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FLIP Project Space is an independent curatorial project presenting various discussions and creative collaborations in relation to contemporary artistic practice. The activities of FLIP Project Space are presented within a multiplicity of spatial situations where discussions take shape as exhibitions and printed/digital publications. Formally initiated and based in Napoli, Italy, FLIP is motivated by continuous change in location and spontaneous occurrences that intern contribute to its multi-layered discourse. We are invested in grasping the contemporary milieu through physical and virtual local specificities that trigger opportunities for the manifestation of curatorial projects. The formation of our practice is defined by our mobility and close contact to different contextual realities or imaginaries and the emerging ambiguities.

Dan Stockholm —

Sculpture as a Storage Medium  

On the work of Dan Stockholm (DK)

Fascinated by places and architecture with an innate historical significance and narrative tension, Dan Stockholm practices a “creative archaeology”, which includes field research and work with various findings. His recent work evolves from what he calls “performative process, ” a method that turns the finished piece into a vessel which carries the story of its own making.

Stockholm uses sculpture as an interface, link, or passage through which places and bodies – across temporal as well as spatial distances – are set in relation to each other. Architecture is a frequent reference point of his work, as he centers on on the conceptual fields of present and past, presence and absence, fleeting and enduring. Thus, objects which emerge in different temporal moments are concentrated. They begin to embody the analogy of the inscription of light traces in the photographic negative that maintain an indexical relationship to the past. It serves as sculptural containers fixing a presence like an imprint and so transposing the sculptural object into the present even when it is only a fleeting glimpse that materializes so enduringly in this way. Stockholm’s understanding of sculpture as a medium of storage and transmission, driven from his archaeological interest, was clarified in an exemplary way in his exhibition HOUSE at Künstlerhaus Bethanien.

The process for the show began in 2013 only days after his father’s death, when the artist in a three-day performative and almost ritual fashion methodically touched the exterior of his father’s entire house centimeter by centimeter. A video in the show documents the intense gesture that seems to indicate an attempt at understanding, implicating a farewell, but nothing is explained. The process ends with Stockholm translating this act of touching into object form by producing a number of negative plaster casts of his hands. The casts are fixed by metal rods, which simultaneously offer protective anchorage and oppressive restriction. Metal scaffolding connects the floor and ceiling of the exhibition space and serve as displays for his organic plaster sculptures.

Next to the scaffolds, the artist raised a precarious-looking wall from unfired blocks of clay with cavities that make visible parts of the same handprints, here expressed as positive shapes. The two communicating works, which thematize the house as a central location of human existence are supplemented by an interactive glass work: Level (Blue Mare, Königsblau). Trapped between two panes of glass, colored ink changes its form and concentration according to the tilt of the exhibition space and the movement of the audience who are invited to walk on the glass. Here too the idea of touching is central; in addition, there is an aspect of uncertainty mimicking a sensation of what happens when one walks on ice.

Andreas Prinzing

Tom Varley —

Text extracts and film stills from Leaving The Sea (Work In Progress), 23mins. HD Video, Sound. 2016

1. The woman carrying the umbrella is a trainee legal secretary at a solicitors firm specialising in no-win-no-fee claims for personal injury and medical negligence. She attends evening classes in advanced first-aid and military self-defence; mouth-to-mouth, hand-to-hand. She lets these lessons merge as she daydreams through reams of paper work. She imagines resuscitating a victim, laid prone and inert by her own masterful roundhouse. She imagines killing a man with a manoeuvre designed to clear an obstruction from the throat.

2. The man in the denim jacket is an eCommerce Insight Analyst for a struggling telecommunications retailer. The problems stem from a brand image built around the chronically antiquated term, ‘Carphone’. His Ashtanga Yoga retreat turned sour. The implementation of his 5-year plan has been postponed. Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed: Mindplace Thoughtstream USB Personal Biofeedback, and the Neen N400 Pericalm.

3. The woman in the trench coat with the ‘Nike Town’ shopping bag works as an immigration officer for the UK border force at Gatwick airport. Her body is roughly three-fifths water. She scrutinises thousands of individuals per day using risk management technology designed by US arms manufacturer Raytheon, which analyses the patterns of travelers’ personal data. The software navigates a ‘sea of data’ – cross-referencing everything from credit-card transactions to in-flight meal choices; email contacts to travel history, in real time. The woman has an adhesive patch on her upper left arm, slowly releasing nicotine though her skin and into her blood stream. Since skin is intended to keep most chemicals out of the body, only certain drugs have the chemical characteristics that allow them to be delivered in this way. The molecules must be small enough to penetrate the skin’s many layers. It must also be nonirritating to the skin and have a low melting point, so it can be incorporated in liquid form.

4. The man in the blue-roll neck is the principal product manager of a large, multinational online-retail and cloud-computing company’s digital-payments product. In his work, he strives to deliver consistent, ‘low-friction’ purchase and payment experiences across all surfaces – removing payments-related bottlenecks to digital-business growth. He excels at delivering results in, what the company itself describes as, a fast-paced and ambiguous environment. At the age of 19, skin from his left buttock was grafted onto his neck and jaw following a motorcycle accident. He had been the passenger.

Olivia Dunbar — 

the shit of our minds

(sing praise)

to sleep

praise the lord

to wake up

praise the lord

 

to spell and say a name

praise the lord

 

to talk with some people

sing praise

 

to name every rotation
would take so much time
that nobody probably has
like i do

to be weighted like clouds

to color my stomach’s pit
like the inside of the earth

to shrink to fit inside the centre of a ring

the size to keep and shape and scold me.

in the times that i feel most alone

in my spending

 

for that i don’t spend

i browse

 

expensive trunks

versace men’s medusa trunks

 

and it’s not difficult to imagine sweating

in silky gradients

 

an ass that’s narrow and glistening as

five medusa logo prints

 

in the image of my medusa

mother

 

venomous snake monster

my illuminated serpent shame

 

versace,

my victim.