Ben Russell: Rune
January 23, 2010 - February 20, 2010
1716 S Morgan #2F, Chicago, IL 60608
Opening reception: Saturday 6-9 pm, January 23rd, 2010

- Ryan Fenchel
- Joshua Manchester
- JT Rogstad
- Melanie Schiff
- Deborah Stratman

Private viewings by appointment*
*The performance of "Doyen: nothing of you is left as it once was" by Joshua Manchester will be presented at approximately 8:00pm during the opening reception.

About the show:
Oh, Necromancy! Oh, Runic Magic! Oh, blótspánn and hlautlein! Oh, Germanic Paganism! With earthquake and sorrow and windows shuttered, this New Decade looks to be as dark as the last and the last and the last before that, and it is in such times (as in those early times of Odin) that we must turn our eyes skyward and acknowledge our ignorance of the world, acknowledge that whatever cannot be readily understood must be sorcery. We must consult our Lindholm amulet, fit our Greymoor Ring tight 'round our finger, and leaf through Sigrdrífumál until we find these words: "Certain is that which is sought from RUNEs / That the gods so great have made / And the Master-Poet painted"

We read further: "if high on a tree / I see a hanged man swing / So do I write and color the RUNEs / That forth he fares / And to me talks." And at last we understand - ART IS OUR DIVINATION. And so emboldened, we use magical staves to collage paper and ink on our walls (ROGSTAD), we perform lithomancy to aid in the photographic documentation of invisibility (SCHIFF) and cleromancy for the video record of flight and phenomena (STRATMAN), we use our percussive instruments to chant galdr (MANCHESTER), and we produce a modern-day Kylver Stone in the form of a sacred animal (FENCHEL).

If the present of now is the future of everything, then the blind seers at BEN RUSSELL have ordained that all shall gather in one glorious sumbel, a celebration for what is and for what is to come. ART is the way forward - the RUNEs within these apartment gallery walls have already prophesized as much.

Manipulated Image #10: Exquisite Corpse Video Project Vol.1
Friday, January 29 2010, 7pm
Santa Fe Complex: 632 Agua Fria Santa Fe, NM, USA, 87501
$5 suggested contribution

ECVP screenings and exhibitions have been taking place in various countries since June 2008, such as Sweden, USA, Greece, Canada, Brazil, Australia and South Africa. The second volume of the project with 12 new videos has just been released in October 2009 in Sweden.

Juliana Monachesi writes:
“The Exquisite Corpse Video Project, having embraced random and chaotic processes, departs from the Dadaist method of creation. Each artist responds to the ten seconds of video sent by the previous artist with one minute of his own, from which he sends the last ten seconds to the next artist. The result is video that runs about ten minutes. The power of a video made by twenty hands surpasses the current vogue of the collective practices in the visual arts. Notably, the artists involved in this project each have a “solo” career, participating in important festivals and exhibitions worldwide. Beyond emerging as a new “collective,” the ECVP experience distinguishes itself by gambling on the possibilities of sharing and creating through the platform of decentralized social networks that have spread through the world wide web. And it offers an aesthetic answer to the mayhem of audiovisual content jamming the same www by showing that there is intelligent life on the You Tube channels.”

http://www.vimeo.com/excorpse
http://www.artreview.com/profile/excorpse
http://groups.to/ecvp