Unpacking transdisciplinary prose + remixed poetics in Cc: Soft John Poetics at Berlin’s gr_und, Sep 26 + 27
26 September 2017
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The Soft John Poetics and Hard John Poetics dual–event at Berlin’s gr_und is taking place on September 26 and 27.
Run by Cc:, the first event Soft John Poetics on September 26 is part of a monthly event looking at poetics and includes contributions by CA Conrad, Caspar Heinemann, Zoe Darsee, Zan de Parry, Fette Sans, Alex Turgeon and others to be announced shortly.
The second event, Bcc: Hard John Poetics on September 27, aims to “critically unpack hard transdisciplinary Prose and remixed Poetics that both forfeit and rejoice in Aesthetic discourse today” by an open discussion, open platform format.
gr_und is a nonprofit space dedicated to hosting exhibitions, workshops, live web radio and other formats to re-adjust the “status quo of the commercial art world.”**
Displacement, dislocation + anarchy at this year’s ‘Platform’-themed Deptford X Festival, Sep 22 – Oct 1
22 September 2017
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The Deptford X Festival is on at venues across South London, opening September 22 and running to October 1.
The theme of the 10-day program is titled ‘Platform,’ featuring five emerging artists who this year include Evan Ifekoya, Project O, Sam Austen, Sisters From Another Mister and Tom Ireland. Nominated by a panel of artists, curators and writers, each participant will produce new work for an outdoor installation at sites around the English capital’s district of Deptford. There will also be a special project by D.A.T.A. (Deptford Anarchist Tapestry Association), where they will confront displacement and dislocation through the famous Deptford symbol of the anchor.
Slime moulds, submarine creatures + migrating birds in Ambient Intelligence at Enclave, Sep 21 – Oct 1
21 September 2017
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The Ambient Intelligence group exhibition is on at London’s Enclave, opening September 21 and running to October 1.
Bringing together slime moulds, submarine creatures and migrating birds, the show looks at “processes of emergence of non-neuronal and expanded forms of intelligence, both in nature and technology” and features work by Joey Holder, Anna Mikkola and Jenna Sutela.
There will also be accompanying events, including a performance by Rachel Cheung ‘Corporeal Computation’ on September 28 and 29, as well as ‘New Ecological Paradigms’ lectures by Aslak Aamot Kjærulff, Alexandra Anikina and Inigo Wilkins, and a screening of Air Kiss (a film by Karina Golubenko, Egor Kraft, Alina Kvirkveliya and Pekka Tynkkynen).
Zach Blas confronts the growing hegemony of the internet with a new queer science fiction film at Gasworks, Sep 21 – Dec 10
21 September 2017
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ZachBlas is presenting solo exhibition Contra-Internet at London’s Gasworks, opening September 21 and running to December 10.
A newly commissioned queer science fiction film installation ‘Jubilee 2033’will be premiered, as well as works in animation, vinyl text and other moving image and “confronts the growing hegemony of the internet.” The opening night will also feature a talk/tour by Blas.
The exhibition dives into the “accelerated capitalism, surveillance and control” that moves throughout the contemporary internet, and approaches science fiction and technology through a queer and feminist lens to sift through the past, present and future. Set in Silicon Valley in 2033, the work (and title) is a play off of Derek Jarman’s seminal queer film Jubilee (1973).
Puncturing the dominating + standardized art circuit with the last episode of Everything We See Could Also Be Otherwise… at The Showroom, Sep 20 – Nov 11
19 September 2017
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The Everything We See Could Also Be Otherwise (My Sweet Little Lamb) group exhibition is on at London’s The Showroom, opening September 20 and running to November 11.
The London iteration of the project is the final stage, with previous episodes shown in Zagreb, each contradicting and reinforcing the others. Bringing together “geographically and poetically heterogeneous artist practices,” the exhibition attempts to “punctuate standardized presentations and interpretations of works that have dominated international art circuits over the last few decades” with disorder and progressive re-imaginings.
The tour follows on to Berlin, Basel, Milan, Lisbon, Porto and Madrid, and features the “loose performance collective” who is Tomislav Feller, Nils Amadeus Lange, Maria Metsalu, Ofelia Jarl Ortega, Vincent Riebeek, Nicolas Roses and Manuel Scheiwiller.
Each show changes depending on the venue and improvisation, but explores scenes that address contemporary “sexuality, authorship, institutionalisation, digital age, fetishes, contemporary dance and visual culture.”
Young Boy Dancing Group (2016) Chart Art Fair, Copenhagen. Photo: David Stjernholm
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What is A Good Neighbor? Levels of distance + intimacy in the 15th Istanbul Biennial, Sep 16 – Nov 12
15 September 2017
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The 15th Istanbul BiennialA Good Neighbour is taking place at venues across the Turkish city, opening September 16 and running to November 12.
Curated by artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset (Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset), the curatorial premise poses a series of questions asking if a good neighbor is, “a stranger you don’t fear,” “from a neighboring country,” and “leaving you alone,” to name a few. Levels of intimacy and distance are are explored through the concept of the acquaintance.
There are 55 participating artists, including Mirak Jamal, Georgie Netell & Morag Keil, Kaari Upson and Aude Pariset among others, with a highlight event including dance artist and movement therapist Tuğçe Tuna‘s new choreography ‘Body Drops’ performed by nine dancers under the dome of the hammam.
Peanut butter + dried up markers smeared across Sophie Serber’s messy interests in Gravity Sucks Again at CAVE3000, Sep 16 -19
15 September 2017
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Sophie Serber is presenting Gravity Sucks Again at Berlin’s Cave3000,opening September 16 and running to September 19.
The press release includes only an abstract written excerpt credited to Chris Viaggio, referring to the Amsterdam-based artist’s often crude aesthetic interests. It reads, “Sucking is pulling, Delivering too, to a cocked-locked-and-loaded organ—what I would do,” while imagining a space where “peanut butter coats the walls; it’s the stuff, it stays stuck and remembers where it’s been—the scribbled marks of a marker drying out.”
Cave3000 is run by Natasja Loutchko in her apartment, where performances and exhibitions take place, which encourages dialogue between public and private, and is described as a “place for play and elaborative social structures.”
The Berlin/Izmir-based artist, writer and performer often works in painting and performance exploring the relationship between humour and fear.
The upcoming show will look at language through fiction, theatre and painting to “perform conflicting narratives and traverse the tension found in irreconcilable difference.” On September 24 Saydam will also have a ‘Studio Sunday’ where she will present Virginia Woolf’s ‘StreetEssay’ (1930) with an accompanying group discussion.
In conjunction, the artist, DJ, performer and poet will also be participating in group exhibition Sonic Rebellion: Music As Resistance at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit running September 8 to January 7, 2018. Along with over 30 artists, the project will look at the role of music “as a catalyst for social change and empowerment” looking specifically at historical and contemporary resistance movements in Detroit.
Stewart Uoo brings cult event It’s Get Better to London for a night of POC, queer, feminist + radical perspectives at ICA, Sep 15
13 September 2017
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Stewart Uoo is presenting the It’s Get Better V night of performance, screenings and a dance party at London’s ICA on September 15.
As the first London iteration of the cult event, the New York-based artist brings together musicians, artists, performers, and poets; “friends, collaborators and heroines,” alongside a programme of film and video works that extend across the ICA building from sunset to sunrise (8pm to 5pm).
Nkisi (2015). Performance view. Photo by George Howard. Courtesy Bold Tendencies, London.
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Mallrats, retrospectives + screenings across sister cities: A list of recommendations for Berlin Art Week 2017, Sep 13 – 17
13 September 2017
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The sixth Berlin Art Week opens across venues in the German capital today, running Sep 13 to 17.
In an effort to disentangle the vast, city-wide program for an AQNB audience, we’ve put together a list navigating the heady combination of festivals, fairs, exhibitions, performances and special events. Some highlights include, a Berlin Community Radio night of art, wellness and shopping the new BCR merchandise line on Thursday and the opening of the Harun Farocki retrospective at NBK, with an accompanying group exhibition, featuring Candice Breitz, Samson Kambalu and others, at SAVVY.
Sarah Miles + Anastazja Moser. Courtesy Berlin Community Radio.
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Meriem Bennani explores tension + tradition within Moroccan chikha culture in Siham & Hafida at The Kitchen, Sep 13 – Oct 21
12 September 2017
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Meriem Bennani is presenting solo exhibition Siham & Hafida at New York’s The Kitchen, opening September 13 and running to October 21.
Curated by Lumi Tan, the installation of the artist’s 30-minute video follows the lives of two women, Siham and Hafida, whose “intergenerational conflicts regarding the chikha tradition reflect greater shifts in Moroccan culture of the past 50 years.”
Looking at the performance of femininity, religion and social traditions, the film will explore the space of tension within a globalized society between oral practices of chikha musical genre Aita and social media.
An exercise in speculative fiction around searching for Paradise on Mars at Istanbul’s OJ, Sep 15-29
11 September 2017
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The Paradise on Mars group exhibition is on at Istanbul’s OJ Art Space, opening September 15 and running to September 29.
Curated by Erdem Cetrez, the show is an exercise in speculative fiction. Employing the backdrop of the newly colonised Mars, artists are invited to reflect on the “politically stuck and contradictory state of the present-day Earth” and fantasise on the potential of humankind as they set about establishing a new society on the rust-coloured planet.
Monia Ben Hamouda, ‘Turn Bomb Craters into Swimming Pools,’ (2017) Installation view. Courtesy the artist + OJ, Istanbul.
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The first Okey Dokey local + international gallery share runs in Cologne and Düsseldorf, Sep 8 – 30
8 September 2017
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The Okey Dokey joint exhibition project of galleries and spaces is on in Cologne and Düsseldorf, opening September 8 and running to September 30.
Similar to the CONDO collaborative project (founded in London in 2016 by Vanessa Carlos of Carlos/Ishikawa and debuting in New York this year) which sees spaces host artists from an international counterpart, the citywide event presents collectively-curated group shows developed in cooperation with their guests.
X is Y (2015). Exhibition view. Courtesy Sandy Brown, Berlin.
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The myths + fairytales around managing bodies in Alex Turgeon’s Good Housekeeping at Toronto’s Franz Kaka, Sep 8 – 30
8 September 2017
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Alex Turgeon is presenting solo exhibition Good Housekeeping at Toronto’s Franz Kaka, opening September 8 and running to September 30.
The Berlin-based Canadian artist known for creating refined installations of subtle complexity alongside an associative writing practice, brings his ongoing investigation into systems used in the management of human and animal bodies by drawing parallels between rural and farm mythologies and anthropomorphic allegories in folk culture.
One such illustrative text is excerpted in the press release, titled How to Build a Stable, and credited to one Donald R. Brann: “Those who neglect cleaning a stall daily soon discover the urine and droppings soften the earth floor.”
Drawing on his own personal history, which is then misrepresented and interpreted in relation to the agricultural and livestock industries, Turgeon repositions the visual language defining these existing structures to point to “broader systems of constraint within contemporary social relations.”
Alex Turgeon, ‘Charon’s Obol’ (2016). Performance view. Courtesy Center, Berlin.
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Bring your own bus stop: Connecting the energies of secret institutions in Carl Palm’s Bacon on the Roof at HEKLA, Sep 8
8 September 2017
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Carl Palm is presenting solo exhibition Bacon on the Roof at Brussels’ HEKLA, opening September 8.
The press release for the show includes a lengthy text by Lars-Erik Hjertström Lappalainen, contemplating the Stockholm and London-based artist’s work around the concept of the institution as something both widely public and deeply personal: “It seems to me as if Carl Palm has been interested in a kind of unofficial institution, recurring situations that may appear to be unorganized, unexpected opportunities without rules and open to creativity.”
It then goes on to refer to the secret actions of sex tools, the ritual of waiting at the bus stop and the contextual shifts of routines and observances by writer Virginia Woolf, before and after WWI, to speculate on the shifting energies of mobile institutions and their revolutionary potential: “small and scattered communities which can be entirely separate but still belong together, not through the networks, but by virtue of the energy and its quality, analogously to the murmur.”
Carl Palm, ‘Toalla’ (2015). Detail. Photo by Lorena Ancona. Courtesy Parallel Oaxaca.
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LOCAL’s Hannah TW + Helen Ralli celebrate the emancipatory power of music with Dance Freedom at London’s V3, Sep 7 – 15
7 September 2017
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The Dance Freedom group exhibition is on at London’s V3, opening September 7 and running to September 15.
Curated by Hannah TW and Helen Ralli, the show features work by photographers and directors celebrating “the power of uninhibited dancing and how this can bring communities together.” Contributors include Coco Bayley, Lewis Khan, Alex Hulsey,Meshach Falconer Roberts, Lotte Anderson, Wilson Oryema, and Stefy Pocket, among others, and present images of everything from “Kiev speed freaks” and “Polish pop fans” to Carnival and Vogue shows.
As organiser of DIY Brixton party LOCAL, Hannah TW is currently in residence at V3 and will follow the show with a night at Club 414 featuring GAIKA on September 9.
Mass extinction + extraction as cultural fracking of Nora Al-Badri + Nikolai Nelles’ Not a Single Bone at NOME, Sep 8 – Nov 11
6 September 2017
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Nora Al-Badri and Nikolai Nelles are presenting Not a Single Bone at Berlin’s NOME, opening September 8 and running to November 11.
The exhibition explores the West’s colonial history of cultural extraction through paleontology, making the science and mythology around dinosaur fossils what art historian W.J.T. Mitchell calls “the totem animal of modern culture.” The duo will present their most recent HKW-funded project, called ‘Fossil Futures’ and based around research around the former German colony and excavation site of the Tendaguru Beds in Tanzania.
In reproducing these fossils using artificial intelligence and leaked data, along with the traditional tools of museums, the work questions “the fictions of authenticity told by Western institutions, and seek[s] to uncover alternative emancipatory narratives.”
Al-Badri and Nelles will also present an iteration of their 2015 project ‘The Other Nefertiti,’ an open-sourced reproduction of the Ancient Egyptian Royal Bust enabled through a data leak, its original still claimed by the Egyptian Museum of Berlin collection.
