Judith Kakon
commuted, ordered, incited, assisted or otherwise participated
Exhibition
11.06.23 – 27.08.23
«Cow» does not simply mean that spotted or non-spotted animal living in the Swiss Alps, on the streets of Agra or in factory farming. Nor is the «Baselstab» simply a bishop‘s crook, an ancient Egyptian insignia or a hippocampus, symbol of emotion or male pregnancy. The denotation – the neutral literal meaning – does not exist. This seems to have become clear by 1973 with Stuart Hall‘s famous essay «Encoding Decoding». The meaning of a word, a symbol or a Christmas star is only completed in the process of decoding, which gives us a certain power over interpretation. The supposed denotation is, thus, always a connotation, of which there are many, but only one with which most agree. It is this dominant reading that feeds the misunderstanding that there is a literal and, therefore, neutral meaning. A misunderstanding that Hannah Arendt describes as the banality of evil. Dominant discourses may hijack meanings and fading ideologies lose interpretive authority. Desire for consumption is mirrored in the consoling glow of Christmas lights, as we have learned to communicate our love to our loved ones through commodities. But the will to understand the glowing stars in this way is waning, and the time seems ready for a collective reinterpretation. Welcome!
Artist
Judith Kakon
Download
Press release (PDF)
Location
For
Teichgässlein 31
4058 Basel
Switzerland
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Website
https://for-space.ch