Building as Unowned Property, by Maria Eichhorn ▪︎ Book Promotion ▪︎ 60th October Salon
⫸ Wednesday, November 20, 18.00, Cinema Hall of the Cultural Centre of Belgrade
⫸ Book presentation and public discussion: Kτίριο ως περιουσία άνευ ιδιοκτήτη / Building as Unowned Property, by Maria Eichhorn
⫸ Speakers: Adam Szymczyk, curator and artistic director of documenta 14, Constantina Theodorou, architect and urban researcher, Lorenzo Balbi and Dobrila Denegri, curators of the 60th October Salon, and Maria Eichhorn, the author
Maria Eichhorn’s work Kτίριο ως περιουσία άνευ ιδιοκτήτη / Building as Unowned Property (2017-) was produced on the occasion of documenta 14 in Athens. It consists of purchasing real estate in Athens, on which the legal status of unowned property is conferred, to create a free site where global capitalism’s impact on the urban fabric can be rethought from an artistic and feminist-Marxist perspective. The publication records the ongoing process of purchasing the property and changing its status to unowned property since 2017. The publication, with essays by Anne Rorimer, André Rottmann, Adam Szymczyk, and Constantina Theodorou, was released in September 2024 by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz Kõnig, Cologne and the Migros Museum fūr Gegenwartskunst, Zurich.
⫸ Numerous visitors to the 59th Biennale of Contemporary Art in Venice in 2022 remember Maria Eichhorn’s impressive work Relocating a Structure, when, by stripping the walls and foundation of the German Pavilion, she exposed the historical layers of German history and the Nazi past.
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Maria Eichhorn is an artist based in Berlin. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (2024); Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zurich (2018/19); Chisenhale Gallery, London (2016); Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2015); Kunsthaus Bregenz (2014). In 2022, she represented Germany at the 59th Venice Biennale. In 2021 she was awarded the “Käthe Kollwitz” Award of the Academy of Arts, Berlin. Maria Eichhorn participated in documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017); documenta 11, Kassel (2002); and the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). Her publications include Kτίριο ως περιουσία άνευ ιδιοκτήτη (Building as Unowned Property, 2024), Relocating a Structure (2022); Hannah Arendt: Jewish Cultural Reconstruction Field Reports, Memoranda, etc. (2021); Film Lexicon of Sexual Practices / Prohibited Imports (2019); a Catalogue raisonné (2017), and 5 weeks, 25 days, 175 hours (2016). She also initiated the website www.rosevallandinstitut.org (2017).
Guided Tour in Russian ▪︎ 60th October Salon
On Saturday, November 9, at 15:00, we invite you to a tour through the exhibitions of the October Salon. Together with the founder of @artmap.rs Ksenia Sedyakina you will visit the Cultural Center of Belgrade SULUJ Gallery and the Salon of the Belgrade City Museum.
The tour will start at the entrance to the Fine Art Gallery of the Cultural Center of Belgrade at Knez Mihailova 6 and will last about 2 hours.
You can attend the tour free of charge and without prior registration.
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Ksenija Sedyakina is an art historian based in Belgrade. She worked as a tour guide & later exhibition manager at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow and currently is developing her own project artmap.rs.
OS COLLECTION + ARTANGEL ▪︎ SCREENING ▪︎ DKC ▪︎ 60th October Salon
A program of films selected through a collaboration between The Artangel Collection + MA Curating and Collections and Chelsea, UAL + 60th October Salon / October Salon Collection / Cultural Centre of Belgrade. The first part of this collaboration was realized in July in London in the form of an exhibition where the works of Francis Alÿs, Sanja Anđelković, Igor Bošnjak, Rachel Pimm & Graham Cunnington, Ben Rivers and Gregor Schneider were shown.
Second part of this collaboration will be realized through two curated selections of artist’s films that will be shown in the Cinema Hall of the Cultural Centre of Belgrade.
October Salon Collection + The Artangel Collection #2
Drenched in Salt
Artur Zmijewski, Adela Jušić and Lana Čmajčanin
Program
Cinema Hall of the Cultural Centre of Belgrade
5 pm – Curatorial statement, video, 5 min
Artur Żmijewski, Operation Cast Lead, 2009, 22min
Adela Jušić & Lana Čmajčanin, I Will Never Talk about the War Again, 2011, 9.42 min
Drenched in Salt, is a film screening programme curated by students of MA Curating & Collections (MACC), Chelsea College of Arts, University of London, The title of the programme references the poem, Drenched, written by Palestinian poet Dr. Refaat Alareer who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the 6th of December 2023. Through this poem, Alareer describes the death and violence on Palestinian bodies and his overwhelming grief. Salt is used in many cultures and rituals as a tool to cleanse, protect and preserve, but being ‘drenched in salt’ can also sting, hurt or burn.
As the cooperation is realized within the curatorial concept “Hope is a discipline”, inspired by the statement of Mariam Keba, the program “Drenched in Salt” reminds us of what is occurring to thousands of innocent civilians, while the world watches.Following the mentioned curatorial concept, hope is used as an invitation to act, gain knowledge, awareness, clarity and build solidarity, and in this case, through an agonistic approach.
Responding to the 60th October Salon’s question of ‘What’s Left?’, MACC presents a programme of two selected films from the October Salon collection. The selected films reinforce the understanding of colonial power structures and their very real consequences. We do not aim to provide solutions, but to start reflection, conversation and action.
Drenched in Salt is curated by Nis Azmee Murat, Yining Bai, Mengze Geng, Riccardo Greco, Maria Herrero Tejada, Yaqi Liang, Wanjing Lin, Heyue Lu, Wenyan Ma, Charmaine Wah, Xingcheng Xu, and Lilian Zancajo-Lugo.
Trigger warnings: Explicit scenes of blood, violence and death, including but not limited to severed limbs, corpses and severely injured children.
More about the works and artists
Artur Żmijewski, Operation Cast Lead, 2009, film, 22’
Courtesy of the Cultural Centre of Belgrade, October Salon Collection, the artist
The film tells the story of the brutality and senselessness of the Israeli military attacks carried out in Gaza in 2009.It is a montaged video material recorded by activists of the B’Tselem Group –Israeli Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, as well as by Gaza residents themselves. Originally, the work was accompanied by 16 drawings made during Artur Żmijewski’s talks with residents of Holon and Tel Aviv, on what was happening in Gaza. The artist asked these people to draw what they were talking about so this edition of the work is titled My Neighbours and fully reflects the mental condition of Israeli citizens at this specific moment in history.
Artur Žmijevski (1966, Warsaw. Poland) https://kadist.org/people/arthur-zmijewski/
Adela Jušić, Lana Čmajčanin, I Will Never Talk about the War Again, 2011, 9.42 min
Courtesy of the Cultural Centre of Belgrade, October Salon Collection, the artists
Lana Čmajčanin’s and Adela Jušić’s video performance draws attention to the post-war situation, in which the past war in the former Yugoslavia is a recurring theme. Personal experience shows that it is impossible not to talk about the war in everyday life. In this performance, two artists try to express a full range of emotions related to the war, but also to point to different positions in talking about the war; the way how nationalist political parties constantly refer to the war in the media – in order to maintain power and intolerance between the peoples of the former Yugoslavia on national grounds.
Adela Jušić (1982, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina). adelajusic.wordpress.com/
Lana Čmajčanin (1983, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina) https://www.lanacmajcanin.com/
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October Salon Collection + The Artangel Collection #3
Mika Rottenberg, Abi Palmer, Andy Holden and Peter Holden
Program
Cinema Hall of the Cultural Centre of Belgrade
6 pm
Mika Rottenberg, Mahyad Tousi. Remote, 2022, 92min
8 pm Abi Palmer Invents the Weather: Rain, 2023, 12 min
Andy Holden and Peter Holden, A Natural History of Nest Building, 2017, 31min
Selection of films from The Artangel Collection curated by Persila Katon, Lina Džuverović and Zorana Đaković Minniti.
The Artangel collection was launched in partnership with Tate in 2011 to enable notable film and video installations to be presented across the UK. Over 25 moving image works – commissioned by Artangel since 1993 – are available for loan, free of charge, to publicly-funded UK museums and galleries.
REMOTE, Abi Palmer Invents the Weather and A Natural History of Nest Building are part of The Artangel Collection, an initiative to bring outstanding film and video works, commissioned and produced by Artangel, to galleries and museums across the UK. The Artangel Collection has been developed in partnership with Tate, is generously supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and The Foyle Foundation and uses public funding from Arts Council England.
Note: all films are with English subtitles
More about the works and artists
Mika Rottenberg, Mahyad Tousi. Remote, 2022, 92min
In their extraordinary first feature film, Mika Rottenberg and Mahyad Tousi create a strangely credible solar-punk world. Set in a near future, REMOTE follows Unoaku, an expat architect living in a solar-punk apartment in Kuala Lumpur, and four other women living on their own in Iran, Argentine, Puerto Rico and South Africa. While watching a popular South Korean dog grooming show, the five women discover they are connected through mysterious portals hidden in their homes.
Filmed in 2021 during the COVID pandemic with a cast of multinational actors and performers including Okwui Okpokwasili and Joony Kim, REMOTE explores what it means to live in a ‘hyperconnected’ future populated by isolated individuals who find new ways to maintain human relationships.
Commissioned by Artangel; the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; in association with Hauser & Wirth. The film was completed with support by MOCA’s Environmental Council, Los Angeles, US; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Canada; X Museum, Beijing, China; the Busan Biennale, Korea; and The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, US.
Abi Palmer: Abi Palmer Invents the Weather: Rain, 2023, 12 min
Abi Palmer Invents the Weather is a series of four short films by artist and writer Abi Palmer made collaboratively with her two cats, Cha-U-Kao and Lola Lola. Unable to reach the outside world during the Covid-19 pandemic, Palmer began a year-long process of performing the outside world for her indoor cats, translating each season into a cat-accessible format. The accompanying voiceover, written and narrated by Palmer, is a love letter to her cats and the climate, and explores the tensions between what we can and can’t control. The resulting films are a playful meditation on disability, climate, and life that can’t talk back.
Rain is the first film from the series of four, and it takes on a literal interpretation of the autumn season. Palmer goes through a lengthy process of trying to recreate petrichor, the earthy smell which happens when it rains.
Commissioned and produced by Artangel for The World Weather Network, a constellation of weather stations set up by 28 arts agencies around the world, formed in response to the climate emergency. Supported by Artangel’s Guardian Angels.
Andy Holden and Peter Holden: A Natural History of Nest Building, 2017, 31 min
A Natural History of Nest Building is a three-screen video installation in which father and son talk about different types of birds’ nests, nest sites and materials. Whilst they find common ground in their shared wonder at the ingenuity and skill of a wide variety of birds, from the chaffinch and the crow to tailorbirds and weavers, they sometimes diverge in what intrigues them most.
Peter’s approach is firmly grounded in Darwin’s theory of evolution and ‘natural selection’ (the title Darwin initially gave to the book eventually published as On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection) whereas Andy is absorbed by the idea that nest building is a considered, creative act. As they look at the extraordinary diversity of nests that birds build, their conversation touches on instinct and learning, the importance of creative collaboration and the nature of parental influence.
Commissioned by Artangel, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, Leeds Art Gallery and Towner Art Gallery, with the support of the National Lottery through Arts Council England, Spike Island and Bristol Green Capital 2015, the Henry Moore Foundation and Artangel’s Guardian Angels.