Supermarket - the artist-run art magazine, Issue#1

the artist-run art magazine

SUPERMARKET 2011

WHERE IS THE CENTRE?

GHETTO

BIENNALE

EXTRA: SUMPTUOUS CENTERFOLD POSTER INCLUDED

MY NAME IS FASHION THE PATHS OF PARADISE

REARRANGING THE CHESSBOARD DJISÖS KRAJST!!!

DANIEL BIRNBAUM

IN DA HOUSE UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS AROUND THE GLOBE

Photo: Mnky Bizz Group (mnkybizz.com)

THE ABSENT HUB

SUPERMARKET issue#1

Cat alog ue SUP ERM ARK ET 201 1 Kul turh use t Sto ckh olm 18– 20 February 2011

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ISSN 2000-8155

11-01-28 08.34.41

utstÄllnInGAr

GreGory Crewdson In a Lonely Place 19/3–12/6 Fri entré

Anneè oloFsson The Face of All Your Fears 5/3–15/5 Fri entré

Kulturhusets FotodAGAr Fler portfoliovisningar, filmer, seminarier och konstnärssamtal än någonsin.

18–19/3 Anneè olofsson: Betty ?, 2011 © Anneè olofsson Gregory Crewdson: untitled (worthington street) © Gregory Crewdson

www.kulturhuset.stockholm.se

5th floor

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Publishing Details

EDITOR & CREATIVE DIRECTOR PONTUS RAUD ART EDITOR ANDREAS RIBBUNG

ADVERTISING SALES TEAM ANNE AUFDEMBRINKE TOBIAS SJÖDIN EMELIE CARLÉN

GRAPHIC DESIGN ANDREAS RIBBUNG MAGDA LIPKA FALK KATHARINA BÜCHEL

ADVERTISING CONTACT AD@SUPERMARKETARTFAIR.COM

IMAGE PROCESSING EMELIE CARLÉN

Economy: Meggi Sandell Sara Dynesius Jannike Simonsson

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS KAN KAN LIU • SINZIANA RAVINI • DR ODYOKE • ANNA-KARIN SANDSTRÖM • EVA-LOTTA HOLM FLACH • PAU WAELDER • HÅKAN NILSSON • ADRIAN BOJENAIU • MIKAEL ASKERGREN • ROBERTO N PEYRE • PAULINA WALLENBERG‑OLSSON • PETER CORNELL CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS & PHOTOGRAPHERS Mnky Bizz Group • ANDREAS RIBBUNG • FLOOR WESSELING • THOMAS GUNNAR BAGGE • MALOU BERGMAN • HELENE HORTLUND • JOSÉ FIGUEROA • PONTUS RAUD • MARTA SZYMANSKA • MARTIN WERTHMANN • LENA GUSTAVSSON • ANNA LARSSON • ADRIAN BOJENAIU • MIKAEL ASKERGREN • LEA GORDON • Jean Hérard Celeur • PAULINA WALLENBERG-OLSSON • TINA SCHOTT TRANSLATION Bongi Jarne McDermott • Richard Griffith Carlsson

INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION NEWSSTAND DISTRIBUTION AVAILABLE THROUGH PineApple Media/SH Circulation Pineapple Media Ltd 172 Northern Parade Hilsea, Portsmouth, Hampshire, PO2 9LT, UK www.pineapple-media.com/ Tel: +44 (0) 2392 787970 PRINTING Printon Trükikoda Ltd. PUBLISHER PONTUS RAUD ISSN 2000-8155

MANY THANKS TO JAMES FOOTE, JAMES BLAKE, TORE DANIELSSON

SUPERMARKET ISSUE is published annualy

by Supermarket Art Fair ek. för.

Postal address: c/o Sandell, Dagagatan 17, SE-646 32 GNESTA, SWEDEN VAT no. SE769616994001 Organisation number: 769616 9940

SUPPORT CREW & FRIENDS MEGGI SANDELL, KENNETH PILS, JANNIKE SIMONSSON, IZABELLA BORZECKA AND ALL THE SUPERMARKET PROJECT TEAM, PERNILLA GLASER, HAMMARBY ARTPORT

Reproduction of editorial is strictly prohibited without prior permission from the publisher (don’t push your luck). All rights reserved in all countries. © 2011.

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Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art Pandemonium: Art in a Time of ‘Creativity Fever’ September 10 – November 13, 2011 Chief Curator: Sarat Maharaj Co-curatorial team: Dorothee Albrecht, Stina Edblom and Gertrud Sandqvist http://goteborg.biennal.org

F UT U R E EX H I B I TI ONS En årlig publikation om utställningsmediet.

Beställ på riksutstallningar.se/futureexhibitions

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Content:

38 In memory of LENA GUSTAVSSON PONTUS RAUD

6 The Absent Hub KAN KAN LIU

27 Daniel Birnbaum in da House Anna-Karin Sandström

50 DJISÖSS KRAJST!!!

MIKAEL ASKERGREN

39 Drifting HÅKAN NILSSON

56 Atis Rezistans & Ghetto Biennale ROBERTO N PEYRE / BLOT

8 The Wedding between Art & Agriculture PONTUS RAUD 31 Hama Goro and the Artist‑run Gallery Centre Soleil d’Afrique in Mali EVA-LOTTA HOLM FLACH

44 A Short Resolution about the East ADRIAN BOJENAIU

62 My Name is Fashion PAULINA WALLENBERGOLSSON

17 Centrifugal desires, temporary autonomous zones and axis mundi SINZIANA RAVINI

48 Mnky Bizz Group and the Evolution of the Cultural Industry 32 Rearranging the Chessboard PAU WAELDER

68 The Paths of Paradise PETER CORNELL

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Nelson Mandela 1990, by photographer Hans Gedda. Silver gelatine print.

A virtual gallery for fine art photography and rare photo books. Please visit www.artedition.se to see more works by Hans Gedda, Denise Grünstein, Mikael Jansson, Anders Krisár, Dawid, Martina Hoogland Ivanow and many more.

Photo: Emeka Ogboh Photo: Emeka Ogboh

RESPECT THE COPYRIGHT

In Focus: Nordic and African Art in Collaboration A non-profit organisation whose purpose is to develop networks and support collaborations between artists, curators and cultural producers in the Nordic countries and Africa.

SUPERMARKET 2011 Videos, photos, presentations, talks Hama Goro, artist and curator / Centre Soleil d’Afrique, Mali Fatoumata Diabaté, photographer/artist, Mali Arijana Kajfes, artist, Sweden Emeka Ogboh, artist, Jude Anogwih, artist, Oyindamola Fakeye, cultural producer / VANLagos Video Art Network, Nigeria Mats Hjelm, artist, Sweden and others Contact: infocusafrica@gmail.com with kind support from the Swedish Institute and the French Embassy in Stockholm

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BUS operates under the copyright legislation and helps develop the legislation for the benefit of its members. Our objective is to ensure that a creator of an original artwork receives remuneration when his/her work is being used in different media i.e. press, commercials, TV, on postcards, in books, on the internet – in Sweden and abroad.

Our costumers are, among others, museums, art clubs, municipals, real estate companies, publishers, broadcasters, cable television operators, auction houses, advertising companies etc. BUS makes sure that your will is respected.

BUS also distributes individual remunerations for public owned art works (individuell visningsersättning) and for photocopying of visual material in books in the educational system(individuell reprografiersättning).

BUS collects and distributes the remuneration when art works are resold by auction houses and the art market (resale right – följerätt).

A membership in BUS is beneficial, free of cost and an act of solidarity. Together we can protect our rights. BUS represents more than 55 000 visual authors from different categories, such as; fine art, craft, design and illustration.

If you aren’t a member already, please contact BUS and become one!

Bildkonst Upphovsrätt i Sverige Visual Arts Copyright Society in Sweden | Årstaängsvägen 5B, 7 tr 117 43 Stockholm, Sweden | +46-8-545 533 80 www.bus.se

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Editorial:

A world ever changing The speed of communication today is striking, giving transparency to the world that few authorities would wish for. What kind of world is it that the elite want to retain at any cost?

Why should a democracy need to sacrifice freedom of speech to protect its inhabitants?

Is this anxiety created by fear of change or is it a consequence of deeper mechanisms?

In this first issue we have chosen the theme of its poetic title ”The Absent Hub”. Changes in the old and new hubs that influence us on different levels are narrowed down in the following articles. The writers have given their own interpretations of the theme and several of them have touched upon the relationship between religion and art. Where is contemporary art situated in relation to religious space? Are art galleries today’s cathedrals? Is it fear of the mad bomber that makes the art world use censorship? Is it possible to conduct a freer conversation through art or is this merely an artistic myth?

Perhaps there was a time when art’s picturing of the provocative in a new light, giving a different expression to the improper and constantly rephrasing the same question: ”Could this really be art?”,caused astonishment. Art galleries have had the headroom to create scandals at the pace of changing norms and conventions.

Art is exciting when it touches upon the forbidden within us, or when it opens up to boundless discussions. If the art world starts using censorship the art gallery becomes a harmless decorated room.

Is this where we are heading?

What is the point in writing about the artist‑run art scene? Artists create a situation in which contemporary art can exist during a short period of time, built on passion and joy…

When this expires the gallery often dies. One can criticise artist-run galleries for their lack of continuity as well as for their tendency to become internal. But one can also ask oneself: What is more important, a conversation about art or a business of art? We do not want to change the fact that the art world is built upon supply and demand. No, we want to add our own scene, the artist-run scene, as an important part of future art. The autonomous art field is a place to fight for.

With this magazine we hope to create a window onto a rapidly growing global network of artist-run galleries. Making this art magazine has not been an easy journey.

It has taken the artists behind Supermarket Art Fair several years to create a structure and financial situation in which this has been possible. We have done this through one of the most powerful forces within the artist-run scene – we have done it together. A shared burden is a lighter and more enjoyable burden.

I would like to thank all who have been involved in this work for an incredible contribution and for all the time and creativity that has been spent to achieve this eccentric within the art world.

Enjoy the read!

Pontus Raud Editor and Creative Director

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The Absent Hub KAN KAN LIU

GRAPHIC DESIGN: MAGDA LIPKA FALCK

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There is an ancient Hindu story about four blind men who wanted to know what an elephant looked like. And each came back with a different perception of the elephant.

If the word â&#x20AC;&#x153;hubâ&#x20AC;? in our present lexicon means the â&#x20AC;&#x153;centreâ&#x20AC;? or the â&#x20AC;&#x153;coreâ&#x20AC;?, carrying so much DGGHG YDOXH LWV HFRQRPLFDO SROLWLFDO PLOLWDU\ DQG FXOWXUDO VLJQLĂ&#x20AC;FDQFHV WKHQ , DP VXUH WKDW ZKHQ we say that Beijing is the hub of China, everybody understands it. I certainly understand it very well every time the power is cut off in other cities in order to provide a normal life for the citizens who live in Beijing. It must be a good feeling to be the hub, or to be in the hub. I was once in a 7LEHWDQ WRZQ LQ QRUWKHUQ <XQQDQ DQG , KHDUG D 7LEHWDQ ZRPDQ WDONLQJ DERXW DQ DFTXDLQWDQFH of hers who came from another Tibetan village. She was laughing at his accent as he didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t speak in the same way as the people in the town speak. I guess it is another sign of being the hub. No? Same as a New Yorker believes that only people from other states have an accent.

The United States is considered as the hub of the world when one thinks of how many atom bombs they have and how much money they can afford to owe. Every time I turn on the news, there is a lot of news about the United States but very little or no news aboutâ&#x20AC;Ś sayâ&#x20AC;Ś Mauritius.

But again, will the people dwelling in Port Louis regard the people from other areas in Mauritius as remote? Yes, the hub is where most activities happen, where money and power dwell, where people speak a language which somehow carries more weight.

If I may consider the universe as a human body and the hub as the heart in this body, then to make this human being healthy both in body and mind, one should make sure that the heart funcWLRQV ZHOO DQG SXPSV KHDOWK\ EORRG WR WKH RWKHU SDUWV WKDW DUH HTXDOO\ YLWDO WR PDNLQJ WKH ERG\ work well. But if one only focuses on the heart and ignores the healthy development of the liver, kidney, or the sexual organs, how far can one get? If we are so mutually dependent economically, politically, and environmentally as a functioning whole, then where is the hub?

7KH Ă&#x20AC;UVW WLPH , ORRNHG DW D ZRUOG PDS &KLQD ZDV DW WKH FHQWUH RI WKH ZRUOG )RU TXLWH D ZKLOH , believed China was the centre as I was taught to believe so. And it did give me a sense of patriotism, as often it was used for a purpose. Is being the centre so important? Can the centre form itself without any support? If wisdom does not necessarily come hand in hand with age, does the hub undoubtedly represent the vital message? One thing is for sure, the feeling of being superior in one way or another is vital for survival, it makes oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s testosterone high.

Now I am in a small village located in southern British Colombia with maybe two thousand resiGHQWV VXUURXQGHG ZLWK KHPORFNV DQG Ă&#x20AC;U WUHHV ZLWK EHDUV ZDONLQJ WKURXJK WKH ZRRGV 0\ KXE LV my family, if one is allowed to say so. The hub of this village is a town 30 kilometers away. The hub of this town is a city 60 kilometers away. The hub of this cityâ&#x20AC;ŚThe hub of this cityâ&#x20AC;ŚI donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know as I have not been there yetâ&#x20AC;Ś Where is the hub of the universe?

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Artwork: Floor Wesseling

s to ent and talk v e l ia c e p s a remembers rijman from V d u k a r a R s m d tu in n Po nL e. an and Mali d agricultur n m ij a r t V r a u r ie fo th re Ma bout the futu a r o t a iv t Kul new era? a f o g in n in eg Is this the b

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GRAPHIC DESIGN: KATHARINA BÜCHEL

driving my mmer, I was In the mid su in was pouring down. e ra nst car, while th le wind agai and a terrib es t ad h g sh y Gre very thou haunts my my window I’m on the t. en appy ev art and about the h ing between d ed l W e th road to place in rura at will take th , on re d u n lt la cu Ö agri land ad, on the is village Dyest eden. w S of t st coas the southea tf la orm, erimental p As an exp five years st has the la ber Kultivator ed in a num d participat s ce n re fe initiated, an con exhibitions, n ee w et of projects, b tion the connec etc, where

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cows

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ks; sustainlife that wor rs fe of ly al actu e ones of us u like. For th yo if , fe li le ab and farmh agriculture social and working wit ical, h for an eth ing, the wis opment of ach to devel ro p­ ap n to ve ti crea a motivatio eneral was g in s. g st ti in ar rm h fa n wit collaboratio is to go into the ehind Kultivatorents b ea id n ai The m e experim tform wher , by provide a pla e performed b n ca es n li p ci outcome, of both dis ers, and the h ot d an s ourselve ed. can be shar or processes

GRAPHIC DESIGN: KATHARINA BÜCHEL issue#1.indd 9

to start r motivation hat was you t and agriW ar (how s-fields of os e” cr ag ri in g ar in work idea behind see the “m is the main riculture at ag h How do you d W ? an t re u ar lt cu etween h new art r? you call it) b entation wit Kultivato im er lp co ex u yo as – – is it an on se we saw it social acti ionals work becau ss is fe th ro forms, or is p and d t te ar ar We st to re-think only with y? g possibility it in s laborate not n st u re u m re ct te m ru in co an h local tablished st e but also wit th m m a lot of es ro or F -f . g re ricull as farmin el ag w d an as kt t ac ar ar b tist within e between g from an ar uch The marriag of us comin ent not so m ience of es er im p on er ex p ex an rew out of new (or ture was an g h it it cial , w d n u as h it s ro d g t form king w so with new ar inethies wor etworking an ­ n n ro r id p fo m s In e at t. th ) form g forenvironmen in d an rb ed actually old u ed, w n e in h issues of im­priso sharing. T ing groups nference/ ss co information re d on in m ad ts n s m ject d the co and immigra had both mat replace we eless people om d in this we h an , ss rm bled areas, fo cu seminar aim; to dis onomic trou e very ec al th n oio to ci ss so on fe pro ks. isconnecti d or a w d et an internal, n ce n d il ie s exper ndition that es and bu material co l, relevant issu ta en am d fun

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Walid Raad Miraculous Beginnings 19 februari - 25 april

I samarbete med Whitechapel Gallery Walid Raad, We decided to let them say â&#x20AC;&#x153;we are convincedâ&#x20AC;? twice _ Plate P3 Date: 2002 (detail)

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WWW.RAKETA.NU 11-01-26 19.11.51

REALITY CHECK Art and Activism Reader

Dr. Odyoke:

The the

Hottest of Hot

Who is the hottest artist in the world?

No rewards for guessing, it is not a person alive. For the second year in succession, Andy Warhol shines in the number one slot of Artfacts’ Top 100 Artists Ranking List. In fact, among the top 10, 6 are deceased. Bruce Nauman in third slot could take pride in being the hottest artist alive.

The ranking is made by a weight algorithm, taking into consideration where and how often the artists have exhibited their works. Generally, there are no big surprises. The art world is conservative, and the names on the list could easily be compiled by any bunch of reasonably well educated exhibition opening party guests.

So who is a rising star, and who is a falling has-been? Tacita Dean and Maurizio Cattelan are definitely rising to stardom, gaining 13 positions each since the 2009 ranking. But poor Dan Flavin is dropping 14 positions, sharing the fate of Günter Förg, who is dropping 11 positions.

But where are the Nordic artists?

If we leave Claes Oldenburg out (he moved from Sweden to the US in 1936), the hottest Nordic artist on the list is Edvard Munch in slot 108. The highest ranking Nordic artist alive is the dynamic duo Elmgreen & Dragset in slot 144. Swedish wondergirl Nathalie Djurberg is hiding in slot 497. So much for the Nordic artistic miracle…

The publication “Art and Activism Reader” is a collection of texts with a focus on socially engaged art and activism. The content presents views from different time aspects in Scandinavia and on the Balkans from the 60s until today.

The reader was produced as a part of Reality Check exhibition in Trondheim 2010.

Anders Burman’s text gives a comprehensive picture of political engagement in Swedish art and crafts in the transboundary times of the 60s and 70s. Misko Suvakovic and Ana Vilenica’s texts describe art and activism from the 60s until today on the Balkans (Yugoslavia and Ex‑Yugoslavia).

The collective as a work method and the content of the film ”Partisan Songspiel” is illuminated in an interview conducted by Jelena Vesic with the creators of the film, Chto Delat /Dmitrij Vilenskij, Vladan Jeremic and Rena Rädle.

Other participants: Lisa Nyberg & Johanna Gustavsson/Malmö Fria.

Kvinnouniversitet, Critical Run Trondheim/Thierry Geoffroy, Turrist/ Anita Hillestad & Stig Olav Tony Fredriksson, Rachel Dagnall, Lisa Torell, Nebojsa Milikic, Dragan Jovanovic, Nebojsa Kitanovic & Milan Zaric and a special contribution by Milica Tomic with the piece “One day, instead of one night, a burst of machine-gun fire will flash, if light cannot come otherwise”.

Editors: Vladan Jeremic & Rena Rädle, Madeleine Park Design: Katarina Popovic Reality Check: www.samtidskunst. no/english-exhibitions-reality_check

World congress in Vancouver In October 2012, Institutions by Artists will survey institutional and para-institutional projects and practices by artists to measure the distance between the performance and the promise of contemporary artist run centres and initiatives.

Institutions by Artists will be a world congress of artists, curators, critics, and academics to deliberate, explore, and advance the common and mutual interests of international artist-run centres, collectives, and cultures in a multi-day convention dedicated to the question: Is there a space for art outside of the market and of the state?

To re-define and transcend existing models of artistic production and circulation that depend on the market and the state, The Convention assumes the negative position – that no such space exists.

The Convention will stage debates, produce workshops and present keynotes to explore newly emergent and promising models, practices, initiatives, orientations, or dispositions.

To furnish a laboratory for discussion, we will consider radically mercantile or hyper-nationalistic projects; examine their scales and frameworks, and see where they are placed – whether urban, rural, fixed, mobile, local, or virtual. Under special consideration are methods, projects, strategies, and tactics that either fully embrace or strongly resist the idea that there is an emergent independence from the market and the state.

The Conven­tion is a project of Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres (PAARC), Fillip Magazine, and Artist-Run Centres and Collectives Conference / La Conférence des collectifs et des centres d’artistes autogérés (ARCCC/CCCAA) www.arcpost.org

(Read the list at www.artfacts.net/en/ artists/top100.html)

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PRIS 75 KR NR 1 MARS 2010 KONSTPERSPEKTIV – SVERIGES STÖRSTA KONSTTIDSKRIFT

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TEMA Den ljusnande framtid?

TEMA Vid sydfronten PRIS 75 KR NR 4 DECEMBER 2009 KONSTPERSPEKTIV – SVERIGES STÖRSTA KONSTTIDSKRIFT

PRIS 75 KR NR 2 MAJ 2009 KONSTPERSPEKTIV – SVERIGES STÖRSTA KONSTTIDSKRIFT

PRIS 75 KR NR 1 MARS 2009 KONSTPERSPEKTIV – SVERIGES STÖRSTA KONSTTIDSKRIFT

PRIS 75 KR NR 3 SEPTEMBER 2008 KONSTPERSPEKTIV – SVERIGES STÖRSTA KONSTTIDSKRIFT

PRIS 75 KR NR 2 MAJ 2008 KONSTPERSPEKTIV – SVERIGES STÖRSTA KONSTTIDSKRIFT

PRIS 75 KR NR 1 MARS 2008 KONSTPERSPEKTIV – SVERIGES STÖRSTA KONSTTIDSKRIFT

skulpturen vägen?

PRIS 75 KR NR 4 DECEMBER 2008 KONSTPERSPEKTIV – SVERIGES STÖRSTA KONSTTIDSKRIFT

TEMA Vart tog

PRIS 75 KR NR 4 DECEMBER 2010 KONSTPERSPEKTIV – SVERIGES STÖRSTA KONSTTIDSKRIFT

PRIS 75 KR NR 3 SEPTEMBER 2010 KONSTPERSPEKTIV – SVERIGES STÖRSTA KONSTTIDSKRIFT

PRIS 75 KR NR 2 MAJ 2010 KONSTPERSPEKTIV – SVERIGES STÖRSTA KONSTTIDSKRIFT

PRIS 75 KR NR 3 SEPTEMBER 2009 KONSTPERSPEKTIV – SVERIGES STÖRSTA KONSTTIDSKRIFT

TEMA Gud gör comeback TEMA Det våras för formhantverket TEMA Go North!

TEMA Möt Storebror!

TEMA En smaksak

OR 56 SID A – EX TR MYCK ET LÄ SN ING !

TEMA Ja, vi elsker

TEMA Grafiken på frammarsch

Trettiofemårsju bileum

TEMA Tanke & känsla

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Dr. Odyoke:

Cultural downsizing

In a recently published report

by SICA, Dutch Centre for International Cultural Activities, a grim picture is drawn of the future for publicly funded European culture. In countries hit hard by the financial crisis (as Greece and the UK), cultural budgets are cut

by 25–50%. Part of the explanation is, of course, that similar cuts are made throughout the whole of the public sector, affecting also healthcare, education and social welfare. But for many governments – especially the ones relying on the support of right‑wing, populist

parties – cutting down on subsidies to cultural events and institutions have been a way of gaining short‑term public goodwill. To close down a municipal theatre instead of a local kindergarten is bound not only to cause violent reactions from the population. It is also a neat way to get rid of certain expressions of contemporary art that criticises the political establishment. On the other hand, this short-term perspective may be dangerous in the long run, threatening the core values of European societies.

During the Second World War, Winston Churchill was once asked if the war effort could not be boosted by funds taken from the cultural budget. His astonished reply was: “But in that case, what is it that we are fighting for?” Not many contemporary European politicians have the visionary power of old Winnie.

Dr. Odyoke:

Wannabe rich and famous?

Damien Hirst put it bluntly: “Art is about life, the art market is about money”. He ought to know.

According to Artinfo, Mr Hirst is probably the world’s wealthiest artist (though challenged by the likes of Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Brice Marden and Julian Schnabel). But how does one become rich in the art world? By selling the right works to the right clients through the right dealers.

Art collector Adam Lindemann’s book “Collecting Contemporary Art” delivers some of the clues.

Published back in 2006, it is now available in a neat Taschen edition for just below 10 quid. Instead of handing out advice, Mr Lindemann

has made interviews with a number of top-notch art dealers, collectors and art consultants, such as Larrry Gagosian, Charles Saatchi, Jeffrey Dietch and Barbara Gladstone.

The interviews are often amusing, but seldom surprising.

After 298 pages, it all boils down to some very simple facts: only buy works you like, learn the social ways of the art world, educate yourself and don’t think that you can predict or influence the direction of art. It all sounds like me - so why am I still not filthy rich? I think Mr Lindemann is hiding some crucial tricks of the trade…

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NORRTÄLJE KONSTHALL Gravende journalistikk, intervjuer og artikler, skandinavisk og internasjonal, samtids- og historisk kunst

Spring 2011 Michael Kirkham & Jukka Korkeila 22/1 – 20/2 Martin Stenberg 26/2 – 3/4 Action / Interaction Eva Beierheimer & Miriam Laussegger Åsa Stjerna 9/4 – 5/6 KG Nilson 11/6 – 21/8

Abboner på KUNSTforum.

Norden: kun 399,i året. send mail til:

14

andre.gali@kunstforum.as. Oppgi navn, adresse og tlf.nr

www.norrtalje.se/konsthall

www.kunstforum.as Kunstforum A5 annons.indd 1

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Dr. Odyoke:

Help a Princess in distress They started out by designing T-shirts for the local market in Stockholm. Swedish design group Fuldesign (literally meaning “ugly design”) is hitting it big. Their range of products nowadays ranges from pins and CD-covers to toys and web pages. Fuldesign’s inspiration comes from a variety of sources like popular culture, music and cheap pornography.

Recently they made a party game, adressing last summer’s media

hallabaloo, the wedding of Swedish Crown Princess Victoria. The purpose of the game is to help the Crown Princess and her spouse to endure their first year as man and wife. Along the way, unexpected events, domestic cock-ups and vile paparazzi are preying on the happy couple. Their fate is in your hands!

Or, rather, in your dice. You may download the game at: www.fuldesign.se/prinsesspel.zip

Dr. Odyoke:

Gearing up for WHAT?

This year, the art world is gearing up for the summers of 2011 and 2012. The Venice Biennale and Documenta is about to hit us. And this time, it will be an all girl’s business. With Bice Curiger at the helm in Venice and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev heading a battalion of co-curators in Kassel the amazons of the global art scene is making it big. So big, that the board of Documenta just had to describe Mrs Christov-Bakargiev as “a real power woman who will, without a doubt, master the Documenta challenge”. Wow, that’s really impressive! The general concepts of these mega-shows are often held in obscurity, which means that the international art kremlologists are busy years in

Bice Curiger

advance, trying to find out the theory behind the curatorial guidelines. But now, the truth is about to be revealed! The theme of the Venice Biennale will be “ILLUMInations”. To help all of us without a deeper knowledge in the curatorial mumbo-jumbo, the press office of the Biennale has attached an explanation: “La Biennale is one of the world’s most important forums for the dissemination and ‘illumination’ about the current developments in international art”. Some great news, indeed, as well as a HUGE surprise! Who could ever come up with such an intriguing concept?

The Biennale will also boost a front-man-artist to sharpen the edges of the curatorial concept.

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

And he is… Tintoretto! No, you are not dreaming. Tinto the Man is going to show the lazy contemporary artist how it is really done. At Kassel, the clouds are somewhat ticker. At a solemn press conference the management announced the 15 pillars of Documenta faith, taking the art institutions corporate bullshit to a new and glorious level. Among these are: “participation and withdrawal as simultaneous modes of existence today”, “proximity and distance, and their relativity” and “the specificity of being an artist and the non-specificity of artistic practice”. Just hope and pray for that none of the participating artists draw inspiration from this verbal crap…

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GRAPHIC DESIGN: ANDREAS RIBBUNG

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Malou Bergman “Santa Goza” 2010

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Centrifugal desires, temporary autonomous zones and axis mundi

by Sinziana Ravini

”When a large amount of energy comes together at one point, a com­ munity starts to feel somewhere in the centre of things. In other words, we felt we where, independently from what New York or Paris had, the centre of life on Earth”.

Boris Orlov 2008

GRAPHIC DESIGN: ANDREAS RIBBUNG

“Peripheries”, “rhizomes”, “escape lines”, “non-hierarchical organisations”...

There are many words with which the nomads of our liquid modernity are hiding their centrophilic desires. As Zygmunt Bauman claims in “Liquid Modernity”, fluidity and lightness have become the leading metaphors for the present state of our modern era. It has become very fashionable in the art world lately to claim that the world has lost its former centres. That New York, Paris and London are no longer the knots that keep the art world together, and that cities like Sao Paulo, New Delhi and Gwangju are equally important. Some even go as far as to claim that with the internet era we are living in, and with the rhizomatic structures of cultural production today, the idea of a “centre” as such has become obsolete.

As Deleuze and Guattari declared, the “rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.” In contrast to an arborescent concept of knowledge that is rooted, the nomadic structure of the rhizome spreads like the surface of a body of water, extending towards available spaces or dripping downwards through fissures and gaps, eroding that which is in its way.

The artists of our time don’t seem to orient themselves around centres any

more, but ideas, dreams and desires.

In that case, how do these new desires constitute themselves?

Has the network killed the centre? Or has this new so-called absent centre created a negative theology that produces an even bigger centre – the one in our heads?

With the arrival of postmodern theories of deconstruction, culture producers were hit by the same decentring logic that once mobilised Copernicus, realising that the white, upper class, male subject wasn’t at the centre of the world any more than the earth or the sun were the centre of the universe.

“Ethnocentrism”, “anthropocentrism”, “logocentrism” had become the new enemies that had to be fought. But in spite of Derrida’s decentring of all kinds of centres, the centre persisted and still persists in the language we are using. How can we get rid of the centre when we are constantly obsessed by its so‑called non‑importance? As we all know, absence is producing presence.

The more you deny the existence of an object or a phenomenon, the more it persists in reappearing.

If postcolonial thinking encouraged artists to exit all kinds of centres, looking for or even becoming the other, it definitely encouraged the so-called “others” to look for those cent­res that those ar­tists were trying to esacpe. Artists like Renzo Martens could travel into the heart of darkness of the Congo playing with capitalistic enlightment politics, trying to take people out of their poverty or en­couraging them to enjoy it. The so‑called others, like Pascale Marthine Tayou or Subodh Gupta, could enter the global art industry by sometimes mimicking, sometimes de­constructing the idea of what it means to be an African or Indian artist.

If the economically privileged artists dream of escaping the centres, the not so privileged dream of settling down in them, or at least – creating new centres

around themselves by inviting the world into their studios.

The problem with this commercially fruitful nomadism, is not so much the arrogant “I can get wherever I want in the name of free exchange” logic, nor the less arrogant politics of good intentions called “resistence to homogenisation and reification”, but paradoxically enough – its extreme success. In an overinformed globalised artworld, overexposed artists are hitting saturation points faster than ever. Becoming one with the centre is almost like putting an end to one’s career, if not economically, at least symbolically.

The rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, inter­ being, intermezzo.

Once you’ve hit the centre it is much harder to escape from it, or at least to afford taking risks, experimenting, etc.

That’s why a lot of artists start repeating themselves, thinking that repetition means consequence and that consequence means success.

Once you’re a part of the global art industry, it doesn’t matter anymore where you’re falling asleep and where you’re waking up. What matters is which gallery or curator promotes you. And those centres of symbolic production are central to ones work, no matter how liquidly the centres or the artists relating to them operate. That’s why artists have to resist their centrophilic desires, the need of being omnipresent, in every art fair, biennial, event or happening. As Duchamp famously said: “The next big artist will go underground”. But how long can one stay in the underground without starving to death?

It’s enough to look at the way the relation between artistic autonomy and economical survival is being used today within artist-run galleries. Alternative and peripheric practices are drawn to one another and coming together more than ever, thus creating new alternative centres.

Every Biennale has an “Anti­biennale”, every art fair has an alternative art fair with artist-run galleries. We have 17

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the Zoo Art fair in London, the Slick Art Fair in Paris, Frère Independent in New York, UND in Karlsruhe, Universam in Moscow and Supermarket in Stockholm. All these art fairs have three things in common: 1) The quest for artistic autonomy. As one can read on the home page of the artist-run art fair Supermarket in Stockholm: “It is becoming increasingly common for artists to take matters into their own hands and set up galleries and project spaces”. Another big issue is 2) The democratisation of the alternative sphere. On the same home page one can further read: “The aim is for Supermarket to be a place where a wider public can partake in what is happening on the artist-run scene”. The third big issue is 3) the relational aspect, in other words – a focus on social rather than economical transactions: “The art fair wants to offer the visitor unexpected meetings and experiences rather than focusing on sales”. This phrase signals a distance to the artfairs that do business as usual.

Does that mean that artist-run galleries shouldn’t think in economical terms?

That “art and money have nothing to do with each other” as Alfred Pacquement – the director of Centre Pompidou in Paris – once said in an interview? Even Hakim Bey – the father of anarchic movements from the 90s that embraced the arrival of the internet and the possibility of immediatism that the internet brought with it – recognises the importance of money when he speaks about his job at the Shiraz Festival of Arts in Iran in the middle of the 70s.

“Money certainly had something to do with it. I mean, the Shiraz Festival of Arts offered so much money that every good left-wing artist in the world couldn’t say no, with a few noble exceptions, I would say”.

As Maria Lind has claimed in several essays, self-organisation has become a cornerstone of the so called “new economy”, a way of “creating a room for maneuvering around market interests or the dictates of public founding”. On the other hand we shouldn’t forget, that there is nothing that neo-liberal forces encourage more, than economically independent organisms. The big question is how alternative art spaces can orga­ nise themselves without realising the neoliberal dream of absolute autonomy.

There is always a big difference between following and letting others follow. Artists that are trying to escape the panoptical gaze of centres by building their own temporary micro centres are much more interesting than those who parasite the existing ones, especially if we consider this double-headed will of both entering and escaping the centre. That doesn’t mean that those new alternative centres would escape ideological, representational, organisational or – last but not least – aesthetic judgements.

It would be even more arrogant to preserve us from such judgements with the excuse of “not wanting to hurt something that hovers the fragility of a new beginning”. What we need is a serious critique of the alternative art scene and the way it organises itself.

It would be even more arrogant to preserve us from such judgements with the excuse of “not wanting to hurt something that hovers above the fragility of a new beginning”. What we need is a serious critique of the alternative art scene and the way it organises itself. The most striking thing with the art fairs for alternative, artist-run galleries, is the high degree of eurocentrism. The lack of money and information encourage most of the art fairs to go with their immediate neighbours. Art fairs seem to be only at the beginning of a post-colonial expansion of the immediate action sphere.

Another striking aspect is the predominant way that alternative art spaces present themselves, as wild, burlesque and non-hierarchical organisations – where everything seems to be ok. The problem with some galleries is that they seem to make a virtue out of randomly chosen and even worse – badly installed art works. The horror vaccui aesthetics dominating most of the galleries make it difficult to discern between good and bad artists.

On this point, commercial art fairs seem to have come a little bit further. At the last art fair of La Fiac in Paris, some

galleries had chosen curators to curate their stands, thus creating what we seldom have within art fairs – the trace of a choice, which creates itineraries one can enter and exit without difficulties. A lot of stands were organised as wunderkammers, personal museums, or, even better, collectors’ houses. The privatisation of the public sphere is something that one has to fight, even in an art fair. Imagine if we could have artist-run art fairs that could have the money to engage in the public sphere, creating itineraries not only in the actual buildings, but also outside of them, working between the interspaces of schools, festivals and secret societies where each and everyone that wants to consume or contribute to a collective knowledge production could have access.

Another thing that needs to be criti­cised, and even changed, is the way that artistrun galleries contribute to a precarisation of the artist, by not paying a regular artist fee if he or she has taken part in a group or a solo show. This is starting to change. The Ministry of Culture in Sweden, for example, is first and foremost showing their financial concern when it comes to galleries that succeed in paying artists a proper exhibition fee.

Some alternative art spaces have even gone as far as starting to have artists in residence programmes, commissioning and even starting alternative art schools. Some of those galleries have even become mobile, travelling around the globe, like nomadic universities and curator labs. The alternative art space has entered a politics of professionalisation where everything has to become optimised. In the interest of whom?

One may ask. What happens when everything, even the alternative, artist-run art space follows the institutionalisation of the art world? What happens with notions like “play” and “experiment”?

Where can one find spaces that escape rational evaluation models? Temporary autonomous zones that Hakim Bay romanticised in “T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone” when he spoke of the importance of creating a revolutionary life without a revolution?

Let’s play with an idea. If the postmodern death of the western geographic centres and the western rational subject was pretty much a response to the death of the biggest authority ever – the death of God announced by Nietzsche

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Helene Hortlund, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Inner Landscapesâ&#x20AC;?, art commission for Uppsala University Hospital.

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and before him Feuerbach, we have to decide, what we should do with the loss of authority. Isn’t the death of God, the centre, etc. also a symbol for the death of the father?

With the death of those authorities, one might automatically feel the need to become an authority, to fill the gap with presence, new meaning and new centrifying subjects, in other words, to “become the father” by creating a new centre. Such an attempt would do nothing else than reproduce the phallogocentric aspect of language that Derrida once tried to deconstruct.

Derrida showed in “Of grammatology” (1976) that classic dualities of western thought always privileged one term over the other, white over black, man over woman, rationality over irrationality and centre over periphery. How can one exit this binary system? And how should one relate to the creation of new centres? In other words – what is the alternative to the alternative, once the periphery has entered the centre? How can we produce and maintain “real” outsides and undergrounds? How can we avoid that the entropy of this new internationalism of peripheries coming together, reproduce the old colonial power relations between west and east, north and south?

Paolo Virno would say that one can do that by organising ourselves in post‑operatist movements of immaterial labour where one doesn’t get co-opted by post-Fordist practices.

As he has claimed several times: “autonomia was a defeated revolution, to which the post-Fordist paradigm was the answer”. At the same time he denies the importance of a “publicness without a public sphere” saying “the general intellect, or public intellect, if it does not become a republic, a public sphere, a political community, drastically increases the forms of submission”.

Perhaps there are other ways of producing publicness without falling into submission, without producing multitudes that get absorbed by hegemonic orders, or the post-Fordist state of service industries with their abolition of mechanical reproduction and the dissolution of the State: perhaps nothing else than “the communism of capital”.

Mircea Eliade wrote in “The Sacred and the Profane” that there were two ways of organising societies – sedentary and nomadic ways. Both societies are organising themselves around an imagined centre, since the centre is 20

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sacred and the periphery is profane. The sedentary socie­ties create fixed centres with fixed laws, while nomadic societies swap one centre for another, and one rule for another, while they are moving.

They choose their direction by throwing a stick called “axis mundi” into the air. When the stick falls to the ground, they chose to move in the direction of that stick, thus letting their lives be de­ter­mined by aleatory principles. The axis mundi was seen as the centre of the world that bound together heaven, the earth, and the underground. Brancusi’s “Infinite Column” is actually such an attempt to bind the world above with the world underneath, without trying to find the centre of the world. It’s about filling an absent centre, relinking mankind as a harmonious being and with the world that he once lost.

If the reality of all things begins at their centre, then the centre of all things must be considered to be everywhere. Accor­ ding to physicists, the atom is the key to the universe. If this is so, it is quite reasonable to consider every atom as the centre of the universe. “Centre everywhere, circumference nowhere” was an ancient concept put forward by Hermes Trismegitus. His alchemic philosophy saw the universal within the particular and the particular within the universal.

According to him, reality reaches out from its centre everywhere toward its own centre everywhere. In other words – the centre is where you are. Which brings us back to the beginning of this text and Boris Orlov’s quote: “we felt we were, independently from what New York or Paris had, the centre of life on Earth”. How does this will to re-centre relate to the postmodern deconstruction of the centre?

Should one embrace the absent centre or embrace the paradox of mobile centres? Derrida describes his theme of decentering as “the stated abandonment of all reference to a centre, to a subject, to a privileged reference, to an origin, or to an absolute archia.” He further writes: “The entire history of the concept of structure, before the rupture of which we are speaking , must be thought of as a series of substitutions of centre for centre, as a linked chain of determinations of the centre.” Although the history of metaphysics has been a long chain of “centres” like substance, essence, subject, energy, ego, conscious-

ness, God, man, etc., “it was necessary to begin thinking that there was no centre.” Can we continue thinking that there never will be such a centre? That mankind will forever be determined by the absence of an absolute centre?

Derrida is not propounding nihilism since all deconstructed centre is said to reappear as “trace”, understood as an interplay of presence and absence, a transcendent God of theocentrism and the individual self of egocentrism. This space inbetween absence and presence is placed “under erasure” (sous rature), i.e., written with a cross mark X, thereby signifying a presence which is at the same time absent and an absence which is at the same time present.

If we apply this intersectional game of presence and absence to the centrifugal nomads of our time, alternative art spaces and all kinds of immaterial network labourists – we can conclude that we can never get rid of the centreperiphery dialectics. But we can always ignore it. In the mean time, we have to keep the holy triad of a revolutionary institution semi-autonomous (that is both independent and statefounded), democratic (accessible to a bigger audience), relational (based on the symbolic value of social exchange), and never the least, playful. In the end, it doesn’t matter where we are, but where we want to go. For this we have to throw our axis mundi in the air and see where the interplay of desire and chance is taking us.

Sinziana Ravini Paris December 2010

Exhibition wall text, “Field of Action.

The Moscow Conceptualist School in Context 1970s–1980s”, Ecaterina Foundation, Moscow. 2010 Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity, Polity Press 2000 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus Interview with Hakim Bay by Hans Ulrich Obrist, e-flux, Journal #21, 12/2010.

Hakim Bey, The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2004 Paolo Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude, Semiotexte 2004 Hermes Trismegistus, The Emerald Tablet Of Hermes, IAP 2008 Jacques Derrida, Writing and differance, tr. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, 286, 279.

Helene Hortlund, “Inner landscapes”, commission for Uppsala County Council, Uppsala University Hospital.

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Upcoming exhibitions

Artists’ Choice

DUNEDIN NEW ZEALAND Blue Oyster 8.3–16.4 2011 Colleen Altagracia, “The Fullness of Empty Pockets”

Upcoming exhibitions worldwide An important aspect of this magazine is the promotion of exhibitions in artist-run spaces worldwide. In almost every city this type of event, independent and self-organised, is becoming ever more common. It is a phenomenon that has as many names as the diverse groups that organise them, in an equally wide variety of spaces – artist led or artist owned galleries, artists’ co-operatives, non-profit galleries, alternative project spaces, artspaces, offspaces, the list goes on...

Many of the artists’ initiatives are operated on a non‑profit basis.

It can also be the case that the space belongs to a non‑profit making organisation. Therefore the term ‘non‑profit gallery’ could be used in these cases simply in order to differen­tiate it from a commercial gallery.

The question therefore begs to be asked – what does the label ‘alternative’ or ‘independent’ actually mean? How ‘in­de­pendent’ are you when applying for funding or seeking out sponsorship? And, are you actually ‘alternative’ simply because you say so? What is ‘alternative’ about you?

Many artists’ initiatives are, of course, truly alternative, due to the fact that they are showing work not exhibited in the commercial sphere, or they could even be experimenting with alternatives to the gallery itself. Others though, do not fully view themselves as ‘alternative’, as they see themselves as part of the existing art scene while, at the same time, offering an alternative to it.

Artists, increasingly, no longer willing to be treated as ciphers to be picked up and dropped at the whim of commercial gallery interests, are forming their own initiatives. These initiatives explore how collaboration and exchange lends itself to a dynamic independence from the established hierarchy, repaying the artist with a joyful empowerment, all too often lost in the commercial world.

The label ‘artist-run’ is widely used, even although this sometimes involves the input of curators. Should it still be called ‘artist-run’ in that case? I would say yes, as it uses an already recognised term and establishes the concept that the curator shares the ‘artist perspective’.

I would argue that there is a difference between the aims and objectives of the commercial gallery and the artist initiative. On one hand we have the commercial interest of the gallery, which builds the career of the artist, and often caters to a limited audience of the financially strong, while on the other hand, the artist needs to communicate with the public, and to expand the audience’s interest in contemporary art.

However, if the artists, and the initiatives they are involved in, truly want to reach out, to attract the interest of the public at large, to occupy the space that is truly their own, they must seek ways to improve how they promote themselves, how to bring their audience to them.

Andreas Ribbung Art Editor and Contributing Editor

Colleen Altegracia is interested in exploring seemingly inconsequential actions, overlooked spaces and ephemeral materials, to reveal their potential and make the invisible visible. Through a performance, as a part of the Dunedin Fringe Festival, and an installation at the Blue Oyster Altegracia launches an exploration of pocketed space. Pockets in clothing are secret, personal spaces felt by the wearer and often containing hidden potential.

Altegracia’s performance involves series of repeated actions, forming a sort of controlled experiment, where casting foam is poured into participant’s pockets. Often to their surprise, participants experience the gradual emergence of a mass of foam from the private, concealed, virtual space of their pocket. The clothing with its foam casting sculptures, and a video recording capturing the actions and reactions of the participants in this and previous incarnations of the experiment, will make up the installation in the gallery. With the clothing hanging on display viewers will be able to see a shape of a person who has worn the pieces and where the foam castings have pressed and overflowed in the making process.

Blue Oyster Art Project Space Basement, 24b Moray Place, Dunedin, New Zealand www.blueoyster.org.nz blueoyster@blueoyster.org.nz +64 3 479 0197 21

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Upcoming exhibitions VANCOUVER CANADA Or Gallery 10.9–15.10 2011 Matthew Buckingham

SYDNEY AUSTRALIA MOP 3.3–20.3 2011 “Speaks Volumes”/“Document II”/“The Quiet Never Meet”

COPENHAGEN DENMARK Koh-i-noor 17.3–31.3 2011 “Model Court”

Sarah Mosca, “Untitled”, 2010

The Or Gallery presents a solo exhibition

by New York-based artist Matthew Buckingham. The exhibition features a collection of works that focus on how cities are formulated, examining how places and their respective “pasts” resonate with and contradict each other. The works explore the enormous social and political shifts that have occurred over the past fifty years in port cities, while mapping the effects of global economic change on both an individual and a city.

The Or Gallery is a non-profit contemporary art gallery and artist-run centre established in 1983. Its early role as a de facto curatorial residency for artists led to its longtime examination of the intersection between curatorial and conceptual art practices and more recent imple­mentation of guest‑curated programming to complement exhibitions and projects developed by the gallery’s curator. In December 2010, it opened Or Gallery Berlin, a new satellite gallery and project space located at Oranienstrasse 37, in Berlin’s diverse Kreuzberg neighbourhood.

Or Gallery 555 Hamilton St. Vancouver, BC V6B 2R1, Canada www.orgallery.org or@orgallery.org +1 604.683.7395

Gallery 1: “Speaks Volumes”: The Ron & George Adams Collection An art collection speaks volumes about their collectors. When artworks enter into private collections they join a family of other artworks that have been amassed according to an idiosyncratic criteria of taste. When artists are collectors, friendship networks often shape a collection – nothing beats, for example, the satisfaction felt when two artists have swapped their work with each other.

Ron & George have been collecting for as long as they can remember and while their collection shows their commitment to the contemporary Australian art world, it particularly reads as a who’s who of artists who have at one point or another contributed to a culture of artist-run initiatives in Sydney.

Gallery 2: Document II: Sarah Mosca Sarah Mosca’s new work draws from her recent experience in Iceland where she attended an artist residency program collaborating with video and sound artist Tim Bruniges. Using different technologies and media including sound, installation and photography, the exhibition explores themes of minimalism and the experience of combining static images and sound.

Gallery 3: “The Quiet Never Meet”: Grant Hawkes What attracts on the banks of the Tigris, on a rooftop in Yazd. What is left behind at the base of one alley or found by sunlight on a wall in Mardin. What sleeps in a marketplace.

The Quiet Never Meet was photographed throughout Iran and Turkey.

MOP 2/39 Abercrombie St, Chippendale Sydney, NSW 2008, Australia www.mop.org.au mop@mop.org.au + 61 2 9699 3955

“Model Court” is an ongoing curatorial/ research project that was designed by the artists Sidsel Meineche Hansen and Lawrence Abu Hamdan and which also involves Lorenzo Pezzani and Oliver Rees. It uses the structure and technologies of the courtroom to interrogate the signifying and controlling role architecture plays in contemporary art and society.

The project that the Model Court group will develop in Koh-i-noor, will instigate a translation between the gallery and the court, in order to open a line of debate around the way in which the legal context challenges the way we see objects, models, films and other forms of production.

The exhibition in Koh-i-noor in Copenhagen will be the third incarnation of Model Court. The project has previously been exhibited at the Centre of Contemporary Art in Glasgow 2009, Ptarmingan, Helsinki, 2010 and recently contributed to the exhibition The Last News Paper in the New Museum in NY. Together with the Center for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University of London, 2010.

Koh-i-noor is an independent project space and non-profit organisation run by a group of artists based in Copenhagen. Koh-i-noor was founded in 2004 and has since then produced a number of exhibitions, discussions, film screenings, and performances.

Koh-i-noor Dybbølsgade 60 1721 København V, Denmark www. koh-i-noor.org koh-i-noor@koh-i-noor.org

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Upcoming exhibitions MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA Kings ARI 12.3–3.4 2011 “Chora Choruses”/“{ultima forsan}”

ZAGREB CROATIA NANO Gallery 16.3–25.3 2011 Anja Planincic, “Forgotten”

Aimee Fairman, {ultima forsan}

“Forgotten – The market keeps changing.”

Countries and nations unite, disunite and then unite again. While I was growing up, we passed through a period of “brotherhood and unity”, then the war, and now we are striving towards a united Europe. All those situations influence the market, that is, different markets. For a number of years, at the time of Socialist Yugoslavia, there was a big market of Eastern Europe which accepted products of our factories. We had production and many employed workers.

With the fall of the Berlin wall, the ideology also fell. What used to be the big Eastern European market vanished.

Countries, systems and values which we had known, disappeared.

The sculpture installation entitled “Forgotten” symbolises the passage of time and values. About thirty volumes of the original Russian edition of “Lenin”, covered with humus, worms and moss on a symbolic level, testifies about great changes which had happened during the last 20 years.

Litterature which used to be a symbol of status and prestige, of something which everybody had been streaming towards and sidled with, has no value today. Antique shops, libraries, or faculties don’t want it. All that we’re left with is about 10 kilos of old recycling paper.

With the change of ideology economic politics change and hence the market.

Front Gallery: “Chora Choruses”: Cath Robinson & Fiona Lee. Chora Choruses extends the idea of collaboration to include the kinds of interaction that are normally overlooked between audience, artwork and institution, within a musical framework.

Robinson’s work for Chora Choruses is a selection of ‘pause for thought noises’ from 33 Hobart contemporary artists considering their inspiration, able to be “played” on a keyboard by the audience. Lee’s work for this exhibition will be a remix of songs representing the Kings Committee’s current listening habits, professionally produced in collaboration with sound artist Matt Warren and performed at the opening.

Middle & Side Gallery: “{ultima forsan}”: Aimee Faiman.

The {ultima forsan} project is a kinetic sculptural and ephemeral installation developed from recent research on the 2009 residency at the Rondo Künstlerateliers in Graz, Austria. {ultima forsan}, meaning “perhaps the last”, combines a suspended constructed alpine landscape, a surgical chair as a tool for viewing, found objects, organic matter, sound, water-vapour and fog machines, to explore notions of the mortality of time and the ephemerality of experience, to address the ecologies of our inner and outer worlds.

Fairman’s work centres on an exploration of the symbolic and Sublime landscape and its potential role as a vehicle to address psycho-geographical spaces, time, memory and narrative.

Kings Artist Run Initiative Lvl 1 / 171 King St. Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia www.kingsartistrun.com.au info@kingsartistrun.com.au +61 3 9642 0859

Anja Planinčić is born in Zagreb, Croatia in 1975. She has graduated sculpture at the Department of Sculpture, Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb. Majoring in Fine Plastic Art and Medal Art in 2000.

Nano Gallery was established in 2005 in Zagreb, Croatia. Since that time it held more than 60 exhibitions by young media artists.

NANO Gallery Gajeva 26 10000 Zagreb, Croatia www.artenativa.hr nano@artenativa.hr

CAPE TOWN SOUTH AFRICA BLANK PROJECTS 6.5–28.5 2011 Abri de Swardt, “On the Seventh Day (Alpha)”

Rendering metanarratives undone is central to the practice of emerging South African artist Abri de Swardt. A collagist operating fluidly between lens-based media, performance and installation, the impetus behind his work resides in the deconstruction of regimes of Truth, whether it be preconceived notions of masculinity, the environment or belief itself, in order to access the Real. This profoundly ethical strategy has led him to reframe the spiritual and that which ignites it.

De Swardt employs religion, iconography, ritual, an aversion to commodity fetishism and corporate colonisation, self-effacement, apocalyptic murmurings and a pantheist conception of nature and the elemental in his various ruminations on consumption, death and transcendence. Ultimately, this is attained via Romanticist tropes of pathos, hyperbole and the Sublime; a fantastical narrative interweaving of historical, art historical, cinematic, literary, biblical, personal and contemporary threads; and a dismantling of the media texts that we are confronted with.

Blank projects is an independent, artist-run exhibition space founded in Cape Town by Jonathan Garnham in 2005. blank projects 113-115 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock Cape Town, 8001, South Africa www.blankprojects.com info@blankprojects.com +27 72 1989 221� |�� ���������������� +27 72 507 5951 23

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Dr. Odyoke:

Top dogs?

1st prize: Larry Gagosian

Every year ArtMagazine publishes a Top100 list of the art worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most powerful people. (www. artreview100.com/2010-artreviewpower-100/). Last year the Swedish interest in the list was exceptional.

The reason: Daniel Birnbaum (the new director of Moderna Museet) was fourth name on the list, qualifying as chief curator of the Venice Biennale.

2nd prize Hans Ulrich Obrist

3rd prize Iwan Wirth

This year everything is back to basics, and Birnbaum is number 63 on the list. Top of the list is mega gallery owner Larry Gagosian, beating last yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s winner Hans Ulrich Obrist. The critical bloggers at Hyperallergic has commented the Top 100 list with an own list of the most powerless people of the art world (www.hyperallergic. com/711/powerless-20).

Who is top of the pops? Everyone that Hans Ulrich Obrist is NOT acquainted with. Further down on the list you may find f.ex. all art world wannabees that lives in only one city (not â&#x20AC;&#x153;London and Berlinâ&#x20AC;?) and all poorly paid gallery assistants, barely able to afford new high heeled shoes for the next opening party. Poor sods.

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Daniel Birnbaum

In Da House

by Anna-Karin Sandström photo: José Figueroa

Daniel Birnbaum has returned home to Stockholm as the new director of Moderna Museet after his nearly decade-long tenure as director of Städelschule in Frankfurt, and its Portikus exhibition space. During his “exile” he has also co-curated several biennials around the world, most notably the Venice Biennale in 2009.

SUPERMARKET asked a few questions.

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AKS: What do you expect from the near future?

Actually, not only dynamite is a Swedish invention, abstraction is as well. Soon the world will know.

No, I’m not joking.

AKS: What is your view with regard to Moderna Museet’s role as a hub in the Swedish art world?

AKS: How do you think that you can contribute to the development of the museum?

DB: We have a new leadership structure. I co-direct the museum with Ann-Sofi Noring. The museum has two directors now, I think that this is a much more contemporary way of managing an institution, less hierarchical and more based on dialogue. Ann-Sofi and I want the museum to be a hospitable site for experimental projects that can attract a large local audience. The museum should really be a second home for the artists in this town. Naturally, we also want our museum to be a cutting edge institution that plays a key role in the international conversation about art and exhibitions. We’ll try hard, that’s all I can say.

AKS: If you look beyond Sweden and focus on similar museums in Europe, would you say that their role as hubs are getting stronger or weaker?

DB: Well, there are the really large places like the Tate or the Pompidou.

They often stage fantastic exhibitions, but of course they are so large that they have lost all intimacy and cannot really be a “home” to artists. I think that the Moderna Museet is a bit similar to the Ludwig in Cologne, Kunsthaus Zurich,

AKS: What about the Internet. Does it play a positive or a negative role for the way art develops?

DB: I guess information travels at a much faster rate now, thanks to the Internet. And the very idea of presence changes with the digital possibilities allowing a conversation to take place every­where and nowhere. And yet, we do need physical venues where we encounter art and other people with whom we can share the experience. At least that is what I think, perhaps the next generation will think differently.

AKS: There are the old hubs, such as the Venice Biennale and the Art Basel. But today we see new hubs emerging, among others, Internet sites such as Artfacts and the Saatchi online gallery.

DB: Yes, and there is artforum.com or e-flux, which are effective when it comes to distributing news about the art world. But in most cases information about art is something different from art itself, in spite of the dematerialization of the art object, an idea we all got used to decades ago. Actually, today’s proliferation of centres or hubs was discussed during our situationist conference. It is important to remember that this was a Pan-European movement, with associated groups and sections in a number of countries: the Spur group in Germany, the Second Situationist International / Imaginary Bauhaus in Sweden and Denmark, the Dutch and the Belgian sections, and so on. Also, it had its origins in movements from numerous places: the CoBrA group, Isidore Isou’s Letterism with its roots in Romania.

Moreover, the Situationist International may be the last avant-garde constellation with truly global claims, in the great tradition of internationalist, radical

GRAPHIC DESIGN: ANDREAS RIBBUNG

DB: Well, I think the museum’s task is to be the central arena for artists and people interested in art in this country.

It has a world-class collection, and it is a very well attended institution where all kinds of people can encounter art – both the modern classics as well as totally new art that doesn’t really fit into any preconceived notions. For me it is also important that the museum is an open platform for discussions and encounters. In the last couple of weeks we arranged conversations about the museum as a site for experimentation and production with Christine Macel, the chief curator of the Pompidou, and with Molly Nesbit, the great American writer and art historian. It seems that Stockholm has a large audience interested in such things, and the auditorium was packed. We then produced a twoday symposium on the legacy of the Situationists, with Jacqueline de Jong, the editor of the Situationist Times, and philosopher Fulvia Carnevale, one of the members of the Claire Fontaine collective in Paris. Those were quite demanding days, and yet really well attended. So we are planning to continue these kinds of conversations and lectures, and in the spring we will have guests such as Hal Foster, Isabelle Graw and Hans Ulrich Obrist. I think that the museum should be a hub where disciplines can meet.

DB: We are planning exhibitions with artists such as Klara Lidén, who will be producing her first real museum show here in the spring, and Jutta Koether, who has not been especially visible in this part of the world. She is a key artist for a large artistic community both in Europe and in New York. I think that the museum’s most vital task is to introduce important artists of our moment, and perhaps also to stage exhibitions that make us look at recent art history in new ways. Our most ambitious plan concerning the re-writing of art history is no doubt going to involve Hilma af Klint, who produced abstract paintings two years before Kandinsky. Actually, not only dynamite is a Swedish invention, abstraction is as well. Soon the world will know. No, I’m not joking.

and perhaps the Stedelijk in Amsterdam, and here I do see that there are possible collaborations. Also small institutions like the Serpentine can be great partners in crime, and we produced the Klara Lidén shown together with Julia Peyton Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist. Perhaps it is important to understand that an important hub in today’s art world is always part of a network. And that is nothing new.

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political movements. In this sense, it points both backwards to the imperialist ambitions of Western modernity, and forward to the globalized networks of our current era.

AKS: Which Situationist influences do you perceive in current artistic practice?

DB: A number of Situationist concepts are still highly relevant for understanding current artistic production: the notion of a “détournement”, a critical hi-jacking of existing cultural forms that turns them against themselves; or the concept of a “dérive”, a drifting through the city that liberates other modes of existence in urban space. In fact, Situationist concepts are also often evoked in debates concerning architecture and city planning: the ideas of a “psychogeography”, of a “unitary urbanism” and so on. While these concepts and techniques have today to some extent been normalized and cannot be uncritically applied or taken at face value, they continue to exert a strong influence: they are constantly remediated, reinterpreted and transferred to new contexts.

As Fulvia Carnevale reminded us in her talk at Moderna Museet, Situationist forms and strategies reappear outside of the confines of this movement itself, for example in the radical movements and urban insurrections in Italy in the late 70s. Forms migrate, as Aby Warburg claimed.

AKS: Do you see new hubs emerging in other parts of the world that challenge olds centres, such as New York, London or Cologne.

DB: Yes, of course, and that is no doubt the greatest development during the last decades. The very idea of a centre in the art world now seems ridiculous. There are important hubs in Asia, Africa, and South America. There is great art coming out of the Middle East and Eastern Europe. We live between languages, and new things seem to emerge where worlds clash.

AKS: Don’t the Swedish artist Lars Vilks’ controversial activities show that we aren’t really as liberated from borders as we would like to think? Most museums are not will-

ing to show his project because, perhaps, they are afraid.

DB: Well, I suppose that Vilks is known internationally as a caricaturist and not really as the conceptualist he considers himself to be. If this project is about freedom of speech, and I guess it is, then I think Swedish media has made clear that we fundamentally have that in this country. His original drawing, the one that created the controversy, has been published in the largest national newspapers. He has been on national television, at the large universities and his work has been projected and discussed at least twice at public seminars at Moderna Museet during these very last months. His work, whether you like it or not, is not really that relevant for classical formats such as the white cube gallery. It takes place outside such institutional structures and is not possible to imagine without his blog. I think that the ongoing activities on his blog is what Vilks himself sees as the real work of art. Of course there is another artist blog that is of perhaps even greater interest to most of us, at least in my view: that of Ai Wei Wei. He really is an unbelievably brave guy.

AKS: The most vital period in Swedish art was in the 60s, and that probably had to do with the cultural politics of the Social Democrats.

What do you think about today’s art in Sweden?

DB: I think that this is a great period in Swedish art, both here in Stockholm as well as in other places where these artists live and work. There have never been so many artists from Sweden that play a role outside of the narrow confines of Swedish institutions. Klara Lidén is just one of many examples of young artists from Stockholm who have achieved global relevance. There is also Fia Backström and many others. I agree that the 1960s were of great interest, not only here in Sweden, but across the Western world and beyond. But I don’t think there is any point in indulging in nostalgia – the most interesting time is always now. And now. And now. And now. Thank you for your attention. text: Anna-Karin Sandström photo: José Figueroa 29

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Hama Goro and the artist-run gallery “Centre Soleil d’Afrique” in Mali.

Artist-run galleries in West Africa

GRAPHIC DESIGN: KATHARINA BÜCHEL

West Africa has a rich cultural life that is renowned worldwide, especially with regard to its musical traditions. What is less known, at least in northern Europe, is that this region launches three of Africa’s greatest art, photo and film festivals: The biennial of Dak’art in Senegal, Encounters of Bamako, African Photography Biennial in Mali and the film festival FESPACO in Burkina Faso. A rich artistic life is obviously taking place here, far beyond the international spotlight. For an artist, living conditions in West Africa are not easy, and the opportunities to present art to a major audience are few. Although there are some museums and cultural institutions in various places, limited resources make it impossible to conduct exhibitions in any great scale. An exception to this are the French cultural centres which regularly present art exhibitions and have a broad and mixed culture programme, but they are controlled and financed by French cultural administrators who still seem to maintain an important influence over the region’s culture activities. Purely commercial galleries are absent in cities such as Dakar, Lagos and Bamako. Hama Goro, an artist from Mali and one of the forces behind the artist-run gallery Centre Soleil d’Afrique in Bamako, has worked to establish the gallery since 1999. Educated in both Bamako and Amsterdam, he has through the years built up a wide artistic network throughout the African continent. But despite many years of tireless labour and with a goal of reaching an ever-growing audience, he says that it is still difficult to run the gallery forward: “Today’s artistic situation in Mali has no tools and references to create a joint discussion between different organizations and actors. We would need to gather around a common point. Today there are very few places where one can arrange exhibitions, and many artists work without clear objectives or feedback from an audience.

This in turn leads to an art market that does not take shape. Despite the lack of coordination and public support, artists still try to take matters into their own hands and just like colleagues around the world, create their own sites to present and highlight contemporary art. This is evident when the biennials are going on and a myriad of artistic activities and art exhibitions occur all over in the cities’ central and peripheral parts.”

Artists join together in groups, install exhibitions in temporary sites, or use their own roof garden as a gallery in the houses where they live. Information is spread by means of “flyers” and on the web. Usually there is no funding, but on occasion they can receive support by European culture organizations. In Mali, when the biennial The Encounters of Bamako takes place, the level of artistic activity is high throughout the city. The biennial is open to photographers and artists from all over Africa and people travel there from all over the world. Couldn’t such an event aid in improving the situation?

Hama Goro: “Apparently, the biennial is a very important cultural event. And even if it does not entirely live up to my expectations, I see it as something very important for Mali, and something we must carefully manage and hopefully also increase the interest for. This is an excellent opportunity for artists, cultural operators and organizations to meet and connect with each other.

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Documentation from Arijana Kajfes’ project DERIVE Tombouctou 2010, participants: Amadou N’Diayé (picture), Momo Diakité and Oumou Sankaré, photo: Fatoumata Diabaté

also get better at involving the local art scene in the biennial, which still has not really occurred.”

Besides the Centre Soleil d’Afrique, there is also the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Lagos, Nigeria, one of few but interesting arts centres in West Africa. CCA was founded in 2007 by curator Bisi Silva as a “non-profit organization” but it also functions as an art gallery with a large international network. In Lagos there is also VAN - Video Art Network, an artists’ collective that works with highlight video art in Nigeria. What is the future like for these organizations and how can the situation for artists in West Africa improve? Hama Goro: “This is the basic question that constantly is part of my work with Centre Soleil d’Afrique. There’s no point in starting a gallery that will soon have to plan for it’s decommissioning.

I think one needs to formulate a common cultural policy in all African countries in order to get a document that prevents people to come from outside to tell us what to do. We must create a policy that works both in a local as well as in an international context. There should be a document that supports artists in their work and also allows galleries and an art market to take shape. The arts are an important socio-economic factor in a country. Meanwhile, art for me has an important emotional rather than aesthetical message to convey. The art touches people’s emotions and have ability to highlight different historical and personal experiences. But for art to develop, there must be a policy that supports it. A culture that does not evolve slowly dies away. Therefore, it is important to support all forms of cultural expression through contacts and exchanges between artists in the light of their historical, social and cultural context. In UNESCO’s Article 13 on cultural diversity, states are invited to integrate culture as part of a social development on all levels. It is towards this goal we are constantly working.”

Eva-Lotta Holm Flach Project manager for In Focus: Nordic and African Art in Collaboration

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Rearranging the chessboard PAU WAELDER

GRAPHIC DESIGN: MAGDA LIPKA FALCK

In his satirical and informative Manual of Contemporary Art Style, artist Pablo Helguera explains the relationships between the different professionals in the art world by comparing it to a game of chess. In this game, the museum director is the king, the collector is the queen, curators are rooks, dealers are knights and critics act as bishops. The pawns are, of course, the artists. According to Helguera, artists are “the least and most important piece of the game”, adding that “they are the most populous in proportion to the total of the pieces, (...) it is very difficult to value them individually at the beginning of the game”. Yet when an artist succeeds, he or she gains power and becomes a key player: “Once crowned, the pawn turns into a queen and is thereafter also able to maneuver with the same power as the most important piece in the game” [1]. With this metaphor, Helguera describes a situation that, although paradoxical, is quite common: the person who creates the piece around which the whole game revolves is in the end the least important player in the art world, except for the few who make it to the “top”.

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BUT THIS IS NOT THE ONLY WAY to play the game. During the last two decades, an increasing number of artist-run initiatives have developed a different chessboard that extends over the peripheral neighbourhoods of metropolises and in smaller cities with an emerging artistic scene, inside traditional spaces or unusual exhibition venXHV 6HHNLQJ LQGHSHQGHQFH IURP WKH VWUXFWXUHV GHĂ&#x20AC;QHG E\ WKH LQVWLWXtions and the art market, artist-run initiatives have proven to be able to create autonomous areas for artistic production and distribution, in the form of alternative galleries, art fairs and other events, but also to contribute to the enlivenment of the cultural scene in many cities DV ZHOO DV XQZLOOLQJO\ SDUWLFLSDWLQJ LQ WKH SURFHVV RI JHQWULĂ&#x20AC;FDWLRQ

These initiatives are obviously not a recent phenomenon: it can be said that, for more than a century, artists have sought to create their own spaces of expression and articulate critical views on the established conventions of the art world. But in the last years the tendency to develop independent organisations for the production and exhibition of contemporary art (under denominations such as â&#x20AC;&#x153;artist-runâ&#x20AC;?, â&#x20AC;&#x153;alWHUQDWLYHÂľ ´QRQ SURĂ&#x20AC;WÂľ ´QRQ FRPPHUFLDOÂľ RU ´VHOI RUJDQLVHGÂľ KDV JURZQ DV PRUH DQG PRUH FROOHFWLYHV Ă&#x20AC;QG WKHLU RZQ ZD\V LQWR WKH DUW world and contribute to shape the cultural scene in their local comPXQLW\ 7KHVH JURXSV IRUP ZKDW 0DLEULWW 3HGHUVHQ TXRWLQJ *UHJRU\ Sholette, describes as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;dark matterâ&#x20AC;? of the art world: an unknown mass of independent cells that move within or in-between its critical and economic structures [2]. Although these initiatives tend to be underestimated or considered as amateurish self-promotion strategies, an increasing number of artist-run spaces has attained a degree of SURIHVVLRQDOLVP WKDW LV HTXDO WR WKDW RI DQ\ RUJDQLVDWLRQ LQ WKH LQVWLtutional and commercial sectors of the art world. Many are, in fact, supported by their local governments and establish connections with other similar organisations on a national and international level. At this stage, the next step is to gain proper recognition as actors in the international art scene and establish a network that allows these independent initiatives to grow by supporting each other.

WITH THIS IDEA IN MIND, the organisers of the SUPERMARKET art fair, in collaboration with MICROWESTEN, set up a meeting of artist-run initiatives in Berlin between October 5th and 6th, 2010. The conference room at the Swedish Embassy hosted the talks between representatives of ten organisations from ten European &RXQWULHV 3URMHFW 6SDFH 7KH +DJXH 1/ $OPD (QWHUSULVHV /RQGRQ 8. $OSLQHXP 3URGX]HQWHQJDOHULH /X]HUQ &+ $OWB &SK 6LJQH 9DG &RSHQKDJHQ '. )DEULFD GH 3HQVXOH &OXM 52

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'( 088 +HOVLQNL ), SUPERMARKET 6WRFNKROP 6( DQG WKH :\VSD ,QVWLWXWH RI $UW *GDQVN 3/ 7KH REMHFWLYH RI WKH PHHWLQJ was to elaborate on the possibility of establishing a translocal network of artist-run organisations and developing a large cultural project that would take place in different cities across Europe. During the discussions, though, it proved to be as important to identify the common challenges that this kind of organisations have to face, as well as to JHW WR NQRZ WKH VSHFLĂ&#x20AC;F VLWXDWLRQ LQ HDFK ORFDO FXOWXUDO VFHQH 6RPH RI the main problems detected were the following: the scope of an artistrun organisation is usually reduced to local network, it does not have enough staff to invest in bigger projects, depends on funding by local RU QDWLRQDO LQVWLWXWLRQV LI LW JHWV WKDW IXQGLQJ LQ WKH Ă&#x20AC;UVW SODFH DQG most of all lacks visibility in the mainstream art world. These problems can be faced, the participants agreed, through the creation of an international network in which knowledge, funding and resources can be shared. This network will be created and expanded by a series of meetings in different locations, seeking to engage the local artist-run organisations and enhance the visibility of their spaces by inserting them into large scale project.

THE TALKS AT THE SWEDISH EMBASSY concluded with the creation of AIM â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Europe, a project consisting of Artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Initiativesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Meetings in the European region that will set the ground for a platform of exchange between alternative art organisations and shed light on the â&#x20AC;&#x153;dark matterâ&#x20AC;? of the art world. Not intending to replicate the existing structures in the mainstream art world or collide with them, AIM presents itself as a nomadic project, highly adaptive and UHVSRQVLYH WR WKH VSHFLĂ&#x20AC;F FRQGLWLRQV RI HDFK ORFDWLRQ *HQHUDWHG E\ dialogue, it will be developed in different spaces and with a growing number of participants, escaping the constraints of local or national identity and the elitism that usually characterises art institutions. The aim is thus set: the next meetings will determine the outcome of this emerging model of collaboration that could lead to an evolved international art scene in which established mainstream art events and DUWLVW UXQ LQLWLDWLYHV FRKDELW DQG LQĂ XHQFH HDFK RWKHU

[1] Pablo Helguera, The Pablo Helguera Manual of Contemporary Art Style. New York: Jorge Pinto Books, 2007, 5.

[2] Maibritt Pedersen, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Where is the dark matter?â&#x20AC;?, in Alt_Cph10.

In Space. Copenhagen Alternative Art Fair catalogue. Copenhagen: The Factory for Art and Design, 2010, 64-67.

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Left: Artists Monika Müller and Raphael Egli from Lucerne, Nico Feragnoli from The Hague, Alex Baggaley from London, Johan Gustavsson from The Hague and Matthias Roth from Berlin at the Pan Nordic Building in Berlin 2010. Photo by Marta Szymanska from Gdansk.

Right: Martin Werthmann, “Obwohl ich schlief, als er warf“ / “Although I was asleep, when he threw“, installation view, Academy of Fine Arts, Hamburg 2009.

“Schachbrett”, 15x500x500 cm, plaster.

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In memory of

LENA GUSTAVSSON

– Fuck it, let’s arrange a Minimarket!

which you take one used item and leave another in its place instead of buying something new. The ancient idea of bartering gained new context and appearance in an art gallery, where the conversation was led towards an awareness of one’s own part in a capitalist system as well as towards awareness of one’s own person as part of a cycle.

Lena Gustavsson showed that it is possible to influence large systems with small means and to create reflection about everyday choices.

Herein lay her strength.

It is the earth bound activist I want to remember, rather than life’s unpredictable cruelty snatching her from us.

Pontus Raud

GRAPHIC DESIGN: ANDREAS RIBBUNG

Lena Gustavsson said these words one magical night when we hit on the idea of an artist run art fair and created a happening. Five years later, Minimarket had grown to become Supermarket, one of Sweden’s largest art fairs. Tragically, Lena didn’t get to partake in the great success initiated by Minimarket, as she was killed in a car accident, together with her husband Ola Pehrson and two of their children, a couple of weeks after Minimarket.

“She is like a spin doctor”, Ola Pehrson said of his life companion, praising her quick intellect and constant curiosity about the surrounding world. Lena was a mother when she studied at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm and

the home and the child’s world became points of reference for her work in painting and mixed media. Later a more political awareness entered her art. She was embraced by the socially critical contemporary art scene and initiated several interesting projects. ”My work moves between painting, collage, action and service. The common denominators are thoughts and different forms of circulation.

Surroundings, figures, patterns and objects recur in my paintings, like extras in new episodes and stories.

The latest paintings are text based and connect to issues that have inspired the actions.”

Among her artistic expressions, her actions and services received most attention. Especially “Buy Nothing Day”, reviewed in this issue by Håkan Nilsson, but also “Circulation – a wonderful alternative”. A place in

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the animated film “The Street”, and Gustavsson exhibited the video Buy Nothing Day, based on the action on the 27th of November the previous year. This provoked the management at Kista Galleria, who demanded that Gustavsson’s video should be stopped. The Swedish Artists’ Centre refused to continue the exhibition without Gustavsson’s piece and responded by closing the exhibition. In the end Kista Galleria decided to close down Kista+Konst.

Drifting

by Håkan Nilsson

In 2004, on the 27th of November, a date that has been internationally appointed “Buy Nothing Day”, Lena Gustavsson led an action in Kista Galleria, “Sweden’s most open shopping mall”, as their slogan goes.

The action was very simple and quiet.

Gustavsson and a number of colleagues and friends walked in procession with empty shopping trolleys through the shopping mall. On their coats they had attached pieces of paper with the text: “act by not shopping”.

(Translator’s note: This could also read: “shop by not shopping” or “action by non-action.”)

There was no chanting and no passages where blocked. But a row of people with empty shopping trolleys, an unusual and, in that context, incomprehensible happening, called on the attention of the mall. Security intervened and asked the participants to remove their signs bearing the anti consumer message. The demand was obligated and the procession could move on. It is, after all, not forbidden not to shop.

Some months later, in March 2005, Lena Gustavsson and Lars Arrhenius had an exhibition at Kista+Konst, an art gallery located in Kista Galleria, run by the association The Swedish Artists’ Centre - Region East. Arrhenius showed

To slowly stroll about in line, one after another, with empty shopping trolleys in a shopping mall may sound silly.

But the feeling and the experience surprised all of us. A tangible sense of peace and calm filled us. We don’t have to buy anything.

This turn of events is typical in many ways: freedom of speech is set against power and territory. We have the artist, choosing to use the space she has been allocated to reflect over the situation in which she has been placed. We have the surrounding world, re­ presented by Kista Galleria, being surprised by the expression of the work of art. They reacted with dismay when they realised that the work of art could be used to question their position, and, furthermore, on their territory. This is about a collision of worlds.

Within the art world, Gustavsson’s action is in no way a suspicious one, but when the action generates an effect “outside”, it is questionable and upsetting (to some).

The fact that different “rules” apply within and outside of the art world has led to a questioning of the value of political art.

Recently at a seminar, a student asked me if I really believed that the art world is the right place to bring up politics and social critique.

The answer is, of course, yes, not least given the trivial reason that art is always in some sense political. But it is not an irrelevant question: there is always a risk that the critique will only reach the already converted.

I think Gustavsson considered this. Her action at Kista Galleria was made possible partly due to the fact that it was called art, but she was probably interested in the effect it would have outside the art world. That is, if she was at all interested in whether “Buy Nothing Day” was “art” or not: Gustavsson got the idea while reading about a similar action on the activists’ web page breathingplanet.net, where its intention was not one of being “art”.

Lena Gustavsson’s action at Kista Galleria could thus be seen as a “found object”, a ready-made of sorts, that she incorporated into her own world. She had worked like this before. No matter what medium Gustavsson worked in, she willingly incorporated objects from her close surroundings. This can be seen in the subject matter of her paintings, as well as in the photographic 39

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Lena Gustavsson, “Loy Cabid / Barn Raising”, photo and thread, 2005. Photo: Anna Larsson.

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Lena Gustavsson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Collection Spring/Summer 2004â&#x20AC;?, collage, 2004. Photo: Anna Larsson.

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collage “Collection Spring/Summer 2004”, depicting a sphere of different children’s prams.

Buy Nothing Day was also a meeting with friends and colleagues, this too a recurring theme in Gustavsson’s practice. As early as in the 90’s, the subject matter “meetings” could be found in her paintings. She also arranged The Circle at Iaspis, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual Arts, where people could come and exchange toys.

Lena Gustavsson’s art has, in other words, at an early stage been circling round questions of ownership, consumption and alternative economic systems. Several of her works touch upon what French art critic and curator Bourriaud in the 1990s called “relational aesthetics”. Art, according to Bourriaud, has always been about social exchange, but in the 90s the art object as mediator was left behind for a more direct inclusion of the audience. Sellable objects, according to him, had mainly prevented the communicative purpose of art.

Bourriaud’s concept works well to describe meetings between artist and audience within a clearly defined art practice, for example a gallery exhibition or an art biennale.

Telling examples would be Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija offering the audience food during art events or Italian artist Vanessa Beecroft’s performances, where fashion models claim the art scene. The concept also corresponds with Lena Gustavsson’s bartering at Iaspis.

Many works that came about within relational aesthetics are rewarding and interesting. At worst, it is an art form that uses the audience as its material, with the audience, not the artist, being challenged.

Lena Gustavsson managed to bypass this in Buy Nothing Day. The action was obviously directed towards the other people in the space, towards ordinary consumers who did not know or care that the 27th of Novem­ber has been appointed a day for buying nothing, towards the shopping mall as an institution and towards consumerism as a life style. But it was perhaps principally an experiment concerning those who participated in the procession. In connection with the exhibition of the video, Gustavsson wrote: “To slowly stroll about in line, one after another, with empty shopping trolleys in a shopping mall may sound silly. But the feeling and the experience surprised all of us. A tangible sense of peace and calm filled us.

We don’t have to buy anything. Strangely

enough, this simple ascertainment felt like a deep understanding.”

Security intervened and asked the participants to remove their signs bearing the anti consumer message. The demand was obligated and the procession could move on. It is, after all, not forbidden not to shop.

This statement brings to mind what French filmmaker, philosopher and activist Guy Débord described in an essay 50 years ago as “dérive”, to drift. Drifting, according to him, was something other than strolling around aimlessly. Débord also used the word “psychogeography” to describe how our surroundings shape and determine our behaviour. It is, thus, in our surroundings that the dominant ideology is manifest. The “flaneur”, the consumer, strolls and thereby accepts the given order of things. But the person who wants to challenge or lay bare the ideology of power must use a different way of movement.

Dérives involve playful-constructive behaviour and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll. 1 In Buy Nothing Day Lena Gustavsson reconnected with the question of whether our patterns of movement determine our behaviour and consciousness. The piece worked on two different levels. First it existed as a happening, a “dérive”, where Gustavsson went against the behavioural patterns that the space intended. The action may not have altered the surroundings but did give her and the other participants some important insight. Later the action became a work of art. In the shape of art the action was more easily communicated to an audience, but also more susceptible to distancing and censorship.

Buy Nothing Day challenges the field of art from several directions and suggests that Lena Gustavsson was moving in a direction that would have been interesting to follow.

She leaves questions that are important for all of us to think about, whether or not we are consumers of art.

Håkan Nilsson

Images: “Buy Nothing Day”, video of action at Kista Galleria, 2005.

1. Guy Débord (1956) “Theory of the Dérive”, http://library.nothingness.org/articles/all/en/ display/314, 2007-02-23.

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Upcoming exhibitions RIO DE JANEIRO BRAZIL Ateliê da Imagem 25.2–8.4 2011 A. C. Junior “Baixo Estacio”

Documentary photgrapher A.C. Junior has been extensively photographing Baixo Estacio, the neighborhood next to “Sambodromo”, the place where the official Carnival parade takes place in Rio. This traditional area of the city is where Samba was born and is a mixture of charm and decadence, a place that is always pulsing with life, but that truly comes alive around the Carnival.

This will be A.C.’s first solo show and is a different way of looking at Carnival and Samba, showing the loneliness of its less glamourous B-side.

Ateliê da Imagem was founded in 1999 by a photography collective as a space for promoting and teaching photography.

In 2004 it also became a cultural center dedicated to the visual arts. Under the direction of one of its founders, photographer and visual artist Patricia Gouvêa, it is considered today as one of the most important references in Brazil for research, reflection, and production of the photographic image. Since 2010, it further benefits from the co-direction of the Italian curator and researcher Claudia Buzzetti.

In addition to working as a school offering courses on all aspects of theory and practice concerning the technical image, Ateliê da Imagem is a cultural center that promotes various activities, such as the “Sexta Livre” project, an twice-monthly open night featuring the work of a photographer, and a vast ongoing exhibition program in its own gallery (and in other places), including seminars, screenings, and other activities.

Patricia Gouvea Ateliê da Imagem Espaço Cultural Avenida Pasteur 453 Urca Rio de Janeiro, Brazil www.ateliedaimagem.com.br pgouvea@ateliedaimagem.com.br 0055 21 25416930 | 25413314

GALWAY IRELAND 126 26.5–18.6 2011 Ruti Sela (1974 Israel) & Maayan Amir (1978 Israel) “Beyond Guilt- The Trilogy”

The series “Beyond Guilt” addresses the undermining of the power relationship between photographer and photographed, men and women, the public domain and the private sphere, object and subject. As the film’s directors, Sela and Amir take an active part in the event. They seduce the interviewees on the one hand, and turn the camera over to them on the other, as part of the this undermining of the power relationship between photographer and subject.

The choice of pick-up bar services or hotel rooms as shooting locations strives to represent an underworld with its own language and signifiers.

The quick encounter before the camera calls to mind the ephemeral nature of intimate relations, but above all the works allude to the influences of the occupation, terror, and army as constitutors of an Israeli identity even in the most private moments.

The sexual identity and the military-political identity seem inseparably intertwined.

126 is Galway’s first artist-led exhibition space. A non-profit organisation, 126 was established in 2005 by local artists as a response to the urgent need for more noncommercial gallery spaces in Galway.

126 has developed a reputation as an organisation which supports traditionally unrepresented artistic projects. Because 126 is a non-profit, publicly funded gallery space, it is able to make decisions on an artistic, rather than economic, basis. As such, 126 is gaining recognition and support as a place of cultural innovation in Ireland and is quickly becoming an integral part of Galway’s cultural fabric.

BUKOVJE SLOVENIA Conceptual Art Centre Bukovje 8.4–23.4 2011 Miltos Manetas “Angels”

Conceptual Art Centre Bukovje is situated in a small Slovene mountain village called Bukovje. A mere twenty years after the first telephones were introduced in the village, CAC Bukovje is proud to present an exhibition of internet-based works by Greek multimedia artist Miltos Manetas.

In the 1990’s Miltos Manetas was categorized as one of the artists within the field of Relational Aesthetics and he was also included in Nicolas Bourriaud’s book with the same name. However, by 1996 Manetas abandoned performance and site-specific installations to explore the possibilities of working with the internet and computer games as media.

Manetas has had an extensive international career and he has had solo exhibitions at both Gagosian Gallery and Yvon Lambert Gallery in New York, and he has also exhibited at, for example, the Palais De Tokyo in Paris and at the 2nd Prague Biennial. He was also the initiator of the Internet Pavillion at the 53rd Venice Biennial.

Curators: Nina Slejko and Conny Blom Conceptual Art Centre Bukovje Bukovje 35 6230 Postojna, Slovenia www.cac-bukovje.com

126, artist-run gallery, Queen St.Galway, Ireland www.126.ie contact@126.ie 00353-91569871 43

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A Short Resolution about the East One of the major aspects that should offer a starting point in a possible analysis of Eastern Europe over the last two decades, is the profoundly cultural feature of postcommunist experience.

Simultaneously with the nullification of the communist political programme in 1989 and the ensuing automatic instauration of transition, a process of restructuration, with cultural discourse as its key element, is initiated. We generally witness an unconditioned and obsessive reference to the communist past and a counteracting projection of a “democratic” future. Both participated in the legitimation of a discourse which was basically engendered by a pre-1989 socio-traumatic inheritance and by the perspective of a future centred upon the healing image of the acceptance of and integration into, what I would call, a global Europe.

From this perspective, the discourse of Eastern European recent history, starting with the fall of the Iron Curtain, defines a cultural space of identification and rediscovery of the “democratic” topic, highly divided by communism, at the same time engendering a cultural product which functions as a fetish; the traumatic past, inherited from communism and

now metamorphosed into discourse, becomes a regulating cultural element.

There is an ambivalent essence at its core, based upon recognition and denial – moments which are necessary and sufficient enough to provide a means of healing and, simultaneously, of moral reformation, having in mind the acceptance and approval to be part in the constitution of Europe.

Referring to Romanian culture over the last two decades, the term “postcommunism” has been the one which left a powerful imprint upon cultural language, concentrating and transforming it into some archives useful for its documentation and into an institution of collective memory, permanently asked to negotiate among the truths of the past. It was equally metamorphosed into an apparatus directly connected to the project of emancipation, of “following European standards” alias the “transition to democracy”, a project whose completion seemingly required twenty years of learning – according to the predictions coming from within postcommunist culture. What appears to be important and worth being emphasized here is the final moment itself, the zero degree of acceptance, the moment when the West includes the East at the end of a programme of recuperating the lessons of democracy.

Placed at the end of these twenty years of learning democracy, of emancipation and, finally, of integration, right at the moment when

this entire endeavour should have been accomplished into the glorious context of a unitary Europe, the entire political and economical world is shaking, faced with a period of crises. According to the old principles this represents the point when the East-West integration itinerary loses its significance.

The policies of emancipation and standardization of Eastern Europe are finally defined as intermediary or transit passages between two utopian contexts: socialism and globalization.

Adrian Bojenoiu (Club Electro Putere)

‘View from my window’. A common view of the Romanian contemporary urban landscape in which three architectural layers corresponding to three different historical and political moments are visible. On the left side, the houses before the Communist time, on the right the typical Communist blocks of flats and in between made its way the postCommunist and capitalist architecture.

The three year old banner on the building in the centre of the image tries to get tenants for the newly built block.

Photo: Adrian Bojenoiu

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Upcoming exhibitions HONGKONG Wooferten Art Space 9.7–7.8 2011 “Violence and Community”

In the exhibition project “Violence and Community” the selected artists will play a leading role in the development of a project, together with a working group of people from other topic-relevant disciplines and from the community. The group will have brainstormings and regular meetings, or research activities to finally come up with one main idea to execute, and try to make a difference to the issue they are addressing.

This project will be attended by Cally Yu, a writer, and the project will be surrounding domestic violence happening to women and targeting mainly the minority community.

While the project intervenes its neighbouring community, the exhibition presentation will be held at its base, the Wooferten art space.

Wooferten is an art group running a cornerstore space located in 404, Shanghai Street, Yau Ma Tei, an old but lively district of Kowloon, Hong Kong. The art space, funded by HK Art Development Council, focuses on experimental ways of engaging with both the community, as well as socialpolitical issues. The artspace regularly stages exhibitions and all kinds of improvising projects, responding to community needs as well as social incidents. It has overthrown the previous white cube gallery model of the space and runs more like a community center, so one could always drop by, chat and check out the latest development.

Wooferten 04, Shanghai Street, Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon, Hong Kong www.wooferten.org info@wooferten.org +852 3485 6499

LULEÅ SWEDEN Galleri Syster 16.4–30.4 2011 Gemma Pauwels “Baixo Estacio”

PHILADELPHIA UNITED STATES MACAS 5.3–2.4 2011 Alexis Granwell and Rick Lewis

Alexis Granwell is a sculptor and printmaker working in Philadelphia. Her work is represented by CTRL Gallery in Houston.

One of the reasons for Gemma Pauwels, a young artist based in Amsterdam, to exhibit at Galleri Syster, is, as she explains it, because the gallery is situated in a city close to both the sea and the forest, and nature in relation to the city is an important subject in her work. As she likes to develop her work on location, she will be working in the gallery and its next-door workshop for a month before the exhibition opens – so neither she nor Galleri Syster knows yet what the exhibition will look like. But what could be said is that Gemma Pauwels, educated at HKU (Hoogeschool voor de Kunsten) in Utrecht and at Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, works in different techniques and materials - maybe with a special predilection for paper – and that her installations and drawings often are both humorous and somehow sad, both fragile and sturdy.

Galleri Syster exhibits contemporary art, as it seems with a special inclination toward the not yet well established; the gallery says that it likes to give the public the possibility to discover something new rather than to confirm what it already knows.

Galleri Syster Kronan H5 974 42 Luleå, Sweden www.gallerisyster.se info@gallerisyster.se +46 70 482 91 99 | +46 73 061 15 88

Rick Lewis is a New York based painter who has shown internationally. His work is represented by Sin Sin Fine Art in Hong Kong and Steven Amedee Gallery in New York..

Both artists engage in their work with a sculptor’s sensibility. Granwell’s sculptures, wall-based assemblages, and prints evoke the sense of painting supports or infrastructure exploding; a frenzy of raw material desperately seeking a center of gravity.

Lewis’ method of mark making on his canvases is fundamentally a form of carving, of digging into material surfaces. These are objects that are direct expression of makers interested in physicality over ethereality.

MACAS (Mount Airy Contemporary Artists Space) is a small artist-run exhibition space in the northwest of Philadelphia. The gallery’s program is focused on connecting artist and artist communities across regional pockets, and to that end most shows are pairings of local Philadelphia artists with artists in other cities.

MACAS 25 West Mt. Airy Avenue Philadelphia PA 19119, USA www.mountairycontemporary.com info@mountairycontemporary.com

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Upcoming exhibitions NEW YORK CITY United States Pierogi 2000 25.2–27.3 2011 Mark Lombardi

Mark Lombardi, an artist whose elegant, minutely detailed diagrams of political and financial scandals brought a distinctive voice to late Conceptualism, was found dead in his loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 2000, at the age of 48.

As an artist, Mark Lombardi was an unusual case: a late bloomer who developed his mature style after the age of 40, but who was experiencing the rapid ascent of a younger artist. Mark Lombardi had his first solo show in 1998 at Pierogi 2000.

Mark Lombardi’s interest in presenting pure information qualified him as a conceptual artist, but in many ways he was an investigative reporter after the fact.

He liked to say that his drawings were probably best understood by the newspaper reporters who had covered the scandals he diagrammed.

The small circles in his drawings identified the main players – individuals, corporations and governments – along a time line. The arcing lines showed personal and professional links, conflicts of interest, malfeasance and fraud.

Pierogi, founded in 1994 by Joe Amrhein, is an artist-run gallery located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn – an area now vital to the larger art community because of its concentration of diverse artists and its innovative gallery scene. Pierogi has monthly solo shows which feature the work of emerging and mid-career artists. The focus is on one-person shows in order to highlight an individual artist’s work.

Pierogi 2000 177 North 9th Street Brooklyn, NY 11211, USA www.pierogi2000.com info@pierogi2000.com +1 718.599.2144

ADELAIDE Australia Seedling Art Space 26.2–13.3 2011 Anna Horne, “Uneasy Order”

The first Seedling Art Space exhibition for 2011, “Uneasy Order”, by South Australian emerging artist Anna Horne is part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival (26th February to 13th of March). The built structures installed in the space revolve around the familiarity of the home, with a focus on architecture. Uncanny elements will evolve as the materials associated with the home are reconfigured and put through a rigorous process. The outcome being sculptures that encompass recognisable elements but possess their own unique order.

Seedling Art Space is a not-for-profit organisation in the outskirts of Adelaide, South Australia. Seedling Art Space is reviving a former experimental orchard office building to create a space for contemporary art for the local community.

This unique project provides the public with an opportunity to engage with contemporary art in a local heritage building, set within the beautiful Blackwood Forest Recreation Park. Seedling Art Space is an environmentally friendly project – the small space has operated for 3 years with no power or water. Seedling Art Space is the only eco-conscious contemporary art gallery currently operating in Australia.

Seedling Art Space Cnr Main Rd & Turners Ave. Hawthorndene, (PO BOX 13 Blackwood) South Australia, 5051, Australia www.seedlingartspace.asn.au seedlingartspace@fastmail.fm

MONTRÉAL Canada Articule 18.3–17.4 2011 Barry Doupé, “Whose Toes”

Whose Toes is a distant, false memory.

Showcasing the late Princess Diana and John F. Kennedy as its main characters, it is an invitation to return to past events that have caused discomfort and, collective trauma, and to re-imagine a misstep in time. The narrative threads need to be spoken aloud to be made sense of. The air from your mouth has to enter the collective sphere of air. An open mouth, circular and centerless, held open by centrifugal force – agasp, empty, rotten out by conspiracy. To sidestep the inheritance of the world. A new time branch that connects the personal experience to the rest of the world. A distorted delusion smearing personal and collective failures. The clockwork of human interaction, a historical soft spot, an ethical blind spot.

Barry Doupé (b. Victoria, BC) is a filmmaker living in Vancouver. He holds a Bachelor of Media Arts Degree from Emily Carr University. His films have been screened throughout Canada and internationally including the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, New York, Lyon Contemporary Art Museum, Pleasure Dome, Toronto and the Tate Modern, London.

Articule is an open-access artist-run centre dedicated to the presentation of a broad range of practices. Articule supports discursive and alternative activities that promote dialogue and build networks with local, national and international artists, collectives and organisations. The programming in the gallery presents a selection of challenging and thoughtful exhibitions from engaging contemporary artists. These presentations are complemented with other activities such as artist talks and publications that provide accessible forums for exchange.

Articule 262 Fairmount O. Montréal Québec, H2V 2G3 Canada www.articule.org info@articule.org 514 842 9686

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27.10.2010, 18:07, “Pontus Raud” <pontus@supermarketartfair. com>: > Hi Maxim, > > I hope everything is Ok with you! I have two questions that I need answer as soon as possible. > > 1. Could you send me some info if you will do another Universam next year or not. We’re doing a short piece for the art magazine about alternative art fairs. > > 2. If you would choose one exhibition to mention that will take place in ABC gallery in year 2011, what would that be? (also for the art magazine) > > I hope you will be able to give some quick answers. > > All the best > Pontus Raud

WHAT HAPPENED AFTER? UNIVERSAM – the artist-run art fair in Moscow took place 23—27 September 2009 in the very center of Moscow, in the publishing house Izvestiya, a classical constructivist building from the 1920s, located on Pushkin Square.

Maxim Iliukhin, founder of ABC gallery, had been participating in SUPER­ MARKET 2009, and together with Anton Litvin, Liza Plavinskaya and Stas Shuripa he started a similar art fair in Moscow with 22 artist-run galleries and groups, mostly from Russia.

hi Pontus, yes i am fine. I am in performance reality now, because three day to opening of exhibition with me as curator. nothing done yet except concept. > 1. Could you send me some info if you will do another Universam next year or not. We’re doing a short piece for the art magazine about alternative art fairs.

After Universam 2009 we decided to wait a few months and then makes next project. We thought that it could be something like four-curator project for next time. We thought that we want to find new place for next time. Even we thought that new place should find us and invite us. New place find us only in the beginning of summer 2010. It was huge new building with unlimited space. We met together again and start to discuss what we wanna do. We invented new project. It is no just art fair but it is platform and time-based project. It should be few open studios of artists. Artist working there, making public discussions, teaching and so on. It’s like Live-show. Step by step unwinding. Artists in the beginning, curators and critics join them, they makes some pubic projects during few months. It could show process of art in the making. And it could do platform well-known. And the final step it should be art fair. Then artists from other places coming and show their products. Local works and atmosphere are basement and part of program of this artist run art fair. But. We couldn’t arrange with buildings owner. And now this project of platform is on the paper and in the heads.

So I don’t now about next Universam. First of all I still have no space for doing something. I’ve no office. I work with laptop on my couch. > 2. If you would choose one exhibition to mention that will take place in ABC gallery in year 2011, what would that be? (also for the art magazine) There is no ABC gallery now. It is only web site and history. Distance between points of net are big and links are thin. I’ve no space. I have some interesting artists which I would like to show, and to work with, but there is no gallery space for it. Now I curating show of famous Russian artist Dmitrij Prigov in one of Moscow university. It is opening on Saturday. It is project not for imaginary gallery. It is rather didactic. And I am planning one exhibition project for next September. It should be show of mediaextended mind artists. I think we will be nice bunch.

With warm wishes, Max.

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Photo: Pontus Raud

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Since its founding within the scope of work commissioned by the Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka, Croatia at the start of 2010, Mnky Bizz Group has expanded its reach across the globe. A broad and diverse network of participants in the cultural domain have aligned their strategies in an international campaign to spark new partnerships between art and business. The launch of Mnky Bizz Group marks the beginning of the end for the hegemonic cultural system.

Mnky Bizz Group and the evolution of the cultural industry Supermarket was able to catch up with Mnky 001, one of the founders of Mnky Bizz Group during the autumn art fair season in Berlin.

How come that members of Mnky Bizz Group don’t have names, just numbers? And how would you like to be addressed?

What we value most is efficiency. It’s not individuality that guarantees success and power, but instead the tastes and preferences of the masses. Our members are active in different roles in the cultural industry. I’m a visual artist myself and being the founder.

I’m known as Mnky 001.

GRAPHIC DESIGN: ANDREAS RIBBUNG

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How can artists join the organisation and what is your objective?

Active participation in the art market is all that’s required for membership. Anyone interested in joining should just get in touch with us. It’s also possible to take part in the

discussion at our Mnky Talk blog. As for Mnky Bizz Group’s mission, we’re all about breaking down barriers between art and business. Creativity and expertise have to be pooled in order to establish a new system where all participants in the art market reap maximum rewards.

Art and revolution. That sounds like a throwback to the movements in the 60s and 70s. Haven’t we been there already?

As I understand those movements, they also contained an element of destruction, even self-destruction in some instances. We, on the other hand, aren’t trying to fight against and stop the current developments, but instead use these for our own ends. Historically, we are indebted to the traditions of the Victorian period as well as to those of the early stages of industrialisation. Today, we’re aligned with the system that calls for rationalisation and profit maximisation at all levels, which includes both the economic and intellectual domains. That’s why it’s so difficult to fit Mnky Bizz Group into one particular category.

One last question: Why do you all wear chimpanzee masks?

There are many reasons for this. The masks came into play during the conception of a work for the 3rd Quadrilateral Biennale in Rijeka, in which we discovered parallels between our project and performance in Darwin’s time. Also, the monkey symbolises wild, unpredictable forces as well as the so-called “missing link”, both a reminder of the insights gained in the study of evolution. And, of course, most of our members simply look better in the masks.

Photo: Mnky Bizz Group

You can find out more about the Mnky Bizz Group at mnkybizz.com 49

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Dostoyevsky was obviously wrong. In fact, religious people in general are wrong: religion does not bring higher moral standards to societies. Religion will never do away with disdain or oppression or violence or crime. On the contrary, religion facilitates crime and immorality, facilitates moral double standards and warfare. Religion is not something harmless and cute. Religion is bad for you!

by Mikael Askergren

GRAPHIC DESIGN: ANDREAS RIBBUNG

DJISĂ&#x2013;SS KRAJST!!!

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Christopher Moltisanti is in hospital with a bad gunshot wound. Everyone in the extended family, especially Carmela and Tony Soprano, brood on their sins and their relationship to God, to religion, and to the Roman Catholic Church. (The Sopranos, season 2, episode 9: From Where to Eternity) However, the episode concludes with everything returning to “normal:” Christopher recovers and picks up his life in crime where he left off. So does Tony. And Carmela, as always, does – nothing. She remains at Tony’s side, forever enabling him in his career as professional criminal.

As always, the occasional onset of moral anxiety amongst the members of the Soprano family does not bring about any permanent changes in any of them.

One might wonder: how is it even possible for ruthless criminals such as these, and for their enablers, to be regular churchgoers, to be deeply and profoundly religious, and to consider themselves true Catholics? This is of course the completely wrong ques‑ tion to ask oneself. It makes so much more sense to ask: Why do so many of us tend to assume that religious faith will make people “better?”

Why Religion Facilitates Crime and Immorality Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880) famously declared that if people did not believe in God, there would be more im‑ morality and crime. Dostoyevsky was convinced that if people do not fear punishment from God after death, they automatically become thieves and rapists and murderers – while in fact, and contrary to what Dos‑ toyevsky would have expected, global secularization in the twentieth and 21st centuries has brought more law‑ fulness and higher moral standards to the world than organized religion was ever able to bring for thousands of years.

Plenty of statistics prove that truly secularized societies enjoy greater financial equality and greater

gender equality, their citizens are more law‑abiding, are less corrupt, experience less crime and fewer murders, put fewer people in jail, and trust their neighbors more than the citizens of religious nations do.

Believers do not behave “better” than atheists. If anything, religious people behave worse: transgressing secular law is never a completely foreign concept to a deeply religious person.

Religious people are often perceived by nonbelievers as “strict,” but all reli‑ gious systems of morality are in real‑ ity extremely pliable, flexible and fluid things: one can always find a religious reason for transgressing secular law and, say, start murdering doctors who performs perfectly legal abortions.

Or start robbing banks. One can always find a religious reason for pretty much any act, also for violent and sexist and racist acts, say. In the religious universe there never is a clear, undisputed line drawn be‑ tween accept­able and unacceptable be­havior.

By contrast, in the nonbeliever’s universe, there actually is such a clear, undisputed line – the line drawn in secular law between “legal” and “ille‑ gal.” In secular society, and to nonre‑ ligious people, that which is “lawful” (albeit often an arbitrary distinction; in some countries it’s illegal to drive on the right side of the road, in other

countries it’s illegal to drive on left side) is a very important distinction indeed: it is tangible, it is concrete, anyone can tell you without much hesitation what is legal and what is not. Not much room for doubt or confusion. To break the laws of secular society and to cross the bor‑ der into lawlessness thus becomes – psychologically and morally – a very great leap indeed to make for the

nonbeliever. (Much greater than for religious folk.) And most nonbeliev‑ ers find great comfort and take great pride in being law-abiding citizens.

(Non-believers find much more com‑ fort and take greater pride in this than religious people do.)

In addition, religious people believe in a universe of hierarchies, in the existence of entities “above” us mere mortals (gods, goddesses) as well as entities “beneath” us mere mortals

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(demons). And to the believer, the psychological leap between (a) plac‑ ing only metaphysical entities above and beneath oneself, and (b) to also start placing other mere mortals above oneself (saints, nuns, priests) as well as beneath oneself (adulterers, homo‑ sexuals, thieves, confessors to other religions than one’s own, people of other nationalities or races) on the hierarchical steps of that very same metaphysical ladder is of course a very short psychological leap indeed.

Once the believer makes that (very short) leap of faith, from thinking (a) to thinking (b), the concept of metaphysical hierarchies begins also to serve worldly and political and nationalist and racist purposes. The metaphysics of religion thus not only distills in people the fear of God, but – extrapolated into the everyday – facili­tates looking down on and despising and debasing just about anybody.

This is an important point to make, especially these days, because in today’s infected public debate about religiously motivated terrorism and extremist violence in religion’s name, one often hears religious people referring to their particular religion or religious denomination as an especially “peace loving” one. Thus pre­sup­posing that those deeply religious individuals who are commit­

ting very violent acts of terrorism in the name of religion (as well as those theocratic, religious nations that are making war also in the name of religion) merely are sad exceptions to the (religious) rule of thumb that religious people are “better” than other people. When are religious people going to admit to themselves that violence is not an anomaly, but a normal occurrence in religion?

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Violence is something to be expected from both extremist individuals and organized mainstream religion. I, for one, certainly expect religious people to be prone to violence. If religious people seem “peace loving” and meek, the way I see it, they simply aren’t that much into it; they simply aren’t that religious to begin with...

By contrast, the secu‑ larized mind has no concept of a metaphysi‑ cal ladder of hierarchy between enti‑ ties, or people for that matter.

The psychological and political and moral leap into placing other mere mortals above or – more alarmingly – beneath oneself is much greater for nonreligious people than for religious people. No wonder athe‑ ists are more likely to actually practice the golden rule, for instance. No wonder secularized nations are more democratic, more egalitarian, less corrupt, less violent and more peace loving.

religion probably serves that nation or society very well, providing productive rules and institutions for both public life and private life. But once a certain standard of wealth and science and art has been reached, a profound and far-reaching secularization of all laws and institutions is the thing that serves any affluent, advanced, and modern society best. Thus, in the miserable 19th century Russia, with all that famine and serfdom, Dos‑ toyevsky perhaps had a point (on how to best police the ignorant under‑ class) – but just a few decades later, the emancipated and affluent post WW II Scandinavia and Japan prove him wrong: religion is not the best way to police reasonably educated and affluent societies, it turns out secularization is.

For the record: In distin‑ guishing between orga‑ nized religion’s (positive?) effect on underdeveloped, premodern societies on the one hand, and organized reli‑ gion’s (negative!) effect on modern, developed, affluent societies on the

other hand, I owe part of my argu‑ ment to Wilkinson and Pickett and their recently published and much debated book: The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (London, 2009).

The separation Wilkinson and Pickett make in their book between modern, affluent, Western democracies (which constitute the subject matter of their book) and underdeveloped countries (not the subject matter of their book) makes sense also (I would argue) for a discussion about religiousness and secularization. Wilkinson and Pickett themselves never discuss or even mention religiousness or secularization as factors that could influence the welfare of a certain society’s or nation’s citizens. This (I would argue) is a considerable flaw with their book: it is impossible to understand how societies function with‑ out weighing in the effects of religiousness and secularization.

Wilkinson and Pickett begin by stat‑ ing that in premodern societies, a growing economy and personal finan‑ cial gain is a positive thing, of course: before there are decent roads and

Dostoyevsky Was Wrong Dostoyevsky was obviously wrong. In fact, religious people in general are wrong: religion does not bring higher moral standards to societies. Religion will never do away with disdain or op‑ pression or violence or crime. On the contrary, religion facilitates crime and immorality, facilitates moral double standards and warfare. Religion is not something harmless and cute. Reli‑ gion is bad for you!

It can, however, be argued that before a certain nation or society has reached a certain level of social and industrial development, organized 53

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Don’t get me wrong: I really love the attempt of Wilkinson and Pickett at providing a social and political “theory of everything.” Kudos! And they almost got it right! They just got a little confused about cause and effect when it came to inequality and religiousness (a case of “the chicken and the egg”): after all, those nations sewage systems available to every‑ one, and before everyone can afford decent food and an education, ev‑ eryone gains from economic growth and higher material standards. But – and this is their important finding – once decent material standards have been reached, further personal financial gain will not make people happier, or longer living, or less af‑ flicted by sickness or crime; only greater equality will make people in (already affluent) societies live lon‑ ger and happier than before. This claim of Wilkinson and Pickett is supported by droves of international statistics, from UNESCO and other reliable sources, presented in actu‑ ally really fascinating graphs and diagrams that contradict everything you thought you knew about physical health, mental health, social mobility, violence, crime, punishment, etc.

Wilkinson and Pickett are very con‑ vincing when arguing that one has to separate underdeveloped and afflu‑ ent nations when investigating how to improve life for people in modern, Western nations. That goes for my discourse of religion and seculariza‑ tion as well: this part of my argument I owe to them.

They are also very convincing in conveying the message that just more and more money will not make us modern, affluent Westerners any hap‑ pier. But contrary to Wilkinson and Pickett, I would argue that it is not financial and social equality per se that causes the wellbeing of the citizens in the happiest nations on earth, it is in fact instead the secularization of those nations that is the primary cause. The benefits of financial and social equal‑ ity are merely the secondary effect and indirect function of the general secu‑ larization of societies and institutions in the West.

that rate the highest in Wilkinson’s and Pickett’s diagrams are without exception the world’s most secularized nations!

And that is of course no coinci‑ dence: financial and social equality of course follows from secularization. It is after all not until organized religion’s patriarchal hierarchies have been questioned – and defeated – by secular institutions that it is even possible for the rulers (and/or voters) of a certain society to even conceive of the financial and social equality that has become so emblematic of the (secularized) Western welfare state.

Now, that should be an even more convincing outline of a really compre‑ hensive social “theory of everything” for you! And this time including (not excluding, as Wilkinson and Pickett do) the crucial effect of secularization on the welfare of societies. I there‑ fore hereby suggest that the variable “income inequality” could – and should – be replaced by the variable “religiousness” in the graphs and diagrams of The Spirit Level: all those graphs and diagrams of Wilkinson and Pickett’s book would still turn out just the same.

About the Author: Master of Architecture, Royal Institute of Tech‑ nology [KTH], Stockholm, Sweden.

Master of Fine Arts, Royal University College of Fine Arts [KKH], Stockholm, Sweden.

Web site and blog of Mikael Askergren: www.askergren.com

Further Reading: Mikael Askergren: Why Religion Facilitates Crime and Immorality, blog post, July 4, 2010 Mikael Askergren: Det finns ingen religiös arkitektur, essay, Kritik Magazine, Stockholm, Sweden, #3-2008

Illustrations: • Mikael Askergren: Exclamations of Astonishment and Horror in Speech Balloons (“Holy crap!” ... “Jesus Christ!” ... “Oh my God!”), 2010 • Pontus Raud: The Sopranos, pastel, 2010 • Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett: graphs showing the detrimental effects of financial and social inequality on society, The Spirit Level, London, 2009

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Dr. Odyoke:

WTF is happening in Gothenburg?

Gothenburg is Sweden’s second biggest city, measured in terms of population. In 2021 the city will celebrate its 400-years anniversary.

Gothenburg is well known for the witty humour of its inhabitants and for its (comparatively) successful soccer teams. But when it comes to culture, Gothenburg is lagging behind the Swedish capital Stockholm. The reason is not so much the successful cultural policy of the municipality of Stockholm, but rather the almost eternal clumsiness and insensibility of the politicians in Gothenburg.

Recently, Mr Björn Sandmark, director of cultural affairs within the municipality of Gothenburg, suggested that the museums in Gothenburg should start selling of certain items in their collections in order to finance a much needed facelift of the city’s cultural institutions.

Mr Sandmark is a well known supporter of a more businesslike approach to the financing of public culture. On his blog, he is referring to the examples of Berlin and London when it comes to fruitful partnerships between public and corporate players in the cultural arena. Not a bad idea,

but Gothenburg is not a city with a size comparable to Berlin and London. It rather matches the likes of Sheffield and Nürnberg. Not so many wealthy sponsors popping up there.

A few months ago, a number of

well known artists with a Gothen­ burgian background published an open letter in Göteborgsposten, the city’s leading daily newspaper.

Their message: everyone is nowadays talking about the importance of contemporary art as a way of building a prosperous local community. Everyone except for the politicians and civil servants in Gothenburg. The BIGGEST event for them last year was the sponsorship of the pseudorenaissance exhibition “And There Was Light”, which after a few months went bankrupt after failing to attract the audience. The municipality’s share of the funding was 500 000 SEK. At the same time, the trade union leaders are threatening to shut down the Art Museum of Gothenburg because of its poor indoor climate. WTF is happening???

Dr. Odyoke:

Me, myself and I Crisis, what crisis? The rest of Europe is cutting the modern welfare state into bits and pieces, but Swedish pockets seems to be bulging with money, ready to be spent on everything from iPads to flashy new apartments in the dynamic centre of Stockholm. But what do you do if you already have an iPhone, an iPad and a brand new Gaggenau kitchen? Why not build your own art museum? That is what wealthy Swedish entrepreneurs are doing, mimicking their wealthy colleagues from a hundred years ago. Björn Jakobson, SEO of baby carrier company Babybjörn, is constructing a private art museum

and cultural centre at Hålludden, on the threshold of the archipelago of Stockholm. The aim is to create a Swedish Louisiana, but so far not much has been mentioned about what kind of art that is going to be exhibited. Construction billionaire Sven-Harry Karlsson is matching Jakobsons ambitions, erecting an art museum/private monument close to Bonniers Konsthall. The building, all in shining brass, will contain exhibition spaces as well as apartments and shops. Part of the museum will be an exact replica of Mr Karlssons 18th century styled mansion, displaying his collection of Nordic 1900-century art.

Eva Asp, former art consultant with the Church of Sweden, has been given the task to organise the museum’s exhibitions with contemporary art. Good luck to her.

She will need it.

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“What happens when first world art rubs up against third world art?

Does it bleed?”

ATIS REZISTANS &

GHETTO BIENNALE Roberto N Peyre/BLOT

GRAPHIC DESIGN: ANDREAS RIBBUNG

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André Eugéne. Photo: Leah Gordon

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In December 2009, only a few weeks before one of the greatest tragedies in modern times wiped away roughly 250 000 individuals and stigmatised millions of people for years to come, there was for the first time in a long while, a sharp exceptional moment of unfettered creativity, great pride and visions of a slightly brighter future in the downtown slum area of Grand Rue in Port au Prince, Haiti.

Over a month, about thirty more or less collaborative international art projects operated throughout, or in direct relation to, the sparse conditions that are the day-to-day reality for this run-down neighborhood.

This was the spark that kickstarted the first grand international arts event in Haiti.

The name of the event is GHETTO BIENNALE.

This unique event was first envi‑ sioned, initiated and organised by the legendary local art collective ATIS REZISTANS in collaboration with the British photographer/ filmmaker Leah Gordon, and the American art curator/scholar Myron Beasley.

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This particular Grand Rue area and its inhabitants are at the tail end of an old tradition of arts and craftsmanship, but have become something of an free reeling visionary raft ashore the lost city of Port au Prince in the lost nation of Haiti on the lost Island of Hispaniola (Ayti). ATIS REZISTANS is a selforganized collective involving and organizing people around an acute contemporary arts practice operating throughout the popular and sanctified realities of the Haitian here and now.

Artwork by Jean Hérard Celeur Photographs: Leah Gordon

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This means to forcefully utilize and empower the never ending bric‑á‑brac of material waste, humani­tarian aid, skeletons, electronics and junk from the crumbling cityscape. And out of necessity, resourceful recycling of both popular and unpopular realities, in service of the Vodoun Lwa and humanity.

At the core of A.R there is the grand old man André Eugéne and Jean Hérard Celeur who over the years have generated an ever expanding extended family of brilliant artists and youth prospects.

Or is it the other way around? The headquarters are both the front and back yards surrounding André Eugénes absolutely hallucinatory studio space. It is a part outdoor gallery/museum/laboratory named “E Pluribus Unum” – “Out of Many: One”.

The Biennale was an event that came to have far greater repercussions than expected. There was massive international press coverage reaching far out of the usual Haiti currents.

The international conference crowning the end of the Biennale consisted of a fine selection of scholars, academics and artists who barely managed to contain all the accurate but highly diverse, and on a personal level, profoundly revolutionary accounts of this sharp moment in history. As the UK artist Bill Drummond auratically concluded in a mural during the Biennale – “Imagine a tomorrow without music”.

BLOT is a mobile collaborative and curatorial cell operating through various strategies, activisms, promotions, exhibitions and participations within aural/visual cultures and very fine art practices. The unit emanates out of the artists Joyce Ip & Roberto N Peyre. The unit is currently based in Stockholm, Sweden.

Blot is singularly focusing on proje­cts fully engaged in the transmutation of cultures and the taste of white darkness oozing through visionary practices.

BLOT had the honour to be in­­vi­ ted to participate in the first Ghetto Biennale in 2009. In the two weeks leading up to the Biennale, Roberto N Peyre re-cut a new dub of his recordings used in the art­work “Ship of Fools”. The material was installed and activated as an audiovisual live event in col­labo­ration with the local Rarah band “Rarah Nancy a men fanm nan” in the Grand Rue. Joyce Ip was invited to stage a screening of her film work “A Tetralogy of Emancipation”. The BLOT participation was made possible through funding by Moderna Museet and Weld.

In April 2011 artists from Atis Rezistance will have a residency as part of Xism, an arts programme curated by BLOT as part of the VODOU exhibition at the Ethnographic Museum in Stockholm.

BLOT is also collaborating on a series of events at Konsthall C, Stockholm, in 2011.

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Links: www.ghettobiennale.com www.atis-rezistans.com www.blot.com www.dazeddigital.com/ artsandculture/article/6425/1/ haiti-ghetto-biennale

Above left: Esteline.

Above right: “Doktè Zozo” by André Eugéne.

Right: André Eugéne welding.

Photographs: Leah Gordon.

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ANDREAS RIBBUNG 2011

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Upcoming exhibitions TEHRAN IRAN Parkingallery 1.3–30.5 2011 “Being Happy for no Reason”

WELLINGTON NEW ZEALAND Enjoy 23.3–16.4 2011 “The Horoscope Show”

Empty Design by Mehdi Ravandi

The exhibition takes place in various locations around the city, from shops, to streets and public places. It involves intervention in the public space, site‑specific installations, mini-exhibitions and performances.

“Being Happy for no Reason” is based on two cross-discipinary exhibitions the Parkingallery realized in 2004 and 2006; “Deep depression” and “Deeper depression”. The current project is influenced by a main aspect in Iranian urban culture: the negotiation habit while shopping. Having a chat with the shopkeepers, asking for advice, negotiating the price while trying to buy the product from someone you know, charac­ terize typical shopping behaviour in Iran.

Based on this tradition, the project and its artists look for various people from any field throughout Teheran, who might be inte­ rested in showing their art. Shops, offices, even workshops are possible. Main part of the procedere is negotiating and deciding together wether to exhibit or not. Through this typical habit, the project takes a short cut to a broader audience, so art doesn’t get trapped in the elite circles for ever.

Parkingallery is an independent project space in Tehran, which started in 1998, originally as a temporary exhibition space and graphic design studio. The virual gallery parkingallery.com opened in 2002 and has become an online platform for many young Iranian artists.

Parkingallery No.1 - 4th Milad Alley, Milad st. Dadman Blvd, Shahrak-e Gharb, Tehran, Iran www.parkingallery.com info@parkingallery.com

Predictions for March 2011 Enjoy Public Art Gallery will find itself experiencing a very productive, exciting month in March, when the universe will expand to allow the housing of an event which a couple of years ago was not possible. This is due to the alighnment of a couple of key planets in your work and spiritual zones.

Twelve like-minded souls will come together for a meeting of sorts; expect an exciting environment where there will be alliances, similarities and friendships as well as possible minor superficial tensions within the group. All of this will culminate in an evening on the 23rd featuring personal introspection, self-belief, community and merriment.

This “coming together” will only last for a month however, the energy from various parts of the world will dissipate, with each person going their separate ways. Signs are good for local, national and international involvement. Working with technology, publishing and creative pursuits are also highlighted. Go Enjoy – this is your month to shine!

Janneke Raaphorst, Ben Buchanan, Clara Chon, Bek Coogan, Tessa Laird, Andrew Barber, Rachel Walters, Caroline Johnston, Victoria Munro, Rob McHaffie, Sonya Lacey, Fiona Jack.

LOS ANGELES UNITED STATES WPA 16.4–14.5 2011 Amy Sarkisian

WPA is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new work by Los Angeles artist Amy Sarkisian. Sarkisian’s use of found objects and wood create figurative sculptures that provide a combination of humor and depth within a simple form.

Amy Sarkisian has shown at Galerie Carlos Cardenas in Paris, Kathryn Brennan Gallery in Los Angeles, Marella Arte Contemporanea in Milan and Suzanne Vielmetter in Los Angeles. She has been included in exhibitions at Leo Koenig Gallery, Deitch Projects, Anton Kern Gallery and The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York; Acme, Marc Foxx, LACE and The Mak Center in Los Angeles; Miliken Gallery in Stockholm, Galerie Loevenbruck and Parc Saint-Leger-Centre d’art in France; Rodolphe Jansses in Brussels. Amy Sarkisian ran the project space, Studio 870, in the late 1990s and is the newest member of the WPA. WPA opened its doors in 2009 after Andrew Hahn brought together a group of fellow artists to organize a venue that provides curated group shows, solo exhibitions, performances, screenings and events. WPA is a multi-purpose acronym but it does intentionally recall the Works Progress Administration, Roosevelt’s New Deal relief agency that employed artists, as artists, during The Great Depression.

WPA 510 Bernard Street (Chinatown) Los Angeles, CA 90012 USA www.wpala.com list@wpala.com +1 213 290 5632

Enjoy Public Art Gallery Level 1/147 Cuba Street Wellington 6011, Aotearoa, New Zealand www. enjoy.org.nz comms@enjoy.org.nz +64 4 384 0174 61

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My Name is Fashion PAULINA WALLENBERG-OLSSON

IMAGES: PAULINA WALLENBERG-OLSSON, GRAPHIC DESIGN: MAGDA LIPKA FALCK

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MY NAME My name is fashion, I am a narrative, a cultural warrior of the adorned body, a prophet inside a costume of imagery, I claim the centre and I invent it. Why wouldn’t I? I am the natural evolution, the ongoing fastforward mutation platform of style serving the street, the catwalk, the whole wide world. My method of procedure is to cast glances, seduce, and to create envy while delivering the most current kind of beauty.

Although, tweaked, still the beauty of divine symmetry, that trigger the signals processed by our animal brains and already programmed into our DNA. I see the splendour in you, my darling, and I dig into your inner turmoil. Your pain and meaninglessnesses turn into laughter. My code, my message, penetrates your mind.

MY CENTRE My old centres are dying and new are being born. Nobody knows how WKH ULYHU ZLOO ELIXUFDWH 7KH NLVV RI GHDWK LV YHU\ VORZ DQG ÀOOHG ZLWK the aroma of nostalgia. The future is not what it used to be. I am in the process of inventing something much more striking than the robotic; metamaterials that gain their properties from structure rather than composition and that can create invisibility and other optical illusions.

My aim is Promethean: continuous world-wide expansion, limitless possibilities. The acceleration of fashion will increase considerably as it has since the middle of the 14th century. Everything and every object will be fashionable, much like in ancient Egypt: pioneers in the arts of adornment, clothes, cosmetics and tattooing. In no country RU FXOWXUH KDV WKH FRQFHUQ ZLWK EHDXWLÀFDWLRQ EHHQ VR H[WHQVLYH ,W transcended class and gender lines. My apparatus of technologies and communication systems will create a new era of meaning. The value goes up when other people tell you it is worth more than you thought, and down when others say it is worth less. That’s why I work with the most interesting photographers and the rarest and most unusual PRGHOV WR FUHDWH DQ HQGOHVV ÁRZ RI HGLWRULDO FULWLTXH DQG FRPPHQWDU\ to create the public opinion that can be found in magazines, on television, fashion websites, social networks, and fashion blogs. I DP SURXG WR VD\ WKDW WKH IDVKLRQ PHFKDQLVP RSHUDWHV LQ DOO ÀHOGV of human endeavour, not just in clothing. Artists, psychiatrists and economists are blind to their immersion in the cycles of fashion.

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MY WAY I am the subject of constant change. In order to survive I need to FRQWLQXRXVO\ UHQHZ P\VHOI 7KHUHIRUH , FDQ DIĂ&#x20AC;UP WKDW P\ FUHDWLYH SURFHVVHV DUH IHDUOHVV LQQRYDWLYH DQG EUDYH 8QOLNH WKH Ă&#x20AC;OP DQG PXVLF industry I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t let myself be controlled by intellectual property laws. No, on the contrary, I encourage exchange, copying, imitation, even theft, to create trends and to construct visions. All attempts to stop the ways of fashion have been in vain. Fashion is the pattern the world will follow more and more; it will create new standards of EHDXW\ GHWHUPLQH OLIHVW\OHV DQG WUDFH RXW SDWKV ZKLFK ZLOO LQĂ XHQFH contemporary art, interior design, and popular culture. My dialogue between art and design are now generating radical hybridizations UHTXLULQJ QHZ FODVVLĂ&#x20AC;FDWLRQV DQG QHZ PDQQHUV RI SUHVHQWDWLRQ ZLWKLQ the structure of the exhibition. Even though art and fashion retain their own distinct languages, contemporary culture increasingly places WKHP LQ D SRVLWLRQ RI PXWXDO LQĂ XHQFH )DVKLRQ DQG GHVLJQ QR ORQJHU seem so alien within the context of art. In all honesty, I have to say, that I never believed that my ambivalent status in contemporary FXOWXUH ZRXOG EH DV VLJQLĂ&#x20AC;FDQW DV LW LV LQ WKLV PRPHQW 0\ DHVWKHWLF principles and optimism will set new standards for the daring and the original.

MY SILENCE In order to surprise myself, which I love to do, I will admit that my inner well is a place without chronology, no clocks or windows. You can let yourself go without any worries, dispel every other thought, let the world around you fade, turning one page after another in PDJD]LQHV Ă&#x20AC;OOHG ZLWK LOOXVWUDWLRQV PHPRULHV EL]DUUH OXVK FRVWXPHV and handpicked models that capture the â&#x20AC;&#x153;zeitgeistâ&#x20AC;?. Everything immersed in an eternal pose. We are immortal, forever youthful, men wear high heels and women have beards. We sleep and breathe in immaculately fresh make-up. Bodies are clad with rich heavy jewellery and wander around exotic locations saturated with decadence. We enter the mist of timelessness. The pleasure of this everyday act is always radically different. I am not bogged down by the burden of meaning. My love affair is with silence, the images from the lowest layers in the ocean, from the cellular level, that sink deep into the mind without a word being uttered. Rather than clear ideas; I present a complex set of intuitions, feelings. The magic of my art is its complete evasiveness, the refusal to admit the true nature of my subject matter: the failure of reality and the triumph of desire and dreams.

Paulina Wallenberg-Olsson works in the areas in between art, music and costume design, and her projects often are in collaboration with artists and creators working in various genres.

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Upcoming exhibitions BOSTON UNITED STATES Kingston Gallery 30.3–1.5 2011 Sophia Ainslie, “Inside Out”

Apply to the art project SUPERMARKET 2012 – the international artist-run art fair in Stockholm.

Artist-run galleries regularly staging public exhibitions in their own exhibition spaces and other artists’ initiatives are invited to exhibit at SUPERMARKET 2011.

Single artists or artists’ groups founded only for applying to SUPERMARKET cannot apply.

SUPERMARKET has a low participation fee and no application fee, so as to include interesting exhibitors who are non-profit or not yet established and unable to take on large financial obligations. No compromises are made where exhibitors are selected simply on the basis of their ability to pay.

The application period is 15 September–30 October

Through the juxtaposition of movement and stillness, flat colour and active mark making, absence and presence, in and out, Sophia Ainslie creates a collage-like space that focuses on the body and land as parallel environments, each with their own mix of beauty and terror. She creates a sense of coexisting disconnection that talks about our fragmented experience within these environments.

For this new body of work, Sophia utilizes a single X-ray of a stomach she recently received from a family member while in South Africa. This she combines with Google earth residential maps of Johannesburg, and, tiny areas of photographs and sketches she’s made while walking outdoors in the New England landscape. ­ These works are very specific to place – exterior and interior – redefining landscape as an evolving relationship between experience, memory, feeling, perception, analysis, recording and the formation of personal symbols.

Sophia Ainslie is a South African artist, living and working in Boston.

Kingston Gallery is an artist-run space founded in 1982, located in Boston’s historic South End in the cultural district. The gallery is committed to introducing work by emerging artists, hosting one-person and group exhibitions by gallery members and offering opportunities for non-members.

Kingston Gallery 450 Harrison Ave. #43 Boston, MA 02118, USA www.kingstongallery.com gallerydirector@kingstongallery.com +1 617 423 4113

FOLLOW US ON www.supermarketartfair.com 66

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MANILA Philippines The Cubicle 1.4–6.5 2011 “Year Zero”

Dr. Odyoke:

Make your bets…

Maria Lind has been appointed director of Tensta Konsthall.

Ms Lind has been heading IASPIS as well as Kunstverein München. Tensta Konsthall was founded by Gregor Wroblewski in 1998. He was fired in 2003 after a fierce conflict with the board members. A new management was appointed with the task of making Tensta Konsthall more of a local centre for culture rather than a showroom for hotshots from the international art scene.

Earlier this year local activist Guleed Mohamed launched

a Facebook campaign aiming to make him the new director of Tensta Konsthall. Ms Lind is an experienced player on a sophisticated international level of the art world. But will she be able to connect with the local society in Tensta, where more than 80% of the population is ethnically non-Swedish? We could be heading towards the art‑clash of the year or towards a brisk, dynamic interaction between local cultural policies and international curatorial experience. Anyone making bets…?

Year Zero is a group show that will culminate in the tenth year of The Cubicle.

It has been a rough road for the art space with its ups and downs, managing and financial struggles. Things that made keeping the space more interesting and worthwhile.

Alongside these there were unforgettable exhibitions that put the space on the map.

The Cubicle has now moved into a different location with a bigger area to work with.

It also serves as the studio of visual artist Ronald Caringal, Kadin Tiu, photographer Buck Pago and a couple of up and comers.

The show aims to spearhead another era for The Cubicle. Greater experience, new artists, new perspectives and new opportunities.

The show consists of previous staples as well as a list of entirely new names that will hopefully push the vision of The Cubicle to a greater audience. With the start of this new chapter, the space aims to pursue further artist development programs as well as continue to provide a launch pad for artists.

The Cubicle has long been known as a prime supporter of young and fresh art and with Year Zero coming up, it’s time again to pile up years of exciting art.

The Cubicle 3rd floor, CDC Bldg., 34 Stella Maris, Maybunga, Pasig City, Philippines www.thecubiclecreativespace.com

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26.

PETER CORNELL

TheParadise Paths of Preface The author was a familiar figure at The Royal Library at Humlegården in Stockholm. On a near daily basis for over three decades he could be seen in the peaceful research room, deep in thought and revery. Word had it that he was involved in an unusually extensive project, a work that – he had once mentioned this in confidence – would reveal a number of hitherto overlooked contexts.

Despite meticulous research, no one has succeeded in finding this body of work following his death. What was found in his estate, however, was a stack of manuscripts with the heading The Paths of Paradise. Notes. In other words, the only thing remaining of the large work was the annotation.

As the author’s only remaining friend and student, it fell upon me to publish these notes in the hope that they might offer some insight into the contours of the lost piece – or at least spur the reader’s curiosity to engage in the literature referred to in the notes.

Stockholm, June 1987

Peter Cornell

12.

Fredrika Bremer made a note of this same stone in her travel log from Palestine: “Here they [the pilgrims] kiss a large, round marble sphere that they call ‘the Navel Stone’, that is seen as being situated at the centre of the world.” But the site – the Church of the Holy Grave – was a notable disappointment to her, a “child’s spectacle, tasteless and untrue in character. Devotion and foundation are absent here… My own Easter celebration has appropriately taken place on a more dignified, inner level.”

35.

In his book Orientalism, Edward W. Said writes the following: “The Orient is identified with commemorative absence. How else can we explain in the Voyage, a work of so original and individual a mind, the lazy use of large swatches of Lane, incorporated without a murmur by Nerval as his descriptions of the Orient?”

In Gérard de Nerval’s Voyage en Orient, the narrator is on a quest for a lost paradise starting in Cairo, and continuing on via Beirut and Constantinople. He travels in circles, for the Holy Land does not allow itself to be focused to a single point, but instead dissipates into a vague absence. He avoids both Jerusalem and Nazareth. He feels it is no

GRAPHIC DESIGN: ANDREAS RIBBUNG

9.

It was thought that man was created at the centre of the world, at the “omfalos”, or navel of the earth.

Mircea Eliade has recounted many similar myths, including several of Mesopotamian and Jewish origin.

Paradise, where Adam was created from dust naturally lay at the centre of the cosmos. Paradise was the navel of the world, and according to Syrian tradition, Adam was created on the precise location where the cross of Christ would eventually stand. The same notion has been preserved in Judaism, where the old Jewish bible commentaries, the Midrash, point to Jerusalem as the site of Adam’s creation. Adam was buried on the same site where he was created, at Golgotha, the centre of the world. Cf. Mircea Eliade, Le mythe de l’éternel retour, 1949.

Here it is mistakenly taken for granted that the centre is always situated in a fixed location. In the case of nomadic tribes, the situation is naturally an entirely different one. As an example of a mobile axis mundi, Eliade mentions the sacred staff of the Achipa tribe in Australia.

These people carry the staff with them wherever they roam. The proximity to the staff means that they are always close to home, and by way of the staff a link is established to the heavens. If the staff were to break, however, this would be synonymous with catastrophe, with the ensuing “end of the world”, and constitute a descent into chaos.

The anthropologists B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen have observed the consequences of such a catastrophe; the members of the tribe were struck with an intense fear of death, wandered about aimlessly, and eventually sat on the ground to await death. (Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and The Profane, 1968.)

Another example of this was the tabernacle of the Jews, the dwelling of divine presence, the Shekinah.

It was constantly on the move until it eventually received a permanent home when Solomon built the temple.

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longer possible to find truth in these geographical locations – moreover, a fellow traveller informs him that the angels have already moved the Virgin Mary’s abode to Loreto in Italy, and that it is therefore not worth the trouble to make a detour to Nazareth.

The Orient of the mid 1800s that Nerval encounters is deserted and in shambles. Nerval’s journey threatens to destroy his perception of the Orient.

Instead, as we have seen, Nerval allows this modern landscape of disappointment to be impregnated with mythologies and fancies from his own interpretation, and that interpretation often dominates over his true journey. Entire chapters from Voyage en Orient consist quite simply of compilations from the works and travel descriptions of other authors such as Lane’s Modern Egyptians, Creuzer’s Symbolism, Herbelot’s Bibliothèque orientale, de Sacy’s Exposé de la religion des Druzes, Terrasson’s Sethos, and many more. His book on his travels thus becomes an incantation against the disappointments of his own journey, against the fears that the arrival will transform the centre into dust, or as Nerval himself wrote in a letter to Théophile Gautier: “I have already lost, Kingdom after Kingdom, province after province, the more beautiful half of the universe, and soon I will know of no place in which I can find a refuge for my dreams; but it is Egypt that I most regret having driven out of my imagination, now that I have sadly placed it in my memory”. As a graphic figure and symbol of Nerval’s travel route, one could aptly choose a crumbling Sicilian labyrinth from the Roman period. The dolphins outside the robust fortification wall hint at its coastal city origin. The labyrinth is now on display in the archaeological museum in Syracuse. The centre of this labyrinth has been left empty, as a white square (cf. Aragon’s words regarding Paris, “a labyrinth without the Minotaur”). Over time, parts of the labyrinth have deteriorated and the old, overall structure has fallen apart. The paths and passageways are no longer unconditionally subject

to the centre, but instead create liberated, albeit fragmented, areas of sorts serving as backdrops for imaginative narratives. Cf. Jean Richer, a.a. and Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 1978.

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true journey to be experienced is the one that leads the faithful from the physical reality to the spiritual one, from corporeal life to life in the Lord and not the trip from Cappadocia to Palestine.

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“Absens et presens” – an absent, heavenly and a present, earthly Jerusalem. The latter served as an incomplete picture of the former. The value of visiting the holy sites was long debated. Whereas pilgrims such

Referring here once again to the terms site and nonsite. The American sculptor Robert Smithson’s works exist in the charged field between what he called site and nonsite.

He could start by searching for a

as Chateaubriand never hesitated, Nerval was plagued by doubt, as was the bishop Gregory of Nyssa centuries previously: “When God called on the Blessed to come to the Heavenly Kingdom he did not list the road to Jerusalem among the precepts that will lead to this end. /…/ The

site, a magical location of sorts bordering on nothingness, normally an inaccessible, far off and desolate place; a desert, a quarry, or a deserted industrial area. Such a site then became the starting point of a nonsite, a physical artwork placed in a gallery space. Nonsite was by 69

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nature fragmentary and consisted of a pile of sand, rocks or soil taken from an original site and placed in geometrically shaped boxes in the gallery, together with topographic documentation of its origin, in other words, its site. Smithson’s site was absent and inaccessible to the public who, on the other hand, could easily gain access to his nonsite, present in the gallery space. A charge arose between these two poles, a longing.

Smithson stated, “What you are really confronted with in a nonsite is the absence of the site. It is a contraction rather than an expansion of scale. One is confronted with a very ponderous, weighty absence.”

A nonsite is, in other words, a description of and an elaboration on an original and absent site. A Nonsite, Pine Barren from 1968, was Robert Smithson’s first nonsite.

It consisted of a container that held sand from a site in New Jersey, or more specifically, from an old landing field with sandy runways. In his final nonsite, however, entitled Nonsite, Site Uncertain, the contact with an existing, original site is less defined and left open. The reference that his nonsite describes is in the process of dissolving. The artwork contains coal from somewhere in Ohio and Kentucky, but one has no clear idea of precisely where its site is located geographically – and it also seems lost in the distant past, in some geological Carbon period. See Robert Smithson: Sculpture, ed. Robert Hobbs, 1981.

56B.

Cf. the Greek word for ‘non place’, ou tópos, i.e. Utopia.

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The arrival can nevertheless be experienced as a paradoxical loss.

Nerval thus writes to his friend Gautier, “For a person who has never seen the Orient, a lotus is still a lotus; for me it is only a kind of onion.”

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“Can one not affirm the non-referral to the centre, rather than bemoan the absence of the centre? Why would one mourn for the centre? Is not the centre, the absence of play and difference, another name for death?”

But on the other hand: “is not the desire for a centre, as a function of play itself, the indestructible itself?

And in the repetition or return of play, how could the phantom of the centre not call to us?”

Questions posed by Jacques Derrida in “Ellipsis”, Writing and Difference, 1967.

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Hartman illustrates his reasoning with two alphabetic labyrinths, by Jost Amman and Johann Caspar Hiltensperger respectively. The latter is based on a few words from the apocryphal writer Jesus of Syrach’s book: “All wisdom is from the Lord God…” The figure is logocentric; all meaning emanates from and can be traced back to the word at the centre. Here lies the origin, the truth and the guiding principle – the strict father who forbids centrefolds, lustfilled excursions and improvised embroideries. Jost Amman’s figure, however, lacks such a centre. Here, a succession of “contes fantastiques” grow freely and organically from a “conte originaire” that at this stage is overgrown to the point where it is barely discernable. New meanings are spread out, and unexpected paths appear for those who wander without a clear travel route. “The word is cast out to sea, a prodigal son with no hope of return.” Geoffrey Hartman, Saving the Text, 1981.

In an essay on the poet Edmond Jabès, Jacques Derrida writes that the difference between original text and exegetic writing corresponds to the difference between the rabbi and the poet. And Alan Megill further interprets this reasoning in his Prophets of Extremity, 1985: “ ‘Rabbinical’ interpretation is the sort practiced by Talmudic scholars, who keep a clear separation between

Scripture and Midrash, granting an unequivocal priority to the former and regarding the latter as a secondary working out and expansion of the Sacred Text. ‘Poetic’ interpretation, the sort practiced by Jabes, is a very different enterprise. Here the distinction between ‘original text’ and ‘exegetical writing’ is blurred if not eliminated altogether, with interpretation itself serving as an ‘original text’… [The interpretation] becomes an end in itself, no longer seeking justification in its attempt to reveal the meaning hidden in an ‘original text’.”

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A utopian, total and celestial Book, “in which the whole world is gathered.” Mallarmé appears to have contrived the idea as early as 1866. In a letter that same year (to Théodore Aubanel), a first hint can be detected: “I have laid the foundation for a monumental work.”

And two weeks later he went on to write: “I envision that it will take twenty years to write these five books that together will constitute the Work.” Up to the time of his death in 1898, Mallarmé was absorbed in thought of The Book, and during the last few years of his life, he devoted his mornings to working on it. It was eventually estimated that it would consist of a total of twenty volumes with a structure and production that was based on intricate algebraic calculations. The absolute, final Book was naturally never completed. The outlines and fragments that have been preserved – despite Mallarmé’s expressed wish that they be burnt after his death – have the character of a condensed, hieroglyphic sketch of 202 script pages, extremely difficult to decipher. The pages have different formats, and are handwritten in both pencil and ink. The text seldom proceeds linearly. Instead, words and numbers have been grouped together so that the pages resemble a cryptic, poetic diagram of sorts.

Some pages are completely blank and unwritten, and among them, a few of the pages have been folded

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in half acting as folders for other manuscript pages. The outline hints at some motifs – hunting, yachting, dancing and fireworks – but focuses mainly on the form and architecture of The Book. Furthermore, the manuscript includes a number of instructions regarding the reception itself, suggesting in other words, various modes and formats of reading.

The author himself had planned to lecture on the book during socalled “seances”, a specific number of pages per occasion, in front of an exclusive audience divided into groups of 24 or 8 people. Because the loose pages could be moved around and each additional page could be subject to ten different interpretations, The Book offered an enormous variety of combinations. Its entire structure evades all attempts by the reader to find an unequivocal

Photo: Pontus Raud.

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and fixed meaning. Instead, it undergoes constant metamorphoses.

In fact, somewhere in the manuscript Mallarmé estimates the modes of interpretation to no less than 3 628 800 (a sum that incidentally appears in the alchemist Athanasius Kircher’s Ars Magna Sciendi sive Combinatoria from 1699). The number of combinations is based on a strict calculation where nothing has been left to chance – but where chance still manages to return via the back door, for who can predict or not allow oneself to be surprised by 3 628 800 combinations? As always, with Mallarmé, The Book exists in the charged field between chance and estimation.

Mallarmé’s The Book could never be realized in physical form. Yet it is still as though the rest of the author’s works all seem to orbit around this

Paths of Paradise

absent centre. Jacques Scherer, who edited and published the manuscript in 1957, thus writes in the preface: “The magnitude of Mallarmé’s work stems from the total Book in relation to which it orients itself. The highlights in his published works bathe in a peculiar light, the invisible origin of which is the final and uncompleted Book.” Jacques Scherer, a.a. Cf. also Gustav René Hocke, Manierismus in der Literatur, 1959.

Peter Cornell is an art critic and author of numerous essay compilations and critically acclaimed books on art and art theory. He has previously worked as a Professor of Art Theory at the Konstfack University College of Art, Crafts and Design and the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm.

Book titles: Den hemliga källan, Paradisets vägar, Saker, Gemensamma rum and Mannen på gatan.

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DÍÓNÝSÍA: Tina Schott, “The Dark Days Are Not Over”, video still, 2008.

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