Aneta Szylak and Hiwa K.: Taqseem

Aneta Szylak – a Polish curator, and Hiwa K – an Iraqi Kurdish artist, will hold a conversation about their multistage Estrangement Project. http://estrangementproject.blogspot.com/

The highly problematic nature of collaboration and artistic partnership encourages a quest for the potential existing in silence, in what is missing, in rupture, in waiting, in the gap and in absence. “Estrangement” is a formless project that travels and adapts itself to local conditions although it does not necessarily translate differences. “Estrangement” works with various elements that do not seem to be connected, places them under observation and sometimes sets them to work.

At the very core of “Estrangement” there is the question of the circulation of cultural forms. The idea of considering the notion in this way arises at the intersection of the poetics of Shklovsky – a representative of Russian formalism – and the Arabic term taqseem, which means both musical improvisation and geometrical division. Found forms and ‘everydayness’ are points of entry into the way the project takes shape and disintegrates.

“Estrangement” was previously presented in exhibition format in Spring 2010 in The Showroom, London, and will be shown on a larger scale as part of the Alternativa Festival at the Wyspa Institute of Art in Gdansk in Summer 2011.

Hiwa K. is a visual artist and musician based on his own feet who lives in Germany as a political refugee. He has developed a series of projects around the implied paradoxes within cultural competence, participation, dissemination of knowledge and diffusion of the event. He began his artistic practice through painting in the 80s in Irak after an informal education together with other intellectuals, musicians, and theatre artists. In 1998, he abandoned painting and started playing flamenco guitar after receiving master classes by Spanish flamenco musicians such as Paco Pena, Paco Serrano, Anton Jimenez and Oscar Largo. He has participated within international art events such as Manifesta 7, Italy.

Aneta Szylak, co-founder and currently director of Wyspa Institute of Art – the intellectual environment for contemporary visual culture – in the former Gdansk Shipyard premises in Poland and Vice-President of the Wyspa Progress Foundation. In 1998, Ms Szylak founded with Grzegorz Klaman the Laznia (Bathhouse) Centre for Contemporary Art and was its Director until spring 2001. Her exhibitions are characterised by a strong response towards the cultural, political, social, architectural and institutional specificity and include: “Estrangement”, with Hiwa K, (2010, The Showroom, London); “Over and Over Again” (2009, The Centennial Hall, Wroclaw); “Chosen”, with Galit Eliat (2009, Digital Art Lab in Holon, Israel); “Translate: The Impossible Collection” (2008, Wyspa).Her writings have been published in Aprior Magazine, n.paradoxa, Art Journal, ArtKrush. Art Margins. She is a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths College in London and Copenhagen Doctoral School Copenhagen University.

Seacex has collaborated to Aneta Szylak’s visit as part of its visiting programme.