24 Dec Promotion of the book /catalogue The Art of Failure: Affective Aliens
It is our greatest pleasure to invite you to the promotion of the book/catalogue, the final artwork of the group exhibition The Art of Failure: Affective Aliens. The book/catalogue is designed by Neda Firfova.
The book promotion will open a conversation between the exhibition artists and the curator.
Date: 26 December, 2014 Friday Time: 20:30
Location: http://seriousinterestsagency.com/contact-2/
The first 50 to come to the promotion, will receive the book as a Christmas gift
Publisher: Coalition SHRMC
Editor: Slavcho Dimitrov
Design: Neda Firfova
Translation from English:
Julija Micova, Dusica Dimitrovska
Photography: Žarko Čulić
Artists: Hristina Ivanoska, Gjorgje Jovanovik, Zernovski Velimir, Nada Prlja,Yane Calovski, Neda Firfova
The publishing of the book was supported by OSF and the Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands in
Skopje, Macedonia
The book includes the artists’ works, as well as critical essays of contemporary authors in the field of gender and queer theories. The publication encompasses translations of some of the most significant texts in the field of queer theories, these being the key references for the theoretical background which is the basis for the exhibition’s chief concept, i.e. the anti-social turn in queer theory, affect queer theory, queer theory of shame and melancholy and negative emotions and their political and cultural sources and implications (Douglas Crimp, Judith Jack Halberstam, Ann Cvetkovich, David Halperin, Heather Love, Sara Ahmed, Lee Edelman, Marina Grzinic, Michael Warner, and Slavcho Dimitrov with introductory text).
“This Catalogue is a process of design research and an attempt to formally institute this curatorial art project (the catalogue) in the basis of the published queer theoretical texts (chrestomathy as well as to incorporate the two in one publication. The width of the cover is shorter than the pages of the chrestomathy (which on the other hand are shorter than the pages of the catalogue) in an attempt to present a `gentle` design intervention that symbolizes the exposure, defencelessness, instability and non-normativity of the literary object, yet of the collected archived content as well.
Until the production and multiplication of the chrestomathy and the catalogue was finalized, I designed dummies, in relation to the growth and modification of the content to be published, while I was making its design. At a first glance, these dummies exaggerate the obsessive need for articulating the content formally absent from the exhibition (the chrestomathy texts), yet on the other hand they are silent, inarticulate static books-objects. They aim to mark the space for the potential printed and multiplied exhibition catalogue, as well as to offer the possibility for it to be touched, hence the impossibility to relate to the potential future of the literary object. This act creates an absurd atmosphere resembling the impossibility to be oneself.
Impossibility and inarticulation are the main themes elaborated in the key visual for the exhibition The Art of Failure: Affective Foreigners. Nausea, loss, negative affects and their potential eventual effects are evoked by indexing in the form of the game Hangman. All these affects are unfolded through an open horizon, foreboding the indefinite and undistinguishable possibility for transforming them in different modalities and positions requiring interactive intervention. The tribulation and slow death resulting from the deprived voice, impossibility, inarticulation, the void and difficulty, marked with the absent vocals in the title, and the dark blue background invite the `visual reader` to intervene and offer a different direction to the situation and `play` with the impossible. Pantone Reflex Blue, the blue colour used in the key visual and the texts in the book, evokes a line of queer art history (Klein, Jarman), creates a depth and conveys reflexive emphasis on the texts, as well as persistence in reading the affective power structures and their inscription in the experience of marginalized subjects.” – Neda Firfova