Katya Ev I Augenmusik, performance, streets of Paris, 2016

Statecraft (and beyond)

EMST - The National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens, Athens (Gr)

2022

ph Diamorfononatas Kratos, Pnelopi Gerasimou

Bani Abidi, Ewa Axelrad, Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler, Loulou Cherinet, Liu Chuang, Navine G. Dossos, Köken Ergun, Katya Ev, Alexis Fidetzis, Marta Górnicka, Ivan Grubanov, Giorgos Gyzis, Lise Harlev, Femke Herregraven, Eleni Kamma, Thomas Kilpper, Szabolcs KissPál, Panos Kokkinias, Stéphanie Lagarde, Langlands & Bell, Ella Littwitz, Thomas Locher, Cristina Lucas, Tanja Muravskaja, Marina Naprushkina, Kristina Norman, Daniela Ortiz, Trevor Paglen, Antonis Pittas, Jaanus Samma, Larissa Sansour, Jonas Staal, Anastasis Stratakis, Sasha Streshna, Maria Varela, Vangelis Vlahos, Eirini Vourloumis

curated by Katerina Gregos

images: Katya Ev, Augenmusik: installation of 12 flashing lights, video (projection, HD, no sound), vinyl lettering, map of Paris

Statecraft is an international group exhibition that explores the underlying mechanisms at work in the engineering of the nation-state, as we know it today, and the challenges it faces in today’s globalised, networked world. Probing the history and the processes of nation-building in modern times, Statecraft examines the power structures and processes behind state bureaucracy, governance, and sovereignty, and their common issues of democracy, citizenship, rights, inclusion and exclusion. The exhibition explores the scope and limits of state authority while confronting a new political reality in Europe and beyond, during a time of rising nationalism and authoritarianism, and as some countries become progressively more inward-looking. >> More

cat. Statecraft (and beyond)

"Ev made the work in the wake of the state of emergency that was declared by President François Hollande on the night of Friday 13" November 2015, during the Bataclan terrorist attacks which left ninety people dead. She hijacks the police siren, a symbol of state power, and symbolically transfers this power to individual citizens. Converging on the city centre, as if in an ancientagona, the performers engage in the practice of performative democracy. The aplyphonic nature of Bach's composition can be likened to the polyphony of the collective, while the siren can be likened to the silencing of the majority. Ultimately Augenmusik, 2016, tests the limits of state power, by subverting a penultimate symbol of that power and turming it into an empowering act of civil disobedience." cat. Statecraft (and beyond), EMST, 2022

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