MORALITY: ACT I & ACT II - Tonight at Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art - Rotterdam, Netherlands

Guysgocrazy, 2007, double channel video installation with sound and framed photo

Morality
October 10, 2009 - July 31, 2010

Morality starts with two opening exhibitions, the first intervention on Witte de With's façade by AES+F and the launch of the Morality web platform.

Act I: Beautiful from Every Point of View
Exhibition
10 October 2009 – 10 January 2010
Featured artists: Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Isa Genzken, Marko Lulić, Kris Martin, Josephine Meckseper, Sarah Morris, Ron Terada, Tobias Zielony, Artur Żmijewski

Curated by Juan A. Gaitan and Nicolaus Schafhausen.

Act II: From Love to Legal
Exhibition
10 October 2009 – 7 February 2010
Featured artists: Joachim Koester, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Isabelle Pauwels, Mark Raidpere, Tobias Rehberger, Nedko Solakov, Danh Vo, Peter Wächtler, Katarina Zdjelar.

Curated by Juan A. Gaitan and Nicolaus Schafhausen.

Opening: Friday 9 October 2009, 6-9 p.m.
The Triumph of Death and King Midas, performances by Spartacus Chetwynd, between 7-9 p.m.

Between You and I: The Feast of Trimalchio by AES+F
Intervention on Witte de With's façade
10 October 2009 – 17 January 2010

Curated by SKOR and Witte de With.

Full program and more details available on our website http://www.wdw.nl

Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, is pleased to present Morality.

From the Fall of 2009 until the Summer of 2010, Morality will be the leitmotif for an assemblage of connected projects that have been divided into several acts. The program comprises five interrelated group exhibitions featuring over fifty international artists, a symposium, a film cycle, a performance program, a web platform and a book. Parallel to this, Witte de With and SKOR (Foundation Art and Public Space) will commission four interventions on Witte de With's façade under the title Between You and I.

Morality is a provocative theme that aims to open a dialogue vis-à-vis the world that is now determined by the experiences of war, displacement, political and economic crises, the rise of religious fanaticism, sectarianism, and the radicalization of seemingly old doctrines and ideologies. Morality is also a broad subject that affects everybody in many different ways. From the bathroom to the parliament, there is a total field of social engagement in which morality functions without boundaries, between a set of abstract, intangible and general ideas. Morality is neither a base nor a superstructure, but a smooth network of influences that supersedes the law, governing both regulated and unregulated social spaces, and affecting daily life in subtle, seductive, unexpected ways. Yet, there is not a unique or purely affirmative sense that one can give to this notion. A number of moral attitudes – often at odds with one another – inform the positions that we, as political subjects, assume in relation to the events that take place in our world.

Seemingly simple, but also disturbingly difficult to grasp, Morality is an ideal leitmotif for a project that seeks to explore critical points of fragmentation in everyday life. By isolating this concept, we seek therefore to withdraw it from any of the social, cultural, sectarian, religious or historical specificities within which an array of categorical imperatives are deployed in its name. Rather than presenting statements that can be perceived as being right or wrong, good or evil, the project Morality will create a space for showing a wide range of attitudes that problematize a total conception of morality, focusing on the less tangible forces and attitudes that shape common thinking and behavior.

Contact:
Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art
Witte de Withstraat 50
3012 BR Rotterdam, The Netherlands
T +31(0)104110144 – info@wdw.nl - http://www.wdw.nl