17 Feb 2017

WKV Stuttgart: Post-Peace

Post-Peace
February 25 – May 7, 2017

Artists:
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, A.S.I. group (Ehsan Fardjadniya), Sven Augustijnen, Ella de Búrca, Anna Dasović, Köken Ergun, Johan Grimonprez, Alevtina Kakhidze, Yazan Khalili, Jaha Koo, Lyubov Matyunina, Adrian Melis, Pinar Öğrenci, Dorian de Rijk, belit sağ, Aleksei Taruts, Anika Schwarzlose, Radek Szlaga, Anastasiya Yarovenko

Curator:
Katia Krupennikova (Amsterdam)

From February 24 to May 7, 2017, the Württembergischer Kunstverein will be showing the exhibition 'Post-Peace' curated by the Amsterdam-based Russian curator Katia Krupennikova. The exhibition, which includes works from nearly twenty artists from different cultural areas, traces the present-day manifestations of and relationships between war and peace. How much war is embedded within our peace? This is the pivotal question.

The idea, still dominant today, that war is a means of achieving peace harks back to the early Christian theologian Saint Augustine from Late Antiquity. Around 1,500 years later, Field Marshal Earl Wavell asserted just the opposite, that the Versailles treaties of 1919 represented 'a peace to end peace.' In taking up Wavell's assessment, the exhibition proposes that our present-day situation, in which the 'peace' of global capitalism is dearly bought through constant violence and war, be expressed with the term 'Post-Peace,' the time after peace.

Indeed, 'Post-Peace' spans a historical arc from the Second World War to the present day. Against the background that history is known to be always written by the victors, the exhibition takes a critical look at our cultures of memory and encourages a redetermination of historical discourse: issues like colonialism and fascism in Europe, the Holocaust, or the so- called Middle East conflict. Explored by the artists are topics like the ramifications of 9/11, the cynicism of global arms trafficking, the contemporary forms of nationalism and militarism, and the conflicts involving Ukraine or the Kurdish population.

The Dutch artist Anna Dasović, for example, uses film fragments from the unfinished Special Film Project 186 of 1945 in her four-part work about Holocaust cultures of memory. This film project, which was commissioned by the U.S. Air Force, for instance comprises footage of Buchenwald immediately after its liberation, showing how residents of the nearby town Weimar were confronted with the conditions of the concentration camp on site. Dasovic interweaves the suggestive aims of this visual production with current political speeches about the Holocaust.

Alongside such works probing the documentary, other pieces investigate the potential of the imaginary. The Russian artist Lyubov Matyunina, in her video work, zeroes in on the fairy tale Little Zaches Called Cinnabar by E. T. A. Hoffmann—a carninvalesque story about illusion and reality—and relocates the story to various venues in Kaliningrad. This city once called Königsberg, which was decimated during the Second World War, was not only the birthplace of Hoffmann and Kant, but also of the artist herself.
The Jordan-born artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan, in turn, follows the homicide of two youths by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank in his artwork, intervolving methods of audio- ballistic analysis with shooting range equipment.

In addition to presenting works of contemporary art, the exhibition is also conceived as an open platform for articulation and performance. To this end, the collective Anonymous Stateless Immigrants (A.S.I.) is building a special stage based on a model by the Russian avant-garde artist Alexandra Exter, which is especially meant to be at the disposal of refugees. Opposing to the concept of closed borders and nation states, through the course of the show A.S.I. group invites visitors of the exhibition to use the stage: think aloud, rehearse, meet in the format of the open mic sessions. During the opening evening a live performance titled I Must Seek Refugee Again will take place at the stage.

On the Censoring and Cancellation of the Post-Peace Exhibition in Istanbul

'Post-Peace' was the winning exhibition of the Akbank Sanat International Curator Competition 2015. Jury members were Paul O'Neil (director of the graduate program at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York), Bassam El Baroni (curator and tutor at the Dutch Art Institute, Arnheim), and Hans D. Christ and Iris Dressler (directors of the Württembergischer Kunstverein). The prize was meant to finance the exhibition to be hosted at the venue Akbank Sanat in the heart of Istanbul. However, it was censored and cancelled by the bank four days before the opening in March 2016.
Open and subtle censorship in the art world is on the rise, even in democratic societies— often these acts of censorship are kept secret and pass off discretely behind the scenes. However, if a case is made public, it often turns out that those who had been censored are accused of being the aggressors themselves, as they supposedly were only interested in producing a scandal. At the same time, quite a few protagonists in the art world appear to have internalized censorship as a sometimes unavoidable means to an end.
The directors of the Württembergischer Kunstverein, Hans D. Christ and Iris Dressler, together with their colleagues Valentín Roma and Paul B. Preciado, also experienced a case of censorship, in 2015, at MACBA in the context of the exhibition The Beast and the Sovereign. Only due to public pressure was the cancellation of the exhibition finally undone. MACBA has still never publicly addressed this scandal. As in the case of The Beast and the Sovereign, the exhibition 'Post-Peace' can no longer be negotiated without the topic of censorship, which now appears to count among the main symptoms of 'the time after peace.'
The presentation of 'Post-Peace' at the Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart aims not only to lend strong public visibility to a brilliant exhibition on peace and war, but also to continue the highly tabooed debate on open and subtle forms of censorship that are increasingly restricting the liberty of art in the minds of many artists and curators.

Conference: How I Learned to Start Worrying: Symptoms of Post-Peace

On the opening weekend of Post-Peace, a two-day conference will be hosted for international artists and theorists. Titled How I Learned to Start Worrying: Symptoms of 'Post-Peace', it will first contextualize and reflect on 'Post-Peace' as a concept. Moreover, the conference will embark on a detailed analysis of the phenomena of censorship, self-censorship, precarious working conditions, neoliberal structures, and lack of transparency in the art world— along with the pertinent forms of resistance. In addition to the case of the 'Post-Peace' exhibition in Istanbul, as well as the special situation in Turkey, other examples of censorship will be discussed, along with basic censorship mechanisms.

PROGRAM
Conference
'How I learned to Start Worrying: Symptoms of Post-Peace'
February 25 - 26, 2017

With: Hans D. Christ, Anna Dasovic, Iris Dressler, Ehsan Fardjadniya / Edyta Jarzab, Alevtina Kakhidze, Yazan Khalili, Jaha Koo, Katia Krupennikova, belit sağ, Anika Schwarzlose, Ece Tamelkuran, Aleksei Taruts and others

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Saturday, February 25, 2017
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2.00 P.M.
TOUR through the exhibition with the artists and the curator

4.00 P.M.
INTRODUCTION to the conference

Katia Krupennikova (curator, Amsterdam), Iris Dressler and Hans D. Christ (directors of Württembergischer Kunstverein)

4.15 P.M.
Alevtina Kakhidze (artist, Muzychi)
'About the Wars, Colorado Beatles, Chicken and Slugs'
PERFORMANCE in format of a welcome speech

The performance is based on the recent war conflicts between the Ukraine and Russia – knit with Second World War stories. The speech is rather a fiction created without deep knowledge about the complexity of backgrounds and mentioned contexts. Language: English in free translation into German.

4.30 P.M.
'This is not censorship, and please keep silence'
CONVERSATION about the censorship of Post-Peace by Akbank Sanat, Istanbul and The Beast and/is the Sovereign by MACBA, Barcelona.

belit sağ (artist, Amsterdam) / Katia Krupennikova / Hans D. Christ / Iris Dressler
following: discussion

Open and subtle censorship in the art world is on the rise, even in democratic societies—often these acts of censorship are kept secret and pass off discretely behind the scenes. However, if a case is made public, it often turns out that those who had been censored are accused of being the aggressors themselves, as they supposedly were only interested in producing a scandal. At the same time, quite a few protagonists in the art world appear to have internalized censorship as a sometimes unavoidable means to an end. The discussion will be focused on two case studies: Post-Peace censored by Akbank Sanat, Istanbul and The Beast and/is the Sovereign censored by MACBA, Barcelona.

6.10 P.M.
Ece Tamelkuran (writer, Istanbul)
'Singular Passages In The Age Of Collective Evil'
TALK

What is rational in the age of 'there-is-no-war-but-millions-of-casulties'? Does sense and therefore art belong to singularity? Does art belong to the only peaceful space, the market? Then here we are singular, market situated and constantly in-between in the post-peace era where bombs are exploding and babies dying around the space of art. Yes the 'prophet of doom is wiping every smile' and we are like Antigone in Brecht's version, carrying our doors on our backs, for singular passages that end up in several singularities but never a collective. Indecisive, hesitant singulars we are, never sure if we have to burry our dead brothers or put their photos out there for them to live forever.

7.00 P.M.
Jaha Koo (artist, Amsterdam)
'Lolling and Rolling'
PERFORMANCE

Following: conversation with Hans D. Christ on South Korea's role in context of Post-Peace.

Lolling and Rolling penetrates Korean's tragic social phenomenon related to English education. In South Korea, there was a big controversy concerning children's tongue surgery for better English pronunciation of 'R' sound known as a lingual frenectomy. A fictional story, video and sound work contextualizes not only contemporary issues but also historical events related to colonialism and imperialism.
Language: English

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Sunday, February 26, 2017
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12.00 P.M.
ARTIST TALKS

Yazan Khalili (artist, Ramallah)
'Freedom of Censorship'

Khalili explores power structures that influence freedom of speech and the paradox that artists have to deal with when speaking politically to power or about it: a double challenge of avoiding both censorship and freedom of speech.

Anna Dasović (artist, Amsterdam)
'When People Are Exhibited to Disappear'

Questions surrounding the representation of the Holocaust have been crucial in understanding the history of suffering and its depiction. One might argue that the Holocaust has defined representation in modern and contemporary society as such. Anna Dasovic will lay out images from various sources in order to consider how politics, media and society deal with the depiction of people as a suffering subjects today. Is this not where barbarism truly constitutes itself: in a Western political imagination that created the conditions in which some of us are entitled to look at how the 'Other' is disappearing?

belit sağ (artist, Amsterdam)
'Do Fictive Images Have Tangible Consequences?'

belit will explore informally, associatively the politics, violence and aesthetics of images, what they mean to us and how they affect us, our lives and realities. We'll look at a wide array of images from Hollywood movies to ISIS videos, from 60s Turkish films to TV series, from youtube clips to news photographs, from an assassination in an art gallery to …

1.40 P.M.
'How to affect the system that affects us?'
FINAL DISCUSSION WITH

Sven Augustijnen, Ella de Búrca, Anna Dasovic, Hans D. Christ, Iris Dressler, Ehsan Fardjadniya, Alevtina Kakhidze, Yazan Khalili, Jaha Koo, Katia Krupennikova, Lyubov Matyunina, Pinar Öğrenci, Dorian de Rijk, belit sağ, Alexei Taruts, Ece Tamelkuran, Anika Schwarzlose, Radek Szlaga and others

The discussion will embark on a detailed analysis of the phenomena of precarious working conditions, neoliberal structures, and lack of transparency in the art world — along with the pertinent forms of resistance. Everyone is invited to participate.

3.00 P.m.
Edyta Jarząb (artist, Warschau)
'More Bark, More Bite'
SOUND PERFORMANCE, 15 Min.

Edyta Jarząb will tell a short story of a female voice modulation, in public space/speech context. Trying to explore the sounding of a peaceful street demonstration, sounding of a consensus.

3.30 P.M.
A.S.I. group (Ehsan Fardjajniya, artist, Amsterdam)
'Ammunition Boxing'
PERFORMATIVE TALK
Venue: Schlossplatz and Stuttgart Mainstation

The performance talk is based on Soapboxing outdoor speech practice that originated in London in the decades immediately preceding World War I. Soapboxing talks manifested the right for everyone to speak politically, gathering incidental audience on the streets. Starting at Schlossplaz with quatrains by 11th century Persian poet Baba Tahir and reading of The Schuman Declaration (from 9 May, 1950), Ammunition boxing will round up with The Laments of the Anonymous Stateless Immigrants — the story of 'Costumer's Control' , a post-artistic anti-fascist performance by Ehsan Fardjadniya at Stuttgart train station.

GUIDED TOURS

CURATOR´S TOUR
Wednesday, March 22, 2017, 7 p.m.
Wednesday, April12, 2017, 7 p.m.
Sunday, May 7, 2017, 4:30 p.m.

FREE GUIDED TOURS
Sundays, 3 p.m.

INDIVIDUAL TOURS
Dates on request
Admission and tour: 50 EUR plus reduced entrance fee
contact: zentrale@wkv-stuttgart.de