Event date:
October 28, 2019 - November 1, 2019 Export event
Conceived by Niccolò Moronato, Jessica Taylor, Abbas Zahedi
Exhibition dates: Monday 28 October - Friday 1 November (12 - 6 pm)
Location: Guest Projects, 1 Andrews Road, London E8 4QL
All events are free and open to all
Departing from Niccolò Moronato's body of work Firmament, which looks at stars and constellations from the alternative perspective of a planet 40 light years away from us, An Alternative Map of the Universe is a collaborative effort to bring together artists who use mapping as a way of responding to current realities or imagining new ones for the future. Together, this group of artists will attempt to find a way to communicate in spite of and in response to the disparate systems that govern our existence today. Through the staging of works, performances and screenings, our aim for this programme is to encourage individuals to consider questions such as: What is space? Is space even real? Who is space for? Who holds power in space? What constellation do we find ourselves in?
Featuring works, performances or talks by: Larry Achiampong, Ewan Atkinson, Niklas Gustafsson, Versia Harris, Emre Kazim, Niccolò Moronato, Paul O'Kane, Katarzyna Perlak, Pilar Quinteros and Abbas Zahedi.
PUBLIC PROGRAMME
Monday 28 October
6pm - Performance by Abbas Zahedi - 'Rose & STEMM' (2019)
Rose & STEMM builds on the ideas and research explored in Zahedi's previous works ROSE WATER (2018) and MANNA from below (2017); this will involve the performance of grieving rites upon the gallery space, as a way of laying to rest the analytic and categorical biases, which are so often used to exclude diasporic bodies of praxis and flesh.
7pm - 'Dressing' Live work by Niklas Gustafsson (2019)
Dressing ignores the distinction between, say, a Ferrari and a sticker and revels in the freedom and challenges that might bring.
8pm - Talk & drinks: 'Is this space real?' with Abbas Zahedi, Niklas Gustafsson, Niccolò Moronato, moderated by Jessica Taylor
Tuesday 29 October
6 - 7 pm - Film screenings, followed by discussion & drinks
Larry Achiampong - 'Relic 1' (2017)
Forming part of Achiampong's multi-disciplinary project Relic Traveller: Phase 1, this short film features a Relic Traveller apparating sites across a seemingly desperate United Kingdom. Uncovering fragments of audible data presenting clue-like testimonies to a forgotten Empire, the Relic Traveller soon finds themselves in an atmosphere that simultaneously delivers poetic moments of the sublime met with increasingly harrowing claustrophobia and tales of trauma. Thus resulting in a familiar feeling of otherness, we are invited on a journey that embodies hysteria.
Katarzyna Perlak - 'Niołam Ja Se Kochaneczke' (2016)
Niołam Ja Se Kochaneczke explores potentialities of queer utopias, while looking at the relationship between history, ‘national values’ and power structures. Through the work Perlak revisited Eastern European folk traditions and whilst employing feminist and queer reading she encourages the viewer to consider and experience history as a discourse made out of multiple, overlapping and contesting narratives rather than a single, fixed entity.
Versia Harris - 'I Don't Want To Be An Emperor. That's Not My Business' (2019)
This work is about how oppression and coercion can be hidden in idealistic rhetoric or conversely how idealistic action threatens the abilities of those in power to oppress and coerce. The imagery is footage of a physical landscape scene built by the artist, presenting a seemingly idealistic society enjoying a day that commemorates "The Pelican." The audio is a collection of political speeches by dictators who have caused mass suffering and political heroes who, because of their idealistic values, have been assassinated.
Pilar Quinteros - 'Cementerio Indio' (2015)
Quinteros investigates the common procedure followed and options available to those who find archaeological sites like the one discovered near her building in 2014 during the demolition of an old house to accommodate a new metro line in Santiago, Chile. To respond to this act, Quinteros builds a reproduction of the house to create a space that people could enter to watch the film's documentation of the demolition, subsequent discovery of the bodies, interviews with those involved, followed by footage of the construction of the cardboard house by the artist.
Wednesday 30 October
5:30pm - Workshop: The Star Survey by Niccolò Moronato (Register here)
7pm - Talk: 'Technologies of Togetherness' with Paul O'Kane and Emre Kazim
8:30pm - Closing drinks
This project is supported by International Curators Forum
For further information contact info@internationalcuratorsforum.org