The exhibition, rather ironically named Choose Choice,
transcends a purely political discourse. The varying backgrounds of the
invited artists, Belgian and international, guarantee that. Some of
them move in the field of the visual arts, photography or experimental
video, others operate as journalists, sound technicians and sound
artists. What connects the five of them is their critical use of the
medium they work in. Averse from the stream of audiovisual mass media
that erode the political discourse to near polemic propaganda, their
work dares take a purely personal stance. Emotions of discord, concern,
anger, fear or resignation cast forward the shadows of what Belgium
will be like after 8 October 2006.

However, the story of the exhibition also wants to work on a universal
level. The works draw parallels with the Netherlands and the Dutch snap
elections of November 2006, or they merge with the abstract register of
it; on the level of considering, selecting, hesitating and… the final
choice.
Participating artists:
Harald Thys and Jos De Gruyter – visual artists, Brussels
Bojan Frajic – visual artist and political sound activist, Belgrade & Amsterdam
Johan Vandermaelen – sound technician and sound artist, Aaigem
Stefaan Quix – musician and media artist, Brussels
Maria Tarantino – journalist, Milano & Brussels

The elections live on Sunday 08.10.06 at 20h00
de Brakke Grond and Cool Politics spare
no expense on the evening of the elections with a real election show,
in the best TV tradition, let’s say. Only better, faster, and harder.
Flemish and Dutch artists and politicians enter into a debate, VJ’s and
DJ’s comment, and you will be activating your brains, livers and legs
all at the same time.

Throughout the run of the exhibition, Bill Jeffries will give lunchtime talks and tours on the following days:
September 12 at 12:05
September 13 at 12:35
September 27 at 12:35
September 28 at 1:05

From September 3 to November 12, 2006, KW Institute for Contemporary Art presents the exhibition No Matter How Bright the Light, the Crossing Occurs at Night,
an exhibtion in collaboration with the Berlin artists Natascha Sadr
Haghighian, Judith Hopf/Deborah Schamoni, and Ines Schaber, curated by
Anselm Franke. We would like to cordially invite you to the opening on
Saturday, September 2, 2006, 5 – 9 pm.

This collaboratively developed exhibition features works by Natascha
Sadr Haghighian, Judith Hopf/Deborah Schamoni, and Ines Schaber, all
addressing themselves to various aspects of the spectral. It is less a
case of rendering specters visible than a question about the
circumstances of disappearance and invisibility – in other words, the
relationships brought forth by the specter, the withdrawal of the
status of reality, and the conditions for transformation: the spectral
destabilizes given relationships between real and unreal, present and
absent. No Matter How Bright the Light, the Crossing Occurs at Night is
also an exhibition about the specters of art: the phantom power to
represent all, mediation as conjuration and banishment, animated
bodies, subjective prostheses, and the “impossible” necessity of a
realism of the specter, a realism of absence.

Ines Schaber speculates on a latent activity within the photograph and
its ability to travel through space and time. Using photographs of
Pennsylvania workers as her base, she follows images from a series
taken for the National Child Labor Committee in the 1910s by Lewis
Hine, a pioneer of social documentary photography. These images become
the point of departure for a trip through today’s hardly recognizable
mining country landscape. There, stored in a former limestone mine,
exists one of today’s largest commercial image archives, Bill Gates’
firm Corbis,
which offers over 70 million images for sale online, including some
from Hine’s series. The overlap of these two moments poses questions
for photography as the agent of something that is able to travel,
multiply itself, appear in various places, and speak with its
surroundings.

Judith Hopf works with the specters of bourgeious society. How do the
attempt to control, the defense against pathological anxieties, and -
following from these – the ideology of complete transparency, inscribe
themselves on the body and on the faculty of imagination? Apart of her
installation, a new videowork, developed and realized with filmaker
Deborah Schamoni will be shown in the exhibition. The video deals with
the representation of specters in the institutional space. Therefore
they do not investigate the presence or absence of the spectral as
search for a usable ritual or codex of form that would make it possible
to assign places to specters as representatives of the repressed in
which they might yet remain visible.

Natascha Sadr Haghighian investigates with Stefan Pente in various
collaborations societal constructions of inclusion and exclusion. How
it is decided when someone will be granted member status in a
“civilized community”? When is someone perceived as present and
addressable through their voice, image, and concerns? How does one lose
this status and when is it withdrawn? In the consideration of various
societal dynamics and representation schemes, it becomes clear that the
construction of the status of the “person” and the associated rights
themselves produce exclusion. Who possesses this status and why do
others fall outside of it? If you are not a person, then what are you?
The mechanisms of presence and absence are questioned in conversations
and installations.

Along with the exhibition will appear a 220-page reader from the
publishing house of Walther König, Köln, with contributions and
dialogues by and with Ines Schaber, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Stefan
Pente, and Judith Hopf, as well as Avery F. Gordon, Anselm Franke,
Nicolas Siepen, Sladja Blazan, Thomas Keenan, and Michael Taussig.

Curated by Anselm Franke.

The exhibition was made possible by the support of the Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Berlin.

Parallel exhibitions at KW:

JEN DENIKE
Photographic and video-based works by the young American artist Jen
DeNike will be presented from September 3 to November 12, 2006 at KW
Institute for Contemporary Art. Jen DeNike’s photos and videos are both
portraits and stereotypes, addressing essential themes like individual
and society, role models and social control, cult and obsession as well
as their physical, sexual, and sometimes also aggressive forms of
expression. In her most recent work the artist looks at stereotyped
behaviours among American adolescents – at the typical and familiar
rituals and power play, at the elements of theatricality, rivalry and
aggression implicit in them and also at what lies behind, namely, the
aesthetics, eroticism and occasional ruthlessness and cruelty of
adolescent fantasy worlds.

MIKA ROTTENBERG
Like Jen DeNike and Aaron Young, Mika Rottenberg belongs to a young and
vibrant New York art scene that is gaining increasing international
attention. Her video installations reflect and comment on global themes
like cultural identity, economy and work in the postindustrial,
globalized age, all in a curious and absurd manner. Her most recent
work Dough (2005/06)
departs from film in real space and depicts a perpetual dough-making
machine operated by a female workforce in beige uniforms who, through
various physical idiosyncrasies and the incorporation of diverse body
functions, become a direct part of the grotesque circle of production.
A claustrophobic situation is produced, which acts like the center of
an uncanny but terribly familiar universe.

AARON YOUNG
From September 2 on, KW will present a site-specific project by the
young American artist Aaron Young. In his performances, videos, and
sculptures, Young replicates social situations in public space, whose
outcomes he himself often cannot control. For Berlin, he will realize a
work entitled “IPO” (25 offerings) (2006).

We would like to thank the Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf, for their generous support.

Opening: Saturday, September 2, 2006, 5 – 9 pm
Dates: September 3 – November 12, 2006
Opening Hours: Tue – Sun 12 – 7 pm, Thur 12 – 9 pm

KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Auguststr. 69
10117 Berlin

http://www.kw-berlin.de

Biennial exhibitions are habitually criticised for spectacularising the
presentation of art. However, in recent years the proliferation of
Biennials has yielded different models that distinguish themselves
notably in their relation to place. Where on the one hand this
multiplication follows the logic of globalised capital on the other a
revaluation of our relation to the global has generated renewed
attention to the local situations and translocal existencies. In
addition new alliances between art, science and fe. ngo’s, cunning,
trickery and ruses displace rugged nostalgia for oppositionality.
Arguably some Biennials have contributed to the creation of new public
spheres and a meaningful critique therefore needs to be precise about
the ways in which the relation between the local and global is
constituted. How does this new generation of Biennials fare?

Arguably some Biennials have contributed to the creation of new public
spheres in their localities. Is it possible to square demands of city
marketing and cultural tourism with an engagement with issues of
citizenship, communities, dissensus and denizens? How can we constitute
a bifocal perspective allowing us to examine the visual regime of
capitalist consumption and the immanent meaning of art and social
practices at the same time?

City Breaks? takes place over four days (the length of a ‘city
break’), starting on the Thursday evening with an evening lecture, and
followed by morning panels and afternoon workshops, in which thinking
and doing enacts both local and international dimensions.

With:
Ackbar Abbas, Cecilia Andersson/Work Ltd, Christian Nolde/ Biomapping,
Claire Bishop, John Byrne, Nina Edge, Charles Esche, Flying City,
Beatriz Garcia, Jonathan Harris+Felipe Hernandez/CAVA, Pablo Helguera/
The School Pan-American Unrest, Manray Hsu, Gerardo Mosquera, Amalia
Pica, Jean Francois Prost, Sala-manca, Stealth Unlimited, Paul
Sullivan/Static, Ti-Nan Chi, Stephen Wright, George Yudice, a.o.

Ticket information and booking:
Tel: +44 (0)151 709 7444
Fax: +44 (0)151 7097377
Email: claireraffo@biennial.com

Liverpool Biennial
16 September – 26 November 2006

http://www.biennial.com

Curated by Annette Kierulf and Mark Sladen

“Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better.” is the central exhibition of
Momentum 2006, the Nordic festival of contemporary art held in Moss in
Norway. The exhibition includes 31 artists and artists’ groups from
across northern Europe, and the majority of the works have been made
especially for Moss. Many of them touch on the theme of absurdity – as
reflected in the title of the exhibition, which comes from the writer
Samuel Beckett.

The town of Moss is famous for its smell, derived from a paper factory,
and Tue Greenfort has created a work in which he uses a byproduct of
this factory to make ice cream. Many ex-industrial spaces in Moss are
being re-developed, but Lara Almárcegui’s work moves in the opposite
direction, preserving a piece of wasteland for a year. Ragnar
Kjartansson is creating an ongoing performance in an old barn on the
edge of town, acting out the life of a stereotypically miserable
Scandinavian male. And in a reversal of the usual model for
site-responsive works, Phil Collins has travelled to Kenya to create a
bittersweet account of Norwegian aid projects in the country.

In its previous incarnations Momentum has been a festival of emerging
Nordic artists, but in 2006 the event has been expanded to include a
wider range of participants. The main exhibition is divided between the
Moss Brewery, the long-established Gallery F15, and a number of outdoor
sites. The festival also includes a number of independent projects and
events.

Independent projects

“Regarding Others”
Amar Kanwar / Johanna Domke / Nanna Debois Buhl / Sergey Bratkov /
Christina David / Katja Høst / Astrid Skumsrud Johansen /Tova Mozard /
Marius Mørch/ Charlotte Thiis-Evensen / Ulrik Weck
For this film programme artist and journalist Charlotte Thiis-Evensen
has brought together a selection of works employing documentary
strategies.

“Imagine the Universe Burst into Song”
Bård Ask / Martin Skauen / Sofie Berntsen / Eline McGeorge / Christian Hoel Schønhaug / Lars Monrad Vaage / Tone Kristin Bjordam
This group exhibition, curated by Ida Kierulf and Helga Marie Nordby,
presents seven young Norwegian artists whose work demonstrates a
longing for the romantic.

“Domestic Affairs”
Lene Ask / Francisca Benitez / Zachary Fabri / Mai Hofstad Gunnes / Jesper Nordahl / Julika Rudelius
The artist-led Project 0047 presents an exhibition of six artists who explore the relationship between self and other.

“Torpedo and Aipotu”
The artists’ collective aiPotu and the art bookshop Torpedo launch the
aiPotu Travel guide – a book based on meetings that occurred during
aiPotu’s travel projects.

“Momentum, what now? / Culture Channel”
Jon Løvøen
For this video piece artist Jon Løvøen invited figures in the Norwegian
art scene to participate in his satirical debate forum, Culture Channel.

The festival programme is curated by Ole Slyngstadli.

Further information

For press enquiries contact Ragna Kronstad, Head of Communications
(+ 47 93 49 74 25 / rk@momentum.no)

For other information see http://www.momentum.no