Thursday 27 May 2010

'Off Cut' | Commissioned by Metwork for LFA 2010

Metropolitan Workshop presents ‘Off Cut’A solo exhibition by Helene Kazan

Private View: 25th June, 6.30 - 9.30pm Exhibition: 26th June - 7th August

This exhibition is part of the 2010 London Festival of Architecture, to find out more information please follow this event on the LFA website: www.lfa2010.org/event

The 2010 Ideal Home Show saw the launch of The Cub, UK’s first carbon neutral Code 5 modular home, an answer for a more sustainable, malleable, and adaptable future. In a year of recovery from deep recession, a general election, leaps in ecological and technological developments, Metropolitan Workshop has started a programme of investigation into new and different forms of creative practice by inviting artist Helene Kazan to create an intervention into their street facing window space.

In 1963, London based experimental architecture group Archigram exhibited their utopian vision ‘Living City’ at the ICA. Coming at a time of radical change, with new developments in technology linked to an increase in mass production and mass consumption, Archigram believed there’s was a ‘message of abstract communication’. Infatuated by nomadic fantasies, Archigram argued that ‘an architecture based on mobility and malleability could set people free’.

In 1967, Amsterdam artist turned experimental architect Constant published ‘New Babylon’. His utopian vision for a situationist city, it comprised of a society of total automation in which the need to work was replaced with a nomadic life of creative play. This derived of a vast network of interconnecting enormous multi level, interior spaces, floating over the planet.

Inspired by these utopian visions of the past, the situation sensitive installation Kazan has conceived for Metwork will comprise of a suspended three tiered, intersloting, three-dimensional drawing. Operating as a focal part of this installation ‘Marmoleum’, traditionally a flooring product is sourced as a building material off cut. With obvious economic and social benefits to the its use, the real decision comes from the idea that excess of this material has only occurred through a desensitization of it by mass production and mass consumption. Shifting the materials context and augmentng its value. Reflecting a projected change in attitude and concern for the production of such materials in the coming future.

'Abbarakadabra' Mardin Bienali | Turkey | June 2010

ABBARAKADABRA
Mardin Biennial
Private View: 4th June
Exhibition will be on till 5th July 2010

I have been invited to take part in the first Mardin Biennial in Turkey, this opens on the 4th June, for more information please follow this link: http://www.mardinbienali.org/bienal/artists.asp

Miniscule | OBLONG Gallery | June 2010















Press Release OBLONG
3-27 JUNE 2010
PRIVATE VIEW 2 JUNE 6-9PM

Miniscule could be regarded as a bijou sociological experiment. It is a Fine Arts exhibition in the sumptuously grandiose Oblong gallery, where up to 200 Object d’Art can be shown simultaneously. Artists across London, Britain and the world have been invited to submit a diminutive object of any genre or media with but one simple proviso: max. size is of the common matchbox - 2” by 1.5”.

Thinking small is a unique challenge, and although there many artists who specialize in the miniature, or consider it part of their normal output, most invitees will find this an intriguing change from normal practice. We can expect a very diverse show with an interesting selection of artists; a toy box destruction derby of high concept in abject competition, a kaleidoscopic cross-cut of current making and thinking, but set in an arena of equality.

Is an object to be judged by its size? Can we say that the London Eye has had more impact on the world than a bicycle wheel? This show will be going against the grain by championing the miniature, so it will be up to the audience to decide whether less really is more…

69A SOUTHGATE RD
LONDON N1 3JS
0044 0207 354 8330
MAIL@OBLONGGALLERY.COM
WWW.OBLONGGALLERY.COM

Wednesday 26 May 2010

TangentProjects | Interviews &&& Creative for 'Market of Ideas'



Sunday, 23 May 2010, saw the Parade courtyard at Chelsea College of Art occupied by a large structure made entirely out of milk crates to house Market of Ideas, as part of the weekend long Parade event organised by Critical Practice. TangentProjects, one of the 'stalls holders', invited &&& Creative to join there day long discussion on notions of creative collaboration, the urban landscape and ideas of publicness. Helene Kazan interviewed Simon Brown, Shawn Davey and Lucas Krull individually about their own practices and collectively as &&& Creative.

Saturday 15 May 2010

TangentProjects | Take part in 'Market of Ideas'

TangentProjects the collaborative group I work with have been invited to take part in 'Market of Ideas', as part of Parade organised by Critical Practice. Come and find us and take part in our discussion...

























Critical Practice would like to invite you to Parade. This landmark event will explore the diverse, contested and vital conceptions of being in public. Set in a bespoke, temporary structure with a host of international contributors, Parade will challenge the lazy, institutionalised model of knowledge transfer. Our modes of assembly, our forms of address and the knowledge we share will be intimately bound.

Location: The Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground, Chelsea College of Art and Design (beside Tate Britain) 16 John Islip St., London, SW1P 4JU (travel info below)

Friday 21st May, 5pm - 7pm: Launch
Potluck snacks (bring and share) while Open Music Archive plays music from the commons

Saturday 22nd May, 10am - 6pm: A Day of Consecutive BarCamps

These open, participatory workshop-events will explore publicness, past, present and future. Come and contribute.

Sunday 23rd May, 2pm - 6pm: The Market of Ideas
Markets are good at distributing resources. Based on the model of the ancient bazaar, Parade will convene a Market of Ideas in which 'stalls' staffed by artists, academics, urbanists, geographers, environmentalists, health workers, anthropologists, economists and others exchange their knowledge with the milling public.The Market of Ideas will explore the distribution of public knowledge, embody peer-2-peer exchange, and build communal resources.

Stall holders include: Abundant Amelia (designers: Dallas Pierce Quintero), Larisa Blazic and startx, Małgorzata Bocheńska / Salon 101, Chelsea iSD MA + Musashino Art University (Tokyo), Geoff Cox and Rui Guerra, Ian Drysdale and ThinkPublic, Roman Dziadkiewicz, Joanna Erbel, Małgorzata Bocheńska, FLAG, Angela Hodgson Teall, The KNOT Team, Owen Hatherley, Brandon Labelle, Wojtek Kosma and Dwayne Browne, Michał Kozłowski, 25 MA students, Ewa Majewska, Lidka Makowska, microsillons, Krzysztof Nawratek, The People Speak, Satelite Project of Politicised Practice Research Group, Dr Malcolm Quinn, Mike Rickets, Anatomy of the Street (Levente Polyak and Eszter Steierhoffer), Eileen Simpson & Ben White of the Open Music Archive, George Shire, Dr Dan Smith, Bogna Świątkowska / Bec Zmiana, TangentProjects, Textile Environment Design (TED), Wojtek Kosma and Dwayne Browne, Chris Wainwright
 and Cape Farwell, Joanna Warsza and Nuno Sacramento and many more besides

Documentation of the Event: The hashtag for Parade on flickr, Twitter, Delicious and beyond is #parade10. Please make your online content locatable by including this tag.

Critical Practice is a cluster of artists, researchers and academics hosted by Chelsea College of Art and Design, a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. We have a longstanding interest in art, public goods, spaces, services and knowledge, and a track record of producing original, participatory events.

By Tube: 5 minutes from Pimlico tube (Victoria Line) 10 minutes from Vauxhall tube (Victoria Line)

Parade is part of POLSKA! YEAR, which comprises over 200 projects presenting the most interesting achievements of Polish culture to UK audiences. The project takes place under the patronage of HM The Queen and HE The President of the Republic of Poland. POLSKA! YEAR is co-ordinated by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw. To find out more visit. www.polskayear.pl/en



Stuart Brisley | Next Door (the missing subject)

I'm assistant to Stuart Brisley, come & see Next Door (the missing subject) his exhibition at PEER.



















In anticipation of PEER's expansion in the adjoining property, the curator of the Museum of Ordure, RY Sirb, will be present at 97/99 Hoxton Street from:Wednesday to Sunday, May 12 to 16 and also form May 19 to 23.
Open to the public on these days form 2.30 to 6.30pm.

Stuart Brisley has made performances, installations, public interventions, films, videos, drawings, photographs and paintings for over 50 years.

To mark PEER's acquisition of the lease on 97 Hoxton Street, which will enable the organisation to expand into next door, Brisley will take up temporary residence amongst the trash and pandemonium of the former shop. Adopting the persona of RY Sirb, Brisley's Curator of the Museum of Ordure, he will investigate and interrogate this transitional space before its transformation as a place of social order and cultural endeavour.

... Time passes, autumn comes before winter, summer precedes autumn, spring comes before summer and before that the first winter when it all began. Next door the shutters were down, the doors were locked, the windows were boarded up. Nobody has been there for months on end ... progress continues at a snail?s pace... It leaves a trace of slime marking its path and there it all is, the letters and emails and the memories of phone calls and mushrooming conversations where the word hopefully recurs, rings out as a sad punctuation among the exhortations, the pleading and the official explanations of procedures ... There is the ironic recollection of letters and emails recording the euphoria when it was first agreed that a lease could be forthcoming that first winter ... To replicate, to double the available space this side of the wall with an exact mirroring of the space that side of the wall with the acquisition of an architectural doppelganger. The prospect of doubling up gave a sense of impending achievement ... However a new problem has arisen, it appears that the keys have been misplaced. Where are they? Somewhere in the Department of Small and Missing Items of course, where else? However, a person from a Department of something somewhere has promised to come with or without keys...

Excerpts from the artist's preparatory notes for Next Door (the missing subject).

Details about Stuart Brisley's work can be found on his website, www.stuartbrisley.com

www.PEERUK.ORG

Tuesday 11 May 2010

Chicago Boys | Performance at The Showroom























THE SHOWROOM
CHICAGO BOYS:WHILE WE WERE SINGING, THEY WERE DREAMING
Thursday 13 May
7PM


An informal evening of music and discussion by Chicago Boys: while we were singing, they were dreaming, a 1970s revival band and neo-liberalism study group assembled by artist Hiwa K. Following from performances at a café on the Edgware Road in April, the band will play popular music from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon in the 1970s, followed by conversations about personal memories and the shaping of the region by neo-liberal policies.


For this performance, Chicago Boys: while we were singing, they were dreaming, band members include: Nabil Ahmed, Janna Graham, Hiwa K, Helene Kazan, Amal Khalaf, Roshi Nasehi, Abbas Nokhasteh, Noura Sanatian, Shimon Sakakibara and Nicolas Vass.


Hiwa K is an artist and musician interested in informal knowledge, performativity and the figure of the artist as amateur. Born in Iraq, he is now based on his feet. His residency in London has been organised in collaboration between The Showroom and the Serpentine Gallery’s Edgware Road Project on the occasion of Estrangement. Co-curated by Hiwa K and Aneta Szylak Estrangement is a curatorial and educational enterprise that is situated outside of one’s familiar context or within the context to which one does not belong. Involving artists from both Europe and the Middle East through international residencies, research and projects, Estrangement rethinks cultures of representation, creating spaces for intimate and individual encounters. It is on view at Showroom until 5 June, 2010. For more information: The Showroom


The Edgware Road Project, links local and international artists to people living and working in this London neighbourhood. The project base is the Centre for Possible Studies, opening 30 May, 2010.


For more information: Serpentine Gallery


Monday 10 May 2010

'Trident Way' | Departure Gallery | Oct 2009























Helene Kazan, ‘Drawn Territory’ - Part 2, Polystyrene columns,
‘Trident Way’ Departure Gallery October 2009

The Southall Project | Departure Gallery | Dec 2009

















Helene Kazan, ‘Drawn Territory’- by Night’, Polystyrene columns,
Trident Way 2: The Southall Project - Departure Gallery December 2009

'Middle of Nowhere' | Departure Gallery | Mar 2010
















Helene Kazan, Plan 002, Stop frame animation projected onto
drawn Plan. Middle of Nowhere - Departure Gallery March 2010