Event overview
This is when, in the opening titles, his name would come in. He is credited as the screenwriter for the Russian version of Fifty Shades of Grey. But he changed the film’s direction. The submissive love story of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey became a takedown of patriarchy. Christian’s body was found dangling from the Volga bridge in Ulyanovsk.
The film never gets made. After a drunk night around Kazan, the former capital of the Idel-Ural State and now part of DVD Zone 5, he discovers a mysterious black statuette at a trash heap in the outskirts of the city along the Western stretches of the Silk Road. He takes the statuette home and begins to listen closely to the weak sounds it is muttering. In all surrounding countries, strange discoveries are made. In Bosnia, a series of triangular-shaped hills are taken for ancient pyramids. The Macedonian capital of Skopje is scattered with golden statues, adorning brutalist buildings on a grid once designed by Kenzo Tange, the Japanese metabolist. A giant knight on horseback, covered in gold, depicts Alexander the Great. But it is, absent-mindedly, called The Horseman. Who, or what, is behind this? The statuette whispers: “The Verities…”
Bio:
Founded by Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden, Metahaven’s practice spans art, filmmaking, and design to provoke new imaginaries that are equally bound to aesthetics, poetics, and politics. Recent solo presentations include ‘Information Skies’, Auto Italia, London (2016), and Mumbai Art Room, Bombay (2016), ‘The Sprawl’, YCBA, San Francisco (2015), ‘Black Transparency’, Future Gallery, Berlin (2014), and ‘Islands in the Cloud’, MoMA PS1, New York (2013). Recent group exhibitions include the Sharjah Biennale 2017, Sharjah, UAE, ‘Fear & Love’, Design Museum, London (2016), ‘Dream Out Loud’, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2016), ‘The Eighth Climate (What Does Art Do?)’, the 11th Gwangju Bienniale (2016), ‘All of This Belongs to You’, Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2015), ‘Private Settings: Art After the Internet’, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw (2014), and ‘Frozen Lakes’, Artists Space, New York (2013). Recent publications include ‘Black Transparency’ (2015), ‘Can Jokes Bring Down Governments?’ (2013), and ‘Uncorporate Identity’ (2010). Music videos by Metahaven include ‘Home’ (2014), and ‘Interference’ (2015), both for musician, composer and artist Holly Herndon, as part of an ongoing collaboration. Metahaven’s full-length documentary, ‘The Sprawl (Propaganda about Propaganda)’, premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2016. Its successor, a short film titled ‘Information Skies’, was shot and edited in 2016 and has been nominated for the 2017 European Film Awards. The short film ‘Hometown’, a successor to ‘Information Skies,’ was shot in Beirut and Kyiv in 2017.
Metahaven's lecture is part of the Goldsmiths MFA Post-Graduate Talks series.
Series 1.2: The Truth, Again.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 20 Nov 2017 | 5:30pm - 7:00pm |
Accessibility
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