OOR Saloon & Killjoys present:
an Unhappy Evening
with a Concert/Performance Session
& Publication Release

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Unhappy Performance/Concert Session with:
AKW (ZH)
Evan Ifekoya (UK)
Maya Dunietz (ISR)
Li Tavor & Moni Schori (ZH)

& Unhappy Drinks
& sadest ever DJ-Set by Fred Hystère (OOR, ZH)

Galerie Mark Müller, Hafnerstrasse 44, 8005 Zureich

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OOR Saloon & Killjoys invited four musical and performative positions to collaborate in a collective sound performance. The performance-session took place at the publication-launch of Sabian Baumann, Karin Michalski: An Unhappy Archive at the Gallery Mark Müller in Zurich.
Starting point and chronological-thematic score was the audio track from the video/10” vinyl «An Alphabet of Feeling Bad» by Karin Michalski and Ann Cvetkovitch, which is part of this publication in form of a 10“ record.
The musicians and performers were invited to respond to the letters and terms of the Alphabet – such as Anxiety, Alienation, Killjoy, Occupy, Rage, Revolution, Precarity, Public feelings, Trauma, Utopia, Vulnerability, Yawn, Yell, Zest – to name only a few – with musical or performance pieces, songs, texts or sound works.
The Alphabet of Feeling Bad comes with the suggestion to understand bad feelings not only as personal and private issues but as being formed by a wider social context. The alphabet invites us to form emancipatory actions out of it.
During the performance session, the soundtrack of «The Alphabet of Feeling Bad» was played from the 10” record and was continuosly interrupted by the performers’ contributions. Sometimes letters of the alphabet were chosen by just one artist, some letters had res-
ponses from several artists, others were not chosen at all. Sometimes a letter was performed individually, sometimes parts, voices and sounds overlapped and at some points the performers invited others to contribute.
The session itself was improvised and the artists and musicians were not aware of the letters the others had chosen – in that sense it was a premiere for both the musicians and artists and the audience.
An Unhappy Evening followed the invitation of the publication to create shared spaces for bad queer feelings and offered an experimental, performative listening-setting, which allowed failures, differences, pauses and interruptions to take place. An Unhappy Evening wanted to find out, how we can listen closely to each other and interact with one another through sonic and performative practices, but without erasing each others differences. This fugitive experience is now added to «An Unhappy Archive» publication in form of a live recording and a visual documentation.

You can order the publication «Sabian Baumann, Karin Michalski: An Unhappy Archive» via www.editionfink.ch
You can listen to the live-recording of the performance-session in our OOR Recording Archive. Enjoy!

An Unhappy Evening was organized by Alice Cantaluppi, Anna Frei, Franziska Koch and Kerstin Schroedinger.

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Evan Ifekoya (UK):
Evan Ifekoya’s current work investigates the possibility of an erotic and poetic occupation using moving image, performative writing and sound, focused on co-authored, intimate forms of knowledge production and the radical potential of spectacle. Ifekoya has recently presented work at Wysing Arts Centre, Stevenson Gallery Cape Town, Jerwood Space, Whitstable Biennial (2016) and David Roberts Art Foundation, FramerFramed and Studio Voltaire (2015). In the next few months new work will be presented at Serpentine Galleries,The Showroom, Assembly Point and IMT gallery in London as well as Transmission Gallery, Glasgow. Collaborative projects include Collective Creativity: Critical reflections into QTIPOC creative practice and Network11.

Maya Dunietz (ISR):
Maya Dunietz is a composer, performer, and sound artist performing internationally for the past 20 years. Maya's music engages visual art, performance, technological research, and philosophy. Maya's works are commissioned by renowned performers and ensembles, and she has created site-specific sound-performance works for institutions such as the Palais de Tokyo Paris, Arnolfini in Bristol, the Center For Contemporary Art Tel Aviv, the Reykjavik Arts Festival, and many more.
Maya also performs regularly around the world playing free improvisation and has played with numerous artists such as John Butcher, Zeena Parkins, Ghedaliah Tazartes and Roscoe Mitchell, to name a few.
In 2015 she was guest professor at CalArts LA as part of the Schusterman residence program. Dunietz received the Prime Minister Composers award in 2015.

AKW (ZH)
Anne Käthi Wehrli is an artist and performer, writes, makes audio works and drawings, editor of fanzines and together with Bettina Stehli she is broadcasting regularly the radio show Pandora's Box Lesbenmagazin on Radio LoRa 97.5 MHz. Recently, as part of the group-exhibition «No-where? Now-here! The Molecular Books of Life - Colleges of Unreason» at Corner College, she was writing and editing a text called «Die Frau als Einstiegsloch».

Li Tavor & Moni Schori (ZH)

Li Tavor is an architect and musician. She is part of the sound project UOM which is currently focusing on the interplay between the autonomy of algorithmic compositions, computer generated effects and analogue (synthezised or natural) sounds. She also is part of a improvised music group called Circumstances, where she mostly plays a modified Fender Rhodes.

Monika Schori played a very heavy bass in the all female band «X-Syndicate» from 1992 until 2000 in Paris, and in the all male band «Demolition Blues» 2004 until 2016 in Zurich. Her solo project is called «Phonica», and her songs «Trains & Plants» or «Singing Railtracks» inspired by her residential location. She plays in several combos, and if she could, she would only spend her time in the rehearsal room, recording studio or on stage.

Moni and Li are collaborating for the second time at «an unhappy evening».

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Release Sabian Baumann, Karin Michalski: An Unhappy Archive
published by edition fink

An Unhappy Archive assembles art and activist works like photographs, videos, books, drawings and paintings that call into question social norms of «happiness».
The name refers to theorist Sara Ahmed, who describes the «unhappy archives» as a collective, feminist-queer, and antiracist project. It not only sets out to impel criticism and resistance within society but also intends to forward the states of pleasure and utopia that are facilitated by supposed antifigures like «the feminist killjoy».
An Unhappy Archive was initiated in 2013 by Andrea Thal at Les Complices* in Zurich, presented for a second time at Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe in 2014, and is now being reactivated and expanded in this imaginary exhibition space of the edition An Unhappy Archive.
The edition will be released at Gallery Mark Müller in Zurich, October 15th, 2016, during an Unhappy Evening with an Unhappy Session performed by a group of International artists and musicians presented by OOR SALOON, Zurich.

Das An Unhappy Archive versammelt künstlerische und aktivistische Arbeiten wie Photographien, Videos, Bücher, Zeichnungen und Malerei, die die gesellschaftlichen Normen von «Happiness» in Frage stellen.
Der Begriff geht auf die Theoretikerin Sara Ahmed zurück, die «unglückliche Archive» als ein kollektives, feministisch-queeres und antirassistisches Projekt beschreibt. Dieses will nicht nur Gesellschaftskritik und Widerständigkeit voranbringen, sondern auch das Vergnügen und die Utopien, die durch vermeintliche Anti-Figuren wie ‚the feminist killjoy’ ermöglicht werden.
An Unhappy Archive wurde 2013 bei Les Complices* in Zürich von Andrea Thal als Ausstellung initiiert, 2014 im Badischen Kunstverein in Karlsruhe erneut installiert und wird nun in erweiterter Form in diesem imaginierten Ausstellungsraum der Edition An Unhappy Archive vorgestellt.
Zur Präsentation der Edition findet am 15. Oktober 2016 in der Galerie Mark Müller in Zürich ein von OOR SALOON organisierter Unhappy Evening mit einer Unhappy Session internationaler Künstler_innen und Musiker_innen statt.

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Evan Ifekoya
Maya Dunietz
edition fink
Galerie Mark Müller
Li Tavor/UOM
Li Tavor/Circumstances