News

DAY 1: Screenings and Talks
10th December: Open School East, 43 De Beauvoir Rd, London N1 5SQ
6:30pm- 9pm with drinks from 9-10pm.
Speakers: Films (in order of screening)

Ralph Dorey and Pil and Galia Kollectiv
Fiamma Montezemolo 'Echo'
Alessandro Rolandi 'POV'
Channa Boon 'Et in arcadia ego'
Oliver Ressler and Ana Pecar 'In the Red'

Day 2: 11th December at RCA
Panel discussion on art, academia and social class with intervention by artist Andrew Cooper

Artists and speakers: Andrew Cooper, Chto Delat?, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Ralph Dorey, Seemab Gul, Fiamma Montezemolo, Nadir Letang Cushnie, Oliver Ressler & Ana Pe?ar, Alessandro Rolandi.

Roundtable discussion chaired by Alpesh Maisuria with Mark Fisher, Mark McGowan (aka The Artist Taxi Driver), Chris Knight, Laura Oldfield Ford, Ana Pe?ar, Alexei Penzin (Chto Delat?), Chardine-Taylor Stone. More speakers to be confirmed.

The Elephant in the Room? aims to address the issue of social inequality in the art world. Above all it will be asked “What is it to talk about class inequality in the art world in 2015?

Low pay and a lack of meritocracy perpetuate a field that is hierarchical and closed to many people of lower social rank. We must tackle these problems at a local level while condemning, for example, the alleged poor working and living conditions of migrant workers building the Louvres and Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi. We can’t even begin to claim the moral high ground within the art world if we don’t start by cleaning up art world practices first. The success of political art and 'artivism' will depend on the ability of the art world to address its own power dynamics and the inequalities which arise from them.

Speakers have been invited to approach the topic from their own background, contributing to a discussion on meritocratic values within the field of artistic production, reception and display. It is hoped that the tripartite social class system (i.e. lower, middle and upper class) can be supplemented with recourse to issues of non-class based wealth inequality, race, gender and sexuality.

Ultimately it will be asked whether a new 'universal class' can be formed from an alliance of dissafected and underpivileged workers, students and unemployed people from across the social spectrum? What role would the art world have in that process?

Organized by Mike Watson (curator), Dorian Batycka, Seemab Gul and Gloria Lin (co-curators).

On Wednesday 25.11.15, we've curated this film program with the Czech Centre and The Performance Studio at Bosse & Baum:

TALK, SO I CAN SEE YOU

Bosse & Baum
Copeland Estate
133 Copeland Road, SE15 3SN
Entrance also through 133 Peckham Rye Lane, London SE15 4ST
www.bosseandbaum.com

The Czech Centre London and The Performance Studio present Talk, so I can See You, a film programme curated by Pil and Galia Kollectiv with recent work by Roman Štetina, accompanied by London-based artists Billy Howard Price, Molly Palmer and Mike Harvey, who will screen selected video works and excerpts from their on-going film projects. In a live, semi-improvised format Štetina will respond by selecting his own film and video works in relation to the topics and images presented.

Organised by Czech Centre London in partnership with The Performance Studio
Hosted by Bosse & Baum

The screening programme will be followed by a round-table discussion chaired by Pil and Galia Kollectiv with all four artists, in which they will be talking about editing, the relationship between sound and vision in cinema, and further ideas that emerge from the work. The evening will culminate in a screening of Roman Štetina’s recent video work Lost Cause (2014), which he will accompany with a live DJ set.

This event is taking place in the context of Štetina’s forthcoming residency in London, supported by the Czech Centre London.

Organised by Czech Centre London in partnership with The Performance Studio. Hosted by Bosse & Baum.

FREE, but booking is required
RSVP to info@bosseandbaum.com

Capitalist Artist Scum #2

In Capitalist Artist Scum #1 we saw a number of presentations from artists who explore different and often complex relationships to non-art industries and the distribution of art. Some of the main questions that arose from this event were whether we might be able to differentiate artistic labour from capitalist labour, and where the issues of ‘survival’ versus other forms of value accumulation and appropriation should sit in relation to the ‘work’ itself.

This second event will centre around the possibility for seemingly opposing or contradictory views and ideas to co-exist within individual and collective artistic practices, as well as the structures that support and encompass these practices. We will discuss how such contradictions materialise, how contradiction may be embodied as a formal quality, and what the implications or effect of these might be.

This will extend to considering ideas of: seduction vs. repulsion; acceptance vs. critique; working within vs. working against; profit vs. not-for-profit; comfort vs. discomfort; pointing at the problem vs. trying to solve the problem; and use-value vs. abstraction.

There will be a number of short presentations followed by a discussion chaired by Helena Reckitt. Contributors include Suhail Malik, Angus Cameron, Pil & Galia Kollectiv and Christopher Kulendran Thomas.

This is a free event but please book a ticket via the eventbrite link above!

This event is part of ‘Agenda Salad’, a week of exhibitions, performances, workshops and discussions devised by OSE associates to mark the end of Year 2.

Once More with Feeling(s): Artist's performance and video, focusing on cover versions

Lewisham Arthouse
140 Lewisham Way
London
SE14 6PD

Artists: Louise Ashcroft, Giles Bunch, Sophie Chapman, Lydia Cohen, Rose Delcour-Min, Alberto Duman, Joseph Ernst, Rosa Farber, Luke Faulkner, Liam Geary Baulch, Marco Godoy, Kerri Jefferis and Ellie Wyatt, Pil and Galia Kollectiv (WE), Sean Mullan, Rosa Nussbaum, Luis Rodriguez, Dominic Watson, Boy With Wings, Rafal Zajko.

The cover version opts for rhythm over algorithm, coarse over smooth. By refreshing dormant tracks with renewed urgency (be it political, emotional or otherwise) the cover becomes a vehicle, delivering ideas through a familiar (if corrupted) form. Whether a pastiche or homage, the tangible authenticityof the cover version resides in the merging of art and life, consumer and producer, audience and author. The dissolution of these binaries opens up formerly homeostatic systems. They become permeable – susceptible to new ideas, new interpretations and new mistakes. This permeability can even retrospectively change the original.

Whilst contemporary pop produces track after track of homogenous hits, the cover is an opportunity for subversion. It is a chance to riff on and compartmentalise the perfection of pop – a chance to dent or scuff surfaces buffed with too much polish. Instead of proliferating imagery that warps how onlookers believe that they should look and engage with each other, the cover sidelines flashy golden grills, abdominal augmentations and swollen silicon buttocks.

It becomes a means for messing with systemic issues, acting as a form through which people can express themselves more fully and in a plethora of ways, which the culture industry fails to accommodate for. Instead of a singular way of existing being pushed or embossed on the mind, there is a redux. The cover is an answer or repost that resists unidirectionality. To cover is to create a dialogue – a feedback loop that resists being told what to think and how to behave. It is a radical rupture, which asserts that there is more than one way to be, to sing and to feel.

So let's have it...once more with feeling(s).

Curated by Chris Alton and Rachel Hill

Full text here: www.chrisalton.com/ Once-More-with-Feeling-s

A Leap of Faith, act III by The LivingRoom

Mark Aerial Waller | Salvatore Arancio | Harvey Grant & Kerala Dust | Misha Bies Golas | Pil and Galia Kollectiv | Hannah Lees | Diana Policarpo | Hollie Slaughter | Michael Speers | Margita Yankova | Madalina Zaharia

The LivingRoom presents A leap of faith, the third act of the project that introduces the work of twelve artists in an extraordinary venue, St. Laurence Church in Catford. Built in the 60’s, the religious setting gives continuation to the Anglican tradition whilst also looking into the future through its architecture and decor.

A leap of faith is a combination of simultaneous temporalities, at once considering the universe, civilisation and the individual; questioning our existence in relation to infinite time and space or to a particular moment in history. Based on natural phenomena, scientific observations or constructed narratives, the works ponder on past ideas and beliefs whilst also constructing their contemporary ones. This cycle of renewal, found in religion as well as in other systems, is visible in the artists’ attempts to make sense of and reorganise traces of our existence.

The LivingRoom is a nomadic space dedicated to the curation, exhibition and promotion of sound, performance and visual art. Playing with the boundaries between the display of the work and the work itself, The LivingRoom hosts events within different contexts in found spaces.

Orchestrated by Cristina Ramos & Sara Rodrigues
http:// www.thelivingroomprojects.c om/

How to get there
Buses 47, 54, 75, 124, 136, 160, 171, 181, 185, 199, 202, 208, 284 and 336. Trains to Catford and Catford Bridge are only a 5 minute walk.
For more information please contact Cristina Ramos & Sara Rodrigues atthelivingroom@gmail.com

HH VORTEX

7PM DOORS
TICKETS £7 ADV (CLICK HERE) / £9 ON DOOR

COLONNADE
BLOOMSBURY
LONDON
WC1N 1JD

Join us for an evening of performance, film and music, emanating angularly from the two seminal issues of BLAST magazine, the publication produced by the Vorticists, an avant-garde, modernist movement which emerged in London in 1914. They established their HQ, the Rebel Art Centre was a couple of streets away on Gt. Ormond Street.

The movement was announced in 1914 in the first issue of BLAST, which contained its manifesto and the movement’s rejection of landscape and nudes in favour of a geometric style tending towards abstraction.

The Vorticism group began with the Rebel Art Centre, which is a couple of streets away from us, which Wyndham Lewis and others established after disagreeing with Omega Workshops founder Roger Fry, and has roots in the Bloomsbury Group, Cubism and Futurism. Lewis himself saw Vorticism as an independent alternative to Cubism, Futurism and Expressionism

Though the style grew out of Cubism, it was deeply in love with the embrace of dynamism, the machine age and all things modern as articulated ideologically by the Futurists.

Performances, films and more from: Chiara Ambrosio, Kitty Finer, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Jeremy Reed and The Ginger Light, Michael Sanders and Liam Wright-Higgins

THE HOMOSEXUALS/ MUYASSAR KURDI/ URBORORO & DJS

Power Lunches proudly present a night of eccentic
music and performance from around the world...

*****£ 4 ENTRY DJS AND DANCING AFTER BANDS *****

THE HOMOSEXUALS
https:// thehomosexuals.bandcamp.com /
The Homosexuals epitomize the British post-punk style of the late '70s, combining the brainy word collages and winding guitars of Scritti Politti with the manic energy and bizarre flourishes of The Pop Group.
"I just had the closest thing to a religious experience since my bar mitzvah... The Homosexuals played the most dynamic, explosive set I've seen in a couple years."

MUYASSAR KURDI
Interdisciplinary performance artist and musician on tour from Chicago performs a reverb-drenched stew of voice, autoharp, organ, tanpura, samples, and electronics which should open up unknown vistas.
http://muyassarkurdi.com/ musicvideos

URBORORO
"UrBororo are objectively boring. They also view themselves as boring. UrBororo actually refer to themselves with typically irritating self-deprecation as 'The People Who You Wouldn't Like to be Cornered by at a Party'. They regard most of what they do as a waste of time."
https://soundcloud.com/ urbororo

MAN WITH FEATHERS
local, organic and free range
https://soundcloud.com/ adamparkinson

The Exhibition Centre for the Life and Use of Books presents:

WE and Onion Widow

WE

More an experiment into the limits of pop than a band, WE are four bodies barely obscured by identical black boxes, a broken man machine of shrill synth grooves, bizarre guitar melodies, cartoon drumrolls and sax for special occasions. Borrowing strategies from the likes of the Residents, Devo and Laibach, WE replace the individual 'I' with the collective ‘WE’, transforming tender love songs into threatening revenge messages and military march tunes: “WE Want to Hold Your Hand”, “WE Will Always Love You” and “WE Will Be Your Father Figure”. WE translate the monstrous, violent, and traumatic, revolutionary process of the abolition of identity into pluralized pop. Songs about 'me' and 'you' become songs about 'us', intimacy becomes a form of collective action and the unique universal. WE present field recordings from the disaster zone of the culture industry. Fragments of 1980s club classics are sieved through the colander of 1970s power pop and pasted together into sticky B-movie surf tunes, not sold as chic upcycled classics but left to rot like a pile of discounted CDs in an abandoned Tesco.

Onion Widow

Onion Widow explores the potential of the cover version as vehicle through which an artist or musician can exhibit creative style, invoking the ambiguity of the remix and the idea of the consumerist record collection as a catalyst for creativity. This rejection of originality is contrasted with an interest in the fetishisation of physical recordings, and the images and lore that are associated with these, questioning the validity of transposing ideas and images into sound. Within the performances there is a stylistic juxtaposition between the new cover and original source; an arhythmic presentation of rhythm using tropes of electronic/acoustic primitivism.

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The gallery space will be used to display material related to our upcoming research and programming.This will be focussed around a continuation of the unfinished work of John H Clark, an experimental psychologist and artist who had developed a new map of mental states, intended as a form of self diagnosis, and a tool for seeking out pathways towards peak states - the origin, and the void - In line with the concept of a web, or map, this core research will be fringed by further enquiries into perception, with music and speech as the initial subject.

Fred’s Ale House is directly opposite Levenshulme Train Station on Stockport Road - the train takes 5 minutes from Piccadilly, and the 192 bus from Piccadilly also stops right outside and runs all night. Fred’s serves nice beer cheap. There will be music for dancing in between and after the performances courtesy of The Shrieking Violet.

Symphony of Hunger

A plus A Gallery and The School
for Curatorial Studies Venice
press@corsocuratori.com
www.corsocruatori.com

A plus A Gallery
E press@aplusa.it
T 00 39 041 277 04 66
www.aplusa.it

Digesting Fluxus in Four Movements
Venice, September 24th – October 31st, 2015
A plus A Gallery, San Marco 3073

First Movement
Thursday, September 24th at 18:00

Second Movement
Friday, September 25th at 18:00

Third Movement
Saturday, September 26th at 18:00

Fourth Movement
Sunday, September 27th at 18:00

The School for Curatorial Studies Venice (SCSV) and A plus A Gallery are pleased to announce their upcoming exhibition, Symphony of Hunger. Inspired by a notable selection of works from the Fondazione Bonotto collection, the show feeds an appetite for candid action and fosters a relation to bodily presence through a composition of pieces by established and emerging artists. Considering themes of desire, taste, digestion, and waste, the exhibition will use an experimental curatorial model to orchestrate an organic exploration of corporal, sociopolitical, and aesthetic hungers.

The exhibition is anchored by historical works from renowned artists including Demosthenes Agrafiotis, Joseph Beuys, Robert Filliou, Juan Hidalgo, Dick Higgins, Arrigo Lora Totino, George Maciunas, Walter Marchetti, and Claes Oldenberg, many of whom were active in the Fluxus movement.

This exhibition re-enlivens the spirit of Fluxus with a convergence of contemporaneity. While the key efforts of the movement may have passed, major threads of its revolutionary intentions live on within the current creative sphere. Many artists today are inspired by the same hunger for expression of social, cultural, and political matters through physicality and interaction. By uniting the historical Bonotto selections with a global assemblage of contemporary works, this exhibition creates a harmonious meeting of artists across five decades and eleven countries that share a common craving. Showcasing the recent work of thirteen international artists and collectives, this exhibition illustrates a fluid continuity of attitude through a wide range of media. Throughout its run, several site-specific works will be revealed, including an immersive installation by sound artist Christian Skjødt (Denmark), as well as three newly commissioned works: a poetry piece by Barbara Rockman (USA), a performance by Tizian Baldinger (Switzerland), and an interactive installation by Davide Sgambaro (Italy). The exhibition will also feature sound and video works by Christof Migone (Canada) and Pil & Galia Kollectiv (Israel). Photographic work by Kensuke Koike (Japan) and two dynamic objects by Mano Penalva (Brazil) will also be displayed.

In the manner of a conceptual symphony, the exhibition explores an experimental presentation model by unfolding over four days in a succession of curatorial “movements.” Following the physical process of digestion in the conjectural path of a compositional score, each day will unveil a new grouping of works. As the score of the show progresses, each movement will build off the last to create a harmony of nuanced connections. The symphony will reach a crescendo as the exhibition is completed on the fourth day. Although the layout of the show will become fixed at this point, the works will not remain static. Rather, many of the pieces will be continuously shifting and evolving in time and space. In this way, visitors will have the chance to metaphorically ingest and digest the score in their own way.

The exhibition will align with the release of a new publication titled Symphony of Hunger: The Fifth Movement, a complementary tome that will add depth and relevance to the conceptual reflections and relational threads presented in the gallery space. The publication will be created in tandem with Tankboys Design Studio and printed by Automatic Books. It will present several newly commissioned texts, including an essay by Patrizio Peterlini of the Fondazione Bonotto, and will provide inquisitive artist interviews and extended research into thematic issues expounded by the show.

The exhibition will proudly result from a pioneering collaboration between the SCSV and the Fondazione Bonotto based in Molvena, Italy. Established in June 2013, the foundation was created in order to preserve and expose the collection of Luigi Bonotto, an early supporter of the Fluxus movement who has collected numerous testimonies of associated actions and events beginning in the 1970s. The full collection, containing over 12,000 works, acts as an archive of ephemera, and also houses a rich documentation of works of Concrete, Visual and Sound Poetry. Through cultivating this archive, which is fully searchable online at www.fondazionebonotto.org, the foundation aims to develop new ways of relating art with education, business, and contemporary culture on an international scale.

31.7.15 For those of you who missed it, you can now listen to the proceedings of the ICA Bureaucracy Symposium here:

23.7.15 Tomorrow morning we shall be playing some music and speaking with Graham Dunning on the Fractal Meat on a Spongy Bone show on NTS radio:

Fractal Meat on a Spongy Bone
Studio guests: Pil & Galia Kollectiv

Joining in the studio this Friday 24th July are Pil & Galia Kollectiv. Tune into NTS from 8am to 10am.

8.6.15 We are organising a symposium on bureaucracy at the ICA with Eliane Glaser on July 1st:

1 Jul 2015
11:15 am | Cinema 1 | £5.00 to £10.00
Book Tickets

It is a paradox of advanced Western economies that bureaucracy has not only endured; it has actually proliferated. To understand why is to explore complex questions about capitalism, power, individual and collective psychology, and the nature of work. This event, organised by Eliane Glaser with Pil and Galia Kollectiv, brings together academics, writers and artists to expose and represent the meaning and function of this scourge of everyday life that we all contend with, yet rarely think or talk about.

Does bureaucracy go hand in hand with neoliberalism, or is it neoliberalism's guilty secret, a riposte to its professed efficiency? How is bureaucracy represented in literature and theory – from Franz Kafka to David Foster Wallace, Max Weber to Michel Foucault; and what do these representations reveal about the relationship between bureaucracy and human nature in post-industrial society? We all recognise form filling and box ticking as the pointless paraphernalia of audit culture, yet we comply with it anyway. Could it be that for all its inhuman, lifeless character, we are somehow attracted to bureaucracy because it is untaxing, relaxing, and procrastinatory, in a world that prizes relentless hard work and high-speed commerce?

Speakers include: David Graeber, anthropologist and author of The Utopia of Rules (2015), political and cultural theorists Jeremy Gilbert and Mark Fisher, novelist Tom McCarthy, author and lecturer Stevphen Shukaitis, writer Eliane Glaser and artists Pil and Galia Kollectiv.

In partnership with Reading University and in association with Canterbury Christ Church University.

metamatic: taf
5, Normanou str., Monastiraki, Athens , (+30) 210-3238757
http://www.theartfoundation.gr/

Opening: Thursday 25.06.2015, 20:30
Exhibition duration: 25.06 – 06.09.2015
Opening hours: Mon-Sat 12.00-21.00, Sun 12.00-19.00

Free Admission

metamatic:taf presents the exhibition “kontratω: for it had turned to gold in his hand”, which opens on Thursday 25 June 2015 at 20.30 and will run until 6 September.

The exhibition was selected through the annual Curatorial Open Call organized by metamatic:taf for the fifth consecutive year addressing young curators under 35 years old, giving them the opportunity to propose a group contemporary art exhibition and implement it in metamatic:taf’ gallery.

The group show kontratω: for it had turned to gold in his hand, explores the politics of working for the arts, through the work of seven artists, along with an interactive archive room. Informed by the Greek myth in which Midas, picks an apple and to his discomfort it turns into gold leaving him hungry – kontratω tells the story of the art workers and their artworks.

Measuring work in a post-Fordist “art-factory” scenario can be slippery, as production of labour is inseparable from activity itself. Art work is integrated in a system designed to produce blockbuster exhibitions by circulating digital and printed press releases, and dealing cultural assets, dependent on the artist’s level of ‘achievements’ listed in a 100-word bio written by a no-more-than-ten-quid-a-day-travel-expenses-paid intern. What is the functionality of working for systems designed to blur work and non-work time, and where are the less visible sides of the art workers’ discontinuous and complex biography? Account books, P45’s, freelance tax returns, payslips, and copyright policies. What contract has the employee of culture signed, and with whom?

The exhibition vocalizes the artworkers’ socio-economical bond with the “art factory”, and resonates a collective multitude of critical voices questioning whether given infrastructures indeed have no alternative.

Contributors

Participating artists: Mariana Bisti, David Blackmore, Sara Borga, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Richard Müller, Saul Williams, Marina Xenofontos

Curated by: Marina Georgiou and Thalia-Maria Kourtesi

20.5.15 There are some WE gigs coming up in London and the Czech Republic with lots of Ravioli on the side:

18.4.15 We are speaking at this screening, performance & debate on the collision of art and politics on 30.4.15:

UNSPEAKABLE FREEDOM

With Jennet Thomas, Pil and Galia Kollectiv and Esther Leslie
Dir. : Jennet Thomas

With the General Election looming, join us for this special screening of Jennet Thomas’ The Unspeakable Freedom Device, an experimental narrative film haunted by the image of Margaret Thatcher as an after-burn on our cultural memory. Set in a warped primitive-future world, of collapsing signs and imploding meanings, characters in the film become entangled in a Thatcher cargo-cult where the difference between technology and magic has become incomprehensible. Jennet Thomas (Matt’s Gallery, London) makes films, performances and installations exploring the connections between the lived everyday, fantasy and ideology. Joining her to discuss the collision between art and politics are Pil and Galia Kollectiv, artists who explore the legacy of modernism and Esther Leslie, Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, who chairs the event.

The event will also feature a one-off live performance taken from of The Unspeakable Freedom Device.

Buy advance tickets (please don't print out as we keep a list at the door) Please note that if the online allocation sells out there will be 50 tickets left on the door for this event.

1.4.15 We are showing The Future Trilogy films alongside a performance in Valencia, Spain, as part of this exhibition:

Business As Usual

2nd - 12th April 2015

Opening: Thursday 2nd April
6.30 – 8.30pm

Marketing and Networking are often thought to be dirty practises within certain areas of the arts. With many believing commercial success is akin to selling out and a lack of conceptual rigour, in that an artists practise having been compromised due to being solely focused on monetary gain or fame. The romantic notion of the poor artist slaving away in the garret is still applicable today, poverty and struggle equating to realness and sincerity.

Taking the conceptual bearing of the business card as an art object, and that artists marketing themselves is an necessary almost performatory element of their practises, ‘Business As Usual’ will consider the role and significance of artists networking. The exhibition will also ask how much importance dealers, collectors, curators and gallerists play in determining success, or whether artists themselves are solely or collectively responsible for carving out their own futures. In an age where curators now procure artists from social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter, ‘Business As Usual’ also presents an archaic practise in an increasingly digital world.

25.3.15 We are giving a talk on obscure synth bands in Tel-Aviv on Monday 30.3.15:

**Friday 6th March** brings WE, hausfrau + new Smack Wizard's spawn ALFRED BELLMAN to The Old Hairdressers.

More an experiment into the limits of pop than a band, WE are four bodies barely obscured by identical black boxes, a broken man machine of shrill synth grooves, bizarre guitar melodies, cartoon drumrolls and sax for special occasions. Borrowing strategies from the likes of the Residents, Devo and Laibach, WE replace the individual 'I' with the collective ‘WE’

Blurring the line between artifice and reality, HAUSFRAU is the pop construct of Glasgow based artist Claudia Nova. Themes of darkness and light are mutated into sensual shades by synth projections and Nova's powerful voice, drawing the listener into a quasi sado-masochistic relationship with the performer-as-oracle.

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

and in between we are giving this talk at Transmission Gallery, Glasgow:

Pil and Galia Kollectiv
Breakfast Artist Talk

Transmission is delighted to announce an artist talk by Pil and Galia Kollectiv this Saturday.

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. Pil and Galia Kollectiv have a joint PhD. in fine art from Goldsmiths College and work as lecturers in Fine Art at the university of Reading and senior lecturers at the Cass School of Art. They are also the directors of artist run project space xero, kline & coma in London.

Pil and Galia Kollectiv also have a band called WE. WE extends the role of music in their artwork, as well as their interrogation of the construction of individuality and collectivity.

WE will be playing the night before (06/03/2015) in the Old Hairdressers, along side Hausfrau and Alfred Bellman:

Join us the 12 noon the day after for a Saturday breakfast time artist talk with Pil and Galia Kollectiv.

Marcia Farquhar
Alexander Hidalgo
Pil and Galia Kollectiv
Mary Ramsden
John Stezaker
Mark Titchner
Santo Tolone
Francisco Valdés

Curated by Martin Rasmussen

29.1.15 You can apply for this masterclass we're teaching in May at the Wysing Arts Centre:

OPEN CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
ARTIST MASTERCLASS RETREAT WITH PIL AND GALIA KOLLECTIV
12-15 MAY 2015

Image credit: Pil and Galia Kollectiv,
Performance by Schwerbelastungskörper for
Concrete Gown for Immaterial Flows,
Mirrorcity, Hayward Gallery, 2014.
Photo by: Roger Wooldridge

Wysing Arts Centre, in collaboration with Curating Contemporary Art Programme at the Royal College of Art (RCA), invites applications from artists, writers and curators based in the UK to take part in an Artist Masterclass Retreat with Pil and Galia Kollectiv.

Pil and Galia are artists, writers and curators, as well as directors of xero, kline & coma gallery on Hackney Road and lecturers at University of Reading and at the Cass School of Art. They also have a band called WE. Their artistic practice is multidisciplinary, featuring collage and poster production, film and animation, sculpture and installation, along with performance and costume design.

2015 Retreats
Pil and Galia’s work examines the relationship between art and politics. Their aesthetic visually recalls the avant-garde movements of the twentieth century. They also address the concept of the individual versus the collective and juxtapose consumer rites with religious ceremonies. Pil and Galia Kollectiv often reference science fiction as a tool for imagining other worlds and other ways of being.

Pil and Galia most recently exhibited at Mirrorcity, Hayward Gallery. They have also recently presented live work at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and shown work at The Northern Charter in Newcastle, and at Kunstraum Leipzig in Germany, as well as speaking about their practice at Tranzit Display, Prague and at the Taste After Bourdieu symposium at Chelsea College of Art, London. They have also been selectors for Castlefield Gallery’s 30 Years of the Future exhibition in Manchester, where they curated the exhibition Radical Conservatism.

Pil and Galia Kollectiv will run a Masterclass retreat at Wysing comprising of workshops, talks, and other activities, using their work and research as a framework to explore interdisciplinary practice. Within these workshops Pil and Galia Kollectiv will utilise the concept of the Muiltiverse as a means of rejecting the notion that the way in which we experience the world today is a predetermined and singular possibility.

The retreat will take place from 12-15 MAY 2015
The deadline for applications is 12midnight, Friday 20 February 2015

We accept applications through our Wysing Submittable online webpage. To apply, you will need to answer the following questions and provide us with the information listed below, each as a separate document (you can save and return to your application at any time up until the deadline).

- How is this retreat and Pil and Galia Kollectiv’s work or working methods relevant to your practice at this time? (max 500 words)
- What do you think you can bring to the retreat and what would you want to get out of it? (max 250 words)

- A statement on your work (max 500 words)
- A current CV
- A selection of 6 images of your work (or other relevant material such as video, sound etc, or send a document with links to websites hosting material such as Vimeo or Youtube).

SELECTION PROCEDURE
Following submission the Curatorial Team at Wysing and The Royal College of Art, in consultation with Pil and Galia Kollectiv, will select up to six retreat participants. Selection will be based on applications received following the Call for Participation and on the information provided as described in How to Apply. The retreat is open to artists, writers, theorists and curators living and working in the UK.

ACCOMMODATION
Wysing can provide free accommodation in our farmhouse. All rooms are for multiple use and we are not able to offer individual rooms. Facilities include shared bathrooms, living room and kitchen.

FURTHER INFORMATION
The Masterclass retreats are free to participants. Meals are also provided free of charge.

Also, follow our conversation withDavid Hodge, Hamed Youssefi, Nina Power, John Roberts and Gregory Sholette On Claims of Radicality in Contemporary Art on eFlux:

This first conversation is on the relationship between art and radical politics today. Briefly, the participants are Pil and Galia Kollectiv (Tuesdays), Nina Power (Wednesdays), John Roberts (Thursdays) and Gregory Sholette (Fridays). Despite the artworld's ever-increasing integration into the realms of high capital and the culture industry, much of its discourse currently centres on vehement claims regarding the revolutionary nature of contemporary practice. Especially in the context of large-scale exhibition projects, curators regularly claim that contemporary art has the capacity to open up a space for social transformation, often implicitly or explicitly using the language of the radical left. This conversation seeks to probe these claims – to consider what historical circumstances might have led to their prominence in recent times.

The Elephant in the Room?: Talk and Screenings on Social Inequality, Meritocracy and Art.

TALK, SO I CAN SEE YOU

Capitalist Artist Scum #2

Once More with Feeling(s): Artist's performance and video, focusing on cover versions

A Leap of Faith, act III by The LivingRoom

HH VORTEX

THE HOMOSEXUALS/ MUYASSAR KURDI/ URBORORO & DJS

The Exhibition Centre for the Life and Use of Books presents:

WE and Onion Widow

Fractal Meat on a Spongy Bone Studio guests: Pil & Galia Kollectiv

Fractal Meat on a Spongy Bone
Studio guests: Pil & Galia Kollectiv