woocommerce-shipping-per-product domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /var/www/staging.esse.ca/htdocs/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131complianz-gdpr domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /var/www/staging.esse.ca/htdocs/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131\nIf \u201crelate,\u201d \u201cparticipate\u201d and \u201cinteract\u201d have been the driving verbs behind much artwork produced since the late 1990s \u2014 and the rise of relational aesthetics in this period seems to indicate as much \u2014 then Models for Taking Part<\/em>, curator Juan A. Gait\u00e1n\u2019s exhibition of five works by international artists that interrogate the cohesion of the public sphere, reveals the dark undercurrents of these practices, focusing on states of infiltration, implica-tion and complicity. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nThe exhibition offers two possible starting points for the viewer. The first, a noisy introduction through Artur \u017bmijewski\u2019s Democracies <\/em>(2009), a 10-screen video installation that simultaneously shows clips from a number of collective actions around the world. By bringing together a cacophony of scenes as diverse as church services, military reenact-ments, anti-globalization demonstrations, political rallies and labour actions, \u017bmijewski attunes us to the formal similarities in public demon-strations of belief systems: rehearsing, singing, chanting, speech-giving and flag-waving reappear as common methods of expressing what Gait\u00e1n describes as \u201cself-affirmation\u201d in the public sphere. Followed by a video by Annetta Mona Chisa and Lucia Tk\u00e1cov\u00e1 that puts the continued relevance of Charles Darwin\u2019s theories about human evolution to the test in a game of \u201cbroken telephone\u201d and a photo and video series by Tobias Zelony exam-ining an Italian public housing project, this route through the exhibition foregrounds moments where meaning breaks down as messages circulate through a collective. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
An alternate path through the gallery presents a quieter but no less provocative initiation into themes of fragmentation and complicity. In the first darkened room, Bouchra Khalili\u2019s looping video Straight Stories \u2013 Part 2: ANYA <\/em>(2008) unfolds the restrained autobiography of a young Iraqi refugee who has been living in the Strait of Istanbul as an illegal immigrant for more than a decade while \u201cwaiting for the authorization to leave\u201d and join her uncle in Australia. The constant flow of images of the nighttime cityscape that accompanies the narrative refuses to let the viewer\u2019s gaze settle, much as Anya\u2019s story cannot cohere around a permanent sense of home or belonging. In the adjacent room, Renzo Martens\u2019 now infamous 90-minute documentary-style film, Episode III: Enjoy Poverty <\/em>(2009), depicts an artist, played by Martens, as he travels through the Upper Congo in an effort to convince its citizens that poverty is in fact their most important resource \u2014 a crusade that culminates in the public presentation of a neon sign that reads \u201cEnjoy Poverty, Please.\u201d Taking the logic of global capitalism and rhetoric of international aid work and exaggerating it until it becomes obscene (at one point Martens leads the community through a cost-benefit analysis of taking photographs of parties versus documenting \u201craped women, corpses, and emaciated children\u201d), the film reveals the complicit double meaning of \u201ctaking part\u201d in the lives of others. <\/p>\n