Seven artists are making oddkin in MeetFactory Gallery

19 June 20, Prague – At The Trouble Is Staying exhibition, seven international artists reflect on how to create a world from an exhausted planet where we not only survive but also meaningfully coexist. They look at the world with fresh eyes, create unconventional symbioses, show a new way of living. The multimedia exhibition can be seen at the MeetFactory Gallery until the beginning of September 2019.

The planet reached a state of total exhaustion. The Trouble Is Staying does not face this topic with a radical environmental activist approach; the state, which the society reached due to its own activities, is taken as a starting point. We are not alone in this situation; people are on the planet with other living creatures facing the same problem. We need each other to survive. Its curator Inês Geraldes Cardoso explains the basic thesis of the exhibition as follows, "The exhibition draws on Donna Haraway's ideas, who claims that we have to learn to coexist with problems, to make oddkin." Then she adds, “We need each other in unexpected co-operations and in unexpected combinations, in hot compost piles. We become-with each other or not at all.”

Seven artists develop this philosophy of coexistence; their works together reveal ethical and practical possibilities to create a caring and considerate world. Using gestures, words, sounds, and surprising symbioses, they create an image of a world where multi-species "vermin" – human and inhuman – teach each other the ability to reshape, re-think, and re-experience the world and at the same time to again find a connection between them. They do so through paintings, installations, videos and sound recordings.

The world where the Atlantic limpets and seashells by André Romão (PT) are safely attached to post-industrial architecture; a performance by Ingela Ihrman (SE), where the world has slowed down to the pace of flower growth; the films by Pedro Neves Marques (PT) depicting agroindustry, which is responsible for soil contamination and cultivation of sterile crops; Patricia Dominguez (CL) shows the archetype of the horse as an age-old guide and helper to man; chair statues by Ane Graff (NO) on which urine crystals, red salt, chia seeds or radishes settled; four sets of sound recordings evoking the movements of four of Earth's tectonic plates in Rachel Pimm’s (UK) work and Vivian Caccuri's (BL) blood-red net as a delicate border between a mosquito and a man that can be very easily abolished. The MeetFactory Gallery turns into a refuge for various forms of life.

Two performances are part of the exhibition vernissage. For the occasion, Vivian Caccuri will be joining the Prague choir Perperuna, whose voices are distorted by the contact of the microphones with the singer’s necks. This results in the amplification of the sound that is created in their throats. In Garganta performance voices overlap, melodies of Brazilian traditional music mix with the sounds of mosquitoes. Rachel Pimm in her performance Volcano, which uses the ASMR method, simulates volcanic sounds and manifestations. The vernissage evening will take place in the Smíchov factory on Tuesday 25 June.

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The Trouble Is Staying  
26. 6.–8. 9. 2019
Vernissage: 25. 6. 2019, 19:30
MeetFactory Gallery
Exhibiting artists: Vivian Caccuri, Patricia Dominguez, Ane Graff, Ingela Ihrman, Pedro Neves Marques, Rachel Pimm, André Romão
Curator: Inês Geraldes Cardoso