INHABIT 2024 and Exhibition CONTACT ZONES
Clara Jo (right) and Fabrice Mazliah (left) are this year’s INHABIT artists (Photo Fabrice Mazliah: ©Theater Basel, Christian Knör / Portrait Clara Jo: ©Aisling Mccoy)
The year 2024 promises several artistic highlights at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) in Frankfurt am Main. The residencies of this year’s artists-in-residence will begin next week with Clara Jo, staying from April until July, followed by Fabrice Mazliah with his residency from September until December. In mid-May, the exhibition CONTACT ZONES will open at the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt am Main, featuring works by INHABIT artists from 2022 and 2023.
With INHABIT, the MPIEA invites guest artists from various disciplines to Frankfurt am Main every year. They each spend several months at the Institute during their separate residencies, initiating new work or developing existing projects in a scientific context. In collaboration with different arts institutions, their work is then presented to the wider public.
Artists-in-Residence 2024
This year’s artists were selected by a jury made up of MPIEA associates and well-known figures from the arts and culture sector:
Dahlia Borsche (Head of Music & Sound, DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program), Tanya Brown (MPIEA, Research Group “Neural Circuits, Consciousness, and Cognition”), Camila Bruder (MPIEA, Department of Music), Christian Grüny (Professor of Aesthetics, HMDK Stuttgart), Alistair Hudson (Director, ZKM Karlsruhe), Çağla Ilk (Curator/Co-Director, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden), Ece Kaya (MPIEA, Research Group “Neural and Environmental Rhythms”), Holger Stenschke (MPIEA, Head of the ArtLab), Eike Walkenhorst (MPIEA, Curator of INHABIT)
April–July 2024: Clara Jo
Clara Jo is an American artist based in Berlin, Germany. She works in film, photography, and sculptural installation. Working with archives is a crucial element of her research process. Particularly in the case of colonial histories that have been buried or erased, she questions the biased narratives they contain. In her previous collaborations with institutions working at the intersection of art and science, Jo has interrogated scientific data as a “voice” to reveal the meta-narratives hidden within. Her project at the MPIEA will expand on her previous work: the research-intensive film and sound project explores the legacies of colonialism and environmental injustice through voice and narrative.
September–December 2024: Fabrice Mazliah
Fabrice Mazliah is an artist, choreographer and performer based in Basel, Switzerland, and Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Drawing on his career as a dancer, including with the Forsythe Company where he worked until 2015, his choreographic work is characterized by a long-term exploration of embodied knowledge and how our inner landscapes—thought processes, perception, and attention—translate into physical expression. His artistic curiosity lies in understanding and renegotiating the relationship between our environment, its objects, and our bodies. The confluence of movement and language, the development of innovative narrative structures, and the exploration of poetic expressions are foundational to his artistic work. During his residency, he will develop an interdisciplinary performance that explores the complex interplay between the internal processes of the body, movement, and the social mind.
INHABIT at the Museum of Applied Arts
With the exhibition CONTACT ZONES—Pamela Breda, Victoria Keddie, Sajan Mani, the MPIEA presents for the second time works by INHABIT artists in cooperation with the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt am Main. The exhibition will feature works created during the artists’ residencies in 2022 and 2023.
The artistic biographies and working methods of the four artists are completely different. Their works reflect an individual approach to the scientific environment, hence the reference in the exhibition title. While in cultural studies the concept of a “contact zone” is used to describe social spaces where cultures meet, in the context of INHABIT it refers to the interaction between art and science.
The exhibition is scheduled to open on May 16, 2024. The works will be on display at the Museum Angewandte Kunst (Museum of Applied Art) in Frankfurt am Main until July 28, 2024.
Contact:
Eike Walkenhorst, Curator INHABIT