Overcoming

Opening Hours is a co-operation project between five European partners: KW Institute for Contemporary Art / berlin biennial for contemporary art (Berlin), IDEA art + society (Cluj-Napoca), Lunds Konsthall (Lund), Műcsarnok / Kunsthalle Budapest (Budapest), and U-TURN Quadrennial for Contemporary Art (Copenhagen).

The basic idea is to challenge the standard notion of presenting art within institutional opening hours by developing time-based programmes extracting the work of each partner/curator and hosted by the partner institutions. While most partners present work related to performative practices, research and experimental film, a theoretical reflection on the topic is organised through IDEA, a partner that offers magazine space rather than an exhibition space. All partners share an interest in breaking with conventional exhibition formats, and in relating contemporary artistic practice and cultural understanding with artistic achievements from the recent past, in order to understand our common and diverse artistic background across the divide of the cold war.

U-TURN – Quadrennial for Contemporary Art was the winner of a competition held by the Danish Arts Council in February 2006 to establish a festival for contemporary art in Denmark. The project was initiated and launched by Danish curators Charlotte Bagger Brandt, Solvej Helweg Ovesen, and Judith Schwarzbart. Since its opening in autumn 2008, U-TURN has been offering an extensive program of exhibitions, performances, conferences, and diverse events.

Ernst Museum hosts different programs as part of the Opening Hours project: an exhibition titled Overcoming with related events and a series of talks, presentations and a curatorial course titled The Pproducers Often in moments of historical crisis, moments where individuals or groups of people are ripped of there basic rights or moments where one system collapses and gives way for another in a rather uncontrollable process, the personal and social or societal experience appear to merge or overlap. The exhibition Overcoming compiles four works from U-TURN Quadrennial for Contemporary Art in Copenhagen, which in different ways use the film medium to get close to a traumatic event, and through aesthetic means mixing the documentary and the staged footage manage to penetrate that moment of loss and trauma. The events referred to are located in different places as Brazil, Turkey, Romania and Bosnia, but what they have in common is an experience that is only about to find a language in which to express it self, a language that on the one hand can remember and hold tightly and, on the other hand, can distance itself from the event in order to try to understand what happened.

Related programmes
On 15 November, at 4 p.m. in Ernst Museum artist Pia Rönicke (Copenhagen) and Kurdish writer Zeynel Abidin Kizilyaprak talk about the joint making of their film Facing – A Usual Story from a Nameless Country.

On 21 and 22 November, at 6 p.m. in KINO cinema, screenings of Sergei Eisenstein’s film General Line (1929) and Kira Muratova’s film Aesthenic Syndrome (1989). On 21 November, the films are introduced by theorist and writer, Anders Kreuger, curator of Lund Konsthall and of the exhibition After Eisenstein.
KINO cinema – 1137 Budapest, Szent István krt. 16.

The Pproducers

Between 15 November and 14 December, in addition to the programs (a talk and screenings) associated with the exhibition Overcoming, we are organising a three-day workshop for young curators and a lecture series for the wider audience by the title The Pproducers.

The central topic will be artistic and curatorial production, including its history, as well as its conceptual, contextual and economic framework/operation. The course will primarily examine the production and producer related possibilities of the different strategies and “scripts” currently in use (biennials, commercial-based and non-profit institutional forms, “nomadic” curatorial projects, etc.). It will also highlight those prominent actors (artists, curators, writers, etc.) whose work significantly determines and shapes how we think about the work/role of the producer and artistic/curatorial production. Invited Hungarian and international guests will reflect on these various strategies through their own work and experiences.

Concept: Lívia Páldi chief curator, Műcsarnok / Kunsthalle Budapest

Course
1-3 December 2 – 5 p.m.
The course will be led by Diana Baldon, independent curator and writer (Vienna).
Language: English
2 – 3.30 p.m. lecture
3.30 – 5 p.m. seminar (discussion, debate)
Participants are required to register prior to the event.

Public lectures and talks (in English):
20 November 20, Thursday 6 p.m.
Rike Frank, independent curator and writer (Berlin) Anders Kreuger, theorist, writer, curator of Lund Konsthall (Lund) Moderator: Franciska Zólyom, curator, Director of Institute of Contemporary Art – Dunaújváros

1 December, Monday 6 p.m.
Diana Baldon, independent curator, writer (Vienna)

2 December, Tuesday, 6 p.m.
Nikolett Erőss, curator of Trafo Gallery (Budapest) Dóra Hegyi, project leader of tranzit.hu, curator of Periferic 8 – Art as Gift Biennial for Contemporary Art (Iasi)

3 December, Wednesday, 6 p.m.
Ana Devic, art critic, curator, member of the independent curatorial collective What, How & for Whom / WHW (with Ivet Curlin, Natasa Ilic and Sabina Sabolovic and designer and publicist Dejan Krsic) based in Zagreb

12 December, Friday, 6 p.m.
Aneta Szylak, curator, writer, co-founder and currently director of Wyspa Institute of Art Cosmin Costinas, independent curator and writer (Berlin) and Binna Choi, curator and writer, Director of Casco, Office for Art, Design and Theory (Utrecht), both are members of the curatorial collective Electric Palm Tree (with Kyongfa Che)