Work descriptions, Double Bind
The Reading Room by Valentina Desideri & Denise Ferreira da Silva
Books, tarots, maps, cards, blankets and a conversation, 2015
Valentina Desideri works with fake healing and other methods, to deal with politics. Denise Ferreira da Silva is a philosopher working on the critique of Kantian and Hegelian philosophy, as well as a practitioner of Astrology, Tarots, Reiki and herbal healing. Drawing from each other's practices Denise & Valentina came together to provide readings of political problems. These Poethical Readings have been performed in Arika ep7 (Glasgow), The Showroom (London) and If I Can’t Dance (Amsterdam).
This room is a reading room. There are texts, bodies, cards, conversations, spaces and situations you can read. You are already reading, not only this text but also the space you are in, the situation, the distances between people’s bodies, the objects around, the smells.
Reading (tarots, bodies, texts, astrological charts...) is a form of imaging in which the intuition assembles non-sensuous similarities in an instant, to form an image. An image can be complex, include multiple perspectives and contradictions.
What if we employ those un-reasonable, intuitive, ethical, non-colonial, anti-therapeutic, open, complicating ways of ‘reading’ to our political situations and crises?
In this room there are different reading tools available for use. There are Tarots cards, Fake Therapy cards, instructions for Political Therapy and a Reiki session is sent regularly to anyone in the exhibition at the announced times.
There is a transcript of a conversation that took place on July 8, 2015 between Denise Ferreira da Silva and Valentina Desideri discussing healing as a political process.
There are bookmarked books that inform their thinking and doing but also poetry books that can be read together with Tarot Cards, a notebook on Palm-Reading and many other books available for reading.
The reading room is open during exhibition hours for anyone to come and do any kind of reading, including of your own books, practices or experiments.
Moon CQ Zoo by Morten Norbye Halvorsen
60 min, stereo sound file, 2015
Moon CQ Zoo is an hour long edit of field and studio recordings, drawing together moments of no apparent connection to each other. The audio cuts between different actual and conjured up worlds— early morning along the perimeter of the London Zoo, wind blowing through trees forming some pastoral scene in the listener’s mind, sine waves and artificial cello harmonics, rain and thunder, an uneventful night in the city — two microphones placed in a field capturing the sounds of a vintage airplane flying overhead and a drone rushing in a figure of eight. The audio, like the airplane and drone, stops and hovers, capturing the throb of a passing train and the gurgle of incoming tide, washing over seals playing in the roar of the surf.
Morten Norbye Halvorsen (b. 1980, Stavanger, N; Lives in Berlin, DE and Suffolk, UK) Attended Falmouth College of Arts, UK and Kunstakademiet, Trondheim, N. He has performed and exhibited his work in group and solo exhibitions such as at All the Instruments Agree, 2015, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Companion, Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool; Pan Exciter, 2013, NoPlace, Oslo; Alluvium, 2013, Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerpen; oO, 2013, The Lithuanian/Cyprus Pavilion, 55th International Art Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia; LA Existencial, 2013, LACE, Los Angeles; Mindaugas Triennial, THE 11TH BALTIC TRIENNIAL OF INTERNATIONAL ART, 2012, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius; Run, comrade, the old world is behind you, 2011, Kunsthall Oslo; Champagne Polka, 2011, Gaudel de Stampa, Paris; Index of, 2010, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Repetition Island, 2010, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Paper Exhibition, 2009, Artist Space, New York.
Butterfly Blues by Styrmir Örn Guðmundsson
Drawings, ink on paper, 2015
Microphone stand, wood, 2015
Origami airplane, steel, 2014
Concert performance 25 min
Butterfly Blues is a nomadic concert performance. It uses sculptures as props and drawings as backdrops for performances of songs composed by the artist and of reworked covers.
Styrmir Örn Guðmundsson (b.1984 in Reykjavik) is a storyteller, performer, singer, object maker and illustrator. He has a love for the absurd, by which is meant less an obsessive passion for the ridiculous, nonsensical or the odd, than a tender and caring attitude. He takes care of the absurd. He helps it develop. He gives it a place alongside everything else where it can be your most disturbing neighbour and your best friend. Styrmir uses written language as a genesis of his work. Written pieces are adapted into live performances that activate objects, things and gestures. The performances and their narrative, that are delivered in the form of monologues, poetry and songs, serve as an exhibition device for autonomous art objects. Styrmir lives in Warsaw.
The Changing Room by Berglind Jóna Hlyndóttir
Read by Shipsi Sipkevics
Music, audio recording and editing by Gatis Zakis & Shipsi Sipkevics
A changing room, a fire-retardant curtain, a skirt and a border tell a story about divides and enclosures.
Berglind Jona Hlynsdóttir (b. 1979, Iceland) is an artist, curator and educator with a background in photography. She holds a BA in Art from the Iceland Academy of Art and an MA in Fine Art from Valand School of Fine Art (Sweden). Gothenburg, Sweden. She has participated in numerous group and solo shows in Iceland and abroad including the 4th International Sinope Biennal: “Wisdom of Shadow: Art in the Era of Corrupt Information” in Turkey, 2012, The Cosmic Was There, In Two Or Three Centimeters, Barcelos gallery, Madrid and Vigo,Spain, 2012 and 2013, Let Me Think at the Mocow Biennale, 2009, the Mendes Wood Gallery booth at Sao Paulo Art fair, 2011, Friction at ASÍ Art Museum, 2012, Nine in Gerðarsafn Museum, 2010, Avgångsutställning at Konsthallen, Gothenburg, 2010, Dialogue in the Gothenburg City Museum, 2009, Bæ Bæ Iceland at the Akureyri Art Museum, 2008, Hard Revolution at Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, 2005, Sequences: Real time art festival, Iceland, 2007 and 2009 and more.
Will be Named When the Artists Meet to Install/ Norwegian Roots/ Received Wet by Juha Pekka Matias Laakkonen & Augustas Serapinas Mixed Media
This is an artwork whose identity evolves as the exhibition travels. It is made of mystery missives exchanged between the artists in the months preceding the show’s inaugural presentation in Vilnius. From a single cardboard box – roots, sticks, newspaper clippings and other objects of undefined significance, appear and disappear with each ritualised repackaging of the work.
Juha Pekka Matias Laakkonen (b.1982 in Helsinki, Finland, lives and works in Skövde, Sweden) graduated from Malmö Art Academy in 2011. Laakkonen has a multifaceted working method, seeking to reveal attempts of understanding existence and attachment. These methods include diverse processes and stages of development, often running over long periods of time. They may involve repetitive everyday actions and meticulous exercises or handcrafts such as sewing, weaving, peeling and extracting. Laakkonen's art aims at a zero-degree visibility where however a spiritual reward might be expected. Laakkonen has exhibited his work at Lofoten International Art Festival, Norway, 2015; The /// Project, Bergen, Norway, 2014, Museum of Modern Art Antwerp, Belgium, 2014, Malonioji 6, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2012; Johan Berggren Gallery, Malmö 2011 and Pleasant Gallery, Copenhagen, 2012.
Augustas Serapinas is interested in the socially engaged and non-material practices of previous generations of artists, such as the one that emerged around the time of his own birth. The early 1990s saw the rise of the relational approach to practicing art with, for and through other people. His experiments with social interaction start from an openness to the encounter, which, as philosopher Alain Badiou points out, differs from experience because it is always based on improbability. The encounter (as a possibility, an act or, if we like, a manifestation of free will) is also fundamentally opposed to the notion of identity (which essentially regulates sameness) and certainly to its instrumentalisation as identity politics. Yet Serapinas is not exclusively concerned with the non-material and inter-personal. He has also busied himself with the discovery and construction of ‘secret spaces’: pockets of subjectivity carved out of the rational infrastructure that society tries to build for itself. Serapinas had taken part in group shows at MuHKA, Antwerp, 2014, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, 2015, International Contemporary Arts Festival Survival kit 6, Riga, 2015, CAC, Vilnius, 2015, 6th Moscow Biennale, 2015 and has also had solo presentations at BWA Warszawa Gallery, Warsaw, 2014 and SALTS, Basel, 2015.
Ladies by Lina Lapelytė
Performance, 4 square stools and LED light, 20 minutes, 2015
Video, 2015
Performed by Kanklės players from the National Song and Dance ensemble Lietuva:
Violeta Aukštkalnytė
Nijolė Plavinskaitė
Danutė Mikalauskienė
Judita Kundrotienė
Violeta, Nijolė, Danutė and Judita have been playing Kanklės at the National Song and Dance Ensemble Lietuva for more than 30 years, where they have an accompanying role as part of the orchestra. For this exhibition, they take centre stage to perform a new work by Lina Lapelytė.
Valstybinis dainų ir šokių ansamblis Lietuva (National song and dance ensemble Lithuania) is the name of the band. Lietuva is a publicly funded body that consists of dancers, singers, folk instrument players and an orchestra.
Lina Lapelyte works in London and Vilnius. In her works such as Have a Good Day!, Candy Shop and Hunky Bluff, Lina has been exploring the phenomena of song, using it as an object and examining issues of displacement, otherness and beauty. Re-enactment appears in her works to question everyday life scenarios and glitches. LinaLapelyte has been exhibiting and performing at the Borealis, Bergen; Baltic, Newcastle; Whitechappel Gallery, London; Serpentine Pavilion, London; Queen Elizabeth Hall, London; DRAF, London; CCA, Glasgow; Ikon, Birmingham; BBC Proms, London; Tate modern, London; Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius and others.
Untitled by Viktorija Rybakova
Architecture, wooden panels, PVC, mirror film
Viktorija Rybakova (1989 Vilnius, Lithuania) works with different materials and architectural assignments, writes, makes design and books. Presently together with graphic designer Goda Budvytyte she works on a research project on plastic in Mexico, exploring mutual relation between form and matter through material that records humankind’s desire for containment and flexibility. Recent exhibitions: 19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil | Southern Panoramas. São Paulo, Brazil; XII Baltic Triennial. Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, Lithuania; Prototypes. Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, Lithuania; 16th Tallinn Print Triennial, Kumu Kunstimuuseum, Tallin, Estonia; Fast Flux: New Art from Lithuania, GSAPP’s Studio-X, New York
Curators: Maya Tounta & Justė Jonutytė
Maya Tounta (b. 1990, Greece) is a writer and curator based in Vilnius, Lithuania. She has a Master of Arts in History of Art and Philosophy from the University of St Andrews. Currently she is Curator at Rupert centre for art and education in Lithuania where she works with the Exhibitions, Residencies and Alternative Education programmes.
Justė Jonutytė is a director of Rupert, Vilnius, where she runs alternative education and residency programs. Recent exhibitions and projects include Laure Prouvost: Burrow Me (2015), Dora Garcia: The Jerusalem of Europe (2013) and Lia Perjovschi: Knowledge Museum Kit & Dan Perjovschi: Time Specific (2014). In the past two years, she has organized a number of public talks, discussions and performances featuring Claire Bishop, Marten Spangberg, Dora Garcia, Miroslaw Balka, Kasia Redzisz, Isla Leaver-Yap, Lolita Jablonskienė and Nicolaus Schafhausen, among others. Together with Paulius Petraitis, she is the editor of Like There’s No Tomorrow: Young Lithuanian Photography (2013, distributed by Motto Books)
Project Manager: Simona Žekaitė
RUPERT
Rupert is a centre for Art and Education devoted to establishing close cooperation between artists, thinkers, researchers, and other cultural actors through interdisciplinary programs and residencies. A knowledge-based platform for innovative creative production, Rupert integrates with the social and cultural framework of the city of Vilnius while simultaneously supporting a strong international focus.
THE LIVING ART MUSEUM
The Living Art Museum (Nýló) is a non-profit, artist-run museum and venue for contemporary art in Reykjavik, Iceland. Nýló is committed to presenting, collecting and preserving the work of contemporary Icelandic and international artists.From the beginning the museum has stayed true to its original goal: to be a platform for progressive exhibitions, critical discussions and experimental art practices and to support emerging artists. The Collection of the museum consists of approximately 2,000 works, which have been donated by artists, resulting in an eclectic body of work by both international and Icelandic artists. Annually Nýló hosts around 10 exhibitions.
THE ACADEMY OF FINE ART AT OSLO NATIONAL ACADEMY OF THE ARTS
A place of making, a site for thinking, an environment to research and produce work: With a faculty of internationally acclaimed artists, writers and curators with expertise conceptual approaches and medium-specific practices on the other, the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo formulates critical challenges to today's society.Our institution is a lively place of urban learning. As such it is part of the landscape of institutions and art initiatives driving the current transformation of Oslo into one of the most active cities for producing, exhibiting and discussing contemporary art and culture in Northern Europe today. Faculty: Jeannette Christensen, Kristina Dag Erik Elgin, Rike Frank, Gard Frigstad, Dora Garcìa, Felix Gmelin, Stian Grøgaard, Saskia Holmkvist, Bouchra Khalili, Maria Lind, Michael O'Donnell, Mike Sperlinger, Dirkjan van der Linde, Jan Verwoert and Susanne M. Winterling.