Artipedia - Arts News

Grand Tour

Welcome to the Grand Tour 2007

The 52nd International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia

Art 38 Basel

documenta 12

skulptur projekte münster 07

are pleased to invite you to the Grand Tour of the 21st century

http://www.grandtour2007.com
contact@grandtour2007.com

Welcome to the Grand Tour of the 21st Century

Once every ten years there is a very special constellation for all those interested in art: three of the major exhibitions of contemporary art and one of the leading art fairs in the world are all held in the same summer. In June 2007 the 52nd International Art Exhibition of the Biennale di Venezia ( http://www.labiennale.org ), Art 38 Basel ( http://www.artbasel.com ), documenta 12 ( http://www.documenta.de ) and skulptur projekte münster 07 ( http://www.skulptur-projekte.de ) are all opening in quick succession – providing an ideal opportunity for an art excursion right through Europe in the summer of 2007.

In a number of meetings held between the four institutions since 2006 to discuss this opportunity, a dialogue began for the first time about the institutions’ respective organisational structures and working methods. This exchange produced a number of ideas for communicating this special summer of art and, above all, the Grand Tour 2007 initiative.

The Grand Tour 2007 initiative aims to inspire visitors to attend the three exhibitions that are held every two, five and ten years in Venice, Kassel and Münster, as well as the annual art fair in Basel , and to make the planning of their trip as simple and stress-free as possible.

The shared online platform http://www.grandtour2007.com – an allusion to the tradition of the classical European educational tours undertaken in the 18th and 19th centuries, with a preference for destinations in Italy – provides basic information and services for all visitors, for the art tourist as much as for the art professional. The service is to make planning an individual route through the summer of art 2007 a more simple process, both for the previews in June and for the exhibitions open to the public in Venice, Kassel and Münster throughout the summer months and into the autumn.

The http://www.grandtour2007.com website integrates various web portals, and provides art tourists with invaluable support in the organisation of their trip and in booking flights, hotels or shuttle services.

The four partners will communicate the idea of the Grand Tour 2007 outside Europe in particular, too, in Asia, in Africa, in Latin and North America and in the Near East in order to win an international audience from all over the world for this art tour through Europe – an opportunity that only arises once every ten years.

For more information go to: http://www.grandtour2007.com

VIDEONALE 11

VIDEONALE 11 - Festival of Contemporary Video Art
Exhibition in the Kunstmuseum Bonn from 15 March to 15 April 2007

Red, erotic, carnal, halfway between glamour and cannibalism: this is how the mouth with its impeccable white teeth filling the screen of the monitor shows itself. This work by video artist Lia Anna Hennig is one of the 48 exhibits presented at the VIDEONALE in the Kunstmuseum Bonn. Besides the latest video creations by artists such as Jeanne Faust, Christoph Girardet or Mischa Kuball, the exhibition also presents works by young artists like the Japanese Hideyuki Tanaka, who shows the strange rites surrounding a godlike figure called Jappy.

"We want to show the whole spectrum of video art today. Above all, we are interested in the appeal of the contemporary", says Georg Elben, curator of VIDEONALE 11.

HIGH-PROFILE JURY

The five-strong preliminary jury chose 48 works from the more than 600 submitted which the VIDEONALE 11 now presents at the Kunstmuseum Bonn. From these works the final jury will choose the winner of the VIDEONALE PRIZE worth 5.000 euros. This jury consists of media artist Candice Breitz from Berlin, Rudolf Frieling, curator of media arts at SF MOMA, and Susanne Titz, director of the Moenchengladbach Abteiberg Museum.

FESTIVAL PROGRAMME: Thursday, 15 March – Sunday, 18 March

Workshops, lectures by experts and artistic statements: The supporting programme of the VIDEONALE 11 deals with theoretical and practical aspects of video art. For details see http://www.videonale.org

EXHIBITION DESIGN: FULFILLING FUNCTIONAL AND AESTHETIC REQUIREMENTS

“Our aim is to present video art in an authoritative exhibition in a museum. One of the things the VIDEONALE allows us to do is to find and explore adequate forms of presentation for the particular reception requirements of video art”, says Georg Elben. The challenge was to avoid the video works overlapping each other visually and acoustically, and to steer clear of small, darkened rooms – the so-called black box.

The design by Frank Leuwer, Muna Sawas and Anke Rohlfing solved the problem by interleaving three different forms of presentation and by grouping together the works with heterogeneous content by means of identical framing. Plain cubes in black and white determine the appearance of the exhibition space. A symbolic power cord in the shape of a silver-coloured pipe system traverses all exhibition elements, guides the visitor and contains part of the wiring.

Visitors sit down on benches inside boxes resembling beach chairs and watch the video works on the back of the “beach chairs” in front. The second component consists of sound bonnets with small, integrated loudspeakers, which visitors can adjust to fit their individual height. A row of monitors with headphones is used as the third form of presentation, predominantly with those works where the visitor is meant to be isolated in order to focus on quiet, subtle sounds.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: VIDEOVOICES

As an alternative to the conventional guided tours the VIDEONALE 11 introduces art in direct conversations with the help of the so-called VIDEOVOICES: art history students who have studied the contents of the VIDEONALE and who will present art in a personal dialogue.

THE STORY OF VIDEONALE 11

VIDEONALE has "… for the past 20 years had the advantage, as a quasi-film-festival for Video Art, of being able to map the current state of filmic development. This accounts for its function as an aesthetic indicator." (K.WEST)

The Videonale e.V. - founded in Bonn in 1984 - is the organiser of one of the oldest Video Festivals in the world. The festival has grown continually and since 2004 been able to use the premises of the Kunstmuseum Bonn.

SPONSORS

VIDEONALE 11 is sponsored by the Federal Cultural Foundation, the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Arts Foundation NRW, the City of Bonn, Stiftung Kunst der Sparkasse in Bonn and the KfW Bankengruppe as principal sponsor.

For more information go to: http://www.videonale.org

PERFORMA07

PERFORMA07
The Second Biennial of New Visual Art Performance
November 1-20, 2007

PERFORMA07, the second biennial of new visual art performance, will take place in New York City from November 1-20, 2007. As with PERFORMA05, New York’s first performance biennial, PERFORMA07 will bring together more than twenty of the city’s leading cultural institutions to present live work in all disciplines by visual artists from around the world. Performance has always been an important catalyst in the history of twentieth-century art, and the PERFORMA Biennial recognizes its vital and ongoing impact on contemporary art and culture and provides opportunities for both established and emerging artists to present new performance for the twenty-first century.

PERFORMA07 will transform the city during its three-week run with a schedule of performances, screenings, symposia, exhibitions and other events at more than twenty venues across the city. New programs this year will include the launch of PERFORMA Publications, PERFORMA late night Hot Spots, a Writing Live blog, and a pilot Apprenticeship Program in Arts Production for young people, ages 18-23. Dance After Choreography, a special series of programs, will examine the influence of the Judson Dance Theater’s groundbreaking interdisciplinary activities in 1960s and 70s New York on contemporary French performance. PERFORMA will also present the thirteenth annual international conference of Performance Studies International in conjunction with New York University. Bringing together writers, artists, curators, and fans of live visual art in its many forms, PERFORMA07 will not only spark cross-disciplinary conversations, but will also build a community of people dedicated to maintai
ning New York’s extraordinarily rich heritage of radical performance and to nurturing new work for the future.

PERFORMA COMMISSIONS FOR PERFORMA07
The PERFORMA Commissions program originates new productions and supports artists in the creation of exceptional performances. PERFORMA works closely with commissioned artists from conceptualization to presentation, including international touring following the PERFORMA Biennial. PERFORMA is pleased to announce Isaac Julien, Yvonnne Rainer, Francesco Vezzoli, and Daria Martin as the first recipients of PERFORMA Commissions for PERFORMA07. Additional commissions will be announced in May.

PERFORMA07 Consortium presenters include (list in formation): Anthology Film Archives, Art in General, Artists Space, Asia Society, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Dance Theater Workshop, Eyebeam, The Kitchen, The Jewish Museum, Participant Inc., SculptureCenter, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Swiss Institute – Contemporary Art, White Box, White Columns and WPS1 Art Radio.

UPCOMING PROGRAMS:

NOT FOR SALE: FOREVER RADICAL? At New York University April 12, 2007
NOT FOR SALE: Forever Radical? will explore the notion of the term “radical” as it has been used in the past to describe live actions by artists intentionally penetrating broadly held values of the art economy and the institutions that maintain it. Moderated by RoseLee Goldberg, this panel will provide a platform for discussion by artists, curators, and writers whose work continues to probe and disrupt those values, even at a time when a buoyant art market quickly absorbs such strategies. NOT FOR SALE is an ongoing public education series presented with New York University.

FIRST PERFORMA BOOK AVAILABLE IN JUNE 2007
PERFORMA: New Visual Art Performance will feature extensive documentation of work by the 100 artists who made the first performance biennial so extraordinary. Photographs by Paula Court. With its coverage of each artist’s work, histories of the presenting venues, and overall characterization of the international performance scene today, PERFORMA will be both an invaluable reference to contemporary art and new media as well as a new kind of guide to cultural life in New York City. Advance copies of PERFORMA can be ordered by emailing publications@performa-arts.org

PERFORMA is a non-profit multidisciplinary arts organization dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of twentieth century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the twenty-first century. PERFORMA’s programs are supported by grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, The Foundation for Contemporary Art, The David & Elaine Potter Charitable Trust, the PERFORMA Producer’s Circle, and many generous individuals.

For further information please contact:
http://www.performa-arts.org
info@performa-arts.org
(212) 533-5720

For more information go to: http://www.performa-arts.org