Event

Till Roeskens / Otobong Nkanga

Monday 13 February 2012 at 7 pm

This third program of the season deals more or less directly with geopolitical questions through Till Roeskens’s and Otobong Nkanga’s propositions. In the work of either artist, singular, personal paths soon move away from the particular as History runs through them.

From moving across the landscape to crossing borders, from local contexts to transnational migrations, the two artists invite us to an exercise in applied geography in which the roundabout ways often needed to reach the desired territory are revealed.

Till Roeskens / Comment aller chez Krimhilde
Leaving from the Strasbourg railroad station, Till Roeskens proposes a trip from the French city to the German village situated on the other side of the border, documenting the journey in the minutest detail. Thanks to a slideshow depicting the various zones he travelled through and a series of sketches he drew, Roeskens has us relive this apparently unremarkable trip, where fragments of History or more recent events (the illegal crossing of the Rhine) still resurface here and there.

Otobong Nkanga / Baggage
In 1972 one of Allan Kaprow’s famous performances invited participants to exchange suitcases filled with sand between the coasts of the United States. In 2007 Otobong Nkanga reinterpreted Kaprow’s score, carrying suitcases filled with sand from the Netherlands to Lagos, Nigeria, before shipping them back to their point of departure —this time filled with African sand. Several versions of the performance, which evokes the transportation of goods and human migrations, have taken place in De Appel, Amsterdam (where it had its premiere), at the Kunsthalle Bern (Switzerland), at Arco in Madrid (Spain), and at the Theaterformen in Braunschweig (Germany). In each the artist gave participants samples of Nigerian sand until it was completely disseminated. The performance is to end with its Parisian presentation.

format 3
format 3
Speakers

Till Roeskens
Otobong Nkanga

Date
Time
19h00
Location
Fondation Pernod Ricard
1 cours Paul Ricard
75008 Paris
Free entrance
Free admission, without reservation