Alicja Melzacka
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Selected curatorial projects
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Selected publications
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About
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portfolio
p 01-17
p 18-24
p 25
Publishing and bookbinding terminology
abounds in bodily metaphors and vocabulary
borrowed from choreography, like dos à dos
(‘back-to-back’) or tête-bêche (‘head-to-toe’).
This dual meaning underscores publishing’s
intrinsic connection to materiality–of printed
matter and the writer’s/ reader’s physicality–
and o󱐯ers a premise for the exploration of the
relationship between texts and bodies.
Taking place across two afternoons, this
programme charts an expanded eld of
publishing and strings together a series of
diverse contributions that in some places touch
each other.
The project was organised by Alicja
Melzacka, O󱐯 the Grid’s curator-in-residence
and coincided with Druk In Leuven, a word
and text festival at various locations in the city.
Alicja Melzacka, ‘Smudged-glass writing’,
reading and discussion group
Jeroen Peeters, ‘A table’, lecture-
performance
Clara Amaral, ‘Do you remember that time
we were together and danced this or that
dance?’, performance
Francesca Hawker, ‘Into Eels’, table-read
Reinier Vrancken, ‘Teeth Surrounding a
Flower in the Meanings’, conversation
Martha Jager (Dear,) & Isabelle Sully
(Unbidden Tongues), ‘Messy Keynote’, talk
Henry Andersen, ‘DS’, reading
Kate Briggs, ‘The Long Form’, passages
translated by Will Holder
Playbill (Martha Jager & Isabelle Sully),
‘Budget Statements 2022’, performance
Back-to-back: perspectives on
artists’ writing and publishing
27-28.04.2024
O󱐯-the-Grid, Cas-co, Leuven
programme with Henry Andersen,
Clara Amaral, Francesca Hawker, Will
Holder, Martha Jager, Jeroen Peeters,
Isabelle Sully, and Reinier Vrancken
documentation by Jente Waerzeggers
[more information]
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Collecting, arranging and displaying, rather
than making, constitute the core of Rokko
Miyoshi’s artistic practice. His collection spans
families of objects, amongst them a vast
number of vintage press photographs and
archival documents. For Art Brussels, Rokko
Miyoshi proposes a new installation that builds
upon this long-standing practice of critically
reframing found materials.
T.W.I.B. (The World is Bananas) extends
Rokko Miyoshi’s ongoing research into the
origins of modern propaganda, viewed through
the lens of the history of the United Fruit
Company (present-day Chiquita)–a multi-
national corporation whose aggressive banana
monopoly at the turn of the 19th century
exerted a lasting, detrimental impact on the
economic and political situation in Central and
South America. Under the inuence of Freud’s
grandson and the self-proclaimed ‘propagator
of propaganda’ Edward Bernays, the U.F.C.’s
state-of-the-art public relations strategy helped
to legitimise neocolonial violence in favour of
the United States’ commercial interest.
A carefully curated selection of objects,
photos, and archives–amongst them lavish
menus distributed on board of the U.F.C-
owned cargo-liners of the Great White Fleet–is
displayed within an imposing frame structure
that engages with the aesthetics and politics
of redaction by simultaneously supporting
and sabotaging access to the materials,
representing yet another in Miyoshi’s long line
of experiments with exhibition devices.
Rokko Miyoshi, T.W.I.B.
25.04-28.04.2024
Art Brussels 2024
solo presentation at the
Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles booth
documentation by Silvia Cappellari
[more information]
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