Marres, House for Contemporary Culture and The Artist and the Others present:

Marres Dialogues: The paradox of objective representation

In the context of the exhibition Marres Currents #3: Sightseeing Marres presents a conversation between the curators, artists and art professionals about the paradox of objective representation.

Philippine Hoegen leads the conversation between Paula van den Bosch (curator contemorary art Bonnefantenmuseum), Chris Keulemans (writer and journalist), Agata Jaworska and Guillemette Legrand (curators MC#3: Sightseeing).

The inconvenient subjectivity of the body, the slipperiness of perspective and utterly unverifiable ideas of universality, all conspire to contaminate the notion of an objective description or representation, and puncture their credibility. Nonetheless the desire for objectivity —for a ‘truth’ or ‘realness’ beyond the individual experience— and a way to faithfully reproduce it, remains.

Whilst trying to come to grips with abstractions or representations that promise such objectivity, and that as a result of our desire to believe in them gain an aura of concreteness —a map, a border, a conviction, a scientific formula— artists in this exhibition use strategies of over identification, of debunking, subverting or otherwise scrutinising the reification of these abstractions. An awareness of the fact that the work itself is also such a representation which adds to, perhaps interferes with or even alters the phenomenon it explores, is often part of the project.

In this discussion we would like to talk through, and with the work of the artists in the exhibition “Sightseeing” about this desire and it’s problematics —bodies, contaminations and punctures; representation, reification and realities— as addressed in the works, to figure out the artistic strategies employed and the insights or knowledge produced.

text: Philippine Hoegen

Drinks afterwards!

Location: Intro in Situ, Capucijnengang 12, Maastricht
Time: 20.00 – 21.30
Language: English
FREE ENTRANCE