Dustin Cauchi

6pm Your Local Time: A document of the documentation

28 July 2015

6pm Your Local Time, organised by Fabio Paris and Domenico Quaranta of LINK Center for the Arts of the Information Age in Brescia, Italy is a one-night event that brings together studio visits, exhibitions and conferences to be distributed through the #6pmeu hashtag on 6pmyourlocaltime.com, at 18:00 CET  on July 22.

These events are mainly experienced through real-time online documentation,  expanding on the idea that the record of a work has shifted from being less a representational tool and more the primary experience. A specifically designed web application that aggregates and collects data with the #6pmeu hashtag presents a democratised presentation of work on the 6pm Your Local Time ‘Socialwall’ page. It’s based on an equalized relationship between artist and viewer that can be read as a more formalized discourse on artselfie viewer-based documentation.

Pierre Clément + Annabelle Arlie, Temporary Arrangement, ‘Candle’, ‘Still Life’, ‘Island’ (2015) Image courtesy the artists.
Pierre Clément + Annabelle Arlie, Temporary Arrangement, ‘Candle’, ‘Still Life’, ‘Island’ (2015) Image courtesy the artists.

Set in their basement, Enrico Boccioletti and Elena Radice present Studio Visit, a “multi-personal exhibition”. Occluding specificity, the description for the Facebook event is a chat extract from the online chat website Omegle. Strangers are asked to disclose the contents of their basement. A discussion about Dr. Dre, dead bodies, Twitter following and ex-girlfriends ensues. The rough surfaces of the basement make for an uncanny atmosphere. Dimly-lit in green and blue fluorescent lights, the basement reveals objects and compositions that resurface like deep secrets only to be concealed again once the viewers have left.

Pierre Clément and Annabelle Arlie’s Temporary Arrangement at Glassbox in Paris functions as a cross between a studio visit and an exhibition, where the works retain a transient relationship to the space. The six pieces on show  cohesively present a symbolic juxtaposition, in particular Arlie’s totem-like ‘Candle’ (2015) and Clément’s ‘Still Life’ (2015) and ‘Island’ (2015). Substituting a sedimented signification with assemblages that act as empty shells, the fabricated artefacts and compositions are mostly made-up synthetic and quotidian elements. Suggesting function, yet remaining by and large purposeless, these artefacts open up a discourse on form and functionality.

Mara Cassiani, #Ed3n and the Perfect Life (2015). Detail. Image courtesy the artist.
Mara Cassiani, #Ed3n and the Perfect Life (2015). Detail. Image courtesy the artist.

At Centrale Fies, in Italy’s city of Dro Mara Cassiani presents performance and installation #Ed3n and the Perfect Life. Set up as a luxurious spa, the space is dotted with customized towels embroidered with mantras and affirmations like “Your body your temple” and “Hydrate yourself”. On the one hand, #ED3N… regards the luxurious spa experience as replacing the need for religious and cult-like introspection. It is the new Garden of Eden. The Biblical reference is reconceptualised as a stable ecosystem; a multi-sensorial ritual akin to esoteric prayer practice. On the other hand, …#The Perfect Life refers to market ventures  exploiting human desire.

In a private bathroom in Paris, Dustin Cauchi’s  055XB HEXAL  plays with material duality and new-found functionality. ‘MTPIXI’, a sculptural work composed of two Manfrotto tripods, is perched over a water-filled basin. As sculpture and  reflection become intertwined, it  is increasingly difficult to view it as separate from the surrounding space. Common bathroom objects appear in parallel to intrusive structures. One such example is a chrome bin that is fronted by a brushed steel sheet. Hidden away behind a semi-transparent shower door is another lit, tripod sculpture which is connected to the shower plumbing. It is made indiscernible by a constant flow of smoke emanating from behind the door.

The viewers’ interaction with the artworks is observed as tagged photos and videos published in real-time on the 6PM website. This is aggregated data constructing a homogenic platform that sheds light on how online documentation has shifted our understanding of materiality and what a work means today.**

Header image:  Dustin Cauchi, 'MTPIXI HEXAL' (2015) from the HEXAL Series. Image courtesy the artist.
Dustin Cauchi, ‘MTPIXI HEXAL’ (2015) from the HEXAL Series. Image courtesy the artist.

6PM Your Local Time was distributed online on July 22, 2015.

Header image: Enrico Boccioletti + Elena Radice, ‘Studio Visit’ (2015). Detail. Image courtesy the artists.

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Wir Kinder aus Asbest @ La Cité internationale des Arts, Jul 10

9 July 2015

La Cité internationale des Arts opens a new group exhibition titled Wir Kinder Aus Asbest, launching at their Paris location on July 10.

The title, which translates to We are children of asbestos—asbestos being the highly heat-resistant fibrous mineral often woven into fabrics to insulate and make them fire-resistant—alludes to the exhibition’s thematics, which confront asbestos as a “symbol for a total melt-down of a modern technology”.

With works by Rudolf ReiberFenêtre Project (featuring Francesca Mangion and Dustin Cauchi), Pierre CleméntRémy Briere, and Ulrike Buck, the exhibition reflects on the previous century’s history, from the atomic disaster of Chernobyl to the fall of the iron curtain, and the “present and dystopian visions of the future”.

See the FB event page for details. **

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Fenêtre Project (2015) exhibition photos

15 May 2015

we wanted to be better and ended up being happythe name of a Fenêtre project-curated show that opened at Galerie Joseph Tang on March 27 (exhibition photos, top right), is now making its online migration in collaboration with OFluxo Blog. It is also a paradoxical statement that could drive you into an existential scream if you let it. Aren’t better people happier? Or is that ignorant people? Are they happier because they forgot it all? Are we sadder because we keep remembering?

The title, their press release writes, is an offhand statement in reply to the “promise of futurity in mainstream sci-fi culture in the 1980s and 1990s”. The future, they say, is a thing of the past; in contemporary culture, “presence has substituted promise, favouring a view of the future as an abridged temporal phenomenon”. We no longer have even nostalgia to cling to.

Tilman Hornig, 'TXT on Devices' (2015). Install view. Courtesy Dustin Cauchi + Francesca Mangion.
Tilman Hornig, ‘TXT on Devices’ (2015). Install view. Courtesy Dustin Cauchi + Francesca Mangion.

The group show, which features Felicia AtkinsonDustin Cauchi, Pierre Clément, and Tilman Hornig, ran at Galerie Joseph Tang for one weekend in late March as part of the ongoing Fenêtre Project in collaboration with the Paris gallery, and is launching at its digital home for an online exhibition. The “curatorial / editorial / convening / creative practice”, developed by Mangion and Cauchi, deals with the dialectics of online/offline and the ways in which the two are converging in the contemporary art field.

Examining curation as an active, dynamic practice, they set up a landscape or “micro ecosystem” of signs and signals composed in hand-engraved text on various objects, like routers, silent speakers, laser pointers, and organic matter. “In this landscape,” they write, “the works co-habit the space harmoniously. This landscape however, harbours a system of signification that is not always visible, at times manifesting a disruption that destabilises this found harmony.” **

Exhibition photos, top right.

The Fenêtre Project group exhibition was on at Paris’ Galerie Joseph Tang, opening March 27. Their SANKAINET solo show is on at Cyprus’ Ground, running May 16 – 17.  

Header image: Dustin Cauchi, ‘055XB’ (2015). Install view. Courtesy the artist.

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