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'I AM THE BEAT' DESIRE NIGHTS AT IMMA MUSEUM
'I AM THE BEAT' DESIRE NIGHTS AT IMMA MUSEUM
In response to the exhibition Desire: A Revision and the work of artist VALIE EXPORT, and presented in partnership with Kildare Village, independent curator Vaari Claffey presents 'I am the Beat', an intimate short programme of screenings of various artists’ films. The films are edited and combined with sound, light and other effects to explore desire in a physical and rhythmic experiment.
27 Feb 2020 / 17:30 / 2 hours
I AM THE BEAT
Continuing on her Sentient Series and the workBLUSHING, PINK AS FUCK, Londi creates a site-specific installation I AM THE BEAT (The HolyMountain Changing Places) responding to the theme of Desire: A Revision from the 20th Century to the Digital Age and the work of VALIE EXPORT.Consisting of a custom made photochromic sheet inhabited by two moving bodies, the installation takes the form of a white mountain, or a loosely covered animated sculpture. The installation is placed on the upper left side of the room overlooking the spectators, who are invited to sit on the floor and faces the end wall of the room where the projection of films and paintings takes central place. As the first screening begins, the lights are gradually lowered until the spectator is immersed in red light.The imagery on the screen changes from sexually implicit to explicit. The atmosphere is intimate. The mountain presents itself as glowing matter,electrified, bioluminescent like a jellyfish emitting lights.
The crowd engages with the film, incited, aroused,provoked. The light flashes back on. There is an interval. Now the mountain reappears in a harsh artificial white light, like the deflated costume of a naïve ghost, crumpled, its pointy edges softened, flat. Its mutation is accompanied by a growing rhythmic sound track. As the impalpable re molding occurs before the viewers’ eyes, the sheet is once again a mountain, growing in colour, becoming the shade of flesh, then vivid pink, then sexy magenta and finally violet, livid. The sheet seems to move, it is a body that swells,breathing like a monstrous formless matter, catching shadows between its folds and peaks before flattening out. It performed its 'impulsive liveliness' before it is censored back into the safe darkness of red lights which enfold the room again as a new film begins. The mountain is now retrieving back to whiteness;untraced, even, pristine like a blanket of snow or a clean sheet covering a sculpture, furniture, human bodies, lovers. The work engages in emotional exposures associated with psychological stimulation. As with Londi’s
painting BLUSHING, PINK AS FUCK it is also a meditation on the politics and history of the colour pink as a cultural construction to define sexual and gendered identity. Through its continual metamorphosis, it addresses what Rosi Braidotti describes in her Nomadic theory as ‘the schizophrenic mode that is characteristic of our era and the hybrid, sexualised nomadic subject we have become.’
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CURRENT
TALK: EMANUELE COCCIA AND ROMANA LONDI DETRUIRE, DIT-ELLE PLANET B, Climate Change And The New Sublime, Curated by Nicolas Bourriaud "Memory Shop" at Casa Wabi Curated by Nicolás Bourriaud. 'I AM THE BEAT' DESIRE NIGHTS AT IMMA MUSEUM 'GAIA HAS A THOUSAND NAMES' at ELGIZ MUSEUM curated by Tara Londi CASA WABI RESIDENCY Mademoiselle, Le Centre Régional d'Art Contemporain, Sète [July 2018 - January 2019] Rhapsodies @ PingPing, Brussels [September 2018] Played, Galerie Ebensperger [July 2018 - August 2018] Skinscapes @ Unit 1 Gallery [September 2017] Interview in ARTEVIST [September 2017] Art Night @ Whitechapel Gallery [July 2017] THE TIMES THEY ARE A’ CHANGIN’ (I WAS HERE, ME IN PLACE AND THE PLACE IN ME) (June 2017) The House of Penelope [January 2017] The Blue Hour, October 2016 Hestitika Magazine – Interview with Romana Londi [July 2016]
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