25th September

Screening of the documentary “Andre Gorz” by Marian Handwerker (1990, 28 min) followed by discussion with the director.
This is a documentary by Belgian director Marian Handwerker is an interview with French philosopher Andre Gorz regarding his theory of the notion of “Labour” and discovers his vision on the topic of “Labour”, its past and present changes and the transformations of the production system.

The film was made two years after the publication of the book “Metamorphosis of Labour, search for meaning” (ed. Galilee, 1988), in which the author develops the idea that the film reflects, more or less directly.

Translation and subtitling of the film was carried out at Utopiana’s Media Lab.

Meeting-discussion with philosopher and sociologist Maurizio Lazzarato.
The philosopher made a presentation on “The Economic Impoverishment and Impoverishment of Subjectivity in Neoliberalism” topic, followed by a discussion.

“... In addition to economic impoverishment, liberalism produced a loss of subjectivity, a decrease in its existential intensity. The economic impoverishment affects the population differentially, by identifying strong hierarchies and polarities of income and status, while the impoverishment of subjectivity affects horizontally, the population as a whole. In societies where social safety is considered first and foremost, unlike the disciplinary societies, the rich and the poor live in the “same world” in the sense that they are exposed to the same symbol system of information, advertising, television, art and culture. Production of such common symbol system is a new and special element in the practice of behaviorial governance, which started to be implemented in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and expanded since the “New Deal”.

Observing the transformations that refer to the role art and the place of artists in the public and social life during the entire 20th century, the author questioned in his presentation the effect of the above mentioned symbol systems on subjectivity, refering to Marsel Dusans concept of «Anart» and the aesthetic vision of Felix Guatari.

26th September

«Assemblages», (Video essey 62’)
Lecture and screening with artist Angela Melitopoulos and sociologist, philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato about their audiovisual research project about Félix Guattari and his revolutionary psychiatric practice, his political activism as well as his ideas concerning ecosophy and his interest in animism especially in the Brazilian and Japanese context.

In Guattari’s work and in the same manner as in animist societies, subjectivity loses the transcendent and transcendental status that characterizes the Western paradigm. Guattari’s thought and that of animist societies can find common ground in this
understanding of subjectivity. Aspects of polysemic, transindividual, and animist subjectivity also characterize the world of childhood, of psychosis, of amorous or political passion, and of artistic creation.

The project was conceived as a video installation with excerpts from documentaries, essay-films, radio interviews, conversations with friends and colleagues of Guattari, and material on the clinic La Borde in France and institutional psychotherapy including films by Fernand Deligny, Renaud Victor, François Pain and others, as well as new material produced in Brazil in the course of the research.

Presented as a triptych of differently sized screens, the installation referred to ideas of movement and gravity eminent in the cartographies of animistic art as well as to concepts of the immaterial in Asiatic art. Each screen intensifies a modality of the senses: seeing, hearing, reading. The montage of the archival material is conceived as a mirror to Guattari‘s concept of the ‘assemblage’, which is also a main topic throughout the installation.
The film screening was followed by discussion with the participation of the authors. The film is available at Utopiana’s Library and is open to public.
The project took place at “Moscow House of Yerevan” in collaboration with the German and French Embassies in Armenia and Wallonie-Bruxelles International.

“The Language of Things” (2006, video, 33’). Film screening by Angela Melitopulous
“No occurrence or thing,” wrote Walter Benjamin in 1916, “fails to take part in some way in language; for it is essential to each to convey its meaningful content.” Angela Melitopoulos’s video essay “The Language of Things” is subtitled at critical moments with quotations from Benjamin’s “On Language as Such and on Human Language.” Silently spoken, they appear over the image sequences of precisely calibrated machinery of acceleration - carousels, wave pools, and the like—from Tokyo’s artificial worlds and high-tech amusement parks.

Things, Benjamin tells us, have a dumb and inchoate form of speech, yet they communicate by means of a material commonality with each other. This commonality is immediate and magical. Only through the mediation of things can the world be grasped as a whole.
By way of a language of technology, the people in the amusement park rides can be outside themselves, ecstatic. For milliseconds, gravity is suspended and speed induces sheer joy. Even the video screen breaks apart. The technologies of this enjoyment are nonlinguistic effects of a designating and calculating language: the language of humans, with its vocabulary of physical designations, leads to the technical knowledge and calculability of affect. But to do so, human language also draws upon the language of things: in this sense, the language of things expresses, through technology, that very commonality by which the world seizes upon itself as an undivided whole.

The film screening was followed by discussion with the authors. The film is available at Utopiana’s Library and is open to public.
_______________
Marian Handwerker was born in 1944 in Taldy-Kurgan (USSR), but was based in Belgium for over 30 years during his entire professional career. In 1971, his popular science documentary film entitled “Peas Peas” was broadcasted by nine foreign televisions and was awarded with several prizes (Sesterce money Press Award and Prize for the Swiss Television Festival Nyon in 1971, FIFA Best Documentary office at the 9th Festival of Knokke 1972). His films have been nominated for various prestigious festivals and competitions for several times (first prize in the contest organized by the scenario of the French Ministry of Culture in Belgium in 1972 with the film “The Bear Cage” and an official selection at Cannes in 1974. His film “The Winter Journey” was selected by the Festival of San Remo, Sorrento and the Rencontres Festival of San Sebastian in 1984).

Maurizio Lazzarato is a sociologist and philosopher, independent researcher specialized in studies of relationships of work, economy and society. Works at the University of Paris I, Profession includes also educational work. Latest publications: Etude statistique, économique et sociologique du régime d’assurance chômage des professionnels du spectacle vivant, du cinéma et de l’audiovisuel. Rapport Général, Recherche réalisée pour le compte de l’AIP (Association des Amis des intermittents et précaires) financée par les Conseils Régionaux de Ile de France, Bourgogne, Rhône Alpes et PACA (2005), Les révolutions du capitalisme, Les empêcheurs de penser en rond. En cour de traduction en espagnol, portugais, en finlandais et en japonais. (2004) Les mutations du travail sur le territoire de la Plaine St. Denis. Pour le compte, du Ministère de L’Équipement, de la Mairie D’Aubervilliers et St. Denis. (2003) .

Angela Melitopoulos, artist in the time-based arts, realized experimental single-channel tapes, video installations, video-essays, documentaries and sound pieces. Her work focuses on migration/mobility, memory and narration. She conceives media art projects in that video technology as a time-based medium revealing mnemonic and micro political processes in documentation. Angela Melitopoulos studied fine Arts with Nam June Paik. She is collaborating in political networks in Europe and Turkey and teaches in academic institutions and art centers. She is publishing theoretical texts and articles and collaborating with the sociologist and philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato. From 1985 on her work was awarded and shown on many international video and film festivals (Berlinale, Video/ Film festival Locarno, EMAF Osnabrück, Film and Video Festival Montreal), and in exhibitions and museums (Manifesta 7, Centre Georges Pompidou Paris, Whitney Museum New York, Antonin Tapies Foundation Barcelona, KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Museé d’art Moderne Montreal among others). In Cologne she co-founded the label APRIL, curated exhibitions and lectures and produced publications (CD, DVD, Print). Currently she is a Phd student at the Goldsmiths College in London and a research fellow at the Matrix East Lab in the University of East London.

André Gorz (9 February 1923 – September 22, 2007), pen name of Gérard Horst, born Gerhard Hirsch, also known by his pen name Michel Bosquet, was an Austrian and French social philosopher. Also a journalist, he co-founded Le Nouvel Observateur weekly in 1964. A supporter of Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist version of Marxism after World War Two, in the aftermath of the May ‘68 student riots, he became more concerned with political ecology. In the 1960s and 1970s, he was a main theorist in the New Left movement. His central theme was wage labour issues such as liberation from work, just distribution of work, social alienation, and Guaranteed basic income.

Pierre-Félix Guattari (April 30, 1930 – August 29, 1992) was a French militant, an institutional psychotherapist, philosopher, and semiotician; he founded both schizoanalysis and ecosophy. Guattari is best known for his intellectual collaborations with Gilles Deleuze, most notably Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980).

less...

“Mikhail Karikis” Performance - 10th September, 2010
The artist participated in the 7th Gyumri Biennale with a performance. The 7 min performance was an extract from his current work “Xenon” opera (see below). The performance was not mentioned in the Biennale program or booklets because it was planned to be an unexpected and shocking intervention and the artist decided to make it during the opening ceremony when he was invited to give a speech as a guest of the event.

The artist noticed after the performance: “When I spoke to individuals in English (my second language), many did not understand me; when I performed in my artist language, the response was immense.”  The performance was very successful. Some guests where very interested in Mikhails work and followed us to Yerevan to participate in Mikhail’s presentation in Yerevan on 12th September.

Sound workshop and performance - 12th September, 2010
The presentation/workshop at The CLUB
During his presentation, the artist talked about his recent art work, including his current collaborative project entitled XENON: an exploded opera which involves over 20 other international artists and explores issues of encounters with strangers evoking questions on human rights, territory, belonging, memory, independence and impossibility.
_____________
Mikhail Karikis is a Greek-born and London-based artist with studies in music, art and architecture, Karikis has developed an art practice that is equally embraced by art galleries and concert halls and his collaborators range from international visual artists to choirs, choreographers and designers. Karikis works cross-disciplinarily in performance art, visual art and music, focusing particularly on notions of encounters with strangers, often employing the voice as a tool to explore ideas and politics of empowerment and difference. Coined by critics a ‘sound alchemist’ (Le Monde) and noted for his ‘sumptuous experimentalism’ (WIRE), Karikis's first music-release on a Björk album was followed by his critically acclaimed album Orphica (Sub Rosa, 2007) and his award nominated project Morphica (2009). Mikhail’s work has been shown at Tate Britain (London), Nederlands Dans Theater (Amsterdam), Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts (Lausanne), Coreana Museum (Seoul) and elsewhere.

less...

Youth has a unique sense of being contemporary. The new approaches of young artists are always refreshing the social understanding of Art. Fine Art affects and is affected by visual and informational environments of the contemporary world. When charecterising the works of young artists it is more than important to say that Art is a media to identify yourself and your environment. In this process of identification it becomes possible to change yourself and your environment. “Like that” was an attempt to display imaginations, conflicts, dreams and feelings of young artists, generated by the opportunities (including lost opportunities) of the postindustrial world they live in.

The exhibition was hosted at “style” gallery and took place from 10th to 20th of September, 2010.

All the graphic activities and printings have been carried out at Utopiana’s Graphic Laboratory. Together with the Annual Catalogue/Archive of the project, Utopiana is planning to make postcards from all the events and artworks presented in the project.

less...

The aim of making this archive is to map some ideas of women art production, examine particular feminist strategies through the years, and discuss how these strategies have been translated into current discourses and projects.

Up to day artists and activists have been interviewed in LA, London, Chicago and N.Y. (USA), in Vienna (Austria), Costa Rica, Mexico, Switzerland, Beirut (Lebanon), Yerevan (Armenia) and Istanbul (Turkey).

During her residencies in Yerevan, Kirsten Dufour has  interviewed Armenian female artists and activists, as well as edited and subtitled the interviews shot in Yerevan back in 2005 and in 2009.  The interviews of Armenian artists and activists will become part of the overall archive.

During this residencies an important decision was made about further development and institutionalisation of this project.  Firstly, Utopiana became a full partner of this project and  started undertaking an important role in archiving interviews and further developing the project.  For this purpose, a permanent working group was created which includes a technician, a translator and a project coordinator. Now the project is searching for funds in order to continue the archive development.

The project “Let us speak now” (LUSN) has been funded by DCA (Danish contemporary art center) and Danish Art Foundation and the State´s Art Fund.

less...

 

Following activities have been conducted during the residency.

Presentation the Club -21.07.2010
“Socialism Failed, Capitalism is Bankrupt. What comes Next?” A project by Oliver Ressler

The project “Socialism Failed, Capitalism is Bankrupt. What comes Next?” focuses on the political and economic situation in the Republic of Armenia, one of the successor states of the Soviet Union. The project materializes in two different formats: a short film “Socialism Failed, Capitalism is Bankrupt. What comes Next?” (19 min., 2010) and a 2-channel video installation that will be accomplished by a photo-based floor piece.

The film “Socialism Failed, Capitalism is Bankrupt. What comes Next?” was recorded in summer 2010 in Yerevan’s largest bazaar, called “Bangladesh”. Every day more than 1000 people try to survive as traders in the “Bangladesh” bazaar, where an average vendor does not earn more than 100 to 250 Euros per month. In the film, the market’s traders talk about their struggles to survive during crises in a post-socialist state that closed most Soviet-era factories and dissolved social safety nets. The market’s traders, primarily former factory-workers, describe how their living conditions worsened after the end of the Soviet Union; they speak about their hopes and expectations for social change. While they live in misery, a small but highly influential class of corrupt politicians and super-rich oligarchs team up with international corporations in order to fill their pockets with profits from transferring state property and licenses for mining.

The project also produced a photo-based floor piece with three-meter diameter in the shape of Armenia; the floor piece provides an illustration of this extremely uneven distribution of wealth.

In the 2-channel video installation, the “Bangladesh” video is combined with a (silent) video, which focuses on former Soviet factories in Yerevan that were shut down or produce at reduced capacity or were transformed into something else. Each factory was filmed with a single shot of 20 seconds, followed by information that includes the factory’s name, what it produced, when it closed, the current owner and the new utilization.
The research and interviews where made during the residency in Yrerevan in collaboration with artist Vahe Budumyan and activist Arpineh Galfayan.  The editing and masterising of the videos were made at Utopiana’s media lab.

The project will be presented in Yerevan during the final exhibition of “Eat and Work” project in September 2011.

Meeting with activits - Presentation at IDHR – 6th August 2010
During his residency the artist also got aquainted and collaborated with Armenian leftist actrivists and artists, as well as collaborated with IDHR (Institute for Democracy and Human Rights) NGO, where he presented his “Comuna Under Construction” film (film 94 min) by himself and Dario Azzelini.

The film was screened in Spanish, with English subtitles. Verbal Armenian translation was also available.

All the presented materials are available at Utopiana’s library.

less...

 

He produced a video on the hour-long encirclement of demonstrators by the police at a demonstration against the World Economic Forum in 2001 in Salzburg, and one on the “Disobbedienti” (with Dario Azellini). “What Would It Mean To Win?” (with Zanny Begg) was filmed on the blockades at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany in June 2007. Ressler created banners for demonstrations (with David Thorne) and was involved in the self-organized collaborative art project Holy Damn It (www.holy-damn-it.org), that produced 50.000 posters to mobilize against the G8 summit in Heiligendamm. Besides these direct interventions with art in political movements, Oliver Ressler will talk about his major ongoing exhibition project “Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies”, which has been realized since 2003. “Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies” focuses on diverse concepts and models for alternative economies and societies, which all share a rejection of the capitalist system of rule. After the presentation, the film “What Would It Mean To Win?” (2008, 40 min. english) will be screened it its entire length.

_____________
Oliver Ressler (born 1970 in Austria) produces exhibitions, projects in the public space and videos which blur the boundaries between art and activism. His projects have been exhibited in solo-exhibitions at the Berkeley Art Museum; Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul; Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade; Kunstraum der Universität Lüneburg, Germany; Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Madrid and in Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum in Egypt. He participated in the biennials in Prague, 2005; Seville, 2006; Moscow, 2007, Taipei, 2008 and Lyon, 2009. For the Taipei Biennial 2008 Ressler curated an exhibition on the counter-globalization movement, “A World Where Many Worlds ”, which was also shown at Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Canada in 2010. Artsist's webpage

less...