Past Future Folly
13. – 27. September 2021
Lori E. Allen
Jérôme Chazeix
Işıl Eğrikavuk
Alice Morey
So close to my face our face,
Brushing his arm does his hand
Breath deep like the wind that carries-us-out
without regard
Gesturing gladly he smiles
Moving with grace she rubs out her grey hair while
Blowing fiercely into a wet flute
Past present past present past present
Filled with sound they expand and contract,
Damp with yogurt, dirt, sea and sand.
From the tree from the tree
Cut from the tree
Whistle and clamer cast out like a pink hammer
Beautiful and free
Languid in the deep yesterday
A mother
A friend
A siren we mean to defend
Lovers of valueless comedy
And important allegory
Quiet quiet quiet now
Listen listen listen
In sweet age we ring around each other
We sea ourselves in the glass wave that sinks us navel deep.
Tomorrow we heard you wailing lost phrases
Pumelling the waves with beats made of our voices
Uncomfortable yet?
Pleasure yet?
Wrapped in sparkling poncho pleasure
Humanities inhumanity
Glistening in techno simplicity and archaeological complexity
Keep us in your pocket, keep us in your shoreline
Wood wind and cast liver
Triple fish and Aperol Spritz
I am yours I am yours I am yours
This is you and you all
Past present future, past present future
by Ashlee Conery
Emerging from her research into making bone flute prototypes —revisiting a practice to build what is often described as the earliest known musical instruments and seen as unmistakable evidence of prehistoric music— Lori E. Allen began exploring the practice of coercing archeological records into a single existing narrative of our species. ‘A wandering taxonomy of our Common Humanity’ is a pamphlet inspired by pocket size leaflets once used as propaganda. Four characters —Nature, Behaviour, Bones and Ideology— traverse past, present and future whilst footnotes to their conversation suggest a new perspective on evolutionary biology.
In addition to this project, Lori created the sound track for Jérôme Chazeix’s work ‘Ship of Fools’ and mastered the soundscape of Alice Morey’s ‘Calling to the Siren’.
Lori E. Allen (b. 1975 in St. Louis MO, USA) lives and works in London as a sound composer and video artist. Drawing from her archaeological background, Lori’s audiovisual works seek to excavate bodiless forms of material culture manifesting in belief structure, language and the manufacture of tradeable ideas in interpersonal and political relationships.
Jérôme Chazeix’s point of departure is the book “Das Narrenschiff” (The Ship of Fools) by Sebastian Brant from 1494 – at the time the most widely read book in the German-speaking world. In an expansive installation of fabric, song and drama, the artist transforms the ship into an equivalent satirical allegory of the human condition and a metaphor for escaping from an immanent crisis.
Jérôme Chazeix (born 1976 in France) lives and works in Berlin. His immersive multi-media installations evoke the impression of parallel worlds, representing a type of Gesamtkunstwerk.
The topography of the region, with the fjord Schlei as the dividing element between two the peninsulas Anglia and Swania, may remind of the Bosphorus in Turkey. Inspired by her participation in the “Bosphorus Cross-Continental Swim” – an annual open-water swimming competition between the continents of Europe and Asia with a distance of almost seven kilometres and thousands of participants – Işıl’s performance explores local histories and personal narratives relating to experiences of transition and change.
Işıl Eğrikavuk (born 1980 in Turkey) lives and works in Berlin. Işıl blurs the line between fiction and fact in her mostly performative works, questioning a reality that we ourselves also only construct.
www.isilegrikavuk.work
Inspired by ancient mythical sea creatures, the Sirens – who lure sailors into the depths of the waters with their song – the artist will create installations as places between destruction and seduction. These material compositions represent intuitive responses to their immediate environment, a kind of echo chamber and vessel in which past, present and future, the realm of the living and the dead collide within constant ambiguity.
Alice Morey (born 1986 in London) lives and works in Berlin. She is interested in the passage of time, finds beauty in decay and contrasts it with the simultaneous discomfort emerging from the juxtaposition of natural and human-made materials and their transformation.
www.alicemorey.com
For the first time this year, a curator has been invited to join with an accompanying programme. Ashlee Conery contributed with a series of writing workshops creating moments of pause and reflection even during the busiest times. Her advise and assistance were vital for the development of each artist’s work as well as they were for the final events.