Episode 7: March 5, Siren Songs
Chiara Fumai, noalanguageschool, Arnisa Zeqo

Chiara Fumai reads Valerie Solanas (2013), an interview between Chiara Fumai and Arnisa Zeqo
The echo of the voice is speaking to us… is speaking to me, a listening session contributed by noalanguageschool with excerpts from works by Meredith Monk, Joan La Barbara, Diamanda Galàs, Cathy Berberian and others

PROGRAM
An interview between Chiara Fumai and Arnisa Zeqo.

Chiara Fumai reads Valerie Solanas (2013),

The performative practice of Italian artist Chiara Fumai belongs to the tradition of female psychics, who are ‘spoken by’ different controversial entities. Entities which the artist freely (mis)interprets and combines into new stories, while questioning their symbolic meaning and representation in the mind of the viewer. Dealing with radical feminism, media culture, language and repression, Fumai’s starting point is performance, later to be transformed into installations, videos, collages and performative displays. At the Rietveld Academie she will read excerpts of the S.C.U.M. Manifesto (where S.C.U.M. stands for Society for Cutting Up Men) written in 1967 by Valerie Solanas, the writer who shot Andy Warhol.

The echo of the voice is speaking to us… is speaking to me,

A listening session contributed by noalanguageschool with excerpts from works by Meredith Monk, Joan La Barbara, Diamanda Galàs, Cathy Berberian and others,

Please bring a cushion or a pillow or a plaid to make yourselves comfortable while joining us for a listening session compiled and presented by noalanguageschool with excerpts from works by Meredith Monk, Joan La Barbara, Diamanda Galàs, Cathy Berberian and others.

A solitary king is caught by a beautiful voice and wanders mesmerized among the rooms and corridors of his castle, imagining the person who utters it. What is hidden of that person in the voice that the eyes of the king won’t see?
‘There is a person alive, with a throat, a chest, feelings who is pushing this voice so much to be different from all the other voices.’ Italo Calvino writes in the story A King Listens.
Inspired by this tale Angela Serino and Francesco Bernardelli invite us to listen to significant (female) experimental composers, singers and performers of our time, who in their work explore the physiology of the voice and the limits of vocal techniques while expanding the possibilities of contemporary composition by mingling and absorbing other artistic disciplines, including dance, electronics, performance and theatre.

PLUS
News from Rietveld Uncut and sneak peek of tomorrow’s Beamclub screening.

GUEST SPEAKERS / PERFORMERS
Chiara Fumai was born in Rome (1978), but lives and works in Brussels where she is current resident at Wiels Contemporary Art Centre. Recent one-woman-shows include: With Love from $inister at A Palazzo Gallery, Brescia (2013 – 2014); С любовью от $инистера at Victoria Gallery, Samara (2014); Follow This You Bitches at Futura Center for Contemporary Art, Prague (2013). Recent group shows include Fiorucci Art Trust, London (2014); Stigter Van Doesburg, Amsterdam (2014); MUSAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (2013); dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel (2012). With Chiara Fumai reads Valerie Solanas the artist was the winner of the ninth edition of the Furla Art Award 2013.

Arnisa Zeqo studied history of art and philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. She is co-founder of RONGWRONG, a small art space situated in the ground floor of her house in Amsterdam.

noalanguageschool: noa language school is an art project initiated by artist Mounira Al Solh and curator Angela Serino. noa is attempting to create a different approach to language education, starting from the experience of living (in)between two or more languages. noa was launched at Goleb and SMBA Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, in Amsterdam in June 2013.

Angela Serino is an independent curator and writer based in Amsterdam. In 2012 she started developing two long-term projects: noalanguageschool (with artist Mounira Al Solh) focused on language education and multilingualism; and Bodies at Work (with artist Maja Bekan) on the conditions of cultural and artistic production. Since 2010, she is a member of the programming committee of Kunsthuis SYB, an artists-in-residency in Friesland.

Francesco Bernardelli is an art writer / curator / teacher / lecturer whose interests focus on the area in between contemporary art, time-based media and performance. Since 1999 he has organized film and video programs devoted to the relation between visual arts and moving images for independent cultural centres as well as institutions and museums like Castello di Rivoli Contemporary Art Museum, the National Film Museum and Fondazione Merz in Turin. He has been invited to give talks and lectures in contemporary art centers and art academies in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Belgrade, Brussels, Budapest, Enschede, Frankfurt, Geneva, Ljubljana, London, Maastricht, Rotterdam, Utrecht.