Valentina Curandi and Isabelle Sully

Marwan, Unplugged

2023 

Safety song, songbook, music stand sourced on site

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Performed intermittently by Tirza Kater and Tim Mathijsen of Marwan, Amsterdam

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September 1–3, 2023, SYSTEMA,

Palais Carli, Marseille 

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Marwan, Unplugged is a song built off a borrowed melodic and lyrical structure of a children’s safety song. The rewritten lyrics are compiled from inventory entries pertaining to a safety fund that Curandi and Sully implemented at Marwan as part of their 2018 exhibition Two In a Coffin and as such reflect on how to work more safely within the artist-run context. The intention of the fund was to provide budget to be redistributed to artists in the future program, who could implement a safety measure at their discretion and according to their interpretation of what exactly a ‘safety measure’ is. Inscribed and therefore embodied within the physical walls of Marwan in 2018, the safety fund was again embodied, this time by the co-directors of Marwan, Tirza Kater and Tim Mathijsen, through song within the halls of the music conservatory Conservatoire National de Marseille—the fact of this site prompting the impulse to work with song in the first place. 

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This work was included as part of Marwan’s presentation at SYSTEMA 2023, titled Phantom Limb: some people bring their bodi,es and including work by Anllel Maria Tanús Guillén, Dieuwertje Hehewerth, Karin Iturralde Nurnberg, Lorenza Wistuba, Tim Mathijsen, Tirza Kater, Valentina Curandi & Isabelle Sully. SYSTEMA is an annual gathering of non-profit and collaborative art initiatives.
 

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