05/07/2014 - 12/10/2014



Positions is a new exhibition format that sets a series of projects in dialogue with one another in the ten galleries of the museum's old building. With each artist presenting a significant body of work, many commissioned for the exhibition and others developed through collaborations with art organisations throughout the world, Positions focuses on the diverse pitch of contemporary artistic voices.
The five distinct presentations explore how we position ourselves in the world today – often making visible frameworks, subjects and ideas that are felt but not seen. The exhibition unfolds as a conversation between a series of installations, films and architectural interventions that move between different geographical and political contexts and invite us to consider how agency - collective or individual - is both granted and taken away.
Positions 2014 includes:
- Lawrence Abu Hamdan;
- Celine Condorelli;
- Bouchra Khalili;
- Charles van Otterdijk;
- Koki Tanaka.
The projects were realised in collaboration with: Beirut, Cairo; Book Works, London; Chisenhale Gallery, London; Museum as Hub; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Stroom Den Haag.
- Lawrence Abu Hamdan (1985, Jordan), Tape Echo, 2013-2014
With Tape Echo Abu Hamdan proposes a series of different methodologies for documenting and intervening within of Cairo's dense amplified audio urbanity. Looking at how voices are distributed and ears are damaged within of the city's rapidly changing sonic conditions. Tape Echo is co-commissioned with Beirut in Cairo and includes a new film commissioned for Positions.
- Celine Condorelli (1974, France), The Company She Keeps, 2014
Céline Condorelli's work is concerned with how all human action takes place amidst what she has termed 'support structures' – whether emotional, legal or physical. These structures are mostly taken for granted, and therefore often seem invisible. The Company She Keeps presents a series of commissioned objects, installations and interventions in the galleries that develop from her ongoing engagement with friendship as a condition for working and living together. At the centre of the installation is the publication The Company She Keeps (published by Book Works, Chisenhale Gallery and Van Abbemuseum) which includes a series of conversations between the artist and friends on the philosophy, politics and history of friendship.
- Bouchra Khalili (1975, Morocco), The Speeches Series, video trilogy, 2012-2013
French-Moroccan artist Bouchra Khalili will present the three-part work Speeches – shown together for the first time in Positions. Speeches is built around three chapters, each comprised of five speeches by migrants that Khalili has collaborated closely with in Paris, Genoa and New York and that focusing respectively on mother tongues and dialects, citizenship, and working class.
- Charles van Otterdijk (1976, the Netherlands), Double Centre, 2013-14
Double Centre is based around two locations on the German/Polish border. Through photographs, research material and a highly evocative installation Double Centre addresses the culture of surveillance and the way in which information is controlled and mediated – by the artist himself and, by inference, to society at large. First presented in Stroom Den Haag (2013) this second 'Situation Report' from the sites includes new objects produced for Positions. The publication Double Centre was published by Bookworks, Van Abbemuseum and Stroom Den Haag in 2013.
- Koki Tanaka (1975, Japan), Precarious Tasks, 2012 - ongoing
Koki Tanaka's Precarious Tasks, developed over the past few years in cities throughout the world, are humble acts of collectivity conceived in the immediate aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake in Japan and the resulting Fukishima disaster. In Positions they are presented through an ambitious, architectural installation with documentation, statements and ephemera from the tasks. Tanaka will carry out two new tasks in Eindhoven, commissioned for Positions.

http://vanabbemuseum.nl/

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