Artipedia - Arts News

unitednationsplaza

unitednationsplaza
Platz der Vereinten Nationen 14a
Berlin 10249 Germany
T. 49 (0)30 700 89 0 90
F. 49 (0)30 700 89 0 85
http://www.unitednationsplaza.org

unitednationsplaza is pleased to present a series of informal readings, talks and discussions in and around the Martha Rosler Library. This program started on June 19th with a conversation by Martha Rosler and Stephen Wright, and will continue during the months of July and August. All events are free but space is often limited: if you are planning to come, please register with magdalena@unitednationsplaza.org

July 17, 730 PM - Molly Nesbit: Photography in the 70’s

Molly Nesbit teaches and writes on twentieth century art, film and photography. Her two books, Atget’s Seven Albums (1992) and Their Common Sense (2000) comprise a part of this work; her work also involves a stream of essays on contemporary art. She is a contributing editor of Artforum, has taught at the University of California, Berkeley and Barnard College, Columbia University, and has received many awards, notably from the Guggenheim Foundation and the J. Paul Getty Trust.

July 26, 730 PM - Tom Hollert: Parker Tyler’s Myth and Magic of the Movies (1947) and Hollywood Hallucination (1944)

Tom Holert is an art historian, based in Berlin. Former editor of Texte zur Kunst and Spex, currently teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Among his books are Künstlerwissen (Munich 1998), Imagineering,Visuelle Kultur und Politik der Sichtbarkeit (Cologne 2000, Ed.), Fliehkraft, Gesellschaft in Bewegung - von Migranten und Touristen (Cologne 2006, co-authored with Mark Terkessidis), Marc Camille Chaimowicz. Celebration? Realife (London/Cambridge,MA, forthcoming).More info: http://isvc.org

July 30, 730 PM - Nina Möntmann
Nina Möntmann is a curator and writer, based in Hamburg. She is a correspondent for Artforum and contributes to Le Monde Diplomatique, metropolis m, Frieze and Parachute. Her current research is focusing on the changing conditions of art institutions and social spaces, models of relationality in art and institutional practice, and reconsiderations of the role and definition of communities as social entities in the public sphere. Selected publications: Art and Its Institutions. Current Conflicts, Critique and Collaborations, London (Blackdog Publishing) 2006; Nina Möntmann, Kunst als sozialer Raum, Köln (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König) 2002 and others.

August 4, noon - Joseph Cohen: Calling Hegel…
*** Please note that the talk will take place at Hegel’s grave located at Dorrotheenstädtische Friedhof cemetery, entrance near Chausseestrasse 125, 10115 Berlin-Mitte.

Born in Montreal, Joseph Cohen completed his PhD in Theoretical Philosophy and Metaphysics at the École des Hautes Études en Science Sociales, Paris. His dissertation, entitled Altérité et révélation — le sacrifice de Hegel, was written under the co-supervision of Professor Jacques Derrida and Professor Robert Legros (University of Caen). Cohen is currently Guest Professor of Philosophy at the Staatliche Hochshule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe,Germany, as well as the Directeur de Programme at the Collège International de Philosophie, Paris. Joseph Cohen is the author of Le spectre juif de Hegel, Paris,Galilée,with a preface by Jean- Luc Nancy (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Strasbourg II Marc Bloch).

August 8, 730 PM - Chus Martinez will speak on the unusual categories of the Martha Rosler Library.

Chus Martínez is a curator and critic, currently the director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein since January 2006. Between 2002-2005 she was the artistic director of Sala Rekalde, a public art space in the city of Bilbao and between 2001-2003 the curator of the project room of "La Caixa Foundation" in Barcelona. She writes for a number of magazines, such as Afterall, and is a member of the advisory board of the upcoming Carnegie International (2008).

August 30, 730 PM - Jan Verwoert: Closing Remarks

Jan Verwoert is an art critic based in Berlin. He is a contributing editor to Frieze magazine and also writes regularly about contemporary art for such art magazines as Afterall, Metropolis M, Camera Austria and Springerin. He is editor of Die Ich-Ressource. Zur Kultur der Selfst-Verwertung, Volk Verlag (2003); and author of Wolfgang Tilmans, Phaidon (2002); and Bas Jan Ader: In Search of the Miraculous, MIT Press (2006). Recent essays appeared in art books and catalogues such as Cerith Wyn Evans, Lukas & Sternberg Inc./Kunstverein Frankfurth (2004); Experience, Memory, Re-enactment, PZI/Revolver (2005); Black Friday, PZI/Revolver (2005); Bik Van der Pol: With Love From the Kitchen, NAi (2005); Works by Annika Eriksson, Revolver (2005); Sean Snyder, Walter Koenig Verlag (2006).

Martha Rosler Library is currently on view at unitednationaplaza. Comprised of approximately 7,700 titles from the artist’s personal collection, the Library was opened to the public by e-flux in November 2005 as a storefront reading room on Ludlow Street in New York City. It has since traveled to Frankfurter Kunstverein and MuHKA, Antwerp. The library will remain in Berlin through August 31st and will travel to Institut national d’histoire de l’art in Paris in November.

Library hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 2 - 8 PM
Admission is free, all are welcome.

Other programs at unitednationsplaza this summer:
WUNP - United Nations Plaza Radio Network, a project by neuroTransmitter
95.2 FM Berlin, online stream: http://www.unitednationsplaza.org/radio.html

unitednationsplaza is exhibition as school. Structured as a seminar/residency program in the city of Berlin, it will involve collaboration with approximately 60 artists, writers, theorists and a wide range of audiences for a period of one year. In the tradition of Free Universities, most of its events will be open to all those interested to take part. unitednationsplaza is organized by Anton Vidokle in collaboration with Liam Gillick, Boris Groys, Martha Rosler, Walid Raad, Jalal Toufic, Nikolaus Hirsch, Natascha Sadr Haghighian and Tirdad Zolghadr.

For further information, please contact Magdalena Magiera:
magdalena@unitednationsplaza.org

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

Stroom Den Haag

LOST TONGUES REDISCOVERED
July 1 thru September 9, 2007

Anna Barham (GB), Harold de Bree (NL), gerlach en koop (NL), Ian Hamilton Finlay (GB), Isabel Nolan (IR), Machiel van Soest (NL), Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries (KOR/USA).

Stroom Den Haag
Hogewal 1-9
2514 HA The Hague
The Netherlands
T +31-70 3658985
Wednesday thru Sunday 12-5 pm
info@stroom.nl
http://www.stroom.nl

Stroom Premium is a subsidy for artists in a period of self enforced intensification, condensation and/or acceleration. It allows them to exploit this phase to the full and to attain further deepening and development of their work. In 2006 the first Stroom Premiums were awarded to the Hague artists Harold de Bree, Machiel van Soest and the duo gerlach en koop. In order to focus special attention on this extraordinary award and the work of the honoured artists Stroom invited British curator Francis McKee to put together an exhibition. Under the title ‘Lost Tongues Rediscovered’ he brought their work together with that of some foreign artists.

Francis McKee:
‘All artists find their own language, often retrieving links between words, objects and ideas that have been forgotten or obscured. That process is highlighted in this exhibition where each of the selected artists develops their own unique form of representation. In several cases, their work makes explicit reference to the visual impact of words themselves. At other times, they point to the potential for form, sculpture and colour to create symbolic languages. Equally each of the artists rediscovers the power of older visual languages whether it is Roman architecture, neoclassical sculpture, ’60s minimalism or cold war weapons design.’

In ‘Lost Tongues Rediscovered’ seven artists consider the relationship between word and thing or between the object and its’ representation. Harold de Bree -winner of the Den Haag Sculptuur Rabobank Award 2007- uses simple industrial materials to construct quasi replicas of objects that defy nature. gerlach en koop demand an attentiveness to minimal detail that refocuses our perception of our surroundings. At times, by showing almost nothing, they change everything. Machiel van Soest reworks the language of abstract painting to imply a more symbolic reading of the simple facts in paint he seems to present. Ian Hamilton Finlay constantly produced a series of prints, postcards and books throughout his life that persistently interrogated the relationship between word and thing. Like Harold de Bree, he often confronts nature with the most aggressive fruits of technology and like Machiel van Soest, he is unafraid to consider the polemic nature of art. Anna Barham traces the recons
truction of a section of a Libyan/Roman ruin, Leptis Magna, in 18th century Britain. Through a dizzying series of anagrams the language of classical architecture morphs into other, unexpected, dimensions. Isabel Nolan creates an animation that slowly evolves from a sequence of painted forms into a sequence of e-mails - a one-sided conversation on the nature of emptiness where even the language describing the phenomenon is stolen. Young Hae-Chang Heavy Industries recover the language of 60s jazz and evoke the explosive typographies of Jean Luc Godard in their vertiginous narratives and poetic meditations. Often working across linguistic boundaries, the word momentarily becomes the thing as it simultaneously builds another link in the evolving meaning of the flashing sentences.

Francis McKee is interim director at the CCA (Centre for Contemporary Art) in Glasgow and next to it responsible for the Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Visual Art. Many years he maintains a very interesting website with essays about contemporary art and culture.

The exhibition is made possible in part by the Mondriaan Foundation. Publications Ian Hamiilton Finlay courtesy the Glasgow School of Art.

Stroom Den Haag focuses on the urban environment from the viewpoint of visual arts, architecture, urban development and design.

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

Frac Lorraine

SHANGRI-LA ON THE HORIZON
07 july - 16 september 2007
opening : Friday 6th July 19.00

49 NORD 6 EST - Frac Lorraine
1bis rue des Trinitaires, Metz
Admission : free
From Wednesday to
Sunday: 12.00 - 19.00
Except Thursday: 14.00 - 21.00

http://www.fraclorraine.org

The Silk Road, the Land of the Rising Sun, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall of China, so many evocations of a Far East redolent of adventure and mystery. Down the centuries, travellers’ tales have helped to uphold an idealized, fantasy view of a fabulously wealthy and impenetrable Asia, whose thousands-year-old traditions were jealously guarded and perpetuated. The Utopian city of Shangri-La, a Tibetan enclave somewhere in the middle of the Himalayas, is emblematic of this fanciful view forged by the West. The country of the sacred and of peace, Shangri-La is the ideal city, surrounded by magnificent landscapes, where time seems to slow down and the inhabitants live in the most perfect harmony. Described in western literature (Edgar Allan Poe, James Hilton), the city focuses the ideal of purity, peace and spirituality embodied by Tibet. This Elsewhere is where everything becomes possible, every Utopia, and this view was copiously passed on by all manner of explorers and adv
enturers setting out to conquer these lands, by hippies looking for spiritual meaning, then by artists who went out to challenge these outsize landscapes and constructions.

Following in their footsteps, we are inviting you to tread the paths leading to Shangri-La and to look out from the city to see if the Utopia is still alive and peace flourishing.

Let’s head off due East! And to help us on this quest for Shangri-La and the mythical Asia, we’ll begin by brushing up on its geography.

Su-Mei Tse, following Chinese conventions, turns the cardinal points the other way round and offers to take us on the journey from the East. A simple but tremendously effective switch that invites us to relativize our way of looking at and seeing things. But does the Utopian city really lie in that direction? This is the quest we invite you to embark on with a few artists who deconstruct current clichés, rethink and take over this historical and philosophical Asian heritage (Kimsooja), even when it drifts towards Utopian and revolutionary ideas. They invite us to follow their tracks across the preserved land of Tibet (Qui Zhijie) up to the top of Mt Everest (Xu Zhen), to go on the "Long March" undertaken by Mao’s troops (Qin Ga), confronting us on the way with the ideological and exotic dimension of our view, with this eternal western model through which we attempt to understand the world.

Crossed horizons: the quest for adventure continues in the steps of a few artists, travellers and land surveyors for whom the very act and process of walking, the transient inscription within the landscape form a work (Hamish Fulton, Marco Godinho). But watch out, exploration and adventure are not necessarily on the other side of the world, they begin exactly wherever we decide, including in the familiar everyday situation! (Tixador & Poincheval).

ARTISTS:
Exhibition: Su-Mei Tse (Frac Lorraine Collection) and Kimsooja, Qin Ga, Qiu Zhijie, Xu Zhen.

Exhibition bis: Hamish Fulton (Frac Lorraine Collection) and Marco Godinho, Laurent Tixador & Abraham Poincheval.

Partners:
Galerie In Situ, Paris
Long March Space, Beijing
ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai
Peter Blum Gallery, New York

The Fonds régional d’art contemporain de Lorraine, member of (( Platform )), is supported by the Lorraine regional Council and the Regional Cultural Affairs Department (DRAC) at the Ministry of Culture.

Press agency:
Heymann, Renoult Associées / Tel. : 0033 (0)1 44 61 76 76 / Fax : 0033 (0)1 44 61 74 40
info@heymann-renoult.com
http://www.heymann-renoult.com

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