The Unexpected Guest

"...For Levinas, this encounter means that the Other is prior to or superior to the self and is the basis of ethics. Yet it is also based upon an ‘impossibility’ or, as Simon Critchley has described it, ‘a radical and unfulfillable demand’,which is akin to the impossible nature of unconditional hospitality. In her article on the work of Krzysztof Wodiczko, Rosalyn Deutsche takes this further by referring to Levinas’s assertion that ‘my relationship with the Other as neighbour gives meaning to my relations with all the others’. Thus the subject’s responsibility is limited not to the Other but extended to Others, making the encounter even more uncanny and traumatic. In this respect, hospitality involves a demanding responsibility." (Tan (2012), excerpt from "The Unconditional Experience of Space" from The Unexpected Guest - 2012 Liverpool Biennale)

---

The Unexpected Guest: Art, writing and thinking on hospitality

Edited by Sally Tallant and Paul Domela
With a text by Lorenzo Fusi

Hospitality is the welcome we extend to strangers, an attitude and a code of conduct, and a metaphor encompassing issues of the body, territory, politics, ecology, commerce and the hosting of data. It is the point where hostility becomes friendship, where the unknown becomes the familiar, and where the outside becomes the inside. But it also about the exercise of power: the power to accommodate or to exclude, the power to impose oneself on the other, and the power to outstay’s one’s welcome. In an age of unprecedented movement of both people and knowledge, different cultures of hospitality confront one another as never before.

Art: Doug Aitken • John Akomfrah • Janine Antoni • Sylvie Blocher invites Jacques Rancière • Andrea Bowers • Libia Castro and Ólafur Ólafsson •   Enrico David • Elmgreen and Dragset • Dora Garcia • Dan Graham • Mona Hatoum • Fritz Haeg • Jeanne van Heeswijk • Oded Hirsch • Hsieh Ying-chun • Nadia Kaabi-Linke • Markus Kahre • Anja Kirschner and David Panos • Jakob Kolding • Jirí Kovanda invites … • Suzanne Lacy and Stephanie Smith • Runo Lagomarsino • Jorge Macchi • Dane Mitchell • Sabelo Mlangeni • Mark Morrisroe • Patrick Murphy • Ahmet Öğüt • Trevor Paglen • Christodoulos Panayiotou • Pedro Reyes • Pamela Rosenkranz • Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse • Sun Xun • Superflex • Sinta Tantra • Tate Liverpool • Althea Thauberger • Jose Angel Vincench • Ming Wong • Jemima Wyman • Kohei Yoshiyuki • Akram Zaatari

Writing: Chris Alexander • Riccardo Boglione • Christian Bök • Stephen Burt • CAConrad • Kieran Daly • Craig Dworkin • J. Gordon Faylor • Robert Fitterman • Kristen Gallagher • Steve Giasson and Robert Fitterman • Kenneth Goldsmith • Lanny Jordan Jackson • Josef Kaplan • Tan Lin • Trisha Low • Stephen McLaughlin • Simon Morris • Tracie Morris • Eileen Myles • Vanessa Place • Kim Rosenfield • Vijay Seshadri • Maria Salgado • Don Share • Lytle Shaw and Jimbo Blachly • Ara Shirinyan • Nick Thurston • Darren Wershler and Bill Kennedy • Steven Zultanski

Thinking: Rosi Braidotti • Costas Douzinas • Stuart Hall and David Scott • Achille Mbembe • Pelin Tan