January 29 – February 28, 2010

Trafó Gallery, Budapest
Link: http://www.trafo.hu/programs/1866

The Center for Culture and Communication Foundation in Budapest, partner of
the exhibition “Subversive Practices”, which was on view at
Württembergischer Kunstverein in summer 2009, presents an excerpt from
this project in collaboration with Trafo Gallery.

The exhibition includes work by the artists and artist groups Carlos
ALTAMIRANO; Collective Actions; Taller E.P.S. Huayco; Ion GRIGORESCU;
Claus HÄNSEL; Indigo Group; Letícia PARENTE; Luis PAZOS; Dan PERJOVSCHI;
Pere PORTABELLA; Ruth Wolf- REHFELDT; Herbert RODRIGUEZ und Horacio
ZABALA.

The exhibition devotes itself to experimental and conceptual art practices
that had established between the nineteen-sixties and eighties in Europe
and South America under the influence of military dictatorships and
communist regimes. The focus is on artistic practices that not only
radically question the conventional concept of art, the institutions, and
the relationship between art and public, but that have, at the same time,
subversively thwarted structures of censorship and opposed the existing
systems of power.

See also:

http://www.wkv-stuttgart.de/en/programme/2009/exhibitions/subversive

Idea and Concept: Iris Dressler, Hans D. Christ
Curators: Ramón Castillo / Paulina Varas, Fernando Davis, Cristina Freire,
Sabine Hänsgen, Miguel Lopez / Emilio Tarazona, Ileana Pintilie Teleaga,
Valentín Roma / Daniel García Andújar, Annamária Szőke / Miklós
Peternák, Anne Thurmann-Jajes
Curator Trafo Gallery: Nikolett Eross

Special event:
February 12, 2010, 5 – 9 pm
Film program; Lectures Ileana Pintilie, Iris Dressler, Hans D. Christ

Supported by: European Commission

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Subversive Practices
Art under Conditions of Political Repression
60s–80s / South America / Europe
Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart
May 30 – August 2, 2009

Curators: Valentín Roma, Daniel García Andújar

Ricardo Bofill/Taller de Arquitectura, Eugeni Bonet (Archive), COAC Archiv, Enric Franch (Archive), Antoni Muntadas, Pere Portabella, Grup de Treball, Sala Vinçon (Archive)

This project sets out to reconstruct the aesthetic and political dimension acquired by conceptual practices in Catalonia during the nineteen-seventies. With this in view, the analysis has been oriented toward a set of proposals developed in a variety of areas—art, architecture, design, film, and education—which nevertheless all shared the same circuits of visibility, closely related language and attitudes, and certain ideological positions that were characterized by their spirit of protest and antagonism. The core of the project consists of five pieces by the Grup de Treball that in some sense point to the disciplines mentioned above. In order to contextualize these, a heterogeneous archive has been put together, drawn from the documentary holdings of (amongst others) the COAC (Association of Architects of Catalonia), the Sala Vinçon gallery, the FAD decorative arts association, and the Elisava and Eina design schools, along with a number of art projects—the film Esquizo (Schizo) by the Taller de Arquitectura and Reflexões sobre a morte (Reflections on Death) by Antoni Muntadas, among others—and also a selection of visual and bibliographical documents from those years. (Valentín Roma, Daniel García Andújar)

WORKS (SELECTION)
All texts unless otherwise noted: Valentín Roma

Ricardo Bofill/ Taller de Arquitectura
Esquizo (Schizo), 1970
Film on DVD, 80’
—
A study of the relationship between art and madness. An experimental documentary on the structure of a brain, the disquiet of an artist and his distorted vision of the world. The film describes the horror of the human condition, a mere instant between nothingness and nothingness.

COAC Space, Barcelona
The exhibition hall of the COAC (Association of Architects of Catalonia) was during the 1970s a space which held numerous performances, workshops and lectures that discussed the role of the new artistic languages in Barcelona.

Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
Report about information, 1965
—
In 1965, during his imprisonment in Lerida, Vázquez Montalbán wrote the Report about information, perhaps the first book that analyzes the political and economic role of the media in Spain. This study was strongly perceived by some conceptual artists who, at that time, began to critically question the role of the media.

Antoni Muntadas (USA; 1942, E)
Reflexões sobre a morte (Reflections on Death), 1973
Slide projection with 80 slides
Courtesy: Muntadas/Collection: Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil

Pere Portabella
Miró, l’altre (Miró, the other), 1969
Script: Pere Portabella, Photography: Manuel Esteban, Music: Carles Santos, Editing: Teresa Alcocer, Production: José Pedro Villanueva / Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Barcelona (COAC) / Films 59
—
One of the most significant projects at COAC was the film Miro, the other (1969) by Pere Portabella, who recorded the action paintings of Joan Miró at the front glass of the building – and the removal of the same, carried out by the artist himself.
see also: Diego Trerotola, in: www.pereportabella.com/eng/laltre_esp.html)

Grup de Treball
Francesc Abad, Jordi Benito, Jaume Carbó, Alícia Fingerhut, Xavier Franquesa, Carles Hac Mor, Imma Julián, Antoni Mercader, Antoni Munné, Muntadas, Josep Parera, Santi Pau, Pere Portabella, Àngels Ribé, Manuel Rovira, Enric Sales, Carles Santos, Dorothée Selz and Francesc Torres
The appearance of Grup de Treball marked a turning point in Catalan culture. First, for their work as a collective and, second, for their interest in moving away from conventional artistic practices and joining a critical current where art had to fulfil a social function. Their brief contribution was made in a setting characterised by an unstable political climate, which coincided with the hardening of repression that marked the last years of the Franco dictatorship.
Grup de Treball set out to distance itself from the usual distribution channels of works of art. Whenever possible they used the press to publish their communiqués and set up information centres at their exhibitions.

Champ d’attraction. Document. Travail d´information sur la presse illégale des Pays Catalans. 9è Biennale de Paris (Field of Attraction. Information work on the illegal press in Catalonia. 9th Paris Biennial), 1975
Photography, sticker of colours, 11 copies, each 143,5 x 92,5 cm
Courtesy: MACBA, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona
—
Shown for the first time at the IX Paris Biennial (1975) and later at the 1976 Venice Biennale and the exhibition Venice Biennale. Art avantgarde and social reality in Spain 1936-1976 (1976-1977), this work contains an analysis of the situation of the Catalan illegal press through images, graphic elements, texts and a wide selection of copies of underground publications.
The passing of the terrorism law in 1975 and the declaration of the state of emergency meant that the work had to be presented unsigned, which, once the Paris Biennial had finished, brought about the end of the activities of Grup de Treball. Owing to the Spanish political situation and the dangerously political character of the work, the text that was designed to appear in the Paris catalogue was not published; two pages were left blank for fear of repression.

Treball col·lectiu que consisteix a verificar la distribució de 44 professions entre 113 persones segons una nota apareguda últimament a la premsa (Collective work consisting of checking the distribution of 44 professions among 113 people according to a report which had appeared recently in the press), 1973
Paper work, 7 pages, each 29,7 x 19,3 cm
Courtesy: MACBA, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona
—
This work is a distribution of the professions of the 113 members of the Catalan Assembly—two of whom belonged to Grup de Treball—who were arrested in the church of Santa Maria Mitjancera in Barcelona in August 1973 and was included in the catalogue-dossier for the exhibition Terrassa, Art Information. It is therefore a proposal in which specific condemnation is approached from procedures related in some way to visual poetry.

Homenatge a l’arquitectura (Homage to Architecture), 1975
Paper work, variables dimensions
Courtesy: MACBA, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona
—
This intervention was done using the official poster for the exhibition Homage to Architecture as support. From a kind of conceptual diagram, Grup de Treball analyses its participation and makes a frontal attack on the exhibition organization structures and their mechanisms for controlling the artists.

Cartell del col.lectiu “Solidaritat amb el moviment obrer” (Poster by the “Solidarity with the Workers Movement” collective), 1973
Paper work, 50 x 80 cm
Courtesy: MACBA, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona
—
Published by the Solidarity with the Workers’ Movement collective to raise funds, this poster was distributed clandestinely on the occasion of the anniversary of the Second Spanish Republic of 1934. The work, which includes the entries repressió (‘repression’), repressiu-iva (‘repressive’) and repressor -a (‘repressor’), taken from the Pompeu Fabra Catalan Dictionary, recalls works that reflect on the relation between language and art.

Sala Vinçon, Barcelona
Postcard collection, 1973-83
Courtesy: Eugeni Bonet
—
Between 1973 and 1983, the La Sala Vinçon in Barcelona was a place that held many exhibitions, workshops and conferences related to conceptual art. From Wolf Vostell to Isidoro Valcárcel Medina, from Alessandro Mendini to Muntadas, from Bigas Luna to Àngel Jové were many who participated in the planning of this meeting point around which gathered several generations of artists and designers.

Dates

Subversive Practices
Art under Conditions of Political Repression
60s–80s / South America / Europe
May 30–August 2, 2009

Press Conference
Friday, May 29, 2009, 11 am

Opening
Friday, May 29, 2009, 7 pm

Symposium
May 30–31, 2009

Curators’s Tours
with Hans D. Christ / Iris Dressler
Wednesday, June 10, 2009, 6:30 pm
Wednesday, July 15, 2009, 6:30 pm
Sunday, August 2, 2009, 4:30 pm

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Artists
Carlos Altamirano, Gábor Altorjay, Lucy Angulo, Ângelo de Aquino, Luis Arias Vera, Autoperforationsartisten, Artur Barrio, László Beke (Archiv), Horia Bernea, Ricardo Bofill/Taller de Arquitectura, Teresa Burga, CADA, Ulises Carrión, Dalibor Chatrný, Carlfriedrich Claus, COAC Archiv, Attila Csernik, Lutz Dammbeck, Guillermo Deisler, Eugenio Dittborn, Juan Downey, Jorge Eielson, Diamela Eltit, Miklós Erdély, Roberto Evangelista, Constantin Flondor, Fernando França Cocchiarale, Enric Franch (Archiv), Die Gehirne, Carlos Ginzburg, Ion Grigorescu, Claus Hänsel, Rafael Hastings, Paulo Herkenhoff, Emilio Hernández Saavedra, Taller E.P.S. Huayco, Joseph W. Huber, Pavel Ilie, Indigo Group, IPUT (superintendent: Tamas St.Auby), Iosif Kiraly, Jiri Kocman, Kollektive Aktionen, Carlos Leppe, Gastão de Magalhães, Oskar Manigk, Francisco Mariotti, Alfredo Márquez, Gonzalo Mezza, Ivonne von Mollendorff, Muntadas, Paul Neagu, Olaf Nicolai, César Olhagaray, Clemente Padín, Letícia Parente, Grupo Paréntesis, Catalina Parra, Gyula Pauer, Luis Pazos, Dan Perjovschi, Julio Plaza, Féliks Podsiadly, Robert Rehfeld, Herbert Rodríguez, Juan Carlos Romero, Lotty Rosenfeld, Jesús Ruiz Durand, Juan Javier Salazar, Hugo Salazar del Alcázar, Valeri Scherstjanoi, Cornelia Schleime, Grupul Sigma, Petr Stembera, Gabriele Stötzer, Grup de Treball, Regina Vater, Cecilia Vicuña, Edgardo Antonio Vigo, Sala Vinçon (Archiv), Krzysztof Wodiczko, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeld, Horacio Zabala, Sergio Zevallos

Idea and Concept
Iris Dressler, Hans D. Christ

Cocurators
Ramón Castillo / Paulina Varas (Santiago de Chile / Valparaíso); Fernando Davis (Buenos Aires); Cristina Freire (São Paulo); Sabine Hänsgen (Bochum); Miguel Lopez / Emilio Tarazona (Barcelona / Lima); Ileana Pintilie Teleaga (Timisoara); Valentín Roma / Daniel García Andújar (Barcelona); Annamária Szöke / Miklós Peternák (Budapest); Anne Thurmann-Jajes (Bremen)

Introduction

From May 30 to August 2, 2009 the Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart devotes itself to experimental and conceptual art practices that had established between the nineteen-sixties and eighties in Europe and South America under the influence of military dictatorships and communist regimes. Both the exhibition, comprising around eighty artistic positions, as well as the related complementary program have been developed by a team of thirteen international curators in close collaboration with the Kunstverein over a two-year process.

The exhibition’s nine sections will be focused on various contexts and strategies of artistic production along with their positioning vis-à-vis political and cultural repression in the GDR, Hungary, Romania, the Soviet Union, Spain, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and Peru. Of equal concern here are both the particularities of and the relations between the different temporal and local environments.

The exhibition undertakes the experiment of a shifted cartograph and an extended understanding of conceptual art, which has become established well beyond the Anglo-American canon. In this respect, the related interdisciplinary, collaborative, and sociopolitical potentials are particularly emphasized—that is, the paradigm shifts between visual arts, politics, society, academia, architecture, design, mass media, literature, dance, theater, activism, and so forth, which have been educed by these potentials.

Furthermore, the focus is on artistic practices that not only radically question the conventional concept of art, the institutions, and the relationship between art and public, but that have, at the same time, subversively thwarted structures of censorship and opposed the existing systems of power. Here, body, language, and public space represent the pivotal instruments, of resistance, symbolic and performative in equal measure. The appropriation of media and distribution channels—especially the postal service—has in turn played a distinctive role in the establishment of the widely ramified networks between (Eastern) Europe and Latin America.

Another core theme explored by the project is the problem in presenting conceptual art forms and their equally ephemeral and processual, time- and location-specific dimensions. Crucial here is to do justice not only to the sensuous and participative distinctiveness of the works but also to their radicalism and their sociopolitical backgrounds.

In lieu of conceptualizing a comprehensive and homogenized design, the various curators will each develop individual presentational models for their respective exhibition section. Thus, the exhibition will not only be introducing different approaches to the restaging of conceptual practices but will emerge as a polyphonic parcourse, experienced as multidimensional cartograph.

A publication on the project will be released in fall 2009.

Sections

Progressive Images: Art in Chile under Dictatorship, 1973–1990
Curators: Ramón Castillo and Paulina Varas
Artists: Carlos Altamirano, CADA, Guillermo Deisler, Eugenio Dittborn, Juan Downey, Diamela Eltit, Carlos Leppe, Gonzalo Mezza, Letícia Parente, Catalina Parra, Lotty Rosenfeld, Cecilia Vicuña

Ramón Castillo and Paulina Varas explore the play on content-related and formal discontinuities, contradictions, and de- and recontextualizations that characterized Chilean art from the nineteen-seventies to nineties. At issue here are both the artistic potentials related to a rearticulation of the cognitive and symbolic world—worlds that were at that time engaged by the ideologies of the military dictatorship—and the question as to how these potentials continue to be relevant today.

Political Bodies, Territories in Conflict

Curator: Fernando Davis
Artists: Carlos Ginzburg, Luis Pazos, Juan Carlos Romero, Edgardo Antonio Vigo, Horacio Zabala

Fernando Davis is concerned with the artistic appropriation of the body and of public space in the scope of the military dictatorship in Argentina. The body was negotiated as an instrument of political resistance. Artists countered the measured order of urban space, dictated by dictatorial violence, with strategies of a poetic dèrive. Both cases involved the subversion of the precepts of meaning imposed by the state apparatus.

Alternative Networks

Curator: Cristina Freire
Artists: Ângelo de Aquino, Artur Barrio, Ulises Carrión, Dalibor Chatrný, Attila Csernik, Roberto Evangelista, Fernando França Cocchiarale, Paulo Herkenhoff, Jiri Kocman, Gastão de Magalhães, Clemente Padín, Julio Plaza, Féliks Podsiadly, Petr Stembera, Regina Vater, Krzysztof Wodiczko

Cristina Freire centers in on the collection of conceptual artworks at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo. During the military dictatorship period, the museum played a decisive role in providing space for free artistic expression and in forming a hub for the international mail art scene. Photography, as a documentation and distribution medium for performances, actions, and situations, along with the subversive use of the body are posited at the heart of her investigation.

Collective Actions: Trips out of Town, 1976–2009

Curator: Sabine Hänsgen
Artists: Collective Actions (Andrej Monastyrskij, Nikolaj Panitkov, Nikita Alekseev, Elena Elagina, Igor’ Makarevič, Georgij Kizeval’ter, Sergej Romaško, Sabine Hänsgen)

Sabine Hänsgen focuses on the performances of the group Collective Actions, that is, on their “Trips out of Town,” which have been carried out since 1976 in rural areas surrounding Moscow. The actions have most frequently taken place on an empty snow-covered field, a terrain “liberated” from symbols and meanings. Hänsgen developed an “installation as diagram” for the exhibition that comprehends an index of all previous actions along with documentary materials and more recent satellite images of the action spaces.

Crosscurrent Passages: Dissident Tactics in Peruvian Art, 1968–1992
Curators: Miguel López and Emilio Tarazona
Artists: Lucy Angulo, Luis Arias Vera, Teresa Burga, Jorge Eielson, Rafael Hastings, Emilio Hernández Saavedra, Taller E.P.S. Huayco, Francisco Mariotti, Alfredo Márquez, Ivonne von Mollendorff, Grupo Paréntesis, Herbert Rodríguez, Jesús Ruiz Durand, Juan Javier Salazar, Hugo Salazar del Alcázar, Sergio Zevallos

Miguel López and Emilio Tarazona investigate two phases of aesthetic-political practices in Peru: first, during the military dictatorship from 1968 to 1975 and, second, during the no-less-violent guerilla war in the nineteen-eighties. While the nineteen-seventies were characterized by the dawn of institutional critique and participative art forms, art was later viewed first and foremost as a space for political protest, for the re-elaboration of Andean modernity, as well

as a means of processing the repercussions of violence.

Between Limits: Escaping into the Concept

Curator: Ileana Pintilie Teleaga

Artists: Horia Bernea, Constantin Flondor, Ion Grigorescu, Pavel Ilie, Iosif Kiraly, Paul Neagu, Dan Perjovschi, Grupul Sigma

Ileana Pintilie Teleagă highlights artistic “survival techniques” and subversive strategies that originated in Romania during the era of the communist regime, or Ceauşescu’s dictatorship. Evoking the body as an equally private and political realm for artistic experimentation counted among these strategies, as did ephemeral, ironic, and sociocritical approaches. Moreover, despite extreme isolation, access to international mail art existed in Romania.

1969–1979: An Approach to the Confluences Between Art, Architecture, and Design in Catalonia

Curators: Valentín Roma and Daniel García Andújar
Artists: Ricardo Bofill/Taller de Arquitectura, COAC Archiv, Enric Franch (Archiv), Muntadas, Grup de Treball, Sala Vinçon (Archiv)

Valentín Roma and Daniel García Andújar fathom the interplay between critical conceptual practices in art, architecture, and design in Catalonia during the final decade of Franco’s dictatorial reign. At the core are six works by Grup de Treball in which interdisciplinary working methods are reflected. These works are contextualized by an archive compiled from various sources, by other artistic works, and by interviews specifically conducted for the exhibition with players from the period in question.

Tomorrow Is Evidence!

Curators: Annamária Szöke and Miklós Peternák

Artists: Gábor Altorjay, László Beke (Archiv), Miklós Erdély, Indigo Group, IPUT (superintendent: Tamas St. Auby), Gyula Pauer

Annamária Szöke and Miklós Peternák exploratively question the present-day relevance of subversive potentials presented by experimental and conceptual art of the nineteen-sixties through nineties in Hungary. In this context, they primarily focus on works that were destroyed, lost, or never realized, that is, those necessitating a reconstruction or restaging. In some cases, the artists are directly involved in the process and are thus effectuating a reevaluation of their earlier projects.

Playing with the System: Artistic Strategies in the GDR from 1970 to 1990

Curator: Anne Thurmann-Jajes
Artists: Autoperforationsartisten, Carlfriedrich Claus, Lutz Dammbeck, Die Gehirne, Claus Hänsel, Joseph W. Huber, Oskar Manigk, César Olhagaray, Clemente Padín, Robert Rehfeld, Valeri Scherstjanoi, Cornelia Schleime, Gabriele Stötzer, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeld

Anne Thurmann-Jajes spotlights the alternative art forms that succeeded in becoming established, beyond the sphere of official art doctrine and censorship, in the nineteen-seventies and eighties in the GDR. Access to the international networks of mail art, along with the so-called living-room galleries or original-graphic magazines, opened up opportunities for artistic experimentation with image, language, performance, sound, and film.

Subversive Practices

Art under Conditions of Political Repression

60s–80s / South America / Europe

May 30 – August 2, 2009

Dates

Press conference

Friday, May 29, 2009, 11 am

Opening

Friday, May 29, 2009, 7 pm

Symposium

Mai 30–31, 2009

Press Release and Press Images

http://www.wkv-stuttgart.de/en/press

Press Contact

Iris Dressler

Fon: +49 (0)711 – 22 33 711

dressler@wkv-stuttgart.de

Idea and Concept
Iris Dressler, Hans D. Christ

Co-curators

Ramón Castillo / Paulina Varas, Santiago de Chile / Valparaíso

Fernando Davis, Buenos Aires

Cristina Freire, São Paulo

Sabine Hänsgen, Bochum

Miguel Lopez / Emilio Tarazona, Barcelona / Lima

Ileana Pintilie Teleaga, Timisoara

Valentín Roma / Daniel García Andújar, Barcelona

Annamária Szöke / Miklós Peternák, Budapest

Anne Thurmann-Jajes, Bremen

A Project by
Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart

Partners
Centre for Culture and Communication Foundation, Budapest
Arteleku, San Sebastian

Main support by

Further Support by

Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst des Landes Baden-Württemberg

Kulturamt der Stadt Stuttgart
Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Berlin
SEACEX, Sociedad Estatal para la Acción Cultural Exterior, Madrid

Institut Ramon Llull, Barcelona

Kulturinstitut der Republik Ungarn, Stuttgart
Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Stuttgart

Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart

Schlossplatz 2, 70173 Stuttgart

Fon: +49 (0)711 – 22 33 70, Fax: +49 (0)711 – 29 36 17, info@wkv-stuttgart.de

www.wkv-stuttgart.de

Hours

Tue, Thu–Sun: 11 am–6 pm; Wed: 11 am–8 pm

PROGRAMM SYMPOSIUM

May 30 + 31, 2009

Languages: English and Spanish

Entrance fees: Single day: 10 / 5 Euro; Single event: 4 / 2 Euro

——————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Saturday, May 30, 2009

——————————————————————————————————————————————————-

1 p.m.

Exhibition tour with the artists and curators

4 p.m.

The Strategy of Anonymity: Some Remarks on Artistic Practices in Peru

Lecture by Juan Javier Salazar (video recording)

Subsequent conversation with Miguel López and Emilio Tarazona

5 p.m.

Critical Rereading of So-Called Catalan Conceptualism

Conversation with Valentín Roma, Daniel García Andújar and others

6 p.m.

Traces of the Hungarian Exhibition(s) at the C AYC (Center for Art and Communication), Buenos Aires, 1973–74

Lecture by Mercedes Kutasy

19:30 Uhr

Performance

Marta Minujin, Gabor Altorjay

——————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Sunday, May 31, 2009

——————————————————————————————————————————————————-

1 p.m.

Around 1970 Art Was a Prison

Lecture by Horacio Zabala

2 p.m.

Artistic Strategies in the GDR, 1970–1990

Conversation with Anne Thurmann-Jajes and artists from her section

3:30 p.m.

Moscow Conceptual Art Online

Lecture by Sergey Letov

4:30 p.m.

Subversive Art as Viewed in Eastern European Romania

Lecture by Ion Grigorescu

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On the Expropriation and Re-appropriation of Social, Political, and Cultural Spaces of Action

Ed.: Iris Dressler, Hans D. Christ

With texts by: Nancy Adajania, Daniel García Andújar, Judit Angel, Álvaro de los Ángeles, artesvisuais-politicas, Ricardo Basbaum, Helmut Batista, Hans D. Christ, Galia Dimitrova, Iris Dessler, Alenka Gregorić, Ciprian Mureșan, Ligia Nobre / Cécile Zoonens, Zoran Pantelić / Kristian Lukić, Dan Perjovschi, Christine Peters, Raqs Media Collective, Valentìn Roma, Lucien Samaha, Hedwig Saxenhuber/ Georg Schöllhammer, Nathalie Boseul Shin, Kristine Stiles, Nasrim Tabatabai/Babak Afrassiabi, Ștefan Tiron / Vlad Nancă, Joseba Zulaika.

656 pages, German/English
ISBN: 3-930693-29-1
Price: 39 Euro (Members 30 Euro)

auszug.pdf

Excerpt: Content / General introduction / Introduction OD #1 / Introduction OD #2 (German/English)

The publication “On Difference #3: Politics of Space” is the third and final part of the “On Difference” project initiated by the Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart.

In two exhibitions and various series of events (2005–2006), the project looked into the question as to how and whether the relevance of local realities can be brought into play within global conditions – of politics, society, culture and the economy. Moreover, the project was driven by an interest in reflecting on, presenting and practising collaborative forms of art and knowledge production.

The two exhibitions were conceived by two different groups of curators: among them artists and curators from Europe, Asia, North and South America, whose everyday practice is connected with creating critical action spaces: be it in the form of exhibitions, workshops, archives, magazines or Web forums. They were invited to develop and design an exhibition section based on their own very different production contexts. The result was two extremely heterogeneous and many-voiced exhibition situations involving more than one hundred artists, curators, theorists, architects, urbanists, activists, etc.

The fields of conflict examined in “On Difference” essentially revolved around urban developments, processes of social transformation, the structures of inclusion and exclusion in the art industry, and the corporatisation of culture. These rather general fields of conflict were negotiated against the foil of specific local situations: for example with regard to the “House of the People” in Bucharest, the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, the island and free trade zone of Kish in the Persian Gulf, or the Guggenheim museum in Rio de Janeiro that was not built.

The more than 650-page publication “On Difference #3” is both a documentation of the project and a multifaceted collection of material on the expropriation and re-appropriation of social, political and cultural action spaces.

Without claiming to be complete, it presents a compact, heterogeneous array of critical artistic practices and their widely ramified production conditions, as were created particularly in “non-Western” contexts.

In addition to the numerous texts and pictures, directly connected to the two exhibitions, the publication contains a series of contributions that run through the documentation as discursive passages.

An extensive index, finally, collates information on all actors and action spaces involved in the project.

With exhibition contributions by: Nancy Adajania, AGITPROP, Tata Amaral, Daniel García Andújar, APSOLUTNO, Arab Image Foundation, artesvisuais_políticas, Negar Azimi, Lara Baladi, Pablo Leon de la Barra, Yto Barrada, Sándor Bartha, Ricardo Basbaum, Solomon Benjamin, Balázs Beöthy, Big Hope, Mirela Brezoi, Broadsheet Collective, Capacete Entretenimentos, Center for Art Analysis, Eduard Constantin, Ştefan Constantinescu, Curator’s Association Budapest, Cybermohalla Ensemble, Angela Detanico/Rafael Laín, Petko Dourmana/Kyd Campbell, Duo van der Mixt, George Dupin, Eastwood, E((O GROUP Fouad Elkoury, e-valencia, Ex-Amics de l’IVAM, EXO experimental.org, Harun Farocki/Andrei Ujica, Luka Frelih, Javor Gardev, Ioan Godeanu, Ion Grigorescu, IRWIN, Joon Ho Jeon, Vladan Joler, Ruchir Joshi, Sanjay Kak, Šejla Kamerić, Tamás Tibor Kaszás/Viktor Kotun, Bahman Kiarostami, Tae Jung Kim, Riyas Komu, Kuda.org, Cezar Lăzărescu, Yong Baek Lee, Ligyung, Kristian Lucić, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Mohammad-Hassan Malekpour/Gelayol Mosaed, Manamana, Middle Corea, Nita Mocanu, Mono magazine, Hyungmin Moon, Ivan Moudov, Ciprian Mureşan, Vlad Nancă, Ioana Nemeş, Vladimir Nikolić, Ligia Nobre, Suntag Noh, Pages, Satyajit Pande, Zoran Pantelić, Dan Perjovschi, Lia Perjovschi, Maani Petgar, Cristian Pogăcean, Marjetica Potrć, Tobias Putrih, Walid Raad, Alireza Rasoulinejad, Jae Oon Rho, Cătălin Rulea, Salvem El Cabanyal, Lucien Samaha, Sarai Media Lab, Ravikant Sharma/ Prabhat Kumar Jha, Mihai Stănescu, Mladen Stilinović, Technologies To The People, Milica Tomić, Gabriela Vanga/ Mircea Cantor, Evgeni Vasilev, X-TENDO, Yangachi, Akram Zaatari, Želimir Žilnik, ZONA FRANCA.

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