Artipedia - Arts News

1st Athens Biennial 2007

1st Athens Biennial 2007
DESTROY ATHENS

10th September - 18th November
Preview: 9th September
Technopolis, Athens
http://www.athensbiennial.org

DESTROY ATHENS

Destroy Athens, curated by Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Poka-Yio and Augustine Zenakos, is an attempt to challenge the ways in which identities and behaviours are determined through stereotypical descriptions. The notion of ‘Athens’ - as the archetypal city that has become emblematic in terms of stereotypes - is used as a metaphor for this feeling of extra-determination or entrapment that the stereotype inflicts upon the personal sense of identity and social behaviour. Destroy Athens aims to function as a progression through various themes - elements will contradict, collide or cancel-out each other constantly. Successive realizations and disillusionments will make up a fragmented acknowledgement of a dead-end, a kind of ‘world’, a dystopic environment of conceptual Waste Lands.

Architectural interventions by Gruppo A12 will challenge and modify the intricate spaces of Technopolis, the main venue, to create new possibilities of perception and determine the viewers’ progression through the various themes of the exhibition.

Artists (as in 30th May 2007): Adbusters, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Aidas Bareikis, Marc Bijl, John Bock, Olaf Breuning, Kimberly Clark, Annelise Coste, Kajsa Dahlberg, Peter Dreher, The Erasers, Chris Evans, Stelios Faitakis, Jan Freuchen, HobbypopMUSEUM, Narve Hovdenakk, Derek Jarman, Folkert de Jong, Vassilis Karouk, Omer Ali Kazma, John Kleckner, Terence Koh, Edward Lipski, Lotte Konow Lund, Mark Manders, Bjarne Melgaard, Ciprian Muresan, Eleni Mylonas, Olaf Nicolai, The Otolith Group, Erkan Ozgen, Torbjorn Rodland, Julian Rosefeldt, Georgia Sagri, Yorgos Sapountzis, Yiannis Savvidis, Santiago Sierra, Martin Skauen, Eva Stephani, Temporary Services, Thanassis Totsikas, Stephanos Tsivopoulos, Jannis Varelas, Void Network, Eva Vretzaki, Bernhard Willhelm

DESTROY ATHENS — APPENDIX

The 1st Athens Biennial includes parallel exhibitions and events, closely related to the theme of the main exhibition Destroy Athens. These will run throughout the duration of the main exhibition and will be presented in the surrounding area of Metaxourgeio.

How to endure

The exhibition How to endure, curated by Tom Morton, borrows from the idea of magic where rituals have two actions, that is to change the world and at the same time to keep it as it is. The exhibition aims to move away from the binary notion that preservation is conservative and change is progressive and explore what that move might change in the way we perceive the city and ourselves.

Artists: Charles Avery, Miguel Calderon, Allen Ginsberg, Loris Greaud, Roger Hiorns, Matthew Day Jackson, Germaine Kruip, Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely, Olivia Plender, Maaike Schoorel

Young Athenians

The exhibition Young Athenians, curated by Neil Mulholland & Deborah Jackson, presents a group of artists that live and work in Edinburgh. The title forms an ironic reference to the infamous cliché of Edinburgh as the Athens of the North. This — unrealistic — relation of the two cities is used by the artists as a vehicle of commenting on the urban environment they live in.

Artists: Tam A, Kim Coleman, Craig Coulthard, Keith Farquhar, Tommy Grace, Jenny Hogarth, Darius Jones, David MacLean, John Mullen, Ellen Munro, One O’Clock Gun, Lee O’Connor, Katie Orton, Kate Owens, Sophie Rogers, Robin Scott, Cathy Stafford, Lucy Mackenzie, Alastair Fairweather.

DESTROY ATHENS — FILM

The Screening Program, curated by Florian Wuest, will present short films and video art, and will include fiction, documentaries and experimental cinematic exercise. Film screenings will also be presented as part of the International Athens Film Festival.

DESTROY ATHENS –- LIVE

Music Events will take place indoors and outdoors in Technopolis and the area of Metaxourgeio, and will include concerts, DJ sets, experimental performances with custom-made software as well as audiovisual events.

Main Sponsor: Deutsche Bank
Under the Aegis of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and the Municipality of Athens

With the collaboration of Technopolis
Sponsors: Athenaeum Intercontinental Hotel | Netsmart S.A.
Media Sponsors: To Vima | Athens Voice | Velvet Magazine | Athina 9.84FM | e-flux | go.culture.eu

With the support of: OCA | IFA | The J. F. Costopoulos Foundation | Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Atene | NIA | Spanish Embassy in Athens | Cervantes Institute | British Council | The Friends of the Athens Biennial

http://www.athensbiennial.org

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

de Appel arts centre

Solo exhibition:
Jonathan Meese
Jonathan Rockford (don’t call me back, please)
26 May - 19 August 2007

de Appel arts centre
Nieuwe Spiegelstraat 10
1017 DE Amsterdam
tel: +3120 625 5651
fax: +3120 622 5215
http://www.deappel.nl
info@deappel.nl
Open: Tuesday - Sunday 11am-6pm

‘In the work of Jonathan Meese everything is Everything and everything is Nothing’, according to art historian Friedrich Meschede. Jonathan Meese (Tokyo 1970), an ‘inventor of idols’ who lives and works in Berlin and Hamburg, has installed in de Appel a contemporary ‘site-specific’ Wunderkammer with paintings, murals, drawings, assemblages, objects, collages, photos, pictures from magazines, posters and painted texts on the walls.

Jonathan Meese is one of German art’s rising stars, who through his radical way of working, ambitious themes and heavy symbolism has caused quite a stir since he graduated from the Hamburg-based Hochschule für Bildende Künsten in 1998. His work is based on an almost nineteenth century early romantic attitude to art: it is the mission of the artist to serve ‘die Sache Kunst’. This has generated an oeuvre that presents an eccentric universe filled with personal obsessions and bizarre fantasies: art with a grand gesture that depicts visions and appeals to universal sentiments. With his eclectic mix of mythology, history and pop culture, Meese alludes to major upheavals in Western political, art-historical and cultural history. He does not shy from pathos or bombast and refers repeatedly to his personal (notorious) ‘heroes’ that range from dictators and Hollywood stars to philosophers and musicians. Noel Coward and Ezra Pound, Marquis de Sade and Dorian Gray, Stalin and
Nero, Wagner and Napoleon, or Nietzsche and even Meese’s own mother populate his chaotically visualized world of ideas. The installations in de Appel bear witness to Meese’s interest in ‘imposing’ themes like fallen heroes, the cycle of life, and the opposing forces of good and evil.

An intrinsic part of Meese’s artistic practice is his much discussed performances. Since a few years, Meese also dares to venture outside the domains of visual art by collaborating with theatre makers and pursuing his own theatrical projects. After designing the stage décors for ‘Die Meistersänger’ and ‘Kokain’ by the German director Frank Castorf, his own theatre production ‘De frau - Dr Pounddadylein’ was premiered at the Berlin Volksbühne in January 2007. During the opening of the exhibition in de Appel, on May 25th 2007, Jonathan Meese held a memorable performance, the fruits of which are to be seen in the present installation.

For more information go to: http://www.deappel.nl

Manchester International Festival & Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris

IL TEMPO DEL POSTINO –
A GROUP SHOW
Manchester International Festival Reveals Leading Visual Artists to Participate in Time-Based Commission

Opera House, Manchester
12-14 July 2007
http://www.manchesterinternationalfestival.com

A co-commission between Manchester International Festival and Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris.

The question becomes… what if having an exhibition is not a way to occupy space, but a way to occupy time…?

Names have been revealed for Il Tempo del Postino – A Group Show, the main visual arts commission for the forthcoming Manchester International Festival.

Co-curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno and directed by Philippe Parreno, Il Tempo del Postino – Group Show will showcase a group of the world’s leading visual artists, comprising Doug Aitken, Matthew Barney and Jonathan Bepler, Tacita Dean, Trisha Donnelly, Olafur Eliasson, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Carsten Höller, Pierre Huyghe, Koo Jeong-A, Anri Sala, Tino Sehgal and Rirkrit Tiravanija, with Darius Khondji and Peter Saville who will create a major new experimental time-based group show at the Opera House, Manchester, with the stage assuming the role of the gallery space.

The world premiere and exclusive three UK performances provide the culmination of three years of planning by co-curators Obrist, Parreno and Manchester International Festival.

With up to 15 minutes of ‘exhibition time’, each artist is creating their own distinctive work - inviting guest performing artists, specially commissioned music - but none using film or video - to create this new form of group show.

By focusing on time-based work, this group show aims to redefine how visual arts can be experienced. Set in a theatre, it transforms the established gallery model into an exhilarating, shared audience experience.

The final production will be created collaboratively with all participating artists feeding into the overall structure, assisted by a creative team of experienced theatre practitioners and technicians.

Manchester International Festival further strengthens its association with leading European opera house, Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, in this second co-commission, following Monkey: Journey to the West. Il Tempo del Postino opens in Paris in February 2008.

“Manchester International Festival is driven by innovation – bringing new ideas and experiences for both the people of Manchester and beyond,” comments Festival Director, Alex Poots. “Il Tempo del Postino – A Group Show cements this ambition, delivering a thought-provoking new visual art event by some of the most famous visual artists alive.”

“The title of the piece relates to my notion of ‘postman time’, and the idea that this exhibition is delivered to the audience rather than the audience walking through it in their own time,” comments Philippe Parreno. “Each episode in the final performance is in some way triggered by the delivery of a new idea from one of the participating artists. We have chosen Italian as it is the language of opera.”

Hans Ulrich Obrist adds, “One of the things that Philippe and I have been discussing since we met each other is what would happen if you have a group show exhibition where each artist would not get space, but each artist would get time? And so that is the point of departure. And through a dialogue with Manchester International Festival – where everything is new – there was a possibility for the first time to actually realise this.”

Tickets are now on sale to the general public.
Opera House, Manchester
12-14 July 2007
http://www.manchesterinternationalfestival.com

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