Antje Majewski

Opening: October 1, 2011, 11am
Curators: Adam Budak and Antje Majewski

Living the Museum
 

The alchemy of things is at the core of a multimedial project by the German artist, Antje Majewski (1968) which aims at rethinking the representation and meaning of objects in the form of a highly personal and quasi surreal collection. In other words, based upon the investigation of various museums and collections, including the profound research into the encyclopeadic structure of the 200-years old Universalmuseum Joanneum, her (private) collection of inanimate objects is the artist’s utopian and subversive (and a seemingly absurd…) take at how to make objects talk. Thus Majewski’s own private museum is a sort of language laboratory – a rhizomatic structure of multilayered connections, a hybride of babel and aleph which sums up an advanced museological experience as beyond-spiritual, universal and hyper semantics.

Realized within the pavilion-like architectural structure that combines painting, video, installation and a book, Majewski’s project refers to a variety of museum’s patterns, including the museum as a place of magical practices (such as, amongst others, a self-reassertion in regards of the current order of things), or the museums as a site of disrupture and cultural displacement regarding former or other orders and use of things. Systems of classifications / systematizations / symbolic orders are revisited through an almost hallucinatory process of questioning and question-posing, regarding the objects‘ ontologie(s):
If we multiply the stories around an object, could this reveal it’s thingness in the center? Could it be possible to grow inanimate things in your garden? Is it possible to replace all inanimate art objects by one living object? Is there really a difference between inanimate and animate objects? Can objects speak? Does all matter think? Can we create objects that connect their thinking with ours?

Artists: Antje Majewski, with Thomas Bayrle, Helke Bayrle, Marcel Duchamp, Didier Faustino, Pawel Freisler, Delia Gonzalez, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Edward Krasinski, Leonore Mau, Markus Miessen & Ralf Pflugfelder, Dirk Peuker, Agnieszka Polska, Mathilde Rosier, Gavin Russom, Issa Samb, Juliane Solmsdorf, Simon Starling & Superflex, El Hadji Sy, Neal Tait

Catalouge

The exhibition is designed by Didier Faustino / Mésarchitecture (Paris) and the
alternative audioguide is composed and performed by experimental musician and writer Momus.

Alternative audioguide: Momus
Momus is the artist name of Nick Currie, born in Scotland in 1960. For over twenty years he's been releasing albums of songs on independent labels. From 2000 Momus began making performance art in New York galleries, improvising stories and serving as an "unreliable tour guide". Since 2009 he's published three books. Momus lives in Osaka, Japan.

Mathilde Rosier’s performance Cruising on the Deck will take place during the opening. Performed by the guests of the vernissage.
Events accompanying the exhibition include a lecture by Chantal Mouffe and Marcus Steinweg, as well as a screeing of films by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Djibril Diop Mambéty.
 

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