As part of the annual Studium Generale Rietveld Academie, If Can’t Dance has been invited to curate and present one of the four symposium days on Friday 8 April, in response to the guiding thematic of this year’s event, Bots, Bodies and Beasts – The Art of Being Humble.
For Propositions on the Subject, the program of the day will comprise the presentation of three works of art that connect theory with artistic practice: Xavier Le Roy’s performance Product of Circumstances (1999); Keti Chukhrov’s film Love Machines (2013)—complemented by a lecture by Chukhrov, and a conversation hosted by Nataša Ilić / WHW; and a new live experience by Alicia Frankovich. Each of the artists’ works intersects with a number of disciplines, from biology and choreography, philosophy and poetry, and visual arts and performance, to create artistic and experimental propositions that speak to the complexity of living bodies.
Further details of the day, and Studium Generale’s thematic are available here.
About the participants
Keti Chukhrov holds a ScD in philosophy, and is an associate professor at the Department of Art History at the Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow; visiting professor at the European Un-ty, St. Petersburg; and runs the theory department at the National Center for the Contemporary Art, Moscow. Since 2003 she has served on the editorial board of Moscow Art Magazine. In 1997-2005 she was the editor of Logos Publishers. Chukhrov has authored numerous texts on art theory, culture, politics, and philosophy, which have appeared in periodicals such as Afterall, Moscow Art Magazine, Artforum, Brumaria, Documenta magazines, e-flux journal, New Literary Review, Logos, and Springerin among others. Her full-length books include To Be – To Perform. ‘Theatre’ in Philosophic Critique of Art (Spb: European Un-ty, 2011); Pound &£ (1999), and two volumes of dramatic poetry: Just Humans (2010) and War of Quantities (2004). Chukhrov lives and works in Moscow. With her latest video-play Love Machines she participated at the Bergen Assembly and in Specters of Communism at the James Gallery, CUNY, New York (2015).
Alicia Frankovich was born in Tauranga, New Zealand, and holds a BVA in sculpture from AUT, Auckland, and lives and works in Berlin. She is interested in embodiments, and becoming-bodies and works with performance, temporal exhibition experiences and other material sequences. Frankovich’s exhibitions include: The Female has Undergone Several Manifestations, Starkwhite, Auckland, (2016), Complex Bodies, Kurator at Alte Fabrik, Gebert Stiftung für Kultur, Rapperswil, Switzerland, (2015), Today this technique is the other way around, Kunstverein Hildesheim, (2013), Gestures, Splits and Annulations, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2011). She has participated in group exhibitions including Test Run: Performance in Public, Modern Art, Oxford, (2015), Le Mouvement: Performing the City, Biel/Bienne, Switzerland, Framed Movements, Australian Centre For Contemporary Art, Melbourne, (2014); Nouvelles Vagues: The Real Thing? Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013). Frankovich has presented performances at MAVRA, Berlin (2015), Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, Tophane-I Amire Gallery, Istanbul, The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Montréal, (2013).
Xavier Le Roy holds a doctorate in molecular biology from the University of Montpellier, France, and has worked as a dancer and choreographer since 1991. He has performed with diverse companies and choreographers. From 1996 to 2003, he was artist-in-residence at the Podewil in Berlin. In 2007-2008 he was “Associated Artist” at Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier, France. In 2010 Le Roy was an Artist in Residence fellow at the MIT Program in Art Culture and Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2012, he begins a 3 years residency at Théâtre de la Cité Internationale, Paris. Through his solo works such as Self Unfinished (1998) and Product of Circumstances (1999), he has opened new perspectives in the field of choreographic art. His latest works such as the solo Le Sacre du Printemps (2007), Untitled (2014), the group piece low pieces (2011), and works for exhibition spaces such as production (2011) created together with Mårten Spångberg, untitled (2012) for the exhibition 12 Rooms, Retrospective first realized in 2012 at the Tapiès Foundation-Barcelona, Temporary title (2015) created at Sydney in the frame of John Kaldor Public Art Project or For The Unfaithful Republica at CA2M Madrid produce situations that explore the relationships between spectators/visitors/performers and the production of subjectivities.
What, How & for Whom/WHW is a curatorial collective formed in 1999 and based in Zagreb and Berlin. Its members are Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović, and designer and publicist Dejan Kršić. WHW organizes a range of production, exhibition and publishing projects and directs Gallery Nova in Zagreb. Since its first exhibition titled What, How & for Whom, on the occasion of 152nd anniversary of the Communist Manifesto, that took place in Zagreb in 2000, WHW has curated numerous international projects, among which more recent ones include the festival Meeting Points 7 that took place in Zagreb, Antwerp, Cairo, Hong-Kong, Beirut, Vienna and Moscow under the title Ten thousand wiles and a hundred thousand tricks in 2013 and 2014, and the exhibitions Really Useful Knowledge in Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid in 2014, So You Want To See at e-flux gallery in New York in 2015, and David Maljković Retrospective by appointment in Gallery Nova, Zagreb.