[Nettime-ro] actors and extras _Argos Centre for Art and Media, Brussels

[Irina Botea <irinab@gmail.com>]

ACTORS & EXTRAS
September 15 - December 19, 2009

Opening: September 12, 2009, 6–9 pm, ARGOS Centre for Art and Media

A cooperation between ARGOS Centre for Art and Media and Siemens
Arts Program

http://www.argosarts.org
http://www.siemensartsprogram.com
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Actors & Extras, a cooperation of Argos and Siemens Arts Program, is  
the most ambitious exhibition that Argos organised in almost twenty  
years of activities.

The starting point for the exhibition is the contraposition between  
the actor and the extra in the film. The dividing line between them is  
that between assertiveness and unassertiveness, cognisance and  
ignorance. An actor stands for a process of embodiment and for the  
ability to give direction to an activity. An extra is a voiceless  
figure in the background: body without embodiment. If the extra, in  
contrast to the actor, embodies anything at all, it is a conflict of  
orientation. Extras are independent of a film. They do not  
participate, do not anticipate. Their equivalent in real historical  
terms is the people, the masses.

The prominence of the characterisation motif has been called to  
attention in recent years. At a time when the idea of community has  
become problematic, desubjectification and social questions about the  
place and status of the individual find a translation. Nothing is then  
more metaphorically appropriate than the (dead) symbolic body of the  
cinema that has always stood as a model for a space of shared  
references, as well as for the idea of the collective consciousness.

In the exhibition Actors & Extras surprising and alternative positions  
are addressed. Invariably the artists explore the span between  
characterisation as abstract, modular and manipulable human material  
on the one hand, and the consciously acting individual on the other.  
The exhibition consists of work from ten artists; with the exception  
of two photographic contributions and an installation, the majority of  
these are video installations. Works in which the figure of the extra  
comprise the subject should often be read as social and/or political  
allegories. Several of them take the form of socio-psychological  
experiments. This involves photo shoots, auditions, castings and re- 
enactments. In particular, re-enactments of events that are etched  
into the collective memory directly appeal to the forming of  
consciousness. The re-enactor is in the event but views it  
simultaneously as a performer and an outsider, from a certain distance.

Artists:
Irina Botea
Jeremy Deller & Mike Figgis
Omer Fast
Christian Jankowski
Mark Lewis
Aernout Mik
João Onofre
Julika Rudelius
Krassimir Terziev
Clemens von Wedemeyer

Curator
Paul Willemsen (ARGOS, Centre for Art and Media) and Thomas Trummer  
(Siemens Arts Program)

Cooperating Partners
ARGOS Centre for Art and Media
Siemens Arts Program

Publication
Actors & Extras, published by Thomas Trummer and Paul Willemsen,  
contributions by Jean-Louis Comolli, Georges Didi-Huberman, Sven  
Lütticken, Thomas Trummer and Paul Willemsen, Argos Editions, 2009,  
152 pages, 25 Euro

Venue
ARGOS Centre for Art and Media
Werfstraat 13 rue du Chantier
1000 Brussels, Belgium

Museum hours
12–19, Tuesday – Saturday

For further information go to http://www.argosarts.org or http://www.siemensartsprogram.com

Contact:

ARGOS Centre for Art and Media
Ive Stevenheydens
Werfstraat 13 rue du Chantier
1000 Brussels, Belgium
T. +32 / 2 / 229 00 03
F. +32 / 2 / 223 73 31
ive@argosarts.org
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