The Proposal
A film by Jill Magid
Video on Demand (Slovenia only)
8–15 January 2021
cinesquare.net
Ticket: 3 €
*Language: English with Slovenian subtitles
In the framework of Akcija!, a cycle of screening events
Known as “the artist among architects,” Luis Barragán is among the world’s most celebrated architects of the 20th century. After his death in 1988, his professional archive was bought by a Swiss furniture company in its entirety, and hid from the public eye. In an attempt to resurrect Barragán’s life and art, boundary redefining conceptual artist Jill Magid creates a daring proposition that becomes a fascinating artwork in itself — a high-wire act of negotiation that explores how far an artist will go to democratize access to art.
Director: Jill Magid
Producers: Jarred Alterman, Charlotte Cook, Laura Coxson
Executive Producer: Laura Poitras
Editor: Hannah Buck
DOP: Jarred Alterman
Original Music: T. Griffin
Associate Producer: Pamela Echeverria
Length: 83 min
Language: English with Slovenian subtitles
RELATED EVENT
What is capitalism’s relationship to art and legacy? Who or what is the law protecting when it allows for the privatisation of culture? How can art be a methodology through which challenging issues are dissected?
The writer, curator, critic, and founder of we-make-money-not-art.com Régine Debatty meets the conceptual artist, writer, and filmmaker Jill Magid to discuss with her the many issues her film The Proposal raises.
FILMMAKER
American artist and writer Jill Magid’s work is deeply ingrained in her lived experience, exploring and blurring the boundaries between art and life. Through her performance-based practice, Magid has initiated intimate relations with a number of organizations and structures of authority. She explores the emotional, philosophical and legal tensions between the individual and ‘protective’ institutions, such as intelligence agencies or the police. To work alongside or within large organizations, Magid makes use of institutional quirks, systemic loopholes that allow her to make contact with people ‘on the inside’. Her work tends to be characterized by the dynamics of seduction, the resulting narratives often taking the form of a love story. It is typical of Magid’s practice that she follows the rules of engagement with an institution to the letter – sometimes to the point of absurdity.
With solo exhibitions at institutions around the world including MUAC, Mexico City: Tate Modern, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Berkeley Museum of Art, California; Tate Liverpool; the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam; Yvon Lambert, Paris and New York; Gagosian Gallery, New York; and the Security and Intelligence Agency of the Netherlands, Magid has received awards from the Fonds Voor Beeldende Kunsten, the Netherland-American Foundation Fellowship Fulbright Grant, and most recently the 2017 Calder Prize. Magid has participated in Manifesta, the Liverpool, Bucharest, Singapore, Incheon, Gothenburg, Oslo and Performa Biennials. She is an Associate of the Art, Design and the Public Domain program at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, and was a 2013-15 fellow at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. An adjunct teacher at Cooper Union, Magid is the author of four novellas. Her work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Fundacion Jumex, and the Walker Art Center, among others.
CREDITS
Production of the event:
Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2021
in collaboration with the Center for Urban Culture Kino Šiška
Film screening and the online conversation will take place as pre-events in the framework of Open Knowledge Day, organized by the Intellectual Property Institute and Today is a New Day. #openknowledgeday
Supported by:
the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana