Synthetic Performances by 010010110101101.org

Driven by the conviction that the Internet is an antidote to the inalienable paradigms of modern art, namely authenticity, originality and novelty, Eva and Franco Mattes reenact historical performances in Second Life, an online virtual world created in 2003. As known as 010010110101101.org, the artist collaboration questions the limits of the performance art.

Rather than pursuing a mnemonic function, the performances lead the audience to ponder upon the immediate expectations from the performance art such as immediacy, spontaneity and unmediated interaction. As the objects and actions of the performances are coded in advance in the virtual world, Synthetic Performances leave no room for improvisation. Also, the absence of physical feelings in the performance reiterates the statement that performative body loses its significance. Eva and Franco Mattes investigate the communication tactics in art through replication and manipulation in a public arena where “culture is plagiarism.”

Since January 2007, the Mattes duo have been working on Synthetic Performances, that included the reenactment of Chris Burden’s Shoot, Vito Acconci’s Seedbed, Valie Export’s Tapp und Tastkino, and Joseph Beuys’ 7000 Oaks. In collaboration with PERFORMA07, Artists Space invites the audience to attend the projection of three live performances in which the interaction is mediated through avatars, the residents of Second Life.

November 13, 2007
6:30pm-8pm
Artists Space, 38 Greene St 3rd Fl New York, NY 10013

See PERFORMA07 website for further information.

Istanbul 10B

“The very idea of the international survey exhibition is now questioned at its most fundamental level. However progressive the political or economic intentions behind them, international survey exhibitions still invite a presumption that the curators have access to an illusionary world view, and that spectators may follow in their wake. But a more specific and sustained engagement with communities and audiences, creating meanings beyond the spectacular and mere festivalizing of such occasions, may produce a new genre of exhibition. It seems that in order to accommodate both artists’ needs and audience demands, the new exhibition must have reciprocity and dialogue built into its structure. How successfully this is accomplished will determine international exhibition maps of the future.”

Bruce W. Ferguson, Reesa Greenberg, and Sandy Nairne, "On Taking a Normal Situation and Retranslating It into Overlapping and Multiple Readings of Conditions Past and Present" (Antwerp: E. Antonis, 1993)

In the light of this remark, what does the 10th International Biennial suggest? Although I have heard many negative comments from a number of art professionals, I always tend to underline that I liked the dialogue between the works and the venues in which they are exhibited. Instead of creating a local exoticism, the 10B leads to an uncanny interaction through the spaces that Hou Hanru has chosen, especially Ataturk Cultural Centre and Istanbul Textile Traders' Market--significant examples of 'modern' Turkish urban architecture, which share the fate to be torn down in the near future-- as well as santralistanbul that has been transformed from the first electric thermal plant of the Republic of Turkey into a culture and arts center. With a focus of an inquiry of modernization in developing countries, I believe the 10B offers a new expansion in Turkey where the art production is predominantly understood as a part of the national identity. As the art merges with urbanism and architecture, the artworks encounter an innovative reception and offer social intervention in a 'peripheral' city, suggesting a negotiation and reciprocity between the global and local. Thus, the 10B eventually fosters an intellectual debate, which is proved to be quite controversial in regards to Kemalism and republican ideals. Therefore, I believe, the structure of the 10th Istanbul Biennial engenders dialogue, which is produced both in an implicit and explicit fashion.

Intellectual Property Rights

"Various initiatives, like the Navdanya seed bank, the Gutenberg Project, open source software, etc., are attempts to resist the expanding regime of intellectual property rights. Intellectual property rights deal with copyright and related rights; geographical indications; industrial designs; integrated circuit layout-designs; patents; trademarks; and undisclosed or confidential information. Since the signature of the Trade Related aspects of Intellectual Property rights (TRIPS) agreement, a part of the WTO GATT agreement, in 1994, about 147 countries around the world agreed to implement the same intellectual property rights as default. Examples of recent inclusions of intellectual property rights are the patenting of genemanipulated living organisms, indigenous knowledges and sofware, the registration of three-dimensional forms, melodies, smells, and colors as trademarks and the copyrighting of databases, choreography, and architecture. In the context of this book, we would like to highlight one particular example: the copyrighting of exhibitions and collections.

During the last century, Marcel Duchamp claimed that the act of exhibiting or collecting an object, was enough to turn that object into an artwork by exhibited a readymade urinal as a work of art. Marcel Broodthaers installed his collection of eagles and about eagles, that were marked "this is not an art object", itself as a work of art. Such artworks posed problems for the copyright regulations and had legal consequences.

For about a decade now, the makers of exhibitions and museum collections have succeeded in obtaining legal protection for their work authorized under copyright law. In current jurisprudence, judges have decided that exhibitions and museum collections may reflect the personality of their makers. From a legal point of view, exhibitions and museum collections are considered intangible realizations of the mind. So just like any other creative oeuvre, they fall under the same regime of
intellectual property rights.

(No rights reserved. This text may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used, modified, or otherwise exploited.)"

- Agentschap (Agency), an agency for temporary interdisiplinary and international collaborations

Play. . . as a four-letter word (A.K.)

"PERFORMA07, the second biennial of new visual art performance, will take place in New York City from November 1-20, 2007. As with PERFORMA05, New York’s first performance biennial, PERFORMA07 will bring together more than twenty of the city’s leading cultural institutions to present live work in all disciplines by visual artists from around the world. Performance has always been an important catalyst in the history of twentieth-century art, and the PERFORMA Biennial recognizes its vital and ongoing impact on contemporary art and culture and provides opportunities for both established and emerging artists to present new performance for the twenty-first century."

PERFORMA website!

TM Sisters at AS

Reflecting the dynamics of the digital age, the artist collective TM Sisters fuse performance and video art flirting with energized imageries. Born in Gainesville, Florida, Tasha and Monica López De Victoria produce a new energy using engaging video game installations.

Artists Space, in collaboration with PERFORMA07, hosts TM Sister’s video performance titled 'Things Will End Before They Start' (2005), which will involve two artists performing before a digitally-simulated backdrop that is inspired by their “flat works”, i.e. collages. TM Sisters’ work reveals a do-it-yourself aesthetic that relates to their home-school education and previous body of work, such as musical happenings, fanzines and sewing clothing. With an emphasis on stimulating interaction, the performance presents a play with postures and expressions, which paves the way for a discovery of spiritual energy and emotions.

November 2-3, 2007
6 pm-8pm
Artists Space, 38 Greene St 3rd Fl New York, NY 10013

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.