Friday April 3, 7.30pm
Repondez s’il vous plait (A.R. is not invited)
Slide Performance by Magda Tothova
Live sound by: Alice Cohen, Delia Gonzales, Paul Philipp Heinze, and Magda Tothova
admission $7 – artists in attendance
35mm slides from the performance Repondez s’il vous plaît (A.R. is not invited) by Magda Thotova
images courtesy of the artist
Microscope is pleased to present Repondez s’il vous plaît (A.R. is not invited), a collaborative, multi-projector 35mm film slide and sound performance by Vienna-based artist Magda Tothova. The piece is based on Tothova’s ongoing research about a person whose identity has been reduced to the initials A.R. Text and slides will be accompanied by improvised loops, vocals, and percussion to create the atmosphere of a mystified figure, who is present but not welcomed.
Tothova’s work is inspired by fairy tales, myths, and personal issues dealing with social structures, presenting dystopian worlds that have many similarities with our own, and encouraging the viewer to see them as parallel worlds. Her interest in utopias and her belief that the world is one of many infinite versions, causes many to associate her work with the genre of science fiction.
“The dystopias that I create in my works consist of all possible cultural forms and value systems…One reason why there are so few changes in society is that we don’t actually know what we want to change. This is the foundation for my work, and opens up the possibility for an endless number of social models in which we are, again and again, faced with the same problems: helplessness and stagnation.” – MT
duration: approx. 45 minutes
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Magda Tothova is a visual artist based in Vienna and Berlin. Her work revolves around modern utopias, constructed norms, social models and their failures, how to address personal and social issues in the private and the political field. Borrowing heavily from fairy tales and science fiction, she is interested in the formation of myths or the essentialism underlying the concept of chance. She has exhibited in Europe and the United States including the Tate Modern (London), The Kitchen (NY), Austrian Cultural Forum (NY), Freies Museum (Berlin), Volkskundemuseum (Vienna), and the Biennial Exhibition in Bratislava. Tothova was born in Bratislava, Slovakia and currently lives and works in Vienna, Austria.
Alice Cohen is a musician and visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Active in the music world since the late 70s, she has released records in a wide array of contexts. Her visual work is largely based on collage and found images. In 2007 she began developing her collages into moving animations, and has since made dozens of music videos in addition to her own video work that has been shown in a variety of venues from galleries, screenings, and museums to nightclub dance parties.
Delia Gonzalez, born in Miami, Fl, is a Cuban/American artist who lives and works in New York City and Berlin, Germany. Working on a variety of mediums – music, film, drawing, performance – Gonzalez’s work constructs a world through film and music that encompasses the curving circular times carrying the viewer through organic and celestial worlds.
Paul Philipp Heinze is a german contemporary artist based in Berlin (DE) and Vienna (AT). Understanding the concept of an institution as a ‘system of rules causing a particular social order’ or a ‘sedimentation of dynamic social processes’, Heinze expands the traditional notion of Institutional Critique by shifting the focus from inherent topics of the ‘art operating system’ to the entire spectrum of the human and non-human existence.
Microscope gratefully acknowledges the Robert D. Bielecki Foundation as the Official Sponsor of the Event Series
35mm slide from the performance Repondez s’il vous plaît (A.R. is not invited) by Magda Thotova
images courtesy of the artist
