A Certain Realism

The Starry Rubric Set

2012-02-02T00:50:00.000-08:00

The Starry Rubric Set

05.02.12-12.03.12

New Work By: Marjolijn DijkmAn / Ruth Beale / Nicholas Deshayes / Rob Filby / Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry / Kate Owens / Laure Prouvost / Giles Round
Sculptures By: HilAry Koob-Sassen in Wysing’s grounds
Live Works By: John Latham / Francesco Pedraglio / Cally Spooner / Emma Smith

Preview Saturday 4 February 6–8pm
Including live performances and launch of a new publication by An Endless Supply.

Saturday 10 March
A day-long series of performances and events including The Government of the First and Thirteenth Chair, the performance of a play by John Latham as re-interpreted by Mark Aerial Waller.

Wysing Arts Centre
Fox Road near Bourn
Cambridgeshire
CB23 2TX

www.wysingartscentre.org

Banner Repeater - Saturday 28th January 2012

2012-01-19T03:13:00.000-08:00

Ten Chapters Seven Chapters, A Contents Page, Parenthesis and Footnotes

Andrew Lanyon, Rebecca Lennon, Jenny Moore, Francesco Pedraglio, Monica Rivas

Saturday 28th January 2012 - 19:35 - 21:00

The evening begins at Liverpool Street Station at 19.35pm.

Board the 19:45 train to Cheshunt five stops to Banner Repeater.

Promptness is essential, especially if prone to missing trains, and in this case missing the train means missing a one-time-only performance!

(If you're unable to catch this train, please still come to Banner Repeater for additional performances and readings from 8pm-9pm)

Ten Chapters Seven Chapters, A Contents Page, Parenthesis and Footnotes is a new publication featuring works by: Davide Balliano, Ami Clarke, Emma Hart, Andrew Lanyon, Rebecca Lennon, Louisa Martin, Jenny Moore, Tamarin Norwood, Francesco Pedraglio, and Mónica Rivas. The individual chapters announce their arrival via an evolving contents page which diagrammatically charts the evolution of the book's existence though it's myriad and disparate events; performances, films, drawings, text, sculpture, and printed materials - each suggesting the nature of the book which itself continually escapes full comprehension.

This event marks the project's first public outlet, and features chapters by Andrew Lanyon, Rebecca Lennon, Jenny Moore, Francesco Pedraglio and Mónica Rivas.

Exhibition continues on 29th January.

Concept: Louisa Martin

www.bannerrepeater.org

Again, A Time Machine

2012-01-15T02:59:00.000-08:00

17 JANUARY 2012
6–9.30PM
THE SHOWROOM
63 PENFORLD STREET
LONDON NW8 8PQ

The Time Machine is a project that asks us to forget about archives and embrace the confusion of the present, in order to consciously experiment with all our imaginable histories and expected futures. Presented as part of Again, A Time Machine at The Showroom, words and archives are discharged into the present, through a series of performative talks and events. This event sees performances, readings and sound work by Alex Cecchetti, Mark Geffriaud, and Kit Poulson with Alex Baker, at the launch of their three publications: A Society that Breathes Once a Year by Alex Cecchetti, The Curve of Forgotten Things by Mark Geffriaud, and The Ice Cream Empire by Kit Poulson. The Time Machine, selected and edited by Francesco Pedraglio from open submission, is a project that asks us to forget about archives and embrace the confusion of the present, in order to consciously experiment with all our imaginable histories and expected futures.

Performance as Publishing - Kunsthalle Basel - 13 January

2012-01-06T12:06:00.000-08:00

Performance as Publishing, 21:00 – 01:00
Performance as Publishing is an event that investigates the shifting relations between performance practice and discourse, event and writing.
The event furthermore explores the work of contemporary artists who use text as the base for their performance. Text does not primarily appear as a means of communication but as something, which has a shape and structure of its own. The performative act appears as an investigation into how meaning can be transformed and constructed through speech act and the voice. Performance therefore emerges as the main tool to make a text presentable and accessible. Through the implementation of voice, gestures and technical amplifiers a wider field of mediation is possible. Language may then be used in different terms (abstract, concrete) for unconventional mediations (fiction, fact), which challenges the perception and questions our daily cognition. Performance as Publishing looks at how language shapes and creates our world and how the corporal act is part of the linguistic mediation.

Nicole Bachmann (CH)
Ruth Beale (UK)
Michael Dean (UK)
Beatrice Gibson (UK)
Francesco Pedraglio (I)
Heather Phillipson (UK)
Reto Pulfer (CH)

Concept: Nicole Bachmann, Ruth Beale
Curated by: Manuela Schlumpf

Katrina Palmer presents dubious objects and made-up texts, readings and performances - Transmission Gallery - Glasgow

2011-11-28T10:17:00.000-08:00

06 December - 10 December 2011

3^rd December 7 – 8pm

FRANCESCO PEDRAGLIO performs a discursive tale with an abstract object

CLAIRE MAKHLOUF CARTER sells-out

10^th December 7 – 8pm

KATRINA PALMER reads a very short story

JEFFORD HORRIGAN performs plus special guest Parisian musician René Salemi

STEWART HOME recites while standing on his head

Claire Makhlouf Carter generates performances that take place within art openings, artist talks and galleries. Sometimes Berber Carpet is rolled out as if a stage and subsequently unpicked by a team of carpet pickers. Carter has hired other temporary workers as part of her performances including a sniffer dog, two mercenaries, a make-up artist cum cloakroom attendant, a psychiatric nurse and a tombola man. Carter’s recently shown work includes DEMO WALWORTH ROAD The Hole London; DAY TRIP TO St LEONARDS-ON-SEA The Lido St Leonards- on-Sea and Art Monthly; Performance Nights at The Barbican Gallery London; Seven Day Weekend, Beaux Arts de Paris andSinpodium The Museum of English Rural Life. Carter’s performances in art school seminar rooms include the Royal College of Art, Kingston University and Chelsea School of Art.

Stewart Home has been a cultural activist since the late-1970s – starting with punk bands and fanzines and moving on to gallery exhibitions, live art and commercial publication in the 1980s and beyond. He is the author of thirteen published novels, one collection of short stories, six works of non-fiction and the editor of various anthologies. His most recent solo exhibition was Again A Time Machine at White Columns in New York (October/November 2011). His last novel was Blood Rites of the Bourgeoisie (Book Works, London 2010).

Invariably Jefford Horrigan makes performances with furniture, lamps and other household objects. Moving and placing them until they become a different entity, half dreamt and half observed, often devoid of common sense but answerable to its own intrinsic logic. Most recent performances, installations, exhibitions and screenings include Out of the Corner of The Eye at the James Taylor Gallery London, Makura at White Deer Projects London and The Table for Portrait of Space at Clonlea Studios, Dublin in 2011. Forrella (Rella - Michael Curran/ Lucy Gunning) at Beaconsfield, London, La Folia for Preludes and Nocturnes (Laura Wilson) New Dalston Library London in 2010 and The Dissolve for the Clockwork Gallery Berlin and THE DRESSER (Talk Show/ Speakeasy) Institute of Contemporary Art London in 2009. The Four Stages of Cruelty Tate Britain London and Past Lives (Body Parts III) Royal Scottish Academy Edinburgh 2007.

Katrina Palmer is an artist and writer. Palmer’s texts feature objects in the imagination and amidst the paranoia and the social/sexual dynamics of art and its spaces. Ordinary things appear alongside discourse and sculpture (the subject in language and the object in action). The work is disseminated through publications, performances and readings. Her book, The Dark Object was published by Book Works 2010. Other work includes:mmmm a CD at Art House Foundation, London 2011; Relief in the Modern British Sculpture catalogue, Royal Academy, London 2011. Live readings include: Head in 3 parts at Hole, London 2011; Under The Desk at Again A Time Machine, Motto, Berlin 2011; Tutorial at These Silences Writing Festival, Summerhall, Edinburgh 2011; Chair-Bed at Volatile Dispersal: Festival of Art Writing, Whitechapel Gallery, London 2009.

Francesco Pedraglio is an artist, writer and co-founder of FormContent project space. Through short-stories, performances and installations, his work reflects on the mechanics of storytelling. Writing directly in a foreign language, he focuses on straight narratives facing the problematic of ‘making sense’ while delivering a story to an audience. He has been performing a.o. at Auto Italia South East, The National Portrait Gallery, ICA, Wysing Arts Centre, Hollybush Gardens. Next to FormContent's activity, he has been curating numerous exhibitions a.o. 'Session_15' (BolteLang, Zurich) 'The Responsive Subject' (Mu.Zee, Ostend), 'Through Body and Text' (La Galerie, Paris) and 'The Young People...' (GAM, Turin). He is editor of the fanzine 'The Mock and other superstitions' and Book Works guest-editor with the project Time Machine.

An action, event or other thing that occurs or happens again - One Thoresby Street, Trade Gallery & Bonington Gallery, Nottingham - 11 Nov 23 Dec

2011-10-13T04:51:00.000-07:00

An action, event or other thing that occurs or happens again

11 November - 23 December 2011

ATHANASIOS ARGIANAS, BRUCE ASBESTOS, ROBERT ASHLEY, RACHEL COLDICUTT, KATIE DAVIES, DANI GAL, YOUNG HAE CHANG, HEAVY INDUSTRIES, CANDICE JACOBS, SALLY O'REILLY, FRANCESCO PEDRAGLIO, MARK TITCHNER, JACK STRANGE, NAM JUNE PAIK, RUTH PROCTOR

An action, event or other thing that occurs or happens again looks at repetition as a tool for the manipulation and control of the masses, thinking about the relationship between repetition, sound and the image; how sound activates text and how the repetition of words, images and actions can create a sense of familiarity or a relationship with something.

Thinking of the television as a sound, image and text provider through its programming and advertising, and advertising and marketing as the manipulation of these subjects; repetition and repetitive techniques are employed to create structures and narratives that are key elements to the success of many sitcoms, TV programmes and magazines. This type of marketing strategy is able to draw in an audience and keep them there, transfixed.

Repetition is also a key element of many music genres; techno, trance, pop, electronica, drum & bass, house; is there a similar formal structure or strategy in place here? An established structure that has the power to control its audience?

This exhibition uses selected artworks, situations and conversations to understand some of these thoughts and ideas by providing a structure where the viewer is free to make their own connections between the works and the ideas within the project.

Trade Gallery have been working in collaboration with artist and producer of this project, Candice Jacobs to develop an exhibition within an exhibition alongside the main gallery at One Thoresby Street. Trade will be screening Perfect Lives by Robert Ashley.

Ashley is a distinguished figure in American contemporary music working in new forms of opera and multi-disciplinary projects. His recorded works are acknowledged classics of language in a musical setting and are distinctly original in style, subject matter and use of language. Co- produced with Channel Four, in August 1983, Ashley’s opera for television is widely considered to be the pre-cursor of "music-television."

This project has been financially supported by the kind generosity of the Arts Council England

Auto Italia LIVE Episode 2: Cosmosis

2011-10-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

Auto Italia LIVE Episode 2: Cosmosis

With Andrew Kerton, Eddie Peake, Francesco Pedraglio and Heather Phillipson

Featuring Sam Belinfante, Naomi Belshaw, Georgiana Cavendish, Sarah Mujinya, Lizzie Sells, Rosanna Ter-Berg, Roberta Vaz, Helena Webb, Matthew Welch, Jess Wiesner, Thais Wizenberg, Molly Wright

The series can be watched as part of the live studio audience or via the website www.autoitaliasoutheast.org

2011-09-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

AUTO ITALIA LIVE

EPISODE 2: COSMOSIS

Open from 7pm: Broadcast LIVE at 8pm

This Saturday 1st October

Andrew Kerton
Eddie Peake
Francesco Pedraglio
Heather Phillipson

Featuring
Sam Belinfante, Naomi Belshaw, Georgiana Cavendish, Lizzie Sells, Rosanna Ter-Berg, Roberta Vaz, Helena Webb, Matthew Welch, Jess Wiesner, Thais Wizenberg, Molly Wright,

The series can be watched as part of the live studio audience or via the website www.autoitaliasoutheast.org

Doors will close promptly at 7:45pm

Catch up on Episode 1: Talking Objects in Space HERE.

Auto Italia South East presents Auto Italia Live: an artist-run TV series, performed before a studio audience and broadcast live over the Internet. Working in collaboration with Auto Italia a wide variety of artists will produce new work through weekly episodes, engaging directly with the format of live Television and a history of artists using broadcast media platforms to distribute work.

Featuring a full camera crew, lighting technicians, directors, performers, production designers and set builders, artists will engage with all aspects of production opening the space for criticality and intervention within the medium. The series aims to experiment with new possibilities to engage in contemporary broadcast and internet culture whilst also responding to the familiar tropes and formulas within television programming.

The apparatus of TV and the technical infrastructure will allow for dialogue and exchange with images, actions, performances and experiences. Covering ideas of ‘edutainment’, to permacultures and ecology that surround the idea of live television the project will engage with how live TV has changed our understanding of culture and public space. Each episode will investigate a range of approaches exploring the expanded notion of the televised live performance, the live soap opera and factual, documentary presentation, through the choreography inherent in both performance and camera movements, and the narrative implicit in the existence of objects within a set.

The studio space will be open to the public both for the weekly broadcasts and also at specific times during rehearsals in the preceding weeks. The whole process of the live broadcast and production will be made public, engaging with audiences in the space and tuning in online. In an ever increasing landscape of broadcast media and ‘accessible’ web platforms this project aims to emerge within pre-existing web communities allowing artists to make and distribute new work and create new contexts and audiences around their ideas.

Produced collaboratively by artists, Auto Italia LIVE aims to reclaim a space within the television format that has increasingly lost its experimental aspect. The project will draw from figures including Nam June Paik that dealt with the risk taking inherent in live TV, Warhol TV bringing a community of artists together and Jef Cornelis in terms of his pioneering productions for Belgium Television in particular shows such as Container. Questioning the demise of risk taking in mainstream cultural programming within the history of British Television, the project aims to provoke discussion and challenge how artists might work together to create new work, examining how dialogues are negotiated and tested within this unique context.

Bound up within the collaborative approach to working and new technological developments, issues of copyright and collective authorship will be examined. New documents will be compiled that will represent the best practice for commissioning on Digital Media platforms, in ways that benefit the artists over the distributer. These will reflect the possibility of artists working together, producing work independently from the demands of the gallery or a standard art context.

Participating Artists

Nathan Budzinski, Benedict Drew, Francesco Pedraglio, Heather Phillipson, Eddie Peake, Andrew Kerton, Leslie Kulesh, Rachel Pimm, Lorenzo Tebano, Robert Carter, Benedictions (Patricia Lennox-Boyd and Jamie Stevens featuring Jeremy Glogan, Steve Kado and Morag Keil)

In collaboration with: Theo Cook, Georgio Bosisio, Sonia Rodriguez Serrano, Alex Lightman, Mc Death, George Moustakas, Luke Collins, Robin Stuart, Amy Friend, Ciara Halpin, Mette Juhl, Radiance Audio, Matt Welch, Nicola Sersale.

Steam Society - Istambul - Sept 15th 2011

2011-09-20T07:13:00.000-07:00

Steam Society is a banquette of all sorts, offering a purification hub for ideas and intimacies to all of its initiates. The first edition takes place at the Historical Galatasaray Hammam (b.1481) at the time of 12. Istanbul Biennial.

INAUGURAL PARTICIPANTS

Ayla Algan, Julieta Aranda, Özgür Erkök, Mehmet Erdem&Co., Esra Ersen, Juan Gaitán, Adam Kleinman, Darius Mikšys, Francesco Pedraglio, Güneş Terkol, Elif Uras, Bedwyr Williams, Pınar Yolaçan, sarp yilmaz, and many other exceptional guests!

STEAM SOCIETY HOSTS

Defne Ayas & Aslı Çavuşo␣lu

Public School 'Performance Art Today' - Freestate, Ostend (BE), 3 September 2011

2011-09-01T03:19:00.000-07:00

Francesco Pedraglio (UK), Hedwig Houben (NL), Sébastien Rien (B), Sofie Haesaerts (B), Dennis Tyfus (B)

In the context of Freestate curator Laurence Dujardyn proposes a Public School class on the status of performance in art today. It is striking that the use of performance and intervention as media often works liberating and that artists use these as a way to break existing categories and systems. As such the history of performance can be seen as a series of waves, related to the periods when art and to extension society wanted to reinvent itself. Many works produced by artists at present witness such a refusal against categorisation, while taking on a position between self-questioning and a sense of responsibility.

Starting at 2pm, the day will consist out of several performances and interventions by artists living in Belgium and abroad, followed by a concluding discussion with all the participants. Throughout the day a Sculptural workshop for foodies will be conducted by Sofie Haesaerts(to participate please subscribe at merel@vrijstaat-o.be) , the results of which will be cooked and served in a communal BBQ dinner starting from 6.30 pm. Following onto that more than 20 bands will be playing a 12 hours FEVER-covermarathon in an old barge next to the warehouse, organized by Ültra Eczema/ Dennis Tyfus.

More info at http://free-state.be

Caribic Residency N33 - Lisbon

2011-08-17T11:58:00.000-07:00

Resident 33: FRANCESCO PEDRAGLIO

"[...] So, let’s say that he was. He was, and now he isn’t any longer. This could be it! A start and an end point. Circular. Balanced. Stable. Meaningful in its simplicity. Actually…no! Better. Let’s say that it was a she. So, she was. She was, and now she isn’t any more. Don’t get distracted by such triviality though. It was – it was a she – and now it isn’t...that’s it. This being certainly one of our character’s primary features, it will not be the oddest yet. Far from it, actually. A body as inanimate as all the imaginable items surrounding it, as a stick or a rock, as a chair, a tin can, a vase, an ashtray, a coat-hanger or anything of that sort. All valuable scenarios, all at the same time. Imaginable at the same time. A cacophony of scenarios. A cluster. Incrusted. The character has been there before.She is there again, now, dropped somewhere – a table, a floor, a bathtub, a staircase, a bed, an armchair – cold, motionless, an object awaiting for the story to evolve, to begin or end, which, at this point – at the point reached by our protagonist, item in the midst of other items – is somehow the same."

Terça, 23 Agosto, 15-18h / Quarta, 24 Agosto, 15-18h & 21h-23h

Rua Diogo Do Couto, 5a

1100-195 Lisboa

www.caribicresidency.com

'Detour of the Lot' - Francesco Pedraglio and Laure Prouvost at V22

2011-07-25T03:27:00.000-07:00

Francesco Pedraglio and Laure Prouvost present:

Detour of the Lot

1945 2011

b&w colour

In flashback, New York nightclub pianist Al hitchhikes to Hollywood (place doesn't matter, time neither) to join his girl Sue. But on a rainy night (forget the hole), fate forced a Detour to revelry, violence and mystery (panic and confusion...few windows were smashed, a couple of trucks set on fire)!

Al takes another man's identity (I'm reporting here...I never actually found anything valuable out there). Thanks to Vera, a blackmailing dame, all of his moves plunge him deeper into trouble...

(We follow the procedure and the procedure is the same for everyone, no exception made: you shut up and dig!)

45'

Wednesday 28th July, from 7pm

V22 Workspace
F-Block The Biscuit Factory
100 Clements Rd
London SE16 4DG

A clock that runs on mud - an online exhibition curated by Jennifer Teets for NERO

2011-07-15T04:40:00.000-07:00

A CLOCK THAT RUNS ON MUD

an online exhibition curated by Jennifer Teets for NERO

With 'muddy time' contributions by:

Mark Aerial Waller,  Aslı Çavuşoğlu/Burak Arıkan , Vava Dudu , FRANCE FICTION (Marie Bonnet, Stéphane Argillet, Eric Camus, Lorenzo Cirrincione and Nicolas Nakamoto) , Valentinas Klimašauskas,  Darius Mikšys , Morten Norbye Halvorsen , Francesco Pedraglio , PERENNIAL (Arnaud Hendrickx, Michael Van den Abeele, Richard Venlet) , Tania Pérez Córdova,  Michael Portnoy , Mateusz Sadowski , Carson Salter , Fatoş Üstek/Per Hüttner +counting

Jennifer Teets's exhibition is now online. You can visit the show HERE

Imaginary Artists - Henry Moore Institute - 13 July

2011-07-07T08:37:00.000-07:00

Imaginary Artists

 Talks Series  6th July 2011 - 20th July 2011 -  Henry Moore Institute

This series of talks throughout July has been programmed to accompany the current Institute exhibition 'Savage Messiah: The Creation of Henri-Gaudier Brzeska' (Gallery 4 to 31 July) which looks at the ways in which the life and work of this twentieth-century sculptor was constructed through biographical narratives and, in turn, through film.

Wednesday 13 July: Francesco Pedraglio

A few stories in the shape of abstract objects

Performance as Publishing - South London Gallery - Wednesday 6 July - 7 to 10

2011-06-30T10:29:00.001-07:00

This festival across a number of spaces in the SLG investigates the shifting relations between performance practice and discourse, events and writing, exploring the work of artists who use existing text as the base for their performance. Includes Fiona Banner, Nicole Bachmann, Ruth Beale, Eleanor Vonne Brown, Daniel Gustav Cramer, Emma Kay, Jenny Moore, Francesco Pedraglio and Heather Phillipson.

7pm - Emma Kay

7.30pm - Francesco Pedraglio

8pm - Nicole Bachmann, Clore Studio

8.30pm - Heather Phillipson, Clore Studio

9pm - Jenny Moore, Clore Studio

9.30pm - Ruth Beale

7-10pm - Works and installations by Fiona Banner, Daniel Gustav Cramer and Eleanor Vonne Brown are on view in the main gallery

Dirty Literature - Tom McCarthy and Francesco Pedraglio

2011-06-03T07:28:00.000-07:00

Francesco Pedraglio, Few stories in the shape of abstract objects (Display), London 2011

Tom McCarthy and Francesco Pedraglio

Thursday 16 June, 7 PM

National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London WC2H 0HE

The event is free but booking is essential, please email
bookings@electra-productions.com to reserve a place.

On Thursday 16 June Electra continues Dirty Literature - a series of spoken portraits by artists and writers exploring the moment when language threatens (or promises) to become illegible. Francesco Pedraglio's A few stories in the shape of abstract objects is a performative lecture and plotted treasure hunt mapping abstract objects, ideal language and the memories that accumulate around them. The performance will be followed by Tom McCarthy's readings and reflections on his recent novel C, pursuing the breakdown of narrative coherence within modernity and the possibilities that might emerge from such a collapse.

Disobedient Words: A User's Manual, the reader accompanying the Dirty Literature series which brings together specifically commissioned contributions by Samuel Dowd, Tim Etchells, Will Holder, Karl Holmqvist, Tom McCarthy, Francesco Pedraglio, Sue Tompkins and Tony White will be available free of charge on the evening.

Francesco Pedraglio
A few stories in the shape of abstract objects is a performance based on suppositions and rumours, a narration that uses invisibility and abstraction as red threads to make sense of a number of seemingly chaotic clues. Turning to the help of an Egyptian man and his French alter-ego, a rock, an arrow, a hole in the ground and a stomach filled with earth, Pedraglio will attempt to demonstrate the existence of non-experiential memories and their link with the production of abstract objects.

Tom McCarthy
C is flooded with signals. The novel follows the short, intense life of Serge Carrefax, a man who - as his name suggests - surges into the electric modernity of the early twentieth century, transfixed by the technologies that will obliterate him. Affiliated with the abstract language of technical codes and networks, C brings into play questions of systems of transfer and the abstraction of mediated communication. Reading and reflecting on passages of C, McCarthy will expand on the absence and loss of narrative coherence in the three-way relationship between language, technology and subjectivity.

Young London - V22 - 28 May from 6 to 8

2011-05-16T10:17:00.000-07:00

Laure Prouvost and Francesco Pedraglio, Faces, such long white faces (again), Billboard and movable signs, London 2011

PV 28 May 2011 from 6 to 8pm / U
ntil 30 July 2011

With:
Thorbjørn Andersen, Ed Atkins, Vanessa Billy, Steve Bishop, Alice Channer, Kim Coleman & Jenny Hogarth, David Raymond Conroy, Michael Dean, Tomas Downes, Jason Dungan, Lydia Gifford, Anthea Hamilton, Gabriel Hartley, George Henry Longly, Ian Homerston, Claire Hooper, Ian Law, Marie Lund, Stuart Middleton, Gorka Mohamed, Laura Morrison, Eddie Peake, Laure Prouvost & Francesco Pedraglio, Magali Reus, Damien Roach, Lewis Ronald, Gino Saccone, Matthew Smith, Maria Taniguchi, Adam Thompson, Cara Tolmie, Jack Vickridge, Alex Virji, Yonatan Vinitsky

V22 WORKSPACE
F-BLOCK, THE BISCUIT FACTORY
100 CLEMENTS ROAD
BERMONDSEY
LONDON SE16 4DG

A Dying Artist - ICA - 22/23 April 2011

2011-04-05T13:54:00.000-07:00

Francesco Pedraglio, A Stomach, reading and video, ICA April 2011

Performances, round table discussions, readings, music and screenings exploring materiality, corporeality, death and dying bodies in art. This event has been organised in collaboration between the ICA and artists Ed Atkins and Siôn Parkinson.

Good Friday: Illness - 22 April 2011
Afternoon:
Brian Dillon
Bonnie Camplin
Dominic Fox
David Toop
Matthew Barney
Dennis Potter

Evening:

Ed Atkins
Heather Phillipson

Francesco Pedraglio

Trouble
Stewart Home
John Cussans
Siôn Parkinson
Raime

Holy Saturday: Death - 23 April 2011
Afternoon:
Steven Connor
Simon Martin & Ed Atkins
David Raymond Conroy
Laure Prouvost
John Russell
Regina Jose Gallindo
Griselda Pollock

Evening:
Michael Dean
Chora
Stan Brakhage
Ed Atkins & Siôn Parkinson
Old Apparatus

The Department of Wrong Answers - Wysing Arts Centre

2011-04-05T13:52:00.000-07:00

Laure Prouvost and Francesco Pedraglio, We all know, Sign, 2011

Laure Prouvost and Francesco Pedraglio, The Lot, Video installation, 2011

Laure Prouvost and Francesco Pedraglio, None is in the department for passion, Billboard, 2011

Laure Prouvost and Francesco Pedraglio, There is nothing to see..., Sign, 2011

Saturday 2 April, from 6-8pm, sees the launch of The Department of Wrong Answers’ gallery presentation. In response to their six week residency within the Department, at Wysing, artists Laure Prouvost & Francesco Pedraglio have written a short story which is presented in the gallery through a new film and publication, and around Wysing’s site through a series of billboards and an installation in our recycled building Amphis (re-named Jody’s bar). Rob Filby’s series of Mood Boards and sculptural counterparts will be interpreted live (2 April) by Lorna Higgins, an interior designer based in the nearby village of Cambourne. Cally Spooner’s new filmed monologue performs the crisis of acting out-loud, achieving excellence, and finding something useful to say in public. On Sunday 17 April she will rehearse a new theatre performance live at Wysing. Giles Roundhas made a series of new sculptural works and furniture which will be exhibited in Wysing’s gallery throughout the presentation. The Department will close with a dinner hosted by Round on Sunday 17 April.

DIRTY LITERATURE - National Portrait Gallery

2011-03-20T07:23:00.001-07:00

DIRTY LITERATURE

Samuel Dowd, Tim Etchells, Will Holder, Karl Holmqvist, Tom McCarthy, Francesco Pedraglio, Sue Tompkins, Tony White.

Curated by Fatima Hellberg (Electra)

Ondaatje Wing Theatre, National Portrait Gallery
17th March - 16th June 2011

All events are free, but booking is essential:bookings@electra-productions.com

From performative lectures that roam across fact and fabrication to genre-defying plays with storytelling, Dirty Literature brings together artists and writers exploring the boundaries of narrative. Here the characters in the National Portrait Gallery collection form a rich cast, portrayed yet again with the use of the spoken word. In the evocation of a person, a presence, the participating artists turn to an array of references and materials - a form of contaminated literature, unfolding at the edges of coherence. Ephemeral like a rumour, mobile like gossip this is a form of biography that escapes the weight and permanence of the published word and the painted figure alike, a real time portrait.

The series will be accompanied by a publication which brings together new contributions by the participating artists, an essay by curator Fatima Hellberg reflecting on language and latency, alongside work from the Tactile Poetry series by pioneering Austrian artist Josef Bauer.

Tim Etchells and Tony White
Thursday 17th March, 7:30PM
In a new text-performance for the National Portrait Gallery Tim Etchells builds and dissolves stories, worlds and pictures in language, working with rules, games and strategies unfolding at the edge of narrative coherence. Etchells draws on text material from catalogue essays and critical responses to works in the collection whilst also invoking the more familiar landscapes from his work through dystopian urban adventures, science fiction and distorted fairytales. The performance will be followed by a contribution by Tony White, the author of novels including Foxy-T (Faber and Faber), described by writer Toby Litt as, 'one of the best London novels you'll ever get to read.' For Dirty Literature, White will read from works of fiction that respond to the National Portrait Gallery's location, as well as his satirical 1999 novel about an alienated police force who seem locked in to a cycle of violence and prurient self-justification: Charlieunclenorfolktango.

Samuel Dowd and Sue Tompkins
Thursday 14th April, 7PM
Sue Tompkins' performances unfold as a stream of consciousness, moving from personal reflections to quotations from multiple, and at times conflicting areas of life. Tompkins' new performance Hallo Welcome To Keith Street will be followed by Samuel Dowd's ambitious collaborative piece, Aphrodite's Left Turn. Realised together with four other writers, this performed screenplay evokes a forgotten moment in the life of architect and artist Frederick Kiesler (1890-1965).

Writers and readers:
Rebecca Bligh: The Young Man (Edwin Denby)
Ben Cain: Aphrodite (Elisa Landi)
NaoKo TakaHashi: The Cat ('sing-sing' the cat)
Isabel Waidner: The Choir Boy (John Latouche)

Karl Holmqvist and Will Holder
Thursday 12th May, 7PM
If one takes the act of portraiture as heresy, then surely any visit to The National Portrait Gallery must be thought to bring one to the heart of the scene of the crime. Swedish artist Karl Holmqvist's work deals with the relation between language and image, figuration and abstraction - relationships he has explored over the last twenty years. For the specifically commissioned artist's talk, 'Change Your Face' he will elaborate on his mostly language-based visual arts practice, and how elements such as repetition and rhythm in language may bring us closer to concerns more often thought of in relation to images. The event will be followed by a new work by Will Holder. Will Holder makes publications, using conversation as a model for production and documentation. He approaches language as a ready-made, reproducing existing texts to emphasise the construction and negotiation of meaning. On May 12th, in the Ondaatje Wing Theatre, Holder continues a series of publications dedicated to single mothers. Previous readings have complicated Adam Pendleton's "Black Dada" and Alice Notley's "Dr. Williams' Heiresses", in favour of an intensified reception of the gendered subject positioned in them.

Francesco Pedraglio and Tom McCarthy
Thursday June 16th, 7PM
Francesco Pedraglio writes short stories that look at words as physical bodies inhabiting spaces that extend beyond the parameters of the page. Writing directly in a foreign language (English), he focuses his texts on straight narratives, facing frontally the basic problematics of delivering a story to an audience. On this line he will present a short story based on the idea of abstract objects and fictional characters. 'Few small stories in the shape of abstract objects' will be followed by a reading by Tom McCarthy, writer, co-founder of the semi-fictitious organisation International Necronautical Society and recently shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for his novel C. The readings of selected passages of Cwill reflect on the breakdown of narrative and coherence within modernity and the possibilities that might emerge, phoenix-like from such a collapse.

Davide Cascio E.N. - Book launch and presentation

2011-02-27T09:28:00.000-08:00

Davide Cascio E.N. by Davide Cascio

A book edited by Egija Inzule

Published by Spector Books

The publication will be presented by Francesco Pedraglio at Xippas Gallery (Paris) March 1st from 18:30 onwards.

Versuch / Event 2: Francesco Pedraglio / Heather Phillipson

2011-02-16T08:01:00.000-08:00

Francesco Pedraglio, Yet Another Tiger in the Room, Performance, London 2011

Heather Phillipson, Well, this is embarrassing. Half an hour in 12 episodes

VERSUCH: Notes and Projects Event 2

Francesco Pedraglio / Heather Phillipson

Saturday 19 February 2011 16.00 - 18.00

at Hollybush Gardens, London

Unit 2, Bj House

10 — 14 Hollybush Gardens
LONDON E2 9QP

VERSUCH Journal- NOTES AND PROJECTS

2011-01-25T04:42:00.000-08:00

VERSUCH IS A JOURNAL AND EXHIBITION PROJECT. IT IS A WORK IN-ITSELF DEFINED ALONGSIDE AND BY THE WORKS WITHIN IT

VERSUCH ’NOTES AND PROJECTS’

A journal and exhibition curated by Gil Leung

Hollybush Gardens - 20/01/11 - 27/02/11

Exhibition

ED ATKINS, BABETTE MANGOLTE & ROBERT MORRIS, BEVIS MARTIN & CHARLIE YOULE, LUCY PAWLAK, PAMELA ROSENKRANZ, ALEXANDRE SINGH, PATRICK WARD

Events

DAVID RAYMOND CONROY

REDMOND ENTWISTLE

FRANCESCO PEDRAGLIO

HEATHER PHILLIPSON

Journal

JESSE ASH, ED ATKINS, ANDREA BÜTTNER, DAVID RAYMOND CONROY, JESSE ARON GREEN, PABLO LAFUENTE, LIANG & LIANG, BEVIS MARTIN & CHARLIE YOULE, CHARLOTTE MOTH, FRANCESCO PEDRAGLIO, COLIN PERRY, HEATHER PHILLIPSON, PAUL PIERONI, HANNAH RICKARDS, ALEXANDRE SINGH, LUKE SKREBOWSKI, ALEXIS MARGUERITE TEPLIN, JESPER LIST THOMSEN

The Cambridge Conflab

2011-01-18T05:23:00.000-08:00

Asli Çavuşoğlu & Francesco Pedraglio, I have built my case..., Performance, London 2011

The Cambridge Conflab

An alternative conference with performances, performance lectures, discussions, screenings, a book launch, and the launch of Wysing’s new project that will be running throughout 2011: The Institute of Beyond.

Located in central Cambridge at The New Hall Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, and the Corpus Christi Playroom.

6-6.20pm
Mark Aerial Waller
Mark Aerial Waller’s Event for a Mille Feuille 2011 brings together patisseries, a text recital and artist John Latham’s group of worksNoit Intercourses, 1960-1988.

6.30-6.45pm
During 2010 Wysing Arts Centre hosted an International Camp for Improbable Thinking. Artist Jeremy Millar has produced a fictive text based on traces left by artists who were part of the Camp in a new book, launching at the Conflab. Includes a break for a complimentary sandwich meal.

7 – 8pm
Sally O’Reilly with Doug Fishbone, Hayley Newman, Michelle Owoo and Bedwyr Williams
This select crew of artists turned comedy writers will be devising scenarios and inventing characters for a new radio sitcom based in the artworld. The Last of the Red Wine is a collaboratively written, improvised and directed radio sitcom in the making. You are invited to join in as the group mime comedy gold from the artworld, with all it’s absurdities, tragi-comedies and jokers.

8.15-9pm
Asli Çavuşoğlu & Francesco Pedraglio
Three actors perform the scripted dialogue by Çavuşoğlu and Pedraglio I have built my case on the evidence that vaporised in front of your eyes which describes inanimate or invisible objects encountered as a result of fictitious crimes. Followed by footage from Çavuşoğlu’s film (10mins).

9-9.30pm
Bedwyr Williams
A solo performance Stepping Razor, 2010* influenced by farming subcultures and agricultures, about revenge and the rural!

Mains D'Oeuvre - A Snowball Effect - Saturday 11th December

2010-11-30T12:10:00.001-08:00

Francesco Pedraglio, Something I don't know and yet I still remember, Performance, Paris 2010

All books that belong to the library of Peter Fillingham and Charlotte Moth will occupy the exhibition space of Mains d’Oeurves for the period of 15th November - 11th December 2010. Fillingham and Moth have invited other artists, writers and curators to share the space with them, in different ways, for the duration of this time.

With Caroline Hancock, Peter Fillingham, Francesco Pedraglio, Falke Pisano, Charlotte Moth,
Film screening :Caroline Hancock
Reading : Francesco Pedraglio
We Love : Falke Pisano & Charlotte Moth

With works for an evening in the exhibition space : Laura Emsley, Judith Dean, Sean Dower, Peter Fillingham, Sadie Murdoch, Sam Basu, Raffaella della Olga, Aurelien Mole, Chloe Briggs, Seamus Farrell

Launch of the mingler cocktail

(so far people participating in various ways)

Anna Barham
Sam Basu
Cécile Bourne-Farrell
Chloe Briggs
Judith Dean
Vanessa Desclaux
Sean Dower
Laura Emsley
Seamus Farrell
Caroline Hancock
Meris Angioletti
Aurelien Mole
Sadie Murdoch
Raffaella della Olga
Francesco Pedraglio
Falke Pisano
Romana Schmalish

Against Gravity - Live Weekend at ICA

2010-11-23T07:22:00.000-08:00

Francesco Pedraglio, Something I Haven't Seen and Yet I Still Remember, London 2010

A performance by Francesco Pedraglio

Saturday 27, 6.30pm

Something I haven't seen and yet I still remember is an performative talk in which, through a selection of texts and visual material, Pedraglio tries to evoke the influence of never-experienced memories on imagining the existence of abstract objects.

Next to it, the new issue of the self-published journal The Mock and other Superstitions is also launched with a series of pre-recorded readings presented by some of its contributors.

Slip Sensor - Cell Projects

2010-10-31T10:47:00.000-07:00

Slip Sensor

an exhibition in two parts with

Laura Buckley • Martin Fletcher Systems House • Ilana Halperin • Andy Jackson • Francesco Pedraglio • Maria Taniguchi • Adam Thompson

November 12th 2010- January 23rd 2011

The following paragraph is a re-imagining of Robert Smithson’s work ‘Asphalt Rundown’, 1969, perceived through the ‘Esper Machine’, a photo analysis tool, depicted in the film ‘Blade Runner’, directed by Ridley Scott, 1982.

'In a forgotten quarry a heavy goods vehicle is emptying it’s load, SLIP, an asphalt load that trickles down, a landslide, an imitation of the painter’s abstract drip…. SLIP Zoom in/Enhance 90%, (to take a closer look); crystalline fragments reflect and refract the light. SLIP Zoom in again/Enhance 34; a shiny cube like stone is migrating. Geometric form, at odds to it’s rounded neighbors, SLIP Track 45/Enhance, Stop/Move in/Stop: 14; miniscule slates, identical in appearance, modular entities, removed from their white-walled resting place, SLIP, asphalt, a recognition of our ancestors ideals, split into disparate parts. SLIP, discordant parts chaotically placed in a Perspex toy box ready for the taking, SLIP Pull back to original/De-enhance 230%: a cascade of moving ground, an unsteady platform, SLIP'. Give me a hard copy right there.’

This paragraph contains elements from the film ‘Blade Runner’ directed by Ridley Scott, 1982

The Esper Machine, a voice-controlled computer, analyses a photograph by revealing a three dimensional capture of an event enabling the viewer to zoom into a higher resolution image navigating and scrutinising surfaces and turning corners. As a premise for the exhibition, the above paragraph introduces elements of the works in ‘Sensorical Slip’ (Part I and Part II) through the context of Robert Smithson’s iconic work, Asphalt Rundown’, Rome 1969. Asphalt Rundown is analysed with the Esper’s mechanical precision, to try and piece together its component parts by digitally scanning the work using overlaid grids, as the viewer calls out commands and coordinates. Smithson’s approach to his vast entropic works was to develop a photographic practice, none of which dealt with traditional composition or conventional image making. 35mm slide transparencies reduced representation making the images themselves displacements. Sensorical SLIP loosely refers to the ‘Non-Site’ (an indoor earthwork) as a three dimensional logical picture that is abstract, yet it represents an actual site. The artists within this exhibition re-work and re-analyze the aesthetics left by this minimalist trajectory.

This exhibition will be accompanied by a newly published text by writer and independent curator Francesco Pedraglio. The text, a fictive narrative around the imagined existence of abstract objects, will entwine facts and fictions responding to the exhibition by presenting itself as a contribution of artwork to the show.

Francesco Pedraglio co founded FormContent with Caterina Riva and Pieternel Vermoortel in 2007. His practice now interlaces writing with curatorial and editorial projects, experimenting formats of narrativity with hybrid cross-posting between exhibition-making and publishing.

As a special evening event, the artist Ilana Halperin will present ‘Hand Held Lava’, which was performed at ‘Triple Canopy’, New York earlier this year. ‘Hand Held Lava’ is a collaborative performative lecture by volcanic archaeologist, Karen Holmberg, writer/curator, Andrew Patrizio and the artist, Halperin. The lecture focuses on human interaction with an ‘analog geologic event’ combining a volcanic narrative of historic and contemporary eruption footage. Halperin's practice, combines personal experience with scientific theories recording the places she has visited in a quest to understand geological phenomena. In 1999 Halperin heated up a tiny saucepan of milk in a 100 °C sulphur spring to make ‘Boiling Milk Solfataras’ Edinburgh based Ilana Halperin exhibited in‘Portscapes’. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam in 2010 and ‘An Entangled Bank’, Talbot Rice University of Edinburgh and ‘Experimental Geography’, The Albuquerque Museum, New Mexico in 2009. Solo exhibitions include ‘Physical Geology. (slow time), three solo projects. Artists Space, New York, ‘Alchemy Project’, Manchester Museum and ‘Towards Heilprin Land’, Doggerfisher, Edinburgh.

FormContent and The Mock at Salon Light 7 (Paris)

2010-10-11T08:26:00.001-07:00

cneai = organises the Salon Light : an annual meeting of micro-publishers of artists' publication at Point Ephémère. For its seventh edition, the Salon Light is part of the program off of the FIAC and will take place from the 22nd to the 24th October 2010. With the presence of some fifty international publishers and 6000 visitors in 3 days, this festive event reveals a demanding but also a very accessible artistic production.
The 2010 edition is divided into four poles: publishers, Motto selection, booksellers and the freebies salon. It highlights the inventiveness of the participants who put their know how in the service of transversal practices: books, magazines, posters, videos, vinyl, websites ...
These publications, often with a limited circulation and sometimes impossible to find, open new doors and create new networks in the world of publishing. Shifted, thrifty and adventurous, the editorial approach of the participants in the Salon Light reflects a willingness to rethink the printed object and its overall production.The salon is punctuated by sales and signatures on the stands of publishers as well as by the Marathon « 11 minutes », a continuing program of performances and lectures conducted by the publishers, the graphic designers and the writers participating.

Editors:

2nd Cannons — AA Bookshop & Bedford Press, Londres — Archives Books, Berlin — Art & fiction, Lausanne BAS, Istanbul — BoaBooks, Genève — Bookworks, Londres — cneai=, Chatou Dent de Leone, Londres — For Further Information, Londres(Paris) FormContent, Londres — Gagarin, Anvers — Incertain Sens, Rennes Kaugummi, Rennes — Kodoji Press, Baden, CH — Les 3 Ourses, Paris Manystuff, Paris — Motto, Berlin / Zürich — Nazi Knife, Paris — Nieves, Zürich — Octambule, Octon — Onestar Press, Paris — Onomatopee, Paris — Zavod P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E., Ljubljana — Roma Publications, Amsterdam — Westphalie Verlag, Vienne…

The Object Lessons - MUDAM Luxemburg

2010-10-06T05:00:00.000-07:00

Nina Beier and Marie Lund’s exhibition The Object Lessons takes as a starting point a fictional short-story written by London-based writer and curator Francesco Pedraglio, following the artists’ invitation to write a subjective text on their 2009 show at De Vleeshal in Middelburg.

This story features the transformation of an artist's subjective gaze into a plurality of view points, as many as the viewers looking at his works.

The exhibition at Mudam will be based on a new series of works taking their inspiration from the sculptures described in the short-story.

The Mock and other superstitions - Le Magasin Grenoble

2010-10-06T04:34:00.000-07:00

Le MAGASIN is devoting the 2010 autumn season to SI Sindrome Italiana, a number of events dedicated to the young curatorial and publishing scenes in Italy subsequent to the generation of Maurizio Cattelan.

Some 40 of these artists, born in the 1970s and 1980s, have been invited to present recent works, or ones created for the occasion, in thematic groups developed in the exhibition galleries and the central glass-covered space known as! “la Rue”. Associated with the exhibition is a a colloquium devoted to the contemporary Italian publishing and curatorial scenes The Practitioners!: Curating & Publishing, which will take place on the opening day, Saturday 9 October, and the Open Office project, organized with young Italian independent publishers. The newspaper Transmission will accompany the exhibition.

List of artists (not comprehensive): Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Meris Angioletti, Salvatore Arancio, Francesco Arena, Rosa Barba, Francesco Barocco, Rossella Biscotti, Lupo Borgonovo, Alex Cecchetti, Danilo Correale, Lara Favaretto, Luca Francesconi, Linda Fregni Nagler, Christian Frosi, Giuseppe Gabellone, Martino Gamper, Francesco Gennari, Piero Golia, Sabina Grasso, Massimo Grimaldi, Renato Leotta, Claudia Losi, Rä di Martino, Patrizio di Massimo, Marzia Migliora, Seb Patane, Pennacchio Argentato, Diego Perrone, Paola Pivi, Riccardo Previdi, Pietro Roccasalva, Matteo Rubbi, Andrea Sala, Manuel Scano, Marinella Senatore, Giulio Squillacciotti, Alberto Tadiello, Santo Tolone, Luca Trevisani, Patrick Tuttofuoco, Nico Vascellari, Francesco Vezzoli.

Colloquium The Practitioners!: Curating & Publishing

Saturday 9 October from 2pm to 5.30pm - Auditorium of Le Magasin

With the intervention of Italian independent curators, art critics, directors of institutions, publishers and some French actors, this colloquium should enlighten about the relationships between Italian editorial and curatorial scenes: the question of international positioning of the Italian scene, the place of alternative spaces and independent actors, and the French and

Italian models...

Participants : Alessio Ascari, Chiara Figone, Marianne Lanavere, Luca Lo Pinto, Francesco Manacorda, Simone Menegoi, Chiara Parisi, Francesco Pedraglio, Alessandro Rabottini, Elodie Royer & Yoan Gourmel-220 jours, Andrea Viliani, Elena Volpato.

Open Office!

Salon du Magasin - from 10 October 2010 to 2 January 2011

The young generation of Italian publishers, represented by the magazines Archive Books, Mousse Magazine, Kaleidoscope,! The Mock and other superstitions and NERO present a selection of rare publications,!special projects, and!artists" books.

SALON Du MERCREDÌ - Centre international d’art de Vassivière

2010-09-16T05:48:00.000-07:00

DEMATERIALIZATION OF THE MATERIAL
/ MATERIALIZATION OF THE INVISIBLE

The Centre International d’Art et du Paysage de l’île de Vassivière and Chiara Parisi, welcomes Alex Cecchetti’s “Wednesday Salon” with interventions by: Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield, Mark Geffriaud, Yoann Gourmel, Geraldine Longueville, Benoît Maire, Simone Menegoi, Darius Miksys, Francesco Pedraglio, Laetitia Queyranne, Caterina Riva, Elodie Royer, Jennifer Teets, Pieternel Vermoortel.

Dear All,

What is not is not and what is, is.

What is not calls us with no voice and we often respond with imagination. Visualizing the nothingness may seem in this case more a paradox. A large part of the ongoing contemporary tale deals with the dematerialization of the material and materialization of the invisible. I am not only concerned with the process of abstraction and withdrawl of reality, I also intend with invisible what is non-perceptible, inexpressible, non-understandable, but still real. The future is invisible and becomes invisible again as it rolls back into the past. Invisible is also what does not exist and will never be. This is much harder. How and why can we conceive this black hole of void? Can nothingness really be understood with imagination or is it a product of imagination itself? Is this invention a tool for some kind of human project of inverting the universe?

During a conversation with Darius Miksys about dreams, we both agreed that everything is for real, or as a Chinese philosopher once said: ‘all things are in the world and there is nothing behind it’. If the void is here, where is it?

Once again I invite you to a very challenging conversation, something perhaps beyond our capacities. Jump in or out of the pool, when it’s empty or when it’s full, as you prefer. Let’s face the nonsense of the void, the conundrum of nothingness, and the riddle of emptiness. Please come and see how to create the void with a patch.

See you soon or elsewhere.

Alex Cecchetti

FormContent and The Mock at Unter Dem Motto

2010-08-31T11:20:00.001-07:00

Unter Dem Motto. September 3-5, 2010

The Unter dem Motto art book fair is going into its second round. The annual fair hosted by Motto Berlin and Chert Gallery will take place at their locations in Berlin Kreuzberg, from the 3rd to the 5th of September 2010. More than 70 publishers from about 17 countries will present their works and show an eclectic overview of contemporary art publishing, ranging from home-printed zines to publications by established institutions.

Unter dem Motto provides a professional look into the newest developments of the international artistic publishing scene. New this year is not only the extension of the fair to a full weekend, but also the participation of a selection of art galleries and exhibition spaces engaged in publishing, and a program of events.

The Time Machine - Book Works new open submissions series

2010-05-27T09:26:00.000-07:00

The Time Machine

Commissioning Editor: Francesco Pedraglio

Book Works is looking for proposals for two commissions in a new series The Time Machine.

I tell you my friends: forget all about archives. What we need now is this Time Machine. It’s no more a problem of understanding what this gathering is all about. We now have to experiment with it, see what we can really get out of it.

What was next? What will be previous?

We welcome international proposals, in English, from all communities, including artists and writers from culturally diverse backgrounds.

For more details and submission procedure, download an application form from our website, or send an A4 stamped addressed envelope to:

Book Works (The Time Machine) at the following address,

or email Gavin Everall, gavin@bookworks.org.uk

Book Works

19 Holywell Row

London EC2A 4JB

www.bookworks.org.uk

Francesco Barocco

2010-05-11T03:33:00.000-07:00

More personal than myself

On Francesco Barocco’s abstract works

When we spoke the first time about it, I was reading 14 things I tell myself when I fall into the trap of making the writing imitate experience*. I was reading and trying to get my head around what he meant exactly when he talked about experience.

He said: writing imitates experience.

I thought: that’s possible.

He said: it is a mistake we should be aware of.

I thought: that’s also very possible, but why is that?

Then I stopped reading and started thinking about this other text, the one you have in your hands, paper between thumbs, fingerprints onto the semi-coated paper.

It is a text that refers to a series of abstract works, two to be precise, objects out there (in the realm of experience?) and yet so embedded in their author’s subjectivity, embedded within him as a thinking body which ‘makes things’, precisely like this text is embedded within me as another thinking body which ‘looks at things’, more personal than myself.

The drive is then to aim for a perfect circularity between the two elements (the writing and the work), circularity as perfect as involuntary.

What about writing as experience rather than writing as a representation of an experience? What about an abstract work as a subjective path able to keep an equilibrium between inside and outside, experience and (what is) experienced?

And if this would all be possible, if it would be reachable, what would we do with such manifested intimacy? Could we have it perfectly mirrored in both the work and this text about the work?

14 things he tells himself…

Again he said: look at the ‘rejected’, at the ‘never-articulated’ to find the liveliness within an object (or situation).

Again I could agree with that, even though I would imagine this liveliness more like a mood, a taste or a smell rather than any direct preconceived physical embodiment or recognisable element.

One aspect is certain though: we are on the same line by choosing experience over its own representation. Writing overcomes any-experience to become all-experience, nothing-else-than-experience. Similarly these abstract works can be encountered just as mood, taste or smell instead than a series of forms regulated by predetermined patterns. It becomes signified without any prescribed signifier, a research as opaque as a personal feeling.

And since there would be no prearranged third element to compare the two contenders with (the subject on one side, his/her experience on the other), and since they would both be definable just in-practice, the result would be a constant fluid movement between these two sides. The dispute would be over for lack of constituents, it would be a clean monism constantly open to reinterpretation.

Yet this is just a generic proposal that doesn’t completely exhaust the presence and function of an object (this text, the work): how is one to trigger this liveliness through an object without falling once again into predetermined aesthetic or conceptual categories?

I imagine a very personal piece of writing on an inexplicably personal abstract work. Do the two elements escape as such the constricting rules of bureaucratic representation? Should they be bounded to a codified reading as any other writing or artwork, that as one moves closer to look at reality through their translucent experience, can’t help but obscuring it and consequently requiring the intervention of a over-imposing interpretation?

Instead we should look at this dualistic reflection as it is, allowing the writing or the abstract work to see and reflect upon nothing but itself, nothing but experience in constant movement between the viewers (readers) and their existence as viewers.

In such a way the experience would be transferable into an abstract piece of work (and a consequent abstract writing) that has nothing else before or after it, nothing over or below it. The writing would just be writing per se, my writing per se. The work would just be abstraction, nothing else but sedimentations, the artist’s way to escape any aesthetic or conceptual demagogy.

Here, writing directly in English is a paradox, a limitation openly translated into an unmediated act, contradiction in movement.

A folded paper, its grids marked by colours’ distribution, layers upon layers, the challenge of control and its constant loss: this is the paradox of a subject becoming pure abstraction, translated into unmediated action.

The work is what it is because it can’t really be explained. There is no other meaning attached to it than the paradox of its existence as unframed movement of the subject onto the paper.

Could all this overcome the suspicions we still have over experience?

Writing in English as ‘foreign body’ emphasises an innate superiority of the writing over the written. Equally, the pure abstraction of the work escapes any crystallisation: not just paper, not just colour and not just subjectivity. It is instead a constant negotiation between all of these elements and more, finally mirrored by their inexorable instability. The strength of the piece has to be found precisely in this constant white noise produced by the artist himself experiencing the work and its limits.

III

Strange intertwined destinies: two men in two different countries, maybe even in two different continents, and with two separate existences. These men share and, at the very same time, are separated by the same object. Maybe let’s not call it an object though. Let’s just say that it is an idea, an intuition. Two perfect strangers in two different points of the globe having, at the very same time, the very same idea. Deciding that it would be the right moment to put it all down, black on white, to share it with everyone else, with the rest of the world, including the respective other man in the different country or continent who is inadvertently sharing the very same thought.

Well that’s a cul-de-sac: they arrive at that point independently and through intricate personal paths, maybe through their own idiosyncrasies and vicissitudes. Yet the fact stays the same: they had the very same intuition and they decided to spit it out, to communicate it to everyone else, unaware of the incredible and fortuitous mirrored case which, in another part of the world, is doing exactly the same, somewhere and somehow differently.

History has taught us that there should be a winner and a loser. One of the two will be remembered, the other forgotten, bounded to oblivion.

Yet I’m not thinking about history here, and for a brief instant the two men are exactly the same man. Their personal differences, their stories and their futures are obliterated by the presence of that perfect thought.

History’s parenthesis: that’s probably what an abstract work, as an abstract writing, should be made of.

It seems as if we could schematise two productive ways of analysing the difficult predicaments of experience: you could simply ‘live the work’ as an immanence, taking unconsciously on board all its conceptual and aesthetic qualities through a subjective mediation of them. Otherwise you could ‘live the explanation of the work’, focusing on the nature of these very same conceptual and aesthetic qualities, but still with a subjective immanent look.

Being able, on the contrary, to clearly draw a line between these two aspects and use one on top of the other, even if just by combining them, that is dogmatism, it is pure institution and has nothing to do with the work itself.

Francesco Pedraglio

* Richard Foreman, 14 Things I Tell Myself when I fall into the trap of making the writing imitate “experience”

Reto Pulfer - Der Themenkatalog

2010-05-03T08:02:00.000-07:00

Der Themenkatalog

Reto Pulfer

Artist’s book with 132 colour reproductions of his artwork
Colour, 48 pages, 24 x 32 cm, hardcover
Edited by Francesco Pedraglio and Reto Pulfer
With a critical text by Francesco Pedraglio (English) and literary texts by Reto Pulfer (English/German)
Published by ARCHIVE Books, Berlin / Turin
in collaboration with FormContent, London
ISBN 978-88-95702-02

Buy your copy HERE

Salon du Mercredi - 'The Water and the Jar'

2010-04-22T04:07:00.000-07:00

Salon Du Mercredi

Tuesday 27 April 7p.m.

at the bar on 20 rue Moret 75011 Paris

How and why we do recognize that something is an exhibition, a show, a spectacle? Come and join us to watch through the unbreakable goggles of representation with interventions by:

Alex Cecchetti, Christian Frosi, Mark Geffriaud, Yoann Gourmel, Géraldine Longueville, Benoît Maire, Raimundas Malasauskas, Simone Menegoi, Darius Miksys, Francesco Pedraglio, Romain Sein, Chris Sharp, Alexandre Singh, Caterina Riva, Elodie Royer, Jennifer Teets, Sandra Terdjman, Emilie Villez, Pieternel Vermoortel and many more.

Organised by Alex Cecchetti and La Vitrine

The known Unknowns - Part 1

2010-03-31T02:09:00.000-07:00

With:

Neil Chapman, Jeremy Akerman, Ruth Beale, Katrina Palmer, Clare Gasson, Hilary Koob-Sassen and Nick Thurston

The known Unknowns - Part 2

2010-03-31T01:31:00.000-07:00

With:

Laure Prouvost, Jamie Shovlin, Reto Pulfer, Ruth Höfflich, Daniel Rourke and Sally O'Reilly

The known Unknowns - Part 3

2010-03-31T01:06:00.000-07:00

With:

Anna Barham, Matt&Ross, NaoKo TakaHashi with Terence Kirkbride, Brighid Lowe, antepress and Stewart Home

Charlotte Moth - Kunstlerstatte Bleckede

2010-03-23T02:44:00.000-07:00

Scattered thoughts after a subjective gaze into Charlotte Moth’s use of images

She: Charlotte Moth

He: extracts from William T. Vollman’s The Rifles

I: Francesco Pedraglio

The first thing she did was to select some images and send them to me.

He wrote: “Maybe life is a process of trading hopes for memories”.

He actually started a new paragraph with this line, breaking the silence with it, projecting me directly into the middle of an unexpected chain of thoughts.

I, a reader like you, couldn’t do anything else but accept it and draw my personal consequences.

Meanwhile she showed me these images, avoiding adding any specific comment on them. Again I’m in the middle of something I don’t quite grasp, something not mine and yet so faintly familiar: have I already been there? Do I know this corner? Did I stare at that sign before, did I dance or eat or talk in this room, in this corridor, under this sky?

It was all quite abrupt. I had simply to acknowledge their presence, the presence of these images and these spaces in my head and in my memory, in my eyes and now in my life.

He said that it may all be a process of trading hopes for memories, and I bet he wrote it in a single breath. She took some pictures and sent them to me, and I suspect he didn’t verbalise the exact reason for her selection.

I felt the existence of a relation between the two events, him and her, written words and photographs, but couldn’t work out why.

He was talking about life in its broader terms, life in general, the expectations that life brings in and the representations we commonly create out of it.

The life he is talking about is the life of someone who creates memories by withdrawing images, the images of his own being in a specific environment, absorbing its functionality and living its consequences.

She starts where he ends: images. She moves backwards in the opposite direction. They are complementary. She takes images to create impressions, memories of spaces and places, of the indiscriminate that, under her lens, could become geometry, light, rhythm, stillness or movement. Hence she too arrives to talk about life, life in its broader sense. She arrives from the opposite end though.

Here they meet again, him and her, matching top-to-bottom through the complex significance of what an image is or could be. They cross each other on the field of the perfect image, the one that establishes the correct relationship between remote things grasped in their maximum distance.

They both search for perfect images, even if through different paths and opposite starting points: from life’s expectation to its representation for him, and from life’s representation to its conceptualisation for her.

I finally gain an elusive instant of contact between them: photographs turning into images and hopes being traded for memories. Temporality is forever lost, becoming timeless anonymity, profitable mystery, organised clash and constructed continuum.

She is not a photographer and that’s why her images are neither abstraction, nor pure technique: they are mystery, hers as well as ours.

He is not constructing theories and that’s why his reading of ‘life as shift to memory’ is never objectively traceable, leaving any categorisation at the mercy of ambiguity.

A balance has now been formed. The relation between her images and his phrase – or between the photographs she sent me, and my interpretation of them – is based on my position as spectator/reader. Through their work I enter into the wider field of collective memory, universally accessible and yet always constructed into subjectivity, my subjectivity as viewer.

Her images are displaced residues of the sites they have come to depict. Like any other image she took, the one she sent me can’t be defined just through her eyes; they inevitably incorporate other personal readings that I, the subject who received them, might place upon them. This is her phenomenology of the image. A photograph, light through the lens and onto the film, a simple frame, but also a perfect image, a constellation of signs and potential dialogue between past and future, between the morbidly common and the uniquely mine.

He stops where she began. She arrives where he started. They link for an instant, for a fleeting gaze in their use of the image as both pure documentation and possible narrative.

While he spoke of life as a process of trading hopes for memories, she thought of how something could look like a picture before you take a picture of it. And what happens once you do it, once you do take that picture and store it, conserve it between other pictures and utilise it in different environments? Isn’t that what he meant when he spoke of hope being traded for memories? Any photograph of an architectural space becomes an atmosphere, a phenomenological hope for a different understanding. Not simply a picture of that space, but of me as viewer-reader, of every subject looking at it. Other eyes transforming images into personal expectations. From memory to hope.

If I could ask him now about his phrase, he would probably not recall where he was at the time he wrote it, what he was doing or wearing, the colour of the walls or the fabric of the half-closed curtains masking the sunlight. Instead she knows the colour of the walls, the shadows produced by the sun crashing against the asphalt, by the light changing through the reflective glass of the buildings.

Her description: meticulous representations of objects and spaces, so meticulously researched that they blur like his words, they become abstract, like paintings.

They are together again. From their two different worlds, they both agree not to show every side of things, allowing themselves a margin of indefiniteness.

And I’m this indefiniteness. I, left in front of that phrase and these images. I, the viewer-reader, as any viewer-reader. We are the reason these interpretations exist. We are the reason their work is so far and yet so close.

The Mock and other superstitions - Zine of the month on 'Art Licks'

2010-01-11T08:47:00.000-08:00

Pierre Leguillon, 'The Front', in The Mock and other superstitions Issue 3. Courtesy: the artist

Art Licks sat down with Francesco Pedraglio, the editor of The Mock and other superstitions, to have a chat about the zine, to find out how it started, how it is made and where it is heading.

The Gutenberg Pavilion - Talk

2009-12-15T06:58:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-13T02:14:00.000-08:00

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

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

2009-11-11T10:23:00.000-08:00

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.

'Film as a Subversive Art' - Playlists

2009-11-01T04:39:00.000-08:00

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

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

2009-09-26T06:08:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2009-09-22T00:40:00.000-07:00

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

Art Writing Summer School at Whitechapel

2009-08-12T09:35:00.000-07:00

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.

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'

2009-07-07T02:44:00.000-07:00

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

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

2009-06-24T10:13:00.000-07:00

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

'Verbavolantscriptamanent' at Fondazione Buziol

2009-06-22T05:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-22T05:15:00.000-07:00

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

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

2009-05-21T02:52:00.000-07:00

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.

Open publication

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)

The Happy Interval - Tulips & Roses - Vilnius

2009-04-24T14:52:00.001-07:00

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.

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

2009-04-07T11:23:00.001-07:00

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.

Reto Pulfer at Wartesall

2009-04-03T02:00:00.000-07:00

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

The Mock and other superstitions - ISSUE 2 - OUT NOW

2009-03-25T03:09:00.000-07:00

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.

Open publication - Free publishing

Kaleidoscope / a contemporary magazine / launch Issue

2009-03-12T12:17:00.000-07:00

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

The Reader - guestroom publication book launch

2009-01-08T06:54:00.000-08:00

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).

The Mock and other superstitions at 'Do you believe in magic?'

2008-12-16T07:05:00.000-08:00

The Mock and other superstitions at Do you believe in magic? a workshop held by Jacopo Miliani (artist in residence) at Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center.

Date: 20-21 December between 2-6 p.m.
Place: Platform Garanti CAC
Istiklal Str. No:115A

with the special contributions from:
Jen de Nike, The Mock and other superstitions, FruitandFlowerDeli, Trisha Donnelly, THISISAMAGAZINE, BROWN, Simone Menegoi, Francesca Pagliuca, Marco Tagliafierro and Miroslava Hajek, Matija Ferlin, Francesca di Nardo, Luigi Presicce, Sandrine Nicoletta, Christoph Keller

'Filled Box' - new magazines corner in Zurich

2008-11-03T09:47:00.000-08:00

Thursday the 6th of November 'Filled Box', a new space for magazines, will open in Zurich (Feldstrasse 121).

FormContent's publications (Rehearsing Realities and Mirrors and Mirrors) and the quarterly journal on writing The Mock and other superstitions will be displayed and sold there among lots of other interesting titles (Art Forum, Eight, Afterall, Foam (new issue + book), Eikon, Daddy (all issues restock), Kaugummi, Napa, Annatitude, Mousse, Afterall, Eye, Double, Esopus, Acne Paper, Prefix photo, Kilimanjaro 7, Decathlon Books, Seems books, Self Service (new issue), Fantastic man (new issue), Adbusters (new issue), Lodown 63, Dotdotdot (+back issues), Useless 8, and more).

SALON FÜR KUNSTBUCH, Vienna

2008-10-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

The Mock and other superstitions (Issue 1), Mirrors and Mirrors (FormContent publishing) and Rehearsing Realities (FormContent publishing) are presented at the SALON FÜR KUNSTBUCH in Vienna.
Check the website here for more information.

The Mock and other superstitions - ISSUE 1

2008-09-03T09:15:00.000-07:00

The Mock and other superstition - ISSUE 1 out now!

The Blackletter
With texts by:
Rebecca Bligh, Michael Dean, Paulus M. Dreibholz, Ruth Höflich, Matt Packer, Falke Pisano, Benoît Maire and Luca Trevisani

Mirrors and Mirrors

2008-08-01T16:59:00.001-07:00

Michael Dean and Francesco Pedraglio
Published by FormContent
Paperback - 160 pp.
ISBN 978-0-9559029-0-1

The Mock and other superstitions - ISSUE 0

2008-07-09T16:56:00.000-07:00

The Mock and other superstitions - ISSUE 0 out now!

A Certain Realism
with texts by:
Michael Dean, Clare Gasson, Francesco Pedraglio and Richard T. Walker