mono.kultur #43 – Spring 2017
FATIMA AL QADIRI: EMBEDDED NARRATIVES
“I want to be heard and not seen.”
Bending and fusing different genres of music, Al Qadiri has released a handful of largely instrumental albums that often imply narratives wrapped in a dystopian atmosphere, evoking an uncanny imagery of our increasingly oversaturated and disorienting information age. It is a simple yet complicated sound that owes as much to electronic music and video game soundtracks as it does to Russian composers and Arab musical traditions.

It is music that draws not only from an eclectic range of contrasting influences, but from a layered personal background: Born in Senegal, Fatima Al Qadiri grew up in Kuwait, but was exposed to electronic music and club culture during frequent stays in London and studies in the USA. It is in New York where she soon established her own place within the art and music scenes, as comfortable producing music in her own name as she is conceiving art installations as a member of the artist collective GCC or providing sound to the fashion shows of labels such as Telfar and Hood by Air.

But regardless of the genre or medium, almost all of Al Qadiri’s work is defined by the thematic undercurrents that run throughout her records, installations, and collaborations, dealing with cultural stereotypes, notions of place and displacement, regional and global politics, and concepts of national but also gender and sexual identity. Hers is a sound very much of the here and now, channeling not only a multi-layered past, but a complicated present, processing a flux of input and information. Sound as a filtered reality, a kind of digital compression of personal obsessions and contemporary concerns.

With mono.kultur, Fatima Al Qadiri talked about the narratives within her music, the cycles of history, and the soundtrack to burning oil fields.

Visually, the issue traces an arc from Fatima Al Qadiri’s youth to her current work. The main imagery comes from her series Bored 1997, for which, at 16, she took photographs of her younger sister Monira dressing up in their father’s clothes. The series is published here for the first time in print, interspersed with stills from a current video work on gender reversal and Kuwaiti rituals, inserted as static stickers.

Interview by Daniel Berndt
Works by Fatima Al Qadiri
Design by Fuchs Borst

€6.00

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BOOK LAUNCH

SCREEN

Arthur Fouray

Tombolo Presses

ARTIST TALK
Arthur Fouray in conversation with Rachel Walker
7.30 pm

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We are happy to invite you to the launch of Tombolo Presses new publication, an artist book by Arthur Fouray. Its title, “Screen”, embodies his artistic process which spreads here across two main formats : painting/serigraphy on cushions and the artist book. The publication sets a comprehensive entry point into a research Arthur Fouray began in 2015 with his solo show “Spectre” at Espace Quark, Geneva. Through art and decoration history, he questions the shift between painting before the industrial revolution and the cinematographic experience. He proposes to the spectator an art experience which skips interaction by teasing the unsaid.

The launch of the book is accompanied by a talk between Rachel Walker and Arthur Fouray. A bookshelf will display books published by Tombolo Presses in recent years.

ARTHUR FOURAY
Arthur Fouray is a French artist born in 1990. His practice analyses through paintings the exhibition format. He is also curator at DOC Paris, France. In 2015, he co-founded the artist-run-space Silicon Malley in Lausanne, Switzerland.

RACHEL WALKER
Rachel Walker is a curator and art historian based in Berlin. Originally from Brussels, she holds an MA from the Courtauld Institute in London. Formerly director at DUVE Berlin, she has worked at König Galerie and is currently Gallery Liaison at Artsy. She has recently curated exhibitions at Frankfurt am Main and Horse and Pony Fine Arts.

TOMBOLO PRESSES
Co-founded in 2013 by Alexandru Balgiu, Thierry Chancogne, Brice Domingues, Sacha Léopold and Pascal Trutin, Tombolo Presses is a publishing house expanding the web revue “Tombolo” with the affinities and contradictions of the practice & reflection of graphic design.

This association brings editorial, curatorial projects produced with the energy of artists, graphic designers, theorists, students & teachers, all active on theoretical and exchange platform “Tombolo”.

This structure’s ambition is to present experimental publications and/or transitional in the field of graphic design extended to visual arts. The image as text and text as image.

TSAR 14, Co-publié par Images Vevey
Mérinat
de Thomas Adank

48 pages
24 × 32 cm
Français / English
ISBN 978-2-9700842-6-6
Première édition 2016

12€
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The book documents the design work of author’s grandmother Kirsti Metusala at the Tallinn Experimental Plant Estoplast where she worked as a designer for 28 years (1964–1992). Estoplast was a factory mainly producing plastic lamps which were highly popular during the Soviet era and even nowadays almost every Estonian family has a lamp or two in their home or country house.

The book consists of a collection of photographs from the archive of Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design showing a selection of lamps designed by Kirsti Metusala. It is accompanied by an interview with her by Ott Metusala which is loosely based on comments of different lamp designs, and sheds light on the specifics of working as a designer in Soviet Estonia. The book also includes a short essay by Kai Lobjakas (director of Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design) discussing Soviet-Estonian design in a broader context.

€15.00

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http://humansacrifice.net/

Browse Publications and artworks by Fritz Welch Here

Edition Tsar @ Motto Berlin. 03.05.2017
from 6pm

Featuring: Julien Gremaud, Julien Fischer, Charlotte Krieger et Agathe Zaerpour, Simon Paccaud, Thomas Adank, Adrien Chevalley, Baptiste Oberson, Guillaume Dénervaud, Thomas Koenig, Vianney Fivel and many others

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POP-UP Press @ Motto Berlin. 03.05.2017
from 6pm

Pardon Refused by Alexander Peli, Popup Press 2017
82 pages, A4, Softcover

Alexander Peli is a Canadian photographer who enjoys a raw atmosphere. The time he spent living in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood of West Berlin had a significant impact on his work and he subsequently travelled throughout Europe seeking misconduct of all kinds.
His photographs often follow a sinful narrative; one of lust, gluttony, sexuality, crime and abuse. Pardon Refused acts as a photo diary and uses the streets as a palette, capturing young artists engaged in destructive action as well as candidly documenting strange yet familiar environments. Alexander and the creatives featured in the pages of Pardon Refused don’t apologize for their behaviour and seek no redemption.
All photographs shot exclusively on 35mm film using 5 different cameras, Pardon Refused contains 66 frames spanning over 7 countries.