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De Kijkdoos, Weesperstraat 51, Amsterdam.

In Support can be visited from

June 10 – September 2, 2017 

1. In Support: “Support as Intimacy and Proximity”

June 10 – July 10 

Performance: 

“How Far Can You Be?” by Aldo E. Ramos

June 10, 19:00 

2. In Support: “Violence of Support”

July 15 – August 8

Performance:

“Bent” by Leon Filter

July 15, 19.00

3. In Support: “Support Structures”

August 12 – September 2

Performance:

“Epic Intervention” by Süreyya Karacabey

August 12, 19:00 

In Support is an exhibition program in three parts taking place from June 10 to September 2, 2017, at De Kijkdoos (Amsterdam), a row of outdoor vitrines accessible to the public 24/7. 

Each of the three strands (each lasting one month) will open with a performance held publicly on the street and will address a different aspect of the notion of support: Support as Intimacy and Proximity, Violence of Support, and Support Structures. The program lifts off from the principal that support – as a call for togetherness and relationality as opposed to the atomized individuality of today’s precarious subject – is essential in our world of plural crises, and asks how artistic practices can themselves be practices of support.

In Support, an experiment in exhibition-making outside the white cube scenario, is curated by Baha Görkem Yalım (DAI, 2018) in company with and in response to contributions from a number of visual artists (Giulia Crispiani (DAI, 2017), Anne-Xûan Llanes, and Dan Walwin), two performance artists (Leon Filter (DAI, 2018) and Aldo E. Ramos (DAI, 2018)), and a scholar (Süreyya Karacabey). 

In Support is an attempt to look at artistic practice as a practice of support. Support is essential in today’s world of plural crises. In contrast to the atomized individuality of the precarious subject, support is a call for togetherness and relationality. 

In Support is a process of coming together. What began as a monologue quickly multiplied into a dialogue with the invited artists, designers, and activists. This beginning can be located in the question, What we are in support of?, regarding the unspoken, the unsatisfied, the late and the latent, the in-process, the pre-thought, the not-yet-manifest, the undeveloped, the unrecognized, the delayed, the unanswered, the unavailable, the not-deliverable, the discarded, the over-looked, the neglected, the hidden, the forgotten, the un-named, the un-paid, the missing, the longing, the invisible, the unseen, the behind-the-scene, the disappeared, the concealed, the unwanted, the dormant (Céline Condorelli). As with any support structure, the positions between artists, designers, activists, performers, curators, and managers switched, expanded, retracted, evaporated. Looking at a brick wall one cannot decide which brick is the most important, as the wall can also be seen as a woven fabric. 

When we think of support we immediately think of position and practice. Support requires proximity, as it’s impossible to maintain from a distance. Art is a stimulus for political imagination, and imagining together is essential. The individual’s position and the position of the collective belong to the same horizon. As Rirkrit Tiravanija puts it: It is time to give up being an author and become a wall or a floor instead, which is a kind of support structure for things to happen on. Authorship demands interest, and, borrowing from Marx, we can conjure its limitations as follows: Interest has no memory, for it thinks only of itself … it never forgets. But it is not concerned about contradictions, for it never comes into contradiction with itself. It is a constant improviser, for it has no system, only expedients. Authorship absorbs everything, and it does so through the support of state apparatuses. Support as a concept doesn’t only belong to us. This is why this project emerges from the necessity of looking in detail at support rather than authorship. And if we apply this way of looking to the artworks in these vitrines, we will see that they manifest as forms of life that are both autonomous and totally integrated. Surrounded by the uninhabitable, we aim towards making the uninhabitable habitable, inhabiting between subjects, objects, and power structures."

All performances take place at De Kijkdoos, Weesperstraat 51, Amsterdam.

Web-archive: www.insupport.tk