Dinner-discussion with artist and curator Ellen Tracy 'Waiter waiter there's an axe in my soup' at Kaunas Artists' House

2018 08 30
Author Echo Gone Wrong
Published in Events in Lithuania

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waiter waiter there’s an axe in my soup | dinner-discussion with artist and curator Ellen Tracy | 30 August, 7 pm, Kaunas Artists’ House 🥣

Axe soup, sometimes stone soup, is a dish about dependency. A stroller (so it’s told) – hungry off the road – counts on the hospitality of a village of strangers but this is withheld. Out of this instance of refusal emerges a pot of soup around which dependencies are reshuffled, and new forms of relating become possible. How could we pull an axe out of a pot of soup?

For the full story: http://www.berattarverkstan.se/net/axe.htm

In absence of an axe, we will gather around a naked table, which sincerely invites you to fill it with whatever food or drink that you can. Over the course of this ‘faith supper’, we will be watching, listening to, and reciting a selection of works presented to our table in confidence from an international group of writers and artists. These individuals temporarily entrust themselves to our gathering, and our attentions should fulfill and amplify this trust. In engaging with their works and with each other around the table, we will question the sort of dependencies that are inherent to creative production (or merely being in community).

We will be asking what it means to entrust ourselves, our work, our words or our actions to others, and how we can possibly respond to the dependencies of others. We will be teasing apart ‘good’ dependencies – which upset the primacy of the neo-liberal ‘sovereign’ subject, and can form the basis for lively collaborative forms of world building – from ‘bad’ dependencies, on which hang economic exploitations, forms of coloniality and other dominations.

Please join us at the table with an offering – a can of cola, half a tart, last night’s leftovers – in homage, and with attunement to the various ways we rely on and are relied upon by those near and far, known and unknown.

This event is a part of a series that follow the establishing of the KAH residency program. The program of residences at Kaunas Artists’ House has been created in 2018 with the aim to present the most relevant contemporary artists, curators and cultural researchers working in Lithuania and abroad to the residents and guests of Kaunas city. The residency program aims to foster intercultural, cross-institutional and cross-sectoral cooperation, to provide artists and cultural producers with the opportunity to become acquainted with the historical and cultural context of the city during their residency, to facilitate their cooperation with other artists or cultural producers and local communities.

Ellen Tracy was raised in London, received her education in the United States, and currently lives in Kaunas, Lithuania. Primarily a researcher, but not attached to a particular medium, she works on diverse projects in modes demanded by circumstance and subject matter.

The event will take place in English.