Iris Touliatou: appendage

Attentive to the ways object, gesture, and affect are mutually implicated, appendage quivers between the remnants of fractured existence and the unbridled desire and pleasure to hold things—together and anew. Harnessing both situated and dislocated supplies, appendage unfolds as a series of fixtures, both material and situational, that are in turn connected or plugged into the architectural and social infrastructure of the Grazer Kunstverein.

doorways, door frames, bar handles, manual mechanisms, outdoor connectors, door eyes, cabin hooks, hinges, stoppers, 3M double-sided adhesive, self-adhesive, window tint removal kit, PVC shock absorber & screws, holes, original column, modern copy of original column, partition walls, galvanized steel, plasterboard, white paint, Olympia black corded phone, wall text, wall mount system, wall absorbers, phone memory, ring tone, handsets, large buttons, cell dead zones, audio assist feature, remote access, cable, splitter, missed calls, call history, membership fee, membership benefits, dispatches, open letter, agreement template, computer floor, calcium sulphate, high strength polypropylene, vinyl, linoleum, laminate, rubber, panels lowered and reversed, removed carpet, base, head, pedestal assembly, stringer, previous institutional identity, stationery, bumpers, nipple shields, sugar substitute, stretch film, food processor, standard blade, drinking water fountains, fittings, rings, stainless steel pipes, elbow, reducer, tee type, cross type, coupling, unions, adaptors, olet, fixtures, flanges, valves, drains, rub handling, outlets, distribution boards, equipment support, Humanscale NeatLink cable management, defender mini, channel rubber, defender cable crossover defender compact, line wiring, today’s standard, wall jack, 30 meter telephone extension cable, 300 bathing suit sets, 300 shirts, motors, chilled water pump, water booster, transducer, cable, charger, network, alarm, security key box, password, extender pro, repeater pro, long range access point, Waveshare screens, black glass, cartons, organic eggs, safety lights, lights on loan, lights for an exhibition, 3 racks, 6 squares, fluorescent bulbs, electrodes, shunted sockets, screw-type base, thermal paper, adding machines, coating, zero ink system, heat, sun, friction, arm fetish, hand fetish, transport van, CB0209PH, books on events according to your date of birth, old astrology guides, prefaces, wires, metal fences and cages retired from circulation, brushed nickel 6-pack stainless steel, gold threads, interior doors, separators, hand rests, windbreakers, wine glasses, magnetic panties, happiness pills, unseizable property, turquoise shades, exterior emulsion, buckets, ice machine loan, oxygen concentrator, PVC belts, plastic wrap, two identical melamine boxes with locks, Christmas trees, the last 230 objects from a store (sold), various for birds, some big black leather couches, we women complete series, free admission,… aggregate and detach.

appendage emerges in the structural dissection of the institution as a public body. Currents of access, data, phone calls, water supply, temperature, electricity, architecture, geography, legal bond, membership, and support structures are scored anew as they are redistributed, diverted, or disrupted. In such an instance of structural glitch, appendage lifts institutional functions from their normative behaviors and replenishes them with transient affiliations and elective affinities.

appendage exposes how objects and their functions continue drifting inseparably from personal and collective attachments and gives body to the enmeshment between infrastructure and affective economies. It lays the transactional conditions that constitute the collective dimensions of intimacy bare and inflamed.

appendage will be accompanied by prefaces to appendage, a publication with contributions by Arnisa Zeqo, Iris Touliatou, Julie Peeters, Lisa Holzer, Tom Engels, and Quinn Latimer.

appendage will host a sound program with oral contributions by artists including Eduardo Costa, Eleni Poulou, Hannah Weiner, among others.

appendage is curated by Tom Engels.

Iris Touliatou (b. 1981, Athens) lives and works in Athens. Recent solo exhibitions include Organs, EXILE, Vienna (2020); and Overnight, Radio Athènes, Athens (2019). Touliatou has been part of the group exhibitions 2021 Triennial: Soft Water Hard Stone, New Museum, New York (2021–22); Work and Leisure, Milan (2022), When I state I am an anarchist, PLATO, Ostrava (2022); Anabasis, Rodeo Gallery, Athens (2022); Eclipse, the 7th Athens Biennale (2021); Lives of an Object, Andreas Melas and ARCH, Athens (2021); The Way In, Haus N Athen, Athens (2021); Anti Structure, DESTE Foundation, Athens (2021); Interval, Goethe-Institut Athen (2021); The Same River Twice, Benaki Museum, Athens (2019); and Manifesta 12, 5x5x5: Selected Projects, Palermo (2018), among others. In 2022 Touliatou will participate in SIREN (some poetics) at Amant Foundation, New York. appendage is her first institutional presentation in Austria.

Grazer Kunstverein is structurally supported by the city of Graz, the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport, the province of Styria, legero united—the shoemakers, con-tempus.eu, and its members.