Evil Earth System: Lala Raščić
Opening: June 11, 6 - 9 pm
Exhibition Dates: June 11 - July 3
!!! Special guest performance @ 6 PM!!!
“....I want to agree with you but you are making it really hard for me” by Plural Authorship Collective



Special Events:
Friday, June 17, 7 PM
Plural Authorship Collective artist talk

Sunday, July 3, 7 PM
Victoria Simmons (with Lala Raščić)
spoken word performance and Evil Earth System exhibition closing

Good Children Gallery is proud to present Evil Earth System, a solo exhibition featuring new installation and video work by Good Children Gallery member, artist by Lala Raščić. Good Children Gallery will also host a special guest performance “....I want to agree with you but you are making it really hard for me” by Plural Authorship Collective.

Lala Raščić’s exhibition Evil Earth System is a multi-faceted installation of light, reflection, shadow, gilded objects and videos, based on the artist’s exploration of contemporary language and data visualization.

What began as a trial collaboration, Raščić worked with Slovenian programmer Marko Plahuta, mining 8.6 million Tweets for words starting with the prefixes anti-, pro-,pre- , post-, neo-, proto-, hyper- and contra-. The aggregated results of research were used to yield values that translated into objects, shapes, and gestures. Objects, executed in the technique of “verre églomisé” (reverse painting with gold leaf on glass), are arranged as tabletop compositions, both emancipated in their own materiality and elusive –dematerialized by light, transformed into invisible reflective surfaces. Dynamic representation of the collected data is available via a computer installed in the space of the gallery.

In the tradition of concrete poetry of the 50’s and onward, the materiality of language (and in this case data) is utilized, both as meaning and as code, as building blocks for a systematic, yet visually opulent installation situated in the front room of Good Children Gallery. Inspired by early computer art, op art, conceptual art and the international movement that brought forth concrete/visual poetry, Raščić mires her work in a system of causes and effects, a tautological system of references extracting visual compositions out of data. Irrational interventions and subjective decisions provide a ludic element to this exhibition-system, contrasting the subjective with the methodological, the lyrical with the geometrical.

Evil Earth’s Notebook, a 30-minute video produced during the artists’ residency at Cultiral Center Tobačna in 2015, dominates the back room of the gallery. Evil Earth’s Notebook reflects Raščić’s research of the representation of landscape under the conditions of contemporary visualities shaped by screen technologies. The video takes the form of a video essay in which we can follow the artists’ voice reading research notes, consisting of both her own text and quotes from various poets and thinkers. At one point in the video, the artist says “Evil Earth is a system. This exhibition is a system.” Therefore, the Evil Earth System.


Plural Authorship Collective

Good Children Gallery is proud to be one of the hosts for the London-based performance duo Plural Authorship Collective (P_A_C), as they make their U.S. tour. “....I want to agree with you but you are making it really hard for me” is a text-based performative work, initiated in middle of the Atlantic ocean as P_A_C sailed from Rome to the U.S. “....I want to agree with you but you are making it really hard for me” is a part of a performative journey, a satirical starting point reflecting on the construction of selves through the ideas of ancestry, gender, race, and notions of identity. P_A_C will also deliver an artist talk on Friday, June 17, reflecting on the 67 days performance of the mirroring selves, what it means to try and become one, what it is to lose privacy, what it takes to make private public and what is means to perform.

Plural Authorship Collective (P_A_C) is an artist duo based between London, Berlin, Amsterdam and Ghent, founded in 2015, creating multi disciplinary work through performance, video and text. P_A_C takes an ethnographic approach to systems of behaviour, examining modes of being, bureaucratic protocols, and embracing the death of privacy. P_A_C have already performed at Current Space, Baltimore; Panoply Performance Laboratory, NYC; Open Source Gallery, NYC; and Mammal Gallery, Atlanta, with scheduled stops in Austin and Tallahassee. Their work was also shown as part of Antwerp Art Weekend (2016) and in a solo show at the Kleiner Salon, Berlin (2013).


Victoria Simmons

Evil Earth System will close on July 3, 2016 with a spoken word performance with poet Victoria Simmons, in collaboration with Lala Raščić, delivering her poetry created in reaction-to and in collaboration-with the exhibition.
Victoria Simmons is a poet from Columbia, MO. Despite struggling with severe dyslexia at a young age, Victoria was inspired by her 4th grade teacher, to begin writing and performing poetry. Recently relocating to New Orleans and interacting with the vibrant, creative minds that inhabit the city, has presented new opportunities for artistic collaboration that have reawakened the poet in Victoria. Her writing is very personal, exploring sexuality, spirituality and nature within the dichotomy of fragmentation and unity.