Portal 2: Physical Property, 2019

2019. Installation

The earth moves against the world. And today the response of the world is clear. The world answers in fire and flood. The more the earth churns the more vicious the world’s response. But the earth still moves. The earth’s procession is not on the world’s calendar. It is not a parade on a parade ground. It is not in the world’s teleology. Nor is the procession exactly a carnival played to mock or overturn this parade, to take over its grounds. A procession moves unmoved by the world. The earth’s procession around which all processions move struts in the blackness of time. And the earthen who move around, and move in earth’s procession, move, like astrals in their own time out of time. God is so powerful in this procession that he cannot exist. Not because he is everywhere in the procession but because we are. We are the moving, blackened, blackening earth. We turn each other over, dig each other up, float each other off, sink down with each other and fall for each other. We move in earthen procession swaying to base even as its beat alerts the world’s first responders. These responders are called strategists. Strategy responds to the constant eruption of the earth into and out of the world. The response takes the form of a concept upon which form has been imposed, which is then imposed upon the earthen informality of life. The portal isn’t dimensional – it is a physical property of fire and water.

Extinction Rebellion

2019. Performance by Voin de Voin and Marie Civikov

What is the relation to artificial intelligence? Or can the question be reversed? How does the already formed consciousness of AI relate to the human condition, and more specifically to our emotions?

By placing two bots opposite each other and giving them the same parameters and topics to discuss and relate to, seduce, quarrel and last but not least to talk about love.

The conversation at play is a double reverberation of signifiers, which are put at stake to fill the ambiguity of performing a text created by robots to fill the void of the impossibility to deliver an idea about love.

Bios

Voin de Voin is a Bulgarian artist currently living and working in Sofia. He is the founder of Æther art space in Sofia, running since may 2016. He is part of Sariev Gallery, Bulgaria. He studied Art and Dance in Laban centre, London, Rietveld Academy Amsterdam, International School of Cinema of Paris, and holds a master degree in advanced research in the performing arts from DASARTS, Amsterdam. His work is a combination between performance, installation and social experiments. His aim is to create new connections between the private and the collective, to establish new systems of thinking and offer unique experience to his audiences by creating environments where the borders between performer and public are merged. In his practise he is creating his own platforms to explore the effects and affects of the contemporary life, where the political, sexual and experimental art intersect.

His work has been shown in various festivals and places like NYLO-Living Art Museum, Iceland, Museumsquartier, Vienna, Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin, MOMA, New York, Istanbul Contemporary, Documenta 13, Manifesta 11, Zurich, Pane per i poveri, Venice, and others. He has participated in theatre plays, commercials, independent movies and video clips as actor as well as maker.

aethersofia.wixsite.com/artspace

Marie Civikov (NL 1979) graduated from the Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam in 2002 in the direction of autonomous visual art. Her work has been shown in The Netherlands a.o. at TENT Rotterdam, De Kunsthal Rotterdam, Galerie Nouvelles Images The Hague, Arti et Amicitiae and the Royal Palace Amsterdam and at the Triennial for Graphic Arts in Novosibirsk.She is awarded the Buning Brongers Prize 2004 and the Royal Award for Modern Painting in 2011.

More recently her work primarily concerns humanistic questions in a surrealistic setting in which 'normal' figuration alternates with abstract components in almost shone bright colours. Some of these abstract elements symbolize the inevitability and mystery death brings with itself, relating to childhood fear dreams containing knots of wires. Does anything of our spiritual being remain when we're physically not here anymore? And if so, is it possible for us, people who love each other, to meet somewhere? On the other hand, more concrete subjects concerning nowadays western society catch the same amount of her interest. These two, the physical and the metaphysical, are combined. With her work she intends to convert the personal and private as closely as possible in a visual language that makes outsiders curious and permits them in a world they do not know: identification nor recognition are her goals; it's rather about rapprochement by wonder.

Since 2016 Civikov started working on an art project based on her Bulgarian grandfather. During her research she met visual artist and founder of Æther Sofia, Voin de Voin, with whom she entered into a collaboration based on the parallels in their two family histories. In October 2018 together they created a new exhibition space in The Hague under the name Æther Haga, a place for exchanges between these two extremes of Europe.Currently her practice is generously supported by Stroom The Hague and a with grant for Established Artists by the Mondriaan Fund. 

www.mariecivikov.nl

Voin the Voin and Marie Civikov started their collaboration in 2016 with the series The Revolution will not die with Us, based on the parallels in their two family histories. Three editions took place in The Ruse Art Gallery, Ruse (2017), The Sofia City Art Gallery (2017), and in The Hague as part of the Ground Festival (2018). October 2018 together they created a new exhibition space in The Hague under the name Æther Haga, a place for exchanges between these two extremes of Europe in Bulgaria and The Netherlands. Their second joint project, Æxchange, will take place both in Sofia and The Hague, Spring 2019 and is generously supported by Stroom The Hague.