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MINT WORKS: GHOST

MINT WORKS: GHOST

Event date: October 15, 2018 - November 11, 2018 Export event

Exhibition and cultural programme 16 Oct - 10 Nov 2018 

Where is home? How do you host? What does it mean to be a guest? With the global rise of nationalism, Brexit and the refugee crisis, ideas around belonging and territory are changing. It is critical to engage in cross-cultural and open minded dialogue during these times of change. Welcome to GHOST.

GHOST is a multidisciplinary month-long programme of events and exhibition at Guest Projects, Yinka Shonibare’s London residency space and funded by Arts Council England and other supporters. A week-long symposium starting on the 16th of October, will be followed by the opening of the exhibition on the 27th of October. GHOST will showcase a series of commissioned works by nine North African and European artists alongside a diverse events programme investigating the themes of ‘Guest’ and ‘Host’. Amongst others, Hicham Gardaf, Noureddine Ezarraf and Léa Dumayet will be exhibiting in the UK for the first time, alongside events such as a light show performance event by David Bardo and Sophia Satchell-Baeza and a DJ set with music producer U-Cef. Through performances, talks, and workshops, participants and audiences alike will be invited to reflect on what it means to be a ‘guest’ or a ‘host’ at a time when notions of otherness, territory and belonging are being challenged. 

Both the exhibition and events programme are free and open to all. 

GHOST is curated by the the Marrakech based curatorial collective Mint Works, founded and run by Florence Devereux, Jean Feline and Taïs Bean. Since 2013 the collective has been working between London, Marrakech and Paris, producing experimental cultural programmes.   

Contact: mintworksmarrakech@gmail.com 

Flo: 07985601394 

Programme dates: 16.10.18 - 10.11.18

Private view for exhibition: 27.10.18

Full programme details: mintworks.org/GHOST


Mint Works socials: 
www.mintworks.org 
instagram: @mintworks

Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/mintworksmarrakech/

Opening hours: 

16.10 - 10.11 : See programme below for specific events times 

27.10 - 10.11 : Exhibition 

27 .10 : Exhibition Private View: 7pm - 1 0pm

Programme:

Events programme - 16 Oct - 10 Nov

Events are free and open to all

 

16 Oct: SALAM LONDON – Video Installation, 6.30pm - 9pm

As a house offering living and working space to artists, cultural practitioners and researchers, and as one of the still rare cultural pluridisciplinary spaces in Marrakech therefore often integrating external proposals to its own programming, hospitality is a fundamental component of LE 18’s DNA. Mirroring this, as well as the dynamic interplay between the roles of guest and host played with MINT Collective across the years, for the opening night of GHOST in London, LE 18 proposes a curated video art programme (and here the term does explicitly refer to its latin foundation - that of ‘curare’), showcasing video pieces, short films and documentaries developed by artists LE 18 has been hosting, engaging and exchanging with since its creation in 2013.

Conceived as an immersive experience to be navigated throughout the space and time of the evening and across cultural and social geographies, SALAM LONDON operates as an orchestra of voices, a multi-vocal constellation exploring, performing and redesigning competing identities, subjectivities, territories and mobilities, from localised and counter-hegemonic positions.

Kicking off the evening, SALAM LONDON proposes at first a quite feminine and indeed feminist screening session, featuring the works of four artists, Anna Raimondo, Touda Bouanani, Ro Caminal and Rim Mejdi, all powerfully addressing through different lenses, the politics and poetics of gender, femininity and the social role women perform in and across different social, cultural and political economic landscapes. Following the screening, the audience is invited to navigate across the space, engaging with the video installations punctuating it. The works by Simohamed Fettaka, Oussama Tabti, Laila Hida and Abdelmohcine Nakari, all playfully question and attempt to invert the structures and processes constructing and reproducing (Arab and/or Moroccan) identities, exploring the role that language, music, the production of images and the performativity of bodies play therein. The installations by Zainab Andalibe & Nicolas Kozerawski, Jacob Wiener and Hamedine Kane, finally, explore or perform, often through a sociological eye interlaced with a poetic language, territories and dynamics of migration, mobilities and labour.

Established in 2013, LE 18 is a multidisciplinary cultural space in Marrakech, which promotes artistic and cultural exchanges by offering a space for research, creation and expression. LE 18 aims at supporting the local emerging art scene, bridging it with international ones, while fostering a reflection on the role of contemporary art in the region through research and residency programmes, exhibitions and public gatherings. Located in the medina, LE 18 offers a close proximity to the city's traditional life, bringing its inspiring qualities into closer contact with the practices and reflections of invited artists, while critically investigating and attentively investing the sociocultural transformations it is undergoing.

LE 18

18, derb el ferrane, Riad Laarouss

Medina, Marrakech 40000

le18marrakech@gmail.com

www.le18marrakech.com

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17 Oct - 18 Oct: Painting Clubb – Workshop, 1pm - 6pm

Painting Clubb is an inclusive and nomadic platform which practices collaborative painting and drawing sessions with its participants. Exploring the questions GHOST poses, this two-day workshop allows participants to raise voices/unspoken ideas and conversations, encouraging them to consider the roles of ‘guest’ and ‘host’. Along with it’s artistic satisfaction, this process unites people and thoughts through a medium that is creative and peaceful.

Painting Clubb was founded in 2018 by Bora Akinciturk, Canan Batur, Jennifer Ipekel, Merve Iseri, Asli Ozdemir and Tabitha Steinberg.

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20 Oct: Guests and Hosts in the Age of Migration – Discussion+Spoken Word, Cathy Wilcock, 3.30pm - 5.30pm

While forced immigration to the UK has always happened, it has become an increasingly politicised issue over the last 10 years. Against the backdrop of the Tory ‘hostile environment’, what are the ways in which communities in the UK are hosting migrants? How do people work within, around and against hostility and what can we do to be the most ‘moral’ hosts? Perhaps this involves a radical reimagining of the identities of guests and hosts altogether? Perhaps the imagination, both creative and political, is key to addressing toxic forms of belonging and recalibrating identities to be more inclusive, dignified and solidaristic.

Join Cathy Wilcock, researcher and spoken word artist, for a talk and discussion followed by spoken word performances around this theme.

Cathy Wilcock is a researcher based in the Institute of Social Studies in the Hague. She completed her PhD at the University of Manchester and specialises in the political anthropology of migration. She works with Sudanese communities in the UK and the Netherlands and is interested in music as a form of transnational claim-making. She is also a songwriter and spoken word artist as one half of the Manchester and Rotterdam-based duo Gymnast. 

 

Another News Story – Film Screening, 6pm - 7.30pm followed by Q&A with one of the film crew

Another News Story takes a fresh view of the European refugee crisis. The film opens in 2015 Greece as refugees arrive on the idyllic island of Lesbos and follows refugees into Hungary and Croatia and across Europe to a hoped-for sanctuary. The film chronicles a journey beset by physical deprivation and danger, bureaucratic and political obstacles and thousands of miles of uncertainty. As the refugees wind their way across Europe they are accompanied by a pack of fellow travellers – reporters, camera-operators, producers and news vans. As he too travels alongside the refugees, debut British director, Orban Wallace, turns the camera in a new direction: the world’s 24-hour news gatherers in pursuit of the breaking story.

Another News Story was directed and produced by Orban Wallace, of Gallivant Film. He and his team followed the media coverage of the ‘refugee crisis’ during Autumn of 2015.  

 

Gymnast – Gig, 8pm - 8.45pm 

Rotterdam-based electronic duo Gymnast will finish the day off with some dark and dreamy alternative-pop.

“Under the influence of Wild Beasts and following hot-on-the-heels of new Secretly Canadian signing Woman’s Hour come Gymnast with their own brand of refined and sultry modernism.” (DIY) 

“the local duo are a revelation, bringing the advanced artpop of debut album Wild Fleet to invigorating life. Gymnast are special indeed.” (The Skinny)

Gymnast is the Rotterdam based project of songwriting and production duo Cathy Wilcock and Chris Lyon. A live setup of synths, electronics, and dual vocals offers up “clever pop” (Dots and Dashes) in the form of “hypnotic beats and euphoric atmospheric soundscapes” (Acid Stag) – lyrics to make you think and beats to move your feet. Having cut their teeth supporting artists such as Salt Cathedral, Phox, Dan Croll, and Woman’s Hour, the dance-heavy influence of their current base Rotterdam has begun to creep into new work. For that, see their upcoming EP ‘Cusp’, set for release later this year.

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21 Oct: Becoming Object: Flesh to Meat – Performance Lecture, Rowan Markson, 1pm - 2pm

Becoming Object: Flesh to Meat is a performance lecture by Rowan Markson that explores our collective detachment from death, especially through our consumption of bodies, both animal and human. It will focus on the artisanal butcher Mohammed Taitra who created a fake bacon recipe in Marrakech in the 90s. Borrowing the title from Maggie Nelson’s ‘The Art of Cruelty’, it will interweave limited representations of sacrifice and slaughter within art, religion and contemporary culture, which merge subjects and objects to simplify complicated relationships. 

Rowan Markson (b. 1990) is an artist and programmer living in Glasgow, having graduated with a Photographic Arts BA from the University of Westminster (2013). Most recently he completed the experimental art documentary Zahwa (2018), which was filmed in Marrakech with the support of Art Council England. Meanwhile he has just finished a residency at CCA (Glasgow), which resulted in the launch of a new narrative driven podcast “Set the Scene’. After programming two events Folly and Fools in early 2017 he became part of the programming committee of the artist-run space Market Gallery (Glasgow). 

Sacramental/Commune – Workshop, Nelly Kelly, 3pm - 4.30pm

Part workshop/part communion, this work invites participants to enter into and engage with a queer sermon formed and guided by the rituals of the catholic mass. This mass will be followed by a communal writing workshop that sees its participants build their own manifesto aimed at evoking radical ways of thinking, removed from institutional ideology. This piece examines the historical role of the guest/host through a queer lens. Through the ritual of the Eucharist - the giving and receiving of the catholic host (sacramental bread) - this piece aims to bring to judgement the deeply rooted dogma fertilised by the long history of religious practices and the impact this dogma has had on how we perceive ourselves, others and the world we live in.

Nelly Kelly is a genderqueer playwright, dramaturg, performance maker and researcher. They hold an MLitt in Playwriting and Dramaturgy from Glasgow University. 

Credits include: Dramaturg with Red Women’s Theatre Award; Greenwich Theatre, London; Performing Arts Academy, Scotland;  Cumbernauld Theatre and Queen Margaret University. They have performed work at Tron Theatre, CCA, Traverse, the James Arnott Theatre, Summerhall, Adam House and Queen Margaret University Theatre. Recently they brought their work-in-progress version of ‘Sacramental’ to Take Me Somewhere Festival Symposium.

 

SPECTRAL/OLFACTORY – Performance Lecture, Sophia Satchell-Baeza with Bardo Light Show, Courtenay Pollock and SonicSoul, 6.30pm - 8pm

‘SPECTRAL/OLFACTORY’ is a projection-based performance lecture by Sophia Satchell-Baeza, in collaboration with Bardo Light Show and SonicSoul. Partly inspired by Brian Eno’s perfume lecture, this talk will explore the role of synaesthesia across a range of artistic and countercultural practices. Interspersed with readings from personal “sense logs”, the talk will be animated by liquid colour projections by Bardo Light Show, concrete mandala imagery by gong practitioner Courtenay Pollock, and an immersive soundscape by sound artist SonicSoul. 

Sophia Satchell-Baeza (b. 1989) is a writer, researcher, and lecturer in film and animation. She holds a PhD from King’s College, London, and is an Associate Research Fellow at CInema and Television History Research Institute at De Montfort in Leicester. Her PhD dissertation, titled Projecting Psychedelia, focused on the psychedelic moving image in Britain during the Long 1960s, and was supported by the AHRC. She teaches American Underground and European Avant-garde film at King’s College, London, and is a Visiting Lecturer in Animation and Contextual and Theoretical Studies at London College of Communication.

Inspired by the light shows of the 1960s, the Bardo Light Show provides an authentic psychedelic light show utilising vintage analog media and equipment. Liquids and chemicals are at the heart of the light show.

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26 Oct: VIP Exhibition tour, 6pm - 6.30pm, VIP Dinner, 7 - 9pm

Mint Works invites supporters who have made GHOST possible to share a dinner with the participants and exhibiting artists. Mint Works curators will take the guests on a VIP tour of the exhibition.

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27 Oct: GHOST – Private View, 7pm - 10pm

Mint Works opens the exhibition showcasing nine commissioned works from North African and European artists, working with past collaborators as well as new practitioners for the show. The works are poetic responses to GHOST, with some observing social-political concerns and others touching on artists intimate experiences of their exploration into the roles of guest and host. The works converse through the mediums of sculpture, video, text and installation. There will be a performance programme during the private view. 

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28 Oct: Take In Care – Performances, 1pm - 6.30pm

When exploring the interface between the ‘guest’ and the ‘host’, memories of generosity or conflict can flood in. In this time of global movement, when mobility can be voluntary or imposed, how do we meet each other? How do we listen to one another, offer care, embrace differences, learn new codes, and cultivate generosity? Drop in throughout the day to enjoy alternative modes of care, one-to-one with artists or in small groups. 

Florence Devereux, Durational

Florence Devereux’s practice explores how animism can blur modernity’s ontological boundaries. For Take In Care she will use her knowledge of astrological charts in an intimate performative setting to experiment with different ways of listening to our contextual environments.  

Light Eye Mind presents The Light Salon, Durational 

The Bean, Durational

The Bean’s latest work explores intimacy, vulnerability and transformation through experimental one on one exchanges and conversations. For care day, she will offer bespoke drinks of individual improvised chants, lovingly tailored to your most unsuspected needs.

 

Jade Wilford and Nadia Berri, Durational 

Jade Wilford and Nadia Berri will present their performance Käfig. At the core of Käfig performance is a loose ability to take and transform through giving and receiving. Objects, sounds, movements and performers grow these temporary spaces in which a collective narrative emerges. Both their audience’s feedback and their personal experience speak of Käfig’s ability to create both the comfort and challenge to collectively go to a state a little outside ourselves as individuals.  

Siri Kalla, Durational

In our present society, the menstrual cycle is often regarded as a nuisance, or even something inherently bad. However, by becoming aware of it's monthly ebb and flow, we can tap into a well of wisdom residing inside our bodies. Only by learning to truly care for our bodies, can we can learn how to truly care for others. During the care day, Siri Kalla will be our resident Menstrual Oracle. Come see her with all your questions about how you can care for and nourish your body and menstrual cycle in a profound way.

ddjinn 

ithinkthereforiambient set takes you not quite upstairs or downstairs, offering figments of imagination, moments of halfway and in between. Ambient soundscapes intermittent with spoken word and poetry. 

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30 Oct: The Political Animal – Reading Group, Olga Koroleva, 6.30pm - 8.30pm 

Olga Koroleva will host a reading group exploring human acknowledgement or disregard of the host species and environments that make life possible, and to what extent to we see ourselves as guests on planet earth? Olga Koroleva will invite readers to contemplate ‘We Refugees’ by Hannah Arendt, a key text for the curators of GHOST and a few key texts by the group Political Animal to inspire conversation. Do we ever consider our status as guests in other species habitats? What and who do we consider unwanted guests in our homes?   

The Political Animal reading group was set up by Olga Koroleva in February 2016, and is based at The Showroom, London. Satellite groups meet in Dublin (led by Jessica Conway) and Edinburgh (led by Tom Jeffreys). They read and discuss all things animal: domestication, queer theory, biology, Derrida, and poetry. 

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03 Nov: TBC – Performance, Noureddine Ezarraf

During Noureddine Ezarraf’s two week residency in London, he will explore the roles of guest and host, devising an interactive performance with his findings. 

For bio see artists profiles at the start of the press release 

 

بيتي  – Performance, Yara Said, 12pm - 4.30pm 

Live from Amsterdam through Skype, Yara Said invites the audience to share a day with her at her studio, where she places herself as the host. Using technology to bypass time, space and cultures, Yara Said opens up a window into her most intimate safe space. She says:“ My studio is my home. It’s the only place on Earth where I feel real and productive, the only place where I can be completely genuine. It’s a place where I can gather with friends and have new experiences. A monk has a temple, an artist has his studio”. She welcomes the guests to silently peer into her home or ask questions and engage with her through the window of the screen. Yara Said and the audience are invited to experience the ambivalence of her wide open private space and the possibilities and limits of our virtual presence to each other. How intimate or superficial can the exchanges be, how much of each other will we allow ourselves to give and receive? In parallel with prejudice and cultural codes, how do the framework and technology involved influence and shape our encounter with her? 

Yara Said (b. 1991, Damascus) based in Amsterdam. She studied Oil Painting at the

Academy of Fine Arts in Damascus (2009-2014), She is currently an MA student at the Sandberg institute at Gerri Rietveld university, Amsterdam. Said’s art is not confined to one discipline. She creates paintings, collages, as well as conceptual art. The work is highly subjective and expressionist, yet at the same time has a strong purpose to communicate with the beholder to tell a story bigger than herself and more universal.

 

The Long Now – Performance, Demelza Woodbridge, 7pm 

The Long Now is a performative audio visual essay that speculates on the phenomenon of Alien Time as it traces a forgotten history of displaced people. A collage of found sounds and footage underscores the reading of a text that underlines the need for a practice of the decolonising of belonging. To diminish the borders between human and non-human and assert a de-centring of human agency. A call to adopt and explore shape-shifting and the imagination as effective strategies to embrace in our efforts to repair our future memories. 

Demelza Woodbridge is a London based multi-disciplinary artist and activist researching modes of practice as strategies of resistance to narratives of cultural dominance. A praxis of decoloniality combined with a feminist approach inform her practice in the challenging of Western notions of universality, neutrality and linear evolution. Working predominantly with performance and sound, her work seeks to disrupt and interrogate power dynamics and challenge cultural bias.

 

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08 Nov, ENTER THE TRANS – Performance Lecture, Halea Kala, 7pm - 8pm

ENTER THE TRANS is a simultaneous presentation as well as a performance piece by Berlin-based artist, director and producer Halea Kala whose work is marked by an audio-visual, philosophical as well as episodical approach to providing frameworks. Instead of offering a frontal stage-based presentation, Halea Kala will create a hybrid format that invites you into a sacred space created to share her take on the art directing, curating and facilitating.

 

ENTER THE TRANS – Film Screening + Director’s Q&A, Halea Kala, 8pm - 10pm

IMAGE

 

ENTER THE TRANS is a documentary film by Luisa Dahringer & Halea Kala about changemakers that challenge and transform the current system by exploring new possibilities for transitioning into a new paradigm with alternative social, economic and cultural approaches.

Halea (b.1989) grew up between Northern California, USA and Berlin, Germany. She later moved to London to study Photography and Media & Communications at Goldsmiths graduating in 2013. She is now lives in Berlin where she works as a freelance filmmaker, photographer and cultural producer. She is the co-founder of MUSÉ - a label, network and platform for transformative artistic and socio-cultural work. MUSÉ initiates and facilitates collaborative projects with cultural creatives and social entrepreneurs from different fields. 

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10 Nov, Homemade Lunch – Performance, Girlfriend Of The Year (GFOTY), 1pm - 3pm

Girlfriend of the year is your best friend. Girlfriend of the year is also your enemy. You want to be her but you also want to hate her because she is all you ever wanted to be. She makes good girls furious and grown men cry. For one day and one day only (for the foreseeable future), GFOTY is going to cook you the stages of a fully fledged relationship from start to finish, so you don’t have to. Forget about clean eating, things are going to get dirrrrrty. 

 

GFOTY was born one day, just like all of us. She started writing in 2009 for Super!Super! Magazine and from that, an idol was born. She started making music for the masses and the masses loved her. She tried her hand at writing inspirational quotes to help the uninspired get inspired (@gfotyquote) and on top of all of this GFOTY can also cook, but most importantly GFOTY is your saviour. The GFOTY brand grew and grew and has never stopped growing. Help her grow some more and keep both yours, and her, dream alive.

 

Hosting or betraying? The political dimensions of translation – Lecture, Meryem Sebti, 4.30pm - 5.30pm

One of the modality of hosting the foreigner is by translating his language. Therefore, Meryem Sebti would like to question the act of translating into its political dimension. The recent debates that have emerged in France, particularly around the question of the feminisation of the language, have also a political dimension, just as the choice of the translator is political: should one keep the inflections of the original  when translating a text or, on the contrary, is it necessary to erase all the asperities and strangeness of the source language to offer to the reader a smooth tongue, free from all "impurity"? Using the the historical example of the Greco-Arabic translations of the 9th-11th century as a tool for analysis, Meryem Sebti will look at the contemporary situation in relation to this issue. 

Meryem Sebti is historian of ideas, specialised in islamic philosophy. She is a senior researcher at the french CNRS, Centre Jean Pépin in Paris (National Center for Scientific Research).

Halalium – Performance Lecture and DJ Set, U-Cef, 7pm - 10pm

U-Cef brings together the traditional Moroccan sounds he was brought up with and the hip-hop beats of London and New York. His music embodies his belief that ‘nobody is made of one stuff’. For his lecture and DJ set during GHOST, U-Cef will explore his album Halalium which blends the sounds from different geographies, namly Moroccan, American and British; subverting the archetype of the white producer making 'world music,' to play with the lines where sound and cultures meet.   

U-Cef was born in Rabat and later moved to New York where he was a percussionist and drummer in various bands. He then moved to London where he has been living for more than fifteen years.

 

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