Places: Tokamachi City, Kawanishi Town, Tsunan Town, Nakasato Village, Matsudai Town, Matsunoyama Town
Organized by: Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial Executive Committee
General Director: Fram Kitagawa (art director)
Art Advisors: Hou Hanru (curator/Ch), Rosa Martinez (curator/Sp), Tom Finkelpearl (curator/USA), Yusuke Nakahara (art critic/Jp)
Participating artists: about 150 artists from 23 countries.
Oficial website: http://www.echigo-tsumari.jp

The Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial is a natural-setting festival for nature, art and human beings, which takes place every three years in six municipalities of Echigo-Tsumari.
The six municipalities launched the Echigo-Tsumari Art Necklace Project seven years ago, in partnership with Niigata Prefecture, to revitalize the region by taking advantage of its characteristics; they held the first festival of the Triennial in 2000. The Art Necklace Project is an enterprise designed to make use of art and plants in public projects such as the construction of roads, parks and cottages. The Triennial is a three-yearly presentation of the progress of this project that is held along with local traditional festivities. It was conceived with the firm belief that the landscape and the life of the people, both of which have been fostered with the blessing of nature since 5000 years ago, and the long relationship with the earth through agriculture are the most precious treasures of this region.
The artists discovered in Tsumari various features: namely heavy snow that covers the earth for half a year, farming during the rest of the year, people’s wisdom and warmth of heart brought about by such hardships, beautiful, ephemeral and strong nature and cooperation among the communities. The artists turned their discoveries into works of art in collaboration with local residents. Spread over an extensive rural setting, the artistic works that stood in front of the rice plants, whose colors changed everyday in fertile summer, allured many visitors. Some visitors complained about it being «too hot»,»too large» or «too far to walk», but they said it was «interesting» and they enjoyed their experiences using their five senses. The natural canvas appeared as though illuminated by art.
The first Triennial witnessed a great number of supporters who participated from outside of the region, in particular a young volunteer group named Kohebi-tai. It showed future possibilities in that regions could be promoted through cooperation or people networking, which crosses regions, generations and disciplines.

Features of the 2nd Triennial
For the second festival, artists are creating their works in terraced rice paddies, hamlets, the city areas and parks, and beside ponds and roads. The works are scattered over more than 50 areas at the communities’ request. Many artists are using traditional materials and methods, including kimono, farming tools and yukigakoi, a device for protecting a plant from snow. A great number of workshops have been held so far. The artists have been involved with the communities more profoundly than during the first triennial.
For this festival, a short video competition was organized. It is expected to expose how international artists understand Tsumari, a depopulated, mountainous and agricultural region and how they confront the crisis in the global environment. The winning works will be shown at everyday places such as waiting rooms, meeting places and restaurants.
In addition to 150 permanent and temporary works and 40 video works, several exhibitions are scheduled: a contemporary Aboriginal art exhibition from Australia, an Inuit textile exhibition from Canada and two local exhibitions on Jomon and Akiyamago. The exhibitions on indigenous arts, which have been adopted from ancient times and are being reevaluated as contemporary, will provide us with many ideas. Along with the exhibits on Jomon, Matagi (hunting) and agrarian culture, they will tell us about the relationships between the earth, human beings and art.
The Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial is supported by many countries. The Netherlands presents «Real Lear», a play performed by Tsumari’s elderly people in collaboration with Dutch artists. We sincerely appreciate countries’ funding of the Triennial. Also, this triennial is characterized by the deep involvement of the aged and children. The 2003 summer in Tsumari is full of works of art, including the existing works created at the last Triennial, exhibitions, summer festivals and events.
Lastly, I am pleased to announce that Echigo-Tsumari Art Necklace has finally begun in full-scale with the completion of the three Stages. The Stages are planned to be the basis for the long-term vision of Art Necklace with the aim of rediscovering regional treasures with the help of artists and trying for independence through collaboration with artists. The Snow-Land Agrarian Culture Center in Matsudai Town will be managed focusing on land. The Museum of Natural Science in Matsunoyama Town will show prospects for preserving the region through ecological research. The concept of the Echigo-Tsumari Exchange Center in Tokamachi City is the exchange of products and information outside a mass consumer society.

Prospects for the Future
We have come to understand, over the six years we have been working on the Triennials, that although the 20th century was the age of cities, Japan and the rest of the world could not be developed only through urbanization; we now realized how important it is to review local properties deeply connected to nature and to encourage exchanges between the countryside and the cities, along with collaboration of people beyond areas, generations and genres. With the theme «Human Beings as Part of Nature», we wish to further exchanges between the countryside and the cities.
Art has worked as a tie between nature and human beings since ancient times. Art connects people to people. Please come to Tsumari in the summer. Walk around there and feel this connection.

Fram Kitagawa
General Director

La entrada 2nd Echigo – Tsumari Art Triennial, Japan, 2003 (Inglés) se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

January 28-February 28, 2005. Press days: January 27-28

Places:
Main Venue: former Lenin Museum, Moscow

Curators:
Joseph Backstein, Daniel Birnbaum, Iara Boubnova, Nicolas Bourriaud, Rosa Martinez, Hans Ulrich Obrist

Press Contact:
info@moscowbiennale.ru
www.moscowbiennale.ru

Why a new Biennale in Moscow?

The First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, initiated by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, marks an important step forward in the process of reintegrating contemporary Russian art into the international art world.

One of the most obvious consequences of political and economical stabilisation in Russia is the growing interest of Russian society in contemporary culture, and more precisely contemporary art. In the last decade a totally new Russian art infrastructure has emerged through art fairs, galleries, non-profit exhibition spaces, festivals and conferences. For these reasons, 2005 is the right time for Moscow to create a major international art event, the first of its kind in the country.

The Moscow Biennale aims to become not only a great event in the artistic life of Moscow and Russia but also to play an important social, cultural and political role internationally. It is intended to be not only a particular powerful event, but a new institutional project that will strengthen relationships between curators, art historians, managers, federal authorities, sponsors and trustees, mass media and public opinion on contemporary art both in and outside Russia itself. It is the organisers’ intention that The Moscow Biennale will become a reproducible strong structure that will find its place in the network of other major international art forums.

The Theme of the Biennale

Under the theme, Dialectics of Hope, the main exhibition will present art that focuses on one of the most fundamental experiences of a modern human being: hope. On the one hand, hope exists as a private existential feeling, touching particularly on issues of care or caring, on the other it is found in the older Utopian vision of a shared social feeling. The dialectical character of hope today as well as its emergence in different forms of contemporary art will be the focus for the exhibition, reflecting the influence that social and political changes exert on the way we attempt to anticipate our own future and the development of the societies to which we belong. In politically turbulent and worrying times, the function of hope as an organising principle of our lives becomes increasingly apparent.

Structure

The first Moscow Biennale will include a main project organized by its international curatorial team, and a series of parallel events. The selection of artists and the development of the main projects have been a collective endeavour of the curatorial team.

The 2005 exhibition is the first element of a larger project conceived as a trans-generational endeavour that will unfold in a series of steps until 2007. This first manifestation concentrates on young artists from all over the world. Its main aim is to describe the state of contemporary art and the new issues addressed by the artists of the 21st century. The same curatorial team will also work on the 2007 exhibition.

The main project of the Moscow Biennale 2005 will be accompanied by a series of special projects and a wide parallel program representing contemporary art from Russia and the former Soviet Union. The events will be held in a number of key venues in and around the centre of the city of Moscow.

Curators

Joseph Backstein, Co-ordinating Curator (Russia), Deputy Director of the State Centre for Museums and Exhibitions ROSIZO – Curator of the Russian exhibition at the 25th Biennale in Sao Paolo, 2002 – Curator of the Russian Pavilion at the 48th Venice Biennale, 1999.

Daniel Birnbaum (Sweden/Germany), Rector of the Stadelschule Art Academy, Frankfurt am Main and Director of Kunsthalle Portikus – Co-curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale, 2003 – International Foundation Manifesta Board Member (Amsterdam), since 2000.

Iara Boubnova (Bulgaria), Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Sofia – International Foundation Manifesta Board Member, since 2002 – Co-curator of Manifesta 4 (Frankfurt am Main), 2002 – Curator of Bulgarian National Participation in the 48th Venice Biennale, 1999.

Nicolas Bourriaud (France), Director of the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (with Jerome Sans), Founder Director of the magazine Documents – Co-Curator of the Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art, 2005 – Curator of the Aperto at the 45th Venice Biennale, 1993 – Curator of Unmoving Short Movies at the Venice Biennale, 1990.

Rosa Martinez (Spain), Artistic Director of the Arsenale, Venice Biennale, 2005 – Chief Curator of the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art – Curator of the Spanish pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale, 2003 – Curator of the 3rd SITE Santa Fe Biennale (New Mexico), 1999 – Artistic Director of the 5th International Istanbul Biennale, 1997.

Hans Ulrich Obrist (Switzerland/France), Curator at the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Co-curator of the exhibitions Cities on the Move, Laboratorium, Utopia Station at the 50th Venice Biennale, 1st Berlin Biennale, Manifesta 1. The first volume of his ongoing interview project was recently published: Hans Ulrich Obrist Interviews (Milan: Edizioni Charta, Pitti Imagine 2003).

Chairman of the Organizing Committee: Michail Shvydkoy, Head of the Federal Agency for Culture and Film.

Commissioner: Evgeny Zyablov, Director of the State Centre for Museums and Exhibitions ROSIZO.

Venues

The main project will be realised at the former Lenin Museum, in the very centre of Moscow, near the Red Square. Built in 1892 as the Moscow City Hall, in October 1917 the building became residence of the Committee on Public Security which aimed to prevent the developing revolution. When Soviet power was established, it was first occupied by the Moscow Soviet and then by the Moscow Trade Union Soviet, and since 1936 served as the Lenin Museum, a unique collection of items related to Lenin’s life and activity.

Contact
info@moscowbiennale.ru
http://moscowbiennale.ru/english

La entrada 1st Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art 2005 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

Inventing Venice: A Director’s Roundtable

by Massimiliano Gioni

Rosa Martínez, ’05

How much time did you have to organize the Biennale? How did this impact your process and results?
We had only about nine months to start thinking and acting, even though I said yes as soon as I was asked by the president of the Biennale at that time, Davide Croff, since I was aware of the significance of being inscribed in the history of the event as the first woman director in its 110 years of existence. I was also thrilled at the possibility of creating a show in the amazing spaces of the Arsenale. So these challenges compensated for the short time—made more pressing by the slowness of the Italian bureaucracy—and all the other difficulties. When I learned that the president had also chosen another woman to curate the Central Pavilion, and that this woman was María de Corral, I was very happy to share this chance and yet to have different spaces. The fact that we were two women directors (instead of the classic one man) prompted Italian feminists in Milan to ask the president a funny question at the press conference: had he made this decision because in his male unconscious it took two women to equal one man?

What was your budget? How much did you raise?
The budget was a big mystery. I never knew what my total budget was, but I remember that it was cut by a big amount when I said no to a request made by a sponsor. Neither I nor the artists I invited would agree to convert the Arsenale into an advertisement space for coffee machines, with chairs bearing the sponsor logo all around. So I had to ask some galleries and artists to help me balance the cut, and they did.

In curating the show, did you aim to talk to your peers or to address a wider audience?
Harald Szeemann [director of the 1999 and 2001 Venice Biennales] told me that when you do a show you always have to keep your peers in mind. However, I think that in an international event as meaningful and important as this one you have to present la bella combinazione, addressing a wider audience. You must take the event a little bit further than your predecessors took it, but you also have to make it broad and comprehensible enough to reach the general public.

What did you want to do differently than your predecessors? Did you accomplish that goal?
Being a woman, I wanted to reflect on the exclusion that female artists have suffered historically, and the Guerrilla Girls helped me very much with their statistics. Through a series of ironic, large-scale posters, they showed how in 1895 only 2.4 percent of the artists who participated in the International Exhibition in Venice were female; but the shocking thing was that one century later, in 1995, the proportion was only 9 percent. I also wanted to reflect on other political inequalities, so the sound project by Santiago Sierra at the corridor entrance was very meaningful. Among many other things, he stated how in 2005 the countries that had a national pavilion inside the Giardini represented 24 percent of the world’s population and produced 83 percent of the Global National Product, while the countries having a national pavilion outside the Giardini represented 34 percent of world’s population, producing 9 percent of GNP.

What was the most complex project you were involved with?
The installation Cube by Gregor Schneider at the Piazza San Marco was so complex it became totally impossible to achieve, even though the artist had financial support to do it. We had to go through a hard process of obstacles and face political censorship, because the piece resembled the Kaaba in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam.

Which key project were you unable to pull off?
In addition to Cube, there was an ambitious project by Jun Nguyen Hatsushiba that could not be presented. Jun wanted to create a big performative installation to criticize the commercialization of domestic water by Coca-Cola in Vietnam. There was also a proposal by Gianni Motti and Christoph Büchel for which we did not get permission: they wanted to sink a container in the waters outside the Arsenale to simulate the isolated conditions of the prisoners in Guantánamo.

What was the harshest criticism you faced?
Believe it or not, the harshest criticism came from some Spanish magazine editors and art critics. The provincial envy was one of the worst things we had to face. Other power strategies could be observed in the critical reception of the event. For example some hegemonic critics dropped a line in major art magazines saying the show was not relevant, then spent four pages acclaiming their own national artists—even though those artists, while well established in the market, had very little to say about the present. But this is part of the game.

What did you risk?
I risked losing my patience, especially with the managing director of the Biennale at the time. But María de Corral was very wise in advising me to keep calm, and Robert Storr, who also suffered that manager’s dark intrigues, finally had the pleasure of seeing him resign prior to the opening of his Biennale in 2007.

What did you lose in the process of curating?What did you gain?
I did not have the chance to bring the show even further as I did not have time for deeper and wider artistic research, but I gained many pleasures: having wonderful projects by artists that I deeply believe in; becoming part of the history of an extraordinary international art event; working with a wonderful local administrative team; and, last but not least, learning to walk through the labyrinths of Venice without getting lost.

How do you think your Biennale is remembered? How do you think it impacted the history of the Biennale itself, or changed the format of what a biennial can be?
From the curatorial point of view, I intended to make the syntax of my exhibition clear and legible; I used the longitudinal walk of the Arsenale to play with similarities and oppositions between the works placed on either side. By creating conjunctions and disjunctions, contrasts and connections, I proposed an interpretation of what contemporary creation is all about. Many people understood and appreciated this, together with the political ambition, the humor or the beauty of some of the selected projects. But I was especially surprised by the sexist evaluation made by an important male dealer: he said he had never seen the Arsenale so neat and tidy, so it was obvious that a woman had taken care of it. Apart from that, my contribution to the history of biennials has to be appraised by others, taking into account other projects I’ve done, such as the 5th Istanbul Biennial in 1997, the 3rd SITE Santa Fe Biennial in 1999, the Biennial EVA 2000 in Limerick and several international exhibitions that I co-curated during the decade 2000-10. My desire and my curatorial actions have always been invested in what could be called the expanded field of contemporary art, bringing the exhibition beyond its walls, dissolving esthetic ideologies and interacting with local communities. So, in Venice, the Arsenale was beautiful and charged with meaning but still small.

2005 Prizes:

• Golden Lion for best artist of the international exhibition: Thomas Schütte
• Golden Lion for an artist under 35: Regina José Galindo
• Young Italian Art Prize: Lara Favaretto
• Golden Lion for lifetime achievement: Barbara Kruger
• Golden Lion for best national participation: France, represented by Annette Messager
  
  PHOTO: View of El Anatsui’s Fresh and Fading Memories, 2007, aluminum and cooper wire, 360 by 240 inches; installed on the exterior of the Palazzo Fortuny in the 52nd Venice Biennale, 2007. Photo Giovanni Pancino. Courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

Rosa Martínez is an independent curator and art collections consultant. 

Full article: Art in America

La entrada Art In America, Nueva York, EEUU, Marzo, 2013 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

The River of Endless Love 1

Rosa Martínez

“My art is grounded in the belief of one universal energy which runs through everything: from insect to man, from man to spectre, from spectre to plant, from plant to galaxy.” Ana Mendieta, 1983 “A Selection of Statements and Notes”, Sulfur, vol. 22, 1988, 70.

“The mind of the great sage of India is intimately transmitted from west to east. While human faculties are sharp or dull, the Way has no northern or southern ancestors.” Sekito Kisen (700-790) Sandokai (Harmony of Difference and Sameness)

The Search for Vision Some works of art caress our senses with the lightness of a feather. Others pierce our heart like a sword. Some are curative, for their wisdom and beauty act as a balm for our sorrows. A few arouse our critical intelligence and make us aware of evil and injustice. The subtle irony of others makes us smile. Some even o∏er us a refreshing silence, a pause in the maelstrom, a space for meditation. Others act as energy condensers, like batteries charged with meaning. But they all need a viewer in order to exist. They all expect that interpretative, plastic transfer that shapes our sensations, awareness and affections. They all wish to convey their vision, be it purely aesthetic, playful, ideological or deeply sacramental.

Quantum physics has taught us that the existence and identity of things is based on transformation and not on an immutable essence, and that the interpretation of the observer modifies the observed. Insofar as it gives the viewer the role of creator, quantum physics coincides with the theory of language, which believes that the reader is also an author. Subjectivity and objectivity, phenomenology and perception are interwoven.

However, as Rilke said, the world into which we are born is a world that has already been interpreted, and our growth process fluctuates between the need to learn its codes and our yearning to be free of the clichés in which meanings are entrenched. We are body and language; we continue to need instruments of vision and methods of thought that will help us navigate through life and implement the ability to transform ourselves. To quote Miyazawa Kenji,2 perhaps everything is no more than a landscape of our soul and perhaps to shape that landscape is the great Work we are called on to perform.

Literature and film have offered us paradigmatic creations on the physical and symbolic paths a human being will journey through to discover himself or to explore the multiple dimensions of existence. From Ulysses’ travels to Dante’s Divine Comedy, from Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad to Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, there is nothing for us but to persevere in order to navigate the earthly or infernal world in which we live. The 1989 film, Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Le≥ for the East? by South Korean director Yong-Kyung Bae, is a profound reflection on morality in the search for enlightenment and on the awareness of death as experienced by a Zen master, his disciple and a young apprentice. The master advances several koans that have to be solved and states, “When you dig up the moon in your inmost mind to light up the sky and the earth, its light will chase away all the shadows of the universe.”

To Read the World Again

At the onset of the twenty-first century, the concept of the work of art is not only based on the material nature of its support, nor is it identified with the idea of object. Painting and sculpture have broadened their traditional formats. Film, drama, performance art, happenings, photography and all forms of relational art have opened new doors to the ontology of what is considered art. Classical borders have become porous, disciplines are interconnected and artistic activity has spread to new physical, conceptual, social and geopolitical territories.

Today, science, art and philosophy move towards a vision of humanity and the cosmos that is unitary, not divided. When Beuys said that “Every man is an artist” and that the transformation of thought through words is in itself a sculptural act, he was not far from the Buddhist idea that every one of us is a potentially enlightened being, a Buddha, a god. To curate an exhibition is to propose a subtle yet determined combination of works, to articulate a reinterpretation of the world, one that is partial and fragmentary, but as true as possible. Curators are mediators, interpreters, catalysts and channels for the experiences of others that become their own.

In the realm of art shows, diachronic interpretations assess the evolution of forms, while thematic proposals explore specific aspects of cultural production more deeply. Totalising visions give way to other developments, other forms of interpretation. In this opening up of new spaces, synchronic interpretations and the transversal interconnection of works from different cultures and ages have appeared in curatorial practice as propitiatory exercises. This prospective gaze prefigures a near future in which differences will cease to mean hierarchy, separation and exclusion, and will prioritise instead the values of co-existence, sympathy and interconnection.

This task requires si≥ing through the mad circulation of messages, shedding new light on what is already known and, in the best of cases, tracing an unexpected flash of awareness and thereby triggering an uncommon joy. Conceiving images as ‘operational symptoms’, revealing their elective aΩnities, expanding the reverberations of meaning that throb within them. To study their symbolic migrations and global legibility is the task. However, it is not only an intellectual task, but an exercise that needs a heart.

The Exhibition as a Journey

Unforeseen associations of objects and images pointing to something that has not yet been visualised and revealing the ‘magnetic anomalies’ that exist between works leads to the discovery of new sculptural and poetic qualities of the real, as Harald Szeemann declared and practiced. By uniting visible things to the invisible space that surrounds them, we create the continuity of the world. And that continuity can be transformative because it invites us to overturn previous preconceptions and invent new territories of meaning.

Visiting an exhibition is a phenomenological experience and, in the best of cases, it can be a rite of passage, an emotional and spiritual transfiguration. The exhibition is a proposal, a guiding tool to enable us to see through the eyes of the spirit. Its effect can be even greater if the power of love inspires the choice of works and the rhythms between them, if the spatial sequences, the volumes and voids, lights and shadows are carefully planned.

The fact that the Palazzo Fortuny should be the architectural and symbolic setting in which our curatorial exercise suggests new possibilities for vision is particularly relevant. Fortuny combined fashion, painting, philosophy, trade, set design, lighting and photography with a huge passion for Eastern wisdom. His palazzo embraced a certain way of life and was a laboratory where the arts could be interconnected.

TRA: Edge of Becoming hopes to share and broaden the radiance of this legacy, to establish the flows of beauty, love and awareness that transcend it, to grant access to some celestial spheres without excluding the vision of the door to hell. Today, this is a source of pleasure and growth that can be obtained through various types of ecstasy, the fortuitous and incomplete relations of which can be traced through the echoes of some of the works in the exhibition:

• Consider the thought of a Zen monk who, over 1200 years ago, decided to abandon his monastery in order to escape from the inflexibility of a rule that was too strict and castrated genuine spiritual search.
• Observe the inside of a ritual African mask, whose strange eyes and fading smile tell us of the other side, the other world. –
• Imagine the cosmic weight of ultramarine blue.
• Understand the suffering of a woman crossing through darkness under a stone before surfacing once again to the light, purified and redeemed, as a healing ritual and a promise.
• Enter and exit through fictitious migratory doors that make us ‘Oriental’ or ‘Occidental’.
• Discover in the wabi labyrinth space, a work consisting of two strokes on the upper and lower parts of the canvas: the demarcation of the void, above and below the horizon.
• Share the beauty of dialogue with the dead and the generosity of singing softly to corpses.
• Stroll through a forest of voodoo dolls made out of industrial waste.
• Admire a woman who keeps her balance on the horizon of the sea.
• Imagine that we are walking up a liquid ladder made of transparent glass that doesn’t break.
• Lift up our arm in a dark room to gain access to a beam of light. To become light.
• Observe a blackbird that comes up to eat seeds in the courtyard of the palace.
• See a rainbow appear on a skirting board, at floor level.

Within the multifaceted tour of the Palazzo Fortuny we come across the artist’s studio, a hidden matrix, a secret chamber with a plain sink for washing the paintbrushes. The marks le≥ by the brushes on the plaster of the wall are traces of waste, involuntary non-artistic signs of the existence of the tools Fortuny used to shape one of the multiple possibilities of seeing and being. These marks provide an indication and a hope for all those who still want to make the effort to see and to be. If it is true that we all eventually find the necessary echoes for our paths, then we shall probably leave the exhibition having navigated a river of endless love and wisdom, a river with secret bends and turbulence that will continue to flow towards new hopes and becomings.

1. The title of this essay is taken from the 1988 song, River of Endless Love by The Moody Blues. Opposite Page: Descartes, René (1596–1650), Traité de l’Homme. Published 1677 by T. Girard in Paris. 2. Miyazawa Kenji, Spring and Ashura (1924). Translated into English by Ruriko Suzuki, An Asura in Spring, Shohakusha, 1999. “These poems would make man, the Milky Way / the Hecatomb and the sea urchin / think of the cool Theory of Essence / as they feed on the dust of the universe / or breathe the air of salt water. / But all is reduced to a landscape of our soul.

La entrada TRA. Edge of Becoming, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, Italy, 2011 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

Organizada por Manuel E. González

Artistas / Curadores: José Bedia, Víctor Zamudio-Taylor. Robert Chambers, Paula Harper.
Dara Friedman, Clarissa Dalrymple. Luis Gispert, Rina Carvajal. Adler Guerrier, Thelma Golden. Mark Handforth, Frédéric Bonnet. Gean Moreno, Ivo Mesquita. Glexis Novoa, Marcelo E. Pacheco. Sergio Vega, Rosa Martínez.

La risa destruye el miedo y la piedad ante un objeto, ante un mundo, convirtiéndolo en un objeto de contacto familiar y despejando así el terreno para una investigación absolutamente libre sobre él. (*)

Rosa Martínez: Durante los últimos ocho años has estado trabajando en El Paraíso en el Nuevo Mundo, un proyecto artístico interdisciplinar inspirado en el libro homónimo escrito por Antonio de León Pinelo en 1650. Valiéndose de una disciplina naciente como la historia natural, Pinelo intentó demostrar científicamente que el Jardín del Edén estaba situado en América del Sur. Siguiendo su tesis, has hecho varios viajes de investigación al estado de Mato Grosso, en Brasil, llevando un diario de viaje en el que describes tus aventuras. A través de una serie de fotografías, vídeos, dioramas e instalaciones derivadas de las anotaciones del diario, exploras cómo se construían los discursos coloniales en relación con la mitología específica del Paraíso. En este sentido, ¿cómo actualiza tus reflexiones estéticas y conceptuales la instalación que has creado para la exposición 10 Floridians?

Sergio Vega: La instalación presenta obras surgidas de los tres primeros días que pasé en la ciudad de Guiaba y sus alrededores. Un elemento central es el diorama/vídeo titulado Fotografiando (p. 97)> una recreación del lugar de mi encuentro inicial con el «Paraíso.» Fotografiando reconstruye un segmento del «patio» de una favela, con desperdicios y gallinas andando por allí.

El componente videográfico es un collage compuesto por el baile de Saraghina—de 8 1/2, de Fellini—y por secuencias de perros ladrando a la cámara. Estas imágenes se proyectaron sobre el espacio y los objetos del propio diorama, para ser grabadas de nuevo y editadas después en la versión final del vídeo. La proyección sobre la favela activa el espacio como revisión metafórica de mi enfrentamiento traumático con el «cuerpo materno» (un atributo simbólico del Edén).

La historia es así: estaba fotografiando aquella favela, el caos de los objetos desechados entre las gallinas, conejos y perros, que me recordaban a Aíice in Wónderland (Alicia en el País de las Maravillas), cuando una mujer enorme con un vestido ajustado y una enorme cabellera formando un nido diabólico apareció por la puerta trasera de la vivienda. Mientras me maldecía por meterme donde no me llamaban, empezó a lanzarme piedras. Los perros se unieron al ataque ladrando ferozmente y me mordieron. Sin que dejaran de lloverme piedras encima, huí renqueando hacia el dominio urbano de las clases altas.

Esta experiencia ridicula me llevó a reflexionar sobre la dinámica del acto fotográfico. Me permitió encarnar la parodia del artista heroico que retrata la otredad. Me indujo además a poner en tela de juicio no sólo las relaciones de poder entre el que retrata y el que es retratado, y su pertinencia en relación a las pretensiones de realismo transparente de la fotografía documental, sino que también me llevó a cuestionar la naturaleza misma de la fotografía como práctica colonizadora. En estos tiempos, temas relacionados con los traumas de la marginalidad, como la pobreza y otras formas radicales de otredad, están cargados con los crudos y amenazantes atributos de la realidad objetiva. Así, cuando esas realidades se convierten en representaciones y se exhiben para los públicos no tan marginales del arte, se perciben como familiarmente extrañas, visceralmente abyectas y dotadas de un exotismo muy de moda.

RM: En contraste con la «pureza» del modernismo anglosajón, tu obra es un canto a la exuberancia y al carácter orgánico del barroco como modelo estético liberador. ¿Gomo definirías las ideas en que se basa lo que has dado en llamar «Modernismo Tropical»?

SV: Mi reflexión sobre los estilos—barroco, romántico, moderno—para este proyecto se centra en cómo fueron empleados para producir fantasías del Paraíso. Modernismo Tropical tiene que ver con lo que encontré al otro lado de la colina, después de escaparme de los perros. Me hallé en una amplia avenida con extravagantes edificios modernos, influenciados de alguna manera por Osear Niemeyer. Algunos de aquellos edificios, de colores estridentes y formas voluptuosos, me parecieron extrañas adaptaciones de la paradigmática búsqueda de arquetipos biomórficos de Roberto Burle Marx. Pintor y botánico, Marx quería que su obra rompiera con el concepto romántico del paisaje en la arquitectura y propuso un examen detenido de la naturaleza desde una perspectiva científica. Es posible que yo sufriera de insolación después de subir corriendo la colina, pero aquellos edificios me parecían un desfile carnavalesco bailando al suave son de la bossa nova y anunciando el triunfo de la modernidad sobre la selva. Llegué a la conclusión de que
en algún punto el modernismo en los trópicos había abandonado la lógica cartesiana para echarse una siesta y despertar más tarde en medio de un ritual chamánico, travestido de animal o de planta. Esta línea dionisíaca y sensualista de la modernidad, emblemática de las clases altas de América latina, es la que exploro en Modernismo Tropical: una arquitectura para fiestas y cócteles. Tengo curiosidad por saber cómo se verá esta obra en Miami, una ciudad que sufre un síndrome parecido, aunque en este caso influido por los fundamentos estilísticos del Art Deco (otra clase de Paraíso modernista).

RM: Actualmente, la idea de Paraíso la construyen las instituciones culturales y las industrias turísticas. Mediante iconos y símbolos que condensan significados, provocan deseos que contribuyen al desarrollo económico. Tu instalación invita a los espectadores a reconsiderar el concepto de Paraíso y a experimentar su lado oscuro. El comfort burgués del proyecto Tropicalounge (2002—03) contrasta con la obra Sala de Espera (2003), donde los presos políticos agonizan antes de ser arrojados al vacío. Bajo la superficie barroca de placer y exotismo, siempre analizas las estructuras de poder y las implicaciones ideológicas.

SV: Sala de Espera está basada en un lugar conocido como «la puerta del Infierno» donde, durante la dictadura militar de Brasil, se llevaba a presos previamente capturados a un puesto de la policía caminera estratégicamente situado y se los arrojaba por un precipicio. He recreado la sala de espera del puesto y he hecho una «réplica» de un preso que lleva puesta una bolsa en la cabeza. Suministro «objetos/máscaras-capuchas» para que el público se los ponga, y una cámara Polaroid para que los participantes se fotografíen.

Tradicionalmente, se ha reflexionado sobre el arte marginal a través del culto al objeto de arte, el cual ha sido interpretado literalmente como la encarnación «representativa» de la otra cultura. En nuestros días, la exposición de arte como sala de juegos para el placer del espectador se ha convertido en un arma de doble filo. Cuando se exhibe a «otra» gente como arte, se desencadena una especie de dinámica sadomasoquista en la que el público se siente incómodo y es llevado a explorar sus sentimientos no resueltos. Lo que propongo es que los espectadores interactúen con el objeto de arte «otro» (a través del uso de objetos/máscaras-capuchas) así como con ellos mismos (a través de autorretratos fotográficos). Mi deseo es que, enmascarados y semejantes al preso encapuchado, entren en el mismo campo que el objeto de arte y se reconfiguren.

La obra es una invitación a experimentar con la percepción sensorial, en una versión distorsionada de la propuesta de Lygia Clarky Helio Oiticica. Una suerte de performance revisionista de lo que sucedía en Brasil a finales de la década de 1960 y en la de 1970, tanto en el campo del arte como en la política. Mi esperanza es que los participantes consideren—y experimenten-la idea de que, frente al vacío, podemos intentar disolver la dicotomía entre sujeto y objeto, yo y otro.

(*) Mikhail M. Bakhtin. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays.
Austin: University ofTexas Press, 1981, 23.

www.miamiartcentral.org

La entrada 10 Floridians. Miami Art Central. Miami, 2004 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

Comisaria: Rosa Martínez

Venecia 15 de junio – 2 de noviembre, 2003

El trabajo de Santiago Sierra se inscribe dentro de un conjunto de operaciones críticas que ponen en cuestión la creencia de que el arte es una actividad autónoma, sublime y desinteresada. Evaluando las obras realizadas en los últimos doce años se constata la persistencia de temas y líneas recurrentes de actuación que remiten a una obsesión fundamental: la que deconstruye el minimalismo – como lenguaje hegemónico asociándolo a la dictadura de la producción y el beneficio.

En las acciones de Sierra, las personas se convierten en “ready-mades performativos” con los que conforma “historias situadas” que amplían la noción clásica de intervención específica. Conectar las cargas semánticas que sus actores personifican con las condiciones socio-económicas y geopolíticas es una forma efectiva de enlazar lo personal y lo político, lo local y lo global. En los proyectos realizados en el Pabellón de España en Venecia confluyen algunas líneas fundamentales de su poética: la obstrucción, la provocación lingüística y la reflexión sobre el trabajo como castigo.
Muro cerrando un espacio remite a las tecnologías de intermediación y de restricción del acceso representadas por las fronteras y por los límites, visibles e invisibles, que sitúan a las personas en diferentes territorios físicos, sociales o ideológicos. El muro polariza a los espectadores de la Bienal a ambos lados de un escenario hipotético, y da forma a tensiones físicas y políticas que remiten a ese extraño territorio de ciudades y países blindados que define las exclusiones contemporáneas. A diferencia del existencialista y absurdo «muro de la nada» de Beckett, Sierra construye muros que muestran que las fronteras no se han abolido sino que se han consolidado. En el interior del Pabellón la puesta en escena de los restos del trabajo de construcción del muro, el desorden y el abandono, se proponen como un ejercicio de desnudamiento de lo real, y remiten a otros restos y otras zonas de penumbra.

Palabra tapada es una sencilla escultura realizada con materiales pobres. Aquí Sierra actúa por omisión. Tapando la palabra “España”, suspende momentáneamente sus múltiples significaciones históricas y simbólicas. Prefigura así una controvertida emergencia de reacciones sentimentales, lecturas ideológicas y evaluaciones estéticas.

La acción Mujer con capirote sentada cara a la pared se realizó en el contexto físico del interior del Pabellón de España, sin presencia de público, el 1 de mayo de 2003. Durante una hora, una mujer permaneció sentada, inmóvil y en silencio, con un capirote negro en la cabeza. La obra, que el artista documentó fotográfica y videográficamente, insistía en el trabajo como tecnología de dominación, dejando constancia de la violencia de los procesos disciplinarios y del poder objetualizador del dinero. Las conexiones iconográficas con obras de Goya y con las torturas de la Inquisición pueden asociarse a muchas otras referencias iconológicas contemporáneas.

Rosa Martínez. Curadora del Pabellón Español de la Bienal de Venecia 2003

Extractos del ensayo La mercancía y la muerte, publicado en el catálogo Santiago Sierra. Pabellón de España. 50ª Bienal de Venecia. Editado por el Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores/Turner, 2003.

La entrada 50a Exposición Internacional Bienal de Venecia – Pabellón Español se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

Curators: Rosa Martínez, Viktor Misiano, Katalin Neray, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Andrew Renton.
ROTTERDAM, the Netherlands, 9 June – 19 August. 1996.

Venues: Rotterdam, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Witte de With, center for contemporary art, Chabot Museum, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

Selected Artists:

AMSTERDAM: Liza May Post, Renée Kool. ATHENS: Jenny Marketou. (New York), Lydia Venieri. BARCELONA: Eulalia Valldosera. BEAUNE: Didier Trenet. BERLIN: Maria Eichhorn, Regina Möller, Christine Hill, Pit Schuiz. BOLOGNA: Eva Marisaldi. BRATISLAV: Roman Ondak. BUCHAREST: subREAL. BUDAPEST: Róza EI-Hassan, János Sugár. COLOGNE: Rosemarie Trockel / Carsten Höller. COPENHAGEN: Hendrik Plenge Jacobson. DUBLIN: Maurice O’Connell. ESSEN: Jitka Hanzlová. FRANKFURT: Tobias Rehberger, Tamara Grcic. GHENT: Patrick Van Caeckenbergh. GLASGOW: Tracy Mackenna, Douglas Gordon. HELFENBERG: Bernhard Fuchs. HELSINKI: Tommi Grönlund / Petteri Nisunen. ISTANBUL: Ayse Erkmen, Hale Tenger. KIEV: Arsen Savadov / Yuri Senchenko. KRAKOW: Piotr Jaros. LISBON: Roger Meintjes, Entertainment & Co. LJUBLJANA: IRWIN, Tadej Pogacar The P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum. LONDON: Mat Collishaw, Sam Taylor-Wood, Siraj Izhar, Catherine Yass. MAASTRICHT: Suchan Kinoshita. MALAGA: Rogelio Lopez Cuenca. MILAN: Luca Quartana. MOSCOW: Vadim Fishkin, Oleg Kulik, Dmitri Gutov, Valeri Podoroga, Yuri Leiderman. OULU: Esko Männikkö. PARIS: Huang Yong Ping, Fabrice Hybert, Marie-Ange Guilleminot. PRAGUE: Pavel Kopriva. RANHEIM: Mette Tronvoll. REYKJAVIK: Olafur Eliasson. ROTTERDAM: NEsTWORK. SKOPJE: Robert Jankuloski. SOFIA: Nedko Solakov. STOCKHOLM: Carl Michael von Hausswolff.
TALLINN: Jaan Toomik. TEL AVIV: Uri Tzaig. VALENCIA: Paco Vacas. VIENNA: Martin Beck/ Mathias Poledna, Gerwald Rockenschaub. ZAGREB: Ivana Keser. ZÜRICH: Susann Walder. NEW YORK: Rirkrit Tiravanija, Douglas Gordon. JERSEY CITY: Joseph Grigely. SEOUL: Soo-Ja Kim, Koo Jeong-a. SYDNEY: Kathy Temin. STRÁÑAVY: Roman Ondák.

Institutions: Kunsthal Rotterdam, Natural History Museum Rotterdam. Netherlands Architecture Institute, Chabot Museum., Villa Museumpark 9., Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam Center for the Arts, V2_0rganisation, Institute for the Unstable Media, Nederlands Foto Instituut, Witte de With, center for contemporary art, The Policegallery, Maritime Museum ‘Prins Hendrik’ Rotterdam.

Manifesta is a pan-European event, which aims to be open, fresh and ‘alternative’. Through publications, seminars, workshops and a massive exhibition it will serve as a stimulus to the free exchange of people, ideas and works of art.

The aims of Manifesta:

Manifesta will encourage reflection on a wide range of cultural, philosophical, political, historical and social issues relating to contemporary art in Europe.
Through its charter and its organisational structure it will maintain the maximum independence from political, commercial and sectarian influences.

Its Committee of Honour, International Board, Advisory Board and National Committee guarantee both independence and organisational continuity.
Independent curatorial teams will be appointed for specific projects and fixed terms of office only. This means that successive editions of Manifesta´s biennial exhibition of young and emerging artists will vary in curatorial and thematic approach.
The European Art Manifestation Foundation which organises Manifesta will work with all organisations and individuals willing to collaborate without prejudice or precondition, but will question established notions (aesthetic or otherwise).
It will have no part in organising prizes or competitions or supporting national rivalries. Manifesta aims to transgress the existing regional, social, linguistic and economic barriers in Europe.

It will give wider currency to fringe areas of European culture and place the artist at the heart of a continuing dialogue with curators, critics and a wider public. In this way, and through demonstrating the pluralism of contemporary art and its openness to contemporary realities, Manifesta will exemplify the important role that young artists can play in helping to make the new Europe a more exciting and culturally diverse place in which to live.

Statement of the Advisory Board of MANIFESTA, Summer 1994.

The inner dynamics of Manifesta:

Manifesta is not only an art show. The exhibition MANIFESTA I in Rotterdam in the summer of 1996, will be the climax to an intensive dialogue about new developments in the visual arts and will represent the first fruit of a new type of collaboration. Manifesta is a biennial event. It must have the ability to reinvent itself for each new edition. Subsequent events will takeplace in different regions of Europe. However, it is intended that a permanent administrative base for Manifesta should be established in the Netherlands, as a means of ensuring organisational continuity. For the necessary flow of information we use the most effective means of modern communication: Electronic Mail, access to the Internet and Multimedia data carriers such as CD-ROM.

Open Houses have been held in:

* CAC-Moscow
* Ludwig Museum Budapest
* Moderna Museet Stockholm
* De Unie Rotterdam
* De Beurs Amsterdam
* Soros Center for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana

http://www.manifesta.org/manifesta1/index.html

La entrada MANIFESTA I, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 1996 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.