Practices of Belonging
artist group Office Collective
10. 9. – 25. 9. 2022
opening: 9. 9. 2022 from 6pm
curators: Tereza Rudolf, Elisabeth Pichler,
Markéta Mansfieldová
the exhibition takes place within Fotograf Festival XII
an Office is an international group that met at the Salzburg Summer Academy in 2021 during the ruangrupa course “becoming lumbung”. an offi ce seeks to create a [play]ground for collaborative practices, fi guring out ways of learning and unlearning together.
Dead Dove: Do Not Eat is an open installation for testing togetherness in dialogue with passers-by, exploring the ways of inhabiting more or less hostile environments. The fi rst intervention took place at ruruHaus underground in August 2022 at documenta fi fteen in Kassel, Germany. This shared journey now continues at the Fotograf Festival in Jeleni Gallery and will be followed up by an intervention at Centrul de Proiecte in Timisoara, Romania.
the welcoming department
Dear friend, Welcome. For a few precious moments, this place is yours and ours. Please sit down, relax, and feel at home. You can join the large group of friends in conversation on the wall, even in the case of our absence.
Enjoy!
the communication department
an office’s communication department aims at resurrecting every PR agent’s wet dream: we will show you how to maximize infl uence while minimizing effort, how to stay underpaid but still appear overdressed, and how to promote your brand values without destroying yourself along the way.
the documentation departement
This department presents traces of a lived experience of togetherness and its emotional bla bla bla that can never be fully transferred. In this context, it acts as a waiting room offering to the audience a place to adjust to the current space. It is a lived and living archive.
the department of empowerment
Linda Weiss: swift (relentless structure), 2008-2022, video and sound, 75:00 min
The starting point for the video piece “swift (relentless structure)“ are nine photographs taken at the SWIFT offi ce in New York after a bump into an African-American Wall Street professional in 2007 and a remeeting in New York during Occupy Wall Street protests. The work questions the relationship between the socio-economic elites, racism and class structures and its context. It is intended as an empowerment message, and as such is to be discussed by its recipients.
the garden department
Humans have been using plants to beautifying the workspace and boost productivity. Apparently, non-stop work seems a bit more humane when accompanied by a tired green organism.
The bull, a symbol of violence and power, in Romania is beautifiying with flowers when the agriculture season starts, contrasting the cyclic work of the land with the frantic urban buzz.
Are we beautifying labor to erase its effort? Are we deploying plants to supervise our productivity?
*Members of an office brought seeds from their countries to Kassel and talked about our (lack of) gardening practices, questioning the translocation of seeds in our societies today.
the secoma department
Co-facilitating settings and maintenance. Giving support and assistance to the group‘s needs.
the drapes department
The Drapes Department presents “Dead Dove do not Eat: Perpetual Stew (A play in as many acts as you like)” a theatrical performance written and directed by Sophie Anna Stadler, and performed, hijacked, re-written and fucked up by members of an office collective and audience interference.
It was conceived and welded together from real and overheard conversations, chat dumps and research frenzy surrounding its first iteration at the documenta 15 in Kassel, in the year of the Lord™ 2022.
The program of the Jeleni Gallery is possible through kind support of Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Prague City Council, State Fund of Culture of the Czech Republic, City District Prague 7, GESTOR – The Union for the Protection of Authorship
Partners: Kostka stav
Media partners: ArtMap, jlbjlt.net, Náš REGION
and Mladý svět and UMA: You Make Art
