The Otolith Group — A Lure a Part Allure Apart — Bétonsalon - Centre d'art et de recherche — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: June 15 → July 23, 2011

Bétonsalon presents the first solo exhibition in France by The Otolith Group, the London-based artist collective founded by Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar. Concerned with exploring the legacies and potentialities of the essay film, cosmopolitan modernisms, speculative futures and science-fictions, The Otolith Group has developed a multifaceted practice that integrates video and film making, exhibition curation, publication and the elaboration of public platforms.

At the core of the exhibition is The Otolith Trilogy, consisting of Otolith I (2003), Otolith II (2007) and Otolith III (2009), each of which considers the potential of specific political and cultural moments to evoke alternative futures. Projected according to a set schedule, these essay-films alternate with assemblages that revisit The Otolith Group’s lecture performance Communists Like Us (2006), their audio-essay The Secret King in the Empire of Thinking (2011) and the work of Marvel comics artist Jack Kirby and artist Vidya Sagar, both of which informed the methodologies of The Otolith Trilogy.

These assemblages, designed specially for Bétonsalon, constitute a near-subliminal exhibition that appears and disappears within the scheduled screenings. The folding of a temporary display inside a scenographic proposition opens up new passageways through The Otolith Group’s constellation of allusions and references. A Lure a Part Allure Apart embraces The Group’s preoccupation with the disjunctions of temporality and the science-fictions of the alternative present.