APPARATUS CRITICUS & LOCUS

On the occasion of its 35th anniversary, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart presents a dual exhibition; Apparatus Criticus & Locus as well as Footnotes, a satellite show in collaboration with the project space, Lotte. The exhibitions have been researched, developed and installed through conversations, responses and feedback of two curatorial practices during an ongoing process.

Pilvi Takala, Players, 2010, 7:50 min. video (16:9), still

Initially, Apparatus Criticus intends to operate as a conceptual tool to investigate contemporary forms of critical distance and how diverse artistic languages approach their subjects. Critical apparatus, or apparatus criticus in Latin, refers to a collection of notes, variant readings, and other matter accompanying a printed text, and positions exhibition making as an open script in relation to the practice of process-based writing. Questioning potential relationships between the artworks, which call each other at contextual, conceptual, and critical levels of association, the exhibition aims to analyze artistic practices and how they define their critical distance to content, subjects and choices of material in accordance with their identities, positions or situations. Metaphorically speaking, Apparatus Criticus takes the exhibition form as primary source material that accompanies an edition of a text, and experiments with the possibility of developing a grammatical form of exhibition through several strategies, borrowed from textual criticism. Making an exhibition becomes no different than reading an exhibition whereas the variants of an exhibition or a text such as location, edition, source, subjects, and footnotes are visible during its presentation.

Judith Groth & Frederike Vidal, Exchange, 2012, Blumentopf mit Kirschbaum, verschiedenen Pflanzen, 20x20x150cm

Parallel to this exhibition process, Locus appeared as a responsive idea to Apparatus Criticus. Locus is an exhibition which studies how responsiveness takes form and position through artworks. Locus is ‘a place where things are found,’ a point of reference, which delineates the relationships among responsive acts and propositions.

As an allegory of exhibition space, Locus attempts to arouse curiosity in an audience through the artworks and provoke imagination of the possible scenarios, which the artworks have already responded to. Not much different from living things, artworks tend to reflect on numerous subject-matters of everyday life, and they are often developed in response to specific situations including those which are emotional, natural, political and social. With this in mind, Locus is a survey of reaction as it is embodied in the artistic positions derived from diverse references. While investigating degrees of criticality and parallel readings among exhibited works, Locus responds to traumas of destruction, utopias, curious narratives of the ‘hidden-in-history,’ politics and the sociability of nature.
While Apparatus Criticus & Locus are simultaneously on view within the exhibition space of Künstlerhaus Stutgart, prescribing a parallel reading as dual exhibitions, Footnotes at Lotte reveals the research process through artworks, drawings, sketches, references and footnotes. These exhibitions not only create two independent conceptual entities, but also form a monolith exhibition space, which proposes a cohesion of exhibition-making, curating and working with artists.

APPARATUS CRITICUS
Artists: Aaron Angell, Ziad Antar, Alejandro Cesarco, Bouchra Khalili, Shirin Sabahi, Pilvi Takala, Rinus Van de Velde
Curator: Adnan Yıldız

LOCUS
Artists: Khaled Barakeh, Ünsal İçöz, Filippa Pettersson, Frederike Vidal & Judith Groth
Curator: Didem Yazıcı

FOOTNOTES at Lottte
with participation by Input/Output Izmir (Turkey) based artist collective

Rinus Van der Velde, The angry sculptor: a self-portrait in which I visit my old studio [...], 2012 charcoal on canvas, 270 x 400 cm

Program

Friday, May 24
6 PM Opening Speech at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart
8 PM Opening Speech at Lotte

Sunday, May 26, 12-5 PM
Künstlerhaus Stuttgart Sunday Brunchh & Artist Talks

Friday, June 7, 5 PM
Linie West at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Exhibition Tour with Adnan Yıldız & Didem Yazıcı

Friday, June 14, 5 PM
Lotte Exhibition Tour by Didem Yazıcı

Friday, July 5, 5 PM
Künstlerhaus Stuttgart Exhibition Tour with Adnan Yıldız & Didem Yazıcı and Lecture from Amanda Rath

Künstlerhaus Prtrait: Ich/I (year-round)

Among other events and exhibition projects Künstlerhaus Stuttgart celebrates its 35th anniversary with a performance program entitled, “Ich/I,” that investigates how artists approach the form and frame of institutional space, demanding change through research and production of imaginary scenarios. The program will be composed of several directions and episodes, bringing together a range of diverse artists with critical interdisciplinary practices relating to performance, sound and intervention. This year-long project will begin in May 2013 as a flashback to the May of 1978, when Künstlerhaus was established by Stuttgart-based artists. Accumulating the remarks, reminiscences and tracks developed during the sessions “Ich/I” augments itself as a collective portrait of an artist studio, an institution by artists as well as a space for artistic freedom and conceptual experiments. The participating artists will examine how artists define, position, and transform their roles today with regard to contextuality, the medium of performance functioning as a criticism on institutions as it reflects the initial intention of the artists who founded Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. Contextualizing the means by which crises operate on individual levels and transformations of societies/communities/systems influence the artistic vision of future, “Ich/I” operates as a place for imagination, creativity and curiosity. Articulating the self through such a simple mono-syllabic form of expression, “Ich/I” proposes diverse forms of self-presentation, and conceptions of stage through which artists are able to express themselves while simultaneously reflecting and criticizing the institution. “Ich/I” is an attempt to reconstruct the artistic motivations, which were established, generated and have survived over the decades as the essence of Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. Debates, memories and sound-recordings of events and performances will be documented, evolving into a portrait of an artist’s studio as it emerges from an artist-borne institution.

Program

May, 8, 2013
Prologue: Tender Buttons
Electra / London
With works from James Richards, Auto-Italia, Wu Tsan und Kajsa Dahlberg

July 5, 12, 19 and 26
Local Utopias
Anike Joyce Sadiq, Stuttgart, Marco Schmitt, Stuttgart/Mexiko-Stadt, Ulrike Buck, Stuttgart/ Mexiko-Stadt

September 19, 2013
A Scenario for Future
Discoteca Flaming Star / Berlin

Process Late Lunch
Chloë Bass / New York

November 8, 2013
Post-textuality:
Emine Sevgi Özdamar / Berlin

December 13-20, 2013
Epilgue: Body Book
Mariechen Danz / Belin

Download ICH-I Flyer

This project ist supported by Stiftung Deutsche Pfandbriefbank