10.09: Dark Advances | Finissage curated by Lilly Markaki and Felice Moramarco @ Motto Berlin

Posted in Exhibitions, Motto Berlin event on September 10th, 2022
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“The coalition emerges out of your recognition that it’s fucked up for you, in the same way that we’ve already recognized that it’s fucked up for us. I don’t need your help. I just need you to recognize that this shit is killing you, too, however much more softly, you stupid motherfucker, you know?” ― Fred Moten

Please join us this Saturday, September 10, for an evening of outdoors readings/performances to mark the closing of Dark Advances: ‘Affect Aliens’ & Revolutionary Despair—an installation featuring works by Spiros Kokkonis, Candice Nembhard (okcandice), Kari Rosenfeld, Lou Lou Sainsbury and Kwamé Sorrell.
 
Dark Advances: ‘Affect Aliens’ and Revolutionary Despair tunes into the hum, tremble, or murmur by which everything now rises to the surface. Not a human song, but the perlocutionary utterance of what Stefano Harney and Fred Moten speak of when they write of the movement of the earth against the world—an underground, black rhythm, chant or riot, that one “can’t join from the outside.” What does it want? Nothing, except perhaps to unground the ground—to reveal “the hole in the ontological project,” as R.A. Judy has it—by unearthing the bones that fire our great toxic machinery.

Dark Advances devotes its breath to this cosmic piece of anti-music, and to practices aimed at its amplification. To those ‘affect aliens’ who, faced with the ways of the world, promote neither the promise of utopia, nor despondent resignation, but the world’s collapsing: ‘unworlding’, or what one might describe as the ambivalent third way of revolutionary despair.

Readings/Performances by: Sabeen Chaudhry (@sabeen.chaudhry), Francesca Flora (@francesca.flora) & Nobile (@nobile_nobile), Céline Mathieu (@cm.celinemathieu), Circular Ruins (@marijijn) ft. oxi pëng (@pennybirdy), Sarah Messerschmidt, Eric Peter (@surroundedbysun), Kari Rosenfeld (@karileighrosenfeld). 

Exhibited works by: Spiros Kokkonis (@8317k), Candice Nembhard (okcandice), Kari Rosenfeld (@karileighrosenfeld), Lou Lou Sainsbury (@loulousainsbury) and Kwamé Sorrell (@___kwame___ ). 

Please note: Lou Lou Sainsbury’s new video work descending notes and sound piece The Law of Desire is Fascist made with Kari Rosenfeld and commissioned by Gasworks London will be showing on the day. Visit the basement between 6-9 pm. 

Curated by Lilly Markaki (@dustbreeding) and Felice Moramarco (@felice_moramarco)
Presented by DEMO

Saturday 10 September
from 6pm


Motto Berlin
Salitzer Str. 68 (im Hinterhof)
10997 Berlin

Lou Lou Sainsbury, descending notes, 2022. With Raffia Li and Ada M. Patterson. HD Video, 17:45 min.

***
Spiros Kokkonis
was born in Athens, Greece, where he currently lives and works. He’s co-founder of the artist-run space Grace/ Athens. Operating in a very specific context—politically, socially, and culturally—the artist creates images both influenced by and dealing with aspects of contemporary life. Spiros’ work has been exhibited at Athens Conservatoire, Parko Eleftherias, Art Space Pythagoreion, Saigon Athens, SHED London, Grace / Athens and Onassis Cultural Centre.

okcandice (one word, all lowercase) is a writer, artist-curator, poet and musician based between Birmingham, England and Berlin, Germany. Their multi-disciplinary practice is explained as «i’m working on it», dealing with grief, love, queer identities, oration in Black cultures and archival materials. okcandice is a co-founding member of the collective poet & prophetess and founder of the queer film series ALL FRUITS RIPE. They host the experimental broadcast Bedtime Stories on Cashmere radio and work as a freelance curator, (song)writer and creative producer.

Kari Rosenfeld (b. Houston, TX) is an artist currently based in Berlin, Germany.  Kari’s work is focused on ontology, political and social affect, religious and mythological narratives, image, genre, and attachment. They have degrees in American Studies and Philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin and graduated from Dutch Art Institute Masters of Art Praxis in 2021. They were a co-founder and Artist in Residence at the Cairo Institute of Liberal Arts and Science—Alexandria where they facilitated courses in theory and visual media.

Lou Lou Sainsbury is a trans artist based in Margate, UK & Rotterdam, NL, working in live performance, video, writing, installation and textiles. She identifies as a time traveller, making things that unwrite histories of living beings into mythopoeic dreamscapes, informed by queer and ecological activisms.Recent performances and group exhibitions include: Whitstable Biennale (2022), Centre for Contemporary Arts Prague (2021); Yaby and La Casa Encendida, Madrid; Nottingham Contemporary; Tate Modern, London; Yaby, Madrid (all 2019); and Flat Time House, London (2018). 

Kwamé Sorrell (b. 1990) is an artist, poet, researcher and writer. Kwamé is co-founder of BlackMass Publishing, an independent press focusing on re/de/contextualizing black and African social vernacular through image and text. He lives and works under the sun. His work is rooted in language and form, as a way to explore the gap between art and tradition, music and sound, space and time; constantly in transition. (this bio is subject to change)