selma banich and the Politics of Touch collective, ERASED GAZES

 

 

With selma banich and the Politics of Touch collective, Jule Flierl, Agata Jakubowska, Mónica Mayer, Elva Peniche Montfort, Vesna Vuković.

Curated by Iva Kovač and Bettina Knaup.

 

 

In the final stage of the Archival Chain Reactions exhibition the curators will bring together artists and writers whose diverse practices engage with archival gaps and forgotten artistic or institutional connections through the acts of voicing, metabolising, tracing, or gifting.

 

 

Referencing some of the works by GDR’s performance artists and collectives featured in the exhibition, the choreographer Jule Flierl will perform an intergenerational attempt to recalibrate the gaze in relation to the opaque history of GDR’s dissident art.

 

Another exhibit featured in the Archival Chain Reactions is a catalogue for a 1982 exhibition in Sarajevo, which testifies to an earlier connection across different geopolitical contexts. In the early 1980s, Mexico, West Germany, former Yugoslavia and other (Eastern) European countries all hosted a traveling exhibition featuring works by several generations of Mexican women artists, Mónica Mayer prominently among them. Attempts to trace the exhibition’s impact on the local feminist (art) scenes yielded little on the former Yugoslav showings. However, along the way, the curators encountered current research that sheds light on the moments of its direct impact. By introducing the art historical research of Agata Jakubowska, Elva Peniche Montfort and Vesna Vuković, the finissage weekend brings this knowledge closer, strengthening connections between different sites and temporalities of feminist art organizing, with a particular focus on the intergenerational dialogue.

 

In the spirit of its title, the Archival Chain Reactions exhibition project will be concluded with ceremonial gifts made by Mónica Mayer and selma banich together with the Politics of Touch collective. Openly reciprocal, both gifts seek to bring people and stories less visible within national institutions to the forefront.

 

 

Programme

 

Friday, September 11th

7 p.m.

The state in your mouth - fragments on the GDR underground in art and performance: Jule Flierl

lecture performance, followed by a conversation

 

 

Saturday, September 12th

3–5.30 p.m.

Commemorating Erasure Workshop: selma banich and the Politics of Touch Collective

 

3–7.30 p.m.

Archival Gaps and Forgotten Connections: tracing, circulating, gifting

 

3 p.m.

Welcome and Introduction

 

3.15 p.m.

Art and Labour: Women’s art production in self-managed culture: Vesna Vuković

 

Discussion

 

4 p.m.

Organization and exchange between artists from Mexico and Berlin. The binational exhibition "La creación femenina", 1980: Elva Peniche Montfort

 

4.30 p.m.

Exhibitions of Mexican Women Artists in Europe: Feminism and Cultural Diplomacy: Agata Jakubowska

 

Discussion

 

5.30 p.m.

Break with drinks and snacks

 

6.00 p.m.

Activating and Donating 'Archiva - obras del arte feminista en México': Monica Mayer

 

lecture performance (online)

 

6:45 p.m.

Erased Gazes: A donation to MSUM: selma banich and the Politics of Touch Collective

 

 

Sunday, September 13th

5–6 p.m.

Guided tour by the curators

 

 

 

Produced by Association City of Women & cross links e.V. Berlin

Funded by Visual Arts Project Fund of the Goethe-Institut, City of Women (Municipality of Ljubljana, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia).

Made in collaboration with Moderna galerija and Goethe-Institut Ljubljana.