Designer Chris Kabel, artists Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Samuel Levack and Jennifer Lewandowski, and Gil Leung and philosopher Alexei Penzin presented an evening of screenings, readings, talks and performances addressing light, happiness, affect and productivity in contemporary culture.
Inspired by Reiner Ruthenbeck’s 1977 installation Zwielicht/Entre chien et loup at the Serpentine Gallery, as well as the exhibition of Julio Le Parc’s works at the Serpentine North Gallery, this evening of screenings, readings, talks and performances addressed light, happiness, affect and productivity in contemporary culture. Programmed in collaboration with LUX. Supported by the Goethe-Institut, London.
Participants included: designer Chris Kabel, artists Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Samuel Levack and Jennifer Lewandowski and Gil Leung as well as philosopher Alexei Penzin. A Bright Night also featured a screening of Betzy Bromberg‘s 1980 film Soothing the Bruise (21 min, colour, courtesy the Artist and LUX, London) on 16mm and Marc Camille Chaimowicz’s 1976 Fade (27 min, colour, courtesy the Artist and Cabinet, London).
PROGRAMME: 7-10pm
Introduction: Lucia Pietroiusti, Public Programmes curator, Serpentine Galleries
Screening: Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Fade, 1976 (27min, colour)
Talk: Chris Kabel, on blue skies and talking machines: a short talk about Kabel’s latest works and the immersive and experiential layers that are incorporated therein
Talk/Reading: Gil Leung, Assets, 2015: A short reading on isolation pods, jet lag and the end of a relationship
Screening/Talk: Sidsel Meineche Hansen, screening of the animations ONE-self, 2015 and Seroquel®, 2014, and a talk about the psycho-pharmaceutical industry and the emotional-industrial complex
Screening: Betzy Bromberg, Soothing the Bruise, 1980 (16mm, 21min, colour)
Talk: Alexei Penzin, The Night Preserved: night, sleep, and the continuum of sleepless production, reproduction, consumption, financial speculation and other incessant and open-ended activities without any interruption or meaningful finale
Screening/Performance: Samuel Levack and Jennifer Lewandowski, Winter Solstice – Meditations in the Colour Blue, 2015, performed by Das Hund (Samuel Levack, Jennifer Lewandowski, Nicholas Pankhurst, Fancy Smith. Musical director: Bryan Mills)
Assistant Curator: Claude Adjil. Production Manager: Iain Pate
Filmmaker Betzy Bromberg, Director of the Programme in Film and Video at California Institute of the Arts, has been making experimental films since 1976. Her latest film, Voluptuous Sleep (2011), premiered at the REDCAT Theater in Los Angeles. Bromberg’s films have shown extensively in museums, cultural venues and festivals within the United States and abroad. Most notably, her work has been presented at the Museum of Modern Art and Anthology Film Archives, New York; the National Film Theatre, London and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
Marc Camille Chaimowicz was born in post-war Paris and lives and works primarily in London. Exhibition projects in the past year have included Light and Shade, Halle für Kunst e.V., Lüneberg, Germany; Forty and Forty…, Galerie Neu, Berlin; Gustave 2014…, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York; Portraits d’intérieurs, Nouveau Musée National Monaco and Manifesta 10, The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Chaimowicz was Artistic Director to Decorum: Carpets and Tapestries by Artists at the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris in 2013. Fade is the video documentation of a performance with Colin Naylor at Acme Gallery, London.
Product designer Chris Kabel combines his desire to be an inventor with an intuitive, artistic approach to designing everyday objects. Kabel works with product design labels (Droog, Amsterdam) as well as galleries (Galerie kreo, Paris) and cultural institutions (Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, Marres, Maastricht and Witte de With, Rotterdam). Kabel teaches at ECAL, Lausanne and the Design Academy, Eindhoven.
Samuel Levack and Jennifer Lewandowski’s collaborative practice encompasses installation, video, performance, music and sculpture. Recent and upcoming exhibitions and projects include PoetryFilm Solstice, ICA, London (2014); Alternative Equinox, French Riviera, London (2014–15); Das Hund and The Pilgrim Shells, Whitstable Biennale, UK (2014) and Space Time: Convention T, Wysing Arts Centre, UK (both 2013). A solo exhibition at Evelyn Yard, London, is forthcoming in 2015.
Gil Leung was born in Stockholm in 1980 and lives and works in London. Recent projects include For as Against at Rowing, London; Exchange at Flat Time House, London and Bedroom Tour in collaboration with Am Nuden Da. She is resident at Wiels Contemporary Art Center, Brussels in 2015.
Sidsel Meineche Hansen is an artist whose practice explores nervousness as a form of institutional critique. Her work manifests as exhibitions and cross-disciplinary seminars. Her most recent solo exhibition was INSIDER at Cubitt Gallery, London (2014). Her current seminar series, This is not a symptom, hosted by South London Gallery, began in 2014 and is ongoing.
Alexei Penzin is Reader at the Faculty of Arts, University of Wolverhampton (UK), and Research Fellow, Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. His major fields of interest are philosophical anthropology, Marxism, Soviet and post-Soviet studies and the philosophy of art. He is the author of Rex Exsomnis: Sleep and Subjectivity in Capitalist Modernity (Hatje Cantz, 2012). Penzin is a member of the group Chto Delat [What is to Be Done?], as well as on the editorial boards of Stasis and the Moscow Art Magazine. He lives and works between London and Moscow.
