ONLINE TALK
Wednesday, Sept 28, 3-4:30pm CET
EXTRANEOUS PRACTICES
(For Htein Lin and Vicky Bowman)
Nora Sternfeld, Margherita Moscardini, Milica Tomić and Sawangwongse Yawnghwe in conversation, in the framework of Extraneous, a group exhibition curated by Zasha Colah with Valentina Viviani at EXILE, as part of the festival curated by. To join the online talk please click on the above image or on the link below at the time indicated (Wednesday, Sept 28, 3-4:30pm):
→ https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89538890780?pwd=Qk1YNUlCaHl2QjVNSTdsL2RycTkvUT09
A subtle yet perhaps radical act, the matka left on the doorstep, is also a collective recognition of thirst. This extraneous element disrupts (–puts a foot in–) the doorstep, the piazza, the courtyard, leaving the door open for territories out of territory to emerge, or for extra-territories. These everyday spaces become extraterritorial through the possibilities they open.
NORA STERNFELD is an art educator and curator. She is professor of art education at the HFBK Hamburg. From 2018 to 2020 she was documenta professor at the Kunsthochschule Kassel. From 2012 to 2018 she was Professor of Curating and Mediating Art at Aalto University in Helsinki. In addition, she is co-director of the /ecm - Master Program for Exhibition Theory and Practice at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, in the core team of schnittpunkt. austellungstheorie & praxis, co-founder and part of trafo.K, Office for Art, Education, and Critical Knowledge Production (Vienna) and since 2011 part of freethought, Platform for Research, Education and Production (London). In this context she was also one of the artistic directors of the Bergen Assembly 2016 and is since 2020 BAK Fellow, basis voor actuele kunst (Utrecht). She publishes on contemporary art, educational theory, exhibitions, politics of history and anti-racism.
MARGHERITA MOSCARDINI born in Italy, 1981, investigates the relationships between transformational processes in the urban, social and natural orders of specific geographies. Her practice favours long-term projects developed through large-scale works, drawings, writings, scale models, and video-documents. Her projects include Istanbul City Hills_ On the Natural History of Dispersion and States of Aggregation (2013-2014), which focuses on the recent urban transformation of Istanbul, the demolition of neighbourhoods and the forced displacement of local communities. Between 2012 and 2018, she developed 1XUnknown (1942-2018, to Fortress Europe with Love), a series of 21 short videos documenting the Atlantic Wall defensive line: 15,000 bunkers built by the Third Reich across the European Atlantic coast, with the purpose of defending Fortress Europe. Since 2016, Moscardini works on The Fountains of Za’atari project, studying refugee camps meant as towns, starting from Za’atari Refugee Camp, which arose in Jordan in 2012 on a desert area near the Syrian border.
MILICA TOMIĆ born in Yugoslavia, is an artist and Head of Contemporary Art Institute at the TU Graz. Her work centers on researching, unearthing and bringing to public debate issues related to political and economic violence, trauma and social amnesia. Milica Tomić is a founding member of the new Yugoslav art/theory group, “Grupa Spomenik” [Monument Group] (2002), founder of the cross-disciplinary project Four Faces of Omarska (2010) and initiator of the Working group Four Faces of Omarska. In 2020 she initiated “Annenstrasse 53,”, an independent exhibiting space that exposes (un)learning processes. From 1998 Tomic has participated in international
exhibitions such as 24th Sao Paulo Biennale [1998], 49th/50th Venice Biennale [2001/2003]; 8th International Istanbul Biennial [2003]; 15th Sydney Biennale [2006]; Prague Bienniale [2007]; Manufacturing Today/Trondheim Biennale [2010]; 6th International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Gyumri, Armenia [2008]; 10th Sharjah Biennial [2011], Odessa Biennial [2013]; The School of Kyiv - The Biennial [2015]; and recently On Love Afterwards, photo installation/ … of bread, wine, cars, security and peace, Kunsthalle Vienna / performance, Europa Machine, Burgtheater, Vienna [2020], Bigger than Myself. Heroic voices, MAXXI - National Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome, [2021], Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA3) [2022], Solo Exhibition at the 59th October Salon, Belgrade [2022] etc.
SAWANGWONGSE YAWNGHWE was born in Shan State of Burma in 1971. He comes from the Yawnghwe royal family of Shan. His grandfather, Sao Shwe Thaik, was the first president of the Union of Burma (1948–1962) after the country gained independence from Britain in 1948. Shwe Thaik died in prison following the 1962 military coup by General Ne Win. Since then, Yawnghwe’s family was driven into exile. They stayed in Thailand, then escaped to Canada, where Yawnghwe grew up and received education. He now lives and works in the Netherlands. Yawnghwe’s painting and installation practice engages politics with reference to his family history as well as current and historical events in his country. Family photographs also provide the basis for a pictorial language through which he explores events in the country, suggesting that existing and available archives cannot reveal a nation’s entire truth. In addition, Yawnghwe’s work of maps charts the conflicts between drugs such as heroin and amphetamines, revolutionary armies, minority ethnicities, mining and gas pipelines, the armament of generals, as well as state genocide against its minorities. He intends to bring discernible order to a complex political situation.
