Jean-Philippe Rameau
Les Indes Galantes

The first merit of this new production, streaming with intelligence, is that Laura Scozzi and Christophe Rousset have read Fuzelier’s verses deeply. And of Rameau, we must add, so much the composer, perpetually dissatisfied with his poets, harassed them word for word, when he did not take up the pen himself. In addition to lines which, like his contemporary Marivaux, seem to have been invented instantly, Fuzelier has built a dialectical finesse between peace and war, joy and hatred, pleasure and violence, the state of Nature and the state of society. The Gallant Indies according to Laura Scozzi are not a gigantic burst of joy. On the contrary, they reveal a perpetual and restless balance between shadow and light and are a look, less consensual but true and human, on the Age of Enlightenment. Here is a startling ideological reversal, without any forcing: Laura Scozzi has simply revealed the implicit nature of a libretto, so far read superficially.

Emobot
Catala’s work investigate emotions and empathy in our technological information-driven society. His computer generated Emobot appears at once familiar and strange as it utters simple statement about its feelings. The visually mesmerizing figure might serve as an avatar onto which we relate to the expression of strong feelings when they are delivered digitally-an increasing prevalent cultural phenomena. Listening to a not-quite human presence express its vulnerability may have less impact in us than hearing a real person communicate similar emotions. Nevertheless, the deliberate and repetitive manner in which Emobot articulates powerful sentiments affords us ample opportunity to reflect on the existential quality of their meaning.

Work in progress
The motionless figure of an androgynous giantess occupies almost the entire gallery space in her entangled posture. On its body and around it, small scaffolding grows upwards. But the construction site is deserted. Only the figure, which resembles an avatar, remains in a calm state. A state of “being in between”. Between day and night. Between dream and reality or even between life and death? It almost seems as if the figure is still being brought back to life. One is inclined to think of Mary Shelley, whose novel character Victor Frankenstein created an artificial human being 200 years ago – in a time of great upheaval and discovery. Today we find ourselves once again at a turning point in society and technology, which makes us question ourselves as well as platforms on which we construct our selfs… Is that what Evelyn Bencicova and Enes Güç are alluding to here?

One Two Three Swing!
One Two Three Swing! challenges society’s apathy towards the political, environmental and economic crises of our age. The installation is experienced in three states: apathy, production and movement. The state of apathy compromises a large pendulum suspended by a 20 metre cable from ceiling and swinging above a 770 square metre carpet in a colour scheme inspired by British currency. Occupying the far end of the hall is the state of production, a factory station where swing seats are assembled, stamped and stored prior to distribution and use. Emerging from the state of production, an orange line formed of sets of interconnected, three-seated swings invite and frame the movements of users.

Damnatio Memoriae

From the Latin, damnatio memoriae describes an act of erasure from the historical record reserved for
those who have brought dishonor to the Roman State. Employed as the most stringent punishment for
treason, damnatio memoriae physically razes all traces of an individual from society, typically through
the destruction a statue’s physiognomy or the abrasion of inscribed monuments. Throughout the past
two decades, Sassolino has developed a body of work that examines the relationship between industrial
machines and humanist impulses where viewers are meant to question how an sculpture’s kinetic
function aesthetically and conceptually allegorizes human experiences and cultural conditions.

TETRAGRAMMATON
A dialogue between these two artists on themes of myth, ritual and meaning, as much about their exhaustion and propensity to bewilderment as any potential they may inhere, for recuperation for and by language, culture and society. Joey’s work, ‘Religiously observant’, is inspired by alchemical and occult ideas, the world of spirits and hallucinations. The wall print features a gold CGI blazon of the Tetragrammaton It references the Sumerian mythology of the Annunaki a race of ancient chthonic fertility Gods, subsequently inscribed in a series of publications by Zecharia Sitchin (a kind of elder statesman of conspiracy theorists worldwide) as descendants of aliens, who enslaved the human race to extract gold from the earth. John’s work similarly ranges over territories of opposition: between ancient and contemporary; mythic and kitsch; between the viscid and primordial. It takes as its subject the vector of congealment, in the Marxist sense of the way labour power is congealed in commodities and so forth, extending this metaphor into an aesthetics of myth and ritual, emptied out, flattened, compacted like a sedimentary layer of anthropocene garbage, for the post-historical epoch.The sound component provides an aural complement to this structure of refuse, exhaustion and abjection. Mixing pre- or post-linguistic utterances, grunts, groans, screaming: a kind of secular glossolalia chaotically interwoven with whalesong, deep techno and political oratory.

Роберт Глигоровым
罗伯特·格利戈罗夫
روبرت غليغوروف
the kiss
Gligorov’s work attempts to shock the viewer. Each piece tantalizes the imagination, awakening it from a state of lethargy. Confronting a society accustomed to sophisticated and extreme forms of visual communication, Gligorov amplifies the shock value of his work in order to compete with the deluge of images that cloud our visual field.

최수앙
Choi Xoo Ang is an emerging mixed media artist based out of Seoul, South Korea who creates figurative sculptures out of clay and resin that examines human rights, society’s pathological state, and sex and gender politics among other themes.

Роберт Глигоровым
罗伯特·格利戈罗夫
روبرت غليغوروف
A plate of coltan for Mr. Steve Jobbs
Gligorov’s work attempts to shock the viewer. Each piece tantalizes the imagination, awakening it from a state of lethargy. Confronting a society accustomed to sophisticated and extreme forms of visual communication, Gligorov amplifies the shock value of his work in order to compete with the deluge of images that cloud our visual field.

최수앙
Listener
Choi Xoo Ang is an emerging mixed media artist based out of Seoul, South Korea who creates figurative sculptures out of clay and resin that examines human rights, society’s pathological state, and sex and gender politics among other themes.

Live forever: Act I
For her first major exhibition in the United States, Lee Bul exhibited work from her continuing series of karaoke booths that she started at the Venice Biennial in 1999.This new work elaborated upon her interests in investigating the relationship between the body and how we experience our technologically mediated society.more…

MENSKE

Even the standing room only tickets have sold out, and the raging mass of disappointed kids looks like they may start a riot: the atmosphere before Ultima Vez’s performance is akin to a rock concert. Choreographer superstar Wim Vandekeybus’s company has toured the world with their trademark vocabulary of acrobatic, extreme, often violent movement, soaked in multimedia and energetic music. Menske (meaning approximately ‘little human’), their latest work, has all the typical flaws and qualities of classic Vandekeybus. On the conservative end of political intervention, Menske is an explosive concoction of brash statements about the state of the world today, a sequence of rapidly revolving scenes of conflicting logic: intimist, blockbuster, desperate, hysterical. The broad impression is not so much of a sociological portrait, but of a very personal anguish being exorcised right in front of us, as if Vandekeybus is constantly switching format in search of eloquence. Visually, it is stunning, filmic: a slum society falling apart through guerrilla warfare, in which girls handily assume the role of living, moving weapons. A woman descends into madness in an oneiric hospital, led by a costumed and masked group sharpening knives in rhythmic unison. A traumatised figure wanders the city ruins dictating a lamenting letter to invisible ‘Pablo.’ Men hoist a woman on a pole her whole body flapping like a flag. “It’s too much!” intrudes a stage hand, “Too much smoke, too much noise, too much everything!” And the scene responsively changes to a quiet soliloquy. At which point, however, does pure mimesis become complicit with the physical and psychological violence it strives to condemn? Unable to find its way out of visual shock, Menske never resolves into anything more than a loud admission of powerlessness.