Opening:
Friday, June 22, 5 pm
Reading with Christoph Szalay:
Friday, June 22, 7:30 pm
- feast (n.) c. 1200, »secular celebration with feasting and entertainment« (often held on a church holiday); c. 1300, »religious anniversary characterized by rejoicing« (rather than fasting), from Old French feste »religious festival, holy day; holiday; market, fair; noise, racket; jest, fun« (12c., Modern French fête), from Vulgar Latin festa (fem. singular; also source of Italian festa, Spanish fiesta), from Latin festa »holidays, feasts, festal banquets,« noun use of neuter plural of festus »festive, joyful, merry,« related to feriae »holiday« and fanum »temple,« from Proto-Italic fasno- »temple,« from PIE dhis-no- »divine, holy; consecrated place,« suffixed form of PIE root dhes-, forming words for religious concepts.*
For this year’s Volkertmarkt summer festival in Vienna, Kevin Space invited Solitude fellows – visual artists Daniella Domingues and Ricardo Portilho, and the author Christoph Szalay – to reflect upon the traditions and rituals of the Festa/Volksfest and the concept of home and neighborhood.
Ricardo Portilho used the visual concept of the Brazilian »Festa Junina« as a starting point in thinking about forms and functions of festive visual patterns. In his work as a graphic designer, he is interested in ambiguities and paradoxes within the decorative moment – when things get unpredictable and become something else underlying the dominant narratives. Working with the author Christoph Szalay, who presented words and text fragments, Portilho assembled an installation that adapted, transformed, and challenged complex concepts of traditions and rituals; home and neighborhood. Daniella Domingues explored the direct surroundings, mapping surfaces from the neighboring area and placing altered and found objects within the installation.
By understanding the Festa/Volksfest as an encounter of poesis (making), praxis (political or collective activity) and poetry, rather than the impossibility of togetherness under capital or ideology, the artists initiated radical shifts in perspective as a tactic to incite political and social transformation. They produced a common space that is not only adaptable and affirmative but also explores the sometimes uneasy alliance of a gathering in a diverse society and neighborhood.
The intervention and the reading Poesis, Poetry and Praxis: or Love is Reality was part of Kevin Space’s ongoing series of exhibitions and interventions. The series explores different concepts and developments of spatial, social, cultural, and personal borders and the continuously shifting thresholds between us and them, I and the other, past and present.
Szalay wrote the evening’s central text:
von welchem Punkt auch immer du
in diesem Raum ausgehst, Liebling,
sei bestimmt in der Richtung, die du
einschlägst, weiche dennoch
zurück an den Stellen, an denen die
Böden nachgeben,
dear, embrace being lost, being
without names, being all names
sag nicht Lichtgestalt, sag being
soft ist the new XXX
Daniella Domingues is a Brazilian artist working in video, sculpture, drawing, writing, photography, and publishing. Her work explores how we relate to time and its materiality, and is often linked to the notion of territory and its flows. Her works have been shown in exhibitions in Brazil and abroad, such as Topologies of an Ad Hoc Future, Platforms Project, Athens (2018); When a wave rolls out and the next has not yet broken, Akademie Schloss Solitude Project Space, Stuttgart (2017); and Parking Lot, Kunsthalle São Paulo (2013). In 2014, she was an artist in residence at Paradise AiR in Matsudo-shi, Japan. In 2017, Domingues received the Illy Caffè Grant for the UNIDEE Program at Cittadellarte / Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella, Italy.
Ricardo Portilho lives and works in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He studied design in Belo Horizonte and completed his masters degree at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. His research projects take the language of graphic design as a starting point to deal with reality, and to produce work that can take form in various media and contexts. He has been running Entrecampo, a hybrid practice between a micropublishing house and a design studio, since 2015. That year he received the Illy Caffè Grant for the UNIDEE Program at Cittadellarte / Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella. His works have been exhibited at Cidade Gráfica, Itaú Cultural, São Paulo (2014), and the 10th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial (2013). He has been published in Piseagrama (2015), Abrigo Portátil (2016), and the anthology Masters of Rietveld: Dutch Design Education in the 21st Century(2008).
Christoph Szalay lives and works in Graz, Austria. He studied German language and literature in Graz, and Art in Context at the University of the Arts, Berlin. Szalay mainly writes poetry and hybrid prose. His recent projects and exhibitions include Volksfronten (steirischer herbst 2018, upcoming) when we turned off the light [we didn't see nothing], 89plus/Luma, Zurich (2017), SPACE=WOW (BUT I STILL MISS YOU, EARTH), chapbook, Spacecraft Press, Calgary (2017), Re-Considering Trieste or OH, HOW I WANTED TO BE YOUR BABY (but you wouldn't let me), publication in limited edition (100) in conjunction with AiR Trieste 2016, When I think of palace, lecture performance in three parts in cooperation with FORUM Stadtpark and steirischer herbst (2016). He is the coordinator for literature for the FORUM Stadtpark Graz.
In cooperation with Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, and Soybot e.V., Vienna
