The total scab-free solidarity and performative silence that struck floor-shows and soundstage from Desert to NJ coast for over half a year
September 5 – November 1, 2020

LARA ALMARCEGUI
MERCEDES AZPILICUETA
DANIEL JACOBY
DAVID MAROTO
FALKE PISANO
VICTOR SANTAMARINA

curate by TIAGO DE ABREU PINTO

The exhibition The total scab-free solidarity and performative silence that struck floor-shows and soundstages from Desert to NJ coast for over half a year takes its title from and refers to a particular extract from Infinite Jest (a novel by David Foster Wallace) that focuses on president Johnny Gentle, a jester-like character who embodies a lack of compromise, responsibility and empathy towards others. He epitomises somebody who does not involve the community in his decisions, nor fosters a sentiment of unity among them. The works in this exhibition engage orally and somatically with the visitor by showing how the environment affects, protects, or alters the body in processes of exchange, to essentially reconfirm the importance of interrelationality and intersubjectivity between ourselves and others. Johnny Gentle stands as a neuralgic element to raise socio-political questions addressing the dichotomy of the private and the public—understanding the body from within, and its relation to the surrounding environment that potentially affects us and is affected by us. The exhibition ultimately unfolds a psycho-topological conundrum involving the visitor in a “catalogue-novel,” in which a set of characters open a dialogue around solidarity, collectivity, interdependence, and the process of becoming empathetic subjects.

This exhibition marks the inaugural edition of A Tale of A Tub’s annual Open Call for Exhibition Proposals, conceived in collaboration with and support from CBK Rotterdam. The exhibition is additionally supported through the Municipality of Rotterdam, the Mondriaan Fund, and Stichting Elise Mathilde Fonds.