29 June 2008 – 5 October 2008

Word Event

Can a gesture be a word?

Word Event looks at a select group of makers who carry on a tradition of subversive methodology in their practice and attitude.

Word Event is a multi-level cross-sectioned exhibition of contemporary works, events, performances and informances, scores, printed matter and film. Taking George Brecht’s “Word Event” (1961), a handwritten Event Card, as its starting point, the exhibition attempts to displace itself by purposely seeking out confrontation and synchronization thus landing in the exhibition space as an active dialogue. Word Event points to a possible return of a fluxus sensibility via a new, contemporary, proverbial linguistic turn.

Artists today – or more precisely, ‘cultural producers’ – are reactivating a language based and, specifically, narrative based practice. Creating room for conversation and leveling the hierarchy of production between sketch, thought and product, this linguistic turn approaches the surface of the metaphorical page as an ‘exchange surface’, ‘as a space of shift between different mediums, in which, as Rancière puts it, “signs become forms and forms become acts.”’ [1]

Address

Kunsthalle Basel
Steineberg 7
Basel
phone +41 61 206 99 00
http://www.kunsthallebasel.ch

Opening Hours

Tuesday-Friday 11 a.m. - 6 p.m., Thursday until 8.30 p.m., Saturday-Sunday 11 a.m. - 5 p.m., closed on Monday

Within 10 days
starting exhibitions
ending exhibitions