Ines Doujak Not Dressed For Conquering · 1/15/2017 · others in the north of the island resisted and, when finally defeated, were enslaved to work on sugarcane plantations –

Ines Doujak

Not Dressed For Conquering

October 15, 2016 – January 15, 2017 Press conference: Friday, October 14, 2016, 11 a.m.

An exhibition by

Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart

Curators

Hans D. Christ, Iris Dressler

Württembergischer Kunstverein · Schlossplatz 2 · 70173 Stuttgart Fon: +49 (0)711 - 22 33 70 · Fax: +49 (0)711 - 29 36 17 · [email protected] · www.wkv-stuttgart.de

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Introduction

Let’s enter the a-historical and hermetic

world of fashion to dirty its surface.

For the exhibition Ines Doujak. Not Dressed For Conquering, Württembergischer

Kunstverein temporarily assumes the guise of a fashion store – to be precise, an assortment

of various pop-up stores.

The show is based on the long-term Loomshuttles / Warpaths project by Austrian artist Ines

Doujak (*1959) that, in different forms and formats, explores the links between textiles,

fashion, colonialism, violence and globalized production conditions. It comprises Doujak’s

“eccentric archive” that focuses on the history of globalization based on textiles from the

Andean region; an open-ended series of sculptures, performances, writings and video works

along with various, constantly evolving fashion collections.

The exhibition Not Dressed For Conquering features a selection of all these elements,

reorganizing and extending them. The focus is on eight fashion collections showcased in the

specially designed pop-up stores, each following different themes and motifs. Among them,

the fire of burning factories and the burnout – in the literal sense too – of low-wage workers,

animal and human skins, carnival and masquerade, and the devil himself. Under scrutiny are

the supply chains of global trade, tightly organized by means of barcodes, automated

cranes, containers and mega ships, or the long history of degrading workers to the level of

“intelligent apes”.

The collections consist of fabrics in which the various themes and motifs are directly

inscribed and of patterns, garments, outfits and accessories derived from them, but also of

writings, publications, objects, videos and pieces of dance and music in which patterns are

transformed and translated into motion and sound.

Employing the glamour of the fashion world, Doujak not only spotlights the exploitative

structures, gender and class orders of haute couture and mass-market clothing. Harking

back to the resistant, anarchistic practices of textile design ranging from Andean weaving

traditions to Dapper Dan, the iconic New York tailor to the eighties’ hip hop scene, she

creates another, a different fashion that counteracts the status quo. This idea is also

embodied by a group of “looters” and “rioters” who act as a kind of inverted gatekeeper at

the various pop-up stores.


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This other, resistant fashion again is the focal point of a number of performances and

workshops taking place during the exhibition, combining tailoring, dance, music, film and

politics.

Performance, f i lm and song are translations in motion of the

rhythmic texti les of cultures which, using the off-beat phrasing of

music, are a vibrant visual attack where the colors must talk to

each other or l iteral ly argue. The intention is for such motion to

break the cultural paradigm in which patterns exist only within

borders, so that they may permeate the world at large.

Ines Doujak


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The Stores (selection)

HC01 FIRES: The War Against the Poor

The war against the poor whereby locked in workers with overloaded electricity circuits live

under threat of death and horrible injury by fire to fulfill skin-tight clothing contracts.

(Ines Doujak)

In the modern world technological development has made for highly sophisticated production

processes, yet which co-exist with and are co-dependent on ultra-exploitative working conditions

especially in the making of clothes … In Bangladesh in 2010, just days before yet one more fatal

factory fire, a worker was shot dead by the police for protesting at conditions in a South Korean

owned factory. In Honduras burn-out is such that only 6.3% of women have worked longer than 10

years in such factories … Textile and clothing workers have fought against their exploitation for

hundreds of years with strikes, riots and the struggle to create trade unions, knowing that only they

can change the conditions of work. In some instances fire itself has been used as a direct means of

attack against oppressive conditions. (Ines Doujak)

Exhibits: Two textile prints as bolts; shirts, trousers as samples on ladder; video (of a performance); hand-out (on

what happened after the Karachi fire); audio-interview with Chun Soonok …


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HC 02 DIRTY SECRETS: Tradition

Good Marks for Social Cohesion, Bad When it Resists Enclosure of the Common. Inside the

clean-cut Black Square the dirty secret of a thousand years of textile patterns. (Ines Doujak)

Exhibits: Scarves; ponchos; 8 booklets and a historical display with the inscription: “Lest. Verbreitet gute

Schriften (Read! Spread Good Writings!); poster; knitted pull-over …

Sample (left); cover of booklet (right): pattern (bottom)


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HC 03 CARNIVAL

Where Masterless Voices Sing Songs in the Dark of Unforgiving Joy, the Masters’ Voice

Falters. (Ines Doujak)

Exhibits: Video (with John Barker); body suits; masks; partly produced with the support of the São Paulo Biennial

Ines Doujak / John Barker, A Mask is Always Active, video, 2014

HC 04 TRANSPORT

Chains of Lean Retailing, their Wheels Oiled by Bar Codes and Human load Carriers …

(Ines Doujak)

Exhibits: Textile print; necklaces; bags …

Cloth (detail)


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HC 05 APES, KRIMINALAFFE: Why Are Things As They Are?

When Paradise was lost to men and women, the Ape stayed put. In captivity the lazy rascal

must work for his supper, and asks: Why Are Things As they Are? (Ines Doujak)

“F.W. Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management was published in 1903. In it, he describes a worker

both as an 'intelligent gorilla' and – unwittingly endorsing the worker-gorilla's intelligence – as one

who "deliberately plans to do as little as he safely can." Nine years later in 1912, the Prussian

Academy of Sciences opened a station on Tenerife devoted to experimentation with the ‘mental

capacities’ of apes, and especially chimpanzees. Tenerife itself was the last of the Canary Islands to

be conquered by the Spanish in 1496. Half the indigenous population sided with the invaders, the

others in the north of the island resisted and, when finally defeated, were enslaved to work on

sugarcane plantations – a laboratory for colonial capitalism. It was chosen as a location for the station

because of its climate and because of its proximity to Cameroon, then a German colony, from where

nine chimpanzees were captured and transported over the sea. It became famous for the

‘experiments’ of psychologist Wolfgang Koehler. He has been acclaimed as a co-founder of Gestalt

theory, for offering an alternative to the behaviourism of Pavlov and Thorndike and as anti-Nazi, but

he also laid some groundwork for an instrumentalized psychology of work …”

(From: Ines Doujak, John Barker: “Kriminalaffe: Sultan at the Dole Office”,

see: http://continentcontinent.cc/index.php/continent/article/view/214)

Exhibits: Textile prints; Dapper Dan outfits; sweat suit; sculpture; …

Performance, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HWK), Berlin, 2015 Dapper Dan, iconic tailor of the 1980ies, who

created the outfits of the hip-hop-scene


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HC 06 THE DEVIL

The devil opens a night school in Kyiv to teach the secrets of success and failure. The curriculum

includes the uses of drugs in war, the war against drugs, drugs as war and the drug of war. This

wandering school will made its first stops in Ukraine and Spain, where the crises are acute and

provide stark examples of the forces of profit as violence and the resultant break-downs. The artists

use the figure of the devil and its many names and guises to dramatize and amalgamate the

businesses of war and drugs. A movable tent with a specially designed and printed cloth on which

there are horses, rotting grapes and close-up charred wood becomes the devil’s night school

location. As a start the devil will offer two types of drug: heroin, as a legacy to the world from the

wars in Vietnam and then Afghanistan, and crystal meth. (Ines Doujak)

Exhibits: Video (30’, produced with the support of the Kyiv Biennial); devil film costumes; umbrellas made of

blood polka dot pattern; drug film costumes …

Ines Doujak, John Barker, The Devil Opens a Night School to Teach the Secrets of Success and Failure, 2015, video

Ines Doujak, John Barker, The Devil Opens a Night School to Teach the Tent / „Pop-Up Store” Secrets of Success and Failure, 2015, video


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HC 07 AQUA VIVA: What Forms the Outside of the Inside?

Exhibitis: Collages, outfits; 2 textile prints


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Program

Friday, October 14, 2016, 7 p.m.

OPENING

With Klub Mutti: Fashion Show

Fashion icon and ‘it-girl’ Mara Gheddon presents the current ‘must-haves’ of the season. She speaks

about fashion and other circumstances. A Swabian in exile, she is interested in handicrafts and gender

bending.

Saturday, October 15, 2016

2–6 p.m.

WORKSHOP

Re-clothed

With Alessandro Marques, Pablo Lafuente

For this workshop, Marques and Lafuente will propose to explore, together with the participants,

clothing that extends the body and connects it to other bodies. The four-hour workshop will involve the

joint conception and construction of a series of outfits. On focus here is the collective process that

includes also the engagement in a series of dance moves.

Alessandro Marques: Designer, São Paulo

Pablo Lafuente: Writer, teacher and curator, Porto Seguro, Bahia, São Paulo

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Language: English; Limited number of participants

Application required until October 10, 2016

Info + registration:

Barbara Mocko, [email protected], Fon: +49 (0)711 - 22 33 713

Participation fee: 15 Euro; reduced and WKV members: 7,50 Euro

7 p.m.

PERFORMANCE

What Inside Forms An Outside

And What Is The Space In Between?

With John Barker, Ornella de Bakel, Ines Doujak

What inside forms an outside and what is the space in between? We will talk of the substance ergot and

one of its alkaloids LSD as freeing consciousness from neuro gatekeepers, of the skin as more than a

container, and of disgust as an emotional and political barrier.

John Barker: Fiction writer, essayist, performer, political activist, Vienna, London

Ines Doujak: Artist, Vienna, London

Ornella de Bakel: Artist, dragqueen, Vienna

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Language: German, English


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Thursday, November 24, 2016, 7 p.m.

PANEL DISCUSSION (in German language)

Burn Out. Deadly Fire. Four Years, No Justice

With Thomas Seibert (medicointernational), Miriam Saage-Maaß (ECCHR), a.o.

In collaboration with Terre des Hommes

Saturday, November 26, 2016, 2– 5 p.m.

SEMINAR

Lost and Found

With John Barker, Ines Doujak, Evelyn Steinthaler

As a last resort, mothers in 18th century London who could not support their children hoped to win a

place for them at the Foundling Hospital* determined by a lottery system. Instead of identity papers

they left an individual piece of cloth. Now, parents in war zones have a similar hope for their children to

find refuge in Europe. Too many disappear in the process despite the heavily monitored world in which

we live. We would like you to join us to search individual fates of unaccompanied minors in a time of

desperation and need, and examining the economics of desperation.

Evelyn Steinthaler: Writer, editor, producer, performer, translator, Vienna

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Language: German, English

Sunday, January 15, 2017, 6 p.m.

FINISSAGE + BOOK LAUNCH

Eccentric Archive

With John Barker, Ines Doujak a.o.

Language: English

GUIDED TOURS

Curator’s tours

Language: German

Wednesday, October 26, 2016, 7 p.m.

Wednesday, November 16, 2016, 7 p.m.

Wednesday, December 7, 2016, 7 p.m.

Sunday, January 15, 2017, 4:30 p.m.

Free guided tours

Language: German

Each sunday, 3 p.m.


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Biography

Ines Doujak

* 1959 in Klagenfurt, l ives in Vienna and London

Solo exhibit ions (selection)

Johann Jacobs Museum Zurich (2015); Galerie Krobath, Vienna (2007); Salzburger Kunstverein (2005); Wiener

Secession, Vienna (2002)

Group Solo exhibit ions (selection)

2016 Peace-Treaty, San Sebastian (Cultural Capital); Sans peau / No Skin, SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art,

Montreal, QC

2015 School of Kiev, Kiew-Biennale; Creating Common Good, KunstHaus Vienna; All Men Become Sisters,

Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz; The Beast and is the Sovereign, MACBA (Museu d’Art Contemporani Barcelona),

Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart; Social Glitch, Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Vienna; Utopian Pulse –

Flares In The Darkroom, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart; Wow! Woven? Entering the (sub)Textiles,

Künstlerhaus. Halle für Kunst und Medien, Graz; Share – Too Much History, More Future, Museum of

Contemporary Art Banja Luka, Banja Luka

2014 Ejemplos a seguir! Expediciones en estética y sostenibilidad, Museo Metropolitano de Lima, Lima; Share –

Too Much History, More Future, MMKK, Klagenfurt; Utopian Pulse – Flares In The Darkroom, Wiener Secession,

Vienna; 31ª São Paulo Biennale; Punctum. Bemerkungen zur Photographie, Salzburger Kunstverein; Zur

Nachahmung empfohlen. Expeditionen in Ästhetik und Nachhaltigkeit, Zollverein, Essen; Ten Million Rooms of

Yearning Sex in Hong Kong, Para/Site Art Space, Hong Kong

2012 re.act.feminism #2. A Performing Archive: Fundación Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona; Museet for Samtidskunst,

Roskilde; Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic, Zagreb; Acts of Voicing, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart; Busan

Biennale 2012, Busan, South Korea; Reflecting Fashion. Kunst und Mode seit der Moderne, Museum Moderner

Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, MUMOK, Vienna

2013 ¡Ejemplos a seguir! Exploraciones en estética y sustentabilidad, Capilla del Arte, Puebla; 54th October

Salon. No one belongs here more than you, Belgrade Cultural Center, Belgrade; Acts of Voicing, Total Museum

of Contemporary Art, Seoul

2010 Principio Potosí: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin;

Museo Nacional de Arte La Paz, Bolivien; Triennale Linz 1.0. Gegenwartskunst in Österreich, Lentos

Kunstmuseum Linz

2008 Peripheral Vision and Collective Body, MUSEION, Bozen

2007 documenta 12, Kassel

2004 Be What You Want, But Stay Where You Are, Witte de With, Rotterdam; Die Regierung. Paradiesische

Handlungsräume, Secession, Vienna

2003 How Do We Want to be Governed?, MACBA (Museu d’Art Contemporani Barcelona; Being in the World,

Miami Art Central, Miami

2000 Dinge, die wir nicht verstehen, Generali Foundation, Vienna


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Dates and Credits

EXHIBITION

Ines Doujak

Not Dressed For Conquering

October 15, 2016 – January 15, 2017

An exhibition by


Curators

Hans D. Christ, Iris Dressler

Supported by

Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst des Landes Baden-Württemberg

Kulturamt der Stadt Stuttgart

Innovationspreis des Landes Baden-Württemberg

Stiftung Landesbank Baden-Württemberg

Bundeskanzleramt Österreich

Péter Horváth-Stiftung

Wüstenrot Stiftung

Marli Hoppe-Ritter-Stiftung zur Förderung der Kunst

Bonnie, Stuttgart

Pro Lab, Stuttgart

Media partner (Program)

Jungle World

PRESS

Press conference

Friday, October 14, 2016, 11 a.m.

Press contact

Barbara Mocko

Fon: +49 (0)711 - 22 33 713

[email protected]

Press pictures and -dossier

http://www.wkv-stuttgart.de/en/press/2016


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INFO


Schlossplatz 2

DE - 70173 Stuttgart

Fon: +49 (0)711 - 22 33 70

Fax: +49 (0)711 - 29 36 17

[email protected]

www.wkv-stuttgart.de

www.facebook.com/wuerttembergischer.kunstverein

Hours

Tue, Thu–Sun: 11 a.m.– 6 p.m.

Wed: 11 a.m.– 8 p.m.

Entrance fees

5 Euro

3 Euro reduced

Members of WKV: free

Documents

Ines Doujak Not Dressed For Conquering · 1/15/2017 · others in the north of the island resisted and, when finally defeated, were enslaved to work on sugarcane plantations –