AS I GET OLDER I GET MORE AFRAID OF THE DARK
28.06. – 23.07.2017
Opening: Wednesday, June 28, 19:00
19.00 – 20.30 / Screening of There Are Many More Ways to Die Than to Be Alive
20.30 – 21.30 / Drinks
Doors open at 18.45
Artists:
Declan Clarke in collaboration with Ștefan Tiron
The present exhibition is the last event in a series organised this season by Salonul de proiecte in collaboration with Ștefan Tiron, having as a starting point the work of Russian cosmist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. After moderating the first episode and curating the second one, he is now playing the main character in Declan Clarke's new film There Are Many More Ways to Die Than to Be Alive – a noir sci-fi political thriller that was developed as a collaboration between Clarke and Tiron, produced by Salonul de proiecte and shot on location in Bucharest in 2017.
The film centres on an individual named Konstantin who works for a government agency that speculates on alternative socio-political scenarios and uses them to inform political policy in conjunction with other European states. Konstantin's work begins to unsettle his superiors, and he eventually makes a discovery that suggests his employers are using the work of the department for other, more sinister means. As Konstatin reflects upon the potential ramifications of this newfound knowledge, the net tightens around him.
In the exhibition, Declan Clarke's film is presented in dialogue with a site-specific intervention by Ștefan Tiron that relates to the history of the Universul building, a former printing house – Ink as Black Goo: “Thinking or Writing as Black Goo. Ink as dirty multiverse, indelible occultural sludge, dark universal substance, or unrealized ‘actance.’ Ideas, thoughts, alternate worlds were teased out of this magmatic ink. So many incendiary pamphlets, manifestos, and poems came out of it. But what came out of the black goo of history? The Gutenberg Galaxy has somehow reached its own Styx River, a subterranean river of the unwritten afterlife that one must cross in order to get to the non-textual after-world. Printing Ink as the Fuel and Indelible Pollutant of History or as Its Primordial Matter.” (ST, in memory of Mihai Ciobănașu)
During visiting hours, the screening of There Are Many More Ways to Die Than to Be Alive will start at 15.00 and 16.30.
Declan Clarke (b. 1974) lives and works in Berlin. He studied at NCAD, Dublin (BA Fine Art) and Chelsea College of Art, London (MA Fine Art). In 2002/03 he was awarded the PS1 MOMA International Residency Program by The Arts Council of Ireland. Recent solo exhibitions include: I Wanted to Share My Lover’s Fate, Farbvision, Berlin; Declan Clarke: Recent Film Work, Torrence Art Museum, Los Angeles; The Hopeless End of a Great Dream, Temple Bar Gallery Dublin, Belfast Exposed, and the Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris; Geist Trilogie, Tromsø Kunstforening (all 2016); Wreckage in May, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, Dublin (2015); Group Portrait with Explosives, Mother’s Tankstation, Dublin (2014). Recent group exhibitions include: Transmediale 2016, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Over You/You, Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts; The Shock of Victory, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, HOME, Manchester; Un-Speak, CCA, Lagos (all 2015); Invisible Violence, Salzburger Kunstverein, MOCA Belgrade, Basque Museum of Contemporary Art, Vitoria (2014/5); Built with Love, Mother’s Tankstation, Dublin (2013). His films have recently been included in the FID-Marseille International Film Festival (2013 & 2016); Tromsø International Film Festival (2014); Cinéphémère, Jardin Des Tuilieries, FIAC, Paris (2013 & 2016).
Ștefan Tiron (b. 1976, RO) lives and works in Bucharest. Since 2005 he has been activating as curator and also contributing with texts and works to many projects, exhibitions, and magazines across Romania and Europe. He is the founder and co-curator of the Space Agency for Nocturnal Journeys to the Origins of the Universe (2006 – 2013), a series of art and science “wonder-shows” taking place in galleries, regional natural history museums, universities, private homes, or former clinics. He is the co-founder of Art-Leaks, a collective platform initiated in 2011 by an international group of artists, curators, art historians, and intellectuals in response to the abuse of their professional integrity and the open infraction of their labor rights. Between 2008 and 2011 he co-curated (with Claudiu Cobilanschi) the ParadisGaraj / Kunsthalle Batiștei project space in Bucharest. In 2016 he curated a series of guided tours as part of the Bucharest Disaster Detour Agency.
Special thanks: Ramona Bălăşcuţă; John Beattie and Firestation Artist Studios, Dublin; Richard Bovnoczki and Tudor Mircea; Simona Cosma; Carmen Coţofană and Vava Ștefănescu; Adi, Elena, Irina şi Domnul Gheorghe; Daria Ghiu; Dan Grigorescu; Valentina Iancu; Veronica Mincic; Sarah Perks; Nicoleta Radu; Ștefana and Napoleon Tiron; Clara Trăistaru; Răzvan Tun.