Performance and conversation surrounding Sacred Threads

Performances and conversations Sacred Threads image

Performance and conversation surrounding Sacred Threads. The entry to the exhibitions is free from 15:00 on. The event takes place in English.

15:00
Opening and reception of the public

15:30
Performance tool/툴 II by Mira Mann

tool / 툴 II is a live, multi-voice conversation between the host of a call-in radio show and different appearing characters about mysterious streams of water, bizarre phenomena, and rebuilding relationships. The stories narrated here bring together questions of the translatability of language and the associated misunderstandings, but they also touch upon the universality of stories and myths and their placeless, timeless sounds. For tool /툴 II, Mira Mann has linked old and new stories, interrogating the potential that reinvention and adaptation can offer – here, the gaze is drawn toward both the traditional and the other, at the intersection of global, social, ecological, and colonial contexts. The performance keys into Mira Mann’s interests in hybrid forms of narration, Korean folk songs, and pansori – a Korean genre of epic musical storytelling, performed by a singer and a drummer. The word pansori is formed of the syllables ‘pan’ (an outdoor playing field; place in which many people gather) and ‘sori’ (sound; music). tool / 툴 II is performed with Sarah Doolan.
Text: Gesa Huewe

17–18:30
Roundtable with Yasmin Afschar, Olga Generalova (curator of the exhibition), Mira Mann, José B. Segebre and Jura Shust

During the discussion, exhibited artists and guest speakers will explore how different generations of artists have used their artistic practices to engage with ancient cultures and reclaim disappearing folklore and mythical traditions from their cultural heritage. The focus will be on how indigenous knowledge and ancestral traditions are reinterpreted through a twenty-first-century lens, and remain committed to exploring the profound connections between spirituality, culture, contemporary society, and our relationship with nature.

Bios
Yasmin Afschar is a Swiss-Iranian curator, editor, and producer for contemporary art, based in Zurich. Currently the Interim-Director at Kunsthalle-Mainz, Yasmin is the former curator at Aargauer Kunsthaus in Aarau, Switzerland, and has been co-curating the nomadic discussion platform LE FOYER – IN PROCESS since 2018. Recently, she was appointed as a mediator by the New Patrons, an international initiative supporting public art projects commissioned by citizens. Exhibitions Yasmin organized include Emma Kunz Cosmos. A Visionary in Dialogue with Contemporary Art (Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau 2021 & Tabakalera, San Sebastián 2022) as well as solo exhibitions with Hannah Villiger (together with Madeleine Schuppli, Muzeum Susch 2023), and Denise Bertschi (Aargauer Kunsthaus 2019), among others. Yasmin is the first recipient of Asia Society Switzerland’s Curator Residency.

Olga Generalova (1986, Belarus) is co-founder and curator of the independent exhibition space Sentiment in Zurich.

Mira Mann’s (1993, Germany) practice includes time based and site specific modes of working, moving image, and cross-media settings in which they explore fictional spaces and storytelling as a medium for visualizing social structures, collective memory, and new narratives within the play of identities. Their discursive scenographies evolve around transcultural relations of human and non-human agents and the glitches they generate between experience and memory, reality and fiction. Recent exhibitions include Frac Île-de-France, les Réserves & Fondation Fiminco (2023), N/A (2023), Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und WesWalen (2023). Mira Mann is represented by Galerie DREI in Cologne.

A scholar and curator, José B. Segebre (any pronouns) received a PhD in Aesthetics/Philosophy at Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach (DE). Titled Aesthetics of Waiting: Queer, Feminist and Decolonial Perspectives, the project explores notions of unfreedom in contemporary art: waiting becomes a metaphor to describe how power temporizes and how aesthetic experience modulates hopes and expectations. José’s writings circulate in exhibition catalogues and academic journals. They also write fiction in Spanish and enjoy collaborating. With François Pisapia they host Full Moon Screenings (2019–), a travelling series of experimental events waxing and waning around food and moving images. José has lectured and organised workshops in universities, museums and artist-run spaces in Europe and México, currently teaching art theory at New York University in Berlin and at Kunsthochschule Kassel.

Jura Shust (1983, Belarus) explores the connection between ritual and escapism. His work combining sculpture, video, and installation redefines spiritual ecology. He is influenced by scientific research and blends archaic and futuristic perspectives to create mental landscapes. Jura Shust’s work is informed by ethnoreligious beliefs and biopolitical intentions. He has exhibited worldwide, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art GFZK in Leipzig (2022), the Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe (2021), and the Contemporary Art Museum S.M.A.K. in Ghent (2014). He is represented by the gallery Management in New York.