I'm Not There
01 - 14 Apr 2012
A History of Performance in 20 Minutes, by Guillaume Désanges, image by Virginie Nguyen courtesy of D-CAF
I'M NOT THERE
1 - 14 April 2012
On the occasion of D-CAF , CIC presents I’m Not There, the contemporary art section of the festival, an empty exhibition and a nightly series of artist interventions. Contrary to the traditionally spectacular vibe of a festival, I’m Not There is an exhibition of absent artworks – a fully staged exhibition with many artists involved, but without the artworks. It forms part of a long history, following Surrealism and Conceptualism, of disrupted and empty exhibitions. I’m Not There, however, reflects specifically on the broad scale of conditions of working for artists both in Egypt and abroad.Each ‘exhibited’ piece is one which has been prevented from being exhibited – whether that was due to reasons of censorship; practical, economic, political, cultural reasons; or plain bad luck, largely but not entirely gathered from experiences in Egypt. In the place of each artwork is documentation of the reasons behind the work’s absence; the viewer will be able to get the insider’s story on how and why the artwork did not appear. In the vacuum created by the artworks, will appear a nightly performance, intervention, screening, or conversation expanding the topic of absence, substitution, invisibility, compromise, and the dematerialized artwork. Artists and speakers will send emissaries, will make lectures in the form of flash animations, will discuss the ghosts in our societies and unbuilt monuments, and will screen lost films.
Exhibition: Magdi Mostafa, Huda Lutfi, Ayman Ramadan (TBC), Larissa Sansour, Oraib Toukan, Susan Hiller, Nermine Hammam
1 - 14 April 2012
On the occasion of D-CAF , CIC presents I’m Not There, the contemporary art section of the festival, an empty exhibition and a nightly series of artist interventions. Contrary to the traditionally spectacular vibe of a festival, I’m Not There is an exhibition of absent artworks – a fully staged exhibition with many artists involved, but without the artworks. It forms part of a long history, following Surrealism and Conceptualism, of disrupted and empty exhibitions. I’m Not There, however, reflects specifically on the broad scale of conditions of working for artists both in Egypt and abroad.Each ‘exhibited’ piece is one which has been prevented from being exhibited – whether that was due to reasons of censorship; practical, economic, political, cultural reasons; or plain bad luck, largely but not entirely gathered from experiences in Egypt. In the place of each artwork is documentation of the reasons behind the work’s absence; the viewer will be able to get the insider’s story on how and why the artwork did not appear. In the vacuum created by the artworks, will appear a nightly performance, intervention, screening, or conversation expanding the topic of absence, substitution, invisibility, compromise, and the dematerialized artwork. Artists and speakers will send emissaries, will make lectures in the form of flash animations, will discuss the ghosts in our societies and unbuilt monuments, and will screen lost films.
Exhibition: Magdi Mostafa, Huda Lutfi, Ayman Ramadan (TBC), Larissa Sansour, Oraib Toukan, Susan Hiller, Nermine Hammam