HLYSNAN: The Notion and Politics of Listening at Casino Luxembourg – Forum d'art contemporain, May 17 - Sep 7

In the Old English word hlysnan, "to listen," the focus is on the notions of attention and intent. Similarly the emphasis in the project HLYSNAN: The Notion and Politics of Listening lies on the active act not merely of hearing—usually referring to automatic or passive sound perception – but rather specifically on listening; hearing with intent.

Above: Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere, "What we might have heard in the future," 2010/2014. Radio drama. Installation view at Casino Luxembourg. © photo: Patrick Galbats.

Listening requires intensified concentration and attentiveness towards what one is listening to; it is linked to the notion of desire, anticipation and understanding, a striving for a possible meaning. HLYSNAN: The Notion and Politics of Listening understands listening as agency, as gesture, as attitude and as taking a position. The  exhibition attempts to reconcile audio practices with contemporary social and political realities and invites the visitor to actively experience, listen and engage with the sense of hearing to the various complex interplays.

Tatiana Trouvé's exhibition, I tempi doppi, at Museion Bolzano, May 24 - Sep 7

Curated by Letizia Ragaglia, Museion presents Tatiana Trouvé's first solo show in an Italian museum. The Italian-born artist, who lives and works in Paris, is known for installations designed to draw the visitor into haunting situations that oscillate between the real, the imaginary and the illusory, and question our sense of space and time. 

Above: Tatiana Trouvé, "350 Points Towards Infinity," 2009. Installation view, "A Stay Between Enclosure and Space," Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, 2009. Photo: Stefan Altenburger, Courtesy Johann König Gallery, Perrotin Gallery and Gagosian Gallery.

The title of the exhibition alludes to the intrinsic duality of the artist's work, where the rational and the irrational, the mind and the senses, are inextricably linked. The fourth floor of the museum hosts the large installation 350 Points towards Infinity (2009), in which 350 slender plumb lines hanging from the ceiling mysteriously appear to be pulled in different directions. The arresting presence of the work, which evokes a shower of metal raindrops, hints at the concealed presence of some kind of chaotic forcefield. Indeed Trouvé's works often conjure up alternative worlds, enabling visitors to envision hidden, parallel dimensions, and experience the unsettling feeling that things are not quite as they seem. 

Learn more at www.museion.it

Aperture: Summer 2014 Available Now, "The São Paulo Issue"

The summer 2014 issue of Aperture focuses on the dynamic photography scene in South America's art capital, São Paulo. Aperture's editors worked onsite in São Paulo with guest editor Thyago Nogueira, head of the Contemporary Photography Department at Instituto Moreira Salles, one of Brazil's leading cultural institutions. 

The issue showcases a rich cross section of both historical and contemporary photography, reflecting curatorial and research activity taking place today, with a broad embrace, from the inception of photography in the early 19th century to the most exciting contemporary figures. In between are key touchstones: the postwar avant-garde photo clubs, the photo-conceptualists of the 1970s, art and photojournalism during the repressive dictatorship years, and the recent rise of politically engaged, new-media-savvy photography collectives who engage questions of inequality in Brazil's booming economy. The issue offers a fresh take on São Paulo's exceptional photographic culture, reflecting the energy, diversity, and history of the city itself. 

Rashid Johnson's Magic Numbers, opening at the George Economou Collection on June 20

The George Economou Collection has recently announced the upcoming Magic Numbers, a solo exhibition by American artist Rashid Johnson (b. 1977, Chicago), opening in Athens on June 20. Curated by the artist in collaboration with Katherine Brinson, associate curator at the Guggenheim Museum New York, and Skarlet Smatana, director of the Economou Collection, the exhibition features a site-specific installation of works largely conceived on the occasion of the exhibition.

Above: Rashid Johnson, "The New Black Yoga" (still), 2011. 16mm film transferred to DVD with sound, 10:57 minutes. © Rashid Johnson. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Since coming to prominence in the early 2000s, Johnson has forged a nuanced and diverse body of work that explores the complex contemporary and historical forces that shape identity. His paintings, photographs, videos, and sculptures draw on a shifting corpus of references spanning music, literature, intellectual history, and pop culture, interwoven with dense autobiographical valences. His installations often take the form of wall-mounted shelves that suspend together found objects such as books, vinyl records, CB radios, plants, and oyster shells, imbuing them with a new, talismanic significance. In recent years, Johnson has also increasingly worked in a purely abstract vein, mining the legacy of modernist abstraction while exploiting the unique expressive potential of his vocabulary of unconventional materials. 

Five New Spring 2014 exhibitions at the New Museum, New York

The New Museum launches a new series of solo shows, featuring the first New York museum presentations of five young international artists, including a new performance work by Ragnar Kjartansson, an immersive sound installation by Roberto Cuoghi, a survey of videos, sculptures, and drawings by Camille Henrot, and site-specific installations by Hannah Sawtell and David Horvitz. Working across various mediums, the artists are linked by an interest in music, sound, and the circulation of images to represent personal histories and systems of knowledge.

Ragnar Kjartansson: Me, My Mother, My Father, and I, May 7 - June 29, Fourth Floor, Curated by Massimiliano Gioni & Margot Norton

Born into a family of actors and theater professionals, Ragnar Kjartansson draws from a varied history of stage traditions, film, music, and literature. His performances, drawings, paintings, and video installations explore the boundaries between reality and fiction as well as constructs of myth and identity. At the New Museum, Kjartansson presents works with and about his family, including a newly orchestrated performance and video piece titled Take Me Here by the Dishwasher: Memorial for a Marriage (2011/2014), in which ten musicians play a live composition for the duration of the exhibition. Other works in the exhibition are made in direct collaboration with Kjartansson's parents, including a new series of images of the sea made with his father, titled Raging Pornographic Sea (drawings)(2014), and an ongoing video collaboration with his mother where she repeatedly spits in his face, Me and My Mother, which began in 2000. 

Gallery MOMO presents, Dorky Park in collaboration with Ayana V Jackson, May 30, 2014

"Punk Protest Performance: Pussy Riot in Perspective", 12 May 2014, 6–9pm

Pussy Riot. Photo: Igor Mukhin, 2012.

Monday 12 May 2014, 6–9pm
Det Norske Studentersamfund
Slemdalsveien 150369 
Oslo, Norway
www.thefirstsuppersymposium.org

With Rosi Braidotti, Judith Butler, Viktor Misiano and Pussy Riot

A number of issues were raised when members of Pussy Riot were arrested and imprisoned after their Punk Prayer performance in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour (2012). When does public protest transgress the limited range of permissible behaviours in a society? What is the future of feminist performance art under times of censorship? 

The First Supper Symposium have gathered these renowned speakers to provide different perspectives on Pussy Riot's punk protest performances—from gender theory to Russian contemporary art practice—in dialogue with members of the feminist collective. Ekaterina Sharova will contextualise Pussy Riot's performances in relation to the Russian contemporary art scene, while Viktor Misiano will situate their work within a history of art activism in the immediate post-Soviet era. Rosi Braidotti will reflect on the politics of women's rock and punk bands and how performances have been used as feminist means of protest. Judith Butler will examine the gender and LGBT issues Pussy Riot invoke in a wider context of political demonstrations. Pussy Riot is represented by Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina. Panel discussion moderated by Natalie Hope O'Donnell.

The symposium forms part of a series of events and exhibitions in Oslo, including a screening of Non-Consensual Act (in progress) and artist talk with Goshka Macuga at Kunstnernes Hus, and an exhibition with the Feminist Pencil at Galleri 69/Grünerløkka Lufthavn. The parallel programme has been curated by Ekaterina Sharova, in collaboration with the First Supper Symposium.

Words and Image via eflux.

Maha Maamoun's The Night of Counting the Years at Fridericianum Turm, May 11–July 27, 2014

Maha Maamoun's first institutional solo exhibition focuses on her films, with which she injects history into existing images, texts and sounds: Domestic Tourism II (2008) compiles cameo appearances by the Pyramids of Giza in Egyptian cinema since the 1950s. This ancient Wonder of the World in its role as a backdrop for discussions of national, individual and gender identity in Egyptian mainstream cinema advances to become the protagonist of a dramatic feature film. 

When the text of a contemporary science fiction novel meets the reenactment of an iconic film image from the 1960s, the idea of imagination as potentiality is reduced to absurdity in 2026 (2010). Digging through blurred mobile phone footage on YouTube, which has captured the storming of the state security buildings in Cairo and Damanhur in spring 2011, Maamoun sets up an arduous course of decoding the past (Night Visitor: The Night of Counting the Years, 2011). In her latest film, Shooting Stars Remind Me of Eavesdroppers (2013), Maamoun likewise refuses to direct actors or scenes and instead orchestrates images and sounds recorded in Al-Azahr Park together with an intimate conversation about eavesdropping, truth and trust.

With her films, Maamoun trawls through the cultural imaginary in search of historiographical framing in which to set the present. This is also reflected in the exhibition title, which stems from the cinema classic by Shadi Abdel Salam. Maamoun's works indicate that the question of whether art can step out of the symbolic circle in order to have an effect in the lifeworld is posed incorrectly: it's all about the how. Art is opening out almost of its own accord when Maamoun takes seriously symbolic representations and has them clash with one another. In this process ruptures are caused in the representations, enabling the painful points of current questions to be intuited. 

Words via e-flux announcement.

[EXHIBITION] Unbound: Contemporary Art After Frida Kahlo, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, May 3–Oct 5, 2014

Frida Kahlo is one of the most famous artists in the world. Her reputation and persona have grown immensely since her death in 1954, yet posthumously she has been turned into a stereotype of Latin American art. This predicament, along with her celebrity status, often overshadows the confrontational and boldly transgressive nature of her paintings, and ultimately undermines the revolutionary intent of her work. 

Left: Image 1, Right: Image 2. See image credit below.

At the time it was made, Kahlo’s unabashedly intimate portrayal of her physical and psychological experiences and her appropriation of Mexican folk art aesthetics challenged the bourgeois European mainstream. The scale and content of her work also stood in opposition to the monumental, nationalistic history painting being produced by her male Mexican contemporaries. Her work subverted accepted notions of gender, sexuality, social class, and ethnicity, and was prophetic in anticipating the broader cultural concerns—postcolonialism, feminism, civil rights, multiculturalism, and globalization—that reached a crescendo in the 1960s and continue to be relevant today.

Image 3: See image credit below.

In 1978, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago presented Kahlo’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States. Using two of the works included in the original 1978 exhibition, Unbound: Contemporary Art After Frida Kahlo brings her work into a dialogue with contemporary art. The selected artists in this exhibition share Kahlo’s spirit of rebellion and similarly assert themselves against the patriarchy as they insert their voices into dominant artistic discourses. This exhibition highlights four themes in Kahlo’s paintings to examine their continued relevance to international artists: the performance of gender, issues of national identity, the political body, and the absent or traumatized body. 

Sharon Lockhart's 'Milena, Milena' at Bonniers Konsthall

Milena, Milena is the second in an exhibition trilogy - a narrative triptych that grows from Lockhart's relationship with Polish teenager Milena. Lockhart first befriended Milena in 2009 in Łodź, Poland during the filming of Podwórka (included in the exhibition). Several years later, Lockhart rekindled her friendship with Milena and discovered Milena's desire to write a book about her life. Triggering an ongoing dialogue between Lockhart and Milena, this imagined autobiography has become the impetus through which the two have explored the ambiguous autonomy of the young adult.

Sharon Lockhart, "Milena, Jarosław, 2013," 2014. Three framed chromogenic prints, 128.8 x 103.3 cm. Courtesy the artist, neugerriemschneider, Berlin, Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels, and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles.

Spread across three institutions and unfolded over a span of three years, each iteration of Milena, Milena features a slightly varied selection of works and marks an organic progression to the overall project. Comprising research (CCA Warsaw, 2013), production (Bonniers Konsthall, 2014), and contextualization (Kunstmuseum Luzern, 2015), Milena, Milena's trajectory aims at reflecting both highlights of the artist's 20-year career and her focus on a single character's choreography of selfhood and identity. 

The exhibition trilogy includes a series of strategically selected identifications that claim the biographical dimension of Lockhart's work, thus operating as (self-)portraits as well as projections. As such, the exhibition is framed by two works of a subtly biographical background: It opens with the cinematic tour de force of Double Tide (2009)—filmed in Maine, USA, where Lockhart spent her childhood—and concludes with the rarely exhibited series "Untitled Studies" (1993–ongoing), the artist's photographic diary, composed of re-photographed snapshots found in her own family album. At the center of the exhibition's narrative is Milena, an enigmatic figure who remains disquietly absent, distilling the different threads of identification in her very non-presence.

Lockhart's new work is a study of intimacy, shaped largely by the artist's reading of theoretical writings of Polish-Jewish educator, children's author and pediatrician Janusz Korczak (1878–1942). A legend of his own time, Korczak experimented with the methods of institutional education, based on the developmental enhancement of a child's inborn abilities. Representative of the social pedagogy approach to education and a pioneer of children's rights, he envisioned a future in which children structured their own world and became experts in their own matters. He crystallized his knowledge of child psychology, while learning to "(speak) not to the children but with the children."

Words from e-flux announcement.