&8 Art Salon
2019, self-organized group exhibition with 6 invited artists and artists' talk
GlogauAIR Art Residency, Berlin
&8 Art Salon was founded in 2019 by artist Eight Fang; an accessible platform for exhibitions, performances, and panel talks where creation, representation, collision, connection, collaboration, and interrogation coalesce. Our mission is to foster interdisciplinary exchange, -to bring together and represent emerging artists.
The collectives, to be presented by &8 Art Salon, comprise artists of all ages, from varying backgrounds and artistic practices. The investigation of diverse spaces and the development of collaboration between artists is encouraged and promoted through bi-monthly salons.
&8 Art community is an extensive yet ever-expanding platform; we host monthly meetings to provide artists with an intimate environment that fosters and facilitates personal networking in a professional setting.
ASSEMBLED [IM]POTENCY
The premiere &8 Art Salon:
“Assembled Impotency” – curated by Eight Fang
With works from the first collective: Dora Tarasidou, Eva Gentner, Tzu Ting Wang, Meltem Nil, Jussi S., Torben Jost, and Moritz Zeisner. Panel talk leads by moderator Tillmann Severin.
The seven artists invited to exhibit at &8 Art Salon share a common interest in historical narratives. Using various mediums, -installation, video, performance and sound, -the authenticity and accuracy of history, especially the relationship between narrative and narrator there within, is interrogated. The collective is invited to explore how time and spatial-specific histories shape human behavior.
The title “Assembled [Im]potency” draws on several sources. In 1940, Wilhelm Stekel referred to the term impotence as a curse to man; a disorder, - the incapacity to have sexual intercourse, -associated with modern civilization.
Literally translated the word impotency means lack of power. In 1420 Thomas Hoccleve used it to mean ‘want of strength’ in his poem ‘De Regimine Principum.’ History meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation"; it referred to the study of the past as it is described in written documents. Events occurring before written records are considered prehistory.
The surmounting collocation of artworks confronts the viewer, under the given spatial context, with a tensely pressing series of questions: how do we understand history? Should we rely on personal or collective historical interpretations? Or the introduction of fictional narratives to navigate our futures?