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16.12.11 We are participating in this group show at Project Space Leeds:

14 January - 31 March 2012

Private View Friday 13 Januray 2012, 6-8pm

Project Space Leeds
2 Riverside Way
Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS1 4EH

Glamourie is an introduction to a more-or-less affiliated group of too-little-known contemporary British artists. An accompanying publication will be released in March.

Curated By David Steans

featuring Simeon Barclay/ Joseph Buckley/ Sophie Carapetian/ Kitty Clark/ Matthew Crawley/ Chris Evans/ Johannes Fa/ Josephine Flynn/ Jason Forrest/ Pil & Galia Kollectiv/ L Foundation/ Joseph Lewes/ Ant Macari/ Rory Macbeth/ Paul McDevitt/ Harry Meadley/ Harold Offeh/ Hardeep Pandhal/ Richard Rigg/ Leon Sadler/ Stefan Sadler/ Rhiannon Silver/ Iona Smith/ Paul Smith/ David Steans

Events:

Dark Heart > M1 by Chris Bloor < Derek Horton Throughout Project dates TBC

'Snap Like A Diva' workshop with Harold Offeh Saturday 25th February 2012, 2-4pm

3.12.11 WE are supporting Duchess Says on Monday 12.12.11 at 20:00 at C.A.M.P., 70 City Road, London. Tickets on sale here.

19.11.11 Better Future, Wolf-Shaped will be screened on 25.11.11 at Tate St. Ives as part of Fieldclub & Friends Late at Tate:

29.10.11 Jeffrey Vallance at xero, kline & coma:

Jeffrey Vallance
Reliquaries

Statue Blessed by Pope John Paul II and Drive-by Yassir Arafat 2006

xero, kline & coma
258 Hackney Road
London E2 7SJ

www.xero-kline-coma.com

Private view: Thursday November 17th 19:00 – 21:00
Exhibition open: 19.11.11 – 18.12.11 Sat. – Sun. 12:00 – 18:00

Jeffrey Vallance’s reliquaries don’t contain the remains of the saints canonised by the church. They are not relics by any consensus shared by a group of believers or cult members. Instead, they are propositions, offering the suggestion that a secular culture much more focused on the individual might still have a place for ritual and even faith. Perhaps all we lack is the physical organization of our historical, political and cultural landscape, our modern day mythology even, into agreed forms like these. Bringing together a dead president, memorabilia from an audience with a pope and a king and the remains of a frozen chicken laid to rest, these carefully crafted objects go beyond the role of the performance prop as an art commodity, juxtaposing the banal, the personal and the political to form a hagiography for the present day. Jeffrey Vallance is an artist, writer, curator, explorer and simulacrum hunter.

More information here.

11.10.11 xero, kline & coma re-opens Thursday 13.10.11 with new work by Patrick Moran and Liam Wright-Higgins:

Ouroboroscopic Ways
Patrick Moran and Liam Wright-Higgins

xero, kline & coma
258 Hackney Road
London E2 7SJ

www.xero-kline-coma.com

Private view: Thursday October 13th 19:00 – 21:00
Exhibition open: 15.10.11 – 6.11.11 Sat. – Sun. 12:00 – 18:00

Over the road and through the lashing rain, the Bingo hall throbs pissed. My nostrils dilate. My lungs fill. My ribs round. Denim and Lynx Africa and vaginal mucus. Bow wow wow. Bone. Urea. Diesel. Tussles. Spice and sauce and the musk on the tips of outstretched fingers. No throat. No teeth. No tongue. I smell the sponge and blood of rotting wood. I smell the hours etched in filth along the pavement and up the walls. I smell the meat and the oil of the meat and the bone of the meat. Bow wow wow. I smell conker pith and malt vinegar. Gold. Bath salts. Syrup. Brine-bitten tin. Breath. Arf. Stalking the puckered and shitty arse of a plump staffie cross. Its neat tuck. Its gear and tackle and trim. Wow bow wow.

A thousand drowned horses. Nautical miles of slurry. Spunk fogged expanses. Nautical horses of drowned caves. The stink of almonds, veined fractures, mould-furred aporia. A girth. Flaccid appendages. A red pong. Growl and snap. A fat red pong.

14.9.11 WE are playing live at King Kong Club in Berlin on 22.9.11 and then at the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club in London on 7.10.11:

We are showing a video in the exhibition All I Can See is the Management at Gasworks gallery, opening Thursday 6.10.11, 18:00 - 21:00:

All I Can See is the Management

7 October 2011 - 11 December 2011

Pauline Boudry & Renate, Lorenz KP Brehmer, Filipa César Eulàlia, Amy Feneck, Pil & Galia Kollectiv, Darcy Lange, Stuart Marshall, Allan Sekula

All I Can See is the Management is an exhibition and programme of events that looks at how artists address the pervasiveness of managerial culture from the late 1970s to today.

The exhibition brings together historical and contemporary artworks that consider how late capitalist approaches to working life play out at work, in education and at home. It focuses upon the changing roles of the worker, the manager and the entrepreneur, and how these condition our understanding of other social relationships, such as those between students and teachers or among family members. It also addresses the ways in which companies have sought to enlist and manage the private aspirations and emotions of their employees. These personal capacities are increasingly considered essential to professional performance and the production of economic value, further blurring the boundaries between work and life.

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All I Can See is the Management takes its title from Stuart Marshall’s video Distinct or It's Been So Long for So Long (1979, 38 min.), an off-kilter take on the television family drama. What at first seems a trivial conversation between a heterosexual couple soon becomes an attempt to uncover the ideological constructs, gender stereotypes and economic conditions that govern the home. The same scene is restarted time and again, as if in an attempt to find the appropriate words and gestures to give new life to a long-stagnant discussion.

As the 1977 democratic elections in Spain were drawing 36 years of dictatorship to a close, conceptual artist Eulàlia was laying the groundwork for a feminist critique of representation in her landmark collages Discriminació de la dona (Discrimination of Women, 1977, ink on plastic and acetate, 6 parts, 50.5 x 75.4 cm). These incisively juxtaposed black and white reproductions of appropriated media imagery reveal the binary oppositions underpinning gender stereotypes at the time. Comparing the division of labour at home to that in the workplace, Eulàlia's montage argues against the exploitation of women. A series of prison images also underscores the further reinforcement of gender discrimination under conditions of confinement.

Establishing 'rapport' with others is the key goal of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), a psychotherapy technique widely used in management training. Based on the idea that certain patterns of behaviour can be modelled after those of individuals who have achieved ‘excellence’, NLP often seeks to align the personality of the worker with the needs of business. Made from documentary footage of an NLP session, Filipa César’s video Rapport (2007, 15 min.) focuses upon the staging of the self that takes place during this kind of group therapy.

Amy Feneck's short film Government Workers (2010, 16mm transferred to DVD, 6 min.), was made as part of a year-long residency at the Free and Parochial Secondary School in Hackney, east London. Described as an 'observational documentary', it captures the everyday life of the school. It shows how architecture and design regulate students' behaviour, touching upon how, today, British education is increasingly managed from above.

Seele und Gefühl eines Arbeiters (Soul and Feelings of a Worker, 1978-1980, silkscreen prints on polyester, 3 parts, 140 x 120 cm) by KP Brehmer (1938-97) proposes a taxonomy of worker's emotions. Influenced by Rexford B. Hersey's 1932 book Workers' Emotions in Shop and Home, the work stems from the artist's decades-long investigation of the ways in which abstracted data may be used as a political tool. Brehmer's methodology also closely aligns with the ways in which businesses have sought to quantify the personal capacities of their employees, showing how art work is a model kind of work in today's economy.

Described by the artist as ‘researches’, Darcy Lange’s Work Studies in Schools (video transferred to DVD, times variable) document the experience of teachers and students in both public and state schools in Birmingham and Oxfordshire during the years 1976 and 1977. The studies in schools were made as part of a larger series that observed people at work. By recording lessons being taught in the classroom, and then having the teachers and selected students respond to and discuss watching themselves on videotape, Lange exposes each individual’s relationship to their role in the process of education. Lange’s inquiry therefore investigates the work of the teacher in managing the pupils’ learning environment and illustrates how, within this environment, social codes and structures are reproduced and reinforced.

Allan Sekula's School is a Factory (1978-80, 14 prints, 57 x 71 cm) proposes the school as a space of continuous production. Focusing on Southern Californian community colleges, Sekula uses diagrams and half-staged, half-observational photographs to present the educational environment as a kind of social funnel, where students are acclimatised to their future position within society, dependent on their race, sex and class. Sekula illustrates how these colleges blur the distinction between student and employee, acting as training grounds that closely mimic businesses, paring down education to a simple transferral of low-level corporate skills.

In Co-Operative Explanatory Capabilities in Organizational Design and Personnel Management (2010, DVD, 23 min.), Pil and Galia Kollectiv use an online archive of images that record the history of an early computer company, transforming the documented minutiae of corporate life into an uncanny narrative. Despite its bizarre descent, the narrator's account is familiar in the post-industrial workplace; the careful observation, monitoring and management of workers’ behaviours and emotions, supported by complex bureaucratic ranking systems. In a mildly absurdist tone, the film acts to critique the fictional corporation’s bid to affect worker productivity by conflating work-time and free-time, exposing the impact this has upon the psychology of the individual.

All I Can See is the Management marks the first stage of an ongoing research. A programme of talks, screenings, workshops and contributions to Pipeline provides a further public resource for the issues raised in the exhibition.

Curated by Antonia Blocker, Robert Leckie and Helena Vilalta.

Also, we are participating in Cultivation Field: Postgraduate Symposium:

Wednesday 28th September 2011

The premise for this symposium is that cultivation is leading to new art practices deserving of critical inquiry and articulation. Whether in the garden or allotment, the soup kitchen or the road, on wasteland or the tower block, or wherever there are cracks in the system, cultivation provokes questions about human being’s relation to and encounter with the earth and its growth systems and operations. The purpose of this Symposium is to encourage discursive exchange and productive encounter between art practitioners and researchers whose work explores plant-based material, land use, growth, ecosystems, economy, taxonomy, environment, power and chaos in the field of cultivation.

Location: Cultivation Field Postgraduate Symposium The Minghella Building University of Reading Whiteknights RG6 6UR

Deadline for registration: 23rd September 2011. To register for the Symposium please fill in the online. Contact: cultivationfield@pgr.reading.ac.uk

Link to travel and map of Whiteknights Campus

THIS EVENT IS FREE

Our exhibition in Tokyo opens on Saturday the 17th of September:

Cross Counter

Dates: 17.9.11 - 2.10.11
Open Hours: 12:00−19:00

Venue 1: XYZ collective 2-30-20 1F Tsurumaki, Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan, 154-0016 http://xyzcollective.org/

Venue 2: CAPSULE 2-7-12 Ikejiri, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo Japan, 154-0001 http://www.capsule-gallery.jp/

Chicks on Speed / Peter Donaldson / Ruth Ewan / Pil and Galia Kollectiv / Peter McDonald / Kate Owens / Hideyuki Sawayanagi

Live: Soshiro Matsubara / Fuyuki Yamakawa 17.9.11 at 16:30 (1D 500yen)

And we have a screening in Peckham:

Screening of video art selected by Cedar Lewisohn at N/V PROJECTS as part of PAMI: Peckham Artist Moving Image

72 Copeland Road SE15 3SU Peckham

OPENING NIGHT: WEDNESDAY, 14th of September 2011 / 6 - 8 pm Thursday 15th - Sunday 18th of September 2011 / 1 - 6pm

works by:

Ruth Ewan
Ruth Ewan has created a video for the English folk song Cutty Wren'. She asked musician David Coulter to whistle the tune, and invited 10-year old Fred Woodley Evans to create a simple animation sequence, referencing the song's lyrics. The Cutty Wren is one of the earliest known protest songs, and there are number of different interpretations of its meaning. Ewan chooses to focus on itsassociations with the English Peasants Revolt of 1381. The revolt wasprecipitated by King Richard II's attempts to enforce a poll tax on hispeople. The song tells the story of the capture of the wren - a symbol for the King - and its division amongst the poor.

Liam Gillick and Corinne Jones
Liam Gillick and Corinne Jones’s video ‘Earthed’ is a collaboration between the two artists. The video shows the constant construction and reconstruction of equally sized blocks of wood. The simple small-scale forms resemble minimalist sculpture, and indeed, Gilllick’s own sculptural works. The video celebrates the child-like simplicity of these forms, no matter the scale, and suggests you could perhaps make your own.Liam Gillick and Corinne Jones recently released an EP of their collaborative music. For information go to www.brigadecommerz.com

Pil and Galia Kollectiv
Pil and Galia Kollectiv’s video “WE Will Follow Him” is part of an ongoing project, in collaboration with Victor M. Jakeman and Ruth Angel Edwards, which sets out to subvert the individualism of pop music by altering song lyrics from “I” to “WE”. The visual style of their video mixes 1970’s new wave and punk aesthetics with “retro futurist” outfits inspired by avant garde costume design. Pil and Galia Kollectiv recently released a 10’’ vinyl record of songs from the WE project. For more information go to www.kollectiv.co.uk/WE

Tai Shani
Tai Shani’s video ‘Anti-Heroine Collapse Generator’ is a dark homage to the French New Wave cinema of the 1950 and 60’s. The video and lyrics depict a tragic romance viewed from multiple perspectives. Set simultaneously as a staged drama and in a cinema, the line between viewer and actor is blurred. The “music” in Anti-Heroine Collapse Generator is in three parts, first an introduction played on an organ then a spoken word dialogue and finally an a cappella ballad. For more information on the work of Tai Shani go to www.taishani.com The above films were commissioned by Tate Shots. They asked artists who use music in their practice to each make a music video.

PAMI is an initiative to highlight moving image artwork, made by an international selection of artists, in a concentrated four-day programme of exhibitions and events across Peckham. It runs from 15th - 18th September 2011. Participating organisations: The Sunday Painter, Arcadia Missa, Lucky PDF, Bold Tendencies 5, Son Gallery, SG Project Space, Khan's Bargains, Sassoon Gallery, N/V_Projects, New Gallery, Your Body Is A Temple, FIELD, Studio Downturn, Flat Time House

www.pami.org.uk | www.thenullandvoid.blogspot.com

16.7.11 We are screening some vegetable sci-fi films in Hackney Wick as part of Hackney Wicked on 29.7.11 at 21:00:

They Came from the Earth: A screening of science fiction films concerning vegetables

Time: July 29th, 21:00 – 22:00

Location: Folly for a Flyover Under the A12 Flyover, Hackney Wick London, E9 5HW

The Folly can be accessed by foot or bicycle along the towpath or from the Eastway. Nearest train station is Hackney Wick for the London Overground. Buses: 26, N26, 30, 236, 276, 388, 488

image: Gelbart, Vermin, Berlin / Germany. 23´09´´, 2011

“The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution!” Paul Cezanne

Bloodsucking evil created by radiation, soilent creatures sent here to terraform our planet, controlling all elements of the biological down to the cellular level. Come the vegetable rebellion, they will have their day. They came here and built their organic machines from giant vegetables. But what is the purpose of these machines? Although predominantly benign, these entities consisting of mainly carbohydrates finally get their retribution. The ultimate form of revolution arises from the earth, as subservient salad turns to violent vengeance. This program of short artist films, television excerpts and trailers presents a cornucopia of catastrophic calamities and inexplicable encounters between man and vegetable, curated by xero, kline & coma and featuring the work of Gelbart (with Felix Kubin), Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Charlie Tweed and others.

Also on Friday, we have some work in an exhibition opening at Cartel Gallery:

The Long Avant-Garde

PV 29th September 6-9pm
Show continues until 10th September, open Wed-Sat 12-4pm

www.cartelgallery.com

Cartel Gallery
Deptford Police Station
114-116 Amersham Vale
London SE14 6LG

Phone: 07971 292 817
Email: cartel@cartelgallery.com

Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Freee, Artlab, Clegg and Guttman, Plastique Fantastique, Hut Project, AAS, Carrot Workers Collective, Beagles and Ramsay, Chto Delat? and SALT

curated by Dave Beech

Raymond Williams reminds us that recuperation is never final. Recuperation is a complex, conflictual process. It is never one-way, automatic, inevitable, 100% complete and irreversible. Williams is one of the few on the Left who has attended seriously to questions around the persistence of hope and critique in the most objectionable of circumstances. But resistance calls for perseverance and resourcefulness if the struggle is not going to be lost. The Left has been better at theorizing the impossibility of social and cultural transformation, and they have excelled in theorizing the ease with which the existing structures absorb all opposition, not least in questions related to artistic struggle, radical artistic practice and the politics of art. We have been told time and time again that the avant-garde is dead. The avant-garde is no longer on the outskirts of cultural power - it is taught in the universities, hangs in the museums, fills bookshelves. Some wish for the avant-garde to stop spoiling art's sacred spaces. But the cultural, ideological and aesthetic struggle is incomplete and has not been stopped. It is the persistence of the avant-garde's struggle after recuperation that we would call the 'long avant-garde'. DB.

Cartel is a curatorial consortium created by Anthony Gross and Bea de Souza - future exhibitions in 2011 will be curated by Eliza Tan (Sep) and Per Hüttner & Anne Klontz (Nov).

Also, we are showing films in Manila at the Ishmael Bernal Gallery:

Videos of Pil and Galia Kollectiv

15.7.11 - 5.8.11

Ishmael Bernal Gallery
Osmena Ave btw
Magsaysay Ave & Roces St
Quezon City,
Philippines 1101

30.6.11 Epic Sea Battle at Night: A Revolutionary Play Permeated with the Economic Thinking of Milton Friedman in London for Again, A Time Machine at the Showroom on Tuesday, the 5th of July:

Again, A Time Machine A Book Works touring exhibition in five parts Part Three

The Showroom, London Performative Talks - Future Orientation

Tuesday 5 July 6.30-9pm The Showroom, London 63 Penfold St.
The event is free, booking is essential.

Telephone Book Works on 020 7247 2203 or e-mail gavin@bookworks.org.uk

Again, A Time Machine is a fluid tour, reinventing itself as work moves from venue to venue. Based on new commissions and archival presentations, it will generate ephemera, performance and printed material, in response to a theme that plays with and inverts notions of time, archive, distribution and received pasts and perfect futures. Future Orientation, presents three practices that forge the absurd and future-orientated with the collective and distributive. In a night of ritual, images and choreography, the distribution of printed matter as a form of gangster economics encounters the circulation of not-human mass propaganda and the exploration of new uses for past futures.

The second event for Again, A Time Machine at The Showroom, London, Future Orientation, presents three practices that forge the absurd and future-orientated, with the collective and distributive. Pil and Galia Kollectiv present Epic Sea Battle at Night: A Revolutionary Play Permeated with the Economic Thinking of Milton Friedman, reanimating a Maoist painting for a capitalist future; Alexis Zavialoff, of Motto, Berlin explores the conditions of print and the circulation of printed matter; and the performative fiction Plastique Fantastique deliver three mythopoetic communiqués.

Provisional schedule: 6.45pm Pil and Galia Kollectiv 7.25pm Alexis Zavialoff, Motto 8.00pm Plastique Fantastique.... 9.00pm End

Doors will open at 6.30pm. Performances will start before 7pm. Due to the nature of these performances late arrivals will have to wait for the performances to end before being admitted.

Pil and Galia Kollectiv are London based artists, writers and curators working in collaboration. In their ongoing exploration of the relationship between art and politics, Pil and Galia Kollectiv re-enact a scene from the Chinese play Epic Sea Battle at Night. Originally staged in 1967 to commemorate two of the People's Liberation Army's military triumphs over the Taiwanese, stills from the play were published in an English language pamphlet designed to educate Western Imperialist in Maoist policy. Today, these images are clear representations of ideology. By contrast, neo-liberal, late capitalism shirks from such blatant displays of propaganda. Juxtaposing the visual language of ideology with the text of the capitalist manifesto, Pil and Galia Kollectiv's reinterpretation of Epic Sea Battle at Night is a tableau vivant commentary on the exploitation of art for ideological purposes, complete with costumes, props and theatrical lighting.

Motto, was started by Alexis Zavialoff in 2007, as a distribution company for Switzerland. Motto Berlin, the first permanent store opened in 2008 and is dedicated to magazines, books and self-published printed matter. Permanent shops now operate in Zurich and, in collaboration with Fillip, in Vancouver, each running a programme of presentations, publication launches and screening. As well as this, Motto continues to distribute, and also appears as a temporary travelling bookshop in locations that have included Vilnius, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Moscow, Vancouver, Stuttgart, Athens, Seoul, Tokyo, Paris. Motto will appear at Spike Island, for the Zine fair in October, held as part of Again, A Time Machine.

Formed by David Burrows, Simon O'Sulivan and others, Plastique Fantastique is a collaborative investigative fiction of aesthetics, the sacred and politics – produced through comics, performances, text, installations and shrines and assemblages.

24.6.11 Publication launch in Frankfurt:

BENEDICTIONS Issue 1: 'Ciao Peter Gidal'
LAUNCH At Economy, Frankfurt Monday 27th June 2011

BENEDICTIONS is a project by Patricia Lennox-Boyd and Jamie Stevens. An indefinite series of publications in different formats that are each organised in response to a single piece of correspondence. C o n t r i b u t o r s to each issue are invited by the editors to construct a response to the document or its author.

'Ciao Peter Gidal': Phillida Cheetham, J.A. Harrington, Louis Henderson, Morag Keil, Anja Kirschner and David Panos, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Robert Leckie, Gil Leung, Helena Vilalta

BENEDICTIONS @ ECONOMY
Monday 27th June 2011

16MM SCREENING: PETER GIDAL C/O/N/S/T/R/U/C/T (1974) CLOUDS (1969) + LIVE COMMENTARY FROM BENEDICTIONS:
A screening of two films by structuralist film-maker and theorist Peter Gidal, accompanied by a public reading of the editorial from Benedictions Issue One. AULA, STÄDELSCHULE - 3-4PM 'CIAO PETER GIDAL' A short-lived exhibition to mark the launch of the first issue of Benedictions, a project by Patricia Lennox-Boyd and Jamie Stevens. Featuring a small number of works, documents and facsimiles by Rachel Reupke, Andy Warhol, Peter Gidal and others.

KUBELKA KITCHEN, STÄDELSCHULE - 7.30PM TIL LATE

Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste - Städelschule Dürerstraße 10 60596 Frankfurt am Main.

www.economy-projects.com

18.5.11 New performance Epic Sea Battle at Night: A Revolutionary Play Permeated with the Economic Thinking of Milton Friedman at Radar Loughborough as part of THIS IS NOT A PERFORMANCE OR A LECTURE! 17-18 June 2011:

THIS IS NOT A PERFORMANCE OR A LECTURE! 17-18 June 2011

Radar presents two days of discussion and new commissions that begin a dialogue about the intersection between performance and visual practice. In recent years the division between the two has become increasingly blurred, breaking down some of the often imaginary differences between them. One area of increasing interest to practitioners working in both fields has been the performance lecture. Even though formally quite limited they offer unique and complex possibilites and challenges. On Saturday 18 June we will present seven new commissions responding to this format. They will inhabit spaces across the campus purposefully meandering from performance to lecture and back again , testing what might constitute a performance lecture rather than demonstrating a unified approach. As works combine explanation with a more overtly fictional narrative, moving between the theatrical and instructional, exchanging an authorative voice with one that is more unreliable, the programme will challenge traditional notions of these particular forms of imparting either knowledge or entertainment. The day of performance lectures will be accompanied by a symposium on Friday 17 June, which will examine the changing nature of performance, and the use of performance within a visual arts context.The symposium will include the presentation of a recent live work by Janice Kerbel.

Friday 17 June – 2.00pm-6.30pm - FREE

Cope Auditorium

Symposium: Visual/Performance Interface: Speakers include Gavin Butt, Bridget Crone, Maxie Szalwinska, and Dan Watt and with a performance of Ball Game by Janice Kerbel .

Saturday 18 June – 12noon- 6pm - FREE

Various locations – Information Point & Archive: Martin Hall

This is Not a Performance or a Lecture! Frank Abbott, Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth, Robin Deacon, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Ruth Proctor, Neal Swettenham and Michael Pinchbeck, Jennet Thomas.

Also, last exhibition before the summer break at xero, kline & coma:

David Steans - The Bin Bag

xero, kline & coma
258 Hackney Road
London E2 7SJ

www.xero-kline-coma.com

Private view: Thursday June 9th 19:00 – 21:00
Exhibition open: 11.6.11 – 3.7.11 Sat. – Sun. 12:00 – 18:00

Imagine a plastic bin-bag full of blood and meat and feathers hung from a tree. The Bin-bag contains some disembodied organs, too. An old heart, purple and green, a liver coloured likewise, and a brain, bruised and oscitant. Somehow - either through accident or malefic design - the bag lives. Its blood and meat and heart and liver and brain form rudimentary circuits inside its plastic skin and it seethes with a useless blind intelligence...

xero, kline & coma present The Bin-bag, a solo exhibition by artist David Steans. The Bin-bag is, to use the artist's own phrase, a "horror-story", comprised of text, video, sound and sculpture. According to Steans, The Bin-bag is "an experiment in... creating a new idiom for the horror-story, one fit for the twenty-first century and all its attendant anxieties... an experiment towards... the horror-story we all deserve".

Email for more information or go to www.davidsteans.com | www.glamourie.co.uk | www.thepanjpiare.co.uk

7.5.11 The fourth show at xero, kline & coma opens on 12.5.11:

Mikko Canini - Jet Black White Noise

xero, kline & coma
258 Hackney Road
London E2 7SJ

www.xero-kline-coma.com

Private view: Thursday May 12th 19:00 – 21:00
Exhibition open: 14.5.11 – 5.6.11 Sat. – Sun. 12:00 – 18:00

The exhibition began with the receipt of a broken .doc. Masses of nonlexical ASCII characters had ordered themselves into overlapping blocks and clouds, the intended message derendered by an unknown system that had imposed its own grammar. A spectral system, embedded in the original, liberated by – what? An encoding error? Translation? System glitch? The data was there in the image, but where was the information? Email for more information or go to Mikko Canini's website.

For more information contact: info@xero-kline-coma.com

1.5.11 Exhibition featuring our text on the Museum of American Art - Berlin:

Out of a Stone

Banner Repeater
Platform 1
Hackney Downs Network Rail
Dalston Lane E8

private view: Saturday May 7th, 6-9pm - 8th May.

A two day exhibition with new work from Guy Benfield (U.S.), Kate Newby (N.Z.), Ron Tran (C.A.), Virginia Overell (A.U.), and Campbell Patterson (N.Z.) This exhibition is accompanied by a text in draft form by London based artists and writers Pil & Galia Kollectiv, Rebecca Lamarre, Renee So, Willem Weismann, and Kentaro Yamada.

Curated by Daniel Munn with assistant curator Lydia Cowpertwait.

http://www.bannerrepeater.org/now

28.4.11 Utopia Ltd. opens tomorrow at Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, Ireland:

Utopia Ltd. A new exhibition of work opens at Highlanes Gallery on Friday 29 April 2011 at 6.00pm

Highlanes Gallery is delighted to announce the opening of Utopia Ltd.. The exhibition curated by two exhibiting artists Mary-Ruth Walsh and David Mabb and was first shown at Wexford Arts Centre earlier this year. Utopia Ltd. was selected for the annual Drogheda Arts Festival visual arts strand at Highlanes Gallery. The exhibition will feature additional new work from a number of the artists. The exhibition opening and launch of the Drogheda Arts Festival will be performed by Gerald Nash T.D. Utopia Ltd. explores the relationship between utopian ideas and commodification, bringing together artwork by Blaise Drummond, Brendan Earley, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, David Mabb, Lizi Sanches and Mary-Ruth Walsh.

The seven artists’ work opens up a dialogue on the utopian within painting, sculpture, architecture, design and video. By rescuing, reclaiming, remapping and rebuilding, Utopia Ltd. suggests that utopian ideas persist in contemporary art, making a provocative demand on the viewer’s “capacity to produce social dreams of their own – as part of a moment of utopian praxis’. The exhibition’s title Utopia Ltd. is a satirical echo of an operetta by Gilbert and Sullivan, Utopia (Limited) or, The Flowers of Progress (1893), in which a utopian colony is turned into a joint stock company. But it is also more immediately influenced by Matthew Beaumont’s book Utopia Ltd. Ideologies of Social Dreaming in England, 1870-1900. An exhibition guide and programme of events will accompany the exhibition. Utopia Ltd. continues until 3 August, 2011.

14.4.11 We are included in Benedictions at Limoncello Gallery, 21.4.11, details below:

6.3.11 WE will be playing live at the ICA on 8.4.11.

WE: Pil & Galia Kollectiv

8 April 2011,, 20:00

£5

WE is the ghost of the future of the left. To perform political speech, you have to say WE and we all know this WE will exist as a result of what I have said now. - Slavoj Zizek

It is Marx who, for ‘general intellect’, uses the term ‘social individual’. We can postulate that the general is something pre-individual, a kind of general consciousness that exists before individuals form, and from which they form. This general pre-individual is a WE that exists before the different I’s develop, so is not the sum of all I’s. - Paolo Virno

The individual can be sacrificed to a historical cause that exceeds him. [...] It is only by dissolving itself into a project that exceeds him [that a subjective reality can be created]. The WE constructed in and by this project is the only thing that is truly real—subjectively real for the individual who supports it. The individual, truth be told, is nothing. The subject is the new man, emerging at the point of self-lack. The individual is thus, in its very essence, the nothing that must be dissolved into a WE-subject. - Alain Badiou

WE is a live performance by Pil and Galia Kollectiv, featuring Victor M. Jakeman and Ruth Angel Edwards. Challenging the individualism of the Western pop song, WE reveals the latent politics of the love song and transforms chart hits by annihilating their liberal subject and replacing it with a collective consciousness. Through the simple substitution of the plural for the singular, intimacy becomes a form of collective action and the unique the universal. Despite being the mass product of an anonymous culture industry, the very premise of the pop song is one of extreme individualism, elevating the ‘one’ subject of romantic desire above any other and declaring one moment in time more significant (‘when I first saw you’) than any other.

As a result, even though the pop song is often the outcome of the labour of producers, engineers and technicians, it is associated with the strong fictional character of the pop star. WE reinjects collectivity into this framework, exploring the tension between the dystopian quality of the totalitarian mass and the utopian promise of a communal project. Inspired by the dystopian fiction of Yevgeny Zamyatin and the minimal synth covers of pop classics made by obscure DiY groups in the late 1970s and early 1980s, WE follows in the footsteps of bands like The Better Beatles, who sought to improve on the canon of popular music by stripping it bare, even.

http://www.ica.org.uk/28653/Live-Art/WE-Pil-Galia-Kollectiv.html

Also, the third show at xero, kline & coma opens on 7.4.11:

Plastique Fantastique TV
David Burrows & Simon O'Sullivan & others

xero, kline & coma
258 Hackney Road
London E2 7SJ
www.xero-kline-coma.com

Private view:
Thursday April 7th 19:00 – 21:00

Exhibition open: 9.4.11 – 1.5.11
Sat. – Sun. 12:00 – 18:00

xero, kline & coma

11.2.11 The second show at xero, kline & coma opens on 10.3.11:

Ychen Bannog
Art Exhibition of King Conny Wobble

xero, kline & coma
258 Hackney Road
London E2 7SJ

www.xero-kline-coma.com

Private view:
Thursday March 10th 19:00 – 21:00

Exhibition open: 12.3.11 – 27.3.11
Sat. – Sun. 12:00 – 18:00

There are many stories of the Ychen Bannog - the long horned oxen. These were the strongest oxen in the world, but there were only two of them and one could not live without the other. They were often used to haul monsters from their lairs, such as the dreaded Afanc, the water monster that lived in the river conway near Betws-y-coed. The creature was enticed from its cave by a young girl it had fallen in love with, but although the towns people managed to put chains round it, it clawed off one of the girls breasts and and escaped. Finally, it was left to the Ychen Bannog to haul the Afanc from its hiding place, they did so, but such was the struggle that the eye of one of the oxen fell to the ground. This was so large that it formed a pool, which is still known as Pwll Llygad ych - the pool of the ox's eye. The oxen were then taken to Llanddewibrefi in Cardigan, where they were employed to haul an enormous boulder to build the church. The work proved too much for them however, and inseparable to the last they died from exhaustion.

- excerpt from the Readers Digest book of Folklore Myths and Legends of Britain

King Conny Wobble reigned for a day in the time of the rule of Edward the Confessor, allowing the subordinate classes to take revenge on their masters. For Ychen Bannog, xero, kline & coma will show handcrafted musical instruments and films about their ritual use, accompanied by masks, prints and artifacts forming an alternative folklore of the British Isles. The exhibition charts the history of the drum and the cult of the Drummers of Tedworth, as well as displaying a hurdy gurdy in the form of a church.

For more information contact: info@xero-kline-coma.com

3.2.11 We are showing films in an exhibition at the Wexford Art Centre:

Utopia Ltd. 12th February - 12th March 2011

Group exhibition curated by David Mabb and Mary Ruth Walsh

Artists: Blaise Drummond, Brendan Earley, Pil & Galia Kollectiv, David Mabb, Lizi Sánchez, Mary Ruth Walsh

Exhibition Opening & Tour: Friday 11th February at 6pm

Wexford Arts Centre is delighted to host a group exhibition entitled Utopia Ltd from Saturday 12th February to Saturday 12th March 2011. Utopia Ltd. explores the relationship between utopian ideas and commodification, bringing together artwork by Blaise Drummond, Brendan Earley, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, David Mabb, Lizi Sanchez and Mary-Ruth Walsh. The seven artists' work opens up a debate on the utopian within painting, sculpture, architecture, design and video. The works in Utopia Ltd. represent modernist architecture and design in its various mutations within a spectacularised, commodified 20th century consumer society. In these works, the utopian dream seems to burst through again and again, despite, rather than because of, the permutations of commodity culture. By picturing the past, present and possible future the works destabilize fixed linear time. By rescuing, reclaiming and re-picturing, Utopia Ltd. suggests that utopian ideas persist in contemporary art, making a provocative demand on the viewer's capacity to produce utopian dreams of their own. The exhibition's title Utopia Ltd. is a satirical echo of an operetta by Gilbert and Sullivan, Utopia (Limited) or, The Flowers of Progress (1893), in which a utopian colony is turned into a joint stock company.

The exhibition was curated by Mary Ruth Walsh and David Mabb. Pil & Galia Kollectiv's video, The Future Trilogy can be seen in Wexford Arts Centre's theatre at the following times: Saturday 12th February, 3-4pm Thursday 17th February, 1-2pm Friday 18th February, 1-2pm Thursday 3rd March, 1-2pm Friday 4th March, 1-2pm Saturday 5th March, 3-4pm Thursday 10th March, 1-2pm Friday 11th March, 1-2pm Wexford Art Centre's galleries are open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am-5.30pm and admission is free. School tours and artist led workshops can be arranged upon request. The workshops focus on the work of exhibiting artists using observation, discussion and a variety of practical and artistic techniques For further information on the artists or exhibition, or to request images please contact Catherine Bowe, Visual Arts Manager, Wexford Arts Centre on +353 (0)53 91 23764 or email catherine@wexfordartscentre.ie.

Images (left to right): Pil & Galia Kollectiv, Co-Operative Explanatory Capabilities in Organizational Design and Personnel Management. 2010, DVD, 23 min. Blaise Drummond, La Façade Libre (Live Forever in Perfect Health and Happiness), oil, acrylic and collage on canvas, 2011

29.1.11 Part of the video for Asparagus: A Horticultural Ballet will be shown at the Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast as part of Dry Grass and Shadows:

Group exhibition curated by Ben Crothers

Artists: Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Laura MacGowan, Ryan Moffett, Zoe Murdoch, Charles Walsh and Summer Zickefoose.

Golden Thread Gallery
84-94 Great Patrick Street
Belfast Co Antrim
Northern Ireland
BT1 2LU

Dates: 03/02/2011 to 25/02/2011

Times: Sat 10:30 AM - 4:00 PM; Tue - Fri 10:30 AM - 5:30 PM

An exhibition of contemporary artworks in a range of media, from fine art and photography to installation, video and performance. The works featured in the exhibition - by artists from the UK, Ireland and the USA - are connected through their engagement or involvement with the natural world. The works are conceptually, thematically and aesthetically varied but all demonstrate a consideration of, intervention with or reimagining of natural landscapes.

23.1.11 We are speaking in Germany:

CHICKS ON SPEED present GIRLMONSTER # 12 "REDEFING THE NOW"

music by GO CHICK (Taiwan)
performance by ALEX MURRAY-LESLIE and ANAT BEN-DAVID
lecture by PIL AND GALIA KOLLECTIV
hosted by MELISSA LOGAN special: POP UP VOODOO STORE! art, music, fashion, action!

DATES:

HAMBURG 28/1/2011 // 20:30 // KAMPNAGEL
DÜSSELDORF 29/1/2011 // 20:00 // FFT

6.1.11 Our new project space, xero, kline & coma, opens 27.1.11 with an exhibition of works from the Museum of American Art:

Seth Siegelaub: Exhibitions, 2069
Collection of the Museum of American Art – Berlin

xero, kline & coma
258 Hackney Road
London E2 7SJ

www.xero-kline-coma.com

Private view:
Thursday January 27th 19:00 – 21:00

Exhibition open: 29.1.11 – 27.2.11
Sat. – Sun. 12:00 – 18:00

The Museum of American Art – Berlin presents the inaugural exhibition at xero, kline & coma, a new project space run by artists Pil and Galia Kollectiv.

The Museum of American Art, which opened its doors in 2004 in Berlin, contains a collection of paintings and objects that ‘repeat’ significant works from 20th century American-cum-International Art History. The Museum of American Art is the museum of The Museum of Modern Art, where “American” stands for “Modern” in the sense of “individualism”, “internationalism” and “progress”, an American story which was originally based only on European artifacts. It inverts the logic of the ready-made: in the case of the ready-mades, non-art objects are transformed into art objects by changing their context, while in MoAA traditional art objects like paintings are transformed into non-art artifacts. These exhibits function like souvenirs from an obsolete practice of art, selected specimens of our collective memory, set within a destabilized chronology of meta-art-history. From the future perspective of MoAA, the shock of the new is the shock of the old. For Seth Siegelaub: Exhibitions, 2069, the Museum of American Art – Berlin will stage an exhibition about the history of exhibitions, based on Siegelaub’s exhibition catalogues from the 1960s.

For more information contact: info@xero-kline-coma.com

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