Narelle Jubelin, In late July, 2017. A transcription was made for the end-papers of this publication whilst staying in her childhood home. A familial return to the house where the political reflections of Hannah Arendt were first read some decades earlier. Photography: Nelson Corrales Jubelin.
Foreword
A lot has happened in this academic year. After a fractionally won Referendum result, the British government has officially begun the process of leaving the European Union by triggering article 50 of The Lisbon Treaty. Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States of America after a closely and divisively fought election campaign. In Turkey a failed military coup and a subsequent referendum brought controversial constitutional change to the country. We have seen referenda in Italy and pivotal elections played out in Iran and in France. Anti-government rebels continue their violence in Colombia while Russia and China are subjected to political provocations with controversy and suspicion continuing over cyber security. It feels more than ever that what side of the fence you sit on has more at stake yet less effect. The world, as always, is in flux and we feel less sure of the power of our own voice. It has been a year of violence and protest, political upheaval and public tragedy exposing stark and painful divisions in the social landscape. Social media has been positively mobilising as ever, bringing communities together and giving voice to activism but it is also in this last year we increasingly hear the term ‘echo chamber’ muttered with cynicism. Facebook, criticised as an ever-diminishing sphere of influence, further polarising public opinion and ossifying political division. So too have the terms ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ entered common parlance, leaving doubt and mistrust of political discourse and media outlets.
Chelsea’s Curating cohort is widely international and the course is taught in the context of international collections. It is also taught, however, in the context of our global socio-political climate. When making their final exhibition this dynamic was reflected upon by the group with seriousness and a sense of responsibility. How can one’s democratic voice be heard? How can one effect change through action? What is arts role in this discourse? What purpose does the exhibition serve? These are the questions that Re Re- Re: addresses and it does so with an openness to the inquiry and a discursiveness that reflects the way in which the exhibition was conceived. It is undoubtedly a challenge for 30 curators to come together to stage a single project but this exhibition is testament to the fluidity and agility of this year’s intellectual outlook and ability to work together. It was Hannah Arendt’s 1958 work, The Human Condition that gave traction to this enquiry from the beginning. The work considers action and the role of speech as a way humans distinguish themselves from one another. This acknowledgement of plurality in the masses is a defining feature of how power is understood and as Arendt points out “perhaps nothing in our history has been so short lived as our trust in power”. Power, politics and economics are set in distinction. Arendt suggests the political recognises the potential of the individual and the economic recognises only that part of the individual that works and produces. Power holds the people together but is predicated on speech and action as a unifying force and as evidence of its own emergence - what Arendt would call ‘the space of appearance’. If the possibility for speech and action is lost or corrupted, power is lost or corrupted and society as a political entity is undermined. Arendt argues that this is possible whenever and wherever trust in a world as a place fit for human appearance, for action and speech is gone.
While Arendt's work was first published in 1958 and was a close examination of the forces of fascism, political commentators today are quick to draw comparison to the contemporary moment and point towards the echo chambers of the internet and the rise of the alt-right. The artists that have been invited to exhibit engender in their work what might be read as a space of appearance. Through performance, action, speech and activism, the artists establish a dialogic proposition. One that asks for the participation and action of the viewer too, aiming to challenge notions of power, truth and the political potential of performance in the public realm. What you now hold in your hands further attempts to explore the relevance of Arendt’s work. This is not so much a catalogue for the show but a platform for divergent voices to coalesce around the subject. In light of the contemporary moment, artists, writers, curators and academics have been invited to further consider the impact of Arendt’s seminal work from their own perspective and in the context of their own practices. What follows is a rich array of contributions that include poetry, calligraphy, photography, drawing, writing and text that the curators hope may constitute a space of appearance itself. Now, all that remains for me to do is thank, on behalf of MA Curating and Collections, the formidable list of artists and contributors who have given so generously to this project and who have responded so positively to the invitation they were given. But above all I want to both thank and congratulate this graduating cohort for what has been a truly inspirational year. So much good work has been done, so much has been shared and for this I am grateful and honoured to have been a part. This achievement is obvious when reading the pages that follow and when experiencing the exhibition Re Re- Re:. The strength and quality of both these outcomes alongside a public programme of events is evidence of such a year. The enthusiasm and generosity displayed by participants to this project is testament to the seriousness of the enquiry and significance of the invitation put forward.
Lynton Talbot, August 2017
contents
Narelle Jubelin
08 Carlos Saavedra
14
David Gothard
11
Weiping Hu
16
C.M. Kosemen
22 Dave Beech
20
Fereshte Moosavi
31
Fabian Peake
27
Cally Spooner
38 Sophie Loss
35
Francesco Pedraglio
40
Kata Oltai
43 Nahal Tajadod
44
08
Narelle Jubelin
Narelle Jubelin is an Australian artist based in Madrid, leading to her establishing a strong relationship with Spain while addressing issues related to Australian history and culture. Her interests focus on the way objects travel and translate. Solo exhibitions include: Flamenco Primitivo (2016) at Marlborough Contemporary, London; Afterimage (2012) at La Casa Encendida, Madrid; Cannibal Tours (2009) at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne; ECRU – Trading Images (1998) at Pavilhão Branco, Instituto de Arte Contemporanea, Lisbon; Dead Slow (1993) at Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow. Selected group exhibitions include Workshop and Museum (2001) at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Total Object Complete with Missing Parts (2001) at Tramway, Glasgow; Leaving Tracks: artranspennine98 (1998) at Tate Gallery Liverpool; Doubletake: Collective Memory and Current Art (1992) at Hayward Gallery, London.
David Gothard is a London-based director and producer. He worked as the artistic director of Riverside Studios in London as well as the Abbey Theatre, Dublin and resurrected the Kosovan National Theatre after the war. He lectures at Chelsea College of Art, the National Film School, Montclair State University and the University of Iowa.
David
11
Gothard
12
By David Gothard
Thoughts on Hannah Arendt, Apperance and Reality, Using My Personal Diary
Hannah Arendt is no skeleton of a thinker. Her identity, similar to her extraordinary contemporary, the mystic, Simone Weil, who worked for the Free French under de Gaulle in the block where I live, buried and neglected in Ashford, Kent. Oswald Mosley, the English Fascist leader and part-society pet was arrested in the same block just before. Both were volcanoes of analysis and passion involving the whole of their being, giving room to an intimacy between intimacy and historical life spent in an era too long suppressed by the shortcomings of Anglo-Saxon academic thinking. Both were great thinkers with feeling and a sense of activism that placed them at the heart of what should be our cultural and artistic language and history. Both were deep thinkers, serious in their silences and contemplation. I write on the evening of the centenary of the state massacres of Passchendaele, wrapped in its coating of royalty and quasi-Hapsburg sentimentality “as the sun goes down.” Passchendaele was of the war that should have prevented us being led into the next 20 years later. 20th century wartime horror experience led giants of art language and expression like Samuel Beckett and Francis Bacon to question the validity of art leading to a “beginning again” in basic language and depiction from 1945. The starting point was “lost, meaning dead, friends and souls” through a language connecting with philosophical and artistic modernism. The nouvel roman, the new novel and painting confronting the subject matter of humanity at its worst, it has since been given a bourgeois definition as personal and saucy - acceptable for the balanced mind. Poor Francis; poor Beckett.
Hannah Arendt, herself, is present at the birth of existentialism, screaming with the background across Europe of empire, rotting monarchies and ideology rooted in the brutality and poverty imposed on their own in the nineteenth century. Karl Jaspers she knew and she had respect for her professor who slipped into Nazi membership - Heidegger, significant student of Husserl, founder of phenomenology. Loathing and love therefore come into the respect and disgust that flooded her life as the liquids intermixed from world experience - strengthened by the singularity of her intellect and the strength of Jewish culture and mysticism. This is the whirlpool to be confronted in recent history as we dabble with theory of thought in the rough sea of recent cultural history. More specifically we continue to ignore too much the women of this period who entered Auschwitz and who saw what man should never see: we neglect Arendt, Kollwitz, Weil and Alina Szapocznikow at our peril as the gaping hole stands side by side with the loud male protest of righteousness. The silent scream of Brecht and Helene Weigel’s protagonist of our time, Mother Courage, who like Heidegger and all of us was no saint and that is the point. Our friend Roland Penrose continued fighting in the steps of Picasso and the Ubu-like puppets of Miró against Spanish fascism, never fully taking on board the unexpressed thoughts of his wife, Lee Miller, friend of Arendt, as she gave language to the meaning of what she saw as she bathed in Hitler’s bunker and entered Auschwitz for American Vogue. The banality was in the familiarity and the terror of the comfort, its “understanding”. The evil was to turn to see the spillage on our side of the fence and its normality because of its very nature. As I write, on the final day of July where the icon of the banality of the month’s evil in our own sitting room, on the daily television, in Grenfell Tower, seems destined to imprint itself on what remains of the quality of our spirit (the relevant action and contemplative
Arendt word), a “whole range” of “corporate charges” begin their Nuremberg trial, their “criminal investigation”. If you step back you can see the image of the tablecloth of our lives being pulled into that necessary hole of handling and understanding if we are still capable of honesty with language. My generation is familiar in childhood with Hannah Arendt’s New York front page report on the Eichmann trial. It was loud popular communication. In the mid-seventies, Hitler’s respected architect, Albert Speer, was released from Spandau Prison, years before the pathos of Hitler’s deputy (his doppelgänger - as his wife called the man in his eighties, planted by the British with their antique expertise of “false news”.) In the seventies, by the side of a new arrival, Marina Abramović, there was tea for us to meet the Bechers - wonderful German artists with a specific voice of truth. As we entered the central London flat, I heard one of them introduce Albert Speer as the teacups clicked...the drug of the noise, the thrill, London’s beat and the diary continue. Years on, the awfulness of black American life, generally speaking, spelt out by James Baldwin and others, gets equal treatment in the newly arrived blockbuster of US black art at the Tate Modern. Tomorrow I will be there. As a child in Suffolk in the fifties, there were regular long walks down dark lanes between school and home, with grandparents and parents. A favourite repeatable pastime for children was the tale of the coachman, trusted and fascinating as one of those stories which never end but which are told just for this: always, in the dark, at the end of the improvised story, the coachman protagonist turns to the young boy to whom he has given a lift. He draws aside the upturned collar hiding his face and there it is: the face of Hitler who we knew as children had never died, but wandered, disguised, into all our lives.
Carlos Saavedra
14
Carlos Saavedra is a Colombian photographer whose projects focus on the different stages of the human life cycle such as motherhood, birth, old age and death. Recent solo exhibitions include Rostros (2016) at LA Galería, Bogotá; La Nana (2015) Mexico City; Las hijas de Huitaca. Los ojos de la Madre Tierra (2016) Museum of Tolima Ibagué. Selected group exhibitions include No Name (2016) at Tamayo Museum, Mexico City; Photography Now 2016 (2016) at the Center of Photography Woodstock, New York; MOPLA Group Show: Diverse / City (2016), Arena1 Gallery, Los Angeles. In 2012, he qualified as a finalist for National Geographic Photo of the Year for National Geographic.
Chรถd Ritual (Series: Shugsep Nunnery) Black and White Analog Photography 120mm, 6x6 2016
Buddhist debates (Series: Shugsep Nunnery) Black and White Analog Photography 120mm 6x6 2016
Weiping Hu
17
Weiping Hu is a renowned calligrapher and professor at the Kunming University of Science and Technology, China. Hu’s calligraphy was published in the book Weiping Hu’s Collection of Calligraphic Works (2013) and he recently had a solo exhibition, The Most Beautiful Poetry: Weiping Hu’s Calligraphy Works (2015) at Yunnan Contemporary Art Museum, Beijing. His works have also been included in many exhibitions and collected by international and Chinese individuals, companies and institutions.
). These two sentences come from an ancient Chinese book called the ‘Daodejing’ ( ) by Laozi ( One of the phrases means that the most beautiful music in the world is composed of individual tones, if one listens closely; and the greatest notions in the world have no fixed form because they contain countless minute components or ideas interacting with each other.
Hu uses this to echo Arendt’s theory of spaces of appearance, as this is a potential condition which is only actualised when people gather together and generate dialogue. He also refers to the exhibition itself as a small signifier of a concept which, together with countless other signifiers, will manifest into an even greater symbol in the future.
Dave Beech
20
Dave Beech is an artist and writer and is a member of the Freee Art Collective. Beech researches the formative social conditions for artistic practice and its relations to broader social and political forces. His work for Freee focuses on political rejuvenation of the concept of the public sphere as the realm of dissensual publishing. Beech recently authored Art and Value (2016) and co-authored Failed to Agree (2004); The Philistine Controversy (2002). He has also edited Beauty (2009) as part of the Documents of Contemporary Art series in Whitechapel Gallery.
4. How to Disagree (e.g. in a workshop)
Select an existing slogan, phrase, lyric or similar (e.g. black is beautiful) Choose an issue or a series of issues Change a word or words in order to give it a new meaning based on your chosen issue (e.g. protest is beautiful) Guidance and tips remember, slogans are not marketing statements (e.g. just do it) but say something about the world (e.g. votes for women) the existing phrase does not have to say something you agree with you should not expect to get it right first time so try to write as many different slogans from one existing phrase as you can use the same phrase to write multiple slogans about different issues. For example, For the many, not the few becomes For the public, not the market For the love, not the money For the workers, not the wealthy For the angry, not the satisfied For the revolution, not the revolt what makes an existing phrase suitable for turning into a slogan is that:- it is not too long its meaning is not too complicated you don’t have to change too many words
Why we need to disagree: Consumerism replaces disagreement with trading for what each individual can afford. Voting is a mechanism for turning disagreement into the dominance of the biggest minority over all other minorities. A vital political community thrives on disagreement and establishes a wide range of forums and formats that aim to encourage those without a voice to speak up against the dominant views. Guidance and Tips Disagreement is not a sport (the aim is not to win or to beat your opponent by overpowering them with your skills or tricking them into adopting your idea and dropping theirs) Disagreement means listening fearlessly, not just speaking fearlessly (what other people say should not be dismissed or disproved but acknowledged and used to give you a new perspective on your own point of view) Disagreement is an activity that binds you to those who disagree with you (disagreement is a collective act and should be pursued in a spirit of a joint endeavour) Disagreement cannot be completely eradicated (the purpose of arguing your point is not to eliminate rival positions but to sustain the difference between you) Disagreement aims to split the room not unify it by persuading everybody of your idea (consensus results from disagreement only by concealing real differences so the aim of disagreement is to reveal those differences) Disagreement leads to collective action not by excluding those who disagree with you but by preserving different modes of participation Disagreement is sometimes so accentuated and disturbing that the only way forward is to go your separate ways and become enemies.
2. How to make a Poster choose a slogan that you agree with make sure the slogan is something you want to say to others make an object out of the slogan (writing, printing, sculpting, etc) take a photo of yourself holding the text object print the photo in multiples attach the posters to public surfaces 3. How to Choose a Badge Look at all the badges and read all the slogans on the badges Choose a badge according to the meaning of the slogan (not the colour or design) Choose the slogan that you most agree with (do not choose a slogan by asking whether you like it or it sounds nice or looks good or has a good rhythm) Agreeing with a slogan means that you can repeat it as if you had written it yourself If you do not agree with any of the slogans, do not choose any badge If you agree with several slogans, either choose all of them or keep thinking about which one you agree with most you must wear the badge that you have selected you must be prepared to justify your choice of badge you must be ready to defend the slogan on the badge that you are wearing
Five Instructions The Freee Art Collective
1. How to write a slogan
5. How to change the world (opposition is not enough) Opposing, resisting, rejecting and attacking dominant social forces can only be achieved on the basis of: Building, sustaining, organising and protecting a network of institutions, clubs, groups, unions and parties that: Provide collective resources for critical discussion, mutual support, alternative cultures, traditions of insubordinate thought and experiments in unprecedented forms of collective living that foster: A culture of protest and politicisation, the production of alliances and solidarities and the development and reproduction of alternative values and new practices that underpin: A united response to emergencies, a coalition of critical forces united against the existing social system, short term goals for social change and long term aims for structural transformation.
By Dave Beech
22
C.M. Kosemen is an Ankara-based artist and independent researcher. His areas of interest include Surrealist art, visual culture, Mediterranean history, palaeontology, evolution and zoology. Solo exhibitions include Last and First Forms (2017) at CER Modern Gallery, Ankara; The Lathe of
Memory (2016) at Artist House Gallery, Tel Aviv. Selected group exhibitions include Mindscapes (2016) at Sofa Hotel Gallery, Istanbul; Art in Turkish Sweetgum Forests (2015) at Mall Galleries, London.
C.M. Kosemen
C. Memo Kรถsemen, Corax Acrylic on art paper 100 x 70 cm (original size) Colourful work
C. Memo Kรถsemen, Effulgence Acrylics on art paper 100x 70 (original size) Colourful work
Fabian Peake
26
Fabian Peake is an artist who incorporates tailored wall pieces, cut-outs, photography, drawing, writing and poetry within his work. Solo exhibitions include I Believe in Dragons (2008) at Chelsea FutureSpace, London; The Suitcase (2007) at FIAC, Leon, Mexico; Revenge of the Quincunx
(2005) at Hothouse Space, London. Select group exhibitions include Entre Muros (2008) at Wynwood Gallery, Miami, Florida; Entre Muros (2006) at Guanajuato, Mexico (2006). His work is hel d within the Arts Council England collection and at the University of Liverpool.
27
Fabian Peake 1st April 2011
they they to black were see consciousness) in I it the bag (plastic) know know some descend fact have with I one something the bald headed when kite a don’t painted as any chewed kite the a blue I noticed the stairs be our of feet on of I may be that ladybirds by the at to by not cork the real some were all (but kind into a red in with containing point those red painted socks hell I and although paper the of horse tiled still which drawings I plastic rehearsals took even from dog it though (there floor see deeper another but that deeper home a all am and the provided prevailed a bed horse of one thought for blue I time the to more brown the blue me turquoise in food leads there a as but down as a girls extraordinary I it taking and lumbering the photographer kite) the disturbed thought didn’t of was and only feet the pictures came (what so on
Fereshte Moosavi
31
Born in Tehran, 1981, Fereshte Moosavi is the Artistic Director and Curator at the MOP Foundation; a non-profit organisation based in London that provides a platform for emerging Iranian artists to present and develop their works internationally. She is an educator in curatorial studies with a PhD from the Curatorial/Knowledge programme at Goldsmiths, University of London. Since 2015 Moosavi has been curating and co-directing a pedagogical programme in Tehran titled Curatorial in Other Words in collaboration with Charsoo Honar. Moosavi has been a teaching assistant in the Visual Cultures Department at Goldsmiths College University of London from 2014 to 2016 and has taught as assistant teacher and external supervisor at Essex University in 2011, as well as Aalto University in Helsinki in 2014. Her published articles include Theatre as Crime| Theatre as Justice, published on the Art & Media magazine in Tehran, in 2013, and Salaam Cinema, Entering the Space of the Unknown, on DISDISDIS, in October 2013. She has worked at the Bon-Gah publication as Editor and Translator in Tehran, from 2004 to 2010. May – June 2017 Lajevardi Foundation / Tehran / Iran
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CO-APPEARANCES A short analogy on the intricate state of exhibition
On the notion of ‘we’ as opposed to ‘I’ Jean Luc Nancy argues “If being-with is the sharing of simultaneous space-time, then it involves a presentation of this space-time as such.” “Presentation” in understanding the notion of being (as singularity) and being-with (as plurality) requires the necessity of what he calls a stage or a scène on which several people can say ‘I’. “But a ‘we’ is not adding together or juxtaposing of these ‘I’s’. A ‘we’, even one that is not articulated, is the condition for the possibility of each ‘I’.” In other words, thinking of the presentation as subject, rather than the subject of representation, Nancy suggests that the notion of presentation would open spaces of co-appearances. In the past few decades, various methods have been honed to allow us to view exhibitions, democratising the sense of power, and making the place of exhibition accessible to ‘all’ – not only to view artworks, but also to be able to somehow ‘participate’ in the exhibition. Nonetheless, this accessibility has been utilised by institutional structures through new regimes of representation, comprising the power-knowledge relation in organising the order of things and people. In other words, the presentation of art-objects - as things - and artists, curators, and audience- as beings - has been re-arranged in order to form new methods for the appropriation of such co-appearances. The first international Surrealist exhibition was held in the United States of America following the migration of many of the European Surrealists during the Second World War. After the occupation of France by Germany, nine of the Surrealists had to leave their country and go through the legal processes of citizenship application. Their exhibition was titled The First Papers of Surrealism, to reflect on the paperwork of these immigration processes. The show was held at Whitelaw Reid mansion in New York in 1942. The building was the premises of a war relief agency, the Coordinating Council of French Relief Societies. The exhibition was part of their humanitarian activities, organised in order to raise funds for French prisoners and the adoption of children orphaned and displaced by the war. With the title of the exhibition, the artists aimed to underline the émigré’s status, pointing to the socio-political atmosphere that was created by the war. Duchamp, one member of the Surrealist group, installed numerous lines of string throughout the exhibition space, in between the panels on which the paintings were installed. For the viewer, gaining access to the paintings as a bodily experience thus became a crucial task; nevertheless, from a considerable distance the paintings were viewable. The created distance between the paintings and the viewers formed a space through which the function of re-presentation was re-appropriated differently. One could say that, as a result, both the artworks and audience co-appeared in a new position. Duchamp transformed the mansion’s former drawing room by traversing it throughout with simple strings. The exhibition space was filled with paintings, hung on portable partitions, which constituted the overwhelming bulk of what was on show. The entangled net did not cover up the paintings fully; instead, it intended to create a disturbing situation, building a barrier between the spectator and the ‘works of art.’ This created the possibility of re-thinking the position of the spectator and allowed the re-appropriation of the exhibition space.
The withdrawal of the artist from the situation anticipates a return or a re-placing, back into a different position. The visitors were disturbed by the unexpected and inappropriate acts of the children mentioning Duchamp’s name, which replaced the bodily absence of the artist. This approximate presentation, the withdrawal of the artist from the event of the exhibition, seems to allow a different position for both the artist and the audience, that of being “beside itself.” Moreover, the representational format shows a displaced normality, in order to inhabit the space differently. In other words, in this example Duchamp initiates the creation of an environment by withdrawing, re-placing and dis-placing.
Fereshte Moosavi PhD candidate, Curatorial/Knowledge Goldsmiths University of London Art Director MOP Foundation August 2017 1. Nancy, J. L., 2000, Being Singular Plural, Richardson, R. D., & O’Byrne, A. E., trans., Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, p. 65 2. Ibid, p.3 3. One of the children was quoted in Surrealism in Exile and the Beginning of the New York School: “We were encouraged to run about and I remember feeling somewhat uncomfortable both because I didn’t think it was proper behaviour and also because I sensed that some of the guests were of the same opinion.” Kachur, L., 2001, Displaying the Marvelous, Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, and Surrealist Exhibition Installations, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England: The MIT Press, p. 196 4. Nancy, 2000, p. 96. Nancy argues: “Beside itself means into the dispersal of disposition, into the general element of proximity and distance, where such proximity and distance are measured against nothing, since there is nothing that is given fixed point of ipseity (before, after, outside the world). Therefore, they are measured according to the dis-position itself.”
Sophie Loss
35
Sophie Loss is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work reflects her interest and excitement in “what- if� situations, occurrences in which one thing meets another, an activated interrelationship of two elements. Select exhibitions include Library and Archive Show and Tell (2017) at AMBruno
Artists Collective, Tate Britain; 53 books (2016) at Chelsea College of Arts Library; Re object (2015) at The 18th International Artists Book Fair, The Tetley, Leeds; Surfaces: Works on Paper (2012) at Sput+Nik Gallery, Porto.
Perpetual Tango
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Cally Spooner
Cally Spooner lives and works in Athens. Her most recent solo shows include The New Museum, New York, The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (both 2016). Her recent group shows include Serpentine Gallery (2017) and the Geneva Moving Image Biennial (2016 - 17). Her book of Scripts is published by Slimvolume (2016), and her novel Collapsing In Parts is published by Mousse (2012). She is the current writer in residence at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (2016 - 17) .
ACTION
THE VITA ACTIVA & THE MODERN AGE
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Francesco Pedraglio
Ideal space for a performance 16:9 linoprint, 60x40cm, 2016/17
Francesco Pedraglio works with writing, performance, film and installation. Recent texts, performances and exhibitions include The Time Machine (2012), Book Works; A man in a room spray-painting a fly... (or at least trying to...), (2014) Book Works; With regard to the care of horses (2013), Geneva; Pajaro / piedra (eventually you’ll find this beautiful), Provisional Information (2013), Camberwell Space, London; The camel (I had noticed) is passing with great difficulty through the eye of the needle (2014) at Palais de Tokyo; The Melody is in the eye (words are just the left hand) (2015) at Artissima, Turin; (poema) (2015) at Norma Mangione Gallery, Turin; 2 battaglie e 1 guerra (2016) at Istituto Svizzero, Milan; Two Points Connected by a Line or a Line Separating Two Stories (Facts Are Fluid) (2017) at Series #1 CRAC Alsace, Altkirch.
Battle 32 -------- San Romano 1432
BATTLE 32 San Romano (1432) - To be performed while descending a staircase. 1) Losers get to be remembered. 2) Winners, consequently, get to be forgotten. 3) You might as well call it a privilege - the privilege of being remembered - even though it is the sort of privilege the losers themselves would quite easily have done without. 4) Or again: usually losers tend to be remembered, yet for all the wrong reasons - mostly due to their total or partial annihilation - while winners end up being forgotten, confused amongst the dwindling ranks of those left standing, those still alive. 5) Even if, in general terms, the dead always tend to outnumber the living, it is precisely the living who tend to arouse less curiosity - or empathy, or, for that matter, scorn - when compared to the dead. Hence their innate lack of popularity in the history books. 6) At school - or in the playground - we were taught something different, it is true. But I know and you know that, deep down, it is always the losers one remembers the most. 7) At times, losers and winners are one and the same thing. Or better: some losers maintain they are the true winners, making the winners the losers, or so it seems. Still, the same thing could be said of the exact opposite. As such, in the aforementioned situations, it becomes complicated to decide with a decent amount of certitude who to remember and who to forget. 8) Such is the case apropos this action, or performance, or event. A particular case of collective amnesia. Winners and losers are remembered, respectively, as the losers or the winners depending on which side one asks. 9) Red and silver, black and silver... easy to be mistaken. Perhaps it is just a problem of tonalities. 10) Obviously there are times when none of this is possible. Namely: when the losers are all extinct; killed off, most probably. In such cases the winners do indeed appear to be winners and there is little space for anything else. 11) Following this line of thinking, if it is the winners who have been killed, well then they get automatically relegated to the losers position, so that point number 7 - a form of tautology - appears to once again be valid. 12) Mistake: keep in mind how, in such events as the one portraying winners and losers, dead and living, there might as well be a mirage effect, a so-called prospectiva naturalis. That to say, there might as well be more than one vanishing point to keep in consideration when judging the action. 13) Mistake: a hare chased by a greyhound might as well be chased, in turn, by a second hare. 14) The action ends with both sides celebrating, half-dead, the future of the half-living. 15) If interested, make a firm decision on who exactly to remember and who to forget. When finished, leave the room quietly.
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Kata Oltai
Kata Oltai is a curator, art historian and the director of FERi gallery in Budapest. FERi gallery is an education project that addresses gender issues, queer studies and feminism. Prior to starting FERi, she worked for the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest, where her projects included Pál Gerber’s retrospective exhibition, Rita Ackermann’s first comprehensive solo exhibition in Hungary; as well as coordination for the retrospective exhibition of László Moholy-Nagy in 2011 and the Martin Munkácsi show in 2010. Her publications include essays on feminist art, gender roles and the Hungarian art scene since the 90’s.
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Nahal Tajadod Nahal Tajadod is a novelist and translator born in Tehran who has mainly worked in France since 1979. Her research addresses the religious interactions between Iran and ancient China. She specialises in the poetry of Rûmi and has expanded into literary writing. Her publications include Passeport à L’iranienne (2007); Debout sur la terre (2010) and Elle joue (2012) inspired by the life of Iranian artist Golshifteh Farahani. In her text, Nahal Tajadod expresses that everyone’s perceptions are different. Similar ideas and concepts can appear or be understood differently by each one of us. Tajadod refers to the age- old tale of love between Majnun and Leyli, launching her vision of Arendt’s text into the “space” of Persian poetry.
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Regarde moi avec mon oeil
La littérature persane est dominée par le thème de l’amour de Majnun, dont le vrai nom est Qeys, pour Leyli. Ne pouvant épouser sa bien aimée, parce que trop expressif dans les manifestations de son amour pour celle-ci, Majnun, dont le surnom signifie “fou”, en l’occurence “fou d’amour”, ici fou de Leyli, abandonne sa famille, ses amis, s’habille en guenilles, se réfugie dans le désert et compose des poèmes à la louange de Leyli. Lorsqu’on lui parle du pèlerinage, il se rend autour du campement de la tribu de Leyli et lorsque son propre père l’emmène à La Mecque, au vrai pèlerinage, il n’y entend scander que le nom de Leyli. Un jour, parlant et rêvant de Leyli, un ami vient lui annoncer l’arrivée de celle-ci, juste sur le seuil de la porte. Trois ou quatre pas le séparent d’elle. Mais il refuse de la voir. Sa présence l’empêche de penser à Leyli. Interpellé par ces récits, le calife demande à voir Leyli. Lors de l’entrevue, il découvre une jeune fille plutôt moche, maigre et basanée. La seule réponse que Leyli peut lui apporter c’est qu’il n’est pas Majnun. Le calife convoque alors Majnun et l’interroge sur les raisons de son amour pour la moins belle des moins belles des femmes. Majnun répond: “Ô calife, c’est avec les yeux de Majnun qu’il faut voir la beauté de Leyli !” Nezami (XIIe), Rumi (XIIIe), Jami (XVe), Vahshi Bafghi (XVIe) et beaucoup d’autres grands poètes persans ont raconté cette histoire qui ne peut être qu’une relation de vision, un lien entre le visible et l’invisible, l’extérieur et le soi profond: Si tu vois avec les yeux de Majnun À part la bonté de Leyli, tu ne vois rien d’autre. Toi, tu vois sa taille et Majnun voit la séduction, Tu vois un œil et Majnun voit un regard qui tire des flèches. Tu vois un cheveu et Majnun voit les ondulations du cheveu, Tu vois des sourcils et Majnun les promesses des sourcils. Vahshi Bafghi
by Nahal Tajadod
Ce regard, cette impossibilité du regard, Roumi le transfère sur lui-même et par extension sur tout être, en disant: Regarde en moi tant que tu veux, Tu ne me connaîtras pas, Car de ce que tu vis de moi J’ai changé cent fois de nature. Approche, viens dans ma vision, Regarde-moi avec mon œil, Car c’est hors de toute vision Que moi j’ai choisi ma maison. Pour finir, je pourrais ajouter que Majnun est l’espace, Leyli l’apparence et l’union n’est possible que dans la phrase de Rumi: “Regarde-moi avec mon œil”. La science d’aujourd’hui ne dit pas autre chose: “L’atome du soleil parle à l’atome de l’œil le langage de la lumière.”
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curators
Ilke Alkan Benedetta Bianchi Ryan Blakeley Feini Chen, Tiffany Zeming Chen, Roger Zizhen Cheng Nadine Cordial Settele SofĂa Corrales Akerman Chen Cui Paul Davey Hao Deng, Sophia Juanita Escobar Bravo Gaia Giacomelli Golnoosh Heshmati Yuen Yu Ho, Louiza Max Jones Georgia Keeling Maria Kobzareva Yue Li Yuran Lin, Yuki Deborah Lim Shuchang Liu Zhao Liu, Jennifer Flavia Prestininzi Malou Siegfried Ksenia Stepanova Chinmayi Swami Yanbin Zhang, Nancy Xiaodeng Zhou, Sander Xinliang Zhuang
MA Curating & Collections would like express their gratitude to Dr. David Dibosa Dr. Mo Throp Lynton Talbot Donald Smith Cherie Silver For their support and generous contributions, we would also like to thank Karin Akerman Shaun and Elizabeth Blakeley Dwi Choong Alejandra Escobar Bravo Juan David Escobar Alvarez Nadya Ivannikova Hana Noorali, Andrew and Margaret Smith Julia Voskoboinikova and those who wish to remain anonymous.
This publication was produced to accompany the exhibition RE RE- RE: held in the Cookhouse Gallery, Chelsea College of Arts, September 2017. Designed by © Molly Burdett and Léna Rigoleur Printer: Precision - https://www.precisionprinting.co.uk/ Paper: FAVINI - http://www.favini.com/en/ Edition of 500 All rights reserved 2017 © The contributors.
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