Unfortunately, It Is Not Open to Public

Unfortunately, It Is Not Open to Public

Steel, clothing, screens, short wave radio receiver, wood, wire

Project commissioned as part of the M HKA / Van Abbemuseum Research Fellowship, 2021.

As part of:
Eurasia – A Landscape of Mutability
M HKA
Antwerp, Belgium
Oct 6, 2021 - Jan 23, 2022

LINK

Alighiero Boetti, Anatoly Osmolovsky, Babi Badalov, Basir Mahmood, C. K. Rajan, Cevdet Erek, Damian Le Bas, Deimantas Narkevičius, Elena Vorobyeva & Viktor Vorobyev, Etel Adnan, Evgeny Antufiev, Femmy Otten, Goshka Macuga, Gulnara Kasmalieva & Muratbek Djumaliev, Haegue Yang, Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin, Ieva Rojūtė, Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, Ives Maes, Izmail Efimov, Janek Simon, Jimmie Durham, Joseph Beuys, K. P. Krishnakumar, Koka Ramishvili, Lee Bul, Lin May Saeed, Metahaven, Michèle Matyn, Nam June Paik, Oleg Kulik, Pedro G. Romero, Pejvak, Qiu Zhijie, Ria Pacquée, Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide), Shigeko Kubota, Slavs and Tatars, Suchan Kinoshita, Taus Makhacheva, Thea Gvetadze, Ulay, Vlad Monroe, Yayoi Kusama/Harrie Verstappen, Zheng Mahler, plus items from Stichting Egress Foundation founded by Seth Siegelaub (including textiles, books and film by Rini Hurkmans).

The exhibition EURASIA – A Landscape of Mutability seeks to map innovative practices and exchanges that reflect the plurality of cultures, collaborations and conceptions of Eurasia, with all its innovations and frictions. Inspired by the artistic imagination of artists, it will consider Eurasia as a landscape of mutability. EURASIA will explore the transformations and growing mutipolarity of the supercontinent, reflecting the flux of cultural practices, communication and exchanges. It will ask: How has Eurasia inspired artists and thinkers historically, and how has this varied across the supercontinent? What can be its artistic potential, and what spaces for speculation does it offer? What new networks of exchange and mutability can be established? And what creative friction can be found at its parameters? We will look at Eurasia as a cultural and geo-political space in the making. With methodology embodying content, EURASIA will be an exhibition of mutability.

With references ranging from the exchanges between Nam June Paik and Joseph Beuys (whose long-term dialogue was titled EUR-ASIA), to the most famous travelogue of the Medieval era dictated by Marco Polo to Rustichello da Pisa, the lyricism of Marina Tsvetaeva’s poetry, the influence of the artistic and intellectual community of Santiniketan, the epic of Gilgamesh, textile and mercantile histories, and the machinations of George Orwell’s 1984, we look across the contemporary Eurasian landscape. We consider the work of artists who reflect the mutability of culture, and who have developed experimental practices for inventing new forms of communication and circuits of exchange. Alongside exploring the tension between utopian and dystopic visions, EURASIA seeks transdisciplinary, transcultural and dialogical perspectives for considering the wealth of artistic intelligence across the supercontinent.                                                                                                 

A two-part video and literary installation collectively titled Scenes Around an Enigma, each representing a chapter exploring narratives surrounding listening and seeing across ideological and technological frontiers.

Unfortunately, It Is Not Open to Public considers the sites of Western surveillance in pre-revolution Iran. The video component of the installation was filmed in Behshahr (formerly the village of Safi Abad) in Iran, where CIA listening stations functioned from the late 1950s up until the Islamic revolution of 1979, as part of a chain of surveillance networks throughout northern Iran constructed for the purposes of detecting missile launches in the Soviet Union. Whilst capturing the enigmatic presence of the spy station’s white dome, the video follows several threads relevant for the residents of Behshahr today. Colloquially referring to the military station surrounding the dome as “Merghouneh”, which means chickens’ house due to the egg-like shape of the dome, the local chronicler in the video cites memories of residents going up the hill for the first time after the 1979 Islamic Revolution – an event which forms the backbone of subsequent intergenerational legends and (mis-)remembered micro-histories.

Unfortunately, It Is Not Open to Public also incorporates three metal drying racks that double as antennae. On the racks lay old clothing items that are rusted through, revealing their trues purpose as decoys. A shortwave radio device affixed to one of the structures is picking up on 145.985 MHz: the now-silent channel over which the last communication with the groups working on the ham radio operations aboard the Mir International Space Station took place. The installation also includes a new research-oriented publication which introduces Pejvak’s project within the context of space 40 travel at the height of the Cold-war, and the reimagination of certain regions of Eurasia as buffer zones and sites of intelligence gathering. As a poetic assemblage, the installation brings into focus the narrative capacity of cold war-era espionage missions that gave rise to the complex social and political fabric that dominated contemporary international relations in the region and beyond.

Scenes Around an Enigma, Publication produced as part of the exhibition, 78pp, 2021.