Scarica | Download - art a part of cult(ure)

More documents

Recommendations

Info

London Biennale: The beginning | di David Medalla di David Medalla 19 giugno 2010 In approfondimenti,art fair biennali e festival | 8.061 lettori | 1 Comment This year, 2010, the FIFA Football World Cup will be held in South Africa. Newspapers and magazines are teeming with articles and photographs of South Africa. There are extensive media coverage of the sports facilities which the South African government has erected to host this global event. I saw colour photographs of the massive new football stadium in Cape Town. Seen from the air the concrete stadium looks like a solid mandala that has fallen from the sky: a beautiful structure with the famous Table Mountain in the background. The photo of the stadium that I saw was probably taken from the upper storey of a tall buildiing: a modernist skyscraper in the Greenpoint district of Cape Town where Adam Nankervis and I stayed during the 2nd Johannesburg Biennial. The year was 1997. I was a DAAD artist in Berlin. The year before Adam Nankervis started MUSEUM MAN in Prenzlauerberg in East Berlin. MUSEUM MAN has since become a nomadic museum of contemporary art from all parts of the world. Cuban curator and art historian Gerardo Mosquera (a previous director of the Habana Biennial in Cuba) invited Adam Nankervis and me to participate in the 2nd Johannesburg Biennial which was directed by Okwui Enwezor in 1997. Gerardo Mosquera installed the works of the artists he personally invited in the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Brazilian scuptor Cildo Meireles greeted us when we arrived at the gallery. Cildo had finished his installation and there was just enough time for him to say ‘Hello’ to us and for him to catch a plane to America. Adam and I created installations inside the Johannesburg Art Gallery, participatory installations in relation to the theme “Trade Winds”, the theme of the 2nd Johannesburg Biennial. In the centre of our twin installations was a large circular table on which we invited the spectators to the show to put anything on it in exchange for anything they find
on the table. One person put a book of Nelson Mandela’s speeches which another person exchanged for his expensive wrist watch. I told the director of the Johannesburg Art Gallery that perhaps someone from Soweto might come and bring a goat and exchange it for a chair by Gerrit Rietveld which is in the gallery’s collection. Alas, that did not happen. During the first week of the Johannesburg Biennial, Adam and I went to Cape Town.We stayed in a bed and breakfast inn beneath the Table Mountain. One bright sunny morning Adam and I sailed from Cape Town on a sail boat accompanied by a small crew of sailors and cameramen and women. We sailed past the Cape of Good Hope towards Cape Point: to the place where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet. It was the place where dolphins, sharks and whales mate. From our boat Adam and I unfolded a colourful piece of cotton cloth above the waters. The winds helped Adam and me in shaping the billowing cloth into the letter “C” – the initial letter of Cape Town. A video was made of our event, which was part of our on-going project entitled “The Secret History of the Mondrian Fan Club”. We took the video back to Johannesburg and showed it in our twin installations inside the Johannesburg Art Gallery. We returned to Cape Town and stayed, the second time round, in the tall skyscraper-like modernist building at Greenpoint. During our second stay in Cape Town Adam and I created impromptu events in different parts of the city. In one event we joined a chorus of wandering singers in the city centre. In another part of the town I did an impromptu in front of a shop with the sign “A Stitch in Time”. Adam did an impromptu in front of a school surrounded by a cement wall topped with a fence of barbed wire and a sign saying the barbed wire was electrified. One day we joined artists, art critics, art historians, and art curators, who came down from Johannesburg to Cape Town, in a boat trip to Robben Island. Robben Island was where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated during the apartheid regime in South Africa. At Robben Island, the international art community conducted an impromptu conference in homage to Nelson Mandela inside one of the halls of the former island prison. Afterwards Adam and I explored the jail cells where political opponents of the apartheid regime were locked up. It was an eerie experience. I was reminded of Franz Kafka’s ‘The Penal Colony’. Paradoxically it was also an exhilarating experience, for apartheid had ended and the empty jail cells were mute witnesses to past state crimes while at the same time they were very real testaments to the fact that injustice could end, did end for Nelson Mandela and his fellow freedom fighters, and thus freedom can be accomplished. It was on the boat trip to Robben Island that I conceived of the idea of the London Biennale. I discussed the idea with Adam Nankervis on our way back to Cape Town. We continued discussing the idea when we got back to Berlin. Over the years as as an artist I have participated in many international cultural events such as Documenta in Kassel, Germany, ‘Air Art’ at the University of California in Berkeley Art Museum, ‘Fluxattitudes’ at the New Museum in New York, ‘Live/Life’ at the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, ‘l’Inform’ at the Cntre Pompidou in Paris, and in many art festivals and exhibitions all over the world. I felt that the nature of a famous cultural event such as the Venice Biennale, because of its rigid structure of selecting artists through national institutions, did not make it possible for artists who are citizens of countries without national pavillions in Venice, or artists who live the lives of exiles, migrants or refugees, artists with little or no ‘profiles’ in the art market, have very little chance to show their works and participate in the most prestigious of art biennales: the Venice Biennale. For many years, in the art circles of America and Europe, I was described as a ‘marginal artist’ (albeit with the cynosure ‘par excellence’) by French art critic Pierre Restany (ideologue of ‘nouveau realisme’) and Harald Szeemann, the curator of DOCUMENTA 5. At Cape Town in 1997I thought it was time to create a viable and memorable platform for the world’s ‘marginal artists’, and that, initially, was the inspiration for the LONDON BIENNALE, a biennale that would be open to every artist regardless of age, sex, ethnic origin, and artistic language or style. The first London Biennale was held in the year 2000, at the start of the new millenium, an auspicious time for an auspicious occasion. Shortly afterwards, Adam Nankervis, who is the internationl coordinator of the London Biennale, suggested that we do ‘Pollinations’ in
Page 2 and 3:
Louise Bourgeois è morta, viva Lou
Page 4 and 5:
Articolo pubblicato su art a part o
Page 6 and 7:
dello stesso scrittore, questa incu
Page 8 and 9:
A testimoniare l’ esplorazione te
Page 10 and 11:
E’ nata una fiera | di Maddalena
Page 12 and 13:
Solo per puntualizzare, anche noi.
Page 14 and 15:
M. De L.) Approdi alla fotografia d
Page 16 and 17:
era a Londra. M. De L.) Quanto è i
Page 18 and 19:
Gentile Paolo Buggiani, sto per pub
Page 20 and 21:
Quello dell’artista è stato semp
Page 22 and 23:
Arte & Impresa: Osservatorio # 02 |
Page 24 and 25:
B. M.) È statisticamente provato c
Page 26 and 27: F. C.) Trovo romantica ma lontana d
Page 28 and 29: Palma Bucarelli, la regina: celebra
Page 30 and 31: #2 Commento: di blùbelle il 9 giug
Page 32 and 33: Bizhan Bassiri) La caduta delle met
Page 34 and 35: di pensiero. Lui é stato per me co
Page 36 and 37: Da che parte stai quando elabori un
Page 38 and 39: Il movimento è più bello se c’
Page 40 and 41: superato e gli feci una serie di es
Page 42 and 43: Don’t you see the search of a way
Page 44 and 45: FDF: 1. Hai vissuto la tua vita da
Page 46 and 47: CL: 5. Collectif La Valise è un gr
Page 48 and 49: question that I address to an audie
Page 50 and 51: Records 2008-2010 records, wooden c
Page 52 and 53: che non volevano assoggettarsi al n
Page 54 and 55: quanto prima, ci concederemo una vi
Page 56 and 57: Il progetto architettonico del Camp
Page 58 and 59: Obey, impegno sociale, Peace and Re
Page 60 and 61: Repubblica… Articolo pubblicato s
Page 62 and 63: Arts (MFA) e cofondatore del MFA in
Page 64 and 65: Quanto vale l’arte contemporanea
Page 66 and 67: la propria cultura, saranno privile
Page 68 and 69: Report. Shirin Neshat al MACRO | di
Page 70 and 71: spettatore. Il solo modo che conosc
Page 72 and 73: sorprese. Preferisce pianificare, i
Page 74 and 75: Franz West: retrospettiva. Arte da
Page 78 and 79: different parts of the world during
Page 80 and 81: La malattia dei sentimenti. Antonio
Page 82 and 83: della borghesia. Mi diceva: “Un f
Page 84 and 85: Amaro Ammore di Canio Loguercio. La
Page 86 and 87: Zaha Hadid e il suo Suprematismo. A
Page 88 and 89: questione ma la mostra deve essere
Page 91 and 92: Da una Fiera nata - nel 1970 - per
Page 93 and 94: dalla tedesca Katharina Fritsch. La
Page 95 and 96: Lambri, per anni invasiva ovunque,
Page 97 and 98: d’Arte Contemporanea | Con brevi
Page 99 and 100: #14 Commento: di Simon il 1 luglio
Page 101 and 102: Anche se già “Bergson aveva parl
Page 103 and 104: HDM, la Galleria dell’Accademia d
Page 105 and 106: Documentare la fine. End all’Hang
Page 107 and 108: Immagini: Stefano Boccalini, Meltin
Page 109 and 110: J. R.) Sì, un’attrazione sul dia
Page 111 and 112: che può comunque vedere e sentire
Page 113 and 114: Steve McCurry e la mostra Sud Est:
Page 115 and 116: talmente profonda che anche gli ele
Page 117 and 118: L’approccio a Bacon di Franz Krau
Page 119 and 120: William Klein: Roma. Con Fellini ch
Page 121 and 122: #1 Commento: di bruno il 25 giugno
Page 123 and 124: tempo per un’ultima mano, per un
Page 125 and 126: Ma cosa succederà dopo che Aliéno
show all

Scarica | Download - art a part of cult(ure)

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?