PARALLEL ART FOUNDATION
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Cia Rinne [FI]
notes for soloists
Cairo Contemporary, Budapest
1071 Budapest, Lövölde tér 7.2025 January 9 - February 2
On view: 0-24hCia Rinne is a Finnish conceptual poet who lives in Berlin. She writes in a dual tradition of European sound poetry. Polyglot – she alternates English, French, Italian and German with a playful approach to concrete poetry archetypes with puns, visual gags, materiality of language, and effects of meaning.
notes for soloists is series of visual and concrete poetry. Instigated by a deep mistrust in language and its use, the short pieces examine the smallest parts of language and its rhizome, playing with phonetic similarities and shifts in meaning, visuality and sound. The minimalist pieces are the result of a reduction towards nothing.
Cia's approach is multifaceted. She once said in an interview: I always used to play little word-games at school while writing or listening to something. Then it became more severe when I was studying philosophy that so much dealt with language. We were disputing about every single word, and the resulting language often turned out to sound ridiculous. In order to say something really clearly you have to be quite precise in your use of language, so as to avoid any possibility of misunderstanding. Many discussions were structured around the definitions and use of words and concepts. Philosophical language is often a very peculiar language. Wittgenstein wrote: “A proposition is completely logically analysed if its grammar is made completely clear: no matter what idiom it may be written or expressed in.” Somehow, this way of thinking affected me. You immediately react logically to formulations that could be misunderstood and need to use the most minimal expression possible to keep that potential at stake.
Cia Rinne refers to the importance of her experiences from a long-term research project on the language of the Roma as fundamental to an understanding of how movements between different languages and places – a kind of linguistic nomadic life – have led to an interest in the political and cultural gaps and shifts in meaning of language that are the basis of her work. She also points to the Fluxus movement, musicians like Steve Reich and John Cage, and philosophy as sources of inspiration. By twisting and turning words and shifting language within the same sentence, she plays with the meaning of words and their phonetic and visual similarities and differences. In her performances, she explores, among other things, the relationship of the body and the voice to language, and how the body can function as a meaningful sign. In addition to being permeated by the language of philosophy and the philosophy of language, Rinne’s practice also contains a great deal of humour.
Cia Rinne (1973) was born in Gothenburg but grew up in Germany, Finland, and Denmark, and is now based outside Berlin. She has published four collections of poetry, written opera libretti, and several texts for the stage. Her work has been exhibited in Marabouparken konsthall in Stockholm, Haus am Waldsee in Berlin, and Centre Pompidou in Paris; and is represented in collections such as the MOMA Artist Book Collection, Bibliothèque des Beaux-Arts de Paris and the Copenhagen City Collection.
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Curator: Gábor Pintér
Cooperation partner: Bischitz Johanna Integrated Human Service Centre
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