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Please scroll down for English version PRESSEMITTEILUNG Berlin, 20. November 2014 Mounira Al Solh NOW EAT MY SCRIPT Videoinstallation 7.12.14–15.2.15 Eröffnung: Samstag, 6.12.14, 17–19 h Ort: KW Projects In der Videoarbeit NOW EAT MY SCRIPT (2014) setzt sich die Künstlerin Mounira Al Solh mit dem Moment auseinander, an dem Fragmente von Geschichte und Biografie aufeinandertreffen. Anhand der Reise eines geopferten Lammes im Kofferraum ihrer Tante zwischen Syrien und dem Libanon verwischt Mounira Al Solh die Grenzen von Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, Wirklichkeit und Fiktion. Sie verwebt Geschichten ihrer eigenen Familie, die Beirut während des Bürgerkrieges 1989 verlassen musste, um nach Damaskus zu gehen, mit denen syrischer Flüchtlinge, die heute in ihrer Nachbarschaft Schutz suchen. Die Arbeit lädt ein, über die Darstellung von Gewalt sowie über das Dilemma für eine Künstlerin oder einen Künstler, ein Trauma in Realzeit zu erfassen, nachzudenken. Al Solhs Blick auf den Gebrauch von Sprache ist dabei eine ausgewiesene Methode, um das Phänomen des Übergangs zu untersuchen. Durch die Verwendung von Alltagssprache in dieser Arbeit verringert sie die Distanz zum Trauma der „Anderen“. Die Künstlerin spielt auf Gewalt an, ohne sie direkt zu benennen, ebenso wie jene Familien, die „versuchen, ihren bürgerlichen Status zu bewahren, indem sie sich selbst nicht als Flüchtlinge bezeichnen“ (Zitat aus NOW EAT MY SCRIPT). 1978 in Beirut geboren, pendelt Mounira Al Solh heute zwischen ihrer libanesischen Heimatstadt und Amsterdam. Vergangene Ausstellungen umfassen unter anderem ALL MOTHER TONGUES ARE DIFFICULT, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut, LB, 2014; MOUNIRA AL SOLH AND SARAH FORREST, TWO SOLO SHOWS, CCA Glasgow, UK, 2013; HOME WORKS VI, Beirut, LB, 2013; THE UNGOVERNABLES, The New Museum Triennial, New York, US, 2012; MOUNIRA AL SOLH & BASSAM RAMLAWI AND DRAWINGS BY RENÉ DANIELS, Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam, NL, 2011; I DECIDED NOT TO SAVE THE WORLD, Tate Modern, London, GB und Salt, Istanbul, TR, 2011; THE FUTURE OF TRADITION – THE TRADITION OF FUTURE, Haus der Kunst, München, DE, 2010; Manifesta 8, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art, Region Murcia (SP) im Dialog mit Nordafrika, 2010. Mounira Al Solh wurde von Alya Sebti, freie Kuratorin, eingeladen. Das Programm der KW Institute for Contemporary Art wird durch die Unterstützung des Regierenden Bürgermeisters von Berlin – Senatskanzlei – Kulturelle Angelegenheiten ermöglicht. Öffnungszeiten Mi–Mo 12–19 h, Do 12–21 h, Di geschlossen Eintritt Eintritt frei Pressekontakt Henriette Sölter T +49 30 243459 42 presse@kw-berlin.de KW Institute for Contemporary Art Auguststr. 69 10117 Berlin www.kw-berlin.de www.facebook.com/KWInstituteforContemporaryArt www.facebook.com/KWFreunde —– PRESS RELEASE Berlin, November 20, 2014 Mounira Al Solh NOW EAT MY SCRIPT Video installation 7.12.14–15.2.15 Opening: Saturday, 6.12.14, 17–19 h Venue: KW Projects In her video NOW EAT MY SCRIPT (2014) the artist Mounira Al Solh engages with the moment where fragments of history and biography meet. Through the journey of a sacrificed lamb in her aunt’s car trunk, traveling between Syria and Lebanon, Mounira Al Solh is mixing past and present, reality and fiction. She is interweaving the stories of her own family, who had to leave Beirut going to Damascus during the civil war in 1989, and those of the Syrian refugees who are seeking shelter in her neighborhood today. The work is an invitation to reflect on the representation of violence and the dilemma for an artist to register the trauma in real time. Al Solh’s look at the use of language is a dedicated method to explore the phenomenon of transition. By using everyday language in this work, she removes the distance to the otherness’s trauma. The artist alludes to the violence without naming it, like the families, who are “trying to preserve their bourgeois status by not calling themselves refugees” (quoted from NOW EAT MY SCRIPT). Born in 1978 in Beirut, Mounira Al Solh lives between her Lebanese hometown and Amsterdam. Recent exhibitions include ALL MOTHER TONGUES ARE DIFFICULT, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut, LB, 2014; MOUNIRA AL SOLH AND SARAH FORREST, TWO SOLO SHOWS, CCA Glasgow, UK, 2013; HOME WORKS VI, Beirut, LB, 2013; THE UNGOVERNABLES, The New Museum Triennial, New York, US, 2012; MOUNIRA AL SOLH & BASSAM RAMLAWI AND DRAWINGS BY RENÉ DANIELS, Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam, NL, 2011; I DECIDED NOT TO SAVE THE WORLD, Tate Modern, London, GB and Salt, Istanbul, TR, 2011; THE FUTURE OF TRADITION – THE TRADITION OF FUTURE, Haus der Kunst, Munich, DE, 2010; Manifesta 8, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art, region of Murcia (SP) in dialogue with Northern Africa, 2010, among others. Mounira Al Solh is invited by Alya Sebti, independent curator. The cultural programs of KW Institute for Contemporary Art are made possible with the support of the Governing Mayor of Berlin – Senate Chancellery – Cultural Affairs. Opening hours Wed–Mon 12–19 h, Thu 12–21 h, Tue closed Admission Admission free Press contact Henriette Sölter T +49 30 243459 42 press@kw-berlin.de KW Institute for Contemporary Art Auguststr. 69 10117 Berlin www.kw-berlin.de www.facebook.com/KWInstituteforContemporaryArt www.facebook.com/KWFreunde

Top: Jessica Higgins, Creative Director of SWITCH, R. Jaime Davidovich video artist & Founder of SoHO Arts Network. Mid: New Observations Magazine Published by Erika Knerr, Issues #95 and #70. Bottom: Line Art depicting Artist Organized Art, R. John Landino & GLOVE (pictured) to perform in the New Media Gallery at Waugh Agency.

SWITCH Retrospective Screening, Nov 15/16, 11am-5pm,
Panel Nov 15, 5pm, Reception Nov 15, 6-8pm

The retrospective screening presents all 16 episodes, which comprise 65 works, as a two day retrospective with screenings on the walls and selected works for video monitors. SWITCH is a community based public access cable television show of intermedia and performance art, interfacing performers from the Pioneer Valley and from New York City. The Creative Director is intermedia artist Jessica Higgins. All 16 episodes of SWITCH were shot in a studio in Holyoke-Mass, or on locations throughout the Pioneer Valley and in NYC. The show was produced by Denis Luzuriaga, in Holyoke-Mass, but first aired in Easthampton-Mass on ECAT, before being syndicated nationally on channels reaching over 80,000 households in states from Massachusetts to Hawaii. The program is also streamed on the web. SWITCH is a one of a
kind art for TV showcase offering vintage Fluxus, intermedia, performance art and conceptual video works. SWITCH re-addresses the use of public access cable by putting contemporary work with an experimental edge on televisions in everyone’s homes. http://switch.artistorganizedart.org

New Observations Publication Archive Reading Room,
Nov 15/16, 11am-5pm, Panel Nov 15, 1-2pm

New Observations is an independent, non-profit contemporary arts journal written, edited and published by the arts community in an expanded process, as a work of collaborative art. Dedicated to bringing artists’ voices to the public forum through an innovative guest edited magazine published from 1981-2001, it resumed publication of a new series in 2013 with issue 129. Today, artist & graphic designer Erika Knerr serves as Publisher and was previously the art director of the magazine for many of its issues. Its editorial pages have presented an extraordinary range of viewpoints and ideas reflecting the diversity within the arts. New Observations Magazine has featured artists working inside of visual art, poetry, essays, fiction and project based works and is a resource for and from the art community, including art historians, scholars, and the general public. The journal was found
ed in the early 1980′s, covering New York’s provocative art scenes at the time, but soon expanded its horizons nation wide and internationally. In the Reading Room at Eastworks visitors encounter how, with the genuine and generous enterprise that each “new observation” brings, each new emerging thought, each new sensible field, helps us cross a new horizon line together. www.newobs.org/backissues

Line Art À La Carte – Participatory Art, Nov 15 & 16, 11am-5:00pm

As a new collaboration between Artist Organized Art and Eastworks, Line Art À La Carte offers a social space reserved for patrons to make art. At Line Art À La Carte guests order instructions for simple line drawings from a menu of options, just like at a restaurant. A choice from column A, from column B – from C. The menu columns offer parameters such as shapes, sizes, colors, actions and more. Then, each guest is invited to add their drawing to the wall. Guests are helped by art guides, artists who are volunteering to share their know-how with the public to help each visitor enjoy making their drawing directly on the walls of a beautiful space. Finally the drawings meet up on the walls, as the community meets up in the space.

Artist Guides: The Line Art À La Carte menu is jointly created. Eastworks artist Kim Carlino (www.kimcarlinoart.com) a veteran installer of Mass MoCA’s “Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective” is frequently commissioned for original full scale wall works in commercial and industrial buildings. She has prepared a special menu with members of Artist Organized Art. Among the members are veterans of intermedia, such as Joshua Selman, with direct experience in Fluxus À La Carte festivals (as documented in the 129th Issue of New Observations Magazine) and in the use of Fluxus action event scores, such as LaMonte Young’s instruction “Composition 1960 #10 to Bob Morris: Draw a straight line and follow it.” A rare meeting of
artistic legacies floats in the background.

John Landino & GLOVE, Special Performance, Sunday,
Nov 16, 4-5pm, Projections: Nov 15 & 16

This will be the first performance in 3 years of John Landino & GLOVE, who unfamously introduced a project of sonic & social intervention in the Pioneer Valley with their strategic collaboration simply titled Intervention. The two met at Eastworks and galvanized a community of artists around energetic excursions into socially unpredictable situations using music as a pretext to up-end behavioral protocols at chosen venues. Despite hostilities and threats that frequently emerged at the encounters, many followers claimed to have discovered new dimensions of taboo and possibility in the radically altered social space. After John Landino’s long and protracted illness and a near shut down of their network, GLOVE has contrived for the duo to re-surface at the Eastworks Open Studios Weekend, where they may be unwelcome and could potentially be carted off.

The Waugh Agency is an insurance agency, founded by composer Matt Waugh, which sponsors a new media gallery and electro-acoustic research at a site for the presentation of art works achieved using new technologies and new media. Works may include multiple channel audio-visual installations, interactive performances, hardware hacking, circuit bending, animation, projection mapping, as well as telematic projects using networked audio and video. www.waughagency.com

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www.eastworks.com

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