Friday, April 30, 2010

Curtain Show

Curtain Show at Birmingham's Eastside Project showcases a wide ranging number of projects from Albrect Schafers recreation of an aluminium curtain wall facade from Berlin to Grace Ndiritu's Still Life, set in an area curtained off with West African fabrics from Holland, fabricated in China, and available in Birmingham's rag market.
Ines Schaber has been working on archive based projects since 2005. In a series of case studies, texts, and artistic works she investigates and tests notions of the archive, in which not the collecting and sorting of things, but the work and production done around archives is central.

For Curtain Show Schaber is exhibiting Diabolic Tenant (2007) created with Celine Condorelli and Alex Nikitas (sound by Tychonas Michailidis). The domesticated, curved, enclosure formed by the green silk curtain harbours a directional speaker that is in conversation with another speaker placed in front of the more formal, almost industrialised, vertical blinds. The two curtains' discussion embodies the different social and political spheres that they inhabit and offers insights into both their functional and social roles.
Blind: We have many things in common. We organise the relationship between inside and outside.

Silk: (dismissive) The old myth of inside and outside. Thereby I am a scheme for a space and you an attribute of it. In my case however, it is about structure - more than separating, it is about creating a new space.

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