Beyond An Event Horizon
As said by writer and curator Irit Rogoff, there is a recognition “that the subjects and the forms we have inherited neither accommodate the complex realities we are trying to live out, nor the ever more attenuated ways we have of thinking about them.”[1] Contemplating the community of young artists from Cyprus, the myriad of situations, localities and subjects present a constellation of materials and ideas that, as Rogoff says, play out our complex realities: appearing intricately entwined even as they exist seemingly amidst contradictions and impossibilities. Looking toward a dialogical praxis where “art as a material practice be[comes] inseparable from art as discursive practice”[2], the work created by this community can be seen as an elongated conversation and a site of generative activity. Expounded beyond a set framework, the inheritance of place is contextualised within the ever increasing transient and globalised world of artistic production.
Embracing a durational, open-ended collaboration – in which authorship is removed from constraints – the gallery is introduced as the site of social production and a place in which material presented remains fluid “deftly avoid[ing] the stillness of a … exhibition through an evolving rehearsal of the objects themselves”[3]. Bringing together these two states – a constellation of conversations between the young artists of Cyprus and the practice of exhibition making as a collaborative and experimental process – Beyond An Event Horizonseeks to open up the context of place and identity in the formation of an artistic community, and consciously question if the distinct social, political and physical landscape of Cyprus has an innate influence on the participants collective practice.
[1] Irit Rogoff, ‘Smuggling’ - An Embodied Criticality, transform.eipcp.net, 2008
[2] Paul O’Neill, The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s), (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012), p 18.
[3] Sophia Hao, A Cut A Scratch A Score: a comic opera in three parts, Cooper Gallery, http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/exhibitions/cutascratchascore/ (accessed 8 November 2015)
By Emily Gray and Leontios Toumpouris
