Jon Rafman, Still Life (betamale), 2013, Video HD
Music by Oneohtrix Point Never, 4’54”
Courtesy the artist

Fondazione Modena Arti Visive presents The Mental Traveller, the first large-scale exhibition of works by Jon Rafman to be shown in an Italian contemporary art institution. Curated by Diana Baldon and presented by Fondazione Fotografia Modena and the Galleria Civica di Modena, the exhibition will open at the Palazzina dei Giardini on Friday 14 September 2018, to coincide with this year’s festival filosofia, the theme of which is truth.

The exhibition brings together a selection of multimedia installations, presented for the first time in Italy, tracing the arc of the Canadian artist’s practice from 2011 to the present. Employing a variety of media—including photography, video, sculpture and installation—Rafman explores how reality and simulation have become increasingly homogenized in contemporary society in artworks that blur the boundaries between the virtual and the tangible, between physical bodies and technological replicas.

Born in 1981 in Montreal, where he lives and works, Rafman studied literature and philosophy at McGill University before graduating in film, video and new media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since his earliest career, Rafman has investigated the ramifications of our reliance on technology on our perceptions of reality. To create Kool-Aid Man (2008–11), Rafman spent three years exploring the virtual-reality platform Second Life, in the guise of the titular avatar, to discover the myriad incarnations of its digital ‘inhabitants’. Rafman neither judges nor criticises his Second Life cohabitants: rather, his intention is to document how technology enables people to create entirely new versions of themselves in fantastical environments, giving them the freedom to invent new identities and iconographies.

Rafman also drew from the Internet and its multiple online communities as archival resources for the three videos comprising his Betamale Trilogy (2013–15)—Still Life (Betamale), Mainsqueeze and Erysichthon—which are among the installations included in this exhibition. As in the novels of Georges Bataille, where the narrative arc implodes in the claustrophobic and catastrophic arena of the writing, this leads to a proliferation of narrative strands and interpretations. Watching the Betamale Trilogy, the viewer feels trapped in a vortex of scenarios that are traumatic yet seductive. Rafman skilfully conveys the ambiguous lure of the Internet, which seemingly promises freedom and the discovery of new worlds, yet, in reality, imprisons you in a space tracked by algorithms and monitored by agencies that process, then sell, your navigational data.

Rafman’s extensive research on both the Internet and the deep web has enabled him to assume the mantle of amateur anthropologist and digital flâneur. He investigates the epistemic collapse in recent years of the distinction between digital and authentic worlds, between reality and its virtual representation. In his videos, a poetic and hypnotic off-screen voice invariably accompanies a sequence of images taken from the Internet, videogames or online chat forums.

Memory figures as a major theme in many works. In A Man Digging (2013), which comprises footage from videogames including Max Payne 3, the main character speaks of the intrinsic mutability of memory and how it allows for the rewriting of individual and collective history. While the narrator nostalgically drifts along in search of his fragmented past, Rafman transports us, via the glinting surfaces of memory, to the furthest reaches of reality. The video Remember Carthage (2013) tells the story of a man who sets sail on a ship bound for Tunisia in search of a mythical city in the Sahara Desert that existed at the same time as Carthage. Despite its legendary status as the ‘Las Vegas of Maghreb’, however, no trace of the city remains. Composed of footage from Second Life and the videogame Uncharted 3, the film again features an off-camera voice detailing the sublime architectural beauty of ancient civilisations. Remember Carthage explores not only memory but the contemporaneity of history, since – thanks to technological developments such as videogames and Second Life – even history can now find a different form and influence.

The video Dream Journal (2016–17) comes from Rafman’s habit of animating his dreams using amateur 3D software, and has a soundtrack composed by James Ferraro and Oneohtrix Point Never, with whom the artist has previously collaborated. Two young female protagonists – a stereotypical millennial and a child warrior – set off on a Dantean journey within a dystopian universe. The narrative interweaves imaginary scenes with characters from classical epic tales to yield a series of darkly surreal incidents: this is Rafman’s unconscious mind, augmented by online surfing, rendered visual.

Greeting visitors at the entrance of the Palazzina is the artist’s latest work, Legendary Reality (2017). In this he leads us on a voyage into ‘inner space’. An anonymous protagonist narrates a journey through what appears to be a sci-fi landscape – although he could just as easily be sitting at a computer screen on which historical depictions have become conflated with virtual experiences.

Jon Rafman (Montreal, 1981) is an artist who explores digital culture and subcultures, exposing the desires, obsessions and fetishes triggered by the use of technological devices. Recent solo shows in international contemporary art institutions include: I have ten thousand compound eyes and each is named suffering, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2016); Jon Rafman, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster (2016); Jon Rafman, Zabludowicz Collection, London (2015); The end of the end of the end, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2014); Remember Carthage, First Look: New Art Online, New Museum, New York (2013); The Nine Eyes of Google Streetview, Saatchi Gallery, London (2012); Jon Rafman, online exhibition, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012). He has also participated in numerous group shows, including: I was raised on the Internet, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2018); Alone together, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2018); ARS 17: Hello world!, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki (2017–18); Jon Rafman / Stan Vanderbeek, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles (2017); Manifesta 11, Zurich (2016); Welcome to the Jungle, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2015); Speculations on Anonymous Materials, Fridericianum, Kassel (2013); Nine Eyes, Moscow Photobienniale (2012); Screenshots, William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut (2012); From Here On, Les Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles, Arles (2011).

Jon Rafman, Mainsqueeze, 2014, Video HD, 7’23”
Courtesy the artist

Jon Rafman, Dream Journal 2016-2017, 2017, Video HD
Music by James Ferraro and Oneohtrix Point Never, 49’17”
Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers

Jon Rafman, Erysichthon, 2015, Video HD, 8’4”
Courtesy  the artist

Jon Rafman
The Mental Traveller
Curated by Diana Baldon
14 September 2018–24 February 2019
Opening 14 September 2018, 6pm

Galleria Civica di Modena | Palazzina dei Giardini, Corso Cavour 2, Modena
Opening hours: Wed–Fri, 11am–1pm, 4pm– 7pm. Sat–Sun and Holidays, 11am–7pm
+39 059 2032911/2032940
www.galleriacivicadimodena.it

Short Theatre 2018

With 6 world premieres, 9 national premieres, 2 original productions, 4 co-productions, 2 resident projects, 9 workshops and 2 site-specific projects, Short Theatre returns to Rome from 5 to 15 September 2018, one of the most important international events for contemporary performing arts and creations, now in its XIII Edition. In 10 days, in the spaces of La Pelanda, Teatro Argentina, Teatro India, the Biblioteche di Roma and several other urban spaces, the creations of 55 entities, including artists, groups and national and international companies with over 250 artists present for a total of 120 events and a decidedly large place left solely for education. A multi-disciplinary program which goes from theatre to dance, from performance to audio-video installations, from concerts to dj sets and makes room for “non-standard” projects, multimedia platforms, meetings, workshops and some important additions, such as Panorama Roma, the musical program Controra and the section Tempo Libero dedicated to workshops and training activities.  It isn’t just a simple festival but a precious opportunity for encounters between artists, public, critics and technicians who, every year, create a true community and give life to a system of crucial relationships.

Short Theatre 2018 was conceived and organised by AREA06 under the artistic direction of Fabrizio Arcuri, the general direction and co-curation of Francesca Corona, and created with the support of the MiBAC and the Region of Lazio with the patronage and promotion of Roma Capitale - the Assessorato alla Crescita Culturale – the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali and the Azienda Speciale Palaexpo. It is held in collaboration with the Teatro di Roma – Teatro Nazionale and with the support of the Institut Français Italia, Istituto Svizzero Roma, Accademia di Spagna Roma, Istituto Cervantes Roma, Instituto Camões, Accademia di Romania, Istituto Confucio dell’Università Sapienza di Roma.

Provocare Realtà or “Provoking Reality” is the title of this edition – more than a definitive and imposed theme, it is a key with which to invite the public to read between the lines of the program, seeking out its themes and the subtle shades of its meaning. “Provocare Realtà” expresses the renewed will of the festival to gather artistic itineraries that know how to question the real and how it is narrated, observing its mechanisms, scrutinising how it is represented, placing emphasis on the capacity of the contemporary in its languages to generate “new objectivity”.  What stories are we not paying attention to? What are the forces to which we are not giving voice? Modifying reality through staging, rewriting the narration of the future, examining our relationships with urban spaces, reflecting on the body and on its political and social implications are the principal lines with which we can attempt to answer these questions.

Among the main events of this Edition, the preview on 5 September at Teatro India with Tiago Rodrigues which is the world premiere of the final product of École des Maitres 2018 and, in the following 2 days, 6 and 7 September at the Pelanda in its National Premiere, Antonio e Cleopatra, the play which left its mark on the 2016 Edition of the Festival d’Avignone. Actor, director, producer and executive director of the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II of Lisbon, Rodrigues has staged a reflection on love and politics with Shakespearian echoes and homages to the Hollywood colossal of Joseph L. Mankiewicz with Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. Tiago Rodrigues will also hold a free masterclass open to the public on 7 September at the Pelanda. There will also be two showings of Gala by Jérôme Bel in its national premiere on 9 and 10 September at Teatro Argentina: after having involved the mentally challenged and the common public in his last two plays, the French choreographer is back to subvert the hierarchy with a dance-theatre piece that involves who is normally excluded from live performances, amateurs and those with non-conforming body types. Gala is presented in co-production with the Teatro di Roma – Teatro Nazionale—as part of Grandi Pianure – Gli Spazi Sconfinati della Danza Contemporanea, the festival which the city of Rome’s theatre has dedicated to contemporary choreography, curated by Michele Di Stefano – and as part of La Francia in Scena, the artistic program of the Institut Français Italia and the French Embassy in Italy. The collaboration of Short Theatre with France continues with another national premiere: on 15 September at La Pelanda the choreographer, dancer and researcher of Brazilian origins Ana Pi with Le Tour du Monde des Danses Urbaines en Dix Villes will accompany the public to 10 different cities throughout the world in a conference-play, for a public of adults and children, ages 8 and up, to look at the different styles of urban dance, showing the relationships between the movement of bodies and urban identities with political movements and social struggles. Reality explored through dance is also the perspective of Hope Hunt (and the Ascension of Lazarus) from the choreographer from Belfast Oona Doherty, on stage the 7th and 8th of September. Then, there’s Markus Öhrn – Swedish artist based in Berlin, with an unusual look at colonialism and the diversity of cultural perspectives with Bergman in Uganda, an installation with two points of view, dissecting the white middle-class narrated by Bergman in the film Persona from ’66 through the voice of the Veejay that accompanies the projection of the classics of cinema in the barrack-cities of Uganda, on 7 and 8 September at La Pelanda.

A co-creation with Romaeuropa, The Quiet Volume is a performance that unites listening and literature, by Ant Hampton and Tim Etchells (founder of the company Forced Entertainment) which from 10 to 15 September, then to be staged again from 20 to 29 September at Romaeuropa Festival 2018, will be hosted in 3 libraries in Rome – at the centre of the performance, reserved to 2 spectators at a time, reading as an intimate and daily gesture. Engaging visual art, performance and literature, is also Belgian Sarah Vanhee, revelation of the latest editions of the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels. In Oblivion, with its national premiere on 14 and 15 September at La Pelanda, Vanhee stages a sort of “negative” of her private and professional life, through the sorting of trash that the artist herself has saved for a year. This attempt at rewriting reality focusing on contemporary tragedies can also be found in The Art of a Culture of Hope, a project of wide breadth from the duo of Jessica Huber and James Leadbitter (The Vacuum Cleaner), which intends to restore idealism in the future. In collaboration with Baobab Experience, the 2 artists will conduct a workshop with a group of people requesting asylum in an attempt to reform the narrative of a question that, today, is steeped in fear and resignation. The result will be presented on 11 September at La Pelanda in its national premiere.

Fruit of an artistic residence and an original production of Short Theatre. the 2 projects presented in their world premiere on 13 and 14 September at La Pelanda by Bogdan Georgescu and Mihaela Michailov, 2 Romanian authors selected within the program Fabula Mundi – Playwriting Europe: the first looks at the influence that the Italian media had on the image of Romanian citizens while Michailov’s work concentrates on the testimonies of several Romanian women living in Rome. Then there’s the World Premiere of Combattimento, the new creation of Muta Imago which debuts on 13 and 14 September at La Pelanda: an exploration of the concepts of love and desire inspired by the music of Monteverdi and developed through the filter of courtship in the animal kingdom. Once again at La Pelanda and also a World Premiere, from 11 to 15 September, Leave The Kids Alone, installation/performance dedicated to the thorny topic of bullying by VicoQuartoMazzini, the winning company of the grant from PAV, Short Theatre and Theatres in the program Fabulamundi – Playwriting Europe.

Continuing with world and national premieres, the installation Little Fun Palace from the company OHT, in residence at Short Theatre like Bad Peace, creators of a concert and a non-standard radio show inspired by the “bed in” of John Lennon and Yoko Ono; the performance In Between of What is No Longer and What is Not Yet by Spanish artist Juan Dominguez; and that of Claudio Stellato, 2, fruit of the project of European co-operation SOURCE which involves the Théâtre National of Brussels, the Festival of Avignon and the Trafo of Budapest; and the site-specific projects that deal with urban spaces (L’uomo che Cammina by DOM- a production of PAV as part of the Estate Romana program, and The End from the Milanese collective Strasse), and then the work of live expanded cinema Sanctuary by Carlos Casas, at La Pelanda in its National Premiere on 12 and 13 September. Spanish visual artist and film-maker, Casas conducts the spectator on a dreamlike journey of images and sounds—curated by one of the greatest sound designers and sound recorders in the world, Chris Watson—following the destiny of a group of elephants.

Completing the incredibly dense calendar, creations involving dance, theatre and performance from some of the most important Italian artists, such as Annamaria Ajmone and Alberto Ricca Bienoise (To Be Banned from Rome), Babilonia Teatri (Calcinculo), Claudia Castellucci and Chiara Guidi (Il Regno Profondo. Perché Sei Qui?), Claudia Catarzi (A Set of Timings), Filippo Michelangelo Ceredi (Between Me and P.), Fortebraccio Teatro (Sei. E Dunque Perché si fa Meraviglia di Noi?), Jacopo Jenna (If, If, If, Then), Sotterraneo (Overload).

It will be Ninos du Brasil along with Carlos Casas (live visual) to inaugurate, on 6 September, Controra, the musical program of Short Theatre 2018. There’s also Gegen, the historic evening from Berlin’s underground in collaboration with the Festival di Santarcangelo, the concert of the French-Israeli pop-wave duo Winter Family (as part of Francia in Scena), the live set of Taiwanese artist Jing, the first anticipated appearance of the project Soniche – le Signore dell’Elettronica which will really only take off next Spring, the dj set of London producer Debonair in collaboration with Spring Attitude, the evening—with music and literature—dedicated to Arab futurism created in collaboration with Nero and the dj sets of Lady Maru, St. Robot, Ubi Broki from the collective Strasse and Martina Ruggeri and Erika Z. Galli from the company Industria Indipendente.

Among the new additions of this edition, the work sessions of Panorama Roma. In hopes of consolidating the dialogue among the protagonists of Rome’s art scene, artists and authors such as Alessandra Di Lernia, Federica Santoro, Giorgina Pi, Industria Indipendente, Artisti Innocenti, Timpano/Frosini, Salvo Lombardo, Dynamis will engage each other on 9 September about their respective studies, starting from the working materials of their latest creations.

Finally, the workshops of Giorgia Ohanesian Nardin, Hugo Sanchez, Teatro e Critica, Da.Re, Modulo Arti – Master in Studi di Genere dell’Università di Roma3 and Dominio Pubblico Summer Moving 2018, will underscore the importance of education within the complex environs of contemporary artistic mediums.

SHORT THEATRE 2018 – XIII Edition
Provocare Realtà
6–15 September 2018
Première 5 September 2018

La Pelanda – Mattatoio di Roma | Piazza Orazio Giustiniani 4
Teatro India | Lungotevere Vittorio Gassman, 1
Teatro Argentina | Largo di Torre Argentina, 52
Biblioteca Renato Nicolini | Via Marino Mazzacurati, 76

www.shorttheatre.org

Ivan Moudov at BVC, DEC,32,2013, 2018, acrylic on canvas

Baba Vasa’s Cellar is an independent art space in Shabla, a small town on the coast of the Black Sea in northern Bulgaria, run by an 90-year-old lady in the cellar of her house. The 11-square-meter space has been refurbished in a white cube. Since its opening in 2002, more than 50 international artists have presented their works there.

“/ When you’re 90 many people that were dear to you are gone. The dog’s run off, the ducks are multiplying and growing wild, the garden’s becoming a jungle. You find TV ever less interesting, you start to forget, one day blends into the next. Dates no longer matter that much.

/ Every day I follow the same course. The icon’s still hanging on the kitchen wall. There’s a photograph in the house I kiss every day. Summer comes and it gets hot, the garden fills with guests. My dearest people come, the heart fills with love. You can hear voices and music, coffee and watermelon being carried back and forth. They go to seaside, they bathe, they surf. My cellar is a gallery with white walls, my garden’s a stage. 

/ The old ladies will be sure to go down and have a look. They’re also here to see how I’m doing and have a drink. There needs to be wine.”— Baba Vasa on the three works by Ivan Moudov

Ivan Moudov (1975, Sofia) graduated in 2002 from the National Academy of Art in Sofia. His artistic practice comprises photography, video, performance, and installations. In his work, which has a strong metaphoric charge, he questions the field of contemporary art within the systems of power as well as the sociopolitical and economic conditions; furthermore, by subverting the existing norms and rules he reveals the levers of their functioning. He has presented his work at numerous solo and group exhibitions: Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Cabaret Voltaire (Zürich), Kunstverein Braunschweig (Braunschweig), Manifesta 4 (Frankfurt), the 52nd Venice Biennale, the 1st Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, and Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig – MUMOK (Vienna).

Ivan Moudov, Wine for Openings (Baba Vasa’s Cellar), 2018
Installation, sink, pipe, barrel, wine

Ivan Moudov, Wine for Openings (Baba Vasa’s Cellar), 2018
Installation, sink, pipe, barrel, wine

Ivan Moudov, Saint George, 2018
icon, plug

Ivan Moudov, Wine for Openings (Baba Vasa’s Cellar), 2018
Installation, sink, pipe, barrel, wine

Ivan Moudov
thirty-second

Baba Vasa´s Cellar | 22 Marica Street, Shabla, Bulgaria

http://baba-vasa.blogspot.com

Lee Kit, Still life – plant, 2016
Courtesy the artist and Massimo De Carlo

Museo Casa Masaccio Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea presents the first solo exhibition to be held by Lee Kit in an Italian public institution. Linger on, your lit-up shade includes paintings, texts, immersive sounds, projections and videos

that, conceived for the most part specially for the rooms of this building and the fruit of a long stay in San Giovanni Valdarno, turn the route through the exhibition into a single and all-encompassing account, as if it were just one big canvas.

Between chance and coincidence, conducted at a velvety pace and in a nostalgic manner, Lee Kit’s practice on this occasion also makes use of a palette of pastel colours that, mellowing the more poetic and melancholic elements of our personal narratives, employs simple materials of everyday use: cakes of soap, place-mats, a cup of steaming hot coffee, cardboard boxes and plastic containers. Banal objects that, in their essential nudity and with discreet and subtle gestures, give voice to the habitual, to what returns every day, bringing us back to the reality in which we always live, that of the body and the ‘environs of the body’.

The works that inhabit this centuries-old domestic space provide a confirmation of the artist’s fascination with the ordinary and the accustomed, with that ‘daily existence’ which, because of its extreme familiarity, completely escapes the notice and the memory of the person who is immersed in it. Without going to look very far away, Lee Kit tracks down what has always been very close to us and that we are often unable to recognize for what it is, the little things with the remains and the rituals of daily life; and, to avoid their being drowned in indifference, he lets them speak for themselves.

As the artist himself puts it, Linger on, your lit-up shade ‘is about some moments and thoughts that happened when we woke up in a room, with the sunlight shining through the window curtain, wherever we were. Those moments and thoughts that could hardly be shared. Peaceful, quiet, bright, sad and done.’

‘A band once sang, 

“The first love you can’t escape, the second love, it feels like pain.”

Forget about love. You wonder what was between the first and the second catastrophes. (Given that you were still alive.) It was that morning, or those mornings. Like reading the morning news, something changed and it brought hope. You had some nice ideas about something. About a beautiful day, or your life in the near future. You saw the light from your innermost self, happiness arose like a running dog. After a while, it blended with sadness and weariness quietly, without a trace. In the same morning, within an hour or two, happiness has gone. 

It is excitement without happiness. Perhaps it is catastrophic. The things that hid behind the muted solitude discreetly linger on the melody of a beautiful song, as if the singer were to stop singing all of a sudden, and the music go on. A sad song is actually not that sad. Nothing could be done.—Lee Kit

Linger on, your lit-up shade has been made possible by the support of the Galleria Massimo De Carlo, Milan/London/Hong Kong.

Lee Kit was born in 1978 in Hong Kong; he lives and works in Hong Kong and Taipei. He obtained an MFA in 2009 at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and in the same year was one of the finalists for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize 2009-10. Lee Kit’s work encompasses a wide array of mediums that include painting, drawing, video, installations and hand-painted cloth. Lee’s signature pastel palette translates and enhances the apparently cryptic but profound investigations and reflections on the habits and traces that shape the practice of everyday life, with the array of ever-changing emotions that it embraces. His solo exhibitions include: I wanna tell you something good about yourself, Hara Museum, Tokyo (forthcoming: 2018); Something you can’t leave behind, Massimo De Carlo, Hong Kong (2017); Hold your breath, dance slowly, Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis (2016); A Small Sound in Your Head, SMAK, Ghent (2016); You (you), Hong Kong Pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale, Venice (2013); Every Breath You Take, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2012). His group exhibitions include: All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2017); The City, My Studio / The City, My Life, Kathmandu Triennale (2017); Jing Shen. The Act of Painting in Contemporary China, PAC (Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea), Milan (2015); The Great Ephemeral, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2015); Duchamp, UCCA, Beijing (2013); Printin’, MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), New York (2012); No Soul for Sale, Tate Modern, London (2010).

Lee Kit, (Repeat), 2018. Looped video
Courtesy the artist and Massimo De Carlo, Milano/Londra/Hong Kong. Ph OKNOstudio

Lee Kit, Come on, 2016
Courtesy the artist and Gallery Massimo De Carlo, Milano/Londra/Hong Kong. Ph OKNOstudio

Lee Kit, Your neck, 2016
Courtesy the artist and Gallery Massimo De Carlo, Milano/Londra/Hong Kong. Ph OKNOstudio

Lee Kit, Untitled, 2018
Courtesy the artist and Gallery Massimo De Carlo, Milano/Londra/Hong Kong. Ph OKNOstudio

Lee Kit
Linger on, your lit-up shade
Curated by Rita Selvaggio
23 June–9 September 2018

Casa Masaccio| Corso Italia 83, San Giovanni Valdarno
Opening hours: Mon–Fri 3–7pm, Sat–Sun 10–12am, 3–7pm
055 9126283
casamasaccio@comunesgv.it
www.casamasaccio.it

Carlos Fernandez-Pello, A futile attempt at creating cult objects, 2018
Courtesy Garcia Galeria

Montecristo Project is an exhibition space and an artistic and curatorial office based in a deserted island along the Sardinian coast. As its opening exhibition of 2018 Montecristo Project presents the first ever group show on its island, hosting the sculptural works of four different artists: Carlos Fernandez Pello, Karlos Gil, Alfredo Rodriguez and Alessandro Vizzini.

The works are individually exhibited on different spots of the island, each relating to the landscape and the different morphologies of the islet. A narrative exhibition of a one day journey around a deserted island, among rocks, plants, beaches and ruins, this psycho-exhibition is Montecristo Project’s first attempt at reversing an exhibition logic by turning it into an imaginary journey of its land. Each work was specifically chosen or realised for the exhibition, as its documentation and contextualisation was curated by Montecristo Project so to host and create a spread system of sculptures ideally protecting the island.

Montecristo Project island Mediterranean sea Sardinia

Alessandro Vizzini, Veloce come luce, 2018

Alessandro Vizzini, Veloce come luce, 2018

Alfredo Rodriguez, Bodybuilding, 2018

Alfredo Rodriguez, Bodybuilding, 2018

Carlos Fernandez-Pello, A futile attempt at creating cult objects, 2018. Courtesy Garcia Galeria

Karlos Gil, French curve, 2017
Courtesy of Garcia Galeria

Karlos Gil, French curve, 2017
Courtesy Garcia Galeria

MONTECRISTO PROJECT
I S L A N D ( Sculptural mirages / A psycho-exhibition )
19 July–20 August2018

Mediterranean sea | Sardinia, Italy
montecristoprojects@gmail.com
iislland.tumblr.com

Carlos Monléon, Impossible Oven (Gut Diaspora) #2, 2018
Courtesy the artist and MONITOR Rome/Lisbon. Photo: Bruno Lopes

Monitor Lisbon presents A Tale of Ingestion, a project curated by Margarida Mendes, featuring works by Lupo Borgonovo, Alma Heikkilä, David Horvitz, Carlos Monléon, Mumtazz & Peter Zin. A Tale of Ingestion, inaugurates the summer solstice with an exhibition that includes works exploring metabolic fictions and the cosmology of matter itself. This invitation gathers different generations of artists and poets who navigate between psychedelia, ecology, abstraction and romantic conceptualism. The triggering image and figure of thought is the Egyptian goddess Nut, who metamorphizes into a cow and swallows the sun, moon and cosmos at night to give birth to them the next day, thus digesting the whole universe cyclically.

Just as the stomach and viscera are extensions of our brain and nervous system, so too is the planet filled with organisms that metabolize its ecosystems. Blankets of fungi cover the intimate subsoil of forests with mycelium, interconnecting trees and other beings in an ample digestive system that can reach an extension of 970 hectares in a single body, as is the case in the mountains of Oregon. Elsewhere, we discover 420 million year old fossils of fungi—the prototaxites—which have populated earthly landscapes since the Paleozoic era. We study the cellular intelligence of slime mold, a curious matter that makes adaptive spatial decisions according to its survival conditions, developing intelligent pathways which may contribute to the development of artificial intelligence systems.

These fungal universes ferment our imaginary, broadening our understanding of bodily liminality. At the same time they remind us that all ecosystems are interrelated in a symbiotic manner, under a condition of mutual co-development, in which different species form assemblages and generate new symbiotic entities. This reframing of our perception of beings and the world destabilizes our ecological conceptions, reconfiguring the notions of parasite and host, prey and predator, unity and community. We are invited for example, through the work of Peter Zin, to intervene in our surroundings in a conscious way, taking into consideration the lessons of the Native American Iroquois people, whose Constitution defends the law of the “Seven Generations” recommending that our life and work decisions should take into account the benefit of the seventh generation to follow us. But these will not be the only lessons that such a sensory and metabolic dérive inspires.

In the first room, we are presented with a large painting-installation by Alma Heikkilä (1984, FI), titled Pollen grains, fungal spores, bacteria, mycelium, cysts, algal filaments and spores, lichens, insects and their parts, plants and animal tissues and several other microorganisms (2017) which refers to small particles invisible to the human eye that float in the air and travel through our lungs. Alma Heikkilä’s practice is developed at several scales, from the pictorial—in her explorations of abstraction through immersion in closeups– to the ecological—in her work with the Finnish association Mustarinda, involving artists and researchers in projects to promote the ecological revitalization of society.

Downstairs, we also find pleural sculptures by David Horvitz (19??, US), made of blown glass containing A single breath of air (2016). An earlier version of the work was produced for the Volcano Extravaganza festival on the island of Stromboli in 2016, and the spheres were thrown into the night waters of the Mediterranean in a full moon ritual conducted during a boat journey. Creating a conceptual multiverse, where new species can couple and develop their habitat, these aether sculptures hide throughout the exhibition space. It is worth remembering the artist’s obsession with mushroom collecting and plant names, and how directly this contact with nature in his daily life contributes to the vital matter and lexicon of his body of work.

Lupo Borgonovo (1985, IT) presents two sets of sculptures, Ornithology I (2015) and S (2015). His works are often elaborated as stream of consciousness exercises, testing the limits of materiality while defying symbolic perceptions. In S (2015), we are entangled in a series of viscous casts with impressions of different types of animal skin, upon which we can project animals, or our own guts. In these sculptures, the distinction between the exterior and interior of the mould is diffuse, appealing to the visitor’s imagination and navigation of his/her own interstitium.

On the table, we find a bronze and marble sculpture by Carlos Monléon (1983, ES). This is a prototype for a wood fired oven reconfigured in the form of the digestive system and viscera. This prototype is part of a series of sculptures that the artist is developing following his research on ingestion, fermentation and bacterial universes, which materially elaborate his reflections on the digestive system and distributed cognition.

Mumtazz (1970, PT) presents a series of drawings with imaginary bodies and kaleidoscopic figures. These are part of an extensive body of graphic work which is rarely shown, where the artist develops her pictorial and visual lexicon through a poetic reconfiguration of the real, based on the symbiotic borders of metamorphosing matter. With kinetic preponderance, these figures take into account the plural and oneiric universe of animation, from Paradjanov to Švankmajer, but also report on the archetypal journeys to be found in the writings and paintings of Jodorowsky, Jung, and Khalo.

Peter Zin (1947, SE) is a tree planter, poet, and free jazz musician. His talent for improvisation has passed through as distant geographies as Senegal and Canada. His teachings draw inspiration from the generation of Buckminster Fuller and Stewart Brand, and have influenced activists and ecologists across the Iberian peninsula, introducing methods of permaculture and ecological revision that explore the resilience of the Earth and its resources in a conscious way. On the wall of the gallery is displayed a selection of his extensive collection of flag-manifestos, that will be shown in full at the 4th edition of the Istanbul Design Biennial in September 2018. Accompanying this, we present Visible Hand, a recent poetry book, which includes a refined compendium of ideas and ecological provocations.

Margarida Mendes (Lisbon, 1985) is a curator, educator and activist. In 2009 she founded The Barber Shop project space in Lisbon, hosting a programme of seminars and residencies dedicated to artistic and philosophical research. Exploring the overlap between cybernetics, philosophy, sciences and experimental film, her personal research investigates the dynamic transformations of the environment and its impact on societal structures and cultural production. In 2016 she joined the curatorial team of the 11th Gwangju Biennale and developed the pilot program of escuelita, an informal school at Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M), Madrid. Currently she is co-curating a school and exhibition on the metabolism of digestion for the 4th Istanbul Design Biennale A School of Schools, opening this September.

Alma Heikkilä, pollen grains, fungal spores, bacteria, mycelium, cysts, algal filaments and spores, lichens, insects and their parts, plants and animal tissues and several other microorganisms, 2017 (detail)
Courtesy the artist and MONITOR Lisbon/Rome. Photo: Bruno Lopes

Lupo Borgonovo, Ornithology, 2015
Coutesy the artist, Galleria Monica de Cardenas, Milan and and MONITOR Lisbon/Rome. Photo: Bruno Lopes

Mumtazz, Chequedisco#46, 2010
Courtesy the artist and MONITOR Rome/Lisbon. Photo: Bruno Lopes

Mumtazz, Mecanismo461#9, 1998; Chequedisco#22, 2010; Chequedisco#46, 2010; Chequedisco# 30, 2014; Chafariz#18, 2016 (Installation view)
Courtesy the artist and MONITOR Rome/Lisbon. Photo: Bruno Lopes

Peter Zin, SIGHT A LIGHT LIGHT A SIGHT; &; SEEWEED; ACTUANTE; SEMENTEIRA NO MAR; 7 GENERATIONS; CONTACTACT; DEPTH OF FIELD; MAKING MIND; DISCONSONANCE; ALAS DO VENTO; LIVELYWOOD; SPACESCAPE, 2003-08. Courtesy the artist and MONITOR Rome/Lisbon. Photo: Bruno Lopes

David Horvitz, Untitled (a single breath of air), 2016-18
Courtesy the artist, ChertLuedde, Berlin and MONITOR Rome/Lisbon. Photo: Bruno Lopes

Installation view of A Tale of Ingestion, curated by Margarida Mendes at MONITOR Lisbon
Photo: Bruno Lopes

Installation view of A Tale of Ingestion, curated by Margarida Mendes at MONITOR Lisbon
Photo: Bruno Lopes

A Tale of Ingestion
Curated by Margarida Mendes
21 June–25 August 2018

MONITOR Lisbon | Rua D. João V 17A, Lisboa
Open by appointment throughout the month of August
+351913840247
monitor@monitoronline.org
www.monitoronline.org

Invisible, 2018, ed. 1+1AP
courtesy The Gallery Apart Roma, photo by Giorgio Benni

The Gallery Apart presents The Invisibility of Plants, the second solo show hosted in the gallery spaces of Meital Katz-Minerbo, an Israeli artist based in Tel Aviv.

The artist continues to investigate key concepts in the history and chronicles of her country, while touching on sensitive matters that relate to the human condition. She stresses the definitions of gender through an ironic underlining of attitudes typical of male hegemony’s representation. She questions the meaning of housing and territory, in connection to concepts of mobility, permanence and nomadism, pointing out Ethics, especially in reference to their absence. Katz-Minerbo denotes the use of the body as an instrument of social status through garments and accessories used to cover and adorn it, as a platform for dialogue between humans, objects and the environment.

To lead us to question ourselves on these issues, Katz-Minerbo has given life in the last two years to the Cactus Man, a character that has become central in the practice of the artist focused on giving visual representations to definitions of otherness. The Cactus Man is a hybrid that combines a plant with a human being. Despite his monstrous appearance, he became well placed in the high ranks of society. His versatility and agile mobility inside capitalist structures allowed him to become wealthy. The Cactus Man is a thief. His skin is endless, for that his shape has no limits. Clothes are his skin; they cover his aberrant semblance in order to make him hard to recognize. He has two voices with two different accents, emitting sounds that contain the knowledge of two epochs. The Cactus Man is an empty shape ready to be filled.

The Cactus Man takes over the gallery spaces. He takes them up temporarily, as his style is based on mobility dictates and in line with the perennially changing conceptions of territory and body. A series of personal objects are disseminated in the gallery space alluding to a domestic place. They indicate the different areas of a specific and unknown home: a dining room, a bedroom and a basement. The group of objects can be easily put in a suitcase to be transported from the current residence to the next, where they will be displayed again, always maintaining the same sense of familiarity. It is not the traditional sedentary home. Katz-Minerbo presents an ever-moving house, a nomadic idea of a house belonging to a nomadic subject.

The ground floor of the house is structured as a normal private home; a bed that recalls the human nature of Cactus Man. The living area, with artworks on the walls, clothes on the hanger, a mirror, shelves to empty the pockets and a large table full of accessories, personal items and anything else Cactus Man uses to settle his relationship with the world. The basement is obscure and gloomy, as a less defined area of the house it represents the dark side of the Cactus Man. This is the room where the Capital takes part in commercial transactions. Two chairs placed inside a space that brings to mind a storage area, together with piles of paintings and a small amount of light that emanates from a monitor and a sculpture are the testimony of the act that took place there.

The Invisibility of Plants offers an original interpretation, reflected by the Cactus Man character, of an intellectual urgency that questions contemporaneity and highlights the end of anthropocentrism. Through the prism of the post-human criticism the superiority of the human over “other” living beings it’s questioned and reformulated into new structures of hierarchy and bodily forms. Meital Katz-Minerbo relates to the post-human discourse by exploiting the theme of the hybrid, so dear to the post-modern art of the last twenty years, with the intention to create a visual mediation between the variety of subjects that exists in this ever changing world.

The Invisibility of Plants, installation view at The Gallery Apart (basement), photo by Giorgio Benni

L1, 2018, collage,
Courtesy The Gallery Apart Roma

The Invisibility of Plants, installation view at The Gallery Apart (basement), photo by Giorgio Benni

Bandana painting (Brown), 2018
Courtesy The Gallery Apart Roma

Portable bed installation, 2018. The Gallery Apart Roma (ground floor), photo by Giorgio Benni

Portable bed installation, 2018, ed. 1+1AP (detail)
Courtesy The Gallery Apart Roma, photo by Giorgio Benni

Personal vitrine, 2018, ed 1+1AP
Courtesy The Gallery Apart Roma, photo by Giorgio Benni

Lobby, 2018
Courtesy The Gallery Apart Roma, photo by Giorgio Benni

Meital Katz-Minerbo
The Invisibility of Plants
19 June–7 September 2018

The Gallery Apart | Via Francesco Negri 43, Roma
Opening hours: Tue–Fri, 3–7pm or by appointment
+39 0668809863
info@thegalleryapart.it
www.thegalleryapart.it

Éric Baudelaire and David Douard, Prove e Motivi, 2018

Capo d’Arte, a non-profit organisation which promotes contemporary art and culture in Salento, presents the ninth edition of its summer event in Gagliano del Capo, in the Province of Lecce, Puglia, whose artistic direction is carried out by Fantom’s Massimo Torrigiani. This edition sees the participation of Lorenzo Vitturi, with his new site-specific sculpture Solo lo stupore conosce (Only Amazement Knows), which will be unveiled in the Villetta, the public garden in Via Roma, opposite the the town hall, on Saturday 28 July, at 8:30pm.

On the same day, at 7pm, Palazzo Daniele will inaugurate the exhibition Prove e Motivi (Trials and Motives), the result of the first collaboration between acclaimed French artists Éric Baudelaire (b.1972) and David Douard (b.1983), who were hosted in Gagliano del Capo as part of the 2017-18 residencies offered by Villa Medici, an associate of Capo d’Arte since 2016.

Lorenzo Vitturi was invited to conceive a sculpture for a public space in Gagliano del Capo. The work, specifically produced for the town, will be the first of a series which will enrich Gagliano and its landscape with works of art to be installed in squares, streets and gardens.

Solo lo Stupore Conosce (Only Amazement Knows) originates from a pre-existing piece of street furniture, for a long time deprived of any functional value: a simple pole. Located inside the “Villetta” in Via Roma, the rod caught the attention of the artist, whose work is always based on the collection and rearrangement of objects, signs and materials of the places where he works. Vitturi provides these items with new perspectives and new lives, through the juxtaposition of disparate elements—ranging from local craftsmanship to popular traditions, and to everyday objects—by analogy and contrast.

On this occasion, the artist encircled the pole with playful and colourful elements, even a real basketball hoop, the result of the suggestions gathered together during his journey in Salento, under invitation of Capo d’Arte, but also on the occasion of his recent travels in Perù and in Venice, the artist’s hometown, both cultural references for this project.

Solo lo Stupore Conosce, Vitturi’s first iron sculpture and public work, invites the visitors, especially children and youngsters (the main users of the “Villetta”) to rediscover the magical dimension of the everyday, and to seek the extraordinary in the ordinary, turning it into a new, playful experience.

The title of the work is a quote from Gregory of Nissa, a Cappadocian theologist who lived in the 4th century, “Concepts create idols. Only amazement knows.” invites us to be amazed by the simple beauty of the everyday, and to observe how a gesture or a gaze are capable of transforming even the most ordinary element of a landscape, into something extraordinary, fairy and weightless.

Born in Venice in 1980, Lorenzo Vitturi is an italian photographer and sculptor based in London. Formerly a cinema set painter, Vitturi has brought this experience into his photographic practice, which revolves around site-specific interventions at the intersection of photography, sculpture and performance. In Vitturi’s process, photography in conceived as a space of transformation, where different disciplines merge together to represent an increasingly complex urban reality. Vitturi’s has been recently exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Flowers Gallery in London, T293 in Rome, The Photographers’ Gallery in London, Yossi Milo Gallery in New York, Contact Gallery in Toronto and the CNA in Luxembourg. Vitturi also participated in group exhibitions at Maxxi in Rome, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, La Triennale in Milan, the Shanghai Art Museum. After Picture Perfect, the inaugural show of the gallery Viasaterna in Milan, Droste Effect Debris and Other Problems was his first solo show in Italy, both curated by Fantom. His latest book Money Must Be Made was produced after a long residency in Lagos, in particular in the area of the market in Balogun, in Nigeria.

The video-installative exhibition Prove e Motivi (Evidence and Patterns), opening earlier on Saturday, 28 July at 7pm, is the result of the first collaboration between Éric Baudelaire and David Douard, amongst the most appreciated artists in the international scene, carried out as part of the 2017-18 residencies organised by Villa Medici.

Baudélaire and Douard spent a few weeks in Gagliano del Capo back in April. Exploring the land of Salento, the artists’ attention was caught by the olive trees, severely damaged by the bacteria Xylella Fastidiosa, in particular in the Municipality of Ugento. This theme was the starting point for the artists’ research, which continued into an artisanal weaving workshop owned by the Liso family in Alessano, and in the municipalities of Castrignano, Leuca, and Gagliano. Up to the production of the installation Prove e Motivi. The exhibition, open to the public until Saturday 1 September (6–10pm), begins with a sculpture and continues into a bright white basement with two video projections and a sound piece, the result of the footage and field recordings produced in the course of the residency.

The project is supported by Total E&P Italia.

Éric Baudelaire is an artist and film maker, currently a fellow of the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici. His movies have been selected at the festivals of Locarno, Toronto, New York, Rotterdam and the FID in Marseille. His artistic production, always linked to a long research process, includes photographs, prints, sculptures, performances and publications, which are integrated in the form of installations around his films. Among his recent solo shows are those at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Witte de With in Rotterdam, the Fridericianum in Kassel, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Beirut Art Center and Gasworks in London.

David Douard, a graduate from the École Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, is currently a fellow of the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici. He collaborates with the gallery Chantal Crousel in Paris, and his work has been presented in a number of Franch and international institutions, such as the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, the FNAC, the FRACs in Île de France and Limousine, thee Panacée of the MoCo in Montpellier, the Fridericianum in Kassel, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Taipei Biennial, the Sculpture Center in New York and the Astrup Fearnley Museet in Oslo. Douard’s artworks are currently on view as part og the group shows Another banana day for the dream-fish at Palais de Tokyo (Paris), and Take Me (I’m Yours) at the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici. His work will be presented at the Gwangiu Biennial from September 2018.

Lorenzo Vitturi, Preparatory sketch for Solo lo stupore conosce, 2018

Villetta in Via Roma, Gagliano del Capo, Lecce 2018

Lorenzo Vitturi, Preparatory sketch for Solo lo stupore conosce, 2018

Lorenzo Vitturi
Solo lo stupore conosce
Curated by Massimo Torrigiani
Opening Saturday 28 July 2018, 8:30pm 
Villetta in Via Roma, Gagliano del Capo (LE)

Éric Baudelaire and David Douard
Prove e Motivi 
Opening Saturday 28 July 2018, 7pm
Palazzo Daniele, Corso Umberto I 62, Gagliano del Capo

Tai Shani, Dark Continent: SEMINARS, 2018
Courtesy the Artist

Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo hosts The Institute of Things to Come, an itinerant art programme aimed at investigating forms of imaginative speculation as cultural strategies and methodologies for critical positions. Founded in 2017 by artist Ludovica Carbotta and curator Valerio Del Baglivo, each year The Institute focuses on a different theme, inviting artists to present works that interact with other disciplines. At the centre of each yearly theme are a series of artworks, interrogated through conferences, projections, seminars and exhibitions. Moreover The Institute conducts a nine months Associates Programme, allowing six participants to develop their practice and contribute to the public programme in concert with the yearly theme.

The 2018 theme is TERRA INCOGNITA (a Latin term used in ancient cartography to indicate the existence of unexplored lands) and it is inspired by the book of sociologist Albert Meister, Under the Beabourg (1976). In his text Meister describes the existence of an imaginary museum right beneath the original one: an underground-cultural center (a Beabourg with lowercase “b”) where an assembly of four thousand people organizes a countercultural pole. This reference is taken as a starting point to speculate about fictional territories, places and landscapes invented by artists, that have served as literal and metaphorical sites of subversion, anti-authoritarianism, utopia and fantasy.

The programme starts in November 2018 with a night of events at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo: artist Nicoline Van Harskamp presents her film PDGN that portrays a future no longer controlled by national governments or global corporations, and where a new linking language is seen to develop between people through voluntary self-instruction; curator and online media producer Joseph del Pesco will read extracts from his book The Museum Took a Few Minutes to Collect Itself discussing the existence of fictional Museums that defy their real-world counterparts, and thus affirm the importance and value of their reimagining; artist Simon O’Sullivan gives a talk about mythopoesis, myth-science, mythotechnesis addressing fictioning as a ‘counter-strategy’ against today’s post-truth and post-fact political terrain. In December The Institute moves to Grazer Kunstverein organizing an explorative journey of lectures and performances co-curated with Director Kate Strain, on what can emerge from wreckages and leftovers, with contributions from artists and curators Mehraneh Atashi, Angelika Loderer, Pádraic E. Moore and the Department of Ultimology. In February, for his solo show, artist Mikhail Karikis presents, for the first time in an Italian institution, Children of Unquiet: a multipartite project exploring new ways of thinking about the destiny of Larderello (Tuscany), a territory scarred by industrial obsolescence, and hints at foreseeable or potential futures conjured up by the imagination. In April artist Tai Shani presents her project Dark Continent, where erotic, fantastical narratives mixing science-fiction, anthropology, feminist and queer theory re-imagine a world to propose a possible post-patriarchal future. Reasoning on the archeology of pain as it links the body and on past and present forms of capital, our writer in residency Mirene Arsanios will publish three new fictional texts in collaboration with NERO Magazine, our media partner.

From November to May The Institute of Things to Come promotes an Associate Programme for six international participants (artists, curators, researchers, writers, etc.), to develop their practice in concert with the yearly theme. Directed by our 2018 junior curator Michele Bertolino, the program consists of four research-modules led by international artists in collaboration with another guest: Simon O’Sullivan collaborates with designer Ola Stahl, Mikhail Karikis with curator Sofia Victorino and Tai Shani with performer Aura Satz. Free to attend and non-accredited, the programme provides a grant to each participant with the intention to formulate a public programme at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (May 2019). For more information about application procedures please visit www.theinstituteofthingstocome.com.

The Institute of Things to Come is realized thanks to the support of Compagnia di San Paolo while the Associate Program is funded by Formech Inspire.

Nicoline Van Harskamp, PDGN, video still, 2016
Courtesy the Artist

Mikhail Karikis, Children of Unquiet, production photograph, 2014
Courtesy the Artist

Mikhail Karikis, Children of Unquiet, video still, 2013-2014
Courtesy the Artist

The Institute of Things to come
TERRA INCOGNITA
Mirene Arsanios, Joseph del Pesco, Mikhail Karikis, Simon O’Sullivan, Tai Shani, Nicoline van Harskamp
Curated by Valerio Del Baglivo
October 2018 – May 2019

Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo | Via Modane 16, Torino
www.fsrr.org
info@theinstituteofthingstocome.com
www.theinstituteofthingstocome.com

Installation Views at SALTS, Birsfelden. THE GOURD AND THE FISH, Rodrigo Hernández, 2018
Gunnar Meier Photography. Courtesy: SALTS & the artist

Jumana Manna, curated by Samuel Leuenberger, Bhanu Kapil and Khairani Barokka, curated by Harry Burke for The Printed Room, and Rodrigo Hernández’s THE GOURD & THE FISH curated by Samuel Leuenberger and Elise Lammer, are currently on show at SALTS Basel.

An exhibition space dedicated to the display of printed and literary materials, The Printed Room at SALTS, Basel, stages two simultaneous solo presentations, Formidable Sparkles by Bhanu Kapil, and Selected Annahs by Khairani Barokka. While conceptualized separately, the projects spatially overlap, and represent parallel interpretations of the same theme: the interwoven, and intimately political, relationship between poetry and performance.

Formidable Sparkles gathers materials produced by the writer and poet Bhanu Kapil during the composition of Ban en Banlieue (Nightboat Books, 2015), a book described by its author as “notes for a novel never written.” A poetic work, in its expansive yet fractionable form and concerns, Ban en Banlieue nonetheless outbounds the work, or the scope, of poetry. As Maureen N. McLane has written in the Los Angeles Review of Books, with reflection on the limits of this term, the book metamorphoses into, for lack of a better word, a project—or a projective, even: “poetry as a projecting forth, something thrown forward into a given, multiple, and transformable world.” The project’s inciveness emerges in the productive happenstance of literature’s failure. Writes Kapil: “The project fails at every instant and you can make a book out of that and I do.”

The novel at the centre of Ban en Banlieue takes place on April 23, 1979, the day of an anti-racism demonstration, and ensuing race riot, in the west London suburb (banlieue) of Southall. Its protagonist, Ban, is “a brown [black] girl . . . walking home from school.” Upon hearing the sound of breaking glass, she responds by lying on the ground for twelve hours. The book is structured through an assemblage, a shattering, of notes, fragments, blog entries, vignettes, and deletions—paratextual strategies that have been described by Allison Conner in jacket2 as a “syntax of resistance” due to their fractious relation to teleological narrative. Excavating the deeply contested boundaries of violence, identity, place, race (Brownness, and its significantly complex relation to Blackness), and subjectivity, the work complicates, and finally refuses, interpellation by the colonial, racist state, be this performed governmentally or internalized by the writing subject herself.

“I want a literature”, states Kapil, in a trenchant, self-reflexive switch, “that is not made of literature.” Kapil has described her writing as comprised of “annotations on performances.” A chorus of rituals and performative acts made up the initial authoring processes of the book, and of Ban as a fictive (and, ultimately, lived) character. Many of these took place in Kapil’s garden in Colorado. They were rites of composition and decomposition, held in dialogue with a small plot of domestic land, and documented, through irregular, provisional means, on The Vortex of Formidable Sparkles, Kapil’s “always-never: blog” before being further digested (petrified) in book form. Though existing outside of a conventional writerly framework, these displaced materials are fundamental to Kapil’s perpetually reconstitutive, transformational, practice of writing.

Though not conceived as visible or audible elements, banners, a trousseau, photographs, notes, and imagistic, writerly fragments will be displayed at SALTS alongside videos of poetry readings given during this period. Presented as performance documentation—a continuance of writing—in their unresolved state the materials transmit a vivid liveness. Also shown will be parts of an unpublished novel written on yellow and pink paper, an extension of Ban en Banlieue. While Kapil’s chapbook entre-Ban (Vallum, 2017) emerged, as a horizontal evolution, from these “next notes,” the novel remains a simulation: unfinished.

Assembled through processes of paratext, interpretation, allusion, notation, and devotion, and without the artist present, the installation, too, will be unfinished. Khairani Barokka’s Selected Annahs draws from research into Paul Gauguin’s 1893-4 painting Annah the Javanese, conducted by the artist as part of a forthcoming speculative nonfiction book project titled Annahs, Infinite. Painted between trips to Tahiti, Gauguin’s portrait is of a young girl whose age was thought to be “around thirteen”, who was assumed to be his lover as well as model, but whose lineage, origins, and life circumstances—including the tale that she robbed Gauguin’s apartment of everything but his art in 1894—are recorded in supposedly reliable art historical documents with clashing details.

Selected Annahs makes revisionist readings of the painting, with a forceful critique of the colonialism, misogyny and pedophilia that is entrenched in Gauguin’s work. Taking advantage of the incongruent records surrounding Annah’s life, Barokka will stage a performance during the exhibition’s opening, in which supernatural and science fictional Annahs attempt to reckon with, or erase, the traumatic images of herself. The performance will offer a poetic captioning for a series of photocollages produced by the artist. Audio documentation from this performance will play in the space through the duration of the exhibition, in an installation that also features annotations placed directly on the gallery walls.

The Printed Room at SALTS, Basel, is dedicated to the display of literary and printed materials. Initiated by Quinn Latimer in 2013, since 2015 it has hosted a sequence of exhibitions curated by Harry Burke, featuring artists such as Hanne Lippard, Ho King Man, Martine Syms, Penny Goring, Arleen Schloss, Lady Pink, Lorraine O’Grady, Hamishi Farah, Holly White, Jesse Stecklow, and Bea Schlingehoff, among others. This year’s presentations comprise the final installments in this series.

Khairani Barokka is a writer, poet and artist in London. Among her honours, she was an NYU Tisch Departmental Fellow, a recipient of six residencies, and is a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader for arts practice and research. Okka has presented work extensively, in twelve countries, including the Baltic Triennial Prelude, on BBC Radio 2, and as Edinburgh Fringe Festival’s only Indonesian representative in 2014 with her one-woman show. She is the author of Rope (Nine Arches, 2017), author-illustrator of Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis, 2016), and co-editor of Stairs and Whispers: D/ deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches, 2017) and HEAT: A Southeast Asian Urban Anthology (Fixi, 2016). Published and anthologised widely, she is a PhD-by-Practice Researcher in Goldsmiths’ Visual Cultures Department.

Bhanu Kapil is the author of five books, most recently Ban en Banlieue (Nightboat Books, 2015) and the re-issue of Incubation: a space for monsters (Kelsey Street Press, 2017). Born in the U.K. to Indian parents, she now lives and works in Colorado, in the U.S. Her current long-term projects include a re-writing [emptying out] of “Ban”—of which a succession of mutations and deletions were included in the chapbook entre-Ban (Vallum, 2017). She is writing a novel on yellow paper, a re-telling of the childhood classic, The Secret Garden.

The title of Rodrigo Hernandez’ first solo exhibition in Switzerland is inspired by Catching a Catfish with a Gourd, a Zen ink painting from the 15th century located in the Taizo-in Temple in Kyoto. In the center of the composition, a man standing on a bank holds a gourd in both hands, attempting to capture or pin down a catfish swimming in the stream below. An impossible task, such nonsensical act is underscored by the awkwardness with which the figure struggles even to hold his gourd. The image also serves the purpose of a Zen koan, an exemplary story or dialogue seemingly illogical used as a tool for meditation, often grappling with existential questions.

Putting the riddle into practice, the space was divided symmetrically into two parallel rooms, each fitted with a new entrance placed at equal distance from the middle wall. With no further indication, the visitor can access the exhibition from either side. Each space proposes a similar yet distinct situation: built like a multi-layered tableau, a translucent humanoid figure hung near the entrance faces a colourful papier-maché relief painting placed on the back wall. All walls are striped with horizontal continuous lines that create an optically vibrant environment meant to link all works together, very much in the way some East Asian paintings such as a “Boneless Manner” or Mokkotsubȳo manage to evoke an ambiguous space by depicting an atmosphere without any clear outlines. When combined, red and blue stripes create a visual effect known as chromostereopsis, a visual illusion crafting the impression of depth, but which can also be highly unsettling, triggering a sense of vibration for the viewer, as it was common in Op-Art. By echoing Dave Hickey’s introduction to Optic Nerve: Perceptual Art of the 1960s (2007) one can introduce Hernandez’ interest in creating installations that can be both understood autonomously, or by engaging with the artist’s process of cumulative associations.

“…Op art does its own work for whoever will look. It dispenses with the repertoire of knowledge and experience that is presumed to be required to appreciate abstract art. It replaces the elite, intellectual pleasure of “getting it” with the egalitarian fun-house pleasure of disorientation; of trying to understand something that you cannot… As we stand before op-paintings that resist our understanding, we introduce ourselves to our unconscious selves. We become aware of the vast intellectual and perceptual resources that await our command just beyond the threshold of our knowing. These, of course, can only be inferred on the rare occasions when they fail to serve our purposes. Optical art provides those occasions.”

Yet, another layer comes to the mix: the abstract painted reliefs are partly inspired by some of Emilio Pucci’s flamboyant designs. The Italian fashion designer’s action-packed biography seems to tangentially add up to the constellation of references. Upon close inspection, the contour of a fish in rapid movement might emerge out of the abstract shapes or one could infer a microscopic non-realistic rendering of water, establishing a dialogue with the fish-hunting figure in the middle of the space. Though still debated, it has been agreed among many specialists and dilettantes alike, that Catching a Catfish with a Gourd is about the impossibility of grasping the mind (the catfish) with the mind (the gourd), and by extension about the absence of an independent and substantial self. Acting both as the means and end of Rodrigo Hernandez’ process, this paradigm is exemplary of the artist’s work. Working as a total environment, The Gourd & the Fish simultaneously invites the viewer to contemplate an open-ended question, but also avoids hinting at any clear answer. Rather, it collages extraneous elements, calling for a new interpretative set-up, defined by both external and internal, natured and nurtured aptitudes.

The title of Jumana Manna’s first solo exhibition in Switzerland, Adrenarchy is a take on “Adrenarche”, an early sexual maturation stage in some higher primates, which similarly takes place in humans before the age of 12. During this phase, the body, its smell and oiliness dramatically change, following an increase in cortisol levels, resulting in what is commonly known as puberty. A fabricated combination of -adrenalin and -anarchy Manna’s title aims at transposing this uncomfortable moment of transformation and awe into an installation which combines anthropomorphic elements, whose shape and formal qualities incarnate ambiguity.

Manna is a sculptor and filmmaker, whose main interests address how various forms of power are articulated through relationships, often focusing on the body in relation to narratives of nationalism, and histories of place. Manna’s work uses often a poetic and fragmented visual language in order to address biographical experiences. Individuals play the central roles in narratives where the body becomes a political tool addressing more global concerns, as exemplified in her recent feature film Wild Relatives (2018), which follows a batch of seeds that were sent from Aleppo, Syria, to the Global Seed Vault, in the Arctic island of Svalbard, and recently back to Lebanon to be planted. Following the path of this transaction, a series of encounters unfold a matrix of lives between these two distant spots of the earth. The film captures both the violence and melancholy of both climate and war induced disasters on earth, alongside practices of care that manifest resilience it.

For this exhibition, the artist has created a new body of work comprising sculptures laying over a sauna-inspired construction. Evoking strength and eroticism, these structures seem like archeological fossils sweating out some tension. Armpit (2018) and Armpit Shell (2018) continue the Muscle-Vase series, which she began in 2014; a body of androgynous and dismembered hollow vessels that are juxtaposed with found furniture or simple structures. On the right side of the wall, Torso II (2017), a white skin-shell sculpture resembling the shape of a torso is leaning against the wall. Accompanying the sculptures, one finds piles of towels that introduce softness to the hard bodies, as well a a tablet and smart phone playing short-looped animations, Balls and Flutter (both 2014). These comical and grotesque videos add an additional layer to the over-sized bodies and their surfaces, into the digital, haptic realm. They linger in the space like left-behind objects, adding to the general uncanniness. Jumana Manna’s sculptural work simultaneously appears to be strong in their materiality, while also bearing a fragile and deconstructed presence. This ambivalence is also palpable in the contrast between the delicate and candid way she captures the sheer beauty of every day human moments and landscapes in her films, and the tension brought by her use of humour and criticism in other installations. Manna’s artworks are conceived as surrogate vessels, through which a psychological journey takes place.

Additionally, in the adjacent room, SALTS presents Manna’s Blessed, Blessed Oblivion, her first film from 2010, inspired by Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1963), which weaves together a portrait of male thug culture in East Jerusalem, manifested in barbershops, auto-shops and body building.

SALTS supports young Swiss and international artists to develop unique and outstanding site-specific projects. Since 2009, the exhibitions have often materialised on site, in varied forms of media, always with the goal to push beyond the artists’ daily practice, while challenging the audience’s formal and conceptual expectations. Each new project grows out of a unique commissioning process, born from an open-ended conversation, with the ultimate goal to become a landmark in an artist’s career.

Off the usual gallery set-up and dynamics, SALTS is a non-for-profit Kunstverein that aims at developing proposals addressing the specificity of its location. An old family butcher shop, two converted garage boxes, a courtyard and a garden adjacent to the river Birs in the outskirts of Basel, are the elements each artist is offered to respond to formally and conceptually.

SALTS promotes an interdisciplinary exchange and dialogue and encourages involvement with other non-for-profits spaces, while fostering a dialogue with educational institutions on a national and international level. Today, SALTS is run by Samuel Leuenberger. Its exhibition program is curated by Samuel Leuenberger and Elise Lammer, and it hosts regular contributions by guest curators.

Installation Views at SALTS, Birsfelden. ADRENARCHY, Jumana Manna, 2018
Gunnar Meier Photography. Courtesy SALTS & the artist

Installation Views at SALTS, Birsfelden. Formidable Sparkles, Bhanu Kapil and Selected Annahs, Khairani Barokka
Installation shots Gunnar Meier Photography. Courtesy SALTS & the Artists

Installation Views at SALTS, Birsfelden. ADRENARCHY, Jumana Manna, 2018
Gunnar Meier Photography. Courtesy SALTS & the artist

Installation Views at SALTS, Birsfelden. Formidable Sparkles, Bhanu Kapil and Selected Annahs, Khairani Barokka
Installation shots Gunnar Meier Photography. Courtesy SALTS & the Artists

Installation Views at SALTS, Birsfelden. THE GOURD AND THE FISH, Rodrigo Hernández, 2018
Gunnar Meier Photography. Courtesy SALTS & the artist

Installation Views at SALTS, Birsfelden. ADRENARCHY, Jumana Manna, 2018
Gunnar Meier Photography. Courtesy SALTS & the artist

Installation Views at SALTS, Birsfelden. Formidable Sparkles, Bhanu Kapil
Installation shots Gunnar Meier Photography. Courtesy SALTS & the Artist

Installation Views at SALTS, Birsfelden. Formidable Sparkles, Bhanu Kapil
Installation shots Gunnar Meier Photography. Courtesy SALTS & the Artists

JUMANA MANNA
Curated by Samuel Leuenberger
BHANU KAPIL, KHAIRANI BAROKKA
Curated by Harry Burke for The Printed Room
Rodrigo Hernández
THE GOURD & THE FISH
Curated by Samuel Leuenberger & Elise Lammer
15 June — 25 August 2018

SALTS | Hauptstrasse 12, CH–4127 Birsfelden, Basel
Opening hours: Fri, 2–6pm & Sat, 1–5pm and by appointment
+41 61 311 73 75
info@salts.ch
www.salts.ch