EXHIBITION: Dr. Falke’s Oraculum
Dr. Falke’s Oraculum
KAHN & SELESNICK
NOVEMBER 5 – DECEMBER 21, 2021
Opening: Friday, November 5th, from 5pm - 8pm
“Dr. Falke's Oraculum” continues the adventures of the Truppe Fledermaus, a cabaret troupe of anxious mummers and would-be mystics who catalogue their absurdist attempts to augur a future that seems increasingly in peril due to environmental pressures and global turmoil. During these journeys to such far-flung places as the coastal cliffs of Ireland, the remote island of Fogo off the coast of Newfoundland, the sandy wastes of Cape Cod, and the muddy, muddy banks of the swollen Delaware, the artists considered the circular structure of time and our attempts to make sense of the present by projecting our minds into the future, then mapped these various methods of prognostication onto the distant landscapes in which they sojourned. The results of these meditations were then transcribed onto the images of the Truppe's performances to produce a sort of personal Oraculum. As a result, this volume does not purport to be an instruction manual so much as a mindset that one might adopt while attempting to think about Augury.
ABOUT THE BOOK
The book is presented unbound so that it may be used as a bibliomancy oracle where pages can be shuffled and selected at random to receive messages and prophecy, much as one uses the tarot and other cartomancy decks. To this end, the artists found inspiration in "Napoleon's Book of Fate", an oracle purportedly unearthed in Egypt during a French military expedition in 1801 and supposedly consulted by the Emperor "before every important occasion". The fact that the upheavals of that time seem in many ways to echo our own only strengthened the desire to produce an Oraculum updated for this current, turbulent age.
In addition to being a sort of augury engine, viewers of the book will also get a glimpse of the real-life adventures that inspired the artists to create their Carnival at the End of the World Tarot deck. Many of the characters and mummers included in that deck come to life in the book, dancing on the ice floes and mountain tops while being battered by the elements in their improvised costumes. These journeys, most particularly to Fogo Island with the Nomadic School of Wonder, allowed the artists to fully inhabit the notion of the carnivalesque.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Kahn & Selesnick are a collaborative artist team who have been making narrative card decks, staged narrative photographs, figurative paintings, handmade books, and sculptural installations since the early 1980s. They specialize in alternative historical narratives that may also be futures. The artists have participated in over 100 solo and group exhibitions worldwide, have work in the collections of over 20 museums and public institutions in addition to numerous private collections and have been the recipients of grants from NASA and the Pollock Krasner Foundation. Their work has been featured in well-known publications such as the New York Times and Huffington Post, and has been the subject of documentaries by PBS and Voom; they have published monographs and projects with Aperture and Candela Books.