Argos – Centre for Art & Media, Brussels

Argos announces two new exhibitions:

Clemens von Wedemeyer & Maya Schweizer: Films in Common

Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan: Monument of Sugar
Featuring: A Work of Lawrence Weiner, 1969

26 June – 8 September 2007
Argos – Centre for Art & Media
Werfstraat 13 Rue du Chantier
Brussels 1000 - Belgium
T: +32 2 2290003
E: info@argosarts.org
http://www.argosarts.org

Clemens von Wedemeyer’s films combine an awareness of social issues with an investigation of the multiplication of cinematic perspectives and the processes of filming in front of as well as behind the scenes. At Argos, Wedemeyer will present his film installation Otjesd as well as a joint work with artist Maya Schweizer entitled Metropolis, Report from China. The title of the exhibition Films in Common reflects the cooperative and social working processes which characterise the works on view.

Otjesd, which in Russian means departure, is a meditation both on migration but also the act of film making itself, based on a real scene Wedemeyer witnessed when he was in Moscow: Russians waiting in a queue outside the German embassy. In the unlikely setting of a wooded wasteland Wedemeyer stages a surreal scene which intimates the Kafkaesque struggle with border bureaucracy.

Together with Otjesd, Wedemeyer will also show The Making of Otjesd, which describes the process and research behind the making of the film and a series of photographs from the set.

In 2004 Clemens von Wedemeyer and Maya Schweizer travelled to China in order to research for an adaptation of the legendary 1927 feature film Metropolis by Fritz Lang. The film has not been re-made but the result of the artists’ investigations in Beijing and Shanghai is a documentary film entitled Metropolis, Report from China (2006). The film features the interviews conducted there, footage of the urban fabric, casting research and discussions with the workers and architects who are responsible for the building of the 21st century Chinese metropolis. It provides insight into growth of the Chinese mega-city, but also questions the implications of modernity, development and progress at all costs. At Argos the film will be shown alongside photographs and archival material the artists collected during their research in China.

For their first solo presentation in Belgium, the Dutch collaborative artist duo Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan will present Monument of Sugar, an installation consisting of a 16mm silent film essay and a floor sculpture. As with many of their projects this one also explores the intersection of social and political issues with artistic and aesthetic practices. Following the discovery that a large amount of European sugar ends up outside of Europe, the artists embarked on a research trip to investigate the European subsidized sugar trade which took them from Holland to Poland and finally to Lagos, Nigeria. They decided to reverse the flow of the subsidized commodity by buying European excess sugar cheaply in Nigeria and shipping it back to Europe. To elude the European trade barrier for sugar imports they would transport the sugar as a ‘monument’. The material result of their research, two groups of sugar modules, is shown together with a dialectical film essay which
charts the artists’ travels and investigations into the sugar trade. Slowly running titles narrate the obstacles faced by the artists in their quest to find out more about the sugar trade route as well as the difficulties encountered in the production of their ‘monument’. These running titles, or ‘Garamond landscapes’, as the artists call them, are intersected by documentary footage exploring, in long slow takes, hidden production landscapes of global trade, like crop fields, sugar refineries, flow-bands, harbours, and the different sites where the artists performed their drifting studio practice.

Monument of Sugar is shown together with a work by Lawrence Weiner from 1969. In agreement with the ideas of many conceptual artists who gained international recognition in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Weiner’s works challenges the myth of artistic authorship and undermines the ‘prestige’ of the artwork. His statements are lettered in a standard typeface, phrased with impersonalised syntax, and the lettering need not be done by the artist himself, as long as the work is executed according to the minimal instructions by the artist. In transferring 1000 euros worth of sugar from one continent to another, Van Brummelen and de Haan’s work seems to poignantly echo Weiner’s 1969 Statement.

Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan: Monument of Sugar has been made possible with the support of the Mondriaan Foundation

Argos general support: The Flemish Authorities, the Flemish Community Commission of the Brussels-Capital Region

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

The Power Plant

AUTO EMOTION: Autobiography, emotion and self-fashioning
18 May – 19 August, 2007

Marina Abramovic, Reza Afisina, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Sophie Calle, Andrea Fraser, Rodney Graham, Christian Jankowski, Yayoi Kusama, Nikki S. Lee, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer,
Matt Mullican, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Adrian Paci, Johannes Wohnseifer

Curated by Gregory Burke and
Helena Reckitt

Despite Conceptual Art’s disavowal of narrative and self-expression, a number of contemporary artists are mining autobiographical and biographical genres. Some artists have not hesitated to express deep feelings about the world, themselves and the artist’s role. Others have wrestled with questions of how to represent the self, sometimes trying to avoid clichés, at others deliberately appropriating them. Drawing inspiration from events in their own lives, and setting up situations that blur the division between art and life, several artists explore art’s potential for transformation and catharsis. ‘Auto Emotion’ includes works that carry an interest in the relationship between social conformism and autonomy, brain chemistry and emotion, automatic behavior and self determination, the fictional and the real.

Performance becomes self-portraiture in Official Welcome (2001) by Andrea Fraser, The Onion (1995) by Marina Abramovic, and during a hypnotized performance given by Matt Mullican. Canadian artist Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay represents the biographical in Live to Tell (2002) and Lyric (2004), where pop songs are represented as folklore both to tell his story, and to investigate notions of clichés as cultural truths. This element is taken into the therapist’s office for artist’s block experienced by Christian Jankowski in the pressure to make new work, or questioned as fictional elaborations of romantic partnerships by a master of disguises, Nikki S. Lee, exposing these states of perpetual flux within the varying personas. Adrian Paci’s Vajtojca (2002) shows the self in the cycle of birth and death, both as an Albanian, and as an artist, when he stages his own funeral and pays a professional mourner to weep for him.

This exhibition is a timely reflection on issues of the complexity of self-representation and deflection, within and outside the art institution as many of the artists in ‘Auto Emotion’ question the role of the artist in society.

1 – 17 June, 2007
PULSE FRONT: Relational Architecture 12

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Curated by Gregory Burke

In association with and linked to ‘Auto Emotion,’ The Power Plant presents ‘Pulse Front: Relational Architecture 12’, a new commission by Montreal-based artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. ‘Pulse Front’ features a matrix of light over The Power Plant and Harbourfront Centre, made with light beams from twenty of the world’s most powerful robotic searchlights. The installation is entirely controlled by sensors that measure the heart rates of passersby. Ten metal sculptures with embedded sensors and computers are placed along the harbour where they detect the pulses of people who hold them and convert them into light pulses. Computers also determine the orientation of the beams, recording changes in participants’ physical and emotional states. The resulting effect is a visualization of vital signs, arguably our most symbolic biometric, in an urban scale.

Lozano-Hemmer is an artist who relies on the public to create the work, and claims that he merely orchestrates the tools. While he has exhibited in over 48 countries, ‘Pulse Front’ is his first public interactive installation in Canada.

‘Pulse Front’ is commissioned by and premiered at Luminato, curated by The Power Plant and co-produced by Harbourfront Centre. Presented by TELUS.

The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery
231 Queens Quay West
Toronto ON Canada M5J 2G8
http://www.thepowerplant.org

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

Centre for Fine Arts | Palais des Beaux-Arts

YOUNG BELGIAN PAINTERS AWARD 2007
22.06 > 09.09.2007

Centre for Fine Arts | Palais des
Beaux-Arts, Brussels
Rue Ravensteinstraat 23
1000 Brussels, Belgium
http://www.bozar.be
info@bozar.be
+32 (0) 2 507 82 00
Admission Free

Since 1950 this competition has focused attention on young Belgian artists. “Young” means under 35 years of age; “Belgian” means based in Belgium; for a long time now, it has not been restricted to “Painters”. The competition is akin to the Turner Prize in the United Kingdom, the Prix Marcel Duchamp in France, and the Vincent in the Netherlands. Laureates such as Pierre Alechinsky, Ann Veronica Janssens, Hans Op de Beeck, and Christophe Terlinden indicate its international impact. All of those who have succeeded in convincing the extremely demanding jury are already winners. This year’s jury is made up of: Ann Demeester (De Appel, Amsterdam), Eva Gonzalez-Sancho (FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon), Stijn Huijts (Stedelijk Museum Het Domein, Sittard), Jérôme Sans (BALTIC, Gateshead), and Nicolaus Schafhausen (Witte De With, Rotterdam).

The seven candidates will produce for the occasion a new work that competes for the four awards: the Young Belgian Painters Award- Crowet (€ 25,000), the Young Belgian Painters Award-Emile and Stephy Langui (€ 12,500), the Centre for Fine Arts Award (€ 12,500), and the ING Award (€ 12,500).

For more information go to: http://www.bozar.be

Fundacio Antoni Tapies

SANJA IVEKOVIC.
GENERAL ALERT.
WORKS 1974-2007
31 May - 22 July, 2007
Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona

Curators: Natasa Ilic and
Kathrin Rhomberg

Organization: Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona; Göteborgs Konsthall, Göteborg; Kölnischer Kunstverein, Köln; and Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck

http://www.fundaciotapies.org

Sanja Ivekovic studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb from 1968 to 1971. There she began an artistic practice which was far removed from "official art" and the predominant tendencies in Yugoslavia at the time. In her work from the seventies and eighties she often used her own image and personal experiences as a woman and a citizen of an communist regime to show how the public, political and social spheres affect the construction of one’s own identity. Her work reveals a concept of identity as something complex and in constant evolution, constructed from the confluence of a host of dimensions and reciprocal influences between the public imaginary and personal notions. Dvostruki zivot (Double life, 1975) is a series of 66 pairs of photographs where snapshots from her personal album are placed side by side with images of women from women’s magazines, paired according to the similarity in their appearances, figures, accessories and situations. The emphasis on the
parallelism between the mass media and the private photographs blurs the distinction between original and copy, between model and representation, and invites us to think about the nature and origin of the stereotypes of femininity. Is it the mass media that appropriate expressions, poses and attitudes which are typical of female behaviour or is it women who, under the influence of those media constructs, have ended up adopting them? Ivekovic suggests the influence of the mass media in the shaping of feminine stereotypes and turns them into elements of identity.

In many of her works from the seventies, national symbols and representation of the state play an important part, but the core of interest is not communist dissidence but the relations between gender and power. Her stance was a politically committed one, not as ‘a battle against communist obscurantism and totalitarianism’ but as a struggle for the pursuit of self-fulfilment by individuals and culture. Trokut (Triangle, 1979), one of her most important performances, was developed during a visit to Zagreb by Josip Broz Tito, then president of Yugoslavia. Disobeying the official instructions what forbade the presence of people on the balconies of buildings while he was there, Ivekovic stepped out and simulated an act of masturbation, assuming that although she could not be seen from the street, the surveillance teams on the roofs would detect her presence. Moments later a policeman knocked on her door and ordered the balcony to be cleared of people and objects. With Trokut, she
exposed government repression, not only of the rights of women but also of freedom of speech in the Yugoslavia of the seventies.

During the eighties and nineties, as a reaction to the political and economic events of former Yugoslavia, Ivekovic’s art work took on a more marked political slant. It denotes a sharp awareness of the extent to which the media shape our understanding of the present and our perception of the past. She uses television programmes, magazines, advertisements and news items from the daily papers to structure a micropolitcal reading of history and affect the recovery of the collective memory. The video Osobni rezovi (Personal cuts, 1982) shows her with her face covered by a black stocking which she herself is cutting with a pair of scissors. Each ‘cut’ is followed by a short sequence from a historical documentary about Yugoslavia. The video ends when her face is completely uncovered. Gen XX is a work published in 1998 in the Croatian magazines Arkzin, Kruh i ruze and Zaposlena, all three products of the independent, alternative scene which led the criticism of nationalist politics
and culture in the nineties. The work consists of a series of textual interventions on photos from magazine advertisements. The women who appear in the photographs are fashion models who are known to the public. The images are accompanied by biographical details which correspond not to the models photographed but to women who had been officially proclaimed ‘national heroines’ in memory of their struggle against fascism in the Second World War and were well known figures for the generations that grew up in the socialist period of former Yugoslavia. Her mother, Nera Safaric, is represented in one photograph, taken two years before she was captured and sent to Auschwitz, where she was held until the country was liberated. For young Croats today, these ‘heroines’ are unknown women who have been erased from the collective memory. Throughout the nineties, with Croatian society influenced by the nationalist ideology, the war, the triumph of capitalism and the rediscovery of the market economy, the struggle against what was denounced as the cultural hegemony of the left officially accepted their antifascist legacy, although in fact it denied it by encouraging collective amnesia about the entire socialist era.

Since the early nineties Sanja Ivekovic has been an important figure in political activism and, through her participation in collective initiatives and public projects, has defended a critical concept of gender politics, undertaking a personal commitment to social issues such as violence against women. Zenska kuca (House of women) is a project in progress which she began in 1998 and has developed internationally in association with different reception centres for women who have been victims of domestic violence. At each centre she asks the women to tell their stories and makes plaster models of their faces. This work is expressed in different forms: texts, postcards, posters, lectures, video presentations, etc. It is also structured as an installation, which presents the moulds of the faces of each of the women accompanied by their respective personal histories. So far she has worked with reception centres in Zagreb, Luxembourg, Bangkok and Pristina (Kosovo).

Ivekovic, a conceptual artist, gives priority to the artistic concept and uses all kinds of techniques and media to formalise it. However, she shows an unusual capacity for putting her ideas into visual form and finding the right expression for each of them. In her artistic practice, a single idea often takes different shapes, changing from a performance to a video or an installation. She also uses different media to channel the ideas, often having recourse to infiltration strategies that enable her to go beyond the sphere of the museum and enter the mass media. Whether through the political and social content or the reflection on gender politics, her work turns a critical eye to the traditional power structures and analyses the relations between gender and power, constructing an artistic practice that has an unprecedented impact on the contemporary aesthetic and ideological debate and is always linked to a constant quest for human emancipation.

Press Department: Alexandra Laudo
(Tel.: 934 870 315 / Fax: 934 870 009 / press@ftapies.com / http://www.fundaciotapies.org)

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

Götenborgs Konsthall

Painting, Space & Society
20 June – 5 August 2007

GÖTEBORGS KONSTHALL
Götaplatsen, SE-412 56
Göteborg
tel +46 31 61 50 40
fax +46 31 61 50 43
http://www.konsthallen.goteborg.se

Participating artists:
Birgir S. Birgisson (Iceland), Gardar Eide Einarsson (Norway), Jens Fänge (Sweden), Jukka Korkeila (Finland), Elina Merenmies (Finland) & Fie Norsker (Denmark)
Curators: Mika Hannula & Göteborgs Konsthall

Contemporary art is constantly up for discussion and in the process different positions are drawn up. Typical contrasting positions are those between the immediate, expressive or symbolic on one side and the analytical, reflexive and more conceptual on the other. This discussion is perhaps especially evident in the context of painting. Differing approaches and values are dependent on point of view. Some will stress the accessible and recognizable qualities possessed by expressive and figurative art while others point to the critical qualities within painting which are the fruit of a more conceptual or social methodology.

One of the underlying causes behind the ongoing discussion is our relationship towards visuality and the role and function it is ascribed in society today. It has to do with how we relate to ourselves and our surroundings: the constant contrasts of give and take, push and pull, hide and seek, contact and isolation. There is thus far more at stake than just marking a position. Our relation to the visual has to be regarded in a broader perspective and seen in terms of developments in society and our awareness of time and space. This exploration of the critical consequences of the visual can be seen as an axis that Painting, Space & Society evolves around.

Painting, Space & Society is the first of two exhibitions to be held at the Göteborgs Konsthall in which the focus is on painting, visuality and society. The exhibitions will display clear divergences in expression and content – both individually and in combination – and in this way present some of the manifold variation within contemporary painting.

The second of the two exhibitions will take place in summer 2008. The collective title for the whole project is A Good Idea. The idea is to focus on the chances, demands and potentialities of contemporary painting as a vehicle for thinking thoughts and sharing experiences. The aim of the project is not to gaze backwards or to predict the future of this particular medium. Instead, with the two intertwined exhibitions, the task is to generate a space in which each separate work can stand out and challenge our perceptions, our sense of space and our view of the society we live in.

Linked to the project A Good Idea two workshops are conducted in collaboration with Valand School of Fine Arts in autumn 2007 and spring 2008. Through a range of initiatives and forums within the project the intention is to present and make possible an exchange of thoughts and experiences as well as to critically discuss the potentials of painting.

Exhibition opening:
Wednesday 20 June, 16.00-21.00.
16.00-17.30 Talk to me (like lovers do) - panel discussion with the participating artists on the subject of contemporary Nordic painting. The discussion will be in English.

18.00 Presentation of the exhibition by Lene Crone Jensen, director of the Konsthall, and its formal opening by Mika Hannula, Professor at the Kuvataideakatemia, Helsinki, and the Department of Fine Arts, Valand, Göteborg.

18.15-21.00 Music and mingling. D.J.s: Demonika and Mika Hannula.

Opening hours
Tuesdays and Thursdays 11-18
Wednesdays 11-20
Friday-Sunday 11-17

Entrance free

Guided tours
Guided tours covering different aspects of the exhibition take place
On Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays

Exhibition production
Mika Hannula and Göteborgs Konsthall

Art works
The artists respectively

The exhibition is supported by
the Nordic Culture Fund & FRAME Finnish Fund for Art Exchange

Our thanks to
Hämeenlinna Art Museum
Heino Collection
JKS a/s
Galleri Nils Stærk
Mogadishni
Christian Larsen AB
Malmö Art Museum
and not least all the private lenders

For more information go to: http://www.konsthallen.goteborg.se

CCS Bard Hessel Museum

Martin Creed: FEELINGS
July 7- September 16, 2007
Opening: Saturday, July 7,
5:00- 7:30 pm

Performance with Martin Creed
and His Band
Saturday, July 7, 8:30 pm
SummerScape 2007 Spiegeltent
For tickets: 845-758-7900

Martin Creed: FEELINGS

This summer, the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) presents Feelings, the first North American survey of the work of British artist Martin Creed. Curated by CCS Bard curator-in-residence Trevor Smith, Feelings includes a comprehensive survey of Creed’s work in the CCS Galleries as well as an installation of his works alongside the permanent collection in the recently opened Hessel Museum of Art.

Feelings ranges from the earliest work in Creed’s oeuvre, Work No. 3: Yellow Painting (1986), to recent video and sculptural works, produced over the last year. A number of new projects are also presented, both inside and outside CCS Bard. Major new realizations of Creed’s signature works, such as The Lights Going On and Off and Half the Air in a Given Space, are featured.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Creed offers a one-night-only performance on Saturday, July 7, at 8:30 p.m. Martin Creed and His Band will perform on the Bard College campus in the SummerScape 2007 Spiegeltent. For tickets call 845-758-7900 or visit http://www.fishercenter.bard.edu.

Martin Creed is renowned for his aggressive deployment of a range of seemingly banal materials, such as a spot of blu-tak affixed precisely to the center of a wall; sheets of letter paper filled in with highlighter or ballpoint pen; collections of an enormous variety of balls; stacks of lumber; or neon spelling out simple words and phrases such as “THINGS,” “FEELINGS,” or “EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT.” Such works subvert traditional hierarchies, appearing to aim for a Minimalist degree-zero of sculpture, while invoking a surprisingly broad range of potential meanings and emotional responses, from fear to pleasure and empathy.

Creed is also a musician and speaks of wanting to make art aspire to the condition of music. The idea is that one might experience art more as an event than as a static object, as in two of Creed’s most renowned works, The Lights Going On and Off (1996) and Half the Air in a Given Space (1997).

For the inauguration of the Hessel Museum in November last year, Creed performed Work No. 593 with the Bard College Conservatory of Music. The work, produced as a musical composition, was performed with all the instruments in the orchestra lined up by pitch, from high to low, with each playing single notes in turn. Ordering the instruments this way created equivalencies instead of the unquestioned hierarchies between instruments that are the norm, making the triangle or kettledrum as significant as the violin. Creed has also applied such simple ordering structures to potted plants, trees, and metronomes. Using objects as integers can be seen as a classic Minimalist strategy, while its absurdity owes a debt to Dada and punk.

The recent Sick Film and Shit Film, both 2006, introduce previously unrealized visceral potential in Creed’s work. In a featureless white space, individuals carry out elemental bodily functions. Performing such ordinary yet private, even hidden acts before a camera, the individuals reveal a range of personalities invoking a range of responses, such as empathy, embarrassment, disgust, and pride.

Born in Wakefield, England, in 1968, Creed graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in 1990. He has exhibited and performed in solo and group exhibitions and biennales around the world. In 2001 he won the Turner Prize for his Work No. 227: The Lights Going On and Off. In the last year he has presented solo exhibitions and projects at Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan; Curzon Mayfair Cinema, London; Hauser and Wirth, Zurich; MC, Los Angeles; Michael Lett Gallery, Auckland; and Johnen Galerie, Berlin. His work was also featured in How to Improve the World, Hayward Gallery, London; Of Mice and Men: 4th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art; and Scape, 2006 Biennial of Art in Public Space, in Christchurch, New Zealand, among other venues. His work is in the collections of some of the most important museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Tate, London.

Martin Creed is represented by Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, Hauser and Wirth, London and Zurich; and Johnen & Schöttle, Cologne.

Limited free seating is available on a chartered bus that leaves from New York City for the exhibition opening. The bus returns to New York City after the reception. Reservations must be made in advance by calling the Center at 845-758-7598.

Museum Hours
Wednesday – Sunday, 1:00 – 6:00 pm
All CCS Bard exhibitions are free and open to the public.

About the Center for Curatorial Studies
The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) is an exhibition and research center dedicated to the study of art and exhibition practices from the 1960s to the present day. The Center’s graduate program is specifically designed to deepen students’ understanding of the intellectual and practical tasks of curating exhibitions of contemporary art, particularly in the complex social and cultural situations of present-day urban arts institutions. With over 9,500 square feet of gallery space and an extensive library and curatorial archive, CCS Bard offers students intellectual grounding and actual experience within a museum.

In November 2006, CCS Bard inaugurated the Hessel Museum of Art, a new 17,000-square-foot building for exhibitions curated from the Marieluise Hessel Collection of more than 1,700 contemporary works. The new museum features intimate rooms encircling two large central galleries, and is scaled so that approximately 10 to 15 percent of the collection can be shown at any one time. The Hessel Museum extends the reach of the CCS Bard exhibition program, providing a place to test out the possibilities for exhibition making using the remarkable resources of the collection as a whole.

For further information, call 845-758-7598, e-mail ccs@bard.edu, or visit http://www.bard.edu/ccs

Center for Curatorial Studies
Hessel Museum of Art
Bard College, PO Box 5000
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000
845-758-7598
ccs@bard.edu
http://www.bard.edu/ccs

For more information go to: http://www.bard.edu/ccs

ARTFORUM

EVERYONE WAS THERE

Artforum’s online diary takes you behind the scene with day-to-day reporting from Venice, Basel, and Documenta. LOG ON at http://www.artforum.com/

06.18–NICOLAS TREMBLEY AROUND BASEL

"The bar at the Kunsthalle Basel resembles the waning moments of Le Palace or Studio 54 in the ’80s–though with a properly Swiss air, of course. Everyone was there. Whether rich or poor, beautiful or ugly, thin or plump, artists and dealers from each of the fairs convened to mix and barter with liaisons from other worlds, including fashion (Yves Saint Laurent’s Stefano Pilati seemed to be everywhere) and architecture (represented by the eminent Jean Nouvel)."

READ ON http://www.artforum.com

06.14–SARAH THORNTON ON ART BASEL 38

"’There is north, south, east, and Barbara,’ said one collector as we entered the Restaurant Stucki Bruderholz for a dinner hosted by Barbara Gladstone and Sadie Coles. Every conversation led back to the market. "I’m feeling bearish. I’ve only spent two million dollars since January," said a gent who has been collecting for fifty years."

READ ON http://www.artforum.com

COMING NEXT: David Velasco on Documenta 12.

WHILE YOU’RE ON THE TOUR

Artforum.com is the art traveler’s "to do" list. Log on to make the most of your European trip.

Critics’ Picks: What’s best in the best of the galleries.

artguide: A comprehensive listing of exhibitions around the planet.

eat/sleep: A curated list of restaurants and hotels for the art weary.

ARTFORUM.COM

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

A Prior Magazine

A Prior Magazine presents:

issue #14-Sven Augustijnen, Deimantas Narkevicius,
Joachim Koester;

issue #15-Valérie Mannaerts, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula.

A Prior Magazine is a contributor to this year’s documenta12 magazines project - an open source collaborative project between over 90 on- and off-line (art)publications. A Prior’s two issues of this year take their cue from the conceptual outlines of the documenta12 project. A Prior also took the occasion to extend its activities, exchange articles and organise seminars and educational sessions.

Board of editors: Els Roelandt, Andrea Wiarda, Monika Szewczyk, Raimundas Malasauskas, Dieter Roelstraete, Hilde van Gelder, Ann Demeester, Anton Vidokle, Aneta Szylak, Dirk Snauwaert, Barbara Vanderlinden.

[APM#14_modernity]

Chèr Pourquoi Pas? - Sven Augustijnen
Who killed Patrice Lumumba? And who murdered his alleged murderer? What was the role of journalist Pierre Davister? Sven Augustijnen’s investigative and elaborative project on (post)colonial events and media in both Congo–a former Belgian colony–and Belgium, recalls the thin lines between truth and fiction, the manipulation of words and data, power structures and media. Based on magazine and archived articles, real and fictional interviews the project also features an extensive series of covers from the 1960s reviews Pourquoi Pas? and Spécial. Jan Verwoert elaborates on the ‘Practical Surrealism’ Augustijnen’s work.

Re-visiting Solaris - Deimantas Narkevicius
Narkevicius reconsiders Solaris–the enigmatic Tarkovsky film adaptation in 1971/2 of the novel by futurologist Stanislaw Lem. An extensive text by writer Jean-Pierre Rehm and a conversation between Narkevicius and Larissa Harris, discuss Narkevicius’ mastery in addressing the contemporary and (recent) past, in the context of the wrangling of the economic and the socio-cultural condition, specifically in the former Eastern Bloc.

Königsberg / Kaliningrad - Joachim Koester
Koester travelled to the city of Königsberg / Kaliningrad together with curator and writer Anders Kreuger and literary scholar Claudia Sinnig and discovered that Kant’s beloved hometown (and Hannah Arendt’s birthplace) was now covered with shopping malls and other marks of post-communist, capitalist influence. Koester elaborated his project The Kant Walks with new photographs for A PRIOR and produced a new series of photographs: Kaliningrad is Full of Holes. With reflections on Königsberg / Kaliningrad by Dieter Roelstraete, Anders Kreuger and Claudia Sinnig.

/ VISIONS

I Am Alive and You Are Dead…
Curator and writer François Piron elaborates on the inherent tensions and contradictions of modernity starting from Glass Architecture–a manifesto written by the German poet Paul Scheerbart in 1910–and subsequently on the production of errors as an interpretative methodology or, what modernity could have been if….

[APM#15_on Life]

A Monster of LochNess Feeling - Valérie Mannaerts
Belgian artist Valérie Mannaerts presents a four-part series of new photographs: A Monster of Loch Ness Feeling yielding a vision of life in a bare, abstract form, but one that is rarely evident in contemporary theoretical discourse. In a contribution by Monika Szewczyk on Mannaerts work the question of bare life emerges as the object of ‘an experimental knowledge’. Further elaborations on Mannaerts work are contributed by Jeroen Boomgaard and Kersten Geers.

Bringing the War Home - Martha Rosler
Martha Rosler presents a verion of her series of images which powerfully rearticulates the kind of domestic, everyday, regular life in the context of (current) war(s). Accompanied by a conversation around the Martha Rosler Library between Martha Rosler, Dieter Roestraete and Anton Vidokle–shedding a different light on Rosler’s work as well as the critical universe that books construct.

Shipwreck and Workers–Version 3 for Kassel (2007) -Allan Sekula
Allan Sekula offers an in-dept (pre)view of his project for Documenta12, accompanied by an elaborate commentary on this new project, previous series and the broader context of Sekula’s work by Hilde Van Gelder. Asserting labour as a noble poetic and essential part of human life.

/ VISIONS

‘What’s the place of art in all this?’ A conversation with Maria Hlavajova by Andrea Wiarda; Rudi Laermans on COMMONism and other things we may not share…; Dirk Lauwaert discusses Wanda… Barbara Loden’s only feature film; Hito Steyerl elaborates on the uncertain status of documentary footage; Marius Babias reflects on the relations of ‘populism’, ‘public sphere’ and ‘terrorism’ in his text on Zones of Indifference.

A Prior Magazine is supported by The Flemish Community, the University College Ghent – Department of Visual Arts and Design, Duvel and the Advertisers.

A Prior Magazine info and subscriptions on: http://www.aprior.org
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Andrea Wiarda: andrea@aprior.org
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For more information go to: http://www.aprior.org

CANADIAN CENTRE FOR ARCHITECTURE

Lessons from Bernard Rudofsky
4 July to 30 September 2007

CANADIAN CENTRE FOR ARCHITECTURE
1920, rue Baile
Montreal, Québec,
Canada H3H 2S6
http://www.cca.qc.ca/exhibitions

Organised by the Architekturzentrum Wien, Vienna, in collaboration with The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, and in association with the CCA.

The first retrospective to examine the life and work of Bernard Rudofsky, the controversial architect, designer, and critic whose groundbreaking buildings, exhibitions, and fashion designs challenged the Western world’s perceptions of comfort and culture. Lessons from Bernard Rudofsky highlights the diverse contributions of a unique and underappreciated pioneer of modernism, and brings to light the relevance of Rudofsky’s principles today.

The exhibition spans the entire career of Bernard Rudofsky (1905-1988), including his roots in the early years of European modernism; his world travels, which shaped his views as a designer and critic; and his influence as a curator and writer on international discourse on architecture, fashion, and design. The underlying motivation that unified Rudofsky’s work was what he saw as a loss of sensual awareness in all aspects of modern life. Rudofsky is perhaps best known for the exhibitions and publications that he conceived in the second half of the twentieth century. The most famous of these is Architecture Without Architects, the landmark book and exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York (1964), which toured for 11 years and was presented in more than 80 venues around the world. Carefully researched and visually engaging, Architecture Without Architects challenged conventional notions of architecture and dwelling through its study of vernacular building technol
ogies and alternative ways of living. Rudofsky’s openness to different social and architectural traditions and his recognition of the sensory dimensions of the environment continue to be of great relevance for architecture and urbanism today.

As an architect, Rudofsky employed a modernist vocabulary — with its characteristic white, undecorated, cubic shapes in concrete and glass — yet at the same time he was an outspoken critic of modern architecture. He rejected the notion of universal or standardized concepts of dwelling and instead promoted the idea that an individual’s built environment should reflect the history, culture, and climate of his or her immediate surroundings. Architecture, for Rudofsky, was “not just a matter of technology and aesthetics but the frame for a way of life – and with luck, an intelligent way of life.”

Lessons from Bernard Rudofsky is curated by Monika Platzer, Curator, Archive/Collection at the Architekturzentrum Wien, and Wim de Wit, Head of Special Collections and Visual Resources and Curator of Architectural Collections at the Getty Research Institute.

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE

The exhibition is accompanied by a 296-page catalogue with contributions by Andrea Bocco- Guarneri, Monika Platzer, Felicity D. Scott, Wim de Wit, Maria Welzig, and includes forewords by Thomas Crow, Director of The Getty Research Institute, Architekturzentrum Wien Director

Dietmar Steiner, and CCA Director Mirko Zardini. A selection of Rudofsky’s visual and text contributions to Domus are also reproduced and translated. Published by the Architekturzentrum Wien and The Getty Research Institute in English and German editions, Lessons from Bernard Rudofsky is lavishly illustrated with over 200 black and white and colour images including fullpage reproductions of Rudofsky’s photographs. The English edition is available at the CCA Bookstore.

For more information go to: http://www.cca.qc.ca/exhibitions

[mac], musée d’art contemporain de Marseille

Peter Friedl: Travail 1964–2006
30 June – 16 September 2007
Opening: Friday, 29 June, 7:00 pm

[mac] Marseille
69 avenue de Haïfa
13008 Marseille - France
Tel : + 33 (0)491 25 01 07
dgac-mac@mairie-marseille.fr
Open : Everyday 11am – 6pm.
Closed on Mondays and bank holidays

“What interests me about a new concept of genre is how it can create a difference to the old politics of identity. It offers the freedom to look at things more differently, which becomes again interesting in a political and aesthetic prospect. Things become a little strange if their relative autonomy is enforced.”
Peter Friedl

Le [mac], musée d’art contemporain de Marseille is pleased to present the retrospective exhibition Peter Friedl: Travail: 1964-2006.

Berlin-based artist Peter Friedl (born in Austria, 1960) has made a steady incision in the methods and conventions of contemporary art. He has held numerous solo exhibitions and participated in major group shows such as Documenta X and this year’s Documenta 12 ( http://www.thezoostory.de ). Presented today in the form of a retrospective, Friedl’s work—consistently heterogeneous in terms of medium, style, and meaning—highlights political awareness, autobiography, permanent displacement, design interventions, narratology, potential counter imagery, and the reinvention of genres left over from the history of modernism. His projects present aesthetic models for disarming configurations of power.

Peter Friedl: Travail 1964–2006 problematizes the genre of “retrospective,” that is, the musealization of an oeuvre within the framework of institutional logics and through the context of its own history. For this reason, the works and installations in this exhibition are edited and exhibited nearly as documents. In addition, the exhibition brings together a vast selection of drawings on paper, presented chronologically from Friedl’s earliest artistic production to the present. These drawings offer a glimpse of formal elements (handwriting, motifs, colors) and contents (historical references, signs, and symbols) that often reappear in other works and projects: The poster-piece Map (1969-2005) is based on an early drawing from 1969 assigning the names of Native American peoples to the U.S. territory. In Neue Straßenverkehrsordnung (New Traffic Code, 2000), Friedl uses neon to recreate a motif from 1995 in large scale. The reference is a RAF document from 1971, which outl
ines the possibilities and models of revolutionary activity in Western European cities.

In the form of conceptual aesthetic acts and based on exemplary brief actions, video works such as Dummy (1997) or Tiger oder Löwe (2000) investigate how art history and social history function. The video installation King Kong (2001) features songwriter Daniel Johnston against the backdrop of apartheid history, filmed in “Triomf Park”—located in Sophiatown on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Also included is Friedl’s most recent production, Liberty City—an homage to the community of Liberty City in Miami.

Started in 1995, Playgrounds consists of more than 700 color slides arranged for various digital wall projections in kid-size format. The pictures—all in landscape format and taken by the artist—show public playgrounds from around the world. Another ongoing project, Theory of Justice, is presented as both an extensive installation and an artist’s book. Friedl’s project, begun in 1992, is based on the collection and selection of newspaper and magazine images, which are displayed in specially designed showcases.

The exhibition is produced by the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Spain, and curated by Bartomeu Marí.

Peter Friedl: Travail 1964-2006 is accompanied by a 380-page catalogue book featuring a large selection of the artist’s writings, along with essays by Mieke Bal, Roger M. Buergel, Norman M. Klein, Bartomeu Marí, and a conversation with Jean-Pierre Rehm. The French version is published by Analogues and distributed by Les presses du réel.

For more information go to: http://www.marseille.fr/vdm/cms/accueil/culture/musees/musee_art_contemporain_mac