Publishing Practices 2
In the Inner Bark of Trees
Archive Berlin
Reinickendorfer Str. 17, 13347 Berlin
Opening July 29,
From 14:00
Exhibition dates
July 30, until August 27
Opening hours Thursday – Sunday 14:00 to 19:00
With contributions from
Amina Agueznay, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Sara Bouzgarrou, El Warcha, Juan–Pedro Fabra Guemberena, Aziza Gorgi, Karina Griffith, Raisa Kabir, Gladys Kalichini, Gabriel Rossell Santillán and Keiko Kimoto, Teresa Lanceta, Machi Mashy, Mallory Lowe Mpoka, Rah Naqvi, Katy Lèna N’diaye, Merve Elveren and Çağla Özbek, İz Öztat, Zineb Achoubie and Lorenzo Sandoval, Farkhondeh Shahroudi, Shireen Taweel, Cecilia Vicuña.
Curatorial ensemble Soukaina Aboulaoula, Mistura Allison, Chiara Figone, Paz Guevara, Beya Othmani
Curator in residency Salma Kossemtini
Visual identity Aziza Ahmad and Lilia Di Bella for Archive Appendix with Yvon Langué
Scenography and head of production Nancy Naser Al Deen
Structures design Ola Zielińska
Production assistance and hospitality Malab Alneel, Miriam Gatt, Iman Salem
Forum of co-learning curator and coordinator Samira Ghoualmia
Light design Emilio Cordero
Carpentry Santiago Doljanin
Exhibition mounting Ayham Allouch, Fai Chung, Waylon D’Mello, Rafał Łazar, Jessie Omamogho
Tech Bert Günther
Program
Open Class
Juan-Pedro Fabra Guemberena
Referencing Aurelio Gonzalez’s photographic archive and its series of photos of ‘openclasses’ in the 1970’s, done by the Teachers Union in Uruguay, the artist will activate an‘open class’ at Nettelbeckplatz, in the immediate areas of the exhibition. By engaging the knowledges and practices of some of the exhibition participants, the Open Classintends to socialize knowleges, while connecting the passers-by and the concerns of today.
Juan-Pedro Fabra Guemberena is an artist that works across media on histories of forced migration, tackling historical and ongoing forms of violence and injustice while proposing formats of critical reflection and reunion in the public space. He studied at the Royal College of Art in Stockholm (M.F.A). His exhibitions include: Semiotics of Confinement, Gothenburg’s Konsthall (2020); National Pavilion Bosnia & Herzegovina, the 57th Venice Biennale (2017); The School of Kyev, Kyev (2015); 1st Biennale of The Americas, Denver (2013); Favored Nations, 5th Momentum Biennal, Moss (2009);Delays and Revolutions, 50th Venice Biennale (2003); My Private Heroes, Marta Hereford Museum (2006), The Moderna Exhibition, The Modern Museum of Art, Stockholm (2006).
18:00 SCREENING, 58MIN
The world like a Jewel in the Hand – unlearning imperial plunder II
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay
Followed by a conversation with Beya Othmani
The film travels over open books, looted objects, and postcards to look for the imperial foundations of the world in which we live. Within this wide landscape, the film focuses on the destruction of the Jewish Muslim world in North Africa, making it imaginable and inhabitable again. Narrated in the first person by an Algerian Jew and a Palestinian Jew, the film refuses the imperial histories of those places. Objects held captive in museums and archives outside of the places from where they were looted are only the visible tip of the iceberg of the mass colonial plunder of Africa. The film explores the substantial wealth accumulated by extracting raw materials, labor, knowledge, and skills, including the “visual wealth” attained by putting people in front of the colonizers’ cameras.
20:30 SOUND PERFORMANCE
Re-imagining in conversation
Hannan Jones and Shamica Ruddock
They shared a basement studio as 2020-21 Associate Artists of Open School East. Here they began the ongoing project ‘Re-Imagining in Conversation’ (RIC). In 2021, the Annex platform of Contemporary Centre of Art Glasgow commissioned an iteration of‘Re-Imagining In Conversation’ in the form of a sonic and visual essay that culminated their research and response to ‘Female Voices in Revolution: Autobiography and Collective Memory in Assia Djebar’s Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade and Merle Collins’s Angel’; a text placing the orality of Algeria in relation to the oral traditions of the Caribbean. Supported by A/C Projects, Jones & Shamica shared the live performance of RIC at Counterflows 2022. In 2023, they performed at Counterflows and Cafe OTO alongside mentor and celebrated improviser Pat Thomas. The Shift marked their debut duo gallery exhibition at Well Projects, Margate (2022) and their contribution to ‘Seeking Channels,’ an anthology. Their essay ‘Speculation is the Vehicle’ has been published with Un Projects’ issue 17.1 in response to the theme‘Resist’. Jones and Ruddock are currently Web Residents with Akademie Schloss Digital Solitude x Liquid Architecture.
Hannan Jones is an interdisciplinary artist whose research motivations encompass peripheral narratives. Drawing parallels of personal and collective histories; and navigating these intersections from the perspectives of hybridity through language, rhythm, and psycho-geography. Hannan is of Algerian and Welsh origin raised in Binjareb Noongar Boodja, Australia.
Shamica Ruddock is an artist-researcher often found working between sound and moving images. Through sound, Shamica considers the ways Black diasporas are engaged and presented. Shamica has been particularly interested in how black technosonic production functions as a form of speculation, narrativizing and space-making.
AUGUST 2, 16:00 WORKSHOP
AUGUST 3, 16:00 WORKSHOP
A multivocal, translinguistic, and transnational project, In the Inner Bark of Trees, reflects the necessity of continuously challenging pathways to knowledge inheritance, production, and transmission. In presenting art libraries, texturalities, performances, and co-learning sessions that defy histories of oppression and colonialism, the project reunites publishing practices that seek to simultaneously unsettle knowledge systems from dominant symbolic cultures and release themselves from the confines of the material medium of modern colonial libraries. Instead, it fosters the imagination not only of libraries that are no longer limited by the printing system or canonical classification but crafted and nurtured by the intergenerational techniques, modalities, and feelings needed to sustain the alternatives of insurgent practices.
Although the performative nature of alternative libraries and archives has been extensively discussed, the project aims to question and reclaim the tools that allow the realisation of spaces and modes of cultural production and their maintenance and circulation in a transnational context. By virtue of virtual communication that flows like the vital lymph that passes through the inner bark of trees, the program interconnects different art libraries across regions and practices to share books and non-book cultural materials and immaterial figurations with Berlin practitioners and communities.
A broad spectrum of performative, aural, textile, and bodily artistic practices are addressed within In the Inner Bark of Trees in conjunction with the context of the extensive research stream of Publishing Practices, which analyses other meanings and outcomes of publishing, such as descent, belonging, and dissemination. By drawing inspiration from collective, anti-disciplinary, and reflexive perspectives—which emphasise how knowledge production is always becoming participatory and contradictory, as well as how the hierarchies of learning can be disrupted—this set of research embraces artistic, publishing and curatorial practices calling for awareness of often unquestioned aspects of publishing and seeking alternative pathways to inhabit and engage with forms of knowing and sensing.
Download the Exhibition Handout and Conceptual Framework below