September 17, 2023
dublab and visual artist Béla Pablo Janssen teamed up for a live broadcast about his latest show “ANARCHIVE”, which had been on display at the FOYER of Kunsthalle Düsseldorf over the summer until this performance. dublab DJs Hermes Villena and Block Barley selected music and sounds, interwoven with words from an ad-hoc performance by Max Dax and BPJ.
About ANARCHIVE:
The series comprises 103 posters, which Béla Pablo Janssen has collected between 2013 and 2023. BPJ sprays over the posters uniformly: The text part is blotted out with coloured, white, or black spray paint that matches the colour of the original text, creating “clouds” or “bars” on each poster where the information about the exhibitions was once legible. In the colour-congruent overspraying, a new pictorial interweaving of background and blotted-out text information is created. The viewer lacks the essential information. Deprived of this, BPJ presents them as purely visual, aesthetic remnants.
The artworks are labeled with a sequential number, accompanied by the exhibition’s title and venue to which they are associated. The series itself bears the name ANARCHIVE, intertwining the concepts of organization and accumulation found within traditional archives, while engaging with the political state of lawlessness and absence of authority. At this intersection rises a fresh framework — an innovative archive — that thrives on subverting and infiltrating the existing order.
