Installations and Performances 2019

Installations

Kathrin Köster
The hammy stage dive, 2018
legerdemain, 2019

Kathrin Köster’s sculptural installation includes The hammy stage dive, 2018, and a new commission, legerdemain, 2019. Constructed with multi-layered fabric and paper upon supporting structures, Köster’s works explore how these materials express their own sense of theatricality and movement in situational contexts. Based on K.F. Schinkel’s vision of the stage and utopian scenery design, The hammy stage dive creates illusions that simultaneously collapse in their fragility. Gestures such as leafing through, grasping, rolling apart, and unfolding overlap in legerdemain. These works are shown in connection with Köster’s newly published artist book ex plica (Argobooks, 2019), bringing together themes of folding, textiles and corporeality. The physical mobility of her book’s design reflects the performative aspect of her work.

Visit Argobooks (Table N4) to browse the publication.

Rudolf Samohejl
Life Table, 2019
Rib Cage, 2019

Rudolf Samohejl’s ‘sculptural situation’ features two new works, Life Table, 2019 and Rib Cage, 2019. Intended to be shown in public space, his work is activated through unpredictability in an effort to disrupt our everyday habits. Utilising humour, he reflects on functional design, game theory, systems versus randomness and low-tech as opposed to high-tech. Life Table is both a sculpture and a working ping-pong table, where Samohejl challenges viewers to a game (or they may play each other), subverting the passive mode of experiencing art into an active role. Rib Cage is a boat-like sculpture revealing a stripped-down structure that was developed by the application of a computational thinking method onto matter. Samohejl’s newly published artist book Plane Dreams (ArtMap, 2019) is a collection of photographs taken since 2017 and presented in the form of a graphic novel.

Visit ArtMap (Table H3) to browse the publication.

Alias
Reading Area

The Alias reading area features collected books published by Alias, an independent editorial project based in Mexico City. Established by Damián Ortega, Alias publishes texts that it considers to be valuable contemporary art references. These include creations that have not yet been translated into Spanish or have not been printed and distributed in Spanish speaking countries, as well as creations that have been discontinued or were never distributed in Mexico. It was conceived by Ortega as a programme for publishing a collection comprised of texts written in the artists’ own hand, in addition to texts initially generated as interviews or lectures. Alias currently approaches contemporary art through its own editions, a selection of catalogues and art criticism, in the form of essays and other texts.

The furniture for the Alias reading area is by Studio Manuel Raeder.

Visit Alias (Area O) to browse the publications.

Mathilde ter Heijne
Woman To Go, 2005-ongoing

Mathilde ter Heijne’s Woman To Go is an ongoing project and archive, begun in 2005. Her installation of postcard racks features postcards with the portrait of an unknown woman who lived between 1839 (the beginning of photography with daguerreotypes) and the 1920s, while the ‘message’ side of the postcard has text with the biography of a person born as a woman and influential or extraordinary in her time. The biographies speak of lives of people who all fought for their individual goals in a world dominated by patriarchal society structures – a world in which women had no right to choose or own property, and being remembered was an exclusively white, male privilege. Most of these women have been forgotten, and the many unknown women help the known ones to become visible again. The postcards can be taken by viewers, so the public may compile alternative historiography through subjective biographies.

Visit Argobooks (Table N4) to browse the publications.

Tamami Iinuma
Piece of colonne, Fragment of waves, 2018-19

Piece of colonne, Fragment of waves, 2018-19, is an interactive installation by Tamami Iinuma featuring 36 unique artist books of photographs derived from coloured light spectrums as they appear in and through an architectural structure. Iinuma, who works with photography in an effort to capture the ‘story of an architectural body’ was affected by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. This catastrophe demonstrated for her how nature can cause architecture created by human technology to suddenly disappear without warning. In her installation, abstract images appear and disappear meditatively as the pages are turned, recalling the continuously ebbing and flowing of waves or the ‘breath of architecture’. Viewers are invited to create their own waves and see waves created by others.

Visit Tamami Iinuma (Table U8) to browse the publications.

Marlena Kudlicka
unprotected 0 fig. 120°, 2015
unprotected 0 fig. 120°, 2015
velvet mind marble thoughts, 2019

Marlena Kudlicka’s installation includes a sculpture unprotected 0 fig. 120°, 2015, and a small framed work by the same name, unprotected 0 fig. 120°, 2015. Reflecting her interest in the tradition of Constructivism, Kudlicka focuses on exploring semantic and spatial relations between function, language, structure, contour, shape, and system. The titles of her work give additional poetic meanings and explore the problems of communication, grammar, and space. Investigating the intrinsic relationship between error and its derivatives (uncertainty, doubt), she determines how present they are in a sculpture that is to be made and creates a ‘recipe’. This recipe works as an index of what the sculpture is – much more than its mere shape – it is the result of a causality of all the ingredients that it entails. Also on view is Kudlicka’s new limited edition poster velvet mind marble thoughts, 2019, commissioned by Friends with Books and available for free to the public.

Visit DISTANZ Verlag (Table R4) to browse the publication.

Performances

Saturday, 21 September, 17:00 h

Lara Salmon
mnemonic gesture, 2019
Duration: c. 45 minutes

mnemonic gesture, 2019, is a performance by artist Lara Salmon taking place simultaneously and alongside a public programme presentation by Yon Natalie Mik and Micaela Terk, as they discuss performance art in relation to The Invisible Archive, a new performance and time-based art journal. In contact with the speakers, Salmon’s movements denote the history of script. Through these acts, a part of the performance is preserved for later recollection.

Presented by Goodbye Books in collaboration with The Invisible Archive.

Visit Goodbye Books (Table S9) to browse their publications.

Saturday, 21 September, 18:00 h

Black Palm
Lies, 2019
Duration: 50 minutes

Multidisciplinary curatorial platform Black Palm enacts Lies, 2019, a ’conversation performance’ and symposium, addressing the determinability of truth and lies, examining the influence of individual experience. Originally presented at Kunsthalle Wien, this performative round of discussion with video and sound is adapted to present their new publication Unangenehme Gefühle 2 – Lügen (Black Palm and SIG, 2019).

Presented by Black Palm. Programme in English and German.

Participants include Sonja Cvitkovic, Catalon, Verena Dengler, Marine Drouan, Anke Dyes and Megan Francis Sullivan.

Visit Black Palm (Table P3) to browse their publications.

Sunday, 22 September, 14:00 h

Mette Edvardsen
Black, 2011-ongoing
Duration: 25 minutes

Artist Mette Edvardsen performs Black, 2011-ongoing, a performance about making things appear. Through spoken words and movements in space a world becomes visible, where the performer is the mediator between the audience and what is there. A play in time and space where only the body is physically present, Edvardsen performs actions and handles invisible objects, attempting to bridge the invincible gap between thought and experience. Edvardsen’s performance is in connection to her artist book Not Not Nothing (Varamo Press, 2019).

Presented by Varamo Press.

Visit Varamo Press (Table S10) to browse the publications.

Sunday, 22 September, 14:30 h

Jereon Peeters
The elusive eloquence of dozing off, 2019
Duration: 30 minutes

Writer Jeroen Peeters’ lecture-performance, The elusive eloquence of dozing off, 2019, muses on various kinds of literature that don’t quite make it to the printed page. When invited to contribute an essay on artist Mette Edvardsen’s library of living books Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine, 2010-ongoing, Peeters replied that he didn’t have the time for this, as he was too busy following various characters in novellas by the Argentine writer César Aira, and ended up embracing their exploration of the art of not writing. Varamo Press is named after César Aira’s character Varamo.

Presented by Varamo Press.

Visit Varamo Press (Table S10) to browse the publications.