dis-LOCATE
https://www.neme.org/blog/dis-locate-press
On 13 June at 7.30pm, NeMe invites you to a *New Threads* 1 Project at the NeMe Arts Centre.
Curator’s statement
The rewriting of the past is dynamic, orientated towards the future. Its role is to endow the present with meaning by offering a focus of desire to a community with reason to doubt its future. 2
Regis Debray theorises his concept of Mediology as a practice which strives to analyse the transmission of cultural meaning in society by operating to make the present meaningful and identifiable through the intersections between the medium through which it travels and the intellect. This requires that a closer investigation is made of its material dimensions bringing to surface its diachronic and/or political impetus. 3
Using Debray’s metaphor of the ‘black box’, dis-LOCATE features both new and existing works created by young artists which may be seen as innovative vehicles of transmission. dis-LOCATE asks how we might begin to identify with our immediate environment, deciphering its ambiguity within the existing manifold debates on the current national and economic focus in search of cultural and political relevance so to provide meaning to our distinct regional contexts.
This process of art making, according to Gilles Deleuze’s concept of ‘becoming’ is translated as a process in itself rather than determining an outcome. Presented are a series of works whose meaning is not always obvious and whose physicality and specificity of the medium used are explored. Inherent are elements of chance, indeterminacy and heterogeneity that move beyond the notion that art should only be valued as an aesthetically pleasing end product.
The question arises as to why many young artists have recently begun to emphasise the means and processes of their practice as an alternative to finished outcomes? Can it be that their initiatives place emphasis on process as a means of resistance to popular cultural ideology so that the definition of this established aesthetic being challenged and constantly revised with greater focus on the process of becoming? The artists represented may also reflect the recent shift from the drive to become part of the mainstream to a multiplicity of ‘outsider’ actions, reflecting a certain critical and independent distance which, at this early stage of their careers, can been read as a self imposed amorphous condition of ‘othering’ their process of art making.
The participating artists’ works are presented within an interdisciplinary framework whereby one work’s meaning may unfold in relation to another, inviting the viewer to examine the cultural, political, social and technological factors that play a role in mapping and mediating a sense of Cypriot locality within a global frame of reference.
Curator: Natalie Kynigopoulou
Participating artists:
Alexis Andreou, Adonis Archontides, Hattie Ball, AnnaMaria Charalambous, Nefeli Christodoulou, Aristos Christoforou, Chrisanthy Christoforou, Theseas Efstathopoulos, Anthi Evangelou, Markella Hadjijoseph, Marinos Houtris, Alexandra Michael, Andriana Nikolaidou, Myrianthe G. Sozou, Jeanett Stonex, Marios Theophilides, Elena Vassiliadou.
Exhibition duration
Opening: 7.30pm 13 June 2015
Opening dates: 13-27 June 2015
Opening hours: Tuesday-Friday 5pm-8pm, Saturday: 10am-1pm
- Exhibition extension
The exhibition will stay open until 22 July 2015. We open it by appointment.
Sponsors
Cyprinters, C. Kynigopoulos
Notes
- New Threads is initiated by NeMe as a platform to invite young and emerging Cypriot cultural practitioners to curate low budget events.
- Jules Régis Debray, God: An Itinerary ,Verso, 2004.
- Jules Régis Debray, trans. Eric Rauth, Transmitting Culture. Columbia University Press, 2004.
