Tyler Coburn’s I’m that angel explores the conditions of how we work on and against the computer, narrated from the perspective of a “content farmer”: an emergent type of online journalist contracted to generate articles based on words peaking in Google Trends.

As a text, I’m that angel takes shape as a stony stone, a cut in the stream—a book. Its format shores up the paraliterary, confessional, and epistolary precedents for our virtual vernaculars. Designed by Eric Nylund, the pages concretize found quotes, trending language, anecdotes, notes and rants; call it inattentionality as method.



If the book sustains a material limit that belies the diffuse shape of the cloud, then its readings attempt similar concretions by having reader and audience occupy the sites that compose the physical form of the Internet. On other occasions, readings pair with documentation shot on server floors, thus temporarily constructing the data center within the art institution. Each scenario discloses securitized spaces in which reader and audience already reside, for we encounter the material doubles of our virtual subjectivities as data stored in server form.

Rather than concede to the seeming intractability of cognitive capitalism, these readings potentiate novel, critical operations through shared access, listening and discussion. Across its parts, I’m that angel argues for a renewed consideration of the immanent horizons of subjectivity, sociability and creativity.

PLEASE NOTE:

The reading-performance will take place at Google Zurich and is booked out. No seats available anymore.

Thanks to Google for supporting and hosting "I'm that angel".

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In May and June, Coburn is performing at data centres and institutions throughout Europe, including Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp; CAC Vilnius; Grazer Kunstverein; the Pionen Data Center, Stockholm; EvoSwitch, Amsterdam, in collaboration with San Serriffe; e-shelter, Berlin, in collaboration with Archive Kabinett; Volta, London, in collaboration with South London Gallery; and Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce, in collaboration with Peep-Hole. Copies of I’m that angel are available at bookstores and institutions worldwide.

[English below]

Eine Veranstaltung im Rahmen der Corner College Ausstellung Cold. War. Hot. Stars. The Iron(y) Helmet of the Intellect.

17:00h

Nowhere Men – Illegale Migranten im Strom der Globalisierung

Eine performative Lesung von Christoph Miler unter Mitwirkung von Fredrik Wendschlag

In Europa leben heute mehr als vier Millionen illegale Einwanderer. Unzählige weitere kommen tagtäglich hinzu. Auf der Suche nach einem besseren Leben durchfahren sie Wüsten in rostigen LKWs, überqueren Meere auf morschen Holzkähnen und passieren Grenzen unter glühenden Motorhauben. Unser Wissen über sie beschränkt sich dabei allerdings meist auf tragische Nachrichtenmeldungen und simple politische Botschaften. Das Buchprojekt Nowhere Men will dazu einen Gegenentwurf liefern und die komplexe Wirklichkeit dieser Menschen begreifbarer machen – indem es ihre Geschichten erzählt und in einen größeren Zusammenhang stellt.

Nun wird Nowhere Men erstmals im Rahmen einer performativen Lesung vorgestellt. Dabei wird die Lebensgeschichte eines illegalen Migranten in ein Netz globaler Beziehungen und Machtstrukturen eingebettet: Von den Slums in Mali und den Schmuggelrouten in Nordafrika, über die Büros transnationaler Unternehmen und mächtiger Politiker, bis hin zur Computerproduktion und dem Internet, Flughafenstreiks und Supermärkten, Lampedusas Küstenwache und dem Schweizer Wahlkampf. Ein komplexes Geflecht aus Zusammenhängen und Abhängigkeiten entsteht, der Anbruch eines neuen, wahrhaft globalen Zeitalters wird skizziert: Die unscheinbarsten Ereignisse, egal wo, egal was, können von nun an auch die Leben all jener unbekannten Gesichter am anderen Ende der Welt beeinflussen, die einst noch so unerreichbar weit weg schienen.




18:00h

Monumental Misconceptions

Vorlesung von Liane Lang

Liane Lang spricht über ihr Projekt Monumental Misconceptions. 2009 im Memento Sculpture Park in Budapest begonnen, erkundet das Projekt Bildhauerkunst, die durch politische und historische Begebenheiten ihren ursprünglichen Status als Kunst verloren hat. Das Projekt umfasst Statuen aus der sozialistischen und der Reichszeit aus Ungarn, Deutschland und Grossbritannien und untersucht den Symbolismus der Figur der Skulptur durch unterschiedliche Medien. Langs photographische Arbeiten zeigen Interventionen in Monumente, die rein skulpturaler Art sind, aber als Akte der Performance daherkommen und dadurch das Objekt neu fast und dem Publikum eine neue Perspektive auf oder Interaktion mit Statuen mit zwiespältigen und komplexen ästhetischen, sozialen und ökologischen Eigenschaften eröffnen. Langs Vorgehensweise der Bildhauerkunst gegenüber ist unehrerbietig, zuweilen makaber. Ihr Projekt ist jedoch nicht eine Kritik der monumentalen oder repräsentativen autoritären Ästhetik an sich, sondern stellt vielmehr die Frage nach der sich ändernden Bedeutung des Objekts und der dürftigen Stellung der Künstler_in, die in einem Raum kontinuierlicher sozialen und politischen Veränderung arbeitet.


[Deutsch siehe oben]

An evening in the context of the Corner College exhibition Cold. War. Hot. Stars. The Iron(y) Helmet of the Intellect.

17:00h

Nowhere Men – Illegal Migrants in the Stream of Globalization

A performative reading by Christoph Miler with the participation of Fredrik Wendschlag

More than four million illegal immigrants live in Europe today. Countless are the ones that add to this number every day. In search of a better life they drive through deserts in rusty trucks, set across seas on rotten wooden barges and pass borders hidden under smoldering engine hoods. Our knowledge of their lives however is mostly limited to tragic news reports or simple political messages. The book project Nowhere Men aims to provide an alternative perception and make the complex reality of these people more tangible – by telling their story and putting it in a broader context.

Now, Nowhere Men will be presented for the first time in a performative reading. The story of the life of an illegal migrant is thus woven into a network of global relations and power structures: From the slums of Mali and the trafficking routes in North Africa, to the bureaus of transnational corporations and powerful politicians as well as computer production and the Internet, airport strikes and supermarkets, the coast guards of Lampedusa and the Swiss electoral campaign. A complex mesh of connections and interdependencies emerges, the dawn of a new, truly global era is outlined: The most unspectacular events, wherever and whatever they may be, can from now on influence the lives of all those unknown faces on the other end of the world that once seemed so unreachably far away.


18:00h

Monumental Misconceptions

Lecture by Liane Lang

Liane Lang will be talking about her project Monumental Misconceptions. Begun in 2009 at Memento Sculpture Park in Budapest, the project investigates statuary that has lost its original status as art through political and historical events. The project includes Socialist and Empire era statues from Hungary, Germany and Britain and investigates the symbolism of the figure in sculpture through multiple media. Her photographic works show interventions with monuments that are purely sculptural but pose as acts of performance, reframing the object and offering the audience a different perspective or interaction with statues that have ambiguous and complex aesthetic, social and environmental characteristics. Lang’s approach to statuary is irreverent, at times macabre, but her project is not a critique of the monumental or representational authoritarian aesthetic per se. It is rather posing a question as to the changing meaning of the object and the tenuous position of the artist working in a space of constant social and political change.

join us for the dinner party on 8 march at 20:00 at corner college for a polyphonic performative reading and table talk!

with sofia bempeza, johanna bruckner, mo diener, anne-laure franchette, anne francke, anke hoffmann, stefanie knobel, nicolasa navarrete, rayelle niemann, caroline palla, jenny rova, anabel sarabi, bernadett settele, dimitrina sevova, riikka tauriainen, anne käthi wehrli, sophie yerly, sarah zürcher

taking inspiration from four women, luce irigaray who wrote this sex which is not one, a letter from nancy spero to lucy lippard (1971) and the dinner party by judy chicago, each of us will bring along with us a short text or passages from a woman poet, artist, writer or theoretician that we like best or find very important for ourselves and women's history of struggles, resistance or aesthetic practices, and we'll read together.

the dinner party is open for anybody who wants to come over and listen to our small performative reading and take part in the discussions.

let's come together on this evening!

sofia bempeza, johanna bruckner, mo diener, anne-laure franchette, anne francke, anke hoffmann, stefanie knobel, nicolasa navarrete, rayelle niemann, caroline palla, jenny rova, anabel sarabi, bernadett settele, dimitrina sevova, riikka tauriainen, anne käthi wehrli, sophie yerly, sarah zürcher

eine Veranstaltung im Corner College, die Nicole Bachmann, Delphine Chapuis Schmitz, Nora Schmidt, Sally Schonfeldt, Axelle Stiefel, Martina-Sofie Wildberger und Dimitrina Sevova zusammenbringt, um ein kollaboratives Feld pluraler Performativität zu eröffnen, einschliesslich singulärer Interventionen, Filmvorführungen und Performances, danach eine Diskussion zwischen den Künstlerinnen, der Kuratorin und dem Publikum.

an event at Corner College that brings together Nicole Bachmann, Delphine Chapuis Schmitz, Nora Schmidt, Sally Schonfeldt, Axelle Stiefel, Martina-Sofie Wildberger, and Dimitrina Sevova to open up a collaborative field of plural performativity, encompassing singular interventions, screenings and performances and followed by a discussion between the artist, the curator and the audience.



[Text unten / Text below]



Nicole Bachmann

Personare Part II

Screening of the video documentation of the performance Personare Part II at Tenderpixel, London on 20 January 2018.



This performance examines the relationship between language, voice and power. Negotiating the materiality of speech and gestures, it investigates the power of the disembodied voice and its relationship to other bodies and find agency in this relationality. The piece deals with questions around the constitution of subjectivity and becoming an active agent through language both in a political or civil sense.

It is important to mention the set up of the performance: the gallery consists of a ground floor space and a lower ground floor gallery, connected with a tight staircase. The audience was led downstairs where the dancers were in place. The actor was upstairs, unknown to the audience. They would only hear her voice.

The performance is based on rehearsed improvisation, by which I mean there was a script and a choreography but each time the piece would be different through the interaction between the three performers.

The piece is about how we can each find a language, a form of expression through different means, by language as well as an embodied vocabulary.

Performed by Anna Procter, Patricia Langa and Sonya Frances Cullingford.

Dance choreography by Patricia Langa.



Delphine Chapuis Schmitz

poems fRom our time(s)

Delphine Chapuis Schmitz will be reading from a collection of texts she is currently working on under the title poems fRom our time(s), and will give a short presentation of her practice at the crossroads of visual art and experimental writing.



Nora Schmidt

Journal/Blog (2011-today)

Reading with a selection of short texts from the artist's Journal/Blog (2011-today).





Sally Schonfeldt

On the Politics of Present Thought

Experimental film. 8′




Axelle Stiefel

Codex Operator
Sound performance. 20′





Martina-Sofie Wildberger

I WANT TO SAY SOMETHING

Performance, Improvisation. About 13′

Text: Martina-Sofie Wildberger, I want to say something (printable as PDF, 17KB)





Endless Conversation – Spacing! enacts a performative and conversational setup to test the aesthetic and political conditions of sharing, which inevitably involves an inoperative spacing, intervaling, and displacing. This in-betweenness is the condition of taking place and the mechanism of giving meaning. “Sharing is itself the origin,” wrote Jean-Luc Nancy in Being Singular Plural, sharing according to language exposes singular plurality to interrogate this openness toward the infinity of performative language games and endless scholarship – “the circulation of a meaning of the world that has no beginning or end”, which is the condition of every engaged and committed conversation from a being to a being.

With this event we are looking forward to the potentiality of a new performative that has to be continuously rehearsed, re-enacted, exercised, and practiced, sharing infinite language ‘conversations’ that go into affective registers and intensive qualities. Singular plurality lies at the heart of the discourse concerned with the political and aesthetic potentiality of language, into which this event intervenes, involving the somatic quality of voices and deconstructive/uncompleted gestures, inflections, movements of bodies and production of spaces – “or sometimes it takes place through a shift in tone or modulation of voice,” (Judith Butler) or just spacing, intervaling, displacing.

At the limit of presentation, the event tests how art is a matter of differing/deferring, a coming-into-presence involving “the simultaneity of all presences that are with regard to one another, where no one is for oneself, without being for others.” (Nancy) In Endless Conversation – Spacing!, presentation is distinct from the representation of art. With the live event and vivid conversation, it aims to reflect on art in terms of spacing / interval / displacement in the relation between the politics of language and embodied practices, “a certain displacement in time and space that constitutes the condition of knowing.” (Judith Butler) These dislocated elements of shared language produce other spaces of knowledge, with their particular aesthetics.

The event is part of the curatorial research by Dimitrina Sevova, On the Politics of Language and the Aesthetics of Affect – Thinking of Art Beyond Representation in Contemporary Art Practices and Production, a qualitative curatorial research that maps out a cluster of artistic positions and reflects on their practices by means of relational and analytical techniques, from the perspective of the affective politics of the performative and the politics and aesthetics of language, conceptualizing further the relation between contemporary art, plural performativity, and the singular plural.

The research explores the potentiality of language as an artistic material and reflects on the relation between the performative and performance, practices and discourse, in voice-based and text-oriented art practices. It further discusses and analyses, in close collaboration with the artists, how artists do things with words, textuality and space – a flux of art practices that generate ‘concepts in the wild,’ in the sense that they venture beyond the conformity of the well-known and of conventional representation into ambiguous space and unpredictable experiments, pursuing other avenues and producing temporalities and unexpected encounters. The research asks how they relate a politics of place and the possibilities of language in the trajectory of the plural performative as a proliferation of difference. This research is concerned with art practices and the artists’ process of making, rather than their representational contexts.

The curatorial research reflects the role of language in contemporary art, and artistic practices that form a critical fabulation and involve other experimental forms of artistic research that bring together aesthetic practices and knowledge production. The main objective of this research is to ask how art produces knowledge by other means and opens onto a new ethico-aesthetic paradigm. The focus of my research is on artists whose practices and aesthetics embody a materialism of alterity and the translatability at the heart of the unpredictability of an event, testing the limits of how language can articulate the body and the space.

The artistic positions are selected for their experimental approach to language and voice-based practices, the inventive and critical way they work with performative strategies, and how they deal with the system of circulation and collection of information, with knowledge production and the aesthetics of affect, and operate within expanded discursive fields. I would not want to split a certain flux of practices and artists into generations. Because of this, the research is situated across what is defined as a generation. The artists and their practices are approached not as insulated cases in a monographic framework, which would have focused on individual art works or an artistic oeuvre. Rather, my aim is to give, through the research, a sense of a vibrant art scene of resonating practices and overlapping contexts. For me, it is more important to map and reflect on how they are related and shared in certain approaches and trajectories in their work. I did a series of interviews, conversations face to face, and studio visits, and followed the artists in different public activities during the period of the research.

The focal point of the curatorial selection in the process of mapping is a new generation of Swiss artists who work with language and the aesthetics of affect. Their practices can no longer be considered peripheral to the system of art, or alternative, on the edge of the art institutional context, as they form a new and fascinating direction in contemporary art. At the same time, the research emphasizes the differences in practices amid the cluster of selected artists, and the shift in the means of production in contemporary art at large, and its context as it has expanded into sociality, politics and daily life.

There is an upcoming modest publication, composed of an analytico-reflective text that sums up my curatorial reflections, insights, encounters. It will be accompanied by the collected documentation, and conversations and interviews with the selected artists recorded in the context of this research.

Text: Dimitrina Sevova, 2018




This project is supported by a curatorial research grant of Pro Helvetia.