Olaf Breuning Lecture Tonight

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A quick reminder for Olaf Breuning‘s lecture in the Métamatic Artists’ Lecture Series tonight. As usual, the lecture will start at 20:00 (doors 19:30) at Felix Meritis, Keizersgracht 324, Amsterdam. If you’re planning on going but have not yet reserved a seat, please do so by sending an email to paul[at]allartinitiatives.org.

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Olaf Breuning was born in Schaffhausen, Switzerland in 1970 and currently lives and works in New York, NY. Breuning studied professional photography in Zurich, Switzerland and went on to complete postgraduate studies in photography at the HSFG Zurich. Breuning has had solo exhibitions in Metro Pictures, New York; Migros Museum, Zurich; Chisenhale, London; Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City; Magasin, Grenoble. He has also been included in several international group exhibitions, including Whitney Biennial 2008, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; ‘Looking At Music’ at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008); ‘All About Laughter’ at Mori Art Museum, Japan (2007); ‘Let’s Entertain’ at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Centre Georges Pompidou.

In the past years Breuning made a series of films based on collage and fragmentation, addressing delicate social issues and conventions. The way he combines a large dose of dark humour and a critical view with the autonomous references and interpretation of his themes shows a strong connection to Tinguely. As does his keen sense for present-day social misconceptions. In ‘Home 2′ for example, he ridicules the Western need to visit primitive cultures and the conviction that their authenticity and purity can save us from our cultural doom, or can at least make us feel better about ourselves. In ‘Home 3′, his proposal selected by the MRI directors, Breuning wants to further continue this method around the relation between modern man and his technological environment. Hoping for liberation from his tasks by (communication) technology, this human becomes more and more entangled in obligations and interaction.

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Kunstlicht Call for Papers

Guillaume Appolinaire in Picasso’s Studio © Pablo Picasso, 1910

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For an upcoming issue, Tijdschrift Kunstlicht is looking for papers that explore the variety of creative exchanges between Artists and Writers.

They invite academic reflections on works and practices that resulted from encounters between visual artists and writers, and academic reflections that lay bare artists’ and institutions’ networks of exchange. They also look forward to receiving essays that focus on theoretical examinations and examinations of theory. Both analyses of historical cases as well as reflections on the present will be considered. Furthermore, authors are encouraged to propose research beyond these guidelines.

The deadline for abstracts (200 – 300 words) is March 23, so check out the complete announcement in our Call for Papers section.

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Jeremiah Day . Of All Possible Things

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Earlier this month, Jeremiah Day‘s first UK solo exhibition opened at Site Gallery, Sheffield. The exhibition will run until April 14. Jeremiah Day is affiliated with the VU Department of Art & Culture as a PhD researcher pursuing a unique Doctorate of the Arts, and has taught a 2011 research seminar on Hannah Arendt’s Crisis in Culture.

Of All Possible Things is based on the mixed and unresolved legacies of the end of the cold war. Taking as its point of departure a former check-point on the Berlin wall that has subsequently been turned into a Lidl superstore, Day uncovers fragments of the history of the place through a series of research interventions.

In Day’s work, site, place and historical memory are explored through photography and performance improvisation. Often focused on resistance movements and the lived experience of political struggle, in Day’s work historical incidents and sites serve as allegories, offering insight into broader philosophical and political questions.

This evolving work will be materialized in Sheffield through photographs, audio recordings, performance documentation, and a new video and performance work.  At times oblique, and at times explicit, the works explore the intersection of landscape and ideology, local memory and ‘world history’.

Of All Possible Things represents Day’s contribution to a series of commissions developed with European arts institutions in collaboration with If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution which includes artists Sung Hwan Kim, Hito Steyerl, Wendelien van Oldenborgh and Emily Wardill.

The exhibition is accompanied by the publication of an artist’s book, Autonomy which documents Day’s making process. In addition, a symposium will be held on March 30. More details will be announced soon on www.sitegallery.org

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