2014 edition / agitationism curated by bassam el

Transcription

2014 EDITION / AGITATIONISM
CURATED BY BASSAM EL BARONI
12 APRIL — 6 JULY 2014
LIMERICK CITY / IRELAND
EVA INTERNATIONAL
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IRELAND’S BIENNIAL
AGITATIONISM
2014 AGITATIONISM
INTRODUCTION BY BASSAM EL BARONI, CURATOR
In the past few years we have witnessed protests unfolding into serious
unrest across many parts of the world. After initial excitement at this
new global wave of voicing political demands, seasons change, and what
was a novelty becomes a norm that lures many of us into the trap of trying
to determine and define this previously undetermined phenomenon.
Such engagements with current political upheavals can be termed
agitations, an old philosophical term which denotes the extreme tension
of the brain in its attempt to determine something perceived as previously
undetermined—such as a sublime experience of nature. These agitations
usually recast the sense of the human self accompanying all thinking into
a clearly distinguishable entity, treating it as if it were something we could
claim to really understand.
Agitationism, on the one hand, is the condition of living under a constant
flow of agitations, including the ones that you inevitably sometimes
produce yourself. However, it is also the process of ‘working through’
them with the aim of seeking adaptation to a logic situated somewhere
else, surpassing the entrapment between past, present, and future—
three tenses that overlap in the contemporary moment, creating a kind
of palimpsest of half undone histories, half imagined futures, and a present
of phantasms as a consequence.
EVA 2014, AGITATIONISM attempts to grasp the sense of living under
agitation while capturing how we are slowly adapting to a different
perception of the world by working through our relationships with historical
ideologies, post-colonial narratives, other forms of life (animals for
example), and speculations about the not-so-distant future.
AGITATIONISM, the 36th edition of EVA International, simulates the
struggle between the tides that pull the present towards romanticisations,
utopias, ideologies, and nostalgias; and the tides that attempt to push it
beyond those limitations and towards an unknown, a desire and drive for
something that remains too complex to determine today.
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AGITATIONISM VENUES
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LIMERICK CITY GALLERY OF ART
PERY SQUARE, LIMERICK
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday
10.00am—5.30pm
Thursday 10.00am—8.30pm
Saturday 10.00am—5pm
Sunday 12.00—5.00pm
Closed on Bank & Public Holidays
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KERRY GROUP FORMER GOLDEN VALE MILK PLANT
O’CALLAGHAN STRAND, LIMERICK
Daily 12.00—5.00pm
Closed on Bank & Public Holidays
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VENUES-2014
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THE HUNT MUSEUM
RUTLAND STREET, LIMERICK
Monday to Saturday 10.00am—5.00pm
Sunday and Bank Holidays 2.00—5.00pm
Closed Good Friday (April 18) &
Easter Sunday (April 20)
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BOURN VINCENT GALLERY
FOUNDATION BUILDING
UNIVERSITY OF LIMERICK
See www.eva.ie/venues for details
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LIMERICK GREYHOUND STADIUM
GREENPARK, DOCK ROAD, LIMERICK
Saturday 12 April 6—11pm
EVA INTERNATIONAL
LIMERICK
CITY GALLERY
OF ART
PERY SQUARE, LIMERICK
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GROUNDFLOOR
FIRSTFLOOR
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RAQS MEDIA COLLECTIVE
+ ISWANTO HARTONO
9 STEFANOS TSIVOPOULOS
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MIRI SEGAL
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MONA MARZOUK
10 EVA RICHARDSON
MCCREA
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ALON LEVIN
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RAMON KASSAM
6MICHAEL
PATTERSON-CARVER
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AMANDA BEECH
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LUIS CAMNITZER
11 CÉCILE HARTMANN
12 SIOBHÁN HAPASKA
13 MALAK HELMY
14 LUIS JACOB
15 ASIER MENDIZABAL
2014 AGITATIONISM
VENUE LIMERICK CITY GALLERY OF ART
GROUNDFLOOR
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FIRST FLOOR
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RAQS MEDIA COLLECTIVE +
ISWANTO HARTONO
MIRI SEGAL
(Raqs Media Collective established 1992,
live and work in New Delhi)
5 PRINCIPLE NO-S, FOR A NEW PANCASILA
(2012-2013) Wall Installation. Courtesy of the Artists.
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Raqs Media Collective was recently paired with Iswanto
Hartono, an artist with the Jakarta based collective
Ruangrupa by the curator Agung Hujatnijennong to
do a collaborative work for the Bandung Pavilion in the
Cities section of the Shanghai Biennale. The work would
be based on instructions sent by Raqs which were to
be translated into a concrete material form by Iswanto
Hartono. Raqs devised a set of instructions that went
back to the idea of the Pancasila (Five Pillars). There
were one, two, three ‘pancasilas’ in the air in the late 40s
and 1950s – in Indonesia, India and China. Generally,
these were pithy statements of a state’s philosophy
(Indonesia, 1949), principles of relations between states
(India and China, 1954), and a charter of principles
for the conduct of newly decolonized states (Bandung
Conference, 1955). These principles, especially as they
came to be developed as frameworks for the relations
between sovereign powers, were generally expressed
through a set of negations - ‘mutual non interference’,
‘mutual non aggression’, ending in the most classic
negation of all - ‘non-alignment’. Inspired by these
multiplying negations, Raqs offered a modest proposal
for a new set of Pancasila principles. These are not to be
seen as drafts of the statements that states make to and
between themselves. These are simply some desires
that we as citizens, might have of states, and of the
relations between them. “This is how we would like to
be governed, if we have to be governed.”
BIO
The Raqs Media Collective, based in Delhi, enjoys playing a
plurality of roles, often appearing as artists, occasionally as
curators, sometimes as philosophical agent provocateurs.
They make contemporary art, they have also made films,
curated exhibitions, edited books, staged events, collaborated
with architects, computer programmers, writers and theatre
directors and have founded processes that have left deep
impacts on contemporary culture in India. Raqs (pron. rux)
follows its self-declared imperative of ‘kinetic contemplation’ to
produce a trajectory that is restless in terms of the forms and
methods that it deploys even as it achieves a consistency of
speculative procedures.
(b. 1965, lives and works in Tel Aviv)
WHATEVER YOU SAY? (2 PARROTS)
(2008) Interactive media installation. Courtesy of Philippe
Cohen Collection, Paris and Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv.
The interactive installation Whatever you say?
(2 Parrots) ironically alludes to the ‘impotence of art’
and connects it to some dumbing-down aspects that
new technology has on our thinking and discourse. Two
parrots wonder on two adjacent walls, from time to time
they speak up, sometimes they curse, sometimes recite
each other, and at times repeat each other, if the viewer
addresses them they may decide to repeat the viewer
or ‘answer’ him or her. Every half hour the two parrots
perform an excerpt from Shakespeare’s “Midsummer
Night’s Dream” in which the male parrot, a blue macaw,
is “the donkey” and the female parrot is “Titania”. They
play the scene of “Automated love” inflicted upon
Titania as a punishment, in which she wakes up to find
herself in love with the donkey. Supported by Artis Grant
Program.
BIO
Miri Segal is an artist who mostly explores media and
technologies. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions
at Moma PS1(New York), Lisson Gallery (London), Kamel
Mennour Gallery (Paris), Tel Aviv Museum, Dvir Gallery (Tel
Aviv), among other venues. Segal’s videos and installations
explore perceptual modalities and the impact on the viewer of
unexpected situations. Her works investigate being in the world
today by disrupting the perspective of the viewer’s body in the
space (actual or virtual) within a political and temporal context.
She uses physical, optical and conceptual manipulations that
invade the space of consciousness of the viewer. Ghosts and
shadows without a material body and in a limbo between life
and death - serve as basic figures in many of her works. She
uses them to subtly speculate about the limits of our capacity
to apprehend concrete reality, the future of humankind and our
ability to integrate the sensation that images provoke.
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MONA MARZOUK
ALON LEVIN
(b.1968, Lives and works Alexandria, Egypt)
(b. 1975, lives Den Hague and Berlin)
MOBY (FOR TRAYVON)
(2014) Wall Painting. Courtesy of the Artist.
END TO THE GRAND GESTURE
(2011 – 2014) Installation. Courtesy of the Artist and
AMBACH & RICE, Los Angeles.
Moby (for Trayvon), is a new mural painting that takes
the courtroom as its starting point. The past few years
of demonstrations and socio-political upheaval have
been intense, and the courtroom as a space in these
unfolding narratives has been featured extensively
in the media, as a space for the implementation of
justice. But, the rule of law and justice are in many
cases at opposite ends of the spectrum, as author
China Miéville has pointed out “The chaotic and bloody
world around us is the rule of law.” The courtroom as a
psychological space, as a space of argumentation, as
a problematic construct leads to the research of cases
in different parts of the world where there has been an
evident miscarriage of justice or a wrongful conviction.
Based on such cases in the present and in history, and
speculations about possible cases in the future, the
artist uses these cases to generate the material from
which the mural is made, allowing her to think of justice
as an abstract visual plasticity. Evidence, phrases,
and uttered sentences become forms, shapes, and
colours that direct us to an immaterial and unsituated
courtroom.
BIO
Greek-Egyptian artist Mona Marzouk was one of the first
contemporary artists practicing in Egypt to be recognized
internationally. After finishing her studies at the Academy of
Fine Arts in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1996, Marzouk returned
to her hometown of Alexandria, Egypt, to launch her career in
painting and sculpture. Selected solo exhibitions include The
Bride Stripped Bare of her Energy’s Evil, BALTIC Centre for
Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (2008); The New World, Art
in General, New York and Townhouse Gallery, Cairo; MUSAC,
León, Spain (2006). Selected group exhibitions include Havana
Biennial (2012); Second World: Where is Progress Progressing,
Steirischer Herbst, Graz, curated by What, How & for Whom /
WHW (2011); 8th Gwanju Biennale, curated by Okwui Enwezor
(2008); 1st Canary Islands Biennale, Spain (2006). From 2005
to 2013, Marzouk co-founded and co-directed the artist-run
space Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum in Egypt.
Based on his ongoing-research on socio-political
principles, artistic movements, and philosophical/
scientific concepts, data that the artist accumulates is
transformed into large-scale installations. Levin invents
storage and display systems that follow a self-invented
logic of categorization. The structures he erects to house
this assembled vocabulary of society’s ideology and order,
resemble towers as well as archival shelving units. They
represent models of thinking as physical manifestations
of our cultural codes. The work monumentalizes the
perilous doctrines of power, progress and growth.
Symbols and attributes that represent our drive towards
progress and change, instruments that animate our
revolutionary efforts, artefacts left by our civilization’s
ruins, evidence of Utopias unrealised and empires failed
make up the lexicon of the installations. The installation
End to The Grand Gesture stems from this idea that
everything is bound to fail, but in fact it celebrates the
success in failure. Central to the installation is the
deconstructed work “Untitled, A Proposal for a Universe
Under Control” as a re-presentation of one of his older
works that has now been chopped into pieces, whitenedout, and is thereby transformed into many new parts.
As with social rhetoric and political agenda, Levin’s
installations are continually destroyed, rearranged or
recycled. Through this process of endless re- and deconstruction, the work both celebrates and commemorates
the triumphs and failings of political systems as well as
his artistic practice. In doing so, there is the hopelessly
hopeful effort to escape the inevitable, to invent the new,
and to right the wrong. Supported by Artis Grant Program.
BIO
Alon Levin (born in Ramat Gan, Israel) is an artist based in Berlin
and Den Hague. He studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in
Amsterdam from 1998- 2002, followed by a residency at the Jan
van Eyck Academie in Maastricht in 2003 and a two-year postgraduate program at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam from 20052006. In 2008 Levin was granted a residency in the International
Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York. Recent
exhibitions have included Fútbol: The Beautiful Game, LACMA,
Los Angeles, CA; Beautiful Things (solo), AMBACH & RICE Los
Angeles, CA; Ten Years, Wallspace, New York, NY; Jew York, Zach
Feuer Gallery & Untitled, New York, NY; Made In Germany Zwei,
Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover, DE; TRACK, S.M.A.K, Ghent, BE;
Material World, Groningen Museum, Groningen, NL; Remodelling
Systems, CCS Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; and History of
Art, the, David Roberts Art Foundation, London, UK.
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RAMON KASSAM
MICHAEL PATTERSON-CARVER
(b. 1981, lives and works in Ireland)
(b.1958, Chicago)
ALL WORKS
Acrylic on linen, see wall label for details.
Courtesy of the Artist.
Colour drawings all Ink, pencil and watercolour on
paper, see wall labels for details. Courtesy of Galerie
Susanne Zander, Cologne; The Museum of Everything;
the Tania El Chiaty Collection; Timothy Taylor Gallery,
London.
Ramon Kassam’s paintings incorporate various motifs
in their quite often ruthless and laboured construction.
The works in EVA, come from a place of deep personal
engagement with life in the studio and reflect its
relationship to the city. The repercussions of living in a
city or town are central to Kassam’s thought process,
and this informs his painterly gesture. Kassam likens
urban surroundings and experiences to physically living
within a painting, citing the combination of artificial
colour, texture and narrative on any given streetscape
as part of his concept. Out of this close proximity with
one another these elements which are displayed by
the inhabitants, vehicles, buildings, signs, markings
and structures are frequently and randomly colliding
and jostling for visual and psychological precedence.
Kassam aims to simulate these situations concisely.
Placing importance on arbitrary textures and colours
in replication of an urban scenario, he pieces together
the painterly gesture in much the same way as urban
planners experiment with spatiality, splicing together
opposite qualities endeavouring to create a new
visual arrangement. Canvases are often cropped,
stitched together or glued, and can incorporate
various narratives and studio materials such as tape,
paper, tacks etc. These working methods create an
interruption within the flow of the subject matter, the
surfaces deliberately tampered with to provide the
viewer with as many alternatives and readings as
possible within the work.
BIO
Ramon Kassam is a painter from Limerick City. He received a
first class honours degree in Fine Art Painting from Limerick
School of Art and Design in 2007. Solo exhibitions ‘Portrait
Cuts Itself out on the Floor’ Pallas Projects, Dublin (2013) &
‘Paint-things’ Occupy Space, Limerick (2010). Recent group
exhibitions include ‘Periodical Review’ Pallas Projects, Dublin
(2013) ‘New Living Art’ Irish Museum of Contemporary Art,
Dublin (2012) ‘Bricks and Mortar’, Boston, USA (2012) and
‘Transitive Relationships’, Limerick City Gallery of Art (2012). In
2013, Kassam participated on a four month studio residency at
The Irish Museum of Modern Art and was also awarded the 12
month RHA Tony O’ Malley Residency Award. From 2009-2011
Kassam founded and was a director of both, Wickham Street
Studios (an artist studio complex) and Occupy Space - a visual
arts exhibition space in Limerick City.
Michael Patterson-Carver (b. 1958) is a self-taught
artist born in Chicago who practices a personal form
of political activism through his colour drawings. His
works of picketing and political protests paint a small
history of dissent that is simultaneously humorous
and disturbing. The lack of doubt in his political position is equally both refreshing and seemingly alien to
the type of critical engagement many artists practice
today, imbuing his works with an air of mystery.
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AMANDA BEECH
LUIS CAMNITZER
(b. 1972, UK, lives and works in Los Angeles)
(b.1937 in Germany, lives and works in New York)
FINAL MACHINE
(2013) 3 Channel Video Installation, 45 mins.
INSULTS
(2009) Vinyl wall text. Courtesy of the Artist and
Alexander Gray Associates, New York.
Beech’s work takes up the dynamic of imageforce, through entangling narratives of power from
philosophical theory, literature and real political
events. Inspired by these discourses on power, her
work proposes a new realist politics of the artwork and
its possibilities in the context of contingency. FINAL
MACHINE confronts the problem of how to predicate
a politics (and an art) that is recalcitrant to its own
ideological systems. This is a journey with no future;
only a constant working upon a claustrophobic present.
It navigates the wasteland of the Mojave Desert, trails
cars through night-time Miami and is intersected by
balletic graphic imagery and abrupt aggressive ‘bullet
points’ that emphasize the groundless and mobile
force of the negotiated image. The metronomic tempo
of the imagery is pervaded by a persistent pragmatic
voice that locks the work into a hallucinatory steroid
reality. The narrative interlocks the sensations of thrilling
rhetorics that draw from Louis Althusser’s lecture series
‘Philosophy and The Spontaneous Philosophy of the
Scientists’ (1968), the prose of CIA recruitment lectures,
tales of the high stakes games of undercover special
agents, and our obsession with reality. Together these
coalesce as an experience and an interrogation of force.
In Insults, conceptual artist Luis Camnitzer repeats the
sentence ‘All those who can’t read English are stupid’
using different languages and replacing ‘English’
with the language used to write the sentence. Each
culture, irrelevant of where it is situated in the world,
and in varying degrees, assumes at certain moments
that it is superior to other cultures, and at the core
of this assumption is the trumpeting of its language.
By repeating this gesture of cultural superiority via
language in different translations the intention is
to suggest surpassing the idea that any culture is
inherently superior since no one has the capacity to
learn every single language in the world; cultures and
languages are not the total sum of who we are.
BIO
Amanda Beech is an artist, writer and teacher. Beech has
exhibited her artwork internationally; recent exhibitions include:
Final Machine 2013, Lanchester Gallery Projects, Coventry,
UK and Ha Gamle Prestagard, Norway, 2013; Asymmetrical
Cinema, Beaconsfield Gallery, London; and, (Past Present)
Future Tense, Center for Living Arts, Alabama, USA 2013.
Recent publications include; Final Machine, Urbanomic, 2013;
Sanity Assassin, Urbanomic, 2010 and new essays for the
anthologies, Realism, Materialism, Art, Sternberg Press, 2014,
Speculative Aesthetics, Urbanomic, 2014 and The Flood of
Rights, Merve, will be published this year. Beech also regularly
speaks at conferences and symposia including keynotes for
“Generative Constraints”, London, 2103 and “Exhibiting Video”,
London, 2012. Upcoming projects include Everything Has Led
to this Moment, a solo exhibit at Zero, Kline, Coma, London,
and the Fieldwork residency at Marfa Texas where she will
be producing a major new video work. She is Dean of Critical
Studies at CalArts.
BIO
Luis Camnitzer is a German-born Uruguayan artist, educator,
writer, and curator who moved to New York in 1964. He was
at the vanguard of 1960s Conceptualism, working primarily in
printmaking, sculpture, and installations. His humorous, biting,
and often politically charged use of language as an art medium
has distinguished his practice for over four decades. Though
Camnitzer never left his adopted city New York, his practice
remains intrinsically connected to Uruguay and the whole of
Latin America. As well as many solo exhibitions his work has
been featured in several international biennials, including the
Bienal de la Havana, Cuba; Whitney Biennial, and Documenta
11. Camnitzer’s work is in the permanent collections of The
Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and
the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the TATE,
London, UK; and Museo de Arte Latino Americano de Buenos
Aires, Argentina (MALBA), among others.
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STEFANOS TSIVOPOULOS
EVA RICHARDSON MCCREA
(b.1973, lives and works between Athens,
Amsterdam and New York)
(b. 1990, lives and works in Dublin)
HISTORY ZERO
(2013) HD Video and Archival Installation. Courtesy the
Artist and Kalfayan Galleries, Athens – Thessaloniki.
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History Zero was first presented at the Greek Pavilion
at 55th Venice Biennale. It takes as its starting point
the multi-layered contemporary crisis in Greece,
which Tsivopoulos sees as an opportunity to interpret
an alternative visualisation of the future. It has two
components, a film which can be seen in the small
room, off the atrium and an archive which can be seen
all-round the atrium. The film depicts three human
experiences relating to notions of value systems and
in so doing explores the role of money in the formation
of human relationships and political and social
elements relating to the ownership of money. The
archive provides examples and evidence of alternative
non-monetary exchange systems, focusing on the
ability of such models to question the homogenising
political power of common currencies, and the ways in
which communities function in relation to the exchange
of goods in difficult times. The combination of the
archive and the film brings together the diverse culture
surrounding economic exchange whilst challenging the
social, political and performative aspects of alternative
currency models. Supported by the Mondriaan Fund.
BIO
Tsivopoulos studied fine arts at the Fine Arts Academy of
Athens, the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Rijksakademie
van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. Recent solo exhibitions
include: Greek Pavilion, 55th La Biennale di Venezia (2013);
Art Basel Miami (2013); Stella Art Foundation, Moscow (2013);
ISCP, New York (2011); Heidelberg Kunstverein (2010); Smart
Project Space, Amsterdam (2010). Recent and upcoming
group exhibitions include L’iselp, Brussels (2014); Lehmburg
Museum, Duisburg (2014); CAFAM Biennial Beijing (2014);
SALT, Istanbul (2012); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2011);
Manifesta 8, Murcia (2010); Witte de With, Rotterdam (2010);
BFI Southbank, London (2009); Friedericianum, Kassel (2008);
Athens Biennale (2007); and Thessaloniki Biennale (2007).
FILM/ ACT/ EVENT
(2013) Single Channel HD Video, 21 mins.
Film/ Act/ Event is a film based on “The Incident at
Antioch”, a play by French philosopher Alain Badiou,
written between 1982 and 1989. Divided into three acts,
the characters move between five allegorical locations
as they discuss the nature of politics and search for
a new political way forward. Badiou’s philosophy is
rooted in mathematics and in particular set theory. In
his major work “Being and Event”, Badiou proposes
that being is pure infinite inconsistency. This allows
for the possibility of something new occurring. This
something new is truth. For Badiou a truth is brand new,
finite and particular to the situation in which it occurs.
Truth can occur in four domains: politics, science, love
and art. Film/ Act /Event moves between the theatrical
set where various characters muse abstractly over the
state of things, to the concrete sites of other locations
in the play – lit theatrically but absent of their original
characters. Long passages of dialogue are intertwined
with quick camera cuts and fast editing, locating the
film between the genres of TV drama, soap opera and
the filmed staged production. Film/ Act /Event explores,
in concrete form, relations between cinema, theatre,
philosophy and politics - between theory and praxis.
Special thanks to Joseph Nelson, Conor Doyle and
Ciara Smyth (acting), Brendan McKenna, Daragh Walsh,
Eoghan McIntyre and Julia Kempermann.
BIO
Eva Richardson McCrea graduated from the National College
of Art and Design in 2013 with a Joint B.A (Hons) in Fine Art
(Sculpture) and History of Art. Working primarily in video,
Richardson McCrea is drawn to the mechanics and processes
of filmmaking, and how these elements can be revealed or
concealed within the frame, and how this affects the work.
From philosophy to theatre to Wikipedia her practice explores
links between abstract idea and realised form, the relationship
between semiotics and meaning, and information and
understanding. Recent exhibitions have included NLA IV, Dublin
(2013) NCAD Degree Show, Dublin (2013), iDeA, Rotterdam
(2012), & Thanks for All the Fish, Rotterdam (2012). She is
currently a studio resident at Basic Space, Marrowbone Lane,
Dublin.
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CÉCILE HARTMANN
SIOBHÁN HAPASKA
(b. 1971, lives and works in Paris)
(b. 1963, Belfast, Northern Ireland,
lives and works in London)
KESSOKU (COVENANT)
(2006) Single Channel Video loop with original
soundtrack, 9 mins. Courtesy of the Artist.
For EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial 2014,
Hartmann a French artist, presents Kessoku
(covenant) a film realized in 2006 in Japan. Kessoku
(covenant) connects the strategic spaces of economic
globalisation to the unstable zones of volcanic craters.
In a swaying and reversible motion amplified by an
electronic music sample and by atmospheric vibrations
of colour and smog, business fluctuations connect
with telluric tremors in search for an anchorage and
a balance point. A paradoxical feeling of subdued
restlessness arises from this intense encounter.
Supported by the French Embassy in Ireland.
BIO
The work of Cécile Hartmann negotiates relations between
documentary and fiction. Her works question the division
between a constructed world and an organic (natural) world,
pondering instability, materialistic experience, and the
metaphysical. Extensively researched information drawn
from the recent history of the global economy, architecture,
or pre-modern forms of life is reformulated into elaborate
photographic projects and film installations. After studies at
The National Fine Arts Academy of Paris, Hartmann lived in
Japan and in Berlin. Her films have been realized in places
as far apart as New York, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Dubai and in the
Azores Archipelago. In 2013 and 2012, her movie “Achrone”
was shown at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Beirut Art
Centre, Lebanon; Museum Akarenga Soko in Yokohama.
She has also recently exhibited at the Palau de la Virreina in
Barcelona, Museum of Photography of Thessaloniki, and the
Museum of Modern Art, Bogotà.
BOND
(1999) Fiberglass, Irish basalt, reindeer moss, twopack lacquer and electrical components. Courtesy of
IMMA | Irish Museum of Modern Art – The Collection.
Bond is an example of the artists earlier work in
which she often played with the notion of nature
versus machine. Both organic and artificial, Bond
intrigues because of its contradictions and contrasts.
For example, the contrast between the portrayal of
dynamic movement and stillness and, between the
aerodynamics associated with car design and the
weighty appearance of a static sculpture. The lacquer
finish can be compared to the metallic finish of a car
and the addition of electric lights, a connotation to the
speed of light, contrasts with the slow accumulation of
basalt and moss nestling naturally within the forms of
the sculpture.
BIO
Siobhán Hapaska’s work is charged with a number of cultural
and socio-political issues. Often difficult to categorize, her
work is a poetic play of imagery and ideas that forge discordant
connections. It’s a complex interweaving of narrative that
is articulated through a diverse vocabulary of materials
incorporating extraordinary objects that range from olive
trees to magnets, tumble weeds to selenite. She creates
multisensory works that continually extend the definition
of sculpture. Her recent solo exhibitions include Magasin 3
Stockholm Konsthall, Sweden (2013); the Barbican Centre,
London (2010); Glasgow Sculpture Studios (2009); and
Camden Arts Centre, London (2007). She is a recipient of the
Paul Hamlyn Award (2003), represented Ireland at the Venice
Biennale (2001) and participated in Documenta X (1997).
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MALAK HELMY
LUIS JACOB
(b.1982, lives and works in Cairo)
(b. 1971, lives and works in Toronto)
CHAPTER 3: LOST REFERENTS OF SOME
ATTRACTION FROM ‘RECORDS FROM THE
EXCITED STATE’
(2012) Single Channel HD Video loop,
6 mins 54 secs. Courtesy of the Artist.
ALBUM XII
(2013-2014) Image montage in plastic laminate
panels, 148 panels. Courtesy of the Artist,
Birch Contemporary, Toronto, and Galerie
Max Mayer, Düsseldorf.
Chapter 3: Lost Referents of Some Attraction is a
video composed of three scenes in landscape: a
salt flat, a beach, and a future nuclear power plant.
Five characters wander on the edge of a narrative,
anticipating employment into function and meaning.
Like the landscape, these characters are extras on the
periphery of an event, charged with desire of awaiting
time and resolve. Lost Referents of Some Attraction is
a new chapter in a series of works titled Records from
the Excited State– an ongoing project that conducts an
analysis over time of biological and social rhythms of a
site of leisure on the coastline of Egypt.
Realised in a wide array of media that includes painting,
video, installation, and photography, Luis Jacob’s
diverse work invites a collision of meaning systems,
attempting to destabilize our conventions of viewing
and to open possibilities for engagement and the
creation of knowledge. Presented for the first time at
EVA International 2014, Album XII (2013-14) consists
of hundreds of photographic images excised from
a variety of published sources. These images are
mounted together in plastic-laminate panels displayed
sequentially in a form reminiscent of family photo
albums and communal bulletin boards. By means of
visual rhymes and correspondences between images,
Album XII creates extended narratives constellating
around various themes: architectural space and the
built environment; embodiment and the encapsulation
of collective experience; alienation and social sculpture.
These topics weave together into a kind of theory
of subjectivity, understood in its dual aspects as
individual experience and as the social processes of
subjection. Album XII is an opportunity to form and
de-form our frames of reference, by relying upon each
viewer’s capacity for deep engagement in the play of
correspondences.
BIO
Malak Helmy works most often with video and writing. Her
work explores moments and locations in time through an
archaeology of ideas, desires, the city and the scientific
possibilities around them. She also works with collective
initiatives exploring areas between urbanism, architectural
research and artistic production. She has exhibited at the 63rd
+ 64th Berlinale Film Festival Expanded Forum in (2014, 2013),
the 9th Mercosul Biennial (2013), Frankendael Foundation
(2013), Beirut in Cairo (2013), Camera Austria, Graz (2013),
Moving Image Art Fair, NYC (2013), 9th Gwangju Biennial
(2012), Documenta 13’s Cairo Seminar (2012), Bergen
Kunsthalle (2012) amongst others. She received her MFA in
Social Practice from the California College of Art in 2010, and
her BA from the American University in Cairo in 2005.
BIO
Luis Jacob was born in Lima, Peru, and now lives and works in
Toronto, Canada. He studied semiotics and philosophy at the
University of Toronto, graduating in 1994. Working as an artist
and curator, his diverse practice addresses social interaction
and the subjectivity of aesthetic experience. As an artist, he
has achieved an international reputation – particularly since his
participation in documenta12 in 2007 – with solo exhibitions
at Kunsthalle Lingen (2012); Museum of Contemporary
Canadian Art, Toronto (2011); Fonderie Darling, Montréal
(2010); Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach
(2009); and Kunstverein Hamburg, (2008). Jacob’s work was
also featured in group exhibitions at the Taipei Biennial (2012);
Witte de With, Rotterdam (2012); Generali Foundation, Vienna
(2011); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010);
Contemporary Art Museum, Houston (2010); Institute of
Contemporary Art (ICA), Philadelphia (2009); MuHKA, Antwerp
(2008); and The Power Plant, Toronto (2008).
2014 AGITATIONISM
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ASIER MENDIZABAL
(b.1973, lives and works in Bilbao)
A MODEST IMPERATIVE AND OTHER NOTES
ON LANDSCAPE
(2012 – 2014) Configuration of four works. Courtesy of
the Artist and Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London.
A Modest Imperative and Other Notes on Landscape
is the title of a text based work which articulates the
different works presented here by Mendizabal. The
works all refer to the construction of images and all of
them try to isolate a formal trait or a technical device
on which a typology of the image becomes a cultural
indicator. Rotation (Moiré, Rome) and Rotation (Moiré,
Egin), both 2012, show how the inaccuracy of half tone
printing technology used to produce press images
could propose a sort of structural metaphor for the
always problematic representation of the mass. The
inability to simultaneously perceive the total form of
the multitude as well as its individual parts echoes
other formal problems such as the visually evocative
pair ‘figure’ and ‘background’ and their relationship,
but more intriguingly, the technical pair of ‘weft’ and
‘warp’ in the process of weaving. The rough concrete
form cast out of a wicker basket also included here
[Untitled (wicker)], (2014), repeats this pattern as a
culturally readable form, as does the very base on
which it is displayed. These references are crossed
with improbable but fecund associations in the text
presented in the brochure. The brochure which doubles
as a poster and is free to take, is an integral part of
Mendizabal’s presentation at Eva 2014 since it is where
the the aforementioned formal problems are highlighted
by evoking particular cases of their usage, such as the
specific history of representation in landscape imagery
produced during the Chinese Revolution. Supported by
Acción Cultural Española, AC/E and Etxepare Basque
Institute.
BIO
Asier Mendizabal’s practice is fundamentally attached
to sculpture, but is resolved through diverse media and
procedures, often including the written word. He has
exhibited individually, at among other venues: the Hordaland
Kunstsenter, Bergen, Norway; Raven Row, London; Museo
Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid;, DAE, San
Sebastian; MACBA Barcelona and Culturgest in Lisbon.
He has taken part in group shows such as, IllumiNATIONS,
54, Venice Bienale; Scenarios about Europe: Scenario 3.
Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig; In the First Circle
Fundació Tapies, Barcelona; Às Artes, Cidadãos, Museu
Serralves, Porto; Chacun a son Gôut, at Guggenheim
Bilbao Museoa; Després de la notícia, at CCCB Barcelona;
Manifesta 5, the Taipei biennial; Insiders, at CAPC Bordeaux;
Flüchtige Zeiten, at Westfälischer Kunstverein, “On
Handlung”, 4th Bucharest Biennial.
[AC/E and Etxepare logos]
15
EVA INTERNATIONAL
KERRY
GROUP
FORMER GOLDEN VALE MILK PLANT,
O’CALLAGHAN STRAND, LIMERICK
1
TOM FLANAGAN &
MEGS MORLEY
2
JENNY BRADY
3
KJERSTI ANDVIG
4 CHIMURENGA
16
17
CARLA ZACCAGNINI
18 NILBAR GÜREŞ
19 JACQUELINE DOYEN
20 CATALINA NICULESCU
21 NEŠA PARIPOVIĆ
22
ELIZABETH PRICE
5
PER–OSKAR LEU
6
DAVID HORVITZ
7
ANN BÖTTCHER
8
JEFFREY CHARLES
HENRY PEACOCK
9
ZACHARY FORMWALT
10 PRANEET SOI
11 RANA HAMADEH
27GRRRR
(INGO GIEZENDANNER)
12 HASSAN KHAN
28
13 PATRICK JOLLEY
29 METAHAVEN
14 SOFIE LOSCHER
30
PAULINE M’BAREK
15
BENJAMIN DE BÚRCA &
BARBARA WAGNER
31
MARK O’KELLY
16
SEAMUS NOLAN
32 DOA ALY
23
NICOLINE VAN HARSKAMP
24
MARTÍ ANSON
25
HUMBERTO VÉLEZ
26 GARRETT PHELAN
WALID SADEK
2014 AGITATIONISM
VENUE KERRY GROUP – FORMER GOLDEN VALE MILK PLANT
P
17
P
EVA INTERNATIONAL
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TOM FLANAGAN &
MEGS MORLEY
(b. 1981 and 1979, live and work in Galway)
THE QUESTION OF IRELAND
(2013) 3 channel HD Digital film, 60 min.
Courtesy of the Artists. Supported by the Arts Council
of Ireland 2013.
18
This three screen video work attempts to provoke the
relationship between the language of politics,
performance and cinema. It takes Karl Marx’s
overlooked political analysis of Ireland “Notes for
anUndelivered Speech on Ireland” as its basis. Marx
had prepared the text for a speech that he was due
to deliver at the meeting of the International Working
Men’s Association on November 26, 1867. Marx’s
analysis of the ‘Irish Question’ became for the artists a
broader question into its relevance and its relationship
to the contemporary situation of Ireland today, with
clear overlapping concerns of political corruption,
Irish Independence, mass emigration and evictions.
Wishing to extend this ‘question’ to other disciplines,
the artists invited Kieran Allen (sociologist) Bernadette
Devlin (civil rights and political activist) and Grace
Dyas (playwright) to respond to and re-imagine Marx’s
“Notes for an Undelivered Speech on Ireland” within
the context of modern Ireland. The resulting speeches,
each taking an individual approach, were then
performed by actors, John Olohan, Bríd Ní Neachtain
and Lauren Larkin in the historic National Theatre
of Irish language, the Taibhearc. Employing devices
borrowed from historic political cinema, the artists
explore the language of film, performance and cinema
across a synchronized three-screen format, attempting
to tap into the political imagination and latent unfulfilled
dream of this undelivered speech formerly described
as a “revolutionary thunderbolt” by Marx himself, at a
time when his ideas are being closely re-examined with
renewed rigor in light of the current crisis of capitalism.
BIO
Tom Flanagan & Megs Morley’s collaborative work is an
ongoing investigation of the language of cinema and its
relationship to political power and collective memory. Their
works examine real and imagined politically complex sites
and forgotten histories, attempting to intervene into collective
understandings of the present, by exploring the space between
images, memory, knowledge and power. Recent solo and
group exhibitions include: Mermaid Arts Centre (2013), Cirrus
Gallery Los Angeles (2013), Lucca Film Festival 2013, Labour
and Lockout, Limerick City Gallery, (2013), Momentous
Times, CCA Derry 2013, Rencontres Internationales: Paris:
Centre du Pompidou November 2011 & Berlin July 2012,
A Series of Navigations, The Model, Sligo, 2012, The Good
Children Gallery, New Orleans, 2012 (Solo), Alchemy Film
Festival, Scotland, 2012. Galway Arts Centre, June 2011(Solo)
Public commissions include “Aughty” a feature length film
commissioned by Aughty Public Art Projects and Galway
County Council 2012. Upcoming: Station Independent
Projects, NY.
2014 AGITATIONISM
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3
JENNY BRADY
KJERSTI ANDVIG
(b. 1983, lives and works in Dublin)
(b. 1978, lives and works in Norway and Brussels)
WOW AND FLUTTER
(2013) HD video with sound, 13 min. 3 sec.
MEDITATION EVIL
(2014) Sound on continuous loop in designed room.
Working primarily with the moving image, Jenny Brady
makes experimental, narrative video works, which
incorporate text, music and performance to explore
the subjective character of experience and problems
of representation. Her works are concerned with ideas
of communication and the limitations of language,
in which animals often feature as troubling figures of
mistranslation. She is interested in the potential of
the moving image to propose new forms of speech,
incorporating gesture, text, sound and image to present
speculative communicative systems. Her works feature
a unique audio-visual grammar, which draws upon
experimental music and utilize unexpected rhythms,
interruption and commentary to complicate potential
readings of the subjects she explores. Wow and Flutter
presents the viewer with a fractured portrait of a bird,
formed over the course of three acts. The artist employs
strategies of translation, performance and rhetoric to
‘give voice’ to its central protagonist, only to reveal a
troubling anthropocentric bind. Drawing on research
into the thirty-year scientific collaboration between
animal cognition scientist Irene Pepperberg and
an African Grey Parrot she trained in elements of
human language, this work considers the various
forms of displacement at play in our depiction and
understanding of animals. It features a score made in
collaboration with musician Andrew Fogarty, employing
a mixture of field recordings, electronics and found
material to conjure a unique sound world.
The work is a sound installation composed of so-called
non-sounds. These are the sounds of old refrigerators,
fans inside old laptops, boilers, fluorescent lights, DVD
players and the likes. Together these sounds make a
composition, which is intensified and interrupted at
regular intervals. What is special about these sounds
are that most people quickly become used to them.
They quickly become background noise, a continuous
frequency of vibrating noise which is often less apparent
than other sounds, such as music and voices. It is only
when these sounds stop that one notices how tiresome
and straining to our ears they really are. This feeling
of relief that one feels when these ever-present noises
stop for a moment is what Meditation Evil simulates.
The work in this regard is as much about silence as
it is about living with noise. Supported by Office for
Contemporary Art Norway, OCA.
BIO
Jenny Brady completed an M.A in Visual Arts Practices (2011).
Her recent group exhibitions include Futures ‘13 curated by
Patrick Murphy at RHA; TULCA Golden Mountain (2013),
curated by Valerie Connor; and Make Shift (2013) Talbot Rice
Gallery, Edinburgh curated by Alex Hetherington. She has
had solo shows at Mermaid Arts Centre (2011) and the 126
Artist-run gallery (2010). Future projects include screenings at
Images festival, Toronto (2014) and Atelier Public #2, Gallery of
Modern Art, Glasgow as part of Glasgow International (2014).
In 2013 she set up Critical Forum Dublin with LUX and Temple
Bar Gallery + Studios and has undertaken commissions for
Dublin City Council (2013) and Mayo County Council (2012).
Recent awards include an Arts Council Project Award (2014),
Travel and Training award (2013, 2012) and Visual Arts bursary
(2011).
BIO
Kjersti G. Andvig was born in Oslo and grew up on the Lofoten
islands. She’s been based in Lofoten and Brussels since 2011.
In 2003 she graduated from The National Academy of Fine
Art in Oslo. Besides from working on the piece for EVA, she is
currently working in collaboration with Lars Laumann for the
200 year anniversary jubilee of the Norwegian Constitution.
In 2014 she will be an artist in residence for five months at
Glasgow Sculpture Studios months as part of their residency
project HIGH-NORTH. Andvig has presented her work in
exhibitions in Norway, Sweden, Japan, France, and Germany,
among other places.
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EVA INTERNATIONAL
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4
5
CHIMURENGA
PER-OSKAR LEU
(Collective founded in 2002, Cape Town, South Africa)
(b. 1980, lives and works in Oslo, Norway)
CHRONIC READING ROOM
(2002 – 2014) Chimurenga Chronic Newspapers and
Publicity Posters. Courtesy of the Artists.
CRISIS AND CRITIQUE
(2012) Single-channel video with sound,
28 min. 07 sec. Courtesy of the Artist.
For EVA 2014 Chimuranga have set up a reading room
for The Chimurenga Chronic. The Chronic is a
quarterly pan African newspaper that gives voice to all
aspects of life and celebrates our capacity to continually
create something bold, beautiful and full of humour. It
seeks to write Africa in the present and into the world
at large, as the place in which we live, love and work. An
intervention in both time and space, it embraces the
newspaper as the medium best capable of inhabiting,
reproducing and interpreting political, social and
cultural life in places where uncertainty and turbulence
are the forms taken, in many instances, by daily
experience. The Chronic tells stories of a complicated
ordinariness. It employs reportage, creative nonfiction, autobiography, satire and analysis to offer a
vivid and richly textured engagement of everyday
life. The reading room invites visitors to literally step
inside the newspaper where they’ll encounter forays
into interlaced subjects of power, resistance, protest,
mobilisation, mobility and belonging; investigation into
the rhetoric of land theft and loss; journeys through the
business of moving corpses; and analysis on the
philanthropic complex. Find out how Ghana’s
controversial duo FOKN Bois mess with the puritanical
mores in the world’s most religious country, and learn
why Africa’s best footballers aren’t African!;
and much, much more.
Per-Oskar Leu is concerned with questions surrounding
art’s ability to respond in times of social upheaval. In
his multidisciplinary practice, which includes sculpture,
installation and video, Leu often makes use of archival
material in order to re-stage historical events, and to
reinterpret works of film and literature. His video essay
Crisis and Critique is a humorous and often agonizingly
ironic account of German poet and playwright Bertolt
Brecht’s compelling testimony before the House of
Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. Here, Leu
highlights the absurdity of McCarthyism by weaving
together audio recordings of the HUAC hearing
with imagery drawn from films Brecht had a hand in
writing or directly influenced, most strikingly, from
the final underground kangaroo court scene of Fritz
Lang’s film “M”. Crisis and Critique draws parallels
between historical moments in Nazi Germany and
McCarthy America, providing a cautionary tale of
politics’ interference with art. Supported by Office for
Contemporary Art Norway, OCA.
BIO
Chimurenga (‘Struggle for Freedom’) is a pan African
publication of culture, art and politics based in Cape Town.
Founded by Editor Ntone Edjabe in 2002, it provides an
innovative platform for free ideas and political reflection by
Africans about Africa. Its titles include, amongst others, Music
is The Weapon, Futbol, Politricks and Ostentatious Cripples,
Black Gays and Mugabes, Dr. Satan’s Echo Chamber (a
double issue on African science fiction) and, ‘The Chimurenga
Chronic‘, a once-off edition of an imaginary newspaper. Since
2013, Chimurenga have published the Chronic as a quarterly
gazette. Chimurenga magazine has featured work by emerging
as well as established voices including Njabulo Ndebele,
Lesego Rampolokeng, Santu Mofokeng, Keorapetse Kgositsile,
Gael Reagon, Binyavanga Wainaina, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor,
Dominique Malaquais, Goddy Leye, Zwelethu Mthethwa,
Mahmood Mamdani, Amiri Baraka, Akin Adesokan, Neo
Muyanga, Johnny Dyani, Olufemi Terry, Koffi Kwahule, Parselelo
Kantai, Billy Kahora and Greg Tate, among others.
BIO
Per-Oskar Leu lives and works in Oslo. He has studied at the
National Academy of Fine Art, Oslo, the Staatliche Hochschule
für Bildende Künste – Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, and
the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, New York.
Recent exhibitions include: In These Great Times, Kunstnernes
Hus, Oslo; We Are Living on a Star, Henie Onstad Art Centre,
Høvikodden; The Suitcases of Mr. O.F., 1/9 unosunove, Rome;
When it Stops Dripping from the Ceiling, Kadist Art Foundation,
Paris.
2014 AGITATIONISM
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DAVID HORVITZ
ANN BÖTTCHER
born 1982 and lives in New York
(b. 1973, lives and works in Malmö, Sweden)
EVIDENCE OF TIME TRAVEL
(2014) Slide projection, clock, and text documents.
ST. JOSEPH’S
(2014) pencil on paper drawings.
Courtesy of the Artist and Galerie Nordenhake.
David Horvitz is presenting Evidence of Time Travel,
a new work that was commissioned specially for EVA.
The piece was made from March 24 to April 3 in Dublin
on residency at IMMA | Irish Museum of Modern Art,
and is a continuation of works by Horvitz that explore
travel and place, time and its standardization. Upon
arriving in Ireland, Horvitz has kept his watch set to the
time of California’s time zone (the state he was born in)
which is currently eight hours behind Ireland. Using this
skewed clock, which is operating autonomously from
his immediate surroundings, he schedules his daily
routines. A breakfast coffee in the morning enjoyed
while it’s the afternoon for everyone else, a lunch while
people are having dinner, a dinner while everyone is fast
asleep, and an after dinner walk while dawn is breaking
and the only ones in the streets are foxes. As his body
attempts to adjust to the light of the day and coordinate
with his current locality, he consciously resists this
temporal and spatial adaptation as he stays on his own
time, the time of his birth place, using the clock as his
sun. Presented at the exhibition will be photograph and
text documents from his experience in Dublin. Horvitz
currently lives in Brooklyn, but he is from and was born
in Los Angeles.
While visiting Limerick earlier this year, Böttcher went in
search of trees that silently spoke to her. Along Mulgrave
St. and Ballysimon Rd., she came across Limerick
Prison, St. Joseph’s Hospital and Mount Saint Lawrence
Cemetery, one after the other (in itself an interesting
narrative). The artist was drawn towards the buildings
and parklands of St. Joseph’s, resulting in a series of
pencil drawings. The drawings are portraits of Irish yew
and cypress trees from the hospital grounds. Through
research, the artist got to know parts of St. Joseph’s
history as well as the rise and fall of mental institutions
in Ireland and Europe. The hospital is closing down,
following the same deinstitutionalisation reforms that
started in Europe in the late 20th century. By looking
at different reforms, one can follow society’s view on
mental health as time passes. The 1821 ‘Lunacy Act’
and the 1838 ‘Criminal Lunatics Act’ were replaced by
the ‘Mental Treatment Act’ in 1945 and later by the 2001
‘Mental Health Act’. In attempts to get rid of the stigma
attached to mental illness, reforms have dictated name
changes. St. Joseph’s was founded in 1827 as Limerick
District Lunatic Asylum, in 1923 it changed to Limerick
District Mental Hospital and finally to St. Joseph’s
Hospital in 1959. Today, its massive grey limestone
buildings that once housed up to 1,000 patients
are next to empty. The actual closing date is not yet
decided.Supported by Iaspis, the Swedish Arts Grants
Committee’s International Program.
BIO
David Horvitz is a Brooklyn based artist whose work shifts
seamlessly between the Internet, the printed page, and
the exhibition. He works in a variety of media, including
photography, video, watercolour, mail-art, and the web. His
participatory practice, often involving close collaborations
with other artists, as well as a web-based audience, considers
strategies of information circulation and the impermanence
of digital artefacts. His published work includes: Rarely Seen
Bas Jan Ader Film (2009), Sad, Depressed, People (2012), and
Watercolors with Natalie Häusler(2013) and he has exhibited
at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Tate Modern, MoMA, Art Basel
Statements, the New Museum and LIAF 2013.
BIO
Recent exhibitions include “The Drawing Room”, Magasin 3,
Stockholm Konsthall and “Our Inner Nature” Marabouparken,
Stockholm. Selected group exhibitions: “Art of Memory”, at
Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm 2013, LIAF, Norway (2013),
X-border Biennal, Luleå (2013), “Meeting with Hill”, at Lunds
Konsthall (2011), “More Light”, at Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, NL
(2011), “Thrice upon a time”, at Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall”
(2010), “Time’s Arrow”, at Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm (2010),
“La Petite Histoire” at Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna
(2008), “Vertrautes Terrain” ZKM, Karlsruhe (2008), “The Moderna
Exhibition 2006” at Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2006), “Altered,
Stitched and Gathered,” at P.S. 1 MOMA, New York (2006),
Delayed on Time” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb
(2004), and “Le Songe d’une nuit d’été” at Magasin 3 Stockholm
Konsthall and CCS, Paris (2003). Solo exhibitions: “Der Umgang
mit Mutter Grün” at Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin (2008), “The
Entrance to the Sanatorium”, INDEX, Stockholm (2007), and “The
1st at Moderna” at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2006).
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EVA INTERNATIONAL
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9
JEFFERY CHARLES HENRY
PEACOCK
ZACHARY FORMWALT
(Dave Smith b.1972; Thom Winterburn b.1970,
live and work in the UK)
SCABS
(2014) Pencil on Arches Aquarelle paper, frames,
trestle-tables, MDF drawing boards, vinyl sheets, work
lamps, printouts on 180gsm matt paper). Courtesy of
the Artists.
22
Scabs revolves around a reproduction of Courbet’s
1849 painting of the Stonebreakers. The reproduction
consists of two figures, just under life-size, on a dirt road
set against a dark hillside. A limestone crag (reminiscent
of Malham Cove, Yorkshire) juts out from the forested
hillside. The sun is bright and it appears hot. The older
man is bent on one knee that is protected by a straw
bundle and raises his hammer to break a rock. The
younger man is carrying a wicker hod filled with the
smaller finished broken rocks. We assume this stone
aggregate is used as a filling and drainage material for
the road. From the full-size reproduction we can see
that the clothes of the figures have been worked with
particular attention, more so than the flesh that they
cover. The trousers of the older man appear stiff. It’s
hard to know whether it is the quality and weight of the
material, rather than the ground-in dirt and sweat like
the unwashed denims of a Hells Angel. The clothing
also has the appearance of a stone carved low relief.
Both of the figures faces are obscured; one by the shade
of his hat, the other by his turning to a lost profile.
Clogs and shoes predominate the foreground. With
this the artists ask “Is this a good enough description
of our reproduction?” Exhibited alongside the Courbet
reproduction investigation are a series of posters
containing images and statements. Each declaration
airs cynicisms and predicaments, and finally surrenders
to the ritual of exhibiting in order to take it to task.
BIO
Jeffrey Charles Henry Peacock is the sole collective practice
of Dave Smith (based in Holbrook, Derbyshire) and Thom
Winterburn (based in London). JCHP Have exhibited at the
Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Swiss Institute, New
York USA; Free Museum of Dallas, Texas USA; Lanchester
Gallery Projects, Coventry UK. Their book ‘Critical Décor: What
Works…’ will be distributed through Lanchester Gallery Projects
and Banner Repeater, London UK in May 2014.
(b. 1979, lives and works in Amsterdam)
IN LIGHT OF THE ARC
(2013) Double-channel video installation with sound,
30 min. looped. Courtesy of the Artist.
In Light of the Arc goes inside Shenzhen’s future stock
exchange, once inside, a series of relations appear
between the material infrastructure required by today’s
financial system and the surface of exchange that
results from this infrastructure. While today’s markets
are touted as pure arenas for efficient price formation,
the work suggests that these prices are but one side
of the equation. The material underbelly cannot be
made to disappear simply through the abstraction
of an economics that has become obsessed with an
efficiency measured through abstract notions such as
liquidity and risk, terms which have themselves been
reduced to a technical language that avoids any
reference to the meaning which they have outside of
this discipline. In Light of the Arc proceeds by way
of other images, the construction of which is never
entirely complete. These incomplete images attempt
to capture a process of materialization in a place that
will soon be driven by dematerialization. The film is
split between two screens positioned opposite each
other and projected from the same angle that the
shots were originally taken from. The familiar tapering
of the building facade as it stretches upward is here
corrected by the angle of the projection, so that the
building remains the same width at both the top and
bottom. It is what would be seen from an ideal point
where the facade would not be affected by perspectival
space, an ideal view that is only achieved through a
severe distortion of all that surrounds it. Supported by
Mondriaan Fund.
BIO
Zachary Formwalt was born Albany, Georgia (USA) and
has been living and working in Amsterdam since 2008.
He has presented solo projects at VOX Centre de l’image
contemporaine, Montreal (2013); KIOSK, Ghent (2013); AR/
GE Kunst, Bolzano (2011); Casco—Office for Art, Design and
Theory,Utrecht (2010); Wexner Center for the Arts: The Box,
Columbus, OH (2010); Kunsthalle Basel (2009). In 2013, his
film, Unsupported Transit, was awarded a Tiger Award for Short
Films at the IFFR and the Dialogpreis at EMAF.
2014 AGITATIONISM
VENUE KERRY GROUP - FORMER GOLDEN VALE MILK PLANT
10
PRANEET SOI
(b.1971, live and works in Kolkata, West Bengal and
Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
SRINAGAR
(2014) mixed media installation, slide-projection,
Papier Mache tiles 3m/3m, Papier Mache Disc 1.2 m,
Chalkboard Texts and images. Courtesy of the Artist.
Supported by Outset England and Outset Netherlands
as part of the International Production Fund.
Important notice: Praneet Soi’s installation for EVA
International 2014 is staged and unfolds over time and
in layers, allowing for his immersions in Kashmir to
articulate an emergent and experimental narrative.
The artist first visited the Kashmir valley (Srinagar) in
the Christmas of 2010, in the aftermath of what had
been a particularly violent summer. Between May and
September 2010 more than a hundred people lost their
lives in the valley and innumerable others were injured
by stone pelting and aggressive policing by civilians
and the armed forces respectively. A staged encounter
between armed forces and militants had been brought
to light and sparked huge unrest. For Eva International
2014 Soi will be working with artisans that he had met
over his first visit to create a 4/4m patterned tile and
a patterned disc in papier mache, a technology that
enters the country with the arrival of Sufism from Iran.
The saint Bul Bul Shah is attributed to having converted
the Buddhist ruler, Rinchen Shah, to Islam in the 1300’s
and laid the foundation of a secular Sufi culture in
Kashmir. On the surrounding wall Soi will be creating a
series of texts that he will over time inscribe with images
that he has accumulated within Srinagar, the Kashmir
valley. The use of image distortions of anamorphosis will
be explored as a means to articulate a parallel narrative.
Finally, the slideshow explores the working of ancient
patterns within the architecture of the city. It is an essay
that articulates the acts of fragmentation and alienation
that allow for the formation of motifs.
BIO
Praneet Soi’s work spans a wide range of media including
painting, drawing, collage, text, slide-shows and performancelectures. Literature and film have influenced his work and
narratives. Soi’s exploration of media imagery led him to
experiment with fragmentations and distortions of the human
body and the environment around him. The fragmentation
of the land through the enforcement of borders finds, to Soi,
a parallel in the way motifs are constructed. He is currently
working to create a body of work on the subject of labour
using documentation of small one-man workshops in North
Kolkata that he has collected over the past four years. Soi
has participated in the 7th Gwangju Biennale in 2008,
and in 2011the first curated Indian National Pavilion at the
54th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia in
2011 amongst other venues. A monograph on his work was
published by Distanz Verlag in 2011.
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RANA HAMADEH
(b. 1983, lives and works in Rotterdam)
HUSSEIN MINNI WA ANA MIN HUSSEIN
(HUSSEIN IS OF ME AND I AM OF HUSSEIN)
(2014) Framed pencil on paper drawings. Courtesy of
the Artist.
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This is a new episode of Hamadeh’s ongoing umbrella
project, ‘Alien Encounters’, which is a multi-faceted
research project that thinks through the conjunctions
of the legal and the spatial. It is the first stage of
a series of works that attempt to deconstruct the
theatrical components that constitute the phenomenon
of ‘Ashura’, taking the political, military and legal
actualization of this theatrical phenomenon within the
Lebanese and Syrian contexts as a field for commentary
and research. Although ‘Ashura’ is a particularly Shiite
phenomenon during which tens of thousands of men,
women and children take to the streets to re-enact
the historical battle of Karbala in commemoration
of the slaying of Imam Al Hussein (a highly regarded
political/religious figure for Shiite Muslims and an
allegorical reference to the promise of a coming
justice), the artist sees this phenomenon as a structural
dramaturgical framework that paradoxically underlies
the entire politics of oppression in Syria, primarily based
upon minoritarian resurrective ideologies. For EVA
International 2014, Hamadeh presents a series of new
drawings whose protagonist is a theatrical-auditory
script. Departing from a claim that regards justice
as the extent to which one can access the dramatic
means of representation – the measure to which one
can access theater – the drawings propose a detour: a
side-entrance to the notion of justice and its workings
through the suspension of the theatrical on one side
and through its intensification on the other. How is it
possible, then, through such a detour, to script justice?
To rehearse it, orate it, narrate it, prop it, choreograph it,
scenograph it or even spectate justice? Supported by
Mondriaan Fund.
BIO
Rana Hamadeh is a performance and visual artist from Beirut,
Lebanon currently based in the Netherlands. Interested in a
curatorial approach within her artistic practice, she works on
long term discursive research-based projects that function
as umbrellas to series of performance, choreographic,
cartographic and writing projects. Her works constantly
question the boundaries, mechanisms, thresholds and
authority of meaning production, and are concerned
with processes of shifting and queering the conditions of
spectatorship. Selected exhibitions include presentations at
KIOSK (solo, 2014), Riga Art Space (2014), Lyon Biennale, The
Lisson Gallery and Beirut in Cairo (2013), Van Abbemuseum
(2011/2008), Beirut Art Center (2010), and The New Museum
(2009). She graduated in 2009 with an MFA from the Dutch
Art Institute/ ArtEZ Instiute of the Arts, and is currently
auditing within the Curatorial Knowledge PhD programme at
Goldsmiths University, London.
2014 AGITATIONISM
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HASSAN KHAN
PATRICK JOLLEY
THE DEAD DOG SPEAKS
(2010) Colour animation, 4 min. 2 sec. looped.
STUFFEDPIGFOLLIES
(2007) Six inkjet prints on paper.
Courtesy of the Artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel.
THIS MONKEY
(2009) Digital video transferred from 16mm film
original, 7 min. Courtesy of The Patrick Jolley Estate.
(b. 1975, lives and works in Cairo, Egypt)
In the dubbed digital animation “the dead dog speaks”
three figures; based upon the artist’s mother, Tokyo
the dead family dog of his childhood, and the face of
Youssef Shaaban an Egyptian Film and TV actor who
in the 80s and 90s epitomized Egyptian machismo
(whether playing the roles of evil or good characters),
are engaged in an absurd conversation that revolves
around their relation to each other. Each sentence is
uttered in a different voice, thus further enhancing the
operation in which a character is emptied out and word
flows automated, gaining and losing meaning in relation
to the context it is put in. “stuffedpigfollies” are six
20x25 inkjet prints on Canson paper, they are digital
drawings of cartoon like pigs in different paranoid
states. Each drawing is accompanied by a sentence
written in a font designed by the artist. The piece
takes a generic anthropomorphic figure that of the
pig, and makes it speak of the very conditions of the
construction of a persona. Both works find forms to
engage with what might lie at the heart of human self
identification- a moment of possession and loss.
BIO
Hassan Khan is an artist, musician, and writer. Recent
exhibitions include: The Unrest of Forms, Secession, Vienna,
2013; Hassan Khan, SALT, Istanbul, 2012; Documenta 13,
Kassel, 2012; Intense Proximity, Paris Triennial, 2012; and
The Ungovernables, New Museum Triennial, New Museum,
New York, 2012. Most recently for the Nuit Blanche Festival
Khan premiered Composition for a Public Park a large-scale
multichannel music and lights installation at the Parc du
Belleville in Paris. His publications include The Agreement
(2011) and Nine Lessons Learned from Sherif El Azma (2009).
(1964 – 2012, born in N. Ireland)
This Monkey, filmed over a number of months in the
Delhi area, confronts the spectator with a disturbing
image of man’s close relative, the rhesus monkey.
Through long tradition, these semi-wild animals have
co-existed with their handlers, providing delight to
spectators. Jolley exploits the sense of biological
kinship that these simian creatures elicit in us, and
his film owes much of its evocative power to the
revulsion we feel at being suddenly confronted by
unexpected and unpredictable violence. This power
is compounded by the absence of language, which
might offer mitigation or a means of placing the event
into a context. Patrick Jolley’s work spanned film,
photography and installation. He was profoundly
interested in the ordinary and its proximity to the horrific
and in how little can be done to stop the one turning into
the other. Like Beckett, he saw acceptance and
humour as tools to be used to survive life—even to
enjoy it. He did not believe in the possibility of escape,
or rather he saw all attempts at escape as doomed
to failure and therefore not worth the candle. Neither
explanation nor comfort formed any part of his
repertoire. The influence of Eastern European and
Russian literature are clear; also the tragic and bloody
history of the twentieth century. Jolley passed away in
India in early 2012.
BIO
Patrick Jolley was born in Co. Down and had lived in Ireland,
London, New York and Berlin. He had been living in Co.
Meath until his sudden death on January 15, 2012. Recent
exhibitions include a solo show at Limerick City Gallery, and
group exhibitions at ‘EXPO 1: New York’, PS1 MOMA, New York,
‘Unsafe Spaces in Contemporary Art’, Kunstmuseum Bonn,
‘Prelude Speaker: Contemporary Castletown’, Co. Kildare and
‘9 + 1 Ways of Being Political’, MOMA, New York. Institutions
and that exhibited his work include the TATE, London, the
Pompidou Centre, Paris, the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid,
the Irish Museum of Modern Art and PS1 MOMA, New York.
His work has been included in the São Paulo Biennial, Brazil,
the Gwangzhou Triennial, the Berlin Biennial and Dublin
Contemporary. His work is in the permanent collection of the
MOMA, New York, NBK, Berlin, and IMMA, Dublin. His work has
had extensive screening at international film festivals, including
the Sundance Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival and Kassel
Documentary Festival.
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SOFIE LOSCHER
(b.1987, lives and works in Dublin)
BENJAMIN DE BURCA &
BÁRBARA WAGNER
WAITING IN THE WINGS
(2013) Glass, lights, brackets. Courtesy of the Artist.
(de Búrca b.1975, Wagner b.1980, live between Berlin,
Galway and Recife)
Sofie Loscher is an installation artist and sculptor
working at an intersection between art and physics.
She is interested in the physical properties of the natural
world and in human perception.Her work explores
perception as a sensory experience. She creates
illusionary constructs as a tool for exploring visibility,
redirecting the viewer’s attention away from the object
and towards the process of perception. The work shown
here for EVA 2014 is titled Waiting in the Wings and
like some of the artists other works is a conceptual
manifestation derived from an eighteenth century
theatrical technique called Pepper’s Ghost which was
used to create ghosts on stage. In Waiting in the wings,
the illusion sees unwired bulbs become illuminated by
reflection. Loscher uses the glass to replicate light from
one bulb to another creating a double reality, obscuring
the line between the existing and the unreal.
BIO
Sofie Loscher holds an MFA in Sculpture from the National
College of Art and Design, Dublin and a BA in Visual Arts
Practice from Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and
Technology. Recent projects include a site-specific commission
in Killruddery House, Wicklow; solo exhibitions in Tactic
Gallery, Cork and Monster Truck Gallery, Dublin, and a one-year
studio residency in UCD School of Physics. She is currently
undertaking a public art commission for the Lyric Theatre,
Belfast.
EDIFICE RECIFE
(2013) Inkjet print on Hahnemuhle paper, 120 framed
images and texts. Courtesy of the Artists.
Edifice Recife identifies the relationship between social
status and taste embodied in the architecture and
urban planning of the city of Recife, in the Northeast
of Brazil. There, an ideal of modernity was materialised
by law in 1961 making mandatory the placement of
three-dimensional artworks at the front of residential
edifices to be constructed over 1,000 square meters, for
which only local artists should be commissioned. From
the 60s to the 80s, these works - mostly sculptures
- were made by recognised artists of a modernist
tradition. Since the 90s - as private investments
gradually influenced changes in this law in order to
speed up the completion of real estate projects – the
construction companies began producing these
artworks themselves. Usually positioned near to the
security cabins of the condominiums, these pieces are
subjected to continuous observation and conservation
by the porters who guard these sites. Edifice Recife
consists of 60 colour photographs of these sculptures
paired with 60 texts by the porters describing their
relationship to the artworks they share their space
with. While the photographs give an account of the
eclecticism adopted by modernist art and architecture
in the Northeast of Brazil until the recent real-estate
boom years, the porters’ text depict the position of
individuals from an emerging class on an art form
traditionally made for consumption of an ‘educated’
elite. Edifice Recife overviews a new aesthetic
prescribed by a developing economy, uncovering
contradictions of a social fabric where elements of
colonial servility remain evident.
BIO
In their collaborative practice, Benjamin de Búrca and Bárbara
Wagner work in the space between the documentary and art,
making use of familiar narrative forms such as: interviews,
surveys, collection and display of accepted forms of visual
production. They aim to bring diverse and contradictory
elements of reality to an equal level of presentation, destabilising
embedded hierarchies of knowledge. Working together since
2011, they have participated in exhibitions at the Grimmuseum
(Berlin), Museu de Arte Moderna MAM-SP (São Paulo) and 4th
Biennale des Arts Actuéls (La Réunion). In 2014 they will show at
Centro Cultural Helio Oiticica (Rio de Janeiro) and produce their
first documentary based short film, which addresses tradition,
pop culture and consumerism in the Northeast of Brazil.
2014 AGITATIONISM
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CARLA ZACCAGNINI
(b. 1973, lives and works in Sao Paulo)
NILBAR GÜREŞ
(b. 1977, lives and works in Istanbul and Vienna)
EVIDÊNCIAS DE UMA FARSA / EVIDENCES OF A FARCE
(2011) Framed magazines and video montage, 2 min.
34 sec. Courtesy of the Artist and Galeria Vermelho
OPEN PHONE BOOTH / IDENTITY
(2011) Framed colour photographs and video, please
see wall text for individual titles. Courtesy of the Artist,
Rampa, Istanbul and Martin Janda, Vienna.
The Video:
FIRST MINUTES FROM “SALUDOS AMIGOS!”
(DISNEY STUDIOS, 1942) AND EXCERPT FROM “RIO” (20TH
CENTURY FOX / BLUE SKY STUDIOS, 2011)
The Two Magazines:
‘Tbc defgc hi hjbk dglmn c g13.02.1956 AND ‘THE ECONOMIST’
MAGAZINE FROM 14.11.2009
Evidências de uma farsa / Evidences of a Farce is a
project initiated in 2011 and still under development.
It intends to bring together a collection of diptychs,
which pair elements from two different time frames,
both dealing with the international image of Brazil.
Each of these diptychs is composed of two elements:
one element from the last two decades, and another
one from the so called período desenvolvimentista
(development era), which coincides with the post war
decades. These objects, photographs, films and other
memorabilia are the symptoms of a geopolitical position
and apprehension of Brazil that can be found
inhabiting our daily contexts and popular standards
of representation. The project started as the result of
research the artist had to undertake to write a text in
2011, she began noticing many similarities between
the image of Brazil that circulated back in the 50s and
60s and the one that is being produced and publicized
in recent years. In the chapter of the project exhibited
here, Zaccagnini has brought together two magazine
covers and two animation films, from the past and
present. The artist is currently researching the past and
present image of Brazil in relation to the World Cup,
Miss Universe and modern art museums.
BIO
Carla Zaccagnini is an Argentinean artist, living and working
in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her work is often concerned with the
fallibility of perception and she has created many works
which are deliberately disconcerting and require the viewer to
decode what may be happening. Zaccagnini often works on
site-specific installations or in projects carried out as part of
residencies in which she reflects on the place, language, ways
of relating and the editing formats of the work itself. Recent
works have found the artist making private and intimate use
of language, concerning herself with notions of displacement
of meaning. Her recent exhibitions include the Lisbon
Architecture Triennial (2013), Fotografisk Center, Copenhagen
(2013), 9th Shanghai Biennale, China (2012), and the 28th São
Paulo Biennial (2008).
Nilbar Güreş works with her family and friends; people
whose stories she knows well. Her work focuses on
the gap between the image that a state popularizes of
itself and the surge of global changes that render state
apparatuses at odds with the realities of daily life. In her
project Open Phone Booth produced while on visits to
her father’s birthplace, a Kurdish and Alevi (an ethnoreligious minority in Turkey) village in the East Anatolia
region of Turkey, she investigates how questions around
infrastructure can be translated into forms of visual
narration that can hold critical potential. One of the most
drastic changes in the lives of the village’s inhabitants
has been the advent of communication technologies. A
telephone network was introduced during the 70s but
villagers had to go to the village’s chief to make phone
calls through his office line. Although a phone network
was promised and the villagers paid the required fees,
the village still remains without a telephone network.
Fast-forward into the digital age, and, while the mobile
phone means increased connectivity and mobility, in
this village it means climbing up hills in order to catch
very weak signals and make necessary calls. The
very short video Identity is an extension to the Open
Phone Booth series capturing the burden of the term
and a desire to surpass it while being grounded in its
consequences.
BIO
Nilbar Güreş received a BA degree in Painting from the Faculty
of Fine Arts, Marmara University, İstanbul, then a MA degree
in Painting & Graphics from the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.
Recent exhibitions include; “An Inspiration of History”, Palais
De Tokyo, Paris (2013); “Signs Taken in Wonder”, MAK, Vienna
(2013); “Rosa Arbeit auf Goldener Strasse”, Akademie des
Bildener Kunste Wien (2012); “What is Waiting Out There”,
6th Berlin Biennial (2010); “Where Do We Go From Here?”,
Secession Vienna (2010), “What Keeps Human Kind Alive?”,
11th International İstanbul Biennial, (2009) and the travelling
exhibition “Tactics of Invisibility”. Selected solo shows are;
“Self-Defloration”, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (2011); “Nilbar Güreş”,
Rampa, Istanbul (2011), “Nilbar Güreş”, Iniva, London (2010-11);
“Unknown Sports; Indoor Exercises”, Salzburger Kunstverein
(2009). In 2012, she completed a residency at the International
Studio & Curatorial Program in NYC supported by the Austrian
Government.
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SEAMUS NOLAN
JACQUELINE DOYEN
TARZAN TRAINING CAMP
(2014) Slideshow projection based on the actual
training camp. Courtesy of the Artist.
MODEL 3107
(2013) Installation with staged performance. Courtesy
of the Artist.
The inaugural Tarzan Training Camp took place in April
at Pery Square (the people’s park) Limerick City, as part
of EVA 2014. This one day training camp devised by
artist Seamus Nolan offered the opportunity to explore
a unique and personal perspective in experiencing,
managing and negotiating local landscape and
environment. Taking place in Pery Square and the
education room of the Limerick City Gallery of Art,
the workshops addressed the topics of landscape
(permacultural orientation within our environment), food
(locating foraging and preparing food in the wild),
movement (bird, animal, and human patterns of
movement in the landscape), and voice, marking
the boundaries of landscape and territory through
vocalisations. They were all devised as a set of
instructions towards locating the participants inner
Tarzan, a series of exercises to orientate ourselves
within our environment, to recognize what our resources
are and how to use them, explore movement in relation
to the natural world and digging deep to release our
primitive cries out over the landscape of the city. This
slideshow documents and reflects on the first training
campwhile the well known Tarzan yell is activated on the
hour through the exhibition space. With support from
ACA, Askeaton Contemporary Arts.
Jacqueline Doyen is a French artist currently based in
Berlin. Her work focuses on the connection between the
body and image-making. Her industrially manufactured
objects uncannily recall medical appliances, theatrical
props, or sport apparatuses. They exist as sculptural
installations as well as usable appliances for staged
performances. In both their extreme uncomfortableness
and beauty, they extend the imagination, bringing it
to the relationship we have with our bodies in a wider
socio-political framework. These works investigate
the potential to physically re-enact, or mentally
explore the sculptural dimension of the human body.
Each of her works necessitates a specific pose to be
performed and sustained. The poses each indicate
particular relationships with the body that are linked
to history, culture, the environment, and sometimes
history. For EVA 2014 Doyen is showing her work
Model 3107. It references the famous posture of the
British model Christine Keeler in Lewis Morley’s 1963
photograph, which although not visible in the exhibition,
is made apparent through the work’s materiality,
the performance on opening night, and the staged
photograph taken of the performance. In Morley’s
original photo Keeler was portrayed sitting on a copy of
Arne Jacobsen’s Serie 7, Model 3107, the chair inspired
the title of this work by Doyen. Supported by the French
Embassy in Ireland.
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BIO
Seamus Nolan adopts a methodology of ‘formal repositioning’
to reflect the nature of the institutions under which he operates.
Recent work includes “10th President” at Templebar Gallery
and Studios Dublin, a project which proposed the President
of Ireland temporarily hand over office, “Newtopia, the state of
human rights” Mechelen, Belgium, “The Trades Club Revival”
which saw the revival of the traditional working man’s club in
Sligo. Another project attempted to hijack a Ryan air flight
(Flight NM7104) for “Terminal Convention Cork”, and another
was the refusal to participate Ireland’s recent international
art event Dublin Contemporary 2011. Other works include
‘every action will be judged on the particular circumstances’ a
collaboration with the 5 peace activists acquitted for disarming
a military aircraft in Shannon Airport, as well as “Hotel
Ballymun” which saw the transformation of a residential tower
block on the outskirts of the city into a boutique hotel.
(b. 1978, lives and works in Berlin)
BIO
Jacqueline Doyen graduated from the Villa Arson in Nice (FR)
and the ‘Hochschule für Bildende Künste’ in Braunschweig
(DE). Selected exhibitions include, ‘Show Time’(group show)
at GI Holtegaard Kunsthall (DK), ‘Eclipse’(solo) at Kunstverein
Wolfsburg (DE) and at Kunsthalle Lingen (DE), ‘So near the
garden but still miles away’(group show) at Galleria 1/9,
Rome (IT) and ‘Jacqueline Doyen and Claudia Kapp’(two artist
exhibition) at the Kunstverein Hannover (DE).
2014 AGITATIONISM
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CATALINA NICULESCU
NEŠA PARIPOVIĆ
GUEST
(2008) HD video, looped, 4 min. 10 sec.
N.P. 1977
(1977) Film transferred to DVD. 22 min. Colour, no
sound. Courtesy of Kontakt, the Art Collection of Erste
Group and ERSTE Foundation.
(b.1978, lives and works in London)
The video Guest captures the repeated, inexhaustible
climbing of a variety of urban barriers. These civic
obstacles vary significantly in scale and purpose from
the elaborate and yet exclusory ornamentation of the
palace gates to temporary metal crowd control barriers.
Although the video is looped it is the internal loop
located in the editing of live episodes that structures the
work. The performed action is obstinately repeated over
and over again as Niculescu hurriedly enters the
frame and begins to climb the obstacles in front of
her, some are loaded with notions of exclusivity and
authority while others are blatantly self-imposed
barriers. Significantly the artist is always prevented from
a successful assent by her own editing that refuses to
allow what would seem to be the successful conclusion
of the task. This suggests that we have missed
something of importance. What that something is, or
what it means, opens the work up to a variety of possible
readings from the comic to the disturbing; from the
political to the deeply personal while it simultaneously
manages to frustrate a definite interpretation.
BIO
Catalina Niculescu is a Romanian born German artist based in
London, who works with moving image, performance, collage
and photography. She studied at the Academy of Art and Design
in Offenbach, Germany, and the Slade School of Art, University
College London. Niculescu’s work has been exhibited in various
galleries and institutions across Europe and the USA, her films
were screened at the BFI London Film Festival, Stuttgarter Film
Winter, South London Gallery and Milton Keynes Gallery. She
uses architectural structures as instruments for exploring human
activities, the current transformation of our natural environment
and the evolution of urban habitats. Her more recent works draw
upon architecture’s relationship to its natural environment, its
integration into urban systems and juxtapositions with the local
vernacular. Projects include Along the Lines (Romania/UK 2011),
Second in Space (USA/UK 2012) and Present Perfect
(JP/UK 2013).
(b.1942, in Belgrade, Serbia, lives and works there)
N.P. 1977 is a film about a summer walk through
Belgrade. In a way it´s a self-portrait of the artist who
plays the main protagonist in the film. The film’s title
refers to the artist’s initials and the year in which it
was made. The artist/protagonist is dressed for the
occasion. He moves through town like someone with
a purpose who knows his way, who´s on his way to
something exciting, who´s in a bit of a hurry, like
someone who has the urgency of taking a short cut.
But this short cut is slightly absurd and probably not
a short cut at all, as we see him jump over fences,
stroll over playgrounds and streets and climb over
walls and roofs. N.P. 1977 draws a line through the
city, from the outskirts and through the centre, as the
protagonist passes by suburbs, backyards and well off
neighbourhoods in what is also a portrait of Belgrade
at the time. But this line through Belgrade is only in
the mind of the viewer. In fact the film has no clear
logic or narrative besides the constant movement of
its protagonist. He disappears around a corner only to
reappear through a hole in a wall in a different part of
town. We follow him while he moves in what is actually
not a line at all, but a labyrinth, where there is no
beginning and no end.
BIO
Neša Paripović is one of the most influential artists within
conceptual art in Serbia. He was part of a group of young artists
that emerged around the Student Culture Centre, founded
in Belgrade in 1971. Together with, among others, Marina
Abramović and Raša Todosijević, he was one the advocates
for the”new artistic practice”, a critical and political movement
which in the wake of the student protests of 1968 opposed the
old modernism dominating the scene in Yugoslavia at the time.
He works in a variety of media such as photography, film, objects
and painting. His performances are done for the camera, not in
front of an audience, and he features himself as the actor.
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ELIZABETH PRICE
NICOLINE VAN HARSKAMP
THE TENT
(2012) HD video installation, 15 min. Courtesy of
the Artist and MOT INTERNATIONAL London and
Brussels.
YOURS IN SOLIDARITY
(2013) HD video projection and archival documents,
53 min. 22 sec. Courtesy of the Artist and D+T
Projects, Brussels.
The Tent is derived from a single book, “Systems”
(1972–3). The book is the video’s primary visual subject
and its text is the source for the narration. Indeed most
aspects of the video, including the melodic soundtrack,
have been derived from the properties of this book.
The only elements not generated in this way disclose
the production of the video itself. The copy-stand on
which the book is filmed is occasionally visible, as are
Price’s hands turning the pages; and the live-sound of
the studio in which the video was recorded is audible:
the radio can be heard, passing traffic, planes overhead.
Published by the Arts Council, Systems surveys the
work of artists associated with the 1970s British
Systems Group: reductive, predominantly abstract art
generated using system theories. It features drawings,
documentation and essays by each of the artists. The
proposition of the video is to formulate the book as a
kind of space, an ideological and imaginative enclosure
expressed as a futuristic tent – and the book’s content is
employed to narrate a fiction regarding the erection and
attempted inhabitation of that tent. Drawing on spacefiction genres the narrative responds to the recurrent
themes of the book: apocalyptic anxiety and futurological
urgency, idealised relations between social and aesthetic
economies, and artistic production as intense, hermetic
refuge. The ideograph of the tent - the video’s central
motif - is derived from James Moyes’ Vibration Tent
(1972), proposed in “Systems” as an environment
intended for the intense, reductive experience of extreme
white light and white noise. Price’s work responds to
Moyes’ proposal: the sculptural and audiovisual elements
of the installation combine to create an enclosure for this
sensual andpsychological experience.
In Yours in Solidarity, Nicoline van Harskamp addresses
the recent history of anarchism through the correspondence archive of Karl Max Kreuger. From 1988 until
1999, the late Dutch anarchist corresponded by post
with hundreds of like-minded people worldwide. As one
of these letter writers herself, van Harskamp studied the
archive for more than a year and tried to imagine the
many proponents’ life stories since the last date of writing.
She chose especially captivating correspondents,
gave them a pseudonym, collected notes on them
and produced their personality reports through an
online handwriting analysis program. She then cast
professional actors for each writer, with the relevant
nationality and estimated current age, to work with her,
one at the time, on creating a character with a biography
and set of views detailed enough to conduct an
interview. The first half of the project is a comprehensive
archive of van Harskamp’s notes, as well as audio- and
video documentation of the working sessions with the
actors. From transcribed conversations with the new
‘characters’, van Harskamp compiled the script for a
fictional work which forms the second half in which she
lets a number of anarchists elaborate on the history
and future of the movement in a fully scripted anarchist
gathering. The resulting video installation, named after
a much-used anarchist sign-off, suggests what might
happen if the international correspondents were to meet
today. Supported by Mondriaan Fund.
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BIO
Elizabeth Price is an artist who uses digital and reprographic
media to explore existing art and design objects, collections
and archives. In 2012 Price was awarded the Turner Prize for
her solo exhibition ‘HERE’ at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary
Art, Gateshead. She was featured in the British Art Show 7: In
the Days of the Comet (touring 2010 - 2011), and has recently
had work presented at Bloomberg International and Chisenhale
Gallery, London; The Stedelijk, Amsterdam, and the Musée
d’art Contemporain de Montréal. Price lives and works in
London.
(b. 1975, lives and works in Amsterdam)
BIO
Van Harskamp’s project ‘Yours in Solidarity’ (2010-2013),
addressing the very recent history of anarchism, was presented
in different stages of completion at the Gothenburg Biennial
2013, MUAC in Mexico City, the Frankfurter Kunstverein,
Manifesta 9 in Genk, the Shanghai Biennial 2012, and
elsewhere. Her performance series in progress, ‘English
Forecast’ (2012-ongoing), about the nature of the English
language used among non-native speakers has so far been
presented at Tate Modern in London, IASPIS in Stockholm and
Stroom in Den Haag. Other works were presented at Performa
11 in New York, the Bucharest Biennial 2010, and the Van
Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. Van Harskamp has staged her live
pieces at Witte de With in Rotterdam, the New Museum in New
York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Serralves
Foundation in Porto. In 2009 she won the Dutch national prize
for contemporary art, Prix de Rome. Van Harskamp is a head
lecturer at the Sandberg Fine Arts Institute, Amsterdam.
2014 AGITATIONISM
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MARTÍ ANSON
(b. 1967, lives and works in Mataró, Cataluña)
MATARÓ: LABORATORY OF SPAIN
(2014) Wooden structure with billboard, framed postcards and other details). Courtesy of the Artist.
Mataró: Laboratory of Spain started when a large neon
sign for the artist’s hometown bank, Caixa Laietana, was
suddenly removed. The Caixa Laietana billboard had
stood atop the highest building in Mataró for decades
and for as long as the artist could remember. It lit up the
city’s skyline at night and was ever-present from almost
all angles of this small city. In the words of the artist “It
should be mentioned that Mataró was never perceived
without that big neon sign, it became part of how we
related to our town, it presided over our streets, our
beaches, etc. it also had a built-in thermometer telling
us the temperature!” Mataró: Laboratory of Spain is
a project about how signifiers of capitalism become
part of our identity, leaving us unsettled if they ever
disappear. Mataró’s bank Caixa Laietana was on verge
of bankruptcy and was purchased by the powerful bank
‘Bankia’, the billboard was taken down in 2013. Anson
managed to obtain a collection of original Mataró tourist
postcards from the 70s to 2013. Through this collection
we see how the neon billboard was always visible and
an integral part of the city’s landscape and finally we
witness its disappearance in 2013. The collection is
housed inside an outdoor construction that represents
the partial framework of the Caixa Laietana billboard,
with its signage and thermometer. The Limerick Caixa
Laietana billboard is set against Limerick’s cityscape
as a background, making it a perfect postcard image,
a displaced billboard for an ever changing world.
Supported by Acción Cultural Española, AC/E.
BIO
Since receiving his degree in Fine Arts, Martí Anson has been
an architect (Bon dia, Sala Montcada, “La Caixa” Foundation,
1999/2000, and L’Apartament, Galeria Toni Tapies, 2002);
a footballer (L’angoixa del porter al penalt, Iconoscope,
Montpellier, 2001); a film director (Walt & Travis, 2003,
produced at the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio, USA); a
boat builder (Fitzcarraldo, 55 dies treballant en la construcció
d’un veler Stela 34 al Centre d’Art Santa Mònica, 2004/2005);
an art thief (Mataró/Montreal, Circa Gallerie de Montreal,
2006); a house builder in a project he devised to make a
replica of a building in the United States to help conserve local
heritage (Martí and the flour Factory, Lucky number 7, SITE
Santa Fe Biennale,2008); he is also involved in a project to
rescue the furniture designs that his father developed in the
60s (‘Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels
Modernes & des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne’,
Meessen de Clerq Gallery, Brussels 2011). In June 2013 he
worked as an architect claiming some architecture from the
60s which remained anonymous and building a precise replica
of a house 1/1 at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. (Catalan Pavilion,
Anonymous architect, Palais de Tokyo, 2013).
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HUMBERTO VÉLEZ
GARRETT PHELAN
THE UNDERDOG (EVA INTERNATIONAL CUP 2014)
(2014) Short video loop with sound.
… THAT TENSE EXPECTATION …
(2014) Ink drawings, animation, zine, and various
branding manifestations. Courtesy of the Artist.
(b. 1965, lives and works in Manchester and Panama
City)
Please see works under Limerick Greyhound Stadium
for further details, p.41.
This is a video work in relation to the collaborative
performance project at the Limerick Greyhound
Stadium on 12 April it will be filmed live and installed by
14 April.
The video captures the intensity and speed of a
greyhound race, but it is not your usual greyhound race,
it’s the EVA International Cup race, and its commentary
is extraordinary! Supported by Limerick City of Culture
2014.
32
… THAT TENSE EXPECTATION … is a commissioned
work by EVA International 2014. The project is the
integration of the artist’s practice into the identity output
for EVA International 2014 – the Biennial brand. From
advertisements publicizing the Biennial to drawings
presented in exhibition form, it constitutes a whole. The
work aims to reflect confusion and disjuncture within
systems of conviction and principles – unknown spaces
or entities. It represents both certainty and true
irrationality or perhaps ultimately the energy used
when trying to rationalise the impossible. The intention
throughout the project is a highlighting of capitulation
to the absolute present tense. Exhibited are various
drawings from the project, a zine, a short animation.
Visitors walking or driving by can also see Phelan’s
slogans on the outside of the former Golden Vale Milk
Plant.
BIO
Garrett Phelan has developed a distinctive art practice that
directly engages the audience with immersive ambitious sitespecific drawing projects, independent FM radio broadcasts,
sculptural installations, photography and animation. He has
exhibited widely in Ireland and internationally, most recently at
the Irish Museum of Modern Art; Proa Fundacion, Buenos Aires,
Argentina; the 11th Lyon Biennial, France; 4th Auckland Triennial,
New Zealand; SMART Project Space, Amsterdam; ICA, London;
Fruit market, Edinburgh; Kunstverein, Hannover; Art Statements,
Basel 39; and Manifesta 5.
2014 AGITATIONISM
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GRRRR (INGO GIEZENDANNER)
WALID SADEK
GRR58
(2014) Drawings, mural, short digital animations.
THE RUIN TO COME
(2013) Plexiglas labels, printed text on paper,
photographs. Courtesy of the Artist.
GRRRR (alias Ingo Giezendanner) seeks inspiration
from urban space, obsessively documenting his location
in detailed drawings, animations, and public murals.
For EVA 2014 GRRRR spent a month in Ireland, he
documented his journey from Zurich to Limerick and
his journeys around the country with drawings in black
ink pen, his signature style. Roaming around the city
of Limerick, he also made many drawings, and out of
these experiences he developed a new multilayered
mural including drawings and screen-based animations.
GRRRR constitutes the idea of artist as traveller, a figure
both on the inside and the outside of a different place,
capturing fleeting material observations about them.
His works are contemporary handmade travelogues that
convey the time it takes to be attentive to detail and the
time of traditional skilled labour, factors that seem to be
incompatible
with how space and place are usually recognized today.
He often revisits the sites of previous travels and allows
his work to develop over time in relation to the different
locations. Supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro
The exhibited works which constitute the installation
titled The Ruin to Come are For when Aeneas bears
Anchises (2010), Would that a survivor (2013) and
A belly of pardons (2013). This installation proposes
a rethinking of the figure of survivor outside the
temporality of the posthumous. When framed as a
posthumous figure, or that which lives on in spite
of its death, the survivor is an impediment to the
reconstruction of society along normative guidelines.
But the persistent conditions of protracted war call for
a re-conceptualization of the figure of the survivor along
another temporal axis. No longer posthumous, the
survivor is not an over-liver but rather a witness who
knows too much carrying an unwelcome but necessary
knowledge. Out of their forced retreat, the nonposthumous survivors search for where their next may
lie; where the continuance of the past in the present
can still find byways to elude the gates of interdiction
and thus begin to build the necessary ruin that only
survivors know how to gather and make. Yet the difficult
question remains as to whether the next of survivors can
amount to a liveable future and not just a mere time to
come during which they are forcibly reintegrated within
social institutions, having been analyzed and given
a place in chronology as a past event.
(b. 1975, lives in Zurich, works while travelling)
BIO
Ingo Giezendanner (aka GRRRR) is based in Zurich Switzerland.
He travels the world and documents his surroundings at place
with pen on paper. These drawings lead to picture books,
murals and animations. He has produced videos for Swiss
television SRF and published artist books with Nieves
(CH) and Ediciones De A Poco (DR). His work has been
exhibited in museums like Kunsthaus Zürich (CH), Kunst Halle
Sankt Gallen (CH), CAB de Burgos (ES), Fondation Van Gogh
Arles (FR), Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (EG) and
Swiss Instiutute (USA). Most of his artistic production
(GRR1-GRR57) is accessible via his webpage: www.GRRRR.net
(b. 1966, lives and works in Beirut, Lebanon)
BIO
Walid Sadek is an artist and writer whose early work investigates
the familial legacies of the Lebanese civil war. He later began to
posit, mostly in theoretical texts, ways of understanding the
complexity of lingering civil strife in times of relative social
and economic stability. His recent written work endeavors to
structure a theory for a post-war society disinclined to resume
normative living. Concomitantly, a number of artworks propose
a poetics for a sociality governed by the logic of a protracted civil
war and search for a critical temporality to challenge that same
protractedness. He is associate professor at the Department of
Architecture and Design at the American University of Beirut.
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METAHAVEN
PAULINE M’BAREK
BLACK TRANSPARENCY
(2013–2014) Various materials, objects, and video.
Courtesy of the Artists.
SHOWCASE
(2012) Installation, 200 x 60 x 1.5 cm.
TROPHY STANDS
(2011) Sculptures, 43 x 92 x 14 cm.
Courtesy of the Artist and Thomas Rehbein Gallery.
Founded by Vinca Kruk (b. Leiden 1980) and Daniel van
der Velden (b. Rotterdam 1971)
34
Metahaven’s recent project Black Transparency is
thematically focused on the internet. The project
explores the political mentality of a densely
interconnected population whose principle instrument
of freedom—the internet—defines at the same time its
ubiquitous subjugation to abstract power. The video
seen here is a manifesto for the current generation
of digital nomads combining footage from austerity
riots in Athens with imagery from popular culture and
images of deserts; spaces which Metahaven view,
metaphorically and literally, as blank canvases for a
more distributed and decentralized network. ‘Black
Transparency’ further comprises a set of proposals for
data hosting in the form of a set of Bedouin tents. Using
the ungoverned territories of “failed states” like Yemen,
these nomadic data centres address possibilities
for a distributed infrastructure, circumventing most
international regulations. Using satellite connections
and solar power, they may appear as quickly as they
disappear. Metahaven have also teamed up with the
fashion designer Conny Groenewegen. Together, they
are creating a series of garments under the title / label
‘Data Stitch’, elements of which you can view in this
installation. The designs process the keffiyeh, or the
“Palestinian scarf” into a new kind of wearable object.
In ‘Data Stitch’, USB flash drives and other data storage
devices are connected to garments making them
physical and personal data centres.
(b. 1979, lives and works in Cologne and Brussels)
Showcase: Especially in ethnological museums, the
showcase functions as the central element of
presentation, in which mainly exotic artefacts are
presented. By means of vitrification and theatrical
illumination, the foreign object is enhanced. At the
same time, the object is deprived of any physical
contact, while the optical framing of the display case
is constructing and disciplining the viewers gaze. The
work ´showcase´ consists of a door-like object with
embedded mirror and glass parts, situated in a corner
lit from both sides. Standing right in front of the object,
at the right distance, a three-dimensional object made
of reflections and shadows unfolds itself forming a
museum showcase. However, the showcase´s inside is
empty - it´s fetish emerges only in the gaze of the
viewer. If the spectator is standing right in the middle of
the light source, his own shadow is projected into the
showcase - just like an ethnological object, one find´s
oneself trapped in the raster. Trophy Stands: A variation
of six different mask stands, which usually can be
found in ethnological museums. Without the presented
masks - whose forms we can imagine - the pointed
metal forks protrude into empty space. If the viewer
is standing directly in front of them, his/her own face
fixed on those metal forks becomes imaginable. If one
looks at the metal forks from the side, the combination
of their shadows on the wall and the forks themselves
resembles a classic chase trophy: a deer antler.
BIO
Metahaven, founded by Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden, is
a research and design studio based in Amsterdam. Metahaven’s
work—both commissioned and self-directed—reflects political
and social issues in collaboratively conceived graphic design
projects, objects, and media. In addition to international
presentation of design and research projects, Metahaven have
published numerous essays such as the three-part “Captives
of the Cloud” series on e-flux journal, “Uncorporate Identity”, a
design anthology for our dystopian age, co-edited with Marina
Vishhmidt (2010) and the e-book “Can Jokes Bring down
Governments?” (2013). The studio was awarded the CoBRA Art
Prize 2013 and the Icon Design Studio of the Year Award 2013 by
Icon magazine, London. Select exhibitions include Islands in the
Cloud, MoMA PS1, New York; Gwangju Design Biennale 2011,
Gwangju, Korea; Graphic Design: Now in Production, Walker Art
Center, Minneapolis, and Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain.
BIO
Pauline M’barek, studied Fine Art in Hamburg and Marseille and
studied new media at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne.
Her work has been presented in several solo exhibitions such
as “Trophies” at Sfeir-Semler Gallery (2011), “Semiophores” at
Thomas Rehbein Gallery (2014) and “the tangible border” at the
Quadriennale 2014. She participated in group exhibitions such
as “The mask needs to have danced” at Marres in Maastricht
(2013), “The Memories Are Present” at Stedelijk Museum
Bureau Amsterdam (2012) and “Chkoun Ahna” in the National
Museum of Carthage, Tunisia (2012).An upcoming project will
be a solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Frankfurt in October 2014.
2014 AGITATIONISM
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MARK O’KELLY
DOA ALY
A SOLAR SYSTEM
(2014) Installation of 10 oil on linen paintings.
H.C.F
(2014) video projection, approx. 5 min. looped.
This installation of paintings presents a way of thinking
about late Argentinean artist Xul Solar’s painting Rua
Ruini. Rua Ruini features the hammer and sickle, the Star
of David, the swastika, the crescent moon, the orthodox
cross, among other loaded signifiers. Painted in 1949,
the watercolor measures 35 by 50 centimeters and
contains a complicated mise-en-scene. In it, four dead
bodies are lying in the street, in a destroyed city. The city
walls bear our improvised lynching gallows and bear the
aforementioned markings of various cultures. A strange
spectral figure witnesses the scene while a zombie
figure looms in the foreground. Etched on one of the
city walls are the figures ‘1939-1945’. O’Kelly painted as
though he was painting over Solar’s painting, replacing
its imagery with images that advance and conflagrate
the desperate vision and prophetic phantasms inherent
in the original work. Conflicting narrative images, cast
from these dystopian themes are applied: demonstration,
deposition and trial, all painted over and sometimes
replaced completely. O’Kelly took all of the original
painting’s component elements apart to re-imagine
its multiple moments frame by frame. In particular the
walls supporting each of the individual ideological signs
in Solar’s work are re-imagined and mapped on the
stretched canvases; the specificity of each individual sign
is reconfigured as an evolving diagonally structured
matrix. This network, which harnesses, marks, explodes
and vanishes, is a visual metaphor for the combined
universality and arbitrary affect of the political/religious
symbol, as if all the signs were written upon one another.
On the 25th of January 2014, hundreds of thousands
of people gathered in Tahrir square to celebrate the 3rd
anniversary of the Egyptian revolution. While the square
only admitted those who were supporters of the army,
state police and hired affiliates were crushing nearby
opposition protests with tear gas and ammunition. The
proximity of the celebrations and the killings led many
writers to call it the day of “death and dance”. Most writing
attributed this frenzy to fear. The notion of fear functioned
as an apology, but also promised a brighter future, once
“fear” subsides. Those who spoke, albeit with passionate
disgust, were still hesitant to address the implications of a
huge crowd acting as one bigoted individual. I started
revisiting Bataille and De Sade’s writings on the 26th.
That day, a journalist started his daily column in AlTahrir newspaper with the words, “Jihadi madness
versus the hysterical choir of the frightened”. Using
words like madness and hysteria, he denied this “mass”,
frightened and hysterical, all responsibility afforded by
self-governance. I’m recreating the Hysterical Choir of the
Frightened’s alter ego - H.C.F. It is unafraid, unapologetic
and accountable. H.C.F portrays a choir of young women
chanting an excerpt from de Sade’s novella “Justine”
(1791). In this passage, de Bressac attempts to convince
Therese of the banality of murder, arguing that murder is
futile, that killing is a necessity to the regenerative forces
of Nature “since it is proven that she cannot reproduce
without destructions.”
(b.1968, lives and works in Dublin and Limerick)
BIO
Mark O’Kelly’s paintings are engaged with the analysis of
mediated images. His work seeks to enable alternative forms of
identification with the image, revealing the mechanisms which
generate notions of coherency, rationality and history; and
harmonize the individual consciousness through mass
social organization. Recent Exhibitions include, Drive time,
The Black Mariah, Cork, 2014; Modern Families, Lewis
Glucksman Gallery, Cork, 2013; Partition, Void, DerryLondonderry, 2013; Periodical Review 2, Pallas Projects, Dublin,
2012/13; EVA International, Limerick, 2012; Last, Douglas
Hyde Gallery, Dublin, 2012; Figure of 8, Kevin Kavanagh
Gallery, Dublin, 2011, (solo); Leaders and Followers, Temple
Bar Gallery, Dublin 2010, (solo); Cinema Impero, and Occupy
Space, Limerick 2010, (solo). O’Kelly is a lecturer in Fine Art at
Limerick School of Art and Design.
(b. 1976, lives and works in Cairo)
BIO
Doa Aly’s practice is informed by the notion of disturbance.
Trained as an academic painter, her videos, drawings, paintings,
and text collages evolve from an acute concern with aberrations
of the human form. She uses an interdisciplinary approach to
explore lust – both physical and mental – as a fundamental
condition of humanity. She samples and merges scientific
principles from psychology and anatomy, in addition to esoteric
strands of thought and literature. Her work is often based on
short stories, epics, myths, and folktales that speak of an
intense struggle between control and consummation. Selected
exhibitions include Meeting Points 6, Beirut Art Center, and
Argos, Brussels, curated by Okwui Enwezor (2011); The Future
of Tradition/The Tradition of Future, Haus Der Kunst,
Munich, curated by Chris Dercon; 7th Busan Biennale (2010);
11th Istanbul Biennial, curated by WHW (2009), and The
Maghreb Connection, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Genève,
curated by Ursula Biemann (2007).
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EVA INTERNATIONAL
THE HUNT
MUSEUM
1
36
BISAN ABU-EISHEH
2
SECOND FLOOR
ANN-SOFI SIDÉN
2014 AGITATIONISM
VENUE THE HUNT MUSEUM
1
2
BISAN ABU-EISHEH
ANN-SOFI SIDÉN
(b.1985, lives and works in London and Jerusalem)
PLAYING HOUSE (BAYT BYOOT)
(2008-2011) mixed media installation. Courtesy of
Coleção Teixeira de Freitas.
Playing House is an installation made up of a collection
of pieces gathered from demolished houses in
Jerusalem. They range from objects utilized in the daily
lives of people, such as pieces of clothing, kitchen
utensils, toys, and CDs, to architectural components
and debris, such as granite, wood, and pipes. For EVA
International 2014 the various pieces are presented at
The Hunt Museum’s Jewellery Room showcases, each
with a label describing its origin (the exact place where
it was found), the demolition date of the house in which
it was found, and the number of people displaced as a
result of demolishing the house. The objects in vitrines
are accompanied by a looped video of the destruction
of a five story building in the Palestinian district of
Beit Hanina, Jerusalem which the artist sourced from
YouTube. Playing House recuperates the bureaucratic
methods of categorization, information gathering, and
archiving used by states to manage, track, and control
human populations, and turns them into tools that
present and identify the brittleness at the core of their
subjects.
BIO
Bisan Abu-Eisheh is an artist and a M.A. candidate at
Central Saint Martins, 2014. He received his B.A. at the
International Academy of Art – Palestine. Selected Group
Exhibitions include: Hiwar “conversations in Amman”, Darat
Al Funon, Amman, Jordan (2013); Points of Departure, ICA
Gallery, London, UK (2013); ‘Arrivals and Departures’, the
Mediterranean exhibition, Ancona, Italy (2012). The Jerusalem
Show on/off Language (2011), and The 12th Istanbul Biennial
(2011). He has performed in several art events including:
Friday Late night at V&A museum, London, UK. Prayers by
Dora Garcia, The Jerusalem Show, Al-Mammal foundation,
Jerusalem (2009). Hello Jerusalem by Hello Earth Danish
group, the Palestinian national theatre, Jerusalem (2009).
Selected Residencies include: Hiwar “Conversations in
Amman” at Darat al Funon Foundation, Amman, Jordan.
(2013). Radio Materiality at Vessel Art Project, Bari, Italy (2013).
Points of Departure at The Delfina Foundation, London (2012).
(b.1962, lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden)
LUNCH TO LAST CALL
(2014) 9 Channel silent video – mixed media
installation, 1 hrs 30 min. Courtesy of the Artist,
Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin, Christine König
Galerie Vienna.
“All these things I saw without then knowing that I saw
them…” C. Dickens
This video installation is the result of a long process.
It traverses the dichotomy of day and night unravelling
it through a cycle of events at Costello’s Tavern, a pub in
Limerick. At the core is the Costello family, interacting
with their elderly regulars coming in for lunch, and later
overseeing the rush of a younger crowd out for some
drinks and fun. A maid scrubs the dance floor, a set
up for a probable but uncertain outcome. Costello‘s
opens when all other pubs are closed. The day-to-night
routines and rituals fluctuate in character and intensity,
modulated by the various age groups and motivations
of the clientele. A small town’s social tensions and
discrepancies rise to the surface. But who are the
protagonists and who is watching? The material is
largely recorded by using the pub’s own surveillance
equipment with a 24 hour cycle, cut and edited into
a 90 minute long, 9-channel, black and white silent
movie. Supported by Iaspis, the Swedish Arts Grants
Committee’s International Program.
BIO
Ann-Sofi Sidén is an artist and a Professor at the Royal Institute
of Art, Stockholm. She studied at Hoch Schule der Kunst,
Berlin 1986-89, Meisterschule 1990, and Royal College of
Art in Stockholm 1989-1992. She recently collaborated
with composer Jonathan Bepler on “Curtain Callers”, 2011,
and Is currently working on an opera with composer Jonas
Bohlin, for the Royal Opera in Stockholm 2015. Recent group
exhibitions include: 2008, KIASMA-Museum of Contemporary
Art, Helsinki; 2009 Venice Biennale – Collateral Events; 2010,
Wanås Foundation Knisslinge Sweden, Moderna Museet
Stockholm; 2013 Curitiba Biennale, Curitiba, Brazil; 2014,
19th Biennale of Sidney. She was also a participating artist in
Manifesta 2, Luxembourg in 1998 and the 2001 edition of the
Berlin Biennial. Recent solo exhibitions include: 2008 Bonniers
Konsthall, Stockholm; 2011 Mobile Art Production & Royal
Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm, and Sigmund Freud Museum,
Vienna; 2012, Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin.
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BOURN
VINCENT
GALLERY
1
URIEL ORLOW
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P
Bourn
Vincent
Gallery
2014 AGITATIONISM
VENUE BOURN VINCENT GALLERY
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URIEL ORLOW
UNMADE FILM
(2012–2013) Multi-component Multi-media installation, video, film, sound, photography, drawing, print.
Uriel Orlow is known for his modular, multi-media
installations that take specific locations and events
as starting points and combine archival research
with work in video, photography, sound and drawing.
Orlow explores the spatial and pictorial conditions of
history and memory, focusing on blind spots and forms
of haunting. His installations bring different imageregimes and narrative modes into correspondence.
‘Unmade Film’ is an impossible film, fragmented
into its constituent parts; an expansive collection of
audio- visual works that point to the structure of a
film but never fully become one. The work takes as
its starting point the mental hospital Kfar Shau’l in
Jerusalem. Initially specializing in the treatment of
Holocaust victims–including a relative of the artist–it
was established in 1951 using the remains of the
Palestinian village Deir Yassin which was depopulated
in a massacre by Zionist paramilitaries in April 1948.
Unmade Film evolved out of long-term research as well
as collaborations with actors, musician’s psychologists
and pupils in East-Jerusalem and Ramallah. The various
parts – The Staging, The Voiceover, The Score, The
Storyboard, The Script etc. – combine voice, drawing,
video, text, music and photography in an assemblage
whose multiple meanings emerge in complicity with
viewers of the work. Presented here at EVA International
2014 are the following parts of Unmade Film: The
Voiceover, the Staging, the Script, the Stills, the
Storyboard and the Closing Credits. Supported by the
Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.
BIO
Uriel Orlow, born in Zurich, Switzerland based in London;
studied at Central Saint Martins College, Slade School of
Art, London and University of Geneva. Recent international
exhibitions include Something in Space…, Württembergischer
Kunstverein (2014), Bergen Assembly (2013), Aichi Triennale
(2013), Nouvelles Vagues, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013),
Manifesta 9 (2012), Chewing the Scenery, 54th Venice
Biennale (2011), 8th Mercosul Biennial (2011). Recent solo
exhibitions included Deep Opacity at La Veronica, Modica
(2014), Back to Back at Spike Island, Bristol and Unmade Film,
Al-Ma’mal, Jerusalem, Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris and Les
Complices, Zurich (2013).
39
EVA INTERNATIONAL
LIMERICK
GREYHOUND
STADIUM
GREENPARK, DOCK ROAD, LIMERICK
1
HUMBERTO VÉLEZ
40
2014 AGITATIONISM
VENUE LIMERICK GREYHOUND STATION
1
HUMBERTO VÉLEZ
(b. 1965, lives and works in Manchester and Panama
City)
Participative event (2014). Courtesy of the Artist.
This collaborative performance and event for the
opening weekend of EVA INTERNATIONAL 2014
will take place over a whole evening at the Limerick
Greyhound Stadium. It will be in collaboration with
the Irish Greyhound Board, the Limerick Greyhound
Stadium, the CBS Pipe Band, the Munster Rugby
Supporters Club Choir, dog breeders, dogs, trainers,
and owners, and Greyhound race commentators. The
Underdog (THE EVA INTERNATIONAL CUP 2014) will
be a real race followed by an actual award ceremony in
which the winning dog and its owner are awarded the
Eva International Cup. The race can be betted on just
like any other race, the spectators; especially those
placing a bet will realize that the dogs’ names have been
changed for this race and given names that call into
question issues relating to culture, politics, identity, and
economics. The Underdog (THE EVA INTERNATIONAL
CUP 2014) pays homage to a quintessential part of Irish
culture while also positively engaging with the wider
question of culture and its socio-political, historical, and
economical components. Using humour, celebration,
parades, and music the festivities preceding and
following the actual race bring different people together
into an event that is both a social gathering and an
artistic endeavour. A video of the race featuring its
special commentary will be part of the exhibition
and in later outcomes a series of photo-portraits of
dog breeders and their dogs will become part of the
project’s expanding repertoire.
Supported by Limerick City of Culture 2014 and in
partnership with the Limerick Greyhound Stadium
and Irish Greyhound Board.
BIO
Humberto Vélez studied Law and Political Science at the
University of Panama. He was later awarded a scholarship by
The Foundation of Latin American Cinema to study Filmmaking
and TV in the International School of Cinema of San Antonio
de Los Baños, Cuba, founded by Gabriel García Márquez.
He works and lives between Manchester (UK) and Panama.
He developed collaborative performances in collaboration
with the TATE Modern, London, the Centre Pompidou, Paris,
among others. He has participated internationally at the Venice
Biennial, the Havana Biennial, the Shanghai Biennial, the
Liverpool Biennial, the Central America Biennial, the Panama
Biennial, and the Cuenca Biennial among others. He has also
been invited to develop performances for the 30th anniversary
of the Havana Biennial, SITE Santa Fe, USA; ARPA Art
Foundation Panama, and CORNERHOUSE, Manchester. He is
the founder and CEO of VISITING MINDS, Panama, an art and
education forum in Panama City.
41
EVA INTERNATIONAL
42
PERFORMANCES,
EVENTS,
AND
YOUNG EVA
2014 AGITATIONISM
PERFORMANCES, EVENTS & OTHER PROJECTS
11.04.14
12.04.14
NÁSTIO MOSQUITO
HUMBERTO VÉLEZ
(b. 1981, lives and works in Angola and Belgium)
BEE: THE OPPOSITE OF COCKROACH
(2014) Live performance specially commissioned by
EVA International 2014. Courtesy of the Artist.
VENUE: DANCE LIMERICK, THE DAGHDHA SPACE (ST JOHN’S CHURCH), LIMERICK
DATE: FRIDAY 11 APRIL
TIME: 9PM
Some rules sent through in relation to the performance
Collaborative Performance and Event; please see
under Limerick Greyhound Stadium (p.41).
JUNE
RANA HAMADEH
PERFORMANCE
Details TBA; please see under Kerry Group – Former
Golden Vale Milk Plant (p.24).
Golden Rules for Making Motivation — Hand Made
Method:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. There is an old saying that cold hands make
good motivation. The first golden rule of making
short crust motivation is to keep the ingredients, the bowl and the hands as cool as possible.
In the US, mix equal quantities of all-purpose
power with cake flour to create a lighter pastry.
Sieve the power to add extra air and lightness
to the motivation.
Work quickly, this keeps the motivation cool
and prevents the gluten in the power
developing too quickly – which will make
the motivation too elastic and difficult to roll,
cause shrinkage, and create a tough end result.
Handle as little as possible. Too much handling
will make the fat soft and the motivation greasy.
Always wrap the motivation dough in saran
wrap/cling film and chill for at least 30
minutes if possible.
Chill again after rolling out to prevent
shrinkage in the oven.
Roll motivation on a cool surface (a marble
slab is perfect), dusted with power.
Lightly dust the rolling pin also with power to
prevent sticking.
For a crisp base on tarts and pies always cook
on a preheated baking sheet in the oven.
BIO
Multimedia artist Nástio Mosquito is known for performances,
videos, music and poetry that show an intense commitment
to the open-ended potential of language. Easily misread as a
kind of world weariness, it is the extraordinary expression of
an urgent desire to engage with reality at all levels. Selected
international participations include: Untimely Stories at the
Muzeum Sztuki Lodz; 9th Gwangju Biennale - Gwangju
Biennale; Manifesta 8 - European Biennial of Contemporary
Art, Murcia; 52nd Venice Biennale.
43
EVA INTERNATIONAL
APRIL
ONLINE
(b.1965, lives and works in Limerick)
+ BILLION –
(JAMES MERRIGAN)
PAUL TARPEY
MAKING THE CUT
(2014) Performance based collaborative event
resulting from workshops with Limerick youth.
VENUE: THE ‘RED CROSS’ BUILDING,
ROCHES STREET, LIMERICK
DATE: THROUGHOUT APRIL
44
Paul Tarpey, Andy Deviant, and Cha Haran are
facilitating workshops throughout the month of April
with local participants at the Northside Learning Hub.
This will result in a spoken word performance using
sound and projected visuals at The ‘Red Cross’ Building,
Roches Street. The final performance is open to the
public and takes place 6pm on 28th June. This project is
developed in partnership with Limerick Youth Services,
further details available on www.eva.ie VENUE IS
UNCLEAR PLEASE MAKE IT CLEAR. In 1968, Limerick
responded to an internationalism that challenged
prevailing attitudes of a society in transition from its
deeply conservative past. It was the birth of a counter
culture. ‘Making The Cut’ is an event that acknowledges
the underrepresented legacy of this quiet revolution.
Many of the city’s youth responded to the psychedelic
message emanating from cities like London or San
Francisco, places that stood in contrast to the drab and
stifling static post-war Ireland. This event celebrates the
non-conformist threat represented in part by that the
cities beat bands. Musicians and activists of the era now
link with contemporary youth for a collaborative event
that revisits a legacy of cultural resistance. As much
as anything this event is a celebration of the ‘Outsider’.
Supported by Limerick Regeneration and in partnership
with Limerick Youth Services.
BIO
Paul Tarpey is a native of Kiltimagh Co. Mayo. He holds a BA in
Sculpture and MA in Visual communications from NCAD Dublin
and is currently based in Limerick City as a Senior lecturer in
the Limerick School of Art and Design. Participation in recent
exhibitions have included, ‘Essays for the House of Memory’
(2014) and ‘What has been shall always never be again’ (2013),
both at Ormston House, Limerick. ‘The Act of Portrayal: artists
interpret works from the National Portrait Collection’, (2013),
at Limerick printmakers, and Liquid Borders: A multi-location
exhibition on the theme of hybridisation between physical and
social identities in contemporary cities held in Bari Italy (2013).
www.billionjournal.com
BIFOLD INTERPELLATION
(2014) Online Critical Platform for AGITATIONISM,
EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial 2014. Courtesy
of the Artist
+billion - journal was selected for EVA international
2014 after an open request to the curator, to invite
the online art criticism entity, billionjournal.com, as
an internal proliferator and interpellator of creative art
criticism at EVA. The proposal offers a platform for
art criticism to ‘act’ rather than just ‘reflect’ through
an irregular model of critical interiority, creating a
space of LIVE argumentation and discussion. In a
corruptible sense + billion - aims to interrogate artmaking at its foundations with its own audio-visual
language, combining critical and aesthetic license to
blur audio-visual and syntax boundaries. Moreover,
by embedding +billion - into the structure of EVA, with
the added complication of being invited, questions
of critical objectivity and integrity are challenged.
Through studio visits and interviews, +billion - intends
to respond in micro-critical detail to the artworks and
thematics of EVA through a panoply of textual/audiovisual presentations that will be experienced exclusively
online at billionjournal.com, reaching audiences beyond
Limerick and Ireland.
BIO
+billionjournal was born online in 2010, as the brainchild of Irish
artist and art critic James Merrigan. +billion- is an exclusively
online art criticism platform to free-up the editorial etiquette
and standard frameworks for art criticism. +billion- makes great
efforts to work against the trend of ‘cold reviewing’ (publishing
reviews after the exhibition has ended). +billion- is a feeler, doer,
thinker and aesthete.
2014 AGITATIONISM
PERFORMANCES, EVENTS & OTHER PROJECTS
YOUNG EVA
CRAFTERNOONS
Every Saturday 12—1pm 12 April—5 July 5
Jean O’Dwyer will lead free art & craft workshops for
4—12 year olds in the HUB at Limerick City
Gallery of Art. Each week Jean will create fun projects
that centre around the EVA exhibition
artworks. All materials are provided. Children must be
accompanied by adults for the duration
of the workshop and while visiting the gallery.
Places are limited so booking is recommended, to
reserve a place please contact [email protected]
WILDROUTES WORKSHOPS
Saturdays from 3—4pm on 7, 14, 21 & 28 June
Local artist Mary Conroy will lead four Wildroutes workshops for 12- 18yr olds in the HUB at Limerick City Gallery of Art. Wildroutes is a participatory, urban eco-art
project that aims to encourage people to reform public
space in our city. Each workshop will be project-based
and all materials will be provided. Projects include seed
sculptures, green graffiti, hanging herb gardens and
drawing with nature.
Places are limited so booking is recommended, to
reserve a place please contact [email protected]
ART & PHILOSOPHY WEDNESDAY
Wednesday 12—2pm on 18 June
As part of the Young EVA Programme, Curator and
Gallery Educator, Katy Fitzpatrick and
Philosopher, Aislinn O’Donnell will be collaborating
on an art and philosophy project with the children and
teachers of Scoil Mháthair Dé, Limerick. The children
will work with an artist to explore ways of making their
ideas into artworks. A public workshop will be held in
the Limerick City Gallery of Art on Wednesday 18 June
at 12pm to discuss with the children their ideas about
art, philosophy and education.
EVA ARTIST TALKS
Thursdays 2—4pm
Every second Thursday from 10 April onwards, at
Limerick City Gallery of Art, a talk directly related to the
EVA International AGITATIONISM exhibition will take
place. This, in the grand tradition of agitating, will be
announced closer to the time of each talk.
For further information contact Noelle at [email protected]
EXHIBITION TOURS
Saturdays 12 April—6 July
AGITATIONISM – Curated by Bassam El Baroni
Guided tours of the exhibition venues are available on
request by contacting [email protected]
45
EVA INTERNATIONAL
SUPPORTERS
46
COLOFON
Exhibition Guide for the 2014
edition of EVA International
– Ireland’s Biennial
AGITATIONISM
12 April – 6 July 2014
Curated by Bassam El Baroni
Published by EVA
International
© EVA International, 2014
© Authors
© Artists
EVA International – Ireland’s
Biennial, Limerick City Gallery
of Art, Pery Square, Limerick
City, Ireland
www.eva.ie | [email protected]
EVA International Biennial
of Visual Art Limited trading
as EVA International is a
company limited by guarantee
not having a share capital.
Registered office: Limerick
City Gallery of Art, Pery
Square, Limerick City, ireland.
Company number: 510483
Editors: Bassam El Baroni and
Woodrow Kernohan
Design: George&Harrison
georgeandharrison.nl
Font: Fakt Pro
Printer: Newspaper Club
Cover image:
Garrett Phelan
A POWER OF NEGOTIATION –
...THAT TENSE EXPECTATION…
(2014) Indian Ink, Assorted Pens,
Lazer print, Tippex on paper.
20.9 cm H x 29.5 cm W (unframed).
Courtesy of the Artist
2014 AGITATIONISM
SUPPORTERS / COLOFON
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47
2014 EDITION / AGITATIONISM
CURATED BY BASSAM EL BARONI
For updated information on
artists, venues, events and
previous EVA editions,
please visit:
www.eva.ie
12 APRIL — 6 JULY 2014
LIMERICK CITY / IRELAND

2014 edition / agitationism curated by bassam el

Transcription

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