If I Can't Dance Tonight with the Otolith Group & Will Holder

15/12/2009, 20:00 hrs

Upcoming 'Tonight' features the Otolith Group & Will Holder. The event includes the screening of the film 'Otolith III' and the presentation of the book 'A Long Time Between Suns', followed by a conversation with Anjalika Sagar, Kodwo Eshun, Will Holder, Grant Watson and Frederique Bergholtz. Read more »

Frascati, Nes 63, Amsterdam
Bookings: +31 (0)20 626 68 66, tickets €10 (€7,50 discount)

About the Otolith Group & Will Holder
The Otolith Group was formed in 2002 by London-based artists Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar. Their works, which include 'The Otolith Trilogy' (2003-09), 'Inner Time of Television' (2007) and 'Nervus Rerum' (2008), have been exhibited in museums and biennials worldwide, including Tate Britain, Hayward Gallery, International Center of Photography and Documenta 12. In 2006, If I Can't Dance... co-produced the film 'Otolith II'. Read more »

Will Holder is a designer and writer based in London. He recently curated 'Talk Show' at the ICA, and is editor of 'FR DAVID', published by de Appel, Amsterdam. He is currently editing and designing a biography of American composer Robert Ashley (with Alex Waterman), and rewriting William Morris’ 'News from Nowhere (An epoch of rest)' into a guide for design education and practise set in 2135.

back to top

Otholith III
Informed by Satyajit Ray's unmade screenplay 'The Alien' (1967) and Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Appunti per un film sull'India' ['Notes Towards a Film About India'] (1968), 'Otolith III' replays Ray's unrealised science fiction as a series of competing past potential futures, reanimating a cinematic concept marooned in history. According to its scenario, four of Ray’s principal protagonists - the Boy, the Industrialist, the Journalist, and the Engineer- attempt to locate their director, then cast their own characters from a range of figures appearing in disparate source footage, and at long last complete the film. 'Otolith III' is co-produced by The Showroom, Gasworks and Il Trifoglio Nero and is supported by a grant from Film London.

back to top

A Long Time Between Suns (2009)
'A Long Time Between Suns' is an archival assemblage that links the two stages of the exhibition by the same title that was the first solo show in London of The Otolith Group at Gasworks and The Showroom in 2009. 'A Long Time Between Suns' brings together the voiceover scripts of the three films with newly commissioned texts by T.J. Demos, Jean Matthee and Diana McCarty and texts already published by Mark Sinker and the Otolith Group. 'A Long Time Between Suns' has been designed by Will Holder and forms an archival assemblage that crosses a broad stratum of the Group’s practice in its intersection with the practices of interlocutors.

'A Long Time Between Suns' is co-published by Sternberg Press, Berlin/New York, The Showroom and Gasworks, London, MACBA, Barcelona, Fondazione Galleria Civica – Centro di Ricerca sulla Contemporaneità di Trento, and If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution.

back to top

If I Can't Dance Tonight is generously supported by the Mondriaan Foundation, SNS Reaalfonds, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds.

the jungle is a skyskraper
10/12/2009, 19:00 hrs, at M HKA

The performance the jungle is a skyscraper by Stefanie Seibold and Teresa Maria Diaz Nerio, revolves around the costume politics of Sun Ra and the Arkestra. Sun Ra (1914 – 1993) was an African-American jazz composer, musician, poet, philosopher and leader of the Arkestra, and a pioneer of Afrofuturism whose unconventional lifestyle and eclectic music brought him both fame and notoriety. The political motive behind his and the Arkestra’s musical performance concept was to literally incorporate the alienation to which they were subjected as a result of their blackness and project themselves into a beyond, that is, into outer space. In this performance concepts like consonance and dissonance, the known and the unknown are consequently renegotiated within the objects and unfoldings of the mis-en-scène, to be newly combined, presenting surfaces, textures and materials as the locus of the political. The performance will be part of the exhibition 'Textiles, Art and the Social Fabric'. Read more »

the jungle is a skyscraper is a co-production of If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution and M HKA, Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp.