15.12.14 Last thing for 2014 - we are participating in this exhibition at Romantso in Athens:

π 05
Friday 26th of December
Ρομ?ντσο – Anaxagora 3-5
Starts at: 19:00

The 5th π event will take place on the 26th of December at ΡΟΜΑΝΤΣΟ and it consists of an exhibition titled «I thought you were the real thing” and party with New Yorker dj Adam X and Athens based SAWF, ANFS and 3,14. A one day exhibition will take place on the first and ground floor of the building and it will include multimedia installations, video projections, interactive video projections,flashing lights and colours, all under the notion of post digital cultures which will lead to an evening of festivities. The event will be streaming live at the art online exhibition space Channel Normal, which shows time based and web based art works.

"I thought you were the real thing"

It looks liquid, it is soft like jelly, pulsating like a living organism, or it might be hard like a piece of metal and its moving. It might be part of your body or it might feel like it even though its not. It controls you, you control it, it does not work and it pisses you off “would you like to open a tab or a window?” words become numbers and numbers become codes and codes become things – 10 tabs, 20 tabs, 30 tabs; you move back and forth on social networks falling in love with your computer which might loves you back.

Internet melancholy and ecstasy of communication, ambiguous feelings on nomadism through technology and the embodiment of oneself in another well designed dimension. Can we get away from materiality or are we forever bound to this body? Are we trapped or do we simply perceive the imaginary as it is socially constructed? Do we create our own world or does our world creates us? Its hard to get away from matter, even sound, the most immaterial thing, comes from matter.

Human, non-human bodies, or shapes that look like parts of bodies but they are internet gifs, or not even that; a journey through the body, bots that talk about game theory, Nicki Minaj as a feminist role model, empty chat roulettes, phallic soup and blue milk, sea paintings – kill modernism, please and lets give birth to the paradise of the truly imagined, and imaginary world. Is this thing real? Is this thing human?

Curated by: Elena Poughia

Participating artists:
Marios Athanasiou, LaTurbo Avedon, Eleni Bagaki, Elias Carella, Δεριςαμειτζορπρομπλεμιναυστραλια, Zoe Giabouldaki, HOPE, Georges Jacotey, Katerina Kana, Akis Karanos, Georgia Karydi, Valentinas Klimasauskas, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Rollin Leonard, All Matters, Lsrcv Njry, Peristeri On, Dimitris Papadatos, Eva Papamargariti, Natasha Papadopoulou, Sofia Stevi, Blu Than, Iris Touliatou, Corinna Triantafyllidis, Pavlos Tsakonas, Anna Chatzioannidi

Performance from: Georges Jacotey
Live from: Γεωργ?α Καρ?δη
DJ Set from: Yparxei provlhma Amalia Party

ΑDAM X (Sonic Groove, L.I.E.S. /US)
SAWF (Perc Trax, Modal Analysis /GR)
ANFS (Modal Analysis /GR)
3.14 (Modal Analysis /GR)
Starts at: 00.00

29.11.14 We are participating in the exhibition MIRRORCITY at the Hayward Gallery. Our installation, Concrete Gown for Immaterial Flows, will feature a series of performances of Nathan Alterman's "Morning Song" over the next couple of months:

Schwerbelastungskörper 11.10.14
Woolf 13.10.14
Peepholes 16.10.14
The Rebel 13.11.14
Holger Hiller 13.12.14

MIRRORCITY: London artists on fiction and reality
14 October 2014 – 4 January 2015

MIRRORCITY explores the effect the digital revolution has had on our experiences. London is one of the world's centres for contemporary art. MIRRORCITY shows recent work and new commissions by key emerging and established artists working in the capital today, who seek to address the challenges, conditions and consequences of living in a digital age. JG Ballard believed that reality had already exceeded the visions conjured by science fiction by the end of the 20th century. Drawing on the digital era we now live in, the artists in MIRRORCITY respond to and address this new perception of the world. Artists have always created alternative realities but recently they have been exploring where the digital and the physical space cross over and fold into each other. The exhibition considers questions specific to our time such as: ‘How can we navigate the space between the digital and the physical?’ and ‘What is the effect of advanced technologies on our lives? The engagement, innovation and complexity of the works selected for MIRRORCITY also directly or indirectly reflect the multi-faceted character of London itself.

Artists presenting artworks in a wide variety of media including painting, film and video, sculpture, drawing, sound and performance, artists in the exhibition are:

Mohammed Qasim Ashfaq; Anne Hardy; Ursula Mayer; Katrina Palmer; Laure Prouvost; Hannah Sawtell; Lindsay Seers; John Stezaker and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

New works in MIRRORCITY are by Emma McNally, Helen Marten, Daniel Sinsel, Susan Hiller and Michael Dean. New commissions are by LuckyPDF, Karen Mirza and Brad Butler, Tim Etchells, Lloyd Corporation, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Aura Satz, Tai Shani and Volumes Project.

A specially produced ‘alternative’ newspaper has been created by Tom McCarthy for MIRRORCITY. The project was conceived as a collaboration between the author and the artists featured in the exhibition. Artists have contributed a diverse and distinctive array of texts and pictures that McCarthy has edited into an otherworldly reading experience.

MIRRORCITY is curated by Stephanie Rosenthal, Chief Curator, Hayward Gallery.

Also, if you're in Sheffield, our text on sculpture and performance will be discussed at Site Gallery:

READING GROUP: TUESDAY 9 DECEMBER, 5.30PM



Our final informal reading group for 2014 will focus on an essay by Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Can Objects Perform?: Agency and Thingliness in Contemporary Sculpture and Installation.

Whilst Mel Brimfield and Gwyneth Herbert, our current residency artists are constructing wooden sets, props on wheels and chalk timelines for Barbara and Henry – The Musical, we turn to ideas provoked by Pil and Galia Kollectiv; of object-oriented philosophy, the creativity of things and the theatricality of minimalist sculpture.

This reading group will be chaired by Dr Becky Shaw, Post Graduate Research Tutor in Art and Design at Sheffield Hallam University. Becky’s research focuses on the relationship between people and the material world, and how ideas of objectivity and subjectivity dwell in objects.

Read the essay here.

All welcome, free – booking recommended.

We have also selected Sam Keogh for 30 Years of the Future at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester:

30 Years of the Future

5 December 2014 — 1 February 2015

2 Hewitt Street
Manchester
M15 4GB

0161 832 8034

info@castlefieldgallery.co.uk

Gallery opening times during exhibitions: Wed-Sun, 1-6pm

30 Years of the Future and help us celebrate our 30-year history. Since its founding in 1984, CG has been proactively supporting artists at various stages of their careers and has been privileged to work with many artists who have gone on to receive international acclaim. For 30 Years of the Future CG has asked prominent contemporary artists, curators and thinkers who have contributed to its 30-year history to nominate artists who they consider to be shaping the future of contemporary art.

Working with sculpture, painting, video and performance the nominated artists, selected from across the UK, communicate the breadth of visual art being made today and demonstrate a variety of approaches to contemporary art practice.

Nominated artists include: Josh Bitelli and Felix Melia; Hannah Clayden; Jay Delves; Kathryn Elkin; Samuel Fouracre; Danny Fox; Timothy Foxon; Evan Ifekoya; Sam Keogh; John Henry Newton; Yelena Popova; Evangelia Spiliopoulou; Nye Thompson; Finbar Ward; Thomas Yeomans.

Nominators: Dave Beech, artist, writer, and Lecturer in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts; Pavel Büchler, artist and Professor of Fine Art at Manchester Metropolitan University; JJ Charlesworth, associate editor of Art Review; Ryan Gander, artist and Patron of Castlefield Gallery; Mary Griffiths, artist and Curator of Modern Art at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Lubaina Himid, artist and Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire; Kate Jesson, Curator at Manchester Art Gallery; Pil and Galia Kollectiv, artists, writers, curators, and Lecturers in Fine Art at the University of Reading; Francis McKee, Director at the Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow, and research fellow at The Glasgow School of Art; Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects at Serpentine Gallery, London; Bob and Roberta Smith, artist, Royal Academician, Trustee for the National Campaign for the Arts, and a Patron of the National Society for Education in Art and Design; Emily Speed, artist; Corin Sworn, artist, represented Scotland at Venice Biennale 2013, and winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women 2013; Sue Webster, artist.

To coincide with 30 Years of the Future CG has commissioned Manchester-based artist Mike Chavez-Dawson to develop 30/30: a continuation of his work with concrete poetry and performance posters. To mark CG’s 30th anniversary Chavez-Dawson has developed a new piece based on answers to questions he posed to selected past and present CG staff. Weaving their experiences together to form a concrete poem poster that acts as a kinetic, visual and linguistic score. The work will be performed by poet and curator of The Dark Would an exhibition and anthology of text based art and co-curator for TEXT Festival, PhiliP Davenport and curator, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, and curator of Concrete Poetry (2011) Hayward Gallery, Richard Parry during the preview of 30 Years of the Future on Thu 4 Dec 2014.
A limited edition of 30 signed A2 black & white 30/30 posters will be available for £30 each during the exhibition (ends Sun 1 Feb 2015). Following this they will be on sale at £130 each.

Public Preview: Thu 4 Dec 2014, 6-8pm – All welcome

21.11.14 We are speaking at Material Conjectures on Friday 28.11.14:

A symposium on occasion of the exhibition
'Material Conjectures: Kwartz Kapital Konstruction Kollider'
at Beaconsfield, 22 Newport St, SE11 6AY
Friday 28.11.14
6.30 - 8.30pm

Speakers include:
- Bridget Crone https://dutchartinstitute.eu/page/6176/bridget-crone
- Pil and Galia Kollectiv http://www.reading.ac.uk/art/about/staff/p-g-kollectiv.aspx
- Matthew Poole https://www.csusb.edu/profile/matthew.poole

Active since 2011 and co-authored by the artist Dr Dale Holmes and the curator Kirsten Cooke, Material Conjectures is a project in staging productive frictions through which contested authorial positions – artist/curator – are at stake. In a symposium on 28 November, designed to bring contemporary curatorial debates into a public arena, Material Conjectures will converse with Bridget Crone, Pil and Galia Kollectiv and Matthew Poole in the context of the artist-led entity Beaconsfield.

Concession tickets available
Beaconsfield, 22 Newport Street, Vauxhall, London SE11 6AY
info@beaconsfield.ltd.uk +44 (0)20 7582 6465
http://www.beaconsfield.ltd.uk

Also, in case you happen to read Dutch, we've done an interview for this book:

Een stuk van mij gaat een paar keer
Een ‘snelcursus’ kunst en documentatie door Arjen Mulder

Author: Arjen Mulder
Year: 2014
Type: Paperback, monochrome
Pages: 96
Language: Dutch

A work of art can not exist without documentation, without coverage that it exists and how we choose to frame it. Art is documented through written and spoken texts , photographs, films , sound recordings, reproductions , replicas and now mainly through jpegs, live streams, social media and other digital channels for information dissemination and comment production. The artwork is no longer autonomous, as the last century wanted. A work of art is what is talked about. The relationship between original and documentation over the past thirty years shifted completely .

Arjen Mulder (1955 ) published in 1990 a series of studies in which he documented the influence of a particular technical medium on our experience of the world around us and analyzed our most intimate feelings. His essayistic method garnered praise at home and abroad. He teaches Media Theory and Semiotics at the KASK in Ghent.

More information here.

21.10.14 WE are playing live at The White Building on 20.11.14 with The Rebel:

                   
  (photo credit: Mike Cameron)

  PERLIN NOISE #1 - WE AND THE REBEL

  20/11/2014 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM

  The White Building
  Unit 7, Queen's Yard
  White Post Lane
  London E9 5EN

  £5

  Announcing WE and The Rebel, the first in the Perlin Noise series at The White Building.

  20 November

  SPACE’s new sound art programme, Perlin Noise * challenges assumptions of what contemporary music and sound art are through a range of interventions –
  including live events, collaborative learning, artist development, and digital platforms. By tracking and reflecting the complexity of the permeable boundaries
  between sound art, experimental music and networked performance,we invite the audience to listen and experience in new and expanded ways.

  This rolling programme invites us to explore a series of sonic interventions, soundscapes and audio prototypes, challenging the idea of what makes up our
  auricular environment.

WE are also playing live at Abattoir on 12.11.14:

We are in conversation with Elena Poughia at Banner Repeater on 11.11.14 at 19:00:

A Dialogue as a Discussion:
Pil and Galia Kollectiv in conversation with Elena Poughia publisher and editor of DIALOGOS.



Tuesday Nov 11th - 7-9pm

Banner Repeater
platform 1
Hackney Downs Network Rail
Dalston Lane
London E8 1LA

http://www.bannerrepeater.org/

DIALOGOS issue #2 is an interview with Pil and Galia Kollectiv who are London based artists, writers and curators working in collaboration. Their work addresses the legacy of modernism. They are interested in the relationship between art and politics, and the role irony and belief play in its current articulation.

The interview began on Skype, communicating ideas in cyberspace, which evolved into printed matter, presented and accompanied by a podcast which circulated over the internet. They meet in the flesh at Banner Repeater's reading room / bookshop where both parties will pick up where they left off to further discuss their interests and influences.

DIALOGOS is a bimonthly zine that nourishes discussions and collaborations between artists and curators through the process of generating dialogues with the aim to fuse practices, enhance associations, encourage intersections and nurture new structures of communications.

And giving a talk and workshop at Tranzitdisplay in Prague:

Pil and Galia Kollectiv: Concrete Ideology / Real Abstraction

The Pil and Galia Collective accepted an invitation from the Curators and Critics Programme and the Sculpture Studio at UMPRUM, where it will hold a workshop as part of the school’s open days on 17 November on the future of archaeology, which reacts to the newly formed collection at the studio.

During their visit they will also present their new exhibition at present being hosted by London’s Hayward Gallery. As part of the cycle “Talks at tranzitdisplay” the collective has prepared a lecture on entitled Concrete Ideology / Real Abstraction and will speak of selected themes featured in their art projects and criticism and about their motivation as curators.
Pil and Galia Kollectiv are London based artists, writers and curators working in collaboration. Their work explores the legacy of the avant-garde in the changing context of creative work and instrumentalised leisure. They are interested in the relationship between art and politics and the role irony and belief play in its current articulation. Their band WE extends the role of music in their artwork, as well as their interrogation of the construction of individuality and collectivity. They are also the directors of artist run project space xero, kline & coma in London. They have a joint PhD. in fine art from Goldsmiths College and work as lecturers in Fine Art at the University of Reading.

Pil and Galia have had solo shows, Terminal Equilibrium at Trade, Nottingham, and Suck the Living Labour at Ort, Birmingham. The Future Trilogy at Te Tuhi Center for the Arts, New Zealand, 2010, Svetlana, at S1 Artspace, Sheffield, 2008, and Asparagus: A Horticultural Ballet at The Showroom Gallery, London, 2007. They have also presented live work at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 4th Athens Biennial, the 5th Berlin Biennial and the 5th Montreal Biennial, as well as at Kunsthall Oslo, Arnolfini, Bristol, Late at Tate Britain and ICA London. They are currently exhibiting in Mirrorcity at the Hayward Gallery, London.

14.9.14 We are showing work at the Northern Charter in Newcastle on 6.11.14:

An evening of live work & video.

Thursday 6 November 2014
7pm

The Northern Charter
5th Floor
Commercial Union House
39 Pilgrim Street
Newcastle, NE1 6QE

http://thenortherncharter.org/

Featuring screenings of work by:
Pil & Galia Kollectiv Tim Etchells, Aïda Ruilova

And performances from:

Cara Tolmie, Kathryn Elkin Romany Dear & Ashanti Harris, Ditte Goard, Iuliia Iarova, Nellie Saunby, Beth Edwards, Chloe Nicholls

PART 2 of A PERFORMANCE SYMPOSIUM
organised by Giles Bailey

We are also included in Search Routines: Tales of Databases at Kunstraum Leipzig:

Search Routines: Tales of Databases

Exhibition at D21 artspace Leipzig, 04.10. – 02.11.2014

Opening: 03.10.2014, 7pm

Artists: Francis Hunger, Kernel, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Sebastian Schmieg, Jonas Lund and Johannes P Osterhoff

Symposium: October 23–25
Speakers: Marcus Burkhardt, Wolfgang Coy, Francis Hunger, WaiWai and Heath Bunting

The exhibition wants to focus behind user interfaces and aims to establish a consciousness for the societal, political and cultural dimensions of databases. Instead of trying to visualize the data, the works in the exhibition examine its material history, showing not so much the content, but the logics and forms of data administration and the culture behind.

On Saturday, October 25 and Sunday October 26, a symposium takes place at the hackerspace “sublab” in Leipzig. Lectures and an open forum shall encourage the discussion about databases in different fields.
Curated by Lena Brüggemann, Hannah Sieben, Francis Hunger
Symposium in collaboration with sublab e.V. Leipzig.

Funded by Kulturamt der Stadt Leipzig, Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen and Stiftung Kulturwerk der VG Bild-Kunst. Thanks to V22 Collection.
http://d21-leipzig.de/

Finally, xero, kline & coma re-opens with Frank Wasser -

Frank Wasser
Scene 93 OMITTED

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

www.xero-kline-coma.com

Exhibition open:
18.10.14 – 9.11.14
Sat. – Sun. 12:00 – 18:00

Private view:
Friday October 17th 19:00 – 21:00

SCENE93 OMITTED

SCENE 94 INT RESTAURANT NIGHT

ELLIE comes into the darkened restaurant, following the source of the flickering light. A candle burns at a table in the corner.

JOHN HAMMOND sits at the table, alone. There is a bucket of ice cream in the middle, and he's eating a dish of it, staring down morosely.

Ellie draws up to the table and Hammond looks up at her. His eyes are puffy, his hair is messed up - - for the first time we've seen him, the fire is gone from his eyes.

(Taken from the original script for Jurassic Park)

Taking this 5 second camera panning as a point of departure 'Scene 93 Omitted' is a review, reconfiguration and reevaluation of the year 1993 as remembered by Wasser, then 5 years old.

Jurassic Park and its exclusive branding haunt lucid memories of that year: a small neurotic child runs up and down a living room in Jurassic Park PJs spelling out in the air the title credits of the movie accompanied by the humming of the soundtrack; he insists on green jelly for dessert on Sundays because that's what Tim eats in the film; Santa brings a plethora of dinosaur themed toys that Christmas, but anything without the film's trademarked logo on it is rejected as ‘extinct’. [1]

The promise of merchandise is a tactile relationship with a fictional world. In Scene 94 Jurassic Park approaches the edge of self-reflexivity as the camera pans across the gift shop, showing kids' pajamas, lunch boxes and toy dinosaurs all emblazoned with the theme park’s logo. But these branded objects fall short of the slick design characteristic of actual merchandise surrounding a film. The ersatz aura of these things then prefigures, exploits and undermines the possibility of entering Jurassic Park. SCENE 93 OMITTED unearths the problems that these types of material remnants pose for experiences of nostalgia and cultural memory, and exploits the discrepancies between their various appearances.

Frank Wasser (b.1988) is an artist, educator and writer from Dublin, Ireland currently based in London. Wasser completed a MFA at the National College of Art and Design Dublin in 2012.

Recent shows and projects include, EX, Catalyst Arts, Belfast, August 2014, Art and Interpretation (Artist led study day) Tate Modern, June 2014, UNDERLINE, Occupy Limerick, Limerick, June 2014, PIGDOGANDMONLEYFESTO, Airspace gallery, Stoke, England, June 2014, Art and Language (Artist led study day) Tate Modern, March 2014, PENUMBRA, Tactic Cork, Cork, March 2014, An egg in the sky, publication featuring Joseph Noonan-Ganley, Jason Dunne and Frank Wasser, designed by Hato Press, London, January 2014.

Curated by Joseph Noonan-Ganley and Sam Keogh.

For more information, visit www.franciswasser.com.

[1] In the description box of videoSTORK's YouTube clip JURASSIC PARK & pity for UNSOLD PRODUCTS, videoSTORK describes the camera panning that opens scene 94 of the screenplay: Dr. Ellie Satler (Laura Dern) and John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) debate the psychology of consumption and product seduction. In Jurassic Park, Speilberg's pathos extends to this emotional scene in lamentation of unsold products beginning with a heartbreaking pan across the shelves (93 omitted). The products won't be sold in the fictional story, but luckily for these orphaned t-shirts and sports bottles the consumer guilt worked its movie magic and a mint was made on Jurassic Park merch anyhow. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ2OxVzleaE [accessed 22/09/2014]

7.9.14 VOTE WE FOR WEIRDNESS!

Vote for WE in The Weirderst Band in the World September poll. Voting ends midnight Pacific time on Sunday, Sept. 14. The winner of the poll will be named our Weird Band of the Week starting on Wednesday, Sept. 17.You can check out the competition here.

30.7.14 WE are playing Wysing Art Centre as part of SPACE-TIME: THE FUTURE:

SPACE-TIME: THE FUTURE

30 AUGUST, 12 NOON TO MIDNIGHT

Space Time: The Future is Wysing Arts Centre’s fifth annual festival of art and music. For the first time the festival will focus primarily on women in experimental and electronic music and art, or bands fronted by women. It will include twelve hours of live music, performance and screenings across three indoor stages alongside a covered stalls area, presenting artists’ editions, music merchandise and publications.

Tickets can be purchased via the Eventbrite page or in person at Wysing Arts Centre.

Tickets with camping and return travel from London are available.

Free entry to children under 13 when accompanied by a paying adult.

This year's festival at Wysing celebrates some of the incredible live output that sits at the intersection of art and music being made by women artists and musicians today. With: Ashley Paul / Hannah Sawtell / Helena Hauff / Holly Herndon / Holly Rumble / Jenny Moore / Karen Gwyer / Lucy Railton / Lucy Woodhouse / Manuela Barczewski / Nik Colk Void / part wild horses mane on both sides / Peepholes / Ravioli Me Away / Seeds and Bones / Silver Fox / Sue Tompkins / The Fucks / Trash Kit / WE / Woolf / Yola Fatoush

WE are playing live at the Hoxton Bar and Grill on Friday 22.8.14 with Grand Bassam and Uther Moads:

Rebel Rebel
Hoxton Bar and Grill
2-4 Hoxton Square
London N1 6NU

19:30 - 22:00

http://www.facebook.com/events/276356492556234/

With live acts from 7:30pm till 10pm every Friday night, Rebel Rebel brings you all the best up-and coming acts with resident DJs playing until 2am- everything from old school Disco to future Indie/ Electro classics, with the odd guilty pleasure thrown in for good measure!

***RESIDENT DJS ELLE & JAY DJ-ING AFTER GRAND BASSAM TIL 2AM***

Having recently released their debut EP London 2 piece Grand Bassam bring their dark electronic pop show to Hoxton on Friday 22nd August. Think somewhere between The Knife and Depeche Mode.

Plus additional live support from Uther Moads + WE.

18.7.14 The new WE tapes are finally ready, get them here:

15.6.14 We're giving a talk at Good Job gallery this Wednesday:

Pil and Galia Kollectiv Artist Talk

Good Job Gallery
ACAVA Studios
49 Grange Walk
SE1 3DY

19:00

Pil and Galia Kollectiv are London based artists, writers and curators working in collaboration. Their work explores the legacy of the avant-garde in the changing context of creative work and instrumentalised leisure. They are interested in the relationship between art and politics and the role irony and belief play in its current articulation. Their band WE extends the role of music in their artwork, as well as their interrogation of the construction of individuality and collectivity. They are also the directors of artist run project space xero, kline & coma in London. They have a joint PhD. in fine art from Goldsmiths College and work as lecturers in Fine Art at the university of Reading

Pil and Galia have had solo shows, The Future Trilogy at Te Tuhi Center for the Arts, New Zealand, 2010, Svetlana, at S1 Artspace, Sheffield, 2008, and Asparagus: A Horticultural Ballet at The Showroom Gallery, London, 2007. They have also presented live work at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 4th Athens Biennial, the 5th Berlin Biennial and the 5th Montreal Biennial, as well as at Kunsthall Oslo, Arnolfini, Bristol, Late at Tate Britain and ICA London. Recent solo exhibitions include Terminal Equilibrium at Trade, Nottingham, and Suck the Living Labour at Ort, Birmingham.

31.5.14 WE are playing with Retrofuture and Ravioli Me Away at the Dalston Victoria:
http://www.facebook.com/events/241926209337449/

RETROFUTURE's cassettes are almost almost ready!! and they will be doing the official Demo launch on the 14th with RAVIOLI ME AWAY and WE.

Also Samhall & Jonestown and Saul Adamczewsi ( Fat White Family ) will be the DJ'S of the night!

The event will be at The Victoria in Dalston and Ticket price will be £5 and £7 with the tape and badge!

RETROFUTURE
An all girl Pataphysic band

Retrofuture appeared last November in a Estate in Homerton. They came from 2015 across the washing machine. They play pataphysic punk with absurd lyrics, primitive sounds, emotional vocals and fresh synths.
https://retr0future.bandcamp.com/

RAVIOLI ME AWAY

Dangerously ambitious and delusional all girl jazzy post-pop punk hip funk with a stylistically schizophrenic theme spanning all known past, present and future human cultures and sub cultures....
" Vintage drag queen Bananarama you tube footage played with twice the sass and in double time with an incredulous broadband connection reflected in the eyes of a much overworked and downright exhausted Julie Burchill on acid".
www.raviolimeaway.co.uk

WE

WE is a live performance, video and vinyl project. 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.
http://soundcloud.com/we-are-we
www.kollectiv.co.uk/WE

At THE VICTORIA in Dalston
451 Queensbridge Rd, London E8 3AS

20.5.14 The Exploit.zzxjoanw.Gen USB, featuring a track by WE is being released on Punctum Records and launched in Edinburgh on 30.5.14:

Exploit.zzxjoanw.Gen USB

Collective Gallery
City Observatory | City Dome
38 Calton Hill
Edinburgh
EH7 5AA

T: +44 (0)131 556 1264
E: mail@collectivegallery.net
W: www.collectivegallery.net

Exploit.zzxjoanw.Gen is an audio zine, a collection if vagrant sonic fictions.

It will be available to purchase for £30 as a USB device designed by Plastique Fantastique, or as a free digital download from the Collective and Punctum Records websites, as well as exploitzzxjoanwgen.tumblr.com

The rubbled architecture of the semantic apocalypse is a jambient meshwork of infectious crypto-fictions, arche-hymns, cargo-cult objectiles and the untethered futurities of permanent collapse. A tentacular-empire-machine.

Swarming visions, speculations and transmissions are hereby retro-clothed in vaporware, to be neurocast for further maladaptation by the following memechanics of the salvaged future:

AAS, The Confraternity of Neoflagellants, Plastique Fantastique, Head Gallery, Jillian Mayer, WE, English Heretic, Michelle Hannah, Benedict Drew, POLLYFIBRE, The Cult of RAMM:ΣLL:ZΣΣ, Xempeer and Kornelia Remø Klokk.

Dane has worked in partnership with Punctum Records to publish and distribute this project.

Exploit.zzxjoanw.Gen | Launch Event
Friday 30 May 2014 | 7-10pm
Bongo Club

Exploit.zzxjoanw.Gen is a project by Satellites Programme Intern and curator, Dane Sutherland. He has worked with a number of leading artists to create new music, sound artworks and texts which will be available to purchase as a limited edition USB stick designed by Plastique Fantastique for £30. It will also be available from 31 May as a free digital download from the Collective and Punctum Records websites.

Performances on the night by: Plastique Fantastique, The Cult of RAMM:ΣLL:ZΣΣ and Kornelia Remø Klokk. Doors open at 7pm, performances from 8pm.

Book your free ticket here via Eventbrite.
Admission: Free

Also, Amanda Beech's exhibition opens at xero, kline & coma on 29.5.14:

Everything has led to this moment
New works on paper by Amanda Beech 

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

www.xero-kline-coma.com

Exhibition runs:
31.5.14 – 22.6.14
Sat. – Sun. 12:00 – 18:00

Private view:
Thursday May 29th 19:00 – 21:00

Everything Has Led to This Moment retrenches the role of images within the domain of necessity and fate. Shapes, patterns, data and information now preside and insinuate new facts. The future is no longer possible as a thought, and instead we confront only the designs of reality; since a reality that really exists can supplant the false consciousness of our universal perceptual malaise. Everything that is here is meant to be, everything that is here is necessary.

A series of injunctions; t(r)opographies of what is and will be, sit on the gallery walls. These works on paper and installed wall paintings show hands that point, display and grasp. They are iconic representatives of companies, interests and propositions. In these works, will, facticity and prophetic determination coalesce and occupy the landscape of image design. Freeways crash and twist as the Earth’s curvature erupts again, smashing the myth that the open road is the space of our freedom. Constrained to a new contract, a covenant to rule, the image cranks up, inflicting new ones where fate is now something else.

Amanda Beech is an artist and writer. Her work takes up the dynamic of image-force, through entangling narratives of power from philosophical theory, literature and real political events. Inspired by these discourses on power, her work proposes a new realist politics of the artwork and its possibilities in the context of contingency. Beech has exhibited her art work internationally; recent exhibitions include: Final Machine 2013, featuring in the next Irish Biennial, EVA international, Limerick, 2014, also shown as a solo exhibit at Lanchester Gallery Projects, Coventry, UK and Ha Gamle Prestagard, Norway, 2013; Asymmetrical Cinema, Beaconsfield Gallery, London; and, (Past Present) Future Tense, Center for Living Arts, Alabama, USA 2013. Recent publications include; Final Machine, Urbanomic, 2013 and Sanity Assassin, Urbanomic, 2010. Forthcoming essays can be found in the anthologies Realism, Materialism, Art, Sternberg Press, 2014, Speculative Aesthetics, Urbanomic, 2014 and The Flood of Rights, Merve, 2014. Beech also regularly speaks at conferences and symposia including keynotes for “Generative Constraints”, London, 2103 and “Exhibiting Video”, London, 2012 and she will be artist in residence at Fieldwork Marfa 2014. She is Dean of Critical Studies at CalArts, USA.

For more information visit amandabeech.com

That same night, we are also screening Another Proof of the Preceding Theory in Colchester:

Invisible Fabrick
A Vessel for Action

Date: Thursday 29 May 2014
Time: 7pm

The Minories Galleries
74 High Street
Colchester
CO1 1UE
United Kingdom

Films by Anthony McCall, Katie Davies, Neïl Beloufa, Jessica Warboys, Pil and Galia Kollectiv and others

Whether documenting the political spaces which establish social rules, intervening directly in public space to subvert or disrupt it, or confusing our perception of our environment, the artists in this programme, via performance and play, offer the chance to reappraise our relationship with the spaces around us and suggest the means by which they might be animated differently.

More information here.

16.5.14 WE are playing on 24.5.14 at the Courtyard Theatre:

HOW TO BECOME A CULT LEADER
MiDDLE EARTH
SPACE IS ACE

www.facebook.com/howtobecomeacultleader

The Courtyard Theatre, 40 Pitfield Street, N1 6EU London, United Kingdom

Visuals from Space Is Ace with music in three 47 minute segments from the five following performers (rotational by track/piece) :

JESSE HACKETT
https://soundcloud.com/jessehackett

PATCHFINDER
https://soundcloud.com/p_a_t_c_h_f_i_n_d_e_r

WE
https://soundcloud.com/we-are-we

LORD TUSK & THE BLACK SUN
https://soundcloud.com/user451387179

MAN FROM URANUS
http://www.manfromuranus.com/home.htm

Hosting and track selections from:

CHARLIE BONES
https://www.nts.live/shows/the-do-you-breakfast-show

•OPEN 7.30pm - 12.30am
•SHOW 8.30am -11.30am

•DOOR: £6 , ADV £5.

You can also listen to our one-off dub plate at Project/Number:

And we are screening Suck the Living Labour in Paris:

‘La négation du travail spéculatif’

26 May, 20:00–23:00

Cinema La Clef
34 rue Daubenton
75005 Paris
France



‘La négation du travail spéculatif’, is a series of film screenings at Cinéma La Clef, Paris. The artist films will be works by: Bernard Brunon, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Jake Laffoley and David Price & Andy Roche.

€5 Entry

‘Laissez-faire’, was a common term used and a form of economic capitalism in 19th Century Britain. Laissez-faire, in french translates as ‘let us be’ or ‘let us do’ ; it is the ideology of a free market, often utilised in the Industrial Revolution to justify the exploitation of orphan and child workers. The workhouses and factories of the 21st century are now often outsourced to ‘cheaper to produce companies’, such as China, Taiwan and India. Now the workers of the western world often produce a ‘service’. The production of services (immaterial commodities) particularly in Britain and the U.S.A has led to affective labour in which the workers ‘smile’ and pleasure of work is also part of his/her job. ‘La négation du travail spéculatif’, is a fictitious form of contemporary economics and art theory in which the politics of labour and the working day will be deciphered.

About the films:

Bernard Brunon’s, enterprise ‘Thats Painting Productions’, will present 'Wet Paint' 2014. The film is of archive footage from 'a painting job' at Texas Gallery in Houston in which the artist assimilates the performance of a white collar labourer, deriving capital from the performance of managing a painting company. Brunon will also screen the short film 'That's Painting at TokyoEat' 2003, from an intervention at Palais de Tokyo, shot and edited by Nicolas Floc'h.

Pil and Galia Kollectiv, 'Suck the Living Labour' 2013 explores geriatric vampirism. Austerity measures have indebted the young and the old through the privatisation of education and health. These age groups have been thrown into a relationship of mutual dependency and conflicting interests. The film depicts a cult of dissident vampires attempting to withdraw labour power from the bloodsuckers who would thrive upon it. Suck the Living Labour extends Marx’s metaphor, comparing Capital to a vampiric force that thirsts for infinite surplus.

Jake Laffoley ‘Un/skilled‘ 2014, will present a film/ essay about an unskilled manual laborer from the Birmingham Pen Trade. The nameless character, whom was once a child laborer in the industrial revolution critiques the 21st century service economy through the eyes of a ‘gheist’, often drawing from her past life.

David Price & Andy Roche will premier Natures Bet Washed up in Heaven 2013, a short film made last year in Chicago using the game Yahtzee to consider production through play/ games and informal strategies. They will use this opportunity to continue their collaborative work by making a new film they will also premier.

24.4.14 We are speaking at this conference on 15.5.14:



Thursday 15 May - Friday 16 May 2014

Chelsea College of Arts
Banqueting Suite
45 Millbank
London
SW1P 4RL

The conference Taste After Bourdieu brings together UK and international speakers from arts practice, art education, curation, sociology and cultural criticism to ask - what is the current relationship between aesthetic judgement and social distinction?

Taste and the experience of art: a critical legacy
Chair: Dave Beech
This panel of Professor Peter Osborne, Dr Pil Kollectiv, Dr Galia Kollectiv and Dr. Ken Wilder will consider taste and its critical legacy within the experience of art. All three presentations reject the vulgar sociological reduction of aesthetic experience to quantifiable social aggregates without reverting to the established construction of the autonomous individual subject of taste.
Dr Ken Wilder writes on the philosophy of art through a close analysis of the problematic of beholding. A particular concern is the ambiguous encounter between the viewer and the virtual: a feature of artworks that implies two modes of interiority, one belonging to the viewer and one belonging to the work.
Pil and Galia Kollectiv explore the political legacy of modernism and the avant-garde through critical aesthetic interventions. They will be exploring the role of taste in the construction of post-ironic subculture, focusing on the phenomenon of normcore.
Prof Peter Osborne, whose book Anywhere or Not At All argues that the philosophy of art must be distinguished sharply from the study of aesthetics, introduces the category of ‘postconceptual art' as the legacy of the philosophical inquiry into the ontology of art, casting the viewer as critically engaged rather than aesthetically sensuous.

For more information go to: https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/chelsea-college-of-arts/research-at-chelsea/past-research-events/taste-conference

7.4.14 We are showing our film Suck the Living Labour alongside work by Roman Vasseur and Annabel Frearson at IMT Gallery, London on Thursday 8.5.14:

Filmarmalade presents Pil and Galia Kollectiv

IMT Gallery

Unit 2
210 Cambridge Heath Rd.
London E2 9NQ

Time: 18:30 - 21:30

The event is free

Ghouls, ghosts, werewolves and vampires form a rich layer of imagery in Karl Marx's Capital. These monsters continue to haunt discussions of capitalism as metaphors for consumerism, greed, the modern bureaucratic management of life and, mostly, systems of labour. The event will expire these links between politics, art and the gothic imagination through presentations and screenings of work by Roman Vasseur, Annabel Frearson and Pil and Galia Kollectiv, followed by a discussion between the artists about spectres of the market and the demonology of Capital.

For more information contact IMT Gallery at: 020 8980 5475

www.imagemusictext.com / www.filmarmalade.co.uk

Also, WE are playing at Open School East with Dr. Peabody:




Saturday 3 May 7pm
AT Open School East
43 De Beauvoir Road
London N1 4SQ

with live music from:

WE
An experiment into the limits of pop, WE are four bodies of shrill synth grooves, bizarre guitar melodies, cartoon drumrolls and sax. Borrowing strategies from the likes of the Residents, Devo and Laibach.
http://www.kollectiv.co.uk/WE/

Dr. Peabody
Mentally and emotionally stifled 13 year olds trapped in 3 twenty something's bodies singing songs about life, love, jobs, architecture, science fiction novelists and gardening, and always dressed accordingly from offcuts of the high school drama department's closet.
http://www.drpeabody.co.uk/

and DJ Crystal Clear & DJs Radio Anti

PLUS paper-themed food, cocktails and costumes

£3 on the door

Future dates for WE:

17.5.14 at the Dolphin, Mare st.
24.5.14 at Courtyard Theatre, Hoxton

And, our new performance, I-O, will be shown at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam on 24.4.14:

PIL AND GALIA KOLLECTIV: I-O
24 APR 2014
Location Teijin Auditorium, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
Time 8 - 8:45 pm
Language English
Admission Entrance price to the museum + €2,50 cover charge Reservations
It is necessary to make a reservation.

The Stedelijk Museum presents I-O, a new performance by Pil and Galia Kollectiv. This new commission is developed especially for the Teijin Auditorium of the Stedelijk, and is part of the performance and lecture series Stage It! (Part 3): SCRIPTED.

I-O is a new performance piece that ties together notions of ritual, office work, and experimental pedagogy. Moving between team building exercises, fringe art school workshop, and cult initiation rite, the piece examines the performative act through which collectivity is formed as a fantasy at the heart of post-capitalist individualism. The title, I-O, is an allusion to industrial organizational psychology – a management system where techniques from behavioral psychology are used to maximize worker productivity. It is also a diagram that demonstrates the transition from the I to the many – symbolized here by the sign of the circle.

See more here.

Finally, If you're in Edinburgh, we're showing some work in this exhibition:

Vulcan Point

Private View: Friday April 11 7pm -9pm

Embassy Gallery 10B Broughton Street Lane, Edinburgh, Midlothian EH1 3LY United Kingdom

Claire Davies | Pil and Galia Kollectiv | Ditte Gantriis | Eva Papamargariti | Tom Smith
Accompanying text Yalta Scotland by James Clegg
Accompanying music by Macintosh Plus

"The three designers thus entered in to Gomyko’s secret project, a commission that promised to save them from the recession and the bathetic post-collage collapse of their creative ideals. Leaving the office, pleased that at least one small part of his plan had fallen in to place, Gromyko’s mind churned up a troubling story: Lavadia Palace and people with bullet holes in their heads listening from the rooftops to plans for a new world and revelling in the imperial drives of the supposed Communists." - extract from Yalta Scotland by James Clegg

More information here.

12.3.14 Billy Howard Price - Foma opens at xero, kline & coma on 20.3.14:

Billy Howard Price - Foma

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

www.xero-kline-coma.com

Exhibition runs:
22.3.14 – 13.4.14
Sat. – Sun. 12:00 – 18:00

Private view:
Thursday March 20th 19:00 – 21:00

'Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy'.
The Books of Bokonon 1:5
Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

'A real holy man was born from a man not wholly real, continuing the new line at the top of the range. Over the moving surfaces of the mountain water he soaked up crystal clear still images and dropped them in a photo stream. The moving images vibrated with static. This was when the past was tense. A truly 21st century guru, with millions of followers and posts all around the world, he taught us to access our inner net rather than the internet. From this rock they built his church, and adorned every doorway with his mantra; Love All Serve All. He branded his name and sold an incense with a smell everybody nose. Listen and you might hear him; his name is truth'.

Billy Howard Price’s films and installations treat the technical production of images and mediascapes as an experiment in psychotropic mind control. They appropriate the rhetoric and aesthetic of new age cults, advertising and music videos to interrogate the relationship between moving images, truth and belief.

Foma, Price's first solo exhibition, juxtaposes the rhythmic structuring of video and the linguistic nuances of printed text as a tactile material within the social construction of esoteric ideology. Taking the mutation from spirituality to commodity as an inherent precondition of the modern age, the exhibition looks at how this transition plays out in the transient surfaces that mediate our interaction with it, as lofty ideas of the other are continually abstracted and warped by inevitable physical and theoretical obsolescences.

For more information visit https://billyhowardprice.com/

2.2.14 Robert Holcombe: Folklore, Ritual and the Modern Interior (1955 – 1975) opens at xero, kline & coma on 13.2.14:

Robert Holcombe: Folklore, Ritual and the Modern Interior (1955 – 1975)

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

www.xero-kline-coma.com

Exhibition runs:
15.2.14 – 9.3.14
Sat. – Sun. 12:00 – 18:00

Private view:
Thursday February 13th 19:00 – 21:00

“I am fascinated by self-erasure. The more stridently our world demands that we prize individual uniqueness and choice above the connections between us, the more obvious it becomes that we choose one poor print from a very limited range. Still, paradox is our friend. We resist the effort to shape us by a refusal to accept the stifling conformity of being ourselves…” [RH: Unpublished Letter to Eduardo Paolozzi (1984)]

“I’m interested in all the strange stuff that circulates in our heads now: histories where fact bleeds into fiction, advertising and propaganda, stories that pretend they’re showing the world as it is, or could be, if we’d just work harder and do as we’re told. To be effective, that kind of material needs to tap into something truthful about what we do really want, subconsciously, but I’m not sure anyone can predict exactly how releasing those authentic desires along with the fabricated ones will play out. What if we buy into the desires they’re fabricating for us more deeply than they imagine possible – and then act on them?” [RH: Unpublished Letter To Eduardo Paolozzi (1972)]

Robert Holcombe is an entirely fictional British artist (b. Leeds 1923 - d. Exeter 2003) whose fascination with collage was first discovered when he began cutting up magazines and rearranging the parts whilst convalescing from injuries sustained in 1944, during active service in Malaya. He was a radio engineer, a contemporary of Richard Hamilton at the Slade School of Art between 1948 and 1951 and, from 1955 until 1988, a planning officer in the city of Leeds. His early, if oblique, involvement with the Independent Group continued into the 1980s, and he maintained a long correspondence with Eduardo Paolozzi, whose interest in elaborate fictions and alternate realities he shared.

Although Holcombe did not exhibit publicly during his lifetime, he made most of his work under two pseudonyms – Gene and Michael Harrison. It’s also notable that many of his images, particularly those featuring material rooted in fashion, advertising and technology, show a more ambiguous enthusiasm for the world of the Post-War era than was generally usual at the time. The consumerist excesses of the Immersions series (1970 – 71), the inscrutable apparitions of surgical, sexual and folkloric symbols inside modernist interiors elsewhere, alongside the many disturbances of ordinary spaces that colour the whole body of work, all suggest an artist with a satirical as well as unsettling and surreal take on the emerging society and politics of his age.

For more information on Robert Holcombe: http://wayneburrows.wordpress.com/

Also, we are speaking at WARP in Cardiff about curating on Friday 7.2.14:

Curator Taster Session 
7 February 2014, 11am - 6pm/ g39, Cardiff. 



What do Curators do all day? The WARP Curator Taster Session is an opportunity for recent graduates, and those interested in developing their curatorial voice in a daylong session aimed at informing and exchanging curatorial ideas with professionals in the field. Speakers for the day include: Mark Devereux + Liz West (Mark Devereux Projects, Manchester)), Melissa Hinkin (Artes Mundi, Cardiff), Kevin Hunt (artist/curator, Liverpool), Pil & Galia Kollectiv (xero, kline & coma, London) and Sam Perry (Independent, Cardiff); as well as structured talks from curators the crux of the event is on discussion, engagement and exchange, to inform and support new Curatorial voices in Wales. Project organised by WARP Intern, Bob Gelsthorpe. 

Spaces are limited so to book please email intern@g39.org with the subject 'Curator Taster Session' and a brief description (200 words max.) of what you are interested in/ want to discuss/ hope to achieve. Cost is 5.00 pounds and includes refreshments throughout the day. 

1.1.14 The exhibition we have curated at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester continues, join us for performances and symposium on - 31.1.14 and 1.2.14:

Radical Conservatism
Curated by Pil and Galia Kollectiv

Featuring work by Chris Evans, IRWIN, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Joseph Lewis, Patrick Moran, Oscar Nemon and Public Movement

Castlefield Gallery
2 Hewitt Street
Manchester
M15 4GB

29.11.13 – 2.2.14

* A special event featuring performance work by Public Movement and Chris Evans and a symposium about the exhibition will take place on 1.2.14, details to follow.

In 1938, Yugoslav sculptor Oscar Nemon arrived in Britain, having fled the Nazi invasion of Brussels, where he was living with Magritte. He was part of the European avant-garde that came to the UK as a refugee. Shortly thereafter, Nemon proposed a bold architectural plan to construct a temple of universal ethics in London and was in correspondence over this with central figures in Britain. After the war, he became know for his portrayal of figures like Churchil, culminating in a bust of Margaret Thatcher that is currently at the Tory HQ.

Radical Conservatism explores the space between these two moments and asks whether these two terms are really antithetical. In the British context in particular, where the European avant-garde never really took hold, a kind of reactionary modernism has always defined a culture wary of revolution. But today more than ever, with the left increasingly holding on to the past of the welfare state as an ideal, and the right quietly revolutionising our world through neoliberal reforms, the paradigms of radicalism and conservatism need to be redefined. Can conservatism be seen as a radical position in itself? If art is defined by a movement towards the new - could 'holding on to the past' stubbornly be seen as a critical position, now that neo-liberalism has forced a far more radical shift in politics than the left has managed in a long time?

About the artists:

Oscar Nemon was born in 1906 in Osijek, Croatia. After studying at the Royal Academy of Fine Art in Brussels, where he shared a flat with René Magritte, he settled in England. His technique depended on modeling from life directly in clay, quickly making many small studies with no preliminary drawings. He designed his own home and studio, an unlikely modernist edifice in Oxfordshire named Pleasant Land, which currently houses many studies and models for his finished works.

The IRWIN group was founded in Ljubljana (Slovenia). Its members are Dusan Mandic, Miran Mohar, Andrej Savski, Roman Uranjek and Borut Vogelnik. IRWIN, along with the music group "Laibach" (1980), the performance group "Gledalisce Sester Scipion Nasice" (1983), later known as the "Kozmokineticni Kabinet Noordung", and the design department "Novi Kolektivizem", comprises one of the core groups within the artists' collective "Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK)", established in 1984 in the Slovenian republic of the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. IRWIN is committed to the so-called 'retro-principle' which is "not a style or an art trend but a principle of thought, a way of behaving and acting"(IRWIN). In its artistic projects the group IRWIN has been involving itself extensively with the art history of Europe, in particular with the ambivalent inheritance of the historical avant-gardes and its totalitarian successors, and thus with the dialectic of avant-garde and totalitarianism. At Castlefield Gallery, IRWIN will be showing two ‘IRWIN framed’ icons from their 2012 project, Was ist Kunst Hugo Ball, alongside a large-scale photograph of Bishop Metodij Zlatanov, Christian-Orthodox Metropolitan of Macedonia, produced specifically for this exhibition and showing him holding in his hands an original Dada work from the Kunsthaus Zürich as if it was an icon in a procession. According to IRWIN, icons do not reconstruct reality as if someone were lookin through a window into a different world. Rather, by adhering to strict rules, their painters succeed in fixing in an image the actual presence of holiness. Icons are ritualistic tools which do not represent holiness but are the substance itself, thus giving direct access to divinity. Their function as ritualistics tools brings icons very close to what Hugo Ball tried to achieve with Dada. Dada was neither a 'style' nor a 'movement of art', but a gesture Ball thought would help him obtain mystic insights. He conceived of this notion the night he was intoning phonetic poems in the guise and voice of a bishop. The project thus literally reframes Dada as a modern orthodoxy.

Public Movement is a performative research body that investigates and stages political actions in public spaces. The movement explores the political and aesthetic possibilities residing in a group of people acting together. It studies and creates public choreographies, forms of social order, overt and covert rituals. Among Public Movement's actions in the past and in the future: manifestations of presence, fictional acts of hatred, new folk dances, synchronized procedures of movement, spectacles, marches, inventing and reenacting moments in the life of individuals, communities, social institutions, peoples, states, and of humanity. For Radical Conservatism, Public Movement will show news reports from two actions. Their recent piece, Honor Guard, was a weekly ceremonial performance of national pride taking place at the entrance to the Chaing Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, Taipei. Throughout the duration of the Asian Art Biennial, Public Movement joined the Veteran Honor Guard in presenting a new State Choreography, inviting spectators to pay respect to Taiwan's past, present and future and to the beauty of order. For University Exercise, Public Movement occupied the University of Heidelberg's main building and the University Square. Together with 16 policemen and 40 firefighters, Public Movement organized a public behavior drill, an examination in citizenship. A screening process at the University entrance including physical checks and a seating plan, a procedure in a lecture hall, police questioning in the corridor, police arrests, a demonstration and an emergency evacuation drill led by the fire brigades. The action ended in street party on University Square. Public Movement will also present Debriefing Session, a one on one performance action taking place a hotel lobby in central Manchester. The performance adopts the form of a diplomatic engagement between individuals to explore the intricate and often concealed ties between cultural institutions, funding bodies and political agendas. While developing the project in New York over the course of six months, Public Movement negotiated with power structures and various publics, navigating agendas, institutional alliances, backroom politics, and creating fractures across a spectrum of individual and organizational positions. Debriefing Session foregrounds the transitional moment between research and action by turning members of the public into emissaries of this information. Activated in England for the first time, Debriefing Session in Manchester functions as a new method of sharing the complex relations between cultural production, public and private funding bodies, political agendas and activism.

Chris Evans’ work often evolves through conversation with people from diverse walks of life, selected in relation to their public life or symbolic role: the directors of a leading champagne house, a former member of the British Constructivists, the CEO of a Texas pharmaceutical company, a selection of elderly Italian politicians etcetera. Sculptures, letters, drawings, film scripts and unwieldy social situations created as a result of this, are indexes of a larger structure through which Evans deliberately confuses the roles of artist and patron, genius and muse. Evans will be showing his video ‘COMPANY’ (2009). Taking direction from Allan Kaprow’s score Company, an interview is set up with Walid El Kafrawy, Chief Executive of ofok (Arabic for “horizon”) – a construction company dedicated in the conception of new communities in the Egyptian desert’s “intimate serenity”. From this a script is co-authored with Will Bradley and edited by El Kafrawy. The latter recites his own words to the camera in blocks, fed back to him through an earpiece – over images of ofok construction: a year-long transformation, “through people”, from “dust and flies” to a “nurturing community”. The discourse of the property developer turns the gated community into a utopian project. Evans will also present a performative event entitled ‘Work in progress for rebranding Pepsi Cola by Arnell Group, and other exercises in public presentation’ (2013). This is a presentation on design, with invited guest, on questions of rebranding, produced in collaboration with Dexter Sinister, Marina Vishmidt, and Massimiliano Mollona.

Pil and Galia Kollectiv are London based artists, writers and curators working in collaboration. Their work addresses the legacy of modernism and explores avant-garde discourses of the twentieth century and the way they operate in the context of a changing landscape of creative work and instrumentalised leisure. Pil and Galia Kollectiv’s prints from their Future Monument series present proposals proposal for a monument to the future crimes of capitalism inspired by the form of the yacht. It has often been remarked that the late capitalist operations of financialisation have no concrete visual language. Global finance is a liquid, smooth motion that paradoxically de-territorialises and concentrates wealth like a swarm of fractional arithmetic components, both menacing and immaterial. But if its true nature is an elusive, constantly mutating entity, then yachts serve as a fictionalization of its core essence, a testament to the conditions under which we live. As repositories of capital, they are fascinating because they make concrete the invisible flows of finance. Their display of power and status is inverted in their sheer visibility. Ignoring what goes on inside, we are treated to a spectacle of architecture in motion, evoking the impermanence to which the postmodern monument aspires.

Joseph Lewis’ hurdy gurdies chart an alternative folklore of the British Isles. Produced through a rigorous study of ancient craft traditions and folk symbols, these instruments are nevertheless a celebration of an anarcho-democratic and carnivalesque tradition – a surplus that cannot be contained by the pacifying framing of British heritage in the tourist industry. Sonically, the instruments also occupy an ambiguous position: while their sound can be associated with ‘twee’ folk festivals, they also produce a noisy drone that corresponds to notions of avant-garde composition. For this exhibition, Lewis will show three wooden positiv churches: a hurdy gurdy, a church tool box and a church library. These alternative relic chests symbolise the hidden popular knowledge and labour interred in churches and the Christian faith. A performance illustrating the ritual use of the hurdy gurdy accompanies the exhibition.

Buried is a metal Fanzine that rejects Xerox zine aesthetics to deliver something akin to a medieval text. Consequently, each issue is entirely printed by hand, and bound into a hardback book filled with original illustrations and Gothic fonts. There are 3 editions of Buried, the first looking at One Man Black Metal Bands, the second a more general study of Black Metal and the third was a survey of the Brutal Death Metal scene in the UK. Issue 4 will be launched at Castlefield gallery alongside prints by editor Patrick Moran, exploring the tension between the formal strict generic constraints of metal and its transgressive preoccupations.

Also, Re-Wilding opens at xero, kline & coma on 11.1.14:

Re-Wilding

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

www.xero-kline-coma.com

Exhibition runs:
11.1.14 – 26.1.14
Sat. – Sun. 12:00 – 18:00

Private view:
Saturday January 11th 19:00 – 21:00

What is interesting about the term "The Wild" is its semi-redundant meaning in contemporary Europe, having come to refer more to a philosophical or cultural idea of being outside of society, or lacking human control, something that is all but impossible in the contemporary European landscape.

The Wild Project is a creative initiative set up by Alexander Stevenson. For this group exhibition at xero, kline & coma, 16 artists from across the UK and Europe have developed new work in response to themes of Wildness and Re-Wilding; following a residency in August 2013 in the North of the Czech Republic. Artists selected from an international call-out spent several weeks together examining the theme of "The Wild" socio-politically, historically and environmentally in relation to this European context. The group have since formed an international network continuing the project on several platforms.

“Re-Wilding” presents new work showcasing an on going exploration into concepts of “Wildness” by:

Melissa Burn, Adam Scarborough, Beth Savage, Bobby Sayers, Simone Landwehr, Thomas Keyes, Rachael Kidd, Roos Dijkhuizen, Tim Ridley, Alistair Grant, Nathalie Holbrook, Jacek Hubner, Danielle Heath, Alexander Stevenson and Saskia De Ronde.

For more information visit http://www.thewildproject.eu/

News from 2013 is archived here.

News from 2012 is archived here.

News from 2011 is archived here

News from 2010 is archived here

News from 2009 is archived here.

News from 2008 is archived here.

News from 2007 is archived here.

News from 2006 is archived here.

News from 2005 is archived here.