Hauntopia / What if | Exhibition and Conference at the Research Pavilion in Venice

The exhibition

In times of violent political conflicts, the exhibition explores the conjuring of specters as a proper method of arts-based research. It welcomes the appearance of ghostly events, signs, images, practices and objects that recount the ferocities of the past while they also hold the possibility of a different future. Building on a glossary of hauntopic devices the exhibited work is looking for traces, negations even, of things, stories and future visions, while in many instances making use of formats that employ ephemeral, opaque or sci-fi elements. Thus the exhibition explores the range of a ghostly aesthetics: In Naomi Rincón-Gallardo's video work, for instance, a set of fantastic species from a forgotten future – located between trashy leftovers and a not-yet-here gender-ambiguity – explore the connections between sexuality and colonialism and create a counter-world within neocolonial settings. A backpack appears as a phantom-object in Zsuzsi Flohr's installation; despite its material absence it became the main protagonist of a Holocaust survival story. Rafal Morusiewicz' film installation conjures ghostly figures out of found footage from Polish (experimental) cinema – figures pushed to the margins during the Polish People's Republic. Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński's performance-based video installation shows the impossibility of visualizing the ways in which the artist is haunted by the leftovers of Paul Schebesta, an Austrian ethnographer, writer and photographer.

Artists: Aline Benecke, Katalin Erdödi, Zsuzsi Flohr, Sílvia das Fadas, Moira Hille, Zosia Holubowska, Hristina Ivanoska, Janine Jembere, Ruth Jenrbekova, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, Rafal Morusiewicz, Lisa Nyberg, Read-in, Naomi Rincón-Gallardo, Masha Godovannaya, Keiko Uenishi

EARN-Conference, September 8 and 9 , 2017

The concept of haunting has been employed to create a language for the many ways in which an unfinished past makes itself known in the here and now (Avery Gordon) and violent histories, or stories, cause ongoing disruptions, wronging the wrong (Eve Tuck). Haunting often takes place when an official narrative insists that the violence of subjection and injustice is overcome (after liberation from colonialism, after Stonewall, after the end of a war, etc.) or when their oppressiveness is strictly denied. Now ghosts "appear" as agency in-between subjectivities, images and spaces and demand a response, while haunting also works as an exile for our longing, it stimulates an imagination of how things could be otherwise. With these complexities in mind, the conference reflects on the potential of artistic research to not just welcome but conjure the specters of the past to make unresolved social violences demand their due.

The conference is organized by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna as the annual event by the European Artistic Research Network (EARN).

Conference with lectures, artists' presentations and performance.
Including: the specters of Octavia Butler and José Munoz
Keynote lectures by Avery Gordon (UC Santa Barbara) and Eve Tuck (University of Toronto), and researchers from the EARN network

Programme: www.artresearch.eu and www.akbild.ac.at

Research Pavilion Utopia of Access 11 May – 15 October 2017

The programme of the Research Pavilion consists of three 6-week contemporary art exhibitions and 46 multidisciplinary art events activities called Camino Events .

Uniarts Helsinki is set to open a Research Pavilion in May in the context of the 57th Venice Biennale. During a span of five months, the Pavilion will host three contemporary art exhibitions and over forty multidisciplinary events. Under the theme Utopia of Access, the Pavilion calls for a variety of interpretations on urgent topics of debate using experimental methods. Over a hundred artist-researchers from European art universities will introduce their own contribution to the Pavilion in the field of contemporary art, music, performing arts, and curating.

The Research Pavilion is a follow-up to the pilot project that took place in Venice in 2015, and thanks to the enthusiastic reactions from the international art and research field, the university was encouraged to develop the concept further. Uniarts Helsinki has invited Konstex and the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme (NARP) as its main partners for the Research Pavilion. The networks represent a large number of Norwegian and Swedish art institutions of higher education. In addition, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Zurich University of the Arts will also produce one exhibition each for the Research Pavilion.

www.researchpavilion.com researchpavilion@uniarts.fi

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