Ed Atkins: Un-like
1 March, 29 March, 26 April 2014
Slavs and Tatars: Lektor
15 February–17 August 2014
Kunsthalle Zürich
Limmatstrasse 270
CH-8005 Zurich
T +41 44 272 15 16
Ed Atkins: Un-like
1 March LOVE
29 March DEATH
26 April POETRY
All events will be held in English.
Under the negatively reparative banner Un-like, a special series of events has been developed with Ed Atkins to coincide with his exhibition at Kunsthalle Zürich (11 February–5 May). Artist talks, surrogate performances, scholarly presentations, literary interventions, philosophical debates and karaoke will seek to inquire after the technological and mediatised condition of so much contemporary life, love and death.
Privileging an idiosyncratic and personal approach to such vast themes, Un-like will attest to something of the irrecuperable in experience of manifestly contemporary life and its innumerable mediating and mediatising apparatuses. What and where are the limits of our self-imagery? How might our relationships, with one another and the world at large, be extended rather than retarded by those objects, devices, and ideas that interpellate us?
Slavs and Tatars: Lektor
For the future public library space of Kunsthalle Zürich, the artist group Slavs and Tatars invites Lektor to the installation and programme. The project comprises an audio work of the same title, as well as Mother Tongues and Father Throats, a carpet on a platform for visitors to pause, to listen, and to reflect on the notions of language and translation, geography and governance, pasts and presents. In addition to these works, a series of events is launched. Encouraging a constant shift of speakers and listeners Lektor welcomes a wide audience to engage with its subjects and situations.
Film screenings/performances
This cycle of investigation into practices and techniques of translation looks for the cracks that moments of imagination may cause. The Gavrilov technique, often used in Eastern Europe for live voice-over translations in television and cinema, and elsewhere mainly for news reports, leaves a gap between the original and local language, so that the actors’ audible performance merges with one’s comprehension of the spoken content in a trans-cultural process of perception and interpretation. An American, Polish, and Soviet screwball comedy movie, screened and live interpreted respectively in German at Kunsthalle Zürich, will displace and demonstrate this experience of the real “lector.”
6 March, 6pm: To Be or Not To Be, by Ernst Lubitsch (1942, USA)
9 May, 7:30pm: Mimino, by Georgiy Daniela (1977, RU)
14 August, 6pm: Seksmisja, by Juliusz Machulski (1984, PL)
Reality Check—encounters and talks
Reality Check is a series of encounters between non-art experts.
“Faith, Etiquette, and Ethics in Public Policy, Then and Now” (German)
10 April, 6:30pm
On the occasion of Lektor, a discussion will take place between a specialist of “mirrors for princes,” a genre of medieval political literature, and a political commentator on the contemporary challenges of faith, etiquette, and ethics.
Q&A—artist talks, questions, and answers
“The Transliterative Tease” (English)
12 June, 6:30 pm
Through the lens of phonetic, semantic, and theological slippage, this lecture, performed by Slavs and Tatars, explores the potential for transliteration—the conversion of scripts—as a strategy equally of resistance and research in notions of identity politics, colonialism, and liturgical reform. The artists will be joined by Stefan Nowotny, a theorist of translation and translator of theory, for a round of questions and answers.
Making of—theory and programmes at Kunsthalle Zurich
How does an idea transform into an art object and an exhibition ultimately? And what is the relationship of these art works and exhibitions to their surrounding contemporaneity and to art history? These questions constantly pose themselves anew to different generations and different groups of visitors, collaborators, thinkers, and artists. By fostering this dialogue, a new series of theory and programmes hopes to create entryways into the works of art shown at Kunsthalle, as well as loopholes from there into broader questions of making and being made.
Kunsthalle Zürich is generously supported by:
Stadt Zürich Kultur; Kanton Zürich—Fachstelle Kultur; Zürcher Kantonalbank—Partner of Kunsthalle Zürich; LUMA Foundation
The Ed Atkins exhibition is generously supported by:
george foundation, The Henry Moore Foundation.
