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Venice Biennale 2022 | Highlights
di Droste Effect | A Walk Through The ArtApr 25, 2022
59th International Art Exhibition | The Milk of Dreams
The 59th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale is finally open: this edition was delayed by one year due to the world health emergency. The last time the Biennale was postponed due to exceptional circumstances was in 1944, during the second world war, which makes this Biennale particularly momentous.
The Venice Biennale 2022, titled The Milk of Dreams after Leonora Carrington’s book, is curated by Cecilia Alemani (the first Italian woman to hold this position) and will be open until November 27.
It feels as though this additional time has allowed the curatorial team to find the time to pause, reflect and search deeper, thus producing a project of magnitude with a strong critical narrative and enhanced attention to detail.In addition, what is immediately apparent this year is the influence of the current social movements, brought to global attention by the new feminist wave, Black Lives Matter, and efforts to recontextualize the history and consequences of colonialism.
These social waves have pushed certain themes and artists to the foreground, which were previously underrepresented. The result is a far richer outlook on artistic research, as well as on the human condition.
One will notice that, in certain cases, the pressure to conform to these themes has given an incentive to national participants and artists to push themselves to conform to this wave, with mixed results. Hence, some presentations appear somewhat forced, which is disappointing, and risks undermining the strength and importance of these themes in contemporary art. In a few cases, the operation appears as a counterproductive redress, almost resulting in cultural exploitation and/or appropriation.These crucial themes are instead very well portrayed by artists such as Simone Leigh, deserving winner of this edition’s Golden Lion for the works she presented and that can be viewed in the United States Pavilion, at the Arsenale’s main exhibition, and at the Giardino delle Vergini. Another fascinating research is the one presented by the two female artists (Ingūna Skuja from Latvia and Melissa Braden from California) who form the artistic collaboration Skuja Braden, representing Latvia in its Pavilion at the Arsenale with their overflowing installation-universe.
Of course, another theme that pervaded this opening weekend was the war in Ukraine, mentioned in multiple presentation speeches by curators and politicians alike, and silently embodied at the Giardini della Biennale by a closed Russian Pavilion – following the curator and artists’ decision to resign from their positions, thereby cancelling the country’s participation in this year’s edition – and by the installation Piazza Ucraina, realized by the curators of the Ukrainian Pavilion Borys Filonenko, Lizaveta German and Maria Lanko in collaboration with the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund and the Victor Pinchuk Foundation.
One of the exceptions to this pervasive sentiment of inclusivity and social activism is the Italian Pavilion, showing a nation mainly focused on itself, disconnected from the international scene, despite the participants’ stated intentions.After all this, a question lingers: are we forced to look at parallel narratives by these trying times (are we virtue signaling?), or do we really believe in a change of perspective?
VENICE BIENNALE 2022: PHOTO GALLERY/HIGHLIGHTS
BIENNALE ARTE 2022: OFFICIAL AWARDSGolden Lion for the Best Participant to:
Simone Leigh (1967, Chicago, USA. Lives in New York City, USA)
Golden Lion for Best National Participation to:
GREAT BRITAIN
Sonia Boyce: Feeling Her Way
Silver Lion for a Promising Young Participant to:
Ali Cherri (1976, Beirut, Lebanon. Lives in Paris, France)
Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement to:
Katharina Fritsch (Germany)
Cecilia Vicuña (Chile)
NATIONAL PARTICIPATIONS: GIARDINI DELLA BIENNALE
This year, the Nordic Pavilion celebrates the art and sovereignty of the Indigenous Sámi people by renaming itself the Sámi Pavilion:
NATIONAL PARTICIPATIONS: ARSENALE
THE MILK OF DREAMS | CENTRAL PAVILION: GIARDINI DELLA BIENNALE
THE MILK OF DREAMS | CENTRAL PAVILION: ARSENALE
VENICE BIENNALE 2022 | MISCELLANEOUS
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A Meditation on History: Art Exhibitions in Shanghai in 2000
di Shuai Yin | Letters from ChinaFeb 21, 2022
A Review of Uncooperative Contemporaries
The curtain of “Bodies of Water: The 13th Shanghai Biennale” rose at Power Station of Art in early November, 2020. At the same time, European countries have again been caught by lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic, introducing more uncertainties to this year’s struggling art events. In August 2020, on the 125th anniversary of Venice Biennale’s foundation, curators of the six artistic sectors (Art, Architecture, Cinema, Dance, Music, Theater) presented the exhibition The Disquieted Muses. When Venice Biennale Meets History in the Central Pavilion of the Giardini della Biennale. [1] Coincidentally, Power Station of Art curated in Summer the exhibition Shanghai Waves: Historical Archives and Works of Shanghai Biennale to warm up the upcoming Shanghai Biennale.
It is perhaps no coincidence that the Venice Biennale with a history of a century – as the Shanghai Biennale in its 25 years – has chosen to reflect on its history. It is worth noting that, while attempting to find clues about the relevance of these events, I noticed the new release of the “Exhibition Histories” series books, Uncooperative Contemporaries: Art Exhibitions in Shanghai in 2000, published by the UK Afterall Books. I was hence endowed with the chance to have acquaintance with Shanghai at the turn of the century, and revisit the clues of past that were too subtle to be found.
Why Exhibition Histories?
In his book, Hans Belting, a German art historian, discussed and analyzed traditional art history, which tended to make classification according to the linear time, locations, ways of creation, genres, and even the biographies of artists. After people read the seemingly meticulous and detailed categories, they will perceive that the internal logic at the center of art history is constantly passivating. This also makes art history a kind of depicted framework that can have been painted into the cultural and social environment following our expectations. However, for artists and art practitioners, such a “natural” theoretical framework and narrative logic of art history are obviously not good enough as expressions of our society today. The “autonomous” art in the past three decades has been pursuing the same “autonomous” art history. As Hans Belting put it, the “picture” (art) was taken out of the “frame” (art history) as the latter no longer fitted the former. [2]
So how will we view the “picture” when we shake off the “frame”? “Exhibition Histories” provides us a different perspective: the investigation is more complex than a single interpretation of artworks or artists, demanding researchers to analyze and judge upon the historical context. Compared with the traditional discovery and interpretation, it is more like an “archaeologist” piecing together the threads of broken clues and asking questions constantly. This also became the purpose of Afterall’s series of books: They walk out of the “frame” and turn to public art events (usually exhibitions or art activities). Taking clues of historical archives as context, and artists and art creations as the object of study, they reconstruct the social context for the occurrence and existence of a certain art exhibition and build up a communication space for various discourses, ideas, voices, and views.
Compared with the single linear narration of art history concerning books, “Exhibition Histories” can be used to restore the scene of exhibitions from different perspectives, enriching the appearance of artistic events, which also makes it easier to detect logical errors in past narration and attract more attention to neglected historical clues. Such discovery and reflection can really help us to correct and dismantle the privileges in art history and exhibitions, and achieve the equality of artistic creation.
“Exhibition Histories”, therefore, isn’t so much a research work tracing back to history as it is a re-creation, where files, documents, pictures, manuscripts are no longer numbered files. In the texts, they develop intertextuality between each other, break the original time limits and construct a new narrative. This new narrative, starting from exhibitions, extends to art production, curatorial logic, exhibition design, art market involving artists, curators, art critics, gallery owners, institution directors and collectors, and provides us with another possibility.
Art Exhibitions in Shanghai in 2000
So far, Afterall has researched nearby 15 exhibitions with case study, such as: Arte Povera around 1960s; Conceptual and Land Art; in the context of Anti-Form, a revisit to two exhibitions in which the curator Harald Szeemann participated [3]; an investigation of the relations between Lucy Lippard and Conceptualism to Feminism [4]; a review of the Third Havana Biennial 1989, “Les Magiciens de la Terre”, and the global art market [5] ; and other studies. They have become important learning and research materials for students or professional curators.
This study of the history of Shanghai’s exhibitions follows an Afterall publishing strategy, as the subtitle suggests: “Art Exhibitions in Shanghai in 2000—the study does not focus on a single exhibition, but take the year of 2000 as its investigation object”. Taking into consideration three exhibitions during that period, the third Shanghai Biennale, Fuck Off and Useful Life 2000, it shows a whole scene where official art museums, artists, curators, galleries, and other participants in the art industry at home and abroad respond to the problems faced by Chinese contemporary art against “globalization”, and raises questions to existing art history narratives: Were the Chinese art events of 2000 merely a practice to conform to the globalization of art? Is there a post-colonial vocabulary and connotation? Are artists embracing globalization with open arms, or are they trying to figure out their own strategies and practices?
Jane DeBevoise, Chair of the Board of Directors of Asia Art Archive, traced the distribution of Chinese art since the 1990s – starting with Shanghai’s art market in 2000 – and analyzed “commerce” and “gallery”, the neglected factors in former analysis for artistic creation and production. And it was exactly art spaces such as ShangArt and BizArt that promoted artistic creation and the flow of artworks. For example, Xu Zhen, who joined BizArt later, faced the local business environment directly in his Xu Zhen Supermarket and Useful Life 2000, and gave his own thoughts and responses. Later, MadeIn Company also conducted an exploration in this direction.
The governmental and public art systems are not the two sides of a coin full of estrangement and opposition. Actually, since the 1990s the economic logic of “de-politicization” also affected the governmental art system. In 1993, the Shanghai Art Museum transformed from a public institution with government funding into a self-financing enterprise [6]. Gaining more freedom for work and operation, it brought the Shanghai Biennale into reality in 1996. Therefore, it is difficult to clearly distinguish one from the other by the words “official” and “public”, “governmental” and “commercial”. The establishment of the Shanghai Biennale itself represents “coexistence”.
In Manifolds of the Local: Tracing the Neglected Legacies of the 2000 Shanghai Biennale, Mia Yu pointed out that in the past we were too used to view the third Shanghai Biennale as an epoch-making artistic event, that we neglected the “locality” and “globalization” complexity and multiple possibilities implied in the exhibition itself. Mia, grasping experience in curating, took Hou Hanru, an international curator focusing on global urbanization, Toshio Shimizu, discussing “Cross-Asia Dialogue”, and Zhang Qing and Li Xu, curators with Shanghai Art Museum, as her research clues. She analyzed the curating ideas, artists’ choices, exhibition and setting while reconstructing correlation between the three, presenting readers in the exhibition scene that multiple elements coexisted and worked together with each other but had long been ignored under the banner of “globalization”.
This interaction of multiple elements not only occurs in such a large artistic mechanism as the Shanghai Biennale, but also is an inevitable manifestation of social diversity. In the same period, the exhibition Fuck Off, curated by artist Ai Weiwei and curator Feng Boyi, enriched and clarified the meaning of this “coexistence”.
Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu, taking Fuck Off as an example and another perspective for their practice to restore the artistic pictures of Shanghai—stressing self-organization and self-practice where all of these could never be finished in a single art activities but need different periods of evolution. The authors extend this clue, and formed intertextuality relations between The Wild: Starting from the Waking of Insects in 1997 and Fuck Off. The paper does not take art as a mere production output. In the exhibition Fuck Off, “participants and works are not the objects of choice, identification and judgment” [7], rather it examines the attitude of art itself towards self-practice, and emphasizes the independent and critical stance as the basis for the existence of art. Readers meet, in research, different artists in different states and approaches, and hear the individual voices of each one of them.
In 2004, Zhou Zixi published From Niuzhuang Village to BizArt. The artist speaks for the various groups of local artists from Shanghai. Zhou’s opinions were included in Uncooperative Contemporaries: Art Exhibitions in Shanghai in 2000, themed on globalization. Focusing on humanity, his participation makes the discussion more sincere and apropos. In the tide of the times seeing constant changes, artists like Zhou have the passion and enthusiasm for creation. Their works with genuineness show insipid empty free.
Curating and publishing
The book started by introducing the market outlook and background (Jane DeBevoise), and discussed about various roles, power, status and actions in “pictures” (Mia Yu, Lee Weng Choy, Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu), followed by Zhou’s narration. The articles showcase a different Chinese art scene through a new narrative with progressive layers. Thanks to their contribution, reading the book feels like visiting an exhibition. Interviews with Anthony Yung, senior researcher of Asia Art Archive, relevant artists and curators make the scene built in the book more vivid.
As mentioned above, research on exhibition histories should be viewed as a creative knowledge production, while the editors of this book try to inspire readers with curating thinking and express narratives. This is not a blind definition to comprehend all problems in a universal rules of grand view, but a discussion showing respect for the individuals, which hit the nail on the head.
From my point of view, Uncooperative Contemporaries: Art Exhibitions in Shanghai in 2000 is exactly such a publication that breaks away from the mainstream binary opposition values and tries, through research, to endow readers with the right to make judgement by themselves.
Notes:
- “The Disquieted Muses. When Venice Biennale meets History”, Venice, Italy. Curators: Cecilia Alemani, Alberto Barbera, Marie Chouinard, Ivan Fedele, Antonio Latella, Hashim Sarkis. Date of Exhibition: August 29-November 4, 2020.
- Art History after Modernism, Hans Belting (Germany), 2014, Gold Wall Press.
- Exhibiting the New Art: Op Losse Schroeven and When Attitudes Become Form 1969, Afterall Books in association with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2010.
- From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard’s Numbers Show, Afterall Books in association with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and Van Abbemuseum, 2012.
- Making Art Global (Part 1): The Third Havana Biennial 1989, Making Art Global (Part 2): ‘Magiciens de la Terre’ 1989,Afterall Books in association with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2011.
- Uncooperative Contemporaries: Art Exhibitions in Shanghai in 2000, Afterall Books in association with Asia Art Archive and the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, 2020.
- Description by Ai Weiwei and Feng Boyi, in October, 2000.
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Clan Lazzaro – A new pole for Art City Bologna
di Droste Effect | NewsMay 6, 2021
Due to the current emergency, the 2021 edition of Art City Bologna is happening independently from the contemporary art fair Arte Fiera, which was postponed until next year.
Art City Bologna 2021 has a few innovative features, which reflect the need for a new beginning, starting from its brand new visual identity. Another interesting change regards the creation of a new art space cluster outside of the city. This new de-centered pole for contemporary art lies outside the city limits, in the nearby San Lazzaro, where three contemporary art spaces decided to give themselves a collective identity. From this decision, Clan Lazzaro was born, a name uniting three important artistic realities from the area: the Massimo and Sonia Cirulli Foundation, 10 Lines, and Kappa-Nöun.
We asked them to offer us a comment and present themselves, and they gave us the following statement.
«Clan Lazzaro are 3 independent, heterogeneous and complementary cells: the members of Clan Lazzaro organize themselves anti-hierarchically to coalesce in events that highlight artistic production, collecting and art displays.
A decentralized aggregation process located along the ancient Via Emilia, which has always been an element of connection between different types of knowledge.Clan Lazzaro is part of the institutional program of this 2021 edition of Art City Bologna.
On Saturday, May 8th and Sunday, May 9th, Clan Lazzaro, with the patronage of the Municipality of San Lazzaro di Savena, provides a free shuttle service departing at 4:30 PM from MAMbo – Museum of Modern Art Bologna. The ride includes a guided tour of the 3 spaces, with return service to the Museum.10 Lines offers a preview of the new series of works by Alessandro Brighetti, a preview of his solo show, which will take place in Autumn 2021.
On Sunday, 9th at 5:00 pm, 10 Lines invites you to join “En Plain-Air” – an open-air, live portrait session by artists Sergia Avveduti, Giulia Bonora, David Casini, Umberto Ciceri, Rudy Cremonini, Veronica Santi, Ivana Spinelli, and Matilde Soligno, accompanied by a live-jazz session by Andrea Grillini, Carlo Atti, Filippo Cassanelli and Andrea Calì.
The Massimo and Sonia Cirulli Foundation presents “Fiorucci POP Revolution”, a trip back in time, to the 1970s and 1980s, and in particular into the creative chaos of Elio Fiorucci.
This time capsule, set up in the hall on the ground floor of the Foundation, is a careful selection from a wider collection of heterogeneous material from the recently acquired Fiorucci creations spanning from the 1970s to the 1990s.Kappa-Nöun showcases “Sandwich Walls” by Michael Beutler (2008), a labyrinthine installation of poster paper, plywood, wood, and wood glue.
“Sandwich Walls” shows the entire production site of a beehive construction built inside the walls and made of the materials contained within the structure.»ART CITY BOLOGNA
Clan Lazzaro // Multiple locations:
Massimo and Sonia Cirulli Foundation
10 Lines
Kappa-Nöun
Saturday, May 8th and Sunday, May 9th, 2021
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A history of the Wild West Side and the Whitney’s new public sculpture
di Robin Newman | Focus on the American EastApr 25, 2021
Long before its abandoned train track was turned into a famous park (The High Line), the streets of New York’s Meatpacking District were lined with racks of raw meat, drug dealers and transexual prostitutes. Biker bars and BDSM sex clubs, run by the mafia, were also scattered throughout the neighborhood. Back then there were no condos or designer stores… and no art museum. However, because it was socially and physically on the outskirts of town, it provided young artists with inspiration for, and a place to create experimental art.
The piers across from where the Whitney Museum now is were once called “the sex piers” because they were such a popular place for gay men to find and have sex. The gay artist Davis Wojnarowicz frequented these piers, took photos and wrote about sex at them. It was also near that museum on Gansevoort Street that in 1973 the West Side Elevated Highway collapsed leaving the street in ruins. Two years after the highway collapsed, the artist Gordon Matta-Clark transformed a pier building at the foot of Gansevoort into an artwork or “indoor park.” Matta-Clark’s now-iconic “park” Day’s End was created when the artist broke into the abandoned building and sliced five openings into the walls and floors.
Thirty-five years after Gordon Matta-Clark created his piece, The Whitney Museum, in collaboration with the Hudson River Park Trust, is developing its own Day’s End. Unlike the artwork that inspired it, this new public sculpture is institutionally approved and will be permanent. This 2021 rendition, made of stainless steel bars, will be installed in a neighborhood that has changed dramatically since the 1970s. Nonetheless, this new piece by David Hammons is located at the same place along the west side shore where Matta-Clark’s was.
David Hammons’s Day’s End for the Whitney Museum will be completed in May 2021.
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Salvo. A performance lecture I’ve never written
di The Lecture Agency | Focus on EuropeJun 4, 2020
The period that anticipates Salvo’s leap to painting has often been described with a narcissistic flavor, that of the artist-author in the front row. The absence of his face in his subsequent work does not mean in any way a lack of presence, the protagonism is there and has always been a baggage of historical and imaginary references constantly linked to shapes, colors, and landscapes. However, The Lecture Agency would not like to limit its reflection to this, but on the contrary try to rethink this constant declaration of the artist’s role that can be read in Salvo’s work.
The process of substitution and impersonation that we see in his early works is not self-celebrating, it is not a medal that he decided to attribute to himself, but a positioning that for a long time cost him the definition of outsider. Today Salvo’s work has acquired a new weight, a weight that must be valued not only by its new price on the market, but by the teachings he has given us, unconsciously or not. His figure, his operability and his gestures, his way of writing and saying things are today an open lesson we can and must count on.In a 1976 issue of Data, Werner Lippert, writing about Salvo, said: “the relationship with one’s own history is necessarily a matter of self-consciousness and self-understanding”. In 12 Autoritratti, literally and metaphorically, Salvo puts his face to the test, a face that he himself cuts out and glues on figures engaged in common work, the real workers who have carried on stories, economies and nations. At the same time he does not fail to sneak into the images of history close to him: the Vietnam War rather than the American Black Panthers. Risk and awareness are the first lessons he wants to convey.
Between 1969 and 1972, the investigation of Salvo’s writing not only relies on tombstones, but he also exposes himself on paper. Once he retrieved notebook and pen, the artist engaged in hours and hours of transcription of texts, novels and writings that were fundamental to him. Salvo becomes the protagonist, thanks to the substitution of his name with that of the main characters, and the author of a new and old manuscript. Feelings do not arise so much from the contents but from the writing process, from the weariness of the hand, from the almost school-like way of learning. The statuariness of the re-born masters and writers moves in parallel with a downsizing of the contemporary artist who, moved by conceptualizing intentions, tries to establish good practices.
In 1970, Salvo was invited together with Alighiero Boetti to take part in Aktionraum, a project founded in Munich the previous year by Alfred Gulden (writer and director), Eva Madelung (patron) and Peter Nemetschek (artist and photographer). With the intention of looking beyond the paradigms of the market and institutions, the space dedicated to young artists proposed a critique of society and an active commitment. On this occasion, Salvo proposed a blessing of the city, a solemn act of greeting and wish, the invocation of protection. The blessing in Munich did not take place because of some problems along the way. Nevertheless, blessings were offered in other cities such as Lucerne. With regard to Aktionsraum, the intention here is to share a letter that Salvo later wrote to Eva Madelung.
16-04-1970
Dear Eva Madelung
I’m really sorry I couldn’t come to bless Monaco. However, I wanted to talk to you about this fact: as agreed you would have paid for the trip and the expenses of the stay. I didn’t even arrive in Munich, however I made a large part of the trip which involved many expenses that I wanted to submit to you.
Turin – Rufstein – Turin, accompanied by an Austrian policeman to the Brenner Pass 100 DM
The fine paid at the border 200 DM
Interpreter’s expenses DM 40
Marijuana for the value of 40 DM
all for a total of 380 DM
I would be grateful if you could return this money to me. I would also remind you that you have one of your questionnaires with a circle drawn by me on it, which I consider a work and to which I had given the title “Io come Giotto”. I don’t know what else to add; with the hope that, although it is difficult for me to come to Germany, our relations will continue.
I wish you all the best,
Salvo
This letter emptied of institutional references is actually a manifesto of a performance lecture that appropriates an entire artistic practice, its professionalization (the request for compensation may seem trivial but it is an example), and a personal life. Salvo’s work is an act of micropolitics, an informal but capillary, expanded politics. He was ungovernable: he moved away from Arte Povera to a medium, painting, which had lost all meaning; he wrote Della Pittura, a philosophical treatise that doesn’t mince words; he entrusted his work to countless different galleries, almost as if to disrupt the static model of “official” representation that touched other artists. He was, for all intents and purposes, a free artist. Even the arduous task left to his archive is an example of this.
Salvo / Norma Mangione Gallery / Archivio Salvo
The Lecture Agency is a research platform, based on forms of radical pedagogy, which includes on its website a library of manifestos and other fundamental texts aimed at deepening the theme of lectures. -
Ryan Gander. The whisper perspective
di Marco Antelmi | Focus on EuropeMay 12, 2020
Ryan Gander’s body of work fully reflects theories about the reality of the virtual. Professor, amateur philosopher – as he likes to define himself – and TV presenter, the artist from Chester (UK, born 1976) masters the ability to open new fields of discussion on important themes through the lens of the details of everyday life. Gander swims upstream, avoiding by-now-common reproductions of human experience of reality in artificial digital media: his focus is the real effects generated by something that does not yet fully exist – the next yet-to-come.
Considered the standard-bearer of new conceptual art, his artwork has been shown at dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and at the 54th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. Among Gander’s projects is his solo exhibition at the National Museum of Art of Osaka in 2017, where he not only presented approximately sixty of his works, but also curated an exhibition pairing works from the museum collection.
Interview with Ryan Gander
MARCO ANTELMI: In your work, the themes of attention, money and time recur constantly and wink to each other in a triangular loop. How do you relate to these three fields?
RYAN GANDER: I consider them under the aspect of artifacts: when we’ll be dead, there will be a lot of artifacts that will stay, that will remain after us. So I consider art as a physical thing, but one that leads to an experience or to a story or a situation that is not physical, and, moreover, that can only be articulated through an object, or by an object. As in Shintoism, for instance – art in its physical form doesn’t matter, art objects are only “recipients” of experiences. Ultimately, art can be considered as the value of time, on time. In other words, if you’re sitting on a bus, thinking about a work from the exhibition you just visited, it means that that specific work is a successful one, whether you liked it, enjoyed it or loathed it, it captured your imagination. For this reason, I consider artworks as proof of quality experiences.
MA: Your art is in the details, I think about We never had a lot of € around here (a single 25 euro coin from 2036), about I… I… I… (a mouse animatronic that holds philosophical discourses). Why, in a time characterized by enormity, did you decide to focus on the details?
RG: I like big subjects, such as mortality, but I don’t like to demand attention. I believe that the public should invest attention on what it wants. If they invest attention on a particular work, it’s their choice. A lot of art now is like clickbait, it demands attention, I don’t like to feel manipulated so I prefer artworks to seduce me subtly. You shout and often people don’t remember what you say, however a whisper is a different thing.
MA: So, you wanted to express this atmosphere of subtlety when you used an 18% grey, the one that photographers use to set their camera, to color everything in your exhibition Some Other Life at Esther Schipper Gallery in Berlin?
RG: In this installation I wanted to induce empathy. This grey is also the one used in virtual spaces, when you use it in the real space, it produces a feeling that what’s around you doesn’t feel like reality. This specific grey, and more precisely this 18% one, it’s midway between black and white and this is exactly what I want to express with my production: neither black, nor white, but something in between. It’s about perspectives, because this color communicates a kind of virtual feeling that can open the public’s minds to the new. It’s not a statement, it’s a start.
MA: What about your watch with an obscured display, Clack, clack, thud, or your collaboration with Tony Chambers for the production of kitchens with your new venture OTOMOTO, then? Do you think your way of describing reality is closer to some kind of “alternative life” solutions, rather than actually art?
RG: If we go back to the triangle made of money, time and attention, there should be said that these fields are not only intertwined, but also overlayered. Everybody knows that time equals money, but I’m convinced even more that time equals attention: if you only had 20 days left, would you still go on Instagram? Starting from this, I believe there is no difference between design and art; all this is just cognitive activity, it’s exercising your imagination. We could consider imagination as a methodology – actually, imagination is a muscle. And the best way to exercise imagination is to make a lot of various creative acts.
MA: Another element that often recurs in your work is the collision between public and private, between family and philosophy, daily life and infinity, like in Equivalent Economies and Equivalent Means, a vending machine that sells stones. Could you explain more about this?
RG: A lot of art is about politics, activism, the Internet and other very important topics, but I think that all this art is actually about mortality. We, as humans, have a deficiency: we project ourselves in the future; animals, on the contrary, are lucky, because they only think about diet or reproduction. The vending machine idea came from my kids, they were collecting stones illegally on a beach, so I decided to put them in a vending machine and to let people buy them. I wanted to talk about predicament of value. We feel that time accelerates because of repetitive acts, so I try to break this repetition with different mechanisms of the way we approach art.
MA: Is this the same reason why you chose to use your nine year old daughter’s voice for the works 2000 year collaboration (The Prophet) and I… I… I…? This work is not only cute, I remember your daughter saying very important things, imparting, in the first one, a philosophical speech based on the final scene of The Great Dictator by Charlie Chaplin, rewritten from a post-Internet perspective. This cuteness made the work very famous, especially on social media. Where did this idea come from?
RG: I chose my daughter’s voice because when politicians make their speeches they usually shout, they stand higher than you, they’re on a pedestal. Again, here comes back the perspectives topic: I wanted to bring out a positive dictation speech from the smallest character possible, this is the reason of the mouse animatronic. Furthermore, if you shout nobody listens, if you whisper everybody does, that’s why I chose my daughter’s voice.
MA: It’s interesting how you talk about and face complex topics without using specific or trendy words, i.e. Anthropocene, climate change, and so on – for instance, in A toppled Breuer chair after a blizzard of snow, a chair apparently covered by snow, which is actually marble.
RG: I am of the opinion that we use the wrong strategies for changing. I have to say I don’t believe in protesting, in political demonstrations and so on. If you want change, you have to reach for it in a positive way. People should just start being good role models, and then the rest will come. This is also why snow is the material of our time: snow is a kind of equalizer, it’s always changing and changes also the environment around you, the sounds, the colors. If you think that in 2050 the UK weather will be like Barcelona, snow is really the rarest material today. Snow is the material of our time, just as time is the subject of our time: it doesn’t only transform the environment, but also the way we understand the world. The sea, for instance, never disappears, it shows us the bottom of the ocean. Snow is the material of our time because when it is gone, we’ll realize how important it was.
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Art Workers Italia | Manifesto
di Droste Effect | NewsMay 7, 2020
The following manifesto was first published by Art Workers Italia on Labor Day, May 1st, 2020. You can learn how to be a part of the project at this link.
Who is Art Workers Italia [AWI]
[ART WORKERS ITALIA] is an informal, autonomous, and non-partisan group of contemporary art workers formed in response to the current crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
AWI includes all figures who operate within public and private organisations and institutions for contemporary art – such as museums, foundations, cultural associations, universities, independent spaces, galleries – and/or those who carry out freelance work in collaboration with these organisations. Together, we have convened under AWI to communicate our demands with a single [INDEPENDENT VOICE].
We are [ART WORKERS]: artists, performers, curators, assistant curators, researchers, museum educators, art handlers, producers, lighting and sound technicians, registrars, videomakers, art critics, art writers, art historians, invigilators, couriers, gallery assistants, project managers, consultants, coordinators, conservators, graphic designers, illustrators, photographers, animators, studio assistants, communication and social media managers, and press office staff.
« Art Workers Italia »
The name « Art Workers Italia »[1] underlines our [LOCAL AND TRANSNATIONAL] perspectives: our analysis of working conditions is informed by the international community of contemporary art workers, while our understanding of workers and their needs is rooted in the historical and political context of Italy, in dialogue with other initiatives supporting [PRECARIOUS CULTURAL WORK].
Why was AWI founded?
[AWI] was founded in response to the social and economic [CRISIS] caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. For many of us, the crisis has resulted in the suspension and/or loss of jobs and projects. Furthermore, these selfsame employment arrangements have been the reason for exclusion, in most cases, from any form of social safety net or [PROTECTION] envisaged by the government in the “Cura Italia” decree, such as the cash supplement for unemployed workers or one-off bonus paid by INPS.
The criticality of the situation, amplified by the increase in demand for unpaid digital content during the quarantine by public and private entities, has clearly revealed several [STRUCTURAL PROBLEMS] of the sector. The majority of our work is [IRREGULAR] and [FRAGMENTED], defined by atypical and intermittent contracts, creating an [UNTENABLE] working situation. Furthermore, the lack of protective entities specific to our needs weakens the bargaining power at our disposal. Together with the fact that our wages often neither adequately compensate for the hours and quality of work done, nor the training and experience required, these conditions render our current working circumstances extremely [VULNERABLE].
All of this occurs in a sector in which wages barely above the poverty line coexist with the standards and regulations of the luxury goods industry, where an unacceptable percentage of unofficial and [UNAUTHORISED WORK] is simultaneously accompanied by high levels of education. It is in this context that, instead of monetary remuneration, alternative forms of “compensation” are imposed, with promises of exposure, networking, and building one’s reputation for the sake of a future (yet uncertain) position. This is supported by an [ELITIST SYSTEM][2] which complicity incentivises a dynamic of competition and [SELF-EXPLOITATION]. Ultimately, this situation undermines a healthy working environment based on respect for skills, training, experience, and collaboration.
What does AWI do?
[AWI] voices [MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES AND NEEDS] through [COLLABORATIVE AND SELF-DIRECTED] inquiry, forming a critical mass and advocating for the inalienable right for the recognition of our status as workers, and along with it our subsequent rights and obligations. The organisation is divided into [COMMITTEES], according to different areas of focus, in order to articulate concrete proposals both in response to the ongoing emergency and in the long term.
[AWI] aims to define, develop, and provide operational [TOOLS] that provide support concerning ethical, political, legal and contractual nature. Our areas of focus include: strengthening and developing definitive measures of protection; studying the [SPECIFICITIES] of the non-profit sector; researching historical workers’ [STRUGGLES] in Italy; creating a comparative analysis of [GOOD PRACTICES] already tested in EU and non-EU countries; and identifying and coordinating with other national and international initiatives to protect [COGNITIVE LABOUR].
Ethical Principles of AWI
[AWI] upholds the principles of [INCLUSIVITY AND SUSTAINABILITY] as fundamental prerequisites of ethical conduct. We cannot, and we refuse, to discount the necessary solidarity with all workers who are underpaid and exploited. Furthermore, we strive towards a systemic change supporting an [EGALITARIAN FUTURE] for all [MARGINALISED IDENTITIES] in respect to gender, ethnicity, class, ability, sexual orientation, religion, age, and nationality.
AWI [IS NOT] an artistic or curatorial project – rather, it is a non-hierarchical and collective undertaking.Goals of AWI
Our strategic perspective, in the short and long term, is to focus on the [RECOGNITION] of the profession of contemporary art workers, the [REGULATION] of employment relationships, the [REDISTRIBUTION] of resources, and the reform and [RESTRUCTURING] of the entire sector.
Building upon previous efforts undertaken by others, Art Workers Italia is currently working in dialogue with several research institutions, universities, foundations, and cooperatives: to conduct [SURVEYS] designed to provide quantitative and qualitative information regarding contemporary art workers in Italy; provide training materials for professionals working within the sector; and develop a [CODE OF CONDUCT] specific to cultural work, that acknowledges its financial and value-extraction operations.
COVID-19 Emergency Requests
Following requests already made by other social and cultural sectors, AWI asks the Italian government for:
• [BASIC ECONOMIC SUPPORT] corresponding to the gravity of the situation
• The extension of the measures already outlined in the Cura Italia decree to those who do not yet have a [SOCIAL SAFETY NET], a condition that affects the majority of the people who work in the sector, as they are subject to intermittent employment contracts or contingent work, and thus reach the minimum days of employment necessary with difficulty
• Confirmation of the appropriations provided by the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism regarding projects and events scheduled for 2020-2021 and, where necessary, the reallocation of funds for research and production activities
• Fiscal and tax relief, such as the extension of the 2019 tax balance for the current year; the suspension of advance payment under “Separate Management” for self-employed workers, whether as a lump sum or otherwise; the suspension of Synthetic Indices of Tax Reliability (ISA); and finally, the lessening of rents – through tax credit – for non-profit associations and other premises used for artistic production (including [ARTIST STUDIOS])
• A policy addressing the [COMPENSATION] of digital and online art productionLong-term Goals
Together with various institutions and entities, AWI will work towards the long-term goals concerning the following macro-themes: worker protection, the establishment of designated funds, and the reassessment of a system of increased competition and professionalisation. We aim to create an overarching organisation that can connect a constellation of individuals and associations, representing their collective needs and demands within the [PUBLIC SPHERE].
These include:• Developing a [PROFESSIONAL CHARTER] for those working in the contemporary arts, modelled after the Carta nazionale delle professioni museali
• Identifying key points in the current legislation applicable to contractual [EMPLOYEE] positions; developing legal forms that more accurately reflect current working situations, with the intent of proposing one or more drafts for future models of national contracts relevant to the different roles within the field of contemporary art
• Creating new ATECO codes, or revising pre-existing ATECO codes, for [INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS] to adequately address more specific needs and extend to them legal protection such as unemployment benefits, sick leave, maternity leave, and parental leave
• Proposing [FAIR COMPENSATION] for services rendered by artists and arts professionals (such as exhibitions, performances, public conferences, workshops, screenings, reproductions for commercial and non-commercial use, exhibition installation, curation, etc.), in addition to promoting and monitoring the widespread use of these standards
• Requesting the Italian government to adhere by guidelines such as the Statuto sociale degli artisti – Risoluzione del Parlamento europeo del 7 giugno 2007 sullo statuto sociale degli artisti (2006/2249(INI)) and their subsequent updates that take into consideration existing industry needs
• Enabling access to [DESIGNATED FUNDS] in Europe dedicated to the production and acquisition of artworks, artistic training, and professional research and development, to be available regionally and nationally
• Proposing the establishment of a [FUND FOR VISUAL ARTISTS] by expanding upon the pre-existing INPS PSMSAD Artist Fund
• Calling for funding to be more transparent, inclusive, and reflective of current practices of cultural production, as well as arts education, by restructuring the current [SYSTEM OF OPEN CALLS AND GRANTS]. To this end, we ask for public funding to be conditional upon the fair remuneration of all the artists and professionals involved
• Expanding the number of entities and activities who can benefit from [PATRONAGE] – such as Art Bonus – and provide additional tax breaks for donations made to support contemporary art
• Facilitating [SPONSORSHIP] in contemporary art by bridging the information gap between possible sponsors and sponsees
• Promoting [PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT] for artists, [ARTISTIC STUDIES], and the role of education in contemporary art in the education system in ItalyConclusion
Contemporary art workers operate at all levels of national and international cultural production, in both breadth and depth. Collectively, the sector does not only impact the [SOCIAL COHESION] of a community but also its [INTELLECTUAL AND CIVIC GROWTH], carrying significant economic repercussions across the country.
This manifesto[3] represents the first step away from an unjustifiable and unacceptable condition of [INVISIBILITY], towards the goal of full civil and political recognition that takes into account the fundamental role, and its specificities, that contemporary art professionals occupy within the larger sphere of local and global cultural production.
[1] The reference to the historical group Art Workers Coalition (1969) did not influence our decision to name ourselves Art Workers Italia, but is certainly part of the cultural references shared by the group.
[2] The possibilities of professional success in the field of contemporary art are often directly proportional to the capital available at one’s outset. Because this capital can also be social or cultural in addition to being an economic one, we have chosen to use the term “elitist” instead of “classist.”
[3] The manifesto and agenda presented by AWI are to be considered exclusively political tools. Arising directly in response to the urgency that led to the spontaneous establishment of the group, this manifesto represents the main tool for conveying this energy across multiple public contexts such as the virtual march on the occasion of Primo Maggio Cittadino in Turin, 2020, during which the foundation of AWI was first publicly announced. -
Scott Burton. Lecture on Self
di The Lecture Agency | Focus on the American EastApr 27, 2020
Scott Burton’s 1973 performance lecture
The Lecture Agency is a research platform, based on forms of radical pedagogy, which includes on its website a library of manifestos and other fundamental texts aimed at deepening the theme of lectures.
The Lecture Agency was actually discovered in the archives of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. It was basically one of the many associations in the 1930s that used performance lectures as a tool to teach society how to live a “modern” life.In collaboration with Droste Effect, The Lecture Agency will provide excerpts from performance lectures to survey their role in the past and today. Some of the publications will analyze different perspectives about the topic coming from heterogeneous fields, others will present texts or findings from the archives.
In this first publication, we present excerpts from the performance lecture given by Scott Burton in 1973 at Oberlin College in Ohio, USA. The brief description offered in the catalogue clearly illustrates what will happen during the performance.
“In a solo performance of about one hour, Scott Burton will give an illustrated critical lecture on the performances of Scott Burton, who will then appear for questions.”
Scott Burton is an intriguing figure, who remained in the dark for a long time. He wrote a wonderful text in the catalogue of Live In Your Head: When Attitudes Become Forms. He was indeed an artist, but also an art critic and an editor for ARTnews and Art in America.
The Lecture Agency decided to start with this piece for more than one reason. First, the Lecture on Self emphasizes this type of performance as a tool to reflect on ourselves and our practices (which is what TLA hopes to encourage you to do). Secondly, in his research project the artist collected viewpoints from a number of fields (art, architecture, design, theater, philosophy, education, and so on). The third reason is that this lecture offers an interesting point of view from which to start to re-think the role of performance today, passing through the thoughts expressed by Marie De Brugerolle and Catherine Wood.Performance is in medium a form of theater but in category a form of sculpture. This esthetic innovation is not merely formal but indicates a new cultural value, at least metaphorically. The performance artist initiates a transactional or situational relation with the viewer. The viewer becomes a member of an audience, in a collective rather than private esthetic situation. And in the changed situation of performance art, the artist – like his work – is no longer separated by a conceptual and physical gulf from the viewer, but is directly vulnerable to the reaction of the viewer. […] The performance piece, however, is not collaborative any more than a painting is collaborative. In performance the authorship is singular, and if the agent is other than the author of his surrogate, he is usually treated as material or medium rather than independent and equal partner. Almost all performance tends to the primary use of the artist’s self.
Of the current group of young performance artists, only one has sought to go beyond such self-directed, if exemplary, activity. His major achievement in performance has been an introduction of representational style, of mimetic and figurative elements – both in mobile objects and in the form of living tableaux. Within non-illusionist contexts, he presents quasi fictional, even narrative content. His are the most theatrical of current performances, often actually taking place on proscenium stages in a manner suggesting their related visual art components: the pedestal and the frame. […] His living tableaux and his objects form two recent series of works in different materials but with overlapping preoccupations – with the human figure, with dream states, with social relationships, with sexuality, with art – both with the decorative or applied arts and with fine art. The object-pieces expose the roots of performance in earlier modern styles – assemblage, kinetic sculpture, environments, found object-pieces, temporality – that is to say, theatricalism – is often explicitly introduced.
A work called Behavior Tableaux, in which emotionally charged material (this time of social transaction rather than isolation) is also present and also distanced. This time there are not evenly spaced episodes. The episodes or tableaux are determined in length and in order by purely internal, narrative or thematic, demands. The displacement was accomplished in this performance by literally distancing the viewer 50 feet from the performers’ space and by the extremely slowed-down and simplified – always neutral, never expressive – style of movement used by all the performers. The performers also resembled each other in body type (tall and thin) and in style of dress. […] The initial theme of this performance piece is the behavior of concord – of equals existing in mutual acceptance. They group equidistantly and turn toward one another, or they slowly join together in an intimate group. A second theme, however, reverses the first and introduces tensions, divisions, and disharmonies among the group. The performers separate into sub-groups or become isolated from each other. Or, they turn away from each other, as in a sequence in which one turns his face slowly away from another who has just entered. He continues across the stage-room to be treated identically by two other previous occupants of the space and finally to settle alone in an unaccompanied spot. […] This theme includes confrontations between members of the group, which oppose similar tableaux of the earlier theme of the harmony of equals. A third theme of these Behavior Tableaux is that of authoritarianism. The group divides into a one-to-four relation, with the individual dominant over the group. Whether he stands before them or they before him, the psycho-social interpretation of their spatial relationship must reveal his dominance. The reverse of this theme is provided in a fourth theme that retains the one-to-four dispersal of the group but makes the individual into a sub-dominant class of one – very different from a sub-dominant class of four. Isolation, it is implied, depicts the position of low status as an intolerable and crushing one, in contrast to the self-assertiveness of the individual who is dominant. […] The Behavior Tableaux’s placement, posture, and gesture and its observations and violations of personal-space and body-surrounding territories reveal the unconscious attitudes literally shaping and deploying body language. […]
The name of the artist is Scott Burton. [1]
[1] Unpublished text of Scott Burton’s performance lecture Lecture on Self, given at Oberlin College on May 5th, 1973. Scott Burton Papers [II.52], The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York.
You can also find this text in Scott Burton. Collecting writings on Art & Performance 1965-1975, curated by David J. Getsy, Soberscove Press, Chicago, 2012. -
Spoken Narratives. A Book Show by REPLICA
di Droste Effect | Focus on EuropeApr 3, 2020
REPLICA presents Spoken Narratives, a collection of artist books by Francesco Pedraglio, Juan de la Cosa
Droste Effect: This is the first year of REPLICA, and after the first year more concrete perspectives and willingness usually begin to consolidate. In short, it is time to draw conclusions. What would you tell us?REPLICA: This project started with the right gear – from nothing, with two calls we started to collect several artist books and independent editions, such as catalogs and fanzines. A good number of these editions have been donated to the archive, others are on loan for the duration of the project. This initial collection has allowed us to look for a website, which is meant to be read as the digital dimension of the project. In fact, within the site, that is still in the final stages of implementation, you can access the documentation and filing of books in the archive. In addition, the site collects traces of the various activities carried out by REPLICA. Among these, it is worth mentioning the ongoing collaboration with ATPdiary, which supports the project through a bimonthly column called ATPreplica, where from time to time the books in the archive are presented and deepened – and this, when possible, is done by leaving the floor directly to the artists. A new and important collaboration started in January 2020 with Fondazione Rossi, which helps us to develop the project also on an international level. We should certainly remember one of our first collaborations, the one with the Associazione Progetto Città ideale, which allowed us to host our first exhibition project at Edicola Radeztky’s Multipli e Unici. The exhibition, Spoken Narratives, is still in progress, in collaboration with Norma Mangione Gallery. On display, beside a section curated by artist book collector Diego Bergamaschi, are the works and books of Francesco Pedraglio, together with a selection of volumes published by his independent publishing house Juan de la Cosa. Among the most challenging projects there is certainly the one we are carrying out with Fruit Exhibition, the independent publishing fair in Bologna. The Fruit Exhibition team has invited us to curate an exhibition related to travel and travel publishing, the main topic of this edition of the fair. Moreover, together with KABUL magazine and the Fruit Exhibition team, we are working on the realization of a part of the public program of the fair. Every project we are carrying out is always referred to the two main subjects of our research: artist books and archives. Both consolidate the possibility of reacting to traditional exhibition models, by allowing us to question the use of the display, to deepen our historical heritage, to reflect on contemporary practices and, above all, to establish an interdisciplinary discourse.
D.E.: You have recently opened an exhibition entitled Spoken Narratives. What role do writing and narratives play in your project, which is dedicated to artist books?
R: In this specific case, writing and narratives have been the subject of our research from the point of view of their performativity, an aspect that also touches the artist book as an object. On display are Francesco Pedraglio’s maquettes – sculptures that miniaturize real objects, such as a column, and have an engraved telephone number. By dialing this number, we can listen to a story told by the artist himself directly on our mobile phone. It is thanks to this engraving that these objects become Spoken Sculptures – talking objects, books in the shape of a micro monument, ready to tell a story written by the artist.
D.E.: In the exhibition, in addition to presenting works by Francesco Pedraglio, you have created a collaboration with collector Diego Bergamaschi. How did you select the artist books?
R: Immediately after the first draft of the exhibition project and confirmation by Francesco Pedraglio and Norma Mangione, we thought it would be interesting to involve an external but competent look on artist books. Thus, we decided to contact Diego Bergamaschi, who has a rich and heterogeneous collection of artist books and is able to take a look back on their historical legacy, even though he mainly focuses on contemporary productions. Together, we have selected a series of books capable of expanding the concept of the performativity of narration. To give some examples, among this selection of volumes there is also 10 elastic band launches, a book by Giuseppe De Mattia, where the performativity of the sign is central. In fact, the book collects ten drawings by the artist on unbound sheets: a sample of random shapes, generated in a free and random way, following the shape of a blue elastic band thrown on the ground, which is identical to the one that keeps the book cover bound. Other examples of the concept of the performativity of narration are certainly the two books by Mette Edverson that show the result of a practice of re-writing from memory. The artist, in fact, invited several figures to learn a book by heart, and then later invited the same people to rewrite it. In these two cases, the narrative becomes something blurred and personal, like memories. On the occasion of the exhibition, we created an agile catalogue with Diego Bergamaschi, in order to make the books displayed in cases accessible, through descriptions of the projects and images. We have already confronted ourselves in flawed ways with the realization of catalogs, although we have no aspiration to become a publishing house. The first is the catalog of the exhibition Pelle d’oca d’oca, which also contains a precious unpublished story by Luca Scarlini. The second is the catalog of Senza Bagno, the exhibition project curated by Simone Camerlengo in the spaces of Monitor Gallery, where we contributed with the writing of a text and the editing of various published content. With him, we created the catalog.
D.E.: What are your plans for the future?
R: Surely we want to consolidate and implement the relationships that we are already pursuing. Then, as already mentioned, we are working on a challenging exhibition, which will involve different figures including collectors, curators, galleries and several independent spaces in Bologna. The core of the exhibition will be presented and set up at MAMbo and, although divided into sections, the main theme will be travel publishing. The public program organized in collaboration with Fruit Exhibition and KABUL will include four talks on mobility, migration, borders, cartography, urban planning, anti-institutional and imaginative practices and, of course, artist books. Another project that we care about is the realization of the first catalog of REPLICA’s activities and its collection. The catalog will be published in 2020 by Postmedia Books. Among the things that are motivating us the most is certainly the trust that we are finding from artists and publishers – who have also done their best to give us their books. The archive is therefore in continuous expansion. For this reason, we are also thinking about the possibility of finding a more suitable headquarters in the city of Milan, especially to ensure a service and greater usability of the archive itself. Among our great aspirations is certainly that of being able to create an institutional exhibition and to export REPLICA abroad. That said, in order to not stop thinking about this format, and on the display, we decided to invite architects’ studios to present sketches, projects and images with book display solutions during the summer period. The “table” on which to display these proposals will be our Instagram page.
Francesco Pedraglio, Juan de la Cosa, Spoken Narratives, Villa Vertua Masolo, Nova Milanese (Milan), through April 19, 2020
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Bulletin #24. Inscriptions by Cecilia Canziani
di Droste Effect | Bulletin, FeaturedMar 21, 2020
Bulletin #24
Inscriptionsby Cecilia Canziani (ENG – ITA)
An essay on the artwork of Ivana Spinelli, published on the occasion of her solo show Contropelo at Gallleriapiù, Bologna (January 23 – March 28, 2020).
A year ago, I visited Ivana Spinelli in her studio. As we had been planning for a while, we went through her body of work, looked at finished, unfinished, almost finished pieces, and discussed her latest exhibition. Then we talked about books, and I think that was the moment when she grabbed a folder from a shelf that was filled with exercises – writing exercises.
– Cecilia Canziani
About the author:Cecilia Canziani is an independent curator and art historian.
About the artist:Ivana Spinelli (Ascoli Piceno, 1972; lives and works between Berlin and Bologna) is an Italian artist and Sculpture lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. Her twenty-year practice mainly analyzes the relationship between body and language, and their ability to continuously shift the limits of perception and reality by defining each other. In her work, she addresses the social and political dimensions of personal relationships, as well as the everlasting conflict between the normativity of legislative language, brands and social media on the one side, and the vitality of world protests and re-appropriation on the other. The strict definition of terms like clandestine, feminine, terrorist, vegetal and minimum is expanded by actions such as sawing, wearing, translating, and voicing – which are often shared by participants in performances and workshops. Currently, her work is showcased in the solo show Contropelo at GALLLERIAPIÙ, Bologna and in the group show Scrivere Disegnando – When Language Seeks Its Other, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève; later in 2020, it will be featured in the group exhibition Io dico io – I say I at La Galleria Nazionale, Rome. Selected international exhibitions from the past are: Zig Zag Protofilosofia, Una Vetrina, Rome; Minimum:Voci, Museo Barracco, Rome; Minimum, GALLLERIAPIÙ, Bologna; 5th Mediations Biennale, Poznań, Poland; Il sangue delle donne, Casa Internazionale delle Donne, Rome; Exploring Resilience, Mila Kunstgalerie, Berlin; Progetto Italiano n. 3 – Avere fame di vento, The Workbench, Milan; Topophilias, Kreuzberg Pavillon, Berlin; Baustelle, BeoProject, Belgrade; Art Goes City, Postaja Raumau, Slovenj Gradec; Embedded art, Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Global Sisters, Italian Academy of New York. She was in the program Grand Tour d’Italie (Mibact 2019) and won the 2019 Replica Prize for artist books and the 2005 New York Prize. Her work has been analyzed in several essays and catalogues, such as Das Image des Terrorismus im Kunstsytstem (Sebastian Baden, Edition Metzel, 2018), Global Fight Club (Matthias Reichelt, Distillery, 2011), Caos #2 (Raffaele Gavarro, San Servolo, 2010), and The Aesthetics of Terror (Manon Slome and Joshua Simon, Charta, 2009). Her work was also published in the exhibition catalog Global Sisters –The Contradictions of Love (Revolver Books, 2012) and in the artist book Minimum (2017).
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SMASH THE SHMOOGLEARCHY. When Andy Kaufman meets Google?
di Droste Effect | NewsMar 16, 2020
Review by: Mária Horváthová
Since when is becoming the thing you hate a good idea? If there’s one thing I take from transmediale festival this year, it is this mantra which I’ve since pinned to the board of my bed.
I attended the festival’s End 2 End symposium at Volksbühne, about a month ago. I admit I’m quite impatient when it comes to the theorizing on why people theorize about the theorizing of others. I am more of a hands-on kind of gal. Instead, I ended up sticking to the sidelines for this one, dropping by the performances and workshops around and across the Volksbühne.
Unfortunately, I have no room here to praise the Citizen Kino event, to name one wonderful example. Even more unfortunate, was that I skipped the end of the splendid workshop by the Telekommunisten and wasted it on the Shmoogle and Desperately Seeking panel instead. The title of the panel was promising, “THE HUMAN SEARCH ENGINE”, further peppered by promises to “smash the Googlearchy”. If only the panel didn’t remain desperate all the way through, with the Googlearchy emerging unscathed at its end.
In a nutshell, Shmoogle is a search engine that “hacks” Google by scrambling the order of its search results. Desperately Seeking (or just DS …shorter, less annoying) claims to be an online community that deals with digital health issues. The panel came after a bunch of workshops that were carried out in a Pop-Up lounge area called, tongue in cheek, “The Shmoogle Shmampus”—codename for a pile of branded beanbags. Program overlaps permitting, I somehow managed to miss all the workshops. From what I overheard, though, not a huge loss. Workshop participants were mainly cornered into trying out Shmoogle—the usual attempt to conceal a focus group as a self-empowerment new-age pep talk. Still, I wanted to understand how these guys managed to take over the entire festival program, and so, 17:00 saw me sharp at the doors of the Roter Salon.
Honestly, I have no idea what these people were thinking. The whole thing read like a Rick and Morty episode that never made the cut and for good reason. If I try hard, I guess I could best describe what went down as a convoluted lecture-performance. Leading the panel were an annoying artsy hipster girl who was constantly flirting with her hotshot wannabe-academic-celebrity ex boyfriend. Then came a tiresome talk by Shmoogle founder CEO and she was eventually interrupted by someone in the crowd. Apparently, the intruder was another DS member who wasn’t too impressed with how her face was used without her consent to promote Shmoogle. Something like that.
What of it was staged, I couldn’t tell you. Right from the start, the ex boyfriend was very keen on proclaiming that it was all scripted. How far the script extended? How much of it all was even real? Unclear. By now I have serious doubts that the DS community as a whole even exists. Their website is an underwhelming dead end. It looks like someone uploaded a bunch of amateur videos to YouTube and flailingly crammed them into a WordPress template. Even their thumbnail is stolen from Kony 2012—the all-time most embarrassing social movement in the history of the Internet—and Photoshopped over.
What was the purpose of this staged YES MEN styled self-sabotage? Great question! Was this an attempt to capitalize on Berlin’s Fuck Off Google campaign, heavily discussed in transmediale 2018? Was it an invitation to self-reflect on art’s role in the tech industry? Perhaps. If this indeed was a hoax, admitting it could have led to a discussion on deceptive marketing and on the exploitation of the grassroots concept to peddle a product. But no one was willing to come clean about anything, so it is all left to speculation.
At least the Shmoogle page itself seems legit. That product actually exists. So, actually, my guess is that this whole operation was just one more stoopid (or shmoopid?) Threatin attempt—this time with silly tech instead of awful music—to promote the Shmoogle brand in an “artistic way”. This mainly resulted in Shmoogle outsmarting itself.
Is this what happens when art dares to merge with tech? Becoming the thing everyone hates the most? A pointless product? Is this part of the positive message transmediale hoped to bring across this year? Was the festival playing along with this presumed hoax? Or was this a self-inflicted curve-ball thrown twofold, by both Shmoogle and the festival? If there was a “Woah moment” here, I missed it.
Having said all this, I still believe transmediale means well and Shmoogle seems like a small struggling venture. Bashing heads in while offering zero prospects seems just as pointless as this whole operation. So, at the risk of finding out that I too am just a tool in this calculated spiel of a brand’s attempt at over-elaborate self-promotion, I will say this:
Maybe this is what art has to become in order to remain relevant ever since Instagram took its place. If so, it just needs to be better planned. Post Fyre festival, post Kony 2012 and Threatin, the post-truth age should be rebranded as the age of the glorious post-car-crash. Maybe there’s some potential here still. I wouldn’t be wasting all this space if I wasn’t at all fascinated with watching these art-tech hybrid models burn.
• When approached towards the publication of this piece, Shmoogle responded that it is currently reconsidering its relationship with Desperately Seeking. Desperately Seeking, in turn, abstained from commenting.
Mária Horváthová is a freelance art and technology columnist, based in the Slovak Republic. She also runs her own plant shop and is currently polishing the draft of her unauthorized biography of Jeff Bezos.
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Bulletin #23. Against the Grain by Claudio Musso
di Droste Effect | Bulletin, FeaturedFeb 19, 2020
Bulletin #23
Against the Grain. The Verse and Reverse of Signs and Imagesby Claudio Musso (ENG – ITA)
An essay on the artwork of Ivana Spinelli, published on the occasion of her solo show Contropelo at Gallleriapiù, Bologna (January 23 – March 28, 2020).
Ivana Spinelli suggests a different look into the signs that are deposited in our collective memory as decorative elements lacking of any linguistic value. All of a sudden, those inscriptions manifest themselves as a code composed by discrete elements that can be used to form words and sentences, and take concrete shape as sculptural matter.
– Claudio Musso
About the author:Claudio Musso is an art critic and independent curator. His research activity is particularly focused on the relationship between visual arts, language, and communication, on urban art, and on the new technologies in the artistic landscape. He is currently a lecturer in Phenomenology of Contemporary Arts and in Theory of Perception and Psychology of Form at the G. Carrara Academy of Fine Arts in Bergamo, Italy, where he is also Coordinator of the Visual Arts Department. He has participated as curator and jury member in international festivals, and has been invited as a speaker at conferences and lectures in Italy and abroad. He is a columnist for Artribune, as well as the creator and host of Die Straßenzeitung, an in-depth program on contemporary art for NEU Radio. He has published numerous academics paper, essays and critical texts.