Evening of readings with PUBLICS

Update: Guestlist is full, any new RSVP’s will be put on waitlist

Tuesday 14 Nov 2023
5-7pm

Finnish Cultural Institute in New York
208 Bowery
New York 10012

Please join us at the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York offices on Tuesday the 14th of November where artist, writer, curator and Artistic Director of PUBLICS, Helsinki Paul O’Neill is joined by curator and writer Bhavisha Panchia, and artist, writer and producer Stéphane Querrec from PALO Art Productions, for an introduction, reading and informal presentation of four recent artist-led publications published by Publics and co-edited by Paul O’Neill.

A small number of copies of the books will be available for sale at the event.

Attendance is free of charge but seats are very limited. Please RSVP at info@fciny.org

The publications introduced during the evening

The Voice That Remains, edited by Publics and co-published with Lugemik, 2024.

Letters and Banners: Dave McKenzie (2023) brings artist Dave McKenzie’s recently commissioned body of work together with curator Bhavisha Panchia’s writing. The book explores multiple forms of personal and public address, employing words as personal and political forms that continually shift emphasis between direct and ambiguous meanings. Co-published by Rooftop Press with PUBLICS and PALO art production the book begins a new series of Coupling Words publications. The series is initiated by PUBLICS as part of their Couplings program. In these couplings two writers / artists / groups of practitioners are introduced to one another for the first time in print or in space because of some common concerns within their practices.

Independence Days: Maryam Jafri (2022) presents an expanded version of her photo installation, Independence Day 1934–1975, juxtaposing and arranging 234 photographs sourced over 10 years of research in 40 archives across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, including many from rare and at-risk collections. This book is co-published by PUBLICS, TAXISPALAIS Kunsthalle Tirol and Walther König. Essays by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Paul O’Neill, and Nina Tabassomi in English and German accompany Jafri’s work.

Kathrin Böhm: Art on the Scale of Life (2023) has been realised through a collaboration between the University of Gothenburg; PUBLICS, Helsinki; and The Showroom, London, and is co-published with Sternberg Press. This anthological book provides acomprehensive overview of Kathrin Böhm’s multifaceted, deeply collaborative and durational practice. Combining visual and textual material, it offers an overview of Böhm’s exceptional modus operandi. Kathrin Böhm: Art on the Scale of Life critically profiles, contextualizes, and theoretically elaborates the work of artist Kathrin Böhm, offering an overview of her exceptional practice, which is rooted in a highly original artistic synthesis of a range of concerns and approaches. Co-edited by Gerrie van Noord, Paul O’Neill, and Mick Wilson. The book is designed by An Endless Supply.

Dr. Paul O’Neill is an Irish curator, artist, writer, and educator. Paul is the Artistic Director of PUBLICS, since September 2017. Between 2013-17, he was Director of the Graduate Program at the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), Bard College, New York. He is author of the critically acclaimed book The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s), (Cambridge, MASS., The MIT Press, 2012). Paul has also co-curated over seventy exhibitions and is author and editor of numerous agenda-setting anthologies on curating. Most recent being Not Going it Alone: Collective Curatorial Curating (Apex Art, New York, 2023).

Dr. Bhavisha Panchia is a curator and researcher of visual and audio culture. Her work engages with artistic and cultural practices under shifting global conditions, focusing on anti/postcolonial discourses, imperial histories, and networks of production and circulation of media. She is the founder of Nothing to Commit Records, a label and publishing platform committed to the production and expansion of knowledge related to the intersection of contemporary art, literature and music within and across the global South.

Stéphane Querrec is a Finland-based Basque-French artist manager and producer specialised in conceptual and experimental art projects on the cusp of visual arts, sound, film and performance. As the co-founder and director of PALO, a support structure based in Helsinki, Querrec has over the last few years been involved in the leadership, development, production of more than twenty artworks, partnering with institutions in Finland and abroad.

PUBLICS is a curatorial and commissioning agency with a dedicated research library and event space in Helsinki, Finland. Under the artistic direction of curator Paul O’Neill, and team members Annabelle Antas, Micol Curatolo, Valentina Černiauskaitė and PUBLICS YOUTH, PUBLICS explores a “work together” institutional model with multiple overlapping objectives, thematic strands and collaborations. PUBLICS is partnering with Saastamoinen Foundation for 2023-25. www.publics.fi