ARTISTS:
Vyacheslav Akhunov, Karen Andreassian, Artpool, Chto delat?, Ciprian Mureşan, Gorgona, Idea Art, Sanja Iveković, Maj 75, Dan Perjovschi, ŠKART, Mladen Stilinović
CURATORS:
WHW
Printed Matter, New York
10/4 – 22/5/2010
Bertolt Brecht, Praise of Learning, 1931.
In spite of its title, which repeats the socialist mantra that glorifies education as a condition of emancipation, and which found its well-deserved poetic form in Brecht’s famous poem, the exhibition Hungry Man, Reach for the Book. It Is a Weapon does not present artists’ books and publications that necessarily engage directly with pedagogical and didactic aspects of production. But, it does suggest to read them as a way of addressing the problem of constituting and addressing the public, and as a critical engagement with the questions of the public sphere.
The exhibition is focused on the political geography that contained the so-called “socialist states” from before the fall of Berlin wall in 1989, that ‘obscure disaster’, as Badiou calls it in describing a definite end of the epoch that began with the October Revolution.
The exhibition presents certain case studies against the background of Brecht’s enlightening call that continue to persist as a historical reminders, residue, or inspiration, even when Brecht’s urging is rejected. The title of the exhibition is a proposal to read the presented works as results of a desire to step out of the dominant matrix of individual artistic genius and the production of objects for the art market. These works articulate, agitate, propagate and communicate critical thinking in order to imagine the consequences of new possibilities beyond the dominant state of affairs.
Exhibition leaflet is available here.