// Exhibition / Film Event / Reading Event / Curator & Artist Talk & Concert
Project Archive: http://www.ghostsofdreamsdeferred.blogspot.com/
11.04.2010 – 01.05.2010
Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina

Artists: Anita di Bianco, Young In Hong, Laura Kuch, Hidde van Schie, Lindsay Seers

The exhibition Ghosts of Dreams Deferred depicts the condition of being haunted by ghosts of a past that is yet vibrant and resemble hissing for a loss that instead could be of a joyful present moment. The exhibition brings together five different practices, thus works that expand the conceptual framework in the way in which the concept of the exhibition is taken towards an expansion of resemblances and associations.

Societies, individuals, and personas, in ontological sense, live with the continuous production of desire and with the drive to embody their dreams. Passion as a strong impulse may wither away by the immense accumulation of disappointments and failures of beholding the dreams to come true. As failure is not the ultimate end, but the consequence of the loss of trust in one’s engagement to political, economical, psychological, emotional and social domains; it leads to viciously circulating state of complication. That is to say, it leads to a complicated state of mind where the present moment is continuously defined by the traumatic. The traumatic is the representative of the set of traumas, which encapsulates the body (individuals, societies, communities) in suppressive sensual space and holds back.

Hence, ghosts, not in metaphysical sense, resemble, reiterate, and almost re-enact the experience of the trauma. In other words, ghosts are the metaphorical iconography of the traumatic, which is in the very nature of personhoods (rationale of societies, characteristics of individuals).

What does it mean to try to make an articulation of traumatic, what does it mean to recall and try to hold on the relational which defines the present moment? What does it mean to meet with the ghosts of our past, or be aware of the continuous state of being haunted? Ghosts of Dreams Deferred is a project, which presupposes that haunting is a social phenomenon rather than an individual psychosis nor a pre-modern superstition; hence it investigates the potentiality of radical political, social and emotional change. That is to say, it implements change, which is possible only through flourishing of new forms of subjectivity and sociality.

Thus, the project is a proposal to allow the ghosts of the past to emerge in order to be able to perform a new future within a yet-unthought-soon-to-be-present approaches, understandings, and positions. Ghosts of Dreams Deferred is a ground for activating the complication of personhoods, societies at their rationale. The exhibition does not display works that illustrate the relationship between trauma, ghosts, dreams and loss. Despite, the space of encounter, defined by settings from installations to reading event, from film event to a concert from the chairs placed empty for the audience to posters outdoors, intends to be triggering of effect for experiencing, articulating, and evaluating the individual and societal relation to the topic as such.

The project is furthered with a film event in the premises of Stacion and a closing concert by Hidde van Schie – Schie’s music oscillates on the domains of psychedelic yet experimental, with lyrics compiled by the artist himself.

The project is a structural exercise for an exhibition where conditions of funding has lead to a curatorial and artistic production from far. The conceptual framework has been revisited by the obstacles of curating a space that the curator (- nor the artists) has not been and will not visit before the opening and imagining the premises of display in relation to the works to be included in the exhibition. The artists of the show have been asked to ponder on the condition and investigate what it would mean to make a ghostly appearance of themselves as well as the curator is meant to investigate the horizons of a practice through her office.
In all respects, the exhibition is an outcome of a dream that has deferred, namely being in the premises and installing the show in collaboration with the artists hence its ghosts are the initiators and producers of the project which have been haunting the staff of Stacion, literally.

Ghosts of Dreams Deferred is part of the working module Kuratorët, a project by Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina; is sponsored by Mondriaan Foundation, Dardania Insurance Company, Technomarket, KTV, Rrokum, Gegë, Alter Habitus and DZG.

Events:
18.04.2010, 18:00 – 20:00hrs.
Reading event: It has to be this way by Lindsay Seers

25.04.2010, 18:00 – 20:00hrs.
Film event: Screening of Ghost Dance

01.05.2010, 18:00 – 22:00hrs.
Curator & Artist Talk + Closing Concert by Hidde van Schie