Biennials: local exoticism, market-dependency, multiculturalism, innovation

Spurred by their proliferation in the last two decades, international contemporary art biennials have become the locus for heated controversies. On one hand, skeptics underline the inalienable and tight relationship between the art market and the biennials, focusing on spicing up the familiar market-oriented artists along with the new tastes. On the other hand, biennials offer an exciting change of the locales and promote international cultural exchange and multiculturalism that has been underscored since 1989 when Jean-Hubert Martin curated the exhibition Magiciens de la Terre in Paris.

Art biennials consist of a complex web of relations among national cultural policies, art markets and usual/unusual/exotic/non-exotic/innovative art practices. Despite their inevitable link to the art market and the marketing goals of the funders, I believe the biennials suggest a multi-faceted position beyond the promotion of 'local exocitism' and market-dependency.

--

"International biennials are to the art market what fusion food is to the culinary world: mainstream ingredients with a local flavor snuck into the mix, but not enough to aggravate the conventional palate. What recipe possesses the right balance to allow for necessary mass consumption? Or course, nothing too excessive: Let's start with something a little unusual, say papaya? And then mix it with chicken pâté. Everybody eats chicken, right? And systematically, those with purchasing power dictate the margins of taste.

In the process of 'glocalism' or fusion, power politics play the determining role. Getting back to contemporary art, give me something familiar enough, say Olafur Eliasson, and mix in a little Solmaz Shahbazi? That's just about mild and new enough. I like chicken, and papaya sure sounds sexy.

All of this is a problematic because art is not food, and within the aggressive parameters of the market-driven culture industry, international biennials are the market's white lie: International Food Day. They are about consumption, they are about tourism, they are about branding, and they are about new product lines. But thankfully, they also have a comforting slogan: promoting international cultural exchange, art and ideas.

When the meal is over, although we believe we have widened out horizons (even though it was just chicken!), we are often still too uncomfortable to pick up a papaya the next time we are at a fruit stand. Perhaps it is indeed time to regain our Jamesonian 'distance of critique' because fusion good has yet to fulfill its promise, and we are always still hungry after leaving the table."
(Mai Abu ElDahab)


"Events like contemporary art biennials, initiated by local authorities to promote the position of locales on the global map, are then global events by nature, while they claim to be locally meaningful and productive in terms of new localities. The introduction of 'foreign,' international knowledge, cultures, artworks, and discourses are not only proof of the capacity to master international cultural exchanges and thereby better defend local characteristics. More significant yet, this process reveals that international or global cultures influence and even condition the new reality of the locales. The home is being voluntarily turned into a kind of non-home, a constantly changing and evolving in-between space, a kind of 'glocal' land. The new localities being generated are definitively impure, hybrid, and therefore innovative."
(Hou Hanru)

(Quotes from The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe.)

New video work by Judit Kurtág

Artists Space hosts "Episode"--a new video work by Judit Kurtág (b. 1975, Budapest) from October 12 through December 8, 2007 . Following her studies on photography at École des Gobelins in Paris, Kurtág honed her skills at École des Beaux Arts in Bordeaux. Participated in many international exhibitions and art fairs in Paris, Amsterdam, Milan, Tokyo, Shanghai, Reykjavik and Kiev among many other places, the artist shows her work in New York for the first time.

Judit Kurtág’s videos present an idiosyncratic harmony of sound and image, and an uncanny digital manipulation that reflects contemplation upon subjectivity. “For me reality is what really happens, what we think is happening, and what happens in our memories,” the artist utters, “So these three layers are mixed, in a Cubist way.” Being introspective yet open to wider explorations, Kurtág’s works play within the limits of expression where the difference between artist, narrator and audience become unclear. Taking motion as the ultimate point of reference, Kurtág’s videos embrace a liminal perception of reality instead of a depiction of the world.

Volume 12: Al Manakh

What does the recent bewildering development of the Gulf region mean to the rest of the world? Focusing on this question, the magazine VOLUME 12: Al Manakh is about to be available in bookstores. Co-edited by Archis, OMA*AMO and Moutamarat, Al Manakh was released at the International Design Forum in Dubai that took place between May 27-29, 2007.

Elaborating on the scrutiny of culture, history and architecture of the Gulf region, the magazine calls attention to Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Ras Al Khalmah. Considered as the first attempt of a meticulous research of the urban setting of the region, this issue articulates itself as an investigation of the ‘ultimate tabula rasa’.

To quote Rem Koolhaas, “The tragic effect of architecture's inability to recognize and think through modernization's inevitabilities is a wistful language of perpetual disappointment with what is produced and the endless recycling of nostalgic panaceas as well-meaning but moribund alternatives... It is particularly cruel that the harshest criticism comes from old cultures that still control the apparatus of judgment, while the epicenters of production have shifted to the other end(s) of the globe. […] The Gulf is not just reconfiguring itself; it's reconfiguring the world.”

http://www.volumeproject.org/

Frozen Waves: New work for YAMA

FROZEN WAVES
NEW WORK FOR YAMA, ISTANBUL

Babak Ghazi Mustafa Hulusi Paul Snowden Mark Titchner Eva Weinmayr
Curated by Michelle Cotton and Sylvia Kouvali
6 SEPTEMBER – 4 NOVEMBER
Marmara Pera Hotel, Mesrutiyet Caddesi Tepebası 34430 Istanbul
11 – 14 OCTOBER
Urban Screens Manchester 07 Art & Events Programme
Manchester Metropolitan University All Saints Garden Oxford Road, Urbis Cathedral Gardens

"Frozen Waves will broadcast new work by Babak Ghazi (UK), Mustafa Hulusi (UK / Cyprus), Paul Snowden (NZ / Germany), Mark Titchner (UK) and Eva Weinmayr (UK) via publicly-sited screens in Istanbul and the UK.

The project has been commissioned for Yama, a public art programme hosted via a 6m x 9m diode screen on the roof of the
Marmara Pera Hotel in the centre of Istanbul. Since July 2006 Yama has presented work by artists including Wael Shawky (Egypt), Ahmet Ogut (Turkey), Köken Ergun (Turkey) and Jenny Holzer (USA). The screen is sited 72 m above street level in Tepebasi, a busy square in Beyoglu overlooking the Golden Horn and is visible from various points in the city.

Titled after a chapter in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1937 dystopian novel, We, Frozen Waves will play a continuous programme of media work on the screen during the hours of darkness. Five atists employing visual and textual codes familiar from the language of commerce and the information economy were invited to develop projects for Yama and their short works have been informed by the architecture of the screen, the Lumacom technology and the local context.

The format of Frozen Waves is concerned with the role that technology plays in structuring communication, occupying what the architect Robert Venturi refers to as an ‘iconographic surface’, a façade that functions as a source of digital information that is by nature subject to renewal and change.

Frozen Waves will launch during the professional preview for the 10th International Istanbul Biennial in September 2007 and forms part of the public art programme for the annual, international Urban Screens Conference hosted this year in Manchester in October."

For further information contact
Sylvia Kouvali yama.opening@earthlink.net or
Michelle Cotton michelle@melocotones.co.uk

More information.

25 Years Later: Welcome to Art in General

Celebrating its 25th Anniversary, Art in General, a non-profit visual arts organization in Lower Manhattan, and UBS collaborate for the exhibition "25 Years Later: Welcome to Art in General" that is hosted by the UBS Art Gallery in Midtown. Dedicated to unconventional art practices, Art in General curators prefer not to undertake a retrospective perspective; rather, the exhibition focuses on artists and artists collaboratives who proffer the organization's enthusiasm for the experimental wing of recent art as well as its suggestion of art as a social engagement in relational terms.

Installations consisting of performances and event-based works engage with the audience in creative ways. What makes the exhibition more interesting, is its space which is located at the lobby of the UBS building, thus at a platform that is exposed to a heteronegeneous and wide range of publics--different from the gallery-goers. Artists and artists collaboratives include Alejandro Cesarco (Montevideo/New York), Kianga Ford (Los Angeles/Boston), Chitra Ganesh (New York) and Miriam Ghani (New York), Sharon Hayes (New York), Timothy Hutchings (New York), Surasi Kusolwong (Bangkok), Bik Van der Pol (Rotterdam), Ana Prvacki (Singapore), Jiri Skala (Prague), and Lee Walton (New York).

Please visit Art in General's updated website for the schedule of events and further information.

10th Istanbul Biennial: Not Only Possible, But Also Necessary

"Not Only Possible, But Also Necessary: Optimism in the age of global war"
Curator: Hou Hanru
September 8 - November 4, 2007

"The 10th İstanbul Biennial will not be a thematic exhibition in the traditional manner; rather, it will emphasise artistic production based on collective intelligence and the living process of negotiating with physical sites. The biennial will focus on urban issues and architectural reality as a means of exposing different cultural contexts and artistic visions regarding the complex and diverse forms of modernity. The current mutation of the global art scene reflects the restructuring of the world order prompted by the inventions and realisations of different modernities and modernisation projects beyond the traditional hegemonic vision of the West. This tendency is naturally the focus of the upcoming İstanbul Biennial when it attains its 10th edition. The unique context of Turkey as one of the earliest non-Western modern republics and its geopolitical position as a gateway between Europe and Asia provide a perfect location and momentum for artistic and cultural explorations of such an issue. It represents aspiration and optimism – it’s a kind of realisable utopia. We are living in an age of globalisation. The impacts of globalisation on different parts of the world are complex and contradictory. They not only create economic, cultural and social progress but also spread conflicts and wars all over. Facing such a reality, better visions of our life and society driven by the dynamism of modernisation and certain utopian idealism are urgently needed. Such endeavours are not only possible. They are also necessary. And contemporary art, if it can still make sense in our turbulently mutating world, must engage itself in such a struggle."
Retrieved from the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts website.

For the artist list, special projects and venues' roles within the biennial visit the link.

Muhtelif!

"Muhtelif" cikti!
"Muhtelif" is now available!

Muhtelif 2
Guncel Sanat Yayini/Contemporary Art Publication, Istanbul

Retroakt/Retroact
Igor Zabel
"Diyalog"/"Dialogue"

Şimdi/Now
Hrant Dink
"Ruh halimin guvercin tedirginligi"/"A pigeon-like unease of spirit"

Diskur/Discourse
Natasa Petresin
Tarihi kim yazmali? "Who shall write down the history?

Gunluk/Diary
Ahmet Ogut
"Allahim lutfen beni cok unlu bir sanatci yap!"/"Please God make me a famous artist!"

Diskur/Discourse
Adnan Yildiz
"Deeparture"/"Deeparture"

Gramer/Grammer
Ovul Durmusoglu
"Institution and Crisis: Rooseum"/"Kurum ve Kriz: Rooseum"

Tunel/Tunnel
Jacques Ranciere
"Siyasi Ozne Olarak Sanatcilar ve Kultur Ureticileri, Neo-Liberal Kuressellesme Doneminde Muhaliflik, Mudahale, Katilimcilik, Ozgurlesme"/"Artists and Cultural Producers as Political Subjects, Opposition, Intervention, Participation, Emancipation in Times of Neo-Liberal Globalisation"

Gramer/Grammer
Pelin Tan/Anselm Franke
"Jest Üzerine"/"On Gesture"

Havuz/Pool
Servet Kocyigit
"Brroomm"

Editorler/Editors: Ahmet Ogut, Pelin Tan, Adnan Yildiz
Ceviriler/Translations: Muhtelif, Şevin Yildiz, Oyku Ozsoy, Ozlem Unsal

Muhtelif, PİST, BAS, ve Platform Garanti Güncel Sanat Merkezi'nden, Ağustos'tan itibaren ise BFB (www.bigfamilybusiness.net) Office ve rodeo-gallery'den temin edilebilir.

Muhtelif is now available at Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, at PIST, and at BAS, and will be available at the rodeo-gallery, and at www.bigfamilybusiness.net in August.

Ofis Arhitekti's dynamic facades

Based in Ljubljana, and initiated by Rok Oman and Spela Videcnik in 1996, Ofis Arhitekti is the prizeholder of the Slovenian National Design Competition with "2 Apartment Blocks on the Coast" project in Izola, Slovenia, which was also nominated by Mies van der Rohe Awards 2006.

Currently in construction on progress, these 'smart living units' consist of 30 apartments, 2800 m2 in total, including studios and three-bedrooms. The facades feature fun, dynamic and original details; trapezoid-shaped balconies and colorful sunshades/curtains provide a playful 'outfit' to the apartments with coastal views. As the organization's website utters, "the changing rhythm of balconies creates dynamic elevations and offers privacy to the neighbouring owners."

Frankly, it is relieving to see affordable housing projects that do not claim social engineering.

For further information, please visit Ofis Arhitekti's website.

Did you know that...

Below are some excerpts from Plug In#28--Raimundas Malasauskas writes to accompany a project of Nomads & Residents collective created by Bik Van der Pol:

"Did you know that...

[...]

...“stupid as a table” is an expression used in certain languages to define the void of knowledge and thinking altogether? Most often it refers to a human being, never to an actual table. However some professors of philosophy also tend to use an example of a table as a figure of knowledge or things in itself.

... the paradox of the table exemplifies the phenomena of language games: our thinking differs not only due to the different languages we speak, but also due to the specific language games we play.

... art is just another language according to certain theories? It allows a certain group of people to find each other and communicate the value of their communication.

... language games are an intrinsic part of the design of everyday reality? If you decide that you are the designer of your subjectivity try to design a table of its contents first. I started my table of contents with coffee stains today.

[...]

... art often works as a table of contents for non-artrelated subjects and disciplines? It connects multiple dots of various types of knowledge creating temporary spatial constellations of collective thinking.

... knowledge production is a preoccupation of many contemporary artists? Therefore the content of their work is often redefinition of what they do and what their role should be.

[...]

... it is not enough to make certain types of knowledge accessible and available in order to activate it? Knowledge needs dissemination in order to function. Yet it is hard to believe those who say that the best use of knowledge is not its actual implementation into action, but a circulation only.

... John Baldessari sang “Sentences on Conceptual Art” by Sol LeWitt in 1968 in order to make them more accessible for an audience via a format of the song?

... that certain types of knowledge can activate (or translate) each other in the same way different ingredients activate itself in cocktails? The symbolic transition of an artist from a barman to a mixologist marks this shift in professional sophistication.

[...]

... artists often tend to discuss the impact of their work?

.... that impact is not instantaneous? Don’t expect to experience the impact of the table of contents immediately, it might take one million years, so, as Bruce Nauman says, “pay attention mother fucker.”

... infinite conversation is the way culture functions? (therefore your participation in this culture thus can change it, at least make the conversation shorter or change the subject.)"
-Raimundas Malasauskas

Raimundas Malasauskas is a curator at the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Bik Van der Pol is an artist collaboration that consists of Liesbeth Bik and Jos Van der Pol, who live and work in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

For further information, visit the Van Abbemuseum website.

Global Cities at Tate

"Global Cities, a major free exhibition examining recent changes in ten global cities - Cairo, Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, and Tokyo - will be presented in a spectacular installation in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern from 20 June-27 August 2007.

The show will feature newly commissioned work by leading international artists and architects Nigel Coates, Zaha Hadid & Patrik Schumacher, Fritz Haeg, OMA*AMO/Rem Koolhaas, Nils Norman and Richard Wentworth inspired by the social, cultural and physical dimensions of London. To complement the other city data are more than twenty works by artists and architects Atelier Bow Wow, Hüseyin Alptekin, Francis Alys, Laurence Bonvin, Osman Bozkurt, Hala Elkoussy, Kendell Geers, Dryden Goodwin, Andreas Gursky, Naoya Hatakeyama, Francesco Jodice, Eva Koch, Maha Maamoun, Neutral, Nils Norman, Scott Peterman, Melanie Smith, Dean Sameshima, Guy Tillim, Paromita Vohra and Yang Zhenzhong.

The exhibition addresses major issues facing some of the most influential urban centres around the world: from migration to mobility, from social integration to sustainable growth. It explores five themes: size, speed, density, form and diversity and draws upon comparative socio-economic and geographic data assembled by researchers at the London School of Economics.

With over half the world’s population now living in urban areas, cities increasingly lie at the centre of public debate, cultural speculation and media attention. A century ago only 10% of the planet lived in cities; by 2050 up to 75% of the world’s population of 8 billion will be living in urban areas, many of them concentrated in the developing regions of Asia and Africa. The shape, size and structure of exploding mega-cities like Mumbai, Shanghai, Mexico City, Istanbul or Cairo affects not only the lives of millions of new urban dwellers, but also the health and sustainability of the planet given that large cities contribute to over 75% of the world’s CO2 emissions. Cities are stronger today as centres of economic, social and cultural exchange than they ever have been, acting as crucibles of creativity, economic growth and social encounter."

From June 20 through August 27 2007.
Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London.

See the website.