The Power Plant

Since 2009, Spanish multi-disciplinary artist Dora García has been carrying out the Mad Marginal project, major stages of which were shown at dOCUMENTA 13 (2012) and the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). Her work examines the wellsprings of artistic experience, altering the traditional relationships between artist, work and viewer, as well as those of the individual, whose daily behaviour she questions through performance, film and discussion. This ongoing project continues at The Power Plant during our Fall 2015 season.

Several universes cross Mad Marginal as García investigates and stages the works of authors James Joyce, Jacques Lacan and Samuel Beckett, to name just a few of the literary references that nourish her thought. Since 2012, García has been exploring deviant literature, exploded language and the unconscious—especially through the figures of James Joyce and Robert Walser—as well as the state of exile and its relation to artistic practice. These dimensions of her practice manifest in Exile (2012–), an ongoing interactive and archival project, as well as in her acclaimed film The Joycean Society (2013), both on view in this exhibition.

In her more recent works, García has shifted her focus to compulsive writing, collective reading, endless or circular books, graphomania and the parallels and intersections between reading and writing, as the works Exhausted Books (2013) and Mad Marginal Charts (2014) reveal. Her explorations of compulsive writing and graphomania also opened up new areas of interest as García began investigating the notion of voice-hearing and other extrasensory perceptions, and their relation to creativity and visionary world-making, even prophecy. ESP (2015) and Imposed Words/Palabras Impuestas (2015) betray a Lacanian accent of language as something that is imposed upon us, and another more Proustian accent of literature as “always written in a foreign language”. All of the works have a performative character and act as indices of an action, past or future. Maintaining traces of continuous and lifelong activity, a strong archival impulse also emerges from these works.

A four-hundred page reader by Dora Garcia and edited by Chantal Pontbriand accompanies the exhibition. The Mad Marginal Cahier #4: I SEE WORDS, I HEAR VOICES brings together major essays by international authors who delve into different threads in Garcia's research. The publication has been co-published by Academy of Fine Art/Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Fonderie Darling/Darling Foundry, Punkt Ø, The Power Plant and Sternberg Press.

Dora García (born in Valladolid, Spain, 1965) lives and works in Barcelona and Oslo. She currently teaches at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway, and HEAD, Geneva. She is Co-Director for Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Paris. Her work is largely performative and deals with issues related to community and individuality in contemporary society, exploring the political potential of marginal positions and paying homage to eccentric characters and anti-heroes. She has exhibited her work at numerous international events such as the 54th, 55th and 56th Venice Biennale (2011, 2013 and 2015), the 29th São Paulo Biennale (2010), the 16th Sydney Biennale (2008), Documenta 12 (2007) and Münster Sculpture Projects (2007).

This Exhibition also features a number of gallery engagements that are open to the public.

Finnegans Wake Collective Reading

Sunday, 27 September 2015, 4-6 PM
FREE

Echoing the film The Joycean Society (2013) Dora García will lead a collective reading of Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. Participants are invited to bring their own copy of this seminal novel for discussion. Participants are invited to bring their own copy of this seminal novel for discussion.

RESERVE NOW: Space is limited. Call 416-973-4949 or email info@thepowerplant.org for advance registration.

Saturday Encounters: Sharing a diversity of experience, perception and language

26 September 2015 - 2 January 2016, 2 PM
The Power Plant
FREE

Each of us perceive the world differently, and some of us perceive extraordinary things, things that not everyone else can hear, see, feel or smell. Each Saturday, here at The Power Plant, and as part of Dora García's work ESP (extrasensory perception), experts by experience will describe in words of their choosing a part of what they perceive, sharing personal insights into living with experiences that may seem extraordinary and therefore not easily conveyed to others.

LEARN MORE

Watch an In Conversation with Dora Garcia & Chantal Pontbriand

Fall 2015 Program Guide