Artipedia - Arts News

MEGASTRUCTURE RELOADED

Guenther Domenig & Eilfried Huth
Stadt Ragnitz with Wohnvolumen Habitat, 1969.

Visionary architecture and urban design of the sixties reflected by contemporary artists

by European Art Projects

20 September - 2 November 2008
Preview: 19 September 2008

Symposium
18 & 19th of October 2008

Former State Mint
Molkenmarkt 2
Berlin-Mitte

http://www.megastructure-reloaded.org

Architects and artists:
Archigram, Archizoom, Alan Boutwell, Guenther Domenig & Eilfried Huth, Constant, Yona Friedman / Groupe d’Etudes d’Architecture Mobile, Eckhard Schulze-Fielitz, Superstudio

José Dávila, Simon Dybbroe Moeller, Ryan Gander, Erik Goengrich, Franka Hoernschemeyer, Gordon Matta-Clark, Victor Nieuwenhuijs & Maartje Seyferth, Tobias Putrih, Tomás Saraceno, Katrin Sigurdardóttir, Tilman Wendland

curated by Sabrina van der Ley and Markus Richter / European Art Projects

In the early 1960s, the London-based Archigram group around Peter Cook designed Plug-In City, a megastructure in the form of a both roomy and gigantic framework into which mobile units (Plug-Ins) for all sorts of purposes and needs could be slotted, moved, and removed. Nothing was predetermined; everything was to change according to the changing needs of its users. Around the same time, Constant Nieuwenhuys in Amsterdam was working on New Babylon, an urban landscape branching out like a rhizome covering existing cities, resting on columns and pillars. The “sectors” of New Babylon form one endless, convoluted spatial continuum, a tangle of levels and passages, joined by struts and braces. The interiors are neither fixed nor defined. Rather, space is redefined over and over again by “homo ludens,” drifting through the labyrinthine passages, determined solely by creativity and the power of his imagination.

MEGASTRUCTURE RELOADED is dedicated to the visionary urban designs of the 1960s, which crystallize in the idea of the Megastructure. These urban visions are setting the starting point for ten projects by contemporary artists. José Dávila (Mexico), Simon Dybbroe Moeller (Denmark), Ryan Gander (GB), Erik Goengrich (Germany), Franka Hoernschemeyer (Germany), Victor Nieuwenhuijs & Maartje Seyferth (Netherlands), Tobias Putrih (Slovenia/USA), Tomás Saraceno (Argentina/Germany), Katrin Sigurdardóttir (Iceland/USA) and Tilman Wendland (Germany) have developed installations especially for the theme megastructure. Aside from these contemporary statements the exhibition will show drawings, collages and models of megastructure projects from the 1960s. The designs by Archigram, Archizoom, Alan Boutwell, Yona Friedman, Guenther Domenig & Eilfried Huth, Constant Nieuwenhuys, Eckhard Schulze-Fielitz and Superstudio are not only interesting as architectural projects. They also fascinate
with their visual strategies borrowed from pop culture as well as through their ability documenting the times of reflection of the social fermentation crucial for the 1960s. In addition, we will show Gordon Matta-Clark’s film on his Parisian installation Conical Intersect, which was set-up in 1975 across from the construction site of the Centre Pompidou, one of the few realized megastructures.

The exhibition architecture is developed by Dennis Crompton, a former member of Archigram, in collaboration with raumlabor_berlin, a Berlin based collective of architects. The exhibition will not only do justice to the subject in terms of content; megastructures will also be represented by the exhibition’s architecture.

The exhibition will not be a documentary representation however; instead the megastructuralists are to be tested for their currency and relevance to the problems of contemporary urban design. The focus will be on the connection, so significant for these designs, between spatial structures and visual art, as well as on actual architectural and urban-design issues, while examining whether megastructures offer a feasible conceptual approach for the problems of fast-growing mega cities.

Thus, integral parts of the project will be a symposium and a workshop. The symposium with renowned international scholars, urbanists and architects will take place at the exhibition venue on 18 and 19th of October 2008. It will be followed by a workshop with young architects, architectural students and researchers.

A comprehensive bilingual catalogue will be available published by Hatje Cantz (order no. ISBN 978-3-7757-2216-2). With 368 pages and more than 150 color illustrations it features texts by Eilfried Huth, Thilo Hilpert, Carsten Krohn, Tom McDonough, Pelin Tan, Marie Theres Stauffer, Hadas Steiner, Joyce Tsai, Florian Urban, and others. The catalogue, edited by Sabrina van der Ley and Markus Richter, investigates the subject in more depth, tracing the megastructuralists’ historical precursors, and examining the relationship between the Megastructure-Avantgarde and the architects who in the 1950s actually realized new cities such as Chandigarh and Brasila. The movement’s individual protagonists will be presented in detail and there are introductions on all the artists. Moreover, there will be ten artists’ plug-ins, visual essays by each of the participating artists presenting their personal approach towards the concept of Megastructure.

MEGASTRUCTURE RELOADED is funded by the Capital Culture Fond, Berlin and the Berlin Lottery Foundation

Additional support is kindly provided by the British Council, Berlin; Danish Arts Council, Center for Icelandic Art, Reykjavik; Fundación/Collección Jumex, Mexico; Ikea Stiftung, Hofheim-Wallau; Koenig GmbH & Co KG, Moringen; Lafarge Gips GmbH, Oberursel; Nuessli AG, Huettwilen; The Henry Moore Foundation, Perry Green; Mexican Embassy in Berlin/Office of Foreign Affairs of Mexico and the Mondriaan Stichting, Amsterdam.

Project Partners: Archigram Archives, London, Center for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin; Greige / Buero fuer Design, Berlin, Hatje Cantz, Berlin; raumlabor_berlin and Weiss-Heiten Design, Berlin/ London/ Paris

For images and further information please view http://www.megastructure-reloaded.org or contact Anne Maier at European Art Projects, am@european-art-projects.eu, Tel. +49.30.30 38 18 37.

http://www.megastructure-reloaded.org

Gwangju Biennale

CHEN QIULIN: Still from The Garden, 2007
Color video installation with stereo sound, 15:11
Copyright Chen Qiulin
Courtesy the artist and the Long March Foundation, Beijing.

The 7th Gwangju Biennale
Annual Report:
A Year in Exhibitions

Duration:
September 5 - November 9, 2008
Professional Preview:
September 3 and 4, 2008
Press Preview:
September 4, 2008

Gwangju, South Korea
http://www.gb.or.kr

The 7th Gwangju Biennale takes place from September 5 to November 9 in the city of Gwangju, South Korea. It is curated by the artistic director Okwui Enwezor and the co-curators Hyunjin Kim and Ranjit Hoskote.

Under the title Annual Report: A Year in Exhibitions, the 7th Gwangju Biennale is a report on the distribution system of artistic and cultural forms and a reflection on the intermediary gap between artists, producers, practitioners, and audiences. Consisting of 127 artists from 36 countries, Annual Report is developed around three principal components: first, On the Road is a report on 36 recent exhibitions that have occurred or have been exhibited elsewhere between 2007 and 2008; Position Papers is a platform dedicated to curatorial proposals and experiments in exhibition practices by curators working in Southeast Asia, North Africa, South Korea, and the United States (Patrick D. Flores, Jang Un Kim, Abdellah Karroum, Sung-Hyen Park, and Claire Tancons); finally, Insertions presents a series of new and independent projects, either commissioned specifically for the biennale or invited as proposals into the exhibition framework.

All three elements of the Biennale bring together a range of activities produced across the span of nearly eighteen months. The exhibition will serve as hosting site, incorporating into its sequence of galleries and sites a series of activities ranging from performances, readings, film screenings, music, dance, theater, to quite a few very unique examples of contemporary exhibition-making. Using the notion of the space of encounter, the biennale hopes to explore models of cultural exchange, setting up a soft, porous line between context and practice, form and medium, artist and system, institution and locality.

Some of the highlights of the program include Fassbinder’s restored movie Berlin Alexanderplatz which will be shown for the first time in Asia in its entirety, running for more than 13 hours, in Gwangju Cinema; Gordon Matta-Clark’s full-scale retrospective You are the Measure, which also travels to Asia for the first time; the street procession project Spring curated by Claire Tancons including samba drummers in the streets of Gwangju; the premier of the Johannesburg-based composer Joachim Schonfeldt’s new sculpture and composition; Hasaan Khan’s presenting an evening of continuous mixture of older and newer music works; and the launch of RADIO APARTMENT 22 by Abdellah Karroum ( http://www.radioapartment22.com ).

Okwui Enwezor, the artistic director of the 7th Gwangju Biennale has pointed out that: “2008 marks the year in which no less than ten biennials and triennials are set to open in September in the Asia-Pacific region alone. Anchored by the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the convergence of these events and the various national and regional agendas – cultural, economic, political – that define them, exemplify both the magnitude of the changes taking place in Asia, but also the scale and ambition within which they are occurring. Such scale and ambition, and the confidence with which they are pursued have led to the idea of this moment possibly being the Asian century.”

The exhibition and the accompanying programs also reflect Gwangju Biennale’s global commitment to various forms of cultural production. The Global Institute, held in collaboration with the Korean National University of Arts, Seoul; Chonnam National University, Gwangju; the San Francisco Art Institute; and the Royal College of Art, London, consists of the programs Open Studio and Arenas and Systems, organized into a series of workshops and clinics beginning in mid-August. Also, a series of plenary sessions based in Seoul and Beijing, China, collectively entitled Formations of Global Society and Domains of Public Culture will be held this fall, formulated around three broad themes: civil society as a form of coalition building; civil society as a platform of the global multitude; and civil society in relation to nihilism. Furthermore, a symposium and an associated two day seminar entitled The Politics of Spectacle and the Global Exhibition will run over a period of four days, f
rom September 24 to September 27, in response to changes shaping the distribution of global culture.

The 7th Gwangju Biennale will take place in different venues of the city of Gwangju, including the Biennale Hall, the Gwangju Museum of Art, the Uijae Museum of Korean Art, the Cinema Gwangju, and the Daein Traditional Market.

For detailed information on the biennale and the programs please visit the website: http://www.gb.or.kr

For press information please contact:

Jin-Kyung Jeong
PR & Business Department, The Gwangju Biennale Foundation
Biennale 2-gil Buk-gu Gwangju, South Korea
Tel +82 62 608 4264 / Fax +82 62 608 4269
1212jjk@gb.or.kr

“Pray” (2007) Oil on Canvas 120 x 150 cm

“AFTER_JOEBLOGS” - ENDA O’DONOGHUE
September 4th – September 25th 2008 at Limerick Printmakers Studio & Gallery, Limerick, Ireland

Enda O’Donoghue was born in Limerick, Ireland and has been living in Berlin since 2002. Originally O’Donoghue studied computer programming before he turned to a career in visual art. After completing his degree in fine art painting at the Limerick School of Art and Design, he went on to do a Masters in Interactive Media at the University of Limerick. He then stayed on at UL to work with the Interactive Design Centre and teach on the Interactive Media course.

Since moving to Berlin, O’Donoghue’s work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Notable examples include a recent solo show at the Galerie hunchentoot in central Berlin, the showcase exhibition for the 10th annual Berlin Kunstherbst festival, the Berliner Kunstsalon art fair, the Tease Art Fair in Cologne, the annual KiC NordArt exhibition in the north of Germany, at Overgaden the Institute for Contemporary Art in Copenhagen and closer to home at the Four Gallery in Dublin.
In 2009 he will have an exhibition in New York at the Irish Arts Center in Manhattan.

The work in this exhibition comes from an ongoing series of paintings, which looks to the Internet as a source for photographic imagery. The images are then treated to a methodical process of transformation and translation to form O’Donoghue’s paintings. The images are all other people’s photographs; digitally found images. O’Donoghue describes the scenes that inhabit these paintings as “in-between” spaces. The viewer is presented with banal scenes from everyday places, photographed by people going about their daily lives, in such places as airports, train stations, waiting rooms or shopping queues.

Images of the paintings and further information can be found at the website: http://www.endaism.com

‘AFTER_JOEBLOGS’ will run at Limerick Printmakers Studio & Gallery from 4th September to 25th September. The gallery is open 11am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday and 10am to 4pm Saturday. This exhibition will open on the night of the 4th of September at 8pm. For further information please contact Limerick Printmakers. All are welcome. Admission is free.

Limerick Printmakers Studio and Gallery
4 Robert St
Limerick
Ireland
limerickprintmakers@gmail.com
www.limerickprintmakers.com

Fundación Telefónica

The Eleventh International Art and Artificial Life Competition VIDA 11.0
Now Accepting Entries
From 15 June to 6 October 2008

http://www.fundacion.telefonica.com/vida

The Eleventh International Art and Artificial Life Competition VIDA 11.0 Now Accepting Entries

• The purpose of the competition is to award prizes to electronic works of art created with artificial life technologies

• Projects will be accepted from 15 June to 6 October 2008

• For this edition of VIDA 11.0, the prize money has doubled to 80,000 Euros

• The competition rules and all the information on previous editions can be viewed on the Vida Internet website http://www.fundacion.telefonica.com/vida

One of Telefónica Foundation’s main objectives is to promote the relationship between art and the new technologies. As a part of this goal, Telefónica Foundation is announcing the eleventh edition of the international VIDA competition to recognize artistic excellence in the field of artificial life and related disciplines.

The competition is open to art projects that explore the interaction between “synthetic” life and “organic” life as a reflection of the field of artificial life. 572 artists from 32 countries have participated in the ten previous editions and prizes have been awarded to more than 100 projects which included robots, electronic avatars, chaotic algorithms, cellular automats, computer viruses and virtual ecologies.

VIDA 11.0 will award a total of 80,000 euros to winning projects in two categories: one open to already-finished projects and another as an incentive for production in Ibero-America, Spain and Portugal. The winning works of art will be exhibited, as usual, at the Telefónica Foundation stand at ARCO.

The works of art submitted will be reviewed by an international panel made up by Mónica Bello Bugallo (Spain); Daniel Canogar (Spain); José Carlos Mariátegui (Peru); Sally Jane Norman (France-New Zealand); Simón Penny (United States-Australia) and Nell Tenhaaf (Canada). Terms and conditions of the competition, which is open to participants from all over the world, are available in Spanish, English, German, Portuguese, Korean and Chinese.

More information:

Entry Period: 15 June to 6 October 2008

Complete competition rules at http://www.fundacion.telefonica.com/vida