YOU ARE INVITED – Orient Express Yourself by Dafna Maimon
YOU ARE INVITED – Lilith 10th Anniversary Celebration 2017 – a series of unique dinner performances by 5 beloved artists from Lilith’s past!
YOU ARE INVITED – Orient Express, Yourself
Dafna Maimon
Date: 22-24 September 2017
Place: Lilith Performance Studio, Bragegatan 15 Malmö
Participants: Vilija Židovainytė, Louise Zurawski, Ako Aziz, Araz Aziz
Special thank to: Lo Pettersson – Lundgren, Daniel Mårs, Sandra Stjernfeldt, Irene Stenberg,
Joanna Öhman, Anna Kraus, Mihaela Jekic, Damali James Dawn, Jonas Ermegård
Världens första och enda performancestudio för bildkonstperformance fyllde 10 år 2017. Först ut i jubileumsserien var YOU ARE INVITED – Orient Express, Yourself av den finsk-israeliska konstnären Dafna Maimon. Orient Express var Finlands första Falafel och Kebabrestaurang som öppnades 1985 av Dafna Maimons far, i shoppinggallerian Forum in Helsingfors, där han introducerade finnarna för exotiska smaker från Mellanöstern. På Lilith Performance Studio återskapades restaurangen från 80-talet med fullt utrustat och fungerade kök och arbetande personal. Publiken fick köpa falafel med sina egna berättelser om minnen av familje- och könsroller och patriarkala strukturer som betalningsmedel, med priser från 15 till 299 ord. Orient Express har fortsatt under hösten 2017 och våren 2018 i 3 nya former som utställning och performance; After Hours på Galerie Wedding, Berlin; Family Business på SIC Helsinki och “FAMILY BUSINESS: POWER FAILURE” Kim? i Riga På Galerie Wedding i Berlin fungerade installationen som ett spökminne av den långväga restaurangen. Falafels såldes till publiken endast vid öppningen, där ordbetalningen spelades in i en gammal bandspelare. Under tredje stoppet återvände restaurang Orient Express äntligen tillbaka till Finland efter 33 år, nu i utställningsform på SIC Space med titeln Family Business. I den nya versionen av familjerestaurangen såldes falafel av Maimons syskon under öppningen. http://www.sicspace.net/past/dafna-maimon-family-business/ Det sista stoppet för Orient Express blev en ny version av performance och utställning med titeln “FAMILY BUSINESS: POWER FAILURE” på Kim? Contemporary Art Center i Riga, med öppning 20 april 2018. http://www.kim.lv Mer om konstnären: Maimon skapade Modern Lives på Lilith 2016 som tog sin utgångspunkt i en verklig persons liv; konstnärens egen mor, Ulrica Maimon, Sommaren 2016 gjorde hon ett mycket omfattande arbete med titeln Camp Solong: Nonstop Sunset på Sinne Gallery, Helsingfors i samarbete med Ethan Hayes-Chute. Maimon har nyligen haft ateljéstipendier bl.a. vid Künstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin, IASPIS Stockholm, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Liliths 10-årsjubileum var en serie performance med titeln – YOU ARE INVITED, som löpte från september till december,2017. De inbjudna konstnärerna var: The world’s first and only performance studio for visual art performance turned 10 years in the fall 2017. First out was the Finnish-Israeli artist Dafna Maimon with the dinner-performance YOU ARE INVITED – Orient Express, Yourself. Orient Express, Yourself was inspired by autobiographical and micro historical research into a family-owned business – Finland’s first kebab and falafel restaurant ”Orient Express”, opened by the artist’s Israeli father in 1985. Located in the ”Forum” shopping mall in Helsinki city centre, the restaurant introduced Finns to the delicacies of the Middle East. Some years ago, Maimon found a rather strange high-budget video ad from 1986 that her father had produced, which used his own exoticness in a high-paced narrative to market kebabs in Finland.Starting from this video-relic and her childhood memories, the artist has now reworked the commercial and reimagined the restaurant. The restaurant from the 80’s was reconstructed at Lilith Performance Studio, in an absurd, playful and contemporary critical performance were the guest’s own personal stories became a commodity. Orient Express has continued in a new forms as exhibition and performance during the fall 2017 and spring 2018; After Hours at Galerie Wedding, Berlin; Family Business at SIC Helsinki and “FAMILY BUSINESS: POWER FAILURE” Kim? in Riga In Galerie Wedding, the installation functioned as a ghostly memory of the long-gone restaurant. The third stop for the restaurant Orient Express was a return to Helsinki, Finland at SIC Space, 33 years after its initial opening, as the exhibition Family Business. The mutation of the restaurant served falafel cooked and sold by the artist’s actual family members – her siblings. http://www.sicspace.net/past/dafna-maimon-family-business/ The last stop the restaurant branched out to Kim? Contemporary Art Center in Riga, opened on the 20 April 2018, in yet a new mutation as a performative space where collected local memories have been transformed into a script. http://www.kim.lv More about the artist: Dafna Maimon (b. 1982, lives and works in Berlin) explores and engages with human narratives that challenge stereotypical constructions in order to question the unclear limits of identity, the self and the body in performance, short film, video web TV, texts and sculpture. Her projects showcase the economy of affect-based ties as well as materialize through them, casting value on community and collaboration on a grassroots level. Maimon created Modern Lives at Lilith in 2016, an emotional landscape in motion were the starting point was from the life of a real person; the artist’s mother Ulrica Maimon, who in the early 2000s, created an alter ego for herself, the 1860s goldsmith’s widow Mrs. Gyllendaal Af Berntas. At full-size domestic arena was built up at Lilith for the alter ego Mrs. Gyllendaal. The widow inhabits the house together, with her doppelgängers, and her staff. In the summer 2016 Maimon produced a major work entitled Camp Solong: Nonstop Sunset at Sinne Gallery, Helsinki in collaboration with Ethan Hayes-Chute. Camp Solong was an ongoing nomadic summer camp, a temporary, small-scale society that challenges stereotypical constructs during three days in Ekenäs, Finland. In November the work with ”Orient Express” will continue in new forms at Galerie Wedding, Berlin; SIC Helsinki and Kim? in Riga. Dafna Maimon has been a resident at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Iaspis Stockholm, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council New York and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine. Maimon has exhibited internationally at, PS1 Moma, New York; Kunst-Werke Berlin; Center for Contemporary Arts Ujazdowski, Warszawa; Annie Wharton Gallery, Los Angeles, and Project Native Informant, London. Lilith’s 10th Anniversary Celebration was a series of performances titled – YOU ARE INVITED, followed by the artists subtitle, running from September to December 2017,
Sedan starten 2007 har Lilith skapat över 50 storskaliga soloproduktioner och engagerats i mängder av inspirerande samarbeten och curatoruppdrag världen över.
Detta firades under hösten 2017 med tio högst annorlunda performancemiddagar av 5 älskade konstnärer ur Liliths historia.
I performancen ”Orient Express, Yourself” utgår Maimon från autobiografiskt material med fokus på fadern och de patriarkala strukturerna som omgav henne under uppväxtåren.
Med en lekfull, absurd och samtidigt skarp kritisk blick undersöker hon hur det påverkat hennes tankar idag, och låter gästernas egna personliga berättelser bli en handelsvara.
För finnissaget öppnades restaurangen igen med föreställningen After Hours, där Maimon skapat ett absurt rörelsemönster baserat på de olika sysslor man gör i en restaurang innan man stänger för kvällen.
En syssla var att räkna alla inspelningarna och att spela upp alla ord som samlats in från vernissagen. http://galeriewedding.de/dafna-maimon-2/
Dafna Maimon (f. 1982, bor och arbetar i Berlin) använder sig av mänskliga berättelser som utmanar stereotypa konstruktioner för att belysa de oklara gränserna för identitet, jaget och kroppen i performance, kortfilm, video webb-TV, text och skulptur. Hennes projekt lyfter fram och materialiseras genom de nära personliga relationernas ekonomi och värdesätter idén om gemenskap på gräsrotsnivå.
som i början av 2000-talet skapade ett alter ego i form av guldsmedsänkan Fru Gyllendaal Af Berntas från 1860-talet.
På Lilith byggdes en fullskalig huskuliss upp för alter egot Fru Gyllendaal, där ett emotionellt landskap sattes i rörelse.
Camp Solong var ett pågående nomadiskt sommarläger, ett tillfälligt småskaligt samhälle som utmanar stereotypa konstruktioner, som pågick under tre dagar i Ekenäs Finland.
I november fortsätter hennes arbete med ”Orient Express” i nya former på Galerie Wedding, Berlin; SIC Helsingfors och Kim? i Riga
New York och visat sina verk på bl.a. PS1 Moma, New York; Kunst-Werke Berlin; Center for Contemporary Arts Ujazdowski, Warszawa;
Annie Wharton Gallery, Los Angeles, och Project Native Informant, London.
Läs mer om konstnären: http://dafnamaimon.com/
alla på samma tema och utgångspunkt; en middagsbjudning. Varje konstnär var helt fri att själv tolka vad en middag kan vara.
Dafna Maimon (Israel/ Finland) 22 – 23 september
Myriam Laplante (Italien) 12-14 oktober
Odun Orimolade (Nigeria) 24-25 november
The Icelandic Love Corporation (Island) 14-16 december
YOU ARE INVITED – Lilith 10th Anniversary Celebration – a series of 10 unique dinner performances by 5 beloved artists from Lilith’s past!
Since the inception in 2007, Lilith Performance Studio has created over 50 large-scale solo commissions and been engaged in numerous inspiring collaborations and curator missions worldwide.
Lilith celebrated this with a series of unique dinner performances by 5 beloved artists from Lilith’s past.
Inside the equipped a functioning kitchen trained “restaurant workers” sold falafel in exchange for the audience’s own words. The customers paid prices ranging from 15 to 299 words, and answered questions relating to memories of family and gender roles, as well as the effects of destructive patriarchal structures. Their amplified recollections enabled a semi-shared and intimate space between strangers.
Falafels were sold to the audience only at the opening, where the word-payment was recorded into an old tape recorder.
For the finnissage the restaurant catered to people again with the performance After Hours.
Maimon scripted an absurd movement score, based on restaurant chores a worker performs when closing up for the night.
One chore was to count the takings; the words collected at the opening were played back within the performance as further fragmented memories to a new audience. http://galeriewedding.de/dafna-maimon/
Read more about the artist: http://dafnamaimon.com/
all with the same starting point: an intimate dinner. Each artist was free to interpret what a dinner may be.
The invited artists were:
Dafna Maimon (Israel / Finland) – 22-24 September
Myriam Laplante (Italy) – 12-14 October
Odun Orimolade (Nigeria) – 24-25 November
The Icelandic Love Corporation (Iceland) – 14-16 December
Hashtags for social media: #lilithperformancestudio10år #lilithperformancestudio10years #youareinvited #orientexpress_yourself #dafnamaimon
Image credit: Petter Pettersson & Tomas Gilljam/ Lilith Performance Studio