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Lorraine O'Grady
Miscegenated Family Album – Sisters III, Nefertiti’s daughter, Maketaten/Devonia’s daughter,
Kimberley, 1980/1994, courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York, NY, photo: Ilya Rabinovich
Ramadan (one of the members of the Chamber of Public Secrets)
has recorded the presentation of Arab artist Walid Raad on how
his luggage had been inspected when he entered the United States,
and how the artist was criminalized in an extra-artistic context.
His series of photo self-portraits, where he reflects on his own identity,
wearing different outfits and haircuts, as well as his interest in
buildings have become shady and were suspiciously inspected by
the officers.
One can feel that the often used terms like, critical attitude, social
sensibility, narration have become wearied order words, and are
threatened by the monster of meaning exhaustion. Only the sharpest
works can escape this danger, such as Comrade Alfredo Neri by
AGM (a collective of the Chamber of Public Secrets), a film about
“the spokesman” of the Italian neo-Nazis. The film reflects not on
reality as such, but on the means of communicating it, and hereby
makes a much more effective political statement than classic documentarism.
It fictionalizes the reality so that in the freshet of information
it can take an efficient political stand.
As the curatorial collective ACAF raises the issue, what art is, is
always established by the art world, by those who are in the position
to do so. The insiders seem to know “the secret” about what
moves art. By reflecting on itself, Manifesta actually scrutinizes this
“secret”.
AGM
Annual General Meeting,
commissioned and produced
by Manifesta 8,
courtesy of Manifesta 8
Translation by Sabin Borø
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