Mill Ends Park

Sunday, March 28, 2010

New Beginnings - Open house at Iaspis

Welcome to the first Open house of the year at Iaspis. 15 artists will participate, all of whom have held residencies of various durations, at Iaspis in Stockholm. Guest producer is Sinziana Ravini (Paris), curator and writer.

PROGRAMME:

Prologue
Friday, 15:00

Welcome by Cecilia Widenheim, Director, Iaspis and Sinziana Ravini, guest producer and moderator.

Act 1
Friday 15.15 – 16.15, The project room.
Theatrum Mundi, the world as a stage – on reality production.
Invited guest: Cecilia Parsberg
Artists: Hans Rosenström, Carl Palm, Jesper Nordahl, Can Altay, Mako Ishizuka, Daniel Eatock

Act 2
Friday 18:30-19:30, The project room.
The text as an act – on performative writing and storytelling.
Invited guest: Cecilia Sjöholm
Artist: Lina Issa

Act 3
Friday, 19:30
The party

Act 4
Saturday, 14.00 – 16.00, The project room
New Beginnings – on the aesthetics and philosophies of new beginnings.
Invited guests: Nicolas Bourriaud, Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, Sven-Olov Wallenstein
Artists: Tom McCarthy, Meike Schalk, Ingo Vetter

The choir enters, sings and lamentates – what will happen?

Act 5
Produced by each and every one of us, actors and emancipated spectators alike. It is up to us all to decide how the story goes, and whether we have taken part in a tragedy or a comedy.

THE CONCEPT:

Michel de Montaigne once said: “The births of all things are weak and tender and therefore we should have our eyes intent on beginnings”. As fragile as they might be, beginnings have great impact on the course of things. In the beginning was the word. But Goethe’s Faust says that in the beginning was the act, overturning the entire history of logo centrism. Nowadays we tend to convince ourselves that acts are stronger than words. But what if the word was an act? What if writing is the principal action? If so, what would a collective writing experience be?

New Beginnings is an exhibition organised for Iapsis open house event on the 26 and 27 of March 2010. The exhibition will display the work of 15 artists working with theatralisation, staged realities, performative writing and storytelling. The common denominator between them is the quest for different kinds of temporality. New Beginnings is also the title of a collective writing experience – a manuscript containing a prologue, 10 monologues, a dialogical manifesto and an epilogue.

The prologue is a search after new beginnings; the monologues, and the dialogical manifesto is written by the 13 artists in response to the prologue. Finally, there is a summarizing epilogue.

The Open House event itself is structured as a theatre play in 5 acts where the artists and invited guests play the role of actors, the curator the role of the theatre director, the staff at Iaspis play the role of prompters that help the ensemble to stick to the script, and you - the audience, are the emancipated spectators.

If the world, as Shakespeare says is nothing but a stage, and life nothing but a tale signifying nothing – then it is up to each and every one of us to decide whether New Beginnings is a tragedy or a comedy.

Participating artists: Can Altay (Istanbul), Lina Bjerneld (Stockholm), Daniel Eatock (London), Fatale: Katarina Bonnevier + Meike Schalk (Stockholm), Sönke Hallmann (Berlin), Mako Ishizuka (Kobe/Stockholm), Lina Issa (Beirut/Amsterdam), Armando Lulaj (Bologna), Tom McCarthy (London), Jesper Nordahl (Stockholm), Carl Palm (Stockholm), Christodoulos Panayiotou (Limassol), Hans Rosenström (Helsinki), Ingo Vetter (Stockholm)

Publication design: Byggstudio (Stockholm)

For more information please contact Iaspis project manager
Jonatan Habib Engqvist, jhe@iaspis.se or +46 8 5065 5094.