Vulnerable Critters: Performances
For the first time in Spain, P. Staff will read selected poems from their upcoming publication Everything Has Speed, in which they explore the fluid and violent interactions between bodies and politics. After the reading, Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser will blend spoken word and live music in a performance that reflects on borders and contamination.
| Duration: | 2 hours 30 minutes |
Everything Has Speed by P. Staff
In this poetry reading, P. Staff delves into the vulnerable encounters of bodies, ecosystems and politics. The selected poems are from the artist’s forthcoming publication, provisionally titled Everything Has Speed. P. Staff’s writings explore themes such as intimacy, violence and sensations, as well as the dialogues between bodies, fluids, animals and chemicals, all essential aspects of their artistic practice.
P. Staff (UK, 1987; lives and works in Los Angeles and London) studied at Goldsmiths College, London (2009) and was part of the Associate Artist Programme at LUX, London (2011). Solo exhibitions have been held at LUMA Arles, France (2021), ICA Shanghai (2020), Serpentine Galleries, London (2019), and LUMA Westbau, Zürich (2019), among other venues. P. Staff’s work has been exhibited at various international events and institutions, including the last Venice Biennale (2022), the 13th Shanghai Biennale (2021), the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco (2020), the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2019), the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018), and the New Museum, New York (2017).
Static Range by Himali Singh Soin with David Soin Tappeser
As part of the multi-faceted art project Static Range, Himali Singh Soin reads excerpts from a fictional correspondence between Nanda Devi, a Himalayan peak, and an American nuclear-powered radio surveillance apparatus. By personifying the mountain and the device, Himali tells a simultaneously local and global tale of nuclear contamination while also reflecting on national identities, borders and leakage. The soundscape, played on Himalayan drums, alludes to the oppression of the Uyghur people and their cultural ties to the Himalayas region.
*Produced in partnership with TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, which will present a solo show of the artist this October at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.
For more information: www.tba21.org
Himali Singh Soin (1987; lives and works in New Delhi and London) is a writer and artist. She uses metaphors from outer space and the environment to construct imaginary cosmologies of ecological loss and the loss of home, seeking shelter in the radicality of love. Her book ancestors of the blue moon (2021) is a collection of flash fictions written from the perspective of forgotten Himalayan deities.
