Agency is the generic name of a Brussels-based agency that was founded in 1992 by Kobe Matthys. Agency constitutes a growing list of things that resist the division between ontological categories of culture and nature. These things are derived from juridical processes, lawsuits, cases, controversies, affairs and so forth, around intellectual property (copyrights, patents, trademarks, etc…). Agency calls things forth from it’s list via varying assemblies inside exhibitions, performances, publications, etc., most recently at The Showroom, London (2011), “Speech Matters” at the Venice Biennale (2011), Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (2010), “Watchmen, Liars, Dreamers” at Le Plateau, Paris (2010), “Animism” at Extra City and M HKA, Antwerp, Kunsthalle Bern and Generali Foundation, Vienna (2009 -11).

During the course of the exhibition, Agency will convene a group of concerned guests (a lawyer, philosopher, physicist, artist and art historian) to respond to Thing 001032 (Transparent Colour Sheets), The date will be announced shortly.

This performance will launch the book ‘Circular Facts‘, and will mark the culmination of this two year collaborative endeavour.

Hassan Khan (b. 1975) is an artist, musician and writer who lives and works in Cairo. He has had solo shows at, amongst others, Galerie Chantal Crousel (Paris 2011), Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (2010), Le Plateau (Paris, 2007) and forthcoming at The Queens Museum (New York, 2011) and Objectif Exhibitions (Antwerp, 2011). Khan has also participated in Manifesta 8 (Murcia, 2010), Yokohama Trienniale (2008), Gwangju Biennale (2008), Sidney Biennale (2006), Seville Biennale (2006) and other international exhibitions. His album tabla dubb is available on the 100copies Label, and he is also widely published in Arabic and English. His text Nine Lessons Learned from Sherif El-Azma was published by the Contemporary Image Collective (2009), and his artist book 17 and in AUC – the transcriptions was published by Merz and Crousel (2004).

Edited by Mai Abu ElDahab (Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp), Binna Choi (Casco, Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht), and Emily Pethick (The Showroom, London), the book offers ten perspectives on the subject with contributions from Artist’s Institute, New York; Art Space Pool, Seoul; Bétonsalon, Paris; Bulegoa zenbaki barik, Bilbao; CCA, Glasgow; Konsthall C, Stockholm; Kunsthall Oslo; Kunstverein, Amsterdam; and Les Laboratoires D’Aubervillers, Paris.

To launch the book Egyptian artist Hassan Khan will perform ‘A Short Story based on a distant memory with a long musical interlude’.

Published by Sternberg Press.
For a copy, please contact info@theshowroom.org or Sternberg Press. www.circularfacts.eu

Sisters! is not a film about the Southall Black Sisters, but is a two-way project between Bauer and the staff at the organisation. Documenting one week in the life of the organisation, the film takes their daily activities as a springboard for a visual discussion on feminism, politics and aesthetics in today’s society.

The film asks what happens when questions from the 1970s Women’s Liberation Movement (particularly those explored by feminist film collectives from the time) are posed in a contemporary political setting; and consequently what are the important feminist issues of today and what are the pressing issues for today’s black and minority women?

Petra Bauer’s films explore the possibilities of storytelling through the form of documentary making. Her interest lies in film as a political practice, and the role of moving images in the construction, presentation and representation of histories. Through her work she demonstrates how moving images can be seen as a space where social and political negotiations can take place.

Sisters!is co-commissioned by The Showroom and Picture This and is funded by Bloomberg, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee and IASPIS as funding bodies. It was made possible thanks to the generosity of Southall Black Sisters.

Acting as an interim assembly hall for the game “huddle”, ‘Rogue Game’ exhibition recomposes the Casco space into a playing site for the audience. Demarcations of the three sports are taken from their usual sport hall milieu into the exhibition space to further export strategies for cohabitation. This is facilitated by a “territorial enquiry” based on municipal records around local distribution of sport centres in Utrecht presented along with issues of public welfare and service with support materials from the ‘COHAB’ exhibition and documentation from previous Rogue Game events. This array of materials will integrate gaming instinct into ‘COHAB’s set of proposals for how inhabitants or stakeholders intervene or contribute to the urban sphere.

Hassan Khan has had solo shows at, amongst others, The Queens Museum (New York, 2011), Galerie Chantal Crousel (Paris 2011), Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (2010), Le Plateau (Paris, 2007) and Gasworks (London, 2006). Khan has also participated in Manifesta 8 (Murcia, 2010), Yokohama Trienniale (2008), Gwangju Biennale (2008), Sidney Biennale (2006), Seville Biennale (2006) and other international exhibitions. His album “tabla dubb” is available on the 100copies Label, and he is also widely published in Arabic and English. His text “Nine Lessons Learned from Sherif El-Azma” was published by the Contemporary Image Collective (2009), and his artist book “17 and in AUC – the transcriptions” was published by Merz and Crousel (2004).

Be a speaker. So be it… evolved out of work that the group have been doing towards the establishment of a new contemporary art centre in Tbilisi. Plans for this are so far imaginary, inspiring the group to devise a music festival in 2009 and develop the project Hurt Locker Instruments at Casco, Utrecht, in 2010, as part of the project Circular Facts. The installation at The Showroom will incorporate 3D drawings and a slide show of plans for the Tbilisi Center for Contemporary Art, both based on a drawing by Gela Patashuri.

For further information and images please contact Kate Stancliffe on 020 7724 4300 or kate@theshowroom.org

Notes to editors: Ei Arakawa was born in 1977 in Japan, Sergei Tcherepnin in 1981 in the USA, and Gela Patashuri in Georgia in 1973. They have been working collaboratively since 2008 on projects at Casco, Utrecht (2010), New Jerseyy, Basel (2009) and in Tbilisi (2008, 2009). Arakawa’s solo projects include Galerie Neu, Berlin (2010), Kunsthalle Zurich and Sculpture Center New York (both 2009); Tcherepnin has performed his musical improvisations in numerous New York venues and his compositions are performed internationally; Patashuri has curated and participated in group exhibitions in Georgia, most recently in Shindisi.

Be a speaker. So be it… is supported by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation and the Japan Foundation, and has been commissioned in the framework of Circular Facts, a cooperative circuit for itinerant research and projects by artists initiated by Casco, Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht, Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp, and The Showroom in collaboration with Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen and Electric Palm Tree; financially supported by the European Commission. The project will travel to France, to Betonsalon in Paris and CAC Bretigny. The Showroom is supported by Arts Council England and members of the gallery’s Supporters Scheme.

In ‘COHAB’ public sculpture will be seen as a point of assembly of multiple attentions, voices and initiatives (or as things calling for assembly) and a lever that marks (un)official territories. The project addresses the wider question of cohabitation, one of the main interests of Can Altay’s practice, by referring to the clashes and overlaps between the decisions of placing and living with artworks in an urban context.  Its research draws upon public information and archives around the public sculptures and monuments provided by the municipality of Utrecht, but looks further into some particular – and controversial – cases such as ‘Tenttoren’ in the Lunetten area or the Barry Flanagan statue ‘Thinker on a Rock’ in the city centre. Altay has collected actual and speculative stories around specific sculptures in public space, and interpreted their position in the wider scope of city development, and in relation to the often top-down and capital driven urban regeneration programmes – as echoed within many cities around the world.

For ‘COHAB’, Casco will act as one of the assembly points. An array of research materials and stories as well as (imaginative) maquettes, models or objects will be available around a specially constructed large table, shaped after a typical post-war housing block. It will provide an overview and encourage interpretations of relations between art, space and inhabitants. Eventually, all of these constituents will build up towards opportunities to intervene and/or contribute to the ways in which different stakeholders place and live with art in public space.

Programme

Friday May 6

6pm – Introducing Circular Facts

7pm – “A SHORT STORY BASED ON A DISTANT MEMORY WITH A LONG MUSICAL INTERLUDE” by Hassan Khan (artist, Cairo)
A performance with multiple starting points: a suspenseful short story written in pulp literary Arabic for a cancelled exhibition; the ongoing attempt to discover the work; the direct and abstract power of music; childhood memories; the driving anger the artist depends upon when writing; and the elusive search for a simplicity that remains complex.

Saturday May 7

11am – “Assembly (Circular Facts)” by Agency (artist, Brussels)
Agency will call Thing 000884 (Catalogue of the Private Library of the Late Dr. I. T. Talbot of Boston) forth from the list. Thing 000884 concerns a 1912 controversy around an auction catalogue that reprinted letters written by Mary Baker G. Eddy to her cousin.

12pm – Break

1pm – Session One: How to work?
This session will focus on how artistic practices inform institutional methodologies and structures.
The session will begin with a ten-minute presentation from each of the participants situating their practice in relation to the panel’s specific topic.

Participants: Norma Jeane (artist), Natasa Petresin (Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Paris) and Francis McKee (Center for Contemporary Art, Glasgow)
Moderator: Mai Abu ElDahab (Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp)

3pm – Break

3.30pm – Session Two: Who are we working with?
This session will look informal communities and the building of institutional affinities based on common goals rather than structured networks. The session will begin with a ten-minute presentation from each of the participants situating their practice in relation to the panel’s specific topic.

Participants: Frederique Bergholtz (If I Can’t Dance…, Amsterdam), David Reinfurt (Dexter Sinister, New York) and Mia Jankowicz (Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo)
Moderator: Binna Choi (Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht)

5.30pm – Break

6pm – “All Cats are Grey in the Dark” an event by Norma Jeane (artist)
Rationality is a weak tool when not sustained by a variety of physical and emotional information. Norma Jeane’s intervention takes the shape of a sensual invitation to dive deep into the very matter of things. Guests are invited to a diverse, colourless and unidentified aperitif. Each guest’s satisfaction and eventual inebriation will be fulfilled on the condition of letting themselves go at the risk of a full experience – and perhaps gaining insight into the complex web of relations and dynamics that constitute the art world.

Sunday May 8

11am – Session Three: What we do?
The session will look at possibilities of defining the authorial position of institutions, and the implications of this position of authority. The session will begin with a ten-minute presentation from each of the participants situating their practice in relation to the panel’s specific topic.

Participants: Dan Kidner (City Projects, London), Will Bradley (Kunsthalle Oslo) and Giovanni Carmine (Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen)
Moderator: Emily Pethick (The Showroom, London)

1pm – Break

2pm – “The weather, a building” a reading by Ruth Buchanan (artist, Berlin)
In her work, Ruth Buchanan seeks to address the condition of artistic agency today – both as a physical position and a material form – and does so by bringing various elements together in precisely choreographed spatial and temporal situations. “The weather, a building” continues this interest and explores the manifold ways in which we inhabit space.

3.30pm – The End

Come by.
Discover what you might want changed about yourself and how you are perceived.
We will help you to make it real for one day.

On Saturday 30 April from 11am to 7pm, at no cost, a team of advisors in costume, make-up and hairstyling will be available to help you shift the way you and others perceive you. We are not offering a makeover but a chance to step into a conversation and step out into your regular life transformed.

For one day, we offer you a place where you can temporarily change the way you feel and experience the world the world.  At our informal bar, while having a coffee or a glass of wine, you can get more information, meet others who are also eager to be transformed or simply satisfy your curiosity. If you’d like your new image captured, a professional photographer will also be on hand.

You are then left to go back to your normal lives, yet transformed for one day.  For the artists, the participants interaction with the public spaces in Antwerp constitutes an exhibition, which is ephemeral but in full public view.

To participate in Be Another You it is necessary to make an appointment, please email bay@objectif-exhibitions.org or go to www.facebook.com/BeAnotherYouNow

Norma Jeane (the artist) was born in Los Angeles when Marilyn Monroe (the movie star) died on the night of August 4^th, 1962. By taking possession of somebody else’s personal data, renouncing a specific gender, and creating a proliferation of personalities, Norma Jeane produces uncountable ‘copy and paste’ versions of the persona in whom different features coexist, transcending any possible existing person. She is in fact an artist without a body. Her works have been shown at, amongst others, Objectif Exhibitions (Antwerp, 2011), Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (2010), Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2009), Frieze Projects (London, 2008), the Lyon Biennial (2007),  Martin Gropius Bau (Berlin, 2006) and the Swiss Institute (New York, 2005). She will take part in the next Venice Biennale.

Tim Etchells is an artist and writer based in the UK, and is the leader of the world renowned performance group Forced Entertainment. His work spans performance, video, photography, text projects, installation and fiction. His first novel The Broken World was published by Heinemann in 2008 and his monograph on contemporary performance and Forced Entertainment, Certain Fragments (Routledge 1999) is widely acclaimed. In recent years Etchells has exhibited widely in the context of visual arts with solo shows at Sketch (London, 2007) and Gasworks (London, 2010), as well as participating in Manifesta 7 (Rovereto, 2008), Art Sheffield (2008), Goteborg Biennale (2009), October Salon (Belgrade, 2010) and the Aichi Triennale (2010).

Be Another You is part of the For Real! project, which aims to develop an effective and innovative methodology for the realisation of public art events. Initiated by Mai Abu ElDahab, Giovanni Carmine and Norma Jeane, For Real! aims to create a substantial and fair form of collaboration amongst artists, art institutions and local players (such as audience, professionals, private companies, civil organisations etc.) within the framework of public art. A first edition of For Real! took place at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen in November 2010, for more information see: www.k9000.ch.

The project team for Be Another You includes: Dorothee Catry, Nathalie De Hen, Raphael Julliard, Roel Melis, Gerlinde Vervenne and Ann Weckx.