»POSTCARDS OF A HUMAN LANDSCAPE«

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​POSTCARDS OF A HUMAN LANDSCAPE

Postcards of a Human Landscape is the title of Akademie Schloss Solitude’s fall program which includes exhibitions, film screenings, and a framework program. Postcards of a Human Landscape outlines a man-made surrounding that has been created and modified by representation, media, and by technological progress. It affects our present and also has an effect on how history is being narrated and interpreted. 

On September 20, the Akademie Schloss Solitude opens the exhibitions Past Future Perfect by Marina Gioti and Sensing Landscape by Saadia Mirza. The exhibitions will be on view until December 2018 and will be accompanied by a framework progam which starts on September 21 with the screening of the essay film Off-White Tulips by Aykan Safoğlu and a talk by the curator Marina Fokidis. The closing event of Postcards of a Human Landscape is the Winter Feast Punch in the Snow with readings, performances and open studios by current Solitude fellows. 

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EXHIBITION

Marina Gioti
Past Future Perfect

September 21 to December 7, 2018
Opening: September 20, 2018, 7 pm

During and after WWII and through the 1960s, in the industrial nations and the world techno-scientific progress was seen as the driver of history. These so-called golden years of science where characterized by immediate implementation, limited corporate accountability, and the motto: »Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms”«. Past Future Perfect is pondering on the things that this promising future past »would have brought« or »delivered not necessarily as advertised«, yet left their indelible mark in our present and recent past and in some cases still compromise our future. What followed is more or less known; besides spaceships, superhighways, benevolent robots and complex kitchen gadgets, we also got deadlier wars, industrial accidents, overwhelming pollution and climate change. Without using any explicit visual reference to these dystopian effects, the work delves into an industrial archaeology of the time that the future was all ours, which is not exactly the case in our time.

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EXHIBITION

Saadia Mirza
Sensing Landscape

September 21 to December 7, 2018
Opening: September 20, 2018, 7 pm

To make a map is to give order to the world – to give it a »reasonableness which it doesn’t necessarily possess«. Maps describe more than the biophysical constitution of territory, revealing instead an obsession with exactness and measurement; opening up a biography of observation, control, and knowledge. Featuring visualizations and mappings of conflicted landscapes in Southern Afghanistan during the 2001–2014 war, this installation stems from a research project that analyzed the strategic importance of the most conflicted landscapes in the area using geospatial analysis. This installation exposes not the truth-value, but instead the peculiar nature of remotely sensed data that is assembled by an analyst. Aesthetics and objective knowledge are entangled through a purely optical rendering, that makes it at once as subjective and qualitative as it is evidentiary, revealing the politics and aesthetics of remote sensing. It lays bare my map of Afghanistan from the Afghanistan of my map.

The installation features the collaboration with artist, composer and performer, Antoni Rayzhekov, in the form of a sonification of the project’s image-data, maps and the topography represented. The soundscape is thus an expansion of his distinct project Organic Oscillators.

Acknowledgements: This project was originally developed through conversations with archaeologists and geographers at the Centre for Ancient Middle Eastern Landscapes (CAMEL) at the University of Chicago.

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ESSAY FILM

Aykan Safoğlu
Off-White Tulips

Screening: September 21, 2018, 5.30 pm
Please check the schedule of the guided-tours for further dates

»Off-White Tulips is conceived as a fictional dialogue with James Baldwin that focuses on his prolonged stay in Istanbul. Found documents and re-signified objects are manipulated to layer Baldwin’s identity as an Afro-American gay author with the narrator’s personal history. The associative narrative extends with references to Turkish and American pop-icons, investigations into etymology and self-reflexive comments on visual representation towards a situated critique of racism. – İz Öztat.«

Turkey/Gernany, 2013, 24 min. In Turkish language with English subtitles.
The artist will be present on September 21.

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DISCOURSE

Marina Fokidis
Going South

Lecture: September 21, 2018, 7 pm

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ART EDUCATION

Guided tours through the exhbitions Past Future Perfect by Marina Gioti and Sensing Landscape by Saadia Mirza and screenings of the essay film Off-White Tulips by Aykan Safoğlu

September 30, 2018

2 pm: Guided tour by Denise Helene Sumi (Art coordination)
3 pm: Film screening Off-White Tulips, Turkish with German subtitles

October 28, 2018

2 pm: Guided tour by Lukas Ludwig (Art coordination)
3 pm: Film screening Off-White Tulips, Turkish with German subtitles

November 25, 2018

2 pm: Guided tour by Johanna Markert (Art coordination)
3 pm: Film screening Off-White Tulips, Turkish with German subtitles

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WINTER FEAST

Punch in the Snow
With current Solitude fellows

December 7, 2018, 5 to 10 pm

Finissage of the exhibitions by Marina Gioti and Saadia Mirza as well as open studios, concerts and readings by current fellows from Israel, Indonesia, Austria, Germany, Belgium, USA and Switzerland.
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The exhibitions are on view from September 21 to December 7, 2018
Opening hours: Tue–Thur: 10 am–12 pm, 2–5 pm, Fri: 10 am–12 pm, 2–4 pm, Sat–Sun: 12–5 pm (from November 12–4 pm)

All events take place at Akademie Schloss Solitude. Free entry!

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