Event
DXG #1: Thinking the Otolith Sigil
Thursday 12 October 2023
Preview & In-conversation | The Otolith Group: ...But There Are New Suns
Cooper Gallery is delighted to invite you to the preview of The Otolith Group's exhibition ...But There Are New Suns, the third Sit-in as part of our ongoing programme The Ignorant Art School.
Celebrating the opening of Sit-in #3, the in-conversation event Thinking the Otolith Sigil will feature The Otolith Group artists Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar and Glasgow based artist and academic Ranjana Thapalyal.
Departing from and returning to multivalent readings of that which is encrypted in the sigil of the Otolith Group, the dialogue aims to darken the light of transparency that illuminates the perspectives and the positions of the Group.
Schedule
Doors open: 5.45pm
DXG #1: Thinking the Otolith Sigil (Panel Discussion): 6–7pm
Exhibition viewing and drinks reception: 7–9pm
Booking
The event is free and open to all.
Book a seat for the panel discussion via Eventbrite.
The exhibition preview and drinks reception is un-ticketed.
Sit-in Curriculum #3 is conceived and activated in collaboration with The Department of Xenogenesis or DXG, a time space enacted by The Otolith Group. The curriculum of events is an open invitation for interlocutors to think together critically. View future events here.
Biographies
The Otolith Group is an award-winning artist led collective founded by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun in 2002.
Their moving image, audio works, performances and installations are characterized by an engagement with the legacies and potentialities of diasporic futurisms that explore modes of temporal anomalies, anthropic inversions and synthetic alienation.
Approaching curation as an artistic practice of building intergenerational and cross-cultural platforms, the collective has been influential in critically introducing particular works of artists such as Chris Marker, Harun Farocki, Anand Patwardhan, Etel Adnan, Black Audio Film Collective, Sue Clayton, Mani Kaul, Peter Watkins, and Chimurenga in the UK, US, Europe, and Lebanon.
Dr Ranjana Thapalyal is an inter-disciplinary artist and writer based in Scotland. Her practice spans ceramic sculpture, painting, collaborative performance, critical and creative writing. Research areas include materiality in art, cultural identity, and the metaphysical self in relation to all of these. Of particular interest are concepts of self in South Asian and West African traditions, feminist readings of ancient philosophies of the global South, inter-disciplinary and inter-cultural pedagogy. Recent writing can be found in Art Monthly, Nowness Asia, MAP, Panel, and Mrin. In her book, Education as Mutual Translation, a Yoruba and Ancient Indian Interface for Pedagogy in the Creative Arts (Brill 2018) Ranjana suggests that a more resilient original voice emerges from awareness of others than from individualism, and that genuine pedagogic exchange changes student, tutor, and the work of both. She lectured for many years at Glasgow School of Art and now works independently.
About the exhibition
...But There Are New Suns is the first major exhibition in Scotland by the Turner Prize nominated artist collective The Otolith Group; and is the third iteration of The Ignorant Art School: Five Sit-ins towards Creative Emancipation.
Founded in London in 2002 by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun, The Otolith Group practices modes of digital image making, exhibition making and discourse making that seek to activate the chronopolitical potentials of differentiated futurisms.
Visit:
13 October – 16 December
Monday – Saturday, 12–5pm
Read more on our exhibition page.
Access
The gallery is on two floors. First floor has ramped access and disabled toilet.
Second floor is accessible via lift and for wheelchair access via a stairclimber. The In-conversation will take place on the second floor.
Please email in advance if you require lift or stairclimber access so we can arrange support.
Large print versions of the exhibition information handout are available, please ask our Guides.
If you require live captions for the panel discussion please email to request.
Alcoholic drinks will be served. Non alcoholic refreshments available.
All enquiries please contact: exhibitions@dundee.ac.uk
Image credits
Header
The Otolith Group, What the Owl Knows, 2022 (film still)
Funding support
The Ignorant Art School at Cooper Gallery, DJCAD is supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland.
Cooper Gallery
exhibitions@dundee.ac.uk