STATE

STATE-LESSNESS

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Beny

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Eléonore Saintagnan

Gen Ueda

Jonathan Vinel

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Yuki O kumura

Justyna Wierzc

howi

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12 MAYPERFORMATIVELECTURES& OPENING

13 MAY–07 JULY 2018

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OJAI: Chris Dreier & Gary Fa

rrel

lyM

eggy Rustamova

P R E S S K I T

Legal Publisher: Adrien Grimmeau / ISELP

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T 1. Press Release2. Curators Statement3. Artworks Descriptions4. Artists Biographies 5. Public Events 6. Rites of Exchange7. Practical Information

ISELP presents State of Statelessness, an exhibition elaborated by four students from Curatorial Studies programme at KASK – Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten, Genk: Hilde Borgermans, Romuald Demidenko, Maxime Gourdon, Alicja Melzacka.

The artworks by Sabrina Chou, Marijke De Roover, Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence (OJAI) – Chris Dreier & Gary Farrelly, Yuki Okumura, Meggy Rustamova, Eléonore Saintagnan, Gen Ueda, Jonathan Vinel, Beny Wagner and Justyna Wierzchowiecka are audio and video installations. Presented as statelessness states, they list autarkic entities, which evolve away from social norms and conventions. State of Statelessness mixes real, speculative and fictional scenarios reveling personal cosmogo-nies where resounds technology and bureaucratic power.

The four curators developed a program of complementary activites around their project, including bilingual guided tour of the exhibition (June 2, 9), performances by OJAI (Chris Dreier and Gary Farrelly) and Sabrina Chou (June 2, 16), as well as screenings of films by Gen Ueda and Yuki Okumura (June 9, 16).

As a premise of the exhibiton, ISELP hosts Rites of Exchange (May 12, 11:00 am-6:00 pm) as well, where each student in Curatorial Studies programme at KASK invite a selection of artists in residence at HISK – Hoger Instituut voor Schone Kunsten, Genk (which propose a two years post graduate program of two years to young international artists), – to realise performative interventions in ISELP exhibition spaces. This program brings together a wide variety of interventions including TEDX conference, food tasting, ping-pong play, dance and audioguide, and results from a collaboration between the two academic institutions and ISELP.

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T State of Statelessness1 is one way to describe the contemporary condition of disembodiment and the position of an individual in an increasingly mediated society. It becomes a site for self-production and aestheticisation,a matrix enmeshing what has not assumed any fixed form (yet).

It can also be imagined as a paradoxical, pseudo-administrative body,a space for a supranational society to take form, a utopian enclave based on indeterminacy and fluidity.State of Statelessness is a swansong amidst the crisis.

On the other hand, statelessness may appear as a fatal predicament, a painfully carnal condition of displacement.It harbors feelings of rejection and non-belonging and imposes the status of an outcast, the ‘other’.

Finally, it connects to the state of being in-between, the moment of intermission or suspension on variety of levels.In mid-May ISELP – and us with it – will enter this particular modewith a group show that sets out to manipulate the ambiguous notion of statelessness.

The departure point for this exhibition has been an attempt to identify how these different instances of statelessness shape our life condi-tions and ourselves. The follow up question is, what can be done in response? From critically observing and commenting on the status quo, to proposing alternative solutions for living together (and with ourselves), the works position themselves against or outside of the cold regime of statelessness. The 11 invited artists, working in different media (installation, sculpture, post art and, predominantly, video art) have assumed divergent approaches – turning towards reexamining old modes of materiality, or experimenting with the new ones. While some look back to the pre-internet era, the others try to predict what may lie beyond it. All works on show relate in a way to the problems of identity-crisis, uprootedness, and disembodiment; to migration on the one hand and mediation on the other. In the exhibition space, fictional biographies mix with true stories – all of them trying to help us navigate through the apparent identity crisis. It is difficult to decide which voice and evidence to follow; personal photographs turn out to be public, tears to be digital, and the tweeting artist – already dead.

Hilde Borgermans, Alicja Melzacka, Maxime Gourdon, Romuald Demidenko

1 The title of the exhibition derives from the text P.A.R.A.D.E. On Streaming Selves, Social Forms, and Disembodiment by Sabrina Chou, 2017.

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P.A.R.A.D.E. On Streaming Selves, Social Forms, and Disembodiment, performance, photo: Courtesy of the artist

“The spacelessness and statelessness of social media allows for a huge range of connectivity, of collective organization. Without being bound to geographic or nationalistic identities, voices can gather and gain traction in terms of other types of communities. (...) And often the virtual community is an extension of a physical community that already exists in space. Social media—and how it allows people to come together—has been witness to and complicit in political mo-vements and changes in our recent history. (...) Affinity-based social formation has led to the distancing of extremes. Differing opinions are less likely to come together, even to spar. The homogenization of segments of the digital network has created an architecturally and algorithmically segregated virtual space, where left and right move far-ther apart and the spectrum in between falls more and more vacant”. In her analysis of social forms in both digital and real lifes, Sabrina Chou addresses various, positive and negative aspects of techno-logical immediacy, on the one hand, and the phenomenon of public gathering of protesting bodies on the other. The chapter of Chou’s essay, referred to above, has informed the title of the exhibition.

SABRINA CHOU, P.A.R.A.D.E. ON STREAMING SELVES, SOCIAL FORMS, AND DISEMBODIMENT, 2018, TEXT

The first version of the text was published in the All the Time at Work, 2017, Galeria Labirynt, Lublin.

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The Eggcellent Adventures of Marijke De Roover (a TEDx Musical on Non-Nuclear Parenting) (video still), 2018

Surrogacy, egg donation, adoption, and co-parenting create or offer a certain hope for gay couples, but they are also only a starting point for rainbow couples to raise their children. In her TED-inspired musical, Marijke De Roover deals with questions regarding the nuclear family, the relationship between feminism and motherhood, and the ethics of reproduction. TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) talks address a wide range of topics, often through storytelling. The speakers are given a maximum of 18 minutes to present their ideas in the most innovative and engaging way possible. In 2010, noted statistician Nassim Taleb called TED a ‘monstrosity that turns scientists and thinkers into low-level entertainers, like circus performers’. De Roover chooses this format for her musical lecture performance to combine (pseudo-)scientific research with personal experience. She includes music and musical theater features, inten-ding to evoke emotional reaction of the audience, reflecting on per-sonal setbacks, and - through including fairytale inspired songs - at-tempting to create a myth of origin of conceiving and raising a baby in a non-heteronormative family, often including questions of how the kids will relate to their family construction and existing tales and model.

MARIJKE DE ROOVER, THE EGGCELLENT ADVENTURES OF MARIJKE DE ROOVER, (A TEDX MUSICAL ON NON-NUCLEAR PARENTING), 2018, VIDEO, 22’

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world map, 2018, installation view, Laura Mars Gallery, photo: Courtesy of the artists and Laura Mars Gallery

OFFICE FOR JOINT ADMINISTRATIVE INTELLIGENCE (OJAI - CHRIS DREIER & GARY FARRELLY)

The content presented by the Office for Joint Administrative Intelli-gence (OJAI) incorporates research and experiments conducted by its members, Gary Farrelly and Chris Dreier, on the manifestations of power through social, political and architectural structures. This research feeds the mapping exercises, registering systemic behaviors and moments of violent disruption, as well as, OJAI’s video works overlaying instructive spoken elements with footage shot during research field trips in Brus-sels, Berlin, Dallas, and Wuppertal. Besides the exploration of bureau-cracy and organisational structures on the macro-level, OJAI is also interested in the mechanisms of control by means of a self-imposed re-gime of repetitive tasks and ongoing auto-documentation, the process referred to as ‘self-inventory’. Through the intimate format of a postcard (of which sentimental value has been enhanced by the meticulous act of embroidery), OJAI presents various subjects transformed into objects of desire and displaced from their original (heteronormative) context, in this way turning the underlying societal convention against itself.

The correspondence display offers an insight into the written ex-change between Dreier and Farrelly, from which OJAI originated in 2015, and which remains central to the practice. The comradeship of the postal transaction subverts the atmosphere of officialdom pre-sent throughout the project, situating OJAI somewhere between institutional critique, over-identification, and structured intimacy.

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Correspondence display, 2018, installation view, Lola Pertsowski,

photo: Courtesy of the artists and Lola Pertsowski

photo: Courtesy of the artists

CORRESPONDENCE DISPLAY,

2018, POSTAL CORRESPONDENCE (MULTIPLE ELEMENTS), GLASS AND

MDF, 160 X 80 CM

ROTTERDAM SKYLINE, 2018, EMBROIDERY ON POSTCARD,

17.5 X 11.5 CMCOURTESY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTION, BRUSSELS

BRITISH PAVILLION, 2016, EMBROIDERY ON POSTCARD,

14.5 X 10 CM

TRUDEAU AIRPORT, 2016, EMBROIDERY ON

POSTCARD, 14.5 X 10 CM

SUBJECT 1/ STRAIGHTSPLOITATION 1,

2018, EMBROIDERY ON SCREENGRAB, 17.5 X 11.5 CM

COURTESY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTION, BRUSSELS

SUBJECT 2/ STRAIGHTSPLOITATION 2,

2018, EMBROIDERY ON SCREENGRAB, 17.5 X 11.5 CM.

COURTESY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTION, BRUSSELS

FINANCE TOWER, 2016, VIDEO, 1’53’’, LOOP

PEDESTRIAN TUNNELS, 2017, VIDEO, 7’14’’, LOOP.

WORLD MAP, 2018, WALLPAPER / DRAWING /

DIGITAL PRINT, 205 X 383 CM.

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On Kawara is Still Alive: An Interview with Pall Thayer (video still), 2015

Over the last 9 years, a twitterbot @On_Kawara has been posting daily ‘I AM STILL ALIVE’, a message conveyed by nearly 900 telegrams sent by On Kawara himself over three decades, in what can be considered his most personal durational performance. In this video, Yuki Okumura interviews Pall Thayer, an artist and the mind behind the twitter account. In 2014, upon the passing of On Kawara, Thayer had to face the decision, whether to abort the project...

In this and many of his other pieces, Okumura takes as a starting point not so much the work of another artist, as the figure of the artist in itself, and an almost mythical aura surrounding it. In relation to this material, Okumura assumes a position of an editor and a researcher on the one hand and a medium or a surrogate on the other. In this way, he puts into question the established notions of authorship and of ‘artistic persona’.

YUKI OKUMURA, ON KAWARA IS STILL ALIVE: AN INTERVIEW WITH PALL THAYER, 2015, HD VIDEO, 29’ 18’’, (SPECIAL SCREENING)

(Dis)location (video still), 2013

MEGGY RUSTAMOVA, (DIS)LOCATION, 2013, HD VIDEO, 13’

Meggy Rustamova was born in Georgia but moved to Belgium when she was 8 years old. Through her films, she never refers to her heritage literally, but chooses to work with topics such as language, identity and displacement. In (Dis)Location, Rustamova investigates the relationship between visual narrative, storytelling and construction of memory. By assembling various archival photographs, the artist creates a narrative that blurs the distinction between the personal and the universal, reality and fiction.

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Ancêtres n°2, 3, 4, 2013, vue d’exposition, Alessandro, photo: Courtesy of the artist and

ELÉONORE SAINTAGNAN, ANCÊTRES N°2, 3, 4, 2018, CERAMICS, MP3 PLAYER, SOUNDTRACK 39’Through the mouth of a small ceramic frog, Jean-Pierre Brisset tells us how he discovered that mankind descended from frogs – the theory argued in his La Grande Nouvelle (1900). This extraordinary book presents his research into swimming, languages, and batrachians and delivers phonetic evidence for a purported evolution from frogs’ cry to human speech. Many years later, Eléonore Saintagnan became familiar with Brisset’s work and casted a series of ceramic frogs entitled Ancêtres, which became messengers for this alternative scenario of human origins.

Searching for Takayuki Suzuki (video still), 2017 Entre Le Vide (video still), 2017

GEN UEDA, SEARCHING FOR TAKAYUKI SUZUKI, 2016, HD VIDEO, 37’40’’ (SPECIAL SCREENING)This documentary film is based on both public and personal archives on the Japanese football player Takayuki Suzuki. After the rising foot-ball star had been transferred to the Belgian football club KRC Genk, his performance dramatically fell. From the promising beginnings to his disheartening decline, Gen Ueda followed the career of Suzuki, who became almost the artist’s alter ego. Superimposed over the timeline of Suzuki’s career, Ueda presents a series of videos that captured moments from his daily life, while awaiting the final goal.

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S GEN UEDA, ENTRE LE VIDE, 2017 HD VIDEO, 13’In his textual video Entre Le Vide, Gen Ueda takes as a point of departure a figure of the French art-house film director Gaspar Noé. As the plot unfolds, Noé slowly becomes the main character of his own movie, Enter the Void, and he must face the plot in which he got entangled. Reworking Noé’s original intrigue, Ueda ultimately grants the film director the omniscient position of an omniscient character through a complex system of moving subtitles and intertwined narratives. Entre Le Vide is one of the latest developments within Ueda’s practice, investigating written ci-nematic materials as an alternative way of addressing a spectator.

Martin pleure (video still), 2017

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S JONATHAN VINEL, MARTIN PLEURE, 2017, HD VIDEO, 16’24’’If Martin cries, it is because his friends left. They not only left, they disappeared and Martin is determined to look for them all over the city. Despite his relentless efforts, Martin fails and there is nothing to calm his nerves. Between the excessive violence and the fear of loneliness, Martin Pleure crystallizes mixed feelings in the coming of age of a virtual character. Difficult feelings mediated by inexpres-sive modelled polygon characters reverse the emotion process in allowing us to project ourselves. Based on GTA V video game footage, Martin Pleure is nevertheless a game of real feelings, where palpable emotions are enhanced by virtual landscapes and flashy visual effects.

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S BENY WAGNER, OUTSIDE, 2017, HD VIDEO, 14’Working in moving image, text, installation and lectures, Beny Wa-gner constructs non-linear narratives which investigate ecological, linguistic, and technological modes of mediation and how these give shape to the parameters of consciousness and perception. Outside, traverses two metabolic paths in the attempt to forge a reciprocal rela-tionship between the two. Moving from the metabolism of the human body to the metabolism of waste infrastructures, the film creates an inverted exchange wherein the concealment of waste inside the hu-man body turns to the concealment of the human body inside waste.

This boundary, separating waste from production, would seem to contain an underlying set of moral implications. The film considers these as situated somewhere between law enforcement and class structure as defined through labor positions.

Outside (video still), 2017

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S JUSTYNA WIERZCHOWIECKA, UNTITLED (TO DRAIN THE SEA), 2015, HD LOOPED VIDEO

A digitally processed rotating still by Justyna Wierzchowiecka belongs to the series To Drain the Sea. By isolating selected images from their ‘natural’ surroundings and situating them in an abstracted envi-ronment, the artist attempts to create a semantic hyperbole. In this case, an imaginary tower or its silhouette appears on a black screen. By situating an architectural representation of a high-rise, an emble-matic image of corporate capitalism, within a corpus of a concrete institution, the artist initiates a dialogue with the site as well as with the other landmarks present in its vicinity. This unrealistic surroun-ding becomes a remnant of the contemporary dystopia, filled with everyday objects and situations - believable yet somehow fictional.

Untitled (To Drain the Sea) (video still), 2015

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IES Sabrina Chou investigates systems and structures of belief, and how we

perceive our surroundings through her research and artistic practices. Via installations, performances and broadcasts, she stages settings, in which absurdity and theatricality interpret societal structures, economic exchanges, and architectural typologies.

Marijke De Roover via her mostly performative and video-based work she focuses on the meaning of identities and various aspects of their creation, researching such notions and phenomena as grass roots politics and the relation between presidential campaigning and Greek theatre, ways of creating identities on the internet (‘The Selfie Song’, 2013), mormon lifestyle and musical (‘A Mitt Summer Night’s Dream’, 2014), cult of health (‘Is Bio the New Avant Garde’, 2015) and religion (‘Cosmic Latte’, 2016). De Roover holds a Master in Fine Arts from KASK School of Arts, Gent where she was nominated for the Start Point Prize, Prague. She currently pursues her prac-tice as a laureate-graduate at Higher Institute of Fine Art (HISK) in Gent.

The Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence (OJAI) was founded in 2015 by Chris Dreier (DE) and Gary Farrelly (IRE/BE) and is headquartered in Berlin and Brussels. OJAI’s work explores bureaucracy, administration and the self-generated institution as apparatus that ensures collective functioning. OJAI research focuses on power structures embedded in public architecture, and the agency of the self in society’s bigger narrative. The project has it’s origins in written correspondence between Dreier and Farrelly and mail remains central to the practice. The comradeship of the postal transaction subverts the atmosphere of officialdom present throughout the project, situating OJAI somewhere between institutional critique, over identification and structured intimacy. Besides Mail art- OJAI work is manifested in the form of surveys, field trips, publications, performances, videos and a radio show. OJAI content has been presented in exhibitions at Marres – House for Contemporary Culture (Maastricht), Laura Mars Gallery (Berlin), Grölle pass:projects (Wuppertal) and RO2 Art (Dallas).

Gary Farrelly (1983), Director for Administrative Heritage and Self-Inventory, OJAI SUD is an Irish artist based in Brussels. Farrelly studied at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and LUCA Arts (Sint-Lukas) in Brussels. In 2010 he spent the year as artist/researcher at the University of Texas in Dallas. He has instructed workshops based on his expertise in the field of mail art at L’École nationale supérieure des arts visuels (ENSAV) in Brussels and Texas Womens University in Dallas. Exhibition highlights include Central Trak (Dallas), TAMAT (Tournai), Museum of Contemporary Art (Banja Luka), Parking Projects (Tehran), Crawford Municipal Art Gallery (Cork) and 500X (Dallas).

Chris Dreier (1961), Director for Finance and Systemic Risk, OJAI NORD (born 1961) comes from Wuppertal and is based in Berlin. Dreier studied Visual Communications at Berlin’s University of Art (UDK). In the nineteen eighties she was a member of experimental music group Die Tödliche Doris. Her visual artwork has been exhibited at The Museum of Contemporary Art (Wroclaw, Poland), New Mexico History Museum (Santa Fe), Center for Contemporary Art (Brest, France) and the National Media Museum (Bradford).

SABRINA CHOU (US)

MARIJKE DE ROOVER

(°1990, BE)

OFFICE FOR JOINT ADMINISTRATIVE

INTELLIGENCE

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IES A starting point for the diverse practice of Yuki Okumura, encompassing

among others video, text, and curatorial projects, lies often in the work of other artists and their (fictionalised) biographies. In relation to this material, Okumura assumes a position of an editor and a researcher on one hand and a medium or a surrogate – on the other. His work blurs the border between biographical fact and fiction, but also between the subject of the inquiry and the inquiring subject. In this way, he puts into question the established notion of authorship and the concept of an ‘artistic persona’. The limitations of language and in particular of translation constitute another important plot intertwined in Okumura’s work. Translation can become also a metaphor for his approach in general, in a way it problematises the idea of an ‘original work’ by means of subjectivity inherent in any interpretation.

Meggy Rustamova was born in Georgia, she lives and works in Belgium. In her artworks she never refers explicitly to her origins, but works around themes such as language, identity and the credibility of images. She tackles these subjects in performances, photo and (audio) installations, and is most well-known for her video work. Using photography, which she transfers to film, she translates stories that bring the tensions between reality and fiction, static and moving images, to boiling point. She holds a Master’s degree in Visual Arts from the School of Arts (KASK, 2011) in Ghent (BE) and studied at the Universität der Künste (UdK) in Berlin (DE, 2010). Afterwards she completed a two-year post-academic program at HISK (Higher Institute for Fine Arts, 2013) in Ghent (BE).

Recent solo exhibitions include: De Brakke Grond (Amsterdam, 2017) Beursschouwburg and Bureau des Réalités (Brussels, 2015). Recent group exhibitions: 6th Moscow Biennale (Moscow, 2015), S.M.A.K. (Ghent, 2016), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna, 2015), Salzburger Kunstverein (Salzburg, 2014), Tallinn Art Hall (Tallinn, 2016), Project Arts Centre (Dublin, 2014) and Savvy Contemporary (Berlin, 2013). Her films have been screened in such film festivals as Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam and Kasseler Dokfest. The artworks she creates are mainly shown in an institutional context, in museums, kunsthalles, film festivals and biennales. Her artworks are included in the public collections of S.M.A.K. (Ghent), Argos Centre for Media and Art (Brussels), Flemish Com-munity (Belgium), Belfius Art Collection (Brussels), University College (Ghent) and numerous private collections.

Eléonore Saintagnan pursues a polymorphic oeuvre, which takes its roots in literature and philosophy. Her work revolves around beliefs, and use the prolific images, and storytelling in text-based videos. His research duration as experience, structural effects on the video medium through imagery of tales and legends so as to unveil the uncanny characters of our world. Between ethnology and storytelling, her practice is not bound to a specific medium : she films, performs, sculpts and gives life to fictional identities from reality. Graduated from Le Fresnoy, she previously exhibited to Wiels, Brussels; Pa-lais de Tokyo and Centre Pompidou, Paris; MMCA, Seoul.

MEGGY RUSTAMOVA

(°1985, GE)

ELÉONORE SAINTAGNAN

(°1979, FR)

YUKI OKUMURA (°1978)

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IES Gen Ueda is a video artist and writer. From text material and video footage,

he performs personal narratives through poetic parables. His body of work fluctuates between collecting minimal interventions : juxtaposing, editing, writing. Currently in MA at ERG Brussels in Videography, he pursues a varied prolific activity on different mediums.

Jonathan Vinel characters seem come from nowhere known, but paradoxically remain close to us. Postmodern gestures of recuperation, mimicry to penetrate the salient problématiques of the contemporary ; Jonathan Vinel makes uses of the personal to infiltrate the youth our genera-tion will always be. Using a video game, he turns Martin Pleure’s virtual worlds into friendship melodrama intrigues. Often associated with the French director Caroline Poggi with whom he directed several short movies, he graduated at the FEMIS, and his/their films were internationally distributed in film festivals.

Beny Wagner is an artist and writer based in Berlin. Working in moving image, text, installation and lectures, he constructs non-linear narratives which investigate ecological, linguistic, and technological modes of mediation and how these give shape to the parameters of consciousness and perception.

Wagner has exhibited his work and screened films worldwide: International Film Festival Rotterdam, Media Art Biennale WRO, Movimenta Biennale (Nice), Rongwrong (Amsterdam), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Art Athina (Athens), Impakt Festival (Utrecht), 5th Moscow Biennale for Young Art, Eye Film Museum (Amsterdam), Venice Biennale, Plato (Ostrava), Im-port Projects (Berlin), Future Gallery (Berlin), Center (Berlin) among others. His work has been featured in Artforum, Spike Magazine Quarterly, Frieze Magazine, Kaleidoscope Press, Die Zeit. He has published texts with Valiz, BLOCK Magazin, and 60 pages. Wagner graduated with honors from Bard College, New York in 2008. He was a researcher at Jan van Eyck Academy, The Netherlands in 2015-6. He is currently a lecturer at Gerrit Rietveld Acade-mie, Amsterdam, and has been a guest teacher at several other academies.

Justyna Wierzchowiecka, through her predominantly photographic, video and installation work, the artist reflects on how the randomised or on demand online circulation of incorporeal images interweaves with experiences of looking at works of art. She completed her BA in visual design at ÉSAD Orléans, and she is a graduate of the photography MA program at the La Cambre Visual Arts Academy in Brussels. Wierzchowiecka was the laureate of Showoff 2016 during Cracow Photomonth and one of the participants of Plat(t)form 2017 at Museum Winterthur in Switzerland. Her recent work was presented in solo exhibition ‘More Than Once’ at Komplot in Brussels (2017) and as part of BIP Liège (2018). Nominated to Friends of the S.M.A.K. Prize (2018).

JONATHAN VINEL (°1988, FR)

BENY WAGNER (DE/US/IRL)

JUSTYNA WIERZCHOWIECKA

(°1990, PL),

GEN UEDA (°1992, BE)

6. RITES OF EXCHANGE

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Opening of the exhibition State of Statelessness.

Guided tour of the exhibition followed by the performance RED TAPE LOTTERY (3:00pm) by OJAI : Chris Dreier & Gary Farrelly

Guided tour of the exhibition followed by the movie screeenings (3:00pm) of Searching for Takayuki Suzuki (2016) by Gen Ueda and On Kawara Is Still Alive – An interview with Pall Thayer (2015) by Yuki Okumura.

Performance – reading group intitled BODY SHOPPING by Sabrina Chou followed by the movie screeenings (3:00pm) of Searching for Takayuki Suzuki (2016) by Gen Ueda and On Kawara Is Still Alive – An interview with Pall Thayer (2015) by Yuki Okumura.

Closing event of the exhibition with the performance GENERAL AUDIT 2 by OJAI: Chris Dreier & Gary Farrelly

2 JUNE, 2:00PM

9 JUNE, 2:00PM

16 JUNE, 3:00PM

7 JULY, 3:00PM

Over one afternoon, ISELP hosts a series of performative lectures by artists and curators throughout the space of the Institute. While all forms of lecturing are essentially performative, the performative lecture has emerged as an art category in its own right, borrowing from – and questioning – both the lecture’s assumed relation to knowledge and truth, and the performance’s indebtedness to theatricality, story-telling and fiction.

Rites of Exchange takes ISELP’s history as a reference point – a contemporary art space whose first projects, in the early 1970s, took the form of seminars, talks and conferences. As a collaboration between two neighboring educational institutions in Ghent, HISK and KASK, Rites of Exchange returns to ISELP’s dialogic origins by staging encounters in which semblances of knowledge are transmitted. In these interventions, it is the exchange between the protagonists and the audience, rather than the communication itself, that takes center stage.

If verbal engagement remains critical to many of the events in Rites of Exchange, others bypass language altogether, using gesture, mu-sic and games to facilitate interaction. The ‘lectures’ performed at ISELP thus range in format from the drawing exercise and dance floor demonstra-tion, to the ping-pong game and food tasting session. Beyond their formal differences, what unifies the performative situations in Rites of Exchange is a desire to frame knowledge as contingent, subjective and often playful, to de-passify the spectator, and to mobilise her and him physically, emotio-nally and intellectually.

Rites of Exchange is the result of a close collaboration between artists in residence at HISK - Higher Institute for Fine Arts, Gent, and curators on the Curatorial Studies programme at KASK - School of Arts, Ghent.

ARTISTS (HISK)Sofia Caesar, Chego Check (aka Goeun Choi), Lisette de Greeuw, Megan-Leigh Heilig, Roel Heremans, Hannah Mevis, Mark Požlep, Marijke De Roover, Lisa Wilkens

INVITED ARTISTSBéatrice Didier, Chris Dupuis, Frédéric Ehlers, Gašper Piano

CURATORS (KASK)Nathalie Cohen, Romuald Demidenko, Maxime Gourdon, Hélène Jacques, Alicja Melzacka, Benedict Vandaele, Anna Zhironkina

12 MAI, 19:00PM

Sabrina Chou, Marijke De Roover, Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence (OJAI) – Chris Dreier & Gary Farrelly, Yuki Okumura, Meggy Rustamova, Eléonore Saintagnan, Gen Ueda, Jonathan Vinel, Beny Wagner, Justyna Wierzchowiecka

Hilde Borgermans, Alicja Melzacka, Maxime Gourdon, Romuald Demidenko

Sofia Caesar, Goeun Choi, Lisette de Greeuw, Béatrice Didier, Frédéric Ehlers, Megan-Leigh Heilig, Roel Heremans, Hannah Mevis, Mark Požlep, Marijke De Roover, Lisa Wilkens

Nathalie Cohen, Romuald Demidenko, Maxime Gourdon, Hélène Jacques, Alicja Melzacka, Benedict Vandaele, Anna Zhironkina7.

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ISELP / Bd de Waterloo, 31 B-1000 Bruxelles +32(0)/504 80 70 accueil@iselp.be - www.iselp.be - Mardi › Dimanche / 11h ›18h

Avec l ’a ide de la Fédérat ion Wal lonie-Bruxel les, de la Commission communautai re f rançaise, de Wal lonie-Bruxel les internat ional .

STATE

STATE-LESSNESS

OF

Beny

Wag

ner

Eléonore Saintagnan

Gen Ueda

Jonathan Vinel

Mar

ijke

De R

oover

Yuki O kumura

Justyna Wierzc

howi

ecka

Sabr

ina C

hou

12 MAYPERFORMATIVELECTURES& OPENING

13 MAY–07 JULY 2018

AT

OJAI: Chris Dreier & Gary Fa

rrel

ly

Meggy Rustamova

ARTISTS

ARTISTS

CURATORS

CURATORS

PRESS CONTACT

STATE OF STATELESSNESS

RITES OF EXCHANGE

Mélanie Rainville : m.rainville@iselp.be / +32 (0)2/54.80.78