The Runaway (escape, stand still, trespass)<\/p>\n
Brandon LaBelle<\/p>\n
Curated by Sala-manca<\/p>\n
Compiling a selection of works by the artist, the exhibition \u201cThe Runaway (escape,
\nstand still, trespass)\u201d focuses on the itinerant, the self-organized and the restless as
\nparticular expressions and figures of movement. Through a range of strategies and
\ncreative processes, these figures interrupt the field of the visible by being on the run \u2013
\na running away that unsettles borders and articulates new social imaginaries. The
\nrunaway acts as a critical figure that improvises and that requires support from others,
\nthat migrates and that stitches together from gleaned materials, to carve out a pathway
\nof cultural survival. From alternative routes and creative withdrawals to daily
\nencroachments and secret solidarities, the exhibition brings us closer to the creative
\npotential of bodies in movement.
\nThe exhibition includes the following works: The Free Scene (2017), Monument (to
\nthe wild imagination) (2014\/2017), Handbook for the Itinerant (2012), A Thousand
\nSecrets (2010), and The Sonic Body (2009-2011).
\n–
\nThe Sonic Body is a series of recordings of movement improvisations performed by a
\ngroup of participants, as well as a set of recordings of individuals dancing to specific
\nsongs heard over headphones. As an audible catalogue, The Sonic Body registers the
\nphysical energies and expenditures one produces through dance and movement,
\ncapturing them as sonic events. Rather than concentrate on the visual expressions of
\ndance, these recordings lead us into the unseen arena of the body\u2019s more vibrant and
\nghostly qualities.
\nIn addition, a series of video works are presented related to the project Monument (to
\nthe Wild Imagination). The works capture participating dancers and performers
\nstaging a series of movement labs enacted in public in the cities of Athens and Berlin.
\nMovements and gestures are developed and performed that search for ways to express
\nthe tensions central to the contemporary neoliberal city and the ways in which
\ncreativity and the figure of the artist is harnessed for economic profit and marketing.
\nIn response, the work asks: how might the creative body position itself in opposition
\nto its own capture? And further, how may we figure ourselves as bodies open to each
\nother and toward the remaking of urban values?
\nThis is elaborated through a more recent video work The Free Scene. Shot within an
\nabandoned building in the city of Madrid, the video is a one-hour journey, with the
\nartist using the camera as an extension of his body. Comprised of a single shot, the
\nwork brings us up against the materiality of abandoned space, finding in it an image
\nof urban crisis as well as social potential. Responding to the emergence of self-
\norganized occupations of empty buildings in the city, the artist performs a type of
\ninhabitation, a deeply slow occupation, highlighting it as a movement of cultural
\nsurvival.
\nQuestions of space and movement are furthered through the presentation of A
\nThousand Secrets. Originally produced for a public park in the city of Bordeaux, the
\nwork is an audio guide that visitors may listen to through headphones while walking<\/p>\n
in the gardens of the Hansen House. Through the headphones, a voice speaks to us
\n\u2013\u00a0is it a friend, or an enemy? Someone to trust, someone we might run away with?
\nThe work invites us to enter into an invisible yet poignant interaction, drawing out the
\ndeeply private arena of an inner listening and what it means to walk side by side with
\nanother.
\nFinally, the exhibition presents the text work Handbook for the Itinerant, which the
\nartist developed in 2012 for a public festival in Belgium. Consisting of a collage of
\ndifferent narrative threads, from meditations on experiences of travel and escape to
\nbibliographies cataloguing publications on walking, migration, and vagrancy, the
\nwork attempts to provide a discourse of runaway thought. As a Handbook, it may
\nwork to guide us as we venture and drift, struggle over homeland or imagine future
\ndestinations.
\nThrough the series of works, the exhibition is a meditation on what Stavros Stavrides
\nterms \u201ccommunities in movement\u201d: the emergence of new political subjectivity that
\nconstructs, from the ephemera and potentiality of crisis, life open to others. As such, it
\nreflects upon the creative movements of bodies as the basis for reconfiguring social
\nrelations as well as for crafting a new common imaginary.<\/p>\n
Participants in Monument (to the Wild Imagination) include: Janine Eisen\u00e4cher, Hana
\nLee Erdman, Omar Nicolas, Steffi Weismann, Achilleas Chariskos, Myrto Grapsa and
\nIoanna\u00a0Apostolou.
\nParticipants in The Sonic Body project include: Angelina Attwell, Nicole Clarke,
\nShayna Keller, Eliza Pfister, Gerald Michel, Natalie Hofmann, Anna Posch, Isis
\nMartin, Lorenz Rollh\u00e4user, David G\u00fcnther, Miriam Jakob, Billy Mark, Catarina
\nTrota, Corinna Spieth, Teresa Mayer, Leo Nabuco, Trine Hylander Friis, Annette
\nStahmer, Pedro G\u00f3mez Ega\u00f1a, Bruno Lechowski, Martina Schaaf, James Webb,
\nSigne Lind\u00e9n, Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec.
\n–
\nBased in Berlin, Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer and theorist working with
\nquestions of social life and cultural agency, using sound, performance, text and sited
\nconstructions. He develops and presents artistic projects and performances within a
\nrange of international contexts, often working in public. This leads to interventions
\nand performative installations, archival work, and micro-actions aimed at the sphere
\nof the (un)common and the unlikely. He is also an active lecturer working with
\ninstitutions around the world addressing questions of auditory culture, sonic and
\nspatial practices, and voice and the politics of listening.<\/p>\n
His work has been presented at Documenta, Athens (2017), South London Gallery
\n(2016), Gallery Forum, Zagreb (2016), Tel Aviv University Art Gallery (2015),
\nMarrakech Biennial (parallel project), 2014, General Public, Berlin (2013), The
\nWhitney Museum, NY (2012), Image Music Text, London (2011), Sonic Acts,
\nAmsterdam (2010), A\/V Festival, Newcastle (2008, 2010), Tramway, Glasgow
\n(2010), Museums Quartier\/Tonspur, Vienna (2009), 7th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto
\nAllegro (2009), Center for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade (2009), Casa Vecina,<\/p>\n
Mexico City (2008), Fear of the Known, Cape Town (2008), Netherlands Media Art
\nInstitute, Amsterdam (2003, 2007), Ybakatu Gallery, Curitiba, Brazil (2003, 2006,
\n2009), Singuhr Gallery, Berlin (2004), and ICC, Tokyo (2000).<\/p>\n
Also a prolific writer, he is the author of Lexicon of the Mouth: Poetics and Politics of
\nVoice and the Oral Imaginary (2014), Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian (2012),
\nAcoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life (2010), and Background
\nNoise: Perspectives on Sound Art (2015; 2006). Through his work with Errant Bodies
\nPress he has co-edited the anthologies Site of Sound: Of Architecture and the Ear
\nVolumes 1 & 2 (1999, 2011), Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language (2001),
\nSurface Tension: Problematics of Site (2003) and Radio Territories (2007), along with
\na series of monographs (Critical Ear series) on sound and media artists.<\/p>\n
He has various audio releases on international experimental music labels, and
\nregularly produces works for radio, notably for Documenta radio (2017), Kunstradio
\nin Vienna (1999, 2001, 2007, 2009) and Deutschland Radio (2009). He received a
\nMasters degree from Cal Arts, Los Angeles in 1998, and completed his PhD at the
\nLondon Consortium in 2005. Following his doctoral work he undertook post-doctoral
\nresearch at the University of Copenhagen from 2006 to 2009, in Modern Culture and
\nSound Studies. In 2008-09 he worked as Guest Professor at the Copenhagen Art
\nAcademy and at the Free University in Berlin, holding seminars on acoustic
\nterritories, spatial practice and the male voice. He lives in Berlin and since 2011
\nworks as Professor at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Norway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Runaway (escape, stand still, trespass) Brandon LaBelle Curated by Sala-manca Compiling a selection of works by the artist, the exhibition \u201cThe Runaway (escape, stand still, trespass)\u201d focuses on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5784,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"exhibitions_categories":[167],"exhibition_status":[498],"artist":[],"class_list":["post-5783","exhibition","type-exhibition","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","exhibitions_categories-exhibition","exhibition_status-past"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n