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| 24.10.2008
- 16.11.2008 Curators from East and Central Europe II: Elena Sorokina Subjective Events, Sometimes Recorded Opening:
24.10.2008, 8PM |
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Subjective Events, Sometimes Recorded Yevgeny
Fiks
In everyday language, an event is a notion that embraces two different meanings - a happening violating limits or, in the opposite, invigorating them. One is destructive, the other restrictive; one is closer to the chaos of a revolution, the other to a meticulously performed ceremony with a set of rules. The work in the exhibition focuses on the second meaning: initially, it comments on contemporary rituals or pronounced interest in social codes, which often re-emerge in times of crisis and insecurity. Through recording, staging, or enacting some examples of today's ritualistic behavior the artists examine how the so-called "flexible personalities" engage in a performance of specific and mainly self-imposed rules. The group REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT observes visits to the newly built Japanese garden by the inhabitants of the Berlin district Marzahn, Alexander Vaindorf looks into some unusual therapy sessions, Katarina Zdjelar films amateurs singing, and Ana Hušman mocks a perfect lunch with invited guests. In analyzing these voluntary "ceremonial behaviors" proliferating in today's order, which promote "limitless living and choosing", the artists in the show direct our attention to contemporary changes in the nature of limits and social prohibitions. Introducing
the notion of the "subjective event," -- an experience
which can't be proven and whose very existence is not certain ----
the exhibition circumscribes a field of tension between the mise
en scene of the quotidian and intangible action as material for
artists' work. Yevgenyj Fiks and the group Demokratisk
Innovation enact subversive gestures or interventions which
are inconspicuous and almost invisible for the "general public."
Using custom-produced stamps featuring faces of former leaders of
the American Communist Party to pay his bills, Fiks, for example,
turns a ritual of the capitalist world order - paying bills to corporations
- into commemoration of the American Communist movement. Kent
Hansen and Jo Zahn from DEM at tv-tvconduct an
"emancipatory experiment", handing a camera to random
groups. They conclude, however, that the films produced never exceed
personal narratives.Finally, some work recontextualizes highly visible
public happenings as some kind of subjective events. The footage
of visits by heads-of-state to France, used by Franck Leibovici,
Giulia Di Leonarda and Armin Linke in their collaborative
project, or body searches at airports recorded by Gulnara Kasmalieva
and Muratbek Djumaliev - change their possible readings through
displacement. These rituals, observed by the artists, collapse into
meaningless repetition, never becoming the action they promise to
be. -Elena Sorokina, 2008 Elena
Sorokina is a Paris/Brussels based curator and writer. A Whitney
ISP fellow, she recently |
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Yevgeniy
Fiks
Lenin for your Library?, 2007
100 copies of "Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism"
by V.I. Lenin were sent out to the addresses
of World's major corporations, including Gap, Coca-Cola, General Electric,
and IBM among many others. In an enclosed letter, it was stated that the
book was a donation to the corporate library. Out of 100 copies, 14 were
accepted and "thank you" letters were received. 20 copies were
returned together with letters stating various reasons for rejection,
including a particular focus of the library or their policy not to accept
any gifts or
donations from private individuals. The fate of the remaining 66 copies
remains unknown.
Commemorative
CPUSA Stamps, 2007-2008
The artist published US postal stamps baring portraits of historical leaders
of the Communist Party of the USA, including Mother Ella Reeves and William
Z. Foster among others. Eight different stamps (eight different portraits),
ten with each portrait, eighty stamps total. During 2007-2008 Yevgeniy
Fiks was using these stamps on envelops when he pays his monthly utility
bills to corporations (Time Warner Cable, Con Edison, T-Mobil, CitiMortgage,
Verizon, and other corporations). Fiks subverts the concept of a “commemorative
stamp” baring portraits of historical figures by putting on stamps
faces of forgotten and repressed leaders of American
Communist Party and using these stamps in his everyday life. (Yevgeniy
Fiks)
Kent Hansen
und Jo Zahn (for TV-TV)
Ceci n'est pas une interview, 2008
“Ceci n`est pas une interview” is a TV series developed by Kent
Hansen and Jo Zahn. The first volume of “Ceci n'est pas une interview”
was broadcast for the first time at the Parisian local TV station La Locale
2007. In the production a high end camera is handed to random groups in
the streets of cities around the world. Presenting themselves as a TV-crew
they invite the groups to record their get-together. The TV-crew then
leaves the place, and returns after a while to retrieve the camera. The
single edited sequences last for approx. 6 minutes." (Kent Hansen)
Ana Husman
Lunch, 2008
Video, 16’30“
Gulnara
Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev
Something about Contemporary Nomadism, 2006
Video, 12’30“
Franck
Lebovici, Giulia di Leonarda, Armin Linke
Sommet de la méditerranée, 13 juillet 2008, Grand Palais
REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT
The Japanese Garden, 2008
Video, 9’38“
Idea and concept REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT and Gaby Steiner
The Japanese Garden is located at vacation park Berlin Marzahn in the
"Gardens of the World". The employee of a security firm is on
guard duty there. It is his job to announce behavioural rules and information
about the cultural meaning of the place. To reach all the visitors with
his message he has to repeat his directions again and again. In addition
the film shows a staff member who rakes the small stones of the garden
every morning in a similar repetitive way. The remake of a non European
garden in the middle of a prefabricated housing area at the periphery
of Berlin causes notable cultural interferences. An environment that is
intended to be spiritual merges with the behaviour of the staff and visitors
of a middle European leisure facility. The result is a culture of simulation
that causes the disappearance of borders between different forms of culture.
Alexander
Vaindorf
Every word is becoming, 2008
Video, 2’36“
The video contains personal definitions of wealth collected via survey
forms on the web. “Global” submissions - dominant values in
western society are visualized as a text subtitles. During the entire
video its background fades throughout the full colour spectrum, as each
colour assigned to each
definition and its value. The speed of the video is ten times faster then
normal which limits the reading
possibility to only a few words at a time, as those become keywords.
Using similar mechanisms as in advertisement the video correlates to a
"modern" rapid life style, contradicting
the “actual” time needed to reflect on ones life values. (Alexander
Vaindorf)
Katarina
Zdjelar
Everything is gonna be, 2008
Video, 3’35“
The video was made with an amateur choir from the Norwegian peninsula
of Lofoten, which
might as well have been Burgh-Haamstede, The Netherlands (hiding behind
the dunes) or
Dornstetten, Germany (on the rim of the Black Wood) or San Domenico, Italy
(the little village
from which you can see Florence), or Héricourt, France (one of
these little villages that
gave its name to a great battle). (Frans-Willem Korsten, 2008)
Further documentation to this exhibition at http://c-m-l.org/?q=node/346
Elena
Sorokina is a Paris/Brussels based curator and writer. A Whitney ISP
fellow, she recently
curated "Petroliana" at the Moscow Biennial 2007, "Laws
of Relativity" at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin,
and "On Traders' Dilemmas" at YBCA, San Francisco. She writes
for Artforum, Moscow Art Magazine and other publications.
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