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Posts from the ‘Arts Catalyst events’ Category

Dec 4

Republic of the Moon opens in Liverpool 16 December

Agnes Meyer-Brandis, We Colonised the Moon, Andy Gracie, Leonid Tishkov, Liliane Lijn, Sharon Houkema

FACT, Wood Street, Liverpool
16 December 2011 – 26 February 2012
Open daily (except 24-26 December). Admission free.

As the players in the new 21st century race for the Moon line up – the USA rejoining China, India and Russia and jostling with private corporations interested in exploiting the Moon’s resources – a group of artists are declaring a Republic of the Moon: a ‘micronation’ for alternative visions of lunar life.

The Arts Catalyst and FACT’s new exhibition ‘Republic of the Moon’ challenges utilitarian plans of lunar mines and military bases with artists’ imaginings and interventions. Combining beguiling fantasies, personal encounters, and playful appropriations of space habitats and scientific technologies, Republic of the Moon reclaims the Moon for artists, idealists, and dreamers.

The last race to the Moon was driven by the political impulses of the Cold War, but shaped by extraordinary visions of space created by writers, film-makers, and artists, from Jules Verne, Lucien Rudaux, and Vasily Levshin, to HG Wells, Stanislav Lem and Stanley Kubrick. Can artists’ quixotic visions reconcile our romantic notions of the Moon with its colonised future, and help us to reimagine our relationship with our natural satellite in the new space age?

Curated by The Arts Catalyst and FACT, Republic of the Moon includes major new commissions by Agnes Meyer-Brandis and We Colonised the Moon, and works by Leonid Tishkov, Andy Gracie, Liliane Lijn and Sharon Houkema.

Exhibition webpage

Breakfast with the artists and curators
Friday 16 December, 10.30-12noon, The Box, FACT, Liverpool
Artists Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Leonid Tishkov and Andy Gracie discuss their work with curator Rob La Frenais and FACT’s Mike Stubbs.


man on top of an urban building at night with his Personal Moon by Leonid Tishkov  portraits of the eleven Moon Geese with their astronaut inspired names  photograph of the projection of the word SHE on the Moon by Liliane Lijnphoto of two Drosophila Titanus flies in front of the moon  artist out on a lake with his private moon, Leonid Tishkov  seated astronaut

Top: Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Moon Goose Experiment, 2010

Bottom (L-R, top to bottom): Leonard Tishkov, Personal Moon, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Moon Goose Experiment, Liliane Lijn, moonmeme, Andy Gracie, The Quest for Drosophila Titanus, Leonard Tishkov, Personal Moon, We Colonised the Moon, Enter At Own Risk (prototypes & experiments)

Oct 12

Primate Cinema: Apes as Family

Two screen image. On the right, a chimpanzee in a green area near a busy road. On the left, a chimp watches the same image on a TV screen in a zoo enclosure.

Rachel Mayeri's Primate Cinema: Apes as Family (2011). Commissioned by The Arts Catalyst

At The Arts Catalyst, the team is looking forward to the opening of our latest commission, Rachel Mayeri’s Primate Cinema: Apes as Family, showing in our Clerkenwell space in London, from 19 Oct – 13 Nov 2011.

Mayeri’s two-screen video installation juxtaposes a drama enacted by humans in the guise of apes (of a female chimpanzee befriending a group of outsiders) with mesmerising footage of the reactions of its chimpanzee audience at Edinburgh Zoo. As the watchers of the watching chimps, we perceive – or we imagine – fascination, puzzlement, and flashes of anger in their responses. But chimps are not humans, and Mayeri’s artwork says far more about our own reactions and perceptions to what we are watching, than those of the chimps to the film.

To make Primate Cinema: Apes as Family, Rachel Mayeri collaborated with comparative psychologist Dr Sarah-Jane Vick, who studies chimpanzee cognition and behaviour, testing different styles and genres of film to gauge chimps’ responses. DNA sequencing has placed humans firmly within the great apes, so how do our cognitive abilities differ from those of chimpanzees? Do we share basic preferences for novelty and perhaps even form and content with our closest relations? In a symposium, Cinema as Primatology, (4-6pm, Tue 18 October), Rachel Mayeri and Sarah Jane Vick will explore similarities and differences in perception, cognition and socio-emotional behaviour between humans and chimpanzees.

In Mayeri’s film, the intriguing and amusing story-response structure contains dark undercurrents in its contemplation of the lives of our captive close relatives. The Budongo Trail at Edinburgh Zoo is a state-of-the-art facility to provide the best possible conditions for chimpanzees within a zoo environment. But many people are uncomfortable with zoos in any form, and with the idea of making any animal captive.

A fascinating short documentary film about the making of the work will also be shown in the space, which sheds some fascinating light on the chimps’ ambiguous (to us) behaviour.

“Some stimuli do seem to provoke responses … Sex, food, violence – and drumming!” Rachel Mayeri