ephemeropteræ
Performer, Audience, Word, Spoken, Garden, Friday, Evening
June 14–September 20, 2013
Opening: June 14, 7pm
Performances: Every Friday (except August 2–16), 7pm
Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary–Augarten
Scherzergasse 1A, 1020 Vienna
T +43 1 513 98 56 24
augarten [at] tba21.org
www.tba21.org
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The second edition of Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary‘s weekly spoken-word performance series ephemeropteræ explores in 12 episodes the rich traditions and evanescent articulations of poetry, literature, performance, and language-based artistic practice at TBA21–Augarten. ephemeropteræ—referring to species that live for only a brief moment—stages the fleeting emergence of singular and truly remarkable voices performing, displaying, and choreographing spoken expression. This ongoing performance series is presented in the open air, under a canopy of trees, on a hospitable stage structure designed by architect David Adjaye. The ephemeropteræ stage consists of a trapezoidal prism made of timber slats, which frames the view of the surrounding park and references, somewhat ironically, the proscenium of classic theater.
The spoken, the screamed, the whispered, the stuttered are all manifestations of oral expression, as is the decomposition of speech into rudimentary vocal sounds such as growls, moans, and coughs, as well as its corporealization into gestures, enactments, or speech-songs. The voice occupies its discursive space but is also an “animation” of the body, and the body manipulates the sounds of utterances. But there are also the inner voices that one hears in one’s head, plaguing voices, speaking in tongues, and ambiguous, ghostly, bodiless articulations. Rather than fading in inner silence, these voices are rematerialized, resocialized, and made to be heard in nuances and inflexions in its artistic expression. But then again, there is the speech of reason, the prepared address, intended to be educative, informative, structured, playing with various regimes of knowledge production and communication. ephemeropteræ pulsates from poetry and prose to music, dance, theater, film, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, and other fields of art and science. By resisting definition and directly addressing and engaging audiences, ephemeropteræ offers an interdisciplinary arena dedicated to the nature and the experience of oral practices and reveals itself as a potent and thought-provoking site of contemporary expression.
ephemeropteræ 2013 features: Wanda Coleman (b. 1946), the legendary L.A. blueswoman, 2013 Jean Burden Poet, recipient of the Shelley Memorial Award, and great Afro-American poet; Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir (b. 1976), the Icelandic artist and poet behind the lyrics to Ragnar Kjartansson’s Feminine Ways; Antonio Caro (b. 1950), the Colombian guru of pop-conceptualism; storied Welsh artist Cerith Wyn Evans (b. 1958); John Giorno (b. 1936), the legendary poet and beatnik, and the sole actor in Andy Warhol’s 1963 movie Sleep; performer and musician Susan Stenger; a stunning collaboration between the Austrian musician Christian Fennesz (b. 1962) and the film director Edgar Honetschläger (b. 1963) on AUN (in cooperation with Filmarchiv Austria); American genderqueer artist, painter, curator, composer, and writer Vaginal Davis (b. 1969); the Wittgensteinian project of the Mexican artist Erick Beltrán (b. 1974) and his Colombian colleague Bernardo Ortiz (b. 1972); Clémentine Deliss (b. 1960), the anthropologist, curator, editor of Metronome press, director of the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt, and founder of the Future Academy’s oral newspaper voiceforum; Hassan Khan (b. 1975), the Egyptian artist, musician, and author; Austrian artist, curator Johannes Porsch (b. 1970); Blixa Bargeld (b. 1959), the cult figure of industrial music, leader of Einstürzende Neubauten, and one-time member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, this time in the role of spoken-word artist; Romaine Moreton (b. 1969), the fabulous Australian poet and filmmaker; Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye (b. 1966), the author of ephemeropteræ pavilion; Peter Gidal (b. 1946), the Swiss-born experimental filmmaker; Lois Weinberger (b. 1947), the fabled Austrian “plant-man”; the collective of female artists Chicks on Speed created in 1997 by Alex Murray-Leslie, Kiki Moorse and Melissa Logan; the emerging artist Anna Artaker (b. 1976); an evening of artists’ writings selected and performed by Daniela Zyman and Boris Ondreička.
Curated by Daniela Zyman and Boris Ondreička
For the full program: www.tba21.org
