Weekly Roundup (30 May 2018)

Blok’s Opening Week Picks

May 31

• Riga, Latvia: 1st Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art.  The 1st Riga Biennial will reflect on the phenomenon of change – how it is anticipated, experienced, grasped, assimilated and dealt with at this time of accelerated transitions and the increasing speeding up of our lives. Various artists, dates and venues.

June 1

• Vilnius, Lithuania: Paroda Dark Drawn / Tamsos širdis hosted by Nida Art Colony. Dark Drawn aims at being a powerful statement through the medium of drawing. Through recent decades drawing has fortified its position as a challenging opponent to other media, capable of astounding audiences with untraditional and unexpected manoeuvres. In order to present this to a wider audience, we have attempted to compile a drawing exhibition that combines traditions with contemporaneity. Artists: Vanna Bowles, Ian Damerell, Algirdas Jakas, Robert Johansson, Bas Ketelaars, Lynette Smith, cured by Iam Damerell.

• Kraków, Poland: Welcome to the land where Gypsy dies Krzysztof Gil. Anti-Roma legislation validating reluctance towards the Roma and their persecution began to be developed in Europe in the fifteenth century. Adam Bartosz in the book “Do not be afraid of a Gypsy” lists anti-Roma legal acts. The first laws were issued in Lucerne in 1471. Persecution of the Roma in the majesty of law reached a peak in the following centuries when hunting Roma (Heidenjachten). The hunts took the form of a hunting campaign, providing entertainment to the hunter. Bartosz quotes a fragment of a seventeenth-century chronicle, in which we read a report from hunting: “a beautiful deer was shot, five deer, three large breeders, nine smaller boars, two gypsies, one gypsy and one gypsy girl”. This chronicle has become an inspiration for the work of Krzysztof Gil.

• Ljubljana, Slovenia: Zmagovite štiri / The Victorious Four at KAPSULA and P74 Gallery. The Victorious Four, a group presentation of outstanding female artists who in the recent decades have significantly marked contemporary arts in the fields of painting, experimental graphics, performance art and public art. In the past few years, we have been witness to a trend in the international space of discovering female artists who have been overlooked by the art system. As a result, numerous women are experiencing the height of their artistic careers in their eighties or even in their nineties. Artists: Geta Brătescu, Maria Lai, Adriane Maraž, Milena Usenik.

June 2

• Berlin, Germany: Opening: Voyage at Tropez. TROPEZ’ summer exhibition VOYAGE presents artworks realized for the public pool that take the beholders on a journey to far-away places. In and around TROPEZ the visitors encounter sculptures and installations, computer games, video and sound pieces created at the intersection of poetry, technology, politics as well as fine and performing arts. With: Aurora Sander, Nigin Beck, Adam Harvey, Porpentine Charity Heartscape, Anastasia Kubrak, Sandra Mujinga, Raphaela Vogel, and Jan Vorisek.

• Budapest, Hungary: Crisis What Crisis Performance Festival hosted by Patyolat // PROOF and Crisis What Crisis. Crisis and crisis – whether global terrorism, capitalism, migration or the threat of never-seeing natural change – are increasingly dominant narratives in politics as well as in ecology or economics. he performance festival connects artists from all over the world with media artists, guerrilla gardeners, dramaturgists and architects to contemporary dancers, developing crisis-narrative mechanisms in the form of performative events with their own toolkits, specific strategies for crisis management, constraints and attitudes returning formations.

June 4

• Moscow, Russia: Naprosvet at Moscow Museum (Park Kultury). NAPROSVET  is a multimodal experience that beckons viewers to question the fleetingness of light as a social and emotional construct. In the disembodied spectacle of post-truth we find ourselves in today, could it be possible to embrace light as an emanating and healing force of social and spiritual transformation? What can the metamorphosis between light and dark teach us about our contemporary condition? Can light dissolve into darkness, only to return back to light again? Curated by Dorian Batycka and featuring Narine Arakelyan, Jeremy Shaw, Tomoyuki Ueno and Matthew “Akote” Agbetiafa.

• Warsaw, Poland: 225964027 Phone performance at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Department of Presence will host a telephone performance by Zuza Golińska and Natalia Sielewicz, which will coincide with the cycle Plaintext Bureau, devoted to new technologies in the era of disinformation, interpretive abuse and rhetorical games. A material counterpoint to the ephemeral digital interventions of Plaintext Bureau is The Office, by Zuza Golińska. For the duration of working day, from 10:00 am to 6 pm, Golińska, the author of the installation, and the occupy the general public. They can be reached via the curator’s extension telephone number.

June 5

• Berlin, Germany: Performing Arts Festival (PAF). From the 5th to the 10th of June 2018 the Performing Arts Festival Berlin invites the (inter) national theater world and the audience for the third time to experience the free performing arts of Berlin! On five days, an artistic cartography of the city, its venues and artists emerges, ranging from the renowned dance company to the next generation of performers, from the big stage to the theater in the open air. The program is accompanied by a supporting program, special formats and events for national and international trade visitors.

June 6

• Berlin, Germany: In House: boychild “Untitled Lip Sync (for Ana Mendieta)”. “Untitled Lip Sync (for Ana Mendieta)” is a 9-hour performance that continues boychild’s exploration of language and movement, referring to the current exhibition by Ana Mendieta at the Gropius Bau. The performance develops in five chapters and follows the course of the sun on the basis of the incidence of light into the exhibition space. On the occasion of the performance “Untitled Lip Sync (for Ana Mendieta)”, admission to the exhibition “Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta” will be free on June 6, 1818.

Open Call

• Call for Applications: Residency program MINI/Goethe-Institut Curatorial Residencies Ludlow 38, the Goethe-Institut New York. Located on Manhattan’s Lower EastSide, Ludlow 38 has provided for curatorial experimentation in the tradition of the German “Kunstverein” since 2008. The residency program’s mission is to introduce new, international perspectives to the local art scene and to foster dialogue within the greater aesthetic and political context of New York and the United States. Deadline to apply: May 31. For more info.

• Call for Proposals: The European ArtEast Foundation (EAEF)  is an inspiration for the 1950’s and 1960’s. The purpose of this project is to give art historians and curators the opportunity to carry out an important history of Eastern Europe. The Foundation’s goal is to stimulate the development of an important political context. Deadline to apply: June 4, 2018. For more info.

Art news from around the Blok

• Cultural groups band together in Berlin to vastly outnumber far-right AfD march, as per DW:

Representatives of Berlin’s famous dance club culture had promised to “bass away the AfD” by drowning out the right-wing populist speeches with ultra-amplified techno music. But that didn’t happen either at the main train station or the Brandenburg Gate.

• #MeToo Flash Mob Hits the Architecture Biennale – French architect Odile Decq staged a demonstration at the Giardini during the kickoff of the Venice Architecture Biennale to protest harassment in the field. She was joined by around 150 women, including the architect Farshid Moussavi and Martha Thorne, the chief executive of the Pritzker Prize, who read out a manifesto