Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons is pleased to present two new exhibitions for the Spring edition of its biannual exhibition program: Two Rubatos, an experimental sound-focused solo exhibition by artist Terre Thaemlitz, and Footnotes on Equality, a collective exhibition of art and research by members of GRACE – Gender and Cultures of Equality in Europe in collaboration with Rotterdam-based architecture and design collective Cookies. The exhibition program opens on Friday, 8 March 2019, International Women’s Day.
What new tools and resources are necessary for a non-essentialist, non-capitalist identity politics that challenges existing notions of (in)equality and difference?
Two Rubatos
An exhibition by Terre Thaemlitz – who as a non-essentialist transgender person rotates gender pronouns – presents two new multimedia installations of existing piano solos and images originally utilized during live performances of her Rubato series from the late 1990s. Rubato is an open-meter improvisation method of musical performance that disregards strict tempo, instead varying it by either quickening or slackening. Her piano solos are renditions of songs by the well-known music band Kraftwerk and British electronic pop musician and producer Gary Numan that uses rubato as a core artistic method to trouble the melody recognition process. Thaemlitz’s sound work explores thematics of authorship, identity, and post-industrial technologies found in albums by Kraftwerk, as well as themes of sexual ambiguity in the works of Gary Numan. Likewise, the artist also presents image parodies to jaywalk with the sounds, and a critical essay that accompanies each rubato.
Footnotes on Equality
An exhibition by GRACE researchers in collaboration with Cookies, a Rotterdam design and architecture collective, centers around an installation featuring an eclectic collection of art and everyday objects. The objects act as indexes for various contentious points around the cultural production of (in)equality, and props to tell stories about the contemporary fights against injustices. GRACE researchers have been conducting fieldwork across Europe that has brought them into contact with people or communities with life circumstances where struggles for equality take place but also get complexified – such as when equality for one group or issue means corresponding inequality for another. Objects are collected out of such situations and transformed into a labyrinth-like installation, inviting the viewer to consider their own situation of (in)equality and where it connects with others. Like Thaemlitz, the intention of the GRACE researchers and Cookies is to trigger the imagination for complexity, so it might be understood as an essential commoning method and value. The researchers take a critical stance towards how one’s struggle, right, or identity is co-opted and commodified – taken into a sort of “exclusive ownership” – in contemporary capitalist culture. Such structural processes may even lead some to be “against equality.” The exhibition is also an attempt to undo a disciplinary research process, and make art practice and co-creative work an integral part of research and how it is shared.
Both exhibitions are in line with Poetics of Living, one of Casco’s study lines on art and commoning practices, co-initiated with Rizvana Bradley. With Poetics of Living, we explore non-normative and non-binary ways of living together in consideration of rapidly changing discourses around sexuality, health, communal life, and death.
Calendar
Friday, 8 March, 17:00 - 20:00
Opening Spring 2019 exhibition program
Two Rubatos solo exhibition by Terre Thaemlitz
Footnotes on Equality collective exhibition by GRACE – Gender and Cultures of Equality in Europe, with Cookies
Part of the study line Poetics of Living
Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons
Thursday, 7 March – Saturday, 9 March
“Gender and Cultures of In/Equality in Europe”
GRACE conference
Casco Art Institute, Centraal Museum, and Utrecht University
Saturday, 9 March, 23:00 – 05:00
"falling from grace"
Un/official after party for the GRACE conference
Organized by queer collective niet normaal*
EKKO, Utrecht
Tuesday, 19 March, 17:00 – 20:00
ReadingRoom Season five, session three
Reading Rosa, Pink and Other Colors
Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons
Register via Terra Critica (info@terracritica.net)
Thursday, 2 May, 17:00 – 18:30
Doing Gender Lecture
by Terre Thaemlitz
Parnassos Cultuurcentrum, Utrecht
Organized in collaboration with Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies and Terra Critica
Information on registration coming soon
- Opening times
- Casco Office Gallery
- Monday - Friday, 12:00 - 18:00
- Exhibition
- Tuesday - Sunday, 12:00 - 18:00