Post Brothers
The Hole Idea
21 April 2016, 7pm
‘It’s a cubist bit of dark, an aperture in any surface, and yet a thing, physically promiscuous, malleable and expandable, foldable and rollable, poured, printed, or painted. IT does what it PLEASES. It’s behavior is as elastic as its form…’
As part of the public programming encircling Ola Vasiljeva’s exhibition You’ve got beautiful stairs, you know, Kunstverein München presents The Hole Idea — a video lecture by Post Brothers on 21 April 2016, 7pm. Taking place in the Kino, and lasting approximately 45 minutes, the Kunstverein's new curator will focus his presentation on the aesthetic, philosophical and socio-political possibilities of ‘the portable hole’.
The portable hole is a ubiquitous phenomena in the history of animation, and was retroactively given an origin story in Robert McKimson’s 1955 cartoon, The Hole Idea. In McKimson’s short film, the inventor Dr. Calvin Q. Calculus pours black liquid onto a table, which dries into flat, flexible, black circles. When applied to a solid surface, these 'holes' offer temporary passage through that surface, and they can be just as easily removed. As Post Brothers charts the portable hole’s application throughout animation, economics, philosophy, politics, he asserts that the precarious properties of the portable hole make it a useful tool for examining the irrationality of our world. And by applying the portable hole to the context of Vasiljeva’s exhibition, Post Brothers projects a new perspective onto the pataphysics, plasticity, plasmaticity, and preposterous pareidolia that permeate Vasiljeva’s prolific practice.
The Hole Idea was originally developed in 2008 as part of Gintaras Didžiapetris’ artist magazine NINETY (#2), and has since been presented as a video lecture, or as a video loop, at international venues including the Integrated2015 conference, Antwerp (2015), Kerstin Engholm Gallery, Vienna (2015), Syntax, Lisbon (2015), ŠMC/Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (2015), Grüntaler 9, Berlin (2013), the 9th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai (2012), Will Brown, San Francisco (2012), Paleisje voor Volksvlijt, Amsterdam (2011), and COCO Kunstverein, Vienna (2011). Portions have also been published as text in numerous other projects.