EPHEMEROPTERÆ

Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary’s EPHEMEROPTERÆ, the annual spoken-word performance series held since 2012 in the Augarten Park in Vienna brings together, artists, poets, musicians, scientists, architects, and philosophers to explore the rich traditions and evanescent articulations of poetry, literature, theory, performance, and language-based artistic practice.

The sixth season of EPHEMEROPTERÆ engages with themes related to the oceans, deep ecologies, and ecofeminisms, with oceanic sciences, ecopedagogy, aquatic soundscapes, and speculative poetics. Participants in the 2017 season include: Ursula Biemann, Benjamin Bratton, Warwick Fox, Ellie Ga, David Gruber, Florian Hecker, David Horvitz, Joan Jonas, Hilary Koob Sassen, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jonathan Ledgard, Chus Martinez, Nicola Masciandaro, Astrida Neimanis, Trevor Paglen, Josef Penninger, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Markus Reymann, Nainoa Thompson, Janaina Tschäpe, Jana Winderen, Susanne M. Winterling, and Peter Zinovieff.

EPHEMEROPTERÆ accompanies the exhibition Tidalectics, which proposes a new mode of commitment to the oceans, a mode coming from the seas themselves, focusing on the poetic, mythical, spiritual, and solidary dimensions of the oceans. Taking its title from a play on words by the celebrated Barbadian poet-historian Kamau Braithwaite, Tidalectics seeks to comprehend our histories as trajectories tossed by waves, from ocean crossings to systems of exchange, myths, and microbial origins. The exhibition features works that have come about as a result of the TBA21–Academy and its ground-breaking research and exploration trips, as well as other works by artists whose practice is profoundly dedicated to the oceans.

A newly commissioned performance talk by Joan Jonas on June 23 marks a highlight of the program. Jonas’s talk draws from a wellspring of materials, literature, mythology, and the artist’s collections of sketches and notes on the sea, exploring “the ocean as a poetic, totemic, and natural entity, as a life source and home to a universe of beings.” Video footage of underwater scenes—from Jean Painlevé’s black-and-white reels of sea creatures to shots of aquariums—intersect poetically and associatively with excerpts from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Sy Montgomery’s Soul of an Octopus, and Italo Calvino’s The Aquatic Uncle.

Offered free of charge, the individual 40 to 60-minute live-acts are diverse in both content and form, and are repeated on a weekly basis throughout the summer from June to September (with a summer break between July 15–August 24).

EPHEMEROPTERÆ 2017 is curated by Daniela Zyman and Boris Ondreička with Stefanie Hessler and Markus Reymann.

The whole programme is available here.