Creating and Dispersing Universes that Work without Working
Jalal Toufic & Anton Vidokle

Led by Toufic and Vidokle, the program will focus on artistic concerns ranging from how to build and/or disperse a universe that doesn’t fall apart “two days” later, to an inquiry into work in art practice and the possibility of sovereign art. Organized in five thematic chapters, the program will be comprised of a series of public lectures and a seminar by Jalal Toufic that draws on cinema, art, literature and science; and exhibitions and publishing projects organized by Anton Vidokle in collaboration with visiting artists, participants of the program and e-flux journal. 

Chapter 1: November 6 through December 20,2013

ONGOING EXHIBITION, Monday to Friday 5-9pm | Adam Curtis: The Desperate Edge of Now 
*Click here for more information on the exhibition and screening schedule.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2013
3-5pm | by registration: Orientation for participants, with Jalal Toufic and Anton Vidokle | this year’s resident professors invite participants for a first meeting and an introduction to the year’s program

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2013
8pm | public: “Creating and Dispersing Universes (that Work without Working at Singularities)” | keynote lecture 1 by Jalal Toufic
*Click here for more information on the lecture.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2013:
2-6pm | by registration: Narration and Absent Horizons, Workshop with Brian Kuan Wood on writing, art and journalism in the context of works of Adam Curtis
7-9:30pm | public: e-flux journal special issue launch | reading and discussion at 8pm | cocktails at 9:30 
*Click here for more information on the launch.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2013:
6-9:30pm | public: Exhibition opening, Adam Curtis: The Desperate Edge of Now 
8pm | public: “Curating and Narrating Artworks that are Not”, a talk with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Brian Kuan Wood, and Anton Vidokle 
9:30pm | public: Party to celebrate the opening of Home Workspace Program 2013-14 
*Click here for more information on the exhibition.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2013
6:30-9pm | by registration: Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Mortals | seminar 1/6 by Jalal Toufic
*Click here for more information on the seminar.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2013
8pm | public: Art without Work | Talk by Anton Vidokle
*Click here for more information on the talk.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2013
8pm | public: I’ve Heard Stories, 4’49”, 2008 | Conversation and screening with Marwa Arsanios
*Click here for more information on the event.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2013
6:30-9pm | by registration: Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Mortals | seminar 2/6 by Jalal Toufic
*Click here for more information on the seminar.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2013
8pm | public: New York Conversations, 66″, 2010 | screening with Anton Vidokle 
*Click here for more information on the screening. 

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2013
5pm | by registration: The Sky Over Beirut | Tour 1: Achrafieh, with Tony Chakar 
*Click here for more information on the tour. 

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2013
6:30-9pm | by registration: Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Mortals | seminar 3/6 by Jalal Toufic
*Click here for more information on the seminar.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2013
11am | by registration: The Sky Over Beirut | Tour 2: Downtown, with Tony Chakar 
*Click here for more information on the tour. 

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2013
8pm | public: Transparent Evil, 27″ 2011 & Untitled for Several Reasons 13″, 2003 | Conversation and screening with Roy Samaha
*Click here for more information on the event.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2013
6:30-9pm | by registration: Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Mortals | seminar 4/6 by Jalal Toufic
*Click here for more information on the seminar.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2013
8pm | public: Civil War, 1’25” 2002 | Conversation and screening with Mohamed Soueid
*Click here for more information on the event.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2013
6:30-9pm | by registration: Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Mortals | seminar 5/6 by Jalal Toufic
*Click here for more information on the seminar.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2013
2-4pm | by registration: Workshop with Adam Curtis

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2013
8pm | public: “Once Upon a Time in Damascus” | Talk with Adam Curtis
*Click here for more information on the talk.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2013
8pm | public: Incident in the Museum, 8″, 2013 | Screening and conversation with Oleksiy Radynski
*Click here for more information on the event.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2013
6:30-9pm | by registration: Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Mortals | seminar 6/6 by Jalal Toufic
*Click here for more information on the seminar.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2013
8pm | public: The Mountain, 1’24”, 2010 | Screening and conversation with Ghassan Salhab
*Click here for more information on the event.
 

Chapter 2 : January 7 thorugh February 14, 2014

TUESDAY, JANUARY 7, 2014
5-6pm | by registration: Orientation for participants, with Jalal Toufic and Anton Vidokle | this year’s resident professors invite participants for a meeting and an introduction to the second chapter and the program

TUESDAY, JANUARY 7, 2014
8pm | public: “Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Fiction/Artworks” | keynote lecture 2 by Jalal Toufic
*Click here for more information on the lecture. 

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 8, 2014
6-9pm | public: Exhibition opening 

Portraits and Prayers

Collection of the Salon de Fleurus New York

Salon de Fleurus is an educational institution dedicated to assembling, preserving, and exhibiting memories on early modern art. Its permanent exhibit, titled From The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, located at 41 Spring Street, New York, has been open to the public since 1992.
A selection from the Salon’s permanent collection was part of the Fiction Reconstructed that was shown in Ljubljana, Belgrade and Budapest from 2000 to 2002. In 2002, Salon de Fleurus was included in the Whitney Biennial, Sydney Biennial, and exhibition Am Anfang der Bevegung stand ein Skandal in the Lenbachhaus Munich. 

Selections from the Salon’s permanent collection were also shown at the exhibitions What is Modern Art? (Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 2006),The Making of Americans (James Gallery, CUNY Graduate Center, New York) and Les Fleurs Americaines (Le Plateau, Paris, 2012). That same year, an event titled A Salon de Fleurus Salon was organized at MoMA (New York). In 2011, the Metabolic Studio (Los Angeles) opened another version of the Salon de Fleurus, with a collection titled Portraits and Prayers that more closely resembles the early twentieth century Paris Salon. It is this collection that will be replicated at Ashkal Alwan in Beirut beginning of January 2014. The exhibition will include guided tours and three public presentations..
*Click here for more information on the exhibition.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 9, 2014:
5-7pm | by reservation: Every 30 minutes, guided tour with the caretaker of the Salon
*Click here for more information on the tours.
8pm | public: The Making of Americans | presentation by Gertrude Stein (part 1/3) 
*Click here for more information on the presentation.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 2014:
3-5pm | by reservation: Every 30 minutes, guided tour with the caretaker of the Salon
*Click here for more information on the tours.
5pm | by registration: Anachronistic Utopias | Workshop with Katya Sander’s class at the Danish Royal Art Academy with guest professor Pelin Tan 
*Click here for more information on the workshop.
8pm | public: Abstract Cabinet and the Modern Narrative | presentation by Alfred Barr (part 2/3) 
*Click here for more information on the presentation.

MONDAY, JANUARY 13, 2014:
5-7pm | by reservation: Every 30 minutes, guided tour with the caretaker of the Salon
*Click here for more information on the tours.
8pm | public: American Tutti-Frutti | presentation by Porter McCray (part 3/3) 
*Click here for more information on the presentation.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 14, 2013
6:30-9pm | by registration: Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Fiction/Artworks | seminar by Jalal Toufic, session 1/5
*Click here for more information on the seminar.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 2014:
8pm | public: Two Suns, 22″, 2012 | Screening & conversation with Anton Vidokle & Marwa Arsanios
*Click here for more information on the screening. 

FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 2014:
8pm | public: Modern Art in Lebanon: A Conversation in Three Movements | presentation by Rasha Salti & Joseph Tarrab
*Click here for more information on the presentation.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013
6:30-9pm | by registration: Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Fiction/Artworks | seminar by Jalal Toufic, session 2/5
*Click here for more information on the seminar.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2014
2-4pm | by registration: The Eccentric Knowledge: Images, Memories, Emotions | seminar session 1/2 with Georges Didi-Huberman
*Click here for more information on the seminar.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014
4-6pm | by registration: The Eccentric Knowledge: Images, Memories, Emotions | seminar session 2/2 with Georges Didi-Huberman
*Click here for more information on the seminar.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 2014:
2-4pm | by registration: Guided tour of the exhibition Afteratlas with Georges Didi-Huberman at Beirut Art Center

FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 2014:
8pm | public: Some Stories from the Sultan Gallery | presentation by Kristine Khouri
*Click here for more information on the presentation. 

TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2014
6:30-9pm | by registration: Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Fiction/Artworks | seminar by Jalal Toufic, session 3/5
*Click here for more information on the seminar.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2014:
8pm | public:Surgeons & Magicians: International Modernism and the Lebanese Art Historical Context | presentation by Octavian Esanu
*Click here for more information on the presentation. 

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2014
6:30-9pm | by registration: Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Fiction/Artworks | seminar by Jalal Toufic, session 4/5
*Click here for more information on the seminar.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2014
6:30-9pm | by registration: Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Fiction/Artworks | seminar by Jalal Toufic, session 5/5
*Click here for more information on the seminar.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12 – THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2014
4-6pm | by registration: History as Commodity | Workshop with Brian Kuan Wood
*Click here for more information on the workshop.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2014
8pm | public: Politics and Other Aspirations: The Beirut Art Scene 1948-1988| Presentation by Saleh Barakat
*Click here for more information on the presentation.
 

Chapter 3 : February 25 through April 3, 2014 

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2014
6pm | by registration: Orientation for participants, with Jalal Toufic and Anton Vidokle | this year’s resident professors invite participants for a meeting and an introduction to the third chapter and the program

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2014
8pm | public: “Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Dancers” | keynote lecture 3 by Jalal Toufic
*Click here for more information on the lecture.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2014
6-9pm | public: Exhibition opening

Animism, curated by Anselm Franke

Animism has been a multi-part exhibition project realised in various collaborations since 2010. The project interrogates notions of modernity through its ‘negative horizon’, animism. Originally an anthropological concept denoting humanity’s alleged original beliefs in an animated nature and migrating souls, this project conceives of animism not primarily as belief, but as a category in which modernity and state-reason imagined the absence or transgression of its own conceptual boundaries, chiefly between inanimate matter and non-humans, geared to delineate the status of “person” endowed with a voice and rights. The project does not ask how some people come to perceive objects or nature as “social beings”, but inverts the question to delineate how objects are made and the status of person can be withheld or withdrawn. Animism then becomes a lens through which the making of boundaries comes into view, which situates aesthetic processes, such as the effect of animation, against a historical backdrop of modern-colonial mythologies and mobilisations of science. The project seeks to register current shifts from from a critique of alienation, reification and objectification, to a cultural production under the paradigm of subjectivation and the technological mobilization of pre-individual mimesis and relationality. The works and archival documents on display interrogate the symptomatic media-effects of modern boundaries, the nexus between active and passive, poeisis and pathos, and hence recast the ecological network-paradigm of the present in terms of boundary-practices and a critique of media-technologies. 

The present edition presents works that interrogate the dialectics of particular formats and genres of the modern institutional imaginary, such as the museum and its relation to time, order and transformation (Jimmie Durham / Chris Marker / Alain Resnais), ethnographic film (Rudolph Poch), the mummy-complex of cinema (Artefakte), animation and the animal-metaphor (Walt Disney, Marcel Broodthaers, Jean Painleve), labor, media and the body (Ken Jacobs), psychiatric boundaries of subjectivity (Angela Melitopoulos and Maurizio Lazzarato), ecstasy (Yayoi Kusama), the continuum of body and technology (Daria Martin), and exemplary “scenes” exploring mediality and the enrollment of mythology and enchantment, materiality and fetishism in the re-configuration of modern power and modern frontiers (Al Clah, Hans Richter, Len Lye, Yervant Gianikian / Angela Ricci Lucchi, Adam Avikainen, Otobong Nkanga), as well as current frontiers in indigenous struggles (Paulo Tavares). 
*Click here for more information on the exhibition.

8pm | public: Modernizing Animism? Specters of Superstition, Partisanship, and Rationalist Control | talk by Anselm Franke 
*Click here for more information on the talk.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2014
5-7pm | by registration: “The Whole Earth: Antinomies of the Anthropocene” | workshop with Anselm Franke
*Click here for more information on the workshop.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2014
8pm | public: “Energy of Kosmos is Indestructible!!!” | Reading performance by Anton Vidokle followed by a conversation with Marwa Arsanios 
*Click here for more information on the event.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2014
2-4pm & 5-7pm | by registration: Internet as Ideology | workshop with Brian Kuan Wood

TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2014
6:30pm | by registration | Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Dancers | weekly seminar by Jalal Toufic 1/5
*Click here for more information on the seminar.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 2014
6pm | public: A Border Musical by Chto Delat, 2013 | screening & conversation with Dmitry Vilenksy
*Click here for more information on the event.

TUESDAY, MARCH 11 & WEDNESDAY MARCH 12, 2014
3-5pm | by registration: Technical workshop with Belal Hibri

TUESDAY, MARCH 11, 2014
6:30pm | by registration: Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Dancers | weekly seminar by Jalal Toufic 2/5
*Click here for more information on the seminar.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 2014
3-5pm | by registration: workshop with Ana Teixeira Pinto 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 2014
6pm | public: Tilikum, 2013 | screening & conversation with Jan Peter Hammer
*Click here for more information on the event. 

THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 2014
8pm | public: Animism and Cybernetics | talk by Ana Teixeira Pinto
*Click here for more information on the event. 

TUESDAY, MARCH 18, 2014
6:30pm | by registration: Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Dancers | weekly seminar by Jalal Toufic 3/5
*Click here for more information on the seminar.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19, 2014
4-6pm | by registration: workshop with Oxana Timofeeva 

THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2014
4-6pm | by registration: workshop with Sarah Rifky 

THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2014
8pm | public: Animals and Revolution | lecture by Oxana Timofeeva 
*Click here for more information on the lecture. 

FRIDAY, MARCH 21, 2014
8pm | public: Delusions of Reference: In Defense of Art (Part 2) | talk by Sarah Rifky
*Click here for more information on the talk. 

TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 2014
6:30pm | by registration | Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Dancers | weekly seminar by Jalal Toufic 4/5
*Click here for more information on the seminar.

TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 2014
6:30pm | by registration | Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Dancers | weekly seminar by Jalal Toufic 5/5
*Click here for more information on the seminar.

THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 2014
4pm | public: The Act of Killing by Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012 | film screening
*Click here for more information on the screening.
 

Chapter 4 : April 15 through May 31, 2014 

FRIDAY, APRIL 11
11am – 4pm | by registration: Montage in Writing | writing workshop with 98weeks – session 1: Sampling, Plagiarizing, Appropriating 

TUESDAY, APRIL 15
6:30pm | public: Orientation for participants, with Jalal Toufic and Anton Vidokle | this year’s resident professors invite participants for a meeting and an introduction to the fourth chapter and the program

8pm | public: “Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Ruins” | keynote lecture 4 by Jalal Toufic

APRIL 16 – 19
Opening week | Hito Steyerl: Junktime

Imagine an exhibition that cannot be sustained. That is falling apart before installation has even begun. That flickers on and off to skype notification sounds. That consists of nothing but these sounds. Because the space cannot be occupied. Its time cannot be filled. Because time and space already collapsed into twisted pockets of detritus, hastily patched over by shutterstock images. 
Acceleration is yesterday’s delusion. Today you find yourself crashed and falling apart. You might try to occupy the square or bandwidth but who will pick up the kid from school? Your nerves are broadcasting emails into your molars. Someone tries to convince you to do a screening in broad daylight. Stop pretending there is electricity or enough time to watch that video all the way through. Stop pretending time exists. Stop pretending love exists. Stop pretending everything is fine because it really isn’t. Are your teeth on twitter yet? 
Junktime depends on velocity as in there isn’t any, sorry. It happens in the sudden transition from 9g to -4g; or from vertical sovereignity to the diagonal rule of gangs and trend forecast agencies. Somewhere in there time fractures and breaks into segments of uneven intensity. Huge hangars pop up in service sector neighborhoods featuring members of lower digital castes struggling but unable to piece it back together. Junktime is exhausted, interrupted, dulled by Ketamine, Lyrica, corporate imagery stuff. Junktime happens when information is not power, but lands as pain. Junktime doesn’t have side effects, sorry. It is a side effect. It might scan your attention span and spam you forever.
Junktime is what happens if the rug of time gets pulled out from under time based media. No sequences other then permanent jumpcuts, no duration just loops, all running to the rhythm of misfiring neurons and intercepted geolocation data.
Welcome to junktime. Already available at a server near you. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16
7pm | public: opening of Hito Steyerl: Junktime
8pm: screening program 1 | Strike, 28s | How Not to Be Seen. A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, 14min | Liquidity Inc., 30min
9pm: conversation with Jalal Toufic & Hito Steyerl

THURSDAY, APRIL 17
12pm | by registration: visit to National Museum
7pm | public: Hito Steyerl: Junktime
screening program 2 | Is the Museum a Battlefield, 40min | Guards, 20min
8pm: conversation with Hito Steyerl & Hisham Awad
9pm: screening program 3 | I Dreamed a Dream: Politics in the Age of Mass Art Production, 30min 

FRIDAY, APRIL 18 
6pm | public: excursion to B018
8pm | public: Hito Steyerl: Junktime
screening program 4 | Journal Nr. 1: An Artist’s Impression, 21min | In Free Fall, 34min | Adorno’s Grey, 14:20min
9pm: conversation with Brian Kuan Wood & Hito Steyerl

SATURDAY, APRIL 19
3-5pm | by registration: Montage in Writing – writing workshop with Hito Steyerl & 98weeks – session 2: Articulations, with Hito Steyerl
6pm | public: Hito Steyerl: Junktime
screening program 5 | November, 25min | Lovely Andrea, 30min | Abstract, 7min
7pm: presentation of “Montage in Writing” with 98weeks & Hito Steyerl
8pm: selection of films by Hito Steyerl’s students at the Berlin University of the Arts / UdK
For information about the student screening, click here

MONDAY, APRIL 21 
8pm | public: 2084, Episode 3: The Noosphere by Anton Vidokle & Pelin Tan | screening & conversation with Anton Vidokle and Marwa Arsanios

EVERY TUESDAY from APRIL 22 – MAY 27
6:30pm | by registration: Creating and Dispersing Universes that Include Ruins | weekly seminar in 6 sessions by Jalal Toufic

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23
11am – 4pm | by registration: Montage in Writing | writing workshop with 98weeks – session 3: The Sentence as Montage

FRIDAY, APRIL 25
4-6pm | by registration: Image as Life-form | workshop with Brian Kuan Wood (group 1)
7pm | public: Hito Steyerl: Junktime screening program 3 |I Dreamed a Dream: Politics in the Age of Mass Art Production, 30min

MONDAY, APRIL 28
4-6pm | by registration: Image as Life-form | workshop with Brian Kuan Wood (group 2)
7pm | public: Hito Steyerl: Junktime screening program 4 | Journal Nr. 1: An Artist’s Impression, 21min | Adorno’s Grey, 14:20min

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30
11am – 4pm | by registration: Montage in Writing | writing workshop with 98weeks – session 4: to be determined 

MONDAY, MAY 5
7pm | public: Hito Steyerl: Junktime screening program 1 | Strike, 28s | How Not to be Seen, 14min | Liquidity Inc.30min

MONDAY, MAY 12 
7pm | public: Hito Steyerl: Junktime screening program 2 | Guards, 20min | Is the Museum a Battlefield, 40min 

MONDAY, MAY 19 
7pm | public: Hito Steyerl: Junktime screening program 5 | November, 25min | Lovely Andrea, 30min | Abstract, 7min

Chapter 5: June 10 through July 18, 2014 

TUESDAY, JUNE 10
5pm | by registration: Orientation for participants with Jalal Toufic & Anton Vidokle
8pm | public: “Creating Universes that Include Will and/or Resurrection” | keynote lecture 5 by Jalal Toufic

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11
6:30pm | public: A Museum of Immortality | exhibition opening
8:30pm | public: “Russian Cosmism” | talk by Anton Vidokle

THURSDAY, JUNE 12
4-6pm | by registration: workshop with Keti Chukhrov
6:30pm | public: weekly sci-fi film screening – Aelita, Queen of Mars, 1924, directed by Yakov Protazanov

FRIDAY, JUNE 13 
4pm | by registration: Federov seminar/reading group | led by Anton Vidokle
7:30pm | public: “Why Preserve the Name ‘Human'” | lecture by Keti Chukhrov
9pm | public: Love Machines (2013), by Keti Chukhrov

EVERY TUESDAY, JUNE 17 – JULY 8
6:30pm | by registration: Creating Universes that Include Will and/or Resurrection | weekly seminar in four sessions with Jalal Toufic

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18
4pm | by registration: Federov seminar/reading group | led by Anton Vidokle 

THURSDAY, JUNE 19
4-6pm | by registration: workshop with Ekaterina Degot
6:30pm | public: weekly sci-fi film screening – Cosmic Journey, 1936, directed by Vasili Zhuravlyov 

FRIDAY, JUNE 20
8pm | public: “Defying the Death of Art: Russian Art from Malevitch to Kabakov Under the Sign of Nikolai Federov’s Philosophy” | lecture by Ekaterina Degot 

SATURDAY, JUNE 21
4-6pm | by registration: workshop with Trevor Paglen

MONDAY, JUNE 23
8pm | public: “The Last Pictures” | lecture by Trevor Paglen 

THURSDAY, JUNE 26
3-5pm | by registration: workshop with Shuddhabrata Sengupta 

6:30pm | public: weekly sci-fi film screening – Planet of Storms, 1962, directed by Pavel Klushantsev 

FRIDAY, JUNE 27
4pm | by registration: Federov seminar/reading group, led by Anton Vidokle
8pm | public: “A Lock for Every Key: The Excesses of Restraint” | lecture by Shuddhabrata Sengupta

WEDNESDAY, JULY 2 
5pm | by registration: workshop with Bassam Tabshouri 

THURSDAY, JULY 3 
4pm | by registration: Federov seminar/reading group | led by Anton Vidokle 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 9
3pm | by registration: workshop with Brian Kuan Wood 

FRIDAY, JULY 11
4pm | by registration: Federov seminar/reading group | led by Anton Vidokle
6:30pm | by registration: weekly sci-fi film screening – The Andromeda Nebula, 1967, directed by Yevgeni Sherstobitov 

MONDAY, JULY 14
4-6pm | by registration: workshop with Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige

TUESDAY, JULY 15
7pm | public: Book launch | second edition of Forthcoming by Jalal Toufic

8:30pm | public: “Creating and Dispersing Universes Again and Again” | lecture by Jalal Toufic

THURSDAY, JULY 17
8pm | public: “An Additional Continent” | presentation by Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige

Creating and Dispersing Universes ( that Work without Working at Singularities)

In the summer of 1995, the Lebanese artist Ziad Abillama distributed a written request to the other 44 participants in Ashkal Alwan’s collective “Sanayeh Garden Project,” asking them to grant him a space of 30 cubic centimetres in each of the 23 projects being prepared: to actualize his own intervention. While some granted the request, many refused it. Indeed two of the participants felt offended by it. Maybe their refusal stemmed from an obscure feeling that they had not yet produced the outside that has to do with their artwork, its outside (for instance the crows of Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows or the matted birds with markedly electronic sounds of Hitchcock’s The Birds), an outside without which it cannot remain consistent; and therefore that it was premature to add his alien outside. My qualm with the move of Abillama is that it tends to imply that the anomalous element has to be provided from outside, that the artwork does not itself have it, when in fact any “universe that doesn’t fall apart two days later” (Philip K. Dick) manages to avoid this eventuality precisely because it contains in itself its own zone(s) where it breaks down (“in” our physical universe, in the form of black holes with their singularities where the curvature of spacetime becomes infinitely large and spacetime ceases to exist). Does one encounter, hit against an impossibility in the creation of a universe? Yes, but that does not mean that it is impossible to create a universe, but rather that each universe contains ipso facto an impossibility. The other participants in the “Sanayeh Garden Project,” including those who refused Abillama’s request, were doing the same move in relation to nature: works of art are in a sense these “30 cubic centimetres” that artists request from or impose on the universe, inserting through them in nature something that does not belong to it, for instance the over-turn. Isn’t Reproduction Prohibited “30 cubic centimetres” (to be precise, 81.5 x 65.5 cm) that Magritte requested from or imposed on the universe or at least on nature, which does not contain over-turns? Our world is consistent enough not only to subsist for more than “two days” but also not to fall apart with the introduction through artistic and literary works of what is out of this world (in both senses, literal; and idiomatically informal: “extraordinary; superb”)(would our world fall apart as soon as the Gnostic alien Saviour appears in it?). Sophisticated as they are, artists and writers should try to “build a universe that doesn’t fall apart two days later” (Philip K. Dick; cf. Nietzsche: “I teach you … the creating friend, who hath always a complete world to bestow”) and then try to avoid credulously becoming sucked totally in it (Nietzsche again: “It is necessary to disperse the universe, to lose respect for the whole”). Attempting to break up and disperse a universe (a gesture one finds in Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, and Abillama’s proposal at the “Sanayeh Garden Project”) presupposes a universe that doesn’t fall apart on its own “two days” after its creation—I do not think that this had already happened with the participants in the “Sanayeh Garden Project”; consequently, it was too early to disperse. The percentage of successful universes, ones that last for more than “two days,” is no greater in the physical universe than in fiction and art: a plethora of the baby universes that appear in the physical universe do not have enough consistency, and so disappear in less than “two days.” What can resist, and resists the expansion of globalization is not the local of every country, but the universal of artistic works, which present each a universe that is not part of the expanding universe in which humans materially live but borders it.

Jalal Toufic

Art without Work, Art with Sovereignty

Since the early twentieth century, much of the advanced analysis of art production refers to the position of the artist and the intellectual as cultural workers. This language and thinking is predicated on the privileged position of work (and culture): that in order for art to come into being, work needs to be done—hard work, important work, expert work, work of art, art work. While there is a lot of disagreement about what type of work is actually required, who should or can do it, or if and how they should be trained for it, it is rarely questioned whether work is actually necessary or essential to the production of art. Naturally, making art objects requires labour and work, but art does not exclusively belong to the realm of objects. Art resides within and in between subjects, and subjects don’t always require work to produce themselves. For example, falling in love, or having a religious or aesthetic experience does not require work, so why should art require work to come into being? Duchamp mused whether there could be a work “not of art”; but can there also be an art without work?

Unlike artists of previous epochs, say, before the French Revolution, who usually worked to satisfy a commission from the church or the aristocracy, or to serve public taste and critics, an artist today aspires to a certain kind of sovereignty. Much like popular sovereignty, artistic sovereignty is perpetually contained, contested, recuperated, or co-opted. In order for an artist’s work to be economically sustainable, critically acknowledged, or even simply brought into contact with the art public, it needs to conform to certain network protocols that dictate the forms of art production that circulate. With the ever increasing professionalization of artists, curators, and other practitioners in the field of art, it seems that the industry of contemporary art is actually moving towards a certain restoration of a more prescriptive position vis-à-vis the artist. This reality necessitates a more focused positioning of liberated artistic work within, against, and beyond the contextual superstructure that enables and envelops the sovereign artistic gesture.

Anton Vidokle

Jalal Toufic is a thinker and a mortal to death. He was born in 1962 in Beirut or Baghdad and died before dying in 1989 in Evanston, Illinois. He is the author of, among other books, (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film (1993; 2nd ed., 2003), Forthcoming (2000), The Withdrawal of Tradition Past a Surpassing Disaster (2009), What Is the Sum of Recurrently ? (2010), and What Were You Thinking ? (2011). Many of his books, most of which were published by Forthcoming Books, are available for download as PDF files at his website. He was most recently a participant in the Sharjah Biennial 11, the 9th Shanghai Biennale, Documenta 13, the 3rd Athens Biennale, Art in the Auditorium III (Whitechapel Gallery …), Six Lines of Flight (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), and Meeting Points 6 (Beirut Art Center and Argos). In 2011, he was a guest of the Artists-in-Berlin Program of the DAAD.

Anton Vidokle is an artist and founder of e-flux. Born in 1965, Vidokle lives in New York and Berlin. His work has been exhibited in shows such as Documenta 13, Venice Biennale, Gwangju Biennial, Taipei Biennial, Lyon Biennial, Dakar Biennale, Shanghai Biennale, Liverpool Biennial and at Tate Modern, London; MoMA/P.S.1, New York, among many others. With Julieta Aranda, he organized e-flux video rental, which traveled to numerous institutions, including KW, Berlin; Portikus, Frankfurt; Extra City, Antwerp; Carpenter Center, Harvard University. As founder of e-flux, he has produced projects such as “The Next Documenta Should be Curated by an Artist” (curated by Jens Hoffmann) and “Do It” (curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist). In 2005, Vidokle initiated research into education as site for artistic practice as co-curator for Manifesta 6, which was cancelled. In response to the cancellation, he set up an independent project in Berlin called Unitednationsplaza (2006-2007): a twelve-month project involving more than a hundred artists, writers, philosophers, and diverse audiences, and which featured numerous public seminars, lectures, screenings, performances and various projects. In 2008 Unitednationsplaza travelled to Mexico City, and opened in New York’s New Museum for Contemporary Art under the name Nightschool (2008–2009). In 2008, with Brian Kuan Wood and Julieta Aranda, Vidokle founded the e-flux journal, a monthly online publication on art and critical theory. During the past three years, the journal published 36 issues containing more than 250 essays by writers such as Hito Steyerl, Martha Rosler, Liam Gillick, Boris Groys, Franco Berardi (Bifo), Jalal Toufic, Slavoj Zizek, Diedrich Diedrichsen, Raqs Media Collective and numerous other contributors. Jointly with the Sternberg Press, Berlin, e-flux journal started a new imprint that has put out a series of monographic publications and thematic compilations of essays, including: What is Contemporary Art?(2010), Boris Groys, Going Public (2010), Are You Working Too Much? Post Fordism, Precarity, and the Labor of Art (2011), Moscow Symposium: Conceptualism Revisited (2012). At e-flux space in New York, Vidokle directs a program of exhibitions that has included solo shows by Hito Steyerl, Martha Rosler, Gustav Metzger, Adam Curtis, Raqs Media Collective, Mladen Stilinovic, Alan Sekula, Andrei Monastirsky & Collective Actions; as well as group exhibitions, such as “Agency of Unrealized Projects,” curated jointly with Hans Ulrich Obrist. Vidokle made several films and videos, most recently Two Suns (2012). He has contributed essays and texts to various journals, including October, Frieze and Aprior, as well as to numerous books and catalogues.