Five Heads (Tavan Tolgoi)—Art, Anthropology and Mongol Futurism

Thursday, August 23, 2018 – 14:00The exhibition FIVE HEADS marks the beginning of a season of events co-curated with arts Catalyst and Hermione Sprigg and a residency and exhibition with artist Tuguldur Yondonjamts. 

Opening ceremony and publication launch:August 31st, 6 – 8.30pm Greengrassi Gallery & Corvi-Mora1a Kempsford Road London SE11 4NU Artists:Nomin Bold & Baatarzorig Batjargal | Bumochir DulamYuri Pattison | Hedwig WatersDolgor Ser Od & Marc Schmitz | Rebecca EmpsonDeborah Tchoudjinoff | Lauren BonillaTuguldur Yondonjamts | Rebekah PlueckhahnFeat. Mongolian Rapper “Big Gee” What does the future look like, or feel like, from the perspective of a yak in the coal miningdistrict of Khovd? A Mongolian root extracted, illegally traded and sold internationally as apharmaceutical product? Or the toolkit of an urban shaman, securing economic fortune forprofessional women in Ulaanbaatar? Five Heads (Tavan Tolgoi) brings together the work of five anthropologists and five artists/collectives researching and responding to the dramatic rise and fall of Mongolia’s mineraleconomy. Drawing from ongoing fieldwork in Mongolia, the artists in this exhibition examinecrisis as a space for the emergence of new possibilities. Curated by Hermione SpriggsExhibition dates: September 1st – 15th, 2018Conversations & events in collaboration with Arts CatalystJoin our events page for updates In 1964, at a time when Mongolia was suspended in the social and economic stasis of Sovietrule, Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan seized upon Ezra Pound’s definition ofthe artist as “the antennae of the race,” claiming “the power of the arts to anticipate futuresocial and technological developments by a generation and more.” Indeed, art (or perhaps thesynaptic negative space which exists between art and anthropology) has taken on antennalikeproperties in the context of Mongolia, where the need to rapidly re-think the impactsof mineral extraction and economic chaos is pressing and real, and where a resurgence inshamanic practices—often explained by shamans themselves through a language of codeand telecommunications—can itself be thought of as a kind of radar or antennae capable ofreaching through time, assuring future fortune in the face of agsan (the invisible and chaoticforces of transition). Nested within what might be described as an “aesthetics of estrangement” (Castaing-Taylor)or a process of “optimal distortion” (Neilson & Pedersen) are proposals for alternative mapsand re-surfaced trajectories that shatter a teleological timeline of progress, staking territoryinstead for speculative thought and practical forms of human-nonhuman reciprocity. Asglobal cores and peripheries exchange places and rehearse histories of empire formation, FiveHeads explores geo-ontological emergence, (post)capitalist futures, and alternative strategiesfor creative survival in the present. The accompanying publication Five Heads (Tavan Tolgoi) Art, Anthropology and MongolFuturism (Sternberg Press, 2018) features documentation of the art-anthropology exchangeprocesses, alongside written contributions by Simon O’ Sullivan, Uranchimeg Tsultem, RichardIrvine, Tsendpurev Tsegmid, Hermione Spriggs & Rebecca Empson, and will be availablefor presale for the duration of the exhibition. For more details please visit the following link. Photo: Tuguldur Yondonjamts Binary story/ 875-887, single channel video, sound, 18 min (2018)