Beauty Unrealized: Spider Webs of Personal Universes Seeking a Form

Beauty Unrealized: spider webs of personal universes seeking a form

A research project conducted by Public Space With A Roof (14 December 2006 - 8 April 2007)

In the last few decades’ beauty has been a much disputed term. It has often been associated with things ornamental or decorative, while simultaneously becoming the buzzword for conservative critics who object to anything avant-garde. Perhaps because of this stereotypical understanding and misuse of the term, ‘beauty’ has all fallen out of favour within present art discourse.

With this project, we want to underline that (produced) objects are equally important as “social projects”. Since people have always communicated through objects in space and time, it is important to discuss the link between objects and ideas, or more specifically, between objects and the concept of beauty. Invited artists, composers, film directors and philosophers will explore the concept of beauty today within the scope of their own process of self-development and their own work.

As a framework for the whole project, we created a special library in which visitors can enter and get lost in the world of thoughts, ideas, questions, possibilities, and puzzles. For this library, we invited numerous individuals (artists, filmmakers, writers, theoreticians, etc.) to submit items that have significantly influenced them and their work.

Inspired by Aby Warburg, this library is “a collection of questions” rather than “a repository of books, (…) involving not objects but the tension, analogies, contrasts, or contradictions among them”. Its inside will be used to host six separate exhibitions where the invited artists will present their past works, works in progress, or works produced especially for this project.

Like the majority of the PSWAR projects, Beauty Unrealized will combine an exhibition with an accompanying series of talks, lectures, public debates, and a reader. This project is the forth and final one in the second phase of the work of PSWAR, the result of questions and problems that have arisen from the previous projects. We regard it as a closing of an imaginary circle, which is why we have invited all the artists who participated in the history of PSWAR to be a part of its closure.

The project consists of 7 parts from January to April 2007 Opening dates: December 14,January 13, January 29, February 10, February 24, March 10, March 24

PART 1

14 December 2006

Opening of the library

A performance by Arnold Marinissen for percussion, electronics, musical saw and two feet involving seven composers and ﬁlmmakers in collaboration with ﬁlmmaker Ester Eva Damen.

Program:

Intermezzo Edges (1’) Massimo Mariani / Roberto Musci - A windy place (2006; 12') Michel van der Aa - Wake (1997/2006; 9') Intermezzo Edges (1’) Gerhard Staebler - Performances für Liebhaber (1999/2005; 5') Ester Eva Damen & Arnold Marinissen - Miniatuur VI (2004/2006; 2’30’’) Vinko Globokar – Corporel (1985; 7’) - Ester Eva Damen & Christina Viola Oorebeek - Edges (2006; 14’) Rob & Arnold Marinissen - Prepared Forest (2006; 7') Yannis Kyriakides - Lab Fly Dreams (2003; 18') PART 2

Second part of Beauty Unrealized brings together artists and theorists who reflect on their inspiration by previously existing works, whether films, art pieces, or books. Structured this way, this part will open up the space for discussion on two main levels. On the first level, we are interested in new definitions of cinema as an art form, whether seen as a deconstruction of the cinema as a medium (Cytter) or searching for redefinition of interpretation of the moving pictures (Michaud). On the second level, we want to bring in questions of the function of humour seen as artistic strategy (Hirschhorn) or seen as part of our sensory perception that recomplicates our conceptions of the ethics of the aesthetic (Garnet).

January 13 2007 Opening: Thomas Hirschhorn: “How to Dance Philosophy?” Keren Cytter: Repulsion

Thomas Hirschhorn, “How to Dance Philosophy?”

Conceived as a question and for the first time presented as an independent artwork, this video installation brings together in an absurd manner Georges Bataille, mute mannequin and a half-naked artist. Coming from Hirschhorn’s own logic of how to live philosophy, this peace gives a possibility to turn a cover of a book into a costume to wear and philosophy into a silent music on which to dance to. This installation will be on display in the space of the Library until January 21

Keren Cytter, Repulsion

Repulsion consists of three short films and is based on Roman Polanski’s feature film of the same title from 1965. Cytter’s version deconstructs the original film, being focused on the main protagonist and the two supporting characters. This way, three short films serve as three layers of one movie that has no plot.

January 14, 2007 Two lectures, a series of images, 16mm film projection and a discussion: • Robert Garnet: You Can't be Serious: On the Pre-posterous Aesthetics of Humour • Philippe-Alain Michaud: Cinema Attitude • Public discussion:

Philippe-Alain Michaud: Cinema Attitude We are witnessing today a significant switch of the presentation of moving images from the theaters, where they were commonly presented during the XX century, to the galleries. In the light of this displacement, we are compelled to produce a new definition of the film, not anymore from the restricted standing point of the history of cinema as a technical device for recording and projection, but from the enlarged standing point of the history of art as a new way to conceive the images.

Philippe-Alain Michaud is a film curator at the Centre Pompidou. He has curated the last presentation of the permanent collection of the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris entitled “Le Movement des images”, on display until the end of January 2007. He is the author of Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion (Zone Books, 2004), Le Peuple des Images (Desclè de Brouwer, 2002) and Sketches. Histoire de l’art, cinéma (Kargo, 2006).

Robert Garnet: You Can't be Serious: On the Pre-posterous Aesthetics of Humour The lecture will examine the ways in which humour is an art of the 'sensible' requiring a 'sense' of humour on part of both artist and critic/recipient/participant: how humour offers a means of going beyond oppositions between irony and authenticity, aesthetic idealism and the anti-aesthetic, and recomplicates our conceptions of the ethics of the aesthetic. Robert Garnett is a critic and theorist based in London and Brussels. He has contributed to a number of international publications over the past 10 years, including Art Monthly, Metropolis M and Frieze. He is currently preparing a 3-part publication on contemporary art criticism for Bookworks, London.

PART 3

January 29, 2007

Opening: Benoit Goupy: Le Source

Concert: The duo Otomo Yoshihide and Sachiko M with Axel Doerner and Martin Brandlmayr

These two events mark the third part of the PSWAR new project 'Beauty Unrealized: spider webs of personal universes seeking a form' in which the sound becomes a main focus. From December 2006 to April 2007, PSWAR dedicates its program to the explorations of the concept of beauty as well as to the status of objects as carriers of ideas, sources of inspiration and connections between individuals through time and space.

Benoit Goupy Le Source In his new work entitled 'Le Source', Benoit Goupy will go back to the source and essence of his artistic practice. Goupy's works manifest themselves usually as subtle interventions in the space that he sees as live organisms; they always appear "here and there but not anywhere on the surface of the space, as arteries under the skin". Following the architecture of the space, Goupy's marks inside a space are a product of the traces that the outside reality leaves on his own perception. In the space of the PSWAR library, Goupy allows a new element to step into his work: a sound performance that connects together his intimate story and the story of the space.

Otomo Yoshihide is one of the most creative sound artists nowadays, experimenting with both medium and form. For much of the 1990s his main project was Ground Zero, a large group founded with an ever- changing lineup. Towards the end of that group's life, Otomo formed two electronic free improvisation groups: Filament with Sachiko M, and I. S. O., with Sachiko M and Yoshimitsu Ichiraku. These groups abandoned the frenetic postmodern pastiche of Ground Zero, and emphasized small gestures and low volume. The music contained no samples, being made of sine waves and electronic clicks and hums. Yoshihide largely stopped using records as a sound source, instead manipulating the turntable itself with a wide variety of objects and contact microphones. At the end of the 1990s he founded Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Ensemble. Besides her work with Yoshihide, Sachiko M is also one half of the blisteringly silent and beautiful duo Cosmos with Ami Yoshide. Her earlier work with samplers led to her current methods of using samplers to produce sine tones which she very subtly manipulates. Axel Dörner is a trumpet player who along with musicians like Robin Hayward was involved in the musical current of extended techniques which came to be known as Berlin Reductionism, and can also be heard on two recent releases of Yoshihide's New Jazz Orchestra. The fourth member is the drummer/percussionist Martin Brandlmayr, a member of two extraordinary bands to come out of Austria in the last few years, Trapist and Radian, both of which effortlessly break the boundaries between avant-garde, electronica, rock and jazz. January 2007 marks a first European tour of this quartet.

PART 4

February 10, 2007

Opening:

Michel de Broin, Stick to resist - SD (seeking device) Maurits Fennis, A Discourse On Density Between Reflective Surfaces A performance piece for voice, electronics and rooms

February 11, 2007 2pm Artists talk with Michel de Broin and Maurits Fennis

Michel de Broin: Stick to resist - SD (seeking device)

Through playful objects placed in public spaces as well as in art institutions and galleries, Michel de Broin investigates the concept of ‘resistance’ seen not in opposition to something but as a device that amplifies already existing tensions in the structures that otherwise go unnoticed. Following this perspective, de Broin has produced a large body of works that make visible these fundamental contradictions of different materials and, by analogy, of social systems subjected to clashes of various forces and constraints.

For “Beauty Unrealized”, de Broin presents a new version of his earlier work Stick to resist, a portable sculpture attached to different metal surfaces, acting as a parasite and showing a fragile co-dependence with the system whose part it becomes. Stick to resist – SD (seeking device) locates surfaces in the gallery space whose resistance provide this unusual sculpture with the support necessary to ‘survive’ while allowing it to infiltrate in the existing system.

Maurits Fennis: A Discourse On Density Between Reflective Surfaces Maurits Fennis is a composer and performer of electro-acoustic works, which currently deal with the inner acoustic qualities of spaces, and the voice. He has studied and developed extended guttural singing techniques and software for its analysis and elaboration.

ADODBRS is an electro-acoustic piece concerning guttural singing and the resonant frequencies of enclosed spaces. This piece is Fennis’s personal critique of the use of “excessive technology and multi- speaker systems in the composition of electro-acoustic music, as it attempts to show us that a throat, and a single speaker, both attuned to the acoustics of a space, can stimulate and articulate a spatiality beyond multi-directional speaker arrays; a spatiality which removes the dichotomy between that which produces sound, and that which receives it. It attempts to break down the barriers of our reductionist frameworks, and evolve our understanding of ourselves, and our environment.” PART 5

February 24 & 25, 2007 Opening Falke Pisano: Extracts (Objects)

Presentation and discussion: Kersten Geers and Emiliano Gandolfi: The Shape of Time

The fifth part of Beauty Unrealized focuses on the potential of change in the already existing structures, whether they manifest itself as language (Pisano) or as architecture (Geers, Gandolfi). In her explorations of abstract sculptures, Falke Pisano searches for a speculative language that could turn material objects into structures of different, sometimes immaterial nature. Liberating the object from the limits of its previous existence, Pisano examines the possible answers for the question of how an object can exist within different conditions. Two architects, Kersten Geers and Emiliano Gandolfi will use the structure of a presentation in order to investigate the limits and potentials of beauty in terms of space, staged through the use of words, visuals and sounds. Their main interest is in the newly achieved perception of spatiality and the ways in which it has been organized into a more coherent discourse within the language of architecture.

Falke Pisano: Extracts (Objects)

The starting point for Falke Pisano’s works is her interest in the constructive potential of thoughts, as well as the possibilities to create and resolve problems within the field of language using its internal systems of logic. The work presented at the PSWAR gallery is based on the books from the surrounding library. Inversing Italo Calvino’s description of Lucretius’ “De Rerum natura” as “the first great work of poetry in which knowledge of the world tends to dissolve the solidity of the world, leading to the perception of all that is infinitely minute, light and mobile”1 Pisano extracted from the books qualities, attributes, and forms.2 Those three elements define together a series of objects and therefore reconstruct a potential material origin of the knowledge comprised in these collections of writings.

Kersten Geers and Emiliatno Gandolfi: The Shape of Time

A newly achieved perception of spatiality and the definition of a discourse around means of architectural signs will be the topic of a conversation between the art critic Emiliano Gandolfi and the architect Kersten Geers. The appearance of space is unconceivable without a dissertation on time. Architecture is not necessarily a temporal experience, but time, through its evolutionary cultural process, defines what we should consider beautiful at a given moment. Within Robert Schumann’s poetic beauty, based on humans’ conscious and creative intervention in the nature, and the Japanese definition of wabi-sabi that sees beauty as imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete, our perception flows, in various constructions of signs, through space. Emiliano Gandolfi is an architect and curator of the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam, where he developed several exhibitions and public events such as Newer Orleans, DynamiCity - Tactics for a Changing Metropolis, and Spectacular City - Photographing the Future. Kersten Geers is an architect and before 2002, when he opened his own studio with David van Severen, he has worked for several architectural bureaus (Maxwan/Max.1 Architecten and Neutelings Riedijk Architects). Geers has published various articles on architecture and fiction in numerous professional journals and since 2003 he has been a tutor and guest critic at various institutions in the Netherlands and Belgium.

PART 6

March 10 & 11, 2007

Opening: Adam Avikainen, Breathe the same breath, video Catherine Sullivan: The Chittendens

Film program: Francesco Bernardelli, The Secret Ordeal of Beauty (Surrealist phantoms, fantasies and entropy (or the dissolution of matter))

The sixth part of Beauty Unrealized focuses on cinematic images and the possibility of crossing the boundaries between cinema and other media, as well as the possibilities to break the limits of the cinematic medium itself. In his works, Adam Avikainen examines possibilities of expanding the cinematic moment into different materials and media, proposing a personal reinterpretation of cinema techniques and objectives. From her side, Catherine Sullivan translates the theatrical into the cinematic and vice versa in order to investigate the limits of both. At the same time, Sullivan marks the division line between the individual and the universal, revealing where the Self ends and the cultural patterns begin. Through his selection of videos and films, Francesco Bernardelli presents a different vision of the images in order to enlarge our field of visual experience and disturb dominant regimes of the vision as "manifestations of dominant ideology of Form and Control."

Adam Avikainen, Breathe same breath

video, 9 minutes

Adam Avikainen's work can be seen as an on-going investigation of the potentialities of storytelling, both on a formal and content level. By applying a cinematic treatment to scripts and physical installations, the artist proposes whimsical fictions and self-made mythologies that act as raptures in the reality. For Beauty Unrealized Avikainen presents "Breathe same breath": a video, which reveals the the artist's ironic attitude towards the world, and his intention to create experiences 'between revelation and reason'. Description: "A man gets into one of those jets with the people pacing up and down the aisles trying to sell you jasmine infused breast milk and flies to North America in search of his internet lover. Instead, he discovers a dipsomaniacal sailor slurping songs of cicadas. A post-transcendental walkabout. A square dance under the harvest moon with Caspar David Friedrich, Flannery O'Connor, Henry David Thoreau and Polly Jean Harvey." (A.A.) Catherine Sullivan: The Chittendens Multiple projection, 16 mm film transferred to video

Catherine Sullivan, initially trained as an actress, is best known for theatre and video works in which she explores the conventions of performance and role playing, using a wide range of historical and cultural references. Sullivan investigates tensions between performers, their roles and their audience, as well as the discrepancies between role, person and body. The Chittendens, a six screen video installation shows sixteen actors playing stereotypes from nineteenth and twentieth-century America through the emotional patterns given by Sullivan. Using the grammar of theater, Sullivan successfully reveals culturally inscribed ways of coding gesture and ultimately the defining patterns of the self. The Chittendens was made in collaboration with composer Sean Griffin, who wrote the score for the video which Sullivan re-edited afterwards, thus creating the formal dialogue between the actors' gestures and the music score. The work will be shown only on March 10, 7 - 10pm (in Studio 1&2, OT301)

Francesco Bernardelli, The Secret Ordeal of Beauty (Film screening with introduction) "The Secret Ordeal of Beauty" is an attempt to escape predictable, linear connections in order to refer to a hidden ambiguity and a substantial treachery of the images. Within a short span of time, between the late 1940s and the mid-1960s, the increasingly intermingled social, sexual, political and aesthetic representations offered alternatives to the traditional and rather conservative structures of the cinema machine. By repeatedly fusing supernatural elements and concerns with issues of psycho-sexual drama and images of sexual ambiguity, many marginal forms and cycles of narratives (such as horror, erotic and fantastic) have actually facilitated a shift from a predetermined view of moving images' characters towards a full call into question of established gender roles, power relations and ideological structures. Francesco Bernardelli is a freelance art critic and curator based in Torino, Italy. Since 1999 he has curated film and video programs for Castello di Rivoli Contemporary Art Museum. He has recently catalogued the video collections of Castello di Rivoli and published essays on the historical connections between early performance, video art and experimental dance. Recent projects include Split Subjects (De Appel, Amsterdam 2005) and Figures of Excess (Beursschouwburg, Brussels, 2006).

PART 7

March 24, 2007

Opening: Roma Publications Presents: Oksana Pasaiko, Marc Nagtzaan and Mark Manders Claudio Baroni and Fabian Marcaccio Abstract Terror, video animation

Performance: Egon March Institute: Operabil POW Barbara Thun - voice, Marko Košnik - text, imagery, keynote presentation

The seventh and the final part of Beauty Unrealized focuses on collaborations between artists working in different mediums who reflect on basic parameters and limitations of individual mediums in which they usually work. Creating a platform for their continuous collaboration as Roma Publications, Mark Manders and Roger Willems extend the medium of printed matters, turning them into a space for dialogues with different artists, designers, curators, writers, and poets, at the same time disturbing the usual distribution channels and institutionalized exhibition forms in galleries and museums. In their ongoing collaboration, Claudio Baroni and Fabian Marcaccio step out from their usual mediums and use the form of animation as a meeting point for their previous individual examinations, creating visual and sound landscapes where dreams can easily be turned into nightmares. For Beauty Unrealized, Marko Košnik brings into the framework of the Egon March Institute a singer and a composer Barbara Thun and continues his exploration of relations between human individuals and new media presentations that silently transform power relations into pixelized points of representation.

Roma Publications Presents: Oksana Pasaiko, Marc Nagtzaam, and Mark Manders

overview

Marc Nagtzaam

Oksana Pasaiko

Roma Publications is an editorial publishing project founded by artist Mark Manders and graphic designer Roger Willems and is used as a platform for collaborations with a growing number of artists, designers, curators, writers and poets. Since their beginnings in 1998, Manders and Willems have created their own space in which they fuse art, design and curatorship, and succeeded to spread their works through various distribution channels as well as through shows in galleries and museums. Among the 98 publications released so far, their print runs from 2 to 150.000 copies and includes artists’ books, newspapers, catalogues, posters, postcards, DVDs and audio CDs.

For “Beauty Unrealized”, Roma Publication will present a selection of recent postcards-works by a young Ruthenian artist Oksana Pasaiko, a drawing by Marc Nagtzaam, and a booklet (limited edition) by Mark Manders produced especially for this occasion. Not on display but as a part of PSWAR library, Roma Publications will place on the shelves a broad selection of their previous publications.

Claudio Baroni and Fabian Marcaccio: Abstract Terror

Abstract Terror is a first film animation in the ongoing project of collaboration between a composer, Claudio Baroni, and a painter, Fabian Marcaccio. As their point of departure, Baroni and Marcaccio take the relationship between image and music, creating a temporary structure that contains basic elements of both disciplines. At the formal level, Abstract Terror is organized around seventeen images connected through blackouts and interlaced with music sequences. Each image has a duration of ten to twenty-five seconds, becoming a separate ‘object’ enchained by its visual and sound parameters, generating a narrative similar to a mystery film, images of terror or nocturnal nightmares of almost evanescent brevity.

Egon March Institute: Operabil POW* Barbara Thun - voice, Marko Košnik - text, imagery, keynote presentation

The medium is a person in the state of absence or trance, who can deliver a set of messages that can become meaningful trough interpretations by a person or community of interest. Operabil POW examines relation of original constellation of the human medium to a recent popular form of media enhanced presentation: power point / keynote presentation. Marko Košnik started his polymedia career in 1980s as a writer of concepts and a musician, producing creative environments, open labs and media platforms, dealing with synchronization of authors from different backgrounds. Crossing from acoustic studies of subterranean Karst to performances and installations with sonorostatics (electro-acoustic plates) Košnik entered the field of performances with his own productions of Egon March Institute and started building interactive environments in 1993. Barbara Thun, singer, performer and composer, studied classical singing at the Highschool of Arts in Berlin. Since 1992 she performed solo and as a member of the group "maulwerker" in contemporary music and musical theater, in Germany and internationally.

Operabil POW follows in the series of miniature opera modules - elements, starting with Operabil Vienna in 2005, followed by Operabil Shqiptare (Tirana 2005), Operabil Kobe (Kobe - Maribor - Berlin 2006) and Operabil Laputa Engine (Kassel 2006).

Movie documentation available online at http://web.mac.com/marchegon

*(pow in math: The pow(n) function returns base raised to the exponential power. There's a domain error if base is zero.) The project consists of 7 parts from December 2006 to April 2007 Opening dates: December 14, January 13, January 29, February 10, February 24, March 10, March 24

Project initiated by: Tamuna Chabashvili, Adi Hollander, and Vesna Madzoski Guest curator: Angela Serino

Library installation created by: Tamuna Chabashvili and Adi Hollander Constructed by: Mathijs Lieshout, Davide Manzoni and Maurice Bogaert Advising architect: Ofri Earon

The project is kindly supported by: ‘Cine Qua Non’ film shop, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, VSB Fonds, Mondriaan Foundation

Location: Public Space With a Roof, Overtoom 301, 1054 HW Amsterdam. During the exhibition the project space is open Thursday to Sunday 3pm - 7pm or by appointment.

Invitation / part 

BEAUTY UNREALIZED spider webs of personal universes seeking a form

December , 

: h : h Opening of the library Performance by Arnold Marinissen (percussion) with the support of ﬁlmmaker Ester Eva Damen

A performance in collaboration with  composers and ﬁlmmakers for percussion, electronics, musical saw and two feet.

intermezzo : Edges Massimo Mariani / Roberto Musci : A Windy Place () Michel van der Aa : Wake (-) intermezzo : Edges Gerhard Staebler : Performances für Liebhaber (-) Ester Eva Damen & Arnold Marinissen : Miniatuur VI (-') Vinko Globokar : Corporel () pauze Ester Eva Damen & Christina Viola Oorebeek : Edges () Rob & Arnold Marinissen : Prepared Forest () Yannis Kyriakides : Lab Fly Dreams ()

Public Space With A Roof Overtoom    Amsterdam www.pswar.org BEAUTY UNREALIZED In the last few decades beauty has been a much disputed term. spider webs of personal universes seeking a form It has often been associated with things ornamental or decorative, while simultaneously becoming the buzzword for conservative December ,  – April ,  critics who object to anything avant-garde. Perhaps because of this stereotypical understanding and misuse of the term, ‘beauty’ has The project consists of 6 parts from January to all fallen out of favour within present art discourse. April  Opening dates : January , January , February , With this project, we want to underline that (produced) objects are February , March , March  equally important as “social projects”. Since people have always communicated through objects in space and time, it is important Project initiated by : Tamuna Chabashvili, to discuss the link between objects and ideas, or more speciﬁcally, Adi Hollander, and Vesna Madzoski between objects and the concept of beauty. Invited artists, Guest curator : Angela Serino composers, ﬁlm directors and philosophers will explore the Assistants : Adriel van Drimmelen and concept of beauty today within the scope of their own process of Mathijs Lieshout self-development and their own work.

Library installation created by : Tamuna Chabashvili As a framework for the whole project, we created a special library and Adi Hollander in which visitors can enter and get lost in the world of thoughts, Constructed by : Mathijs Lieshout and ideas, questions, possibilities, and puzzles. For this library, we Davido Manzoni invited numerous individuals (artists, filmmakers, writers, Advising architect : Ofri Earon theoreticians, etc.) to submit items that have significantly influenced them and their work. The project is kindly supported by : Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, VSB Fonds, Inspired by Aby Warburg, this library is “a collection of questions” Mondriaan Foundation rather than “a repository of books, (...) involving not objects but the tension, analogies, contrasts, or contradictions among them”. Public Space With A Roof is open Thursday to Its inside will be used to host six separate exhibitions where the Sunday from : to : and by appointment. invited artists will present their past works, works in progress, or works produced especially for this project. Public Space With A Roof Overtoom  Like the majority of the PSWAR projects, Beauty Unrealized will   Amsterdam combine an exhibition with an accompanying series of talks, www.pswar.org lectures, public debates, and a reader. This project is the forth and final one in the second phase of the work of PSWAR, the result of questions and problems that have arisen from the previous projects. We regard it as a closing of an imaginary circle, which is why we have invited all the artists who participated in the history of PSWAR to be a part of its closure.

Silhouettes abstracted from Batia Suter, Parallel Encyclopedia, Roma Publications, Amsterdam,  BEAUTY UNREALIZED Invitation ⁄ spider webs of personal universes seeking a form Public Space With A Roof part  Overtoom , Amsterdam

Saturday, Sunday, January ,  January ,  opening - pm - pm

Two lectures, a series of images, mm ﬁlm projection and a discussion Thomas Hirschhorn  pm How to Dance Philippe-Alain Philosophy Michaud (video installation Cinema Attitude in the Library) : pm Keren Cytter Robert Garnet Repulsion You Can’t be Serious : (video projection On the Pre-posterous in the Studio ) Aesthetics of Humour

 pm Public discussion, moderated by Noa Roei BEAUTY UNREALIZED Second chapter of Beauty Unrealized brings together artists and spider webs of personal universes seeking a form theorists who reflect, in their individual and specific ways, on their own inspiration by existing systems of thought from already December ,  – April ,  existing objects – artworks or books. Structured this way, our aim is to open up two main lines for discussion. On the first level, we The project consists of 6 parts from January to are interested in new definitions of cinema as an art form, whether April  seen as a deconstruction of the cinema as a medium (Cytter) or Opening dates : January , January , February , searching for redefinition of interpretation of the moving pictures February , March , March  (Michaud). On the second level, we want to bring in questions of the function of humour seen as artistic strategy (Hirschhorn) Project initiated by : Tamuna Chabashvili, or seen as part of our sensory perception that recomplicates our Adi Hollander, and Vesna Madzoski conceptions of the ethics of the aesthetic. Guest curator : Angela Serino Assistants: Adriel van Drimmelen and Mathijs As a framework for the whole project, we created a special Lieshout library in which visitors can enter and get lost in the world of thoughts, ideas, questions, possibilities, and puzzles. For this Library installation created by : Tamuna Chabashvili library, we invited numerous individuals (artists, filmmakers, and Adi Hollander writers, theoreticians, etc.) to submit items that have significantly Constructed by : Mathijs Lieshout and Davide influenced them and their work. Manzoni Advising architect : Ofri Earon Inspired by Aby Warburg, this library is “a collection of questions” rather than “a repository of books, (…) involving not objects but The project is kindly supported by : the tension, analogies, contrasts, or contradictions among them”. ‘Cine Qua Non’ film shop, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Its inside will be used to host six separate exhibitions where the Kunst, VSB Fonds, Mondriaan Foundation invited artists will present their past works, works in progress, or works produced especially for this project. Public Space With A Roof is open Thursday to Sunday from 3 – 7 pm and by appointment. Like the majority of the PSWAR projects, Beauty Unrealized will combine an exhibition with an accompanying series of talks, Public Space With A Roof lectures, public debates, and a reader. This project is the forth and Overtoom 301 final one in the second phase of the work of PSWAR, the result 1054 HW Amsterdam of questions and problems that have arisen from the previous www.pswar.org projects. We regard it as a closing of an imaginary circle, which is why we have invited all the artists who participated in the history of PSWAR to be a part of its closure.

Thomas Hirschhorn : How to Dance Philosophy Philippe-Alain Michaud : Cinema Attitude Conceived as a question and for the first time presented as an We are witnessing today a significant switch of the presentation independent artwork, this video installation brings together in of moving images from the theaters, where they were commonly an absurd manner Georges Bataille, mute mannequin and a half- presented during the  century, to the galleries. In the light of this naked artist. Coming from Hirschhorn’s own logic of how to live displacement, we are compelled to produce a new definition of the philosophy, this peace gives a possibility to turn a cover of a book film, not anymore from the restricted standing point of the history into a costume to wear and philosophy into a silent music on which of cinema as a technical device for recording and projection, but to dance to. from the enlarged standing point of the history of art as a new way This installation will be on display in the space of the Library until to conceive the images. January 21. Philippe-Alain Michaud is a film curator at the Centre Pompidou.

Keren Cytter : Replusion Robert Garnet : You Can’t be Serious : Repulsion consists of three short films and is based on Roman On the Pre-posterous Aesthetics of Humour Polanski’s feature film of the same title from 1965. Cytter’s The lecture will examine the ways in which humour is an art of version deconstructs the original film, being focused on the main the ‘sensible’ requiring a ‘sense’ of humour on part of both artist protagonist and the two supporting characters. This way, three and critic/recipient/participant: how humour offers a means of short films serve as three layers of one movie that has no plot. going beyond oppositions between irony and authenticity, aesthetic The movies will be projected only on January 13, from 7 – 9 pm, in idealism and the anti-aesthetic, and recomplicates our conceptions Studio 1, Overtoom 301. of the ethics of the aesthetic. Robert Garnett is a critic and theorist based in London and Brussels

Silhouettes abstracted from Batia Suter, Parallel Encyclopedia, Roma Publications, Amsterdam,  Invitation ⁄ part 

  Monday, spider webs of January ,  personal universes seeking a form  pm: Opening Benoit Goupy Public Space With A Roof Overtoom , Amsterdam Le Source

 pm: Concert

PSWAR in collaboration with DNK Amsterdam presents: The duo Otomo Yoshihide and Sachiko M with Axel Doerner and Martin Brandlmayr

Library open Thursday to Sunday 3–7 pm or by appointment These two events mark the third part of the PSWAR new project Benoit Goupy: Le Source Beauty Unrealized: spider webs of personal universes seeking a form In his new work entitled ‘Le Source’, Benoit Goupy will go back in which the sound becomes a main focus. From December  to the source and essence of his artistic practice. Goupy’s works to April , PSWAR dedicates its program to the explorations manifest themselves usually as subtle interventions in the space of the concept of beauty as well as to the status of objects as that he sees as live organisms; they always appear “here and there carriers of ideas, sources of inspiration and connections between but not anywhere on the surface of the space, as arteries under the individuals through time and space. skin”. Following the architecture of the space, Goupy’s marks inside a space are a product of the traces that the outside reality leaves As a framework for the whole project, we created a special on his own perception. In the space of the PSWAR library, Goupy library in which visitors can enter and get lost in the world of allows a new element to step into his work: a sound performance that thoughts, ideas, questions, possibilities, and puzzles. For this connects together his intimate story and the story of the space. library, we invited numerous individuals (artists, filmmakers, writers, theoreticians, etc.) to submit items that have significantly influenced them and their work. Otomo Yoshihide with Sachiko M, Axel Dörner and Martin Brandlmayr Inspired by Aby Warburg, this library is “a collection of questions” Otomo Yoshihide is one of the most creative sound artists rather than “a repository of books, (…) involving not objects but nowadays, experimenting with both medium and form. For much the tension, analogies, contrasts, or contradictions among them”. of the 1990s his main project was Ground Zero, a large group Its inside will be used to host six separate exhibitions where the founded with an ever-changing lineup. Towards the end of that invited artists will present their past works, works in progress, or group’s life, Otomo formed two electronic free improvisation works produced especially for this project. groups: Filament with Sachiko M, and I. S. O., with Sachiko M and Yoshimitsu Ichiraku. These groups abandoned the frenetic Like the majority of the PSWAR projects, Beauty Unrealized will postmodern pastiche of Ground Zero, and emphasized small combine an exhibition with an accompanying series of talks, gestures and low volume. The music contained no samples, being lectures, public debates, and a reader. This project is the forth and made of sine waves and electronic clicks and hums. Yoshihide final one in the second phase of the work of PSWAR, the result largely stopped using records as a sound source, instead of questions and problems that have arisen from the previous manipulating the turntable itself with a wide variety of objects projects. We regard it as a closing of an imaginary circle, which is and contact microphones. At the end of the 1990s he founded why we have invited all the artists who participated in the history Otomo Yoshihide’s New Jazz Ensemble. Besides her work with of PSWAR to be a part of its closure. Yoshihide, Sachiko M is also one half of the blisteringly silent and beautiful duo Cosmos with Ami Yoshide. Her earlier work with samplers led to her current methods of using samplers to produce BEAUTY UNREALIZED sine tones which she very subtly manipulates. Axel Dörner is a spider webs of personal universes seeking a form trumpet player who along with musicians like Robin Hayward was involved in the musical current of extended techniques which December ,  – April ,  came to be known as Berlin Reductionism, and can also be heard on two recent releases of Yoshihide’s New Jazz Orchestra. The The project consists of 6 parts from January to fourth member is the drummer/percussionist Martin Brandlmayr, April  a member of two extraordinary bands to come out of Austria in the Opening dates : January , January , February , last few years, Trapist and Radian, both of which effortlessly break February , March , March  the boundaries between avant-garde, electronica, rock and jazz. January 2007 marks a first European tour of this quartet. Project initiated by : Tamuna Chabashvili, Adi Hollander, and Vesna Madzoski Guest curator : Angela Serino Assistants: Mathijs Lieshout

Library installation created by : Tamuna Chabashvili and Adi Hollander Constructed by : Mathijs Lieshout, Davide Manzoni and Maurice Bogaert Advising architect : Ofri Earon

The project is kindly supported by : ‘Cine Qua Non’ ﬁlm shop, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, VSB Fonds, Mondriaan Foundation

Public Space With A Roof is open Thursday to Sunday from 3 – 7 pm and by appointment.

Public Space With A Roof Overtoom 301 1054 HW Amsterdam www.pswar.org

Silhouettes abstracted from Batia Suter, Parallel Encyclopedia, Roma Publications, Amsterdam,  BEAUTY UNREALIZED spider webs of personal universes seeking a form

Invitation / part 4

Public Space With A Roof Overtoom 301, Amsterdam

Saturday, Sunday, February ,  February , 

 pm: Opening  pm: Artists talk Michel de Broin with Michel de Broin Stick to resist – and Maurits Fennis SD (seeking device)

 pm & . pm:

A performance piece for voice, electronics and rooms Maurits Fennis, A Discourse On Density Between Reﬂ ective Surfaces

PSWAR LIBRARY is open Thursday to Sunday – pm or by appointment The fourth part of Beauty Unrealized focuses on the actual space Michel de Broin: Stick to resist – SD (seeking device) of the PSWAR gallery through these two site-specifi c works. Nev- Through playful objects placed in public spaces as well as in art in- ertheless, both of the works, Michel de Broin’s resistant sculpture, stitutions and galleries, Michel de Broin investigates the concept of and Fennis’s performance for voice, electronics and rooms, are not ‘resistance’ seen not in opposition to something but as a device that site-specifi c works in the usual sense as they use this environment as amplifi es already existing tensions in the structures that otherwise their temporary inspiration only, functioning as parasites on and in go unnoticed. Following this perspective, de Broin has produced the body of this particular host. Structured this way, they become a large body of works that make visible these fundamental contra- mobile structures that can be strategically exported to other spaces dictions of different materials and, by analogy, of social systems in order to develop further the strategies of resistance (de Broin) or subjected to clashes of various forces and constraints. transform the reductionist perception of human senses (Fenin).

For “Beauty Unrealized”, de Broin presents a new version of his As a framework for the whole project, we created a special library earlier work Stick to resist, a portable sculpture attached to dif- in which visitors can enter and get lost in the world of thoughts, ferent metal surfaces, acting as a parasite and showing a fragile ideas, questions, possibilities, and puzzles. For this library, we in- co-dependence with the system whose part it becomes. Stick to vited numerous individuals (artists, fi lmmakers, writers, theoreti- resist – SDSD (seeking(seeking device)device) locates surfaces in the gallery space cians, etc.) to submit items that have signifi cantly infl uenced them whose resistance provide this unusual sculpture with the support and their work. necessary to ‘survive’ while allowing it to infi ltrate in the existing system. Inspired by Aby Warburg, this library is “a collection of questions” rather than “a repository of books, (…) involving not objects but the tension, analogies, contrasts, or contradictions among them”. Maurits Fennis: A Discourse On Density Between Its inside will be used to host six separate exhibitions where the Refl ective Surfaces invited artists will present their past works, works in progress, or Maurits Fennis is a composer and performer of electro-acoustic works produced especially for this project. works which currently deal with the inner acoustic qualities of spaces, and the voice. He has studied and developed extended Like the majority of the PSWAR projects, Beauty Unrealized willwill guttural singing techniques and software for its analysis and elabo- combine an exhibition with an accompanying series of talks, lec- ration. tures, public debates, and a reader. This is the fourth and fi nal project of the second phase of the work of PSWAR, the result ADODBRS is an electro-acoustic piece concerning guttural sing- of questions and problems that have arisen from the previous ing and the resonant frequencies of enclosed spaces. This piece projects. We regard it as a closing of an imaginary circle, which is is Fennis’s personal critique of the use of “excessive technology why we have invited all the artists who participated in the history and multi-speaker systems in the composition of electro-acoustic of PSWAR to be a part of its closure. music, as it attempts to show us that a throat, and a single speaker, both attuned to the acoustics of a space, can stimulate and articulate a spatiality beyond multi-directional speaker arrays; a spati- BEAUTY UNREALIZED ality which removes the dichotomy between that which produces spider webs of personal universes seeking a form sound, and that which receives it. It attempts to break down the barriers of our reductionist frameworks, and evolve our under- December ,  – April ,  standing of ourselves, and our environment.” The project consists of six parts from January to April  Opening dates : January , January , FebruaryFebruary , February , March , March 

Project initiated by : Tamuna Chabashvili, Adi Hollander, and Vesna Madzoski Guest curator : Angela Serino Assistants: Mathijs Lieshout

Library installation created by : Tamuna Chabashvili and Adi Hollander Constructed by : Mathijs Lieshout, Davide Manzoni and Maurice Bogaert Advising architect : Ofri Earon

The project is kindly supported by : ‘Cine Qua Non’ ﬁ lm shop, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, VSB Fonds, Mondriaan Foundation

Public Space With A Roof is open Thursday to Sunday from 3 – 7 pm and by appointment.

Public Space With A Roof Overtoom 301, 1054 HW Amsterdam Silhouettes abstracted from Batia Suter, Parallel Encyclopedia, Roma Publications, Amsterdam,  www.pswar.org BEAUTY UNREALIZED spider webs of personal universes seeking a form

Invitation / part 

Public Space With A Roof Overtoom , Amsterdam

The PSWAR LIBRARY is open Thursday to Sunday – pm or by appointment

Falke Pisano: Extracts (Objects) Saturday, The starting point for Falke Pisano’s works is her interest in the constructive potential of thoughts, as well as the possibilities to create and resolve problems within the field of language using its February ,  internal systems of logic. The work presented at the PSWAR gallery is based on the books from the surrounding library. Inversing Italo Calvino’s description of Lucretius’ “De Rerum natura” as “the first great work of poetry in which knowledge of the world tends to dissolve the solidity of the world, leading to the perception of all  pm: Opening that is infinitely minute, light and mobile”* Pisano extracted from the books qualities, attributes, and forms.** Those three elements define together a series of objects and therefore reconstruct a po- Falke Pisano tential material origin of the knowledge comprised in these collections of writings.

Stick to resist – * Italo Calvino, Six Memo’s for the Next Millennium, Vintage Books NY  (© Estate of Italo Calvino), p.  Extracts (Objects) ** Ibid. p.

Kersten Geers and Emiliatno Gandolfi: The Shape of Time Sunday, A newly achieved perception of spatiality and the definition of a discourse around means of architectural signs will be the topic of a conversation between the art critic Emiliano Gandolfi and the February ,  architect Kersten Geers. The appearance of space is unconceivable without a dissertation on time. Architecture is not necessarily a temporal experience, but time, through its evolutionary cultural process, defines what we should consider beautiful at a given moment. Within Robert Schumann’s poetic beauty, based on hu-  pm: Presentation mans’ conscious and creative intervention in the nature, and the Japanese definition of wabi-sabi that sees beauty as imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete, our perception flows, in various con- and discussion structions of signs, through space. Emiliano Gandolfi is an architect and curator of the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam, where he developed several Kersten Geers and exhibitions and public events such as Newer Orleans, DynamiCity – Tactics for a Changing Metropolis, and Spectacular City – Photographing the Future. Emiliano Gandolfi: Kersten Geers is an architect and before , when he opened his own studio with David van Severen, he has worked for several architectural bureaus (Maxwan/Max.1 Architecten and Neutelings The Shape of Time Riedijk Architects). Geers has published various articles on architecture and fiction in numerous professional journals and since  he has been a tutor and guest critic at various institutions in the Netherlands and Belgium. The fifth part of Beauty Unrealized focuses on the potential of BEAUTY UNREALIZED change in the already existing structures, whether they manifest spider webs of personal universes seeking a form itself as language (Pisano) or as architecture (Geers, Gandolfi). In her explorations of abstract sculptures, Falke Pisano searches for a December ,  – April ,  speculative language that could turn material objects into structures of different, sometimes immaterial nature. Liberating the The project consists of six parts from January to object from the limits of its previous existence, Pisano examines April  the possible answers for the question of how an object can exist Opening dates : January , January , February , within different conditions. Two architects, Kersten Geers and February , March , March  Emiliano Gandolfi will use the structure of a presentation in order to investigate the limits and potentials of beauty in terms of space, Project initiated by : Tamuna Chabashvili, staged through the use of words, visuals and sounds. Their main Adi Hollander, and Vesna Madzoski interest is in the newly achieved perception of spatiality and the Guest curator : Angela Serino ways in which it has been organized into a more coherent dis- Assistants: Mathijs Lieshout course within the language of architecture. Library installation created by : Tamuna Chabash- As a framework for the whole project, we created a special library vili and Adi Hollander in which visitors can enter and get lost in the world of thoughts, Constructed by : Mathijs Lieshout, Davide Manzoni ideas, questions, possibilities, and puzzles. For this library, we in- and Maurice Bogaert vited numerous individuals (artists, filmmakers, writers, theoreti- Advising architect : Ofri Earon cians, etc.) to submit items that have significantly influenced them and their work. The project is kindly supported by : ‘Cine Qua Non’ film shop, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Inspired by Aby Warburg, this library is “a collection of ques- Kunst, VSB Fonds, Mondriaan Foundation tions” rather than “a repository of books, (…) involving not objects but the tension, analogies, contrasts, or contradictions among Public Space With A Roof is open Thursday to them”. Its inside will be used to host six separate exhibitions where Sunday from  –  pm and by appointment. the invited artists will present their past works, works in progress, or works produced especially for this project. Public Space With A Roof Overtoom ,   Amsterdam Like the majority of the PSWAR projects, Beauty Unrealized will www.pswar.org combine an exhibition with an accompanying series of talks, lectures, public debates, and a reader. This is the fourth and final project of the second phase of the work of PSWAR, the result of questions and problems that have arisen from the previous projects. We regard it as a closing of an imaginary circle, which is why we have invited all the artists who participated in the history of PSWAR to be a part of its closure.

Silhouettes abstracted from Batia Suter, Parallel Encyclopedia, Roma Publications, Amsterdam,  BEAUTY UNREALIZED Invitation / part  spider webs of personal universes seeking a form Public Space With A Roof Overtoom , Amsterdam

The PSWAR LIBRARY is open Thursday to Sunday – pm or by appointment

Saturday, Sunday, March ,  March , 

 pm - pm  pm Opening Catherine Sullivan: Francesco Bernardelli, Adam Avikainen, The Chittendens The Secret Ordeal of

Breathe same breath Multiple projection, 16 mm film transferred Beauty to video video,  minutes (Film screening with introduction) Catherine Sullivan, initially trained as an Adam Avikainen’s work can be seen as an actress, is best known for theatre and video “The Secret Ordeal of Beauty” is an attempt on-going investigation of the potentialities works in which she explores the conventions to escape predictable, linear connections in of storytelling, both on a formal and con- of performance and role playing, using a order to refer to a hidden ambiguity and a tent level. By applying a cinematic treatment wide range of historical and cultural refer- substantial treachery of the images. Within to scripts and physical installations, the ences. Sullivan investigates tensions between a short span of time, between the late s artist proposes whimsical fictions and self- performers, their roles and their audience, as and the mid-s, the increasingly inter- made mythologies that act as raptures in the well as the discrepancies between role, per- mingled social, sexual, political and aes- reality. son and body. The Chittendens, a six screen thetic representations offered alternatives to video installation shows sixteen actors play- the traditional and rather conservative struc- For Beauty Unrealized Avikainen presents ing stereotypes from nineteenth and twenti- tures of the cinema machine. By repeatedly “Breathe same breath”: a video, which re- eth-century America through the emotional fusing supernatural elements and concerns veals the the artist’s ironic attitude towards patterns given by Sullivan. Using the gram- with issues of psycho-sexual drama and im- the world, and his intention to create experi- mar of theater, Sullivan successfully reveals ages of sexual ambiguity, many marginal ences ‘between revelation and reason’. culturally inscribed ways of coding gesture forms and cycles of narratives (such as hor- and ultimately the defining patterns of the ror, erotic and fantastic) have actually facili- Description: “A man gets into one of those self. The Chittendens was made in collabora- tated a shift from a predetermined view of jets with the people pacing up and down tion with composer Sean Griffin, who wrote moving images’ characters towards a full call the aisles trying to sell you jasmine infused the score for the video which Sullivan re- into question of established gender roles, breast milk and flies to North America in edited afterwards, thus creating the formal power relations and ideological structures. search of his internet lover. Instead, he dis- dialogue between the actors’ gestures and Francesco Bernardelli is a freelance art critic covers a dipsomaniacal sailor slurping songs the music score. and curator based in Torino, Italy. Since of cicadas. A post-transcendental walk-  he has curated film and video programs about. A square dance under the harvest The video installation will be shown only on for Castello di Rivoli Contemporary Art moon with Caspar David Friedrich, Flan- March ,  - pm, in Studio &, Over- Museum. He has recently catalogued the nery O’Connor, Henry David Thoreau and toom  video collections of Castello di Rivoli and Polly Jean Harvey.” (A.A.) published essays on the historical connections between early performance, video art and experimental dance. Recent projects include Split Subjects (De Appel, Amsterdam ) and Figures of Excess (Beursschouw- burg, Brussels, ). Sunday, March ,  The sixth part of Beauty Unrealized focuses on cinematic images and the possibility of crossing the boundaries between cinema and other Francesco Bernardelli, The Secret Ordeal of Beauty: media, as well as the possibilities to break the limits of the cinematic film program medium itself. In his works, Adam Avikainen examines possibilities of expanding the cinematic moment into different materials and me-  pm dia, proposing a personal reinterpretation of cinema techniques and Symbolist aggregations () objectives. From her side, Catherine Sullivan translates the theatrical Fireworks () di Kenneth Anger – ´ into the cinematic and vice versa in order to investigate the limits of Baudelaire (C.Mollino) by Elisa Sighicelli – ´ both. At the same time, Sullivan marks the division line between the Written on The Wind () by Douglas Sirk – ´ individual and the universal, revealing where the Self ends and the cultural patterns begin. Through his selection of videos and films, BREAK Francesco Bernardelli presents a different vision of the images in order to enlarge our field of visual experience and disturb dominant . pm regimes of the vision as “manifestations of dominant ideology of Scorpio Rising () by Kenneth Anger - ´ Form and Control.” Harley-Davidson () (Serge Gainsbourg) sung As a framework for the whole project, we created a special by Brigitte Bardot (video-clip) - ’ library in which visitors can enter and get lost in the world of Girl on a Motorcycle () by Jack Cardiff - ´ thoughts, ideas, questions, possibilities, and puzzles. For this library, we invited numerous individuals (artists, filmmakers, writers, theore- Surrealist phantoms, fantasies and entropy (or the ticians, etc.) to submit items that have significantly influenced them dissolution of matter) and their work. Delicacies of Molten Horror Synapse () by Inspired by Aby Warburg, this library is “a collection of ques- Stan Brakhage - ’” tions” rather than “a repository of books, (…) involving not ob- Decasia () by Bill Morrison - ´ jects but the tension, analogies, contrasts, or contradictions among them”. Its inside will be used to host six separate exhibitions where the invited artists will present their past works, works in progress, or works produced especially for this project. Like the majority of the PSWAR projects, Beauty Unrealized combines an exhibition with an accompanying series of talks, lectures, public debates, and a reader. This is the fourth and final project of the second phase of the work of PSWAR, the result of questions and problems that have arisen from the previous projects. We regard it as a closing of an imaginary circle, which is why we have invited all the artists who participated in the history of PSWAR to be a part of its closure.

BEAUTY UNREALIZED spider webs of personal universes seeking a form

December ,  – April ,  The project consists of six parts from January to April  Opening dates : January , January , February , February , March , March 

Project initiated by : Tamuna Chabashvili, Adi Hollander, and Vesna Madzoski Guest curator : Angela Serino Assistants: Mathijs Lieshout

Library installation created by : Tamuna Chabash- vili and Adi Hollander Constructed by : Mathijs Lieshout, Davide Manzoni and Maurice Bogaert Advising architect : Ofri Earon

The project is kindly supported by : ‘Cine Qua Non’ ﬁlm shop, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, VSB Fonds, Mondriaan Foundation

Public Space With A Roof is open Thursday to Sunday from  –  pm and by appointment.

Public Space With A Roof Silhouettes abstracted from Batia Suter, Parallel Encyclopedia, Overtoom ,   Amsterdam Roma Publications, Amsterdam,  www.pswar.org BEAUTY UNREALIZED Invitation / part  spider webs of personal universes seeking a form Public Space With A Roof Overtoom , Amsterdam

PSWAR LIBRARY is open Thursday to Sunday – pm or by appointment

Saturday, March , 

 pm: opening - pm:  pm: Roma Publications Claudio Baroni and Egon March Institute: Presents: Oksana Fabian Marcaccio Operabil POW * Pasaiko, Marc Nagtzaan Abstract Terror Barbara Thun – voice, Marko Košnik – text, and Mark Manders video animation imagery, keynote presentation

Roma Publications is an editorial publish- Abstract Terror is a first film animation in The medium is a person in the state of ing project founded by artist Mark Manders the ongoing project of collaboration be- absence or trance, who can deliver a set and graphic designer Roger Willems and is tween a composer, Claudio Baroni, and a of messages that can become meaningful used as a platform for collaborations with a painter, Fabian Marcaccio. As their point trough interpretations by a person or com- growing number of artists, designers, cura- of departure, Baroni and Marcaccio take munity of interest. Operabil POW examines tors, writers and poets. Since their begin- the relationship between image and music, relation of original constellation of the hu- ning in , Manders and Willems have creating a temporary structure that contains man medium to a recent popular form of created their own space in which they fuse basic elements of both disciplines. At the media enhanced presentation: power point / art, design and curatorship, and succeeded formal level, Abstract Terror is organized keynote presentation. to spread their works through various dis- around seventeen images connected through Marko Košnik started his polymedia ca- tribution channels as well as through shows blackouts and interlaced with music se- reer in s as a writer of concepts and a in galleries and museums. Among the  quences. Each image has a duration of ten musician, producing creative environments, publications released so far, their print runs to twenty-five seconds, becoming a separate open labs and media platforms, dealing with from  to . copies and includes art- ‘object’ enchained by its visual and sound synchronization of authors from different ists’ books, newspapers, catalogues, posters, parameters, generating a narrative similar to backgrounds. Crossing from acoustic stud- postcards, DVDs and audio CDs. a mystery film, images of terror or nocturnal ies of subterranean Karst to performances nightmares of almost evanescent brevity. and installations with sonorostatics (electro- For Beauty Unrealized, Roma Publication acoustic plates) Košnik entered the field of will present a selection of recent postcards- performances with his own productions of works by a young Ruthenian artist Oksana Egon March Institute and started building Pasaiko, a drawing by Marc Nagtzaam, and interactive environments in . a booklet (limited edition) by Mark Man- Barbara Thun, singer, performer and ders produced especially for this occasion. composer, studied classical singing at the Not on display but as a part of PSWAR Highschool of Arts in Berlin. Since  library, Roma Publications will place on the she performed solo and as a member of the shelves a broad selection of their previous group “maulwerker” in contemporary music publications. and musical theater, in Germany and internationally. www.romapublications.org Operabil POW follows in the series of miniature opera modules – elements, starting with Operabil Vienna in , followed by Operabil Shqiptare (Tirana ), Operabil Kobe (Kobe – Maribor – Berlin ) and Operabil Laputa Engine (Kassel ).

* pow in math: The pow(n) function returns Movie documentation available online at base raised to the exponential power. There’s http://web.mac.com/marchegon a domain error if base is zero. BEAUTY UNREALIZED The seventh and the final part of Beauty Unrealized focus on spider webs of personal universes seeking a form collaborations between artists working in different mediums who reflect on basic parameters and limitations of individual mediums in December ,  – April ,  which they usually work. Creating a platform for their continuous collaboration as Roma Publications, Mark Manders and Roger The project consists of six parts from January to Willems extend the medium of printed matters, turning them into April  a space for dialogues with different artists, designers, curators, Opening dates : January , January , February , writers, and poets, at the same time disturbing the usual distribution February , March , March  channels and institutionalized exhibition forms in galleries and museums. In their ongoing collaboration, Claudio Baroni and Project initiated by : Tamuna Chabashvili, Fabian Marcaccio step out from their usual mediums and use the Adi Hollander, and Vesna Madzoski form of animation as a meeting point for their previous individual Guest curator : Angela Serino examinations, creating visual and sound landscapes where dreams Assistants: Mathijs Lieshout can easily be turned into nightmares. For Beauty Unrealized, Marko Košnik brings into the framework of the Egon March Library installation created by : Institute a singer and a composer Barbara Thun and continues his Tamuna Chabashvili and Adi Hollander exploration of relations between human individuals and new media Constructed by : Mathijs Lieshout, Davide Manzoni presentations that silently transform power relations into pixelized and Maurice Bogaert points of representation. Advising architect : Ofri Earon As a framework for the whole project, we created a special library The project is kindly supported by : in which visitors can enter and get lost in the world of thoughts, ‘Cine Qua Non’ film shop, Amsterdams Fonds voor de ideas, questions, possibilities, and puzzles. For this library, we invited Kunst, VSB Fonds, Mondriaan Foundation numerous individuals (artists, filmmakers, writers, theoreticians, etc.) to submit items that have significantly influenced them and their Public Space With A Roof is open Thursday to work. Sunday from  –  pm and by appointment. Inspired by Aby Warburg, this library is “a collection of questions” Public Space With A Roof rather than “a repository of books, (...) involving not objects but the Overtoom ,   Amsterdam tension, analogies, contrasts, or contradictions among them”. Its www.pswar.org inside will be used to host six separate exhibitions where the invited artists will present their past works, works in progress, or works produced especially for this project.

Like the majority of the PSWAR projects, Beauty Unrealized combines an exhibition with an accompanying series of talks, lectures, public debates, and a reader. This is the fourth and ﬁnal project of the second phase of the work of PSWAR, the result of questions and problems that have arisen from the previous projects. We regard it as a closing of an imaginary circle, which is why we have invited all the artists who participated in the history of PSWAR to be a part of its closure.

Silhouettes abstracted from Batia Suter, Parallel Encyclopedia, Roma Publications, Amsterdam, 