Civil provision! stimulates the desire of people for exchange and production at Belgrade coldspots (rather than hotspots) through the heart-warming power of the artistic imagination. Rather than showing productions in a gallery space, the artistic services will give rise to provisions in the streets of Belgrade, providing transcending and poetic opportunities to the people’s public wishes.

The gallery space is used as a command centre during production and will become an information centre for the duration of the show. At the opening of the exhibition the artists will officially hand over the authority over their work to the people. On site, artists and users will cut the ribbon to express the transfer symbolically. A newspaper will be produced to spread the information, motivation and opportunities the project produces and distributes.

The project therefore necessarily focuses on informal demands and social opportunities that remain hidden and, through this, hopes to give rise to artistic materialisations which infect the bottom-up awareness and foster actual provisions opening up for exchange and usage. Here, a locally situated exchange becomes the material basis of small economics in a wider immaterial field.

Effectively: writers will describe the Belgrade urban subject in general and relate this to wider currents, field workers will walk the streets in a quest for offbeat demands at public coldspots, the mappings will be condensed to focus on demands and to focus on sites, and in response artists will give rise to settings and modes for exchange. This will be captured in a newspaper and an exploratory exhibition in the former command centre.

download press-release here

Sehnsucht, part and parcel of alternative pop culture, experienced by many teenagers during the time their bodies are wriggling under their skins, but usually left behind when coming of age, is Joan’s expressive theme.

Through collaboration, Onomatopee and Joan will develop new work and reflect on its territory. This becomes visible in a solo exhibition in the format of a studio space setting at Onomatopee, which will tour via Los Angeles gallery Paul Loya.  At Onomatopee, events like talks and music sessions will rock the foundations and stimulate outcomes. A publication will be launched at the end of the working period, condensing it and taking it beyond the confines of the residency.

Joan van Barneveld plays the deep desires and visual processes of pop culture. His earlier work energises the visual poetics of grunge culture, the 90s revitalisation of punk’s counterculture, into the present. In paintings made up ​​in black, he projects iconic images of this culture, both on stage and elsewhere. In these, people remain absent, but the feedback of the intensity of this cultural movement is ’condensed’ behind a veil of black layers. By using this technique, the longing is placed behind an optical membrane, which does not suppress it as much as situates its introverted grandeur behind the curtain constituted by this dark skin.  

In recent developments within his work, the energy shifts to a deeper, romantic longing for an essential horizon, narrated in a visually wider manner. He continues to work with blacks and depicts cultural spaces without humans, to process pictures from the public or private sphere releasing a similar charge as when they are ‘condensed’ by shading. Thus, the development of his oeuvre is also a figured and narrated coming of age, evolving the intensity of the original grunge energy he used. The work becomes more layered: as a spectator you can explore narrative links within series, diptychs or triptychs. This enables the evolvement of a temporal transfer of the intensity in his work over a longer period of time, becoming more layered and more powerful in the adult world where positions are more and more fixed and iconic totems possess less strength: the flatness of pop becomes a wide desolate opening into the rock which underlies it. 

Fuck pop, go poetry.

For further information download the handout,
also available in riso-print,
here

Maartje Folkeringa’s work plays the non-verbal forms of communication in our social interaction, our behaviour and the symbols we use to express our worth. It plays with power relationships and discusses the status wherein we postulate our social hierarchy, often unconcious. The work entices us with familiar images of this interaction and with the totems people use to furnish their value.

This sculptural reality, however, does not identify or point a finger at anyone in particular but quietly strips away all decoration, thus exposing and neutralising the facade of human interaction. It reveals how our private allurements can transform us into wannabes, jerks or cowards, or how others fall prey to temptation: man in his trivial megalomania. By articulating and acting upon these symbols, she touches upon the whole unconscious kit and caboodle of social interaction. Her poking around allows us to laugh at ourselves.

Maartje: ‘During the making process, I never try to bend the work to my original intentions but rather enter into ‘negotiation’ with it. In this contra-intuitive game I gradually act more associatively; one turn in a certain direction leads to another. I strive for “air” in my work: playfulness and humour; a balance between sketchiness and accuracy, dark and light, and figuration and abstraction.’

In her games with non-verbal communication as manifested in our behaviour and in the objects we dress and surround ourselves with, we can sense what is going on without words. These are the unwritten rules that colour the spectacle of life itself. We use them to accentuate our power relationships. They provide colour because they form a grey area within our social interaction. Exactly because they are being applied unconsciously, they reveal more than we like them to.

As we familiarise ourselves with our demeanour, social relationships are ingrained only deeper. Non-verbal communication disciplines our interaction and covers our social fabric with a fine hue of repression. Civilisation is rooted in traditions, and conditions our behaviour: it can be understood as the forms and codes of conduct pertaining to a conservative Cultural Capital; a status that is historic and sticks to our unconscious behaviour for a long time. Decency here is moving between the facade that evolved from following tradition and the dynamics of our heart as it tries to adapt to social changes. Enough reason to put this on the map of our cultural horizon.

Production and presentation
In March, April and May, Maartje will be working at artists’ workshop Beeldenstorm. Simultaneously, an open studio space annex author’s exhibition will unfold itself in Onomatopee’s project space. In March we will continuously show a short documentary made by Jennifer Petterson in response to an acquisition by the Jan Cunen museum. In the basement we present images of her sources of inspiration. In April the exhibition will expand with works while the latest challenges are presented in parrallel. Existing works are shown while new works evolve based on the available sources of inspiration, on stories contributing their outlines and on public dialogues with invited speakers.

Folow her blog here 

Al these activities will contribute to a publication we hope to realise, describing Folkeringa’s work that will put her challenges on the agenda and will be distributed as a source of inspiration in its own right.