Melika Ngombe Kolongo

The Long Progress Bar @ Brighton Dome Studio Theatre, Sep 9

6 September 2016

The Long Progress Bar, a one-day festival of talks, screenings, and musical performances at the Brighton Dome Studio Theatre on September 8.

The so-called ‘Festival of Radical Imagination’ celebrates just that and explores new methods of empowerment, collective action and technological progress. This year the festival pays special attention to the “platforms, interfaces and resolutions needed to build a better future” and ask “a new generation of thought-provoking artists, activists and academics: what is progress?”. Hosted by author Warren Ellis, speakers include journalists Aimee Cliff and Ash Sarkar, artists Melika Ngombe Kolongo and Roger Hiorns, and philosopher Nina Power.

Screenings include ‘AS Chingy’ by Sam Rolfes, ‘Europa, Mon Amour’ by Lawrence Lek, ‘Finding Fanon Part Two’ by Larry Achiampong and David Blandy, ‘Rigged’ by Kate Cooper, ‘The Sprawl (Propagadanda About Propaganda)’ by Metahaven, ‘The Suburbs Dream of Violence (Kingdom Come)’ by Gazelle Twin, and ‘Where Land Meets Sea’ by Embassy for the Displaced.

The festival ends with two live performances by Drill Folly and Ital Tek and DJ sets from GAIKA, Kolongo’s Nkisi music production project, and Yon Eta.

See the FB event page for more details.**

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Too Much @ Two Queens, Oct 2 – 25

30 September 2014

Leicester’s Two Queens is putting on the group exhibition Too Much which will be running at their gallery space from October 2 to October 25.

Taking up the topic of emotions and expression in the art world and in media at large, Too Much focuses in on the “emotive and affective properties of artistic expression”, featuring contemporary practices that work to respond to emotional stimuli, “replac[ing] cynicism, disillusion and apathy with rage, fear and love”. Based out of the gallery’s re-launch of Leicester’s collection of German Expressionist art, the exhibition aims to explore how the internet – and media or technology at large – has transformed how artists express themselves.

Featuring a few aqnb favorites, including Jesse Darling and Arcadia Missa‘s Rozsa Farkas, the group show also brings the works of Jennifer Chan, Kitty Clark, Phoebe Collings-James, Jake Kent, Melika Ngombe Kolongo, Jaako Pallasvuo, Leon Sadler, and Alice Theobald, as well as additional texts by Mathew Parkin and James Poyser.

See the Too Much exhibition page for details. **

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THE ANGRY SHOW @ 55 Sydenham Rd install photos

16 March 2014

When Arcadia Missa co-founder and THE ANGRY SHOW curator Rózsa Farkas accidentally emailed me her “secret planning pdf”, I was confused by the artwork descriptions like “perhaps the goetse vid and the text she wrote on the modern phallic subject in htsf, in vinyl on the wall” for Jesse Darling’s ‘Mouf’ (2013) video. Assuming there was a reason for presenting the exhibition information sheet in such an unfinished manner (where a ‘?’ stood in place of an actual closing date), I asked Farkas if I could use the piece below, being drawn to how it called attention to the connotations of a given font: the delicate and graceful Chancery for “feelings”, clumsy and awkward Comic Sans for “the lonely sad girl” and dark Gil San Ultra Bold for “Other”. It turned out to be a very old draft curatorial plan.

Nonetheless, Farkas said I could use it but asked that I clarify how the writing came about, “cos like – they aint proper sentences ahahaa <3 <3”. In the context of THE ANGRY SHOW, though –where the didactics are scrawled in black felt tip over white walls and Jake Kent quotes UK punks Crass in ‘Do they owe us a living? ‘Course they fuckin’ do‘ (2013) –it’s sort of fitting.

Because between Aimee Heinemann’s gleefully low-brow reference to Chris Crocker’s emotional plea in ‘Alter (Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels)’ (2013), with “LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE” spray painted on a survival blanket, and Rachel Lord’s tribute to the pink ‘girl’ Angry Bird in ‘Stella with flowers’ (2013), THE ANGRY SHOW already willingly rejects the “refinement, delicacy, or sensitivity” that Kent’s ‘crass’ is defined as being lacking in.

This is an exhibition that refuses the political structures that not only dictate one’s social worth via externally defined acceptable behaviours but determine its very aesthetic. To Melika Ngombe Kolongo & Daniella Russo’s ‘Unintended Circumstances‘ (2013) video, Farkas says, one viewer at the Sydney exhibition commented that the work, drenched in radiance and depicting the curb Florida teen Trayvon Martin was gunned down on, doesn’t look very “angry” at all.

“If we think about crying selfies and lonely girls, we begin to see a hierarchy in the deployment of affect: the Other cannot embody anger as part of their affect/subjectivity”, she explains. THE ANGRY SHOW refuses that hierarchy and “welcomes rage”. **

Exhibition photos, top-right.

Screen Shot 2014-03-12 at 22.19.12THE ANGRY SHOW group exhibition is running at 55 Sydenham Rd in Sydney, till March 30, 2014.

Header image: Aimee Heinemann, ‘Alter (Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels)’ detail (2014). Image courtesy Rózsa Farkas.

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