in medias res is an ongoing selective collection of seemingly random online images as well as self-taken screenshots and photography. Featuring a selection of over 1200 pictures out of the personal archive, it deals with patterns of recognition, appropriation and contextualization of (popular) cultures. By reproduction through means of hard copy a shift of attention shall be provoked (in favor of THE IMAGE).
Following musical techniques of plunderphonics, the mode of situating and framing finds manifestation from 15th century renaissance art (emblem) through to present operating principles of the social media online platform instagram (hashtags). Focusing on reciprocal influence and interference between text and image, the project aims to intentionally subvert cultural codes of visual content and wording by allegory and metaphor. Associated figures of thought, socio-political terms, new slang, ambiguous terms of marketing and connotated phrases are addressed to expand (semiotic) nuances and undertones of modern day society (consumer culture, mainstream-noise, fashion-dynamics, politics / environmental issues), thus to challenge ways of perception of cultural sets of phenomena (meme).. Of course, a certain sense of humor is a substantial attitude of indifference to ride the jittering stream that shapes contours of global scenes of references and re-production of “meaning” through poor images.
in medias res is a context bundle. in medias res is a deep learning process. in medias res is highly subjective.
“Things can be freer and reach higher when they conceal themselves.”–Rita Ackermann
Rita Ackermann was born in Budapest in 1968 and today lives and works in New York. Arriving in America from Hungary in the early 1990s, she is immediately faced with a major challenge: to be able to survive in a foreign country as a young artist, she must be able to integrate the aesthetics of her cultural background together with what the new country offers her in her artistic practice. Her first drawings and paintings made between 1993 and 1996 show adolescent female figures multiplied within the composition and engaged in various self-destructive activities, expressed to the public through understandable and direct language. About twenty years later Ackermann abandons the figure and develops the series of works he entitles Mama, a set of compositions in which lines and gestures, figures and motifs rise to the surface of the canvas to then dissolve and reappear elsewhere. On the occasion of the exhibition at MASI Lugano, in 2022 Ackermann begins a new series of paintings entitled War Drawings, where oil, grease pencil and acrylic are heavily worked on rough linen canvas. In these works, the figures get lost and the lines are scraped away to reveal fragmented compositions.
Published on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at the MASI in Lugano, entitled Hidden, this book contains reproductions of all the works in the exhibition and others selected personally by the artist.
Text by Pamela Kort, a conversation between Rita Ackermann and Donatien Grau.
We are happy to invite you about a special event coming up that we’re certain will pique the interest of those who delight in the fusion of music, video art, and performance.
X-IMG presents a program of audio-visual excess and dark dance music on May 18th at Ohm, Berlin.
Jubal Brown and Tasman Richardson, who recently awed us with a stunning reading and performance at our bookstore, are now set to light up the stage.
A Kassen is a Danish art collective whose work encompasses photography, installation, and sculpture. Recalling the process-over-product mantra of 1960s action painters and Pop artists, their practice hinges on central questions of authorship and explores the relationship between form and content. Beginning with an everyday object—a material such as bronze, or something more ephemeral, like a puddle or a reflection—A Kassen task themselves with acts of construction and deconstruction, reinterpretation and recontextualization, all the while challenging preconceived notions of what the phenomenon in question is. Through these manipulations, they create works meant to be seen explicitly through the context of art and aesthetics, where the spectator’s role becomes central—indeed, an integral part of the work. Bystanders become interpreters, creating layers of meaning and understanding while rewriting the narratives at hand.
Dimensions Variable includes essays by Irene Campolmi, Adam Carr, and Jonatan Habib Engqvist, and an illustrated chronology of A Kassen’s works.
Motto is pleased to invite you to the film screening and double book presentation of
Objects in Mirror by Tasman Richardson Published by Impulse [b], 2023
Tasman Richardson is his memory of screens. Video from cathode ray to capacitive pixels shapes his language, directs his understanding, and ultimately borders his imagination. Building on McLuhan’s statement “We become what we behold”, Richardson shuttles through the history of tele-vision and tele-presence, postulating consciousness itself as Gysin-esque “cut-up” collage. Fragmented, digressive, and occasionally manic, Objects In Mirror refracts autoethnography into a technicolour meditation on our mediated world. An intimate and humourous technical-mystical delving into a distrust of all things perceived both in life and art.
DIE SCUM, Sex & Drugs & Contemporary Art is the debut novel by artist and iconoclast Jubal Brown, a post-post-modern love story of the drug dealer to the art scene and his paranoid deluge through alcoholic-depression to redemption and personal agency. A 60,000 word auto-fiction confessional of addiction, to drugs and alcohol but, ultimately an examination of addiction to dysfunctional relationships, unhealthy ideals and behaviours, the performance of identity, and the failure of masculinity.
The reading will be followed by film screenings of Richardson and Brown’s video work.
Tasman Richardson & Jubal Brown have been producing video work, sometimes collaborating, for 25+ years, originating in the 1990s with a unique high energy style of experimental video: A/V, audio-visual, or visual music – also known as JAWA, the recombinant montage of appropriated television&movies treated as raw material, sampled and remixed to build compositions engaging the lexicon of contemporary media culture.
This short program will showcase a selection of video work from the past and present.
About the authors:
Tasman Richardson
Tasman Richardson began pioneering his audio/visual cut up method known as Jawa in 1996, later co-founding FAMEFAME media arts collective in 2002, co-creating international a/v tournament Videodrome with cohorts Jubal Brown, Elenore Chesnutt, and Josh Avery, and launching abstract, anonymous live showcase The New Flesh in 2011. His critique of mediated gaze through installation debuted with 2,000 square foot Necropolis (Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, 2012) and bookended with Kali Yuga (Arsenal Contemporary, Montreal, 2019, and Toronto, 2021). Objects In Mirror (2023, Impulse[b]) is his first book, and continues his critical response to recordings which he dubs “contemporary necromancy.”
Jubal Brown Jubal Brown is a producer and presenter of contemporary art & events culture, and writer based in Toronto, Canada. A/V video-maker of over 50 short works screened or performed in Toronto, New York, Paris, London, etc. Brown has programmed with established institutions and underground venues including ART SYSTEM, GALLERY DEATH FAMEFAME, PLEASUREDOME, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (Now MOCA ) DOUBLE DOUBLE LAND, CINECYCLE , and many more. Past projects include Toronto’s legendary event series at abandoned industrial sites WASTELAND… museum vomit intervention RESPONDING to ART, The Cultural Centre ART SYSTEM, multi-media label FAMEFAME, relational aesthetics collaborative The LAND of the LOST, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art’s live audio/visual event series VIDEODROME and the rhythmic noise club night SHIT FUN. In Canadian Art Magazine R.M. Vaughan called him “the dark prince of Toronto art.” Vocationally a Social Service Worker and Addictions Counsellor Brown’s current work deals with addiction, dysfunctional relationships, depression and mental health issues, as well as an extreme individualist canon of iconoclasm, revolution, and nihilism, love and anger, resistance and freedom. His first novel DIE SCUM Sex & Drugs & Contemporary Art is available in paperback and e-book at IMPULSE-b , publisher of artists’ books and multiples.
DARA BIRNBAUM (A) Turning the Media Against Itself Michelle Kuo, Rahel Aima, and Emmanuel Olunkwa in conversation (B) I Fought Like Fucking Hell to Get Out of the Black Box Dara Birnbaum, Hito Steyerl, and Stuart Comer in conversation
ANDREA BRANZI (A) A Ribbon Running Through Andrea Branzi in conversation with Alessandro Rabottini (B) La Gioconda Sbarbata (The Shaved Mona Lisa, 1972) by Andrea Branzi (from Casabella, no. 363, March 1972)
LALA RUKH (A) Reading Lala Rukh by Saira Ansari (B) Interviews, Past and Present by Mariah Lookman
JULIE BECKER (A) The Delirium of Digression by Sabrina Tarasoff (from Mousse #76, Summer 2021) (B) Outside the Vitrine (Julie Becker, Sparkle Woman) by Mark von Schlegell (from Mousse #76, Summer 2021)
VAGINAL DAVIS (A) Vaginal Davis Troubles the Smile by Dodie Bellamy (from Mousse #79, Spring 2022) (B) The Royal We Vaginal Davis in conversation with Ron Athey (from Mousse #79, Spring 2022) (C) Anarchic Abundance, or The Art of Living by Amelia Jones (from Mousse #79, Spring 2022)
ROSEMARY MAYER (A) Nothing Independent of Its Circumstances by Wendy Vogel (from Mousse #73, Fall 2020) (B) Surroundings by Rosemary Mayer (from Art-Rite, no. 15, April 1977)
JEAN-FRÉDÉRIC SCHNYDER (A) Mister Neutral by Martin Herbert (B) On Schnyderian Art by Patrick Frey (from Parkett, no. 25, 1990)
This is an invitation to join a book reading on Friday, May 12 at 7 p.m. in Motto.
“In the attentive curiosity of notunderstandingness, I have the feeling of being inside an infinite conversation in which knowledge and meaning are called into question, through the gaze of various entry points, philosophical provocations, relations, spirits, and rhythms. True to its critical and poetic essence, an encounter with the book seems to invite endless possibilities to enter and re-enter, chronologically and (better) anti-chronologically, and to discover and re-discover, anew.” Writes Grace Euna Kim @grace.euna.kim, Berlin-based Korean-American performance and visual artist, choreographer, and researcher.
Сau Silva @causilva.k and Denis Esakov @denisesakov will read a chapter ‘Happy Adult Future’ and the connections of linear time, images of the future, and hierarchies of power.
Denis Esakov, writer, curator and multimedia artist who graduated from Raumstrategien @raumstrategien (Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin @kunsthochschuleberlin). Denis explores the relationship between knowledge and power toward decolonial thinking.
Cau Silva studied Social Sciences at the São Paulo State University (UNESP) and Visual Arts at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP). Her works investigate the relationship between daily gestures and environments. Through videos, installations, and performances, she experiences the body immersed in a specific situation or place.
Meet us at the Motto @mottobooks starting at 6:30 p.m., reading starts at 7 p.m. There will be books and drinks, bring your friends and curiosity
Reprtoire 8 zeigt berührende Fragmente aus Architektur und Kunst, Theorie und Realität, die ohne Hierarchie und Sortierung und vor allem ohne Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit assoziativ zu einer Sammlung gefügt sind. Die unendlich aufeinander verweisenden Bilder, Zeichnungen und Texte zeigen ein Formenrepertoire, das Grundlage ist für einen architektonischen Diskurs, der nicht mit der eigenen Problemlösung beginnt, sondern mit der Erschaffung eines Kenntniskosmos der Ideen.
Heft 7 der Reihe Repertoire enthält Beobachtungen – Bilder, Zeichnungen und Texte von Häusern und Räumen – der in Berlin lebenden Architektin Oda Pälmke, die sich wie bei einem Entwurf gegenseitig ergänzen und zunehmend ineinander verweben. Es ist eine Einladung, die Autorin auf ihren Spaziergängen und Reisen in die Welt zu begleiten oder, vielleicht ebenso gut, die Publikation zum Anlass für eigene Explorationen zu nehmen.
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“Repertoire” shows a collection of drawings and photographs of common situations and elements of the built environment and may inspire the natural expansion of the design repertoire.
Issue 7 of the Repertoire series contains observations – pictures, drawings and texts of houses and spaces – by the Berlin-based architect Oda Pälmke, which complement each other like a design and increasingly interweave. It is an invitation to accompany the author on her walks and trips around the world or, perhaps as well, to use the publication as an opportunity for her own explorations.
“Oda Pälmke’s way of working is characterized by the methodology of appropriation, the appropriation of found material. It is a strategy that allows a fruitful examination of the real. Casual and trivial, found and invented develop new levels of meaning through their specific way of working through. If everything can once again become “starting material for transformations”, everything can again become “raw material for productions”, says Peter Sloterdijk, there is no creative creation ex nihilo and the modern phantasm of tabula rasa is overcome. The creative process then consists in finding an attitude towards what has been found and developing a story from it. ”(Anh-Linh Ngo, publisher ARCH +)
Repertoire zeigt eine Sammlung von Zeichnungen und Fotografien gewöhnlicher Situationen und Elemente der gebauten Umwelt und mag zur selbstverständlichen Erweiterung des entwerferischen Repertoires anregen.
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“Repertoire” shows a collection of drawings and photographs of common situations and elements of the built environment and may inspire the natural expansion of the design repertoire.
“Oda Pälmke’s way of working is characterized by the methodology of appropriation, the appropriation of found material. It is a strategy that allows a fruitful examination of the real. Casual and trivial, found and invented develop new levels of meaning through their specific way of working through. If everything can once again become “starting material for transformations”, everything can again become “raw material for productions”, says Peter Sloterdijk, there is no creative creation ex nihilo and the modern phantasm of tabula rasa is overcome. The creative process then consists in finding an attitude towards what has been found and developing a story from it. ”(Anh-Linh Ngo, publisher ARCH +)
