Forked TongueForked Tongue

Madison Bycroft explains:

"To speak with a forked tongue, to say one thing but mean something else, is an idiom that itself has a bifurcated history.

It might be possible to read a forked tongue as one that approaches with caution and allows for syntactic uncertainty, an interpretation that moves in multiple directions, performs numerous gestures, and at times sits still. And so how to write in two directions? How to evade a single sense? Instead of containing things within specified boundaries or capacities a space opens for an active non-knowing impulse.

A pun, a code, writing in invisible ink, doublespeak, a city in a city.

But it is also understood that to speak with a forked tongue is to lie: A statement is made, a static viewpoint pledged, a public politic is performed and an ideology is promised, here, only to be broken, and undone. This is the realm of deception, ethical inconsistencies, double standards and betrayal, where thin, fleeting promises benefit only the promiser."

The Forked Tongue includes ten one minute videos that move in two directions, are ambivalent, layered, and in between. Repetitions, translations, and bifurcated histories proliferate, as do restless characters performing multiple gestures, unanchored, and never still. These works evade a single sense. Instead of containing things within specified boundaries or capacities, a space opens for multiplicity and ambiguity. The selected videos were sent in from Australia, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

This online event will take place on Twitch.

Julia van Mourik (director of The One Minutes Foundation) will introduce the programme and the participating artists will be (virtually) present in a Q&A. Open discussion with the public is encouraged.

• 8.00pm: Introduction by Julia van Mourik (director The One Minutes Foundation)
• 8.05pm: Introduction by Emma Mattei (programmer Kinemastik)
• 8.10pm: Introduction to Forked Tongue by Madison Bycroft
• 8.20pm: Screening of Forked Tongue
• 8.30pm: Conversation with participating artists
• 8.45pm Olga Westrate shows her sketchbook
• 8.50pm Charistmatic Inflation by Teresa Busuttil

Madison Maximum Bycroft (1987, Kaurna Yarta, Australia) is an artist based in Marseille, France. Bycroft is a graduate from the University of South Australia (2013), and the MFA programme at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, The Netherlands (2016). Working with video, sculpture and performance, Madison Bycroft's current interests extend into forms of reading and writing, expression and refusal. The politics of illegibility and legibility are explored through language and material, asking how 'sense' is framed by historical contexts, terrestrial bias, and structures of power. Bycroft's work has recently been exhibited in amongst others Biopic - Samstag Museum (South Australia), For Refusal - Transmediala (Berlin, Germany), Making Kin at Kunsthaus Hamburg (Germany) and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Melbourne, Australia).

Adele Dipasquale, Yoohee Cha, Teresa Busuttil, Hayoung Kim, Sol Archer, Sam Kaufman, Cristina Lavosi, Jeanne Rocher, Elif Satanaya Özbay and Olga Westrate.

The One Minutes Foundation produces and distributes one-minute videos from an artistic point of view, offering an international stage for people to create, engage and connect. The One Minutes is active at the forefront of international contemporary art, as well as in education and welfare. It has exhibited internationally, including at Power Station of Art (CN), National Gallery of Iceland in Reykjavík (IS) and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (USA). Every two months, The One Minutes Foundation puts out a new series of 60-second films that investigate how we perceive and engage with the moving image. Send in your videos and participate in the project!

This series is a collaboration between The One Minutes and Kinemastik and is made possible by Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, BNG Cultuurfonds and the Mondriaan Fund.