Public Program at Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina
11.04.2010 - 01.05.2010
Ghosts of Dreams Deferred
18.04.2010, 18:00 - 20:00hrs.
Reading event: It has to be this way by Lindsay Seers
25.04.2010, 18:00 - 20:00hrs.
Film event: Screening of Ghost Dance
01.05.2010, 18:00 - 22:00hrs.
Curator & Artist Talk + Closing Concert by Hidde van Schie
Saturday 1 May 2010
Closing Talk
01.05.2010, 18:00 - 22:00hrs.
Curator's Talk & Artist Hidde van Schie Talk
on the concept and on its personal connotations..
Followed by a concert by Hidde van Schie
Curator's Talk & Artist Hidde van Schie Talk
on the concept and on its personal connotations..
Followed by a concert by Hidde van Schie
Monday 12 April 2010
THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition Ghosts of Dreams Deferred depicts the condition of being haunted by ghosts of a past that is yet vibrant and resemble hissing for a loss that instead could be of a joyful present moment. The exhibition brings together five different practices, thus works that expand the conceptual framework in the way in which the concept of the exhibition is taken towards an expansion of resemblances and associations.
Societies, individuals, and personas, in ontological sense, live with the continuous production of desire and with the drive to embody their dreams. Passion as a strong impulse may wither away by the immense accumulation of disappointments and failures of beholding the dreams to come true. As failure is not the ultimate end, but the consequence of the loss of trust in one's engagement to political, economical, psychological, emotional and social domains; it leads to viciously circulating state of complication. That is to say, it leads to a complicated state of mind where the present moment is continuously defined by the traumatic. The traumatic is the representative of the set of traumas, which encapsulates the body (individuals, societies, communities) in suppressive sensual space and holds back.
Hence, ghosts, not in metaphysical sense, resemble, reiterate, and almost re-enact the experience of the trauma. In other words, ghosts are the metaphorical iconography of the traumatic, which is in the very nature of personhoods (rationale of societies, characteristics of individuals).
What does it mean to try to make an articulation of traumatic, what does it mean to recall and try to hold on the relational which defines the present moment? What does it mean to meet with the ghosts of our past, or be aware of the continuous state of being haunted? Ghosts of Dreams Deferred is a project, which presupposes that haunting is a social phenomenon rather than an individual psychosis nor a pre-modern superstition; hence it investigates the potentiality of radical political, social and emotional change. That is to say, it implements change, which is possible only through flourishing of new forms of subjectivity and sociality.
Thus, the project is a proposal to allow the ghosts of the past to emerge in order to be able to perform a new future within a yet-unthought-soon-to-be-present approaches, understandings, and positions. Ghosts of Dreams Deferred is a ground for activating the complication of personhoods, societies at their rationale. The exhibition does not display works that illustrate the relationship between trauma, ghosts, dreams and loss. Despite, the space of encounter, defined by settings from installations to reading event, from film event to a concert from the chairs placed empty for the audience to posters outdoors, intends to be triggering of effect for experiencing, articulating, and evaluating the individual and societal relation to the topic as such.
Young in Hong, furthers her investigation of Plin - a person who got missing in London, in Prishtina. Hong's look out for Plin, is carried by posters that are spread in the city as well as made available for take-away in the premises for the willing audience to include themselves in the search. In the aesthetics of posters for missing people, Hong's search for Plin asks for responses from any possible source of information via e-mail.
Laura Kuch's Phantom Drawing appears as a gateway in the space, with an intricacy from how the drawing is made to what it resembles: A black hole in the exhibition, yet visual and uncanny.
Lindsay Seers' work will be a specially marked occasion in the form of a reading event where her revised version of the book It has to be this way will be read through. The book is part of her solo exhibition at Matt's gallery, London. The book displays the search the artist has gone through on the search for her sister Christine. Through the reading event an aural experience will be triggered, referencing the tradition of telling tales.
Hidde van Schie's installation Complain Less Thank More, 2008 is composed of a table, a chair and a specially baked bread, referring to the religious teachings of performing to be in life while the quote continuously constructs the articulation of any form of experience. Schie's video piece An attempt to explain what I feel when I try to imagine the infiniteness of the universe, 2007 is a compilation of responses by three drummers while improvising on the meaning of its title.
Anita di Bianco's video piece Dreaming and Drugs, 2007, part of Der Versteller, presents a chapter from a 1980 interview with the writer Marguerite Yourcenar. Played by Jean-Baptiste Naudy, Yourcenar elaborates on the aesthetic structure of dreams, diagrams relations between scholarly knowledge and imagination, and insists on the formidable presence of re-constructed characters in the realm of the historical, and discusses the médiumnique relationship between the consciousness of writers and that of the characters they set to paper.
The project is furthered with a film event in the premises of Stacion and a closing concert by Hidde van Schie - Schie's music oscillates on the domains of psychedelic yet experimental, with lyrics compiled by the artist himself.
The project is a structural exercise for an exhibition where conditions of funding has lead to a curatorial and artistic production from far. The conceptual framework has been revisited by the obstacles of curating a space that the curator (- nor the artists) has not been and will not visit before the opening and imagining the premises of display in relation to the works to be included in the exhibition. The artists of the show have been asked to ponder on the condition and investigate what it would mean to make a ghostly appearance of themselves as well as the curator is meant to investigate the horizons of a practice through her office.
In all respects, the exhibition is an outcome of a dream that has deferred, namely being in the premises and installing the show in collaboration with the artists hence its ghosts are the initiators and producers of the project which have been haunting the staff of Stacion, literally.
Ghosts of Dreams Deferred by Fatos Ustek is part of the working module Kuratorët, a project by Stacion - Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina. Ghosts of Dreams Deferred is sponsored by Mondriaan Foundation, Dardania Insurance Company, Technomarket, KTV, Rrokum, Gegë, Alter Habitus and DZG.
Societies, individuals, and personas, in ontological sense, live with the continuous production of desire and with the drive to embody their dreams. Passion as a strong impulse may wither away by the immense accumulation of disappointments and failures of beholding the dreams to come true. As failure is not the ultimate end, but the consequence of the loss of trust in one's engagement to political, economical, psychological, emotional and social domains; it leads to viciously circulating state of complication. That is to say, it leads to a complicated state of mind where the present moment is continuously defined by the traumatic. The traumatic is the representative of the set of traumas, which encapsulates the body (individuals, societies, communities) in suppressive sensual space and holds back.
Hence, ghosts, not in metaphysical sense, resemble, reiterate, and almost re-enact the experience of the trauma. In other words, ghosts are the metaphorical iconography of the traumatic, which is in the very nature of personhoods (rationale of societies, characteristics of individuals).
What does it mean to try to make an articulation of traumatic, what does it mean to recall and try to hold on the relational which defines the present moment? What does it mean to meet with the ghosts of our past, or be aware of the continuous state of being haunted? Ghosts of Dreams Deferred is a project, which presupposes that haunting is a social phenomenon rather than an individual psychosis nor a pre-modern superstition; hence it investigates the potentiality of radical political, social and emotional change. That is to say, it implements change, which is possible only through flourishing of new forms of subjectivity and sociality.
Thus, the project is a proposal to allow the ghosts of the past to emerge in order to be able to perform a new future within a yet-unthought-soon-to-be-present approaches, understandings, and positions. Ghosts of Dreams Deferred is a ground for activating the complication of personhoods, societies at their rationale. The exhibition does not display works that illustrate the relationship between trauma, ghosts, dreams and loss. Despite, the space of encounter, defined by settings from installations to reading event, from film event to a concert from the chairs placed empty for the audience to posters outdoors, intends to be triggering of effect for experiencing, articulating, and evaluating the individual and societal relation to the topic as such.
Young in Hong, furthers her investigation of Plin - a person who got missing in London, in Prishtina. Hong's look out for Plin, is carried by posters that are spread in the city as well as made available for take-away in the premises for the willing audience to include themselves in the search. In the aesthetics of posters for missing people, Hong's search for Plin asks for responses from any possible source of information via e-mail.
Laura Kuch's Phantom Drawing appears as a gateway in the space, with an intricacy from how the drawing is made to what it resembles: A black hole in the exhibition, yet visual and uncanny.
Lindsay Seers' work will be a specially marked occasion in the form of a reading event where her revised version of the book It has to be this way will be read through. The book is part of her solo exhibition at Matt's gallery, London. The book displays the search the artist has gone through on the search for her sister Christine. Through the reading event an aural experience will be triggered, referencing the tradition of telling tales.
Hidde van Schie's installation Complain Less Thank More, 2008 is composed of a table, a chair and a specially baked bread, referring to the religious teachings of performing to be in life while the quote continuously constructs the articulation of any form of experience. Schie's video piece An attempt to explain what I feel when I try to imagine the infiniteness of the universe, 2007 is a compilation of responses by three drummers while improvising on the meaning of its title.
Anita di Bianco's video piece Dreaming and Drugs, 2007, part of Der Versteller, presents a chapter from a 1980 interview with the writer Marguerite Yourcenar. Played by Jean-Baptiste Naudy, Yourcenar elaborates on the aesthetic structure of dreams, diagrams relations between scholarly knowledge and imagination, and insists on the formidable presence of re-constructed characters in the realm of the historical, and discusses the médiumnique relationship between the consciousness of writers and that of the characters they set to paper.
The project is furthered with a film event in the premises of Stacion and a closing concert by Hidde van Schie - Schie's music oscillates on the domains of psychedelic yet experimental, with lyrics compiled by the artist himself.
The project is a structural exercise for an exhibition where conditions of funding has lead to a curatorial and artistic production from far. The conceptual framework has been revisited by the obstacles of curating a space that the curator (- nor the artists) has not been and will not visit before the opening and imagining the premises of display in relation to the works to be included in the exhibition. The artists of the show have been asked to ponder on the condition and investigate what it would mean to make a ghostly appearance of themselves as well as the curator is meant to investigate the horizons of a practice through her office.
In all respects, the exhibition is an outcome of a dream that has deferred, namely being in the premises and installing the show in collaboration with the artists hence its ghosts are the initiators and producers of the project which have been haunting the staff of Stacion, literally.
Ghosts of Dreams Deferred by Fatos Ustek is part of the working module Kuratorët, a project by Stacion - Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina. Ghosts of Dreams Deferred is sponsored by Mondriaan Foundation, Dardania Insurance Company, Technomarket, KTV, Rrokum, Gegë, Alter Habitus and DZG.
Monday 5 October 2009
APRIL 2010
GHOSTS OF DREAMS DEFERRED
// Exhibition /Reading Event/Film Event/Closing Concert//
Stacion _ Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina
Rr. Zija Prishtina p.n.
10000 Prishtine
Republika e Kosove
Curator: Fatos Ustek
Artists: Anita Di Bianco, Young In Hong, Laura Kuch, Hidde Van Schie, Lindsay Seers
Ghosts of dreams deferred, is a project with four components. The group exhibition hosts artists from various countries in Europe and Abroad who will be engaged in a discussion in the consequent days of the opening through presenting their practice, which will be followed by an open-to-public dinner at Stacion. Additionally, there will be a film event focussed on ghost films accompanied by the curator’s presentation of the concept. Lastly, there will be a publication produced as a furthering of the exhibition and its socio-political context. Ghosts of dreams deferred, evolve around the idea of revisiting events that has been long-imagined-and-failed-to-take-place, that hence transformed into the domain of traumatic. The concept depicts the state of being continuously haunted by the resemblances of the destructive disappointment that emerges with the deference of the passionately imagined. Societies, individuals, and personas, in ontological sense, live with the continuous production of desire and with the drive to embody their dreams. Passion as a strong impulse may wither away by the immense accumulation of disappointments and failures of beholding the dreams to come true. As failure is not the ultimate end, but the consequence of the loss of trust in one’s engagement to political, economical, psychological, emotional and social domains; it leads to viciously circulating state of complication. That is to say, it leads to a complicated state of mind where the present moment is continuously defined by the traumatic. The traumatic is the representative of the set of traumas, which encapsulates the body (individuals, societies, communities) in suppressive sensual space and holds back. Hence life becomes complicated. Sociologist Avery F. Gordon states that, ‘Life is Complicated’ is a theoretical statement that is forged by the forms of power and features of complex personhood. For power, Gordon states that: “The power relations that characterize any historically embedded society are never as transparently clear as the names we give them to imply.” and adds, “We can and must call it by recognizable names, but so too we need to remember that power arrives in forms that can range from blatant white supremacy and state terror to ‘furniture without memories.”1 Like trauma, the forms of power and apparatuses of state cannot be clearly elaborated or grasped in the capacity of language. Rather the feeling of the encounter or the sensuous experience stays in, initiates and directs the future actions. For instance, a major shift in state politics cannot be only articulated by the linear cause-affect relationship but through the feelings that have been generated before, during and in the aftermath. Hence, ghosts, not in metaphysical sense, resemble, reiterate, and almost re-enact the experience of the trauma. In other words, ghosts are the metaphorical iconography of the traumatic. The traumatic is in the very nature of personhoods (rationale of societies, characteristics of individuals). According to Gordon, complex personhood is the second dimension of ‘life is complicated’. “Complex personhood means that all people (albeit in specific forms whose specificity is sometimes everything) remember and forget, are beset by contradiction, and recognize and misrecognize themselves and others. Complex personhood means that people suffer graciously and selfishly too, get stuck in the symptoms of their troubles, and also transform themselves. Complex personhood means that even those called ‘other’ are never never that. Complex personhood means that the stories people tell about themselves, about their troubles, about their social worlds, and about their society’s problems are entangled and
weave between what is immediately available as a story and what their imaginations are reaching toward. Complex personhood means that people get tired and some are just plain lazy. Complex personhood means that groups of people will act together, that they will vehemently disagree with and sometimes harm each other, and that they will do both at the same time and expect the rest of us to figure it out for ourselves, intervening and withdrawing as the situation requires. Complex personhood means that even those who haunt our dominant institutions and their systems of value are haunted too by things they sometimes have names for and sometimes do not. At the very least, complex personhood is about conferring the respect on others that comes from presuming that life and people’s lives are simultaneously straightforward and full of enormously subtle meaning.”2
What does it mean to try to make an articulation of traumatic, what does it mean to recall and try to hold on the relational which defines the present moment? What does it mean to meet with the ghosts of our past, or be aware of the continuous state of being haunted? Ghosts of Dreams Deferred is a project, which presupposes that haunting is a social phenomenon rather than an individual psychosis nor a pre-modern superstition; hence it investigates the potentiality of radical political, social and emotional change. That is to say, it implements change, which is possible only through flourishing of new forms of subjectivity and sociality. In the introduction to Gordon’s book, Janice Radway states that: “Social analysts cannot afford to rely complacently on a penchant for describing and categorising the past, embedded in the terrifying present that surrounds us, we must seek to revivify our collective capacity to imagine a future radically other to the one ideologically charted out already by the militarized, patriarchal capitalism that has thrived heretofore on the practice of the social erasure. As Gordon puts it, ‘To be haunted in the name of a will to heal is to allow the ghost to help you to imagine what was lost that never even existed, really. That is its utopian grace: to encourage a steely sorrow laced with delight for what we lost that we never had; to long for the insight of that moment in which we recognize, as in Benjamin’s profane illumination, that it could have been and can be otherwise.”
Thus, the project is a proposal to allow the ghosts of the past to be able to perform a new future within an yet-unthought-soon-to-be-present approaches, understandings, and positions. Ghosts of Dreams Deferred is a ground for activating the complication of personhoods, societies at their rationale.
1 Avery F. Gordon, Ghostly Matters, Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, New University of Minnesota Press Edition, 2008, p. 3
2 Ibid, p. 4-5
Stacion _ Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina
Rr. Zija Prishtina p.n.
10000 Prishtine
Republika e Kosove
Curator: Fatos Ustek
Artists: Anita Di Bianco, Young In Hong, Laura Kuch, Hidde Van Schie, Lindsay Seers
Ghosts of dreams deferred, is a project with four components. The group exhibition hosts artists from various countries in Europe and Abroad who will be engaged in a discussion in the consequent days of the opening through presenting their practice, which will be followed by an open-to-public dinner at Stacion. Additionally, there will be a film event focussed on ghost films accompanied by the curator’s presentation of the concept. Lastly, there will be a publication produced as a furthering of the exhibition and its socio-political context. Ghosts of dreams deferred, evolve around the idea of revisiting events that has been long-imagined-and-failed-to-take-place, that hence transformed into the domain of traumatic. The concept depicts the state of being continuously haunted by the resemblances of the destructive disappointment that emerges with the deference of the passionately imagined. Societies, individuals, and personas, in ontological sense, live with the continuous production of desire and with the drive to embody their dreams. Passion as a strong impulse may wither away by the immense accumulation of disappointments and failures of beholding the dreams to come true. As failure is not the ultimate end, but the consequence of the loss of trust in one’s engagement to political, economical, psychological, emotional and social domains; it leads to viciously circulating state of complication. That is to say, it leads to a complicated state of mind where the present moment is continuously defined by the traumatic. The traumatic is the representative of the set of traumas, which encapsulates the body (individuals, societies, communities) in suppressive sensual space and holds back. Hence life becomes complicated. Sociologist Avery F. Gordon states that, ‘Life is Complicated’ is a theoretical statement that is forged by the forms of power and features of complex personhood. For power, Gordon states that: “The power relations that characterize any historically embedded society are never as transparently clear as the names we give them to imply.” and adds, “We can and must call it by recognizable names, but so too we need to remember that power arrives in forms that can range from blatant white supremacy and state terror to ‘furniture without memories.”1 Like trauma, the forms of power and apparatuses of state cannot be clearly elaborated or grasped in the capacity of language. Rather the feeling of the encounter or the sensuous experience stays in, initiates and directs the future actions. For instance, a major shift in state politics cannot be only articulated by the linear cause-affect relationship but through the feelings that have been generated before, during and in the aftermath. Hence, ghosts, not in metaphysical sense, resemble, reiterate, and almost re-enact the experience of the trauma. In other words, ghosts are the metaphorical iconography of the traumatic. The traumatic is in the very nature of personhoods (rationale of societies, characteristics of individuals). According to Gordon, complex personhood is the second dimension of ‘life is complicated’. “Complex personhood means that all people (albeit in specific forms whose specificity is sometimes everything) remember and forget, are beset by contradiction, and recognize and misrecognize themselves and others. Complex personhood means that people suffer graciously and selfishly too, get stuck in the symptoms of their troubles, and also transform themselves. Complex personhood means that even those called ‘other’ are never never that. Complex personhood means that the stories people tell about themselves, about their troubles, about their social worlds, and about their society’s problems are entangled and
weave between what is immediately available as a story and what their imaginations are reaching toward. Complex personhood means that people get tired and some are just plain lazy. Complex personhood means that groups of people will act together, that they will vehemently disagree with and sometimes harm each other, and that they will do both at the same time and expect the rest of us to figure it out for ourselves, intervening and withdrawing as the situation requires. Complex personhood means that even those who haunt our dominant institutions and their systems of value are haunted too by things they sometimes have names for and sometimes do not. At the very least, complex personhood is about conferring the respect on others that comes from presuming that life and people’s lives are simultaneously straightforward and full of enormously subtle meaning.”2
What does it mean to try to make an articulation of traumatic, what does it mean to recall and try to hold on the relational which defines the present moment? What does it mean to meet with the ghosts of our past, or be aware of the continuous state of being haunted? Ghosts of Dreams Deferred is a project, which presupposes that haunting is a social phenomenon rather than an individual psychosis nor a pre-modern superstition; hence it investigates the potentiality of radical political, social and emotional change. That is to say, it implements change, which is possible only through flourishing of new forms of subjectivity and sociality. In the introduction to Gordon’s book, Janice Radway states that: “Social analysts cannot afford to rely complacently on a penchant for describing and categorising the past, embedded in the terrifying present that surrounds us, we must seek to revivify our collective capacity to imagine a future radically other to the one ideologically charted out already by the militarized, patriarchal capitalism that has thrived heretofore on the practice of the social erasure. As Gordon puts it, ‘To be haunted in the name of a will to heal is to allow the ghost to help you to imagine what was lost that never even existed, really. That is its utopian grace: to encourage a steely sorrow laced with delight for what we lost that we never had; to long for the insight of that moment in which we recognize, as in Benjamin’s profane illumination, that it could have been and can be otherwise.”
Thus, the project is a proposal to allow the ghosts of the past to be able to perform a new future within an yet-unthought-soon-to-be-present approaches, understandings, and positions. Ghosts of Dreams Deferred is a ground for activating the complication of personhoods, societies at their rationale.
1 Avery F. Gordon, Ghostly Matters, Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, New University of Minnesota Press Edition, 2008, p. 3
2 Ibid, p. 4-5
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About Me
- Fatos Ustek
- Independent curator and art critic, from Istanbul, currently based in London, UK. She is member of AICA TR; currently guest tutor at Vision Forum, Linkopings Universitet, Sweden. She is a member of OuUnPo and leads La Duree with Per Huttner under the framework of Vision Forum.