To be or not to be: a false dichotomy

Shoreditch Town Hall, London

Using the unearthly tone of Hamlet's self-inquiry, and the ambiguity it unveils, as a torch by which to illuminate its chambers and corridors; the show invites thirteen artists working with different strategies to explore the theme of division of the self.

comunicato stampa

curated by Dunia Mauro

We are pleased to announce the exhibition to be or not to be: a false dichotomy, in the basement of The Shoreditch Town Hall, from 22nd October.

The term dichotomy comes from the Greek dichotomia – “a splitting of a whole into exactly two non-overlapping parts”. A false dichotomy, on the other hand, “is a logical fallacy consisting of a supposed dichotomy, which fails one or both of the conditions: it is not jointly exhaustive and neither is it mutually exclusive”. A dichotomy is, in a sense, a sort of thinking system, the basic building blocks of a Hegelian synthesis.

“To be or not to be– that is the question.”

The opening words of the most famous literary soliloquy also mark the beginning of a human struggle. Hamlet raises a false dilemma.
His dilemma is not only about being (living) or not being (dying) but also about the overlapping possibilities of the dualism between dream and reality, sanity and insanity. This suggests that there is not just one way of being or not being but a dichotomy-breaking third possibility; being and not being at the same time.

Hamlet wonders how to exist; in what shape, space and time. For a long time he doesn’t enact his struggles but thinks them, teetering on the edge of a madness which actually engulfs Ophelia. She embodies his psychological tortures. She dreams. She becomes mad. She dies. But if we consider dying as the end of Hamlet’s state of thinking, dying becomes a different way of being. The dichotomy of “being or not being” harmonises to form an alternative condition that accepts everything.

Using the unearthly tone of Hamlet’s self-inquiry, and the ambiguity it unveils, as a torch by which to illuminate its chambers and corridors; the show invites thirteen artists working with different strategies to explore the theme of division of the self. The works in this show embrace the possibilities thrown up by the paradoxes inherent in our collective human drama.

Artists: Matt Ager,Colin Allen,Thomas Crane, Will Cruickshank, Ilua Hauck da Silva , Simona Di Lascio, Crestina Velia Forcina, Jeny Jhonson, Marisol Malatesta, Dunia Mauro, Wayne Robert Parker, Lenka Rayn H., Adam Zoltowsky
Private view: 21 October 2010, 6-10pm

Shoreditch Town Hall
380 Old Street - London
Opening times: Mon - Fri 10 am - 6 pm, Sat - Sun 12am - 5pm

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permanent link

Shoreditch Town Hall

IN ARCHIVIO [4]

Whistling In The Dark
dal 5/10/2011 al 7/10/2011