The Registry of Promise
dal 23/1/2015 al 28/3/2015
Segnalato da
Becky Beasley
Michael Dean
Jean Luc Moulene
Matt Mullican
Reto Pulfer
Lucy Skaer
Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli
Chris Sharp
23/1/2015
The Registry of Promise
De Vleeshal, Middelburg
'The Registry of Promise' is a series of exhibitions that reflect on our increasingly fraught relationship with what the future may or may not hold in store for us. These exhibitions engage and play upon the various readings of promise as something that simultaneously anticipates a future.
Curated by Chris Sharp
The Registry of Promise is a series of exhibitions that reflect on our increasingly fraught relationship with what the future may or may not hold in store for us. These exhibitions engage and play upon the various readings of promise as something that simultaneously anticipates a future, its fulfillment or lack thereof, as well as a kind of inevitability, both positive or negative. Such polyvalence assumes a particular poignance in the current historical moment.
Given that the technological and scientific notions of progress inaugurated by the enlightenment no longer have the same purchase they once did, we have long since abandoned the linear vision of the future the enlightenment once betokened. Meanwhile, what is coming to substitute our former conception would hardly seem to be a substitute at all: the looming specter of global ecological catastrophe. From the anthropocentric promise of modernity, it would seem we have turned to a negative faith in the post-human. And yet the future is not necessarily a closed book. Far from fatalistic, The Registry of Promisetakes into consideration these varying modes of the future while trying to conceive of others. In doing so, it seeks to valorize the potential polyvalence and mutability at the heart of the word promise. Taking place over the course of approximately one year, The Registry of Promise consists of four autonomous, inter-related exhibitions, which can be read as individual chapters in a book.
It has been inaugurated by The Promise of Melancholy and Ecology at the Fondazione Giuliani, Rome, then followed by The Promise of Multiple Temporalities at Parc Saint Léger, Pougues-Les-Eaux, then The Promise of Moving Things at Le Crédac, Ivry, and will conclude with The Promise of Literature, Soothsaying and Speaking in Tongues at De Vleeshal, Middelburg
Image: Michael Dean, hnnnhhnnn-hnnnhnnnnh (Analogue series), 2014. Book, ink, 16 x 23 x 9 cm. Courtesy the artist, Herald St. London, Supportico Lopez Berlin.
Press Contatc:
Simon Blaas, simon@vleeshal.nl
Opening: Saturday, January 24, 5–8pm
De Kabinetten van De Vleeshal
Zusterstraat 7
Middelburg
The Netherlands
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 1–5pm
Admission free