ARTECONTEXTO Nº15 by ARTEHOY Publicaciones y Gestion SL

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Editora y Directora / Director & Editor: Alicia Murría Coordinación en Latinoamérica Latin America Coordinators: Argentina: Eva Grinstein México: Bárbara Perea Equipo de Redacción / Editorial Staff: Alicia Murría, Natalia Maya Santacruz, Santiago B. Olmo. info@artecontexto.com Asistente editorial / Editorial Assistant: Natalia Maya Santacruz Directora de Publicidad / Advertising Director: Marta Sagarmínaga publicidad@artecontexto.com Directora de Relaciones Internacionales International Public Relations Manager: Elena Vecino Administración / Accounting Department: Carmen Villalba administracion@artecontexto.com

Colaboran en este número / Contributors in this Issue: Juan Antonio Álvarez Reyes, Alicia Murría, Pedro Medina, Uta M. Reindl, Pedro Calapez, Eva Grinstein, Fernando León, Marcela Uribe, Stephen Maine, Isabel Tejeda, Mónica Núñez Luis, Filipa Oliveira, Joana Neves, Berta Sichel, José Ángel Artetxe, I.M. Mendiluze, Luis Francisco Pérez, Bea Espejo, Suset Sánchez, Mireia Antón, Natalia Maya Santacruz, Juan Sebastián Cárdenas, Santiago B. Olmo.

ARTECONTEX TO ARTECONTEXTO arte cultura nuevos medios es una publicación trimestral de ARTEHOY Publicaciones y Gestión, S.L. Impreso en España por Técnicas Gráﬁcas Forma Producción gráﬁca: El viajero / Eva Bonilla. Procograf S.L. ISSN: 1697-2341. Depósito legal: M-1968–2004 Todos los derechos reservados. Ninguna parte de esta publicación puede ser reproducida o transmitida por ningún medio sin el permiso escrito del editor. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means without written permission from the publisher.

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ARTECONTEXTO reúne diversos puntos de vista para activar el debate y no se identiﬁca forzosamente con todas las opiniones de sus autores. ARTECONTEXTO does not necessarily share the opinions expressed by the authors. La editorial ARTEHOY Publicaciones y Gestión S.L., a los efectos previstos en el art. 32,1, párrafo segundo, del TRLPI se opone expresamente a que cualquiera de las páginas de ARTECONTEXTO sea utilizada para la realización de resúmenes de prensa. Cualquier acto de explotación de la totalidad o parte de las páginas de ARTECONTEXTO precisará de la oportuna autorización, que será concedida por CEDRO mediante licencia y dentro de los límites establecidos en la misma.

SUMARIO / INDEX / 15 Portada / Cover: RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER Frecuencia y volumen. Pabellón de México. 52 Biennale de Venezia

PRIMERA PÁGINA / PAGE ONE: Sorpresa de verano / Summer Surprise ALICIA MURRÍA

DOSSIER 52 Biennale di Venezia. Documenta 12. Skultptur Projekte Münster 07

Venezia. Kassel. Münster Propuestas sin riesgo / Unchallenging Proposals ALICIA MURRÍA

Bienal de Venecia: La negación del espectador Venice Biennial: The Denial of the Viewer JUAN ANTONIO ÁLVAREZ REYES

Migraciones entre memoria y espectáculo Migrations between Memory and Spectacle PEDRO MEDINA

Documenta 12 UTA M. REINDL

Skulptur Projekte Münster 007 UTA M. REINDL

Notas sobre el uso del ordenador en la creación de imágenes digitales Notes on the use of computers in the creation of digital images PEDRO CALAPEZ

GUSTAVO ROMANO El secreto mejor guardado del net.art / The Best Kept net.art Secret EVA GRINSTEIN

Despreocupado pero no indiferente. (A propósito de los labios de Kiki) Unconcerned but not indiferent. (About Kiki’s lips) FERNANDO LEÓN

CiberContexto MARCELA URIBE

Info

Críticas de exposiciones / Reviews

PAGE ONE Summer Surprise Although rumours about her possible dismissal have been frequent of late, for over her three years of office she caused a lot of unrest in the film, book and art sectors, everything seemed to indicate that the Minister of Culture Carmen Calvo would finish her term of office. But no, by surprise she has been replaced in her post at the head of the Ministry by the writer, teacher and journalist, César Antonio Molina who until now was the Director of the Instituto Cervantes. Although his profile is well known in the field of culture, we will have to wait until after the summer holidays to see what his first actions will be and to know, for example, if the negotiations of the former ministerial team with the associations representing the art sector, on such important subjects as the naming of state museum directors, will appear on his list of priorities. Among other things, the summer is marked by the three great art events that are to be held in the cities of Venice, Kassel and Munster. Their coincidence in 2007 aroused expectations, especially regarding Documenta 12. However, the proposal carried out by Roger Buergel, in spite of the good work he has done as regards the promotion of a large number of artists little known outside their respective countries, is focused almost totally on readings of a formalist kind; a way of understanding artistic practices that contributes few elements of analysis. More disappointing however was the work by Robert Storr for his project for Venice; far from being permeable to proposals for renewal he opted for a museal approach closely linked to the market which talks about a “return to order” and to the “politically correct”. As regards Münster and its Sculptur Projekts 07, headed since its beginning, forty years ago, by Kasper König, it has been, by comparison, the event which has been most insistent on adapting its ways of working. A journey through these great art encounters fills our dossier. Together with this marathon, on the centre pages, the painter Pedro Calapez reflects on the possibilities offered to traditional languages by the computer as regards the creation of digital images, and Eva Grinstein presents the work of the Argentinean artist Gustavo Romano in the field of net.art., while the writer Fernando León offers a personal view of Man Ray. The section on exhibition reviews covers the most interesting international shows of the summer, along with useful information about events and competitions, while the regular CiberContexto section rounds off our summer issue.

ALICIA MURRÍA

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52 Biennale di Venezia Documenta 12 Skulptur Projekte Münster 07

Unchallenging Proposals

ALICIA MURRÍA*

We were wondering a few months ago if the coincidence of the three great events in the Summer of 2007 would turn into the opportunity to impulse some kind of analysis about the Present and its artistic practices. Obviously, among the hundreds of pieces that can be seen in Venice, Kassel and Münster, there is a signiﬁcant amount of relevant work and its presence deserves a journey through the three cities, but the effort and investment that move the great machinery don’t ﬁnd themselves at all at the service of some very necessary debates and ideas that would be in their responsibility to promote and that, in good logic, should be demanded from them. The 52 Venice Bienal, whose curator is the American, Robert Storr, curator of MoMA in New York in the nineties and currently director of the School of the Arts at Yale University, is presided by political correctness and orthodoxy. Without any answers, without surprises, his choice of pieces and artists for the central Giardini pavilion (Pavilion of Italy) as well as for the Arsenale, results extraordinarily predictable and offers a wide overview of the type of art that big international galleries represent; with a gaze that, of course, is centered on the U.S.A., it goes without the slightest interest in research and takes refuge in the legitimization offered by the market. In line with this reading of the situation he suggests the very “open” title of Think with your senses, feel with your mind, the huge warehouse of the Arsenale offers an elegant fragmentation, a miseen-scène in which even the strongest pieces or those with great critic potential appear softened, ridge-less. This is the case of the display done with the piece by Yang Fudong or the great installation by Francis Alÿs. 10 · ARTECONTEXTO · DOSSIER

The same happens with the historical figures selected for the Italian pavilion. A good example is Nancy Spero’s piece which starts the journey, but whose location distorts it in such a fashion that it becomes a decorative element. Something that deserves a special comment is the terrible section dedicated to African production, in which a private collection is shown including, for example, a big drawing by Miquel Barceló, from his series done in Mali. Although predictable, what is really sad about Robert Storr’s work is the intellectual laziness that he emanates. About Documenta 12, the results offered by its curator, Roger Buergel, in collaboration with Ruth Noak, are disappointing; five years, the time that separates each edition of Documenta, seem like a long enough period to elaborate a more influential discourse. Buergek develops a historicist approach, that is, chronologicist , that is centered in the formal continuity (and adjacency) present in the different artistic practices of modernity –modernity avant la lettre , starting in the XVI century– and he calls “migration of shape”. Those satisfied with a reading of art from formalist parameters will be interested in the effort he’s made searching for links between artists of very different stages, contexts and latitudes but with similar formulations. Insisting on that inquiry, he often draws up unlikely and rarely legible connections (the case of Oteiza and Lili Dujourie), while on other occasions he underlines interesting similarities, as it happens with the journey that starts with the delicate ink drawings by Hokusai, made around 1835, and closing with the work of Agnes Martin. The path he’s chosen, and that bases almost exclusively the visual aspects, takes him inevitably into turning the relevant what is merely anecdotic, something that seems to occur even when he introduces historical pieces of conceptual profile or politically commited with their time; this is the case of the Argentinean collective group of avant-garde artists, active at the end of the 60´s of which the Archivo Tucumán Arde is offered. Buergel’s main problem is that he goes without a theoretical formulation that articulates in some way his, to call it somehow, proposal. Thus, his starting point, as a general epigraph of his selection, Is modernity our Antiquitiy?, remains as a sentence-question that, far from answering, he himself blocks as he with-holds all discursive element that might have allowed some sort of reflection. Having said this, the positive aspect of his work resides on an aspect we referred to at the beginning: his effort for tracking the work of interesting artists that are little or not known out of their geographical contexts, and in a very high proportion, though, finally, we ask ourselves if such an effort leads anywhere. As for the Skulptur Projekte Münster, the appointment centered on sculpture and the interventions in public space that is celebrated every ten years and whose reins have been handled along the last four editions by Kasper Köning. Nobody expected risks to be taken; however, he has included two curators in his team, Brigitte Franzen and Carina Plath, whose influence is appreciated in a certain aperture towards new formulations, like the presence of some work

JOSÉ LUIS GUERÍN Las mujeres que no conocemos, 2007. General view of the Spanish Pavilion, Venice Biennial

that is submerged in the social fabric of the city or with ephemeral interventions that move far away from the “enduring object” that so far, almost without exception, characterized this gathering. This is how Jeremy Deller has developed a process-like project in a local gardeners´ community, and Maria Pak formulates an extravagant, neohippie spiritualist camping that approaches the role of religion nowa-days. In the section that could be called “ephemeral proposals” a series of video projections are included in different spaces, among which stands out the piece by Deimantas Narkevicius; or the great sound installation by Susan Philisz. Also among the most interesting, the singular work of Elmgreen & Dragset, Drama Queens , a hilarious play in which well-known sculptures by famous XXth century artists engage in dialogue; or the ironical intervention of Dominique Gonzalez Foerster, who, in a meadow, has reproduced in small scale a good number of landmark pieces from the different editions of this event; Silke Wagner’s piece also stands out, it talks about the German historical memory; or the peculiar Zoo set up by Mike Nelly, with allusions to Sodom and Gomorre. It’s interesting that, among the three, this is the scene that produces the least frustration, the reason may be found in the lack of expectation concerning the fact that Kasper Köning were able to introduce new and renewing perspectives to his working model and his aesthetical options and, in part, he has done it with worthy results. Spanish presence It seems it’s our duty to stop to look at the Spanish intervention in these great international gatherings. We will move away from the cliché DOSSIER · ARTECONTEXTO · 11

NEIL HAMON Ben Roberts, C-Company, 5th Battalion, U.S. Marine Corp, Vietnam, 1968, 2002-2004. Courtesy © the artist and Galeria Leme.

DORA GARCÍA The Beggar’s Opera, 2007. Skulptur Projekte Münster 07

12 · ARTECONTEXTO · DOSSIER

about our meager attendance that, once more, is repeated. If in the previous Venice Biennial the Spanish pavilion stood out because of its high level, with the work of Antoni Muntadas, now it seems to be pointless. The artists are not as responsible as their curator, Alberto Ruiz de Samaniego, Teacher of Aesthetics in the Faculty of Fine Arts of Vigo, whose appointment caused great surprise because his curatorial trajectory was very short. But more have been surprised by his proposal in which cohabit such dissimilar names as photographer Manuel Vilariño, the team of performers Los Torreznos (Jaime Vallaure and Rafael Lamata), Ruben Ramos Balsa and film director José Luis Guerín. It is true that the display that the display of means in the production design can´t soften the incoherence of the selection and much less the discourse formulated by its curator who seems to find anchorage in some late-romantic positions that completely ignore the course of art , and not only currently but since the mid XXth century. In the same line, although obvious, and it is just an example, the contribution of the genre studies, is located on José Luis Guerin´s piece, made especially for the Biennial: ten video projections make up a visual puzzle made of parallel fragments of the same tale; The women we don’t know is articulated by means of an eye-camera, perfect voyeur, that captures female faces in a crowd, casual gestures, or it moves after fleeting figures of attractive women in the street. If the elegance of black and white images is catchy at first, then the astonishment takes over. How is it possible to talk today about women as the essence of the “mysterious”, as the incarnation and the symbol of seduction, of the abysmal “other”, as the author seems to suggest? There it remains. Astonishing. Not only is the curator anchored in another time (by the way, with these discourse formulations it is not strange that he didn’t include any artist of the “mysterious” gender) but Guerín has come up with a very delaying piece, to define it with a soft adjective, that contradicts his trajectory. Moving on to the selection made by Storr, only one Spanish name: Ignasi Aballí, well represented with two of his great phrase sequences extracted from the daily press. As for our country’s attendance to Documenta 12, Roger Buergel’s idea of integrating in his selection the caterer Ferrán Adriá has provoked frowning inside and outside of our borders, and a deafening media noise around a figure that was already talked about in his context. Leaving this aside, three have been the artists with a Spanish passport selectd by Bruegel: Ibon Aramberri, with two excellent pieces, Politica hidráulica (hydraulic policy) and Ejercicios en la cara norte (exercises on the North face); Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle who, born in Madrid, has developed his career in The U.S.A. ; his installation, called Ghost , is a decided criticism on the invasion to Iraq based on the hypothetical existence of weapons of mass destruction; and Sonia Abán Rose, born in Argentina and settled in Barcelona, with a work in which the references to mythology are intertwined with the Holocaust. Finally, and as a historical referent, Oteiza, with two sculptures and a big photograph of his chalk laboratory, an image that results to be barely explicit because of the way it was displayed. At Skulptur Projekte Münster 07 participates Dora García, with The Beggar’s Opera, a piece that, voluntarily, almost went unnoticed and in which an unidentified character circulates in the city and tells a story to whoever agrees to give him a few coins, like in her preceding work, it has a follow-up on the internet (www.thebeggarsopera.org).

Ÿ Alicia Murría is an art critic and independent curator and director of ARTECONTEXTO magazine.

SIGMAR POLKE Bienal de Venecia. Pabellón central

WALTÉRCIO CALDAS Half Mirror Sharp, 2007

SOPHIE CALLE Take care of yourself, 2007 Pabellón de Francia. Bienal de Venecia.

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www.artecontexto.com

IP Poetry, 2004/06. Backstage, . On going project. Performances electr贸nicas, net-instalaciones

GUSTAVO ROMANO

The Best Kept net.art Secret EVA GRINSTEIN* ARTECONTEXTO 路 59

Sopesa la situación antes de efectuar movimiento alguno [Sun Tzu, El arte de la guerra], 2004

One of the most controversial issues about authorship of digital media is the one implied by the functioning of art market. Both the possibility of inﬁnite technical reproduction and the option of unlimited access in the case of artworks available on the Internet are inevitably confronted to the needs of an exchange system ruled by the parameters of Western capitalism. In the last decade, questions such as what would be the best manner to establish the value of an immaterial piece, what proofs of authenticity could be offered to a hypothetic buyer, or how to regulate the divulgation of a work once it would be acquired were part of several discussions aimed to clarify in what terms the commercialization of net.art works would be carried out. Today, after many years of trials and errors, new interesting models of patrimony, more related to the old notion of patronage than to the logics of cultural consumerism, have emerged: several museums and collectors have understood that immaterial artworks generally escape 60 · ARTECONTEXTO

the common formats of market, and accordingly must not be dealt with as regular commodities. Meanwhile, galleries consider how to sell those works that are in principle less stable than, for instance, a painting or a sculpture; on the other hand, institutions are wondering how to store and exhibit their net.art acquisitions –in many cases, they simply exhibit them on their websites, rather than in their physical venues. Spectators, on their part, come across artworks as they navigate through the Internet, not necessarily at galleries or museums. Finally, we all wonder what will come out of this technological revolution. Encouraged by the dynamic and open perspective of the Internet, artists continue to explore techniques, audiences, liberties and limitations of a system that has yet to be developed. It is in this point that we have to situate the work of Gustavo Romano (Buenos Aires, 1958), an artist that has been in touch with new media since its beginnings, considered one of the most important Argentine references both locally and internationally. Having presented his works at the 1st Singapore Biennial, the gallery 80m2 in Lima, Badajoz’s MEIAC and Vienna’s Cervantes Institute, only to mention his most recent exhibitions, awarded with a Guggenheim grant for his project IP Poetry, and represented by Ruth Benzácar gallery, Romano is one of those artists who has managed to merge conceptualist legacy and the new possibilities of electronic arts. Pieza Privada Nº 1 is the title of one of his most recent pieces, designed to be consumed and eventually bought through the internet. Just as it happened to some of his earlier works –the best known ones being Hyperbody and CyberZoo–, in this new piece the artist utilizes the media in order to talk about the media, comprising its most terrifying and particularly the debate on copyright/ copyleft. He does so with humor, without any kind of solemnity or stridency: it is an almost secret work that can only be appreciated by entering its site [http://ﬁndelmundo.org.ar/pp01], a work that has barely circulated around other spaces, either physical or virtual. A work that incarnates a paradox since its very beginning as it simultaneously offers and subtracts itself from our reach. The initial titles summarize the general description of this proposal: “Name: Pieza Privada # 1. Author: Gustavo Romano. Year of release: 2005. Media: net.art. Price: 8.000Euros”. Next, a short introductory text anticipates and comprises virtually all wee need to know about it: “In order to enter this piece, you must acquire it. The access is restricted. By acquiring the piece, you will be sent a user name and a password that will allow you to log in. There is only one enabled user, which secures the private use of the work and the restriction of access for other people. WE RECOMMEND THE USER TO READ CAREFULLY THE CESSION CONDITIONS OF THE WORK”. The cession conditions constitute an ironic comment on the contractual dimension that proliferates today among merchandized art circuits. The buyer is obliged to observe four aspects: the ﬁrst and main one is a compromise to “never exhibit the work for another individual or group. In case the acquisition is made by a company, group or institution, it will assign only one person the right to visualize

the work. This right is exclusively linked to one individual, it is perpetual and inalienable. In case of demise, this right can be transferred to someone else by virtue of testamentary dispositions, or through a natural succession in case there is only one inheritor. On the contrary, the parts involved must reach a common agreement or a legal contract establishing who will be the beneficiary of the exclusive right of visualization, and in no case this right will be shared by the parts”. The buyer cannot reproduce the piece and must assume the cost of the domain where the site is hosted. On his part, the author promises to destroy all the files he has used to create the piece, providing the buyer with all the passwords and the right of management of the site, not modifying it and “not reproducing it by any means, digital or analogical, known or yet to be known”, which guarantees the perpetuity of the closed system that constitutes the base of the project. The access page, that is, the one available on the internet, is not a part of the “secret piece”, therefore the artist can keep presenting it publicly. In the framework of this game all the more serious as it has been displayed under strict legal terms, there is also a clause that adds up the possibility that the buyer re-sells the piece in the future as long as he can guarantee the endurance of its confidentiality. A hypothetical punishment is considered for breaking the contract: if one of the parts, either the buyer or the seller, fails to observe the pact he will be obliged to pay the cost of the piece, 8.000 Euros. Finally, once all the terms of cession have been clearly stated, the page includes the payment options that require filling in a form with basic data. The transfer can be made by credit card, Pay Pal or Western Union. By the time I was writing this article, the artist confirmed that he has received phone calls from interested people, even though no one has yet acquired this piece –as mysterious as real, as thrilling as inapprehensible. Who will pay to possess which is, in the end, a critically intelligent, well constructed idea? Who will pay this piece signed by Romano, that is, a portion of his prestige, the rights to own a part of his authorship? Perhaps, one day we may have a vague notion: if no one breaks the rules, the content will always be hidden within the limits of an enclosed form, sentinel of the treasure who can only be owned by one single person on earth.

TIME NOTES, 2006. 3 performances and mixed media installation City Hall. Singapore Biennale 2006

Eva Grinstein is a critic, writer and curator.

ARTECONTEXTO · 61

CIBERCONTEXTO

A Summer for surﬁng Artists, critics, aﬁcionados and art fans will not have a rest this summer. Those who dare to follow this year’s rhythm, a record year of art events according to the experts, will be breathless. Besides the great contemporary art events –Documenta 12, Skuptur Projekte Münster 007 and the 52nd Venice Biennial–, many other high-quality events will take

Por Marcela Uribe place. And to top it all, it has just begun. Make space in your agendas… In this brief Cibercontexto, we will make a long journey, with a busy and meaningful schedule, from the Colombian Amazon region to Europe’s electronic scenes, to Nevada desert.

PIXELAZO Versión 2007.2. Leticia-Medellín, Colombia http://www.pixelache.ac/2007/pixelazo/

The Pixelazos, urban new media and creative networks laboratories, had their ﬁrst Colombian edition in Medellín, in 2005, as a result of the collaboration between Intermundos (Colombia) and Pixelache (Finland). The Pixelache Festival takes place every spring in Finland as an attempt to create networks between traditional creative practices and the most experimental electronic subcultures. This fruitful network of artists and media activists, will begin the adventure of the Selvatorium and Pixelazo 2007 in Colombia. The ﬁrst event will be held in the Amazon city of Leticia, and it has been proposed as a beta version in which network issues will be explored through the knowledge exchange between scientists, natives, artists and media activists. The Pixelazo, on the other hand, will seize the neighborhood of Santa Cruz de la Rosa in Medellín, in which local collectives, international guests and art fans will have the chance to experiment with appropriation, media and technology in different labs and workshops.

BURNING MAN. Reno - Estados Unidos http://www.burningman.com/

Without doubt, this is one of the most interesting annual festivals. The main topic for the 2007 edition of this legendary festival will be “the green man”, referring to the relations between humans and nature. Burning Man, initially a spontaneous meeting of artists, musicians and performers of all sorts, has become a festival that attracts more than 25.000 people in the middle of the desert. In this monumental camp no simple spectators are allowed, but everyone is obliged to participate in the creation of this new world focusing on an artistic subject and the most varied manifestations. This adventure –a crucial experience, according to the visitors-, has been designed as a city called “Black Rock City”, and a community of interactive art, party, celebration, music, circus arts, performance and all kinds of communal rituals. Coexisting is an art here: advertisement, the use of money or any kind of remunerated service are completely forbidden. Everything people needs is obtained through barter. Nonbiodegradable pollution is also forbidden. The festival’s last night, in a sort of ritual, the “big man”, a gigantic structure and symbol of this event, is incinerated.

DIGITAL ART WEEKS FESTIVAL. Zurich www.digitalartweeks.ethz.ch

This meeting point between art and technology, according to the motto, will be made through a series of symposiums, workshops, performances and four big thematic exhibitions that will include avant-garde investigations and innovations on digital arts and technology. The symposium will count on the presence of ﬁgures such as the octogenarian Joseph Weizenbaum, who is considered the father of cybernetics, or Michelle Riel, multimedia art investigator and creator of www.turbulence.org, one of the most important supporters of net.art. Finally, the Basel’s Cargo Bar, famous for the quality of its vj’s and dj’s sets, has made artworks out of its cocktails that will be served all through the festival. Ordering a “TV and Shotgun”, a “Robot Cowboy” (the title of a work by Oscar Ramos), or a “Dream Machine” (an allusion to the work The 3rd Mind –Art Clay –CHE-, Corrina Mattner & Sebastian Ulbrich –DEU-, will be the best manner to get introduced to the festival and its works.

BIENNIAL OF MOVING IMAGES. Genève www.centreimage.ch/bim.php

The “International Week of Video” was carried out in 1985 as the first experiment for this biennial, which has become one of the most important artistic events not only in Switzerland, but also in Europe. During its 12th edition, the Biennial of Moving Images will be the place of encounter for young artists (all of them under thirty-five) whose works have been produced between 2006 and 2007. All through its 20 years of experience, the curatorial team of the Biennial has introduced very well known audiovisual artists such as Bill Viola, Gary Hill, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Robert Filliou, Chris Marker, Guy Debord, Vito Acconci, Willian Wegman, Bruce Nauman, Chantal Akerman, Rebecca Horn, Laurie Anderson, among others. Far from TV or commercial productions, the Biennial is devoted to video, experimental cinema, and in general terms, to the fusion of visual art and multimedia. Fortunately for those who are interested in video, in this web we can find a detailed description of former editions, from the earliest until the most recent one, which serves as an amazingly useful archive.

MONUMENTA. Paris http://www.monumenta.com

Recently remodelled, the Grand Palais, an architectonic milestone of the modern age, created in 1900 for the “Universal Exposition”, will be the venue of Monumenta. Every year, a guest artist will have the chance to develop a specific installation for the halls of this building. The first three installations will be made by Anselm Kiefer, who inaugurates the program with a reflection on memory and the holocaust, together with Richard Serra and Christian Boltanski. Monumenta will count on a varied program of conferences, lectures, cinema, performances and poetry readings, all related to the work and subjects dealt with by the artist. We recommend exploring the website so as to have a better look at the program.

11TH ANNUAL DUMBO.UNDER THE BRIDGE FESTIVAL. Nueva York http://www.dumboartscenter.org/about/

Produced by the Dumbo Arts center, this annual festival has been working for more than a decade. During three days in September, the Under the Bridge, seizes the streets of Dumbo (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), a neighborhood in Brooklyn that was recovered through artistic intervention and, of course, thanks to the annual celebration of the biggest experimentation on public art in the US. With dozens of artists every year, the party of art in the streets gathers over 20.000 people that take part in the transformation of walls, streets, galleries, parks, buildings, façades, and windows into art. In earlier editions the festival invited artists such as Murat Musulluoglu, Elaine Gan, Meredith Pingree and Vyday Sindikat, who explored the space both publicly and privately; or such as Matt Callinan and Rise Endo, who challenged the limits of space. Organized through different convocations, this edition will exhibit, among others, the Project Glow –a series of installations and sculptures involving light and intervene different buildings of the area-, the Elevator/Lobby Art –where artists are invited to explore the possibilities of art on the river-, the Simultaneous Projections –projections on streets, buildings and windows-, the Video Dumbo –a screen for local video artists-, and a great variety of parties, live music, conferences of artists and forums that transform this festival into one of the main artistic attractions in New York for this summer.

BANFF SUMMER ARTS FESTIVAL. Banff - Canada http://www.banffcentre.ca/bsaf/2007/

Organized by the Banff Centre, an important cultural institution in Banff City that has been working for 75 years now, this versatile festival gathers artists, ecology experts, adventurers, writers, filmmakers, performers, philosophers, investigators and all sorts of creators in a four-months program. With a program that includes contemporary dance, architecture, Jazz, Opera, literary events, world music concerts and new media shows, the Banff Summer Arts Festival does not only gather several artistic expressions, but also offers many new activities: night-time Cabarets, over fifty concerts of over 200 musicians, projections, participative tours, trackline tours and photography field trips, workshops on informal architecture in which art, architecture and contemporary culture are combined in search of alternatives for conventional lifestyles. Osvaldo Gojilov, awarded musician and composer, will join the festival together with musicians such as Alpha Yaya Diallo and his African funk band, Kira Ahluwalia, and the Rwandan guitar player and singer Mighty Popo. Animated films such as Aboriginality, by Dominique Keller, or the work of four animators from the Nunavut Animation Lab, plus a night of projections of videos and performances.

8th BIENNIAL OF VIDEO AND NEW MEDIA 2007. FOR ALL THE ARTISTS. CITIES, CITIZENSHIPS, AND CITIZENS. Santiago de Chile http://www.bienaldevideo.cl/index.htm

This biennial, that has the Contemporary Art Museum as its venue, will summon up the best of Chilean videoart about the topic of the city, the meaning of the urban in culture, contemporary art and new technologies. From this wide framework, the Biennial will exhibit the work of those video-artists who are devoted to experimentation and “videographic” aesthetic, media art and the use of new media. This edition will pay tribute to Guillermo Cifuentes, one of the most outstanding Chilean video-artists, who, having died recently (June, 2007), designed the curatorial concept of this event in collaboration with Néstor Olhagaray. Among the most renown pieces made by this proliﬁc artist we can mention Diálogo de sordos (1995), Lecciones nocturnas (1998), and Reconocimiento de lugar (2002), in which he managed to combine and experimental language with subjects such as love, death, torture, and political opinions, so necessary and always present in Chilean history.

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