Liu Chuang, The Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland, Philippe Parreno, Beatriz Santiago Munoz, Janek Simon, Wang Wei, Hu Xiangqian. The show explores the critically reflexive ways in which artists utilise mainstream cultural and social structures.
Group show
Liu Chuang, The Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland, Philippe Parreno, Beatriz Santiago Munoz, Janek Simon, Wang Wei, Hu Xiangqian
Slash Fiction explores the critically reflexive ways in which artists
utilise mainstream cultural and social structures. The selected artists
operate and participate within major systems or languages such as party
politics, advertising, colonisation and the internet. The results are
often implicitly challenging to the ways those systems work.
Slash Fiction presents works by six international artists. Among these
works is Wang Wei's ambitious exhibition design that will work in
tension with the expected dynamics of an exhibition space and the works
themselves. Janek Simon’s use of information and materials gained
only from the World Wide Web will demonstrate how easy it is to make almost
anything given enough time, patience and bandwidth. Philippe
Parreno's short, cryptic work The dream of a thing (see
below) sits as an unexplained anomaly amongst the more bombastic language
and style of cinema advertising. In his video of the performance Flying
Blue Flag, Hu Xiangqian entered local politics and made his bid to
become town leader.
The Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland will annex Gasworks as a territory for
the duration of the exhibition.*
Hu Xiangqian, Wang Wei and Liu Chuang are participating in Gasworks
International Residency Programme between January and March 2007,
developing projects for the exhibition.
Curated by Nav Haq and Mia Jankowicz.
* Non-citizens will require a visa to enter the Kingdoms. Applications for
visa entry can be made at the border.
Offsite: El sueno de una cosa (The dream of a thing)
Curzon Soho and Renoir Cinema, London
During the exhibition, Philippe Parreno's one-minute work The dream of a
thing will be screened during the advertising showreel prior to all
feature films at two of London's premier art house cinemas. Please see
Curzon Cinemas' website for listings.
Events
Wednesday 4 April, 6.30pm
During the preview, the annexing of Gasworks by The Kingdoms of
Elgaland-Vargaland will be officially declared with a ceremonial address
by Carl Michael von Hausswolff, King of Vargaland.
Saturday 21 April, 3pm
Shumon Basar, architect and an editor of Tank Magazine and sexymachinery,
will discuss the exhibition with its curators Nav Haq and Mia Jankowicz.
The discussion will be followed by screenings:
Newsflash RBTF television, 2007 (9 mins). A newsflash, screened recently
on Belgian public television, announced fictitiously that Belgium’s
Flemish population was declaring its independence. The newsreel played with
contemporary political anxiety and tensions between Flemish and French
speaking communities.
Thriller, Sally Potter, 1979 (34 mins). In this retelling of Puccini's
La Bohème, the character Mimi attempts to understand the reasons
for her death. This rarely screened feminist classic unpicks the
gendered structures of the thriller.
Sunday 27 May
The Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland will celebrate their 15th anniversary
at Gasworks on the closing day of the show. The national anthem will be
broadcast on ResonanceFM from 11am-12pm. Carl Michael von Hausswolff and
his UK Ambassador will give an audience to subjects and tourists at 3pm
at Gasworks.
Preview: Wednesday 4 April, 6.30-9pm
Gasworks
155 Vauxhall Street - London
Admission is free.