Programme produced on the occasion of Playbill Act V: Anna Daučíková & Helena Jiskrová at Torpedo Theatre, Amsterdam June 9, 2023.

Completely adept at taking on institutions that wield normative forms of power, Anna Daučíková is unashamedly informed by the value of her lived experience, a personal history that takes a guiding role within her practice, particularly the period of time during which she lived under surveillance in the former Soviet Union.

In an early photographic series titled Acadamey of the Arts (1988), Daučíková rightly takes up her position atop a plinth built into the side of the Academy of Arts building in Moscow, a subversive move given that it was a position traditionally reserved for the male greats. Daučíková went on to become a professor herself, and was for a long time one of the few women teaching at the academy in Prague. This biographical trajectory evolved into a series of films titled Portrait of a Woman with Institution, which plot out the relationships of various women to the institutions they inhabited. For Act V, one film from this series was screened, dedicated to Czech architect Helena Jiskrová. Alongside the screening, four pieces of furniture redesigned by Jiskrová from salvaged street materials set the scene for the viewing.

Produced on the occasion of Sarah Rapson’s exhibition Ode To Psyche at Secession, Vienna, November 20, 2021– February 20, 2022.

Richard Nonas: Collected Printed Matter 1971–2020 is a tribute to an artist who has superbly captured the essence of the artist’s book, the poster and the invitation as well, by integrating them as symbiotic components into his artistic research; that is, a poetic narrative contaminated by those memories of landscapes and figures that have animated his personal history and that have never left him. This book showcases 138 records of artist’s books, catalogues, posters, invitation cards and ephemera (with an essay by Jan Meissner). Richard Nonas (1936–2021) was a major figure in American post-minimalism.

Invitation card produced on the occasion of Gerwald Rockenschaub’s exhibition at Galerie nächst St. Stephan, Vienna, 3 May–22 June, 1986.

Gerwald Rockenschaub works within a formal repertoire that he began developing in the 1980s when he was a central figure in the emerging “neo-geo” (neo-geometric conceptualism) movement. Uniquely influenced by his work as a techno DJ and composer of electronic music, Rockenschaub absorbs the everyday imagery and forms of logos, traffic signs, and pictograms to produce sculptures, wall installations, and animations that render an aura of hyperrealist perfection.

Publication produced on the occasion of Gerwald Rockenschaub’s exhibition at Galerie nächst St. Stephan, Vienna, 3 May–22 June, 1986.

Gerwald Rockenschaub works within a formal repertoire that he began developing in the 1980s when he was a central figure in the emerging “neo-geo” (neo-geometric conceptualism) movement. Uniquely influenced by his work as a techno DJ and composer of electronic music, Rockenschaub absorbs the everyday imagery and forms of logos, traffic signs, and pictograms to produce sculptures, wall installations, and animations that render an aura of hyperrealist perfection.

Born in Hartsville, South Carolina, Curtis Cuffie moved to New York as a teenager, first residing with his brothers in Brooklyn. In his adult life, Cuffie spent time unhoused in the streets of Manhattan where he found both inspiration and materials for his work as an artist. Cuffie’s sculptures interpret material street culture in the 1990s and early 2000s, using discarded and found objects assembled and transformed into collaged figures that speak to both the abject reality of urban surplus as well as the magical alchemy of artistic creation. Built by Cuffie outdoors, primarily on the sidewalks around Astor Place and along the Bowery, his sculptures were subject to the whims of weather, police interference, and the sanitation department, as well as Cuffie’s own continued interventions into his work. Edited by Scott Portnoy and Robert Snowden with Ciarán Finlayson and designed by Julie Peeters.