NICA recommends | re-Membering Phantoms presents: ‘Talking Phantoms’, a symposium on Hauntology and Artistic Research
Date: 14 September 2023, during the opening of the exhibition re-Membering Phantoms (14-17 September 2023, 17:00-23:00).
Time: 19:00-21:00
Location: The Grey Space in the Middle. Paviljoensgracht 20-24, 2512 BP, The Hague
Organizers: Lore Pilzecker and Mariana Gusso Nickel
Talking Phantoms is a public symposium on Hauntology in the contemporary arts. It will take place on September 14th, 2023, at The Grey Space in the Middle, in The Hague, during the opening of the exhibition re-Membering Phantoms. Through the evening, guests, speakers, and participating artists will be invited to collective reflect on the questions of: what kinds of re-Membering processes allow us to relate to the phantoms of traditionally unacknowledged voices, memories, and (hi)stories in the arts? How can contemporary approaches to Artistic Research benefit from the field of Hauntology?
Talking Phantoms aims to open a conversation between presenters and visiting visual artists, designers, and other researchers about different approaches to Hauntology and its relevance for the creation of contemporary Artistic Research. By facilitating an exchange of ideas between academic researchers and artists, Talking Phantoms will contribute to the creation of transdisciplinary research methodologies that blur the distinction between academic and artistic forms of knowledge production.
On September 14th, the symposium Talking Phantoms starts at 19:00 and ends at 21:00. Guests are welcome in the exhibition re-Membering Phantoms from 14th to the 17th of September (14/09-16/09 17:00-23:00; 17/09 13:00-17:00). If you have any questions, please send an email to dehauntedcollective@gmail.com or visit www.de-hauntedcollective.com.
Programme
19:10-19:20 Introduction to re-Membering Phantoms – Lore Pilzecker and Mariana Gusso Nickel (organisers)
19:20-19:30 The Breath of the Giant – Marieke Peeters
A patterned sofa chair holds a figure enclosed in its folds. The vibrant red pattern of the chair is eerily reminiscent of flesh and scarred tissue. Sinking ever deeper into the chair an elusive presence creates a meditative but unsettling atmosphere when all you can hear is their breath. A durational performance that resembles a symbiosis of the human figure and object. Haunting is assigned another meaning here as the haunted object becomes something extremely physical. A ghost that is evocative of another type of physicality.
Marieke Peeters (she/her) is a visual artist based in Den Haag, NL. She creates immersive installations, sculptures and films that combine intensive material research with performance. In her artistic practice she creates a form of expanded cinema that reconsiders the tableaux vivant. She facilitates immersive experiences that attempt to find comfort within the horrific. Informed by horror as a genre and construct, her works navigate an unstable social reality.
19:40-20:10 The Future Belongs to the Ghosts – Petrică Mogoș
Over the last three decades of increased precarity and insecurity, the act of remodelling the future has disappeared in the turbulent transformations that took the reins over Eastern Europe. The very notion of imagining a better future has been relegated into a worn-out ideal, widely regarded as a by-product of privilege (who has time to think about the future in the age of semiocapitalism, when ideology has pervasively leaked into all forms of existence?), or cancelled entirely from the collective imagination. Juxtaposed between utopia and absurdity, even the possibility of fantasising about what is the come has been discarded and nullified. In the context of disintegrating dreams and prospects, the failure of traditional liberal ideology, the rise of extremist movements, the danger of profound environmental crises, as well as the dilemma of the nation-state system as a relic of the past, what does the future entail for us?
The spectral figure of the ghost may come to our rescue: fed by our constant craving for change, by a nostalgia for a certain something that may not exist yet, the ghost is our guide through (im)possible terrains in the making, our reminder that contemplating the unknown, the unpredictable, and the unseen is not some sort of heresy.
Petrică Mogoș (he/him)is a Romanian writer, researcher, and founder of various editorial projects. Among these, he is the co-editor of Kajet, a Bucharest-based journal that proposes an internationalist exploration of Eastern Europe, and co-editor of The Future of, a quarterly magazine that seeks to deconstruct, recontextualise, and recuperate contemporary ideas as valuable tools for a more liveable, more just future.
20:20-20:50 A Eulogy for the Lost and the Living – Anouk van Wijk
The artistic researcher Anouk van Wijk will present a performance lecture about her ongoing artistic research A Eulogy for the Lost and the Living, which entails a journey of revisiting old practices, an exploration of material kinship, and an immersion in microbial worlds. The research project on microbial entanglements and the accidental death of the microbes she worked with resulted in an altar of sorts; a place of remembrance and celebration. Through different media she explores what it means to allow disintegration as an accepted outcome of her work. Does making kin also include letting go, allowing death and decay to happen?
In this 45-minutes talk, Anouk van Wijk will invite the audience to explore this complex microbial kinship through methods of material kinship. This will be done through an hour of readings and visual footage, combined with a sharing of methods and outcomes regarding the artistic research process.
Anouk van Wijk (she/her) is an artistic researcher based in Amsterdam. Her work explores other-than-human relations through tactile matters, charming critters, and the grotesque. Finding resonance in continuously transforming bodies, she builds intricate sculptural assemblages that teeter on the edge of attraction and repulsion.
* No registration needed.
* re-Membering Phantoms is a project is initiated by the artistic researchers Mariana Gusso and Lore Pilzecker, collaborating as the de-Haunted Collective. Find more on www.de-hauntedcollective.com or via https://thegreyspace.net/program/talking-phantoms/
