4.12.18 We are showing work in Snow Crash at IMT Gallery:

SNOW CRASH

DIANN BAUER | AMANDA BEECH | MELANIE JACKSON
PIL & GALIA KOLLECTIV | CLAIRE POTTER | TAI SHANI
LINDA STUPART | AYESHA TAN JONES | LYNTON TALBOT

CURATED BY KIRSTEN COOKE

11 JANUARY – 10 MARCH 2019

IMT GALLERY
UNIT 2/210 CAMBRIDGE HEATH ROAD
LONDON E2 9NQ UK
mail@imagemusictext.com

OPEN: THURSDAY – SUNDAY 12 – 6PM OR BY APPOINTMENT


PREVIEW: THURSDAY 10 JANUARY 6 – 9 PM
FIRST THURSDAY’S: 7 FEBRUARY AND 7 MARCH UNTIL 9 PM

A scaffolding structure will pierce the dividing wall at IMT gallery; the partition acting as a mirror that reflects the physical diagram across the two spaces. 

Its anatomy is already doubling, self-replicating across the bifurcated gallery.

Snow Crash is a speculative architecture for alternative infrastructures that is flexibly built to respond to the artworks it houses. Artworks that exist in tension with the framework and will impinge on it, spill out from it and will be performed in and around the physical diagram. Assembled out of scaffolding, Snow Crash renders its own configuration visible and provisional, with the potential to be reformulated and adapted to future contexts. Snow Crash’s diagrammatic structure facilitates the ability for the autonomous artistic practices to go off in different directions but to reside in one place, enabling us to consider the complexity of the collective and the equally complex infrastructures that could support it. Snow Crash produces a project that thinks of itself as a scaffold, as opposed to a container, and as result has the propensity to suggest alternative and expansive forms of viewing art. 

#SnowCrash

SUPPORTED BY:

ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND
ART LACUNA
SCHOOL OF ART AT UNIVERSITY OF READING

 

30.11.18 We will be reading from our essay on the missing body of JT Leroy from The Bodies that Remain at South London Gallery tonight at 19:00. Buy the book:

The Bodies That Remain

Edited by Emmy Beber

Contributors Harman Bains, Phoebe Blatton, Uma Breakdown, Kevin Breathnach, Mairead Case, Susanna Davies-Crook, Karen Di Franco, Chloé Griffin, Philip Hoare, Travis Jeppesen, Sharon Kivland, Emily LaBarge, Jeremy Millar, Heather Phillipson, Pil & Galia Kollectiv, Claire Potter, David Rule, Tai Shani, Linda Stupart, Lynne Tillman

The Bodies That Remain is a collection of bodies and absences.

Through biography, experimental essay, interview, fictional manifestation, and poetic extraction, The Bodies That Remain is a collection of texts and images on the bodies of artists and writers who battled with the frustration of their own physicality and whose work reckoned with these limitations and continued beyond them.

The essays in The Bodies That Remain look back at how the identities of these bodies were shaped by the spaces around them, through the retelling of memory, through stories told by others, of how their work, processed by theirbody, made it possible for others to experience sensations – mourning, desire, or a nostalgia that could not belong to another, to another’s body – and in capturing this ability, their work confirms the body’s urgency.

Amongst others, The Bodies That Remain tells the story of Emily Dickinson’s decay, the missing grave of Valeska Gert, the voice and sound of the body of Judee Sill, and the derailed body (and work) of Jane Bowles. It questions the absent body but broken organs of JT Leroy as they find themselves scattered across texts, and also interrogates the loss of distinction of illness for Jules de Goncourt as syphilis riddled his nervous system. It retrieves the illusory body of Kathy Acker through dream and through horror, sees the morphing body of Michael Jackson in becoming all of the bodies he was asked to be, and looks toward Sylvia Plath and the language of her own body.

Where ‘body’ as a verb makes material something abstract, The Bodies That Remain, as a collection, became bodily.

https://punctumbooks.com/titles/the-bodies-that-remain/

 

8.8.18 We are excited to announce the launch of EuroNoize, a live music event, conference, exhibition, book and record project, exploring DiY art bands as intersections of local and global identities. The EuroNoize conference will take place on 21.9.18 at the University of Reading.

Conference

Art Bands, DiY Music and Cultural Identity in an Age of Transnational Mobility

21.09.2018, 9:30-18:00
£12 / £8 concessions (students/unwaged/OAP)

This conference is the first iteration of EuroNoize, a collaborative project held between the University of Reading, Kunsthall Oslo and A.R.E. Prague and funded by the European Commission. The project aims to explore the history and existing practices of the DiY music scene in Europe and beyond, to evaluate this particular form of artistic production alongside other contemporary aesthetic modes, to consider its historical and current relationship to art education (the art band emerging from art school) and to consider the social, economic and cultural structures that shape it in the present. In this context, we will be exploring the relationship between a global (predominantly Anglo-Saxon) culture industry and localised and independent nodes of production. This one-day conference is serve as a starting point in generating a theoretical discussion around an artistic and musical genre that is rarely given enough attention in art criticism.

Speakers

Philip Auslander
Bryan Biggs
Chris Bohn
Paula Guerra
Sarah Lowndes
Pil and Galia Kollectiv
Stephanie Phillips
Simon Reynolds
Matt Worley

Venue

University of Reading
Madjieski Lecture Theatre
Room RGL04
Agriculture Building

About EuroNoize

EuroNoize is a project researching the relationship between art and DiY music scenes in Europe across several platforms. At the heart of the EuroNoize project is an alternative music showcase modeled on the Eurovision Song Context, in which musicians will be invited to consider the interplay of local and global identities in representing their country with a specially commissioned song and video. The live event in London will be streamed online and broadcast at partner venues. Viewers will be able to vote digitally for the winning entry. This is accompanied by a conference at the University of Reading, exploring the histories connecting DiY music and the visual arts and investigating the challenges inherent in formalising the informal networks upon which this cultural activity is built. Conference proceedings will lead to a publication in which these themes will be expanded. Finally, the music produced for this live event will be released as a record and disseminated internationally together with the book and an exhibition at Kunsthall Oslo. The project’s explicit aim is to think of and implement strategies and modes of cooperation between art institutions, DiY musicians and internally between various bands across the continent to facilitate the continuation of these often short-lived practices. In doing so, the project investigates the way European co-operation transcends borders and raises questions about the meaning (and sound) of cultural identity in an age of transnational mobility.

More information 

https://euronoize.kollectiv.co.uk/

 

13.7.18 We are giving a talk at Romanti-Crash!:

JUPITER CAMPOUT: ROMANTI-CRASH!



*A sleepover programme of experimental art and music at Jupiter Artland (near Edinburgh), 28–29 July 2018*

More information here.

Curated by Sian Dorrer (ACID PRAWN) & Matilda Strang (SUPERNORMAL), ROMANTI-CRASH! presents an anarchic and immersive deconstruction of the 'quintessential' big day, interweaving ideas about the evolving nature of matrimony with sound, performance, discussion and creativity.

Taking place across the iconic setting of Jupiter Artland, ROMANTI-CRASH! promises one-off and unique experiences for audiences and artists alike. Expect unbridled innovation, exploration and eclecticism!

LIVE MUSIC AND SOUND FROM:
Martin Creed - Paddy Steer - The Fish Police - Sculpture - The Rebel - Tomaga - Apostille - Primitive Parts - Ectopia - Comfort - Heir of The Cursed - Kubler Ross 
Compered by the enigmatic Dan Mitchell

ART, TALKS AND PERFORMANCES WITH:
Stasis - Urara Tsuchiya - Pil and Galia Kollectiv - Natalie Sharp (LONE Taxidermist) - Eothen Stearn - Lindsey Mendick - Susie Green - Christian Noelle Charles - Sam Riviere

LATE NIGHT STAGE CURATED BY OH141 WITH:
HEALTHY DJS - Junglehussi - Letitia Pleiades - V/DA - hosted by ratty byebye

ARTIST-LED WORKSHOPS FOR ALL AGES WITH:
Alice Lee - Emer Tumilty - Richy Carey - Ssssstudio - Mele Broomes

WALK-IN WARDROBE AND BEAUTY BAR HOSTED BY:
Ravioli Me Away - Lady Neptune - Haircuts for Babes

CAMPING - KARAOKE - CRECHE - SITE WALKS - BUFFET - BANQUET - MERCH - COCKTAILS - FUN - FUN - FUN 

EVENT INFORMATION:


> The site will be open from 1pm, the programme will begin at 3pm and will continue into the early hours of the morning.
> Families and children welcome, a designated family camping area will be available.

TICKETS:
> Adult tickets: £40

> Wedding Buffet tickets: £5
Join us for a wedding buffet extravaganza experience created by ACID PRAWN in
collaboration with artists Lindsey Mendick and Urara Tsuchiya. The buffet will be vegan and available from 6–7pm on Saturday. 

> Teen tickets (13 – 17): £25

> Child tickets (under 12): Free

> Concessions/low income tickets: £20
We want ROMANTI-CRASH! to be accessible to as many people as possible, so have included a Concessions/low income ticket option of £20. Before purchasing this ticket option, please send a simple statement to enquiries@jupiterartland.org which details why you might be eligible for the discount. The statement could include your employment status, if you are currently studying, if you are over 60, if you are receiving government benefits or concessions etc.
*Concessions/low income tickets are limited and will be issued on a case by case basis.
**Tickets for those with a disability and Carers/Personal Assistants are free, please email enquiries@jupiterartland.org

 

Also, our other band, UrBororo, is featured on this brand new compilation from Freakapuss:

The Monsters That Ate Uranus

The Monsters That Ate Uranus is a collection of tracks from 16 individual artists that you should know.

Despite being talented and popular, for one reason or another, or indeed many others, everyone featured on this compilation is obscure in modern day music scene terms BUT SHOULDN'T BE!

Each track is a shining example of individuality and the true spirit of creativity in music, making music as art and not for blatant commercial motives.

The artists emerging on this compilation will remain timeless and continue to be emerging when the best of the overexposed music industry is forgotten or at best outdated.

Support the music that loves you.

1. Solvent Minds - Covered In Sand

2. Jon Slade Knight of the Comet - Margaux

3. J. B. Townsend - Dead Air (tragic)

4. Anastasia Crisis - Cotton Fields

5. PWits - Machine Like Bosom of Stalin

6. The Pheromones - Batch Weddings

7. Simon Murphy - Yamaha Quad Edit

8. Victor Jakeman - Do You Like Warhammer 40K and Country Music

9. Lily Marlene - When You’re Blue

10. Lenguas Largas - Everything

11. The Rancid Hell Spawn - Eat My Cigarette

12. Middex - Lowlife

13. UrBororo - Decisions

14. The Purple Implosion - Purple Implosion Theme

15. Zero Baby and Bonnie Parker - Outlaws

16. Gary Olson - Two

Buy it here.


Finally, come to this reading group in Glasgow, Wed 15 August 2018, 13:30 – 15:00, if you want to discuss this essay we wrote a while back:

Can Objects Perform? - Reading Group

Objects surround us; their very existence is something usually associated with an mundane and everyday attitude. Very little regard is given to objects, especially in relation to our own human existence. Why? An objects placement within contemporary art is equally ambiguous with - often - little acknowledgment of the thingliness within.

Can objects communicate? In the context of exhibition making, we can see how in fact a very social space is created for objects and their beings. Close proximity becomes a metaphor for, and methodology towards, understanding the communicable power of objects. What does this mean for the art world as a whole?

You are invited to take part in a reading group looking at the flattening of hierarchy between human and object existence(s). Through the reading of a text by writers and curators Pil and Galia Kollectiv, we will explore an object-oriented world of the inanimate and everyday; from traditional philosophy, to contemporary artistic practice(s) and even the financial crash of the mid 2000s.

Please attend this event having read the text and with some notes ready for discussion, however, this text is to act as both an instigator and departure point so feel free to bring any ideas or questions unrelated.

Please refer to the link in this description to access the text, alternatively you can contact me if you would like a hard copy posted

The event will take place in The Snug at Kelvin Hall cafe. As you enter Kelvin Hall, head towards the cafe desk, take a left, and head down towards the front of the cafe. If you have any issues please ask any of the Kelvin Hall staff about finding The Snug. Refreshments will be provided. Please get in touch with any dietary requirements/ allergies.

Link for text: www.kollectiv.co.uk/Object%20Orientations.html

Pil and Galia Kollectiv are London-based artists, writers and curators working in collaboration. Their work together addresses the legacy of modernism and the relationship between art and politics. It explores avant-garde discourses of the twentieth century in the context of a changing landscape of creative work and instrumentalised leisure. They often use music and choregraphed movement to investigate the beliefs and rituals of a supposedly post-ideoligical society.

They have had solo shows at Centre Clark, Montreal, Naughton Gallery, Belfast, Pump House Gallery, London, Te Tuhi Center for the Arts, New Zealand and The Showroom Gallery, London. They have also presented live work at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the 5th Montreal Biennial and Kunsthall Oslo. Their band WE extends their interrogation of the construction of individuality and collectivity. They are the directors of artist run project space xero, kline & coma and work as lecturers in Fine Art at the University of Reading, the Royal College of Art and the CASS School of Art.

Louisa Love, some stretchy ecology of concentrics (Installation View), 2018. Talbot Rice Gallery. Image courtesy the artist.

Book here.


26.4.18 Our exhibition, Second Annual Report from the Strategic Sanctuary for the Destruction of Free Will, opens 10.5.18 at Centre Clark, Montreal:

Pil and Galia Kollectiv
Second Annual Report from the Strategic Sanctuary for the Destruction of Free Will

10.5.18 - 16.6.18

Centre d'art et de diffusion CLARK
5455, avenue de Gaspé, suite 114
Montréal (QC) Canada H2T 3B3
+1 514.288.4972 / info@clarkplaza.org

OPENING + PERFORMANCE / THURSDAY, MAY 10, 8PM
ARTIST TALK / SATURDAY, MAY 12, 3PM

Why don’t we do a little exercise… Would anyone like to put themselves forward?”

--Masked voice from the performance in Second Annual Report from the Strategic Sanctuary for the Destruction of Free Will (2018)

In writing about architecture, LeCorbusier observed how things, over time, melt into primary shapes. Like Grecian ruins, great things become reduced to simple, formal arrangements: "I think that the flatness of the horizon, particularly at noon when it imposes a uniformity on everything about it, provides for each one of us a measure of the most humanly possible perception of the absolute". An investigation into how we perceive the world around us, particularly the power structures that bind us, is the starting point for Pil and Galia Kollectiv’s Progress Report from the Strategic Sanctuary for the Destruction of the Free Will. In this site-specific installation by the London-based duo we experience an ineffable, white, total world where self-expression is in tension with over-arching regulating systems.

In Strategic Sanctuary, we encounter a white, horizonless space. Clues to where we are, and what era we are in, provide both comfort and unnerving possibility. A ready-made cardboard Bauhaus room might be a prison cell, monk’s sanctuary, or padded therapy room. The uniform skin of whiteness is cut by swaths of black tape. Long, black lines describe wall hinges and life-sized triangles. They restrain form but also entice us toward ungraspable horizons. The title of the installation is derived from a pamphlet from the 1950s entitled SYNANON: STRATEGIC SANCTUARIES FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF FREE WILL written against Synanon, an offshoot AA cult whose mandate was to get people to stop drinking by using LSD instead. The space itself seems to make a parallel between the mechanisms of state control and regulation on the one hand, and the idea of self-expression and spiritual release, on the other. An audio soundtrack based on a Youtube group therapy session plays eerily in the background. We anticipate de-tox, absolution, or full ecstatic ritual.

Is chaos still chaos if we find ways to contain it? We may stand for or against the monitoring of our well-being and suitability for work, normalcy, and complicity with the whole, but we can’t help but notice how freely we express ourselves when masked. Or how we fall into the surreal gestures and choreology of cult rapture, metal band performances, and group therapy confession. In Strategic Sanctuary we are asked to let go and empathise. Placed under such voluntary house-arrest, the excessive generation of subjectivity (aka sharing) feels like the high of psychedelic drugs, the collective fire of shared justice, and the levelling fervour-to-belong that can bring us, willfully, to the point of worship, making us question the way such experiences are constructed. — Text by Alisha Piercy

Pil and Galia Kollectiv are artists, writers and curators working in collaboration. Their work addresses the legacy of modernism and the relationship between art and politics. Their band WE extends their interrogation of the construction of individuality and collectivity. They have had solo shows at Naughton Gallery, Belfast, Pump House Gallery, London, Te Tuhi Center for the Arts, New Zealand and The Showroom Gallery, London. They have also presented live work at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the 5th Montreal Biennial and Kunsthall Oslo. They are the directors of artist run project space xero, kline & coma and work as lecturers in Fine Art at the University of Reading, the Royal College of Art and the CASS School of Art.

The artists would like to thank Victor M. Jakeman, Rosie Ridgway, Mingo L'Indien, Dominique Pétrin, University of Reading, Royal College of Art and the CASS School of Art.

http://centreclark.com/en/projects/second-annual-report-strategic-sanctuary-destruction-free-will

 

WE will also be playing live in Montreal on 11.5.18 at La Sotterenea:

Analogue Addiction présente:

*** La Sotterenea = petite salle sous La Sala Rossa
*** La Sotterenea = small venue under La Sala Rossa

---- 4848 St-Laurent ---- 

- WE (UK)
https://we-are-we.bandcamp.com/album/inside-the-black-cube

- Ellemetue 
https://ellemetue.bandcamp.com/

- 2U 


11 Mai à La Sotterenea — 21h, 8$
May 11th at La Sotterenea — 9pm, 8$

Affiche par Karmen Mantha

https://www.facebook.com/events/1950451948601320/

20.3.18 WE videos are on show as part of Fusion at Rising Sun Arts Centre, Reading:

Fusion

The Rising Sun Arts Centre
30 Silver St.
Reading
RG1 2ST

Saturday 24.3.18 at 14:00

Fusion is a one day Sound Salon with Sinéad Bligh, Harriet Butler, Gary Charles, Copper Sounds, Shirley Penga, Starky and the Moondoctor, Linda Stupart and WE (Pil & Galia Kollectiv), curated by Simone Hesselberg

The Rising Sun Arts Centre will host an ensemble of artists working with sound, who eschew traditional artistic mediums. Fusion is an immersive auditory experience tinged with chaos, and includes performances, installations and videos bringing a vibrant range of new commissions and existing work to Reading.

Fusion is supported by Arts Council England, Reading International and the University of Reading

Free Entry

More information here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1936994309963988/

 

We are also screening Better Future, Wolf-Shaped in Zurich:

Queering the exhibition

Thursday 22.3.18 at 18:30

OnCurating ProjectSpace
Ausstellungsstrasse 15
8005 Zurich

Contributions by Hana Earles, Maëlle Gross, Anna Linder, Nunzio Madden, OMSK Social Club PUNK IS DADA, Pil & Galia Kollectiv, Marilou Poncin, Tabita Rezaire, Roee Rosen, Scagliola & Meier, Nicolaas Schmidt, Bo Zheng

Curatorial Group: Damian Christinger, Kristina Grigorjeva, Christine Kaiser, Ronald Kolb, Ella Krivanek, Marco Meuli, Camille Regli, Dorothee Richter, Oliver Rico, Elena Setzer

in collaboration with zürich moves!

Taking queer practices & theories as a point of departure, ‚Queering the Exhibition‘ suggests both a conceptually and formally polyphonous environment of 12 video artworks by several artists. Against naturalized, binary subject constructions this group show puts ambiguity, fluidity and layering at the forefront to enhance multiple levels of subjectivity. By challenging its format, the exhibition invites the visitor to perpetually reconfigure the offered narratives.

The exhibition was inaugurated by Elie Autin’s and Juliette Uzor’s performance How can I call what is between us (II). 

The Oncurating Project Space (oncurating-space.org) organizes this exhibition with young curators of the Postgraduate Programme in Curating, Zurich University of the Arts (curating.org) in collaboration with alumnus Marc Streit for zürich moves!(festival for contemporary arts practice in performing arts).

Opening times: Tue–Thu, 4–7pm or by appointment (info@oncurating.org)

http://oncurating-space.org/queering-the-exhibition/

 

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