Visitors Guide January — April 2016 Program January — April 2016 Para | Fictions 29 January 2016 — 9 April 2017 GROUND FLOOR GesammttkkunnsttMeshuggahhLaandtttt Charlemagne Palestine 29 January — 1 May 2016 SECOND FLOOR Relational Stalinism — The Musical Michael Portnoy 29 January — 6 March 2016 THIRD FLOOR Director’s Welcome In an age of constant reformations, be they Both filled with boundlessmeshuggah energy, aesthetic, political, ecological, and even New Yorkers Portnoy and Palestine, with the spiritual, what does it mean to have vision? latter representing more of a parent generation, This is a question both artists and institutions offer us a feast of resistance; opening up routes must continuously ask themselves. through which to reflect upon art and its institutions today; the radical ways in which At the heart of artist and performer Michael performance can be embedded in one’s Portnoy’s exhibition, or in his words “six weeks œuvre without being co-opted as institutional of world bending”, is a bold oppositional marketing departments’ preferred “medium stance against certain breeds of contemporary du jour”. art-making today. It is his view that the art world has recently (and uncannily) supplied And on our ground floor, Witte de With con- us with a perfectly timed breed of perfor- tinues its program of solo commissions, mance, which is asking to be challenged and commencing the year with Berlin-based duo improved. Relational Stalinism – The Musical Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff, who expand presents us with a proposal for (a) new on their investigation into linguistic tropes as breed(s) of performances, framed as a form employed by entrepreneurial start-up’s. of generative critique, that stretch participants’ language and behavior in the service of At our bookshop pick up a copy of our new radical transmutation, invention and abstract publication, in which invited artists reflected forms of communication. with us on current developments in con- temporary art, its landscape and possibilities, GesammttkkunnsttMeshuggahhLaandtttt, at the turn of our quarter century anniversary. on the other hand, takes us on a vivid journey And please also enjoy the articles that are through the universe of performer, sound continuously published on our online WdW and visual artist Charlemagne Palestine, whose Review at wdwreview.org. rituals and shamanistic intoxications are on display through a selection of his extensive With best wishes, and to an imaginative new body of work, including his early performances, season in 2016! extraordinary experimental music annotations, visual artworks that are inhabited by stuffed Defne Ayas animals as well as his expanded ideas around God-Bear Museum. Adorned with shmatas, trembling walls and maximalist piano tunes, GesammttkkunnsttMeshuggahhLaandttt, co- commissioned with Kunsthalle Vienna, marks Palestine’s first large scale solo exhibition in the Netherlands. Para | Fictions GROUND FLOOR If both art and literature constitute forms of Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff thought, what is generated or lost in slippages, Foreword translations, and activations between the two? 29 January – 10 April 2016 Are their dividing lines arbitrary or highly Berlin-based duo Calla Henkel and Max dissoluble? How do both forms enfold and Pitegoff present a configuration of old unfold across the exhibition space? What and new works centered around their investi- relates making to writing, viewing to reading? gation into consumption and connectivity of entrepreneurial start-ups. An excerpt from Witte de With launches Para | Fictions, a cycle a novel-in-progress by New York-based of sustained investigations on its ground floor, artist and writer Emily Segal (co-founder of which take these questions as their focus the collective K-HOLE and former creative through the practice of six artists; Calla Henkel director at Genius), bridging the worlds of & Max Pitegoff, Mark Geffriaud, Laure Prouvost, technology and art, will run alongside their Oscar Santillan, and Lucy Skaer. Each project work, unfolding in three parts over the course on display presents a different artistic methodo- of the exhibition. logy that traces each artist’s visual interests and literary underpinnings to seek the viability of repositioning ‘reference’ as ‘form’, ‘trans- UPCOMING lation’ as ‘co-authorship’. Oscar Santillan 22 April – 3 July 2016 The Para | Fictions series has been provoked by the particular correspondences between Lucy Skaer literature and visual arts in contemporary 15 July – 2 October 2016 culture; a landscape made up of disparate yet relatable topographies of influence branching Mark Geffriaud into fiction as a research methodology and 14 October 2016 – 4 January 2017 theoretical discourse around the fictional nature of the contemporary itself. Laure Prouvost 27 January – 9 April 2017 Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff, EyeEm I, 2015 GesammttkkunnsttMeshuggahhLaandtttt Charlemagne Palestine SECOND FLOOR GesammttkkunnsttMeshuggahhLaandtttt, Born in 1947, Brooklyn, in a Jewish family, a solo exhibition with artist Charlemagne Charlemagne Palestine gained recognition in Palestine, presents a selection of works from the sixties with his experimental compositions the artist’s œuvre, including early video and performances. A flamboyant part of the works, sculptures, paintings, installations, and creative scene of New York, he collaborated sound scores. Palestine’s works form a highly with choreographer Simone Forti, artists Tony personal universe of rituals, intoxication, and Conrad and Richard Serra, and performed shamanism. In the last four decades, the artist alongside avant-garde artist La Monte Young has created an extensive body of experimental and composers Terry Riley, Philip Glass, and musical compositions, bodily performances, Steve Reich. In spite of the art historical con- and, in later years, visual artworks that are sensus about that era and his contemporaries, inhabited by stuffed animals. To Palestine, teddy Palestine has always resisted being labeled a bears figure as powerful shamanic totems, minimalist, opting instead for the term “maxi- which he fondly calls Divinities. malist”. In his later years he toured through Europe, settling briefly in the Netherlands, where Central to his exhibition are a grand piano, he lived and worked in Rotterdam. which can be considered the sounding heart of the show, and a new large-scale version of the so-called God-Bear Museum Model, PUBLIC EVENT a proposal for a new kind of museum where Tuning – Detuning / Noting – Denoting music and performance find a home just as Thursday 17 March 2016, 6 pm easily as a painting would. Also part of the Moving back and forth between sound and exhibition are Palestine’s extraordinary music scripture, this evening consists of a series or sound annotations, a collection of works on of experimental performances and short paper, which aim to translate sound into image. lectures, with a special focus on Charlemagne Palestine’s visual renderings of sound included On 2 and 3 April 2016, Charlemagne Palestine in his exhibition. and Simone Forti will present a new version of their performance Illuminations at Vleeshal Organized together with DE PLAYER as part Markt, organized by Vleeshal, Middelburg. of their ongoing Pushing The Score program. A series of performances by the artist will take place throughout the exhibition. Floor Plan 6 3 5 4 1 2 PERFORMANCES 1 2 He alternates between actions for or with the camera, interweaving objective and subjective Body Music I, 1973 – 74 perspectives. 12:54 min, b/w, sound Produced by Palestine at Art / Tapes / 22 in Florence Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix You Should Never Forget The Jungle, 1975 11:09 min, colour, sound Body Music II, 1973 – 74 Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix 8:09 min b/w, sound Produced by Palestine at Art / Tapes / 22 in Florence Produced in Cologne in 1975, the video Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix work You Should Never Forget The Jungle con- tains many of the objects characteristic In the 1970s Charlemagne Palestine began to of Charlemagne Palestine: scarves, knives, extend his studies of conceptual performance cognac and teddy bears. As in most of his and body art with the help of a new medium: performances, the artist uses his body and video. The two video performances Body voice to investigate the relationship between Music I and Body Music II, both produced in body and mind. The video shows Palestine an abandoned villa in Tuscany, formed standing scantily dressed in a confined space the starting point for a series of works made and holding a glass of cognac in his hand. between 1974 and 1979. He appears to be in a trance and begins to crash into the walls, singing as he does so. At the start of Body Music I the artist kneels, His rhythmic movements bear witness to an humming meditatively, next to a stuffed animal uncontrolled passion and look like a desperate in a white room and rocks himself into a trance- attempt to break out again. The work unites like state. In the course of the work the ritual two contradictory tendencies: while the artist impression of the artist’s actions increases as devotes himself fully to his shamanistic ritual, does the tension, expressed with the help he also seems to want to free himself from of his voice and physical movements. His body the situation that threatens to stifle him. serves as a creator of resonance that ulti- Palestine addresses the relationship between mately shifts to a state of controlled ecstasy. the human being as body and the human The artist throws himself against the walls, being as rational being. This ambivalence at until he finally drops to the ground in exhaus- the root of the video works refers to ancient tion and falls silent. attitudes to the human form as a physical and “primitive” state. Body Music II continues the physical trans- lation of psychological states: Palestine runs St. Vitas Dance, 1975 8:50 min, colour, sound in a circular movement through several rooms Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix of another abandoned building and sings to himself rhythmically.