Activation - Alternative Currencies: An Archive and A Manifesto
w/ Performance Artist Tina Wang
Saturday, February 15, 2020
4 to 5:30
Installation view of Stefanos Tsivopoulos’ Alternative Currencies: An Archive and A Manifesto (2013-Ongoing) and History Zero (2013). Image by Julia Gillard. [Image Description: In a room with black walls and no lights, two metallic gray shelving units stand in the center. On each shelf are boxes, papers, and books. The viewer can see through the shelves onto two projected images: one image is projected onto the west wall and features three people walking in an urban space and the other is projected onto the south wall and obscured. There are light brown stools throughout the space and more shelving units in the background.]
Stefanos Tsivopoulos’ Alternative Currencies: An Archive and A Manifesto was activated Saturday, February 15 by performance artist Tina Wang, who made its contents accessible to visitors through movement and gesture. An ongoing project since 2013, the archival installation features a selection of 32 systems of economic exchange drawn from Tsivopoulos’ larger body of research documenting the visual culture of transaction, including lending libraries, community development banks, and gift economies. The archive will be activated again by performance artist Rebecca Pristoop on Saturday, February 29 from 5:30-7pm as part of Before There Was Money There Was Debt: Anthropologist David Graeber and Artist Stefanos Tsivopoulos in Conversation.
Bios
Stefanos Tsivopoulos is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker who has exhibited extensively in art institutions and film festivals worldwide. In 2013, he represented Greece at the 55th Venice Biennial with the multimedia installation History Zero. He has also exhibited in documenta 14, Kassel, Germany, in 2017; the 2nd Beijing Biennial, in 2014; and Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain, in 2010.
Tsivopoulos has participated in several renowned international residencies including the Rijksakademie van Beeldende kunsten Amsterdam, IASPIS Stockholm, Platform Garanti Istanbul, and ISCP New York City. His numerous awards include the Mondriaan Foundation Production Award, the Onnassis Cultural Foundation New York Commission, the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Award, and the Greek Ministry of Culture Venice Biennale Commission.
Tsivopoulos’s work has appeared recently in solo exhibitions at the MuCEM, Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean, Marseille; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart; Cycladic Museum of Art, Athens; Stella Art Foundation, Moscow; and ISCP, New York among others. International group exhibitions include Tate Modern, London; MACBA, Barcelona; MUKHA, Antwerp; Kunsthaus, Zurich; Bundeskunsthalle Bonn; Haus Der Culturen Der Welt, Berlin; SALT, Istanbul; BAK Basis voor Aktuele Kunst, Utrecht; LEEUM, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul; and the Centre Pompidou Paris, among others.
Tina Wang is a performance artist based in New York City. Identity, fragility, and resilience are key themes in her work, which draws on her experience as a Taiwanese citizen raised in Latin America and her decade of work across the gig economy (service, dance, translation, yoga). Her performances immerse the body around the objects of menial labor. Her work seeks to challenge assumptions about where these objects belong, who belongs with them, and their difference from living bodies. Recently, Tina was a mentee in the NYFA Immigrant Artist Program, participant in Creative Capital's taller para artistas profesionales, and guest artist at The Sable Project. Her work has been shown at Judson Church, New York Live Arts, Governor's Island, The Exponential Festival, Nimbus Dance, Chashasma, Radiator Gallery, Salvatore Capezio Theater, to name a few.