UNA NUEVA LENGUA (A new tongue)

Antonio Gagliano, Verónica Lahitte
with a guest contribution by Anna Romanenko
December 10, 2017 - January 14, 2018

Exhibition
in the framework of the residency exchange program
Catalonia – Baden Württemberg 2017
Württembergischer Kunstverein / Querungen

Opening
Sunday, December 10, 2017, 7 p.m.

Stipend
After a successful start of the residency program for artistic exchange between Catalonia and Baden-Württemberg in 2015, this program was continued in 2017. Initiated by the Goethe-Institute Barcelona, the Hangar art center in Barcelona, the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg and the Württembergischer Kunstverein – it consists in four residencies taking place for two months in Stuttgart and Barcelona and addressing two artists of each partner region. This year’s fellows from Barcelona, Antonio Gagliano and Verónica Lahitte, stayed in Stuttgart from June to July.

Exhibition
The exhibition UNA NUEVA LENGUA (A new tongue) (December 10, 2017 - January 14, 2018) presents the results of this fellowship. Antonio Gagliano und Verónica Lahitte invited the artist Anna Romanenko to take part with a guest contribution.

"UNA NUEVA LENGUA (A new tongue) is a spacial essay combining projects by Antonio Gagliano (Argentina, 1982), Verónica Lahitte (Argentina, 1980) und Anna Romanenko (Russia, 1983) evolving around notions such as accent, réplica, theft, liquidity or recoil.
UNA NUEVA LENGUA (A NEW TOUNGE) loots the conditions of possibility necessary for a conversation to take place. Thus, the projects bring together case studies from the realms of classical literature, the birth of the internet and military history, unfolding scenes wherein two opposing sides, as characters or combatants, exchange sensations and technical arguments. Nevertheless, the messages swarm out into a sentimentally confused zone where the opponents by wishing to understand destroy one another.
At the same time the project recounts appearances of replicas, doubles, copies and of rewriting as a necessary step through which the assemblage of primal scenes can recurrently actualize itself. For what does it imply to exhume a bygone conversation and drag its concerns into the present time? How to address the ways in which history presents itself? Maybe a copy also marks a form of catastrophe?
In no case does the search for material amidst the rubble entail a nostalgic gaze, but rather the insistence on the resignification of fragments, playing with their unforeseen constellations, the traces of a new tongue." (Antonio Gagliano, Verónica Lahitte, Anna Romanenko)

Partner
Goethe-Institut Barcelona; Hangar Art Center for Production and Research, Barcelona; Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg; Württembergischer Kunstverein

Supported by
State Ministry of Baden-Wuerttemberg for Sciences, Research and Arts
regional government Catalonia