Conversation - Grazer Kunstverein

Ezio Gribaudo’s exhibition The Weight of the Concrete culminates with a series of events exploring the nexus of concrete poetry, publishing, graphic design, typography, feminism, and performance, inspired by Gribaudo and Adriano Spatola’s pioneering publication Il Peso del Concreto (1968). The series marks the end of an exhibition and sets the stage for a forthcoming publication published by Axis Axis and Grazer Kunstverein and edited by Tom Engels and Lilou Vidal, revisiting Gribaudo’s legacy and intertwining his graphic work with new and historical experimental poetry, slated for summer 2024 release.

Andrea di Serego Alighieri will focus on the distinct recto/verso format of Il Peso del Concreto [The Weight of the Concrete], as the book presents a unique duality: one side of the page showcases Gribaudo’s artwork, while the opposite side features an anthology of concrete poetry composed by the poet Spatola. As a response to this anthology, he will explore the work of Italian poet Amelia Rosselli (1930–1996) and examine her unique perspective on writing as both a graphic and bodily act of inscription and decipherment, an interplay she described as a fusion of “muscular movements and mental forms.” He will shed light on how this concept of physical inscription resonates with Gribaudo’s Logogrifi, discussing the tangible and performative dimensions of the page, extending it to his research on embossed squeeze papers used in epigraphy to archive inscriptions from antiquity.

ANDREA DI SEREGO ALIGHIERI (b. 1988, Italy) is a writer, editor and typographer based in Brussels. He studied Graphic Design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Comparative Literature at the University of Amsterdam. Between 2014/2015 he was a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie. He is the co-editor of “Resistance” by Lyn Hejinian (uh books, 2019) and translator of Simone Forti’s L’orso allo specchio (Kunstverein Publishing & Galleria Raffaella Cortese, 2020). Recently, he co-edited and authored Glossator 11 (Open Humanities Press, 2021), FR DAVID “Take, Eat” (KW Institute for Contemporary Art & uh books, 2022) with Will Holder, and is the editor and translator of A Talk on Metrical Spaces by Amelia Rosselli (forthcoming for The Last Books). He is a lecturer in writing, typography and thesis tutor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, and a PhD candidate in Medieval & Modern Languages at the University of Oxford.

In their upcoming talk, Mónica de la Torre and Alex Balgiu will present their 2020 publication, Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979, an influential anthology that assembles concrete poems by women from the early stages of this avant-garde movement. This comprehensive collection highlights the contributions of 50 writers and artists from Europe, Japan, Latin America, and the United States, demonstrating how they challenged traditional conventions of genre, gender roles, and the patriarchal constraints on language and syntax. De la Torre and Balgiu will delve into the process behind compiling this anthology and share their personal reflections on the making of this publication, drawing from their experiences as poet, designer, and bibliophile, illuminating the collective endeavor to redefine poetry’s boundaries.

MÓNICA DE LA TORRE is the author of six books of poetry, of which the most recent, Repetition Nineteen (Nightboat), centers on experimental translation. Other collections include The Happy End/All Welcome (Ugly Duckling Presse)—a riff on a riff on Kafka’s Amerika—and Public Domain. Several of her books have been published in Mexico, among them Acúfenos and Taller de Taquimecanografía, written jointly with the eponymous women artists’ collective she co-founded. Recent art writing focuses on Cecilia Vicuña’s Palabrarmas series, Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s Photostats, and Ulises Carrión’s bookworks. She coedited Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959–79 (Primary Information) with Alex Balgiu. She is the recipient of the 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts C.D. Wright Award for Poetry and a 2022 Creative Capital grant and teaches poetry at Brooklyn College.

ALEX BALGIU is an educator, designerwriter and bookgatherer about the age of a Heidelberg GTO 52 press. Concerned with designing spaces for collective creativity and experimenting with various modes of transmission, you can catch him reading, playing and disseminating in Lausanne (Écal), Paris (Doc & Pca), Kyoto (Villa Kujoyama) or the bookshop next door. Or you can pick up Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-79, a collection of outstanding concrete poems by women edited together with Mónica de la Torre (NY: Primary Information, 2020). Do you love books too much? Then join Bibliomania, an ongoing series of editorial puppet shows created with Olivier Lebrun, touring around the world. Currently learning from the forest and the river.

Join us for the book launch of Borrowed, published Thkio Ppalies Project Space, Nicosia, and Grazer Kunstverein (2022).

Borrowed is a bi-lingual publication (English and Greek) that presents a series of visual essays and texts, exploring notions of sharing and indebtedness, writing and sentiment, appropriation and homage, memory and time. It is the outcome of Maria Toumazou’s fellowship with Formworks, a curatorial initiative developed by Evagoras Vanezis at Thkio Ppalies Project Space, Nicosia. The publication features contributions by Aristotelis Nikolas Mochloulis, Georgia Triantafyllidou, Maya Tounta, Koula Savvidou, Evagoras Vanezis, and Maria Toumazou herself.

The publication is co-published by Thkio Ppalies Project Space, Nicosia and Grazer Kunstverein. The realization of it is kindly supported by Hot Wheels Athens, and the Cultural Services of the Deputy Ministry of Culture, Cyprus.

Maria Toumazou, *In search of Marina Avraam (“Foetus”)*, 2021.

On the occasion of appendage, the solo exhibition by Iris Touliatou, Touliatou and Tom Engels, curator of the exhibition, will enter into a conversation to discuss the making of the exhibition and Touliatou’s work at large.

Dialoge is a discursive program organized by the newly founded Center for Contemporary Art at the University of Graz, which will take place from May 16-21 at the Grazer Kunstverein. Under the title Art – Political Responsibility – Social Justice the program examines current socio-political issues. The program focuses on political conflict zones in Europe, diversity in the context of questioning and redefining concepts of identity, as well as social justice, colonialism, and imperialism.

The fourth Dialog examines the intertwinement of acts of political self-determination with artistic practices. With contributions by Mark Nash (lecture), Yagazie Emezi (artist talk), Ryan Cosbert (artist talk), Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński (artist talk), and Florian Bieber (lecture).

For the most recent schedule, please visit the website of the Center for Contemporary Art, University of Graz.

The second Dialog, entitled Trust & Intransigence, will place a special emphasis on European conflict zones. It provides a platform for exchange between scholars and artists. With contributions by Saddam Jumaily (Artist Talk), Marita Muukkonen, Ivor Stodolsky (Conversation), Jasmina Cibic (Artist Talk), Alexandra Hammond (Performance), Ekaterina Degot (Statement), Vedran Dzihic (Lecture) and Anri Sala (Screening).

For the most recent schedule, please visit the website of the Center for Contemporary Art, University of Graz.

The first Dialog includes contributions by Wolfgang Meixner (book presentation), Marc Hill (book review), Steffen Schneider (statement), Renate Hansen-Kokoruš (lecture), and Djordje Čenić (artist talk and screening).

For the most recent schedule, please visit the website of the Center for Contemporary Art, University of Graz.

In the frame of Diagonale’22 – Festival of Austrian Film, the Grazer Kunstverein and Kunsthaus Graz join forces. In Rensonance, a joint film program, connects their exhibitions by Sandra Lahire and The Golden Pixel Cooperative, a Vienna-based feminist association for moving images. Drawing from their back catalog, The Golden Pixel Cooperative members respond to Terminals (1986), one of Lahire’s films. The program includes films by Christiana Perschon, Lydia Nsiah, and Enar de Dios Rodríguez, and examines practices of (self-)observation and the vulnerability of images, bodies, and environments. Together, they resound in a cinematic and intergenerational encounter.

The program includes:

Christiana Perschon, Double 8, 2016. 3 min.
Lydia Nsiah, distortion, 2016. 5 min.
Sandra Lahire, Terminals, 1986. 20 min.
Enar de Dios Rodríguez, Liquid Ground, 2021. 32 min.

The screening will be followed by a discussion between Katrin Bucher Trantow (Interim Director and Chief Curator Kunsthaus Graz), Enar de Dios Rodríguez (artist, GPC), Tom Engels (Artistic Director Grazer Kunstverein), and Antonia Rahofer (curator, GPC). The conversation will be moderated by Daniella Shreir (Another Gaze).

You can book tickets via the website of Diagonale’22.

In Resonance is realized in cooperation with Kunsthaus Graz and Diagonale’22.

The Golden Pixel Cooperative (GPC) is an association for moving image, art, and media founded in 2014. Located at the interface between exhibition space and cinema, its goal is to develop sustainable structures for the distribution, production, and mediation of moving image works by contemporary artists and to promote exchange and mutual support between them. Indizien, The Golden Pixel Cooperative’s exhibition is on display at Kunsthaus Graz between 05/04 and 18/04/2022.

Lydia Nsiah, *distortion* (still), 2016. Courtesy of the artist and sixpackfilm.

This selection of films aims to provide a partial survey of the work of Sandra Lahire’s contemporaries and collaborators, including friends, mentors, and fellow members of the London Film-makers Cooperative such as Tina Keane, Lis Rhodes, and Tanya Syed. This eclectic mix of film and video contains reflections on some of the concerns that pervade Lahire’s work, and that were prevalent at the time, including anti-nuclear activism, constraints placed on women’s bodies, and manifestations of lesbian sexuality and desire. The films will be interspersed with readings of texts and reflections by Lahire and some of the other artists included in this program.

The film program includes:

Tina Keane, Hey Mack, 1982. 13 min.
Jo Davis & Lis Rhodes, Hang on a minute: No 8 Bus, 1983. 2 min.
Jeanette Iljon, Focii, 1974. 9 min.
Tanya Syed, Chameleon, 1990. 4 min.
Martine Thoquenne, Faster Princess, 1982. 8 min.
Sarah Turner, She Wanted Green Lawns, 1989. 4 min.
Sandra Lahire, Eerie, 1992. 1 min.
Annette Kennerley, Sex, Lies, Religion, 1994. 6 min.
Helena Goldwater, Fierce Detail, 1995. 4 min.

The program is curated by Charlotte Procter (LUX, London) and Daniella Shreir (Another Gaze).

Charlotte Procter (b. 1984, United Kingdom; lives in London) is Collection and Archive Director of LUX, the UK’s most significant collection of artists’ moving image. In 2013 she joined the Cinenova Working Group, a collective dedicated to the care and distribution of the feminist film collection Cinenova. From 2018 to 2021, she co-directed the research project Their Past is Always Present at Elas Querejeta Zine Eskola (San Sebastián, Spain), and she is co-editor of Living on air: the films and words of Sandra Lahire (2021).

Daniella Shreir (b. 1993, United Kingdom; lives in London) is the founding editor of Another Gaze, a print and online journal exploring films and feminism. She is also the founder and programmer of Another Screen, an irregular streaming platform, free and available worldwide with subtitles in multiple languages. She works as a literary and non-fiction translator from the French, with her translation of Chantal Akerman’s My Mother Laughs receiving a PEN award in 2019.