Le Lait Généalogie des événements liés à l’exposition

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Jeremiah Day

2019

The Opposite of Fatalism

2020

What Would You Do for Love 2021 of Country? (The Sivens Example)

“If it’s for people, it needs to be beautiful”, she said 2022

Événement : Artistique Politique Relation de cause Présenté Rencontre à effet dans l’exposition Exhibition

“If it’s for people, it needs to be beautiful”, she said

By Jeremiah Day

From to 03|10|20 10|01|21

Opening on at 2 october 2020 6.30 pm

Curated by : Antoine Marchand

p. 3 Press Release p. 5 Jeremiah Day. Notes on the show p. 7 Works Selection p. 13 Press Selection p. 15 Biography p. 18 Rendez-vous /Practical Information Press Release 3 Jeremiah Day “If it’s for people, it needs to be beautiful”, she said

From to 03|10|20 10|01|21 Opening on 2 october at 6.30 pm

Exhibition curated by : In his work, the -based American artist Jeremiah Day Antoine Marchand re-examines recent political struggles and conflicts, revealing their subjective contexts and traces. To do this, he has developed a narrative form in which personal and political realities intermingle,

Ahead of the exhibition, a meeting with the thus offering a thoroughly personal vision of these at times forgotten artist is scheduled for Tuesday 29 moments of history. September 2020 at 6.15 pm at the Médiathèque Pierre Amalric in Albi. The distinctive feature of his method lies in a transversal approach. Duration : 1 hour / Free Entrance As a student of and regular collaborator with Simone Forti, one of the pioneers of Post-Modern Dance, he has turned performance into a now central and structure-providing practice. Since 2014, Jeremiah Day has in effect presented many performances, which contain movement, improvisation, photography and the spoken word, in order to broach universal historical and political subjects, but within an intimate and incarnated context.

With the exhibition “Si c’est pour les gens, ça doit être beau », dit-elle [“If it’s for people, it has to be beautiful”, she said], Jeremiah Day’s intent is to pursue and further develop the lines of thinking involved in this recent performance work, and explore a series of social, political Echoing the exhibition, an event dedicated to the performance titled The Opposite of and climatic events which all raise the same question: how are we to Fatalism is being organized in the premises of achieve a positive citizen’s involvement, in favour of the common the art centre on Saturday 26 September 2020. It will involve, in particular, Jeremiah good? With this project, Jeremiah Day makes art the basis of an Day, Claire Filmon, Adrian Schindler and intense reflection about civil society, while this latter seems to be Chicks On Speed. more divided than ever.

What is the culture of a multi-ethnic democracy? Who are the “people” and how do they describe, reflect, commemorate and speculate about their situation and what should be altered or differently governed? Do images and words (and exhibitions and performances) have something to bring to these discussions? All so many questions raised by Jeremiah Day, whose project—started in early 2020 at the Badischer Kunstverein (Karlsruhe), and predating the health crisis caused by the coronavirus and the events associated with the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis—takes on a whole new meaning today.

The show at Albi bring together a selection of recently produced works which all evoke emblematic citizens’ gatherings. Be it the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama in 1965, the founding of the Black Panther Party in 1966, the demonstrations in Taksim Square in Istanbul in 2013, or the recent student climate strikes staged by the Press Release 4

“Fridays for Future” movement, each one of these events has conveyed and magnified the message from citizens keen to alter the course of history.

A never seen before installation is also presented. It refers to the events linked with the dam construction project in Sivens.

Jeremiah Day (born in 1974 in Plymouth (USA)) lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the University oif California in (UCLA). His work and his performances have been presented in many institutions all over the world, such as the Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2020) ; the M Museum, Louvain (2019) ; the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (2018) ; the Kunsthalle Wien, (2018) ; BAK, Utrecht (2017) ; the , in Warsaw (2016) ; CCA, Glasgow (2015) ; the MAXXI, Rome (2015) ; the Liverpool Biennial (2014); Arnolfini, Bristol (2014) ; the Santa Monica Museum of Art (2014) and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2014).

He is represented by the Arcade gallery (London) and Ellen de Bruijne Projects ().

This exhibition is the fruit of a collaboration with the Badischer Kunstverein (Karlsruhe), the Musée M (Louvain) and the Villa Romana (). A publication, designed by Will Holder and distributed by les presses du reel, will be available at the end of the exhibition cycle. 5

Jeremiah Day The collaboration with Le Lait was initiated by Antoine Marchand in Notes on the show 2017, and since then has built into a larger project combing performance, workshops and exhibitions in and Italy and leading a publication next year.

Part of the challenge of this collaboration has been for me to re-ap- proach exhibition-making as a form, after 5 years of working almost ex- clusively with performance. In this process, I developed a new strate- gy: bringing other artists into a collaborative structure of public performance around a topic of shared concern.

The topic, I discovered could not be just from my own interest, it had to be about something common so that participants would not just be illustrating my vision but find a motivation and thread of their own. The video installation in room 3 is the result of the first attempt at this method (with the video-maker Sebastian Bodirsky and his special counter-point camera).

In looking for another possible topic ofor the Le Lait project, I discovered the example of the Sivens dam and the "ZAD" that formed to preserve the wetlands there, to block the block. My plan was to bring a group of artists to make a public work there, but permission was denied. The contest and meaning of public assembly at the site makes even an assembly on poetic grounds too difficult for the state to safely support. So the water has not been stopped but there is still a Sivens "barrage": against the re-assembly of the public there.

Further, while the image of ZADist bohemia is known to some, the larger political meaning of evolving organized non-cooperation movements – as Martin Luther King called his own actions in Alabama, referred to in another work in the show – this larger _meaning _is also subject to a "barrer". The work outdoors displays traces of another example of this kind of politics. And the work No words for you, Springfieldreflects on the intersection between storytelling, meaning and landscape.

The new work - What Would You Do For Love Of Country - represents an adaptation of my strategy in response to the meaning barrage.

6

Jeremiah Day Like my performances, it is the result of improvisation – designed Notes on the show and produced quick, in the midst of thought. It has a clumsy physicality and an abundance of impressions, framings and questions, offered without a polemic, but as the basis to share an investigation.

Because bringing the public to the site was not possible it includes a large aerial photograph of the site for reference, and is constructed around the principle of a barrier in space.

Because bringing my workshop to the site was not possible I asked the other performers from Le Lait's performance festival, The Opposite Of Fatalism, to travel there and make a quick improvisational work. A video recording of this work– with the dancer Claire Filmon and the band Chicks On Speed – is included.

Because performing at the site was not possible, I made a performance at a dam close to my home in Berlin.

Because the public can not assemble at Sivens, I insist that art has a role in public life. Works Selection 7

Jeremiah Day, Ghost Dance Song, 26.03.14 Performance still: Lower Saxony Chancellery, Berlin, DE, 2014 Works Selection 8

Jeremiah Day with Bart de Kroon To a Person sitting in Darkness (#4 Helicopters), Performance still: CCA, Glasgow, UK, 2015 Works Selection 9

Jeremiah Day and Simone Forti, News Animation, Performance still: Emily Harvey Foundation, New York, US 2018, Photo Credit: James Welling

Jeremiah Day, The chair remains empty / But the place is set: Quaker Meeting House – Istanbul Forums (Performance Notation: October 20, 2015; Gruener Salon, Volksbuhne) 2015, ink on paper, 48 x 66 cm Works Selection 10

Jeremiah Day, Nach Hause gehen - Entlang des Carl und Margarethe Schurz Weges, Performance Still, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe 2020. Photo: Lisa Bergmann Works Selection 11

Performance Still with Joris van Buul, Jungmin Park and Laila Saber Rodriguez, The Opposite of Fatalism (June 22, Neu Hoch Str 51), organized by Jeremiah Day, Berlin, 2019. Cointerpoint camera: Sebastian Bodirsky. Courtesy: Jeremiah Day, Ellen de Bruijne Projects and Arcade

Jeremiah Day, If It’s For The People, It Needs To Be Beautiful, She Said, Exhibition view, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe 2020. Foto: Stephan Baumann, bild_raum Works Selection 12

Jeremiah Day, If It’s For The People, It Needs To Be Beautiful, She Said, Exhibition view, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe 2020. Photo: Stephan Baumann, bild_raum

Joanne Bland - Reflections from Selma / Picturing the Jigsaw Puzzle of Social Movements, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, 2019. Introduction & Moderation: Jeremiah Day. Photo: Klemens Czurda Press Selection 13

UK UK

KUtlUĞ ataMaN JEREMiah daY Thomas Dane Gallery, Arcade, London London

It’s a sad party, with reflective orange, blue Kutlug˘ Ataman’s 80-minute film Journey and silver bunting hanging over a sturdy set of to the Moon (2009) is so full of metaphor, three concrete steps leading to nowhere. On historical reference and subtle, self- an adjacent screen, Jeremiah Day is waving deprecating humour that it’s difficult to his arms in the sky, as if miming a slow-motion know where to start. The two-channel rave. But he’s rambling to himself, a bar-room video installation, which is the narrative monologue, shaking his head back and forth: ‘I centrepiece of the Turkish artist’s hear ya buddy, no, I hear ya, that’s how it is.’ His ‘Mesopotamian Dramaturgies’ project hands wander while he gabbles, at points as if (2009–11), was presented in isolation they’re adrift in a stream, or else running back at Thomas Dane Gallery, the complete and forth as if clearing a desk or smoothing works having previously been shown in 1 out a surface. He stretches, half-reclined on different configurations internationally. the ground, turning on his haunches while he The film is set in 1957, in Erzinean – a striking caricature of modern, secular casually narrates a fragmented story about how small village in rural Anatolia from where Turkey’s ambivalent relationship with Islam, cities change, buildings get torn down, scenes Ataman’s family originates – and tells which in recent years has taken on a more dissipate. The video and installation If You Want the story of four villagers who attempt to conservative hue under Prime Minister Blood (all works 2013) were the main parts of escape by launching a minaret into space. Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The film comprises a this small show that gathered together three On one screen a seemingly never-ending finely considered parable of Turkey’s past works which hovered around the history of one sequence of black and white stills docu- and future trajectories, of how it has been of Berlin’s checkpoints: after 1989, it became ment these improbable events, which are constructed (and here re-constructed) along East Germany’s first used-car lot, before turning narrated in lyrical Turkish prose. As the its own distinct lines. into a branch of Lidl supermarket several years stills roll and roll, it soon becomes clear Historical and narrative construction has ago. The text accompanying the exhibition that this exhaustive archive is, of course, often been a preoccupation of Ataman’s, yet reprinted a letter from the artist to Lidl, in which fictional. Containing little in the way of his- with Journey to the Moon the yarn he spins he resignedly gives up on his hopes of ‘collabo- torical or geographical reference, they take seems to hit a more sincere tone. Equally, rating’ with the chain, attempting to save several on the appearance of incomplete or unreli- compared to some of the artist’s more trees that had grown on the site of the wall from able memories. Interrupting these on an grandiose installations, the film’s relatively being cleared for the supermarket’s new carpark. adjacent screen are a series of interviews conventional devices (stills, interviews, a The show concisely presented the two sides with Turkish intellectuals – a sociologist, two-channel display) makes it at once more of the Berlin- and Amsterdam-based American an astronomer, a journalist – who each understated and persuasive. artist’s practice from the past seven or so years: reflect on the narrative, using them as a So, having been let down by the on one hand, photographic evidence, usually parable to consider a slew of national, his- politician’s empty promises, four villagers, of architectural remnants, unravelled by minute torical and intellectual phenomena. The led by an alcoholic mechanic and a vagrant familial or offhand observations. The Turning significance they place on the events in dancing farmer, decide to restore pride in (Antifaschinger Schutzwall fragment, Neu- Erzinean is such that we can’t help but the village by attaching balloons to a mina- Hohenschönhausen, Berlin) is a large photograph become transfixed by the story’s outcome ret and climbing inside. Their act becomes of an overgrown graffitied remnant of the wall, or, at the very least, what the story might both an absurdist escape and one of defiant the title making pointed use of the eastern GDR’s say about its protagonists and where it self-empowerment. Does it speak, as one label for the wall as ‘anti-fascist protection’. takes place. of Ataman’s panel of experts suggests, Scrawled underneath the image are several Ataman’s film is captivating for a of ‘the anarchistic energy of non-western number of reasons. Set in 1959, at the height society’? We are only left to guess at the of the Cold War, seven years after Turkey’s fate of the four space travellers. How far did first democratic elections and three years they make it beyond the mountains? Such before the military coup that saw the ruling is the optimism of Ataman’s film that their party ousted, it is situated at a pivotal ultimate failure is neither ‘documented’ nor moment for the country’s liberal, democratic addressed. Rather, we are left contemplat- project and its complex relationship with ing a narrative without a defined outcome the world’s central powers. In Journey to or fixed ending. It is here that Ataman’s the Moon this relationship is played out on relationship with history – its necessary many fronts. Within a global, historical fram- and perpetual reconsideration – is at its ing, the film – like Ataman’s ‘Mesopotamian most unresolved. It is also where it’s at its Dramaturgies’ series as a whole – reclaims most genuine. Mesopotamia as a historical site for the present, prompting a reconsideration of the NicK aiKENS former centre of civilization in relation to today’s complex geo-politics. Within a national, more historically specific setting, the narrative reflects 1 the then ruling party’s reliance on the rural Kutluğ Ataman vote and the promise of their own version Journey to the Moon, 2009, DVD still of the Modernist dream. Indeed, the film’s peculiar sequence of events is set in motion 2 by a politician’s impromptu speech, which Jeremiah Day If You Want Blood, 2013, promises the impressionable villagers facto- installation view ries, jobs and the chance to ‘turn this place into America’. That the protagonists climb 3 Mark Fisher and Justin Barton inside a minaret attached to helium bal- On Vanishing Land, loons to reach the moon is partly Ataman’s 2013, colour photograph dig at Turkey’s halting relationship with technological progress. But this is also a 2

234 FRIEZE NO.155 MAY 2013 Press Selection 14

https://thequietus.com/articles/22551-jeremiah-day-even-dust-can-burst-into-flames-arcade-review

Here Time Becomes Space: From Jeremiah Day To John LathamRobertBarry , June 3rd, 2017 12:55 Jeremiah Day's performances draw on Hannar Arendt and the events of Taksim Square and Gezi Park. Arcade Gallery's show Even Dust Can Burst Into Flames puts Day alongside Anna Barham, Kit Craig, and John Latham

Jeremiah Day, The chair remains empty / But the place is set: Quaker Meeting House - Istanbul Forums, (Performance Notation: October 20, 2015; Gruener Salon, Volksbuhne), 2015, ink on paper, 48 x 66 cm, All images copyright the artist courtesy of Arcade, London

I only noticed the arrow pointing to Bunhill Meeting House after I left. It was a little down the road from the venue I’d been in, round the corner, just a few minutes walk away. There was the van for the Quaker Mobile Library, the sign indicating the name of the estate ‘Quaker House’. We pass these things all the time and scarcely give them any thought. What it means to call a place a ‘meeting house’ instead of a ‘church’, to call the people who gather there ‘friends’. At the Kunstraum, Jeremiah Day had been riffing on the Quakers and their meeting houses – and the American tradition of town hall meetings, on Hannah Arendt and workers’ councils, on Gezi Park and Taksim Square, and on a small hippie community in Cape Cod and its fight against McDonalds – for maybe twenty, thirty minutes (with a short break in the middle – a “real” five minutes, as he put it). And all the time he was moving. Stretching and flexing his limbs, crossing the room back and forth along the diagonal, lying down on the floor and sprawling out every which way, or standing on a chair and reaching up, then sitting amongst the audience and gesticulating as if gesturing with us, for us. It feels like a process of mapping – of testing the limits of the space and of his own body, marking each out and plotting one against the other and then, further, against those other spaces alluded to in his speech: Taksim Square, Cape Cod, Berlin streets, New York highways. Biography 15

Born in 1974 in USA. Lives and works in Berlin, Allemagne. Represented by the gallery Arcade (London) and Ellen de Bruijne Projects (Amsterdam).

SOLO EXHIBITIONS Museum Bureau, 2017 Amsterdam, NL Even dust can burst into 2019-2020 flames, Arcade, London,UK Villa Romana, Florence, IT 2008 Centre D’art le Lait, Albi, FR The Fall of the Twelve Acres 2016 Badische Kunstverein, Museum, Arcade, London, UK Neon: The Charged Karlsrhue, DE The Fall of the Twelve Acres Line, Grundy art Gallery, Museum, Ellen de Bruijne Blackpool, UK 2018 Projects, Amsterdam, NL Walking From New Project Arts Centre, 2015 Orleans / No Words in collaboration with Paw, Arcade, London, UK For You Springfield, Simone Forti, , IR Istanbul: Passion, Joy, Arcade, London, UK Fury (with Can Altay), The Emily Harvey 2005 MAXXI, Rome, IT Foundation, New York, US For Us The Living, Ellen 5th Thessaloniki Biennial, de Bruijne Projects, Thessaloniki, GR 2016 Amsterdam, NL Jeremiah Day, Museum Amor Fati, Beyond 2014 of Modern Art, Warsaw Baroque Literary/Arts The Companion, Liverpool Five Performances, Ellen Center, Los Angeles, US Biennial, Liverpool, UK de Bruijne, Amsterdam, NL Expodium, Utrecht, NL The Promise, Arnolfini, Bristol, UK 2015 2000 The Pursuit of Public Giles Bailey & Jeremiah Day, ‘Venice Forever’, Beyond Happiness, Arratia CCA Glasgow, Glasgow, UK Baroque Literary/Arts Beer, Berlin, DE The Frank Church River Center, Los Angeles, US Nonfictions: Jeremiah Day / of No Return Wilderness, Simone Forti / Fred Dewey, Arratia Beer, Berlin, DE 1999 Santa Monica Museum of ‘Metonym Ocean Size’, Contemporary Art, US 2013 California Institute of You Don’t Go Slumming, Salt, If You Want Blood, Technology, Pasadena, US Istanbul, TR (with Can Altay) Arcade, London, UK

2013 2012 SELECTED GROUP Le Tamis et le Sable 2/3: Of All Possible Things, Site EXHIBITIONS l’intervalle, La Maison Gallery, Sheffield, UK 2019 populaire, Montreuil, FR Desertado. Algo que Formcontent presents 2010 aconteceu pode acontecer Jeremiah Day & Philip Lai, LA Homicide, Ellen de Bruijne novamente, Galeria Municipal Elisa Platteau, Brussels, BE Projects, Amsterdam, NL do Porto, Porto, PT 2012 2009 2018 LA Homicide, The 9th Krakersmonument Mess with Your Values, Shanghai Biennale, (Squatter’s Monument), Neuer Berliner Kunstverein Shanghai, CN public commission, Stedelijk (n.b.k.), Berlin, DE Biography 16

La puerta hacia lo invisible Nova, Zagreb, CR 2016 debe ser visible, Casa Del Tea and Darkness, Lago, Mexico City, MX 2006 Jeremiah Day and Aaron If I can’t dance, Site We All Laughed At Hughes, Emily Harvey Gallery, Sheffield, UK Christopher Columbus, Foundation, New York, US three part project: The Frank Church – River 2011 Platform Garanti, Istanbul, of no return and Maquis, Work, Essays and TR; Stedelijk Museum Museum of Modern Observations, Berlin, DE Bureau, Amsterdam, NL art in Warsaw, PL Civic Matters, Los Jeremiah Day & Bart De 2010 Angeles Contemporary Kroon, Tea Project: Tea Jeremiah Day / Simone Exhibitions, US Performance, Chicago, US Forti / Fred Dewey, Letter to a Turkish Friend, Ludlow 38, Goethe 2005 Osmos, New York Institut, New York, US Videobrazil, Sao Paolo, BR Storytellers, Centre 2015 D’Art Contemporain Camp Derby Blues (Reprise), Passages, Troyes, FR SELECTED PERFORMANCES Villa Romana, Florence, IT To a Person Sitting in 2019 2009 Darkness (#2 Perimeter’s (with Simone Forti), Castelli The Columns Held Us Up, Walk), Spazio A, Pistoia, IT Gallery, New York, US 2018 Artists Space, New York, US Kunsthalle Wien, AU One’s History is Another’s 2014 Misery (Monumentalismus), Awake and You’re in Motion 2018 Autocenter, Berlin, DE (Response to Brief from Studio K77, Berlin, DE Oppositions and Dialogues, Bristol Radical Historians), Ode (with Discoteca Kunstverein Hannover, DE as part of The Promise, Flaming Star), Neuer You don’t go slumming…, Arnolfini, Bristol, UK Berliner Kunstverein Arcade, London, UK with Bart de Kroon, Liverpool (n.b.k.), Berlin, DE (with Can Altay) Bienniale, Liverpool, UK In perfomance with Heartland’ Smart Museum, with Simone Forti and Simone Forti, The University of Chicago, US Fred Dewey, Santa Monica Emily Harvey Foundation, Museum of Contemporary New York, US 2008 Art, US The chair remains empty/ Manifesta 7, Trentino, IT Frank Church – River of No But the place is set, Heartland, Van Abbe Return Wilderness, Centre Kunstraum, London, UK Museum, Eindhoven, NL Pompidou, Paris, FR Mind Body World, 2017 2007 Salt, Istanbul, TR The chair remains empty/ Alabama, Office Baroque, Some issues of History, But the place is set, Palais Antwerp, BE Lower Saxony State de la découverte, Paris, FR Ground Lost, Forumstadt Chancellery, Berlin, DE To Seminar, Performance Park, Graz, AU and Lecture, BAK, Ground Lost, Galarie Utrecth, NL BiographY 17

2013 RESIDENCIES Ghost Dance/Zombie 2011-2015 Telescope, Arcade, Villa Romana, Florence, IT London, UK

2008-09 2012 Istanbul Residency Program, Site Sheffield, UK Platform Garanti IRP, TR 2003-04 2011 Rijksakademie van Jeremiah Day as part of Beeldende Kunsten/Dutch More Soup & Tart, Barbican Ministry of Education, Centre, London, UK Culture and Science

2010 2000 LA Homicide, Ellen de Bruijne Beyond Baroque Foundation, Projects, Amsterdam, NL Los Angeles, US Lowndes County, Prologue Objectif, Antwerp, BE Jefferson Project 1-2-3-4, Arcade, London, UK

2009 with Simone Forti and Fred Dewey as part of Talk Show, ICA, London, UK Tarlabasi Crawl, Arcade, London, UK

2008 Jefferson Project 1-2-3-4, Center, Berlin, DE

2007 Maquis, Signal, Malmö, SE

2006 Collaboration with We Vs. Death (The Gary Webb Project), Cubitt, London, UK Rendez-vous / Practical Information 18

Exbition Exhibtion place Press Contact from 03|10|20 to 10|01|21 Le Lait centre d’art contemporain [email protected] 28 rue Rochegude T. : +33 (0)9 63 03 98 98 Opening 81000 Albi M. : +33 (0)6 72 82 22 78 on 2 october 2020 at 6.30 pm Opening Information From Wedeneday to Sunday T. : +33 (0)9 63 03 98 84 Meeting with Jeremiah Day From 1 to 6 pm [email protected] Tuesday 29 September at 6.15 Free entrance, accessible to all www.centredartlelait.com pm at the Médiathèque Pierre facebook & instagram : Amalric in Albi. Administration centredartlelait Duration : 1 hour / Free Entrance Carré Public 6 rue Jules Rolland 81000 Albi

Echoing the exhibition, an event dedicated to the performance titled The Opposite of Fatalism is being organized in the premises of the art centre on Saturday 26 September 2020. It will involve, in particular, Jeremiah Day, Claire Filmon, Adrian Schindler and Chicks On Speed.

Partners Exhibition Partners

Events Partners Institutionnal Partners

The Art Centre is part of the DCA networks (French Association for the Development of Art Centres), the Air du midi network(Regional Associations of Midi Pyrénées Art Centres) and the LMAC (Midi-Pyrénées Laboratory of Contemporary Art Mediations) The Le Lait art centre has the "centre d’art contem­po­rain d’inté­rêt natio­nal" label.