MUSEUM (SCIENCE) FICTIONS
CENTRE POMPIDOU/ESPACE PROSPECTIF
May 18th -23rd
Curated by Elena Sorokina
Contributions by:
Zbynek Baladran, Ekaterina Degot, Elitza Dulguerova, Vit Havranek, Leonid Heller, Myriam Lefkowitz, Jean-Claude Marcadé, Louisa Martin-Chevalier, Ioulia Podoroga, Julie Pellegrin, Natasa Petresin-Bachelez, Barbara Piwowarska, Pauline Simon
Temporary display (co-curated with Vit Havranek):
Babi Badalov, Joao Enxuto et Erica Love, Zhanna Kadyrova, Gluklya (Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya), Kiluanji Kia Henda, Pavel Pepperstein
In early Russian science fiction literature, museums actively travelled in time and space: museums on Mars or museums in the thirtieth century were described in detail. The vivid imagination of the authors oscillated between technological, ecological and various other models, until the museum completely blended into life and thus disappeared altogether. These museums rarely collected; they researched, educated, or functioned as laboratories. They acted as producers of the future rather than organisers of the past. At cross-roads between a “museum” and “science fiction”, this project takes these historical texts as a lens through which current encounters between radical speculative fiction and museums’ scientific narratives can be considered. This week-long project comprises a temporary display, choreographed interventions, and a series of “performative conferences”, featuring artists’ and curators’ talks, music, and readings of sci-fi texts.
Ekaterina Degot will talk about the magic of research and the 2013 edition of Bergen Assembly, (co-curated with David Riff) which was based on the iconic Soviet sci-fi novel Monday begins on Saturday. Vit Havranek and Zbynek Baladran will unravel their use of the Czech sci-fi film Ikarie XB-1 for the exhibition organised at the New Museum in New York, (2014). Julie Pellegrin will extrapolate on her upcoming project on Museum and/as Time Machine. Barbara Piwowarska will present a “footnote” on how Oskar Hansen never built his museum in Skopje and inspired artistic fiction.
Questioning the museum’s classical regime of “presentation and display”, this project introduces other modes of use. The Centre Pompidou’s galleries become a work space for Pauline Simon and Myriam Lefkowitz. Pauline Simon tests her recently created choreography in the museum’s permanent collection, creating “landscapes of the future” with the dancers’ bodies. Myriam Lefkowitz develops a new version of her practice of “embodiment” through touch and sound, connected to a selection of Pavel Filonov’s paintings.
A conference is organised to revisit Pavel Filonov’s exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in 1990. He was a key artist (1883 - 1941) of the “organic” school of the Russian avant-garde, an “off-canon” figure who developed his own version of “modernism”. This was the first solo of his work abroad. The semi-fictional outcome of the exhibition and Filonov’s own vision of the museum between science and metaphysics will be discussed.
Programme :
18 May (Wednesday) 19.00 - 21.30
- Vit Havranek on Spaceship as Museum
- Zbynek Baladran on Museum as a Spaceship
- Julie Pellegrin on exhibition as Machine
Texts performed by Yuri Zavalnuk throughout the conference
19 May (Thursday) 19.00 - 21.30
- Barbara Piwowarska on Oskar Hansen. Footnote 10: Museum of the Unknown
- Ekaterina Degot on Bergen Assembly 2013 as contemporary re-writing of the sci-fi novel by the Strugatsky Brothers Monday begins on Saturday. Followed by the conversation with Natasa Petresin Bachelez
- Projection of the video Debates of Division by Gluklya
18-19-21 May- 14.00 - 19.00, and 20 May 11.00-14.00 and 15.00 - 17.00
Pauline Simon will be working in permanent collection
with Bryan Campbell, Léa Lansade, Duncan Evennou, Thibaut Gauthier
20 May (Friday) 14.00 - 18.00
Myriam Lefkowitz, with Julie Laporte and Jean Philippe Derail
How can one know in such darkness, (by appointment)
23 May, Monday, 15.30 - 19.00
Pavel Filonov and his Museums
-Jean-Claude Marcadé
-Ioulia Podoroga
-Elitza Dulguerova
-Louisa Martin-Chevalier
-Leonid Heller
All conferences take place at the Galerie Prospective, 4th floor of the Centre Pompidou. Entrance on the 5th floor. Pauline Simon will be working in the collections on the 4th floor, her work sessions are open to the public.
This project is made possible with the support of : Galleria Continua, Czech Center, Paris; Galerie Filomena Soares, Iragui Gallery, Polish Institute, Paris; Galerie Jocelyn Wolff
Myriam Lefkowitz working in the exhibition space
