Imaginary Archive: Philadelphia
Archivists Gregory Sholette and Olga Kopenkina
Curated by Liz Park as part of Traces in the Dark
With invited and established collaborators (see below)
Institute of Contemporary Art at The University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA
February 4 – May 22, 2015
If we light up the traces in the dark, will we see their invisible ubiquity? Of what whole will we see?
Curator Liz Park posed these questions to artists Deanna Bowen, Harold Mendez, and Gregory Sholette as prompts to think through the ways in which we engage with the margins of recorded history. Traces in the Dark is the result of the speculative conversation that took place between the curator and artists.
In Deanna Bowen’s ongoing investigation of the Ku Klux Klan, also known as the Invisible Empire, she digs deep into the history of Pennsylvania’s Klan activities from the nineteenth-century fugitive slave uprising in Christiana, Pennsylvania, to the 1964 race riot in Philadelphia, and presents her findings through photography, collage, and performance; in dialogue with his past work, Harold Mendez creates new mixed-media pieces inspired by images sourced from archives in Antioquia, Colombia, which hark back to the country’s violent pasts, including the decade-long civil war now known as La Violencia (1948–58); and Gregory Sholette restages his ongoing Imaginary Archive (produced in collaboration with Olga Kopenkina and more than 70 participants),“a collection of documents about the past whose future never arrived.” Collectively, these projects question what we can and cannot see of the radical and tumultuous pasts from where we stand today.
Traces in the Dark resists today’s emphasis on hyper-visibility which propagates the illusion of everything being seeable, available, accessible, and thus consumable. Each artist instead focuses on a past that is not easy to comprehend, visualize, and digest.
A preliminary version of the Imaginary Archive Catalog is available here.
Established IA Collaborators: Aaron Burr Society, Agata Craftlove, Alan Hughes, Alexandr Wolodarskij, Alien Abduction Collective: (Todd Ayoung, Heather Davis, Kim Asbury, Ulla Hvejsel, and Phoebe Bachman), Andrea Aversa, Anna Zvyagintseva, Austin Ivers, Azra Aksamija, Babis Venetopoulos + John Voyatzopoulos, Ben Geoghegan, Brian Hand, Bryce Galloway & Students, Chris Esposito, Closed Engagement, Dave Callen, Denis Pankratov. Doris Jauk-Hinz, Edda Strobl, Ellen Rothenberg, Eva Taxacher & Karin Ondas, Eva Ursprung, fabian dankl/johannes schrettle/christina lederhaas, Glen Goldberg, Grant Corbishley, Gregory Sholette, Helmut Kaplan, Jeffrey Skoller, Jenny Polak, Jeremy Booth, Johannes/zweite Liga für kunst und Kultur, John Hulsey & City Life/Vida Urbana, Josef Fürpaß, Karl Lorac, Leah Oats, Lee Harrop, Lada Nakonechn,Lesya Khomenko, Malcolm Doidge, Matthew Friday, Matthew F. Greco, Maureen Connor, Markus Wetzel, Maryam Mohammadi , Miroslav Kulchitsky, Murray Hewitt, Mykola Ridnyi , Naeem Mohaiemen, Nanette Yannuzzi, Nayari Castillo, Niall Moore, Nikita Kadan, Oleksandr Burlaka, Oleksiy Radynskyi, Oliver Ressler, Paul Lamarre & Melisa Wolf: Eida House, Paul Maye, Patrik Aarnivaara, Pedro Lasch, REPOhistory, R.E.P. Group, Roger O’Shea, Sarah Farahat, Sasha Dedos, Simon Fleming, Suchness, Tender & endangered Cow/Horse of Dimness, TanzLaboratorium, Tiarnán McDonough, “t.j.”, Thom Donovan, Trust Art, Volodymyr Kuznetsov, Yevgeniya Belorusets, Yevgeniy Fiks, Zoe Beloff, Oleksiy Radynskyi & Oleksandr Burlaka, Sasha Dedos, Nikita Kadan, Miroslav Kulchitsky, Volodymyr Kuznetsov, Lesya Khomenko, Lada Nakonechna, Denis Pankratov, Mykola Ridnyi, Anna Zvyagintseva, Yevgeniya P Belorusets, Alexandr Wolodarskij, TanzLaboratorium, the R.E.P. group, Mark Boswell, Leah Oats, Jenny Polak, Chris Esposito, Andrea Aversa, Lee Harop and Christina Lederhaas.
New Works by: Charlotte Schatz, Salem Collo-Julin, The Think Tank That Has Yet To Be Named, Daniel Tucker, Theresa Rose, Plausible Art Worlds/Utopia School
Traces in the Dark: Conversation with Deanna Bowen, Harold Mendez, and Gregory Sholette:
But what’s at stake when looking? Or seeing? … There are entities (traces) lurking in the dark. We all know that if we look for them we will find them but what do we do when they are brought into focus? —Harold Mendez
Curator Liz Park and artists Deanna Bowen, Harold Mendez, and Gregory Sholette began a written conversation via Google Drive to prepare for the Traces in the Dark exhibition. What unfolded was a multifaceted dialogue on the shadowy realms of the unrecorded past. This program continues their conversation, using Mendez’s questions above as a starting point. Find the conversation here.
A new addition to this iteration of the IA is the THINK TANK that has yet to be named. See their page on IA here.
