The exhibition is named after the movie by Krzysztof Kieslowski. It proposes an ontological thought about the relationship between the human body and its socialized environment. The artworks assembled for this exhibition propose a disturbed physicality, in which physical experience is directly confronted with history or society's insights. The relationship between old and new, body and power, belief and illusion, the individual and society and human and history are questioned through these artworks that have been compiled as a narrative web.
Curator: Emilie Oursel
Artists : Claire
Fontaine, Dora Garcia, Eric Martijn, Tania Mouraud, Bik van der Pol
Project room: William Lamson
The first exhibition in Nieuwe Vide this
year; 'Blind chance and possible futures', named after the movie by
Krzysztof Kieslowski, proposes an ontological thought about the
relationship between the human body and its socialized environment. The
artworks assembled for this exhibition propose a disturbed physicality, in
which physical experience is directly confronted with history or society's
insights. Dora Garcia's installation 'Intolerable Luz', Tania Mouraud's
work 'I have a dream', Claire Fontaine's 'State of Exception' and Bik van
der Pol's installation 'The Disappearance Piece' describe the many ways in
which humans deal with their environment, whether it may be interacting
with it, struggling against it or escaping from it. The artist Eric
Martijn will make a direct intervention in Nieuwe Vide's building, by
cutting out its walls and turning them up side down to build up a new
exhibition space. The relationship between old and new, body and power,
belief and illusion, the individual and society, human and history are
questioned through these artworks that have been compiled as a narrative
web. The exhibition itself will embody the tension of time and space, by
letting the artworks disappear little by little, until the exhibition has
entirely been removed by the last week, as if nothing had taken place
inside.
The exhibition 'Blind chance and possible futures' is thus an
experience into the complex relationship between body/mind and space, with
the human being as the central point. Deleuze defines the human body as a
matrix of flux, which surpasses the simple physical limit of the organic
body. The body has experiences in different types of physical and mental
relations or extensions toward society. Experiencing an environment thus
becomes a way to interact with it and to change it. History and society
are therefore, human creations mirroring their creator, containing within
themselves an inner power on a collective level. The tensions between a
body and its environment become tensions between an individual and a
socialized context, where different issues are played, like freedom of
action, protest, persuasion, manipulation and knowledge as a political
act. Deleuze, and before him Spinoza, draws the attention to the human
body, as containing an inner power of action, the one giving rights,
leading to actions. When power becomes a collective thing, power can thus
turn into the right to override others. Deleuze tried to find an answer
to this power relation. When he speaks about the 'Body without organs' as
a final state of equilibrium, it has to be questioned then, if this final
state, the state of intensities, is not a state of disappearance? This
exhibition embodies the tensions between the relationship experienced by
humans with society and history.It questions if disappearing is not the
in-between space of imagination, in which human escapes all
contextualisation to connect with his very deep self.
The movie 'Blind
chance' by Krzysztof Kieslowski explores the three different achievements
from the life of an imaginary character called Witek. The character takes
three different decisions which lead him to follow different plans in life
: political, religious or professional. A most interesting point is the
way in which Witek's very wish, to leave Poland to go to Paris, is
constantly confronted with history and society's own development. History,
as Milan Kundera says, appears like a big joke which never brings the
character to where he desires to go. The tensions and final confrontation
between the individual, history and society appears in its paroxysm, and
the only moment when Witek is going to achieve his wish, it ends with his
brutal disappearance. Is disappearance a choice of your own or is it
determined by the environment?
Opening : Saturday February 7th from 16:00h to 19:00h
Nieuwe Vide
Minckelersweg 6 - Haarlem