From: Pivô

To: Nothing Gets Organised

Dim Corners

16.11.2024–15.12.2024

In the dim, candlelit stillness of a blackout, the profound kinship between the power grid’s faltering pulse and the human body’s elusive balance becomes self-evident. Just as the ceaseless demands on an overstretched electrical system lead to an inevitable collapse, so do the relentless pressures of modern life erode our inner reserves, culminating in the all-too-familiar state of burnout. Like camera lenses, our eyes gradually adapt to the darkness, searching for light in the shadows, mirroring the resilience and adaptability required to navigate these moments of forced stillness. In each case, the fragility of overtaxed systems becomes apparent, and the flickering of lights and the dulling of spirits both signal a desperate need for rest, recovery, and a re-evaluation of our insatiable drive for productivity. In these moments of forced stillness, we may find an opportunity to reflect on the delicate equilibrium required to sustain our worn-out cities and bodies.

This resonance forms the thematic backbone of Dim Corners, an evocative exhibition in Johannesburg featuring new works by Brazilian artist Leticia Ramos and South African artist Zen Marie. The exhibition takes into account the city’s frequent energy shortages, and also the recent blackouts that São Paulo had experienced since this project started, weaving a narrative that intertwines the immediate physical impact with the broader, insidious issues of climate change and environmental racism. Ramos and Marie, through their distinct artistic lenses, lay bare the socio-economic and environmental crises underpinning these blackouts, urging viewers to confront the realities often left in the shadows.

With her meticulous photographic techniques and hauntingly detailed video installations, Leticia Ramos captures an undetected megalopolis with eerie, ephemeral quality under blackout conditions. Her work is a visual symphony of darkness and light, where the intermittent glow of emergency lights and candles becomes a metaphor for resilience amidst adversity. Ramos’ work documents these moments and provides a stark reminder of the inequities exacerbated by environmental degradation and climate change.

Zen Marie has created a multi-channel video work, filmed over six months while driving on the De Villiers Graaf elevated highway, commonly known as the double-decker highway, in Johannesburg, South Africa. His camera works in an attempt to understand this structure—its layers, concrete beams, and apertures—and serves as a basis for speculations on the city it bypasses. This work reflects on the highway’s design as a lingering fantasy of modernism, one that has evolved into a present marked by fleeting capital, hijacked buildings, and failing infrastructure.

Dim Corners is a pretext for a dialogue between two artists who didn’t know each other beforehand and who share similar concerns, while speaking from different angles of the Global South. Just as a city’s lights can dim without warning, so too can the vitality of its residents; both serve as reminders that when the systems in place fail, the consequences ripple far beyond mere inconvenience.

Information

Address

Museum Africa 121 Lilian Ngoyi St, Newtown Johannesburg

Opening Hours

Tuesday–Sunday: 9:00 am–5:00 pm Closed on Mondays

Contact

For more informations contact us on Instagram, Email or WhatsApp

Program

Opening Event

Saturday, Nov 16th 2024, 11:00 am Museum Africa, 121 Lilian Ngoyi St, Newtown, Johannesburg

Public Screening

Tuesday, Nov 19th 2024, 6:00 pm The Bioscope, 44 Stanley Ave, Milpark, Johannesburg

  • Leticia Ramos, ERBF – Câmera Instantâneo Sequencial (1,2), 2007, 3’38”
  • Leticia Ramos, Grão, 2014, 7’30”
  • Leticia Ramos, [VOSTOK], 2014, 7’30”
  • Leticia Ramos, Não é difícil para um investigador da natureza simular seus fenómenos / For a researcher of the nature, it is not difficult to simulate a phenomenon, 2018 7’22”
  • Leticia Ramos, A Noite Azul / The Blue Night, 2017, 4’
  • Leticia Ramos, Null Island, 2020, 6’30”
  • Leticia Ramos, Drop Spike, 2021, 5’
  • Zen Marie, Ile Aux Serpents, 2019, Excerpt
  • Zen Marie, Paradise Fallen, 2021, Excerpt
  • Zen Marie, Paradise Fallen: Blaxis, 2021, Excerpts
  • Zen Marie, Fly over, 2024, Excerpts

Public Performance
Fly Over: Live Scoring by Mpumelelo Mcata

Saturday, Nov 30th 2024, 2:00 pm Museum Africa, 121 Lilian Ngoyi St, Newtown, Johannesburg

  • Mpumelelo Mcata (BLK JKS) will be performing and composing a live score for the video installation Fly Over by Zen Marie. Mpumelelo Mcata is well known for his affiliation with the post rock band BLK JKS, but is also an internationally acclaimed filmmaker and composer who is no newbie to the exploration of independent art work. Mcata and Marie have collaborated on various projects, films and installations over the years. This new work is an extension of the Blaxis: Paradise Fallen series of installations.
Still from FLY_OVER, directed by Zen Marie, 2024
Still from Witness Block, directed by Leticia Ramos, 2024

Nothing Gets Organised

Operating in downtown Johannesburg since 2016, Nothing Gets Organised (NGO) has attempted to administer an alternative to the current structures practitioners work within in the context of Johannesburg. Noting the contingent nature of our present, their programming attempts to be a dialogical encounter between now and another time. Understanding the future as plural and disparate encounters with both a past not yet passed, and the present as it reveals itself or remains hidden, NGO embraces the future unknown as a premise that might yield another possibility. The platform was founded in 2016 by Gabi Ngcobo and Sinethemba Twalo. NGO is interested in unconventional processes of self‑organising—those that do not imply structure, tangibility, context or form. It is a space for (NON)SENSE where (NON)SENSE can profoundly gesticulate towards, dislodge, embrace, disavow, or exist as nothing! Research is ongoing, malleable and open-ended. NGO pursues that which becomes publicly visible, to which they confer context, name and identity. This is the last project by NGO in its current configuration.

Pivô

Pivô is a non-profit art space providing a platform for exchange, critical thinking and artistic experimentation, funded in 2012 inside one of São Paulo’s most iconic modernist buildings, the Copan, projected by Oscar Niemeyer in the city’s central area. Since its inception, the institution has enabled and facilitated projects by over two hundred artists and curators both local and international and in all career stages.

Its program consists of temporary exhibitions, new commissions, residencies, publications as well as discursive educational public programming, fostering a critical understanding of local and international most pressing issues in art and society. Its core mission is to create growing networks of exchange between artistic and cultural practitioners from different contexts and to provide an active meeting point for an emerging art scene in Brazil.

After more than a decade in operation, in 2023 Pivô opened a space in Salvador (Bahia). Located in a historic and relevant house to the cultural scene in Salvador, Pivô Salvador aims to establish itself as a multidisciplinary research and exchange platform in the Northeast of Brazil. The institution’s main objective is to promote local artistic production and create a free and open space for dialogue between various agents in the field of contemporary culture, both nationally and internationally.

OtherNetwork

OtherNetwork is a decentralised cultural institution that connects independent art spaces. At its core are hundreds of projects that are rooted in their local context, responding to the needs of artists directly. We see the term ‘independent’ as fluid and context-specific, and continuously seek to unpack what this means to cultural practitioners in different global localities.

Follow for updates

  1. @leatomica
  2. @znmarie
  3. @ngo_nothing_gets_organised
  4. @cookies
  5. @pivosalvador
  6. @othernetwork
  7. @ifa.visualarts

Credits

An exhibition by ifa, curated by Pivô and hosted by Nothing Gets Organised at Museum Africa, Johannesburg, as part of the OtherNetwork project.

Artists

Zen Marie, Leticia Ramos

Nothing Gets Organised

Curator

Sinethemba Twalo

Administrator

Samantha Modisenyane

Pivô

Curators

Fernanda Brenner, Sylvia Monasterios

Director

Carolina de Sá

Special thanks to Museum Africa

OtherNetwork

Creative Direction

Cookies (Federico Martelli, Alice Grégoire, Clément Périssé, Colin Keays)

Website Conception & Visual Identity

F451 (Quentin Creuzet, Domitille Debret)

Research Team

Samantha Modisenyane, Abraham Tettey, Camila Alegría, Matheus dos Reis, Camilo Quiroga

Editor

Colin Keays

Project Management

ifa Visual Arts Department (Nina Frohm)

Additional Project Support

Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie, Between Bridges Foundation

ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen

Project Management

Nina Frohm

Travelling Exhibition Department

Sabina Klemm, Nina Frohm, Valerie Hammerbacher, Clea Laade, Alexander Lisewski, Clemens Wild