Arjuna Neuman and Denise Ferreira da Silva: 4 Waters – Deep Implicancy

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Arjuna Neuman and Denise Ferreira da Silva, "4 Waters – Deep Implicancy," 2018

HD video still

Reception Friday, September 28, 7:00 pm

Artist Talk Saturday, September 29, 2:00 pm; preceded by a full screening of both filmworks at 1:00 pm

Or Gallery is excited to present 4 Waters – Deep Implicancy by Arjuna Neuman and Denise Ferreira da Silva. This is the second work produced through Neuman and Ferreira da Silva’s collaboration, and its exhibition at Or Gallery will be its Canadian debut following its world premiere at the 10th Berlin Biennnale.

Curated by Denise Ryner

Four Waters is as much a film project and an experiment in collaboration as it is a set of fragments drawn from a re-imagined cosmos. These fragments, sounds and stories help to convey the experiential moment of entanglement, or rather, they describe an entangled moment prior to separation, what Neuman and Ferreira da Silva call Deep Implicancy. One such story they follow is water, both as it transitions with and into other matter, including life, but also as it combines disparate geographies, bodies of/in water, and four islands within them – Lesvos, Haiti, Marshall Islands, Tiwi.

Through a series of experimental migrations and elemental crossings they begin to question the form of the universal human, its calcified and exceptional origins, and in particular, its ethical program. Wandering and wondering through a transformative figuring of justice, we ask, what if our image of the world recalled phase instead of measure? And what becomes of ethics if we let go of value? Neuman and Ferreira da Silva’s film Serpent Rain (2016), the first work in this series, will also be on view.

Neuman’s recent presentations include those at Whitechapel Gallery, London; Museum of Image and Sound, Sao Paolo; Istanbul Modern, Turkey; MAATand Docslisboa, Portugal; Sharjah Biennial 13, UAE; Bergen Assembly, Norway; NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore; the 56th Venice Biennale and SuperCommunity; Industry of Light, London; the Haus Der Kulturen der Welt; Home Works Forum 7 at Ashkal Alwan and the Beirut Art Centre, Lebanon; Le Gaite Lyric, Paris; the Canadian Centre for Architecture; and the Rat School of Art, Seoul, among others. As a writer he has published essays in Relief Press, Into the Pines Press, The Journal for New Writing, VIA Magazine, Concord, Art Voices, Flaunt, LEAP, Hearings at Contour Biennale 8 and e-flux.

Dr. Denise Ferreira da Silva is a Professor and Director of The Social Justice Institute (the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice) at the University of British Columbia. Before joining UBC, she was an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego and, from 2010 to 2015, she held the inaugural chair in Ethics at the School of Business and Management and the directorship of the Centre for Ethics and Politics at Queen Mary University of London. Her work in the contemporary art sphere includes texts for publications linked to the 2016 Liverpool and Sao Paulo Biennales, advising Natasha Ginwala, the curator for the Contour Biennale 8 (Mechelen, 2017), as well as events (performances, talks and private sessions) and texts that form part of her own practice, Poethical Readings (in collaboration with Valentina Desideri).

Image: still from 4 Waters – Deep Implicancy (2018), Arjuna Neuman and Denise Ferreira da Silva. 30 min, HD video colour and sound. 
Sound Composition: Cobi Van Tonder
; Sound Recordist: Katharina Weinstock
; Editor: Mariam Mekiwi; 
Producer: Julia Reagan

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Presented with the British Arts Council, Hannah Barry Gallery, and the University of British Columbia.