Under / Over

The tyranny between light and shadow (the underexposed and the overexposed) is given a precise image in the opening sequence of Jean-Luc Godard’s Les Mepris (1963). As the camera slides three times along Camille’s desirable, tricolor-lit body, the face of the affirmative boyfriend - Paul - is left throughout the scene, no matter what the lighting colour is, covered by Camille’s shadow. This is the overexposure of the seductive object in the eyes of the lover, himself obscured by her shadow; and it’s this dialogue – between the overt and the hidden, the highlighted facade and the shadowy underbelly, that Transidency contemplates in their first London exhibition Under / Over.

To coincide with the exhibition, Transidency (in conjunction with Close-up Videos) is compiling a set of sub-urban events: film screenings, talks etc; which negotiate issues that hang heavily on the core concept of the exhibition. Please click here for more details.

Preview / order exhibition catalogue here

]]> http://www.transidency.org/blog/2010/01/underover/feed/ 0 http://www.transidency.org/blog/2010/01/it-started-when-2/ http://www.transidency.org/blog/2010/01/it-started-when-2/#comments Sat, 16 Jan 2010 02:00:40 +0000 admin http://www.transidency.org/blog/?p=782

BERLIN 4 -7 March 2010, 100° Festival, Sophiensäle,

Two men sit in the Kitchen of Sophiensäle and talk. At first glance, nothing appears unusual about the scene, however when one carefully listens, it emerges that neither man can finish his sentences. Instead, one breaks into giggles or trails off in silence, while the other stops mid sentence and sighs deeply. It becomes clear that the dialogue is, in fact, two separated monologues; and in the background, a flickering television increasingly gains an importance.

Performance art, drama, sculpture: pan-European artist collective Transidency’s latest offering “It started when…” combines all three to produce a bewildering and mesmerizing scene of fractured communication and everyday absurdity. Set in an old apartment in Berlin’s Sophiensäle, the viewer enters a kitchen in which two men are engaged in what simultaneously seems to be a banal but also a highly intimate conversation, whose purpose or topic is not immediately intelligible.  In the background a television screen shows a variety of bizarre but captivating images such as explosions at sea or a game of scissor paper stone set in ancient Greece, with no apparent connection to the men’s dialogue. The men talk about the weather, chance, artistic failure, newspapers, longing, etc. Nothing of what they say, however, seems to have any consequence; there is neither change nor development in their interaction. The initial atmosphere is thus one of timelessness and existential absurdity, reminding one of Sartre’s Huis Clos or of Beckett’s plays, in general.

As there is no formal barrier between the spectators and the performers, the audience becomes part of the performance, wandering around the apartment, looking for meaning in some of the objects and the furniture of the apartment. Their initial response is one of irritation and uneasy amusement, triggered by the apparent senselessness of the scenario. Yet, all of sudden it becomes clear that there are actually some leitmotifs running through the men’s dialogue. The longer one listens the more fragments of sense one is able to gather.  The dialogue in fact consists of two monologues, each with its specific themes and concerns. While one of the men talks exclusively in the present tense about banal topics such as the weather, his dental health and the latest newspaper headlines, the other reflects on more profound issues such as his past relationships, abandoned dreams and the desire to produce meaningful art, all of which are expressed in the past tense. In addition an at first non-specific correspondence between the images on television and the monologues gradually emerges, which soon, however, becomes a fully developed interplay between image and word, in which every sentence uttered by the men has its counterpart on screen.

The artists thereby skillfully manage to turn a well-arranged scene of confusion into a tightly structured metaphor for the clash between the everyday and the absurd, the past and the present, the emotional and the existential, in which sense and meaning are continually produced, withdrawn and playfully dismantled. If one brings along the necessary patience (the work yields nothing at a first glance) its unique combination of discourse, image and setting proves to be mesmerizing, thought provoking and thus highly enjoyable.

- Kevin Kennedy

]]> http://www.transidency.org/blog/2010/01/it-started-when-2/feed/ 0 http://www.transidency.org/blog/2009/11/i-killed-him-for-money-constantinos-taliotis/ http://www.transidency.org/blog/2009/11/i-killed-him-for-money-constantinos-taliotis/#comments Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:20:11 +0000 admin http://www.transidency.org/blog/?p=1037 ATHENS, November 2009.

'I killed him for money and for a woman. I didn't get the money. And I didn't get the woman' © Constantinos Taliotis
Organized by Kappatos Gallery, St. George Lycabettus, Athens

www.kappatosgallery.com

A=B, The Show, Hildberghausen, Germany, October 2009. Assembling elements of different TV game shows, this performance involved two candidates executing instructions given by a big–footed TV host. The tasks included opening and closing a gherkin jar, demonstrating the workings of a vacuum cleaner or presenting a rainbow coloured sheet of paper. Accompanied by a soundtrack made of various TV jingles, beeps and canned laughter, the candidates were engaged in an absurd and monotonous game with rules that never quite revealed themselves to the audience.

The project is a study of urban spaces and their meanings to the habitants of Helsinki. Three choreographers and one film maker create a forum for encounters and an exhibit in the heart of the city at Lasipalatsi gallery. Choreographers Anu Rajala, Jaakko Simola and Jenni Koistinen are all members of Zodiak's choreographers' collective Z-Score and the group UNIT working in the area of social choreography. Exhibition design by Elina Vainio.

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NICOSIA, June 2009, APOTHEKE

For his first solo exhibition under the title LOVE AT LAST SIGHT, opening on the 19th June 2009 at APOTHEKE, Constantinos Taliotis (b.1983) begins from the end’s beginnings. Scenarios of disaster and situations at the brink of disintegration are photographically charted, narrating multiple endings, thus mocking the obsessive unerstanding of disaster as essentially apocalyptic. Instead of the imminent, grievous flattening an ending is understood to engage in, Constantinos Taliotis rediscovers and manages, at last sight, the discontinuous game of the process of disaster itself. Instead of the ominous consumption of sobs and cries, the echo of a silenced loudspeaker, the rattle of a deserted pool-bar, a bright orange, plastic, toy-gun force the accepted tracing of the warring, the disastrous, the catastrophic to a disorderly retreat.

NICOSIA, November 2009.

War Fever by Constantinos Taliotis is a large scale installation taking place in a post natural catastrophe period Nicosia, in 2042. This completely destroyed, evacuated and rejected deserted urban landscape becomes the battlefield for architectural authority between the “preservationist / heritage” camp and the “contemporary / interventionists” one. The battle for the victory of architectural aesthetics, the battle over the future of the past in a city with neither future nor past. In this battlefield the viewer is invited to actively join the battle and determine its outcome by playing paintball games and fighting for the side of his / her preference.

BERLIN 21 March -  5 April 2009,  Showroom

Kym Ward / Alexandra Schumacher / Julia Prezewowsky / Lucy Beech & Edward Thomasson / Julia Staszak / Awst & Walther

Ausstellung läuft bis zum 5 April 2009

for english version please scroll down

Der Wunsch in die Zukunft blicken zu können ist ein uraltes Bedürfnis des Menschen und hat zahlreiche Professionen, Mechanismen und Genres hervorgebracht. Von HellseherInnen, dem Orakel von Delphi, über die Wettervorhersage bis hin zu wissenschaftlichen Prognosen ist das Bestreben die Zukunft vorauszusagen sowohl fesselnd als auch lukrativ.

Schicksal oder Vaseline bringt eine Gruppe von KünstlerInnen zusammen, die Arbeiten zeigen, welche sich mit verschiedenen Facetten der Zukunft und den damit verbundenen Ungewissheiten auseinandersetzen und gleichzeitig humorvoll die Realität von Materie, Mortalität und klebrigem Alltag wiederspiegeln.

Die Ausstellung läuft vom 21 März bis 5 April 2009. Showroom Berlin, Falkensteinstr.46, Berlin Kreuzberg.

Öffnungszeiten: Freitags bis Sonntags 16 - 20 Uhr

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English version

The desire to know the future is an ancient dream of mankind, and has produced numerous professions, mechanisms and genres. From fortune tellers to the Oracle of Delphi, from weather forecasts to economic speculation, the quest to know what the future holds is as compelling as it is lucrative.

Schicksal oder Vaseline (Destiny or Vaseline) brings together a group of artists, exhibiting works that play with different notions of the future, but that are humourously grounded by the reality of matter, mortality or a greasy mundanity.

The exhibition runs from the 21st of March until the 5th of April. Showroom berlin, Falkensteinstr.46, Berlin Kreuzberg.

Opening hours: Friday until Sunday 4pm -8pm

Creaming off surplus creativity from her part time job as an English teacher, Kym Ward invites K-Salon visitors to participate in a free art performance-slash-English lesson.

Over the past 5 years or so, I have mainly constructed installations and set tasks for myself or others to perform over a duration of time. In the past, these were concerned with an obligatory workload that the performer had to carry out, which was usually absurd; the viewer had the feeling that they were glimpsing part of a potentially infinite process.

More and more in the past year, and funnily enough as a result of a remark I overheard about my performances, I have concentrated on a feeling of sordid-ness that comes with contrivance. Just to explain - it's a feeling; somewhere between the metal strip that separates sticky carpet from wooden dance floor in social clubs; and customer service that tries to please each individual person by giving them undivided, personal attention, before repeating the act word for word with the next customer.

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Creaming-off, Performance von Kym Ward, Dienstag 10. März
K-Salon, Bergmannstrasse 54

Kym Ward schöpft aus der überschüssigen Kreativität ihres Nebenjob als Englisch Lehrerin und lädt Besucher des K-Salons zu einer freien Kunstperformance-Schrägstrich-Englischunterrichtsstunde ein.

In den letzten 5 jahren habe ich hauptsächlich Installationen konstruiert in denen ich mir oder anderen Performern über einen bestimmten Zeitraum Aufgaben stellte. Diese, oft absurden, Aufgaben beinhalteten meist obligatorische Arbeiten für die PerformerIn, die dem Zuschauer einen Einblick in das Gefühl von potentieller Unendlichkeit vermittelten.

Im letzten Jahr habe ich mich, komischerweise resultierend aus einem überhörtem Kommentar über meine Performance, mehr und mehr auf ein Gefühl von Schäbigkeit heimisch im Künstlichem / Aufgesetztem konzentriert. Um es genauer zu beschreiben - das Gefühl bewegt sich irgendwo zwischen dem Metalstreifen der geklebteTeppichböden von hölzernden Tanzflächen in Gemeindehäusern trennt und dem Kundenservice der sich bemüht es jedem einzelnen Kunden recht zu machen indem er ihnen seine vollkommene persönliche Aufmerksamkeit schenkt und im nächsten Moment die exakt selben Worte zum nächsten Kunden wiederholt.

my site | in space is a series of site-specific performance events. A group of artists work under time pressure to create performance in response to a space. Each event is ephemeral: created in a flash, never to be performed again.

The fourth version of my site | in space will take place at Resistance Gallery, a double-height railway arch in Bethnal Green. Performances are on Sat 22nd and Sun 23rd Nov from 3pm.

The artists taking part are:
Nelly Alfandari
Luke Allder & Jon Francis
Justin Allen
Julie Brixey-Williams
Ula Dajerling
Katharine Fry
Yoko Ishiguro
Beatrice Jarvis
Emily Orley & Katja Hilevaara
SKIP theatre
Kym Ward
Alys Williams

For this event guest curator Katja Hilevaara works with Ewelina Kolaczek to facilitate and curate the work.

To find out more or book tickets, please see the online flyer at http://www.switchperformance.co.uk/mysite

TICKETS:
www.wegottickets.com

SATURDAY - http://www.wegottickets.com/event/38220
SUNDAY - http://www.wegottickets.com/event/38222