Previous
2007 - 2006/ 2005 /
2004 Inauguration MNAC /
2003 / 2002
Works
from the Colletion of Société Generale Paris
Selected
by: Oana Tanase
Artistsi: Gérard GAROUSTE, Philippe RAMETTE, Philippe CARPENTIER,
Thomas RUFF, Victor BURGIN, Philippe CHANCEL, Antoni TAPIES, Pierre ALECHINSKY,
Tom CARR, Stéphane COUTURIER, Edouardo CHILLIDA, Sol LEWITT, Andy
WARHOL, Werner HANNAPEL
June, 13 – July, 15 2007
Philippe
Ramette, Contemplation irrationelle, 2003
With the
support of: BRD
Société Generale Romania
ACCIDENTS
A selection of recent Brazilian videos
Curator: Wagner Morales
April,
24 - June, 10
Roberto
Bellini, Through the Glass, film still
Artists: Roberto Bellini, Angela Detanico & Rafael Lain, Cao Guimarães, Marcellvs L., Renata Lucas, Cinthia Marcelle, Wagner Malta Tavares, Wagner Morales, Amilcar Packer, Sara Ramo, Nuno Ramos.
"Accidents"
is a selection of Brazilian videos made over the last six years.
For this screening, I chose video works that share an involvement with
the idea of recording/ registering - an emphasis on what is in front of
the video camera instead of what might be behind it (a constructed story,
a formal device like abstract images of pixels or colors dissolving etc.)
Instead of the complicated constructions of the film maker, the artists
whose works are presented in "Accidents" deploy a performative
engagement with the strategies of video art. Even if it presupposes that
the artist instigates something to happen, activates the very process
he or she will film, the perfomative is a way of allowing accidents into
the work, of instrumentalizing the spontaneous and the possibly disruptive.
The risks and accidents, the errors and the imponderable factors that
tend to be cast aside or suppressed in the video editing process, are
here incorporated as structural elements of the works, articulating a
plane on which it is possible to stroll and gain interpretive access to
the works.
Wagner Morales
SUBLIME
OBJECTS. Collections sans frontières VI
Works from the collections of Frac du Grand
Est
(Frac Alsace, Frac Bourgogne, Frac Champagne-Ardenne, Frac Franche-Comté,
Frac Lorraine)
Curator:
Mihnea
Mircan
Tania
Mouraud, HCYS?, site-specific intervention
collection Frac Lorraine, (c) Adagp Paris 2007
Artists: Adel ABDESSEMED, Alain BUBLEX, Matthew BUCKINGHAM, Julien DISCRIT, Jimmie DURHAM, Ceal FLOYER, Mario GARCIA TORRES, Rodney GRAHAM, David LAMELAS, Didier MARCEL, Philippe MESTE, Tania MOURAUD, Gianni MOTTI, Stefan NIKOLAEV, Philippe RAMETTE, David RENAUD, Allen RUPPERSBERG, Hiroshi SUGIMOTO.
March 28 - June 30, 2007
The
exhibition catalogue
will be launched in September.
Texts by: Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield, Erica Papernik, Arnaud François,
Guillaume Sibertin-Blanc, Beatrice Josse, François Quintin, Ciprian
Mihali.
With the support of:
PLATFORM Grand Est, L'Association des Regions francaises du Grand Est,
CULTURESFRANCE, Ministere de la Culture et de la Commnincation (DAP),
Ambassade de France en Roumanie, Institut Français de Bucarest
WORK OF
THE MONTH
Vlad
Nanca
Happy Sunday
Installation
and performance - Sunday 6th May
between: 16.00 - 18.00
Selected by Ruxandra Balaci
The outline of a car will obstruct the visitor's passage through the corridor leading from from the exterior elevator to the 4th floor of the museum. The car, similar to the ones in the installation Dream of Bucharest from Nanca's exhibition in Akademie Schloss Solitude, in January this year, keeps the same rough contour as the cars the artist has been drawing on pavements and walls all over the public space of Bucharest.
On the first Sunday of the month (6th May) the artist will lie down under the car imitating the gesture of many car owners who perform small repairs at the end of the week. His gesture is paying homage to those people who use the public space to fix their personal car.
Situated
"in a key position - inside the museum, but still outside of it",
Nanca will make use of the time spent under the car to "meditate
on different issues that he is interested in at the moment, such as the
Parliamentary Republic of Romania, MNAC as a possible factor of balance
for the Romanian contemporary art scene, the use of public space in Bucharest
and the battle for the second position in the Romanian Football Championship".
From
Regional to International.
BUILDINGS - PROJECTS 1996-2005
Baumschlager-Eberle
Architects, Lochau (Austria)
February 28 - May 6, 2007
Mediatheque
Since
its establishment as a partnership in 1985, the architectural practice
of Baumschlager - Eberle in Lochau / Vorarlberg has completed well over
300 construction projects and building studies, earning itself an international
reputation. Recent representative works include large-scale projects such
as the Vienna airport extension, the MOMA high-rises in Beijing, the WHO
/ UNAIDS building in Geneva and the 1,000-bed hospital in Kortrijk (Belgium).
Key to the Baumschlager - Eberle philosophy is that architecture is a
complex entity requiring the integration of many different elements, to
which justice can only be done if a building meets all the demands made
on it in terms of structural intelligence, ecology, economic efficiency
and social acceptability.
The exhibition presents the buildings designed by Baumschlager - Eberle
over a period of nine years. The items on display illustrate the scale
of the work handled by Baumschlager - Eberle, which ranges from regional
buildings to major international projects. The exhibition comprises plans,
models and extensive photographic documentation supplied by Arch Photo
Inc. Eduard Hueber.
With many thanks to: Zumtobel Staff; Aedes; Land Vorarlberg
Geta
Bratescu - Ion Grigorescu. Resources
Works from the collection of MNAC
Selected by Ruxandra Balaci with Magda Radu
31
January - 15 May 2007
Geta Bratescu and Ion Grigorescu are two central figures in Romanian contemporary
art, who are recognized on the international art scene as well. Both of
them had major solo exhibitions organized at the National Museum of Art
of Romania (Department of Contemporary Art), curated by Ruxandra Balaci:
Ion Grigorescu's 1998 exhibition, Documents 1967-1997, and Geta Bratescu's
1999 Retrospective. Apart from a life-long friendship and their collaboration
in making some of Geta Bratescu's films (The Studio, The Hand of my Body
and Ludus), what they have in common is an artistic practice orientated
toward experiment, both of them using various forms of expression (ranging
from painting, collage, sculpture, drawing, object and photography, to
experimental film, video works and performance).
Ion
Grigorescu is the author of some anthological works that are seminal for
the alternative art practice in Romania during communism. His famous 8mm
film Dialogue with Comrade Ceausescu (1978) reflects the most critical/subversive
position that a Romanian artist has ever taken in addressing the political
power. The questioning of identity, the radical experiments with his own
body, his interest in Yoga or his allegiance to religious orthodox painting
- are as many facets of his artistic personality which make him extraordinarily
complex and difficult to define.
Alongside his films, the exhibition showcases works from the collection
which the public has now the chance to (re)discover. Works such as Das
Kunstpalais, the tin dogs or the photography documenting the moving of
Mihai Voda Church evoke a sordid local reality that the artist acknowledged
while refusing any rhetoric of the image or of the object.
Geta
Bratescu is represented with works which account for major directions
and essential moments in her artistic career: the happening and the installation
Toward White, the series of collages, the objects which inventively develop
the theme of the self-portrait, the drawings with the eyes closed, the
experimental films from the '70s, etc. In this exhibition, the intimate,
self-reflective space of the studio is counterbalanced by the urban space
(as seen for example in the magnified image of the Magnets in the City).
In addition, Lady Oliver and Sir Thonet are caught in an amusing "duel"
which pairs up word and image (or the object), masculine and feminine,
reality and artifice.
The choice of experimental film and of video is not a forced attitude,
it is, on the contrary, perfectly consistent with her other concerns,
effecting a subtle reshaping of her artistic persona.
SELF-TIMER
Photography and video-art from Finland
14 february - 15 April 2007
Artists:
Elina Brotherus, Aino Kannisto, Sanna Kannisto, Fanni Niemi-Junkola, Salla
Tykkä
Concept/curators: René Block, Birgit Eusterschulte
The exhibition Self-Timer, to be shown at MNAC (National Museum of Contemporary
Art), Bucharest, organized by ARTMANIA Foundation in collaboration with
FRAME (Finnish Fund for Art Exchange), Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel,
the Embassy of Finland in Romania and MNAC, provides a first, comprehensive
insight into the photographic and filmic work of five young artists from
Finland. Their works focus not so much on great political and social themes.
The artists capture their times in personal, everyday events, portraying
the reality of their lives and their relations with the external world,
or they formulate subjective emotions and personal issues in fictional
narration reflecting societal reality. In photography and film they rely
on the force of visual staging and a highly aesthetic visual language
where appearances can prove deceptive.
By merging authentic moment and the staging of personal life, the early
self-portraits of Elina Brotherus (*1972), enquiry into the state of the
personal self. Later photographs shift the perspective outwards from extreme
and exposing self-contemplation: she begins to photograph landscapes and
horizons. The "new paintings," as she calls the series, seek
answers in photography to questions that have occupied painting for centuries:
light and shadow, colour and composition, constellations of figures in
space.
Aino Kannisto (*1973) also works with the photographic self-portrait,
but in her case they are fictive role portraits with the artist as model,
adopting various female identities but not really portraying herself.
Kannistos' meticulously detailed compositions have an air of film stills
of female protagonists, freeze frames capturing a brief moment in the
action.
For her photographs, Sanna Kannisto (*1974) ventured into the Latin-American
rainforest, where she spent months in research camps with scientists,
conducting her own artistic research. In her subjective perspective on
the multifarious, exotic fauna and flora of the rainforest, the artist
adopts the supposedly objective research and working methods of science,
exposing them, however, in her emphasis on the staged and artificial.
Fanni Niemi-Junkolas'(*1962) filmic portraits depict simple people. Mostly
in concentrated calm and quiet observation of the other, she tells of
daily life, and these intimate stories open a perspective on universal
issues of human existence and its environment, on the relationship between
the individual and society.
In her films, Salla Tykkä (*1973) tells short stories about the transition
from childhood to adulthood and relations between the sexes which elude
unambiguous interpretation in their enigmatic ambivalence and complexity.
An atmospheric visual aesthetic, the skilled use of well-known film music,
and playing with allusions and memories generate lasting tension and a
sense of foreboding and uncertainty.
Produced
by:
FRAME (Finnish Fund for Art Exchange) and Kunsthalle Fridericianum
In Romania produced by:
ARTMANIA Foundation and MNAC
The
event is organized under the auspices of the Embassy of Finland in Romania.
WORK OF
THE MONTH
Gili
Mocanu - CO
painting
and object,
2006-2007
chosen by Oana Tanase
until April 15
For Gili
Mocanu, C and O (the consonant and the vowel) have become purely analytic
instruments, their generic force infusing an entire series of works, in
whichever language or media. Seemingly subversive and temperamental, their
origin stems from a research which doesn't take into account the external
reality. C and O share the same lucidity and reductive sensibility which
is apparent both in the artist's earlier and less familiar works like
LIH HIL and in the more recent series of large format canvases which extract
from the everyday life various items like a book, a sofa or a funeral
carriage. Basic grammatical and gravity laws are being resorted to in
the process of negotiating the tensions between the two rings which connect
in the same chain; thus, the painting acquires a metallic edge while the
drawing becomes form.
WORK OF
THE MONTH
Cristi
Pogacean - 2544
chosen by Ruxandra Balaci
until 15 February
"2544"
can be read as a metaphor with ironical and sublime connotations, commenting
upon the much-debated relation between the artist and the curator. On
the first level, the video stages the visual narrative of the physical
effort undertaken by the artist and the curator who are climbing together
to "the very top" (of Mount Moldoveanu, that is, "the very
top" of artistic achievement). The curator (Mihai Pop) carries a
flag with the hypnotic emblem of the artist printed on it.
A second reading renders the message more subtle: not only is the artist's
effigy being lifted by the curator, but the artist is also the one that
holds the camera, directing and recording his own ascension. It is a sort
of reversed mirroring which is mediated through the camera. The sublime
feeling of the friendship between the two is mirrored by the sublimity
of the landscape, providing the neo-romantic undertone present in many
of Pogacean's works.
Christian
Paraschiv
Bio arta - History Line - Le noir este
la couleur du langage
Galeria Etaj 3/4 (TNB), 2 Nicolae Balcescu
March 22 - May 30, 2007
Urs
Luethi
24 November 2006 - 11 February 2007
curator Florin Tudor
Just
Another Story About Leaving, Urs Luethi, photo series, 1974
The
series of photographical self-portraits Just another story about leaving
depicts the gradual transformation (but never the decline) of a face oscillating
between masculine and feminine, a face which as if anticipating its own
autobiography seeks to project itself through indistinctive identification
with the father or the mother figure.
The
complexity of the expression and the continuity of the theme coexist and
this paradoxical feature is only the first and the most conspicuous in
an entire series of dialectical opposites structuring the work of the
Swiss artist; his work thrives on the ambivalence between truth and appearance,
natural and artificial, order and chaos, high culture and kitsch, banality
and sublime, madness and wisdom, the tragic and the burlesque.
These
images seem to allude to the structure of the eye, to the sight of the
iris and the black opening of the pupil. And still, these works are merely
a portrait of the world gazing at itself, a portrait of us all. I'll be
your mirror. There is something provocative, a combination of both attraction
and repulsion that met the eyes of the spectator in the 70's portraits
as well. Lüthi wants to give us a mirror, as if to remind us of our
reversed image, gathering us around the emptiness of the desire, around
this abyss that somehow, paradoxically, sustains us.
Tiziano Santi
Extreme
East
contemporary
japanese architecture
1. SENSAI
8 November 2006 - 8 January 2007
Taro Ashihara, Yasushi, Horibe, Kazuo Iwamura, Chitoshi Kitara, Hiroshi Naito, Akira Sakamoto, Eizo Shiina, Yoshii Takehara, Akira Watanabe, Ken Yokogawa
2. CONTINUITY VS MUTATION
8 November 2006 - 8 January 2007
Jun Aoki,
Ryuichi Ashizawa, Sou Fujimoto, Tetsuo Furuichi, Masahiro Harada &
Mao Harada/ Mount Fuji Architects Studio, Kumiko Inui, Jun Igarashi, Waro
Kishi, Kazuyasu Kochi / Kochi
Architects Studio, Kazuhiro Kojima, Kengo Kuma, Hironori Matsubara + BMA,
Hiroshi Naito, Tetsuya Nakazon / Naf Architect & Design, Kenji Nawa
/ Suwa Seisakujo, Taira Nishizawa,
Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA, Kuniaki Takahashi, Makoto
Tanijiri / Suppose Design Offi ce, Jun Sato Structural Engineers
organisers:
UAR, Arhitectura
main sponsors: Henkel Bautechnik, DuPont Romania
sponsors: Knauf, Velux, Bramac, Mons Medius, Delta Design, Hunter Douglas,
Steealcase prin corporate office solution, Isover, Lafarge
wih the support of: Bicau, Primaria sector 1, Min Culturii, AFCN, MNAC,
Ambasada Japoniei, Japan Foundation, Stage Expert, Xerox Romania, Compania
Nationala de Investitii,
media partners: Igloo, Arhitext, Biz, Business Review, Jurnalul National,
7 seri, Communicate de presa, TVR 2
martin
is not fanny
Martin Zet, a video retrospective, curated by Fania Kaplan
14 September– 14 November 2006
performance 22 October, 18:00 h
with the support of the Czech Center Bucuresti
Nikolaus
Schletterer
6 December 2006 - 11 February 2007
curators Florin Tudor & Andrei Siclodi
The
title of the exhibition, Daylight, refers to a technical characteristic
of the analogue photography: the optimal sensitivity of the photographic
film while taking outdoor photos in the daytime. In this installation,
Nikolaus Schletterer investigates a deserted space, apparently cut out
from any spatial or temporal coordinates. Besides his videos, a series
of photographs, most of them in black and white, depicts an austere seaside
with ruined buildings. Some of the houses are in an advanced state of
decay while others seem to have been abandoned under construction. The
cause of the sudden disappearance of their inhabitants remains unknown.
Although we are left with the impression that a major event occurred,
the buildings have nevertheless been subject to natural degradation. Moreover,
the images elude any geographical / spatial framing of the area: all buildings
are photographed with the sea in the background. Only the road, stretching
out to the horizon, gives some sort of orientation, underlying the out
of this world feeling.
In
Daylight some may discover analogies with the zone from Andrei Tarkovsky
s Stalker. Indeed, like the zone in the film, Nikolaus Schletterer s zone
is a timeless mental space. The furtherance of knowledge, stemming from
the understanding of the complex mechanisms of visual perception, is at
the forefront of Daylight.
Andrei Siclodi
Work of the Month
Geta Bratescu & Ion Grigorescu - Ludus. Studio Play
15 December 2006 - 15 January 2007
chosen
by Magda Radu
For
Geta Bratescu, the studio represents a space of self-knowledge and play;
here, we can see the artist performing a series of actions which are familiar
to those who already know her work: the "automatic" drawing,
the ritual of the make-up, the white mask which stands for her self-constructed
persona, for her double. The camera lingers on the cupboard covered with
many posters, photos and postcards which make up a visual archive with
examples ranging from the Greek Antiquity to Matthew Barney. Ion Grigorescu's
reflection in the mirror, handling the camera, signals that he himself
is part of this visual memory. It also points to the close relationship
between the two artists, to the double play that takes place between the
artist behind the camera and the one who plays a role in front of it.
Oberhausen
On Tour / screening
25th
& 26th of january 2007
Auditorium
The European tour of the International Film Festival Oberhausen - one
of the world's first and best-known short film festivals - is presenting
the most interesting works from recent festivals to an even wider audience.
MNAC will host the screening of two programmes from the festival: The
Best of International Competition (25.01) and Media Art (26.01).
The
Best of International Competition Programme features a selection of mostly
experimental and documentary video works. From Africa to Bolivia, and
from Canada to Kuala Lumpur, the social realities and forms of artistic
expression in this programme are as diverse as life itself
Artists: Miranda Pennell (UK), Khavn de la Cruz (Philippines), Vincent
Meessen (Belgium/Burkina Faso), Andreas Denegri (ARG), Belle Mellor (UK),
Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay (CA), Petra Lindholm (Sweden), James Lee (Malaysia),
Ken Wardrop (IR).
In
the Media Art programme, the boundaries are fluid; the works presented
highlight the tug-of-war between Black Box and White Cube.
Artists: Matthias Müller (GER), Volker Schreiner (GER), Sean Snyder
(GER), Marcellvs L. (Brazil), Shelley Silver (USA), Nathalie Djurberg
(Sweden)
Regimes of
Representation: Art & Politics Beyond the House of People
Conference at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest
11
January 2007
Featuring Chantal Mouffe (keynote), Nicolas Bourriaud, Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield, Marcus Steinweg, 4space, Ruxandra Balaci and Meta Haven.
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Organized by the Jan van Eyck Academie and Meta Haven: Design Research
information and reservations:
http://www.museumofconflict.eu
t +31 (0)64 831 65 43
t +31 (0)62 427 67 97
e office@metahaven.net
Conference
outline
On January 11, 2007, a conference will be organized in the former House
of People in Bucharest - more precisely, in Romania's national museum
of contemporay art: MNAC. The title of the conference is 'Regimes of Representation:
Art & Politics Beyond the House of People'. The subject of the conference
is the very location where the event is being held. The former Casa Poporului,
now Palatul Parlamentului, and its current co-function as a museum of
contemporary art, will be the point of departure for a discussion of the
relation between politics, imagination and representation, both in and
beyond the post-communist condition.
MNAC is one of various attempts to use contemporary art and creative forces
to transform a former 'totalitarian' symbol into one for democracy, but
it is unique in simultaneously being the seat of government. The central
question for the conference is: can art ever 'take over the central point
of power, being a symbol of openness and democracy'? Can, consequently,
imagination influence or take over the meaning of a building that is an
essential logo of totalitarian rule? How does Romania's first national
contemporary art institution employ the symbolic to express a constructed
national identity, by using (totalitarian) foundation? Can we speak of
a reverse 'Bilbao Effect?' And how does the institutionalization of contemporary
art reflect the imperative to democratize since the fall of communism?
This event is generously supported by the Royal Dutch Embassy in Bucharest.
Conference
programme
10.15
Registration
11.15
Welcome - Ruxandra Balaci, artistic director MNAC
11.30
Introduction - Vinca Kruk
11.45
Keynote lecture - Chantal Mouffe
12.45
Lecture - Nicolas Bourriaud
13.30
lunch
14.00
Lecture - Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield
14.45
Lecture - Marcus Steinweg
15.30
Lecture - 4Space (Augustin Ioan & Ciprian Mihali)
16.15
break
16.30
Round table discussion with all speakers - moderated by Daniel van der
Velden
17.30
Drinks
Abstracts / Biographies
Agonistic
politics and artistic practices
Chantal Mouffe - Keynote lecture
In my presentation I will discuss the different ways to envisage the public
space and scrutinize the implications of this discussion for artistic
practices. My argument will be that public art is not art located in a
place that is public - as opposed to private space. Public art is art
that institutes a public space, in the sense of a common action by people.
I will for instance address the question of what kind of public progressive
art institutions should try to institute: a public space that aims at
establishing consensus or a public space of agonistic confrontation?
Taking my bearings from my previous work, I will first show that the task
of democratic politics is not to aggregate interests or to attempt at
reaching a rational consensus, but to transform antagonism into agonism.
Then I will draw the consequences of this approach to understand the relation
between art and politics and to grasp the nature of critical artistic
practices. What is at stake, I will argue, is the questioning of the dominant
hegemony by bringing to the fore all the aspects that the dominant consensus
is trying to repress. I will insist on the multiplicity of ways in which
this consensus can be undermined and show that artistic practices can
contribute in a variety of ways to the fostering of new forms of subjectivities.
Chantal Mouffe is Professor of Political Theory at the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster in London. She has taught and researched at a number of universities in Europe, North America and South America. She is member of the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris. She was editor of Gramsci and Marxist Theory (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1979), Dimensions of Radical Democracy. Pluralism, Citizenship, Community (Verso, London, 1992), Deconstruction and Pragmatism (Routledge, London, 1996) and The Challenge of Carl Schmitt, (Verso, London, 1999). She co-authored with Ernesto Laclau Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (Verso, London, 1985) and was the author of The Return of the Political (Verso, London, 1993), The Democratic Paradox (Verso, London, 2000) and On the Political (Routledge, London, 2005).
Nicolas
Bourriaud
Nicolas Bourriaud is a French curator and art critic who coined the term
'relational aesthetics', which he outlined in 1995. From 2002 to 2006
he was co-director of the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (with Jérôme
Sans). Bourriaud founded the magazine Documents (1992-2000), and served
as the Paris correspondent for Flash Art.
Bourriaud published Relational Aesthetics (2002) and Postproduction (2001).
He defines as 'relational' art which takes as its theoretical horizon
'the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the
assertion of an independent and private symbolic space'.
Nicolas Bourriaud is a consultative board member for MNAC - Muzeul National
de Arta Contemporana, Bucharest.
Art and
democracy at the founding of foundation
Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield
The building in which MNAC is housed was constructed to found - according
to dictator Nicolae Ceausescu who ordered its construction - a 'new man'.
As such it occurs as foundation, not just the foundation of a national
identity, but the foundation of foundation itself. It is this essential
feature that mnac has to negotiate. But how exactly can art 'take over'
such a building 'as a symbol of openness and democracy', as is claimed
for MNAC by Nicolas Bourriaud in his capacity as a founding member of
its advisory board?
What is presupposed by such a claim? Might it not repeat something troubling
about the building's original founding? This paper will draw from what
is troubling about Bourriaud's presuppositions about art, and contrary
to his notion of relational aesthetics, the sense in which art's resistance
to politics is necessary for the institution of democracy.
Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield is Reader in Theory & Philosophy of Art at the University of Reading and sits on the executive of the Forum for European Philosophy at the London School of Economics, and on the board of AICA (Association Internationale des Critiques d'Art). He has published various papers in the area of continental philosophy, on art and on ethics especially. Currently he is writing two books: Art's Resistance to Ethics and Heidegger's Philosophy of Art. He was a researcher at the theory department of Jan van Eyck Academie from 2004 until 2006.
The obscurantism
of facts
Marcus Steinweg
Neither philosophy nor art are matters of proof or opinion. Philosophy
and art posit things, they assert. Assertion is distinguished from proof
and opinion since it has to make do without certainty. A philosophy of
assertion is a philosophy in uncertainty. It surpasses and transgresses
the modalities of conventional thinking such as reflection, argument,
grounding, and criticism. It is a matter of the subject touching a truth
in uncertainty and giving this instance of contact a form, a language.
Truth refers to the limits of the world of facts. Philosophy exists only
in that it touches these limits. It is an assertion that denies the validity
of the imperatives of the factual. Touching upon truth, philosophy has
to resist the certainty of opinion and the obscurantism of facts in equal
measure. It is a touching of the untouchable and it makes this touching
into a life-form.
My aim is to defend the political relevance of art and philosophy against
conventional political art and political philosophy. I intend to show
that political art and political philosophy establish their own de-politicization.
They are not concerned with a politics of freedom, of the impossible and
what is most necessary. The politics I am referring to differ from what
is usually called politics. This type of politics does not assert or defend
interests. It would be about a resistance against the order of socio-political
and ideo-cultural reality. It would articulate itself by absolutely refusing
the universe of facts and the opinions circulating in this universe. It
would be a politics of truth insofar as it considers proof as what comes
into conflict with established certainties. It causes the voice of official
truth to stutter and be brought to silence.
I want to show that art only has meaning as art. Philosophy only has meaning
as philosophy. It does not serve to reduce art and philosophy to the socio-political
field in which they articulate themselves. It does not make sense to define
the mission of art and philosophy as political. 'That is the left-wing
illusion of the past few decades,' Heiner Müller argues 'of European
intellectuals and particularly the literati, that there could be and should
be a community of interests between art and politics. Ultimately, art
cannot be controlled. Or it can always evade control. And for this reason
it has been… almost automatically subversive.'
Marcus
Steinweg is a philosopher and writer who lives in Berlin. His publications
include Krieg der différance and Autofahren mit Lacan (Koblenz,
2001), Der Ozeanomat. Ereignis und Immanenz (Cologne, 2002), Subjektsingularitäten
(Berlin, 2004) and Behauptungsphilosophie (Berlin, 2006).
Steinweg regularly collaborates with the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn
in the latter's publications and large-scale politically inspired art
installations, for which Steinweg often writes texts.
Singular
object: the house of the republic resisting interpretations
4Space (Augustin Ioan & Ciprian Mihali)
The significance of the Ultimate Edifice and, setting out from it, the
Boulevard of Victorious Socialism - or rather the anti-urban phenomenon
that is officially called 'the new civic center' - has been interpreted
lately: their conception and construction and their use from the communist
period before 1989 up to the present. Any attempt to set them in order
should start from two premises. Firstly, the respective edifice resists
any unique, 'holistic' interpretation that could exhaust meanings in matters
of production and destination. Secondly, there are important distinctions
between the modalities of explaining the building from the threefold vantage
of its spaces. These spaces are first of all the exterior space, i.e.
the city. Next there's the exterior space of the building, i.e. its close
vicinity, in the crooked language of post-Soviet politics or the huge
halo of influence that the monstrous structure exuded. Finally, there's
the outer space. Since verifiable data are lacking, oral studies only
account for having established the nearly 'occult' nature of the biggest
urban operation in the history of Romania. These oral sources include
unfinished and unpublished studies such as the one by Gérard Althabe
from the ehess in Paris and legends recounted by eye-witnesses or just
by former 'initiated persons' such as Professor Cornel Dumitrescu, the
one-time rector of iaim Bucharest. As said, this colossal project owes
its imaginary, mythical dimension to the wave of petites histoires it
generated.
The most valuable interpretations, even if partial, are to be found not
exactly in the discourse on architecture and urbanism but rather in that
of the socio-human sciences, political science, history of mentalities,
anthropology of the peri-urban (slum), and, not lastly, in psychoanalysis.
The various sensible projects submitted in connection with the Republic
House after 1989 vacillate between two extremes: the least extreme proposes
to 'recuperate' the House in a strictly professional jargon of architectural
'expertise'.
This has been used not only by architects but also by diverse interpreters
of the house and by guides who show mesmerized foreigners around. At the
bottom line of the bottom-line commentary on the Republic House (as poet
Nichita Stanescu would have put it), we are dealing with quantity, size,
forms of design, special structures and so on. At the upper line of the
bottom line we can approach 'the postmodernism' of the House and of the
Boulevard of Victorious Socialism, its 'Bigness' (Rem Koolhaas) and other
concepts that could prove useful. In discussions about the House, the
'higher' aspect (in the strict sense of ab/use, of excessive investment
with meaning) is taken as an epiphany. The House is like a heavenly Jerusalemite
temple elevated in Bucharest in view of a second coming to take place
on the spot.
One interpretation renders the numerous social, economic, political folds
of the edifice occult - often deliberately because guiltily so. Others
go into an interpretative frenzy before it. Between these extremes flutters
a practically endless concatenation of 'grays'. For instance, the nationalist
rhetoric is boosted by the apparently neutral data regarding construction
technologies and materials that are, apparently, all exclusively Romanian
and, of course, superlative. (At times, the Peles Castle comes into the
picture as a corollary. Here, even the wood was imported). There are also
the much more decent, professionally speaking, but no less phantasmagoric
ideas concerning a pre-established plan of Bucharest setting out from
utopian, ideal schemes of the Sforzinda type (Dana Harhoiu). The structuring
origin of this would be a sacred geometry made up of a monastic 'Triangle
of the Bermudas', with parish churches laid concentrically in relation
to the St. George Old Church that is considered the navel of the city.
4Space is an interdisciplinary group of philosophers, architects, writers, sociologists and geographers dedicated to the critique and writing of urban policies in Romanian cities. It started as a focus-group with the New Europe College institute of advanced studies in Bucharest in 2004 and has a same-titled weekly column on the internet at www.liternet.ro. The group is in the process of publishing a book with contributions of its members at Idea Press in Cluj (2007).
Introduction
& moderation
Meta Haven
Meta Haven: Design Research, based in Amsterdam, was founded in 2005 by
Vinca Kruk, Daniel van der Velden, Adriaan Mellegers and Tina Clausmeyer.
The team first started to collaborate in 2003 with a visual research into
the Principality of Sealand, a tiny nation state located on a former war
platform in the North Sea.
This project - centered around the pro-active engagement with a non-commissioning
subject of interest, coming to terms with myth and symbolism, territorial
identity and its diffusion into information networks - was carried out
at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht.
Since, Meta Haven is investigating an array of case studies where the
linkage between imagination and politics is key. The History Vs. Future
project, focusing on the relationship between identity and history, resulted
in a research of the House of People in Bucharest. Among the results of
this discursive approach are, apart from a series of visual models and
scenarios, the conferences The Museum of Conflict and Regimes of Representation.
At the Jan van Eyck Academie in 2007, Van der Velden and Kruk will carry
out a research into the French/German internet search engine project Quaero,
in collaboration with researchers Tsila Hassine and Gon Zifroni. This
research attempts to merge a critical and imaginative understanding of
design with a discussion on internet, politics, public domain, and cultural
heritage. Meanwhile, Meta Haven: Design Research is working on a book,
Uncorporate Identity, scheduled for publication in Fall, 2007.
Indian
Lava & Ritz Mood Guru present
Salve Fiat Romuli
Painting Exhibition - Gorzo
curator Liviana Dan
5 October - 30 December 2006
Partners: Muzeul Brukental Sibiu, Galeria H'art Bucuresti, ICR Bucuresti
Thomas
Hirschhorn
conference:
"A propos du Musee Precaire Albinet"
participants:
Maria Rus-Bojan (Project Stichting Amsterdam) / Bogdan Ghiu
Friday / 17 November / 06 / 18h00 Auditorium / Calea 13
Septembrie / Bucuresti
Thomas
Hirschhorn
Musée Précaire Albinet
Semaine Léger, exposition
2004, Aubervilliers
courtesy : Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers et l'artiste
WORK
OF THE MONTH/November
DONALD
SIMIONOIU
Placid Couples
oil on canvas, 2006
chosen by Ruxandra Balaci
Simionoiu’s portraits feature recognizable typologies of present-day
Romanians: they are antiheroical figures, grotesque touching or simply
risible. In between the subtle irony which reveals itself only at a second
glance and the rethoric of a clichéd Romanticism, the references
are made at the erotic pattern of a routined daily life in a block of
flats. Funny, forceful, and sophisticated his work is assuming the difficult
task of revealing le cache des individus et d’une partie de la societe.
INDIVIDUAL COMMUNITIES
Scandinavian Video Art (screening)
wednesday 22 November 2006, 18.00
Curator:
Anne Szefer Karlsen
Works by: Bodil Furu (N), Mariken Kramer (N), Ane Lan (N), Peter Larsson
(S), Kjersti Solberg Monsen (N), Jakob Nielsen (DK), Lars Nilsson (S),
Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen (DK), Sixten Therkildsen (DK), Jakob Tækker
(DK), Kristin Tarnesvik (N) and Arne Vinnem (N)
A selection of twelve video pieces made by Scandinavian artists are chosen for this screening to present a view on what it is like to live in a vast region with scattered population. The selected videos in Individual Communities play on documentary, fiction, animation and poetic strategies and take a look at some of recent social changes in the Scandinavia and the way they affect the individual.
Supported
by: Office For Contemporary Art , Norway
http://www.szefer.net/24vs25850.htm
Through
Popular Expression
19 October- 19 November
curators Hu Fang si Zhang Wei, guest curator Simona Nastac
artists: Cao Fei, Jun Yang, MAP office, Xu Tan, Xu Zhen, Zhang Yuan, Zheng
Gougu
WORK
OF THE MONTH / October
THOMAS CIULEI
"Asta e"
92 min, 2001, 35 mm color, transfered on DVD
Chosen
by Ruxandra Balaci
Saga-The Journey of Arno Rafael Minkkinen
curators
A.D. Coleman si Todd Brandow
6 September - 22 october
opening: 5 September/ 18h00
In 1970
the Finnish American photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen began making images
of himself and never stopped. During these decades he has steadily generated
astonishing and memorable pictures exploring his body's interaction with
the physical environement. Saga, the most extensive presentation of Minkinnen's
project to date, distills 35 years of his life's work.
Work of the
month
Every month, the mediatheque of the museum (4th floor), will host a newly
created work exhibited for one month, chosen by a MNAC curator.
September
2006
Irina
Botea: “Auditions for a Revolution”
video and film 16 mm, 24 min, Chicago, 2006
chosen by Ruxandra Balaci
Chicago 2006: young people audition for roles in a reenactment of the first televised revolution, the 1989 Romanian revolution.
The Romanian artist Irina Botea, who withessed the events, juxtaposes actual footage of the revolution* from the well known film of Harun Farocky,“Videogram of a Revolution” with reenactments by non-Romanian speaking performers of those same televised events.
The new
performance was recorded on video and also on 16mm film camera, a camera
the artist acquired from a documentary film company that quite likely
used the camera to film the 1989 revolution.
*Courtesy
Harun Farocky’s film “Videogram of a Revolution”
project
"PerForming the Body"
7 - 8 October
a project initiated by ArtLink
coordonator: Florin Fieroiu
artists: Dana Balint, Mihaela Dancs, Florin Flueras, Ionut Stana,Iuliana
Stoianescu
Parteners :
DanceWEB, Cultura2000, ArCuB - Centrul de proiecte culturale al
municipiului Bucuresti, Pro Helvetia - Programul Cultural Elvetian in
Romania, AFCN - Administratia Fondului Cultural National, CNDB - Centrul
National al Dansului Bucuresti, MNAC - Muzeul National de Arta
Contemporana, 24-FUN si MCC - Fondul de mobilitate
Parteneri ArtLink: comunicatedepresa.ro, TimeOut Bucuresti, port.ro,
Infinium, Wonderboy
www.artlink.org.ro
Dutch
Installation Art
20 May - 10 September
curator:
Annet Dekker
artists: Michiel van Bakel, Jasper van der Brink, Persijn Broersen &
Margit Lukacs, Rikkert Brok, eddie d, Jan Peter van der Wenden, Kirsten
Geisler, Bernard Gigounon, Nan Hoover, Andreas Siefert, Bill Spinhoven,
Eric Steensma, Martijn Veldhoen, Gerald van der Kaap
Gerald van
der Kaap, Chill Cave
Optical
illusions have fascinated man as far back as the Middle Ages, and continue
to do so. For some time now film has been the magical medium par
excellence, but since the rise of video film no longer has the sole claim
to this magic. With virtual reality and the computer the possibilities
seem unlimited. In the exhibition Dutch Installation Art a desire for
the extraordinary, which is at the core of any fantastic machine, travels
through as an undercurrent - and is often transferred to the viewer as
an experience for the senses.
The artists in the exhibition reveal the magic in media art. By playing with space, light and shadow, extreme close-ups or computer techniques the "art magique" is brought to life. When you enter the darkened space of the video installation Dislocations by Martijn Veldhoen your eyes are immediately drawn towards a white cross on the floor, lit from above by a spotlight. And just as in the plaza in front of St. Peter's, this marks the spot where something happens, where the horizon shifts and opens up a different perspective. The single channel video Starship by Bernard Gigounon is a spectacle of scudding spaceships, or are they? The images in Starship form an impressive entity, in no way inferior to science fiction films like Star Wars. However, as you watch longer, it appears that the airships did not originate in the imagination of the artist. And laying down in the Chill Terminal, artist Gerald van der Kaap brings people in a state of "total hoverty" - 'No other drugs required. All senses operative.'
Co-organiser:
Netherlands Media Art Institute Montevideo / Time Based Arts
With the support of: the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Bucharest, Mondriaan
Foundation
Sponsors:
Paravion.ro / Millenium, JW Marriott. Bucharest Grand Hotel, ATIPIC PLUS,
Peroni, Five's
Media partners: 24 Fun, Re:PUBLIK, Igloo, Arhitectura, Rfi
Josef
Dabernig. Films.
(featuring G.R.A.M. and Markus Scherer)
26 April - 3 September
curator Florin Tudor
Rosa
coeli (Josef Dabernig), 2003
This film selection presented now in Bucharest contains works done by
Josef Dabernig between 1996 (Wisla) and 2005 (Lancia Thema). The films
can be read like a layered narrative of different contexts, not necessarily
explaining them but working with the tension generated by their internal
contradictions. The script is constructed similar to Dabernig's minimalist
architecture interventions and grid structures, using rational methods
to organize camera movements, tempo, actions - but at the same time considering
imperfections, absences or lapses. His characters are performing usual,
familiar gestures in a repetitive yet fragmented, disrupted way.
(Florin Tudor)
The work
of Josef Dabernig sometimes seems to be a sort of personal archaeology
of modernity. It displays an admiration for the utopian and rational,
but also a certain pleasure at gaps, mismatches and failures in such ideally
conceived structures. It is important that he sees modernity as marked
by contradictions and as heterogeneous in spite of its claims for universality.
Admiration for the rational forms and structures of modernity and a certain
obsession with them are always combined with an ironic and distanced attitude.
(Igor Zabel, 2003)
List of films:
Wisla
1996,
16mm to DVD, b/w, 8 min
Concept and Realisation: Josef Dabernig
Camera: Thomas Baumann
Editing and Sound: Josef Dabernig, Martin Kaltner
Cast: Josef Dabernig, Martin Kaltner, Emil Brix, Jerzy Fedorowicz, Ludwik
Mietta-Mikolajewicz, Rembert Schleicher
Timau
1998,
16mm to DVD, b/w, 20 min
Concept and Realisation: Josef Dabernig, Markus Scherer
Camera: Christian Giesser
Cast: Josef Dabernig, Wolfgang Dabernig, Markus Scherer, Marino Grassi,
Cesira Leschiutta
Jogging
2000,
35mm to DVD, colour, 11 min
Concept and Realisation: Josef Dabernig
Camera: Christian Giesser
Music: Olga Neuwirth
WARS
2001,
16mm to DVD, b/w, 10 min
Concept and Realisation: Josef Dabernig
Camera: Christian Giesser
Cast: Josef Dabernig, Ingeburg Wurzer, Otto Zitko
automatic
2002,
16mm to DVD, b/w, 7 min
Concept and Realisation: Josef Dabernig, G.R.A.M.
Camera: Christian Giesser
Editing: Volker Sernetz, XXKunstkabel
Cast: Martin Behr, Josef Dabernig, Günther Holler-Schuster, Gerhard
Peckary
Music: Binder&Krieglstein
Rosa coeli
2003,
35mm to DVD, b/w, 24 min
Concept and Realisation: Josef Dabernig
Words: Bruno Pellandini
Voice: Branko Samarovski
Camera: Christian Giesser
Sound design: Michael Palm
Cast: Wolfgang Dabernig, Kurt Fellinger, Thomas Schmid, Josef Dabernig
Lancia Thema
2005,
35mm to DVD, colour, 17 min
Concept and Realisation: Josef Dabernig
Camera: Christian Giesser
Sound design: Michael Palm
Cast: Josef Dabernig
"Two German Architectures: 1949-1989"
15 May - 27 August
curators:
Hartmut Frank & Simone Hain
The
ifa exhibition presents a historical retrospective of the evolution of
architecture between the two German states and tries, along with some
newly discovered materials from East and West as well, to encourage reflection
and comparison, referring to the housing problem in the first place but
also to the problem of monuments dealing with tradition and innovation.
In the same time the exhibition illustrates the cultural, the political
and the economical contexts of the development of these two architectures
and analyses historically the factors that influenced their course.
This
project is made possible also with the collaboration of "Planwerk"
from Cluj, The Order of Romanian Architects and the "Arhitectura"
magasine.
Eastern Alliance 3 / Teledivision Show
10 May - 27 August
Curators:
Ivan Mecl, Jiri Ptacek, Spunk Seipel, Leonor Nuridsany, Alena Boika, Petrit
Hoxha, Hana Vojackova, Marisol Dodriguez
Artists: Akhe Group / Alexander Györfi / Anneta Mona Chisa and Lucia
Tkácová / Cécile Paris / Cecilia Lundquist / Ciprian
Muresan / David Krippendorf / David Ortsman / Debora Hirsch / Dimitry
Gutov / Dimitry Gutov and Radek Community / Dorotea Etzler / Gabriel Acevedo
/ Gabriela Golder / Guma Guar / Gustavo Galuppo / Jakup Ferri / Jan Suk
/ Jan Žalio / Jaap de Ruig / Jim Holland / Jirí Havlícek
and Filip Cenek / Joaquin Segura / Joep Van Liefland / Kuang-Yu Tsui /
Lebel and le Goff / Linda Urbánková / Luciana Lamonthe /
Maix Mayer / Marie Denis / Mark Ther / Mark Ther and Ondrej Brody / Martin
Zet / Matej Smetana / Matt Saundres / Michal Pechoucek / Nine Budde /
Oleg Lystsov / Oliver Pietsch / Ondrej Brody / Ondrej Ševcík
/ Pavel Ryška / Petr Strouhal / Petra Petiletá / Philipp Hirsch
and Heiko Tippelt / Philippe Meste / Radim Labuda / Rudina Xhaferi / Sebastiano
Mauri / Sláva Sobotovicová /Tim Coe / Thorsten Schlopsnies-
Todosch / Zoran Todorovic / Zornitsa Sophia
Martin Zet
Eastern Alliance brings a real parade of contemporary video art and experimental
feature films, each projection having the format of aTV show. The project
tries to fill a gap and make the video art more accessible, by democratic
means.
"
Enough with watching video art secretly, in artistic venues. The TV audience
cant even here about it. We have decided to give the video art back to
the real video fans. Video art is one of the most important cultural phenomena
today, a type of art which easily transcends inner borders by connecting
films, installations, pop culture, comics, games etc. The video works
that we can see in galleries are definitely facing a serious lack of interest
from the media.
The video works will be conceived as typical TV shows shown on erotic,
news, documentaries or children channels and they will be accompanied
by leaflets. The leaflets will be designed as a typical TV program where
the audience will be able to find out more about the video works and tehir
heroes, but also about the time and place where they can see those shows.
The source of the shows is the artistic creation all around the world.
The most represented this time will be the Czech Republic, with a selection
of works done by Ivan Mecl and Jiri Ptacek and Germany, with works selected
by Spunk Seipel."
co-organisers:
Centrul Ceh, [Ksa:K]
partners
: BRD, HP, Divus, Aston Rent
media partners: 24FUN, rfi, RePublik, Igloo, Arhitectura, Umelec
PREVIEW
SINGLE CHANNEL WORKS / 2002 - 2005/
MNAC Mediateque presents starting from 24 February 2006 a selection from
the film collection of the Netherlands Media Art Institute / MONTEVIDEO
TIME BASED ARTS
Artists: Jeroen Kooijmans & Roy Cerpac / Leon Grodski / A.P. Komen & Karen Murphy / Robert Hamilton / eddie d / Antonin de Bemels / Julika Rudelius / Pierre-Yves Cruaud / Ezra Eeman / Jeroen Offerman / Bas van Koolwijk / Jan van de Pavert / Shiho Kano / Seoungho Cho/ Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay /Sebastian Diaz Morales / Janet Merewether / Martijn Veldhoen / Yael Bartana / Robert Arnold / Michiel van Bakel / Bernard Gigounon/ Janneke Küpfer / Persijn Broersen & Margit Lukàcs / Bea de Visser/ Peter Bogers / Adad Hannah / Sami Kallinen / Anouk de Clercq /Jan van Nuenen / Jordan Crandall / Arno Coenen / Sterling Ruby / Martijn Veldhoen / Nicolas Provost / Christoph Draeger / reMI / Jasper van den Brink / Corinna Schnitt / Lin de Mol / Caitlin Hulscher / Sterling Ruby / Els Opsomer / Guido van der Werve / Anouk de Clercq, Joris Cool & Eavesdropper / Mike Stubbs / Ra di Martino / Jeremy Drummond / Emmanuelle Antille / Manuel Saiz / Pia Wergius /Jan de Bruin /Azorro Group / Pieter-Paul Mortier / Rob Johannesma
Photographic
experiments from the collection of IVAM, Institut Valencià d'Art
Modern
13 April - 21 May
curator Josep Vicent Monzo
America SÁNCHEZ, John BALDESSARI, Constantin BRANCUSI, Jose (Pepe)
CALVO NOVELL, Pere CATALÀ PIC, Paul CITROËN, Luis CONTRERAS,
Dis Berlín (Mariano CARRERA), Cesar DOMELA NIEUWENHUIS, Marcel
DUCHAMP, Manuel FALCES LÓPEZ, Joan FONTCUBERTA, George GROSZ, Richard
HAMILTON, Alfonso HERRAIZ SERRANO, Eduard IBÁÑEZ MAGRANER,
Jan KAMMAN, Gustav Gustavovich KLUCIS, Jos LEONARD, El LISSITZKY, Chema
MADOZ, Jose María MENDOZA RODRÍGUEZ, László
MOHOLY-NAGY, Henry PEACH ROBINSON, Arnulf RAINER, MAN RAY, Josep BERENGUER
RENAU, Jorge RUEDA, Antonio SAURA, Cindy SHERMAN, Anton STANKOWSKI, Grete
STERN, Stefan THEMERSON, Eugen WISKOVSKY.
Cindy
Sherman, Untitled no 91, 1981
Organised
by Instituto Cervantes Bucarest, with the support of the ASTROC Foundation
(Spain)
Happy
Sundays @ the museum #11
Henning Lundkvist (Sweden) / live performance
Tugget
(Sweden) dj set
25 June
Fluid
Images, Grenoble
26 May - 19 June
artists: Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan, Vali Chincisan, Pierre Dugelay,
Vlaicu Golcea, D. Fabbri Lawson & J. Corréard\
Gallery
3/4, National Theater, Bd. Balcescu 2
VI/SAS/GAME - contemporary dance performance
27 - 28 May
Dancers
& choreographers: Cosmin Manolescu, Pascal Allio / lights & video:
Stefano Piermatteo
Produced by Proiect DCM & Institut Francais Bucarest
White Night in MNAC (The Night of the Museums)
20 May 20h00 - 21 may 06h00
One night
each year, most of the European museums are opened to public. All MNAC
exhibitions will be open till dawn. A special 10hrs video and music programme.
20h00, opening of Dutch Installation Art
……………………………………………………………
21h00 VideoNight
curator: Jozsef Bartha
……………………………….................................
21h30 Launching of Omagiu #3
…………………….............................................
22h30
Mihai Popoviciu / dj set
The Model / dj set
Tom Wilson / dj set (TBC)
Underconstruct / vj set
VideoNight / curator Jozsef Bartha
Dj & Vj sets / TBA.
NowHere
Europe
Trans:it. Moving Culture Through Europe
10 March - 12 May
 |
|
Trans:it.
Moving Culture Through Europe is an itinerant project that deals with
the most urgent themes of contemporary culture and artistic production
in Europe . An observatory/laboratory on the various practices of artistic
intervention on the territory.
The
members of the Advisory Board for NowHere Europe are: Ruxandra Balaci,
Iara Boubnova, Anselm Franke, Germana Jaulin, Katerina Koskina, Marco
Scotini, Pelin Tan, Nina Vagiç.
Cycle of documentary films by
Bartolomeo Pietromarchi
The
cycle of documentary films of the project Trans:it. Moving Culture through
Europe represents the synthesis of field research carried out along three
itineraries. The documentaries were made using an approach that was both
critical and curatorial, considering video the ideal means to deal with
the fluidity of the issues analysed.
Structured
according to the geographic routes through the cities in which research
was carried out, the documentaries include interviews with artists, architects
and critics and present the contexts in which the interventions were realized.
The Invisible
Community
Documentary film, Italy, 2003-2005
DVCAM, 46' 23"
Original language Engl./Fr./It. (subtitled in English)
This
first documentary covers the first phase of research for the project,
looking at an itinerary that passed through Paris, Rotterdam, Amsterdam
and Rome. The research investigates suburban and urban contexts in which
"invisible communities" have grown up as a result of the redefinition
of social relationships and the development of cultures parallel to those
of the country in question. Multiculturalism, abandoned places, collective
imagination and memory, visual and social transformation, the image of
the city and the sense of public space in the European context, are all
themes examined.
Ruins
for the Future
Documentary film, Italy, 2004
DVCAM, 46'
Original language: English.
The
second documentary film was shot in Berlin, Bucharest, Sophia and Belgrade
where, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, artists, architects and art
critics contributed to redesigning the urban landscape. Through new geographies
and visual transformations, memory and identity are questioned when the
city's form changes and the city itself seems to become more vulnerable.
Ruins speak of the existence of a lost time which artistic practice endeavours
to rediscover: artists seek to construct a common plane on which to merge
individual experience with collective experience, personal responsibility
with civil responsibility.
Fluid
Cities
Documentary film, Italy, 2004
DVCAM, 32' 47"
Original language: English
During
the third phase, the projects for public space developed by artists active
in Athens, Istanbul and Cyprus show a particular interest in traditions
and local culture, manifested in light of globalising pressures arriving
from the world at large.
These cities have been transformed into multicultural laboratories. Migratory
flows, collective memories and spaces undergoing rapid change have given
shape to the concept of fluidity, a characteristic common to various territories
and demonstrative of the continual, rapid and increasing process of transformation
to which the urban context is subject.
Artists
projects
ROTTERDAM
Atelier
van Lieshout
AVL- Ville
2001
Video documentation, 60'
In
the year 2001 Atelier van Lieshout realised AVL-Ville, a free state at
the port of Rotterdam. This large-scale project can be viewed as a grand
work of art that represents the culmination of AVL's work so far. AVL-Ville
had its own flag, currency and constitution, as well as facilities such
as a power plant, working and living units, a mobile farm, compost toilets,
a water purification system, a fully operational hospital, a restaurant
and a distillery.
After eight months, AVL-Ville was closed down, but recently AVL created
the first export-product of AVL-Ville in Park Middelheim in Antwerp: AVL
Franchise Unit. The unit can be considered the first building of a new
settlement.
Erik van
Lieshout
Respect
2003
Video, 8' 25''
The
video Respect depicts an absurd multicultural context in the southern
suburbs of the city of Rotterdam. A group of black, African and Arab kids
act along with the artist, offering their own take on some disconcerting
aspects of the urban experience and ethnic identity in contemporary society.
They created their own screenplay on how to get rich by dealing drugs
and involving Erik and his brother Bart in their illegal activities. It
seems a banal story, but it is their story, and most importantly, the
story they wanted to tell.
ROME
Osservatorio
Nomade
Immaginare Corviale
2005
Documentary film, 30'
The
video documents the project Imagining Corviale realised by Osservatorio
Nomade in collaboration with several artists, architects and filmmakers
in the neighbourhood of Corviale.
Corviale is a 958-metre-long public housing complex inhabited by about
6000 people, located in the south-western perifery of Rome. The project
deals with the imagery, memory, life and transformation of a public space.
The artists involved worked in cooperation with the inhabitants to create
a new image for the residential complex. Imagining Corviale developed
through laboratories for the creation of a local television station, and
for the production of events and artistic interventions. Three dimensions
emerged from a dialogue with the residents: the real and subjective experience
of the place, the image of the place, and the memory of the place. These
three dimensions led to the development of the three platforms of the
project: ON/Field, ON/UniverCITY and ON/Network.
Armin
Linke e Renato Rinaldi
Nuovo corviale, 2005
PARIS
Campement
Urbain
Qui decide de la beauté ? (Who decides beauty ?)
I and Us project
2003
Video, 26'
The
project I and Us was conceived for the recently-constructed Beaudottes
district of the city of Sevran, which has developed around the RER station
along the "B" metro line between Paris and the Charles de Gaulle
airport, and now houses thousands of people. The neighbourhood, consisting
largely of public housing and hosting an emarginated population made up
of a majority of foreigners, has become infamous for social problems.
The intent of Campement Urbain, as the video shows, is to create, within
an area of great urban tension, a special place available to all and protected
by everyone (I and Us). It is an on-going project the goal of which is
to act "from within", and to experiment with new forms of responsibility
and sharing.
BUCAREST/BUCHAREST
Harun
Farocki and Andrei Ujica
Viodeograms of a Revolution
1992
16mm film, 106'
Videograms
of a Revolution, concerns the Romanian revolution of 1989 - including
the fall, flight attack and Christmas day execution of President Nicolae
Ceausescu and his wife Elena - and was put together under the direction
of Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica from independent and state television
video and film sources. Videograms is intended as to represent the closing
of the parentheses of the Twentieth century in Eastern Europe. Crowds
are seen from above scattering under gunfire: revolutionary leaders are
shown seizing the stages at popular demonstrations, and major events in
the story are presented from multiple perspectives.
Ion Grigorescu
My Beloved Bucharest
1978
8mm film, 14'
The
film, shot during the construction of the Bucharest metro, focuses on
the gradual proletarianization and degradation of what was once the elegant
capital of Romania. Grigorescu uses the worksite to represent the gradual
change in the regime's policies. Areas under demolition designated for
the construction of new housing for the working classes and for the metro
are not the subject of an in-depth analysis, but rather the situation
captured by the filmmaker as he walked around with a hand-held camera
is. Political slogans, displayed on large billboards all over town or
published in newspapers, promoted the "golden future" of communism:
they read, for example, "Long live communism, the shining future
of the human race!", or "Tell future generations of our sacrifice!"
SOFIA
Antoniy
Donchev
Art on the Tiles
1989
35mm film, 13'
In
September 1989 a group of young avant-garde Bulgarian artists organized
an exhibition on the roof terrace of the Artists Union building in Sofia.
This happening is documented by Antoniy Donchev's video, which, through
a series of interviews with the artists who participated, focuses both
on the works presented in the show and on the situation of contemporary
art in Bulgaria in the period imediately preceding the fall of the Berlin
wall. Between the art works on display, View to the West by Nedko Solakov
was presented: a telescope was placed on the parapet of the terrace, and,
looking to the West, focused on the red star of the Communist Party building
in Sofia. The work raised much controversy and censorship, which the artist
refers to in an interview. The exhibition seemed to anticipate the changes
that would soon revolutionize the social and political panorama of Eastern
Europe.
Luchezar
Boyadjiev
Super! Super!
2003
Video, 4' 26''
The
video Super!Super! takes its cues from the project Hot City Visual, which
explores urban visual logics and intervenes on the visual environment
of the city of Sofia. The visual interface of the neo-capitalist city
is defined by a law which makes it possible for anyone to display anything,
anywhere, as long as he can afford to pay for it. The work of Luchezar
Boyadjiev consists of promoting a reversal of this stratified visual hierarchy
in which vast visual spaces for corporate billboards are located on high,
while crude, handmade small family businesses logos are affixed lower
down. Super! Super! advertises a small Roma family business in a corporate
way, by positioning a huge billboard in the centre of town. The decision
to publicize Stefan's family businesses is due largely to the fact that
the Rom gypsy minority, although certainly visible on the streets of Sofia,
has no presence in the advertising context and is presented in a negative
way by the media.
BELGRADE
Škart
Škart in short
2001
Documentazione video / video documentation, 3' 13''
Škart
in Short is a video documenting the various projects that the Škart
collective has carried forth in recent years, subverting the mass media
system and creating a new kind of art economy. The project Your Shit-Your
responsibility began in 2000 and consisted of a series of urban actions
regarding the concept of responsibility. 10 With Onions-Embroidery Project,
on the other hand, is a yearly itinerant project that involves several
female collectives living in the area around Belgrade, like ChoircheŠKart,
which uses the choir as a symbol of togetherness. The urban actions organised
by Škart attempt to involve people on several planes of collective
responsibility and self-awareness, as in Coupons Actions (1998-on going)
which reuses the coupons the regime used to print for bread distribution
as a means to rename new forms of limitations and share new feelings.
ATHENS
Athanasia
Kyriakakos
Coffee World
2004
Video documentation, 6'45''
Athanasia
Kyriakakos' work is a sort of journey springing from her own memory and
experience as an artist and a woman. The coffee performances/coffee readings
were born out of a need to create an environment, a space that was both
public and intimate, one that would challenge a community to form around
it. Not too long ago women would gather on their verandas to share a cup
of coffee and share their dreams, hopes, and fears. Coffee became the
catalyst for such a connection. The Greek artist has chosen to share this
personal material with other people in order to build new possibilities
of relationships in the public context, new ideas of communality and original
perceptions of space and time. The environments and communities thus created
are both temporary and mobile, like the society we live in. The simple
action of sharing or giving has the consequence of slowing down time for
the public, who in turn give their time to be part of this exchange, this
dialogue.
Maria
Papadimitriou
Transbonanza Platform (Luv Car)
2003
Video documentation, 13' 40''
Since
1988, and within the context of the work in progress T.A.M.A. (Temporary
Autonomous Museum for All), Maria Papadimitriou has been working with
a community of Vallach-Romanian origin that lives on the outskirt of Athens.
She intervenes in the community's living conditions, and it is this intervention
that she proposes as her work. Trans-Bonanza Platform (Luv Car) is a truck,
the open bed of which has been converted into a platform that can be used
as a stage for live concerts. The truck roams through the neighborhoods
of Athens, inviting passers-by to partecipate in an impromptu celebration,
a kind of carnival, in which roles are reversed and at the same time delineate
a sphere of rebellion. The truck transcends the prescribed borders of
various leisure zones, transgressing not only urban but also ideological
boundaries: the truck is a stereotype of the mythology that has been built
up around the Rom, often used as an index of exoticism emptied of meaning.
ISTANBUL
Can Altay
'We're paperman' he said
2003
Video, 9' 56''
Minibar
2001-2003
Video, 3' 30''
The
papermen as they call themselves go through the garbage of the city, sifting
through trash and garbage to extract and recycle objects they can earn
a bit of money from. In general, theirs is an activity aimed at earning
money in a very organized and territorialized manner. Unrecognized and
unofficial, the papermen move through the streets with their carts, occupy
sidewalks sifting through garbage. They act against the official garbage
collection system, and against the system in general, but what they do
supports the system itself, due to the enormous increase in recycling
rates.
The project Minibar is based on the temporary utilization of existing
urban elements around and between buildings by youth for night-life and
socializing. Minibar is not a radical "taking over" yet it encourages
shifting and subversion of the meanings appointed to these already existing
spaces which are neither public nor private. In Minibar, space is produced
without building anything, and there exists no commercial entity, no service
provided, just people hanging out, bringing their own drinks.
Esra Ersen
Brothers and Sisters
2003
Video, 23' 27''
The
video Brothes and Sisters is the result of many months of work carried
out by the artist in collaboration with a group of African immigrants
in the city of Istanbul. Esra Ersen reflects on the urban experience and
the perception of the city space by people normally marginalized from
community life, illegal immigrants living temporarily in Turkey before
moving on to Western European countries. The transitory status of these
immigrants influences the way they use the urban fabric (houses as camps,
meeting places…) and the characteristics of their identities, divided
between their own traditions and a future social position.
Gülsün Karamustafa
Objects of Desire/ A Suitcase Trade (100 $ Limit)
1998-2001
Video documentation, 9'22''
Gulsun
Karamustafa's project reflects on the possibilities of coexistence between
the Eastern perspective and the Western attitude: political, economical,
religious, sexual tensions between opposites are experienced directly
by the artist. By observing market relations in the city of Istanbul,
referred to as the "suitcase trade", "tourist trade"
or the "border trade", the artist reflected on these trends.
Carrying a suitcase filled with illegal goods that he had recently purchased
from the informal markets of Istanbul, Gusuln Karamustafa crossed the
borders to various destinations where she sold the contents of her suitcase
so as to share her experience with the public.
Oda Projesi
Oda Revisited
2004
Video documentation, 25' 43''
The
documentary video Oda Revisited covers the different phases of a project
realized by the art collective Oda Projesi in Istanbul's city center Galata
neighbourhood. Interviewing the residents of the district and documenting
the different activities promoted there, the video analyses how the group
bases its work on the creative potential of everyday life. Their primary
interest is to involve inhabitants of the neighbourhood to increase the
possibilities of developing a "social sculpture" in progress,
moulded by the relationships between individuals and spaces in everyday
life.
Presentation
of the book The [un] common place. Art, public space and urban aesthetics
in Europe.
The book documents more than fifty artistic and urban projects and interventions
realized or in the process of realization in Europe. 254 pages with theoretical
contributions by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, Hou Hanru, Katerina Koskina,
Theophilos Tramboulis, Claudia Zanfi, Ana Paula Cohen, Maartje Berendsen,
Lidia Porcar, Ramon Parramon, Ute Meta Bauer, François Hers, Jean-Baptiste
Joly, Iara Boubnova, Ruxandra Balaci, Mihnea Mircan, Yorghos Tzirtzilakis,
Raluca Velisar, Pelin Tan, Jochen Becker/ Metrozones, Erden Kosova, Teresa
Macrì, Eric Corne.
www.transiteurope.org
Happy
Sundays@The Museum #10
30 April 16h00 - till late
The Happy Sundays are back. Special guests as DJs. TBA.
Michael
Bielicky, Kamilla B.Richter / Falling life
(projection on the MNAC façade)
30 April from 22h00
An ongoing
project that was introduced for the first time in Berlin in August 2005
and the last September at the Ars Electronica festival in Linz. This urban
screening project doesn't need a curator or a gallery; it doesn't need
a fixed place or an access to electric power. The artists are using facades
of buildings that can be immediately changed into a projection screen.
Michael Bielicky and Kamila B. Richter are using a minimalist language
of constantly appearing and disappearing white pictograms or words.
With
the support of the Czech Center Bucharest
Hardcomics Anthology / Launch
4 May 2006 / from 19h00
special guest Dorit Chrysler / concert and more
www.hardcomics.ro
George
Apostu, Roman Cotosman, Paul Neagu
Artists in Exile
February - March
Wj's
workshop and performances
a project by the Romanian Ministry of Culture
20-23
March 2006
Participating
artists: Lucille Calmel, Sylvie Astié, Jean- Baptiste Bayle, Olga
Kisseleva, Vali Chincisan, Dorel Naste, Suzana Dan, Mihaela Kavdanska.
curator : Anne Roquigny
programmer : Stéphane Kyles
coordinator : Cosmin Tapu
The very first WJ's international workshop in Bucharest represents a collaboration between French and Romanian artists during the Etats Genereaux de la Francophonie. The workshop will end with eight live web performances of the participating artists starting from 18h30 on thursthday 23/03 in MNAC's Mediathéque.
WJ-s is a flexible, high speed connexion public device for web performances (WJ-s/ession) which allows actors of the Internet ( WJs, webjockeys, sound and image artists, netartists, bloggers, graphic designers, flashers, programmers, curators, hacktivists, newmedia theorists, pioneers and web mutants...) to play live with the full scope of contents available in the wideness of the web.
www.wj-s.org
Rokolectiv
- festival for electronic music and related visual arts
27, 28, 29 January
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www.rokolectiv.ro
!The Beginning!
Hard to imagine and hard to digest, Bucharest is the only place where
such festivals don't happen. This is urgent!
We've all hidden our frustration and succeeded to fight against isolation.
We all ran to take a closer look to frenetic creative hotbeds like London,
Paris, Tokyo or Berlin and then returned to spread the rumor.
Rokolectiv is the long awaited international festival for electronic music
and digital culture in Bucharest. With the creative effervescence that
only festivals have, Rokolectiv digs for Romanian emerging talents and
dispatches international artists.
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The festival is organised by Rokolectiv and MNAC.
Parteners
Club Transmediale Berlin, Goethe Institute, French Institute, Czech Centre,
Cultural Centre of the American Embassy, Austrian Embassy, Pro Helvetia,
Japan Foundation, Cervantes Institute
Media partners
B24FUN, Clubbing Mag, RePublik, Radio Delta RFI, AKM, 4elemente
Friday 27.01.2006
19h00
Gojira&Kosak/
visuals by MiKa / Romania
Christian Fennesz / Touch Music / Austria
Yvat&Cut
/ SubliminalTapeClub LaStrada Music / Romania
Ježíš Táhne na Berlín /
muteme / Czech Republic
DJ Elephant Power / Sonig Records / Belgium
Saturday 28.01.2006
16h30
Club Transmediale / Berlin- festival presentation/ panel -Invited guest:
Remco Schuurbiers / CTM / Disk / Berlin
Screening Paranoid, 2005, Remco
Schuurbiers
19h00
Brazda lui Novac/ visuals by Dilmana / Romania
Mlada Fronta / Parametric / France
Rec_Overflow / Spa.RK / Spain
Materidouska / muteme / Czech Republic
Jason Forrest aka Donna Summer / Sonig Records / USA
Sunday 29.02.2006
19h00
Aoki Takamasa & Tujiko Noriko / Progressive Form / Japan
Discordless / Romania
Electronicat / DiskoB / France
My Robot Friend / Proptronix / USA