Hotel Kyjev: Time's Up

Project Structure

Hotel Kyjev will not be a thematic exhibition in the traditional manner; rather, it will emphasize artistic and theoretical production and contestation based on collective, interdisciplinary intelligence and the living process of negotiating a physical site performed by different knowledge producers challenging and supporting each other, and their context. The focus nonetheless will always be the interrogation of the idea of an end or ending, while the hotel and its present day narrative provide the perfect background and stimulus for this experiment.

Over the time span of one week every day from 10AM-1PM (Critical Breakfast) all participants will convene for a mutual update with regard to each person's investment and state of interrogation, material needs, daily program. The session also includes every day a different guest from the city or the area who will be invited for a talk. Each evening at least one opening/closing reception will take place on the premises, a hotel room, the café bar, the night bar, the conference room or somewhere else in the hotel. If possible one whole level of the hotel is at the participants' disposal without any other guests residing among them. Participants can generate, expose and organize their work at free will in their rooms and throughout the hotel. Local arts organizers, off-spaces and artists will be invited to attend the residency at different stages.

Apart from the interdisciplinary discussions at the critical breakfasts and opening receptions, public events will entail a public, moderated conversation with the architect, Ivan Matusik, of the hotel and the current "main architect" of Bratislava, Stefan Slachta, as well as interventions from the local galleries and art spaces. The keynote speaker and philosopher, Clemens Bellut, will officially kick off the project as well as open up a space of interrogation. Boris Groys is planned to be invited to reflect on his book "Über das Neue" (2004) and his conversation with the philosopher Jean Baudrillard about "Die Illusion des Endes/Das Ende der Illusion" almost ten years ago.