Cally Spooner
OFFSHORE
Fred Moten and Wu Tsang, ‘Gravitational Feel’, sculpture and performance, presented as part of If I Can’t Dance’s Finale for Edition VI – Event and Duration (2015–2016), Splendor, Amsterdam. Photo: Florian Braakman.
Saturday 26 November – 27 November 2016
‘Nothing unexpected ever happens here’
7.30pm / The Gallery at REDCAT, Los Angeles / Part of: ‘Hotel Theory’
Cally Spooner’s contribution to Hotel Theory drew on Maurizio Lazzarato’s ideas of capital as a semiotic operator (capital as the creator of and the perpetuator of 'The Performative'), Michel Foucault’s notions of parrhesia (or truth telling), and the Stanislavski method for actors, constructing a script that outsources her own authorship to a set of performers. For this staged reading actors presented delicately choreographed scenarios of excess, control, and emotionality.
The Gallery at REDCAT became a platform for performances, screenings, concerts, philosophical meditations, conversations and other events throughout the three-month exhibition Hotel Theory, which explored the possibilities of theory as an art form. Over twenty artists participated with performances or performance documentation and video, audio, photographs, posters or other related ephemera that contextualized the time-based events. Borrowing its title from Wayne Koestenbaum’s blissfully confusing book of the same name, the exhibition and series of events featured a wide range of artistic disciplines, practices and points of departure. With new work by emerging artists, and seminal works by influential, established artists, Hotel Theory suggested a historical overview—however limited—of artists and practices that question how art spaces contribute to theoretical debates.
With contributions by David Antin, Art & Language, Erick Beltrán and Bernardo Ortíz, José León Cerrillo and Sara Lunden, Chto Delat, Charles Gaines, Liam Gillick, Hanns Eisler Nail Salon (H.E.N.S.), Jackson Pollock Bar, Ian James, Steve Kado, Devin Kenny, Wayne Koestenbaum, Chris Kraus, David Levine, Snejanka Mihaylova and Lisa Holmqvist, Hila Peleg, The Red Krayola, Pedro Reyes, Bartholomew Ryan, Cally Spooner, Danna Vajda, V-Girls, Anton Vidokle, Claude Wampler, Ian Wilson and Tirdad Zolghadr.
Hotel Theory is curated by Sohrab Mohebbi and Ruth Estévez. Hotel Theory is funded in part by generous support from Goethe Institute. Special thanks to the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Moises Cossio and Annina Nosei. The exhibition was made possible by an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award.