Hana Janečková: Life Beyond Death and Oreet Ashery: Dying Under Your Eyes
October 16, 2019 from 6.30PM
Together with the curator Edith Jeřábková and the theorist and curator Hana Janečková we will focus on the work of the artist Oreet Ashery (UK) whose exhibition How We Dye Is How We Live Only More So you can see in the Cursor Gallery, but also on the topic of death and dying in the contemporary society.
After the talk Life Beyond Death given by Hana Janečková will follow the film Dying Under Your Eyes (2019, 25 min), the last work by Oreet Ashery. The film will be presented in English with English subtitles. Hana Janečková´s talk will be in Czech.
Hana Janečková: Life Beyond Death
Six months before she passed away American artist Barbara Hammer presented a highly celebrated performance at the Whitney Museum, inspired by her experience of cancer and palliative care. Even though it was widely applauded as the reversal of dying, what was Hammer actually attempted to convey in this final public performance, and how to read this in wider contexts of necropolitics, the control over life and death? The idea of ‘good death’ might be comparable to ‘good life’ as discussed by cultural theorist Laurent Berlant, describing how neoliberal aspirations of success and productivity are actually harmful to our own well being. For example, if we consider euthanasia, our choice to die, how do we make sure that it is not exploited by the same neoliberal mechanisms of commodification? Drawing on the ongoing collaborative project Multilogues on the Now and her doctoral research, Drawing on the ongoing collaborative project Multilogues on the Now and her doctoral research, Hana Janeckova will look artistic practices and institutional strategies are centred around the politics of the body and the politics of dying in technologically mediated society. Viewing the body as a site where emotional, environmental and technological concerns of life intersect, it will seek to evaluate artistic strategies of resistance, such as radical care and coalition forming.
Oreet Ashery: Dying Under Your Eyes
The most recent Oreet Ashery´s work Dying Under Your Eyes explores the sudden death of Daniel, Ashery’s elderly father in 2018, unravelling the process of ageing, dying, mourning and intimate surveillance. Like a detective, the film follows the circumstances leading to Daniel's death, and incorporates diaristic footage shot on the artist’s smartphone, alongside constructed scenes featuring genetic apparitional figures.
Film Dying Under Your Eyes has been commissioned by Wellcome Collection, 2019
Oreet Ashery is a UK-based interdisciplinary artist whose practice includes time-based image, performance, text, sound and music. In 2017, Ashery won the 10th Film London Jarman Award, and her work has been exhibited and performed all over the world. She is currently an associate professor of Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford.
Hana Janečková is a curator, theorist and artist based in the Centre of Audiovisual Studies FAMU and University of the Arts London. Selected activities and projects include three year curatorial and research project Multilogues on the Now (Display, Prague) 2017-ongoing, publication Iné telá.txt (2018), anthology Diagnosis (Artalk.cz, 2017), Speak, Body (FAHAC University of Leeds, 2017), Hotel Ozone (Prague), Cinema6 (Arcadia Missa, London), New Feminism for Artycok.tv. She was a co-founder and editor of Artycok.tv London (2010–2015) and a commissioning editor for FlashArt CZ/SK. Her recent writing appeared in Artalk, Frieze, Springerin, Romboid, A2, Fotograf, Kapitál and others.
The exhibition program of the CCA is possible through the kind support of Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Prague City Council, State Fund of Culture of the Czech Republic, City District Prague 7
Media support: ArtMap, jlbjlt, UMA Audioguide
