TIME SCHEDULE:
- FRÜHSCHOPPEN
- 11.00 – 12.00 Barspaceba – Niki Ulfstedt & Eva Bjarnadóttir, Spoken Review – Myriam Van Imschoot, Q & A – audience, artists and guests of the day before
- RESONANCE AND TRANSMISSION: FROM ONE VOICE TO ANOTHER
- 12.30 – 14.30 Introduction by Frédérique Bergholtz and Susan Gibb, Readings – Federica Bueti & Camilla Wills, Screening – Sharon Hayes (Ricerche: three)
- 14.45 – 16.45 Artist Presentation – Alex Martinis Roe, Lecture – Francesco Ventrella, Conversation – Alex Martinis Roe & Francesco Ventrella
- 17.00 – 19.00 Screening and Conversation – Wendelien van Oldenborgh (Bete & Deise)
RODE ZAAL 11.00 – 12.00
Frühschoppen – Frühschoppen is a mixed program of performances, discussions and reflections for and among students and participants of the VOICE ~ CREATURE OF TRANSITION.
Frühschoppen will open with Barspacebar – a sound event by students Niki Ulfstedt & Eva Bjarnadóttir. Eva Bjarnadóttir and Niki Ulfstedt will take you on a journey with voices; the human voice in combination with manual voices from the bezemkast. They use tools like measuring tape, chisel, stapling gun and pliers to create rhythms and support the content of the lyrics.
SPOKEN REVIEW: Following the performance, writer and performance artist Myriam Van Imschoot will reflect, live and on the spot, on the works in the exhibition in the context of VOICE ~ CREATURE OF TRANSITION.
Myriam Van Imschoot is a writer and performance artist based in Brussels. She works in various media with archives, voice, memory and landscape. At the moment Van Imschoot makes a cycle of works dedicated to voice and landscape projects, with the support of a trajectory grant of the Flemish Community Commission. Her interest is in modes of communication that stretch time and space. Drawn to art on the brink of ephemerality, she is equally curious about what persists notwithstanding – in the form of traces, debris, echoes.
The program will conclude with a Q & A and discussion between audience, artists and guests of the day before.
EXPO ZAAL 12.30 – 19.00
Resonance and Transmission: from one voice to another
Curated and presented by If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution
SUMMARY
A new generation of feminist thinkers and contemporary artists will come together during a day of reflection on the voice and its relationship with the speaker and the receiver, including the transformation that occurs during its re-articulation by someone else.
INTRODUCTION
“[S]peakers are not political because of what they say, but because they say it to others who share an interactive space of reciprocal exposure”– Adriana Cavarero, For More Than One Voice: Towards a Philosophy of Vocal Expression.
Each voice has a “uniqueness”– an idea proposed by the Italian philosopher and feminist thinker Adriana Cavarero. It is a quality that is found in its particular timbre, and in its interaction with the language it shapes. But how do voices resonate not only in their sound, but also over time? How are they transmitted from one body to another? And how can and do we speak for some-one else?
Resonance and Transmission: from one voice to another considers the voice and its relationship with the speaker and the receiver, including the transformation that occurs during its re-articulation by someone else. Bringing together a new generation of feminist thinkers and contemporary artists, the symposium will consider the intersections between history, politics and the act of speech.
PROGRAM & PARTICIPANTS:
12.30 – 14.30
Over the course of the day Federica Bueti will present a lecture with a performance by the artist Camilla Wills, to builds upon her current research into performative writing in art, feminine writing and the work of Hélène Cixous – the French critic and theorist, novelist and playwright who coined the term.
A screening of selected work by Sharon Hayes will consider the relationship between the individual voice and the collective.
15 min BREAK
14.45 – 16.45
In the afternoon the artist Alex Martinis Roe will talk about her ongoing oral history research into the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective – a feminist group that practices a politics of sexual difference – including the way her methodologies relate to their approaches to storytelling and “doing history”.
Francesco Ventrella will deliver a lecture exploring the relationship between voices and intersubjectivity through the art critic and feminist Carla Lonzi’s book of artist interviews Autoritratto (1969), originally recorded on audiotapes.
15 min BREAK
17.00 – 19.00
The day will conclude with a screening of Wendelien van Oldenborgh’s film Bete & Deise, which recounts an encounter between two women in Rio de Janeiro – Bete Mendes and Deise Tigrona – who have each in their own way given meaning to the idea of a public voice. The screening will be followed by a conversation with the artist.
PARTICIPANTS:
FRÉDÉRIQUE BERGHOLTZ
Frédérique Bergholtz is co-founder and director of If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part of Your Revolution, a curatorial production house for performance-related art and research based in Amsterdam. In this role she has commissioned artists to make new work including Gerard Byrne, Matti Braun, Yael Davids, Mariana Castillo Deball, Keren Cytter, Suchan Kinoshita, Olivier Foulon, Sarah Pierce, Joachim Koester, Jon Mikel Euba, Sung Hwan Kim, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Jeremiah Day and Emily Wardill, and has initiated research projects based on the performative practices of Guy de Cointet, Isidoro Valcarcel Medina, Matt Mullican and Flavio de Cavalho. She has previously worked as a visual arts curator at theatre Huis aan de Werf in Utrecht (2005–2007) and was director of Marres, centre for contemporary art in Maastricht (1998–2005). In 2010 she co-curated Art Sheffield – Life: A User’s Manual. She studied Art History at Utrecht University.
FEDERICA BUETI
Federica Bueti is a writer, editor, art critic, researcher and occasional curator based in Berlin. She is co-founder and editor-in-chief of …ment, journal for contemporary culture, art and politics (www.journalment.org). Her practice explores modalities and methods of production including fictive, critical and theoretical writing and publishing. Her current research focusses on performative writing in art, “feminine writing”, and the work of philosopher and writer Hèlene Cixous.
SUSAN GIBB
Susan Gibb is an associate curator at If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution. She previously ran the independent curatorial initiative Society and held curatorial positions at the interdisciplinary art centres Carriageworks and Campbelltown Arts Centre in Sydney, Australia. Her recent projects include A Planet With Two Suns with Agatha Gothe-Snape at Kunstvlaai: Festival of Independents, Amsterdam (2012) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2013); The River Project (2010) and What I Think About When I Think About Dancing (2009), both at Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney. She regularly writes for art periodicals including ArtAsiaPacific, LEAP: The International Art Magazine of Contemporary China, Art&Australia and Photofile.
SHARON HAYES
Sharon Hayes’ work moves between multiple mediums – video, performance, installation – in an ongoing investigation into the interrelation between history, politics and speech. She employs conceptual and methodological approaches borrowed from practices such as performance, theater, dance, anthropology and journalism. Her work has been shown at the New Museum for Contemporary Art, the Guggenheim Museum, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, Art In General, Dance Theater Workshop, Performance Space 122, the Public Theater, and the WOW Cafe in New York and at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Track 16, Gallery 2102 and The Project in Los Angeles. Internationally at the Tate Modern in London, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, Museum Moderner Kunst and the Generali Foundation in Vienna, the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin and in galleries, exhibition or performance spaces around the United States and world including 45 lesbian living rooms across the United States. She is a 2013 recipient of The Alpert Award in the Arts, Special Mention at the International Exhibition Il Palazzo Enciclopedico (The Encyclopedic Palace) of the 2013 Venice Biennale for her work Ricerche: three, and an Anonymous Was a Woman Award recipient. Hayes is Assistant Professor at the School of Art at The Cooper Union.
ALEX MARTINIS ROE
Alex Martinis Roe is an artist whose current research projects and exhibitions explore feminist genealogies using a variety of media, including film, audio installation, performance and text. In 2006-7 she was a resident at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne. In 2011 she undertook a residency at Seoul Artspace Geumcheon. Since 2009 she has lived and worked at Kunsthaus KuLe, Berlin. She is currently a fellow at the Graduate School for Arts and Sciences, UdK, Berlin. Her recent exhibitions include A Story from Circolo della rosa, Archive Kabinett, Berlin (solo) (2014); Wahala, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin (2013); NEW13, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2013); Collective Biographies, Bibliothekswohnung, Berlin (solo) (2012); non-writing histories, Artspace, Sydney (solo) (2012).
WENDELIEN VAN OLDENBORGH
Wendelien van Oldenborgh is an artist based in Rotterdam whose practice explores social relationships through an investigation of gesture in the public sphere. She received her art education at Goldmiths’ College, London in the 1980’s and returned to the Netherlands in 2004. Van Oldenborgh develops works in which the cinematic format is used as a methodology for production and as the basic language for various forms of presentation. She often uses the format of a public film shoot, in collaboration with participants in different scenarios, to co-produce a script and orientate the work towards a final outcome. These works look at the structures that form and hinder us. She has participated in various large biennials and in smaller dedicated shows. Recent presentations include Après la reprise, la prise in “Art Turning Left”, Tate Liverpool (2013); Cinema Bete & Deise in “Dear Art” by What How and for Whom, Calvert 22, London (2013); La Javanaise (2012) in Berlinale Forum Expanded 2013; in “Holandaise”, RAW Material, Dakar (SN) and the upcoming Biennial of Cuenca (EC); Supposing I love you. And you also love me (2011) in “Speech Matters”, Danish Pavilion, Venice Biennial 2011 and “Untimely Stories”, Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz (PL) 2012.
FRANCESCO VENTRELLA
Francesco Ventrella is Leverhulme Research Fellow at the School of History, Art History and Philosophy, University of Sussex. His research explores the intersection between materiality and corporeality in art writing. In the context of his fellowship at Sussex he is working on a book tentatively entitled Connoisseurial Intimacies: Modernity, Sexuality and the Politics of Identification, which explores the impact of empathy theories and physiological aesthetics in art historiography at the fin de siècle and beyond. Ventrella is a former editor of Parallax and has edited a special issue entitled Enthusiasm (2011). A short piece on queer portraiture appeared last month on Photoworks.org.uk
CAMILLA WILLS
Camilla Wills lives and works in London. Her recent projects include Perra Perdida (with Allison Katz), Lulu, Mexico City; Bard Girls Can Fly, White Flag Projects, Missouri; Cabaret Brutalité, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Sunbathers, 1857, Oslo; Notes on Neo-Camp, Studio Voltaire, London, and Instant Publishing/Automatic Writing, with Publish and be Damned, ICA, London. In 2011 she completed the Master’s programme at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam. She currently works in the editorial department at Book Works, London.