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Trafostacja Sztuki w Szczecinie ul. ƚwiętego Ducha 4 Wto-Czw & Nie / Tue-Thu & Sun 11:00-19:00 Pt-Sob / Fri-Sat 11:00-21:00
Logo TRAFO

THE PARTY

Exhibition:

October 31 – December 31, 2014

Curator:

Ɓucja Waƛko-Mandes

Gallery:

PERFORMANCE EVENING:

October 31, 2014, beginning at 6.00 p.m., the program will finish at approximately 12 a.m. (admission free)

 

TRAFO invites you to an all-night dinner event in the company of international performing artists.

In recent days, there has been much talk of a statement released by the recognized art critic David Hickey who said he was retiring from the nasty and stupid world of contemporary art: “I’m an intellectual and I don’t care if I’m not invited to the party. I quit.” – he said. The title of the exhibition THE PARTY refers to the anti-establishment movie “The Party” (1968) directed by Blake Edwards, a satiric comedy on the social elite of Hollywood. The main character, played by Peter Sellers is invited to a banquet in the house of a respected movie producer. Upon arrival, he is met by a world full of illusion and rigid standards in which he commits a number of social blunders.

The Performance Evening under the title THE PARTY calls into question both the form of the contemporary art world and the manner in which art is represented in galleries and at art fairs. To follow Hickey’s thoughts: Why should artists continue to create art? Why should art be exhibited or given monetary value? Does art have anything more to say? Performance art, as one of the most radical varieties of fine arts, seems to be most appropriate to ask these questions.

The above issues seem justified at the exceptional moment in the history of Szczecin: the city is currently in the process of re-establishing its own identity as a new center of art and culture in Poland. What position does TRAFO take in the new cultural region’s identity?

The Performance Evening will take place in connection with TRAFO’s first anniversary. Furthermore, it references the autumn traditions of the Harvest Festival and Thanksgiving. International performing artists will meet the audience at a dinner table set in TRAFO’s main exhibition hall. The evening will feature an all-night program of performance art and happening. Among the preparation of the meal, discussions on art and the traditional procession around the table, the performances will take place throughout the building.

Although the dinner “menu” has been pre-set, the event will be improvised and spontaneous due to an unpredictable nature of performance art. The exhibition will be affected not only by the number and type of performances, but also the audience – the party guests will become part of the artwork. The event will be documented by a camera crew, with the end result showcased at the exhibition.

BIOGRAPHIES

Thomas Kratz (born in 1972), is a German performer and visual artist. He studied painting at the Royal College of Art in London, at the Akademie der Bildenden KĂŒnste in Munich and new media art at the HfG / ZKM in Karlsruhe. He has performed worldwide, including Kunstraum Verein fĂŒr aktuelle Kunst und Kritik (Munich, Germany), KĂŒnstlerhaus, Halle fĂŒr Kunst & Medien (Graz, Austria), Bielefelder Kunstverein (Bielefeld, Germany), Schmela Haus (DĂŒsseldorf, Germany), Malmö Konsthall (Malmö, Sweden), Frankfurter Kunstverein (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), Organhaus (Chongqing, China), ICA (London, United Kingdom).

AnaĂŻs HĂ©raud-Louisadat (born in 1988), is a French performer and visual artist based in Berlin. She works individually and collaborates with other performance artists, dancers and musicians throughout Europe. She is the initiator of the Berlin-based collective „dealing with normative gaze in performance art” and the organizer of the Berlin trimestrial event „Reflektor”. She exhibited and performed at Soma Gallery (Berlin, Germany), Maison ParticuliĂšre (Brussels, Belgium), Performance in INACT#4 (Strasbourg, France), Centro Cultural Santa Cruz (Bolivia), The Panoply Performance Laboratory (New York, USA), Internationales Performancekunst Festival (Leipzig, Germany), CREATurE Festival (Kaunas, Lithuania), Hitparaden Festival for Performance art and New Theater (Copenhagen, Denmark), Atelier 22 (Paris, France), amongst others.

Ilya NoĂ© (born in 1973), is a Mexican visual/performance artist, walker, collaborator, researcher, occasional curator and admirer of fungi. Born and mostly assembled in ‘el D.F.’, she has since expanded her zone of propagation by intermittently popping up on all sides of the Atlantic and the Pacific to trace lines and build spaces by hand and on foot. Ilya represented her country in Venice’s OPEN 2000, became a UNESCO-Aschberg Laureate in 2003, and a year later was recipient of one of Mexico’s National Young Art Awards. A special guest at the II European Landscape Biennial in Barcelona and at the International Biennial of Cerveira, she has been an artist-in-residence at prestigious institutions in Canada, Portugal, the United States, Germany and Catalonia. Her work is represented in European and North American public collections. Ilya is also a co-labourer of the Month of Performance Art-Berlin (MPA-B), co-founder of the Association for Performance Art in Berlin (APAB) and a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at the University of California, Davis.

Michael Burditt Norton (born in 1985), is an American theater maker, performer, and sound designer based in Berlin, Germany. His solo work explores the blending of sound, theater, and movement, diving into issues of family and our relationship with our inherited bodies. Since 2011 Michael Burditt Norton has been performing with CALVIN KLEIN, a performance group with Alexander Coggin and Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor whose work has been shown in the Tanztage festival at Sophiensaele, Berlin, and Rockelmann& Gallery, Berlin, amongst others. As a director, his projects explore immersive audience relationships, awarding the audience agency to explore and play. He has worked as a performer with Liz Magic Laser and Sanya Kantarovsky (Badisher Kunstverein and KW institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin), Max Pitegoff and Calla Henkel (New Theater, Berlin), Orion Maxted (Das Arts, Amsterdam), Melanie Jame Wolf, and the Triage Live Art Collective.

Justyna Olszewska (born in 1990), is a Polish artist. She graduated from the Faculty of Sculpture and Space Activities at the Poznan University of Arts. She creates video art, installations, performance, objects and sculptures. In 2014, she received the Award of the President of the City of Torun. Justyna Olszewska has participated in many international projects, among others: POLES, The Empire Project (Istanbul, Turkey), Polish Art Tomorrow (2014), Shnu-UAP, Shanghai Normal University (Shanghai, China) and has exhibited at the Municipal Art Gallery, 13 Muses (Szczecin, Poland), Exhibition Salon Rarytas (Poznan, Poland), Counterpoint Gallery (Poznan, Poland), and at the Wozownia Art Gallery (Torun, Poland).

Wiktor Polak (born in 1979), is a Polish artist. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz and defended his diploma in the Studio of Applied Photography run by prof. Grzegorz Przyborek. He focuses on video art, photography, drawings and installations. He has participated in many international projects, among others: Fish Eye, Young Art Biennial 7, Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art, Slupsk, 2004; „In the four walls”, Lodz Biennale, 2004; Art Poznan, 2005; Wschodnia Gallery, Lodz, 2005; In Out Festival, Laznia Center for Contemporary Art, Gdansk 2005; „Temporary Identities”, Novosibirsk State Art Museum, 2006; „Mentality”, Lodz Biennale, 2006; Centre Pompidou, Recontres Internationales Paris / Berlin / Madrid – „Overture de la manifestation 2010”; „Video and drawing”, the Exchange Gallery, Lodz 2012; „Funfair”, The Wozownia Art Gallery, Torun, 2013; „Walk”, Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, 2014.

Ryszard Wasko (born in 1947), an outstanding Polish conceptualist, activist and curator. Between 1971-1975, he was a member of the Workshop of the Film Form. He initiated and organized „Construction in Process”, the largest modern art exhibition in the post
-war Poland. Its first edition was held in Lodz in 1981 and then continued in various locations worldwide. Between 1990-1992, he was the Program Director at the PS1 Museum in New York, USA. Ryszard Wasko was the initiator and creator of Lodz Biennale (2004-2010). His works are held in many public collections, among others: Berlinische Galerie and Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Cinemathek in Brussels, Bauhaus Museum in Dessau, Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum in Ludwigshafen, Arts Council in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Lenbachhaus in Munich.

Poul R. Weile (born in 1954), is a Danish visual artist. He graduated from The Academy of Arts in Odense in 1984. In his work Poul R. Weile invites to a dialogue and challenges the viewer to self-reflection. He displays sculptures in public space all around the world. He has exhibited at Brandts KlÊdefabrik (Odense, Denmark), PRO Charlottenborg (Copenhagen, Denmark), Stamsund International Theaterfestival (Lofoten, Norway), Goertz Höfe (Berlin, Germany), Mona Bismarck American Center (Paris, France), SIM-Gallery (Reykjavik, Iceland), Danish Sculptural Society in Kongens Have (Copenhagen, Denmark), Norden Hus (Reykjavik, Iceland), SAK Exibitionhall (Svedenborg, Denmark),

Kalmar Konstmuseum (Kalmaer, Sweden) amongst others. Poul R. Weile is now working and living in Berlin.

 

 

 

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