HOPE SANK TEETH INTO THE NIGHT / Apparatus 22
- exhibition, curator
Closer Art Center, Kiyv
23.01.2018 – 20.02.2018
This exhibition was accompanied by artist talk and “Positive Tension. Curating kit” (crossbreed of party and thinking get together on curating) organised at Closer Art Center.
The first solo show in Ukraine of Apparatus 22, HOPE SANK TEETH INTO THE NIGHT, is drawing on a odd viewpoint: understanding the day(time) as extension of the night(time); An afterthought of the afterdark. The exhibition is shaped as a direct, yet surprising answer to the very unique setting of the Closer Art Center. Associated with Closer – an iconic club of contemporary Kiyv set within a post-industrial complex, the exhibition space was, until recently, used for raves: it features hermetically closed interiors repurposed from typical “club” architecture. In troubled places – Kiyv included – clubbing proves to be a fierce escape from everyday routine. It can very well turn into a political gesture too. A survival strategy no doubt. First time shown in such a peculiar context, several new works and site specific versions of recent installations by Apparatus 22 are bringing to the fore the topic of resistance in the face of a tedious status quo. The collective is very much interested in clubbing as a social and political phenomenon, underlining its counter cultural narrative. Despite its commodification by the cultural mainstream, clubbing still provides a space in which to share common feelings and emotions as one of the most powerful tools for empowering a community.
In HOPE SANK TEETH INTO THE NIGHT exhibition Apparatus 22 is interested in the fragile after-afterparty evoking precisely a liminal state: in between escapism and its dramatic collision with reality, between excitement and tumultuousness, anxiety and daydreaming. How can we put the intensity, the feeling of unrest, the freedom of the (rave) nights at work to make some cracks in the ways our bleak reality functions? How can we shift our own perspective and transcend the everyday? And last but not least, how can hope be used as a powerful tool of critique in a situation of relativism, distinctive of the dominant discourse? It is not by chance that Apparatus 22 choose to navigate the cruel waters of reality under the flag of hope, a rather romantic gesture. To this effect, the group has even coined the term “SUPRAINFINIT”, indicating a parallel universe somewhere beyond the infinite; this state of SUPRAINFINIT, which is similar to our own world only at a superficial glance, turns into a utopian container for empowering their most audacious ideas about identity politics and cultural definitions. These kinds of ideas, all of them “ephemeral and beyond normalization, in fruitful incongruity with our reality and embedded prospects,” run through the very diverse works produced by Apparatus 22, including installations, performances, and texts. “Hope is a new oxygen,” not without pathos they say. It is difficult to disagree. An the works in this exhibition might prove one day to be more than a daydream.
Photography Natalia Diachenko
video-documentation on MITEC (RUS)
- exhibition, curator
Closer Art Center, Kiyv
23.01.2018 – 20.02.2018
This exhibition was accompanied by artist talk and “Positive Tension. Curating kit” (crossbreed of party and thinking get together on curating) organised at Closer Art Center.
The first solo show in Ukraine of Apparatus 22, HOPE SANK TEETH INTO THE NIGHT, is drawing on a odd viewpoint: understanding the day(time) as extension of the night(time); An afterthought of the afterdark. The exhibition is shaped as a direct, yet surprising answer to the very unique setting of the Closer Art Center. Associated with Closer – an iconic club of contemporary Kiyv set within a post-industrial complex, the exhibition space was, until recently, used for raves: it features hermetically closed interiors repurposed from typical “club” architecture. In troubled places – Kiyv included – clubbing proves to be a fierce escape from everyday routine. It can very well turn into a political gesture too. A survival strategy no doubt. First time shown in such a peculiar context, several new works and site specific versions of recent installations by Apparatus 22 are bringing to the fore the topic of resistance in the face of a tedious status quo. The collective is very much interested in clubbing as a social and political phenomenon, underlining its counter cultural narrative. Despite its commodification by the cultural mainstream, clubbing still provides a space in which to share common feelings and emotions as one of the most powerful tools for empowering a community.
In HOPE SANK TEETH INTO THE NIGHT exhibition Apparatus 22 is interested in the fragile after-afterparty evoking precisely a liminal state: in between escapism and its dramatic collision with reality, between excitement and tumultuousness, anxiety and daydreaming. How can we put the intensity, the feeling of unrest, the freedom of the (rave) nights at work to make some cracks in the ways our bleak reality functions? How can we shift our own perspective and transcend the everyday? And last but not least, how can hope be used as a powerful tool of critique in a situation of relativism, distinctive of the dominant discourse? It is not by chance that Apparatus 22 choose to navigate the cruel waters of reality under the flag of hope, a rather romantic gesture. To this effect, the group has even coined the term “SUPRAINFINIT”, indicating a parallel universe somewhere beyond the infinite; this state of SUPRAINFINIT, which is similar to our own world only at a superficial glance, turns into a utopian container for empowering their most audacious ideas about identity politics and cultural definitions. These kinds of ideas, all of them “ephemeral and beyond normalization, in fruitful incongruity with our reality and embedded prospects,” run through the very diverse works produced by Apparatus 22, including installations, performances, and texts. “Hope is a new oxygen,” not without pathos they say. It is difficult to disagree. An the works in this exhibition might prove one day to be more than a daydream.
Photography Natalia Diachenko
video-documentation on MITEC (RUS)
