June 14. Manuel Ángel Macía: On Pharmacoloniality
Thursday, June 14, 19:00
Manuel Ángel Macía: On Pharmacoloniality
An instance of Manuel A. Macía‘s broader research programme on pharmacoloniality, this lecture-performance takes the form of a listening session on Latin American popular music. Turning to the aural spectrum, the session explores and elaborates Puerto Rican Acoustemologist Julio Ramos’ concept of pharmacoloniality. The concept denotes an inverse process of ‘colonisation’, whereby Latin American substances—sugar, tobacco, coffee, cocaine—intervene to stimulate European rationality and co-produce the rhythm of modern temporality.
The event obliquely addresses the propositions of TIER.space, tackling the psychopolitics of cultivation; healing and self-care through narcosis; and the coloniality of sense.
June 6. OnCurating issue no. 36 ‘Spaces of Anticipation’ launch at TIER.space
We will celebrate our first event this coming Wednesday, June 6th at 19:00 with the launch of the latest OnCurating issue, no. 36 ‘Spaces of Anticipation’, with contributions from Antonia Alampi, BAR Project (Juan Canela, Andrea Novoa, Verónica Valentini), Luis Berríos-Negrón, Sol Calero, Binna Choi, Céline Condorelli, Valentina Desideri, Jonatan Habib Engqvist, Doris Krüger and Walter Pardeller, Teobaldo Lagos Preller, Alex Martinis Roe, Christian Nyampeta, Justo Pastor Mellado, Manuel Segade and Alec Steadman, and edited by Lorenzo Sandoval and Emanuele Guidi.
This issue developed from a research project by Lorenzo Sandoval and Emanuele Guidi that looks at artistic and curatorial practices so as to explore the role and potential of artistic and cultural institutional models. So far, Spaces of Anticipation has taken the form of a symposium with the same title at EACC (Castellón, Spain); the research exhibition Making Room. Spaces of Anticipation, and a second symposium and workshop both at ar/ge kunst (Bolzano, Italy). The term ‘anticipation’ aims at proposing an affirmative approach to the research as intends to elude the use of ‘post-isms’ and ‘future-ism’ terminology, which have been largely employed as parameters to discuss present conditions and their responsibilities.In these terms Spaces of Anticipation aims at gathering practices and relations able to ‘re-territorialize’ existing models of institutions through a genuine ‘desire of becoming’ by acting within present and unexpected conditions.
Various books and printed matter from contributors to this issue of OnCurating will be arranged in the space to expand the contents and trajectories of the publication. A special fermented drink will be prepared by artist Daniel Salomon.
June 6 at 19:00
The Institute for Endotic Research
TIER.space
Donaustr. 84
Berlin 12043
Photos by Benjamin Busch
May 23. The Institute for Endotic Research gains a permanent address at TIER.space, Donaustr. 84 in Berlin-Neukölln, and an inaugural program.
The Institute for Endotic Research (TIER) began in 2015 as a fictional institution understood as a habitable sculpture. It has since brought different practices together, namely architecture, art, mediation and curation, to foster a transdisciplinary approach. TIER.space is a continuation of that project and was founded this spring as a virtual site and a physical location. This endotic institution will serve as a host for TIER’s program in its many different forms, continually adapted and re-tooled for new uses. TIER.space will become a basis for experimenting with forms of institutionalization mediated through encounters between people, materials and devices.
The endotic
The institute is dedicated to research about forms of generation and presentation of subject matter related to the endotic – an antonym for exotic. French writer George Perec used it as a conceptual tool to approach everyday life in one’s own immediate surroundings. With this idea, he proposed to preserve the fascination that comes with the act of exploring while also avoiding to produce the figure of the other. In the public sphere, TIER conducts a space based on notions directly related to the domestic, which are usually confined to the private sphere and reproductive labour. TIER.space foregrounds this relationship to the domestic by combining a public program with a habitable space for hosting transdisciplinary projects.
The fabric of the public program is composed of five interwoven threads: cultivation, building strength, making public, percenting and technics. The converging and diverging of these thematic threads depends on future collaborations that will unfold in different directions.
Cultivation
The first thread is a statement: it suggests to literally and metaphorically work with another understanding of timing. The practice of cultivation will shape the architecture of the space. In the same move, it will approach the formation of the program as a way to maintain ongoing collaborations and germinate future ones. This first thread will be translated into a series of encounters to set the patterns of those collaborations, with roots that extend deeper into the neighborhood.
Building strength
With this thread, TIER.space seeks to establish a series of pedagogical devices to develop multiple skills towards proactive notions of resilience/resistance, healing/self-care and techniques for building both constructions and communities. It will be complemented by group reading sessions and informal presentations.
Making public
One of the meanings of the word publication is to make something public (veröffentlichen). If the relations between local and global are regarded as a text that can be read through contemporary art practices, a pertinent tactic would be to substitute the idea of exhibition with publication. This means to understand exhibitions as narrative machines, as expanded books that can also unfold a set of other possibilities such as cross-temporal approaches, choreography of bodies moving through the extensive idea of text and support structures.
Percenting
The term “percent for art” and its German sibling “Kunst am Bau” speak to an institutionalization of art in public space. It refers to financial incentives for developers and marks a tendency for institutions—public and private—to instrumentalize art and the figure of the artist. Dealing with this notion belonging to the idea of social welfare, TIER.space will gather practitioners who have worked on the presence of art in the city to approach the question: What are the functions and possibilities of art in public space today?
Technics
For institutions and the digital realm, technique is one of the main mediators of social relationships. As such, it deals with many of the interchanges of everyday life refracted through multilayered technologies. With the intention of understanding the different levels that compose the quotidian, this thread will research notions that compose the epistemology of technics. Combined with an approach originating in the historical construction of the idea of technique, TIER.space will look at parallel narratives that position technique outside the western canon of historiography.
Colophon
The Institute for Endotic Research is initiated by Lorenzo Sandoval. TIER.space is elaborated and maintained by Lorenzo Sandoval and Benjamin Busch. The space is generously supported by the Berlin Senate with funds from the Arbeitsraumprogramm.
TIER.space, Donaustr. 84, 12043 Berlin
theinstituteforendoticresearch@gmail.com
November 24. ‘Local Encounters #5: Marie Graftieaux and Nora Mayr/ in situ’ Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin.
insitu is a Berlin-based collective consisting of the curators Marie Graftieaux, Nora Mayr, Gilles Neiens and Lauren Reid and was established in Autumn 2012. The name insitu refers to the team’s understanding of curatorial practice as being necessarily »in situ« in terms of cultural, social and geographic spaces. Insitu collective is interested in experimenting with curatorial formats – How can we change the behavior of visitors in an exhibition? How can the encounter with an individual artwork be re-thought?
This program aims at introducing to you a series of local projects, with a recognized trajectory and fully engaged in the local scene. The agents invited to present their projects are key practitioners to enter in contact with the diversity of the art spheres in Berlin. The objective of these encounters is twofolded: On the one hand, they will facilitate a deeper knowledge of the cultural infrastructure of the city; on the other hand, they will provide the chance of a series of meetings in an informal atmosphere that might facilitate long time contacts.
October 28. The Words That Are Missing: On (Soft) Censorship at Savvy Contemporary.
CONVERSATION
The Words That Are Missing. On (Soft) Censorship
A discussion with Ana Alenso (together with Cristina Moreno), Jesús Acevedo, and Alby Alamo. Organized by The Institute for Endotic Research
October 28, 2017 | 7 PM
SAVVY Contemporary | Plantagenstraße 31 | 13347 Berlin
Free entrance – donations welcome
Organized by The Institute for Endotic Research, ‘The Words That Are Missing’ is an inquiry into formations of language in the public sphere. The series focuses on the lack of certain words in the public arena: by way of censorship or because they are not yet there to describe new situations, or phenomena that were overlooked. One can think of the lack of words as a wys of describing precisely the new different formations of a ‘we’, the movements of people across countries, or the emergence of what was traditionally known as fascism, which now seems to take new and old shapes. At the same time, one can observe how mechanisms of censorship and euphemism make words disappear from discussions, producing an empty spot. In that sense, words are sensors that indicate emerging niches of tensions or alliances, establishing common arenas. At the same way, they can hide what cannot be said by censorship, euphemism or by one’s own self-repression. When looking at public conflicts, words are inevitably at the centre of the discussion.
Taking these points into account, practices related to narration, fiction and wording should be revisited, reappropriated and reimagined to propose new terms. The departure point of these series is embedded in the question: how to gain access to the words that are not there?
In the first gathering called ‘On (Soft) Censorship’ we will introduce a series of different cases which had happened related to art projects in Spanish institutions in Berlin. In this session we will explore how cases of imposed censorship are bound to situations of precarity, which allow techniques of censorship beyond the mere rejection of artworks in a show.
The first case is the exhibition ‘Zwischen den Paradiesen’ in 2016, curated by Cristina Moreno after being awarded a prize by the Spanish Embassy. In this show the work of the Venezuelan artist Ana Alenso was partially removed because it used a Repsol oil barrel (Repsol is the biggest Spanish oil company that operates in Venezuela). Her work deals at large with oil exploitation in her country. The second case looks at Jesús Acevedo’s campaign for the celebration of the 5th centenary of the death of Cervantes. He was commissioned a project by the Cervantes Institute for which he selected a series quotes from the oeuvre of the author. His selection worked as political mottos that can be read nowadays. The former central direction of the Cervantes Institute in Madrid cancelled the project the last minute because it “didn’t fit with the aesthetics” of the organization, against the opinion of the team of Cervantes Institute in Berlin. To complete this presentation, we invited another censored author, again by the Spanish Embassy, Alby Alamo. He was asked to pixelate parts of his video work where genitals appeared in order to keep his work in the exhibition.
Ana Alenso is a Venezuelan artist based in Berlin, Germany. Working across sculpture, photography, installation, sound and video, her current work aims to expose the dire risks in the global oil industry and financial world. Through the use of industrial materials, her work identifies critical states—situations of precariousness and tension—in a poetic register. She holds an MFA in Art in Context from the Berlin University of Arts (2015), an MFA in Media Art & Design at the Bauhaus University Weimar (2012) and a Diplom from Armando Reveron Arts University in Venezuela (2004). Her works have been exhibited at Sixty Eighth Art Institut (DK), Museo de Porreres (ES), Kinderhood & Caracas (DE), Neues Museum Weimar (DE); Nietzsche-Gedächtnishalle Weimar (DE), Ex Teresa Arte Actual (MEX); Centro Cultural Matucana-100 (CH), Museo Alejandro Otero, Espacio Monitor, Gallery Oficina#1 and Gallery Abra (VE) and other diverse locations.
Jesús Acevedo develops his work since the mid 90’s, showing his work mainly in independent spaces. His work has a conceptual and humoristic approach produced with differnt media such as video, spatial interventions, performance, drawing or writing. He has been part of different collectives projects, among them ‘Circo Interior Bruto’, where he was one of the founding members. In 2009 he moved from Madrid to Berlin, where he lives.
Alby Álamo (Las Palmas, 1977) lives and works in Berlin and Canary Islands. He is graduated in Fine Arts and holds a Master´s degree in Art Theory at the Facultad de Bellas Artes de La Laguna Tenerife. His work has been exhibited at the CAAM museum (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), Junefirst Gallery (Berlin), Centro de Arte La Regenta(Las Palmas), Guasch Coranty Painting Award (Barcelona), Gallery Dom Omladine (Beograd) or Kunstraum Dreieich (Frankfurt). As a curator he co-directs since 2015 Urlaub projects in Berlin. He has been one of the selected curators for “Area60” 2017 programm in the museum TEA Tenerife.
October 12. ‘Local Encounters #4: Elena Agudio/Savvy Contemporary’ at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin.
Elena Agudio is a Berlin based art historian and curator. Her research is focused on the sharing and exchange of knowledge and skills across disciplines and cultures. She studied Art History at the University of Venice – Ca’ Foscari and in 2010 she received her PhD in Art and Design at the University of Palermo. From 2005 to 2010 she lectured at the University Iulm of Milano and at the University of Architecture of Palermo. Since 2007 she is writing for and coordinating the direction of the Italian art magazine Art e Dossier.
She is artistic director of the non profit association AoN_a platform for Neuroscience and Art, a project in collaboration with the Medical University of Charité and The School of Mind and Brain of the Humboldt University encouraging both a dialogue and lasting cooperations between contemporary art and the cognitive sciences, for which she has been curating projects at the Deutsche Guggenheim (Berlin) and the Library of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice).
http://www.association-of-neuroesthetics.org/
Since 2013 she is artistic co-director of SAVVY Contemporary, a non profit Berlin based art space founded and directed by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, where she is curating and co-curating exhibition projects, discursive programmes and series, among which – currently – Speaking Feminisms dedicated to an exploration of current feminist practices and alliances, That, Around Which The Universe Revolves investigating ryhthmanalysis and the interrelations of space and time, memory, architecture and urban space, How Does The World Breathe Now, a film screening series critically reflecting on our now and the role of art in the society, and SAVVY Funk, a radio programme and exhibition for Documenta 14.
http://www.savvy-contemporary.com
Among the most recent curated exhibitions and projects: Ivana Franke: Retreat Into Darkness. Towards A Phenomenology Of The Unknown (Schering Stiftung, Berlin), Amos Gitai. The Law Of The Pursuer(Forum Expanded, Berlinale 2017, SAVVY Contemporary), What The Tortoise Murmurs To Achilles (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin), Feedback Control Mode (HALLE 14, Leipzig),The Ultimate Capital is the Sun. Metabolism in Contemporary Art, Politics, Philosophy and Science (Exhibition, Symposium, Publication), nGbK, Berlin; Giving Contours to Shadows, Berlin (nbk, SAVVY Contemporary, Maxim Gorki Theater, Gemäldegalerie), Marrakech, Dakar, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Lagos; Embodied Cognition (…) An interdisciplinary dialogue addressing Tino Sehgal’s work, (30th-31st May, 2013), Peggy Guggenheim Collection’s Library, Venice; In Other words – The Black Market of Translations / Negotiating Contemporary Cultures (3 March/15 April 2012), NGBK and Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin; Totem and Taboo. Complexity and relationships between art and design (Oct/Nov.2011), Museum Quartier, freiraum quartier21, Vienna;
She is member of SYNAPSE – The International Curators’ Network organized by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.
She was curator in residence at CRIS (Curatorial Residency in Stockholm) and in autumn 2017 will be at Helsinki International Curatorial Programme (HICP) organized by HIAP.
Local Encounters’ at Bethanien Künstlerhaus.
This program aims at introducing to you a series of local projects, with a recognized trajectory and fully engaged in the local scene. The agents invited to present their projects are key practitioners to enter in contact with the diversity of the art spheres in Berlin. The objective of these encounters is twofolded: On the one hand, they will facilitate a deeper knowledge of the cultural infrastructure of the city; on the other hand, they will provide the chance of a series of meetings in an informal atmosphere that might facilitate long time contacts.