Exhibition catalog: Lala Raščić – The more tongues you silence, the more they talk

ENGLISH Fe e re l fre tur e n m to e

THE MORE TONGUES YOU SILENCE, THE MORE THEY TALK 6.2–5.4 2021

@rodastenkonsthall rodastenkonsthall.se

INTRODUCTION

For her solo exhibition The more tongues you silence, the more they talk Lala Raščić has created a site-specific installation in collaboration with the music ensemble Göteborg Baroque, commissioned by Röda Sten Konsthall. This is her first exhibition in Sweden.

Ancient folkloric tales, mythological figures and feminist theory are starting points in Lala Raščić’s work, where Medusa and the spider-esque Arachne are two significant sources of inspiration. In collaboration with Göteborg Baroque, she presents a new art production based on Claudio Monteverdi’s opera The Coronation of Poppaea from 1642. This is the first opera to derive its plot from a historical theme based on a story of love and power between the Roman emperor Nero and future empress Sabina Poppaea.

The title of the exhibition is a quote by one of the characters in the opera, the philosopher Seneca. A quote that is still relevant today despite that it is basically 400 years old.

The exhibition includes works created in the period 2015–2021. The exhibition presents four art projects: Evil Earth,

EE-0, GORGO, Poppaea’s Pans. Each of the projects presented at the exhibition is accompanied by a silk screen print within the series that physically connects and encapsulates different thematic segments of the exhibition.

With a feminist perspective, Lala Raščić draw inspiration from craft traditions, ancient myths, and folkloristic customs, which she reinterprets and recreates in her own way, as a distinctive visual experience. In her work she examines women’s limited rights in the public sphere and how Western culture has shaped, silenced, and excluded women from the center of power.

The more tongues you silence, the more they talk will be the first exhibition of the year 2021 at Röda Sten Konsthall – the same year as Gothenburg’s 400th anniversary and 100 years since Swedish women got the right to vote.

1

THE MORE TONGUES YOU SILENCE, THE MORE THEY TALK (2021) 1.1 Tepsijanje – after Födermayr 1.2 Zur Akustik des ‘tepsijanje’ – after Födermayr 1.3 Smile of Medusa 1.4 Semantic Fields 1.5 Shitting Silk

2

POPPAEA’S PANS (2021)

2.1 Poppea’s Pans

3

GORGO (2019–2021)

3.1 GORGO

3.2 GORGO’S Armor 3.3 The Dig 3.4 Making of GORGO 3.5 Faces 3.6 Studies for masks 3.7 Preparatory sketches for GORGO 3.8 Shelley

4

EE-0 (2018) 4.1 EE-0 4.2 Hurije 4.3 Costume sketches for EE-0 4.4 Preparatory sketches EE-0

5

EVIL EARTH (2015) 5.1 Evil Earth’s Notebook 5.2 Evil Earth Script

1.3 1.2

3.2

2ND FLOOR

1.1

2.1 3.1 2.1 3.3 2.1

3.4

3.6

1.4 4.4

3.5

3.8 5.2

3.5

5.1

4.3

1.5

4.1

4TH FLOOR

3.7

3RD FLOOR

4.2

WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION

THE MORE TONGUES YOU SILENCE, THE MORE THEY TALK 1

2021 Portfolio of prints, silk screen on paper, 50 × 70 cm

Tepsijanje – after Födermayr Zur Akustik des ‘tepsijanje’ – after Födermayr Smile of Medusa Semantic Fields Shitting Silk

The prints reference to the projects presented in the exhibition The more tongues you silence, the more they talk, providing at the same time visual clues for contextualization of the work and opening new fields of interpretation.

2

POPPAEA’S PANS

2021 Kinetic and sound installation Copper, tin-plated copper, antique pans, wood and concrete bases, mechanic pan spinners

Site-specific installation Poppaea’s Pans is a result of a long-term process of collaboration and exchange with the early music ensemble Göteborg Baroque that included a residency for the artist at Röda Sten Konsthall in the fall 2020. The work is inspired by the opera L’incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea, 1642), composed

by Claudio Monteverdi and written

by Giovanni Francesco Busenello.

The opera is significant because it features the first libretto based on historical events which delivers a story of love and power between the Roman emperor Nero and his mistress and second wife Sabina Poppaea.

The artist extends her work on this topic by referencing a rural practice

with historical roots in the Ottoman Empire: “tepsijanje” (singing along with the pan), traditionally performed exclusively by women and from a South Slavic cultural context. Focusing on this practice in the particular context of the patriarchal society in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Raščić explores the tradition of the singing with the pan in the relation to women’s creative expression. This expression, in spite of being confined to the realm of the domestic, has been resilient to this very day.

The artist re-creates this folkloric practice as a kinetic and audio installation, which takes into account the site-specific acoustic properties of the space of Röda Sten Konsthall.

Choral renditions performed by the ensemble of Göteborg Baroque create a musical accompaniment to the installation. Their voices are the ones singing with the pan, thus bringing into conversation a rural folk tradition with the highly refined art form of the opera.

The installation is shown in a symbiotic relationship with the video GORGO (2019) that occupies the main space of Röda Sten Konsthall.

Commissioned by Röda Sten Konsthall Pans manufactured by Nermina Beba Alić Technical solutions by Modra d.o.o. Sarajevo Voices by Per Buhre, Amanda Flodin and Karl Peter Eriksson

Music by Claudio Monteverdi and Hildegard von Bingen

3

GORGO

2021

GORGO is dedicated to the mythic figure of Medusa, the Gorgon – GORGO. Medusa’s decapitation can be interpreted as a violent act of colonial patriarchy, as is the subsequent appropriation of her head as decoration for shields, armor, gables, plates, cups, and buttons. Using formulas from folktale and myth, such as resurrection after initiation and the arming of the hero, GORGO rests on the premise the Medusa’s dismembered body is made whole again, she is born again. In the video Lala Raščić, embodies the character of the GORGO, and dons a copper armor that is at the same time an audio instrument. Contact microphones on the inside of the armor pick up on the performers’ movement and the sounds are further processed.

GORGO’S armor is fabricated by the sole female coppersmith in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nermina Beba Alić, breaking with the patrilineal tradition of this craft.

GORGO

Preparatory sketches for GORGO

2019–2021

2019

Video installation

Series of drawings

HD video, color/stereo, 18’

21 × 29.9 cm / 25 × 25 cm

The video GORGO has been specially modified to correspond to the space of Röda Sten Konsthall and the installation Poppaea’s Pans.

Pencil, marker on paper

Shelley 2018–2021

GORGO’S Armor

Installation, BW laser print on tracing paper, adhesive tape

2019

5 cm × 500 cm

Objects (shield, mask, greaves, vambraces, breastplate)

The romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was so inspired by his visit to the Uffizi in Florence and the viewing of the painting of the Medusa head that he made a tribute to the Gorgon by writing a poem that breaks up a vicious circle of her monstrous legacy as a symbol of horror. The poem was significant to Raščić during her development of the project GORGO. This delicate installation is also a document of the artist’s process, utilizing tracing paper, a material the artist extensively uses in the preparatory phase of her works.

Copper, leather, skirt Dimensions variable

Making of GORGO 2019 Single channel video HD video, color/stereo, 12’

The Dig 2019 Installation, 22 reflective plate glass objects 4 mm glass, 22k gold leaf, japan paint, wood, light Dimensions variable

Faces 2019 Series of four drawings Pencil on paper 25 × 25 cm

Studies for masks 2019 Series of four drawings Ink jet print on paper, pencil, tape 21 × 29.9 cm

EE-0 2018

Two-channel video installation HD video, color/stereo, 36’

4

EE-0

EE-0 is a part of the project Europa Enterprise by Andreja Dugandžić, Jelena Petrović and Lala Raščić Courtesy of the artist and KADIST Foundation

2018

Hurije

In the art project EE-0 the Greek myth of Arachne is re-contextualized in a poetic script, taking an imaginative leap from antiquity into science fiction. Storylines based on classic mythology are skewed and combined with anecdotal episodes found through field research in and around Prizren, Kosovo. The video is carried by the performer, who is seen enacting text in a theatrical setting, and her gradual transformation into the spider-character of Arachne, and her recession into an abstract space of darkness from which she emerges as a post-human entity, denominated by a face decorated in the style of the Kosovo bridal make-up tradition.

These striking Arachne-esque visuals are folkloric forms overlaid on a neo-myth. Reacting to the specific site of production of EE-0: Kosovo, Europe’s youngest nation-state, the idea of becoming is explored through the idea of genesis, transformation, and metamorphosis communicated by Arachne’s transformation.

2018 Drawing installation, series of 15 drawings Laser print on paper, watercolor, marker, pencil 16 × 25 cm

The series of drawings Hurije was created as a storyboard for the filming of a sequence of the video EE-0. The sequence was never filmed. This series of drawings is shown here for the first time, as a brand-new work.

Costume sketches for EE-0 2018 Pair of drawings Pencil and marker on paper 21 × 29.9 cm

Preparatory sketches EE-0 2017–2018 Series of drawings Pencil and marker on paper 21 × 29.9 cm

Evil Earth’s Notebook 2015 Single-channel video HD and 4K transferred to HD, color, BW/ mono, 30’

Evil Earth Script 5

EVIL EARTH

2015

Evil Earth is a project dealing with the representation of landscape under contemporary conditions of visuality.

The video essay Evil Earth’s Notebook explores the notion of landscape, and different ways of perceiving the earth through the use of new technologies.

As Marjorie Hope Nicholson outlines in Mountain Gloom, Mountain Glory, the shift in mountain attitudes in writings of the English poets of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries came about due to advances in science and technology, Evil Earth explores the cognitive shift happening today. The basic question asked is how does our perception and understanding of nature, earth and our environment change under the influence of contemporary consumer modes of visualization and screen technologies?

The title of the video essay derives from the artist’s process and testifies to the fact that the script of the video is a compilation of quotes from literature and the artist’s notes, jotted down during her research.

2015 Artist’s working material for Evil Earth’s Notebook BW laser print on paper, pencil, marker, tape Dimensions variable

Photo: Ivan Hrkaš

Group shows include exhibits at Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; MGML, Ljubljana; 7a*11d performance festival, Toronto; Galerie du Jour, Agnes B, Paris; CAC, New Orleans; 54th October Salon, Belgrade; Steierischer Herbst, Graz; City of Women, Ljubljana; Platform Garanti, Istanbul; The Renaissance Society, Chicago, and <rotor> in Graz.

Amongst others, Raščić had attended artist-in-residence programs at the Museums Quartier, Q21, Vienna; Platform Garanti, Istanbul; and Cite des Arts, Paris.

Lala Raščić, born 1977 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, living and working in Sarajevo, in Zagreb, Croatia and until recently New Orleans, USA. She has studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb and Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam.

Solo shows include exhibitions at the Acadiana Center for the Arts, Lafayette; Good Children Gallery, New Orleans: Culture Center Tobačna, and ŠKUC Gallery in Ljubljana; GfZK in Leipzig; and the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna.

Raščić is the recipient of several awards including being shortlisted for the Henkel Art Award. She is a member of HDLU, Zagreb and HZSU, and the Sarajevo organization CRVENA. From 2011 to 2018 she was an active member of the New Orleans artist-run Good Children Gallery.

PROGRAM MODES OF ART PRODUCTION: exposures, gestures, errors March 25, 5 pm–6.30 pm, lecture

An online lecture over Zoom with Jelena Petrović. After the lecture, curator Amila Puzić will have a conversation with Jelena Petrović.

The lecture focuses on today’s modes of art production (artist’s gestures and artistic exposures), introducing the politics of error as a form of resistance to neoliberal ways of (self)exploitation within the contemporary art system.

Jelena Petrović is an art researcher, theorist and curator. She obtained her PhD from the ISH, Ljubljana Graduate School for Humanities (2009), with a thesis on the women’s authorship in interwar Yugoslavia.

Digital talk with Lala Raščić and Göteborg Baroque

specific installation titled Poppaea’s Pans in collaboration with the music ensemble Göteborg Baroque. The collaboration was developed around the theme of the opera L’incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppaea)

by Claudio Monteverdi, that the ensemble was supposed to stage during the show. The pandemic affected the whole process which led to the cancellation of the opera performance.

Instead, Göteborg Baroque filmed a performance act compiled of different early musical pieces, including the parts of the opera L’incoronazione di Poppea.

In the dialogue between Göteborg Baroque’s artistic director Magnus Kjellson, and film director Per Buhre (concept & implementation) and Lala Raščić, the discussion will depart from the collaboratory process of the production of the work Poppaea’s Pans and the film Voices of the Pan.

March 5, 5 pm, film Voices of the Pan March 6, 12 pm, talk

For the exhibition The more tongues you silence, the more they talk the artist Lala Raščić developed a site-

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