February 2, Sunday at 5pm at CAC Reading room

You start by inventing a situation. This demands more invention in turn: to some extent you need to invent the one who speaks, and also imagine and yes partially invent the one who listens. This illustrated talk focuses on how fabrication, artifice, and the imagined situation can co-exist with sincerity; how through a discussion on persona, interiority and identification, we might be able to get closer and break through some of the staged processes and shared neuroses that shape the conditions for making and showing work.

The evening, which departs from Hellberg’s upcoming programme as curator at Cubitt Gallery will move across moving image and text: drawing on the work of French philosopher, mystic, political activist and ‘most radical philosopher of sadness’, Simone Weil; the work of pioneering Los Angelean video artist Cynthia Maughan; and the reprise, effects and doubles of Rachel Reupke.

Fatima Hellberg is a London based curator and writer. She is curator of Cubitt Gallery and associate curator of Electra. She has curated projects in the UK and internationally with exhibitions and projects at amongst others, Tate Modern, Badischer Kunsteverein, ICA, Malmö Konsthall and the South London Gallery. She writes for Frieze, Afterall Journal and various independent publications.

Picture: a still frame from Cynthia Maughan film The Causes of Unconsciousness Tabulated for Ready Reference, 1975