Installation view 'Arthur Jafa - SlowPEX, Luma Arles, France, 2019 ©Andrea Rossetti

Sketch in a book: Édouard Glissant, L’archipel est un passage, et non pas un mur. (The archipelago is a passage, not a wall), c.2005

Slow Show performance, Luma Arles, France, 2019. © Anne-Sylvie Bonnet

Three new exhibitions to open on 9 June 2023: Hans-Ulrich Obrist Archive; Dimitri Chamblas; Arthur Jafa

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND, April 25, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ -- Hans-Ulrich Obrist Archive
Chapter 1: Édouard Glissant

Luma Westbau is pleased to present a new iteration of Hans-Ulrich Obrist first Archive exhibition dedicated to the late Édouard Glissant (1928 - 2011), Martinique-born philosopher, poet and public intellectual. Glissant is an emblematic figure for both Obrist, for whom he was a mentor, and for the Luma project in Arles, for which the thinker has been an inspiration since its inception, as for many who are finally grasping the relevance of his thought. Drawing on periods of collaboration, friendship and mentorship between the philosopher and the curator, the presentation highlights a belief they had in common: conversation and reciprocal exchange with the other can be a means to produce new realities. For Glissant, a world in transformation is a ‘One-World’ that listens and learns from each of its unique voices.

The focus of this presentation is a collection of audio-visual material related to Glissant from Obrist’s Interview Archive, which was displayed for the first time on the occasion of the overall opening of Luma in Arles in 2021. More than six hours of video material from public and private interviews, screened on eight viewing stations, allow visitors to listen to Glissant engaging in dialogues, reading his poetry aloud, forming and shaping his thoughts and philosophy while speaking. In addition to the videos, various other archival materials such as books dedicated to Obrist by Glissant are presented to offer a unique overview of this inspiring relationship. The presentation at Luma Westbau also features a series of posters by contemporary artists, who were either close to Glissant or who feel connected to his thinking. It is through their unique language that Glissant’s ideas find prolongation, reflecting their contemporaneity and urgency.

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Dimitri Chamblas
Slow Show Installation

Conceived and choreographed by Dimitri Chamblas, 'Slow Show' is an intensive, collective dance performance whose visible repercussions are minimal, precise, and concentrated. Presented for the first time in 2018 with dance students from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) at Hauser and Wirth Los Angeles and at the MAK Center at the Schindler House, the performance is rooted in the principles of trance, exultation, telepathy, and unconscious memories, revealing its strength and vivacity through movements slowed to the extreme, almost imperceptible, almost invisible. The invisible is not emptiness, nor is it calmness or absence. The subtlety of the movements doesn’t take away the intensity nor the exhaustion growing from a stretched time instead of a possible frenetic trance. 'Slow Show' has been performed in different locations around the world; each repetition is unique, gathering around 50 local people from all ages and backgrounds and answering to their immediate context. The 20-minute performance is accompanied by sound and music composed by musician, artist, and DJ Eddie Ruscha.

Presented for the first time, 'Slow Show Installation' brings together a selection of 18 portraits of participants Chamblas filmed in collaboration with Manuela Dalle over the course of several performances that took place in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), Arles (France), Minneapolis (USA) and Charleroi (Belgium). These moving images are presented in a specially devised environment at Luma Westbau, where the body is at the centre. Immersed in blue, low light - which has a calming effect on the brain - and surrounded by projections of floating bodies that move to a site-specific soundscape, the reclining structure in the space invites people to slow down and have a shared experience.
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Arthur Jafa
SlowPEX

Arthur Jafa is one of the most significant contemporary artists practicing today. Over several decades he has constructed a compelling body of work which defies categori-zation. For 'SloPEX' (2022), a slowed-down, modified iteration of his masterpiece 'APEX' (2013), Jafa stretches the original video from 8 minutes 22 seconds to now 105 minutes. Underscored by the beats of Detroit techno pioneer Robert Hood, the sound fills the entire exhibition space and the radical contrast of images, and complexity of associations, are daunting and surprising. Powerful and lyrical at the same time, his practice combines a profoundly unsettling blend of images and histories from diverse contexts and backgrounds. Bringing together affective memory that touches on matters such as the history of the United States of America, violence, repression, modalities of survival and how these exist in the production and dissemination of images, music, sound and time-based media, Jafa reflects on the ontology of race and of blackness. Throughout his career, Jafa has been invested in the exploration of strategies for a Black aesthetics, drawing on the experience of being Black in contemporary America and how this relates to life, death and the concept of the human. As one of the most prolific producers of his generation working across many media, he delivers with incomparable precision the power, beauty and contradictions of contemporary society. His work is an essential development to understanding the complexity of racial relationships, the tension between forms of cultural expression and the specificity and energy of Black American culture.

The exhibitions are on view from 9 June until 17 September 2023.
Luma Westbau, Zurich. Free admission

Sandra Roemermann
Luma Westbau
s.roemermann@lumafoundation.org
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