TARING PADI, CLIMATE JUSTICE LEAGUE, POWERNOTTE, OLIVER RESSLER | exhibition

Taring Padi –  The Institute of People Oriented Culture Taring Padi was founded in  1998 by a group of progressive art students and activists in response to  the Indonesian socio-political upheavals during the country’s  reformation era. As such, Taring Padi’s artistic practice is always part  of and contextualised within their socio-political and cultural  solidarity and action. Street protests, woodcutting workshops, art  carnivals, and exhibitions in unorthodox spaces are typical of Taring  Padi’s practice of producing collective and individual works. Diverse ad  hoc political alliances, farming and fishing communities, as well as  their own localities are places where Taring Padi work and learn  together. Banners, woodcut posters, and wayang kardus (life-sized  cardboard puppets), as well as the ever popular Dendang Kampungan music  group are Taring Padi’s artistic formulas to agitate, educate, and  organise themselves, their community, and diverse solidarity actions  they are involved in. In 2002 Taring Padi became a collective in order  to further inclusivity and to facilitate personal dynamic of its  members, whilst maintaining its progressive and militant character in  realising the potential of art as a tool for social change.

Climate Justice League – A generative co-creation of eco-warriors icons front for climate  justice. The Climate Justice League will be present in the form of big  cardboard puppets, ready to enter the street and march around the  planet. The Climate Justice League has been launched by the Institute of  Radical Imagination during the 2023 edition of the World Congress for  Climate Justice,with the complicit participation of Andreco,  Andrea Natella, Noura Tafeche, Serpica Naro and Dirty Art Department (Jerszy Seymour, Theo Dietz e Rosa Meulenbeld), Institute of Radical Imagination (Marco Baravalle, Emanuele Braga, Maddalena Fragnito, Gabriella Riccio, Federica Timeto) and Le Alleanze dei Corpi.

Powernotte – Was conceived in 2020 in Venice, Italy by two artists : Davide  Salmaso, Rocco Cacciari and a product manager : Giuseppe Bateato. The  concept was an artisanal fusion of home design and contemporary art  using the mediums of sculpture and painting. The work is an  investigation of the animal world within their ecosystems. And there is  special attention paid to the totemic value – even amongst the smallest.  Each piece is artisanally crafted, hand-made and one of a kind. This  slow production, with an attention to artistry is a pushback on the  mainstream production model that harms our planet. Our products cannot  be identically replicated or mass produced. They are each perfectly  unique.

Screened films by Oliver Ressler

• Ancestral Future Rising, 4K video, 20 min., 2023
• The Desert Lives, 4K video, 55 min., 2022
• Not Sinking, Swarming, 4K video, 37 min., 2021

Oliver Ressler is an artist and filmmaker who produces installations, projects in  public space, and films on issues such as economics, democracy,  migration, the climate crisis, forms of resistance and social  alternatives. Ressler has had solo exhibitions at Berkeley Art Museum,  USA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade; Centro Cultural Conde Duque,  Madrid; Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, Egypt; The Cube Project  Space, Taipei; Kunsthaus Graz, Graz and comprehensive solo exhibitions  at Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk; Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz; Centro  Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo – CAAC, Seville; SALT Galata, Istanbul;  MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest; and Cultural  Centre of Belgrade. Ressler has participated in more than 400 group  exhibitions, including Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; Van Abbe Museum,  Eindhoven; MASSMoCA, North Adams, USA; Centre Pompidou, Paris; the  biennials in Prague (2005), Seville (2006), Moscow (2007), Taipei  (2008), Lyon (2009), Gyumri (2012), Venice (2013), Athens (2013, 2015),  Quebec (2014), Helsinki (2014), Jeju (2017), Kyiv (2017), Gothenburg  (2019) and Stavanger (2019), and at Documenta 14, Kassel, 2017  (exhibition organized by EMST). Ressler has completed forty-two films  that have been screened in thousands of events of social movements, art  institutions and film festivals. A retrospective of his films took place  at Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève in 2013. In 2002, Ressler won the  first prize at the International Media Art Award of the ZKM in Karlsruhe  and he is the first prize winner of the Prix Thun for Art and Ethics Award in 2016. For the Taipei Biennale 2008, Ressler curated an exhibition on the counter-globalization movement, A World Where Many Worlds Fit. A travelling show on the financial crisis, It’s the Political Economy, Stupid, co-curated with Gregory Sholette, has been presented at nine venues (2011-2016).2019–2023 Ressler has directed Barricading the Ice Sheets, a  research project on the climate justice movement, funded by the  Austrian Science Fund. Configurations of the project were solo  exhibitions at Camera Austria, Graz (2021); Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb  (2022); Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Berlin (2022); Tallinn Art  Hall, Tallinn (2022); LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial,  Gijón (2023); The Showroom, London (2023).