Showing posts with label Mathieu Copeland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mathieu Copeland. Show all posts

Tuesday, 2 August 2011

MATHIEU COPELAND: 'STUDIES FOR A CATALOGUE: A STUDY FOR AN EXHIBITION OF VIOLENCE IN CONTEMPRARY ART (REFPRISE 1964/2011)' AT LATHAM'S FLAT TIME HOUSE


John Latham's Flat Time House in Peckham


Mr. Copeland and Mr. Bruggemann at Latham's brain, watching 'a study for an exhibition of violence in contemporary film'


Latham's study for Flat Time House facade






Panels of a Study for an Exhibition of Violence in Contemporary Art


catalogue for 'A Study for an Exhibition of Violence in Contemporary Art (Reprise 1964/2011)' available to download at http://www.reprise.me/


Stefan Bruggemann's contribution to the catalogue


PLB's contribution to the catalogue


and PLB as the BBQ man!


Reprise #1 - Studies for a catalogue / a study for an exhibition on violence in contemporary art (reprise 1964/2011)
Flat Time House, London - Friday 24 June - Sunday 31 July
Closing Bbq & Publication Launch - Sunday 31 July, 2-6pm

Reprise #1 - Studies for a Catalogue: a Study for an Exhibition of Violence in Contemporary Art (Reprise 1964/2011)

with Karel APPEL – Jean ARP – Francis BACON – Enrico BAJ – Elena BAJO – Giacomo BALLA – Davide BALULA – BALTHUS – Erica BAUM – Max BECKMANN – Tom BENSON – Hans BELLMER – George BELLOWS – Emma BJORNESPARR – Peter BLAKE – Umberto BOCCIONI – Frank BOWLING – Georges BRAQUE – Victor BRAUNER – Stefan BRÜGGEMANN – Edward BURRA – Alberto BURRI – Reg BUTLER – Alexander CALDER – Guiseppe CAPOGROSSI – Carlo CARRA – CESAR – Paul CEZANNE – Lynn CHADWICK – DADO – Salvador DALI – Alan DAVIE – Giorgio DE CHIRICO – Willem DE KOONING – Niki DE SAINT–PHALLE – Philippe DECRAUZAT – André DERAIN – Otto DIX – Jean DUBUFFET – Marcel DUCHAMP – James ENSOR – Max ERNST – Peter FILLINGHAM & Charlotte MOTH – Lucio FONTANA – Sam FRANCIS – Alberto GIACOMETTI – Juan GRIS – Arshile GORKY – Georg GROSZ – Renato GUTTUSO – Richard HAMILTON – Raoul HAUSMANN – Rudolph HAUSNER – John HEARTFIELD – Erich HECKEL – Anne-Sylvie HENCHOZ – Camille HENROT – Maurice HENRY – Roger HILTON – David HOCKNEY – Hans HOFMANN – Allen JONES – Asger JORN – Frida KAHLO DE RIVERA – Wassily KANDINSKY – Ellsworth KELLY – R.B. KITAJ – Paul KLEE – Oskar KOKOSCHKA – Alfred KUBIN – KUKRYNSKI – Felix LABISSE – Wilfredo LAM – John LATHAM – Fernand LEGER – Pablo LEON DE LA BARRA – Wyndham LEWIS – Roy LICHTENSTEIN – Max LINDNER – Jacques LIPSCHITZ – LUCEBERT – René MAGRITTE – André MASSON – Umberto MASTROIANNI – Georges MATHIEU – Henri MATISSE – Mark MCGOWAN – MATTA – F.E. McWILLIAM – Henri MICHAUX – Manolo MILLARES – Joan MIRO – Piet MONDRIAN – Henry MOORE – Edvard MÜNCH – Antonio MUSIC – R. MUTT (Marcel Duchamp) – Paul NASH – Warren NEIDICH – Sidney NOLAN – José Clemente OROZCO – Eduardo PAOLOZZI – Peter PHILLIPS – Francis PICABIA – Pablo PICASSO – Edouard PIGNON – John PIPER – Philomene PIRECKI – Jackson POLLOCK – POSADA – Mel RAMOS – Man RAY – Odilon REDON – RICHARDS – Germaine RICHIER – Bridget RILEY – Diego RIVERA – RODIN – Theodore ROSZAK – Georges ROUAULT – Henri ROUSSEAU – Antonio SAURA – Giorgio SADOTTI – Gerald SCARFE – Karl SCHMIDT–ROTLUFF – SCHROEDER-SONNENSTERN – Kurt SCHWITTERS – Gino SEVERINI – Ben SHAHN – SINE – David Alfaro – SIQUEIROS – Richard SMITH – Chaim SOUTINE – Saul STEINBERG – Graham SUTHERLAND – Rufino TAMAYO – Yves TANGUY – Dorothea TANNING – Jean TINGUELY – Henri de TOULOUSE-LAUTREC – Clovis TROUILLE – Fritz VAN DEM BERGHE – Victor Vincent VAN GOGH – VASARELY – Renzo VESPIGNANI – Andy WARHOL – Neal WHITE – WOLS and Ossip ZADKINE.
An Exhibition by Mathieu COPELAND.

"I am calling this a 'Study' for an exhibition of Violence in Contemporary Art so as to be able to include reproductions and design it so that it can travel to the Provinces when it closes here at the end of March."
Roland Penrose in a letter to the Hon. David L Astor.

Over the winter of 1963 Roland Penrose and his colleagues at the ICA were busy planning A Study for an Exhibition of Violence in Contemporary Art, “an anthology of the various ways in which Violence appears in art”. The exhibition was primarily made up of photographic representations of works, categorised and mounted on thematic panels. The accompanying events programme was an attempt at a similarly exhaustive investigation of violence in the other art forms (film, poetry, theatre, music) and in society more generally. The three-month programme included events as diverse as screenings of Jean Rouch’s films of the traditions and culture of the Niger River valley; films of Francis Bacon, Jackson Pollock and Karel Appel at work under the collective title ‘Films of Action and Violence in Painting’; R.D. Laing speaking on ‘Violence and Love’; Dr Hans Keller on ‘Musical Sadism’; Dr Alex Comfort on ‘Hokum and the Ancestry of the Novel’; and Desmond Morris on ‘Sex and Aggression in Animals’.

In a letter to Dominique de Menil, a patron of the exhibition, Penrose wrote that the ICA hoped to publish a collection of “the most important lectures, and radio and T.V. will, we believe, do their part. What we hope is that we can make this programme so important that it will start up other discussions and provoke a general interest with a view to shedding more light on this trouble-maker, violence.” There was some discussion with Penguin about the publication of a volume of papers drawn from the events programme, but as far as we can tell, this did not happen. An special edition of the BBC arts magazine programme, Monitor, was broadcast in 1964. But the only known publication to accompany the exhibition was a slim volume with a foreword by Penrose and a list of works, original and in reproduction. It’s cover was illustrated with an image of Lucio Fontana at work.

The exhibition at Flat Time House of curator Mathieu Copeland’s ‘bootleg’ of the ICA show, and the very lack of an extensive catalogue of the original show, prompted this publication, Study for a Catalogue. It is an imagined version of what that catalogue might have been; and also of what the exhibition might be, if curated anew in 2011. It comprises photocopied reproductions of all the works from the show (with some free replacements where works were not identifiable from the original catalogue, or have not been readily available in reproduction); a text on the violence of curation by artist Warren Neidich; a downloadable screening programme, again liberally expanded from events that took place in 1964; and pages specially produced for the catalogue in the summer of 2011 by artists including Elena Bajo, Neal White, Davide Ballula, Erica Baum, Tom Benson, Emma Bjornesparr, Stefan Brüggemann, Philippe Decrauzat, Peter Fillingham & Charlotte Moth, Mark McGowan, Anne-Sylvie Henchoz, Pablo Leon de la Barra, Warren Neidich, Philomene Pirecki, and Giorgio Sadotti.

The catalogue, in B&W and A4 format, can be downloaded from http://www.flattimeho.org.uk or http://www.reprise.me ready to be printed. A page template will be freely available so that new pages and chapters can be added with the intention that these Studies for both an Exhibition and a Catalogue of Violence in Contemporary Art can extend the debate, begun in 1964, about the good and bad in violence and about the very image of violence itself.

Text by Elisa Kay
27 July 2011

http://www.mathieucopeland.net/

Friday, 27 May 2011

MATHIEU COPELAND, 'STUDIES FOR AN EXHIBITION' AT DAVID ROBERTS ART FOUNDATION, LONDON



Recreation of Gustav Metzger’s 1956 exhibition/display covering the windows of 30Queens, Kings Lynn, with posters he collected of the exhibition This is Tomorrow shown at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1956/2011. Courtesy of the artist. With thanks to Tate Archive and Adrian Glew.


exhibition view




Elena Bajo, Illusion, Delusion, Allusion: The Order of Anarchy (Studies for a Movement at 66 r.p.m), 2011. Courtesy of the artist and D+T Project, Brussels.


Niele Toroni, Quand les empreintes de pinceau n°50 s’affichent sur leurs affiches – Haags Gemeentemuseum, 1994. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Pietro Sparta, Chagny.


An Exhibition to Hear Read/Une Exposition à être lue, Volume 3. Daily readings at 2pm.


exhibition view with reading plattform





Karin Sander, Mailed Paintings, 2004 - 2011. Courtesy of the artist.


Julia Rometti and Victor Costales, Exotismo Ordinario Internacional Neotropical, 2011. Courtesy of the artists. Booklets available at the front desk.




Study for an exhibition of violence in contemporary art, Institute of Contemporary Art’, February-March 1964.


Emma Bjornesparr, The Commercial Waste Collection, 2011. Courtesy of the artist.


curators’ series # 4
Studies for an Exhibition
07.04.2011 -11.06.2011.

With Elena Bajo, Robert Barry, Emma Bjornesparr, Jarrod Fowler, Nicolas Garait, Karl Holmqvist, Bethan Huws, David Medalla, Gustav Metzger, Roman Opalka, Julia Rometti & Victor Costales, Karin Sander, Yann Sérandour, Cally Spooner, Sue Tompkins, and Niele Toroni.

an exhibition by Mathieu Copeland.

Mathieu Copeland is the fourth guest curator invited by The David Roberts Art Foundation to be part of the Curators’ Series. Studies for an Exhibition, explores how exhibitions are to be envisaged in regard to transient thoughts – an art that reveals itself through time, as movements of transitions, as possible studies giving the feeling of what is, and what can be.

Following a desire to not fix in form an exhibition to be, Studies for an Exhibition brings together practices that explore the possibilities of immateriality and the temporal nature of an art object. The question of time and accumulation is adamant to an exhibition that considers a recycling of our current reality as the means to generate transitory new forms.

Moments of history are revisited, as with the recreation of Gustav Metzger’s 1956 display/appropriation of the posters advertising the seminal show at the Whitechapel Gallery This Is Tomorrow, which he used to cover the entire shop windows of his then second hand shop/exhibition space 30Queens in Kings Lynn. A means to advertise what was tomorrow then, the posters can be read in parallel to the altered exhibition posters by Niele Toroni, who painted over posters advertising his own exhibitions, thereby blurring the moment of the original shows and when these are painted, and shown. Past realities are again revisited and appropriated when confronted with the entire ‘bootleg’ of a 1964 ICA exhibition entitled Study for an exhibition of violence in contemporary art.

In relation to these works of past and present readings, the ‘mailed paintings’ by Karin Sander create in the space of the gallery an unstable hanging as these are being mailed back and forth to the artist in Berlin for the duration of the exhibition. The paintings capture their own reality by acquiring marks as they travel unprotected from one place to the next. As an echo to this reality in motion for an exhibition to be, Emma Bjornesparr addresses the location of the gallery and the habits of consumption. Through a temporary sculpture that frames the entire time of an exhibition in saving the accumulated waste, the artist creates the inversed portrait of the host institution.

Since 1972 Roman Opalka marks time through the progressive inscription of numbers painted from one to infinity. The constant evolution of these paintings is accompanied by a tape recording of his own voice saying the numbers out loud as he writes them. By disseminating these recordings in the space of the gallery we are projected into an ephemeral experience of time.

Accumulation of knowledge is the focus of Julia Rometti and Victor Costales’ work. Exotismo Ordinario Internacional Neotropical is an archive based on their ongoing research into plants from the neotropical region. As part of this continuous study, a series of booklets will be handed out. Elena Bajo’s commission is to be dreamt, forgotten, drawn on a wall or indeed erased. Showing the process of becoming, it is a piece that is all of its studies, changes and potentialities, echoing the exhibition in becoming a study for all that it can and could be.

And as yet another possible study discussing the form of an exhibition, Mathieu Copeland has edited a new publication, the third volume of his series entitled An Exhibition to Hear Read/Une Exposition à être lue. The book will be read out at 2pm every day for the duration of the exhibition. This publication features text based artworks by Robert Barry, Jarrod Fowler, Nicolas Garait, Karl Holmqvist, Bethan Huws, David Medalla, Yann Sérandour, Cally Spooner, and Sue Tompkins. These contributions consider the relation between a text as an art piece to be and its spoken realisation, questioning the ‘performativity’ of the act of reading from a book.

The David Roberts Art Foundation
111 Great Titchfield Street
London W1W 6RY
http://www.davidrobertsartfoundation.com

http://www.mathieucopeland.net

Thursday, 24 December 2009

'MANIFESTO FOR THE AESTHETIC REVOLUTION IN BRASILIA', A MANIFESTO BY MATHIEU COPELAND AND PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA




BRASILIA:
Centro da revolução estética e intelectual
Centre of the aesthetic & intellectual revolution

The manifesto for a revolution, as this completes the journey into the revolution...
The revolution starts now!

In 1967, Helio Oiticica responded to Brasilia, (which was built in 41 months, from 1956 to April 1960, when it was officially inaugurated) by creating Tropicalia, the anti-utopia, the reality of the favelas against the dictatorship of rationality, order and concrete. Confronting these two realities, we shall call for a new vision of Utopia, a CONCRETE UTOPIA! An utopia made of reality, concrete & steel! Brasilia will again be the platform for the development of other modernities and new realities: in other words, Brasilia will embody the centre of the aesthetic & intellectual revolution!

Centro da revolução estética e intelectual is the recreation of the mythical centre of the intellectual revolution: a myth, yet a myth in which we trust!
The two evident trends seem to be that either a revolution concludes its course and becomes a new standard, or following a permanent circle becomes a permanent revolution. The creation of the centre in turns becomes the embodiment of both the playful environment it creates & the serious goal it affirms, and becomes a meeting point of ideas, a cross over of cultures within a third place, the museum.

The revolution within the institution becomes a call that embraces movements, living entities, and breaks for reflection. More than ever we shall rethink the institutions, and rethink the museums that the cities where we live have become. We shall call for the most radical levelling, not the kind that we experience in our everyday life through global similarity and standarisation, but indeed the levelling of our cities, to level everything to zero and start again. And this time, we shall seek no permanency, only new and ephemerals architectures.

The following shall be applied to our everyday life, to our common activities, and to all the institutions that surround us, to all the structures that define our experiences. A third of all museums will have to close for a year, as the other two third continue their activities, and as the year draws to an end, another third will close, and so forth & and so on. Let the dust settle, and from there a new harvest will breed again with more strength from these now fertile grounds.
We now must create an economy of cultural subversion, more than ever we shall create a community in our amnesiac society.

The revolution inhabits the city, and the city becomes the host & the primary resource for the revolution: both a shelter and an entity that digests its own constituting material: a cannibal that is sustained by the city, and that feeds itself from it: neo antropophagia!

The revolution uses the museum as a map, and envisages to use the Espaço Lúcio Costa (the museum of the creation of the city of Brasilia) as the plan, and the city as its operational field. The revolution uses the newspapers of the city as its own catalogue. Spreading the rumours and all worded artefacts only based on beliefs (Spoken Words to the World), the exhibition goes deep into the future, as we recover faith in a new modernism!

The Revolution is such a modernist form! Yet a formalist revolution, such a revolutionary idea!

The Centre is everywhere, omni present, as the centre is within us! Activating art, dance & celebration, the revolution becomes a popular invitation to celebrate art within society. Our belief in modernism does not become a quote or a citation, but to the contrary the means to create new work and non-work and to work with & within the originals – and among these create a circles of old masters as the bearers of Knowledge! We do not reproduce, we breed and we generate a new understanding of the past in inscribing in the present the seeds of the future!

The revolution is ultimately abstracted from the city, the structure of previous modernist models! The Centre Is Not Complete – The Centre Is Everywhere. The seeds of this revolution are within this affirmation, and affirms that all becomes the centres of the centre! The appraisal of humankind in this age of global chaos. Millions of people, arriving from everywhere, from other planets, arriving to the centre, to the centre of the revolution. The Centre Is Everywhere! The Revolution Is Everyvhere!

The centre is within us! The revolution generates life, reality, blood, breaths, and is akin to a mother giving birth: the revolution generates the future, and the future is NOW!

The manifesto for a revolution, as this completes the journey into the revolution...

Mathieu Copeland & Pablo Leon de la Barra
Summer 2008

Sunday, 21 June 2009

'ECHO PIECE' BY MICHAEL PARSONS, CURATED BY MATHIEU COPELAND IN CANARY WHARF


Maria Ines Rodriguez sitting on a Lynn Chadwick sculpture


Mathieu Copeland in Cannary Wharf





ECHO PIECE (CANARY WHARF) 2009
by Michael Parsons
Curated by Mathieu Copeland

Saturday 20th June 2009
10.45 am – 12 noon

A one hour walk through Canary Wharf with live brass accompaniment of a sound composition written by Michael Parsons and site specific to Canary Wharf.

Echo Piece is an environmental sound work to be performed by a number of musicians, moving around and exploring the acoustic properties of an open-air space. Players with trumpets, horns and trombones will play short single notes, interspersed with silences, evoking echoes from reflective surfaces, in a variable, open-form, sparse and pointillistic texture of discrete sounds.

Echo Piece creates a spatial polyphony of multiple echoes, activating the sound-reflecting surfaces of buildings at different distances, revealing the elasticity of the surrounding medium. Canary Wharf is an ideal urban location for this event, having a series of open spaces surrounded by sound-reflecting surfaces, and being relatively free of traffic noise. Echo Piece will change the way these spaces are perceived and experienced, by exposing their latent acoustic potential.

“The space between buildings is also part of their architecture. Volumes, masses and voids ‘transmit’ and ‘receive’ messages from one another.”
Le Corbusier

Members of the public are invited to join the walk. Meet at Cabot Square at 11.00 am for the start. Times and places as follow:

10.45 am Cabot Square
10.50 Fishermans Walk ( waterside on north side of Cabot Square)
10.55 Willoughby Passage (covered passage from west end of Fishermans Walk)
11.00 return to Cabot Square
11.05 Cubitt Steps, leading to Mackenzie Walk
11.10 - 11.20 Mackenzie Walk to West Plaza
11.20 - 11.40 West Plaza
11.40 -11.45 walk through and along north side of Jubilee Park
11. 45 -12.00 Montgomery Square

Commissioned by Culture House at Arts and Business

http://www.mathieucopeland.net/

Wednesday, 25 February 2009

'VOIDS. A RETROSPECTIVE' AT CENTRE POMPIDOU

Vides (voids) A retrospective
February 25 2009 - March 23 2009
11h00 - 21h00

A quite exceptional event, "Vides" (Voids) is a retrospective of empty exhibitions since that of Yves Klein in 1958. In almost a dozen rooms of the National Museum of Modern Art, it assembles in a totally original manner exhibitions that showed absolutely nothing, leaving empty the space for which they were designed.

The idea of exhibiting emptiness is a recurring notion in the history of art over the past fifty or so years, almost to the point of becoming a cliché in the practice of contemporary art. Since the exhibition by Yves Klein – "The Specialization of Sensibility in the Raw Material State of Stabilized Pictorial Sensibility" in Paris in 1958, totally empty exhibitions have been the statement of different conceptions of vacuums.

While for Yves Klein it was a way to point out the sensitive state, by contrast it represents the peak of conceptual and minimal art for Robert Barry with "Some places to which we can come, and for a while 'be free to think about what we are going to do' (Marcuse)" (1970). It may also result from the desire to fudge the understanding of exhibition spaces, as in the work "The Air-Conditioning Show" from Art & Language (1966-1967), or to empty an institution to modify our experience, as in the work by Stanley Brouwn. It also reflects the will to create the experience of the qualities of an exhibition venue, as with Robert Irwin and his exhibition at the ACE Gallery in 1970, or with Maria Nordman at her exhibition in Krefeld in 1984. Emptiness also represents a form of radicalness, like that created by Laurie Parsons in 1990 at the Lorence-Monk gallery, which announced his renouncement of all artistic practice. For Bethan Huws and his work "Haus Esters Piece" (1993), emptiness means being able to celebrate the museum's architecture, signifying that art is already there on site and there is no need to add works of art. Emptiness assumes almost a sense of economic demand for Maria Eichhorn who, in leaving her exhibition empty at the Kunsthalle Bern in 2001, helped to devote the budget to the building's renovation. With "More Silent than Ever" (2006), Roman Ondák, for his part, had the onlooker believing that there is more than what is just left there to be seen.

Commissaires / organisateurs:
Laurent Le Bon, John Armleder, Mathieu Copeland, Gustav Metzger, Mai-Thu Perret, Clive Phillpot

Thursday, 15 January 2009

MATHIEU COPELAND, A SPOKEN WORD EXHIBITION AT BALTIC

A Spoken Word Exhibition
Baltic, Newcastle Upon Tyne,
Friday 16 January – Sunday 15 March 2009 (opening Friday 16/01)

A Spoken Word Exhibition
is composed of worded artworks (artworks only made of words to be spoken), to be read by BALTIC Crew members to visitors who ask to hear the pieces.

Acting as a voice when addressed throughout the building, the Crew repeat the words, sentences or paragraphs, the texts or haikus as written and instructed by the invited artists. Not performing, only using language through the act of reading, the works are available only on demand, initiating an exchange between visitors and BALTIC Crew.

The exhibition inhabits the realm of the spoken word, addressing the possibilities of art, memory & exhibition making. The exhibition is constituted of artworks that are to be spoken and exchanged as a verbal gesture from one person to another. Artworks that only last for the time it takes to read them, generating ultimately an exhibition that only lasts for the time it takes to listen.

A Spoken Word Exhibition is an exhibition of the same nature & material as that of the artworks that constitutes it, which are words. Contributing artists are Vito Acconci, Fia Backström, Robert Barry, James Lee Byars, Nick Currie (aka Momus), Douglas Coupland, Karl Holmqvist, Maurizio Nannucci, Yoko Ono, Mai-Thu Perret, Emilio Prini, Tomas Vanek, Tris Vonna-Michell, Lawrence Weiner, and Ian Wilson.

Please ask to hear the artworks.

An exhibition by Mathieu Copeland
http://www.mathieucopeland.net/


Sunday, 11 January 2009

THE CENTRE IS EVERYWHERE: MATHIEU AND PABLO DRINK SOME PINTS AT THE NEW CENTRE FOR THE AESTHETIC AND INTELLECTUAL REVOLUTION: THE SEVEN STARS PUB!



"We thought we were free, but we found out we are the slaves of everyone, but at least we don't have to wake up early!"

"London is like an airport, we are in a waiting lounge waiting for our time to depart."

"It's time to Take Over!"

"Viva la Revolucion!"

From a conversation with curator Mathieu Copeland at the 'new center for the aesthetic and intellectual revolution'
Seven Stars Pub, 53 Carey Street, London, WC2
January 10, 2009

Friday, 3 October 2008

'L'EXPOSITION CONTINUE' AN EXHIBITION BY MATHIEU COPELAND

L'exposition Continue
Une exposition de Mathieu Copeland pour 2 centres d’art (Circuit & 1m3) avec

David Cunningham,
On Kawara,
Charlemagne Palestine,
et des peintures de Birgir Andresson, Jean-Sylvain Bieth, Francis Baudevin, Michel Castaignet,
John Cornu, Philippe Decrauzat, Noel Dolla, Olivier Mosset, Christian Robert-Tissot, Evi Vingerling,
repeintes de la même couleur que le mur par Claude Rutault.

vernissage le vendredi 3 octobre à 18h
du 4 octobre au 22 novembre 2008
je-ve-sa de 14h à 18h et sur rendez-vous


Concert de Charlemagne Palestine
mercredi 1er octobre à 20h30, Eglise St-François, Lausanne

Concert de David Cunningham et Mika Vainio
samedi 4 octobre à 22h, Le Bourg, rue de Bourg 51, Lausanne

Lecture de One Million Years, On Kawara
chaque samedi à 16h durant l’exposition, Circuit, Lausanne

Lausanne, Switzerland

Thursday, 20 March 2008

SPOKEN WORD EXHIBITION IN TRANZIT/PRAGUE

tranzitdisplay resource centre of contemporary art cordially invite you

A Spoken Word Exhibition

Vito Acconci, Robert Barry, James Lee Byars, Nick Currrie, Douglas Coupland, Karl Holmqvist, Maurizio Nannucci, Yoko Ono, Mai-Thu Perret, Emilio Prini, Tomáš Vaněk, Lawrence Weiner, Ian Wilson

an exhibition by Mathieu Copeland opening on Tuesday, March 18th, from 18:00, 2008 live performance by Nick Currie (aka Momus) exhibition runs until April 20th 2008

a Series of Spoken Word Events will take place during the course of the exhibition featuring live performances by artists including Nick Currie (18. 3.), Tomáš Vaněk (19. 3.) Susan Stenger (18. 4.), Karl Holmqvist (19. 4.) and Fia Backström (20. 4.) please contact the gallery or visit the gallery website for more information

and furthermore
tranzitdisplay resource centre for contemporary art and Mathieu Copeland cordially invite you for two performances as the part of the Spoken Word Exhibition:

at 6 pm: TOMÁŠ VANĚK PARTICIP no. 80

Come and become a part of, a group declamation - the method of a group recital in which the individual participants independently of each other, out loud or silently, quickly or slowly, rhythmically or chaotically declaim an assigned weakness for 3 to 5 minutes. The entire process is recorded. At the end, each of the participants obtains an audio recording - an attempt at a collective recital of a sentence form using the smallest organisational units of speech.

at 7 pm: RAIMUNDAS MALASAUSKAS: 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT BOOKS
‘2 or 3 things I know about books’ is based on the famous scene from Jean Luc Godard’s ‘2 or 3 things I know about her’, where two readers are seated on a table covered with books, randomly reading sentences and paragraphs from randomly selected books. In this performance, a reader selects randomly from the pile of books present on the table paragraphs to be read, whilst the other protagonist is writing on a laptop, not handwriting, the text transmitted online in real time. Assuming that the person who is reading (as well as the one that is writing) is doing some reinterpretation of the text while adding bits and pieces from the memory or from the heart, and the same applying to the person writing, this performance becomes an artistic act on the part of the both, generating live a composite new text based on chance, movement and knowledge.
http://www.tranzitdisplay.cz/en/

Friday, 30 November 2007

'A CHOREOGRAPHED EXHIBITION' BY MATHIEU COPELAND



A Choreographed Exhibition / Eine Choreographierte Ausstellung
With Jonah Bokaer, Philippe Egli, Karl Holmqvist, Jennifer Lacey, Roman Ondak, Michael Parsons, and Fia Backstrom & Michael Portnoy. An exhibition by Mathieu Copeland.


‘A Choreographed Exhibition’ is an exhibition only composed of movements. For over a month and a half, three dancers from the Tanzkompanie Theater St. Gallen are present in the kunsthalle during the opening hours to perform in space the choreography of movements, patterns and choreographed gestures, following the scores and instructions as provided by the invited artists, dancers, and choreographers.

In a space where nothing is present but the dancers, in a the gallery left empty, only the opening hours of the gallery (2pm – 6pm expect Saturdays & Sundays from 1pm – 5pm) and the length of the exhibition (each days between Wednesday and Sunday included from the 1st of December 2007 until the 13th January 2008) gives the time (the rhythm?) to all the pieces. ‘A Choreographed Exhibition’ considers choreography and dance, movements in space and in time, as the gestures become an abstraction of forms choreographed in the space of the Kunsthalle. A succession of movements, where ultimately only the memory of these gestures remain.

The succession of choreographed pieces, each commissioned for the exhibition, discusses the inscription of movements in space, of artworks in time. Roman Ondak communicates an attitude of disdain in his piece ‘Insiders’, requesting the dancers to wear their clothes inside-out and to ignore their surrounding reality. Michael Parsons re-actualises his seminal ‘Walking Piece’ from 1968, and through a new score instructs the three dancers on how to walk in the space of the Kunsthalle, thus generating an open piece of visual music. Karl Holmqvist creates a polyphony of voices in asking the dancers to read different lyrics from various songs whilst performing cleaning gestures. Fia Backstrom & Michael Portnoy in this unique collaboration create a piece reminiscent of the 1960s experimental theatre, where a game structure is intertwined with live reading of the stock exchange. Philippe Egli uses the texture of the body, and brings the outside toward the inside as the dancers perform a series of movements extrapolated from the contemporary dance repertoire. Jonah Bokaer with ‘Three Cases Amnesia’ writes a choreography for any three dancers who mediate the space of the Kunsthale, and that of their bodies and expressions, as so many germs of elements to come (and disseminate) thus generating a choreography of movements formed & filtered through several layers of writing, ultimately mediated by the dancers. As the link between all the pieces and in a desire to bring the inside out, Jennifer Lacey develops a piece that intervenes in-between all the pieces, and therefore within the core of the exhibition.

All pieces are performed as the day evolves, yet at any given time the viewers are only confronted to a succession of solo shows, one piece by one artist, as only in the entire time of the day and solely throughout its whole duration is the group exhibition revealed. Similarly to dance & performance, ‘A choreographed exhibition’ is a mode of production that produces no objects, and as such affirms its political standpoint in an oversaturated world. The exhibition considers movements as the means to produce ephemeral art pieces, as the works only exists for the time it takes for the dancers to inscribe them in space. Through their execution in time these pieces generate an exhibition of movements, and thus structure the movements of the exhibition as an ephemeral environment, or in other words, as a choreographed exhibition.


‘A Choreographed Exhibition’ is an exhibition co produced by the Kunsthalle St Gallen and La Ferme du Buisson .

Le geste est notre état d’esprit / A gesture is our state of mind

www.mathieucopeland.net