ecopolis

Vernon Ah Kee, tolerance, 2005, Vinyl on PVC, 122 x 180cm.
Courtesy of Private collection, Melbourne
Photo: Vernon Ah Kee and Milani Gallery, Brisbane

The theme of the 16th Biennale of Sidney, Revolutions – Forms That Turn, suggests the impulse to revolt, a desire for change, and seeing the world differently.

Many works in this year’s exhibition will be participatory, encouraging people to step inside art and discover new ways of looking and thinking about life today. Movement is a strong feature – works turn, spin, go in reverse, mirror, make noise and even blow up.

The free exhibition is expected to welcome more than a quarter of a million visitors, and more than 180 artists from 42 countries including 65 new art works, presented alongside some of the world’s most ground-breaking art from the avant-gardes of last century.

Venice Biennale Golden Lion is given to Argentine artist León Ferrari.

The art of Leon Ferrari is characterized by protests: Against politics and Christian religion. In 1976 he was forced to move to Brazil:

I became a full-time artist there. In Buenos Aires I made my living as an engineer and made works of art in my spare time. I was treated well in Sao Paulo and did not suffer being in exile

Ferrari ’s famous sculpture titled Western and Christian civilization (1964) shows a crucified Christ tied to an American fighter jet. His arms span the wings as he grasps a missile on either side, resembling a cross.

It was meant as a protest against the Vietnam War. However, it was not included in the exhibition in the Di Tella institute because they did not want to offend the church, but it was hanging there in the week before the opening so everybody saw it anyway. I left the sculpture in a deposit when I moved to Brazil and virtually forgot about it. Then I found this old receipt and went to have a look thinking it would have disappeared because I had stopped paying years ago. However, the man in charge of the deposit recognized me and after sort of settling the bill I took it with me. The work was exhibited various times since then, but it would be good to have a permanent place because it is stored again.

Until 21 november the sculpture is being exhibited at 52 Venice Biennale.

Casa Blanca, performance, Leon Ferrari y Pons

El arte de la eterna rebeldía

In 2000 he showed an installation of Christs and virgins playing chess with devils and penises, against the promises of eternal life. He also paid homage to condoms, which he would accompany by texts saying that by opposing these the church was promoting aids, whereas in a series of collages he denounced their collaboration with the military dictatorship. During the sixties, Ferrari participated in exhibitions like Malvenido Rockefeller protesting this politician’s visit to Argentina and ‘Tucumán Arde’, where treacherous economic politics had led to the closure of sugar factories leaving people in misery. His 2001 exhibition in Spain, which dealt with torture and the Catholic Church, was met with demonstrations and prayer meetings, and even paint-throwing and tear gas. In 2004, his exhibition in Recoleta, Buenos Aires, was forced to close following intervention by a Catholic priest and a subsequent court order. Protests and government action allowed the exhibition to reopen

-¿Le preocupa la censura de tus obras?

-A diferencia de la práctica tradicional de los artistas que cuando les censuran una pieza retiran toda su obra, yo dejo el resto, porque me parece que la censura forma parte de la obra. En el caso del ICI, por ejemplo, era mejor el espectáculo de la gente afuera que lo que pasaba adentro… Hicieron una misa en la puerta y rezaban el rosario, con carteles y figuras religiosas. Hasta me tiraron una granada de gas lacrimógeno. Con la reacción del publico las obras se vuelven una verdadera intervención. En el 92 expuse una obra que se llamaba La Justicia, en la que una gallina defecada en una balanza y me escribieron de todo: “”Qué culpa tiene la gallina de que vos quieras hacer arte”, “”Gallo: cagate en este arte deshumnanizante” y “Ojalá te encierren a vos”. Con eso armé al año siguiente una muestra que se llamó Autocensura. La gallina, esta vez, estaba embalsamada.

-¿Le parece peor la censura del público que la oficial?

-Peor no… mejor. Hay algunos, incluso, que se acercan a la verdad: los que me dicen herejes, por ejemplo. En cambio, no deja de llamarme la atención esa preocupación excesiva por la gallina. La Sociedad Protectora de Animales mandó una carta pidiendo que la sacara. Yo les contesté explicándoles que esa gallina estaba a la espera de que la degollaran y que, por lo tanto, tenía mucho mejor destino como obra de arte. Más satisfacción me dio cuando alguien me puteó porque hacía cagar una paloma blanca sobre una imagen del Juicio Final de Miguel Angel. Por lo menos sentí que había llegado mi crítica a la cultura. El Bosco, Miguel Angel, Giotto, sin dudas hicieron maravillas pero que justificaron una cultura basada en la tortura, en la persecución, en el castigo… Ese arte avaló el accionar de la Iglesia. Así que la reacción de este hombre me sirvió para constatar de que alguien me escuchaba. Las protestas intervienen directamente sobre la obra y la completan. Peor que las puteadas es la indiferencia.

Source:Leon Ferrari

Golden Lion for the best national participation at 52 Venice Biennial is being given to the Hungarian Pavilion featuring the artist Andreas Fogarasi, curated by Katalin Timár

where architecture and cultural history are deployed to generate intelligent and poetic relations between content, visual language and strucural display. The Jury also considers important the artist’s approach to modernity, its utopias and failures in the context of a shared history

Andreas Fogarasi, Kultur und Freizeit, Video installation, 2007
Photos: Bert de Leenheer

Andreas Fogarasi Kultur und Freizeit consists of a series of single channel videos, all showing the current state of cultural centres in contemporary Budapest, projected in separate black boxes which both physically and structurally include the spectators. They function as signifiers for a contemporary separation between mass culture and popular cultures, and their respective institutional frameworks, as opposed to high culture and its locations.

Andreas Fogarasi, born in Vienna, Austria, in 1977. Lives and works in Vienna, Austria.

Not Only Possible, But Also Necessary: Optimism in the Age of Global War.

10th International İstanbul Biennial
September 8-November 4, 2007

Antrepo No.3

Transnational trading, border crossing, migration, global communication and new technologies are transforming almost every aspect of our life. At the same time, every individual is struggling to negotiate with the deconstruction of cultural memory, identity and values prompted by these radical transformations. A metropolis like İstanbul; situated between Europe and Asia, with a long and rich history of negotiating between different cultural, religious and political influences from both the West and the East, and endlessly expanding; perfectly incarnates this dynamism. It is a city of the in-between, of hybridity and, ultimately, the Multitude. It is an “Entre-Polis”.

Rainer Gahnal, Don’t Steal My Puma Bicycle, 2007
(PUMA bicycle, Kryptonite Chain, porcelain chain, bronze chain)

Antrepo No.3 as a site for the 10th International İstanbul Biennial is a condensed “Entre-Polis”: A collective action to claim for the total dissolution of the borders between art and urban life and it is a site for artists to investigate and experiment with the intensity of today’s metropolitan life, always in-between and on the move.

To function like a real city, the Antrepo space is designed as a kind of urban maze to reflect the labyrinth structure of İstanbul. It will host works by more than 50 artists from different parts of the world. Like the urban multitude, these artists are highly different personalities using different languages.

PENG Hung-Chi
“Face to Face”, 2001, fiber glass, LCD monitors, VCD players and speakers, various size

They are committed to explore a wide range of issues decisive for the making of our condensed “Entre-Polis”: urban transformation, global communication, migration, border-crossing travels, geopolitical conflicts, cultural memory, ethnic and religious differences, urban rebellion, manifestations and actions for social solidarity and even, love. Their artistic visions and gestures are always dynamic, performative and open to the participation of the public

Destroy Athens : 1st Athens Biennial 2007

10 September – 18 November 2007

“Technopolis” of the City of Athens
100, Peiraios Street

(click to greek version)

Destroy Athens tells a story.

The story emerged from a completely empirical observation. We, each one of us, the subject of every action and every conscience is built through the eyes of others. What is important here is that it is not being constructed by others – it is all an internal affair: the subject builds its own self, but its building material is the perception of others. And this fact is the precondition of any recognition, collectivity, connection, participation, sense of community.

Mark Manders
Figure with Fake Dictionaries (2006)

As the place where the story unfolds we chose Athens; at first perhaps for the obvious reason that we live here. However, we are in a way fortunate as Athens is in itself an appropriate emblem for what we termed a stereotype, throughout the long period that the story was being shaped, that is the sense of extra-determination which constitutes the extreme expression of the subject’s self-construction we mentioned before. Perhaps a different city could have been employed – and not just Rome or Istanbul, but also Louisville, Nairobi, Peshawar or Volos. Every place, every sense of historicity, every background, every nationalist or cultural construct, any political formation, either individual or collective, is equally vulnerable to the identity that is built through the eyes of others. But if we see Athens as the location where the story evolves, one is obliged to accept the inevitable – and merciful – degree of arbitrariness of any story: if the story took place in London, it would probably be raining, but then what happened after that would still be the important thing. And that’s what is great about a story: nothing is binding, yet everything is specific. One thing or another could happen elsewhere or differently, but it is happening here and it is happening like this.

Illustration by Pablo Picasso for the 1934 edition of Lysistrata in a version by Gilbert Seldes.

The story is divided in six chapters. Its dramaturgy follows a method of constant shifts, where a position is built for a time and is then either twisted towards something else or broken down. The narrative is linear but syncopated, so that from chapter to chapter the atmosphere changes radically. Destroy Athens is then structured as a story also in terms of space. It is a course in space, which allows for a specific continuity and therefore a reading.

It is a story. We do hope that as a story it has meaning between the moment it begins and the moment it ends.
(Excerpt from the curators’ text for the exhibition catalogue)

First Day
Julian Rosefeldt & Piero Steinle, Void Network, Marc Bijl, The Erasers, Adbusters, hobbypopMUSEUM, Banu Cennetoglu
Second Day
Omer Ali Kazma, Nikos Kessanlis, Jannis Savvidis, Florian Süssmayr, Ciprian Muresan, Chris Evans, The Otolith Group, Edward Lipski, Bernhard Willhelm, Yorgos Sapountzis, Eva Stefani, Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Olaf Nicolai, Folkert de Jong, John Kleckner, Jannis Varelas, Eva Vretzaki, Stelios Faitakis, Pablo Picasso
Third Day
Olaf Breuning, Gregor Schneider, Thanassis Totsikas, Bjarne Melgaard, Annelise Coste, Lotte Konow Lund, Jan Freuchen, Kajsa Dahlberg, Robert Gober, Georgia Sagri, Pierre Joseph, Sean Landers, Mark Manders
Fourth Day
AVAF, Torbjorn Rodland
Fifth Day
Aidas Bareikis, Kimberly Clark, Narve Hovdenakk, Martin Skauen, Vassilis Karouk, Erkan Ozgen, John Bock, Yiannis Adamakos, Terence Koh
Sixth Day: Elodie Pong, Temporary Services & Angelo, Peter Dreher, Christian Marclay, Derek Jarman, Eleni Mylonas