Thought Sculpture

Miklós Erhardt, The Bureau of Melodramatic Research, Pakui Hardware, Ralo Mayer

16-17/03/2017. (THU-FRI) 6 pm – 8 pm
Miklós Erhardt, The Bureau of Melodramatic Research, Pakui Hardware, Ralo Mayer
Curator: Borbála Szalai
The lecture-performances will be in English

For the video-dokumentations of the lecture-performances please visit our YouTube channel.
The event is part of the Thought Sculpture lecture-performance series  happening between January and April 2017.


16/03/2017. (THU) 6 pm – 8 pm > Miklós Erhardt, The Bureau of Melodramatic Research

Miklós Erhardt :Instrumental

 
The performance-lecture is a reiteration of a liebling theme in the artist's work, involving melancholy, Bob Dylan and post-truth.
 
Miklós Erhardt (1966), media-artist, doing videos, ephemeral installations and context based works. Between 1998 and 2006 he worked in the Big Hope artist group on participatory projects. His work was included in exhibitions in Apex Art New York, Galerija Skc Belgrade, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, Wiener Secession and Manifesta 7. He is an associate professor of the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest, he lives and works in Vienna and Budapest.
 

Miklós
Erhardt : Instrumental Dove, 2016

The Bureau of Melodramatic Research: Lessons on Anything
 
Using the table as a stage to set up controversies on contemporary philosophical ideas and argue about the latest pop songs, the Bureau of Melodramatic Research will make a dialogue-performance where the phone is a speaker, smalltalk a script, and sometimes not. Where your side of the table is a representation and my side the real world and vice versa, the napkin a world and the teaspoon a thought. Like Flaubert’s characters Bouvard and Pécuchet, the Bureau is an expert in anything, from melodrama to philosophy - and in the end they are just complex copies, redundant to one another. The same half, repeated.
 
Audience is free to join, eavesdrop, check their feeds, drop out of the bar. On this stage, they can choose to be free as in a museum, engaged as in the theater.
 
“I ain't gonna do your laundry, I ain't your mama”.
 
The Bureau of Melodramatic Research is a dependent institution founded by Irina Gheorghe and Alina Popa to investigate the affective modulations of contemporary politics and the emotional performance of labour in the new economy. The Bureau’s explorations gradually extended to the intricate workings of alien, anonymous passions which connect us to an unhuman world at the core of ourselves. Their work was shown in Times Museum Guangzhou, WING Hong Kong, CCK Buenos Aires,MNAC Bucharest, bak Utrecht, mumok Vienna, Salonul de proiecte Bucharest, DEPO Istanbul, Ujazdowsky Castle Warsaw, messagesalon Zurich, Center for Visual Introspection Bucharest, etc.
 



17/03/2017 (FRI) 6 pm – 8 pm > Pakui Hardware, Ralo Mayer

Pakui Hardware: For Subjects with Perfect Knees
 
Pakui Hardware will take a walk around the loop of the paradox in which our biological bodies are entangled today: on the one hand, the body is under a constant pressure to enhance oneself, on the other – it is doomed to be left behind as an obsolete vehicle in relation to possible technological developments. Can we make a third hand here? The trajectory of this walk will include algorithmic ecology of High-Frequency Trading, ideas of Prometheanism, the promises of synthetic biology and the perils of perfect knees.
 
Pakui Hardware (Neringa Cerniauskaite and Ugnius Gelguda) began in 2014. The duo's work spans around the relationship between materiality, technology and economy. How technology is shaping current economy and the physical reality itself, including the human body. In relation to the velocity of technological development, the matter becomes both an obstacle and a vehicle. Their latest solo shows include venues of MUMOK, Vienna; ExoExo, Paris; kim? Contemporary Art Center, Riga; Jenifer Nails, Frankfurt; Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius; 321 Gallery, Brooklyn, New York; NADA New York. The artists have participated in group shows at Moscow Biennale for Young Art, Moscow Modern Art Museum (MMOMA) and Zacheta Project Room, Warsaw. The artists are IASPIS grant holders in Sweden.
 

Pakui Hardware: On the Ecology of Algorithms, 2014

Ralo Mayer: E.T.E. – Extra-Terrestrial Ecologies
 
On September 26, 1991, eight crewmembers began a two years mission inside the closed ecosystem Biosphere 2 near Oracle, Arizona. Their goals: exploring global ecological relationships and testing future life in space.
Unreliable synopsis of related events: E.T., in drag as post-Soviet consultant and blaring Nirvana’s just-released Nevermind, arrives in the Sonoran Desert to help out the Biospherians with a staged reading of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy. Liberal Martian organic-potato farmer Matt Damon talks to Trump’s chief strategist about his Biosphere 2 takeover. (Steve Jobs like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Joan Baez ♫). William Burroughs and Bucky Fuller hack redwood and Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” and psychedelic microdosing becomes Silicon Valley’s hot new business trip. In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni, aka De revolutionibus orbium coelestium—now solar-powered!
 
Ralo Mayer (1976) is an artist based in Vienna. His artistic investigations delineate ecologies of contemporary history linking the past, future and today’s science fiction. Based on a practice of extensive performative research, he creates multilayered storytelling settings in installations, videos, performances and texts. He has presented his work at international exhibitions, film festivals, and conferences, amongst others in Secession, Vienna, 21er Haus, Vienna; Kunsthalle, Vienna; University Museum and Art Gallery, Hong Kong; rotor, Graz; Kunstpavillon, Innsbruck; Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz; NGBK, Berlin; Transmission Gallery, Glasgow; Artspeak, Vancouver; SKC, Belgrad Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel; ARGOS, Brussels.

 
Ralo Mayer: Extra-Terrestrial Ecologists, 2016. Digital collage

Supported by:




EMBASSY OF THE REPUBLIC
OF LITHUANIA

TRAFÓ KORTÁRS MŰVÉSZETEK HÁZA
Box Office opening hours:
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  • studio and club performance days: 5 pm - 8:30 pm
  • other days: 5pm - 8 pm
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  • Closed on Mondays.
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