Some Profound Misunderstanding at the Heart of What Is

A research exhibition of the Jan Van Eyck ‘Moving Images of Speculation’ Inlab

17 jan 2014
23 feb 2014

Hedah Contemporary Art Space and Jan Van Eyck, Maastricht, Jan 17 – Feb 23

OPENING WEEKEND ACTIVITIES Jan 15-20

Screening Session | Film works (selection) by Aleksander Komarov, 8.30pm January 15, JVE Basement, 2014

OPENING: 6pm January 17 at Hedah, with a performance by Jan Hoeft.

Public Roundtable: 2-5pm, January 18, with Sven Lutticken, Vlidi Jeric and JVE artists [see details below. To register for the roundtable and access readings, email movingimagesofspeculation@gmail.com ]

Public Lecture | The Speculative Body, Jeremiah Day Monday, January 20, 6pm, JVE.

ABOUT the EXHIBITION

If cinema’s legacies can tell us something about the present, it is because with the transformation to post-Fordism, fictional powers are increasingly central to value creation and accumulation. The moving image bundles time and toys with negativity to create virtual goods dependent on transactional fantasies in the present. With the shift from commodity money to credit money, to derivative forms and securitization, the financial system breaks from a transcendental signifier. Some Profound Misunderstanding at the Heart of What Is emerges from the Jan Van Eyck 'Moving Image of Speculation' research Inlab of 2013-14. The exhibition constructs a shared space of argumentation between artists who sense, stage and diagram local-global aspects of late capitalism’s speculative production processes across performative installation formats, all of which toy with the etymological and formal bleed between thought and money, cognition and economics. The works of the exhibition are especially invested in performing aspects of financialized systems that take place ‘behind the back’ of human thought, and the role of artists in bringing inchoate knowledges, potentiality and critique into dialogue with the pathologies of the present.

Exhibition curated by Cathleen Schuster, Marcel Dickhage and Rachel O’Reilly. Collaborative research, roundtable and performance workshop curated by Rachel O’Reilly. Artists: Marcel Dickhage and Cathleen Schuster, Zachary Formwalt, Jan Hoeft, Julia Kul, Vijai Patchineelam and Jelena Vesic, Rachel O'Reilly with Valle Medina and Benjamin Reynolds. Design: Stefano Faoro. Additional curatorial consultation, Jelena Vesic. Artistic advisors: Bik van der Pol.

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ROUNDTABLE DETAILS

Saturday January 18, 2-5pm, Hedah Contemporary Art Space, Maastricht.
2.00pm – Welcome/introduction ‘What we talk about when we talk about Moving Images of Speculation: Curating artistic research’ - Rachel O’Reilly
2.20pm – Opening Plenary, Sven Lutticken ‘Filming Speculative Capital’
2.50pm – Contribution/response, Vladimir Jeric ‘Speculative Mining Company’ break
3.30pm – Artist talk, Julia Kul ‘Performing the Fear Index’ on KUL VIX INDEX.
3.45pm – Screening (rough cut) Money and Trade Considered. Marcel Dickhage and Cathleen Schuster discuss their 2013 film production at JVE.
4.00pm Group roundtable discussion.

Pre-readings: Intro, Ch1 and 4, Sven Lutticken, History in Motion: Time in the Age of the Moving Image, Sternberg Press, 2013. Anonymous, Speculate This! Duke Uni Press 2003. http://speculatethis.pressbooks.com/

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ABOUT the ‘MOVING IMAGES OF SPECULATION’ INLAB

Moving Images of Speculation is an artistic research InLab of the Jan Van Eyck Academie exploring contemporary links between post-cinematic form and finance - incorporating readings, screenings, talks, research tours and a research exhibition and roundtable. In 2013-14, the InLab has been taking stock of artists’ approaches to forms and technics of speculative and essayistic practice, in the context of fictional economy. With this focus, the InLab proposes that to track (post-)cinema’s specific comprehension of the speculative at the level of production is to offer up conceptual resources for tarrying quite differently with capital’s logics and affects. The artists and researchers of Moving Images of Speculation aim to think the historicity of contemporary enthusiasms for materiality in much stronger reflexive terms than is often done inside of today’s fine art industries.

FUTURE EVENTS

Lecture/Discussion | | Thijs Witty, ‘Whither the Essay? Learning how to live without speculation’ February 22, JVE Open Studios

Lecture/Discussion | Joseph Vogl, ‘Debts from the future. On The Spectre of Capital' March 28, 2014, JVE Auditorium, Maastricht. Curated by Sonja Lau.

Lecture/Discussion | Marina Vishmidt and Anthony Iles, ‘On Art and Economics as Speculative Practices,’ April 1-7, 2014. Curated by Jelena Vesic and Bik Van der Pol.

Inlab Participants: Oliver Bulas, Marcel Dickhage, Filip Van Dingenen, Stefano Faoro, Jan Hoeft, Julia Kul, Sonja Lau, Catherine Lommee, Valle Medina, Rachel O’Reilly, Vijai Patchineelam, Benjamin Reynolds, Alessandra Saviotti, Cathleen Schuster, Jelena Vesic. Culiminating in a Labin imprint publication edited by Rachel O’Reilly, designed by DongYoung Lee at JVE.