PRESS RELEASE

For immediate release January 14 2014

89plus and the LUMA Foundation announce first 89plus exhibition: “Poetry will be made by all!”

89plus and the LUMA Foundation are pleased to announce the inaugural 89plus exhibition “Poetry will be made by all!” opening on 30 January 2014 at the LUMA/Westbau exhibition space within Löwenbräukunst in Zurich, Switzerland. The exhibition is co-curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Simon Castets and Kenneth Goldsmith, with Danny Snelson as exhibition advisor and program coordinator. Additionally, the exhibition features a film selection curated by Kevin McGarry. “Poetry will be made by all!” is partnered in association with UbuWeb (ubu.com), the world’s leading collection of avant-garde material online.

Expanding on the emergent poetics of online distribution systems and the prominence of poetry in 89plus projects to date, the exhibition will bring together works from renowned and upcoming international poets and writers within displays created by their peers working in design, visual arts and architecture. Inspired by the seminal exhibition “Transform the world! Poetry must be made by all!” curated by Ronald Hunt at the invitation of Pontus Hulten for the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1969, the inaugural 89plus exhibition will highlight how the written word, far from being diminished, finds a renewed importance within today’s digital information networks.

The opening days of the exhibition (30 – 31 January) will feature readings and performances by numerous poets, artists and writers. Emerging poets Harry Burke, Andrew Durbin, Mashinka Firunts, Sophia Le Fraga, Rui An Ho, Sang-Woo Lee, Trisha Low, Steve Roggenbuck and Dena Yago will perform alongside established mentors, including Etel Adnan, Caroline Bergvall, Christian Bök, Anton Bruhin, Tao Lin, Tracie Morris, Mendi + Keith Obadike, Eugenie Paultre and many others. Archival works by Robert Barry and Augusto de Campos will be performed and displayed as part of the exhibition opening. These events will be held in conjunction with a celebration of concrete poet Eugen Gomringer’s remarkably aligned 89th birthday. Gomringer will perform on 30 January and inspires a wealth of poetic works generated throughout the exhibition.

Over the course of two months, poets-in-residence will offer readings, conduct discussions, and produce an expansive library of new works of poetry and innovative writing. These activities bring poets into productive dialogue with visitors to the exhibition as well as a robust network of young poets worldwide, culminating in a library of one thousand books edited, designed and coordinated at LUMA/Westbau and printed on demand by Lulu.com. Through these publications, “Poetry will be made by all!” showcases the breadth and depth of the poetry in real time—locally produced in Zürich and circulating among emergent writers from around the globe. The exhibition features a permanent installation for this type of multimodal media and social engagement designed by acclaimed Japanese architectural firm Atelier Bow Wow. In a spirit of collaboration, the exhibition also features art and design by Content is Relative, Josh Bitelli, Emmanuel Iduma, and Amalia Ulman.

This far-reaching exhibition resonates with the lines of inquiry that guide 89plus: “Since we launched 89plus in January 2013, we have been in a research phase, conducting workshops and panels all over the world. We are starting to see patterns emerge, and one of them is the influence of poetry, both on and offline,” say 89plus co-founders and co-curators, Simon Castets and Hans Ulrich Obrist.

The exhibition will open on 30 – 31 January 2014 and runs through 30 March 2014. It marks the beginning of a three-year collaboration between 89plus and the LUMA Foundation.

Poetry will be made by All!
30 January – 30 March 2014
Opening days: 30 – 31 January 2014

Venue
LUMA/Westbau Löwenbräukunst Limmatstrasse 270
CH-8005 Zurich, Switzerland

Press information
BUREAU N
Jennifer Schmitt – jennifer.schmitt@bureau-n.de / +4930 627 36 104
Silke Neumann – silke.neumann@bureau-n.de / +4930 627 36 102
Katherine Dionysius – katherine@89plus.com

  • About the LUMA Foundation

    The non-profit LUMA Foundation is committed to supporting the activities of independent artists and pioneers, as well as international institutions working in the fields of art and photography, publishing, documentary, and multimedia. Established by Maja Hoffmann, the foundation promotes challenging artistic projects combining a particular interest in environmental issues, human rights, education, and culture in the broadest sense.

    The LUMA Foundation’s current focus is to create a truly experimental cultural complex, the Parc des Ateliers in Arles (France), dedicated to the production of exhibitions and ideas and developed with architect Frank Gehry. This ambitious project envisions an interdisciplinary centre for the production of exhibitions, research, education and archives, and is supported by a growing number of public and private partnerships.

  • About 89plus

    89plus is a long-term, multi-platform research project, co-founded and co-curated by Simon Castets and Hans Ulrich Obrist, which investigates innovative work by the generation born in and after 1989.

    Hans Ulrich Obrist is Co-Director, Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects, Serpentine Galleries, London, and Co-founder of 89plus.
    Simon Castets is Director and Curator, Swiss Institute / Contemporary Art, New York, and Co- founder of 89plus.
    89plus manifests itself through panels, books, periodicals, exhibitions and residencies, bringing together individuals from a generation whose voices are only starting to be heard, yet account for almost half of the world’s population.

    Marked by several paradigm-shifting events, the year 1989 saw the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the introduction of the World Wide Web, and the orbit of the first Global Positioning System satellite. Positing a relationship between these world-changing events and creative production at large, 89plus introduces the work of some of this generation’s most inspiring protagonists.

    Since an introductory panel held in January 2013 at the DLD Conference, 89plus has conducted research and held events in several different countries worldwide, with the 89plus Marathon at London’s Serpentine Sackler Gallery in October as the largest event to date. More at 89plus.com

  • About Kenneth Goldsmith and UbuWeb (ubu.com)

    Kenneth Goldsmith is a poet and the founding editor of UbuWeb. He has published several notable books, including Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in a Digital Age (Columbia University Press, 2011) and his most recent work, Seven American Deaths and Disasters (2013), which was featured on The Colbert Report. He currently resides in New York.

    UbuWeb is a large web-based educational resource for avant-garde material available on the internet, founded in 1996 by Kenneth Goldsmith. Beginning as a repository for visual and concrete poetry, the site has expanded to include a remarkable collection of film and video art, critical documents and essays, sound poetry and art recordings, among many other unclassifiable strands of the avant-garde.

  • About Danny Snelson

    Danny Snelson is a writer, editor and archivist. His online editorial work can be found on UbuWeb, PennSound, Jacket2 and Eclipse. He teaches poetry, new media and digital writing at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the publisher of Edit Publications and runs the Edit Series at the Kelly Writers House in Philadelphia.

  • About Kevin McGarry

    Kevin McGarry is a writer and curator based in Brooklyn, NY. His journalism has recently appeared on Rhizome, T Magazine Blog and the online editions of Art in America, Artforum and Interview. He is a director and programmer of Migrating Forms, an annual festival of moving image art at Anthology Film Archives.