Curateur : Kisito Assangni
Date : 30.04 – 09.06.2022
NEVER CROSS THE SAME RIVER TWICEChapter 3: Spectrum of Appearances
Kunstverein KärntenKlagenfurt, AustriaKunstverein Kärnten (kunstvereinkaernten.at)
30 April – 9 June 2022
NEVER CROSS THE SAME RIVER TWICE embraces expansive videographies that aim to foster new forms of transnational and collective assembly. The exhibition forms a time-shifting survey of performances converging between video, film and installation. Initiated as a travelling research project in 2020, the exhibition traces the recent video practices of 14 international artists.The selected video works act as sites of visual contestation; cinematic aesthetics with narratives that re-remember; they reclaim histories and ancestries; decolonize both the mind and the imagination. Referencing Heraclitus’ river, which conceived identity as an ever-evolving and fluctuating entity, the title of the exhibition is a call to invent new grounds in place of entrenched environmental, political, and regulatory systems.
The participating artists tackle subjects that challenge us to reflect on the changing world in which we live, reconstructing and reclaiming lived-realities and public domains. Exploring the limits of film as activism, several of the works reflect what Argentinian scholar Walter D. Mignolo termed the, ‘epistemic disobedience and decolonial freedom,’ needed to rebuild non-colonial futures.
From a ‘coming community’ to a planetary escape, the project opens up uncanny spectral exits to new collective and geopolitical imaginaries. NEVER CROSS THE SAME RIVER TWICE aims to expand and densify the interconnected motifs weaved through the exhibition program; history, ancestry, ethnography, spirituality, memory, colonization, Afrofuturism, feminism, diaspora, identity, globalization, consumerism, myth.
Participating artists:Ahmet Öğüt (Turkey), Aïda Patricia Schweitzer (Luxembourg), Binta Diaw (Senegal), Gilivanka Kedzior (France), Harold Offeh (Ghana/UK), Irina Gabiani (Georgia), Kokou Ekouagou (Togo), Longinos Nagila (Kenya), Marinella Senatore (Italy), Mohammed Laouili (Morocco), Monica de Miranda (Angola/Portugal), Mouna Karray (Tunisia), Sethembile Msezane (South Africa), Zlatko Ćosić (USA)
Curated by Kisito Assangni