Curating Contemporary Art (MA)

Lindsey Wiercioch

Sets and Scenarios

In recent years, the development of media has transformed the way we experience moving images. Sets and Scenarios explores our heightened proximity to images and what it means to live under their influence. The online programme is composed of moving image works, text and performance that unfolds in three acts.

Commissions by Eva Gold and Adam Christensen delve into notions of control, perversity, desire and heartache. Through text and repurposed film footage, Eva Gold devises scenes of obsessive voyeurism, unravelling how film permeates our dreams and the depth of our psyche. Adam Christensen invites the audience to a performance for the camera in his house-cum-baroque-theatrical-stage, obscuring distinctions between on- and off-set.

In times of reduced mobility, commissions by Aaron Ratajczyk and Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi find motion between images. Aaron Ratajczyk stages a one-to-one rehearsal via video call – the screen as proxy to corporeal normalcy – while movements in time and history are proposed by Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi’s multi- layered films. Presented through a fictitious map, the works expand into a rhizomatic network of different media.

For its inaugural week, Sets and Scenarios presented screenings of moving image works that expand our exploration of the relationship between viewer and screen as images penetrate retina and ear, before creeping beneath the skin, toward the flesh, muscles and viscera. The screening programme featured works and contributions by James Richards and Steve Reinke, Cerith Wyn Evans, Deborah Stratman, Shahryar Nashat, Mary Helena Clark, Sidsel Meineche Hansen and others.

Sets and Scenarios is curated by Jade Barget, Angela Blanc, Panos Fourtoulakis, Charlotte dos Santos, Sha Li, Yi-Ning Lin and Lindsey Wiercioch as part of the MA Curating Contemporary Art Programme Graduate Projects 2020, Royal College of Art, London, in partnership with Nottingham Contemporary.

Contact

ten.labolgcbs@hcoicreiwl

Graduate Project: Sets and Scenarios

LinkedIn: Lindsey Wiercioch

Instagram: parish_365

Degree Details

School of Arts & Humanities

Curating Contemporary Art (MA)

Lindsey Wiercioch is an independent curator, artist, researcher and writer based in the UK and California. Her practice explores modes of collective arts education, art historical research and archiving, institutional representation of artists beyond the West, policies of marginalisation and inclusion within Western arts institutions and the level of privilege held by White, Western institutions concerning the representation of contemporary art. Wiercioch’s dissertation, titled A Textual Game of Othering, analyses and reflects on the representation and presentation of Other artists, via the terms of Olu Uguibe, through the use of gallery and exhibition texts in established Western arts institutions and the responsibility of said institutions in this context. Primarily utilising Olu Oguibe’s The Culture Game (2003) and his concept of the Other, Wiercioch’s research and analysis investigates the issues around of a circle of othering both historically and in the contemporary arts sphere, in this instance, within solo shows and exhibitions of Black artists hosted by major Western arts institutions.

For her graduate project, Wiercioch co-curated a programme of performances at Nottingham Contemporary titled Sets & Scenarios centred around an emerging, post-cinematic regime. Once moved to an online platform due to Covid-19, Sets and Scenarios expanded into a week long programme in which our proximity to moving images was questioned as well as it what it means to live under their influence. The final programme featured new commissions by Adam Christensen, Eva Gold, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi and Aaron Ratajczyk, as well as existing works by Mary Helena Clark, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Shahryar Nashat, James Richards and Steve Reinke, Deborah Stratman and Cerith Wyn Evans.

Prior to coming to the RCA, Wiercioch studied Art History at the University of St Andrews, graduating with honours. Lindsey also worked at the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts in Southern California as Assistant curator, Exhibitions assistant and Arts educator. There, she aided in the curation of FOA associated exhibitions as well as the annual Junior Arts’ exhibition, aided in caring for the off-site permanent collection and taught arts projects to children and FOA visitors.

Launch Project

Aaron Ratajczyk, A Hole in Space ATH-BER 02, 2020, film still, courtesy of the artists. — Aaron Ratajczyk, A Hole in Space ATH-BER 02, 2020, film still, courtesy of the artists.

Aaron Ratajczyk, A Hole in Space ATH-BER 02, 2020, film still, courtesy of the artists.

In Collaboration with:

Aaron Ratajczyk

Aaron Ratajczyk (b. 1989, Warsaw), is a London and Berlin based artist. His recent practice consists of moving image, text and performance. He graduated with a BA in Dance, Context, Choreography at HZT / University of the Arts Berlin and is currently doing his MFA in Fine Arts at the Goldsmiths University of London. His previous performance works were shown i.a. at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, KEM, Warsaw, Yvonne Lambert, Berlin, Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam, NDC, Bucharest, Veem House for Performance, Amsterdam, Import Projects, Berlin. Aaron was also a founder and co-curator of the artist-run series of events and exhibitions Plural Melts, taking place at Yvonne Lambert Berlin 2015 - 2018.

Launch Project

Adam Christensen, Death by Mystery, 2020, still, courtesy of the artist. — Adam Christensen, Death by Mystery, 2020, still, courtesy of the artist.

Adam Christensen, Death by Mystery, 2020, still, courtesy of the artist.

In Collaboration with:

Adam Christensen, Death by Mystery, 2020

Adam Christensen (b. 1979, UK), is a London-based artist who makes performance, video, fabric and text works, and performs with the music projects Ectopia, which was the Wysing Arts Centre’s band-in-residence in 2016. A primary concern of Christensen’s practice is the representation and construction of space, and using unfolding narrative of heartbreak, desire, memory and identity to ‘activate’ that space. He has previously exhibited at Goldsmiths CCA, London Overgaden Institute for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Baltic Triennial, Vilnius as well as Almanac, David Roberts Art Foundation, Southard Reid, Institute of Contemporary Arts and Hollybush Gardens in London.

Launch Project

Actions to Relate to Oneself and the World, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, 2020. Graphic design: Studio Ghazaal Vojdani. — Actions to Relate to Oneself and the World, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, 2020. Graphic design: Studio Ghazaal Vojdani. Image courtesy of artist.

Actions to Relate to Oneself and the World, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, 2020. Graphic design: Studio Ghazaal Vojdani.

In Collaboration with:

Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi

Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi (b. 1988, Germany), lives and works between Berlin, London, and Saigon. Mutating in and out of moving image, sculpture, installation, and interdisciplinary research, she explores imaginations of freedom at the intersection of filmmaking and film theory; especially critical refugee studies and postcolonial studies; personal/prosthetic memory and individual/collective history. In collaboration with the composer Gaile Griciute, she co-founded Technologies Of Non/Self, an open collective working in the interstices between contemporary art and sonic composition. Her work has been shown in various screenings, solo and group exhibitions also held and showcased in a number of art galleries and museums around the world.

Launch Project

Eva Gold, For Your Discreet Viewing Pleasure, 2020, film still, courtesy of the artist. — Eva Gold, For Your Discreet Viewing Pleasure, 2020, film still, courtesy of the artist.

Eva Gold, For Your Discreet Viewing Pleasure, 2020, film still, courtesy of the artist.

In Collaboration with:

Eva Gold

Eva Gold (b. 1994, Manchester, UK), lives and works in London. She graduated from Goldsmiths in 2016, and the Royal Academy Schools in 2019. She works across sculpture, installation, video and writing; often combined in a process of fragmented storytelling. Assembling references from film and architecture, she navigates feelings of desire and disgust, and their often uncomfortable proximity. Locating a space in which these two meet, Gold identifies the emotional threshold where arousal tips over into horror. Her practice raises questions about desire in both the public and private domains, agency, vulnerability and consent.

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Statement

A Hole in Space ATH-BER 02, 2020

Aaron Ratajczyk, A Hole in Space ATH-BER 02, 2020, film still, courtesy of the artists. — Aaron Ratajczyk, A Hole in Space ATH-BER 02, 2020, film still, courtesy of the artists.

In Collaboration with:

Death By Mystery, 2020

Adam Christensen, Death by Mystery, 2020, still, courtesy of the artist. — Adam Christensen, Death by Mystery, 2020, still, courtesy of the artist.

In Collaboration with:

Actions to Relate Oneself and the World, 2020

Actions to Relate to Oneself and the World, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, 2020. Graphic design: Studio Ghazaal Vojdani. — Actions to Relate to Oneself and the World, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, 2020. Graphic design: Studio Ghazaal Vojdani. Image courtesy of artist.

In Collaboration with:

For Your Discreet Viewing Pleasure, 2020

Eva Gold, For Your Discreet Viewing Pleasure, 2020, film still, courtesy of the artist. — Eva Gold, For Your Discreet Viewing Pleasure, 2020, film still, courtesy of the artist.

In Collaboration with: