Dear —, Letters labor with an ambition to devise an addressee--at once everyone and no one--in a serialized practice of (dis)attachment. Let’s deal with the grammar inside of structures of address: the fantasies involved in the genre of the epistolary, its economy of exchange, the disobedience of non-reciprocity, the commotion of transaction. Do you think this letter is for you? It precedes you, impresses itself upon you, injuriously names you, subordinates you to its syntax. You are fed, staged, aggrieved. The letter is a lion, we must shoot the lamb together. Love, —.

Stefa Govaart performs Love me mort, letters written over the course of the last three years. The title suggests that love is a structure of relentlessness. The French word for dead (mort) metonymically and nearly homonymically substitutes the comparative adverb “more”. The cumulative logic of the comparative (more) and the teleological sense of mort merge. In love we find ourselves “shattered” [“en éclats”], thinks philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy. I love you too does not follow I love you. Don't suppose that love is reciprocal. The articulation of the transformation of thought materially transforms us. The performance contains five sections: Sentence, Essence, Woman, Negation, and finally, Sex.

Selma Selman performs Dear Omer, I am not your friend I am your enemy. Selma is addressing Omer, but the audience does not know whether Omer is a fictional character, a deity, or an acquaintance, a brother, a lover, her homme fatale. Evidently, Omer personifies the patriarchy itself, the world we were born into, not the world we chose. Selma’s voice is angry and breaks at times, at other times is decisive and reproving. What remains is poetry, as Selma urges the world, urges Omer, to listen. Selma is not speaking to us, or at least not only to us who came to watch her perform, but to someone who’s not here, and they should be — to an imaginary figure of power that does not know about her work yet; a figure that, in other words, bears no empathy for it. He has no idea. (excerpt of text by Natalija Paunic)

Bio's:

Arnisa Zeqo is a curator, writer and educator, based in Amsterdam. She is co-founder of rongwrong, space for art and theory in Amsterdam. She recently completed a residency at the Rijksakademie, where her main research theme was the relationship between performance, conceptual art and ‘printed matter’ (of artist’s books) in the art ecology of Amsterdam in the 80s and 90s. Arnisa has extensive experience in Dutch art education and has been a tutor at the Dutch Art Institute (DAI), Werkplaats Typografie (ArtEZ) and the Piet Zwart Institute MFA (WdKA). Internationally, she has been involved with the American Academy in Rome, Center for Curatorial Studies Bard College. She was responsible for the educational programs of documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens. Her work is embedded in artistic practices that deal with performance, fiction and stories about art and education. She has recently been appointed the new director of Kunsthuis SYB.

Stefa Govaart’s text- and performance-based work derives from a two-fold background in dance/performance and theory, staging language as dedication poised between the colloquial and philosophical, via the trained body. They have performed internationally, working with Eszter Salamon, Eglė Budvytytė, Christine De Smedt, Bryana Fritz, Adriano W. Jensen, PRICE/Mathias Ringgenberg, Claudia Pagès Rabal, among others. Their recent work was presented at Wendy's Subway, Woodbine, NYU (New York), WIELS (Brussels) and De Appel (Amsterdam).They are a founding member of Sex Negativity at Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, and curate the artists’ gathering spring* meeting at Performing Arts Forum in France. They have taught at P.A.R.T.S. (Brussels) and Sandberg Instituut (Amsterdam). They are based between Brussels and New York.

Selma Selman (b.1991) is from Bosnia and Herzegovina and is of Romani origin. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2014 from Banja Luka University’s Department of Painting. In 2018 she graduated from Syracuse University with a Master of Fine Arts in Transmedia, Visual and Performing Arts. Her works alternate between sensitive, harsh, and ironic gestures revealing discriminatory identity attributions, role expectations, and stereotypes. Her body and identity become the medium for capturing civic and personal themes that articulate political resistance and feminist empowerment. Recently she had exhibited at: Documenta 15, Kassel (2022), Manifesta 14, Pristina (2022), Manifold, Amsterdam (NL)Theaterfestival Boulevard, in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Fries Museum, Leeuwarden (NL), (2022) MO Museum Vilnius, Vilnius (2022), Kasseler Kunstverein Museum Fridericianum, Kassel (2021), National Gallery, Sarajevo (2021), Acb Gallery, Budapest (2021), SU Art Gallery, Syracuse, USA (2018) and many more. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions and festivals, such as URBAN TEXT, Institutes des Cultures d’Islam, Paris, EVROVIZION, ifa, Stuttgart, Mediterranea 19 Young Artists Biennale School of Waters, 58th Venice Biennale, Kunstquartier Bethanien in Berlin, Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, New Children Gallery in New Orleans, L’Onde Center for Art in Paris, Queens museum in New York, The Creative Time Summit in Miami, Museum of Contemporary Art in Banja Luka, Villa Romana in Firenze, Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin, Galerie Boutique in New York and many more. Selma Selman is the founder of the organization Get The Heck To School, which aims to empower Roma girls all around the world who face ostracization from society and poverty.