We Are the (Epi)center

Can Altay, David Blamey, Katarina Burin, Jasmina Cibic, Céline Condorelli, Marjolijn Dijkman, Chris Kraus, Gareth Long, Ronan McCrea, Harold Offeh, William McKeown, Eduardo Padilha, Sarah Pierce, Richard Venlet, Grace Weir, and others

Organized with the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College

“We are the (Epi)center…” is a two-month project at P! that brings together a range of international artists to rethink art’s relationship to its forms of exhibition and propose new models. Co-organized with Paul O’Neill and the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard), “We are the (Epi)center…” is both an evolving, cumulative exhibition and a research project. It incorporates short-term displays, events, performances, artist-led discussions, and other public programs that are developed in collaboration with students from the graduate program at CCS Bard.

“We are the (Epi)center…” approaches curating as a series of actions that lead toward the emergence of an eventual exhibition-form. Its first iteration on 11 November will comprise a selection of existing artworks, new commissions, and ongoing art projects in a display relating to ideas of the ‘exhibitionary’ and the ‘curatorial.’ For the months of November and December, P! will function as a conceptual outpost for We are the Center for Curatorial Studies—a multi-year project, also curated by Paul O’Neill, which opened at the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College on 15 October and continues through 16 December.

The presentation at P! explores six intersecting, speculative ‘departments.’ It is an exhibition that gathers form through an accumulation of artworks and discrete spaces of display, juxtaposing subjects, things, images, information, structures, and discursive events. Over the course of the show, the space at P! will be transformed on a weekly basis, with no singular phase representing a ‘conclusive’ exhibition.

SCHEDULE OF PLANNED EVENTS

Friday, 11 November, 6–8pm

Performance of Covers by artist Harold Offeh

Friday, 18 November, 6–8pm

Threshold, gallery intervention & event by artist Can Altay

Saturday, 19 November, 2–4pm

Domusplinth, gallery intervention & event by artist Richard Venlet

Saturday, 3 December, 2–4pm

Greatness Zine Launch with artist Sarah Pierce and CCS Bard graduate students

Friday, 9 December, 6–8pm

FEEL OK, sound bath by artist David Blamey

Saturday, 10 December, 6–8pm

Film screening & conversation by artist Jasmina Cibic

Wednesday, 14 December, 6–8pm

Book launch & conversation by artist Katarina Burin with curator Jacob Proctor and others

Thursday, 15 December – Thursday, 22 December

“We are the Margins,” a program-outside-of-a-program by CCS Bard graduate students

Exhibition identity & collateral materials designed by the London-based design practice Julia.

The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) was founded in 1990 as an exhibition and research center for the study of late twentieth-century and contemporary art and culture and to explore experimental approaches to the presentation of these topics and their impact on our world. Since 1994, the Center for Curatorial Studies and its graduate program have provided one of the worlds most forward thinking teaching and learning environments for the research and practice of contemporary art and curatorship. Broadly interdisciplinary, CCS Bard encourages students, faculty, and researchers to question the critical and political dimension of art, its mediation and its social significance. CCS Bard cultivates innovative thinking, radical research and new ways to challenge our understanding of the social and civic values of the visual arts. CCS Bard provides an intensive educational program alongside its public events, exhibitions, and publications, which collectively explore the critical potential of the institutions and practices of exhibition-making. It is uniquely positioned within the larger Center’s tripartite resources, which include the internationally renowned CCS Bard Library and Archives and the Hessel Museum of Art, with its rich permanent collection.

Exhibitions at CCS Bard are made possible with support from the Marieluise Hessel Foundation, the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Foundation, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, the Board of Governors of the Center for Curatorial Studies, the CCS Bard Arts Council, and the Center’s Patrons, Supporters, and Friends. Additional support was given by Culture Ireland.