Publication
Thursday, May 23, 19:00
Reality Is Post-Produced
Encounter with Shaunak Mahbubani
An encounter with curator-writer Shaunak Mahbubani excavating the effects of image access, creation, and circulation in contemporary South Asia. Inspired by the works of Hito Steyerl, the encounter builds on the proposition that images no longer simply capture the world around them but rather through their movements they are crossing the screen and affecting the spaces in which they become alive. In the age of the ubiquitous portable digital device, Shaunak thinks through the nexus of whatsapp groups, surveillance cameras, fake news, labour practices, open-air theatres, and the imaginary as political force.
Thinking alongside moving images, photography, and photobooks by:
Arko Datto
Himali Singh Soin
Prashant UV
Sohrab Hura
Video Volunteers
Shaunak Mahbubani is a nomadic curator, primarily pursuing projects under the series ‘Allies for the Uncertain Futures’ initiated in 2016. This exhibition series is focused on exploring the possibilities of socio-political, ecological and techno-evolutionary futures through the lens of non-duality. They are interested in complicating boundaries between artwork and the viewer through the deployment of participatory devices, diffusions, and the use of non-white cube spaces. They have received exhibition grants from apexart (New York) and the Inlaks Foundation, were part of the inaugural edition of CISA (Curatorial Intensive South Asia) initiated by Khoj International Artist’s Association and Goethe Institut Delhi, and the winner of the Prameya Art Foundation Art Scribes Award 2018-19. Previously they have curated exhibitions at Embassy of Switzerland in New Delhi, Kalakar Theatre, Mumbai Art Room, 1Shanthi Road, TIFA Working Studios and Gati Dance Forum. Mahbubani was Curator, Programming at The Gujral Foundation from 2017-18. See previous projects at: www.shaunak.co
Photos by Benjamin Busch
Saturday, May 18, 19:00
In the Ruins of Baalbeck Studios & E.D.L
Screening and Encounter with Siska
In this encounter Siska will be presenting and discussing two works, his latest film In the Ruins of Baalbeck Studios (Arabic title: Bayna Hayakel Studio Baalbeck) about the ruination of film heritage in Lebanon navigated through the country’s cinematic heydays of the late 60s and early 70s — a period that witnessed a rise of Egyptian producers and directors moving to Lebanon to make films partly due to Nasser’s nationalization of the Egyptian cinema. The story of this film project evolves around one of the biggest production studios in the Arab world, and its lost archive. Negligence by the Lebanese authorities has led to mold growing on parts of this archive inside the damp underground warehouses.
Siska’s video installation E.D.L transports us on a journey behind the modernist facade of Beirut’s electricity building. The video portrays Lebanon’s National Electricity building as an homage to a once modernist project linked to the very construction of Lebanon’s modern state. But till today Beirut suffers from a power cut up to 8 hours per day, thus this building remains a highly politicized subject.
Siska, Beirut-born (1984), lives and works between Beirut and Berlin. He holds an M.F.A. in Film-making from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA). Siska’s multidisciplinary work often questions the ruination of Arab cultural heritage and the conflicted interrelationship between individual rights and state duties, while stressing on sociopolitical gaps between the personal and the collective. His work was recently been shown in Centre 104 Paris, Mosaic rooms London, Beirut Art Center, Humboldt Forum Berlin and his latest film was premiered in the Berlinale’s Forum Expanded.
Photos by Benjamin Busch
Thursday, May 9, 10:30 am – 1:30 pm
Everyday, Everyday
Organized by Arts of the Working Class, The Institute for Endotic Research and Broken Dimanche Press
Location: Venice, Italy
Sede Terese, Università Iuav di Venezia
Dorsoduro, 2206, 30123 Venezia
Hosted for the students of the class of Professor Angela Vettese and Teaching Assistant Veronica Bellei of the Advanced course of Visual Arts, and visitors of the preview days of La Biennale di Venezia, the event will encompass an academic lecture and a public breakfast.
Arts of the Working Class, The Institute for Endotic Research and Broken Dimanche Press are joining forces to organize “Everyday, Everyday” — a gathering alongside alimentary pleasures, the event will be spiced with a series of readings that deal with the quotidian in different degrees.
With the publishers of AWC – Alina Kolar, María Inés Plaza Lazo and Paul Sochacki – and guests: Sara Dolfi Agostini (Associate Editor of AWC’s anniversary issue), Pia Chakraverti-Wuerthwein (Independent Author and Curator), Lotte Løvholm (Researcher and Curatorial Fellow at Konstfack’s CuratorLab ), John Holten (Broken Dimanche Press) and The Institute for Endotic Research (Benjamin Busch & Lorenzo Sandoval).
WORKSHOP
10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Arts of the Working Class
Introducing Art of Darkness – Anniversary Issue
The street newspaper on art and society, wealth and poverty, Arts of the Working Class (AWC) celebrates the first year of its commitment to the universal basic need for art. The publication has multiple functions – as a social tool for immediate financial reprieve for our vendors, as a catalyst for academic news, theories and ideas, and as an art object adorning lush coffee tables, public or domestic. Published every two months, AWC redistributes cultural and economical value within and beyond the art system, in order to dismantle its borders.
It contains contributions by artists and thinkers from different fields and in different languages. Its terms are based upon the working class, meaning everyone, and it reports everything that belongs to everyone. Every individual who sells this paper earns money directly. Every artist whose work is advertised, designs its substance with us. Every institution that supports us aids the expansion of artistic exchange with all members and outsiders of society.
AWC is published by Paul Sochacki, María Inés Plaza Lazo and Alina Kolar for the streets of the world. Art of Darkness will be presented during the summer on the streets of Venice, Frankfurt, Valletta, Berlin & New York. During the workshop, the editors will go through the different contributions by the Alphabet Collection (Mohammed Salemy & Patrick Schabus), Shastika Andara, Arshad Akim, Avenir Institute, Barbara Casavecchia, Merlin Carpenter, Simon Denny, Sara Dolfi Agostini, Jimmie Durham, Hallie Frost, Queering Space (Loren Britton, Johnathan Payne and Asad Pervaiz), Kate Fahey, Nschotschi Haslinger, Juliet Jacques, Hassan Khan, Lorenzo Marsili, Ari Benjamin Meyers, Ángels Miralda Tena, Amalia Pica, Joanna Piotrowska, Laure Prouvost, Rob Pruitt, Christoph Sehl.
The current group show at the contemporary art space Blitz in Malta ‚Face with Tears of Joy‘ – with artists Cory Arcangel, Simon Denny, Andy Holden, Maurice Mbikayi, Alexandra Pace, Rob Pruitt, Paul Sochacki, Amalia Ulman, Serena Vestrucci – carries on Blitz’s project by critically engaging with today’s visual culture, a shifting territory of symbols and strategies influenced by media, apps and texting systems. It is curated by Sara Dolfi Agostini, who also worked as associate editor for the current issue. She will give glimpses in her curatorial and editorial practice.
BREAKFAST + READINGS
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
– The Book as an Atmosphere
Introduction to The Endotic Reader N.1 by Benjamin Busch and Lorenzo Sandoval, founders of
The Institute for Endotic Research (TIER). It 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. Its experimental program has been composed of series of workshops, seminars and public events to act as a support-structure, articulating collaborations with architects, scientists, artists, choreographers, philosophers, curators, cooks and others.
– Nebenjob
Pia Chakraverti-Wuerthwein will read from her most recent text Nebenjob and Lucia Berlin’s My Jockey. Chakraverti-Wuerthwein is a curator and researcher living and working in Berlin. She graduated in 2016 from Haverford College, with a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and History of Art. Since 2016 she has been part of SAVVY Contemporary, starting with her involvement in the film series how does the world breathe now?, of which she was a co-curator. In addition to her work at SAVVY, she works as a curatorial advisor to Sinema Kundura in Istanbul, Turkey and as the Curatorial Assistant for the 2019 Berlin Art Prize. Past positions include working as a research assistant for Wu Tsang and Eli Cortiñas. She is currently co-curator of the year-long film series Residing in the Borderlands at SAVVY Contemporary.
– The Readymades
John Holten will read from his forthcoming novel, coming out in September 2019. The section in question is set in Venice during the biennials of 2001 and 2003. The Readymades features artwork by Darko Dragičević and deemed ‘one of the best works of art to come out of Berlin in recent years’ by Art in America when it first appeared in 2011. It tells the story of a collection of friends who took part in the Yugoslavian wars of the 1990s, before going on to become celebrated artists. It recounts their loves, their struggles and the weight of history as they blaze a trail across Europe. Holten is a writer and artist based between Berlin and Ireland. He has been awarded Literature Bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland, most recently in 2017. His writing has recently been included in The Other Irish Tradition (Dalkey Archive Press) as well as in Electric Literature, Frieze and Hotel.
– Museum of Care
Lotte Løvholm will read from ‘Museum of Care’, which unfolds like a play with the protagonists being an art museum and five paintings, and the Two World Wars being our antagonists. The five paintings are related to Løvholm’s own family story in Latvia and connected to Baltic nation state building in the aftermath of WWI and exile from Latvia to Sweden as a result of WWII and Soviet Occupation. In 1939 Malmö Museum in Southern Sweden received a donation from private donor Oscar Elmquist with the purpose of establishing a ‘Latvian collection’ at the museum. ‘Museum of Care’ uncovers the background of this forgotten collection of 45 Latvian artworks. Lotte Løvholm is an independent curator and editor based in Copenhagen. She holds a BA in Theatre Research, an MA in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies and is a curatorial fellow at Konstfack’s CuratorLab. She is interested in the dialogue between art and ethics in her research which take the form of exhibitions, seminars, performance programmes and publications.
Tuesday, April 23, 19:00 sharp
Risograph 101 Workshop by ON/OFF
With Dan Dorocic and Michael Maginness
Dan and Michael of ON/OFF will introduce their practice and then run through the basics of what the Riso machine can do.
In the workshop, we will be crafting and printing (A3 format) booklets, posters, calendars or other paper ideas that people bring to the workshop.
The workshop is donation-based to cover basic materials (5 € per person).
If you would like to come, please let us know so we can make sure to have enough supplies for everyone. Send an email with the subject “RISO 101” to theinstituteforendoticresearch@gmail.com
ON/OFF is a studio of architects, artists, designers and makers based in Berlin.
As a group we draw on a range of different skills, working collaboratively to initiate new experiments that combine different mediums and skills through mobile structures, film and projection, public workshops and writing. As a group we set out to challenge classic modes of practice and to engage with people’s experience of the city through projects in public space. Some of ON/OFF’s network is based in different cities internationally and come together in new formations based on each project. Since 2012 we have been working on a range of competitions, installation designs and on-site building projects, exploring different fields such as media art, theatre scenography, experimental housing, playgrounds and furniture design. We are producing research in the format of a book on Tactical Urban and Rural Interventions called “Co-Machines: Mobile Disruptive Architectures” in 2017.
Dan Dorocic is a Berlin-based architect, artist, geographer and environmental designer. He holds a Master of Architecture from Bergen Arkitekthøgskole in Norway. He is member of architecture collective on/off (www.onoff.cc) and of the art platform anti-forum (http://www.anti-forum.com/). Dan studied geoscience in Montreal at McGill University (B.Sc) whereupon he switched his outlook to work and study Design and Architecture in Toronto, Australia and Norway. Dan worked with many participatory design-build workshops in China, Korea, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Slovakia,Israel & Palestine and Italy + with his collectives on/off, antiforum and with others. Dan has also curated a number of exhibitions: Future Ruins exhibition (2013), the Hardbakka Commons Workshop & exhibition in Bergen, Norway (2014-2016) as well as works at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (2014 & 2016). He is currently working on a publication on the theme of Co-machines, which documents a new mobile disruptive multi-media global architecture and design movement.
Michael Maginness is a Berlin-based spatial designer, urbanist and member of design collective ON/OFF (www.onoff.cc). He studied Classics and Archaeology before completing a Master of Architecture at the University of Melbourne. His practice has covered design, research and teaching across Australia and Europe, including interventions, workshops and exhibitions at festivals and institutions such as The Melbourne School of Design, Festival Kanal Playground in Brussels, Cite de la Mode in Paris, ZK/U Berlin and the Bauhaus Archiv in Berlin. His writing and research have been published by ARCH+, Archdaily and others. His current interests focus on the role of alternative design practice in developing everyday spatial strategies towards the collective struggle for an equitable city.
Photos by Benjamin Busch
Tuesday, March 19, 19:00
How to process Social Dissonance?
Encounter with Mattin
Mattin is an artist from Bilbao – living in Berlin – working with noise and improvisation. His work seeks to address the social and economic structures of experimental sonic artistic production through live performance, recordings and writing. Using a conceptual approach, he aims to question the nature and parameters of improvisation, specifically the relationship between the idea of ”freedom” and constant innovation that it traditionally implies, and the established conventions of improvisation as a genre. Mattin considers improvisation not only as an interaction between performers and instruments, but as a situation involving all the elements that constitute a concert situation, including the audience and the social and architectural space. He tries to expose the stereotypical relation between active performer and passive audience, producing a sense of strangeness and alienation that disturbs this relationship. He has recently completed a PhD at the University of the Basque Country under the supervision of Ray Brassier and Josu Rekalde. Along with Anthony Iles they edited the book Noise & Capitalism in 2009. In 2012 CAC Brétigny and Tuamaturgia published Uconsitituted Praxis, a book collecting his writing plus interviews and reviews from performances that he has been part of. Both books are available online. Mattin took part in documenta14 in Athens and Kassel in 2017.
www.mattin.org
Photos by Benjamin Busch
January 25
18:30 doors, 19:00 start: The ‘Unambitious Stripper’ with Isabel Lewis
20:00: Introduction to ‘Wardian Table’ by Luís Berríos-Negrón
20:30: Screening by Mariechen Danz amid installed artworks
January 26
19:00: Performance by Daniel Salomon
19:30: Introduction to ‘Incommensurate States’ by Patricia Reed
20:00: Screening by Emilija Škarnulytė
‘Infratekture’
Where are the fluxes of affect to be located when thinking them as infrastructure?
The Institute for Endotic Research (TIER) proposes a constellation of words as an extension of that question, inspired by the transmediale Study Circle ‘Affective Infrastructures’. This constellation is drawn from Infratekture, a made-up word which mirrors the blurry edges of possible affects. We take the prefix Infra-, meaning below but also within, to think about Perec’s Infraordinary and Duchamp’s Inframince. And we place it alongside the Proto-Indo-European root *teks-, the root of text, textile, techne, technique, tectonic, architecture, hypertext, pretext, context and texture. With this constellation, we chart a course through the invisible links between the words, on the hazy map of affect.
Our approach with The Institute for Endotic Research sees the space as a text that is constantly written and rewritten, edited and reconfigured. Every intervention responds to the status quo of the space and transforms it. We invite artists, architects, and other practitioners to create interventions in the space, while we also produce our own architectural devices to give texture to the space. Both serve as a common infrastructure for the recombination of relations among people and objects. We ask the artists and researchers who are part of ‘Infratekture’ to respond to this context when applying their technique as part of a collectively unraveling text.
‘Infratekture’ will present works in the form of a two-evening event. It will be composed of a series of performances supported by interventions (both new and existing). The performances will explore notions related with the composition of the social body through the invention of its organs, its nourishment and its textures. This social body-text is readable and editable: it is the result of the accumulation of layers of socio-technical conceptualizations, as well as the affective infrastructures that bind them together. The necessary invisibility of the connections within and between the many words inside Infratekture will be used as a metaphorical device to explore affect.
Artists invited to Infratekture: Luis Berríos-Negrón, Mariechen Danz, Isabel Lewis, Patricia Reed, Daniel Salomon, Emilija Škarnulytė.
With existing interventions by: Ana Alenso, Plating Concrete (Miguel Prados Sánchez and Pablo Ramón Benitez), Sofia Lomba, Sara Pereira.
Luís Berríos-Negrón will introduce the ‘Wardian Table’, that was produced to serve as prop for the re-enactment of ‘Metalogue: A Crème de Menthe, a Rusty Nail. Why Intransitive?’ as the core performance of Memory #02 for the ANARCHIVE at TIER.space.
Mariechen Danz’s approach to a nonlinear historiography of both geographical and anatomical charts will be installed at TIER.space, as a way to question systems of knowledge production.
Isabel Lewis will present an iteration of her workshop titled ‘Unambitious Stripper’, which will use ideas and techniques related to movement for participants to reach a personal inner space by figuratively removing layers of social constructs and identity.
Patricia Reed will present the artwork ‘Incommensurate States’, where a camera maps the contours of the entire world in a loop, moving along the path of all nation-state borders following the logic of the ‘traveling salesman’.
Daniel Salomon will share his guts with the audience in the form of a long sausage based on his daily food intake.
Emilija Škarnulytė’s film and video work examining geologically transformed spaces of legacy and existing regimes of power will establish a visual continuity between concrete infrastructures and the haze of affect that animates them.
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A cooperation between transmediale and The Institute for Endotic Research. Supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe.