The Program
On Ketty La Rocca / On Reception
Friart is hosting a two-day program that connects to and expands on current and previous exhibitions. The events include various formats such as poetry, moving image and lectures and will inaugurate an ongoing experimental series, which proposes to activate discourse and theory at Friart. The Program will be defined collectively and unfold with various contributions that are thought of as expanding the institution itself. It completes or hints at exhibitions, connects parallel narratives and indicates where we stand, what our current inspirations, or the subtexts of our work and passions are.
DAY 1: ON KETTY LA ROCCA
February 28
with Barbara Casavecchia, Camilla Paolino, Sally Schonfeldt
The first day of the program focuses on the artist Ketty La Rocca. Collages, writing, sculpture and video bear witness to the poetic and personal quest of an artist who explores the potential of human communication and the finitude of words, images and gestures. In her oeuvre, nonsense comes to play the strategic role of a poetic against the instrumentalization of language. Unlike many of her contemporaries, who were engaged in a feminist life, the artist decided to wage her struggle from within the artistic field, engaging in a more solitary resistance in this social universe largely structured by forces opposed to her. La Rocca’s practice was determined by a certain negativity, retreat, muteness and unreadability. Who, then, was it addressed to? Who then, and who now? Guest speakers and artists Barbara Casavecchia, Camilla Paolino and Sally Schonfeldt will contextualize her work and its relation to other feminist engagements of the time, as well as discuss the controversial relevance of her presence in the contemporary art context.
DAY 2: ON RECEPTION
February 29
co-hosted with Geraldine Tedder
with L’Acte pur, Chantal Kaufmann, Geraldine Tedder, Ian Wooldridge
The second day connects to questions posed in A House Is Not A Home / A Home Is Not A House (09.2019-01.2020) as well as more generally to important threads in the exhibition program at Friart. It will focus on what happens in spaces in-between: on our relationship to every-day objects, why we orient towards certain objects and not others, how distance and nearness are relevant in these relations and are often passed along from generation to generation but also, more specifically, on the charged space between viewer and artwork where (mis-) understanding can arise. It asks: How could one deviate from fixed definitions, conventional ways of looking or modes of reception we encounter daily? The contributions come together in their involvement with definitions of private and public space, a definition that is shaped by gender, sexuality, race and class. With films by Chantal Kaufmann, talks by Ian Wooldridge & Geraldine Tedder and a concert by L’Acte pur.
