Irene Kanga (CATPC) about her work "Forced Love".
The sculpture is currently on view in our downstairs exhibition CATPC, "Forced Love".
@catpc_lusanga
[…] CATPC’s sculptures from river clay are digitally scanned using state of the art 3D technology, exported and reproduced in Amsterdam (the world’s biggest cocola port) in chocolate enriched with palm fat. CATPC’s first solo exhibition in New York City, highlighting these sculptures, led to much controversy and was hailed by the New York Times as ‘best art of 2017’. As journalist Jason Farago wrote: ‘This was the most challenging show of the year, and proudly “problematic,” but that was the point: You need to be fearless, and run right into the swamp of possible misunderstanding, to have any hope of making a difference’ (New York Times, 6 Dec 2017). Joanna Fiduccia went further: ‘Plantations were not just operations; they were ideologies, justifying the treatment of resources, people, and their sculptural “fetishes” alike as raw material that must subsequently be refined into first-world luxuries. A plantation workers’ art collective is transgressive because it establishes intimacy with material that has been historically denied to them: not chocolate, but sculpture’ (Even Magazine).
The video is an excerpt from Renzo Martens' film "White Cube" (2020).
#irenekanga #CATPC #renzomartens #forcedlove #kow #kowberlin #whitecube #documentaire #whitecubedocumentary #congolese #congoart #congoheritage #congoheritagemonth #sculptureartist
YESTERDAY, February 11, Cercle d'Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise - CATPC minted an NFT to take digital possession of a long-lost sculpture and reclaim their heritage!
NFT technology, often used to create private property, is repurposed to render communal what was privatized by force: not just art, but land and labour.
The Balot sculpture was carved in 1931, during a Pende uprising against rape and other atrocities carried out by the Unilever plantation system and Belgian colonial agents. The sculpture depicts the angry spirit of beheaded Belgian officer Maximilien Balot, and was carved to control Balot's spirit and make him work for the Pende people.
Today, the sculpture is held in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in Richmond. Loan requests by CATPC have thus far been futile. So was a personal visit by CATPC in Richmond (see documentation of this visit at KOW Berlin from NOW till the 9th of April 2022).
With the Balot NFT, the Congolese Plantation Workers Art League uses blockchain technology to claim back what is theirs: not just art, but land. The sculpture will later be atomized in a limited number of original NFTs for sale. Buyers get a digital rendering of the sculpture, based on photographic reproduction from the VMFA's website.
Every purchase helps to ultimately unleash the powers of the sculpture and make it work for the community: sales directly buy back land, replant the forest and reintroduce biodiversity, resulting in offsetting carbon emissions and providing autonomy and food security for plantation workers in one of most impoverished areas of the world.
The launch of the Balot NFT will take place at White Cube Lusanga, and KOW
Image: Diviner’s Figure representing Belgian Colonial Officer, Maximilien Balot, 1931, photo by Travis Fullerton © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
#CATPC #renzomartens #kow #kowberlin #whitecube #enjoypoverty #congolese #congoart #congoleseheritage #videoarte #sculptureartist #whitecubedocumentar
Clemens von Wedemeyer’s video “Transformation Scenario” (2018) is part of the group exhibition “NEW ORDER” at Museum im Kulturspeicher, Würzburg. On view until January 9.
“Simulated life began in the movies and computer games, but is influencing many fields today. In architecture, city planning, traffic navigation, and market and trade predictions, virtual scenarios of human behavior change the way we live. Clemens von Wedemeyer's new multi-screen video installation Transformation Scenario (2018) creates a speculative narration on the impact of emulated group behaviour in society.” (antifilm.de)
Video: Clemens von Wedemeyer, Transformation Scenario, 2018, video, colour, sound, 16:9, 20min, video excerpt.
#clemensvonwedemeyer #transformationscenario #neworder #museumimkulturspeicher #kow #kowberlin
Repost @thehughlane
'Creolizing' ~ #chtodelat
'Creolizing' is part of a series of educational flags produced by the Russian collective Chto Delat positioned as both art and objects of street protests. The banner in this exhibition displays the captions: De-Schooling the 1st World. FORE-Schooling the 2nd world.
Creolizing occurs when a creole language (developed from the simplifying and mixing of different languages) and cultures emerge. This flag series is based on the Soviet Houses of Culture, public spaces for workers where staged events for local party and trade union meetings were held.
The traditional banners were intended to greet the members and encourage them to respond openly to the meeting’s agenda. Chto Delat’s flags contain both image and word games responding to the many themes from various intellectual, political and aesthetic perspectives.
CHTO DELAT (What is to be done?) was founded in 2003 in St Petersburg by a working group of artists, critics, philosophers and writers from St Petersburg, Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod, with the goal of merging political theory, art and activism. The group’s name recalls the first socialist workers’ selforganisations in Russia, which revolutionary Vladimir Lenin outlined in his political pamphlet What is to be done?
Chto Delat as a collective operates in diverse media such as video films, graphics and murals, learning theatre, newsletter publications, radio plays and militant theory. The artistic activities of Chto Delat are orchestrated by four member artists – Tsaplya (Olga Egorova), Nikolay Oleynikov, Gluklya (Natalia Pershina) and Dmitry Vilensky – who often cooperate with Russian and international artists and researchers in joint projects realised under the collective name 🏦: @kowberlin
# ️⃣ # ️⃣ # ️⃣
#museumfromhome #museumsunlocked #Art #Dublin #HughLaneGallery #learningflags #whatistobedone #chtodelat #deschooling #preschooling
Currently showing Barbara Hammer’s exhibition “Would You Like To Meet Your Neighbor?” - on view until November 7.
All films of the exhibition can be viewed on our website.
“We present films from the 1980s that, to this day, have mostly been screened at arthouse theaters and festivals. From the earliest days of her career, in 1968, Hammer located her work in the art world, but, at that time, film and video were media that were rarely included in exhibitions, and lesbian and queer voices like Hammer’s were struggling to be heard in public spaces. Only now, after exhibitions mounted by prominent collections and institutions, is her art finally gaining traction in the cultural consciousness of wider audiences.
Synch Touch (1981, 10:07 min) is one of her programmatic films, championing a lesbian-feminist aesthetic that identifies the conjunction of touching and seeing as the basis for a “new cinema.” Rather than an abstraction disassociated from the body, the filmic gaze remains tethered to the hand, the flesh, the physical senses and, in artistic terms, to painting. “We are in a culture,” a voice observes toward the end, “where the expression of the heart and the senses are repressed. The heart of film is the rapport between touch and sight.”
Video: Barbara Hammer, Sync Touch, 1981, 16 mm film on video, color, sound, 10:07 min.
#barbarahammer #wouldyouliketomeetyourneighbor #kow #kowberlin
Join us today for the opening of Barbara Hammer’s show “Would You Like To Meet Your Neighbor?”
“Focusing on the 1980s - when Hammer left California for New York - our exhibition turns the spotlight on an artist confidently pursuing an experimental practice and expanding on the themes of her early work, while insistently enlarging the radius of her activities and her engagement with politics and media.“
All films of the exhibition can be viewed on our website.
„Audience is an extraordinary document, a film that stands apart from Hammer’s typical camerawork. When her films were shown in retrospectives in arthouse theaters in San Francisco, London, Toronto, and Montreal in the early 1980s, she posted herself at the entrance and questioned moviegoers about the expectations they were bringing to the screening and their thoughts on sexuality and representation. The result is a singular portrait of an era when women were constructing and publicly discussing—in effect, modeling—a self-image that would be influential for decades to come. A thoughtful and complex image of women who love women and diverse others and who want a cinema that captures—that depicts and creates—their desires and hopes.”
Video:
Barbara Hammer, Audience, 1982, 16 mm film on HD video, 32:35 min, b&w, sound.
#barbarahammer #kow #kowberlin #galleryweekendberlin
HENRIKE NAUMANN IN CONVERSATION WITH SOHRAB MOHEBBI (CURATOR, SCULPTURECENTER, NYC) - Art Basel OVR Event
Now @ KOW
Schlusszeremonie
Henrike Naumann
Goodbye Brunnenstrasse
Goodbye Brandlhuber
Goodbye Mitte
Candice Breitz
Digest, 2019
A multi-channel video installation commissioned for Sharjah Biennial 14 by the Sharjah Art Foundation.
(Opening March 7)
300 units:
20.3 x 12 x 2.7 cm each
Wooden shelves,
300 videotapes,
300 polypropylene boxes,
paper and acrylic paint
Disclaimer by Candice Breitz: "This incomplete survey of the analogue intestines of home video is not titled MERDA D’ARTISTA or BOÎTE-EN-VALISE. Despite its investment in strategies of REVERSAL and RETROSPECTION, this mute depository comes both too early and too late to serve as a convincing PENSE-BÊTE. These are neither the tales of Scheherazade nor the boxes of Pandora. These minuscule coffins are not DATE PAINTINGS or TIME CAPSULES , nor are they adequate SURROGATES for the moving images that they obscure. This VERB LIST is not a definitive ATLAS. Nor is it an encyclopedia or compendium or index or library or collection or dictionary or inventory or archive or catalogue. DIGEST could not accurately be described as a monograph or a biopic or a catalogue raisonné. This is not art about art or about artists or about the art market. This is not a love song or a selfie."
#CandiceBreitz #sharjahart #sharjahbiennial14 #sharjahbiennial #kow #kowberlin
Clemens von Wedemeyer at the Riga Biennial
Clemens von Wedemeyer's new work "Transformation Scenario" at the inaugural Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (Jun 2 - Oct 28, 2018)
https://digital.rigabiennial.com/87/00
Michael E. Smith
Michael E. Smith
Franz Erhard Walter activating "Neuere Geschichte Erweitert" ("Newer History Expanded"") from 1981 at Museo Reina Sofía
Franz Erhard Walther activating his work at the opening of La ...
Franz Erhard Walther activating his work at the opening of La Biennale di Venezia #franzerhardwalther
Brazix Muamba #2: Michael E. Smith
Opening today in our project space in São Paulo
Last day of ARCO with Alice Creischer's Arbeitsplatzprojektionsmaschine (1998-99)
Laudation by Heinrich Dunst on the occasion of the FEAGA Award that KOW received today at Art Basel "for creativity and new inspiration as well as for exemplary cooperation with the art community".
