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A Cab at Kunsthalle Athena
From December 4th to 13th 2014, Kunsthalle Athena (28th Kerameikou Street, Kerameikos - Metaxourgeio, Athens, Greece) hosts the exhibition "A Cab".
If cabinet of curiosities were a vehicle…
“Surprisingly, the Viking 1 lander, which remains on Mars, is considered part of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.”
Ann Garrison Darrin and Beth Laura O’Leary, eds., Handbook of Space Engineering, Archaeology, and Heritage
A Cab installation view, 2014, Podium artists space, Oslo, detail. Photo by Robertas Narkus. Courtesy of the artists
Forget causality. A task of pinning down the origins and raison d'être of this cabinet of curiosity is rather painstaking and vague. Was it a talking and self-typing typewriter from Naked Lunch by William Burroughs, Boîte-en-valise, a portable museum by Marcel Duchamp, the news about Harvard geneticists who have successfully stored around 700 terabytes in a single gram of DNA, a found Ex-libris for a library not yet begun, The Third Table, a booklet by Graham Harman? Was it his friend Timothy Morton, author of Realist Magic Objects, Ontology, Causality, who typically reads lectures standing as chairs “are trying to take over”? Or was it a paid visit to a desk – a bed as another model of artists’ studio would also do it – at a studio of a fellow artist, where typically artworks and exhibitions are started? Or was it Epicurus, who made a school out if his garden and not out of the constellation of benches and tables, thus transforming it into an educational vehicle?
Instead of searching of what wasn’t lost, let’s imagine causality as “wholly an aesthetic phenomenon. Aesthetic events are not limited to interactions between humans or between humans and painted canvases or between humans and sentences in dramas. They happen when a saw bites into a fresh piece of plywood. They happen when a worm oozes out of some wet soil. They happen when a massive object emits gravity waves. When you make or study art, you are not exploring some kind of candy on the surface of a machine”, continues Timothy Morton, supposedly still standing.
Ola Vasiljeva, Pianist, 2013-2014, metal work, glass, 25 cm, Courtesy of the artist
After a few but productive conversations with artists between Athens and Vilnius and back, a certain phantasm, cyborg or an animal, – most probably all in one –, started to move in our heads. This creature may be called an exhibition, but also it may be a library of objects, a book written in real time, an assemblage, consisting of communicating and choreographed objects, and creating space for potentialities and events. If we may call it an exhibition, it would be as stable as “Medusa raft”, it would research itself and its surroundings as Mars rover, or the aforementioned Viking 1 lander to be more exact, it would be transported as easy as a suitcase with Ryanair, and, what is more important, it would function as a ghostly vehicle, both figuratively and literary, for audience, artists, objects, and imagination.
Nick Bastis, When you don't find what you're looking for, sleep 2014, snails, Courtesy of the artist
Dexter Sinister, Watch Wyoscan 0.5 Hz, 2012, Courtesy of the artist, Photo by Dexter Sinister
The opening ceremony takes place on December 4th, 2014 at 20.00. The exhibition is curated by Valentinas Klimašauskas and the participating artists are Andreas Angelidakis, Nick Bastis, Liudvikas Buklys, Antanas Gerlikas, Steinar Haga Kristensen, Morten Norbye Halvorsen, Laura Kaminskaitė, Mikko Kuorinki, Lupo, Ieva Misevičiūtė, Elena Narbutaitė, Robertas Narkus, Carl Palm, Natasha Papadopoulou, Zoë Paul, Angelo Plessas, Michael Portnoy, Dexter Sinister, Ola Vasiljeva, Thanos Kyriakides and Stephanos Kamaris. Kunsthalle Athena is open from Thursday to Friday, 17.00 - 20.00, and Saturday 12.00 - 15.00.
Special website project by Angelo Plessas: www.beforeeverything.com
"A Cab" was also presented at Podium artists space, Oslo, November 21-23, 2014.
lack light please, stay late for waffle grace, drenched in lazer flying maze, solid shape, full speech bubble e mumble, 2013, laser cut drawing on black material, Courtesy of the artist
About the Curator
Born after Voyager 1 left the Earth, Valentinas Klimašauskas is letters, but also a curator and writer interested in speculative economies of language and uneven distribution of future. His recent book B and/or an Exhibition Guide In Search of Its Exhibition published by Torpedo Press, Oslo, contains written exhibitions that floated in time and space with and within a joke, one’s mind, Voyager 1, Chauvet Cave or inside the novel 2666 by Roberto Bolaño. Valentinas lives and works between Athens and Vilnius.
