The Ludwig Forum Aachen is pleased to present Ooooooooo-pus, Based on the artist's ongoing interest in language, sound and physicality, the exhibition provides the first comprehensive insight into her work from the late 1960s to the present day. With her radical approach to (sound) poetry and performance, Ladik established herself as one of the few female protagonists of the artistic avant-garde in the former Yugoslavia during the 1960s and 1970s. The multilingual and multiethnic context of her birthplace, Novi Sad (now Serbia), continues to shape her approach to language and poetry to this day. Her interest in the breakdown of language into individual phonemes and the resulting sound of her compositions form the unifying element that brings together the artist's diverse collages, textile works, photographs, performances and objects through the extraordinary range of her voice.

Over the course of the 1960s, Katalin Ladik initially developed a strong interest in language as a subject and began to focus in particular on the visual and phonetic dimensions of her poems. Following the tradition of concrete poetry, she experiments with the appearance of individual words, letters and punctuation marks to examine the visual and sound qualities of language. These works are presented at the beginning of the exhibition together with thirty collaged works on paper, her so-called visual poems, from the 1970s. These are image-text collages made from found materials such as newspaper clippings, patterns and sheet music, which the artist always uses as musical scores that she sets to music with her voice. The titles of this ongoing series refer to Ladik's key areas of work that continue to run through her artistic work today: YU HYMN (1975), Polish Folksong (1978) or Chanson en Rouge [Song in Red] (1974), for example her interest in exploring folklore and national identity in the context of music and musical genres, while the use of knitting and sewing patterns in March of the Partizan Woman (1979) or The Women (1978) was critical of Ladiks Questioning traditional images of women and roles reveals aspects that continue to come into play in her later work.

Another focus of the exhibition is the artist's collaborative works, such as the cross-disciplinary experimental film O-pus (1972), which was created in collaboration with the artists Attila Csernik and Imre Póth. Starting with the letter and phoneme “O,” which serves as the film’s main motif, the artists explore the relationship between visual effects and their reflections in sound with O-pus. Photographs and ephemera for conceptual works such as Change Art (1975) also demonstrate Ladik's growing interest in participatory practices and happenings. As part of the influential Bosch+Bosch artist group (1969–1976), of which she was a member from 1973, she played an important role within the “New Art Practice” (1966–1978) - an artistic movement consisting of a network of interconnected artists Art initiatives in Yugoslavia emerged and were characterized by a broad conceptual approach that often found expression in collective actions.

Around the same time, in 1970, she began to interpret her poetry in front of an audience using instruments and choreographed movement sequences, as an extension of her voice and language. This improvised recitation of poems was often performed in the form of a ritual, as in her photographically documented performance Shamansong (1970). In the years that followed, she staged numerous photo performances for the camera in order to critically question widespread representations of female bodies and the stigmas associated with ideals of beauty. The large-format triptych Androgin (1978) also marks Ladik's interest in the concept of androgyny - a mental figure that has its origins in Greek mythology and serves the artist as a conceptual tool to dissolve gender hierarchies. This examination of feminist issues and mythological narratives continues in her most recent works. While collages and circuit board scores from recent years follow Ladik's visual poems from the 1970s, textile scores such as Follow Me Into Mythology (2017) or The Song of Circe (2017) translate them cut out sewing and cutting patterns of her collages into space through actual seams and stitches.

In Ooooooooo-pus, the settings of Katalin Ladik's visual poetry in the form of collages, photographs, objects and textile works combine to create an independent soundscape that is carried by the artist's voice. The title goes back to her vinyl writing score Ooooooooo-pus (2023), which was created specifically for the exhibition and will be activated by Ladik during the course of the exhibition.

Curated for the Ludwig Forum Aachen by Fanny Hauser and Hendrik Folkerts

Exhibition design: Studio Manuel Raeder with Rodolfo Samperio

Graphic design: Bardhi Haliti

The exhibition was organized in cooperation with the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, and the Haus der Kunst Munich.

With thanks to Róna Kopeczky (acb Gallery), Sarah Johanna Theurer (Haus der Kunst Munich) and the Aachen Papprohrfabrik.

Download accompanying booklet

Accompanying program

Friday, October 6th, 2023, 7:00 p.m.
Opening

Saturday, October 7th, 2023, 11:00 a.m.
Matinée with book release and conversation with Katalin Ladik and the curators Fanny Hauser and Hendrik Folkerts

Sunday, November 19th, 2023, 11:00 a.m.
Performance Katalin Ladik

Wednesday, February 21, 2024, 6:30 p.m.
Lecture by Daniel Muzyczuk: The graphic score as a structure that wants to become a different structure. Thoughts on scores from Eastern Europe

Thursday, February 22nd, 2024, at 5:00 p.m.
Curator tour with Fanny Hauser (in German)
Meeting point: 5 p.m. in the entrance area, costs: €2.00 plus museum admission

Thursday, March 21, 2014, 5 p.m.
Curator's tour with Fanny Hauser (in German)
Meeting point: 5 p.m. in the entrance area, costs: €2.00 plus museum entry

Thursday, April 25, 2014, 5 p.m.
Curator tour with Fanny Hauser (in German)
Meeting point: 5 p.m. in the entrance area, costs: €2.00 plus museum entry

Thursday, May 16, 2014, 5 p.m.
Curator's tour with Fanny Hauser (in German)
Meeting point: 5 p.m. in the entrance area, costs: €2.00 plus museum entry

publication

Katalin Ladik. Ooooooooo-pus

Over the course of the 1960s, Katalin Ladik became an integral part of the literary and artistic avant-garde of her birthplace Novi Sad (formerly Yugoslavia, now Serbia), as the only female artist in the male-dominated art world of the time. Her stay in Budapest from the early 1970s was the trigger for a comprehensive turn to fine art. Ladik increasingly merged visual poetry with experimental sound practice and positioned himself at the intersection of various established and new performance traditions, from theater and film to happenings, rituals, photo performance and television.

This illustrated monograph places Katalin Ladik's diverse practice in the context of international postwar discourses on (lens-based) performance, concrete and visual poetry, score- and instruction-based work, feminist stories, and the motifs of ritual and folklore in contemporary art. Renowned artists, critics and scientists of different generations and backgrounds, including Diedrich Diederichsen, Hendrik Folkerts, Irena Haiduk, Ana Janevski and Dieter Roelstraete, contribute longer essays, while various experts such as Pierre Bal-Blanc, Fanny Hauser, Emese Kürti, Quinn Latimer, Bhavisha Panchia, Gloria Sutton, Sarah Johanna Theurer, Paolo Thorsen-Nagel and Mónica de la Torre will concentrate on individual works from Ladik's oeuvre. Katalin Ladik contributes a newly commissioned visual essay that highlights specific images and source materials that have shaped her foundational practice from the 1960s to the present.

Edited by Hendrik Folkerts

With contributions from Diedrich Diederichsen, Hendrik Folkerts, Irena Haiduk, Ana Janevski, Dieter Roelstraete, Pierre Bal-Blanc, Fanny Hauser, Emese Kürti, Quinn Latimer, Bhavisha Panchia, Gloria Sutton, Sarah Johanna Theurer, Paolo Thorsen-Nagel, and Mónica de la Torre.

In English

Published by Skira, 2023, 160 pages

ISBN: 885724853

2023

Price in the Ludwig Forum Aachen: €28.00

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