Sunday, 28.02.2010 -
Friday, 29.06.2012
Beginning from March 2010 to June 2012 Corner College has co-organised and co-hostsed a bookstore offering a wide selection of books, magazines and artists' publications provided by Motto Berlin.
Foyer Shelf
Haute Bricolage
Corner College Shelf
Outside View
For more informations and orders go to:
Motto Distribution
variomatlink::Motto Zürich Facebook::http::www.facebook.com/mottozurich?ref=ts
Thursday, 26.04.2012
19:00h
‘What does the appointment of art dealer Jeffry Deitch as director of the Los Angeles Museum as director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art have to do with the trend of global financialization restarted at the Toronto G20 Summit in 2010? And how does the 25 percent attendance increase at the 2010 Gwanju Biennale fit in the picture?’ The editorial of the first issue of No Order: Art in a Post-Forsit Society, published by Archive Books, suggest that these events are among the symptoms of a global transformation of labor whereby knowledge, creativity, sociability, and ultimately life itself, are taking on the role played by machines in the Fordist era.
No Order magazine focuses on the relationships between contemporary art systems and capitalism’s production processes. By means of an investigation into current creative industries – and their social, economic and semiotic assemblages – the magazine contributions (essays, articles, interviews and dialogues as well as artists’ projects) aim to deconstruct, analyse and intervene within the ambit of the procedures and forms of cognitive capitalism. It concentrate, in particular, on the phenomena of the ‘biennalisation’, ‘financialisation’ and ‘spectacularisation’ of the political, beginning with the control and distribution of forms of artistic education, production and display on a global scale.
The Editorial Board is comprised of a series of transversal figures from various geographic and cultural environments, and includes Asef Bayat, Harun Farocki, Peter Friedl, Maurizio Lazzarato, Sylvère Lotringer, Achille Mbembe, Angela Melitopoulos, Christian Marazzi, Nelly Richard, Florian Schneider, Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas and Françoise Vergès.
Amongst the numerous contributors to the first, 400 page issue are: Roger M. Burgel, Charles Esche, Harun Farocki, Stephen Willats, Maurizio Lazzarato and Christian Marazzi.
The cover picture is taken from the demonstrations at the Milan Triennale in 1968. The underlying theme of the XIV International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts and Modern Architecture was ‘Large Numbers’. The XIV Triennale never opened. It was occupied by students during the demonstrations and all the exhibition areas were destroyed. ‘Why not try to start again, precisely here in Milan? In that same space in which the great process of social transformation was interrupted?’
Marco Scotini (Editor in Chief of No Order, independent curator and director of the departments of Visual, Multimedia and Performing Arts at NABA, the New Academy of Fine Arts in Milan) and Andris Brinkmanis (coordinator and lecturer for the MA of Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies at NABA and International Editor of No Order) will introduce to the public the first issue of the magazine.
No Order
An event organised by The Postgraduate Programme in Curating, ZHdK.
Sunday, 29.04.2012
20:00h
Imitat, Raubkopie oder Fake-Design? Chinesische Baukunst
Das Authentische hat auch in China Konjunktur. In Zeiten der Globalisierung mit ihrem rasanten Verschleiss an ästhetischen Vorbildern und immer kürzeren Frequenzen der Erneuerung, stellen sich Fragen nach Vorbildern und Identität. Der Westen ist schnell mit oberflächlicher Kritik an den echten und vermeintlichen Kopien, die sich im Wildwuchs des chinesischen Aufstiegs zur Weltmacht finden lassen. Doch sind diese Stilblüten wirklich repräsentativ? Oft liefern ausländische Kollegen ihren zweiten Aufguss alter Konzepte, zitieren sich selbst oder transferieren tradierte Typen aus der eigenen Heimat.
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Ein Diskurs auf Augenhöhe, der die lokalen Fragen ernst nimmt und unvoreingenommen nach neuen Lösungen sucht, ist dagegen selten anzutreffen. In manchen Fällen mag das kopierfähige Modell die richtige Antwort sein, in anderen die Entwicklung neuer Strategien und die Suche nach angepassten Raumstrukturen, die einer sich entwickelnden Gesellschaft Rechnung tragen. Im Zeitalter der Collage, der Versatzstücke und Zitate, der „Inspiration“ durch fremde Kulturen und der eitlen „Trendsetter“-Architektur, bedarf es genauer Analysen und unvoreingenommener Lösungen, die jenseits hergebrachter Vorbilder mit Neugier und Offenheit den Weg für eine kulturelle Erweiterung suchen. Doch welche Konzepte sind tragfähig im neuen China? Welche kritische Haltung entwickelt sich und mit welchen Argumenten wird sie vorgetragen? Gibt es Lösungen jenseits dogmatischer Festlegungen die auch für die westliche Entwicklung von Belang sein könnten? Schlicht, können wir von China lernen?
In Zusammenarbeit mit Public City.
Tuesday, 01.05.2012
19:00h
Im Zentrum ihrer künstlerischen Arbeiten stehen Eingriffe in bestehende kulturelle Systeme. Dazu bedient sich die !Mediengruppe Bitnik der Strategien des Hackings und erweitert diese zu einer Praxis des Umnutzens, Neuausrichtens und der Kritik. Hacking als künstlerischer Eingriff in ein bestehendes System bedeutet, dass das System für andere Nutzungenn Neunutzungen und Umnutzungen geöffnet wird. Bitnik interessiert sich insbesondere für mediale Systeme, mediatisierte Wirklichkeiten und Live-Medien, die sie in einer Weise reproduziert und manipuliert, dass sie der Betrachterin eine neue Sichtweise auf die Mechanismen ermöglicht. In einer ihrer jüngsten Arbeiten beschäftigt Bitnik sich mit städtischen Überwachungsräumen. Mit einem portablen Koffer, ausgerüstet mit Schachcomputer, Videosender und Richtantenne spüren sie Überwachungs-kamerasignale im Stadtraum auf. Sie entführen das ursprüngliche Überwachungsbild und ersetzten es mit einer Aufforderung zu einem Schachspiel: «Spielst du Schach mit mir? - Du bist Weiss ich bin Schwarz». Der Überwachungsmonitor im Kontrollraum des Überwachenden wird von Aussen übernommen und zu einer Spielkonsole gemacht. Mit der Spielaufforderung durchbricht die !Mediengruppe Bitnik die Machtstruktur der Überwachungssituation – eine subtile Performance für einen einzelnen und speziell ausgewählten Rezipienten.
http://errrrrrrrror.bitnik.org/
Eine Veranstaltung in der Vortragsreihe Ästhetik@Subversion
der Vertiefung Theorie in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Master of
Fine Arts des Departements Kunst & Medien der Zürcher
Hochschule der Künste ZHdK.
Thursday, 03.05.2012
18:00h
Aesthetic Journalism
How to Inform Without Informing
Italian writer, curator and artist Alfredo Cramerotti will give an introduction in his book "Aesthetic Journalism: How to Inform Without Informing". Recognising the “blurring of margins between artistic and information practices” as a main feature in contemporary culture, Cramerotti sets out the Who, What, Where, When and How, and Why of Aesthetic Journalism.
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Cramerotti identifies this “'investigative approach” in contemporary art and photography as the use of fieldwork, reportage, interviews, document analysis, graphic mapping and information distribution. He cites a number of artists who employ these strategies: Hans Haacke, Martha Rosler, Lukas Einsele, Laura Horelli, Renzo Martens, Alfredo Jaar, Renée Green, The Atlas Group/Walid Raad and Bruno Serralogue. For Cramerotti, Aesthetic Journalism implies the critical use of documentary techniques and journalistic methods where the medium itself undergoes questioning. He posits that aesthetics, understood as a “process in which we open up our sensibility to the diversity of the forms of nature (and manmade environment)” can open up the mechanisms of art and media to expose the limitations of photojournalism, documentation and the ethics of representation. In doing so, Aesthetic Journalism renders productive readings of reality, information, fact, fiction and objectivity.
The concepts outlined in the book have been a key tool in the development of the Chamber of Public Secrets’ curatorial approach for the 8th edition of Manifesta, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art: Manifesta 8 taking place in the region of Murcia, Spain.
Friday, 11.05.2012
17:00h
The Gentlewoman, a Modern Magazine
Veronica Ditting (Grafikdesignerin und Art Director) spricht über die visuelle Entwicklung der Zeitschrift The Gentlewoman. The Gentlewoman ist eine Zeitschrift für moderne Frauen und erscheint zweimal jährlich. Es geht um starke, echte, modebewusste Frauen und deren Ansichten, Lebensentwürfe und Berufe. Anspruchsvoller Journalismus, Fotografie und Gestaltung werden durch ein kleines Team realisiert. Veronica wird u.a. den Sprung von Fantastic Man zu The Gentlewoman erläutern, auf verschiedene Aspekte der Frauenzeitschrift eingehen und den visuellen Entstehungsprozess zeigen.
The Gentlewoman
Veronica studierte Grafikdesign an der Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam und ist seit 2005 als freischaffende Grafikerin tätig. Sie ist Art Director von den Zeitschriften The Gentlewoman und Fantastic Man und arbeitet vorwiegend im kulturellen Bereich. Bevorzugte Medien sind Bücher und Zeitschriften die in enger Zusammenarbeit mit den Auftraggebern entwickelt werden. Sie arbeitet hauptsächlich in Amsterdam sowie in London.
http://www.veronicaditting.com
http://vimeo.com/39263988
Monday, 14.05.2012
20:00h
Criticism of Measure: God and the Naked Woman
Aesthetics of Differends, section 1, detail, photo credit: MNAM-Centre Pompidou
Since 2008 Benoît Maire has started writing a manual of aesthetics where images, objects and writing take form to bring forth some of contemporary aesthetics’ main issues. Starting from the differend (insurmountable conflict) between saying and seeing, Benoît Maire works in an in-between where art and philosophy merge into a practical use where forms spread out and surpass one another. Neither philosophy, nor art, the Aesthetics of Differends looks to corrupt classical formats by the experimental use of theory. This reading in Zurich will be based on the relationship between liberalism, nudity, pleasure and language to propose a criticism of measure: the work and thoughts of Manet, Masacio, God, Perry Anderson, Catherine Malabou, Jean-François Lyotard, Bruno Bostells and Judith Butler will notably be at stake.
Tuesday, 15.05.2012 -
Friday, 25.05.2012
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Stray Topology is a group show of photographic works by students from the F+F Schule fur Kunst und Mediendesign Zurich. The works have been produced in response to an open ended dialogue on the perception of place and its representations. The show includes a screening and discussion as part of Theory Tuesdays.
Taking the position that place is both exactly where it is and a digression from itself, the project examines the encounter with place through perspectives on urbanism, architecture and literature.
These vantage points animate our relationship to place, suggesting a meshing of subjective experience with the processes of recollection. The project considers the politics of place in relation to the selection, construction and mediation of the photographic image.
Project coordinator: Mary Maclean
Opening: Wednesday, 6:30 - 8:30pm
Opening hours: Saturdays, 12am - 5pm or by appointment
Friday, 18.05.2012
17:00h
From March till July 2011 Dutch graphic designers Bart de Baets (Knokke, Belgium, 1979) and Sandra Kassenaar (Johannesburg, South Africa, 1982) were resident artists at the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo.
Due to the recent events in Egypt and especially its capitol, their initial date of arrival on the 1st of February 2011 was postponed for a month. Being stunned by the political tidal wave flooding the country, the resignation of Hosni Mubarak and the phenomenon of having a curfew — something they had only heard of in World War II stories — the designers found themselves gazing from the sidelines, not knowing how exactly to react to all of this. They asked themselves ‘Would it be arrogant to confront the Egyptians with our assumptions? And ‘isn’t it ignorant to pretend to have a nose bleed?’
Success and Uncertainty
Their unclear position and the new situation the country found itself in proved to be an inspiring discovery, which eventually lead to the project "Success and Uncertainty." The title of this work is an existing headline taken from the 12th of February 2011 front page of "The Evansville Courier & Press," a local Indiana newspaper reporting Mubarak’s resignation as the president of Egypt.
Success and Uncertainty at San Seriffe in W139, Amsterdam
On Wednesday June 1st 2011 a lightbox was hung outside the Townhouse Gallery that announced the start of the project and showcased the first of twenty-one posters. During the month of June 2011, each day a new poster was presented, generating a growing exhibition. The daily changing posters could be seen both in- and outside of the gallery and — just like newspapers — showed bold statements and gruesome facts, next to light-hearted messages, such as casual observations and rumours that caught Sandra and Bart’s attention during their residency. The content provided by both therefore created a clash of information that will influence the way one reads a poster. It was this constant dialogue between the designers that lead to "Success and Uncertainty."
http://www.successanduncertainty.wordpress.com
Organized in collaboration with Motto Zürich.
Monday, 21.05.2012
20:00h
As part of the F+F Schule fur Kunst und Mediendesign show "Stray Topology", Theory Tuesdays will screen excerpts from Robinson in Ruins directed by Patrick Keiller. The film excerpts will be followed by a discussion on the role of ruin aesthetics in relation to the sites and non-places of urban modernity. Mary Maclean and students in the project will hold a critical discussion of the work in the exhibition.
Robinson in Ruins
Production year: 2010
Running time: 101 minutes
Director: Patrick Keiller
PLEASE NOTE: ONLY EXCERPTS FROM THE FILM WILL BE SHOWN.
Sunday, 27.05.2012 -
Wednesday, 30.05.2012
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Pursue Other Avenues is an experiment which takes the form of an open and public "exhibition making workshop". By showing the negotiation, research, and dialogue that typically finishes before the vernissage this experiment aims to give participants an understanding of artists and their work, greater to that of seeing a mere static display of material products. This experiment views all participants as producers, audience, critics, and curators, and with the aid of Isabelle Krieg, Clare Kenny, and Flurin Bisig everyone present will contribute to the development of the exhibition process. This experiment will display the traditionally private stages of an exhibition—doing away with the traditionally public stage entirely. Contrary to most exhibitions, Pursue Other Avenues will not be pure documentation of prior actions, discussions, or collaborations, but the exhibition will be the discourse and connections as they are created. The exhibition becomes flexible and public, and by the time it ‘matures’ it will not then be arrested and stagnate, but this will signal its end.
Schedule:
Monday May 28, 2012 6pm-9pm
Artists talks and open discussions.
Tuesday May 29, 2012 6pm-9pm
part one- Connect and contrast the artists work. Thematic? Non-thematic?
part two – Which works would we (all participants) showcase by each artists? If new works were created what would they look like?
Wednesday May 30, 2012 6pm-9pm
part one – Discuss space and the effect that different spaces would have on the artist and their works.
part two - Effect that context can have on meanings of work and how this could change what we (all participants) know about the work.
Thursday May 31, 2012 6pm-?
part one – How could we communicate these artists' work effectively to people who did not take part in this process?
8pm – vernissage
Find more informations on the Pursue Other Avenues-Blog
Organized by Lindsey Sharman.
Contact pursueotheravenues@gmail.com
> Invitation Card "Pursue Other Avenues"
Thursday, 31.05.2012
19:00h
Alphonse Allais, Album Primo-Avrilesque, 1897
David will introduce some historical artists' publications and trace one origin story for this genre of experimental books. It won't be a full history - maybe a one hour chapter from a 10 part drama mini-series - but there will be a lot of action and adventure. In the mix will be content from three recent shows that he has assembled from the library collection at MoMA - Access to Tools: Publications from the Whole Earth Catalog, 1968-1974, Scenes from Zagreb and Millennium Magazine.
Tuesday, 05.06.2012
19:00h -
Friday, 08.06.2012
A PARADISE OF LETTERS (AN EXHIBITION THAT NEVER TOOK PLACE)
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For a long time, Letterism – established by Isidore Isou – has remained the unknown avant-garde of European Post-war art. Using copies and documents, A Paradise of Letters looks at two aspects of the movement’s production: their notion of a ”metagraphic” or ”hypergraphic” novel, and their experiments with a ”discrepant”, ”chiseling” and ”nuclear” cinema. The display and accompanying lectures will ask the speculative, hypothetical question: what would be the result if these largely forgotten practices were reinscribed into the narrative of post-war poetry, art and cinema?
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A Paradise of Letters is organized by Jonas (J) Magnusson and Kim West. Both will give a lecture (each 1h) about the following topics:
”Hypergraphics, or the art of re-reading and re-writing our world-text” by Jonas (J) Magnusson
Jonas (J) Magnusson will discuss the hypergraphic novels by Isidore Isou (Les Journaux des Dieux, ”The God's Diaries”, 1950; Initiation à la haute Volupté, ”Initiation to High Voluptuousness”, 1960; Jonas ou le corps à la recherche de son âme, ”Jonah, or the Body Searching for its Soul”, 1984), Gabriel Pomerand (Saint Ghetto des Prêts, ”St Ghetto of the Loans”, 1950) and Maurice Lemaître (Canailles, ”Riff-raff”, 1950).
Metagraphics (or post-writing), invented by Isodore Isou in 1950, and four years later renamed hypergraphics (or super-writing), aimed both at subverting the novel as it was known at the time, and at extending Letterist painting to the totality of characters of all writing systems in their existing or invented transcriptions, seen through their ideographic, lexical and alphabetic categories.
”Nuclear cinema: Letterist film experiments” by Kim West
With their first Letterist films, Traité de bave et d’éternité and Le film est déjà commencé? (both 1951), Isidore Isou and Maurice Lemaître wanted to radically extend cinema’s scope of possibilities. Scratching the film frames, separating images and sounds, voices and bodies, and employing the cinema theater as an aesthetic element, they introduced a number of innovative techniques that predated the experiments of ”structural” and ”expanded” cinema, as well as the renegotiations of film language by the Nouvelle Vague filmmakers.
In his combined lecture and screening, Kim West will discuss Isou’s and Lemaître’s classic films, as well as the work of other Letterist filmmakers such as Marc’O (”Nuclear Cinema”, 1952, Closed Vision, 1954, Les Idoles, 1968), Gil Wolman (L’anti-concept, 1952), and Roland Sabatier (such as Pensiez-vous (vraiment) voir un film de Roland Sabatier?, 1973).
Isidore Isou, Les journaux des dieux
Opening hours: Thursday and Friday, 5-7pm; Saturday, 12am-5pm
The project is made with support by Moderna Museet, Stockholm and Allianz Kulturstiftung.
Wednesday, 06.06.2012
20:00h
"Traité de bave et d'éternité" est un film expérimental français écrit et réalisé par Isidore Isou en 1951, produit par Marc'O, et monté avec l'aide de Maurice Lemaître.
Ce film, qui fit scandale à Cannes en 1951 et reçut le Prix des Spectateurs d'Avant-Garde, est basé sur le principe de ce qu'Isou appelle le montage discrépant, qui consiste en une disjonction totale entre le son et l'image, traités de manière autonome sans aucune relation signifiante.
Ainsi, la bande-son est constituée de poèmes lettristes (servant de générique et d'interludes), auxquels s'adjoint une narration contant l'histoire de Daniel, auteur d'un manifeste pour un nouveau cinéma (le cinéma discrépant), de son discours face à un public hostile et de son histoire d'amour avec une dénommée Ève.
L'autonomisation du son a pour but de le faire s'épanouir pleinement, sans tenir compte de l'image, lui offrant ainsi toute la richesse stylistique de la prose, devenant un véritable roman parlé (procédé qui inspirera notamment Chris Marker pour son film La Jetée).
La bande-image, quant à elle, constituée, en grande partie, de found footage, présente une succession d'images banales : Isou errant dans le quartier de Saint-Germain-des-Près ou en compagnie de personnalités (comme Cendrars ou Cocteau), des fragments de films militaires récupérés dans les poubelles de l'armée ou d'exercices de gymnastique filmés, et des plans d'actualités de personnalités de l'époque, telle l'actrice Danièle Delorme.
Ces images servent de prétexte à l'utilisation de la ciselure, procédé rendu en peignant, grattant ou rayant directement la pellicule, séparant ainsi chaque photogramme, habituellement perdu dans le mouvement général d'un film, pour l'explorer en lui-même et l'anéantir. L'image se retrouve parfois réduite à des écrans blancs ou noirs à divers moments du film.
(Wikipedia)
"Traité de bave et d'éternité" (Venom and Eternity)
Directed by Isidore Isou
France, 1951
b/w, 111 Min, English Subtitles
Read here more about lettrist cinema:
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/OCTO_a_00019