The PRAXES Parlors were live events, such as performances, discussions, film screenings, talks, and workshops, led by local and international voices from across the cultural field.

Christina Mackie, “Drop”, 2014. Installation view at PRAXES.

Photo: Eva Lechner.

Matt Mullican: "Second Person", 2014. Performance documentation at PRAXES.

Photo: Albrecht Pischel.

On Saturday 13 December at 17:00, the last date of Cycle 3, we invited everyone to a “Magic Matinee” loosely spun around the practice of Christina Mackie. First, contributor both in writing and thinking, Rogaland Art Center Director Geir Haraldseth read a passage from his PRAXES Paper, a scroll written in response to Mackie’s presence at PRAXES. Second, polyglot Jan Verwoert gave a talk, departing from his essay “Why Is Art Met With Disbelief? It’s Too Much Like Magic.”, on likeness, rhythm, and resonance, constellations and alignments. Bracketing this Cycle as early inspiration and tangential epilogue, Verwoert’s text is also published as a PRAXES Paper alongside images of Mackie’s displays.

Thanks for helping send off another Cycle with a glass of Glögg!

On Thursday 11 December at 19:00 PRAXES presented

“The Second Meaning of Things (performance)”, a new work by Matt Mullican. This evening culminated a months-long focus at PRAXES, narrowing in on notions of the “Second Person” through transitory exhibitions, performances, lectures, and conversations.

Christina Mackie, Foo, 1994. Video still.

Thanks for joining us for the opening of “Frog And”, the final installment in Christina Mackie's Cycle at PRAXES. Prominently featured in this exhibition is the 1994 video piece Foo.

“Forty-four still video photographs fixing the contents of a room at a particular moment were assigned to keys on the computer keyboard. The keyboard was played like a musical instrument in and out of time with a soundtrack of rythmic vocal percussion. The images were played by hand, or played in programmed sequences, or overlaid with colour passes and all were recorded real time onto video tape, along with images recording the computer's own processes. Someone is practising the spoken version of the tabla, an Indian percussion instrument […]. In the written notation, every stroke of the drum has a syllable, syllables make words, words phrases. The syllables come from the Sanskrit but they represent and sound like the bendy sound of the tabla.” (Christina Mackie, 1994)

The exhibition is the second of two presentations taking their cue from a dual monitor work by Mackie from 2000, Frog and Bird, in which a frog seemingly listens to a singing blackbird.

Chinese mó burgers by Moss/Tonner were sold at the event.
The opening was supported by the Embassy of Canada in Berlin.

Thanks for joining us for “Representing the Work”, a lecture by Matt Mullican combining explanatory and performative strategies—slides, video, and drawing—walking through his last forty years of work.

Opening of Christina Mackie’s “And Bird” at PRAXES.

Photo: Agnieszka Roguski

On Friday 3 October, 19:00-22:00, we inaugurated “And Bird”, an exhibition module spanning rarely shown artworks from the last three decades of Christina Mackie’s practice. Thanks to everyone who joined, and thanks to Monkey 47 for supplying free gin and the Embassy of Canada for the support.

Performance documentation, Matt Mullican: "Second Person" at PRAXES.

Photo: Albrecht Pischel

At the opening of “Second Person”, Matt Mullican performed ten of his early works from the 1970s and 1980s.

A warm thanks for joining us for the Grand Opening of Cycle 3 and Christina Mackie’s first exhibition module “Drop”. Turning PRAXES’ ground floor into a composed test site for material experiments processed into crystalline environments, the exhibition module centers on Mackie’s initial blueprints for a series of ten-meter, dye-drenched silk filters, displayed at Chicago’s Renaissance Society in 2014.

A warm thanks for joining us for the Grand Opening of Cycle 3, premiering the first set of materials centered on Matt Mullican’s explorations of different point of views, here in particular the ‘Third Person” narration.

Grand Opening at PRAXES of Christina Mackie’s “Drop”

More images from the event here.

Grand Opening at PRAXES of Matt Mullican’s “Third Person”

More images from the event here.

PRAXES

Bergen Assembly

Østre Skostredet 5 – 7

Bergen 5017, Norway

PRAXES’s Berlin venue has closed. In 2016 PRAXES will open its new iteration in Bergen, as part of the Bergen Assembly

Thanks for joining us for “Always More Than One / Not Here”,

a talk by Prof. Dr. Marie-Luise Angerer, followed by a Q&A

with Matt Mullican.

Matter does not only matter. The important question is rather how matter matters. In Mullican’s artwork the praxis of mattering is at center stage. Angerer’s talk concentrated on this process of mattering, bringing two prominent aspects in his work to the foreground: perception and feeling.

Part of the exhibition module “Second Person”—turning to a subject that the artist is currently examining, namely that of the “you” in his practice—this was the third Parlor in a series of performances, lectures, and conversations presented alongside transitive, accumulative exhibitions deriving directly from the live activities at PRAXES.

Marie-Luise Angerer is a professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. The focus of her research is media technology, affect, and neuroscientific reformulations of desire and sexuality. Her most recent publications include Timing of Affect (together with Bernd Bösel and Michaela Ott, 2014), Desire After Affect (2014), and Choreographie, Medien und Gender (with Yvonne Hardt and Anna-Carolin Weber, 2013).

Lecture by Matt Mullican: “Representing the Work” at PRAXES.

Photo: Agnieszka Roguski