The Antagonistic Link

Opening: Saturday 28 March, 17.00 with a first staging of the writing and performance series Ongoing propositions under different conditions, conducted by theorist and writer Sönke Hallmann and artist Achim Lengerer.

The Antagonistic Link is an experimental setting for drawing transnational links in the form of an agonistic process that assumes the opposing parties to be in a state of conflicting coexistence. The Antagonistic Link uses 'Bye Bye Kipling', a historical satellite event conceived by Nam June Paik in 1986, as a point of departure. The exhibition combines this piece with three other projects initiated by artists and designers from South Korea, as well as other related activities. All these works explore the constructive possibilities of overcoming the sense of distance and antagonism that is the paradoxical product of advancing globalization.

"East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet", the first line of The Ballad of East and West, a poem by Rudyard Kipling, opens up Paik's live satellite link-up of Japan, Korea and the United States – a broadcast featuring different sorts of cultural events and performances. Paik designed and coordinated the event with the intention of countering this poetic declaration (which, to be fair, is also undermined in the rest of Kipling's poem as he suggests that individuals are capable of this after all). The video is a shorter edit of the original broadcast and reveals various ironic and fractious moments in such a linkage. This may be a starting point for questioning the complexities and contradictions inherent in today's communication channels and global links — an inquiry that neither denies nor blithely celebrates the possibilities of transnational connection.

Discussion on Estrangement with curator Aneta Szylak (director of Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk) and artist Hiwa K. on their collaborative initiative 'Estrangement'. Thursday 9 April at 20.00 at Casco

Performance Operational Play Saturday 16 May at 14.00 (starting from Casco) A participatory performance of Operational Play, a project by Hwa Yeon Nam in the context of The Antagonistic Link, takes place at six different locations across the city on 16 May 2009. The 16 players are involved in a collaborative performance based on 23 wars, between 1940 and 2006 and restages them across Utrecht. Each actor masquerades under pseudonyms that represent various operational wars like: Operation Queen, a joint British-American operation during World War II in the Hurtgen Forest near Aachen, and some that are still very vivid on our minds like Operation Blue Tiger and Desert Scorpion, the names of the two invasions in Iraq. Please check Casco website or contact (Jakob van Stolk: jakob@cascoprojects.org) to find out more and participate in the performance.

Exhibition design in collaboration with Susanne Pietsch.

Electric Palm Tree is an initiative of Kyongfa Che and Binna Choi, joined by Cosmin Costinas, and established in early 2008 as an ongoing project for transnational artistic research. More information about Electric Palm Tree is available at http://www.electricpalmtree.org.

The Antagonistic Link
Electric Palm Tree 
Kurator: Binna Choi

Künstler: Mixrice , Sasa 44  / Sulki & Min, Nam June Paik, Nam Hwayeon / Performance: Sönke Hallmann, Achim Lengerer