Rabbit Is The New Beef 28.06 - 2.07.2017
Rabbit Is The New Beef is the first sentence in Rem Koolhaas’ essay on Junkspace. It linguistically accents moments of transition and acceleration. Whereas our contemporary condition is fundamentally different from the conditions of the past. Rather than thinking in terms of progress, Koolhaas demonstrates the entropic nature of modernism, starting with architecture. However, the same dynamics also seize other areas of contemporary activity, including the art world. Hence our looking into artistic practices that explore or interact with spaces in between the public and private, the real and the fictitious.
Rabbit Is The New Beef investigates “liminal space”; a notion describing the unpronounced distance that demarcates the undefined transition from one thing to the other. Accordingly, liminal space is an interesting concept to explore social, artistic and political dynamics we normally can’t grasp. Through a series of semi-scripted events and exhibition, the project wishes to generate an encounter, through which our gaze is redirected from overt points of reference to that which is hidden in plain sight.
The participating artists flirt with thresholds in our prescribed and overly administered world in order to engage with our expectations. As well as introducing new ways of seeing. Through the quasi-fictions they engage with, fixed outcomes are thrown into doubt and a new compliant situation might occur. Through these artistic attitudes, the mechanisms of our attention economy, both destructive and constructive, become a focal point. Exploring the “in-betweenness” of “what was” and “the next”, improvisation is given a chance.
Rabbit Is The New Beef is a project by Curatorial Studies at KASK - School of Arts, Ghent.
Featuring Liesbeth Doms, Luca Frei, Oscar Hugal, Karen Amanda Moser, Benny Van den Meulengracht-Vrancx, Bent Vande Sompele, Elise van Mourik.
Curated by May Lie Basyn, Ralph Collier, Phyllis Dierick, Marta Janakakisz, Maud Oonk, Olivier Van D'huynslager.