ASAKUSA is delighted to announce an artist talk by London-based Mikhail Karikis with Tomoko Shimizu, Associate Professor at University of Tsukuba. The programme will begin with a screening of Karikis's most recent work, Ain't Got No Fear (2016), currently installed at Whitechapel Gallery London and at Kochi-Muziris Biennale in India, which was made with a group of teenagers in a post-industrial regions in South-East England. In the conversation that follows, Shimizu will enquire about Karikis's research-based practice with his use of theoretical frameworks such as Commonwealth (2009), a book by Marxist theorists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, as Karikis cited in his recent work Children of Unquiet (2014). This joint conversation will consider the conception of the commons and its geological base, and explore the political, social, and ethical ramifications of artistic practices which offer alternative memories and futures to reflect upon the present.
Programme:
19:00 - 19:10 Screening of Ain't Got No Fear (2016)
19:10 - 20:10 Conversation with Prof. Tomoko Shimizu
20:10 - 20:30 Questions from the audience
The conversation will be delivered in English only.
About the Artwork:
Ain't Got No Fear (2016) was created by Mikhail Karikis with a group of 11 to 13-year-old boys who are growing up in the militarised industrial marshland of the Isle of Grain in South East England. In response to the isolation of their village and the lack of space where teenagers can gather, local kids have been organising youth raves in a nearby wood which was recently raided by the police. Using as a beat the persistent daily crushing noises of the demolition of a power plant next to their village, Karikis worked with local boys to make a music video in which they sing a rap song they wrote about their lives, recalling memories of being younger and imagining their old age and future. The work also features the boys' rebellious reclaiming of the local site where raves used to take place and glimpses into teenage experiences on the edges of urbanity by following their secret underground hideaways. The work reveals a way in which post-industrial sites may be re-imagined by youths through the logic of friendship, love and play, as well as the thrill of subverting authority and evading adult surveillance.
PEOPLE
— Mikhail Karikis
— Tomoko Shimizu