12. Seecum Cheung
Poppositions Brussels 2017
ING Art Center, Place Royale, Brussels BE
20 to 23 April
Images / Text
For fair information, see poppositions.com
‘Interview with Lennart’ (2016) focuses on Cheung’s introduction to Lennart Schwarzbach, a 24-year-old candidate for the National Democratic Party of Germany (NDP), a political party known to attract neo-Nazis as followers. Conducted 18 months ago in Harburg, Germany with the assistance of the Australian journalist Richard Cooke (SBS), the interview directly questions the candidate’s position on immigration, racial solidarity, and multiculturalism; underscored by Cheung’s physical presence, a binaural soundtrack, and the precarious social terms imposed by aggressively xenophobic politics.
The film is presented alongside an activation of this interview’s transcripts, produced in collaboration with Tom Clark, contributing editor of ‘FORMER WEST: Art and the Contemporary after 1989’ (MIT Press/basis voor actuele kunst Utrecht), former co-director of Arcadia Missa in London, and editor of ‘How to Sleep Faster’. ‘Interview with Lennart’ is a segment of Cheung’s larger ongoing body of research into the rhetoric of resurgent extremist politics throughout Western Europe, particularly in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, and France.
Seecum Cheung (*1984, Coventry, UK) completed her MFA at Piet Zwart Institute in 2016. She lives in Rotterdam. Last month she took part in ‘It is dangerous to go out into the world uncaffeinated’, a presentation and film screening organized by Syndicate in Athens, Greece. Her first large-scale solo exhibition, ‘The Dutch Window’, opens next month at Grand Union, Birmingham.
Invited to participate by the fair's artistic director Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk, and the selection committee, Kasper Bosmans, Elise Lammer, and Jo-ey Tang.
An open forum and panel discussion moderated by Rachelle Dufour will take place as part of the fair's public programme, 'Present Club: So, what do you suggest?' on Friday 21 April from 15 to 16:30.