Marking the end of Moderation(s), a long-term program (August 2012 – August 2014) initiated by Witte de With and Spring Workshop, this group exhibition curated by Heman Chong and Samuel Saelemakers features more than forty artists and plays with variation and repetition, resemblance and difference, synchronicities and slippages.

Exhibition period: 22 May – 17 August 2014
Opening: 22 May 2014, 5pm – 8pm

Events: Throughout June and July 2014, moderated tours and speculative readings of the exhibition will be held by Oscar van den Boogaard (novelist), Chris Fitzpatrick (curator), Christina Li (curator and writer), Marnie Slater (artist and writer), and others. Dates and times to be announced soon.

Artists: A Constructed World, Nadim Abbas, Allora & Calzadilla, Ang Song Ming, Ivan Argote, Bik Van der Pol, Pierre Bismuth, John Cage, Chen Zhen, Chu Yun, Ceal Floyer, Aurélien Froment, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Douglas Gordon, Minja Gu, Sharon Hayes, Ho Rui An, Ho Sin Tung, Tim Etchells & Vlatka Horvat, On Kawara, Patrick Killoran, Kwan Sheung Chi, Nicolás Lamas, Lee Kit, Michael Lee, Lucas Lenglet, Gabriel Lester, Marysia Lewandowska, Charles Lim, Katarina Löfström, MAP Office, Anthony Marcellini, Ahmet Ögüt & Cevdet Erek, João Vasco Paiva, Patricia Reed, Willem de Rooij, Praneet Soi, Nasrin Tabatabai & Babak Afrassiabi, Koki Tanaka, Narcisse Tordoir, Freek Wambacq, Leung Chi Wo + Sara Wong, Magdalen Wong, Adrian Wong, Haegue Yang, Trevor Yeung, Johan Zetterquist

Curated by Heman Chong (artist and writer, Singapore) and Samuel Saelemakers (Associate Curator, Witte de With)

But if everything is potentially everything else, complained the translator, what am I doing here? – George Szirtes, Afterword: The Death Of The Translator, 2013

Works by more than forty artists from across the globe – including a strong contingent of Hong Kong-based artists, many of whom have never shown at Witte de With before– are gathered around key concepts such as time, duration and space (Douglas Gordon, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, On Kawara), memory and inscription (Ang Song Ming, John Cage, Sharon Hayes), transformation (Bik Van der Pol, Nicolás Lamas), pleasure (Ivan Argote, Chu Yun, Willem de Rooij, Haegue Yang), and encounters (Lee Kit, Narcisse Tordoir). The relations and transferences between the presented artworks is guided by notions such as tension, repetition, variation, and momentum, reminiscent of Contact Improvisation, a dance method developed by choreographer Steve Paxton.

How can one work of art moderate another one? Can an audience become a moderator of the works on view? How much translation is needed to bring out meaningful relations between works created by different artists? If everything is connected, what is the shared connective language? The Part In The Story deals with the transmissive qualities of objects, situations, and storytelling, where one can dissolve into the others.

Guilty Pleasures, Incidents of Travel, A Thing At A Time, A Fictional Residency, Stories and Situations, and The Social Contract, each project installment of Moderation(s) questioned or redefined the conditions which impact the creation and production of objects, situations, and stories. As such, the dynamic triangulation between these three axis is the central topic of The Part In The Story, which can be seen as an epilogue and a reprise of the manifold motifs at play in the Moderation(s) program.

An epilogue is the final chapter at the end of a story. It can occur a significant period of time after the main plot has ended, and may offer scenes only tangentially related to the subject of the story. An epilogue can continue in the same narrative style and perspective as the preceding story, although occasionally the form can be drastically different from the overall story.