GREY ROOM presents in collaboration with ARCHIVE KABINETT BERLIN :

“Don’t save your skin, get it off your back!” – potentials of artistic intervention in the public space

Presentations and Public Talk with

Katarina Šević & Gergely László (Tehnica Schweiz)
Hajnalka Somogyi | OFF-Biennale Budapest, HU
Agnieszka Polska & Janek Simon | Szalona Galeria, PL
Andrej Mirčev | Berlin
Chiara Figone | Archive Journal | Archive Kabinett, Berlin

moderated by Kata Krasznahorkai | Critique&Culture

date : 27 January 2018 | 6–8 PM
venue : Archive Kabinett Berlin | Müllerstraße 133, Hinterhof, 13349 Berlin | Tel : +49 30 34719403
contact : critiqueandculture@gmail.com | f: critiqueandculture | info@archivejournal.org

Related to the topic of the exhibition Taking Time and The Curfew project by Katarina Šević and Gergely László (Tehnica Schweiz)

Curated & organised by Kata Krasznahorkai & Kati Simon

The language of the presentations and discussion will be English.

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Realized in Budapest, in autumn of 2017, street play ‘The Curfew’ is an alternative form of public demonstration. A troupe roves the streets of Budapest. They push in front of them a three-meter high egg-shaped, multiplayer megaphone. They stop at busy public squares to perform their play as a speaking choir about the transfiguration of a group of security guards. They are helped by the magical “talking egg” in which the voices reborn and amplify.

By using tools related to the various traditions and forms of street-theater, such as grotesque and humor, the performance aimed to celebrate freedom of expression and fearlessness, acting against a general mood of political and civic frustration and passivity.

Image: Katarina Šević and Gergely László, The Curfew, performance, 2017, Photo by: Boglárka Zellei

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Presentations followed by a public talk :

Hajnalka Somogyi
initiator and leader of the OFF-Biennale Budapest, HU
Gaudiopolis 2017 – The city of joy

OFF-BIENNALE BUDAPEST is the largest civil, independent arts initiative in Hungary. Organized on a grassroots basis, OFF-Biennale is based on self-organization and a voluntary collaboration of artists, curators, gallerists, and collectors, among others. OFF-Biennale strives to take an active part in the social discourse on public issues and to enhance the culture of democracy by the means of art. The OFF-Biennale Budapest 2015 was one of the grant recipients of the 2016 Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory. In 2017, the second edition of the OFF-Biennale Gaudiopolis 2017 – The city of joy aimed to reassess the implications of personal commitment, education, community development, and the sustainability of democracy, as well as rethink, in this context, the potential role of children, playfulness, joy—and art.

Agnieszka Polska and Janek Simon
artists, founders of Szalona Galeria, PL
Szalona Galeria [The Wild Gallery]

SZALONA GALERIA  is a mobile cultural center launched by designer Jakub de Barbaro and two artists – Agnieszka Polska and Janek Simon – that toured small towns and villages in Poland in July and August, 2016. Szalona Galeria was conceived as a response to the fact that a large part of the population of Poland today lacks access to contemporary culture. Outstanding Polish artists representing a range of attitudes and aesthetics were invited to take part in the Szalona Galeria project. In a departure from the discourse prevailing on the Polish art scene in recent years, the exhibition does not revolve around Critical Art but seeks to define a new and different way in which politics can be manifest through art. Instead of carrying out a critique of the current system, the show’s narrative relies on works that hint at the existence of alternative systems.

Andrej Mirčev
performance studies scholar and dramaturge, Berlin
Disturbing (the) image of the neoliberal city

Envisaged as a short presentation the talk proposes a discursive analysis of the performance ‘The Curfew’ relating it to Kevin Lynch’s book on the image of the city and to Foucault’s notion of heterotopia. Recalling interventions in public space as they had been performed by artists within the new art practice movement (Yugoslavia in the 60s and 70s), as well as to some forms of medieval mystery plays, the intention is to negotiate potentialities of performance to disturb the commodified stage of the city.

Kata Krasznahorkai
researcher, curator and chair of Critique&Culture, Berlin

Berlin-based art historian, project director and curator Kata Krasznahorkai is working at the University of Zürich in the research project „Performance Art in Eastern Europe (1950-1990). History and Theory”.

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In the past ten years artists Katarina Šević and Gergely László (member of the collective Tehnica Schweiz) have worked together on several occasions. They realize their projects through groups of objects, accompanied by performative situations and events, combined usually with text and narration. They are propelled by the surrounding social dichotomies of today, and their artistic methodologies are based on complex working processes with the occasional use of archived documents.

The both exhibited internationally in solo and group shows including: OFF-Biennale Budapest; Le 19 CRAC, Monbelliard; acb Gallery, Budapest; Play Time / Les Ateliers de Rennes, Rennes; New Museum, New York; Secession, Vienna; Contemporary Art Museum of Vojvodina, Novi Sad; 21er Haus, Vienna; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; Apexart, New York.

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ARCHIVE KABINETT is a platform for cultural research and debate. It brings together activists and cultural practitioners in an adaptable structure with the aim to foster a unique space for discussion and exchange. Archive is engaged in a wide range of activities including publishing and exhibition making.

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The discussion is part of the program series GREY ROOM, initiated and realized by Critique&Culture e.V. The project has been realized with the kind support of the LOTTO-Stiftung Berlin.

 

                       

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