Forensis | Haus der Kulturen der Welt | Berlin | Mar 2014

2014, Mar 15, Sat - 2014, May 05, Mon

Whereas the twentieth century could be viewed as the "age of the witness", the current "forensic turn" is inaugurating nothing less than a new cultural imagination. The exhibition excavates the notion of forensis - Latin for things pertaining to the forum - to designate the role of material forensics in articulating new notions of public truth. Its condition is one in which aesthetic practices, new technologies, and architectural research methodologies bear upon the legal implications of political struggle, violent conflict, and climate change. Forensis is based on public presentation and argumentative narrative with the aid of material and spatial objects and structures in the juridical-political sphere. It is about "producing" and "attesting" facts through narrative demonstration. The projects by artists, filmmakers, and architects shown in the exhibition investigate a range of human rights violations, environmental crimes, and man-made and natural disasters in order to reflect on the new - technologically induced - political agency of matter. A broad spectrum of spatial analyses, mappings, and forms of representation are used both to interrogate political issues through forensics and at the same time the very assumption of contemporary forensics. The case studies and investigations include f. i. forensic reconstructions of drone strikes in the shadow war in Pakistan and of the failure of NATO ships to render assistance to refugee boats; investigations into resource exploitation and environmental destruction, taking examples such as Chilean and Indonesian copper mines, and historic case studies, including the identification of Joseph Mengele’s remains in Brazil.

How do mortal remains, DNA samples, and satellite images become forensic evidence? What role do imaging techniques and methods of representation play in the investigation of crimes or political acts of violence? How are objects made to speak?

The exhibition FORENSIS and the accompanying conference will explore the procedures, tools, and spatial arrangements used in forensics, as well as the potential of a new aesthetic-political practice. With this exhibition, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt devotes itself to the rapidly expanding field of artistic research and knowledge production and, through diverse examples, examines the interleaving of science, media, and the political sphere.

With contributions by: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Nabil Ahmed, Maayan Amir, Anthropocene Observatory (Anselm Franke, Armin Linke, Territorial Agency/John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi Rönnskog), Jacob Burns, Gabriel Cuéllar, DAAR (Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal, Eyal Weizman), Forensic Oceanography (Charles Heller, Lorenzo Pezzani), Grupa Spomenik (Damir Arsenijević, Ana Bezić, Pavle Levi, Jelena Petrović, Branimir Stojanović, Milica Tomić), Ayesha Hameed, Samir Harb, Helene Kazan, Thomas Keenan, Steffen Kraemer, Adrian Lahoud, Model Court (Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Lorenzo Pezzani, Oliver Rees), Modelling Kivalina (Andrea Bagnato, Daniel Fernández Pascual, Helene Kazan, Hannah Meszaros Martin, Alon Schwabe), Gerald Nestler, Godofredo Pereira, Nicola Perugini, ScanLAB Projects (Matthew Shaw, William Trossell), Susan Schuppli, Francesco Sebregondi, Shela Sheikh, SITU Research (Robert Beach, McKenna Cole, Therese Diede, Akshay Mehra, Charles-Antoine Perrault, Bradley Samuels, Xiaowei Wang), Caroline Sturdy Colls, Paulo Tavares, Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss/NAO, Eyal Weizman and Ines Weizman.

Curated by Anselm Franke and Eyal Weizman.

FORENSIS is a co-production by Haus der Kulturen der Welt, funded by the Capital Cultural Fund, and by Forensic Architecture, ERC-funded research project based at Goldsmiths, University of London.

http://www.forensic-architecture.org

http://www.hkw.de/en/programm/projekte/2014/forensis/ausstellung_forensis/forensis.php

Image: Forensis | The DNA-identification room at Clyde Snow Laboratory (“Laboratorio Clyde Snow”), Guatemala City, November 2011. | Photo: Paulo Tavares/Eyal Weizman

Spring Lecture Series | UAL: Wimbledon College of Arts | Mar 2014

UAL: Wimbledon College of Arts
Spring Lecture Series on the 11th of March 

5 - 6pm Tuesday 11th March 2014

Helene Kazan is a multidisciplinary artist, who across her practice uses research and archival material to generate moving image and multimedia installations looking at risk analysis and the ‘future ruin’. She has exhibited extensively in the UK and internationally, including most recently in 'Exposure' at the Beirut Art Center in Lebanon, 'It’s Always too Late, Archiving the Anthropocene' at The Showroom in London and 'Forensis' an exhibition at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.

Kazan did a BA in Fine Art Painting at Wimbledon School of Art, and recently completed an MA at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths University of London.

Art Against War | The Mosaic Rooms | Feb 2014

British-Lebanese artist Helene Kazan will talk about her work at the Mosaic Rooms gallery in Earls Court, a cultural space dedicated to showcasing contemporary art focused on the Middle East.

Helene Kazan is a multidisciplinary artist, who across her practice uses research and archival material to generate moving image and multimedia installations looking at risk analysis – and the 'future ruin'. She has exhibited extensively in the UK and internationally, including most recently in Forensis, a major exhibition at the House of World Cultures in Berlin.

Please note this event is for Stop the War members, who may bring up to 4 guests. Non-members considering becoming a member or who have further questions are also welcome. This is an excellent opportunity to find out more about Stop the War in an informal setting. Local Stop the War reps and national officers will be happy to speak with you.

STOPWAR

EXPOSURE 2013 | Beirut Art Center | Nov 2013

November 7.13 - January 11.14

Shirin Abu Shaqra • Monira Al Qadiri • Pedro Barakat • Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh & Rozenn Quéré • Yasmina Haddad • Inaya Fanis Hodeib • Maxime Hourani • Maha Kays • Helene Kazan • Christine Kettaneh • Wael Kodeih • Randa Mirza  • Camila Salame • Lara Tabet

About the exhibition

For the fifth year in a row, Beirut Art Center (BAC) is organizing Exposure, its only annual exhibition, dedicated to emerging artists in and from Lebanon.

With the aim of encouraging every eligible artist to apply, Exposure is conceived as an open and flexible exhibition that is only defined by the characteristics of each project, as well as the diversity of the media and themes in the show. Like every year, BAC invites a new jury to make the selection. Gregory Buchakjian (art historian and artist), Fares Chalabi (philosopher), Tarek Abou El Fetouh (curator), and Rania Stefan (filmmaker/artist) formed this year’s jury; as it is customary the board of BAC had one voice. For the sake of presenting an exhibition that is rich in content, fourteen artists were selected from a pool of a hundred applicants, making Exposure 2013 the largest edition to date.

Exposure 2013 presents the occasion to reflect on several ideas and themes. The following description is by no means exhaustive, but is meant to give an idea of some of the concerns and practices of each artist. Although working with different media, Camila Salame, Christine Kettaneh, Helene Kazan, Inaya Hodeib, and Maha Kays express particular impressions of memory and home. The inescapable longing for an impossible home is the impetus behind the poetic imagery in Salame’s sculptures. Kettaneh’s interest lies in language, but also in the access to the home, that is in the key, and especially in what has been cut to make it. Kazan’s multimedia installation sets the ordinary image of the domestic space against a complex conceptual framework of pre-emption, a strategy learned in times of war. Hodeib’s work also has references in the Lebanese Civil War. She seeks to take the portrait form to new terrains by drawing on her light-hearted memories from childhood, and setting them against a backdrop of ‘pop culture’ products, signifiers from the war period.  Also reminiscent of war, a sound unexpectedly emerges allowing a story to be told in Maha Kays’ video installation.

A personal story is the starting point in the works of Yasmine Eid Sabbagh and Rozenn Quéré, Lara Tabet, Pedro Barakat, and Yasmina Haddad. Eid-Sabbagh and Quéré deal with exile, memory and fiction, exploring different possibilities offered by reading images and biographical narration. Tabet also works with family photographs; only it is a therapeutic gesture of understanding and coping with loss. To investigate the past and present of a homeland he never saw as a child, Barakat begins his journey by looking at his father’s objects and diaries. Starting at what used to be her father’s gallery and furniture factory in Beirut, Haddad revisits Art Deco using a cross-thematic approach.

The body is a broad theme that connects the works of Shirin Abu Shaqra, Randa Mirza, and Wael Kodeih. Abu Shaqra meditates on the pathological body as a laborious rite of initiation. The body is questioned in Mirza’s photography installation, as she addresses gender performance and sexuality. Kodeih’s intrigue in the phenomenon of a censored and defaced female body led him to research the topics of activism, Internet security, and surveillance.

Images and events from the contemporary history of our region inform the works of Maxim Hourani and Monira Al Qadiri. Hourani comments on the forms and causes of dissent, and actively involves the viewer in the creation of spaces of protest. From a different perspective, at a time when apocalyptic theories are gaining popular momentum in the region, Monira Al Qadiri recreates the latent nostalgic likeness of doomsday by juxtaposing paradisiacal poetry with amateur VHS footage of the burning oil fields in Kuwait at the end of the First Gulf War in 1991.

Lastly, like previous editions, Exposure 2013 is not a curated exhibition, because of a consensus not to exclude a promising artist on the basis of a theme or an artistic approach. Yet this year BAC put emphasis on discussing the projects with each artist, aiming to accompany them in the process of making their works for the exhibition.

A wide range of media and forms characterize this edition, from photography and video, installations and sculptures, to texts and a painting. And while it is completely arbitrary, it is striking that most of the exhibiting artists live abroad.

An exhibition catalogue featuring the works of all participants will be produced and launched on the opening night. In addition to the possibility of keeping a record of this edition, the catalogue is also a platform for the artists to present ideas and materials around the works on display, as well as insights into their artistic practice as a whole.

EXPOSURE 2013

It's Always Too Late: Archiving the Anthropocene | The Showroom | Sept 2013

Eight MA projects developed at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, attempt to map a specific trace of humanity's impact on the environment. Throughout the exhibition a printing press will perform the archival process, culminating in a publication to be launched on Friday 13 September.

The projects work collectively on calculations of risk, the production and reproduction of error, colonisation and decolonisation, social displacement, the production of urban voids and the structure of the archive itself, through a programme of actions that leave behind a printed mark in the gallery.

Centre for Research Architecture is an MA programme in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. This innovative research centre brings together architects, urbanists, filmmakers, curators and other cultural practitioners from around the world to work on expanded notions of architecture that engage with questions of culture, politics, conflict and human rights.

It’s Always Too Late: Archiving the Anthropocene includes work by Andrea Bagnato, Doron von Beider, Jane Brake, Selman Çelik, Helene Kazan, Bhavika Patel, Marilou Sakellariou and Alon Schwabe.

Launch Party
Fri 13 September, 6–9pm

Conversations on Risk
With Helene Kazan and guests
Mon 9–Thu 12 September, 1–2pm

Terra Infecta
Installation by Andrea Bagnato
Tue 10 September, 3–6pm

Copybird
Performance by Alon Schwabe
Wed 11 September, 5pm

SWIPE: Sonic Works in Passing Edgware
Performance by Jane Brake and Marilou Sakellariou
Thu 12 September, 4–5pm

Never Too Late for Tea
Join us for a cup of the blend of the day
Daily, 5pm

The Showroom

‘The Public Image’ | International Visual Sociology Conference | July 2013

The International Visual Sociology Association 2013 Annual Conference will take place from 8 to 10 July 2013 at Goldsmiths, University of London. The conference will be hosted by CUCR - Centre for Urban and Community Research gold.ac.uk/cucr

Inspired by Michael Burawoy’s concept of “public sociology,” we dedicate the 2013 IVSA conference to the concept of the “public image”, and the ways that visual sociology can meet Burawoy’s challenge to bring a sociological understanding of social life to a vibrant, active and diverse public. Public sociology endeavors to bring sociology into dialogue with audiences beyond the academy, an open dialogue in which both sides deepen their understanding of public issues.

Panel: Forensic Futures
Susan Schuppli
Shela Sheikh
Steffen Kraemer
Helene Kazan

A Domestic Image of Preemption | Lubomirov-Easton | Apr 2013

A Domestic Image

of Preemption

Helene Kazan

Lubomirov-Easton

Enclave 8, 50 Resolution Way, Deptford SE8 4AL

Private View: Friday 26 April, 6-9.30pm

Artist's Performance Lecture: Saturday 4 May, 4pm

Exhibition Dates: 26 April to 24 May, Wednesday to Saturday, 12-6pm

‘A Domestic Image of Preemption’, a multimedia installation by Helene Kazan, sets the ordinary image of the domestic space against a complex conceptual framework of preemption. Bringing together under one roof a sequence of interacting moving images made using a unique methodology of extracting visual information found in a set of photographs, the space depicted in each is reproduced, with the films revealing the potentially catastrophic breaking point under which each photograph is generated. Here, the architecture of the home is shown to transform, through a set of overarching conditions, from a space of shelter to a space of potent threat.

Whilst preemptive action has been etched into our collective consciousness through its application as a strategy of war, Kazan’s claim is that there is no less at stake when such measures are applied to the domestic context. Rather a reproduction of scale is performed, bringing into focus actions of a necessary fortification that take place within the domestic realm: for instance, the use of tape to prevent glass windows shattering when exposed to violent force during natural disaster or armed conflict. As such, the focus for this exhibition is image production – above all photography – as a preemptive act.

Exploring the conditions that provoke such actions, Kazan draws on the idea that any potential threat to the assumed security of this environment creates a situation that reconfigures the relationship between past, present and future. Rather than preventing future catastrophe, preemptive action becomes a driving force inducing it into the present. This proposition is unfolded from two standpoints: a series of photographs taken of Kazan’s own home during the Lebanese Civil War in 1989 and a set of images produced as a home insurance inventory in the UK in 2013.

Operating through the potential of these visual objects and unlocking the information harboured within them, Kazan utilises the elasticity and fluidity of time that is brought to light by this conceptual framework. The tensions of a limited futurity are activated through the use of filmmaking processes to trick time, capture it and then playfully traverse through it. Revealing to the viewer a narrated dialogue formed between the independent, yet interconnected scenarios. Illustrating the dissemination of sovereign power through these conditions, and therefore how domestic space is re-fabricated within the parameters of its control.

Helene Kazan is a multidisciplinary artist who has exhibited extensively in the UK and internationally. Across her practice, she uses research and archival material to generate moving image and mixed media sculptural installations. She is currently completing a Masters at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. 

www.helenekazan.co.uk

Curated by Iavor Lubomirov and Bella Easton. Text by Helene Kazan.

www.lubomirov-easton.com/A-Domestic-Image-of-Preemption

Images of Terror, Narratives of (In)security | University of Lisbon, Portugal | Apr 2013

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

Images of Terror, Narratives of (In)security:

Literary, Artistic and Cultural Responses

23rd and 24th April 2013

Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon, Portugal

One of the greatest paradoxes of the 21st century is the fact that, even though western societies have reached an outstanding scientific and technological development, fear and insecurity continue to be very much alive in public discourse as well as in our private life. Concerns about terrorism, urban criminality, global epidemics, computer piracy and organized crime and, more recently, about the outcomes of the financial and economic crises circulate widely in the media and their highly politicized representations shape much of our everyday life.

To what extent are many of these (in)securities real, exaggerated or constructed? What explains the disparate amount of attention paid to different sources of insecurity? Why do certain forms of “terror” achieve the status of “spectacles” and “memorable events”, while others receive comparatively little attention by the media and popular discourse?

In this conference we aim to examine how literature, art and culture have dealt with notions of insecurity and to what extent they have provided significant challenges and responses to hegemonic discourses.  

Panel: Preemptive Images

Susan Schuppli - The forensic futures of the image

Goldsmiths University of London

Shela Sheikh - Terror on loop

Goldsmiths University of London

Helene Kazan - A domestic image of preemption

Goldsmiths University of London

http://conferencecilm.weebly.com/

Social Structures | Batroun Projects - Lebanon | Mar 2013

Batroun Projects presents:

Social Structures
An event including works by Rehana Zaman and a montage of video material screened by Helene Kazan.
30th March 18.00 – 22.00

Accompanying the event will be a Bar, BBQ and Dj’s (tbc).

Rehana Zaman
Throughout March London based artist Rehana Zaman has been in residence at Batroun Projects and Mansion, Beirut. During her residency Zaman has temporarily relocated her practice that encompasses performance, video and text, to Lebanon. Using the Lebanese context to extend her interest in how narrative abstraction and composition might relate to particular socio-political experiences, for this presentation Zaman will be using the space at Batroun Projects to present an expanded ‘open form’ artist talk.

Zaman’s work was recently presented in a solo exhibition at Studio Voltaire, London. She has also appeared in group shows at The Showroom, Limoncello, the Whitechapel Gallery, The Royal Academy, London and Scaramouche, New York.

Helene Kazan
‘A Domestic Image of Preemption – Film Montage’ by Helene Kazan sets, the ordinary image of the domestic space against a complex framework of preemption. The montage extracts aspects from a series of films to bring together as a whole, a view of the everyday architecture and activities that fill our lives. Showing in juxtaposition the architecture of the home as it transforms through a set of overarching conditions, from a space of shelter to a space of potent threat.

The montage will comprise of inter spliced clips of:
Chantal Akerman’s portrayal of domestic life in ‘Jeanne Dielman 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.’
‘Protect and Survive’ a public information series on Civil Defence produced by the British government during the late 1970s to inform British citizens on how to protect themselves during a nuclear attack.
Kazan’s short films, which use a unique methodology, taking preemptive image production and generating from it stop motion films recreating spaces and events, to include ‘Living the Edge’ 2013.

Helene Kazan is a multidisciplinary artist who has exhibited extensively in the UK and internationally. Across her practice, she uses research and archival material to generate moving image and mixed media sculptural installations. She is currently completing a Masters at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London.

www.helenekazan.co.uk

www.batrounartspace.org

PAVILION presents AUDITORIUM | LIMBO | Mar 2013

Pavilion

Sophie Yetton + Gabriel Birch
films by Mary Hurrell, Helene Kazan, Linda Persson, Thomas Lock, Mirza&Butler and Richard Whitby
2- 10 March 2013

Open Fri-Sun, 12 – 5 pm
Private View: 1 March,  6-9pm

Pavilion is Sophie Yetton & Gabriel Birch. Pavilion’s work re-frames the exhibition space by investigating the possible duality of sculptural object and gallery furniture. They create performative installations which become vehicles for the interaction between audiences and other artists’ work.

Auditorium is an exhibition that explores the idea of screen as object through a single sculpture which poses as a projection room for artists’ films. It challenges the viewer to occupy the structure and invites the audience as a whole to determine the object’s functional and aesthetic potential.

Built from timber and thin sheet material, the scale is both formally sculptural and also suggestive of lightweight architecture. The timber structure is intricate but anarchic, providing an elaborate footing for a shell-like platform. The screen stretches out across the timber, shattering and unfolding into a broken ground to offer a form of seating from which to view the films.

Auditorium presents films by:
Mary Hurrell works across performance, film and sculpture to explore choreography and composition of body, space and object. Her work investigates forms of non-verbal language, and relationships between physical and psychological experience.

Hurrell has made a new work for Auditorium, Tilt your head toward me (Remixed performance works), 2012, which incorporates recent performance footage, creating an altered interpretation of earlier works. This piece looks at the translation of performance to film and uses this dislocation to form a new composition.

Helene Kazan is a London-based multidisciplinary artist, who uses research and archival material to generate moving image and mixed media installations. Currently she is an MA student at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths University, London.

Living on the Edge (2013) is a stop-frame animation entirely generated from a single archive photograph of a flooded house in London in 1989. It recreates the event and its effects on the architecture of the home, as a way of punctuating a turning point in cultural and political attitudes towards the environment, re-placing it within a contemporary context and a continued mobilised state of fear.

View film: Living the Edge

Thomas Lock is a London-based artist working with video and sound. Earlier works explore derelict buildings through a disembodied camera creating uncanny immersive video and sound environments. Lock's more recent works are low-fi video collages that break down the materiality of video and sound.

Body Dysfunctional (2009) explores the architectural space of an abandoned children's hospital in East London. The camera slowly moves throughout the building recreating the experience of a disembodied viewer.

Karen Mirza & Brad Butler have been making films for over 15 years including works that interrogate the illusionistic space of cinema, the recording and representation of space and the politics of the viewing space of film itself.

In The Space Between the film image is constantly fluctuating between object representation and surface abstraction. Repetition does not bring clarity nor is it meant to. No attempt is made to deny either the subjectivity of film or its representational mode; rather the viewer works through and against the film with the filmmakers; so to speak.

Linda Persson's practice stems from a metaphysical ground for artistic unfolding, exploring transformative spatiality through individual and collaborative engagements that influence aesthetics and discourse equally. Through the structure and syntax of filmic representation, the work aims to unsettle perception by activating physical bodies.

Encounter (2007): A lone figure performs undefined movements on a buoyant platform in a lake which was formerly industrial wasteland. His embodiment challenges the set perimeters navigated by historical events.

Richard Whitby sees video as a container in which different materials and tropes can be brought into proximity. These materials can come from historical research, documentary-style shoots and/or improvised performances with handmade props.

Palatul (2011) includes footage of inner-city stray dogs, and a narrated fable of an architect building a palace for a communist dictator.

all design | MARA/Departure Foundation | Sept 2012

ALL DESIGN

Thursday 27th September 6 - 9pm
with Geopolitical banana-wharf cocktails
exhibition Friday 28th September till Sunday 14th October 2012

Open from Thursday to Saturday 1 – 5pm, Sunday 1 – 4pm

EXHIBITING
Palwasha Amanullah, Nadia Barhoum, Remco de Blaaij,
Eva Dietrich, Daniel Fernández Pascual, Blake Fisher,
Mirko Gatti, Janet Hall, Samir Harb, Irmelin Joelson, Heejung
Kim, Steffen Kraemer, Hannah Meszaros Martin, Chris Molinski,
Corinne Quin, Alan Yates

CURATING
Louise Ashcroft and Helene Kazan

The group assembles along a narrow balcony overlooking South
Quay waterfront in Canary Wharf. A suited man awkwardly
pushes past, mumbling an apology as he makes his way through
this gathering. In close proximity, an LED sign with live share
prices moves across a building boldly asserting ‘Information in the
right hands leads to amazing things. That’s the Knowledge Effect’.
Attempting to negotiate a small stretch of water - evidence of the
Quay’s industrial past - one member of the group is precariously
perched on a ladder trying to reach the old sign on the front of
the building. Their intention is to intervene and cancel out its
alliterated past so that ‘Kall Kwik business and design’ now reveals
itself as ‘all design’.

This act of public redaction forms the title of the exhibition - a
semiotic readymade, an architectural cut-up, and an aesthetic
proposition. ‘all design’ brings the sixteen diverse spatial practices
emerging from this year’s MA programme at the Centre for
Research Architecture at Goldsmiths University together into a
space of productive interplay.

Formed around the Centre’s methodological practice-based
approach to research, the works take architecture as a point of
departure and turn it into a mode of analysis and investigation.
Collectively the projects reverse-engineer the making of space
in order to interrogate and identify the political trajectories of
matter and institutional protocols.

Situated in the financial heart of the city, this context provides
more than just a backdrop to the exhibition, as the capital
flows that move through this space are rematerialized into
zones of exclusion and estrangement. Space is not simply
a location, but a field of forces that push and pull at all the
projects presented here. Tensions emerge that reveal moments
of slippage, confusion, rupture, violence, and subterfuge; that
reveal material erosion, breakage, contamination and ruin. But
unlike the movement of electronic capital that carves clean new
jurisdictions out of networked pixels, these works inhabit and
trouble the margins of existing jurisdictions by settling on top
of melting glaciers, moving into dense jungle, occupying the
stairs of St Paul’s Cathedral, dwelling in a German mountain
cave, entering the bread ovens of Cairo, and even probing
the molecules of air and water that make up our planetary
ecologies. ‘all design’ offers sixteen unique perspectives and
interpretations of a collective set of global points and flows.

With thanks to the support of the Centre for Research Architecture
including Adrian Lahoud, Andy Lowe, John Palmesino,
Susan Schuppli, Paulo Tavares and Eyal Weizman.

PAVILION presents AUDITORIUM | Dilston Grove | Aug 2012

Pavilion presents AUDITORIUM: Gabriel Birch + Sophie Yetton
with films by artists Mary Hurrell, Helene Kazan, Thomas Lock, Mirza & Butler, Linda Persson, and Richard Whitby

Private View 10 August 6-8pm
Open w/ends 11/12, 18/19, 25/26 August 12-4pm
Dilston Grove / Southwark Park / SE16 2D

Pavilion presents Auditorium, an 'architecture-sculpture' displaying films by contemporary artists Mary Hurrell, Helene Kazan, Linda Persson, Thomas Lock, Mirza & Butler and Richard Whitby.

Pavilion is a collaboration between Gabriel Birch and Sophie Yetton, which intends to reframe the space of exhibition through interventions that call into question the relationships between viewer, art work and gallery architecture.

Auditorium is a proposal for an alternative display mechanism for artist film. Following in the vein of Pavilion's previous work, Auditorium investigates the possible duality of exhibition furniture and sculptural object.

pavilionprojects.org

Troubling Space: The Summer Sessions | Aug 2012

Troubling Space: The Summer Sessions
Zabludowicz Collection Curatorial Open 2012


5 July–12 August 2012

Participating artists: Francis Alÿs, Yael Bartana, Walead Beshty, Ethan Breckenridge, Gregory Crewdson, Helene Kazan, Avi Mograbi, Miri Segal, Caragh Thuring, Trisha Baga, Shi Jin, Haegue Yang

The exhibition and free events programme, Troubling Space: The Summer Sessions, considers how space is produced through social relations: shaped by our fantasies, transformed through our occupation, or controlled by violence.

It includes works by eleven artists from the Zabludowicz Collection and a new site-specific commission by London-based artist Helene Kazan. In addition, exhibition designer Emil Krøyer has created a furniture system for the Summer Sessions intended to contextualize the events programme in the gallery and to facilitate its social engagement.

The Summer Sessions are integral to the project: they take a range of recent events in the public space and the shifting (shrinking) space of education as an imperative to put the space of the collection to use, to leave no space untouched by pedagogy and resistance. Each weekend’s programme is centred on a spatial question, with presentations by several of the exhibiting artists as well as a number of invited speakers.

Friday–Sunday, 6–8 July

Spaces of Distribution and Production: Considers the spaces in which commodities, images, truth claims, and architectures are produced and distributed.

Participants include Ethan Breckenridge, Helene Kazan, Anthony Downey, and Caragh Thuring.
Walead Beshty‘s objects testify to their movement through space, and give form to invisible systems of distribution. Ethan Breckenridge contains corporate architecture of the everyday in tinted glass vitrines. Shi Jin‘s diminutive karaoke machines reference the mobile business models invented on the margins of global financial systems. Helene Kazan explores the use of masking tape on windows as protection against exterior force, from natural catastrophe and human conflict. Caragh Thuring‘s paintings depict the industrial paradigm’s breakdown as formal elements abstracted from their usual contexts: floating cranes and giants pulleys displaced across raw canvases.

Friday–Sunday, 13–15 July

The Body in Space: Looks at how the body is produced by the space it moves through, and how it in turn produces that space.

Participants include Trisha Baga, Cliff Borress, Miri Segal, Debra Benita Shaw, and Andrew Merrifield.

Francis Alÿs evokes the memory of protest, demonstrating that the way bodies appear in public is as important as the fact that they gather. The subject of Trisha Baga‘s video work navigates an infinite digital landscape, manipulating both physical and social spaces as part of her sense-making journey. Miri Segal situates the viewer simultaneously in private and public space through a mirror-play, by superimposing the viewer’s reflection on a woman enjoying herself and her lover. Haegue Yang constructs figures out of material culture’s marginalia, endowing these quasi-bodies with the authority of the shaman-figure.

Friday–Sunday, 20–22 July

Spaces of Utopia / Dystopia: Aims to flesh out society’s persistent, even relentless production of non-places and spaces of imagination.

Participants include Thomas Keenan, Avi Mograbi, and Brad Samuels.

Avi Mograbi captures a confrontation with Israeli Defense Force soldiers and questions who has the right to look, to be filmed, to access space, or deny access to others. With her study of men challenging each other in four-wheelers on a Sunday afternoon, Yael Bartana‘s work mirrors Israel’s deployment of high-tech military equipment and its ephemeral geography of boundaries drawn and transgressed. Gregory Crewdson‘s photographs are suburban portraits, an image of space shaped by disavowed desire.

To RSVP for the Friday and Saturday night discussions with dinner, please send an email with your contact information and the session that interests you to rsvp@zabludowiczcollection.com.

Troubling Space: The Summer Sessions was selected from over 100 entries to the Zabludowicz Collection Curatorial Open by a panel comprised of Chris Dercon, Martin Herbert, Maria Lind, and Anita Zabludowicz.

Curated by Helga Just Christoffersen and Natasha Marie Llorens.
Zabludowicz Collection
176 Prince of Wales Road 
London, NW5 3PT

HOUSE 2012 | Phoenix Brighton | May 2012

We are pleased to invite you to the openings of HOUSE 2012 on Thursday 3 May:

Deb Bowness

Robin Blackledge

Helene Kazan

Caroline Le Breton

Phoenix Brighton from 5.00pm

10–14 Waterloo Place

Brighton BN2 9NB

David Batchelor

The Regency Town House from 6.00pm

13 Brunswick Square

Hove BN3 1EH

Exhibition continues 4 May – 10 June

Wed – Sun, 11.00-17.00

18 & 19 May, open until 21.00

http://www.housefestival.org

HOUSE 2012 is delighted to be working with prominent contemporary artist David Batchelor. As lead artist Batchelor has also influenced the selection and development of five satellite commissions that make up HOUSE 2012, who include Robin Blackledge, Deb Bowness, CINECITY & Anna Deamer, Helene Kazan and Caroline Le Breton.

Inherent to the character of HOUSE 2012 is work that exists both within and beyond the gallery walls, out on to the street. Collectively, all these projects make playful interventions across the city of Brighton & Hove over the month of May, exploring themes of domesticity, the urban and the everyday.

Celia Davies

Guest Curator

HOUSE 2012

Chicago Boys | Serpentine Gallery | Mar 2011

Chicago Boys: while we were singing, they were dreaming…

Concert and study group

Thursday 8 March 2012 8pm

Serpentine Gallery

Kensington Gardens

London W2 3XA

Free

Chicago Boys: while we were singing, they were dreaming… is a 1970s revival band and neoliberalism study group conceived and developed by the artist Hiwa K while he was in residence on the Edgware Road. Chicago Boys: while we were singing, they were dreaming… will be holding a special performance on the occasion of the exhibition On the Edgware Road at the Serpentine Gallery and the Centre for Possible Studies (6–28 March).

This performance is free, but spaces are limited. Seats will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Further information

Nicola Lees

Public Programmes Curator

nicolal@serpentinegallery.org

information@serpentinegallery.org

www.serpentinegallery.org

Open daily, 10am–6pm

Centre for Possible Studies

21 Gloucester Place

London W1U 8HR

T 020 7486 2266

Open Saturday and Sunday

10am–6pm from 6–28 March

All other times by appointment

Untitled Repetition | Angus-Hughes | Feb 2011

Curated by Fieldgate Gallery

Private View: Friday 24thFebuary, 6-9pm

Exhibition runs: Feb 25th – March 18th

Gallery open: Saturdays & Sundays, 12-6pm, or by appointment

Sarah Rose Allen – Clare Goodwin – Dan Hays

Helene Kazan – Charles Mason

Angus-Hughes

26 Lower Clapton Rd (at the junction of Urswick Rd)

London

E5 0PD

With repetition embedded within their modus operandi, these artists appear to be paying a more respectful acknowledgment to their Modernist predecessors. Some use repetition in series, some as motifs, while for others it is simply a form of process in the making of the work. However, on closer inspection, there is mischief to be had, as unexpected references inform their practices. From domesticity in the form of 70s wallpaper designs to architectural systems; from an inquiry into optics to inversions of the monumental, there is an eclectic range of concerns amongst these artists that ruptures the surface appearance of deference.

Untitled Repetition, Angus Highes: http://www.angus-hughes.com/UNTITLED-REPRETITION

Spaces of Reckoning | Westminster University | Dec 2011

Interdisciplinary approaches to conflict and memory. A symposium at the University of Westminster – 3rd December, 2011.

Both Conflict Studies and Memory Studies have, in recent years, become of increasing interest across the Humanities and Social Sciences, as they generate compelling dialogues between fields of study and build on the interdisciplinary turn in contemporary academe. This event will create a space that will allow for two things: the development of opportunities for discussion across academic and cultural spheres and the inclusion of voices from outside academia that can provide new insight and potential empirical challenges to theoretical discussion. The event will gather together new researchers, and is especially designed to bring together individuals from disciplines that do not traditionally intersect. We are seeking interested participants from across and outside the academic spectrum to contribute to the creation of new and productive dialogues.

Schedule of events on 03 December 2011.

9:00 - 9:25: Arrival and Registration

9:25 - 9:30: Welcome and safety information

9:30 - 11:00: Law, Justice and Memory

With Chairperson: Professor Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos

Lawrence Abu Hamdan: Audio-documentary : ‘The Language Gulf in the Shouting Valley’

Cristina Golomoz: ‘Transitional Justice at the Romanian Constitutional Court’

Peter Manning: ‘“Moving forward through justice”: Human rights, memory politics and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia’

11:00 - 11:15: 15 Minutes Break

11:15 - 12:45: Spaces and Memorialisation

With Chairperson: Danilo Mandic

Aikaterini Gegisian: ‘Mother Armenia is distant: Memorialisation, National identity and Collective Memory in post-Soviet Yerevan’

Eray Cayli: “Architectural Memorialization as Narrativization of the Past in Sites of Post-coup Reckoning: the case of the Madımak Hotel"

Professor. Paul Miller: ‘Reckoning with the Great War: Remembering the Sarajevo Assassination’

12:45 - 13:25: 40 minutes - Lunch

13:25 - 14:25: Keynote Address

Professor Sue Vice : ‘False Memoir Syndrome’

With Chairperson: Tallyn Gray

14:25 - 14:35: 10 minute mini-break

14:35 - 16:05: Personal Subjectivity, Intergenerationality and Memory

With Chairperson: Marija Katalinic

Steve Smith: ‘Between Cultural Memory and Anecdote, Remembrance and Forgetting. An Artist's re-interpretation of a personal history of conflict.’

Merilyn Moos: ‘Learning to Remember’

Hannah Proctor: ‘ Virtual Iraq: War, Technology and the Post-Traumatic Subject’

16:05 - 16:20: 15 Minute Break

16:20 - 17:50: Contextualizing Representations of Memory

With Chairperson: Isac Petruzzi

Dr. Caroline Perret: ‘Confronting History: Jean Dubuffet’s Illustration of Eugène Guillevic’s poems "Les Murs" (1944-45)

Jette Gindner,‘Cross-mappings of the Holocaust, Colonial Genocide and Patriarchal Violencein Ingeborg Bachmann’s Unfinished Novel The Book of Franza’

Helene Kazan: Film: 'Masking Tape Intervention: Lebanon 1989' - Followed by discussion

http://www.spacesofreckoning.co.uk/

Open Shop: Artist Residency | Istanbul Biennial | Sept 2011

Open Shop is an invitation to engage with a process of open discourse, exchange and research to make visible a very specific emotive relationship with the architecture of the home and the reasons that lead to a decision to migrate. The residency will explore a cross section of personal experience of contemporary human migration in Istanbul.

Drawing on her own encounter of moving from Lebanon to England, Helene Kazan’s practice uses developed film making techniques that investigate spatialised experience. ‘Masking Tape / Light Intervention: Lebanon 1989’, is generated from an archive photograph taken of her family kitchen in Lebanon before their migration to England. Involving a combination of model making, oral history and stop motion animation, the work presents the viewer with an emotive relationship with the architecture of the home. Defined by a conversation between her parents outlining the specific situation leading to migration.

The animation will be exhibited at The Architectural Research Studio Mars, near the ‘Open Shop’ in Cihangir, as part of Architectural Research Exhibitions Series 1: Crystal City. Opening on the of 18th September during the opening weekend of the 12th Istanbul Biennial. The film enables a theoretical framework and point of reference for the research undertaken during the residency.

The ‘Open Shop’ will function in two ways:

Firstly it is an open informal space, where visitors are invited to drop in to share and discuss stories or archive photographs of a departed home. Evoking a discourse and exchange with local and international communities in Istanbul.

Secondly using two purpose built screens in the large windows that create the ‘Open Shop’ space, it will function as an informal exhibition and public screening platform relaying the visual and oral research that will be collected throughout the residency.

Parts of the accumulated research will eventually have the same process applied as was cultivated for ‘Masking Tape / Light Intervention: Lebanon 1989’, to recreate and describe other homes and personal histories.

This residency is a collaboration with openvizor, a non-profit international arts and cultural platform and organization that brings together different people and skills from around the world to combine practical knowledge and research.

www.openvizor.com www.helenekazan.co.uk

Architectural Research Studio MARS. Architectural Research Exhibitions Series 1: Crystal City

Opening: 18.09.2011 18.00-20.30 Dates: 18.09.2011 - 18.11.2011 Tues - Sat 11.00-19.00

Address: No:10 Bostanbasi Cad. Galatasaray-Taksim.

Crystal City | Istanbul Biennial | Sept 2011

Architectural Research Exhibitions Series 1 - Crystal City

Parallel exhibition to Istanbul Biennial

Opening Date: 18.09.2011 18.00-20.30

Dates: 18.09.2011 - 18.11.2011

Tuesday-Saturday 11.00-19.00

Concept and Organization by: Pınar Öğrenci

Artists: Şahinaz Emine Akalın, Luk Berghe, Uli Fischer, Claudia von Funcke, Behrouz Hescmat, Evrim Kavcar, Helene Kazan, Pınar Öğrenci, Mustafa Pancar, Erich Pick, Kemal Seyhan

Address: No:10 Bostanbasi Cad. Galatasaray-Taksim.

Contact: pinarogrenci@yahoo.com facebook.com/marsistanbul

The Architectural Research Studio Mars is hosting the Crystal City exhibition from the 18th of September to the 18th of November 2011. Inspired by Italio Calvino's book, 'Invisible Cities', the participating artists set out to discover the secret reasons why people choose to live in urban environments. At a time trying to deal with a vagrant utopia and his longing for urban humanism, Calvino embarks on a journey outside the barriers of time and space; revolting against the modern cities of our time, he investigates the future of modern, metropolitan cities. This exhibition, organized by Pınar Öğrenci, explores through the means of imagery, the artists' relationship with architecture, and therefore cities, as well as concepts such as memory, desire, symbolism, remembrance and barter.

LOW&HIGH programme: Folkstone Triennial | 16 Spaces | July 2011

THE VISITORS - TALK 1:

Structure and Site Search.

SATURDAY, 16TH JULY, 4PM.

With: Louise Ashcroft and Helene Kazan (16 Spaces, London), Julia Crabtree

and William Evans (James Taylor Gallery, London), Pierre D’Alancaisez

(Waterside Project Space, London), Toby Huddlestone (Crate, Margate), Dimitri Launder (Area 10, London).

A discussion on art activities in the contexts of relocating, development, destruction, obstruction, (re)organising and functioning within existing structures as well as creating new platforms and networks. We will also look at nomadic curators-artists/artists-curators and reclaimed (art)spaces. Panelists will share experiences of their work as art workers/art organisers, which will be followed by a Q&A session. The event

is open to everybody.

Free. To book your place email: lowandhigh.platform@gmail.com

Location LOW&HIGH 15 Tontine Street, Folkestone, CT20 1JT

www.16spaces.com

lowandhighplatform.wordpress.com