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4/7/2014

Positions

Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven

Curator Nick Aikens

On Saturday 5 July, the Van Abbemuseum opens the first edition of Positions, with contributions by five international artists: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Céline Condorelli, Bouchra Khalili, Charles van Otterdijk, and Koki Tanaka.

Positions is a new exhibition format that sets a series of projects in dialogue with one another in the ten galleries of the museum's old building. With each artist presenting a significant body of work, many produced for the exhibition and others developed through collaborations with art organisations throughout the world, Positions explores different tones of contemporary artistic voices.

The five distinct presentations examine how we position ourselves in the world today – often making visible frameworks, subjects and ideas that are felt but not seen. The exhibition unfolds as a conversation between a series of installations, films and architectural interventions that move between different geographical and political contexts and invite us to consider how agency - collective or individual - is both granted and taken away.

The conversation between the artists in Positions does not follow one particular thre ad or trajectory; rather questions surface and re-emerge from vastly different positions. Projects by Charles van Otterdijk, Lawrence Abu Hamdan and Bouchra Khalili look at how different sites, locations and even nation states are administered and controlled - and, by inference, how subjects administer their own agency in the world. From an undisclosed site on the Polish-German border to the streets of Cairo to immigrants in Paris, Genoa and New York, a dialogue emerges across different contexts and the people that both control and inhabit these sites. Punctuating these, Céline Condorelli and Koki Tanaka, through a series of objects and happenings, instigate moments of allegiance and shared experience that reveal how alliances, friendships and notions of collectivity create modest but vital moments of political potential. Together, the different projects presented, demand that the viewer engage with a range of contexts and ideas with the position and agency in question oscillating between the subject under discussion, that of the artist and the viewer.

Positions 2014 includes

Lawrence Abu Hamdan ((1985, Jordan), Tape Echo , 2013-2014 Lawrence Abu Hamdan will present Tape Echo , co- commissioned with Beirut in Cairo and including a new video work produced for Positions . With Tape Echo Abu Hamdan proposes a series of methods for documenting and intervening within of Cairo's dense audio urbanity, looking at how voices are distributed and hearing is damaged within of the city's rapidly changing sonic conditions.

Céline Condorelli (1974, France), The Company She Keeps , 2014 Céline Condorelli’s work is concerned with how all human action takes place amidst what she has termed ‘support structures’ – whether emotional, legal or physical – which are mostly taken for granted, and therefore seem invisible. The Company She Keeps presents a series of new objects, installations and interventions in the galleries that develop from her ongoing engagement with friendship as a condition for working and living together. At the centre of the installation is the publication The Company She Keeps (published by Book Works, Chisenhale Gallery and Van Abbemuseum) which includes a series of conversations between the artist and friends on the philosophy, politics and history of friendship.

Bouchra Khalili (1975, Morocco), The Speeches Series , video trilogy, 2012-2013 French-Moroccan artist Bouchra Khalili will present the three-part work The Speeches Series – shown together for the first time in Positions. The Speeches Series is built around three films, each comprised of five speeches by migrants that Khalili has collaborated closely with in Paris, Genoa and New York. The films focus respectively on mother tongues and dialects, citizenship, and working class.

Charles van Otterdijk (1976, the Netherlands), Double Centre , 2013-14 Charles van Otterdijk’s project Double Centre is based around two locations on the Polish-German border. Through photographs, research material and a highly evocative installation Double Centre addresses the culture of surveillance and the way in which information is controlled and mediated – by the artist himself and, by inference, to society at large. First presented in Stroom Den Haag (2013) this second ‘Situation Report’ from these sites includes new objects produced for Positions . The publication Double Centre was published by Book Works, Van Abbemuseum and Stroom Den Haag in 2013

Koki Tanaka (1975, Japan), Precarious Tasks , 2012 – ongoing Koki Tanaka’s Precarious Tasks , developed over the past few years in cities throughout the world, are humble acts of collectivity conceived in the immediate aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake in Japan and the resulting Fukushima disaster. In Positions they are presented through an ambitious, architectural installation with documentation, statements and ephemera from the tasks. Tanaka will carry out two new tasks in Eindhoven, commissioned for Positions.

Collaboration partners The projects were realised in collaboration with: Beirut, Cairo; Book Works, London; Chisenhale Gallery, London; Museum as Hub; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Stroom Den Haag.

Image: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Hypocrisy, 2013. Courtesy the artist

Press contact:
Ilse Cornelis, Communication & Press Phone: +31 (0)40 2381019 Mail: i.cornelis@vanabbemuseum.nl

Van Abbemuseum
Bilderdijklaan 10 - 5611 NH Eindhoven The Netherlands
Opening hours: Tuesdays to Sundays from 11:00 to 17:00 hours.
Every first Thursday evening the museum is open until 21:00 hours.
From 17:00 hours the admission is free.
Admission
Adults € 12,-
Children under 13 years of age free
Young people from 13-18 years € 6,-
Groups of 10 or more € 9,-
Students € 6,-.
Holders of 'Museumkaart' / Rembrandt pas free

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