[artinfo] tranzit presents: I - An exhibition in three acts

[e-Flux]

I - An exhibition in three acts

Act three
I Performative Ontology

22 september – 12 november 2006
Secession, Friedrichstraße 12, Wien, Austria,
<
http://www.secession.at> http://www.secession.at

Act two I Já, Futura Center for Contemporary Art, 
Prague 30 May 2006 - 18 August 2006

Act one I Narrow FocusTake it Personally, Tranzit 
workshops, Bratislava, 29 June 2005-14 August 2005

Act three is divided in three parts
I Set-up 21 Sept. – 7 Oct.
II Confrontation 8 Oct. – 25 Oct.
III Resolution 26 Oct. – 12 Nov.

<
http://www.tranzit.org> http://www.tranzit.org


Bas Jan Ader, Fikret Atay, Johanna Billing, Pavel 
Braila, Lolou Chérinet, Martin Creed, Alan 
Currall, Omer Fast, Stano Filko, Lise Harlev, 
Saskia Holmkvist, Jirí Kovanda, Ján Mancuska, 
Fiorenza Menini, Yan Pei-Ming, Ivan Moudov, Roman 
Ondák, Boris Ondreicka, Jirí Skála, Barbara 
Visser, Silvie Vondrejcová, Lawrence Weiner, Ella 
Ziegler
Curated by Vít Havránek

“I" is a three-act exhibition. It is an 
exhibition that took place in three locations, 
with a somewhat different constellation of 
artists in each, but its core, or perhaps the 
obsessive thematic sphere it contains, remains 
the same.

The third act of the “I" series of exhibitions is 
subtitled “Performative Ontology." Ontology is 
defined philosophically in connection with the 
idea of conceptualization. Our assumption is that 
the term ontology means a specification of a 
conceptualization which contemporary knowledge 
systems that have a distinctly conceptual 
character are derived from. However, our 
intention is not to define this base for 
philosophical knowledge. It seems that ontology 
cannot be generalized, as it were; the moment it 
is generalized, it becomes a theoretical dogma 
that we can perhaps evaluate intellectually, but 
which then recedes from our lived experience. 
Ontology exists only in particular lives, in 
individuals, in the “I” in concrete time. 
Ontology interests us not as a verbal or 
theoretical dimension, but rather as a 
performative, temporal dimension; that is why I 
speak of performative ontology.

The whole series comes to its culmination in the 
Secession’s exhibition titled “I Performative 
Ontology". All the works in it will be present 
during the opening successively, in three acts. 
Some of the works will be visible during one act 
alone, others during two acts, and others during 
the course of the entire exhibition. Each of the 
exhibition’s acts was presented independently of 
the others and the exhibition as a whole. Thus 
there has been an attempt to work dynamically as 
well as repetitively with the interior time of 
each individual work and on that basis to exhibit 
the interior time of the exhibition as a whole.

A publication called Autobiographies has been 
printed to accompany a series of exhibitions. 
Artists who participated in any of the series’ 
three exhibitions were asked to provide an 
autobiography. Publication is published by 
tranzit, Secession and Revolver.

The series of exibitions was organised by: 
tranzit, initiative for contemporary art,< 
http://www.tranzit.org> http://www.tranzit.org, 
Secession, Tranzit workshops, Bratislava, Futura, 
Prague.

Tranzit is an initiative for contemporary art 
supported by the Erste Bank Group, Ceská 
sporitelna a.s., Slovenská sporitelna a.s.