On February 18, 19:30–21:30, Dorota Gaweda and Egle Kulbokaite (YOUNG GIRL READING GROUP), two of the Spring 2020 (Inter)national artists-in-residence at Onassis AiR, will give a public talk about their artistic practice and research as part of the ongoing 2019/20 series of talks at Onassis AiR focusing on artistic & curatorial research practices.

IMPORTANT: THE TOTAL CAPACITY OF THE SPACE IS 49 PEOPLE SO ATTENDANCE WILL BE ON A FIRST-COME / FIRST SERVED BASIS!

Dorota Gawęda (b. 1986, Lublin, PL) and Eglė Kulbokaitė (b. 1987, Kaunas, LT) are an artist duo working under the name YOUNG GIRL READING GROUP (2013–). In their work, they address feminist-inspired theory and (science)fiction, technology-driven emancipation and the discursiveness of space. They work within a variety of media, spanning performance, installation, fragrance, sculpture and video.

With YOUNG GIRL READING GROUP (YGRG) they examine the relationships between reading, affect, distraction, togetherness and disunity, bodily and virtual presence, live action and documentation, interested in how the collective experience of being together can be inscribed in space and how language can become material and embodied. For YGRG, the body of flesh, the location of the reading and the technology used, personify language, perform text and present that very contradiction – of processing material to immaterial, immaterial to material complexities of perceived bodies and environments. The body is re-textualized through technology and the reading is made public and embodied, positing the interdependence of the text, the body, the environment and the technology. The porosity of the queer reading produces a horizontal, useless, amoral and sensual space that lives only in and for experience. In their performances, the ongoing concern is to reconsider the way in which reading developed as a solitary, internalized practice within the modern society, thus having a formative influence on desire and the sexual experiences of individuals. Their current research focuses on the commodification of the ‘scopic’, the over-privileged position of vision over other senses, especially smell but also touch and sound.

During their residency at #OnassisAiR, Dorota Gaweda and Egle Kulbokaite aim to further expand YGRG’s activity through research into emerging technologies of motion tracking, the conceptual and actual possibilities of tactile internet, and the implications those hold for live performance. They further hope to run a number of reading group sessions.

Gawęda and Kulbokaitė have exhibited internationally at Spazio Maiocchi, Milan; Lucas Hirsch Gallery, Düsseldorf (solo); Les Urbaines, Lausanne; 6th Αthens Biennale 2018 ΑΝΤΙ; Art in General, New Yοrk; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Cell Project Space, London (solo); 6th Moscow Biennale for Young Art, MOMA; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Amanda Wilkinson Gallery, London (solo); 13th Baltic Triennial, Contemporary Art Centre, Riga, Vilnius; Kunsthalle Basel; ICA, London; Berlin Biennale 9; CCS Bard, NY; Kunsthalle Zürich; and Le Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, among others. Selected upcoming exhibitions of the duo include presentations at: Lafayette Anticipations, Paris; Amanda Wilkinson Gallery, London; Schimmel Projects – Art Centre Dresden (solo); Futura, Prague (solo); Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf/Berlin.

Learn more: https://www.onassis.org/people/ygrd