Online Opening of COMPOST and launch of PARSE Journal #13: On the Question of Exhibition

A live online event bringing together the opening of Compost. Kathrin Böhm: Turning the Heap at The Showroom and the launch of PARSE journal issue 13: On the Question of Exhibition

On Tuesday 15 June 2021 The Showroom and PARSE held this special collaborative event to mark the opening of Compost. Kathrin Böhm: Turing the Heap at the Showroom and the launch of On the Question of Exhibition, the latest journal issue from PARSE, an online artistic research publishing platform at the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing arts, University of Gothenburg.

Joining from The Showroom were: Kathrin Böhm, Elvira Dyangani Ose and Lily Hall
Joining from PARSE were: Nick Aikens, Jyoti Mistry and Mick Wilson

A central contribution in the new issue of PARSE is a discussion between artist Kathrin Böhm, Yolande van der Heide, Exhibitions Curator at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Gavin Wade, Director of Eastside Projects, Birmingham and Franciska Zólyom, Director and Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (GfZK), Leipzig; framed in response to Böhm’s use of exhibition across both art and non-art contexts. This curatorial-cum-editorial dialogue uses the methodology of composting as a process of collaborative reflection. Turning to possible future strategies of exhibition-making, Böhm reflects on her exhibitonary practice. The conversation highlights Böhm’s experience and tactics of a ‘one-to-one’ scale that disrupts spectatorship and collides making and showing in the same moment.

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Schedule

16.30-16.35 Welcome from The Showroom
16.35-17.00 Introduction from Jyoti Mistry and Nick Aikens, PARSE journal

17.00-17.05 Short break

17.05-17.25 Video tour of Compost at The Showroom led by Kathrin Böhm

17.25-17.40 Reflections on usership as instituting gesture, led by Elvira Dyangani Ose
17.40-18.00 Conversation between Mick Wilson, editor of On the Question of Exhibition and Kathrin Böhm
18.00-18.15 Q&A
18.15-18.30 Open zoom room and live feed video to Compost at The Showroom

The event began with an introduction from Lily Hall, Curator at The Showroom, followed by an introductory exchange between Jyoti Mistry and Nick Aikens, co-editors of On the Question of Exhibition, followed by a video tour of Compost at The Showroom led by Kathrin Böhm, in which she explained the processes of piling-up, filing and fertilising. Elvira Dyangani Ose, director of The Showroom, then explored the exhibition and its modes of usership in relation to institution-building as well as the interconnected web of relations between of The Showroom and Kathrin Böhm's practice over the years; and finally as co-editor of On the Question of Exhibition, Mick Wilson reflected with Böhm on her exhibitionary strategies. There was time for questions and answers at the end, moderated between Lily and Kathrin, followed by an open zoom room with live-feed to the exhibition space at The Showroom.

Biographies:

Kathrin Böhm is a London-based artist working internationally whose practice focuses on the collective re-production of public space; economy as public realm; and the everyday as a starting point for culture. In 2020 Böhm stopped starting new projects and is currently composting what she has produced as an artist so far, in order to make fertiliser for evolving long-term infrastructures Company Drinks; The Centre for Plausible Economies; and the Rural School of Economics.

Nick Aikens is currently PhD candidate at HDK Valand, University of Gothenburg and research curator at the Van Abbemuseum (since 2012). Recent and ongoing projects have focused on the 1980s and specifically the UK Black Arts Movement via a series of exhibitions and the publication ‘The Place is Here: The Work of Black Artists in 1980s Britain’ (2019, co-edited with Elizabeth Robles), a retrospective / monograph on Rasheed Araeen (2017-19) and the exhibition / research project ‘Yael Davids: A Daily Practice’ (2017-ongoing). He leads the current research programme Deviant Practice at the Van Abbemuseum. He was a Research Affiliate, CCC at the Visual Arts Department, HEAD, Geneva (since 2016-2018) and a member of the editorial board for L’Internationale Online (since 2013). He has been a tutor at the Dutch Art Institute (2013-2019) and at the Design Academy Eindhoven (2015-17).

Jyoti Mistry is Professor in Film at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg and she has made critically acclaimed films in multiple genres. Her installation work draws from cinematic traditions but is often re-contextualized for galleries and museums Recent works: Cause of Death (2020), When I grow up I want to be a black man (2017), Impunity (2014). Recent publications: Places to Play: practice, research, pedagogy (2017) explores archive as an exemplar entry to rethink colonial images through “decolonised” film practices. Special issue of the Journal of African Cinema: “Film as Research Tool: Practice and Pedagogy” (2018), International Film and Media Arts: “Mapping Artistic Research in Film” (2020) and “Decolonial Propositions” with OnCurating.org

In 2016 she was recipient of the Cilect (Association of International Film Schools) Teaching Award in recognition for innovation in practices in film research and pedagogy. From 2017-2020, Mistry was principal research investigator on a BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) cross cultural research project that explored image-making practices through Visual Methodologies funded by the National Institute of Human and Social Sciences (NIHSS) in South Africa. Currently she is editor in chief of PARSE (Platform of Artistic Research in Sweden) and on the editorial board of L'Internationale Online.

Mick Wilson is an artist, educator and researcher based in Gothenburg and Dublin, and is currently Professor of Art at Hdk-Valand, University of Gothenburg. He was previously a Fellow at BAK, basis voor aktuele kunst, Utrecht, the Netherlands (2018/2019); Head of Valand Academy (2012-2018); Editor-in-chief PARSE Journal for Artistic Research (2015-2017); and founder Dean of the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media, Ireland–GradCAM– (2008–2012). Co-edited volumes include: Curating After the Global (MIT Press, 2019) with P. O’Neill, L. Steeds and S. Sheikh; Public Enquiries: PARK LEK and the Scandinavian Social Turn (BDP, 2018) with G. Zachia et al; How Institutions Think (MIT Press, 2017) and The Curatorial Conundrum (MIT Press, 2016) both with P. O’Neill and L. Steeds; Curating Research, Open Editions/De Appel (2014); Curating and the Educational Turn, Open Editions/De Appel (2010) both with P. O’Neill; and SHARE Handbook for Artistic Research Education, ELIA (2013) with S. van Ruiten.

Current research interests include questions of: political community with the dead; the political imaginaries of foodways; political imaginaries within curatorial practice / exhibitionary forms; and rhetorical form / method discourse in processes of knowledge conflict. Recent / forthcoming essays include: “White Mythologies and Epistemic Refusals: Teaching Artistic Research Through Institutional Conflict”, in R. Mateus-Berr & R. Jochum (eds.) Teaching Artistic Research, De Gruyter, 2020; “Living the Coming Death”, in M. Hlavajova and W. Maas (eds.) BASICS #1: Propositions for Non-Fascist Living, Tentative and Urgent, MIT Press, 2019; and “What Is to Be Done? Negations in the Political Imaginary of the Interregnum”, S. H. Madoff (ed.) What about Activism? Sternberg Press, 2019.