The Blood of a Poet - (Meta-m-orphosis)

Dear Friends of theOff.space

I kindly invite you to the first exhibition of theOff.space this year.

For this special event there is a special location!

The opening will be on 25th August from 6pm at Hardturmstrasse 3 (8. floor) in Zurich, a few steps away from the Escher Wyss Platz tramway stop.  

theOff.space presents new artists as well as names you will recognize from previous exhibitions:

Marc Busse, Rocco A. de Filippo, Simon Epp, Ana Hofmann, Dieter Holliger, Christoffer Joergensen, Vilija Litvinaite, Laura lux, Leila Peacock and Dimitrina Sevova

For more information such as opening hours, exhibition text and details on each artist please visit https://attheoff.space

For any other questions I will gladly reply to your emails.

I hope to see you there!

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The Blood of a Poet

(Meta-m-orphosis)

A group exhibition project of @theOff.space curated by Rocco A. de Filippo

The exhibition borrows its title from an avant-garde film composed of interconnected sequences, directed by Jean Cocteau (1930) as the first part of the Orphic Trilogy, which was followed by Orpheus (1950) and concluded with Testament of Orpheus (1960). The trilogy unites the mythological figures of Narcissus and Orpheus, and the winged Eros emerges from the dark shadow cast by the three celestial bodies in their eclipses. Orpheus blends into a surrealistic reading of the ancient enigmatic myth of the tragic fate of the poet and the youthful rebellious force inherent in the lyrics and sound of a poem. Orpheus is the archetype of the poet, especially of the singing poet. Ovid mystically transforms Orpheus into a poetic metamorphosis, a transformative Orpheus that is the very nature of transformation, man in nature interrogating the nature of transitional phenomena. The poem is something made or crafted. In Greek, creative is poietic – the poet’s creation is as marvelous as nature’s.

To the poet, metamorphosis is a force of desire opposed to the powers that be, a counter-cosmic agency that interferes with the cosmo-poietic dynamics. In other words, the will kindled by the Promethean flame to defy the oracle’s prophecies about the decision of the gods. Orpheus is the source of a new spheropoetic species that has become a biosphero-poietic geoforce. Meta-m-orphosis has two sides, destruction and creation, death and re-birth in a process of eternal return of the ever different, the art of transformation in which the spirit is purified. Meta indicates inner transformation, the temporality of the process rather than immortality, in-between-ness, “the metamorphic process going backward as well as forward” in manifold micro-events.

The mythical poet’s method of paradoxical transformations makes the future world possible for art and artists. How do human or natural creativity and poetic relate to synthetic intelligence and its combinatory creativity? Is AI more-than-human intelligence, a desire to transcend the limits of nature and reach for immortality? Will the pervasive scattered global cognitive automation endlessly gravitate, and yet remain unable to form a harmonious pattern. Will these operations perform a total oracle, and will the poet still have the magic power to escape its prediction? The po-ethic is more than intelligence. It is conscious, imaginative, laughing at itself, deconstructive and yet a rhythmic motif, an aesthetic pattern with its own moods of headaches, humor, and grief. Imagine the infinite metaphors of metamorphosis, and metamorphosis of metaphors. Why not the story of a salesman by the name of Gregor Samsa who “woke one morning from troubled dreams” and “found himself transformed right there in his bed into some sort of monstrous insect”?

The works in the exhibition contribute different artistic interpretations of metamorphosis.

Text: Dimitrina Sevova and Rocco A. de Filippo