Ghosts of Dreams Deferred Exhibition / Film Event / Reading Event / Concert
Anita di Bianco, Young In Hong, Laura Kuch, Hidde van Schie and Lindsay Seers.
Curated by: Fatos Ustek
Opening: 11 April 2010, 19:00
11 April 2010 - 01 May 2010
The exhibition Ghosts of Dreams Deferred depicts the condition of being haunted by ghosts of a past that is yet vibrant and resemble hissing for a loss that instead could be of a joyful present moment. The exhibition brings together five different practices, thus works that expand the conceptual framework in the way in which the concept of the exhibition is taken towards an expansion of resemblances and associations.
Societies, individuals, and personas, in ontological sense, live with the continuous production of desire and with the drive to embody their dreams. Passion as a strong impulse may wither away by the immense accumulation of disappointments and failures of beholding the dreams to come true. As failure is not the ultimate end, but the consequence of the loss of trust in one's engagement to political, economical, psychological, emotional and social domains; it leads to viciously circulating state of complication. That is to say, it leads to a complicated state of mind where the present moment is continuously defined by the traumatic. The traumatic is the representative of the set of traumas, which encapsulates the body (individuals, societies, communities) in suppressive sensual space and holds back.
Hence, ghosts, not in metaphysical sense, resemble, reiterate, and almost re-enact the experience of the trauma. In other words, ghosts are the metaphorical iconography of the traumatic, which is in the very nature of personhoods (rationale of societies, characteristics of individuals).
What does it mean to try to make an articulation of traumatic, what does it mean to recall and try to hold on the relational which defines the present moment? What does it mean to meet with the ghosts of our past, or be aware of the continuous state of being haunted? Ghosts of Dreams Deferred is a project, which presupposes that haunting is a social phenomenon rather than an individual psychosis nor a pre-modern superstition; hence it investigates the potentiality of radical political, social and emotional change. That is to say, it implements change, which is possible only through flourishing of new forms of subjectivity and sociality.
Thus, the project is a proposal to allow the ghosts of the past to emerge in order to be able to perform a new future within a yet-unthought-soon-to-be-present approaches, understandings, and positions. Ghosts of Dreams Deferred is a ground for activating the complication of personhoods, societies at their rationale. The exhibition does not display works that illustrate the relationship between trauma, ghosts, dreams and loss. Despite, the space of encounter, defined by settings from installations to reading event, from film event to a concert from the chairs placed empty for the audience to posters outdoors, intends to be triggering of effect for experiencing, articulating, and evaluating the individual and societal relation to the topic as such.
Young in Hong, furthers her investigation of Plin - a person who got missing in London, in Prishtina. Hong's look out for Plin, is carried by posters that are spread in the city as well as made available for take-away in the premises for the willing audience to include themselves in the search. In the aesthetics of posters for missing people, Hong's search for Plin asks for responses from any possible source of information via e-mail.
Laura Kuch's Phantom Drawing appears as a gateway in the space, with an intricacy from how the drawing is made to what it resembles: A black hole in the exhibition, yet visual and uncanny.
Lindsay Seers' work will be a specially marked occasion in the form of a reading event where her revised version of the book It has to be this way will be read through. The book is part of her solo exhibition at Matt's gallery, London. The book displays the search the artist has gone through on the search for her sister Christine. Through the reading event an aural experience will be triggered, referencing the tradition of telling tales.
Hidde van Schie's installation Complain Less Thank More, 2008 is composed of a table, a chair and a specially baked bread, referring to the religious teachings of performing to be in life while the quote continuously constructs the articulation of any form of experience. Schie's video piece An attempt to explain what I feel when I try to imagine the infiniteness of the universe, 2007 is a compilation of responses by three drummers while improvising on the meaning of its title.
Anita di Bianco's video piece Dreaming and Drugs, 2007, part of Der Versteller, presents a chapter from a 1980 interview with the writer Marguerite Yourcenar. Played by Jean-Baptiste Naudy, Yourcenar elaborates on the aesthetic structure of dreams, diagrams relations between scholarly knowledge and imagination, and insists on the formidable presence of re-constructed characters in the realm of the historical, and discusses the mediumnique relationship between the consciousness of writers and that of the characters they set to paper.
The project is furthered with a film event in the premises of Stacion and a closing concert by Hidde van Schie - Schie's music oscillates on the domains of psychedelic yet experimental, with lyrics compiled by the artist himself.
The project is a structural exercise for an exhibition where conditions of funding has lead to a curatorial and artistic production from far. The conceptual framework has been revisited by the obstacles of curating a space that the curator (- nor the artists) has not been and will not visit before the opening and imagining the premises of display in relation to the works to be included in the exhibition. The artists of the show have been asked to ponder on the condition and investigate what it would mean to make a ghostly appearance of themselves as well as the curator is meant to investigate the horizons of a practice through her office.
In all respects, the exhibition is an outcome of a dream that has deferred, namely being in the premises and installing the show in collaboration with the artists hence its ghosts are the initiators and producers of the project which have been haunting the staff of Stacion, literally.
Program
11 April 2010 - 01 May 2010
Ghosts of Dreams Deferred
18 April 2010, 16:00 - 18:00
Reading event: It has to be this way by Lindsay Seers
25 April 2010, 16:00 - 18:00
Film event: Screening of Ghost Dance
01 May 2010, 16:00 - 20:00
Curator & Artist Talk + Closing Concert by Hidde van Schie
Ghosts of Dreams Deferred by Fatos Ustek is part of the working module Kuratoret, a project by Stacion - Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina.
Ghosts of Dreams Deferred is sponsored by The Mondriaan Foundation, Dardania Insurance Company, Technomarket, KTV, Rrokum, Gege, Alter Habitus and DZG.