Anri Sala at Summer School as School 2018
July 17, 2018, 20:00
Venue: Boxing Club

Summer School as School
July 16 – August 2, 2018

Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina is pleased to announce the presentation “Take Over” by Anri Sala, part of Summer School as School 2018 Public Program.

Take Over (2017) – a video and sound installation comprising two films – addresses central themes in Anri Sala's oeuvre, exploring the relationships between music and narrative, architecture and film and interleaving qualities of different media in both complex and intuitive ways to produce works in which one medium takes on the qualities of another.

A conceptual point of departure are two well-known musical works, affiliated by an entangled political and cultural history, the Marseillaise and the Internationale. Written in 1792, the Marseillaise was closely tied to the French Revolution but also quickly spread to other countries where it became a symbol for the overthrow of oppressive regimes. Thus the 1871 lyrics of the Internationale were initially also set to the tune of the Marseillaise, until 1888 when its original music was composed and the song became the standard anthem of the socialist movement. Both anthems have undergone major changes in their political connotations: from revolution, restoration, socialism, resistance and patriotism, to additional associations with colonization and oppression in the second half of the twentieth century (as national anthems of France and the Soviet Union, respectively). Yet to this day their meaning remains in flux, as the two songs continue to be appropriated. Take Over makes audible the close relationship of these two political anthems and mines the musical kinship for traces of this changing symbolic significance. Sound literally determines the films, whose changing focus is tied to musical tones and the movement of the keys producing them - even if the underlying system remains elusive.

Both films have been originally conceived to run simultaneously with their respective soundtracks playing in tandem. For this presentation, the films will be screened one after the other.

Berlin-based artist Anri Sala was born in 1974 in Tirana, Albania. Recent solo exhibitions include Anri Sala, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York (2018), Anri Sala, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico (2017), The Last Resort, Kaldor Public Art Projects, Sydney, Australia (2017) Anri Sala: Answer Me, New Museum, New York, NY (2016), Anri Sala, Galleria Alfonso Artiaco, Naples, Italy (2015), 'The Present Moment (in D)', Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2014); 'Anri Sala: Two Films', Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit MI (2012); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark (2012); Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2012); '1395 Days Without Red', Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland (2012); National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan (2011); Serpentine Gallery, London, England (2011) and Musée d'Art Contemporain, Montreal, Quebec (2011).

Sala was awarded the Prix Gilles Dusein in 2000; the Young Artist Prize at the Venice Biennale in 2001 and the Absolut Art Award, Stockholm, Sweden in 2011. In 2013, he was selected to represent France at the 55th Venice Biennial with 'Ravel Ravel Unravel' and, most recently, Sala was the recipient of the Vincent Award, Den Haag, The Netherlands (2014).