Articulations Beyond the Human

Karin Bolender and Amanda Ackerman

 Curated Ida Bencke and Anna De Pascale

24. November 2016

18:00 – 22:00

Articulations Beyond the Human is a polymorphic, polyphonic and polysensory launch-cum-exhibition that situates itself within the broader context of BDP’s sui generis Parapoetics programme. This series interrogates alternative semiotic possibilities and challenges the idea of what it means to name, signify and use sign systems within a more-than- or beyond-the-human field.

The launch will see the presentation of the two newly-published texts Air Kissing by Amanda Ackerman and RAW Assmilk Soap by Karin Bolender. The former, a short essay that brilliantly and (para)poetically explores the way in which perfume operates molecularly, affectively and semiotically, will be accompanied by both a scent installation, that will invite the spectator to experience and (re)discover the long-lost smell of the Middle Ages disinfectant concoction against the Bubonic plague, and a text-and-sound installation that will challenge the audience to read a first-person account of a character who once lived in an underwater city, whilst listening to a sound translation of it made by plants.  

RAW Assmilk Soap, on the other hand, is an essay that tells the story of the American Spotted Ass Aliass’ and Karin Bolender’s seven-week-long journey across the American South, and tries to sidestep Western logocentrism by enquiring into alternative, human and non-human ways of knowing and naming. The latter will go together with both a video installation of the artist’s performance Gut Sounds Lullaby, which explores and documents intra-species becomings through and across Bolender’s and Aliass’ maternal bodies, and an old school sink that will invite the public to ritually wash their hands using a soap made with human and ass milk.  

The viewer will thus be encouraged to actively and intimately participate into an intricate, multisensory, synesthetic experience that will challenge common ontologies and boundaries between the Self and the Other, inside and outside, human and non-human.