Becoming The Icon is a film in which the language of power manifests in familiar yet uncanny ways. Echoing the rhythms of political speech and gesture, artists Lilian Steiner and Emile Zile reveal the ways in which truth and conviction are more than abstract concepts, instead finding surprising roots in our embodied experience.

As debate and propaganda, intimidation and manipulation are all played out through posture, stance and gesture, the secret vocabulary of power is made apparent.

Both intimate and distanced, Becoming The Icon invites you into a seductive realm with a hidden agenda.

Becoming The Icon is the feature project of BLEED between 17 August – 30 August. New works and content will be going live throughout the feature dates.

http://www.bleedonline.net

https://www.li-ma.nl/lima/news/unfold-audienceperformermirror

On the 15th of January 2020 LIMA invites Keren Cytter, Jan Robert Leegte and Emile Zile to present their version of Dan Graham’s performance and video work Audience/Performer/Mirror. Reinterpretations by Adad Hannah, Ian Forsyth & Jane Pollard, and Judith Hopf will be exhibited as well.The works together show the possibilities of reinterpretation and give an artistic anthology, and criticism, of the work of Graham. Gabriella Giannachi (researcher & professor of Performance and New Media at the University of Exeter), Annet Dekker (curator & researcher, assistant Professor of Media Studies University of Amsterdam) and Willem van Weelden (curator & researcher, tutor media theory Gerrit Rietveld Academie,) will reflect upon reinterpretation as both an artistic as preservation strategy. Moderated by art historian & dramaturgist Suzanne Sanders.

New light on iconic work
LIMA presents a new edition of UNFOLD, focusing on reinterpretation and Dan Graham’s iconic work Audience/Performer/Mirror, 1977, De Appel, Amsterdam. During this performance, Graham describes his own actions and the reaction of the audience. The work is questioning who or what motivates who to act and respond and is a reflection on time and direct feedback. All of this happens largely through language: Graham’s flow of words is unceasing, and betrays his background in stand-up comedy. The gaze of the camera, in addition to that of Graham and the mirror, plays an important role in this. The work is effective and layered in all its simplicity and has become an iconic work. The analogy that Graham uses in the work, both at the level of technology and that of language and physicality, has invited many artists to make a homage or a new version of the work. What does Audience / Performer / Mirror stand for today? How is the work experienced; which part of the work is still relevant, what needs to be ‘updated’? LIMA invites Jan Robert Leegte and Emile Zile to translate the work to contemporary time and its digital techniques. Keren Cytter is invited to present her subtle feminist critique on the work. UNFOLD: Audience/Performer/Mirror offers the opportunity to think about reinterpretation and provides insight into both their working methods and the lasting (attraction) power of Dan Graham’s work. This core may be somewhere else for every artist, and each new work will highlight a different aspect of the ‘original’.

About UNFOLD
Reinterpretation is a core concept in music, dance and theater. Every re-performance is a translation into a new, often contemporary, context. Re-performing a work based on documentation, a script, memory or score is an essential part of artistic practice. For complex works in the field of media art and digital art, this is not common, but just as urgent. Reinterpretation of media art can contribute to the preservation and better understanding of the work. Since 2016, LIMA has put reinterpretation on the map as an artistic and conservation strategy. In the interdisciplinary and international UNFOLD project contextualizing, documenting, analyzing, understanding, embodiment and transferring digital culture are central. Relevant questions are: What is the core and production method of a work? Which techniques are used in which context? How do we translate this artistic legacy, practice and knowledge to the next generation? How do reflect and learn from different interdisciplinary practises?

Programme
5 pm Doors open
5.30 – 6.15 pm Presentation Rietveld Students (*free entrance)
6.30 pm Opening exhibition (in collaboration with De Appel): Dan Graham’s iconic work and documentation material of Audience/Performer/Mirror, 1977 De Appel, Amsterdam. Reinterpretations by Adad Hannah, Performer Audience Remake, 2008; Ian Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Audience Performer Fuck Off, 2009, Judith Hopf, What Do You Look Like / A Crypto Demonic Mystery, 2006. (*free entrance)
6.30 – 9 pm Performances Keren Cytter (Performer/Audience/Mirror, 2012), Miron Galić reenacting Cursor, 2016 in Jan Robert Leegte’s Mirror (2020) and Emile Zile (Performer/Audience/Lens, 2018) + artist talks followed by a panel discussion with: Gabriella Giannachi, Annet Dekker and Willem van Weelden moderated by Suzanne Sanders (*a ticket is required for this part of the program).

Event
UNFOLD: Audience/Performer/Mirror
With works and contributions by Dan Graham, Keren Cytter, Emile Zile, Jan Robert Leegte, Gabriella Giannachi, Annet Dekker, Willem van Weelden, Adad Hannah, Ian Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Judith Hopf and students from the Rietveld Academy.
Wednesday 15 January, 2020
5 pm Doors open
5.30 – 6.15 pm Presentation Rietveld Students (free entrance)
6.30 pm Opening exhibition (free entrance)
6.30 – 9 pm Performances & artist talks Keren Cytter, Jan Robert Leegte and Emile Zile, followed by panel discussion (a ticket is required for this part of the program)
Entrance: € 7,50 / 5,- /Free with Cineville
LIMA/LAB111, Arie Biemondstraat 111, Amsterdam
Language: English
Facebook event

Exhibition
UNFOLD: Audience/Performer/Mirror (in collaboration with De Appel)
With works by Dan Graham, Adad Hannah, Ian Forsyth & Jane Pollard and Judith Hopf.
15 – 22 January 2020
Every day from 12 – 23 pm, entrance is free
LIMA/LAB111, Arie Biemondstraat 111, Amsterdam

Graphic design by Bin Koh.

UNFOLD Audience/Performer/Mirror is supported by De Appel, Rietveld Academie and the Mondrian Fund and is part of the collaborative research project Documenting Digital Art, supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Council.

On Saturday 11 August I’ll be performing a version of Dan Graham’s
1975 work; Performer / Audience / Mirror.

A performer faces a seated audience. Behind the performer, covering the back wall (parallel to the frontal view of the seated audience), is a mirror reflecting the audience.

In late May I will be in Los Angeles for the Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art at Otis College of Art and Design Los Angeles.

— Art and Politics in the Age of Cognitive Capitalism —

http://saasfeesummerinstituteofart.com

Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art (SFSIA) is a nomadic, intensive summer academy with shifting programs in contemporary critical theory academy that originated in Saas Fee, Switzerland in 2015 and moved to Berlin in 2016. SFSIA stresses an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the relationship between art and politics. This year, in addition to the Berlin academy, we are hosted in Los Angeles by Otis College of Art and Design with participation of the MA Aesthetics and Politics in the School of Critical Studies at CalArts.

The academy was founded by fine artist and theorist Warren Neidich, is co-directed by art critic and poet Barry Schwabsky. Sarah Beadle is Director of Administration. It was conceived in 2014 as part of an ongoing effort to engage contemporary artists in political, socio-economic, philosophical and historical discourses concerning the power of art. Importantly it realizes that art plays both a generative and emancipatory role in producing theory while at the same time being aware of Neoliberal capitalism’s recuperative prowess.

The program runs two weeks and is structured with half-day seminars, deep readings, and workshops. In the evening SFSIA holds a lecture series, which is open to the public.

Faculty
Alva Noë, Andrew Culp, Arne De Boever, Barry Schwabsky, Candice Lin, Ed Finn, Eleanor Kaufman, Florencia Portocarrero, Graham Harman, Jason Smith, Jennifer Teets, Johanna Drucker, John C. Welchman, Juli Carson, Kenneth Reinhard, Mary Kelly, N. Katherine Hayles, Nima Bassiri, Renee Petropoulos, Reza Negarestani, Sanford Kwinter, Suparna Choudhury, Warren Neidich.

Within the framework of the exhibition “Liquid Cooled: new works by Emile Zile”, LIMA organises a public screening and discussion night. The artist Emile Zile and art historian and critic Sven Lütticken will talk about Zile’s work within the context of the LIMA Collection – ranging from early gems from the seventies (Douglas Davis, Dan Graham) to Zile’s current body of work. Performance on television, social media and the performativity of the mass media will be recurrent themes.

Entrance: € 7,50 / 5,-
Free entrance with: Cineville pass
Language: English

LIMA
Arie Biemondstraat 111
1054 PD Amsterdam
The Netherlands
+31(0)20 389 20 30
http://www.li-ma.nl

https://www.facebook.com/events/356797314716082

This programme is part of the exhibition Liquid Cooled: new works by Emile Zile
LIMA is proud to present its first exhibition of new works by the Australian artist Emile Zile. Liquid Cooled will present prints, video works and a performance by the artist who currently has a residency at the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten.

Interval Projects
Mining the Cloud
A series of desktop documentaries
Thursday May 26, 7pm
Schoolhouse Studios
81 Rupert St. Collingwood
$15

Interval presents Mining the Cloud: a series of desktop documentaries by local and international artists.

Charting the multitude of the Internet through the desktop interface, these films and performances record the virtual as real, traversing landscapes that fall outside our visual circuits. From abandoned virtual realities to electronic dumping grounds of Ghana, this is the detritus of late capitalism in a time of rapid technological change.

The desktop documentary is an emerging practice drawing from the disciplines of ethnography, archaeology and contemporary art. Using desktop browsers as both lens and edit suite, these films and performances excavate artefacts from under the “cloud”. These artists respond to the human impulse to navigate, archive, interpret and ultimately control the world around us.

Lettres du Voyant by Louis Henderson (UK)
Lettres du Voyant is a documentary-fiction about spiritism and technology in contemporary Ghana that attempts to uncover some truths about a mysterious practice called “Sakawa” – internet scams mixed with voodoo magic. Tracing back the scammers’ stories to the times of Ghanaian independence, the film proposes Sakawa as a form of anti-neocolonial resistance.

All that is Solid by Louis Henderson (UK)
A technographic study of e-recycling and neo-colonial mining filmed in the Agbogbloshie electronic waste ground in Accra and illegal gold mines of Ghana. The video constructs a mise-en-abyme as critique in order to dispel the capitalist myth of the immateriality of new technology – thus revealing the mineral weight with which the Cloud is grounded to its earthly origins.

Utopia 1.0: Post ­Neo ­Futurist ­Capitalism in 3D! by Annie Berman (US)
A first­-person expedition to Second Life, the once thriving virtual 3D online world, in search of what remains. Given the invitation to come build anything imaginable, what is it that we chose to create?

A performance by Emile Zile (AU)
Emile Zile’s performances use new-age healing apps, YouTube monologues and algorithmic portraiture to create audio-visual meditations on augmented spirituality and networked representations of the self.

Mildura Biennale listening project 2-5 October 2015

Linked by a pair of ear bud headphones, a couple sit before the camera. I ask them to each select a piece of music, that they are emotionally linked to. They then listen to the music together, one ear each, linked via the extended earbud. I begin the camera rolling and leave the room, telling them to listen to both songs and be seated in front of the camera. The amount of body language they express to the camera is up to them.

Portraits of ‘love and music’ from Mildura ABC News

Unpacking Sound, Text & Speech

This talk and presentation will look at the staging of sound based works in gallery and non-gallery contexts, and the relationship between sound, language and visual representation. Featuring Emile Zile, Speak Percussion’s Eugene Ughetti and their Artist-in-Residence, Kaylie Melville, Alice Hui-Sheng Chang and Philip Samartzis (facilitator).

http://www.c3artspace.com.au/talk-3-july-1st/
http://abbotsfordconvent.com.au/whats-on/events-exhibitions/c3-talks-unpacking-sound-text-speech

My 140-character tweet review of the Ryan Trecartin show at NGV, re-presented by NGV social mediators.

As part of the ‘Put Up a Signal’ Australia-Indonesia program I will be hosted at MES56 from 11-22 November to create new work and exhibit.

http://putupasignal.info/artist

Nayla, Wok the Rock and me practising our wrestling press-kit team pose, 2011.

Thanks to Bus Gallery Melbourne, Mes 56 and Asialink Arts.