Chalet Society and Family Business present:
Les Grands Transparents. In Practice. Vol. II
By Nadja Argyropoulou, Family Business guest (or ghost) curator
A conjuring lecture/performance by the research consortium ESTAR(SER) reanimates the eccentric stagecraft of an American original: Inyard Kip Ketchem, this vaudeville philosopher, who rose to considerable celebrity in the years before World War I, as “America’s Greatest Carnival Meditator”.
*Family Business is a non-for-profit space, a free time-share, open to experimentation and irreverent exhibition formats, initiated by Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni and powered by the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, USA.
On January 18th, Chalet Society hosted* « Fix Your Eyes Right Here! », a lecture/performance by ESTAR(SER), the research consortium known as The Esthetical Society for Transcendental and Applied Realization (now incorporating The Society for Esthetical Realizers).
On this special occasion, visiting representatives of ESTAR (SER), Sal Randolph* and D. Graham Burnett*, reanimated the eccentric stagecraft of an American original: Inyard Kip Ketchem, also known, during his vagabond years riding the carnival circuit in the early twentieth century, as Doctor Ketch’em, Professor Katch’em, The Amazing Mr. Ketch, Yardarm von Kip, Inyard “Eagle-Eye” Kip-Katch, and under a number of other sobriquets.
Documents recently surfaced by members of the Editorial Committee of the ESTAR (SER) opened an idiosyncratic window onto the career of this vaudeville philosopher, who rose to considerable celebrity in the years before World War I, as “America’s Greatest Carnival Meditator”, a distinction he succeeded in parleying into a marginal livelihood as a traveling attention artist and huckster-therapist of modern distraction. Was he associated with the Order of the Third Bird (or related communities of ritually-oriented devotees of practical aesthesis)? There are reasons to believe he was.
* D. Graham Burnett is a historian of science and writer. He is a Guggenheim Fellow in residence at the Bard Graduate Center, un editor of Cabinet magazine, and teaches at Princeton University. dgrahamburnett.net
* Sal Randolph is an artist and writer. Elle appeared at Princeton University, Bard Graduate Center, MoMA, Columbia University, Palais de Tokyo, Dairy Art Centre. salrandolph.com
*Family Business was invited by Marc-Olivier Wahler, and this whole business was organized by curator Nadja Argyropoulou, Anne Davidian, and Chalet’s production genius Sibel Varer.
The Hidden World - an astounding archive of contemporary imagination
Edited by the Chalet Society
Published by Koenig Books, 2014
Jim Shaw calls himself a visual addict who has been collecting the vernacular detritus of American culture for forty years. The book is dedicated to his magnificent compendium of out-there American graphic materials and educational / religious propaganda. It also features a conversation between Jim Shaw, Marc-Olivier Wahler and Anne Davidian, which elucidates the artist’s fascination with this visual world, a series of original essays by philosopher and novelist Tristan Garcia, as well as an encyclopedic glossary dedicated to the protagonists of The Hidden World.
Inspired by a size and a form of the well-known pocket edition of the Bible, with its black leatherette cover and blood-red edges, this is an indispensable guide to the weird.
The book was designed by The Bell Angels, aka Julien Sirjacq and Simon Bernheim.
APR en direct de la journée #presse de l'exposition #thehiddenworld by #jimshaw au #chaletsociety jusqu'à fin décembre #aprevent #aprparis #alexandrapr
