saâdane afif - Mehdi Chouakri

SAÂDANE AFIF
S
aâdane Afif’s works pulsate with a network of multiple meanings. In his installations, performances,
objects and text based works, he translates, combines or transforms materials from many different
sources. His references range from art historical positions to pop music and contemporary culture.
For instance, he can collect all the mentions of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (Fountain Archives, 2008ongoing), ask fellow artists to write songs responding to his works (Lyrics 2004-ongoing), or commission
an actor to declaim these lyrics in the Speaker’s Corner tradition (The Laguna’s Tribute, 2015). La Leçon
de géométrie (2014-2015) is emblematic of both the multiplicity of forms an artwork can take in Afif’s
vision and his collaborative approach. The starting point was a performance given during the Marrakech
Biennial, where drawings were made by a geometry teacher, which later became photographs and were
used as templates for the fabrication of traditional Berber rugs. Das Ende der Welt (2015) started as a
musical piece commissioned to Augustin Maurs, and performed on the last day of Afif’s exhibition at the
Natural History Museum in Berlin. The footage of the performance will become a film, broadening the
spectrum of the original concept. By giving several shapes to the same artwork, which can be seen as a
performance, a drawing, a photograph or a sculpture, Afif creates a web of allusions between art and its
possible media. It expands our perception of an artwork and beyond, playing on a permanent potential of
variation, which can be seen as symptomatic for his entire artistic practice.
Close to post-conceptual postures, Afif goes beyond Kosuth’s One and Three chairs, proposing – instead of a
chair, its representation and its description – an artwork, a poetic text and a song.
Anne Dressen, Flash Art, December 2005
Short biography
Saâdane Afif (born 1970 in Vendôme, France) lives and works in Berlin. His work has been most recently
exhibited at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), Kunsthalle Wien (2015), the Moscow Biennial (2015), or
MOT Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2015). Solo presentations were held at Institut d‘Art
Contemporain, Villeurbanne (2013), Museum für Moderne Kunst - MMK Zollamt, Frankfurt (2012),
Centre Pompidou, Paris (2010), OPA Oficina para Proyectos de Arte, Guadalajara (2010), Witte de
With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2008), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2005), Museum
Folkwang, Essen (2004).
Major upcoming solo shows will be held at Daimler Contemporary, Berlin (2016) Atelier Hermès, Seoul
(2016) and Kunsthalle Wien (2017).
Afif has been awarded the Prix Meurice pour l'Art Contemporain (2015), Award Günther-Peill-Stiftung
(2012), and the Prix Marcel Duchamp (2009) amongst others.
Selected publications
Saâdane Afif – Anthologie de l´humour noir, ed. Centre Pompidou, Paris 2010
Saâdane Afif: Saturne et les Remakes, text by Michel Gauthier, M19, 2010
Technical Specifications, ed. Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam 2008
Saâdane Afif – Lyrics, catalogue of the exhibition in Palais de Tokyo, Paris 2005
SAÂDANE AFIF
Quoi? – L’Eternité.
Atelier Hermès, Seoul
May 10 – July 10, 2016
S
ince 2004, Saâdane Afif asks artists and songwriters to write songs in relation with each of his
exhibited artworks. Something which was meant to remain just an experience turned into
something with a greater importance and he has reproduced this gesture many times since then.
The texts are not only questioning the notion of interpretation and commentary next to the art piece,
they also became a central material of his artistic practice. And then, the question of finding a way to
embody them, to give life to this corpus has become obvious. The answer led him naturally to the
creation of performances for his exhibitions, that he uses now in many different ways. For the exhibition
in Atelier Hermès, new project, Quoi ? – L’Eternité., quoted a verse from Rimbaud’s poem will be
displayed.
As the initial exhibition in 2016, Atelier Hermès exhibits solo show of Saâdane Afif to introduce French
contemporary artist to the local art scenes and increase the exchange with young Korean artists.
"It is discovered./ What? Eternity./ In the whirling light/ Of sun becomes sea." Afif‘s title refers to
Rimbaud‘s poetry. Here, the artist proposes his own interpretation of eternity, by sampling geometrical
color blocks from a prior piece and superimposing them over the organic, irregular lines of the ocean's
waves. The wave foam pattern is printed on the plexiglas, and its shadow on the background creates a
3D effect, blurring the lines between the planes. These orange rays seamlessly stretching across the
tumbling waves build a dynamic composition, reminding us, in a romantic way, that the ocean is a mere
reflection of the sun and the sky.
Exhibition views
Quoi ? – L’Eternité
Atelier Hermès
Seoul, 2016
Exhibition views
Quoi ? – L’Eternité
Atelier Hermès
Seoul, 2016
Exhibition view
Blue Time, Blue Time, Blue Time...
IAC -Villeurbanne
Vielleurbanne 2013
Exhibition view
Feedback - Blue Time vs. Suspense
Espai D'Art Contemporani De Castelló
Castelló 2009
Detail of the left „Teatrino“
Small-scale model of the exhibition
Feedback - Blue Time vs. Suspense
Exhibition view
Feedback - Blue Time vs. Suspense
Espai D'Art Contemporani De Castelló
Castelló 2009
SAÂDANE AFIF
Collaborations with Mount Moon
Monaco, 2016
Basel, 2013
New York, 2012
Performance
Mount Moon
Nuit Blanche
Monaco, 2016
Performance
Mount Moon
Nuit Blanche
Monaco, 2016
Exhibition view and Performance
Saâdane Afif - L‘s Bells The Busker of the Gray Line
Mini Goethe Curatorial Residencies - Ludlow38
New York 2012
Saâdane Afif, Mount Moon: The Basel Tour (2013)
LISTE 18 Performance Project, June 11 – June 16,
2013.
Mount Moon is a Brooklyn based musician and comic
book artist. In 2012, for an exhibition at the Goethe
Institut in New York, Afif invited him to perform lyrics,
the fruit of other collaborations, in two subway stations.
He reiterated his invitation the year after, this time to
perform in Basel during Art Basel. This was Mount
Moon’s first trip to Europe, and he performed on the
streets in various locations around the city Saâdane Afif, Mount Moon:The Basel Tour (2013)
LISTE 18 Performance Project, June 11 – June 16, 2013. SAÂDANE AFIF
Tokyo Art Meeting VI
“TOKYO” －Sensing the Cultural
Magma of the Metropolis
MOT - Museum of Contemporary
Art Tokyo, 2015
Repetition and collaboration are central themes in Saâdane Afif’s work. Since 2004, he has been
asking fellow artists, authors, curators and friends to write songs in response to his works. These
songs, the lyrics of which are printed on vinyl to become wall works, are then recorded by various
bands on several albums, being played during exhibitions, or in live performances.
For his participation in the group show "TOKYO－Sensing the Cultural Magma of the Metropolis“
currently on view at MOT Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art (until Feb 14, 2016), Afif took
collaboration and translation as a starting point. He joins forces with the local band Her Ghost
Friend to render his interpretation of the city of Tokyo, which is the theme of the exhibition.
The above mentioned lyrics are presented on the walls of the exhibition space. For the first time,
they are translated in Japanese, and printed out on the paper used to shape seven traditional
Japanese hanging lanterns. Each lamp embodies a song, and is lit for the duration of the musical
piece it corresponds to. This installation is emblematic of Afif’s creative process: by giving several
shapes to the same artwork, which can be seen as a poem, a song or a light, he creates a web of
allusions between art and its possible media. It expands our perception of an artwork and beyond,
playing on a permanent potential of variation.
Her Ghost Friend will perform a series of three concerts in the city to celebrate the end of the
exhibition. Afif designed a poster announcing the performance, which is also part of his installation
at the museum.
Saâdane Afif (born Vendôme, France, 1970) lives and works in Berlin. His work is currently
presented in several groups exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (until Nov 22), the Natural
History Museum in Berlin (until Nov 29), and the Kunsthalle Wien (until Feb 2, 2016). Major
upcoming solo shows will be held at Daimler Contemporary, Berlin (2016) and Kunsthalle Wien
(2017), and a survey publication will be released by Spector Books next year.
Installation views from Tokyo Art Meeting Ⅵ
“TOKYO” －Sensing the Cultural Magma of the Metropolis
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Tokyo 2015
Installation views from Tokyo Art Meeting Ⅵ
“TOKYO” －Sensing the Cultural Magma of the Metropolis
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Tokyo 2015
Performance Her Ghost Friend
Aoyama Moon Romantic
Tokyo, February 11, 2016
SAÂDANE AFIF
Das Ende der Welt
Museum für Naturkunde
Berlin, 2015
Saâdane Afif
Das Ende der Welt, 2015
Das Ende der Welt is a performance directed by the artist Saâdane Afif. It takes the form of a musical piece
for vocal ensemble and drum composed by Augustin Maurs and commissioned by Afif. The result will be
played on November 29, in a unique concert: a grand finale to close the process of Afif’s intervention in the
dinosaur hall of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.
Saâdane Afif sees the Museum für Naturkunde as a unique place set at the confluence of multiple stories
and eclectic scientific morsels of knowledge, its aim being to index, archive, and classify natural elements
(animal and vegetable species, minerals, etc.) with only one limit: the universe. It constitutes a showcase of
nature, tamed and classified by human intervention. Since its creation, the huge collection of the Museum für
Naturkunde has become a world in itself. It is autonomous, raises questions, and generates its own
explorers.
In the same way as the natural world is getting older and is facing a certain end, the “world museum” is also
subjected to a degradation which will lead it to its own disappearance. With Das Ende der Welt, Afif
underlines this parallelism between the real world and the studied world. One becomes a metaphor of the
other to question the fragile destiny of mankind and nature. From this peculiar site – a museum of natural
history – Afif chose to reflect on the disappearance of the world by announcing its end. Between 27 August
and 29 November 2015, Afif displayed posters in different locations in the Museum, announcing – with a
certain touch of irony – the end of the world. However, in this case, Das Ende der Welt will only be a piece of
music performed in the main hall of the museum.
The brief of Afif’s commissioned work to Maurs was to “compose a musical piece for vocal ensemble and
percussion as if the action were set a few moments before the end of the world”. Afif purposefully chose an
encounter between a choir and a drum for his intervention. Inspired by the symbolism of Greek tragedy, the
choir, a human collective that dedicates itself to a common action (namely singing), represents mankind
performing its own ineluctable extinction. Meanwhile, the drumbeats stand for unchained powerful natural
elements and the beats of time as it passes. The whole project acts like a contemporary vanitas work.
Through this sensory device, Afif tackles the end of various worlds – but first and foremost the end of the
human world and, by extension, the end of consciousness.
Exhibition view
Das Ende der Welt
Naturkundemuseum
Berlin 2015
Exhibition view
Das Ende der Welt
Naturkundemuseum
Berlin 2015
Performance
Das Ende der Welt
Museum für Naturkunde
Berlin 2015
SAÂDANE AFIF
La Leçon de Géométrie, 2015
L
a Leçon de géométrie is emblematic of the multiplicity of forms an artwork can take in Saâdane
Afif’s vision. For the 2014 Marrakech Biennial, Afif commissioned a teacher to give a geometry
class each evening at the Jamaa El Fna square in the Medina. He asked him to make the lectures
as simple as possible. By reducing them to basic references such as circle, square, point, or triangle, these
lessons became ultimate ready-mades.
During the lectures, the teacher was writing some notes on the large sheets of a flip-board, which
eventually became templates for traditional rugs. These drawings were the transcripts of the
performance, which have been translated into wool, following traditional Berbere techniques. This is the
first carpet produced from the series and it comes with a high-end print of the original drawing.
Collaboration is essential for Afif: not only with the geometry teacher, but also with a team of craftsmen
during the six months of the production. The rug was entirely hand made in the tradition of the BeniOuarain tribe in the mid-Atlas. The specificity of the Berbere knots is to be very solid, creating a dense
structure where the yarn goes in every direction, abstracting the pattern.
By giving several shapes to the same artwork, which can be seen as a performance, a drawing, a
photograph or a sculpture, Afif creates a web of allusions between art and its possible media. It expands
our perception of an artwork and beyond, playing on a permanent potential of variation, which can be
seen as symptomatic for Afif’s entire artistic practice.
Souvenir: La leçon de géométrie
The 5th Marrakech Biennale, 2014
Performed by Dahmad Boutfounast
Souvenir: La leçon de géométrie
The 5th Marrakech Biennale, 2014
Performed by Dahmad Boutfounast
SAÂDANE AFIF
Radio broadcasts
Timisoara Art Encounters, 2015
Witte de With, 2008
Galerie Mehdi Chouakri, 2007
Exhibition view
Timişoara Art Encounters
Timişoara, 2015
Exhibition view
Technical Specifications
Witte de With
Rotterdam, 2008
Exhibition view
58.22 & some words
Mehdi Chouakri
Berlin, 2007
Exhibition view
58.22 & some words
Mehdi Chouakri
Berlin, 2007
SAÂDANE AFIF
Ici. Là-bas. 2014
When Saâdane Afif was awarded with the Peill prize in 2012, he travelled to Düren to see the venue
where the prize exhibition would take place. The railway station (mostly a transit station) inspired
him to conceive the works Ici. and Là-bas. Afif was struck by the duality of the place: it is both a
typical and a singular small station, which led him to question these concepts. Düren, as the source
of the project, became Ici. (here), in relation to the other locations, called Là-bas. (there).
The works Ici. and Là-bas. consist in two identical scale models of the original Düren station lamp
with loudspeakers, railway station signage and synchronous announcements. These elements mark
the determinate and indeterminate local specifics of Düren railway station. Afif was showing the
multimedia work Ici. at the Leopold Hoesch & Papiermuseum in Düren (May 29th – November
23rd, 2014), and Là-bas., an exact copy of the work, was first exhibited at the 8th Berlin Biennale
(May 29th – August 3rd, 2014) and later at Kunsthaus Glarus (August 24th – November 23rd,
2014).In this conceptually imagined mirroring, Afif reflects upon the contemporary significance of
‘here’ and ‘there’.
For these three exhibitions, the speakers were playing a live stream from the Düren railway station.
This stream has now been replaced by a recording, that was made during the last week of the
Düren show, to be played in all future presentations of the installation. Hence, Afif adds a new layer
to the project by referring to the Düren exhibition through the soundtrack.
Visiting one of these exhibitions induces an ubiquitous feeling. By transposing a part of Düren inside
an institution, Afif creates a fictional space where distances are shortened, inviting the viewer to get
lost in the exhibition between here and there. Ici. and Là-bas. question our awareness of a place: our
understanding of it is not only guided by our senses, but also by our experience and the knowledge
we compiled about it. The artist is connecting very precisely with his recurring themes – distance,
time, context-specificity, repetition, interpretation, and also sound. The synchronous transmission of
the station announcements of Düren station in Berlin and Glarus sparks speculation about
simultaneity and the everyday, identity and origin as well as fiction and reality, the projection of
desires and an existential state within the local and global structure. Themes that are repeatedly
reflected in countless novels, song lyrics and art, and to which Afif invited authors, artists and art
critics to write a poem or a song lyric. These poetical texts become a part of the exhibition and add
collaborative, associative and always subjective commentaries to the installation, and hence further
layers of interpretation. Afif thus makes visible the collaborative dialogue that lies within the origins
of any art work. This communal energy as a working method constitutes one of the cores of his
works. He is always in search of the essential nucleus, the fleeting and indefinable essence of things.
Afif’s dialogic practice employs strategies of appropriation, the ready-made, the elimination of
authorship and the relationship between original and reproduction.
Exhibition view
Là-bas.
Kunsthaus Glarus
Glarus 2014
Exhibition view: Saâdane Afif, Là-bas., 2014, 8th Berlin Biennale,
Ethnologisches Museum Berlin-Dahlem, 2014
Exhibition view
Ici.
Leopold Hoesch Museum
Düren 2014
SAÂDANE AFIF
Speaker’s Corner
Venice, 2015
Mons, 2015
Zurich, 2012
Rotterdam, 2011
Brussels, 2011
Beirut, 2011
Saâdane Afif
Speaker’s Corner
The project “Speaker’s Corner“ consists of a series of posters, sculptures and performances. Started
in 2011 in Beirut, it was also presented in Brussels, Rotterdam, Zurich, Mons and Venice.
Each poster announces the performances of a speaker, who standing on a wooden or a bronze
sculpture in the shape of a soap box in the middle of the sidewalk, recites poems. The words have
been written by multiple collaborators, artists and musicians, inspired by earlier works of Saâdane
Afif. The artist refers to both to the tradition of the storytellers and the performative art, leaning on
the concept of the Speaker’s Corner that appeared at the end of the 19th century in London. In the
beginning, the term described a reserved space in the north-east of the Hyde Park where everyone
could improvise a speech and proclaim freely one’s ideas on a topic of his choice, traditionally
standing on a soapbox.
On the occasion 56th Venice Biennal, Saâdane Afif reintepreted his concept of the “Speaker’s
Corner“ with a performance taking place every day at sunset in front of the canal.
Exhibition view
56. Biennale di Venezia, All the world’s futures
curated by Okwui Enwezor
Venice 2015
Exhibition view
56. Biennale di Venezia, All the world’s futures
curated by Okwui Enwezor
Venice 2015
Exhibition view
56. Biennale di Venezia, All the world’s futures
curated by Okwui Enwezor
Venice 2015
Le Haut-Parleur de la Grand-Place
performed by Michel Charpentier
performance view
Atopolis, Manège de Sury
Mons 2015
The Soapbox of Schiffbauplatz
Performance View: Art and the city,
Zurich 2012
Melanchotopia
Performance in central Rotterdam
Witte de With
(curated by N. Schafhausen)
Rotterdam 2011
The Soapbox Speaker of Rue Antoine Dansaert
Performance during
Meeting Points 6, Brussels (Curator Okwui Enwezor)
Brussels 2011
The Speaker‘s Corner of Hamra Street
2011
Sculpture: carved and painted wood
Poster: Silkscreen on paper
Sculpture: 40 x 60 x 35 cm
Poster: 128 x 93 cm (framed)
Unique piece
The Speaker‘s Corner of Hamra Street
Performance during
Meeting Points 6, Beirut (Curator Okwui Enwezor)
Beirut 2011
SAÂDANE AFIF
Blue time. Blue time. Blue time...
IAC -Villeurbanne 2013
Saâdane Afif
Blue time. Blue time. Blue time...
IAC – Institut d’Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne, 2013
At the IAC, Saâdane Afif presents Blue Time, Blue Time, Blue Time.... Playing on the repetition at the onset
of the exhibition’s title, the artist invites visitors to follow, from one space to another “variations on the
same piece,” started in 2004. Blue Time, rhythmically runs through the show both as work and as a text,
like a chorus or leitmotif.
Over the past few years, the artist commissioned lyrics related to objects in his exhibitions. For the
exhibition Melancholic Beat in Essen, 2004, Saâdane Afif presents Blue Time (Sunburst), a hybrid object
between a guitar and a clock. Like a metronome of melancholia, the piece’s ticking pervasively marked
the passage of time within the exhibition. In this context Afif first commissions lyrics from the artist Lili
Reynaud-Dewar for each of the four works on display: Brume, Everyday, Black Spirit and Blue Time. These
texts will be exhibited on the wall next to the works they refer to without distinction of status or form.
Throughout his exhibitions, Saâdane Afif successively orchestrates the metamorphoses of these texts
into songs, albums, concerts, performances or radio broadcasts. Borrowing from the worlds of music
and stage performance these experiments remain, above all, conceptual proposals within the field of
visual arts. In 2005, Afif produces a first album with Lili Reynaud-Dewar’s lyrics; a first version of Blue
Time is composed by Portradium and interpreted by Tujiko Noriko. It will be played during a concert
given at the Palais de Tokyo for the Lyrics exhibition.
In 2007, this recording of Blue Time is aired for the radio show 58:22 & Some Words at the Galerie Medhi
Chouakri, Berlin. That same year, at the Galerie Hufkens in Brussels, Saâdane Afif conceives the
exhibition Blue Time vs Suspense in which Vale Poher composes, interprets and records a new version of
Blue Time. Also in 2007, Saâdane Afif stages Vale Poher’s rehearsal of three songs in the album, featuring
Blue Time for The Rehearsal (Blue Time vs. Suspense) at the Moore Space in Miami. In 2008, at the Witte de
With for Technical Specifications, Afif introduces a cover of Blue Time realized from given technical
specifications about the piece and reintroduces Vale Poher’s latest version of the song in the radio
program 53’56’’& Some Words... In 2009, in Spain, for Feedback (Blue Time vs. Suspense), Afif presents the
sculpture Infinity is my Duty, inspired by the song Blue Time, part of a set for an imaginary concert by Vale
Poher. In 2010, for A lecture, a recording & few witnesses at OPA, Guadalajara, Afif commissions a potter
to record the words of the song Blue Time on the ridges of a clay pot. In 2011 and 2012, Saâdane Afif
sends Speakers’ Corner to voice the text Blue Time in the streets of Beirut, Rotterdam and Zurich. Most
recently, last June, a new version of Blue Time is sung by Mount Moon in the New York Subway for the
two months duration of the show L's Bells - The Busker of the Gray Line, produced by MINI / Goethe
Institut Curatorial Residencies Ludlow 38. The official release of the new album generated from this
project, is planned to take place at the IAC under the label Textual Records during the exhibition.
Vale Poher, accompanied by the bass player Carine di Vita, will be playing the Miami version of the piece
(2007) during the IAC’s opening for the show, under the title Blue Time vs Suspense (the rehearsal).
As a prolongation to the show an actor will recite a dozen new texts on Blue Time commissioned by the
artist from a dozen of new authors, the last day of the exhibition and for an entire month, the days the
market takes place in Villeurbanne’s public space.
Blue Time, Blue Time, Blue Time.... retraces the numerous interpretations of the same work and the text
that inspired it. It becomes a vantage point for an artistic process that unfolded over ten years, with
incessant mutations. Its ideal form would be unfinished.
Exhibition view
Blue Time, Blue Time, Blue Time...
IAC -Villeurbanne
Vielleurbanne 2013
Exhibition view
Blue Time, Blue Time, Blue Time...
IAC -Villeurbanne
Vielleurbanne 2013
Exhibition view
Blue Time, Blue Time, Blue Time...
IAC -Villeurbanne
Vielleurbanne 2013
Exhibition view
Blue Time, Blue Time, Blue Time...
IAC -Villeurbanne
Vielleurbanne 2013
Exhibition view
Blue Time, Blue Time, Blue Time...
IAC -Villeurbanne
Vielleurbanne 2013
Exhibition view
Blue Time, Blue Time, Blue Time...
IAC -Villeurbanne
Vielleurbanne 2013
Exhibition view
Blue Time, Blue Time, Blue Time...
IAC -Villeurbanne
Vielleurbanne 2013
SAÂDANE AFIF
The Fairytale Recordings, 2011
Saâdane Afif
The Fairytale recordings, 2011
Since 2004, Saâdane Afif asks artists and songwriter to write songs in relation with each of his exhibited
artworks. Something which was meant to remain just as an experience turned into something with a greater
importance and he has reproduced this gesture many times since then. The texts are not only questioning the
notion of interpretation and commentary next to the art piece, they also became a central material of his
artistic practice. And then, the question of finding a way to embody them, to give life to this corpues has
become obvious. The answer led him naturally to the creation of performances for his exhibitions, that he uses
now in many different ways.
At the end of October 2011, Saâdane Afif presented his exhibition "The Fairytale Recordings at the Schinkel
Pavillon" in Berlin with a performance of a young opera singer standing in poses and expressively reciting lyrics
written by Afif. The performative act of each song consisted of “pouring“ the last tone of the singer‘s voice into
vases, which were then immediately sealed to hold the sound indefinitely. This poetic gesture is not only sealed
in the 8 Nymphenburg porcelain vases, but in also in a red lamp, modeled after the situ wall lights at Schinkel
Pavillon. The lamp nods to the red "session in progress" lights of a recording studio. The bulbs illuminate for the
duration of each song and switch off during the pause between songs.
Exhibition view
The Fairytale Recordings
Schinkel Pavillon
Berlin 2011
Performance during the opening of
The Fairytale Recordings
Schinkel Pavillon
Berlin 2011
Performance during the opening of
The Fairytale Recordings
Schinkel Pavillon
Berlin 2011
Performance during the opening of
The Fairytale Recordings
RaebervonStenglin
Zurich 2011
Exhibition views
The Fairytale Recordings
RaebervonStenglin
Zurich 2011
SAÂDANE AFIF
A Lecture, a Recording & Few
Witnesses
OPA Guadalajara
Guadalajara, Mexico 2010
Recording performance during the opening of
A Lecture , a Recording & Few Witnesses
OPA Guadalajara
Guadalajara, Mexico 2010
Reading ON is a series of vases that
Saâdane Afif literally read on. While a
potterer was forming the clay on a
turntable, the artist was reciting the
lyrical texts that were written on his
art works.
Exhibition view
A Lecture , a Recording & Few Witnesses
OPA Guadalajara
Guadalajara, Mexico 2010
SAÂDANE AFIF
Feedback
EACC Espai d’Art Contemporani de
Castelló, 2009
Saâdane Afif
Feedback
EACC Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló, 2009
Press release
Since 2004 Saâdane Afif has been constructing his exhibitions like record releases. Under a generic title, in
the exhibition space he groups together a set of elements that usually define and colour an album. For each
project Afif works with a songwriter he commissions to pen lyrics for the works he is presenting. The
commission is very specific: after explaining the possible meanings and forms of the pieces, he invites the
author to write a song related with each one. The song must maintain the original title, stick to the spirit of
what he has explained and develop a formal, metaphoric or symbolic relationship with the work, projecting
its own imaginary. The lyrics are then handed over to musicians to perform them and the final result of the
process is the production of an album. To date, with the catch-all title of Lyrics, each of Saâdane Afif’s
exhibition projects has led to an album.
For his show at Espai d’art contemporani de Castelló, Saâdane Afif is creating a specific project that opens a
new series of works and interventions that he will regroup under the overall title of Feedback. The idea in
this project is to take the opposite direction to Lyrics. Starting out from the words, elements and
soundscapes of the albums Down At the Rock and Roll Club (2005) and Blue Time vs. Suspense (2007), Afif
is working on a sound and object installation with sculptures, photos, paintings, scale models, neon pieces,
sounds, texts, posters and other images harking back to these two albums.
Addressing this project as a work in progress involving musicians, radio announcers, graphic designers,
among others, the artist will develop his project in two temporally defined phases.
In two areas within the exhibition hall, from April 24th to May 8th visitors will find scale models, texts,
posters and sound elements associated with the previously mentioned albums plus a music programme
designed specifically for the project to be broadcast live on the radio everyday at the same time. In this task
he has worked closely with the radio station of Universitat Jaime I in Castellón.
The full exhibition will open on May 8th with the installations Feedback (Down At the Rock and Roll Club,
2005-2009) and Feedback (Blue Time vs. Suspense 2007-2009), which can be visited until June 28th at the
EACC.
Exhibition views
Feedback
EACC Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló
Castelló, 2009
Exhibition view
Feedback
EACC Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló
Castelló, 2009
Exhibition views
Feedback
EACC Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló
Castelló, 2009
Exhibition view
Feedback
EACC Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló
Castelló, 2009
SAÂDANE AFIF
Technical Specifications
Witte de With Rotterdam
2008
Saâdane Afif
Tehnical Specifications
Witte de With, Rotterdam, 2008
Press release
Witte de With presents a solo exhibition by Saâdane Afif. The exhibition consists of new
sculptures and installations, each of which is an adaptation by Afif of one of his previous works.
The exhibition’s title sets the parameters for this transformation: each new work uses as a
starting point the technical specifications of the original.
Visitors to Witte de With will also find three radios playing a program of songs inspired by Afif’s
sculptures. Their introductions are scripted by Afif and read aloud in the style of a popular radio
DJ, citing the technical specifications of the work, the author of the lyrics and the composer of
the song. This radio program is recorded live during the opening and broadcast in a loop from
the roof of a neighbouring building to the surrounding area for the duration of the exhibition at
FM 107.5 Mhz, and after the ending of the exhibition streamed online:
www.technicalspecifications.net.
Afif’s work vibrates with multiple meanings and reveals a fascination with music and music
culture. His sculptures often adopt the forms of microphones, amplifiers, speakers, of musical
instruments and their decorative finishes. And many of his works include music as an active
ingredient. Another recurring element in Afif’s oeuvre is the passing of time, sometimes
represented through a vanitas trope (particularly the image of a skull), or through the use of
clocks as part of his formal vocabulary.
Abandoning the position of the isolated artist taking sole responsibility for the outcome of his
work, Afif adopts an unusual artistic approach. He practices a form of artistic delegation, creating
an extensive network of commissions to artists, writers, designers and musicians. Starting in
2004, Afif began to invite writers to create lyrics based upon his own artworks. These were
presented in several exhibitions as wall texts (in place of the usual didactic institutional labels)
alongside Afif’s original works. He then gave these lyrics to musicians and commissioned them to
write music based upon the words. The resulting songs were then presented in the gallery
spaces and released on various CDs.
Afif’s generous and dialogical approach to the creation – and mediation – of art explores the
relationship between the original and the reproduction. At Witte de With, in dialogue with the
curators, Afif takes this process of translating his work a step further, by reworking for the first
time his own sculptures and installations. Additionally, broadcasting the radio show will create an
alternative space and time frame in which to experience his works. In this way, the exhibition
Technical Specifications represents an implosion and explosion of Afif’s practice, as he
simultaneously reduces his own works to the sum of their parts and opens them up to new
authors, new readings, new formats and new audiences beyond the institution’s walls.
Exhibition views
Technical Specifications
Witte de With
Rotterdam 2008
Exhibition view
Technical Specifications
Witte de With
Rotterdam 2008
Exhibition views
Technical Specifications
Witte de With
Rotterdam 2008
Exhibition views
Technical Specifications
Witte de With
Rotterdam 2008
SAÂDANE AFIF
Fountain Archives
2008 – ongoing
“T
he Fountain Archives is a vanitas, a tribute to an artwork that was made in 1917 and then
disappeared. We only know it thanks to a photo by Alfred Stieglitz. Thus it is also an
image of a missing image and of the power and impotence of memory. It is an enigma
impossible to solve. The Fountain Archives convey the melancholy that Afif’s work always emanate.
Echoing Duchamp’s famous phrase “It’s the viewer who makes the artwork”, the Fountain Archives
interrogates how artworks are made – it is a machine to examine the legend that surrounds
Duchamp’s Fountain. It also represents a nexus between many of the issues in contemporary art:
appropriations, ready-mades, addressing the public, radical art acts, the narrative in the construction
of the artwork, etc.
After being torn out, the pages showing the urinal are scanned and stocked on a website
(thefountainarchives.net), another image of the immense database constituted by the Fountain
Archives. The ensemble is the most complete bibliography concerning Fountain to date. Gradually the
Fountain Archives has acquired a life of its own through new commentaries on Fountain sparked by the
Fountain project. Torn out pages of publications in which a visual of Duchamp’s Fountain is used to
illustrate a piece about the Fountain Archives are also posted on the website in a tab called
“augmented”. The last component of this project is a bookcase in Afif’s studio holding the titles
whose pages have been torn out, as if a ghost had slipped into them. These books are like a
photographic negative of the casting mold of this project, a plastic material from which fingerprints
have been taken. When the time is right, they, too, will be presented as an enormous installation, an
astonishingly archaic image of a research project that would have not been possible without the
emergence of the Internet. The Fountain Archives, then, is also a machine for producing images of
time.“ Excerpt from a review by Anael Piget in Artpress 428, December 2015, p. 30
Since 2008, taking Marcel Duchamp‘s Fountain as a starting point, Saâdane Afif has been collecting all
publications, catalogues, guides and books featuring this seminal piece. The pages showing Duchamp’s
work are torn out and framed, creating a new ready-made. The frames are hung within a grid, drawn
with a pencil directly on the wall. It structures the variety of sizes and background colours of the
different frames, which are displayed chronologically, like a sample of the general index. The artist is
building an archive, aiming to account for a thousand mentions of the "Fountain". By now, there are
already more than five hundred Fountain Archives.
The Fountain Archives have been widely exhibited, most notably at Wilhelm Hack Museum,
Ludwigshafen (2014), Museum Kurhaus, Kleve (2014), Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2016).
Installation view
Hamburger Bahnhof
Berlin, 2016
Installation views
Hamburger Bahnhof
Berlin, 2016
Exhibition views
Wilhelm Hack Museum
Ludwigshafen, 2014
Exhibition view
Xavier Hufkens
Brussels, 2014
Installation view
Mehdi Chouakri
Berlin, 2015