I Never
Promised You
a Rose Garden


-
18 October - 3 November 2018
Palermo

-
Minimum
Printed Matters Exhibition
-

On the occasion of the nomadic Manifesta 12 taking place in Palermo, a r c h i p e l a g o presented I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.

This two-parts group exhibition brought together the work of visual artists working in a wide range of mediums, as well as a selection of books exploring the notion of affect in Today’s culture.







What’s Love Got to Do with It?

That is the title of an e-flux publication released in 2017.
That is also the book that prompted the idea of the exhibition “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden”.

The book selection presented as part of the exhibition works as a kind of cosmology around the notion of affect. How do we relate to each other in the digital age? How technologies influence romance? How capitalism uses love and love uses capitalism? Why human connections, touch, materiality are such pivotal ideas today? How do photographers, artists and writers explore these topics?

The book installation intends to incite questions. By presenting Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen, 1813) next to Technologies of Romance (Paul O’Kane, eeodo, 2017) or Margins of Excess (Max Pinkers, 2018), it aims at creating connections, correspondences and, eventually, questions on what “affects” us and how we are “affected” by our relations to others today.

The selection makes good space for self-published books and publishers like eeodo (Uk), Witty Kiwi, Skinnerboox (It) and Onomatopee (NL). The selection also includes essays and novels, aiming at connecting different types of languages; visual, fictional and critical; to create new connections and possible meanings. The book selection is presented with a wall installation intending to highlight the main themes raised by the exhibition.





Images: Michela Palermo