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Westfailure
Press Release The Otolith Group
Westfailure
Project 88, Mumbai 11 - 31 January 2012
Project 88 is pleased to announce Westfailure, The Otolith Group’s first solo exhibition in Mumbai, in collaboration with British Council India.
The Otolith Group was founded in 2002 by Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar. The Turner Prize nominated artists, who live and work in London, are renowned for their videos, curatorial practice, writing, publications and development of discursive platforms for the close readings of documentary fictions.
Westfailure, the title of the exhibition chosen by the artists, has been adopted from The Westfailure System, the influential essay written by British economist Susan Strange in 1999. Westfailure is a homonymic pun that refers to the Westphalia System, the ‘international political system of states claiming exclusive authority and the monopoly of legitimate violence within their territorial limits’, named after the Treaty of Westphalia signed by the European powers, in Westphalia outside Munster, Germany in 1648.
Strange argued that in order to prosper, ‘production and trade required the security provided by the state. To survive, the state required the economic growth and the credit-creating system of finance. But the latter has now created three major problems that the political system, by its very nature, is incapable of solving. First, there is the major failure to manage and control the financial system- witness the Asian turmoil of 1997. Second, there is the failure to act for the protection of the environment. Third, there is a failure to preserve a socio-economic balance between the rich and the powerful and the poor and the weak.’ The result, Strange concluded, was that the ‘Westfailure system is thus failing Capitalism, the Planet and global (and national) society.’
As a term from the recent past of 1999, Westfailure looks forward to our present. Westfailure summarises the pervasive sense of life as it is lived today, in an ideological junkyard strewn with the wreckage of economic systems.
Since 2002, The Otolith Group has revisited episodes from the archives of the twentieth century in order to intervene into narratives that aim to capture futurity for market fundamentalism. Their work has proposed aesthetic hypotheses that emphasize methods of comparability and modes of connectability.
http://www.project88.in/#
Posted on: 02/01/2012
Press Release The Otolith Group
Westfailure
Project 88, Mumbai 11 - 31 January 2012
Project 88 is pleased to announce Westfailure, The Otolith Group’s first solo exhibition in Mumbai, in collaboration with British Council India.
The Otolith Group was founded in 2002 by Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar. The Turner Prize nominated artists, who live and work in London, are renowned for their videos, curatorial practice, writing, publications and development of discursive platforms for the close readings of documentary fictions.
Westfailure, the title of the exhibition chosen by the artists, has been adopted from The Westfailure System, the influential essay written by British economist Susan Strange in 1999. Westfailure is a homonymic pun that refers to the Westphalia System, the ‘international political system of states claiming exclusive authority and the monopoly of legitimate violence within their territorial limits’, named after the Treaty of Westphalia signed by the European powers, in Westphalia outside Munster, Germany in 1648.
Strange argued that in order to prosper, ‘production and trade required the security provided by the state. To survive, the state required the economic growth and the credit-creating system of finance. But the latter has now created three major problems that the political system, by its very nature, is incapable of solving. First, there is the major failure to manage and control the financial system- witness the Asian turmoil of 1997. Second, there is the failure to act for the protection of the environment. Third, there is a failure to preserve a socio-economic balance between the rich and the powerful and the poor and the weak.’ The result, Strange concluded, was that the ‘Westfailure system is thus failing Capitalism, the Planet and global (and national) society.’
As a term from the recent past of 1999, Westfailure looks forward to our present. Westfailure summarises the pervasive sense of life as it is lived today, in an ideological junkyard strewn with the wreckage of economic systems.
Since 2002, The Otolith Group has revisited episodes from the archives of the twentieth century in order to intervene into narratives that aim to capture futurity for market fundamentalism. Their work has proposed aesthetic hypotheses that emphasize methods of comparability and modes of connectability.
http://www.project88.in/#
Posted on: 02/01/2012
Jean Genet, Nottingham Contemporary
16 Jul 2011 - 02 Oct 2011
Marc Camille Chaimowicz; Emory Douglas; Latifa Echakhch; Alberto Giacometti; Mona Hatoum; The Otolith Group; Lili Reynaud–Dewar, and others.
This summer Nottingham Contemporary presents a major group exhibition reflecting on the life and art of Jean Genet – one of the most celebrated French novelists and playwrights of the 20th century, and probably its most scandalous. He led several lives but remained a writer in revolt.
Orphan, prisoner, deserter, vagabond, prostitute and petty thief, Genet turned brutal, abject experience into exalted and sexually feverish poetry – ’The Miracle of the Rose’ (1946) describes life in a penal colony.
By the late 50s he was writing absurdist, political theatre that attacked colonial oppression. His final book, Prisoner of Love, published posthumously in 1984, is an extraordinary memoir of the years he spent living alongside the Palestine Liberation Organisation and campaigning with the Black Panther Party.
Supported by Henry Moore Foundation, Fluxus (Franco–British Fund for Contemporary Art), and Arts Council England.
http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org
Posted on: 03/05/2011
16 Jul 2011 - 02 Oct 2011
Marc Camille Chaimowicz; Emory Douglas; Latifa Echakhch; Alberto Giacometti; Mona Hatoum; The Otolith Group; Lili Reynaud–Dewar, and others.
This summer Nottingham Contemporary presents a major group exhibition reflecting on the life and art of Jean Genet – one of the most celebrated French novelists and playwrights of the 20th century, and probably its most scandalous. He led several lives but remained a writer in revolt.
Orphan, prisoner, deserter, vagabond, prostitute and petty thief, Genet turned brutal, abject experience into exalted and sexually feverish poetry – ’The Miracle of the Rose’ (1946) describes life in a penal colony.
By the late 50s he was writing absurdist, political theatre that attacked colonial oppression. His final book, Prisoner of Love, published posthumously in 1984, is an extraordinary memoir of the years he spent living alongside the Palestine Liberation Organisation and campaigning with the Black Panther Party.
Supported by Henry Moore Foundation, Fluxus (Franco–British Fund for Contemporary Art), and Arts Council England.
http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org
Posted on: 03/05/2011
A Lure a Part Allure Apart at Bétonsalon, Paris
From 15th June until 23 July 2011
Opening 14 June 2011
The Otolith Group will present their first exhibition in a French institution.
Amongst other elements, the exhibition will show the Otolith Group’s first film trilogy, Otolith I, II and III (2003-09), and will be articulated around a set of events with the artists and some of their collaborators. These include the launch of the latest issue of the journal Third Text, guest edited by Kodwo Eshun and Ros Gray and entitled ’The Militant Image: a Ciné-geography’. Taking place on Friday 17 June in the framework of Bétonsalon’s offsite seminar ’Under the free sky of history’ [lien] at musée du quai Branly, the launch will be followed by a study day (also at the museum) curated by Teresa Castro (researcher at Paris 3 University) around cinematograhic production in lusophone Africa. Another event, programmed for Saturday 2 July, will be proposed by curators Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez and Elena Sorokina in the context of their ‘Communism’s Afterlives’ seminar.
http://www.betonsalon.net
Posted on: 02/05/2011
From 15th June until 23 July 2011
Opening 14 June 2011
The Otolith Group will present their first exhibition in a French institution.
Amongst other elements, the exhibition will show the Otolith Group’s first film trilogy, Otolith I, II and III (2003-09), and will be articulated around a set of events with the artists and some of their collaborators. These include the launch of the latest issue of the journal Third Text, guest edited by Kodwo Eshun and Ros Gray and entitled ’The Militant Image: a Ciné-geography’. Taking place on Friday 17 June in the framework of Bétonsalon’s offsite seminar ’Under the free sky of history’ [lien] at musée du quai Branly, the launch will be followed by a study day (also at the museum) curated by Teresa Castro (researcher at Paris 3 University) around cinematograhic production in lusophone Africa. Another event, programmed for Saturday 2 July, will be proposed by curators Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez and Elena Sorokina in the context of their ‘Communism’s Afterlives’ seminar.
http://www.betonsalon.net
Posted on: 02/05/2011
Presentation at MACBA
Saturday May 21 from 10.30 am to 2 pm
The Otolith Group will present a series of speculations on questions of hydropolitics and hydroaesthetics that emerge from Hydra Decapita (2010), the first work in the Group's new trilogy. These speculations constitute a partial inventory of preoccupations and obsessions that occupy the Group's anxieties and continue to feed their fascinations; an unidentified number of these preoccupations and these obsessions have inspired and continue to inspire, obliquely, the forms of thinking of work to come.
Joined by the historian and activist Marcus Rediker (University of Pittsburgh)and moderated by Alex Farquharson, director of Nottigngham Contemporary. This session will explore the conceptual framework that underlies Hydra Decapita and the exhibition Hydrarquia (produced by the LOOP Festival in collaboration with the Museu Marítim)
http://www.macba.cat
Posted on: 02/05/2011
Saturday May 21 from 10.30 am to 2 pm
The Otolith Group will present a series of speculations on questions of hydropolitics and hydroaesthetics that emerge from Hydra Decapita (2010), the first work in the Group's new trilogy. These speculations constitute a partial inventory of preoccupations and obsessions that occupy the Group's anxieties and continue to feed their fascinations; an unidentified number of these preoccupations and these obsessions have inspired and continue to inspire, obliquely, the forms of thinking of work to come.
Joined by the historian and activist Marcus Rediker (University of Pittsburgh)and moderated by Alex Farquharson, director of Nottigngham Contemporary. This session will explore the conceptual framework that underlies Hydra Decapita and the exhibition Hydrarquia (produced by the LOOP Festival in collaboration with the Museu Marítim)
http://www.macba.cat
Posted on: 02/05/2011
The Otolith Group at ALIAS - Kraków Photomonth 2011
The Otolith Group's film Nervus Rerum will be shown as part of ALIAS - Kraków Photomonth 2011, Poland curated by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin
13 May - 12 June 2011
http://www.photomonth.com
Posted on: 01/05/2011
The Otolith Group's film Nervus Rerum will be shown as part of ALIAS - Kraków Photomonth 2011, Poland curated by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin
13 May - 12 June 2011
http://www.photomonth.com
Posted on: 01/05/2011
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© The Otolith Group 2012. All rights reserved.
Site Design Qubik / Programming Spencer Roberts
Subscribe to our mailing list:
© The Otolith Group 2012. All rights reserved.
Site Design Qubik / Programming Spencer Roberts