...and they lived...

Artists: björnsonova & Tamara Antonijević, Lucia Kvočáková, Lucie Mičíková, Nik Timková, Zuzana Žabková, András Cséfalvay, Katrina Daschner, Gideon Horváth, Tina Hrevušová, Valentýna Janů, Teuta Jonuzi & Daria Lytvynenko, Ursula Mayer, Isadora Neves Marques, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Gregor Petrikovič, Agnieszka Polska, Maruša Sagadin, Selma Selman, Natália Sýkorová, Ezra, Šimek, Transformella (fed and cared for by JP Raether)

Curated by: Jen Kratochvil/Tjaša Pogačar/Jelisaveta Rapaić 

…even though, it’s hard to be certain, if it was a question of happily ever after or not. Life is a journey, says a cliché older than capitalism (or an eternal truth made cliché by capitalism), and so is this show. A journey through the riches of storytelling and its endless potentials. Its power to form states of mind, to convince people to create and re-create history, or to put someone to sleep. Our times used to be called the era of post-truth. Others started to doubt if there had ever been any truth to begin with. And so the quantum physicists and comic book heroes gave us the multiverse to get lost in completely (or was it the other way around?). We live next to each other, yet often on parallel planes. And so this international group exhibition offers itself as a stage, as a theater for stories to be unfolded, enacted, re-enacted, performed, and lived. There are no answers at the end of these various rabbit holes, there never were. There is only work, individual internal work, collective reflective work, and work in general leading, possibly, to healing.

In times of need – techniques become tools, weapons and medicine. Coping mechanisms are born out of one’s sheer desire to exist, to heal, to beat the odds in a rebellion or lull to a tranquil state of acceptance. Tales older than time are repeated and transformed, adapted to the needs of the fortune tellers, gurus, political leaders, caregivers and listeners, offering different realities, fears, courage, lessons and hope.

It seems that we exist in a state in constant need of myths, gossip, heroines and villains, the ones to condemn and the others to celebrate. These protagonists’ destiny and their tales’ interpretation is susceptible to constant change, sometimes resulting in more empathic practices and sometimes in more harmful ones. Once scary witches set to burn in flames are turned into wise healers and empowering figures and enchanting legends of how a city rose, can become a baseline for justifying and implementing imperialist prac-
tices. Who are stories told by, for whom and for which purpose is in a constant state of appropriation. Tales are nevertheless dismissible in what we are told is a system based on rational thinking, but one cannot help notice how much of seeming rationality is based on a set of beliefs and legends.

If storytelling is a method reserved for dissidents, lunatics, dreamers and children, then what are the methods of a rational (hu)man? And where does its true potential lie? The line between the real and the fake is often drawn by one’s own capacities, a placebo of sorts. Somewhere in this mess, exists a refuge base where a particular healing power, or at least, coping power, can be unlocked and deployed to give comfort when needed. The one which is channeled through tarot cards and astrology, or activated through role-playing, world-building, drag, speculation, immersion into augmented realities, altering states and many more…

This exhibition strives to show some examples of storytelling being deployed as a weapon to fight injustice, as a tool to construct new worlds and as a medicine to help cope with the existing one. The physical space of the exhibition doubles as a modular stage mutating to nest performances and interventions that will periodically take a physical form and allow room for different narratives to emerge. These sporadic occurrences will challenge in many ways the stories we are being told and provide potential different readings regarding class, climate, intimacy, healthcare and fragility among other topics. Thus, the very character of the exhibition falls in the same order, constantly evolving and offering a change of plot, landscape and protagonists with the aim of maintaining a state of necessary speculation and liquidity.