www.refamiliarization.org/

Exhibition Concept
A century ago, Viktor Shklovsky introduced the concept of “defamiliarization” to describe art’s revolutionary potential. Facing a world beset by habituation, automatism, and alienation, he proclaims that art “exists so that one may recover the sensation of life.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has effected a thoroughgoing sense of defamiliarization—even the most quotidian habits have become strange. It has awakened a reflexivity in our relations to the objects of everyday life, making us more aware of the clothes we wear when leaving the house. Simultaneously, though, the domestic sphere has become the site for further habituation to technologies that imperceptibly extract value from our every utterance and gesture. While some seemingly intractable institutional norms may have been temporarily interrupted, others have been fortified. A sustained moment of emergency, the pandemic obliges us to assess what must be recast and resisted and what, if anything, may be recovered with care.
Refamiliarization brings together works of art—from performances and installations, to videos and sculptures—that unsettle our expectations of what is or could be “familiar.”

Programming
Wednesday, September 29: Opening Reception, 4-5:30pm; Performance of The Estate of Our Friend Sylvia by Ziv Schneider and Bethany Tabor, 5:30-7pm; Screening of films by Robert Rapoport, Hyunmin Ryu, and Rudolf Lingens, 7:30-8:30pm

Thursday, September 30: Processional Event, Embodying Our Collective Change by Edgar Fabián Frías (Berkeley MFA), 5:30-7pm; Screening of films by Dulphe Pinheiro-Machado, VLM, and Tim Feeney, 7:30pm-8:30pm

Friday, October 1: Workshop, Breaking Bread with the Bread Symphony Collective, 4-5:30pm; Closing Reception, 5:30-7:30pm

 
Featured Artists
Alex Saum
Anxious to Make (Liat Berdugo + Emily Martinez)
Diego Orihuela
Dulphe Pinheiro-Machado
Edgar Fabián Frías
Hyunmin Ryu
Jennifer Jane Cannon
Max Horwich, Ashley Lewis, Katya Rozanova, & Emily Saltz
Robert Rapoport
Roopa Vasudevan
Rosalie Yu
Rudolf Lingens
Tega Brain, Alex Nathanson, & Benedetta Piantella
Tim Feeney
VLM
Ziv Schneider & Bethany Tabor