On Friday, March 19, at approximately 17:30pm, Galerie Analix Forever along with the Think Tank that has yet to be named will host a Privately Held Public Meeting on the subject of PUBLIC THINGS. This informal conversation will focus on the ideas of Bruno Latour, specifically using his essay From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik or How to Make Things Public. Additional details regarding this event forthcoming, immediate questions can be directed to Galerie Analix.
From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik or How to Make Things Public
The exhibition Public Things focuses on the role of contemporary artworks as “public things” that point to the dialectical relationship between a specific object and its context, between the private space of a gallery and the public space of the city, between a material thing and its network of relations.
A public thing resists reduction, it is quick to reveal the tangled networks of individuals and institutions to which it is complicit, and it is inextricably bound to the specificities of site. A public thing is more than a mere object of sculpture, it is the specific production of space and time for the purpose of both contemplation and conversation—it is at once a thing, an event, a platform, a meeting place, an issue, and a matter of concern.
This exhibition will feature a solo project by Conrad Bakker as well as the work of five emerging artists from the United States, all of whom share a history with the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois. These artists include: Jennifer Danos (Minneapolis), Katie Hargrave (Iowa City, IA), Philip Matesic (Zurich), Ryan Thompson (Houghton, NY), Meredith Warner (Philadelphia). For this exhibition each artist will produce a specific project—a Public Thing—that will dynamically engage the private space of Galerie Analix Forever and perhaps also the public space of the city of Geneva.
RYAN THOMPSON
Glacial Erratics: Geneva is a series of stereographic animations, photographs, and videos that regard the erratic displacement of rocks by both glacial and human forces. Erratic rocks often become ‘public things’ through their appropriation and use, from religious rituals to cartographic landmarks to tourist attractions (as evidenced by Les Pierres du Niton in Lac Léman). Although their placement and form is geologically temporary, these rocks feel strangely permanent when contrasted with the erratic nature of the objects, ideas, and people which move around them.
JENNIFER DANOS
Untitled (On the Ideology of Public Things 1) focuses on dirt as a public thing as it is literally collected from various surfaces of the gallery and around the city of Geneva using small square pieces of clear contact paper that are then placed upon the windowed facade of Galerie Analix Forever. These squares record both the contents of the dirt and the level of dirtiness as they gradually obscure the view. For the entirety of the exhibition, squares of contact paper will be made available for gallery visitors to collect dirt and continue to fill in the gallery window. In a subtle contrast to the collection of dirt, Untitled (On the Ideology of Public Things 2) represents abstract movements of water from around Geneva via digital projections onto the interior architecture of the gallery. These projects actively sustain a tension between things that are both publicly known and privately experienced.
KATIE HARGRAVE & MEREDITH WARNER
MELTING POT takes two products that become axiomatic of the country: the American apple and Swiss chocolate. Using molds of American apples cast in Swiss chocolate, this project points to the intertwined histories of tourism, globalization, colonization, and trade.
PHILIP MATESIC
WAS THERE focuses on the subject of tourism, photography and memory in and around Geneva, Switzerland by means of an on-the-spot postcard printing service. This service created a space for conversation and collaboration that included printing two copies of the tourists favorite image of a specific landmark: one for them to take home and the other to document the exchange.
KATIE HARGRAVE & MEREDITH WARNER
The collective THE THINK TANK THAT HAS YET TO BE NAMED has produced “30 Readings on Neutrality as it relates to Art, Politics, Biology and Space” as the starting point for conversations on the subject of neutrality. Using a mobile pedagogical stool, the Think Tank is interested in generating a series of sight specific discussions around the city of Geneva and also in Galerie Analix Forever. PROJECT WEBSITE
Link to Privately Held Public Meeting on the subject of PUBLIC THINGS at Galerie Analix!
![CONRAD BAKKERUntitled Project: LIBRAIRIE [Geneva] is a simulated bookshop made of hundreds of hand carved and painted copies of used paperback books from the 1960’s and 1970’s whose subjects range from social issues and existential philosophies to DIY crafts and self improvement. These representations of vintage paperbacks reveal their status as public things in the gathering of persons/things around a specific issue or matter of concern. The very space of the constructed bookshop/librairie reiterates the objective of public things as it becomes a literal platform for considering the relationships between persons, things and ideas.
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images](http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kz0od0SIi91qaj92ro1_r1_250.jpg)
CONRAD BAKKER
Untitled Project: LIBRAIRIE [Geneva] is a simulated bookshop made of hundreds of hand carved and painted copies of used paperback books from the 1960’s and 1970’s whose subjects range from social issues and existential philosophies to DIY crafts and self improvement. These representations of vintage paperbacks reveal their status as public things in the gathering of persons/things around a specific issue or matter of concern. The very space of the constructed bookshop/librairie reiterates the objective of public things as it becomes a literal platform for considering the relationships between persons, things and ideas.
