ANNIKA ERIKSSON:
A REHEARSAL / FABLE OF THE BEES
3 June 2012 3 - 5pm
A performance using an unknown script, four actors and a Sunday afternoon. Tested out, rehearsed and finally performed, the script is an open text, giving a limited set of instructions about time, name and place
Interior view of La Cedille qui Sourit, ca. 1968. Photo courtesy Jacques Strauch and Michou Strauch-Barelli. Courtesy Estate of Robert Filliou and Galerie Nelson-Freeman, Paris.
The dialogue departs from philosopher, political economist and satirist Bernard de Mandeville's 1705 allegorical tale, The Fable of the Bees (Private Vices, Public Benefits). Mandeville's work explores through animal form the nature and morality of commercial modernity, using the hive as a microcosm to outline the true causes of human welfare. In the open rehearsal of the performance, these moral propositions are put to work, in a temporally ambiguous drama, with dystopic undertones.
A Rehearsal/Fable of the Bees by Annika Eriksson is the first part of The idea the model the mistake, a series of specially developed performances about the economy inspired by the work and ideas of Robert Filliou. Drawing on the slippages between how value is performed and generated, the project looks at how systems of labour and capital can be tested from within a practice, as something that is part of what we do rather than a removed object of study.
Annika Eriksson is a Swedish artist living in Berlin. Concurrent exhibitions include: The Trilogy, Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart, Stuttgart; The Great Good Place, Krome Gallery, Berlin; and The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art, Kiev Biennale. A brief selection of previous exhibitions includes a solo exhibition for NON and participation in Scenarios about Europe, GFZK, Leipzig and Public Folklore for Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, 2011; a solo show for DAAD Galerie, Berlin; and a commission for the Hayward Gallery, London, 2010.
The idea the model the mistake is curated by Vanessa Boni, Fatima Hellberg and Fay Nicolson.
For more information please follow this link to a pdf file