Friday 13 November 2009

'The Known Unknowns' - 4 hours continues reading at Whitechapel Gallery




The Known Unknowns is a scheduled cycle of continuous readings running parallel to Volatile Dispersal: Festival of Art Writing, an evening organised by Maria Fusco and Book Works at Whitechapel Gallery.
The festival reflects on the materialisation and dematerialisation of art writing through six newly commissioned works by
Adam Chodzko, Ruth Ewan, Babak Ghazi, Beatrice Gibson, Nathaniel Mellors and Gail Pickering.

The aim of
The Known Unknowns is to gather an interesting number of contributors to publicly read extracts or entire sections of their own texts.
The fluidity and the continuity of the act of reading-aloud will unveil a focus on both the singular texts and the whole reading as a unique entity.
This constant balance between singularity and plurality will also produce an interesting tension with the six commissioned intervention happening around the Whitechapel Gallery.


The Known Unknowns

21 November 2009 - Whitechapel Gallery

First Section (6.30-7.30)

Intro

- Neil Chapman

- Jeremy Akerman

- Ruth Beale

- Katrina Palmer

- Clare Gasson

- Hilary Koob-Sassen

- Nick Thurston

Second Section (7.45-8.45)

- Laure Prouvost

- Jamie Shovlin

- Reto Pulfer

- Ruth Höflich

- Daniel Rourke

- Sally O’Reilly

Third Section (9-10)

- Anna Barham

- Matt&Ross

- NaoKo TakaHashi

- Brighid Lowe

- antepress

- Stewart Home

Wednesday 11 November 2009

'Avant-garde etc.' / a show by Nicolas Chardon / a limited edition catalogue



Nicolas Chardon
Avant-garde etc.
LOG, Bergamo, Italy
Solo show from November 20th to January 9th
www.welogyou.net

In occasion of the show, LOG will publish a limited edition catalogue with a text by Francesco Pedraglio.

Sunday 1 November 2009

'Film as a Subversive Art' - Playlists


Francesco Pedraglio's playlist "The camera has an angry eye"

A project devised by Supercream for the LUX site in parallel to 'Film As A Subversive Art' at Zoo Art Fair 2009.

Supercream has invited a selection of artists, curators and writers to construct a playlist of online videos and links that will outline their position in relation to the idea of subversion.

Emerging from different cultural and generational backgrounds, the participants implement the exhibition by broadening the field of discussion, raising new problematics, interpretations and perspectives.

Playlists will be uploaded regularly throughout October 2009, on both supercream.org.uk/adoptions and on the LUX site.

Participants:
Dean Kissick, Thai Shani, Laure Prouvost, Stazione Orbitante, Francesco Pedraglio, Joao Florencio, Jen Wu, Pil and Galia Kollectiv

Saturday 26 September 2009

'Guided Tours' - 15 to 18 October - Auto Italia South East



Launches Saturday 17th October
9am to 1pm

From 15 - 18 October Auto Italia hosts a temporary programme of performances, events, discussions and presentations from selected on-going projects by emerging artists.

BETTINA BRUNNER / KATHY NOBLE / FRANCESCO PEDRAGLIO
a permanent project for Auto-Italia organised by Katie Guggenheim

Three curators, Bettina Brunner, Kathy Noble and Francesco Pedraglio, present fictional guided tours of Auto-Italia through the medium of writing. The guided tour, an established museological convention, is used here as a means to visit exhibitions that don't exist. The tours will be permanently available to visitors, as three alternatives to the exhibition on show, for as long as Auto-Italia remains at its current location, an old Volkswagen garage which is awaiting demolition.

BETTINA BRUNNER has written a conversation between herself and Dan Graham based on interviews and the artist's writings concerning architecture and space. Bettina is Exhibitions Co- ordinator at the BFI and a regular contributor to Frieze Magazine and Springerin.

KATHY NOBLE has reviewed an imaginary exhibition, addressing authenticity through performance and re-performance. Kathy is a writer and Assistant Curator at Tate Modern.

FRANCESCO PEDRAGLIO will focus on the building itself, imagining possible pasts and futures. Francesco co-founded the curatorial project space FormContent, edits the quarterly fanzine The Mock and other superstitions, and is a London editor for Kaleidoscope.

Tuesday 22 September 2009

The Mock and other superstitions at 'UTOPIA FOR SALE' - Akademie der Künste Berlin -



We are glad to invite you to UTOPIA FOR SALE, a magazine exhibition featuring the archives of the most engaging publications in the current sphere. This exhibition will be held by abc, art berlin contemporary at Akademie der Künste. Please visit us from September 23-27, 2009. Private opening reception on September 22nd, 2009 from 7pm.

This year's abc becomes 'def — drafts establishing future', and presents the work of over 80 artists on their visions for art projects in public space. These works are to feature concepts for utopian or viable projects to be realized in Berlin or elsewhere. In accordance with the theme of abc, the CMYK presents Utopia for Sale.

The title of the exhibition, Utopia For Sale, is taken from a text by critic Frederic J. Schwartz. His work describes 'what happened to the Bauhaus when its products went beyond the world of "theory" and discursive debate and confronted the real, non utopian capitalist economy that actually existed in Weimar Germany'.

From this starting point, we seek to examine the result of the introduction of 'Utopia' into the market economy. The market has a unique way of uniting art and industry, under which these utopian practices are articulated by laws, manipulated by experts, and tested by profits. Therefore the difference between a utopian versus a revolutionary project resides in our capacity to reform these laws instead of being expropriated by them.

The selected issues will be on sale turning the exhibition space into a temporary bookshop. The temporary bookshop is conceived like an experimental platform to test how the art production deals with the market and its distribution rules. The CMYK and Archive Kabinett invited GRID, an art collective based in São Paulo and Berlin to curate the display of the exhibition during abc.

Participating magazines among the others: A prior, Afterall, Archive Journal, Chimurenga, Ctrl+P, Dot Dot Dot, E-flux journal, Fillip, Frieze, IDEA arts + society, Internationalistisk Ideale, Metropolis M, Mister Motley, Mono.Kultur, Mousse magazine, n.paradoxa, Not Announced, Nowiswere, Pages, Paper Monument, Pavilion Magazine, Proximity, Reartikulacija, Script, Site, Spike, Springerin, Texte zur Kunst, The Happy Hypocrite, The Mock and other superstitions, TkH – Teorija koja Hoda, Zehar.

UTOPIA FOR SALE
Exhibition Dates: September 23 – 27, 2009
Location: Akademie der Künste Berlin, Hanseantenweg 10
Opening Date: September 22, 2009, 7pm (upon invitation)

abc, art berlin contemporary
http://www.artberlincontemporary.com
info@artberlincontemporary.com

Wednesday 12 August 2009

Art Writing Summer School at Whitechapel


Tuesday 18, Wednesday 19 & Thursday 20 August
11am-4pm


‘Does the angle between two walls have a happy ending?’

– J.G. Ballard

An intensive three-day summer school focusing on the production, reception and distribution of art writing. Divided into writing, editing and publishing – this practical course invites participants to consider and develop their own writing in relation to a selection of contemporary art works, giving emphasis to texts which are experimental and experiential in form.

The Summer School culminates in a limited edition poster publication produced throughout the three days by and for the participants. Led by Maria Fusco, editor, lecturer and Writer-in-Residence, Natasha Soobramanien, writer and Francesco Pedraglio, writer, editor and curator.

Tuesday 7 July 2009

À corps & à texts - Second event: 'Now that we know that the center could be empty' / 'Maintenant que nous savons que le centre pourrait être vide'

With:
Jochen Dehn, Elodie Royer & Yoann Gourmel, Achim Lengerer, Nicolas Chardon and Geraldine Longueville (in collaboration with La Vitrine), Christian Alandete, Pierre Leguillon and the students from Maria Fusco’s writing workshop at Kadist Art Foundation.

From 7pm at La Galerie

In the framework of La Galerie's exhibition À corps & à texts, the event is an informal night of readings, performances and screenings taking place between the exhibition space and the residency’s studio at Noisy-le-Sec.
Tackling different views on artistic production through a specific attention on cross-fields practices, fluidity of the writing medium, editing and quoting, the night is also an organic gathering of proposals, questions and impressions by different Paris-based artists, curators and writers met during the three months curatorial residency at La Galerie.


Students from Maria Fusco’s writing workshop reading their texts


Students from Maria Fusco’s writing workshop reading their texts


Elodie Royer & Yoann Gourmel, Les informations supplémentaires


Elodie Royer & Yoann Gourmel, Les informations supplémentaires






Nicolas Chardon and Geraldine Longueville, SUDOKUSQUARE (Love song)
Chance
Alphabet
Geometry
Music
and
Love
Purely abstract, we'll never be lost in translation!


Jochen Dehn, Ce que c'est, la différence entre une voyage et une maladie


Jochen Dehn, Ce que c'est, la différence entre une voyage et une maladie


Jochen Dehn, Ce que c'est, la différence entre une voyage et une maladie


Jochen Dehn, Ce que c'est, la différence entre une voyage et une maladie


Jochen Dehn, Ce que c'est, la différence entre une voyage et une maladie


Jochen Dehn, Ce que c'est, la différence entre une voyage et une maladie


Pierre Leguillon during his presentation at La Galerie's studio space


Christian Alandete presents R.A.S


Achim Lengerer, P.S. the show's title was: the film as a page of victor hugo rewritten in the style of nerval


Achim Lengerer, P.S. the show's title was: the film as a page of victor hugo rewritten in the style of nerval


Achim Lengerer, P.S. the show's title was: the film as a page of victor hugo rewritten in the style of nerval

Wednesday 24 June 2009

À corps & à texts - Fisrt parallel event: Alex Cecchetti / Marcelline Delbecq

Friday, June 26, 7 p.m
In the framework of La Galerie's exhibition À corps & à textes, curated by actual resident Francesco Pedraglio, and of café au lit's exhibition of Barbara Breitenfellner, La Galerie contemporary art center in Noisy-le-Sec invites Alex Cecchetti and Marcelline Delbecq for a performance-evening at Café au Lit homestory.

Alex Cecchetti (né en 1977, vit et travaille à Paris)
Vidéo, peinture, performance, sculpture et textes, les œuvres d’Alex Cecchetti questionnent l’origine et la permanence des mythes et des grands récits dans notre société contemporaine avec une certaine fascination pour la violence. Ses performances explorent les méthodes de création, tel que dans I Giocatori où Cecchetti crée un dialogue sculptural avec d’autres artistes sous forme d’un jeu sans règle ou dans Ride, Ride, Ride, une recombinaison de divers textes et passages de livres qui improvise une nouvelle histoire.


Alex Cecchetti,Chevaucher, chevaucher, chevaucher, Café au Lit, Paris


Alex Cecchetti,Chevaucher, chevaucher, chevaucher, Café au Lit, Paris


Alex Cecchetti,Chevaucher, chevaucher, chevaucher, Café au Lit, Paris


Alex Cecchetti,Chevaucher, chevaucher, chevaucher, Café au Lit, Paris


Marcelline Delbecq (née en 1977, vit et travaille à Paris)
Après une formation de photographe aux Etats-Unis, le travail de Marcelline Delbecq s’est peu à peu éloigné de la pratique de l’image pour se concentrer sur la potentialité cinématographique de l’écriture. Son utilisation du récit, de la voix, élabore un univers narratif mis en mots et en sons pour convoquer un ensemble d’images mentales oscillant entre description et fiction. Dans ses installations sonores, publications et lectures — pour lesquelles elle utilise la voix comme une voix-off à un projet cinématographique invisible — les mots mettent en jeux la question du regard en devenant à leur propre tour des visions.


Marcelline Delbecq, Showtime, reading performance at Café au Lit, Paris


Marcelline Delbecq, Showtime, reading performance at Café au Lit, Paris


Marcelline Delbecq, Showtime, reading performance at Café au Lit, Paris


Marcelline Delbecq, Showtime, reading performance at Café au Lit, Paris

Monday 22 June 2009

'Verbavolantscriptamanent' at Fondazione Buziol




The Mock and other superstitions partecipates to the event 'Verbavolantscriptamanent' (Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana Cannaregio 4392, Venezia, 6 giugno 2009 from 6 pm) with Archive Journal, Kaleidoscope, Mousse and Nero.


FormContent at GAM (Turin) - The young people visiting our ruins see nothing but a style



I giovani che visitano le nostra rovino non vi vedono che uno stile

The young people visiting our ruins see nothing but a style

With:
Salvatore Arancio, Francesco Barocco, Vanessa Billy, Andrea Büttner, Felice Casorati, Steven Claydon, Isabelle Cornaro, Dadamaino, Michael Dean, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Thomas Hauseago, Sol LeWitt, Eliseo Mattiacci, Giorgio Morandi, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Seth Price, Clément Rodzielski, Florian Roithmayr, Mino Rosso, Alberto Savinio, Richard Serra, Woody Vasulka

Curated by FormContent

Thursday 21 May 2009

“à corps & à textes” / "Through body & text" - La Galerie, Contemporary Art Centre


With:
Orla Barry, Michael Dean, Clare Gasson, Falke Pisano, Reto Pulfer, Alexandre Singh and Richard T. Walker

Guest curator: Francesco Pedraglio, in the frame of La Galerie's annual curatorial residency.



Through Body and Text
If well thought through, the first encounter with what is simply referred to as ‘typography’ is rather disconcerting: there, graphically arranged on the page, the scission between signifier and signified is studied and formally developed to reach a communicative efficiency. The constructive elements are still the same – a text, its body and the message – but the interpretative lens paradigmatically changes: if the writing remains a fluid stream of subjective idiosyncrasies, at the same time it becomes a body in the space, a body occupying space.
On a similar unsettling level, the exhibition À corps & à texts analyzes a certain typographical nature of the complex relationship between coexisting strategies of employing writing as a motor for artistic creation.
The heterogeneous works of the seven invited artists – most of whom are showing in France for the first time – position themselves between an exquisite rarefaction of the art object through subjective narrations and an analytic investigation of language as a medium for regaining the physicality of the work.
Through the tortuous itineraries undertaken by these different practices, the exhibition explores the countless potentialities of writing as a body that engages both with physical and mental spaces.

It is clear that, when talking of typography in relation to the work of the 7 artists of À corps & à texts, I’m referring to a hybridized version of this complex tool to understand cultural developments.
Indeed I’m not alluding to the art of arranging types and modifying glyphs by using a variety of illustration techniques. I’m instead thinking of intuitive writing practices considered as ‘that by which something is subjectively symbolized or figured’, or as ‘that by which something regains its status of thing between things, regains its being in the world’.
Maybe it would be more appropriate to say that I’m talking of a certain typographical attitude between the invited artists and the production of their work, a relation constantly kept fluid by the unsettlement of their writings. It is in this openness to fluidity and in the consequent exclusion of any crystallized focus on the formalization of the work, that the heterogeneous and partially overlapping practices of the artists of À corps & à texts find a common conceptual ground.
This dilated idea of written words relates to the very same human ability to capture glimpses of reality and simultaneously transform them into bodies, existing both as ephemeral elements of subjective realities and independent objects physically returned to the world.

The intriguing balance between writing as shapeless process of abstraction and concretisation is at the core of the exhibition. This idea can be further exemplified through two significant anecdotes: in 1961 Pier Paolo Pasolini leaves poetry and debuts as a director, converging into his cinematic realism the allegorical power of his poetic writing. In Pasolini’s cinema the application of his lyrical narration onto a realist perception of the world, translates into complex mythologies able to pierce the thick intelligibility of the reality as it unfolds in front of the author’s eyes.
Just ten years earlier, the French writer Raymond Queneau published his Petite cosmogonie portative, a lyrical research into the creative qualities of analytic language. Queneau adopts a language as distant from poetry as can allow for the incorporation of scientific terms and themes. Then, with this very language, he writes a unique lyrical work, a literary cosmogony with a scientific validity.
These two complex and divergent events perfectly exemplify how the existence of analytic and poetic elements could transmute the most subjective description of reality into mythology, and the most scrupulous analysis of language into a physical object.
The possible shadings are infinite, countless as the narrative forms used by the invited artists: the day-to-day, the crepuscular, the intimate and the naturalistic. And then again: the detached, the rational, the calibrated and the analytical.
From Clare Gasson’s and Orla Barry’s researches into writing as imprint of the artist’s subjectivity, to Alexandre Singh’s fictive use of narration as a catalyst for alternative histories. From Michael Dean’s and Falke Pisano’s analytic research into written words as physical and conceptual objects, to Richard T. Walker’s disarming use of writing as psychological link between interior and exterior world, until Reto Pulfer’s use of written words as performable mnemonic exercise through images and objects.
Words are important, and the exhibition is an attempt to analyse the consequences of such assertion through a group of artists that make written words the centre of their practice.

The point of encounter should be found precisely in the fluidity of this ‘certain typographical attitude’ shared by the different works and applied in the balance between the piece and the overflowing written discourse accompanying it.
This encounter is physically shown in the central room of the exhibition space completing the conceptual spectrum of the show by underlining not just the different strategies of employing writing at the core of artistic practices, but also the importance to reflect on our cultural necessity to write, write, write.

F.P.

List of parallel events:
- 3oth May: performances by Alexandre Singh (at La Galerie studio) and Reto Pulfer (in the exhibition space)
- 26th June: performances by Marcelline Delbecq and Alex Cecchetti
- 3rd July: night of screenings and performances at La Galerie's studio (a schedule soon available)






Friday 24 April 2009

The Happy Interval - Tulips & Roses - Vilnius



2009 04 23 - 2009 05 23

THE HAPPY INTERVAL

Opening reception: 2009 04 23, 19:00

Artists and projects:

Mariana Castillo Deball
Jason Dodge
FormContent
Ryan Gander
Mark Geffriaud
Laura Kaminskaite
Irene Kopelman
The Infinite Library

One well known psychoanalyst once said: in order to make a book disappear you don't have to destroy it - simply take it out of its place in the library and insert it somewhere else, be it only several bookshelves away. Physically it will remain right at hand, but for anyone unaware of this, the potential sites and times of the books disappearance will be endless. Only a madman could start scanning the library book by book in order to find the missing oeuvre.
Yet there is another possibility, strangely corresponding to the one just mentioned: the possibility of accidentally finding a certain book which does not belong to the library. A book which coexists with the whole structure without in fact having a rightful place in it. How should one read such a book? How do you tell apart the necessary from the contingent or the text from the context in this instance? Do the underlined sentences form a secret message? Do these greasy fingerprints belong to the character who sneaked this mysterious book into the library? Maybe the whole narrative of the work was conceived only to distract the reader from something much more important? Are you in the book once you touch it?
In the case of the displaced book a subtle gap is demonstrated. This gap is between the real (in this case, the books) and the symbolical (the library). Once a book is erased from the symbolical order its reality is also destabilized. Yet how is it with the book which is in your hands but not in the register? There is no gap in this case - the book missing from the symbolical order still affects the latter. A tangible object intrudes into the sphere of ideas without itself becoming an idea. Apparently, the story begins in the middle as usual.

Tuesday 7 April 2009

The Mock and other superstitions - ISSUE 2 - Launch at Donlon Books / X marks the Bökship


The Mock and other superstitions

Launch of ISSUE 2 - Anecdotes as new theory
Sunday April 5th at Donlon Books / Xmarks Bökship (210/Unit 3/Cambridge Heath Road, London) - from 6.30 to 9


ISSUE 2 - Anecdotes as new theory
The new issue includes contributions by Olivier Castel, Alex Cecchetti, Michael Dean, Marcelline Delbecq, Sarah Elliot, Simon Fujiwara, Charlotte Moth, extracts from Matteo Terzaghi and Marco Zürcher's book Da qualche parte sulla Terra and F/M's hand-written interpretation of Pierre Guyotat's Body of the Text.

In occasion of the launch, Simon Fujiwara reads an excerpt from his erotic story Meat Curtains (Cortinas de Carne) and Olivier Castel presents a slide-show.








Friday 3 April 2009

Reto Pulfer at Wartesall



Wartesall (Zurich) presents Z'Innre redet im Öißre, a solo exhibition by Reto Pulfer with a specially commissioned text you can find HERE.

Wednesday 25 March 2009

The Mock and other superstitions - ISSUE 2 - OUT NOW


The new issue of The Mock and other superstitions is out now!

Titled Anecdotes as New Theory this issue's contributors are: Olivier Castel, Alex Cecchetti, Michael Dean, Marcelline Delbeq, Sarah Elliot, Simon Fujiuara and Charlotte Moth. With images extracts from Matteo Terzaghi and Marco Zuercher Chaier d`Artiste and with F/M hand-written inter-pretation of Pierre Guyotat Body of the Text.


Thursday 12 March 2009

Kaleidoscope / a contemporary magazine / launch Issue



Kaleidoscope is the first European free magazine of contemporary art and culture, a bimonthly publication with a circulation of more than 50,000 copies distributed across an international network of 25 countries making for a total of 400 points of distribution, to an audience of up to 250,000 readers.

Inside this issue of Kaleidoscope you could find a focus titled The Art of Writing featuring also The Mock and other superstitions

Thursday 8 January 2009

The Reader - guestroom publication book launch



Thursday 15th January 7pm -10pm at guestroom studio

The Reader
The latest Guest-room publication looks at the environments of libraries and archives as structures for hosting both personal and institutional systems, for drawing relationships and points of connection. As places of documenting experience, libraries move beyond fixed authorities for acquiring knowledge while books become material for the production and dissemination of new work and ideas.

Includes work by Tom McCarthy, Rebecca Bligh, Hilary Koob-Sassen, Dorian Moore, Nick Laessing, Laura Cull, Francesco Pedraglio and Guestroom (Ruth Höflich and Maria Benjamin).