Wiser Blood (2017 – 2018) starts from the idea of the exhibition, especially the modern white cube, as a space that transforms not only objects within it, but situations as well. It plays with individual and collective art world rituals around exhibition attendance within the white cube space and considers the exhibition as a brief moment in which audience members slip into an altered reality. Wiser Blood explores these ideas through reading groups and fiction writing organised around Flannery O’Connor’s 1952 novel Wise Blood, in which an “anti-preacher” so strongly rejects salvation that he seems to confirm it. This idea of rejecting sets of spatially imposed beliefs and rituals is the basis for a series of performances at the group exhibition “Aisle/Ation” at Souterrain (Amsterdam, June 2018), the writing from which was published in Time to wake up yet.
Reading groups consisted of five meetings (September 2017 – May 2018); performance and installation work took place at “Aisle/Ation” at Souterrain (Amsterdam, June 1-15 2018) and included eight small drawings hidden in exhibition, twelve kiwis left in corner of exhibition and performances during the weekend of the exhibition opening; and the writing used in the Aisle/Ation performance was published in Time to wake up yet, a multidisciplinary anthology compiled by artists Reyni Ng and Catalina Aarzani (2018).
Rachel Pafe 