ISCP Talk
June 28, 2011

Salon: Arianna Carossa and David Maroto

For her Salon, Arianna Carossa will present her recent research undertaken during her residency at ISCP. She will show two multimedia installations made of object trouvés along with photographs produced for the occasion. Carossa’s art practice centers around the material object as an expression of linearity and consistency in humanity. Her research revolves around the concept of deconstruction and reconstruction.

Arianna Carossa lives between Genova, Milan and Rome and graduated from Academia Ligustica di Belle Arti in Genova, where she received a BFA in painting.

Taking as a departing point his own interest in games, literature and psychoanalysis, David Maroto will offer some reflections on his art practice and why it is important that a visual artist poses radical questions to himself. Maroto will focus on his life project Four Circles, and its two main pieces: Illusion (in the form of a novel) and Disillusion (in the form of a board game) as well as other works that emanate from those two central works.

David Maroto decided to frame his art practice from the very beginning in the structure of four circles. This marked and clear beginning will have a marked and clear end, like a narrative. Once he has fulfilled the four circles he will have finished his work and consequently he will abandon art practice. Each of these circles is a well-defined project, autonomous from the others. Yet they all share commonalities that establish points of contact among them. Each circle has its own title: First Circle: Illusion, Second Circle: Disillusion, Third Circle: Truth, Fourth Circle: Death.

Participating Residents

Exhibition
June 15–July 29, 2011

The Power to Host

The International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) announces The Power to Host, an exhibition curated by Maja Ćirić, recipient of ISCP’s 2011 Curator Award, which offers the opportunity for a curator or curatorial collective to present a new group exhibition. This award was established in 2009 for participants in selected curatorial studies programs, as a response to the lack of opportunities for emerging curators to present institutional exhibitions in New York City. Participating artists: Dušica Dražić & Deqa Abshir, Global Alien, Li Mu, Alexandra Navratil, Vladimir Nikolić, Marinella Senatore and Slavs and Tatars + the hospitality shelf.

Addressing the possibility for the international circulation of ideas in the art world, The Power to Host navigates between two different but complementary interpretations of hospitality. Cosmopolitanism, according to Kant, is founded on the term “hospitality” as humanism on the move. For Derrida, to be hospitable it is first necessary that one must have the power to host or some kind of control over the people who are being hosted. This means that guests can be under control: to the closing of boundaries, to nationalism, and even to the exclusion of particular groups. This is Derrida’s possible conception of hospitality, in which our most well-intentioned conceptions of hospitality render the ‘other others’.

Global Alien and Slavs and Tatars, two participating collectives in this exhibition, deconstruct in a humorous way the nation-state by pointing to arts capacity to overcome geopolitical borders and produce new cultural space. While Alexandra Navratil deconstructs power through imagined political and economic spaces, Dušica Dražic has collaborated with an artist from Kenya to create a Technicolor Dreamcoat, a trans-religious symbol that appears in Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Another way of hosting the others – inhabitants of the Lower East Side in New York – is examined by Marinella Senatore whose latest video looks at systems of aggregation and the possibility to exist and think in a collective way. A Tibetan monk hosts the artist Li Mu in a concerned conversation about his art world career as well as his private life, providing inspiring insight. Vladimir Nikolic  examines the “rule of commentators” on which the normative art system lies.

This exhibition points to the fact that those who have the possibility to be hosted at ISCP in Brooklyn, with ideal working conditions and access to a professional network, often share an unstable position with artists from those countries who have more difficulties entering the ‘power field’. A ‘power’ hospitality shelf with catalogues and portfolios submitted directly from some of the countries that are absent from the ISCP alumni map will accompany this exhibition.

On June 20 at 6:30pm, Independent Curators International (ICI) will present The Power to Host: A workshop examining actual and potential global art worlds, based on the exhibition. The discussion will be led by Maja Ciric and moderated by Chelsea Haines, ICI’s Education & Public Programs Manager at ICI’s Curatorial Hub at 401 Broadway, suite 1620.

ISCP thanks the following contributors for their generous support: Brooklyn Arts Council, The Greenwich Collection, National Endowment for the Arts and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Opening Reception: Jun 15, 2011, 7-9pm
Download Exhibition Catalog

ISCP Talk
June 7, 2011

Salon at Olive Street Garden: Elmar Hermann and Firoz Mahmud

ISCP Salon at Olive Street Garden Corner of Olive and Powers Streets, Brooklyn, New York. Limited seating is available, please arrive early to guarantee a place

6:30pm
Firoz Mahmud Lecture

7pm
Elmar Hermann will organize a preview of the book Apogee, a compilation of solitude, ecology and recreation and the second publication by artist group nüanS, forthcoming by Revolver Publishing in June 2011. Featuring work by Jessica Gispert, Louise Lawler, Suzanne Thornton, Michael H Shamberg & and special guests from his turtle salon.

7:05pm Dolly Freed reading

7:30pm Glen Rubsamen reading

8:00pm Music by Kris Parbon & Humberto José Castello (Animal Tropical)

nüans, an artist collective including Elmar Hermann has invited 80 artists and theorists to contribute to various topics related to the theme of islands/isolation. Apogee is the place in the universe that is the most distant to the earth and is a mathematical quantity and allegory for absolute seclusion. For one evening, selected artists connected to the book will have the opportunity to present their ideas at this very special location, a community garden.

nüans is an artist collective organized by Anna Heidenhain, Elmar Hermann and Maki Umehara in Istanbul and Düsseldorf. Instead of being fixed to one place, nüans looks for locations that fit the context of each specific intention. Their projects are interdisciplinary in order to bring about an exchange of ideas between a wide array of collaborators.

Firoz Mahmud will speak about his work in several media including installation, Layapa Art (a Bangladeshi stencil technique), Urgency of Proximate Drawing (NinKI: UoPD), text, video and photographs which are based on Bangladeshi socio-political culture, myth, tradition and pop culture.

Firoz Mahmud (born Khulna, Bangladesh) graduated from received a BFA from Dhaka University, an MFA from Tama Art University and a PhD from Tokyo University of the Arts. He attended Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam. He has shown his work in group exhibitions including the Aichi Triennal, Aichi, Japan; Sharjah Biennale, Dubai, UAE; Cairo Biennale, Cairo, Egypt; Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennal, Echigo-Tsumar, Japan; Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh, Dhaka; Kunsthaus Tacheles, Berlin, Germany; Rochester Contemporary, New York; Sovereign Art Foundation, Hong Kong; S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium; Witte de With, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Rijksakademie VBK, Amsterdam and Metropolitan-Gallery Mostings Hus, Frederiksberg, Denmark.

Participating Residents