Kunsthalle Basel at Stadtkino: Acid Cut Flowers

Performance by Emily Wardill and Ian White

After two months of summer break, Kunsthalle Basel starts its event programme in the Stadtkino again, which takes place each last Tuesday of the month. In connection to the exhibition Word Event, participating artist Emily Wardill will perform the piece Acid Cut Flowers, co-written and co-performed with the artist and curator Ian White. Formally it is a montage of various kinds of public address – the lecture, the interview, reading, acting, moving – made into a highly stylised, illustrated and performed exchange delivered by Wardill and White. It circulates around such ideas, for instance, as the influence of Douglas Sirk on Fassbinder, the use of Melodrama within contemporary Republican discourse in the United States, its relationship to Minimalism and postmodern dance, Melodrama and Slapstick generally, living, speaking plants and Stained Glass imagery. Original text is combined with extracts from the work of George Lakoff, Yvonne Rainer, Walt Whitman, Robert Wilson and others. Acid Cut Flowers attempts to simultaneously discuss and embody those things of which it speaks. It is an enactment and a presentation.

Running time: approx. 50 minutes

Emily Wardill (*1977, UK) lives and works in London. She currently has solo shows at Fortescue Avenue/Jonathan Viner in London (till Oct 5) and at the NKV Wiesbaden (till May 24, 2009), where she could make a show as the first Laureate of the Follow Fluxus Award. This grant supports emerging international artists whose works are inspired by the Fluxus body of thought and production processes. Recent Solo Exhibitions include ‘Sick Serena and Dregs and Wreck and Wreck’ at the ICA (London) and a show at STANDARD (OSLO). She is working towards Solo Shows at De Appel and Spacex in 2009. Wardill is the co-organizer of the yearly event Itchy Park at Limehouse Town Hall and a Senior Lecturer at Central Saint Martins College of Art.

In the Stadtkino Basel (Klostergasse 5, CH-4051 Basel)
Afterwards bar
Admission: CHF 12.-/members of the Basler Kunstverein: 6.-