Courtyard of Galleria d'Arte Moderna Empedocle Restivo - Via Sant'Anna, 21, 90133 Palermo I
THEN DISTANCE IS NOWHERE is a new performance by artist Paul Maheke in collaboration with artist Sophie Mallett.
Inspired by their 2016 performance Hypersea at Turner Contemporary, this new work responds to the context of the city of Palermo as an archive of histories and experiences in constant flux.
The performance takes place in one of the oldest institutions in town, the Gallery for Modern Art Empedocle Restivo; this site has undergone multiple transformations of spirit, changing purposes and housing different entities since 1487.
The city itself has always been, and still is, in transition: with a centuries-long catalogue of colonisers, it has a glorious past as the main cultural and commercial hub in the largest island of the Mediterranean— originally a magnet for immigrants, more recently a land of emigrants.
Using sound, text, movement and image, The Distance is Nowhere explores such transitional spaces, distinguishing the sea as an infinite, constant presence: existing not somewhere specific, but everywhere, mutating in between places. Bodies are composed mostly of water at a high percentage, but while we think of corporeity uniquely as bodily, water follows less fixed, stable patterns and arteries to sustain the terrain on which we exist.
The work makes water a matter of connection and memory— composed by a rich complexity and constantly becoming different, facilitating complex systems into being, the waters of the deep sea also contain the secrets of the smallest particles form prior geological eras.
Manipulating the perception of natural elements such as the wind, symbolic of what animates the surface of water, The Distance is Nowhere articulates the potential of a sea that, like a body or a land, is an archive, comprising and translating histories.
THE DISTANCE IS NOWHERE Performace di Paul Maheke e Sophie Mallett — a cura di Stella Sideli, a Palermo durante Manifesta 12
Sabato 16 Giugno ore 19:00 - Cortile della Galleria d'Arte Moderna Empedocle Restivo
Via Sant'Anna, 21, 90133 Palermo
The Distance is Nowhere, la performance di Paul Maheke portata in Giugno alla GAM a Palermo insieme all’artista Sophie Mallett, è un nuovo lavoro che risponde al contesto della città in quanto archivio di storie ed esperienze costantemente in flusso.
Ispirata alla precedente performance Hypersea, The Distance is Nowhere ha avuto luogo presso una delle istituzioni più antiche in città: la Galleria d’Arte Moderna Empedocle Restivo, magnifico sito cittadino più volte riconvertito nell’utilizzo dal 1487, come la città di Palermo, da sempre in continua trasformazione. Il suo glorioso passato, frutto di continui flussi di colonizzazione, l'ha resa nel tempo la principale hub culturale e commerciale dell'isola più grande del mediterraneo— la città, inizialmente tanto prospera da attirare una immigrazione elitaria, più recentemente è diventata terra di emigrati.
Attraverso il suono, testo, movimento e immagini, The Distance is Nowhere esplora questi spazi tra il cambiamento, riferendosi all’idea del mare come presenza infinita e costante, e che, in moto continuo, esiste solo tra luoghi diversi.
L'acqua è materia di connessione e memoria: i corpi umani sono corpi d’acqua, e mentre pensiamo al corpo in quanto fisico, l’acqua segue altre logiche, meno stabili, per poter sostenere il mondo terreno che abitiamo. E dato che gli oceani profondi ospitano la memoria di particelle di epoche geologiche precedenti, l'acqua conserva più segreti antropomorfi di quanti preferiremmo dimenticare.
Manipolando la percezione di alcuni elementi naturali come il vento, simbolo di ciò che anima la superficie dell’acqua, la performance articola il potenziale di un mare che, esattamente come un corpo o una terra, è un archivio, che contiene e traduce storie.PERFORMANCE (italian)
PAUL MAHEKE (b.1985, Brive-la-Gaillarde) lives and works in London. He completed a MA in Art Practice at l’École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy in 2011 and a programme of study at Open School East, London in 2015 where he pursued a period of research and a series of public conversations entitled ‘Beyond Beyoncé: Use It Like a Bumper!’. Maheke was awarded the South London Gallery Graduate Residency 2015-16 and his exhibition ‘I Lost Track of the Swarm’ was exhibited in the first floor galleries in late spring 2016. His current research imagines the body as an archive using its waters as pathways to information and knowledge. This investigation occupy a metaphorical space wherein which the body resonates and echoes with the broader socio-political and historical context that have birthed it. With particular attention to dance, it proposes to rearticulate the representations of queer Blackness that emerge from Western imaginations by addressing History through non-human subjectivity. It is also a way to question social and geographical relationships to places as they relate to a more personal inquiry that mainly deals with unsettling idea of « main-ness ». Upcoming projects include: Baltic Triennial XIII; The Centre Cannot Hold Itself, Lafayette Foundation, Paris FR; Move 2018, Centre Pompidou. Paris, FR; LISTE, with Sultana, Basel, Switzerland; W.I.T.C.H.E.S Constellation, Kunsten Festival, Brussels BE (all 2018). Recent projects include: Chisenale Gallery, London (2018, solo show); artist-in-residence at Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Aqua Alta, Galerie Sultana, Paris, FR; What Flows Through and Across, Assembly Point, London, UK; In Me Everything is Already Flowing, cur. Room E-1027, Center, Berlin, DE; Ten Days Six Nights, cur. Catherine Wood and Andrea Lissoni, Tate Modern, UK; Diaspora Pavilion, cur. David A. Bailey, during 57th Venice Biennale, IT; (X) A Fantasy, David Roberts Art Foundation, London, UK; Partitions Performances, cur. Christian Alandete, Fondation Ricard, Paris, FR; Klub Fiesta, cur. Michal Novotný + Lumír Nykl, Plato, Ostrava, CZ; The problem with having a body / is that it always needs to be somewhere, The Approach, London, UK; Posthuman Complicities, cur. Andrea Popelka and Lisa Stuckey, Akademie der Künste, Vienna, AT; Opaque Poetics, Music Festival cur. Nkisi, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, UK; La Pensée du Tremblement, cur. Diamètre, YGREC, Paris, FR; Habits of Care, cur. Helena Reckitt, Blackwood Gallery, Toronto, CA (all 2017); I Lost Track of the Swarm, South London Gallery, London, UK; Green Ray Turns Out To Be Mauve, Green Ray, London, UK (all 2016); Re-former le monde visible, Le 116, cur. Marlène Rigler, Montreuil, France; Festival of minimal actions, cur. Thomas Geiger, Bruxelles, Belgique; Paysage Sauvage / Wilderness, Les Banquets du Château, cur. Marianne Lanavère, Centre International d’Art et du Paysage – Île de Vassivière, France (all 2014).
SOPHIE MALLET Educated at Open School East, London College of Communication and Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Mallett’s practice is both interdisciplinary and collaborative, with a reflexive emphasis on how individuals work together. Recent works and projects include: Artist-in-residence, Hangar CIA, Lisbon (2017); National Anthems, ICA, London & CCA, Derry~Londonderry (2017); Portrait (for a score), Tenderpixel, London (2017); Paradise Island, OUTPOST, Norwich (2017); Hypersea, Turner Contemporary, Margate (2016); Artist-in-residence, [SPACE], London (2016); Horrid Little Hands, Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2016); Liminal States, RCA, London, (2016); Project Radio, &Model, Leeds, (2015); Sonic Blind Dates, Tate Britain, London, (2015).