The Secession Sessions

overview

The Secession Sessions is a multipart project that investigates questions of statehood and representation through the prism of statelessness. The project began with seventy-four letters sent over seventy-four days by artist Eric Baudelaire to Maxim Gvinjia, former Foreign Minister of the mostly unrecognised state of Abkhazia on the Black Sea in the Caucasus region. Surprisingly, many letters arrived at their ‘nonexistent’ destination. Gvinjia recorded responses to the letters he received, the contents of which would later become entwined in the narrative voice of Baudelaire’s film Letters to Max (2014). The Secession Sessions comprises various elements presented as part of SB12: public office hours at the Anembassy of Abkhazia, staffed by Gvinjia; daily screenings of Letters to Max; and The Sharjah Sessions, a discursive programme of public events with scholars and artists, which takes place in May as part of March Meeting 2015.

The Anembassy of Abkhazia is open to the public 5–6 March and 14–16 May, 10:00 am–1:00 pm.
Letters to Max screens daily at 1:00 pm, 4:00 pm and 8:30 pm.
The Sharjah Sessions take place 12–13 May 2015.


This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 12