An exhibition project by Adrien Guillet and Quentin Lannes

curated by Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth.

Sat 09.07.2016 - Fri 05.08.2016

Opening on Saturday, 9 July 2016 at 18:00h.

Sunday, 10 July 2016 at 16:00h: Artist Talks, presentations and discussion.

Finissage on Friday, 5 August 2016 at 18:00h in the presence of the artists.


Opening Hours / Öffnungszeiten:

Wed 15:00h - 18:00h
Thu 16:00h - 19:00h
Fri 15:00h - 18:00h


Emporium of Benevolent Data is an exhibition project by Adrien Guillet and Quentin Lannes, in collaboration with Corner College, based on the two artists’ long-term friendship and discussions. It puts on display their recent works Citracit, a site-specific research-based installation by Adrien Guillet, and the two video installations #IamRebekah and The Next Round by Quentin Lannes.

The title of the exhibition project is inspired by the story “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins.” The latter is a scientist from 17th century enlightenment whose “ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies remind us of those which doctor Franz Kuhn attributes to a certain Chinese encyclopaedia entitled ‘Celestial Empire of benevolent Knowledge’” with its taxonomy of animals. The exhibition especially considers the distinctive character, listed in this encyclopaedia under the letter “(f)”, of being “fabulous,” as a method of fabulation on historical materials, modern ruins, commodities, and the recent rapid move of virtual-reality technologies into the medium mainstream, revealing a new geopolitics of the virtual and a crisis of representation of the body that inevitably follows from it. The dialogical format of the exhibition invokes a benevolent methodology that breaks with genealogy and linear narrative, détourning ‘cognitive technologies’ to actively speculate and generate deviated narratives that remain open in their “inherent formlessness,” providing the viewer with a “groundless basis of the aesthetic experience.” This methodology is both anachronistic and futurist, which inevitably come together in a live structure, in what Shklovsky describes as a “ludic ruin/construction site that lays a foundation for the subversive practice of estrangement.” The connecting principle of the works on display is the interplay of de-coding and encoding of the technological dispositifs, colonial history, and material knowledge. As their collective motto, the artists refer to what the Red Queen says to Alice about remembering events before they happen as well as events that have happened: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.”

The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, to which Emporium of Benevolent Data refers, was an important inspiration for Michel Foucault when writing The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, for his fabulation on epistemological models out of “the laughter that shattered” and its echo “continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other.” This echo shall be heard from the depth of the exhibition, rather than forms of mediation of the ambivalent.

Excerpt from the curatorial text by Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth.


Adrien Guillet

Citracit

[English and German below]

Citracit est une uchronie, une fiction dystopique et anachronique qui explore les relations problématiques qu’a noué le constructeur automobile Citroën avec le continent africain. Ce projet prend corps par la création d’un ensemble de produits promotionnels modifiés, de sculptures et d’accessoires de facture artisanale africaine. Ces deux types de productions répondent à l’énoncé suivant : « On a retrouvé des cadeaux souvenirs Citracit qui devaient être vendus dans les boutiques des bordjs-hôtels Citroën. Ils ont échappé à l’ordre de destruction d’André Citroën ! ».


[ French above; German below ]

Citracit is a uchronia, a dystopian and anachronistic fiction that explores the problematic relations weaved by the automobile constructor Citroën with the African continent. The project takes shape through the creation of a number of modified advertising products, sculptures and accessories of African artisanship. These two types of productions respond to the following statement: “Citracit souvenir gifts have been found that were to be sold in the boutiques of the Citroën bordjs hotels. They escaped André Citroën’s order that they be destroyed!”

What does Citracit consist of?

As Alison Murray explains in her essay “Citroën Tourism” (see at the end of this document), the failure of the Trans-African Company was skillfully hushed up, so that Citracit was completely forgotten. The main objective of my project is to dig up the Trans-African Company following a strategy reverse to that of André Citroën. Since the communication material of the Trans-African Company was destroyed, I take care of producing them from scratch.

In my project, Citroën no longer exists, and is replaced by Citracit. In this uchronia, the founding of the Trans-African Company went well, and Citroën has not defaulted. In this parallel reality opened up by the Citracit project, Citroën is no longer a constructor of cars but embodies the very notion of exoticism, adventure and travel in the way of popular travel agencies.

I chose to call my project Citracit in order to bring back to the present the history of the Trans-African Company. This tourism project for a chain of camping sites and hotels in Africa was also called Centracit or CEGETAF. From Citroën to Citracit it is enough to delete a “oën” and replace it by “acit.” Three of the letters to append are already present in Citroën. As for the suffix “a,” it is easily created from the “r” of Citroën. In this play of typographical détournement lies the essence of the Citracit collection. Observing more precisely the Citracit logo that can be found ahead of this article on the first page, one can observe that the “acit” of Citracit is pixelized. What looks accidental is done on purpose and bears witness to the détournement style of the Citroën brand, a raw and DIY kind of détournement. The two chevrons of the logo become sacred clan symbols. We discover them once more on the sculptures, as motifs and texture.

Rather than attempting to find out what might have actually been sold in the souvenir gift boutiques of Citroën’s bordjs hotels in Africa, Citracit is taken as a starting point for a sculptural and conceptual reflection. Far from a historical reconstruction, the elements of the Citracit collection of souvenir gifts are a marriage between the African artisan codes and techniques, and a selection of second-hand promotional Citroën products. Online market places (Le Bon Coin, Ebay, Price Minister and Delcampe) allow me to collect at moderate cost advertising objects and tourist souvenirs from Africa I am interested in. The collection process in itself says something about our times, in the sense that it is mainly about online buying and postal shipping. This dematerialization of the act of buying breaks any possibility of a personal narration, and raises questions about the problem of recycling of symbols. Indeed the value of the souvenir gifts brought back from Africa by travelers is almost nil, since they consist of an ersatz of traditional African art, produced for tourists (airport art). While the great majority of Citroën advertising products are initially free, and intended to be given away (notion of reward and of communication) to clients, future clients, employees and institutions. These are thus indeed symbols, intrinsically poor fetish objects to which a strong history is attached.

The artefacts mixing the visual identity of Citroën and African aesthetics take the form of statuettes, clothes, bags, belts, gadgets, etc., where references cross and symbols enter into confrontation. Each element is the stage of a merciless struggle between the visual identity of Citroën and that of Citracit, between Europe and Africa, between cars and tourism, success and failure, serial production and manually produced work. The status of these creations is ambiguous, both travel memories via a tour operator that has never worked, and counter-advertising products, problematic in that they evoke a chapter of French colonial history that has been completely blanked out.













[French and English above]

Citracit ist eine Uchronie, eine dystopische und anachronistische Fiktion, welche die problematischen Beziehungen auskundschaftet, die der Autohersteller Citroën mit dem afrikanischen Kontinent gewoben hat. Das Projekt nimmt Gestalt an über die Schaffung einer Anzahl von abgeänderten Werbeprodukten, Skulpturen und Zubehör afrikanischen Handwerks. Die beiden Arten der Produktion entsprechen der folgenden Aussage: „Es wurden Citracit-Souvenirs gefunden, die in den Boutiquen von Citroëns Bordjs-Hotels hätten verkauft werden sollen. Sie entgingen André Citroëns Anweisung, sie sollten alle zerstört werden!“

Worin besteht Citracit?

Wie Alison Murray in ihrem Aufsatz „Citroën-Tourismus“ erklärt (siehe Anhang zu diesem Dokument), wurde das Versagen der Trans-Afrikanischen Gesellschaft so geschickt vertuscht, dass Citracit gänzlich in Vergessenheit geriet. Das Hauptziel meines Projekts liegt darin, die Trans-Afrikanische Gesellschaft auszugraben, einer Strategie folgend, die jener von André Citroën gegenläufig ist. Da das Kommunikationsmaterial der Trans-African Company zerstört wurde, mache ich mich daran, diese von Grund auf herzustellen.

In meinem Projekt existiert Citroën nicht mehr und wurde durch Citracit ersetzt. In dieser Uchronie ist die Einweihung der Trans-Afrikanischen Gesellschaft gut gegangen, und Citroën ist nicht Pleite gegangen. In der Parallelwirklichkeit, die das Citracit-Projekt aufmacht, ist Citroën nicht mehr ein Autohersteller, sondern verkörpert geradezu den Begriff des Exotismus, Abenteuer und Reisen in der Art begehrter Reisebüros.

Ich habe für mein Projekt den Titel Citracit gewählt, um die Geschichte der Trans-Afrikanischen Gesellschaft in die Gegenwart zurückzubringen. Dieses touristische Projekt für eine Reihe von Campingplätzen und Hotels in Afrika lief auch unter dem Namen Centracit oder CEGETAF. Um von Citroën zu Citracit zu gelangen, genügt es, ein „oën“ mit „acit“ zu ersetzen. Drei der Buchstaben, die es zu ersetzen gibt, sind bereits in Citroën zu finden. Das Suffix „a“ hingegen lässt sich einfach aus dem „r“ von Citroën herleiten. In diesem Spiel des typographischen détournement liegt das Wesen der Citracit-Sammlung. Eine genaue Betrachtung des Citracit-Logos, das diesem Artikel auf der ersten Seite voransteht, zeigt, dass das „acit“ von Citracit pixelisiert ist. Was zunächst als Zufall erscheinen mag, ist durchaus Absicht und verweist stilistisch auf das détournement der Marke Citroën, eine rohe und DIY Art des détournement. Die beiden Sparren des Logos werden zu heiligen Clan-Symbolen. Wir entdecken sie erneut in den Skulpturen, als Motiv und Textur.


Quentin Lannes

#IamRebekah

2015. HD video, color, silent, 3’20 looped and sound, 7’40 looped.

Dans l’installation vidéo / son #IamRebekah (2015), l'artiste a développé une fiction d’anticipation à partir de deux véritables personnalités publiques – Zoltan Istvan, candidat transhumaniste à la présidence des États-Unis en 2016 et Rebekah Marine, mannequin en situation de handicap et ambassadrice de la compagnie de prothèse Touch Bionics – dont il a imaginé les trajectoires politiques pour les années à venir sur fond de campagne électorale et de cyber-activisme.


In the video / sound installation #IamRebekah (2015), the artist developed an anticipatory fiction on the basis of two true public characters – Zoltan Istvan, transhumanist candidate to the US presidency in 2016, and Rebekah Marine, differently able fashion model and ambassador to the prosthetics company Touch Bionics – of which he imagined the political trajectories for the years to come, on the backdrop of an electoral campaign and cyber-activism.


The Next Round



2016. HD video.

L'installation vidéo et sonore VR Boxing (The Next Round) que l'artiste a développé pour le Corner College se situe dans le prolongement de l'installation #IamRebekah présentée aux Bourses de la Ville en décembre 2015 - janvier 2016 au Centre d'Art Contemporain, Genève. Il y poursuit ses recherches sur les relations entre corps humain et nouvelles technologies. Ici encore, il propose une fiction d'anticipation ancrée dans un futur proche, proposant
un regard sur l'évolution de nos pratiques actuelles.

Il s'est penché sur le récent développement des dispositifs permettant l'immersion dans une réalité virtuelle : par la vue (casques Oculus Rift et HTC Vive), le déplacement (plate-forme de mouvement Omni) et le
toucher (combinaison vibrante Teslasuit). Étonnamment, la plupart de ces dispositifs dits innovants existent
depuis le début des années 90 mais n'avaient pas trouvé un assez large public à l'époque, pourtant tourné vers
les années 2000. Je m'interroge sur les raisons qui amènent le grand public à enfin s'y intéresser aujourd'hui,
presque 30 ans plus tard.

La fiction VR Boxing questionne donc les pratiques du corps – ici le sport et plus précisément la boxe – à l'ère de ces dispositifs de réalité virtuelle.

Un boxeur, dont les mouvements sont enregistrés par des capteurs n'est pas confronté physiquement à son adversaire sur un ring mais combat une simulation numérique d'un autre boxeur, présent dans un autre espace physique, à des centaines de kilomètres de lui. Lorsqu'un coup atteint sa cible, une décharge électrique est envoyée à l'adversaire via sa combinaison. Une journaliste interroge le boxeur sur l'évolution de son sport, son appréhension de la douleur, son rapport au dispositif numérique remplaçant des interactions physiques, etc.

Le tournage s'effectue en deux temps :
captation vidéo traditionnelle à l'École de Boxe Erdal Kiran 1887, Genève.
captation de mouvement réalisée à Artanim, Meyrin.












The Next Round

The video and sound installation VR Boxing (The Next Round) that the artist developed for Corner College is situated in the prolongation of the installation #IamRebekah presented at the City Grants in December 2015 to January 2016 at the Contemporary Art Center in Geneva. In it, he continues his research on the relations between human body and new technologies. Once again, he proposes an anticipative fiction anchored in a near future, proposing a view on the evolution of our current practices.

He investigated the recent developments of dispositifs that allow immersion into a virtual reality: through sight (Oculus Rift helmets and HTC Vive), movement (Omni movement platform) and touch (vibrating Teslasuit). Surprisingly, most of these so-called innovative dispositifs have existed since the beginning of the 1990s but had not found a sufficiently large public at the time, which was turned towards the years 2000. He raises questions about the reasons that are finally stoking an interest with a larger public today, almost 30 years later.

The fiction VR Boxing thus raises questions about the practices of the body – here, sports, or more precisely, boxing – in the era of these virtual reality dispositifs.

A boxer whose movements are registered by captors is not physically confronted with his adversary in a ring but fights a numerical simulation of another boxer, present in another physical space hundreds of kilometers away. When a punch hits its target, an electrical discharge is sent to the adversary through his suit. A journalist interviews the boxer on the evolution of his sport, his perception of violence, his relation to the numerical dispositif that replaces physical interaction, etc.

The shooting takes place in two phases:
Capturing of traditional video at the École de Boxe Erdal Kiran 1887, Geneva.
Capturing of movements operated at Artanim, Meyrin.





This exhibition was made possible by the kind support of the French Embassy in Switzerland.

Finissage: Friday, 05 August 2016, at 18:00h in the presence of the artists.

An exhibition project by Adrien Guillet and Quentin Lannes

curated by Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth.

Sat 09.07.2016 - Wed 04.08.2016


Emporium of Benevolent Data is an exhibition project by Adrien Guillet and Quentin Lannes, in collaboration with Corner College, based on the two artists’ long-term friendship and discussions. It puts on display their recent works Citracit, a site-specific research-based installation by Adrien Guillet, and the two video installations #IamRebekah and The Next Round by Quentin Lannes.


This exhibition was made possible by the kind support of the French Embassy in Switzerland.

20:00h Lesung von Anne Käthi Wehrli
21:00h Konzert von Mosh Mosh


Anne Käthi Wehrli
Lesung

Wieso merkt niemand dass dieser Stuhl eine Brennnessel ist!
Gedichte, Theoretisches Saxophon

Mütterlich lachten die Pflanzen.
Es war in Ordnung. Ich durfte über sie reden und mir Sachen über sie vorstellen.
Es störte sich nicht.

Sogar die Giftpflanzen sagten jedesmal wenn ich eine essen wollte: Nein! Wir sind giftig!
Weil wir Freunde waren.


Reading
Why doesn't anybody notice that this chair is a nettle!
Poems, Theoretical Saxophone



Mosh Mosh
Konzert



Nicht umsonst bezeichnen sich Lady Mosh und Posh Mosh selbst als divenhaftes Duo. Und tatsächlich könnte man sie zu Beginn ihrer Performances mit zwei feinen Damen verwechseln, die unterwegs zu einem Gala-Dinner sind. Allerdings bleibt am Ende jedes Mosh Mosh-Live-Auftritts von diesem Eindruck nicht mehr viel übrig. Denn im Eifer des Gefechts sind sich die Diven weder zum Stagediven noch für ekstatische „Bühnenakrobatik“ zu schade. Im ramponierten Zustand scheinen sich die beiden Ladies am wohlsten zu fühlen - immer fleissig damit beschäftigt, die Codes der Damenhaftigkeit neu zu definieren.
Let‘s deconstruct and your body will follow!
Mosh Mosh entführen dabei in Paralleluniversen ebenso faszinierender wie unheimlicher Gegendarstellungen zur Absurdität normierter Lebensentwürfe. Immer funky und kinky entfalten sie schwärmerische Ambivalenzen für Agent Cooper aus „Twin Peaks“, preisen als verwuselte Enkel_innen von Divine die Vorteile von „Robotic Love“, zeigen uns erneut die spooky Zwiespältigkeit geisterhaften Mondlichts im
Angesicht essentieller Fragen anti-essentialistischen, beziehungsweise extraterrestrischen Inhalts („The Mooon“) und treiben schlussendlich auch den heteronormierten Schwefelgeruch aus der Einbauküche hinaus („Junkies in Bikinies“), leider jedoch ohne das unbeschreiblich gruselig auf dem Linoleumboden herumkriechende Etwas wirklich ganz loszuwerden. Denn Mosh Mosh sind zwar Querfeldein-Utopist_innen aber eben auch sezierende Realist_innen.


Lady Mosh and Posh Mosh don't describe themselves as a diva-esque duo for nothing. Its true that at the start of their stage show, one could mistake them for two, fine ladies who are about to go to a 'Gala' dinner. The truth of the matter is that there is little left of this impression after every Mosh Mosh live show. The divas become stage divers and are not scared of ecstatic and extravagant 'stage acrobatics'. In brief: Mosh Mosh seem to be most at home when they are in tatters. And it is only thus that the codes of 'ladylike behaviour' can be redefined.
Let's deconstruct and your body will follow!


Vielen Dank an Deborah Keller, die diese Veranstaltung auswählte für ihr Meine Wahl, Züritipp 32, 11 August 2016!

An exhibition by Johanna Bruckner and Discoteca Flaming Star

curated by Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth.

Opening: Saturday, 20 August 2016, starting at 18:30h

with a performance by Discoteca Flaming Star at 20:00h.

Saturday, 20 August 2016 - Friday, 23 September 2016


Opening Hours / Öffnungszeiten
Wednesday / Mittwoch, 15:00h – 18:00h
Thursday / Donnerstag, 16:00h – 19:00h
Friday / Freitag, 15:00h – 18:00h
Saturday / Samstag, 14:00h – 16:30h
(Closed on Thursday, 15 September 2016)


[English below]

Die Ausstellung #work #dance #labor #movements vereint die Installation und Performance Love Any Out of (90 Seconds) End von Discoteca Flaming Star mit den Research-Prozess-basierten Video Installationen Rebel Bodies (Episodes I & II) und Total Algorithms of Partiality von Johanna Bruckner.

Beim Ausstellungsprojekt geht es um die Freude am Anderen, und darum, aus polyphonischen Melodien und gemeinschaftlichen Rhythmen einen unpersönlichen Refrain zu erzeugen. Die Ausstellung bezieht bewusst die aktuellen post-fordistischen Bedingungen und die prekäre Lage kreativer Arbeiter_innen und immaterielle Aspekte der Produktivität heute ein, um auszumalen, wie wir alle als Agent_innen in einem Netzwerk von Beziehungen dringend unsere materiellen Körper am Limit tanzend erfinden müssen. Das veranlasst jede_n von uns unweigerlich, unsere Beziehungen zum Anderen neu zusammen zu setzen. In dieser Bewegung des Zusammenspiels, in der man sich um den Anderen sorgt, „kann das Limit nicht ausgeschöpft werden.“ Das, was Franco „Bifo“ Berardi als für die Produktion von Affekt und Potentialität notwendiges Limit definiert, für ein positive und aktive Verfremdung, die es erlaubt, der technologischen Entfremdung zu entgehen, die auch eine soziale ist. In der Überschneidung der Praktiken von DFS und Bruckner zeigt die Ausstellung Techniken der Bewegung, die für das tägliche Proben in unserem Alltag verwendet werden können, um ihr Publikum linguistisch, affektiv und politisch einzubeziehen. Dazu sind keine besonderen Tanzfähigkeiten vonnöten. Es kann experimentiert und improvisiert werden, um einen „Mutationspunkt“ der Bewegungen eines Körpers zu finden, der präzis eine Praxis des Tanzes definiert – eines Tanzes, der nichts Exklusives verlangt. Die Arbeiten von DFS und Bruckner gehen alltäglichen Praktiken von Tanz und Bewegung nach, Praktiken, die der Wiederholung und der konsistenten Imperfektion bedürfen. Die Probetechniken der Improvisation sind molekulare Werkzeuge, die dazu dienen, Sand ins Getriebe der Kontrollapparate und der kognitiven Automation, die sie im Sinn einbetten – Werkzeuge zur Herstellung anderer Dynamiken in der Beschleunigung der Alltags im maschinischen Kapitalismus. Die flexiblen tanzenden Körper, die wie ein Fischschwarm Bogen schlagen zwischen persönlicher und sozialer Zeit, entrinnen den üblichen Koordinaten des Bodens.

#work #dance #labor #movements ist ein Ausstellungsprojekt in Bewegung, das Tanzbewegungen als persönlichen/sozialen Prozess betrachtet, der den sozialen Körper neu zusammen setzt, einen Körper als besonderes Ding, als temporär stabile dauerhafte Konstruktion aggregierter Teile, eine Konstruktion, die niemals ausserhalb ihres Wesens als Beziehung erfasst werden kann. Sie ertastet, wie der konkrete Körper kollektiv hergestellt wird in Bezug auf Bewegung und Ruhezustand seiner zusammengefügten Teile und deren affektive Resonanzen. Die Bewegung hat ihre eigene Präsenz, schreibt Simone Forti, eine individuierende Kraft des unpersönlichen, verkörperten sozialen Wissens, das es in biopolitischen Begriffen, also mit dem Körper zu denken gilt. Affekt ist eine andere Art, über Macht und die innerliche Konstruktion des Körpers, die Macht zu affektieren oder affektiert zu werden. Der Affekt ist die Macht des widerständigen Körpers, des tanzenden Körpers, von Körper-Kämpfen. Der Affekt verteilt die Körper über einen grossen Raum, offen gegenüber mannigfaltigen Dauern. Der Affekt ist eine Körperpolitik. Foucault stellt fest, dass in Machtkämpfe immer „Körperaktionen“ wirken, und affektive Macht ist produktiv, da sie „die Wirklichkeit ebenso postuliert und herstellt, als sie ihr Grenzen auferlegt.“ In Deleuzes Worten: “Was ein Körper tun kann, entspricht dem Wesen und den Grenzen seiner Fähigkeit, affektiert zu werden.“ Am Limit zu tanzen, affektiert den Körper mehr, als es die Repräsentation tut. Es gibt uns den Schlüssel zum Verständnis affirmativer Politik. Der tanzende Körper vermag es, Negativität zurück zu drängen, sich von ihr zu entflechten.

Affirmative Praktiken betreffen alles, was zum Sinn gehört, affektive Resonanzen zwischen den Teilen der Körper und ihre Differenz, alle Mannigfaltigkeiten und ihre Variabilität und Intensitäten totaler Freude im körperlosen, immateriellen und unpersönlichen Ereignis. „Die Frage des Sinns wird eins mit der Politik.“ Die Ästhetik und Politik des Sinns, in Bezug auf radikale Metaphysik und Bio-Macht gedacht, erotisiert den Körper sowohl in seiner Alltags-Existenz, als auch in der digitalen Sphäre, unregelmässige Körper miteinander verbindend, um die wettbewerblichen Prinzipien in jedem Fragment des sozialen Lebens zu hintertreiben – sinnliche Körper der Solidarität, der Gerechtigkeit und des Rechts. Die Art und Weise, wie sie in ihren künstlerischen Praktiken die Ästhetik des Sinns und die Biopolitik angehen, überschneidet sich in den Positionen und den Arbeiten für diese Ausstellung der Künstler_innen Discoteca Flaming Star und Johanna Bruckner.

Auszug aus dem kuratorischen Text von Dimitrina Sevova und Alan Roth.


[Deutsch siehe oben]

The exhibition #work #dance #labor #movements brings together the installation and performance Love Any Out of (90 Seconds) End by Discoteca Flaming Star, and the research-process-based video installations Rebel Bodies (Episodes I & II) and Total Algorithms of Partiality by Johanna Bruckner.

The exhibition project is about the pleasure of enjoying the other, and sets out to produce an impersonal refrain made of polyphonic tunes and collaborative rhythms. It consciously considers the current post-Fordist conditions and the precarious situation of creative labor and the immaterial aspects of productivity today, to outline how all of us as agents in a network of relations, urgently need to invent our corporeal bodies dancing at the limit. It inevitably prompts each of us to recompose one’s relation to the other. In this movement of interplay, when one takes care of the other, “the limit cannot be exhausted.” What Franco “Bifo” Berardi defines as the limit necessary to the production of the affect and of potentiality, for positive and active estrangement to overcome technological alienation, which is also social alienation. At the intersection of the practices of DFS and Bruckner, the exhibition dis-plays techniques of movement that can be used for rehearsals every day in our daily life, to linguistically, affectively and politically engage its audience. It does not require particular dance skills. One can experiment and improvise, to find a ‘mutation point’ of a body’s movements that precisely defines a practice of dance – a dance that does not require something exclusive. The works of DFS and Bruckner trace the everydayness of practices of dance and movement, practices that need repetition and a consistency of imperfection. The rehearsal techniques of improvisation are molecular tools for putting a spoke in the wheels of apparatuses of control and the cognitive automation they embed in the sensible, tools for introducing other dynamics in the acceleration of everyday life in machinic capitalism. The flexible dancing bodies that arc as a fish swarm between personal and social time, elude the usual coordinates of the floor.

#work #dance #labor #movements is an exhibition project in motion that considers dance movements as a personal/social process that recomposes the social body, a body as a particular thing, as a temporally stable, durational construction of aggregated parts, a construction that can never be conceived outside its conjunctional nature. It probes how the concrete body is collectively produced with respect to motion and rest of its conjoined parts and their affective resonances. The movement has its own presence, writes Simone Forti, an individuating power of impersonal, embodied social knowledge, to be thought in biopolitical terms, i.e., thought with the body. Affect is another way to talk about power and the body’s internal construction, the power to be affected and to affect. Affect is the power of the resisting body, of body struggles, of the dancing body. Affect distributes bodies across a larger space open to multiple durations. Affect is a body politics. Foucault asserts that power struggles always involve ‘body actions,’ and affective power is productive since it “posits and produces reality as much as it sets limits on it.” As Deleuze put it: “What a body can do corresponds to the nature and limits of its capacity to be affected.” To dance at the limit affects the body more than representation. It gives the key to an understanding of affirmative politics. The dancing body can de-limit negativity, disentangle itself from it.

Affirmative practices concern everything that belongs to the sensible, affective resonances between the bodies’ parts and their differences, all multiplicities and their variabilities or intensities of total joy in the incorporeal, immaterial and impersonal event. “The question of sensibility becomes one with politics.” The aesthetics and politics of the sensible, thought in terms of radical metaphysics and biopower, eroticizes the body both in its everyday existence and in the digital realm, conjoining irregular bodies to undermine competitive principles in every fragment of social life – sensible bodies of solidarity, justice and rights. The way they treat, in their artistic practices, the aesthetics of the sensible and biopolitics, intersects in the positions and the works for this exhibition of the artists Discoteca Flaming Star and Johanna Bruckner.

Excerpt from the curatorial text by Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth.



Johanna Bruckner

Rebel Bodies
Episodes I & II

The artist Johanna Bruckner continues her research on the organization of collective bodies with “Rebel Bodies”, part II. This large-scale work picks up the Workers Dance League’s inquiry into the possibilities of forming subversive embodied collective subjects. Bruckner’s research based approach sets off from an approximation to marginalized archives of knowledge, and thus creates space for the enunciation of matters which were excluded from hegemonic historiographies. Yet, this process can in no way be reduced to a purely discursive revision or alternative representation (of historiography). “Rebel Bodies” does not only present past (labor) struggles corporeally, but also calls them into the present performatively. Bruckner’s work transposes aspects of subversive choreographic approaches and of worker struggles from the 1930s, the times of industrial capitalism, into the present post-crisis phase of “cognitive” finance capitalism, temporally and spatially; to be more precise, to the Hafencity, which is a prime example of neoliberalism and proceeding gentrification.

(Marius Henderson)


Total Algorithms of Partiality

Hamburg’s Hafencity is currently characterised by continuous transformation. Interest in the most ʻintelligentʼ possible management of the districtʼs infrastructure is being tested by the introduction of new monitoring systems in Hafencity. The concept of logistics is becoming increasingly centralized, to enable optimal co-ordination of commercial, digital and social interactions. In Total Algorithms of Partiality dance scores examining the potential of an altered social logistics in Hamburgʼs Hafencity are developed, during the course of which I look at the current role of contemporary labour organisation and its possible course of action as it is confronted with the controversial developments in Hamburg’s Hafencity. What stance does the trade union take in relation to the complex, unstable situation in the new ʻghost townʼ and what forms of co-operative resistance are set in motion? The artistic work is to be presented in the form of a video installation, a performance, and research material.

This project is concerned with the possibilities of understanding art as an affirmative practice within society and its interwoven infrastructures, deriving from an intensive artistic and scientific examination of the complex logistical developments in Hamburg’s Hafencity and its significant international position.




Discoteca Flaming Star

Love Any Out of (90 Seconds) End



Love Any Out of (90 Seconds) End is a spatial installation and dance performance construction in two different planes. Love Any Out of (90 Seconds) End is a dance piece in which no one ever appears to dance, like in Dance Construction Clothes by Simone Forti. The fabric and its surface are the interiority of the movement itself, which produces an immersive environment not only to look at, but one which the audience walking in the space can feel or inhabit through their moving bodies. Pieces of fabric cut to different sizes, cut across the existing space other temporalities. They are part of the long-term practices of Discoteca Flaming Star with banners, pieces of fabric, glued together and painted or collaged with text which appears irregularly on their surface in poetic lines that make another movement to that of the freely folding, hung fabric. They serve both as backdrop curtains for performances and as an independent, formless architecture within the existing architecture that unframes the space. The movements of the banners shuffle the space; they are a spatial deterritorialization whose disorder forms into words. The interplay between the words makes a sensitive bricolage of Discoteca Flaming Star’s own reflections and the cryptic thoughts that pass through them on everything they are interested in at the moment, which they sometimes carry around with them for months. Sometimes they are concepts, or poems. In the words of DFS, they are think-text-iles.

For their live performance dance construction Love Any Out of (90 Seconds) End, Discoteca Flaming Star take the case of the little girl Esther who trained ambitiously to become a rhythmic gymnast. She wishes to develop to the extreme in her exercises her athletic excellence, to display perfect physical agility, coordination and grace. As it turns out, under the pressure of her parents, Esther eventually left the field of gymnastics to undertake another education that would give her a better future. Now Esther is a woman who graduated from university, which has indeed given her greater opportunities in her life. Her memory has retained, inscribed in her body, the rigorous training of the movements of rhythmic gymnastics. These inscriptions in her body remind her that she did not manage to realize her childhood dream. In the duration of the performance, the dance movements bring her back to the time of her childhood, as they evoke her memory through her body. They follow the dance score of Esther’s 90 seconds of multiple becoming in its imperceptible time, becoming child, becoming animal – A-ESTHER-BECOMING-DIVINE HORSEWOMAN, becoming an imperceptible-impersonal molecule, becoming one and many at the same time in the vanishing time of a 90 seconds duration. A molecular becoming of one/many, to the event of the groundless and infinitely small milieus of a collective action. Esther does not designate a proper name. Esther does not represent a subject, but a desiring assemblage, a collective persona of three and more, as everything written above in capital letters. She is a collective enunciation. The instruction is to love any out of these 90 seconds. To love. A verb in the infinitive! To mark processes like to walk, to love, to dance. The infinitive marks movements of deterritorialization.

Esther dances together with Cristina, and Wolfgang sings. Their dance supposes proximity and distance at the ground level, but in the proximity of their dancing bodies they do not necessarily follow each other’s movements. Their disjointed movements start to intersect more and more often to modulate an invisible diagram of individuation. “I am you” in this passage, with all its intensive components of variability at once. Their movements are at the limit of their bodies and at the limit of their language. Logomotions and body movements interrelate. They double in the becoming of Esther. She is an assemblage – a material production of desires. Esther starts betraying her own memorized techniques of rhythmic gymnastics, displacing them with more improvisational and free movements, eluding the repressive apparatus and disciplining process to lose control, to push her desires to the real life experience, with the sensible quality of emotions and the fabulating movements coming from language. Cristina’s movement techniques are elaborated on the basis of Maya Deren’s and Simone Forti’s systems of movements and techniques, and philosophy.

Love Any Out of (90 Seconds) End opens a new path of imaginary/experience in order to give her a score to become conscious of her difference, embodied in the singularity of the therapeutic process. It is not remodeling Esther’s subjectivity. It is a new production in the dance movements “to recompose her existential corporeality and to get out of her repetitive impasses.” It is both a politics and an aesthetics of irreversible duration.

Love makes the movements a dance of refusal. Love is not work! “dance! no work!” Dance forms life! Dancing molecules, disconnected and at the same time all together. Every movement becomes a joyful autonomous event in a mass tune that gives the courage to Esther to traverse the abyss of the 90 seconds of death, of non-being and crying. “I die. I die.” Which means, paradoxically “I leave. I leave.” And give her the power to fight for the world. “I am you.”

Excerpt from the text on DFS's work in the exhibition, by Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth.