Peter Wächtler: Franky’s Theme

Bergen Kunsthall opens its 2019 programme with a new exhibition by German artist Peter Wächtler. The exhibition presents a large body of new works, in conjunction with a recent large-scale video installation. 

Peter Wächtler works in a variety of media: bronze, ceramics, drawings and video. But in many ways “stories” could be described as his main artistic material. His works often evoke a narration, with animals or human figures in animated states. They are made in ways that use and adapt elements of fiction and folklore, relating to specific traditions and common tales, and materialize the ways of telling a story as much as the story itself. 

For his exhibition at Bergen Kunsthall, Wächtler will assemble a series of four distinct spaces, each presenting a group of new works (ceramics, bronze, drawings) leading towards the Kunsthall’s main space in which the video Untitled (Clouds) (2018) will be projected. The piece features a lonely dragon with a straw hat gazing across a dried wasteland in front of colourful cloud formations. The silent images are overwritten by mid-screen subtitles, which report on considerations and reflections, using a language switching in-between associative poetry and an incoherent code with its true understanding long gone. We follow complaints, insecurities, hubris and self-questioning, while the creature, like many of Wächtler’s protagonists, keeps going. Sticking with the structural set-up of the Kunsthall and it seccesion of different sized galleries, the show’s spectrum is broken up and bumpy, patching itself up from room to room. The four galleries, changing in modes and moods of production, display a stuttering and ambivalent relationship with progression, regression and the end. 

During the exhibition, a new artist book by Peter Wächtler will be published with a collection of works comprising drawings and text contributions by among others John Kelsey and the artist, designed by Boy Vereecken. 

Peter Wächtler lives and works in Brussels and Berlin. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Schinkel Pavilion, Berlin, M HKA – Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerp (both 2017), The Renaissance Society, Chicago, Chisenhale, London, KIOSK, Ghent (all 2016) and Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster (2014). Selected group exhibitions includeThe Absent Museum, WIELS, Brussels (2017), 6th Moscow Biennial, Moscow, Surround Audience, New Museum Triennial, New York (both 2015), A Needle Walks into a Haystack, Liverpool Biennial, Europe, Europe, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (both 2014), and Meanwhile… Suddenly and Then, Lyon Biennale (2013). A collection of Wächtler’s texts titled Come Onwas published by Sternberg Press in 2013.

Beatrice Gibson
I Couldn’t Sleep in My Dream
January 25–March 31, 2019

An exhibition by London based artist Beatrice Gibson presents film works and an extensive programme of talks, music and screenings, organised in collaboration with Borealis—a festival for experimental music. 

The exhibition features the new film I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead (2018), developed together with two of the USA’s most significant living poets, CAConrad and Eileen Myles. A second new film, Deux Soeurs Qui Ne Sont Pas Soeurs (Two Sisters who aren’t Sisters, 2018), will be shown as a screening at Bergen Kino during Borealis festival (Friday, March 8, 8pm). The title of the exhibition, I Couldn’t Sleep in My Dream, is taken from a poem by Alice Notley.

Beatrice Gibson’s films are composite works, combining sound, text and images of different sources. Born out of an interest in the politics and ethos of experimental music and film, they blend historical research with collaborative modes of working, resulting in powerful images that challenge conventional methods of production and perception. I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead starts with material shot on the evening of the 45th American presidential inauguration in January 2017. Scenes produced with CAConrad and Myles’ are woven together with words of fellow poets Audre Lorde, Alice Notley, and Adrienne Rich, exploring poetry as a means of confronting the present. Accompanied by a Pauline Oliveros soundtrack, the film is shown in an installation together with two 16mm portraits of Myles and Conrad. Deux Soeurs is based on an unrealized script by Gertrude Stein, written in 1929 as European fascism was building momentum. Gibson’s adaptation is set almost a century later in contemporary Paris and explores feminism not only as subject matter, but as method, casting as the film’s characters a close network of friends and practitioners, such as Alice Notley. 

A programme of events unfolds the themes and approaches of the films in discursive formats throughout the exhibition period. The two protagonists of the film installation, Eileen Myles and CAConrad, will present a series of readings and workshops at Bergen Kunsthall. An evening of live performances, presented together with Borealis, features among others the American artist, composer and choreographer Colin Self, as well as a commissioned performance by Phoebe Collings-James and Last Yearz Interesting Negro. A series of cinema screenings at Cinemateket in Bergen will show earlier works by Beatrice Gibson as well as a special programme of films selected by the artist. 

On the occasion of the exhibition, a new book edited together with the artist will be published, featuring new essays by Erika Balsom, Mason Leaver-Yap, Irene Revell, and reprints of texts related to the project.

The exhibition is a collaboration of Bergen Kunsthall, Borealis – a festival for experimental music, and Camden Arts Centre, London.

I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead is commissioned by Bergen Kunsthall, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Camden Arts Centre, London, and Mercer Union, Toronto, with support from Julia Stoschek Collection, Outset Germany_Switzerland and Arts Council Norway. Deux Soeurs Qui Ne Sont Pas Soeurs is commissioned by Bergen Kunsthall, Borealis – a festival for experimental music, Camden Arts Centre, London and Mercer Union, Toronto, with support from Fluxus Art Projects, Arts Council England and The Beatrice Gibson Producers Circle. The score is by Laurence Crane commissioned with support from Arts Council Norway. 

Related Events:

Film programme at Cinemateket in Bergen
Wednesday, January 23, 8pm
Beatrice Gibson introduces a selection of her recent films: A Necessary Music (2008), The Tigers Mind (2012), Agatha (2012), F for Fibonnacci (2014)

Platform
Saturday, January 26, 2pm
Peter Wächtler in conversation with artist Ed Atkins

Film programme at Cinemateket in Bergen
Tuesday, February 5, 8pm
A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness, Ben Rivers & Ben Russell (2013) 

Film programme at Cinemateket in Bergen
Tuesday, February 26, 8pm
Films selected by Beatrice Gibson: Occidente, Ana Vaz (2015), Gaza Home Movies, Basma Alsharif (2013), La chamber, Chantal Akerman (1972), Sunset Red, Laida Lertxundi (2016), Super dyke meets Madame x, Barbara Hammer (1975), Umweg, Ute Aurand (2015)

Premiere: Deux Soeurs Qui Ne Sont Pas Soeurs
Friday, March 8, 8pm
Film premiere of Deux Soeurs Qui Ne Sont Pas Soeurs, Beatrice Gibson (2018).
Presented in collaboration with Borealis—a festival for experimental music

Personalized (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals with CAConrad
Wednesday, March 13, 2–5pm
Limited spaces. Please email bergen [​at​] kunsthall.no to reserve a place

Poetic Practice
Wednesday, March 13, 7pm
Eileen Myles and CAConrad in conversation at Litteraturhuset in Bergen

Session(s) with Eileen Myles
Thursday, March 14, 2pm - 5.30pm 
Radical reading (1.5 hrs) and silent writing practice (1.5 hrs)

Platform
Thursday March 14, 8pm
Eileen Myles and CAConrad: Two Poets Talking

Reading & Book Launch
Thursday, March 28, 8pm
Peter Wächtler