Responsive Subjects – On the Design of Collective Actions
21 September 2013–5 January 2014
Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig
Karl-Tauchnitz-Straße 9-11
D-04107 Leipzig
Germany
With contributions by James Langdon, Kateřina Šedá, Joanna Warsza, with the participation of Ulf Aminde, Pablo Helguera, Alexandra Pirici, and GFZK FOR YOU, a.o.
Curated by Julia Schäfer and Franciska Zólyom
Responsive Subjects is about communication, exchange and self-empowerment. In this project, with its interdisciplinary, process-oriented and participatory approach, three young internationally acclaimed cultural protagonists present their work in Leipzig for the first time. Kateřina Šedá, James Langdon and Joanna Warsza focus their attention on the creation of social processes in site-specific projects.
Kateřina Šedá + BATEŽO MIKILU: at sixes and sevens
On view till 5 January 2014
The exhibition at sixes and sevens is about changes and the possibility of thinking them through and trying them out in a playful way, as the title describes a state of disorder, of potential, implying an open process. Together with six young people Kateřina Šedá creates a walk-in, interactive town model of Zastávka, the teenagers hometown near Brno, Czech Republic, which they have investigated collectively since 2011. The main objective here is not to produce a precise reconstruction, but rather to portray the individual approaches of the participants, the questions they ask and the knowledge they gain during their field research, and the social interaction they experience during the working process. At the same time, Kateřina Šedá integrates several former site-specific participatory projects into the all-over structure of the exhibition.
Joanna Warsza: Performative Democracy
A cycle of projects with contributions by Ulf Aminde, Pablo Helguera and Alexandra Pirici
19 October, 10am–6pm: Alexandra Pirici: Persistent Feebleness
20 October, 5pm: Pablo Helguera: Well-Tempered Exhibition
17 December, 7pm: Ulf Aminde: Strike Opera
The series of performative events conceived by Joanna Warsza go back to the idea of ‘performative democracy’ as formulated by the Polish sociologist Elzbieta Matynia. Here, Matynia describes an authentic dimension of democracy which illustrates to people the political potential of their modes of behaviour and statements.
Three consecutive projects by Alexandra Pirici in relation to the Monument of the Battle of Nations, Ulf Aminde on art strike and the politics of withdrawal in collaboration with Cultures of the Curatorial, and a lecture-performance by Pablo Helguera examine classic cultural practices such as rhetoric, orchestral music and the art of the memorial for their potential in the sense of performative democracy.
James Langdon: School for Design Fiction
8 November, 3–8pm
The School for Design Fiction offers a short course in reading objects, environments and messages. Stimulated by the curious genre of design fiction, the programme asserts storytelling as the primary function of design.
Lectures at the school will be centered around a collection of such narrative objects, each a newly commissioned artwork realised by a member of the faculty, among them Céline Condorelli, Sofia Hultén, KNW, Peter Nencini, and Gavin Wade. These objects will be employed performatively to visualise subjects including the discovery of the human brain’s innate mechanism for narrating experience; the legibility of the built environment; and strategies for continuing unfinished stories.
James Langdon is winner of the 2012 INFORM Prize awarded by the Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig to young graphic designers, artists and collaborations whose projects and publications have developed an outstanding graphic position or experimental working methods.
For further information and mediation programs, please contact responsivesubjects [at] gfzk.de, and visit www.gfzk.de.
Responsive Subjects is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation, the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony, The German-Czech Future Fund, the British Council and the Friends of the Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig.
