The exhibition "The Second Death of George Mallory”

the second death

George Mallory of

the second death — George Mallory of

“Because it is there” is a concise answer given by George Mallory when asked why he wanted to conquer Mount Everest.

This sentence, seemingly saying very little, and the figure of George Mallory himself, become a pretext for an exploration not so much of alpinism, but rather of the relationship between embodied cognition, the finite character of the body, and its emancipation: being part of nature, but also transcending it. The exhibition touches upon the question of diverse experiencing the matter of the mountain, getting to know it, but also simply being-in-the-world: not so much of cognitive being opposite to, but of being in and next to. This kind of figure of communion with matter runs along the ridge of cognitive experience, Erf harung , and primal experience, Erlebnis. The space of the rocky massif, untouched by any human trace, becomes a place of longing and desire, but also of various complications – political and economic ones.

Until the mid-17th century exorcisms were performed on the glaciers of Mount Blanc, while two years after the outbreak of the Great French Revolution the mountain was conquered by the “first” human. But this discovery or first climbing is a questionable figure. Discoveries made to the world had always been part of the life of communities which had a non- cognitive relationship with the massif – not being towards. The highest mountain in the world was “discovered” in the office of a surveyor, thanks to years of analysis, meanwhile throughout thousands of years of communion with its massif and experiencing it the mountain

was simply called the Goddess Mother Earth (Chomolungma).

Mankind’s venturing into the mountains, the emancipatory history of climbing, also has a different background – a social background: the people living almost inside the mountain, feeding on it and organising their lives around its massif, according to its rhythm. This rhythm becomes the foundation for transcending the classic relation between the subject and the object, and opens the way to a different thinking about matter – thinking the mountain, thinking towards it and next to it.

Thinking the mountain allows for moving to a different frequency. In this perspective the climber appears to be a little bit like alchemist, searching – according to the rules solve et coagula – not so much for substance, but for his or her higher form of existence, burning out/intertwining with the matter of the massif, which in a way “speaks” with the movement of his or her body. According to the various stages of the alchemical rule, we can say that the alpinist/alchemist rejects his, her attachment to life, perhaps not in order to break away from earthly things, but to sharpen his, her knowledge about them. In this sense, the figure of the alchemist not only reveals a certain given reality, but also establishes it, both situating itself as part of nature, and transcending it. Combining both orders of the human and the inhuman, often reversing their logic, the human-inhuman world every time creates its own image. Marguerite Yourcenar wrote in a forward to Roger Caillois’ The Writing of Stones : “the symbolism of alchemy compared stone to the human body,

which unstable though it may be (and as a stone is itself, seen through stretches of time infinitely longer), is yet a »fixed« quantity in comparison with psychics elements, which are even more fluid and mutable.”

These reflections on nature of stone and cited theme of an alchemist are not necessarily characteristic exclusively for the ethic of heroic climbers. It is also revealed in everyday drudgery, where struggle for survival is not a choice, but a necessity of the communities living around the massif, engaged, for example, in the extraction of ore. History of the mountains and history of mining are inextricably intertwined with each other, and both these narratives illuminate each other. The belief in transmutation of matter or rather the belief in your power to tame substance, allows you to survive in everyday work. This ability to survive, thinking the matter, rather than the ore itself, are the philosophical stone.

Curator: Agnieszka Kilian Translation: Tomasz Bieroń

Exhibition view

Exhibition view

In the foreground

In the foreground

Michael Hoepfner

Pavol Breier /BAHAMA

Lie Down, Get Up, Walk On installation, wool and wood,

Ascents of Caucasus summits:

2014/2015

Summit of Ushba In the background:

21st July 1981,

Pavol Breier

photograph

Shadow of Ganek Gallery from Orlowski route

On the summit of Cheget

photograph, 1982

9th July 1981, photograph

Exhibition view

Exhibition view

UFO Ganek Gallery

In the background

Július Koller, Milan Adamčiak

from left to right:

photograph, 1982

and

BAHAMA group Galeria Ganku

Ganek Gallery Members of UFO Ganek Gallery

Exhibition design

photograph, 1982

Agata Biskup Drawing based on the Orlowski route NW face of Ganek Gallery

Exhibition design

Agata Biskup

Štefan Papčo Andrej

Agata Biskup / Vanessa Bell

sculpture,

George Mallory (1912)

bronze (edition 1/3),

print, 2015

2014

Courtesy Tate Modern

Yan Tomaszewski

13.08.1927 (Szczuka) 16 mm film, 2013, duration: 9’30’’.

Courtesy Yan Tomaszewski

13.08.1927, 2013, reenactment of Szczuka’s last fatal climb, shot at the exact location of his death, video, 09’21’’

Exhibition design

Agata Biskup / Vanessa Bell

In the foreground:

Untitled

Agata Biskup / Vanessa Bell

object / stone,

George Mallory (1912), installation In the background:

Agata Biskup / Untitled object / stone, 2015

Exhibition design In the background:

Prabhakar Papchute Earthwork of Hadsati still from the animation, print, 2013. Courtesy Prabhakar Papchute

2015

Exhibition view

Exhibition view In the foreground

Exhibition view

Jan Moszumański The complete fiction

Rasmus Johansen

glazed kiln shelves, metal,

Close horizon

styrofoam, 2015

tied nylon nets, metal roses, 2015 (in progress)

Exhibition design

Szymon Durek Odurek still from the film, dual channel projection, 2012

Exhibition view

Agata Biskup

Prabhakar Papchute

Installation with John Latham Five sisters (1976)

Earthwork of Hadsati

print, light system, 2015.

print, 2013. Courtesy

Courtesy Tate Modern

Prabhakar Papchute

still of the animation,

Pavel Sterec (in collaboration with David Landa) Canary bird A walk through tunnels of a graffiti mine with a canary bird, winner of a national singing competition, documentation of the performance, 2007.

Courtesy Pavel Sterec

Captions

— Agata Biskup Untitled object / stone, 2015 (..) But it is not an alphabet: it is a pattern without a message...

– Roger Caillois “The Writing of the Stone” Agata Biskup (b.1983) graduated from the Faculty of Painting at the Acad-

emy of Fine Arts in Krakow. In her practice, she has moved beyond the limits of the medium of painting to focus on the analysis of artistic approaches that migrate from the field of art to a non-artistic space. She employs a variety of means of expression and techniques, adopting their language so that it reflects the non-linearity of narration that interests her.

This way, she can formulate her own “grammar” of her message that emphasises the condition of the simultaneous separation and connection of the field of visual arts and those fields that are not automatically related to it.

She lives and work in Kraków.

— Štefan Papčo Andrej sculpture, bronze (edition 1/3), 2014 Štefan Papčo (b.1983) – he is interested in extreme places and situations,

mountains and mountain climebers. As he says: The aim of sculptural and space experiments is to examine landscape as a bearer of the potential to describe a long-term society development that is bound to a specific place.

— Szymon Durek Odurek excerpts from the film, dual channel projection, 2012 Duration: 5’04, duration: 5’03 Szymon Durek (b.1986) graduated from Academy of Fine Arts in Kato-

wice (Silesia). He works in different media: video, photography, objects.

In his art practice, he refers to potholing, one of his passions. Odurek is his first discovered cave.

— Rasmus Johansen Close horizon, tied nylon nets, metal roses, 2015 (in progress) Rasmus Johanssen (b.1982) – studied at Simon Sterling’s class in

Frankfurt am Main and at Cooper Union School of Art in New York.

He works with objects, examining properties of matter. He’s interested in transformation of a substance, process of morphing from one state to another.

— Prabhakar Papchute Earthwork of Hadsati still from the animation, print, 2013 Prabhakar Pachpute (b.1985) works with drawing and animation.

He often recalls the motive of mining, which is an important part of his family life – Pachpute family has worked in Chandrapur’s mines for three generations. The topic of mining returns in his several projects, for instance in his exhibition “Canary in a Coalmine”.

— Pavel Sterec (in collaboration with David Landa) Canary bird A walk through tunnels of a graffiti mine with a canary bird, winner of a national singing competition, documentation of the performance, 2007 The video captures a walk through tunnels of a graffiti mine with a canary bird, the winner of a national singing competition. (In the nineteenth century canary birds served as gas indicators in the mines.)

Pavel Sterec (b. 1985) he often uses an inductive method of artistic

research. The result of his projects is a complex installation, while the focus is put predominantly on the relationships between its heterogeneous parts. His work is usually based on cooperation and series of meetings with various people. At times, he works with scientists; at other times, with children or old people, archivists, curators of museum collections, sailors, or prisoners. He is interested in social engineering on a small scale.

— Jan Moszumański The complete fiction glazed kiln shelves, metal, styrofoam, 2015 This two-part installation employs the motif of so-called Claude glass, made of various materials, such as polished piece of fractured stone.

The mirror allowed for an observation of natural phenomena and was used in the 19th century by scientists and travellers.

Jan Moszumański (b. 1990) works with a variety of materials and me-

dia. Rides a postcolonial hoover through humps and wonders of geopolitical noise. Never singularitarian, he probes the everyday in demon war paints – from casual to fated, and back. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow (The Faculty of Intermedia), Konsthögskolan in Malmö and Kunstakademiet in Oslo. Based in Krakow and Oslo.

— Michael Hoepfner (b. 1972) Lie Down, Get Up, Walk On, installation, wool and wood, 2014/2015 Michael Hoepfner work is based on the experience of walking jour-

neys in desert and steppe areas between Eastern Europe and China, including Ukraine, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Tibet, China and South Korea. He reflects on these landscapes, on the changing nomadic societies and on his own performance in installations that use black and white photography, drawings, slide projections and tent sculptures.

In 2012, over the course of around three weeks, Hoepfner exposed himself to extreme weather conditions, a situation aggravated by intentionally refusing to take maps of the area with him and his uninterrupted search for nomadic people and their constructions used for worshipping the spirits of nature. This psychological and physical experience led the artist to intuitively immerse himself in the man-nature relationship, established by his uncertain explorations, in an almost hallucinatory proximity with the harsh setting. (Luigi Fassi)

— Agata Biskup architecture of the exhibition and interventions:

Light installation

with John Latham Five sisters (1976) print, light system, 2015

Vanessa Bell George Mallory (1912) print, 2015

Drawing based on the Orlowski route, NW face of Ganek GalleryÂ

— Yan Tomaszewski 13.08.1927 (Szczuka), 16 mm film, 2013, duration: 9’30’’ Yan Tomaszewski plays the role of the Polish artist Mieczysław

Szczuka by “repeating” his ascent of Zmarła Turnia, which led to Szczuka’s death when he dropped off a rock face. Mieczysław Szczuka was a Constructivist, a co-founder of Blok group together with Katarzyna Kobro and Władysław Strzemiński, as well as an avid Tatra Mountains climber. His climbing partner, Wiesław Stanisławski, emphasised the importance of avoiding feigned logic that the aim was to reach the peak.

In his “Constructivism in Tatra Mountaineering”, he wrote: “In its premises, Constructivism leads to the construction of increasingly difficult routes by reducing them to a straight line (e.g. in rock faces) or to the bottom of the gully, or, finally, to the edge of the ridge. It significantly removes the meaning of convenient passes, even those that are very logical. The notion of the logic of the route is constantly evolving. (…)

Therefore, Constructivism will certainly find appreciation among contemporary Tatra climbers. A Constructivist route must ascend like a vine around an ideal and abstract vertical line. In essence, in its verticality Constructivism is an implacable enemy of traverse, just like it is a great enemy of upward direction in horizontalism”.

Yan Tomaszewski argues: I am not interested in a contrast between two kinds of logic of moving above reality, a movement that is very

physical in Alpinism, where one starts from point zero and moves towards the peak, as well as in a Constructivist project, where one departs from given situation and attempts to connect art, politics, and everyday life, to somehow direct and shape it. (…) I treat Alpinism as a challenge, a possibility to defeat myself, as an elevation understood also in a spiritual manner. This is my personal reading, which suggests certain paradox, for Constructivism does not really connote spirituality. Yet, there is inherent an aspiration for reaching higher, getting more, doing something better, which then finds its formal expression in sculptures – they are rather tense. The triangular sculpture was my point of departure, for it brought associations with the mountains.

(From the conversation with Rafał Lewandowski, Magazyn Szum, 16.01.2014)

— Pavol Breier / Galéria na Ganku Shadow of Ganek Gallery from Orlowski route photograph, 1982 Pavol Breier (b.1952) – a Slovak photographer, dedicates his work to

the subject of mountain people. His favourite themes are mountainous regions and its inhabitants in Slovakia and in Tibet. He participated at numerous exhibitions both in Slovakia and abroad, he also teaches at the Pan-European University and the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. A member of former BAHAM group and co- member of Gallery Ganku.

— Julius Koller / Galeria na Ganku Members of UFO Ganek Gallery, left to right: Pavol Breier, Rudolf Sikora, Igor Gazdík, Milan Adamčiak, Július Koller, Peter Meluzin, photograph, 1982

UFO Ganek Gallery: Július Koller, Milan Adamčiak, photograph, 1982 “The Ganek Gallery is the name of an actually existing place in High Tatras in Slovakia. It is the name given to a protruding platform which is described in mountaineering guides as a part of the Maly Ganek rock massif. Thew Slovak name Ganok, or Ganek in the Goral dialect, as well as in Polish, and on older maps, identifies a peak on a high ridge of the Tatras. In folk building terminology, the noun “ganok” means a veranda, gallery or porch by the main entrance, and it characterises the shape of Ganek Gallery” – from Ganek Gallery, ed. Daniel Grun.

This linguistic similarity was probably one of the reasons why Julius Koller started the project of the fictional gallery at Ganek. This idea formed a part of a larger project of Universal-cultural Futurological Operations (U.F.O.), a life-long project of moving within factual fiction.

The gallery had its founders, its board, and its activities – all fictional.

The private space of the apartment hosted meetings which by definition never moved outside it. The game played with the massif manifested a fantasy-based approach, an act of route planning. An escape into the space of nature that differed from mass tourism, at the same time offering freedom from official frameworks of art circuit in Czechoslovakia of the period of so-called normalisation.

— Pavol Breier /BAHAMA Ascents of Caucasus Summits: Summit of Ushba, 21st July 1981, photograph On the Summit of Cheget, 9th July 1981, photograph BAHAMA was founded in 1978 by two artists Pavol Breier and Peter Horváth with art historian Radislav Matuštík. The name of the group comes from the first letters of their last names. BAHAMA group often employed the strategy of “pseudo-scientific mystifications”. Using the technique of photomontage they linked fragments from actual cultural-political documents and real-life with elements of fictional events (for instance Psychostereotaxia, 1979). Before 1989, exhibiting their work was illegal.

Their works reacted to the situation in the environment, political and cultural climate of the normalisation period, parodying the rhetoric of ideology. Their working method consisted in linking reality with fiction.

— Bogdan Achimescu Performative lecture Romanian DIY, 24th September, 6 p.m., MeetFactory Bogdan Achimescu (b.1965) – visual artist, born in Timișoara (Romania);

graduated from the Visual Arts Academy in Cluj. His work was featured at Venice Biennale in 2001 within the Context Network project at the Romanian pavillion. He collaborated with the Berlin-based Urban Art group. He is a lecturer and head of the Intermedia Department at the Fine Arts Academy in Kraków. He participated in multiple exhibitions in Poland and abroad. In his artistic practice Achimescu focuses on the DIY culture, using such media as, among all, drawing and photography. He is based in Kraków.

— Agency Performance by Agency Assembly

(The Second Death of Mallory) 19th September, 3 p.m.

Agency convenes an assemblies inside the exhibition The Second Death of Mallory at Futura, in order to invoke the controversy listed as Thing 002188 (Carte de randonnée). It concerns a conflict between on the one hand Didier Richard, a French publisher of maps and guides for hikers, skiers and mountain climbers, and on the other hand the French National Institute of Geography (IGN) about maps.

Didier Richard claimed that the drawings, which IGN indicated on their maps, were copies of itineraries they created. According to I.G.N. the routes published by Didier Richard lacked originality, cause these were due to the geographic topology of the mountains. In 2001 the court of appeal in Grenoble had to decide if the routes by Didier Richard were original or common routes. This controversy will be invoked around the maps in question and in the presence of Pavol Breier (mountain climber), Veronika Kusova (map maker/art historian), Jan Pfeiffer (drawing artist), Jakub Staszkiewicz (intellectual property lawyer) and Hana TuÄ?kovĂĄ (performer). During the assembly fragments of the court decision will be read collectively out loud as a way of provoking a conversation. The purpose of this assembly is to speculate on how common things can become mutually included within art practices.

“Agency” is an international initiative that was founded in 1992 by Kobe

Matthys and has office in Brussels. Agency constitutes a growing “list of things” that resist the radical split between the classifications of nature and culture. This list of things is mostly derived from juridical processes and controversies involving “intellectual property” (copyrights, patents, trade marks, etc...) in various territories around the world. The concept of intellectual property relies upon the fundamental assumption of the split between culture and nature and consequently between expressions and ideas, creations and facts, subjects and objects, humans and nonhumans, originality and tradition, individuals and collectives, mind and body, etc.... Each “thing” or controversy, included on the list, witnesses a hesitation in terms of these divisions. Agency calls these “things” forth from its list via varying “assemblies” inside exhibitions, performances, publications, etc... Each “assembly” speculates around inclusion. The speculations as a whole explore in a topological way the operative consequences of the apparatus of intellectual property for an ecology of art practices and their modes of existence.

Second Death of George Mallory Exhibition in display until: 25/10/2015 Curator: Agnieszka Kilian Curatorial cooperation: Jaro Varga Exhibition design: Agata Biskup Graphic design: Kaja Gliwa Artists: Agency, Bogdan Achimescu, Pavol Breier, Agata Biskup,

Szymon Durek, Michael Hoepfner, Rasmus Johannsen, Július Koller, Jan Moszumański, Prabhakar Pachpute, Štefan Papčo, Pavel Sterec, Yan Tomaszewski Special thanks to:

Pavol Breier, Przemek Czepurko, Kaja Gliwa, Maxime Guitton, Jaroslav Jariko, Martin Kolarov, Caroline Krzysztoń, Zuzana Kutašová, Jelena Martinovic, Jan Pfeifer.

KARLIN STUDIOS KŘIŽÍKOVA 34 180 00, PRAHA 8 - KARLÍN

Projec t co -f inanced by the European Regional Development Fund under the M a Ĺ‚ opolska Regional Operational Programme for 2 0 07-2 0 13 .

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