a cena artística de liubliana

O seguinte texto é resultado das entrevistas conduzidas com alguns dos protagonistas da vibrante cena de arte de Liubliana. A idea surgiu do encontro com Roman Uranjek, membro do grupo Irwin com qual já tinha trabalhado na exposição História reconstruída em Lisboa.
Algumas opiniões correspondem. É evidente que no sistema de arte faltam alguns elementos chave como o mercado de arte desenvolvido e transparente, a reflexão crítica e a educação adequada. No entanto, a grande maioria dos entrevistados acha que a cena artística de Liubliana é apesar do seu tamanho muito dinâmica e com grande visibilidade no contexto internacional.

A inexistência do mercado de arte

O mercado de arte na Eslovénia é subdesenvolvido e intransparente. As razões para isso são variadas e têm a ver com falta de outros elementos no sistema de arte.
Gregor Podnar é galerista que consegiu estabelecer-se rapidamente no contexto internacional. A galeria dele representa os artistas já estabelecidos da Europa de Leste que ainda não tinham a sua propria galeria o que é típico para leste europeu. Inclui os nomes como o grupo Irwin, Attila Csörgo e Vadim Fiskin, como também Tobias Putrih da geração mais nova.
O espaço central da galeria encontra-se em Berlim, enquanto o de Liubliana serve como uma espécie de project room, um espaço mais experimental.
Gregor optou por Berlim porque o mercado na Eslovénia não está desenvolvido e por ser um lugar para onde para além dos artistas recentamente mudaram também alguns coleccionadores internacionais.
Será que há ligação entre a inexistência do mercado de arte e socialismo? “ Não necessáriamente. “ diz Miran Mohar, o membro do grupo Irwin. “ Apesar de um mercado intransparente ser comum no todo o territorio da Europa de Leste a razão para isso não pode ser reduzida ao socialismo. Antes depende de varios factores. “ O Viktor Misiano disse que o problema na Russia é que os melhores artistas trabalham fora das instituições. Também na Eslovénia existe a dichotomia entre a produção artística e a actividade das instituições. O sistema de arte é fechado, o problema reside na política cultural. Uma solução será o estabelecimento das fundações, assim o ministério da cultura já não terá o controle total no financiamento da produção artística. A política deixava de ter a influência directa e será substituída por profissionais da área.
“ A arte na Eslovénia é financiada na grande medida pelo estado. Em relação a isso estamos ainda em transição. “ diz Igor Spanjol, curador da Moderna galerija, a principal instituição de arte contemporânea na Eslovénia. “ Quer dizer que os artistas levam vidas bastante comfortaveis, apesar do mercado ser subdesenvolvido e intransparente. “ Adiciona ainda que os preços das obras dalguns artistas locais como por exemplo os impressionistas cá atingem valores muito mais elevados do que no estrangeiro, o que é uma situação absurda.

A inexistência da reflexão crítica

A reflexão crítica na Eslovénia practicamente não existe. A unica revista dedicada à arte contemporânea editada por Moderna galerija, a Mars, foi cancelada logo depois de alguns números terem saído com successo. A razão disso não é conhecida.
Ao contrário dos outros, a Marina Grzinic, doutora em filosofia, artista e professora de arte na Faculdade de belas artes de Viena, acha a cena artística de Liubliana “ podre” . O território nacional chama “ um buraco burguês neoliberal” .
O que ela propõe é uma plataforma crítica que traz posições que na Eslovénia não existem. A Reartikulacija liga varias àreas do criticismo como a de-colonialidade, delinking, a prática crítica radical e também a cena lesbica à arte contemporânea. O journal bilingue é uma das coisas mais interessantes a acontecer em Liubliana de momento.
Tevz Logar, novo director do Skuc, um espaço not for profit, afirma que na cena não existe espaço para discurso, o que é segundo ele um problema da política cultural, que apoia apenas a produção e não a reflexão.

A educação inadequada

A educação na àrea de arte na Eslovénia não é adequada. Parece que ficou parada no tempo.
“ Os jovens artistas são bastante conservadores, “ diz Igor Spanjol “ conhecem mal a história de arte o que aponta para a incompetência do sitema de educação. “
Miran Mohar, professor na escola de arte visual A.V. A. em Liubliana acha que não há suficiente ênfase na teoria de arte contemporânea e que faltam os professores de fora que por razões birocraticas não têm a oportunidade de trabalhar na Eslovénia(uma das das condições para obter o visto de trabalho é conhecimento da lingua).

Uma cena hermética?

Há artistas e instituições reconhecidos no nivél internacional entre quais Irwin, Marjetica Potrc, Marko Peljhan, Tobias Putrih e Moderna galerija. Enquanto aos artistas, é por iniciativa propria, pois o estado não faz nada em relação a isso. Também a visibilidade duma instituição como a Moderna galerija não ajuda muito para os artistas se tornarem conhecidos lá fora. Ao contrário dum país como a Croacia, falta nós a tradição mais prolongada de vanguardas que na Eslovénia para além do grupo OHO dos anos sessenta e do movimento NSK(Neue Slowenische Kunst) dos anos oitenta não existe.
Alenka Gregoric, a recentamente apontada directora da Mestna galerija, está convencida que a cena artística de Liubliana é apesar do seu tamanho muito diversificada e movimentada. Ela tinha a oportunidade de conhecer as cenas de arte de Istambul, Tel-Avive, Berlim e Nova York que confirmam esta tese.
A cena tem os seus inicios nos anos oitenta com NSK, os anos noventa foram marcados pelos nomes como Vuk Cosic e Marko Peljhan, e agora estão-se a estabelecer jovens, artistas pós-conceptuais.
Igor Spanjol acha que os anos noventa foram mais interessantes do que agora, particularmente a segunda metade dos anos noventa tinha a sua dinâmica muito propria. O Vadim Fiskin chegou do Moscovo, estavam lá também Nika Span e Apolonija Sustersic. No ano 2000 aconteceu ainda a muito criticada Manifesta e à seguir as coisas acalmaram um pouco infelizmente.
Também Tadej Pogacar, director artístico do centro e galeria P74, o unico espaço de artista em Liubliana, acha que a cena foi melhor na segunda metade dos anos noventa, quando ao lado do P74 surgiram a galeria Kapelica, dedicada à performance e body art, Ljudmila(Ljubljana digital art lab) e Bunker.
Roman Uranjek, membro do grupo Irwin, pensa que a cena é apesar do seu tamanho(a Liubliana tem 350 000 habitantes) muito dinâmica. Existem sete espaços onde dá para ver exposições de arte contemporânea: galeria Alkatraz, P74, galeria Skuc, galeria Kapelica, galeria Kapsula, Moderna galerija e Mestna galerija. Na exposição que a Joanna Mytkowska está a comissariar para o Centre Georges Pompidou e inclui cinquenta artistas de quinze países da Europa de Leste, vão estar nada menos que três artistas eslovénos. O galerista eslovéno Gregor Podnar vai estar presente com seis artistas.
Para o reconhecimento internacional da cena foi muito importante a exposição da Moderna galerija Body and the East que tinha mostado que a arte de leste tinha a sua propria identidade e que não é apenas uma má cópia de arte ocidental.
Apesar disso não há profissionais de arte estrangeiros a trabalharem na Eslovénia. Não existe nenhum curador de fora, tampouco um director da instituição de arte.
Para comparação em Austria, o país vizinho, tinham directores das instituições de arte estrangeiros até quando estava no poder o partido nacionalista.

O Futuro

A Moderna galerija estava fechada durante três anos por razões políticas e reabriu em novembro com a exposição do Zoran Music. Muitos dizem que a razão por expor um artista com tão pouco interesse foi outra vez política. A instituição planea para o futuro a divisão dos espaços na arte do século vinte que ocupará o antigo local na rua Tomsiceva e no museu da arte contemporânea que será no antigo complexo militar na Metelkova. A importante parte deste museu é a colecção Arteast 2000+ , que consiste em obras dos artistas da Europa de Leste e se formava durante vinte anos. É ao mesmo tempo a primeira colecção do género no nivél internacional.
O programa da Mestna galerija vai se basear no diálogo com a cidade de Liubliana e a cena internacional e será executado à partir dos convites aos curadores e instituições com quais vão se desenvolver os projectos em conjunto.
Algum espaço será dedicado também aos artistas emergentes dos recentamente formados países da antiga Yugoslavia, àtraves de colaborações com as respectivas instituições que atribuem premios na àrea de arte contemporânea.
No proximo ano o espaço do Skuc vai ser dividido entre a arte local e a presença do espaço internacional, uma das direcções vai também ser a especial atenção aos artistas emergentes. Uma parte importante do programa no futuro será como no caso da Mestna galerija o diálogo com curadores de fora.
A programação do P74 é virada para apresentação, estudo e promoção da arte contemporânea, performance, novos media e musica experimental. Apoio vai aos artistas e curadores emergentes, que têm a oportunidade de realizar as suas primeiras exposições lá. Ao mesmo tempo a juri internacional atribui premios do grupo OHO para jovens artistas.
Anualmente o espaço é dedicado também à exposição do livro do artista e à colaboração com os curadores e instituições do mesmo género de Berlim, Madrid e Viena.
Gregor Podnar encontra-se de momento a lidar com a questão como superar a crise que tem uma grande influência na venda.
A Reartikulacija lança em dezembro o projecto A lei da capital: histórias da opressão no Mestni muzej e leva para Liubliana teóricos e artistas de Viena, Barcelona, Sarajevo, Zagreb, Beograd, Australia e India.
O grupo Irwin acabou o seu último grande projecto East Art Map, a reconstrução da história de arte da Europa de Leste, que tinhamos a oportunidade de ver também em Lisboa. De momento encontram-se a preparar o congresso dos membros do estado NSK que será no proximo ano em Berlim.

Projects(Undying Love; or Love Dies)

The project evolves around the text Undying Love; or Love Dies by the thinker Jalal Toufic written after his wife left him, and is a close collaboration between an architect of lively spaces and night conversations from Lisbon and a writer/curator that spent eight years there to grow up in all senses (and spices), and now encountered herself suddenly in Slovenia (blown by the wind).

Some excerpts of the Jalal's text follow (though I recommend reading the book, which is sold out, or the excerpt that can be found on his webpage):

“All love affairs happen in the foreign cities.”

“Two of the greatest cinematic love stories [here I agree with Jalal whom I never met] Resnais/Duras Hiroshima mon amour and Marker's La Jettée take place against the backdrop of destruction of the city and possibly of the world. Every love of a man and a woman takes place in seclusion from the world: every love of a man and a woman has for horizon the destruction of the world since they can restart the human race (this is one of the ways love is linked to death).”

“Since they usually stayed up late, they called each other around midnight. She did not ask him:

“Did you dream of me last night?” He did not, with the provocation of seduction, tell her:

“Tonight, you'll dream of me.” But rather: “Have pleasant dreams.” He was relieved when she answered: “I don't remember my dreams.”

“While writing this tonight, am I not serving to advance some other persons desperate waiting for his beloved?”

“In waiting, time is for the most part not mine but others'.”

The project includes also two poems written in the year 900 by acclaimed japonese poetess Ono No Komachi that will be read at the finnisage.

First poem:

Is this love reality
or a dream?
I cannot know
when both reality and dreams
exist without truly existing.

Second poem:

Did she appear
because I fell asleep
thinking of her?
If only I'd known I was dreaming
I'd never have wakened.

The project is dedicated to long and envolving relationship between the two cities, Lisbon and NYC; related since the 2nd WW through massive migrations from “neutral” Portugal to the States that took one month by boat at the time. One of such passengers was Hannah Arendt, that found a refuge in Lisbon before departing to New York.

A live piano performance of Keith Jarret's Tokyo Encore will have a special space in this exhibition on impossible love, seclusion of lovers, spectres of a kind, and dreamstates with eyes wide shut. And above all exile.

Proposed artists:

- Walid Raad (The Atlas group), a close collaborator and friend of Toufic
- Wolfgang Tillmans, work Peaches (a very sensual photograph)
- Resnais/Duras: Hiroshima mon amour
- Chris Marker: La Jettée
- Emily Jouvet: One Night Stand (a feature film by a parisiene filmmaker)
- Sara G, the architect that gets carte blanché, main collaborator of mine that will deal with all spatial issues in the exhibition
- Stanley Kubrick: Eyes Wide Shut (optional)

Stranger in the City

Isaac Julien, "Paradise Omeros" , 2002.


"Why are we afraid of globalization, that is the dissolving of the state frontiers monitored by armies of adequately equipped specialized police bodies? We are afraid of globalization because strangers will be constantly trespassing into our neighborhoods and lurking on our street-corners!

The next question then is: Why are we afraid of strangers? I am afraid of strangers because they might harm me. I am afraid to be assaulted and killed by strangers. This is why I feel safer with state-monitored frontiers.

And this leads to the third question: Were foreigners always considered dangerous and the well-guarded frontiers always necessary? Here we stumble on an intriguing diversity of attitudes: not all world civilizations consider strangers dangerous creatures. Where the 1930s Hollywood movie-makers put two pistols in the hands of the cowboy to make sure that the treacherous stranger who appeared at the frontier had no chance to escape death, the ninth century Baghdad story-tellers who crafted the Sindbad tales, made the Iraqi crowds love foreigners, because this hero gathered fabulous wealth by taking risky trips to India and China's faraway islands. "

Fatema Mernissi, Why Are We Afraid of Globalization

E-flux Video Rental

E-flux video rental is an ongoing work by Anton Vidokle and Julieta Aranda, comprising a free rental, a public screening room, and a film and video archive that is constantly growing. This collection of over 850 works of film and video art has been assembled in collaboration with more than 400 artists, curators and critics.
The art project initially presented at a storefront in NY Chinatown and made possible by Anton's and Julieta's large network of institutions and individuals gathered thru e-flux's (electronic flux corporation) newsletter and international biennials, came to Lisbon this summer after landing in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Seoul, Paris, Istanbul, Canary Islands, Austin, Budapest, Boston, Antwerp, Berlin, Miami and Lyon.
The setting for exact replica of NY store (missing only the water dripping air condition mounted in front) couldn't be more unsettling- EVR was placed in a foyeur of a powerful private foundation with public interest, relying on oil traffic, which still remains the primary in-flux of money for this 'national' institution of good reputation, funded by an armenian emigré in the times of turkish genocide, and exercing unquestioned influence and power in the local art context.
But that's yet another of inumerous contradictions of our present condition.
EVR is a poetic exploration of alternative processes of circulation and distribution, and it is structured to function like a typical video rental store, except that it operates for free. VHS tapes can be watched in the space, or, once a new member fills out a membership form and contract, they can be checked out and viewed at home.
It's a great idea to enable public access to around 800 video works, that even the art goers that 'operate' internationally would have little chance to see, and have to content themselves with occasional stills spotted in this or that magazine, this or that electronic portal, a newsletter, an exhibition(but these are almost exclusively dedicated to a single artist or historical works, with some exceptions).
As well an emphasis on circulation (here Anton referred to Marx and video art in its beginnings) and use of out-dated technology (VHS video tape) work as a concept, but when you're there in the screening room, choosing and playing one video after another in an attempt to watch all, in fact the bad quality of the image can become very irritating, especially when you know that most of the videos are part of the current art production, HD, and imagine that some elites actually have the opportunity to see them in better screening conditions. Why archives have always to be so boring?
However, this horrible tech makes you aware of the circulation and distribution, that is the idea behind the art project.
To propose my personal 'cut' on the film and video works, to write history in the present, I would destaque An Artist Who Cannot Speak English Is No Artist by albanian Jakup Ferri, based on Mladen Stilinovic's conceptual work from the '70s. Here the artist appears talking to the camera in his studion in a kind of improvised creepy english, not articulated, repeating, with local sotaque, an outcast, impossible to understand, looking like he is trying his best to give meaning to this babbling, though in fact mocking with the artworld.
Letters à Francine consists of b&w stills, and a voice-over of a man, travelling in Istanbul who's dealing with uncurable disease attempting to comunicate his feelings and observations to beloved one, a woman called Francine. It evokes La Jetté.
Sunset at Corniche was repeatedly filmed by The Atlas Group, a project to investigate the contemporary history of Lebanon. I Only Wish That I Could Weep could be filmed as well in Lisbon or any other city by the sea, could it be? Sunset in Beirut looks so uncannily familiar.
Soviet illegal women in Turkey are the protagonists of Unawarded Performances by Gülsün Karamustafa. “When Soviet Union broke up, our families broke up.”
Another document, Khiam, provided by Hadjithomas&Joreige incitates the victims of torture perpetuated at Israeli detention camp to talk.
Oda Projesi Revisited documents the Istanbuli 'room projects', a socially oriented art practice engaging with the community, somewhat akin to esthetique relationelle, that was tested already by Claire Bishop in her widely discussed article Social turn: Aesthetics and Its Discontents in Artforum.
Hala Elkoussy's Candy Floss Stories are strange and poetic fictions about worker of wonders on a black and white Cairo beach accompanied by wicked elctronic beats and president's speech at the end.
This Day by Akram Zaatari is a feature, a political meditation about Bedouin and the Desert, employing documentary approach and tackling notions like space, nomadism, migration, perpetual movement and the reconstruction of history.
This autumn EVR is travelling to Colombia, Argentina and Brazil.
Having outlived the technology that made it possible, the project will be premanently archived at the Arab Image Foundation and Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, in 2009.

Projects(Kusmi Tea Sweet Love)

Concept and Location:.
The project Kusmi Tea Sweet Love is a collaboration between a curator, lawyer, architect and a filmmaker based on the research conducted in Lisbon's multicultural and somewhat notorious neighbourhood Martim Moniz that reflects the shifts on global scale.
It adresses art and its markets by looking at the other, less familiar trading places and routes extending from Europe to Africa, Latin America and Orient.
Or is it the other way around?
The relations between contemporary art and theft, public space and speculation, artworld and black market, architecture and frontier, and micro-economy and immigration are being explored.
Set in an apartment rented on purpose in the same zone for one month and transformed into a temporary art space, it comprises of an art exhibition, lectures, screenings, discussions, a dinner take-away, a concert, documentation, a food store, tea service, etc.
The location shapes the project in unexpected ways.
We took a following text as a departure node:
In the midst of a black market, a town in town, a buissness spot with unlimited traffic, where micro economy based on exchange of all kind of goods except artworks, is performed daily by immigrants from India, Pakistan, China and Guiné Bissau. Thieves? Merchants? Speculators?
In the centre of Lisbon a small narrow street, where the red letters on ringbells are exclusively in chinese. Some of the apartments, however difficult to say which, host illegal chinese restaurants that differ little from common homes in order to hide their activity. The owners/cooks don't speak neither portuguese nor english and the clients choose from untranslated menus.
Located on the frontier with moorish and red light district, the zone is also known for delicious indian sweets of many colours.
Fiction?
Throughout the history and up to the present the site has been demolished many times, to be rebuild after according to the new ideology.
The huge square bears a monument to the conquest of the Arabs, over-shadowed by the totalitarian architecture of four-star Hotel Mundial, equally over-sized, or the unfinished construction plans on the side. The square serves as a resting area, unofficial market or a spot for encounters and socialising. In other words: unrestricted space, difficult to find in other european capitals and probably closer to the notion of public space in african cities.
The decadent four-storey “shopping centre” CCM (not to be mistaken with CCB- that's contemporary art centre) provides a wong kar wai-style corridors with neon lights where buissness keeps going on until late. The indian spices can be purchased along with sunglasses from Bangladesh and underwear from Brasil. There is a chinese restaurant with a view of 180 degrees and an african hairdresser, the best in town, to balsam your hair after visiting the music shop with the latest singles that could as well be in Kinshasa or Bamako.
The previous research conducted in the zone included a friendship with a young Pakistani buissness man who introduced me to the tricks of the market, a frequent lunch at chinese legal quiosque or a dinner from the clandestine menu, cutting hair at the african hairstudio, shopping Chai(the black tea with spices) at indian supermarket and take-away of the sweets form the restaurant around the corner, filming the square- men with turbans trading mobile phones and women walking down the square from CCM carrying enormous,black plastic bags on their heads. It involved also performing on the square dressed as a wealthy muslim woman(post 9/11), etc.
The collaboration is done together with a lawyer(who wishes to remain anonymous), a funder of the NGO dealing with the rights of the immigrants, foreigners and others, and immigrant herself. She is responsible for the legal questions, meaning that she will also do a lecture on the topic and provide free advisory for interested parties.
The architect of lively spaces and night conversations, and main cultural mover Sara G enters the project to deal with all spatial issues, including the exhibition design. She will also move the crowd gathering outside of her bar every night in direction Martim Moniz.
The capeverdian filmmaker Victoria Verrisímo will fly-in to produce a low-budget documentary film about the square and its notorious surroundings and document the event.
Though we are aware of the social turn in contemporary art and the potential of this project, Kusmi Tea Sweet Love doesn't attempt to improve anything in society, serve the community or bring art back to life. It just brings the artworld face to face with the market of a different kind and hopes to make them think.
The label Kusmi Tea was founded 140years ago by P.M. Kousmichoff. St. Petersburg, London, Paris, Berlin. Kusmi Tea initially spread its influence in Europe before offering the whole world exclusive and high quality blends.
The Kusmi Tea Sweet Love is said to be an exquisite spicy blend that stimulates the senses.
Sweet Love is made of Black China tea, ginseng and liquorice roots, spices, guarana seeds and pink pepper.
Some of the proposed topics for discussion/lectures can be found here:
“ More intriguing to me, however, is how conceptual practices have migrated to the platforms of larger buissness models and proved them quite successful in that context. This suggest a different level of correspondence between art and commerce. ” Tim G(ArtForum)
“ Modernity and renewal by their nature are connected to ideas of a rational and ordered mode of thought, of a planned and effective kind of production, with ideas of a thoughtful use of space and resources, with ideas of a well organized and equitable society. “ Igor Zabel(Individual Systems)
Artists:.
Irwin group opens a passport office, issuing official documents of the NSK State in Time.
Sislej Xhafa does an exclusive performance on the notion of “clandestino”. The artist is known for subversive performance works, which adress the social, economical and political realities of tourism and geographical relations, and the complex forces that form modern global societies.
Sancho Silva stages a new project contaminating public space. Orange Works is an ongoing collaboration project, started in 2004, to build unauthorized temporary urban constructions camouflaged as in-process construction sites in order to probe existing spatial pressures, and reorganize public spaces to allow for new social uses.
DJ/Rupture(Brooklyn) does a live mix for the vernissage and in addition to performance his weekly radio show Mudd-Up! is broadcasted every wednesday at midnight local time.
“New bass and beats plus live guests(musicians, Djs, poets) and an ear for the global south. Cumbia. Dubstep. Gangsta synthetics. Sound-art. Maghrebi. International exclusives.”
MioStoj, an emergent artist and architect based in Frankfurt shares a video shot in a dance club called Robert Johnson, after a famous jazz musician, that was recorded during one year without having a permission. Weekend never dies.
Emily Jouvet pays a spicy hommage to photography from a Paris' rooftop. The soundtrack of this short and stimulating video is by Portishead. The artist became known for the feature film One Night Stand, a close-up of the casual erotic encounters between girls, for which Roof is a short excercise in style.
The art duo Piglet&Butcherboy, in a duel since 1996, have their take on Tate Modern. Uninvited, they decided to contaminate the gallery with a pig while Olafur Eliasson's Wheather Project was on. Meanwhile, the tourists were having their lunch from MacDonald's peacefully underneath the huge sun installation.
Two very young and unestablished local artists are being included in the exhibition. Filipa Almeida shows her portraits of the legendary jazz musicians performing live in Lisbon. While Catarina Pedroso installs a series of large scale photos, blow-ups of the mouth, at the same time dangerous and erotic, playing with prejudices, and referring to advertising, anthropology and feminism.
Budget:.
The total budget including curator's fee, the artists' fees and trips, the installation and equipment, apartment rent, dinner service, a small publication(can be on-line), posters announcing the event, a salary for the staff, etc. is 30 000 euros, provided by the NGO, Gulbenkian Foundation(production of the exhibitions, up to 10 000 euros), City Council(offering a space), foreign cultural institutes and embassies(covering rtists' travel and stay), sponsorship by the restaurants for the dinner, drinks from Baliza bar, plus european funds if applicable.
Publicity Plan:.
Posters all over the city, unusual for art events here. If the budget allows also appears on e-flux, in addition to local press.

Silvia Kolbowski: After Hiroshima Mon Amour

The video After Hiroshima Mon Amour by Silvia Kolbowski currently on view at Mala galerija in Ljubljana and based on Resnais/Duras masterpiece is a work about our inability to fully understand and represent the past and present catastrophes.
Originally, it is a story of a French woman and Japanese men who meet in japan twelve years after the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and begin a one-night affair . They are an allegorical couple , standing for two different actors in the war- France and Japan- evoking challenging questions about disobedience, ethics and desire in a time of military conflict.
According to Jalal Toufic the most beautiful cinematic love stories take place against the backdrop of destruction of the city and possibly of the world, such as La jetté for example. Every love of a man and a woman takes place in seclusion from the world: every love of a man and a woman has for horizon the destruction of the world since they can restart the human race (this is one of the ways love is linked to death).
Rather than a reconstruction, this video uses repetition as a strategy where the diference is what matters. The story is re-enacted by ten different actors of ambigious ethnic origin and race, and unstable gender relations. It is contrasted by the found material that usually depicts violence and brutality, often from the point of view of the power.
As the video comes after the original it situates it in a contemporary political frame. We can observe the devastated streets of New Orleans after the hurricane Katrina, where the US government did nothing to secure the poorest population from the outcomes of the catastrophe. The shots problematize the relationship between the filmmaker and the viewer. We suddeenly burst into an apartment in Iraq along with american soldiers and face a man and an old woman screaming as they are confronted with machine guns. Also, we see a street, presumably in a Middle-Eastern city, from a viewpoint of a speeding driver and are placed on the side of watching the suffering of others. An uncomfortable position.
The texts that appear as titles are in fact a collage of Duras's original script for Hiroshima Mon Amour- fragmented and reassembled by Kolbowski- and Duras's written synopsis of the film. The narration oscillates between the third-person voiceover of the synopsis and a fascinating dialogue between the shifters “I” and “you”, which appear in the fragments appropriated from the film's script.
The dialogue between a French woman and Japanese man in the book Hiroshima Mon Amour beginns tellingly with:
“You have seen nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing.”
“I've seen all. All.”
In the video, the text doesn't fit the image, while sound, silence and colours appear as active actors that give meaning to the material.
The artist became known for her project an inadequate history of conceptual art for which she invited various individuals to tell her their memories of an exhibition, performance or event of conceptual art without doing further research. She would record the audio and display it in a separate room from a video showing their hands while speaking.

Projects(Franchise)

In the midst of a black market, a town in town, a buissness spot with unlimited traffic, where micro economy based on exchange of all kind of goods except artworks, is performed daily by immigrants from India, Pakistan, China and Guiné Bissau. Thieves? Merchants? Speculators?
In the centre of Lisbon a small narrow street, where the red letters on ringbells are exclusively in chinese. Some of the apartments, however difficult to say which, host illegal chinese restaurants that differ little from common homes in order to hide their activity. The owners/cooks don't speak neither portuguese nor english and the clients choose from untranslated menus.
Located on the frontier with moorish and red light district, the zone is also known for delicious indian sweets of many colours.
To link this all and to check how global Lisbon art scene is, I propose a project called 'Franchise', set in an apartment rented on purpose on the same small street and showcasing ten international and local artists, with some projects specially commissioned for this show.
Irwin group opens a passport office. Sisley Xhafa does an exclusive performance on the notion of 'clandestino'. Sancho Silva stages a new project contaminating public space. While Dj/ Rupture streams radioshow live. Mio Stoj shares a video shot in a club 'Robert Johnson'. Emily Jouvet pays a spicy hommage to photography from a Paris' rooftop. And Piglet&Butcherboy take on Tate Modern...
Note: an immigrant will be contracted to staff during the show.

Projects(Day for Night)

In a time of global crisis, over-heated art market, when artworks are increasingly transformed into speculative objects I'm prosposing an exhibition through which various discourses, artistic positions and strategies flow freely like people and capital in global and networked world.
Day for Night takes the title from the work by William Kentridge that resembles a star galaxy, a central piece of this exhibition, to which other artworks establish invisible relations. Infact, the whole structure of the exhibition revolves around small, unexpected constellations of artworks, falling stars, that occassionaly, and for limited period of time, enter in contact.
Kentridge's piece is, in accordance with the statement 'contemporary art objects are frequently not what they seem', actually made by filming ants crossing sugar linen, which makes the pulsating movement on the screen seem very organic. Afterwards, the shot was turned into negative, in a smart twist of what is known as 'nuit américaine', a trick used in '70s B-movies, that means basically shooting night scenes during the day so that they would look like night, resulting in fake night scapes. Instead of that we get a reflection on the process of filmmaking and the magic moment of film projection, leading us back to the beginnings of cinema.
The selection of artworks is based on Ellipse collection that is particularily vibrant in terms of still and moving image of the last thirty years. Both photography and video were not considered art forms in the beginning and had hard time trying to enter (even if contemporary) art history. Photography took over a century to legitimise its existence, while in the case of video this process is still going on and some of the works in this exhibition could intervene fundamentally in this regard.
Similarily, the artists were selected in non-hierarchical way, coming from very different backgrounds, generations and media. The little known artists find themselves in the same space with the undervalued artists and big names. Further, artists from the global South, living in the recently affirming art capitals like Luanda, Jo'burg or Istanbul mix successfully with those lucky(or not) to come from the self-proclaimed capitals of modernism.
The discourses fluctuating thru Day for Night range from queer theory, post-colonial studies, art history, post-feminism, economy(of art), film studies, late capitalism, religion and political philosophy in order to re-articulate contemporary art in our present condition of global unrest.
Artworks on their turn share an aesthetic quality, a beauty that can be political and is normally associated with the 'Other'. And this 'Other' can be nowadays anyone not in possession of right passport. That is, everyone not coming from the forementioned 'centers of modernism' (which undoubtedly still remain the centers of artworld's financial transactions), or global North in general, as well as artists living outside their homeland for any reason. Obviously, this reaffirmation of aesthetics in the works of Kentridge, Pierson, Julien, Orozco or Gonzalez-Torres has nothing to do with aesthetic concerns of modernism or a retroactive cry for ' art for art's sake'.
Most of the videoworks in this exhibition tend towards spatiality and non-linear narrative structure, that becomes kind of a paradigm when observed through a wider scope, it can be noticed in the pieces by Sala, Ahtila, Julien, Yonamine and to certain extent also Kentridge and Atay.
Some of the chosen artworks (art is the question of choosing, afterall) share the performative aspects or are carefully staged as is the case with Sherman, Lucas, Julien, Moffat or Serrano, Breuning and McGuinley to name a few.
Lots of them are playful and engage with the world in humorous way (Orozco, Baldessari, Simmons, Schütte, Breuning, McGuinley, Kelley).
Though what links most of them is desire, as a theme, but also a driving force behind everything we do and inherent to artistic practice.
During the exhibition some artists reappear, we encounter them in different rooms and constellations (Pierson, Orozco, McGuinley and Gonzalez-Torres).
Day for Night shares a room with Anri Sala's double screen projection Blindfold, exhibiting two different angles on the same scene shot in Tirana, showing that what we see depends on our perspective, it is therefore conditioned. The fact that video is local specific locates it light years away from the 'liquid', 'neutral' videoworks from the past decades.
The constellation that follows is charged with desire. There is an untitled photo of purple-toned flowers by Fischli&Weiss; a colourful metamorphosis by Cindy Sherman who is known to use herself as a protagonist for most of the photos she does, adding performative aspect to her practice; a black and white self-portait obviously influenced by her by smoking Sarah Lucas; sexually intense Indian Corn and Pommegranate by Tillmans; blown-up Stardust by Pierson where queer theory enters; A History of Sex explained by Serrano, one of most disquieting artists of our time; an incredibly contemporary work by Baumgarten from '68 called Pupile; and, finally, Islamorada, a paradisiac photo of a palm tree taken from the bottom up that might as well have to do with cuban illegal immigration to the States via deep blue sea.
Next room proposes two video projections that apparently have very little in common, except the strong presence of women protagonists. Wind is part of the Eina Lisa Ahtila's project Love is a Treasure and is essentially about women, their complexities and relationships, for which she spend some time with the patients of psychiatrical institution. Julien's Fântome Afrique in its turn is a triple screen projection dealing with phantoms of the past, colonial history, cinema and love, shot in the african capital of cinema Ouaga. Its protagonists are two 'phantoms', a man and woman, who despite the proximity of their trajectories will never meet, because spectres are invisible even to each other. It is a tale about impossibility of love, and that would actually connect both videoworks, besides their decidedly spatial orientation and non-linear narration.
What follows is not yet titled sculpture of burning drums by Violette Banks, a work yet to come, forming a 'community' with Heroine by Pierson that refers to popular culture, queer world and the killing drug, completed with a post-colonial flavoured painting of sculls, Hula girls, by Ashley Bickerton from Barbados.
Further, the viewer encounters works by Yonamine and Fikret Atay, first being part of Luanda's young artists launched internationally through controversial Check-list: Luanda Pop exhibition at last Venice Biennial, which affirmed Luanda as an art capital to be watched on.
A humour and exuberance enters the exhibition, generally more inclined towards night visions through this stargate: Lemonspeed by Orozco and a 'carroty' Game for two players by Baldessari, through Dieter and Klaus by Schütte coupled with c-print jigsaw puzzles in plastic bag- Loverboy and Fainted by cubanico Gonzalez-Torres, and to close the room Tracey Moffat's latino flavoured knife on the table together with Lady G, that is, a naked blond princess on the horse, by Olaf Breuning; frivolous Jessy by McGuinley in all her beauty; and Mike Kelley's toy-like object The Way is I Am.
The red colour links the pieces from the constellation to come, from horrific video Charlotte by Steve McQueen, to the filtered Shinjuku cemetery by Thomas Struth, or equally terrifying woman from I don't live here anymore by Rondinone, to the teasing Three Red Petit Fours by Laurie Simmons to finish and digest the nightmare.
Day for Night, is coming closer to an end now, its flickering stars turning into stardust, and the last room is again dedicated to still images. Bathtub full of ecstatic youth; Foam on the street without providing a clear idea where it comes from, but nevertheless soon to be dissolved, recalls Sloterdijk; Nudes on the Bed, another joyful session of twenty-somethings, quite common these days; Double
Falling Sunset- a climax making the transition from day to night easier; infinitely triste Last Light; and untitled Cold Blue Snow and Key West dispersal, in an interplay of two artists- Ryan McGuinley and Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
Curating, intended as 'statement in the space' would involve discussions with an architect, having 'nuit américaine' as departure node, and trying to avoid clichés of screening videoworks.
The project will be documented in a thin publication, relying on images of the exhibited artworks accompanied by detailed description of each work and a short intro by the curator.
The exhibition will be announced internationally via E-flux, in addition to usual adds in local press.
Day for Night is the first project in the series of three exhibitions appearing under the common title For the Love of God (present condition and contemporary art), that obviously appropriates the title of Hirst's diamond scull, an artwork known to be at the same time democratic and elitist. It will be followed by History of Violence that puts together Serrano's photo of a member of Ku-Klux clan with Wallstreet by Opie and mehrlicht by Abdelsemed, or for instance Ruff's Petra Grot with Soldiers by Dijkstra. The last being Eyes wide Shut, to close the cycle with yet another title taken from film history. The project is taking as its premise a concept by Slavoj Zizek known as parallax gap.

The Next Step conference

9-10 May Ljubljana

In Ljubljana has just finnished the inernational conference of museums of modern and contemporary art organized by Moderna Galerija. Its title refers to the state of affairs brought about by the rapid globalization and the growing doubts concerning the universality of the Western canon of art history.
The conference appears at the moment when virtually all principal museums in the region are closed for renovation or (re)construction.. Could this be the right moment for them to think about a new type of museum based on the production of knowledge on still-uncanonized histories?
The other questions proposed deal with the work of the museums under global economic crisis and the loooming financial restrictions, and the course of action to be adopted when new spaces are opening up whose art has not yet been integrated into existing canon.
The speakers from the institutions such as Reina Sofia, Centre Pompidou and Tate Modern were involved in the first panel discussion Include or change? that showed that two courses of action seem possible at the moment: one leads to the Other being merely subsumed into the existing art history system, and the other presumes the recognition of a need for a different approach to historicizing which would lead to a global transformation of the workings of the art system and the conception of the museum collections. It seems that all of them opted for the first possibility.
What is happening to the principal museum institutions in the region of former Yugoslavia were trying to respond the speakers from the museums of contemporary art in Belgrade, Skopje, Sarajevo, Zagreb and Ljubljana's Moderna Galerija.
The next question focused on the museum's original significance as a place of study and knowledge production and dissemination in the times of a neo-liberal economy and the global economic crisis, to which Charles Esche, Nina Möntman and Sabine Breitwieser were able to respond best and finish with lively discussion the first day of the conference at around eight o'clock in the evening.
On sunday followed the debate around the legacy of the museums in the countries of formerly repressive political regimes and the future they face based on the examples of Brasil, Poland and Eastern Germany. Museums in countries that used to be relatively isolated seem especially interested in including their local art in international context. How can this international context, specific yet global at the same time, in regions such as South America or Eastern Europe be problematized?
The final word was given to the artists who were asked to show how artists can help make histories presented by the museums more comprehensive.
Irwin quoted from their project East Art Map, which is an attempt to re-construct the art history from Eastern Europe of the last fifty years. Silvia Kolbowski presented her project an inadequate history of conceptual art, Tadej Pogacar his P.A.RA.S.I.T.E Museum of Contemporary Art and Gediminas Urbonas a winning entry for Guggenheim in Vilnius, a space ship by Zaha Hadid.
Artist on the move, Apolonija Sustersic talked about her own practice related to the critical analyses of space, and the processes and relationships between institutions, cultural politics, urban planning and architecture.

Seminário re.act feminism

Galeria Vzigalica, Liubliana,
20 de Março de 2009.

Este seminário insere-se no projecto mais vasto, re.act feminism, que visa apresentar ao público um arquivo de vídeo com mais de oitenta peças de performance, desde a década de 60 e 70 até aos nossos dias, principalmente filmadas na Europa de Leste. Entre os trabalhos documentados dos pioneiros da performance, como Faith Wilding, Abramovic ou Valie Export, assinale-se uma forte e bem marcada presença de artistas da Europa de Leste, como Sanja Ivekovic, Natália LL e Ewa Partum, assim como alguns exemplos da produção mais recente de Boryana Rossa, Tanja Ostojic e Alketa Xhafa Mripa, assim como de Lilibeth Cuenca.
Bettina Knaup, uma das comissárias da exposição, considera que a história da performance, enquanto arte-em-processo, foi muito influenciada por mulheres desde o seu início, na década de 60, tendo ainda, claramente, precursores e raízes em outros movimentos do século XX. A tentativa aqui presente consiste em ir além do cânone patente nas performances geralmente conhecidas, aquelas peças icónicas que figuram nos manuais, alargando assim horizontes através da inclusão de artistas não oriundos das capitais do modernismo, embora igualmente provenientes dos chamados primeiro e segundo mundos, deixando ainda todo o Sul de fora. A história ainda não chegou ao fim.
A historiadora de arte e comissária Angelika Richter fez uma breve apresentação da situação política e cultural da Alemanha de Leste, antes da queda do Muro, considerando que esta deve ser tida em conta quando se pensa nas artes visuais e especialmente na obra de algumas mulheres artistas daquele período: “Todos os artistas tinham um inimigo comum, que era o Estado. A emancipação da mulher era um tema secundário. O principal objectivo consistia em libertar o género humano em geral”.
Dubravka Djuric, escritora, professora universitária e co-fundadora da revista ProFemina não pôde participar pessoalmente no seminário, pelo que a sua comunicação foi apresentada pela artista Lana Zdravkovic /KITSCH. Esta debruçou-se sobre a (im)possibilidade de uma compreensão (ou leitura) universal da arte da Europa de Leste, por oposição à arte ocidental, dando exemplos colhidos nas obras de Abramovic, Ladik e Delimar, da antiga Jugoslávia.
A última comunicação foi apresentada por Barbara Borcic do SCCA, de Liubliana, que efectuou uma apresentação geral do acervo, abordando a questão do arquivo e o problema do arquivamento de obras de vídeo ou de outros documentos filmados de arte ao vivo, como a performance.
Um dos eventos paralelos à exposição foi a projecção da performance-video de Lana Zdravkovic /KITSCH, intitulada: How she enjoys: Naked Reading of Lacan. O vídeo constitui uma reflexão acerca do prazer (sexual) feminino, tal como este é interpretado pela psicanálise lacaniana. O autor surge no vídeo a ler o texto de Lacan Mais, abordando problemas políticos contemporâneos através do fenómeno do prazer, não apenas no que diz respeito à condição da mulher, mas sobretudo assinalando o crescente chauvinismo e machismo disseminados na sociedade como um todo, através da cultura (pop), da arte, da ciência e da economia. As filosofias políticas de Balibar, Rancière e Badiou fundamentam a acusação de que as sociedades ditas democráticas caem facilmente nas profundezas do chauvinismo, racismo e nacionalismo. Assim, Zdravkovic pensa que a luta permanente pela igualdade dos sexos não constitui apenas uma reivindicação feminista, inscrevendo-se numa irredutível exigência de igualdade, não só no que diz respeito ao sexo, mas também à nacionalidade, etnicidade, raça e cultura. Assim, o carácter explícito da imagem (da vagina) nesta peça não se oferece como uma metáfora estética, sendo antes empregue como um símbolo emancipatório. Esta peça pode assim ser lida como uma reivindicação radical de igualdade.
Assinale-se ainda que, simultaneamente, um outro lacaniano, de origem eslovena, está a organizar o Colóquio Sobre a Ideia de Comunismo, no Birbeck Instute for Humanities, em Londres (que se encontra completamente cheio).
A exposição re.act feminism, constitui um evento prévio integrado na programação do festival City of Women de Liubliana. Esta mostra foi inaugurada em Dezembro, em Berlim e encontra-se actualmente em viagem pela Europa.

Western Union: Small Boats by Isaac Julien

Museu do Chiado(Temporary Exhibitions)
30.10.2008-1.2.2009

Western Union closes Julien's trilogy of audiovisual film installations that began with True North (2004) and continued with Fantôme Afrique (2005).
All three works deal with post-colonial condition, newly established global relations and their consequences, tackle philosophical questions, as well as racial and gender issues, and add to all this the frenzy of contemporary dance.
The trilogy delves deep into the cinema culture and suspense, fusing fiction and documentary genres into a dense entity and refusing linear story-telling common to most examples of film production, in order to give space to fragmented, parallel, multi-voiced, non-linear narration.
The simultaneous projections on multiple screens make it impossible to grasp everything at the same time. There is no singular, all-encompassing viewpoint in a Foucauldian sense and therefore no totalizing effect – instead, a single story made up of individual corresponding pieces and consisting of many intertwined stories is created, different every time we watch it. In this case the visitor is not merely a passive receptor, but rather an active editor of the material proposed by the artist.
The videos of Isaac Julien – and the same can be observed in the current production by other artists – are not time-based anymore, but rather local-specific (in this case genus loci is the Mediterranean sea), which is contrary to 'neutral' video works from past decades. Being decidedly spatial in their scope and display, space re-emerges here as a paradigm.
Western Union, named after a company that provides rapid (almost real-time) money transactions between Western Europe and the rest of the world, a system used on a daily basis by immigrants from Africa, Brazil or Eastern Europe, who send money to their families and pay a more or less high tax for this service, depending on the amount and country selected, is a work exploring the notion of journeying from the opposite direction, where the tax to be paid is much higher.
More precisely, it is the story of workers from Sub-Saharan Africa who cross the Mediterranean in small fishing boats heading towards Sicily to escape the wars or famine, looking for a better life. Some (if not most) of these economic immigrants never reach their destination nor return to their native lands.
The work was conceived in collaboration with the contemporary dance choreographer Russell Malliphant and relies on the appearance of an enigmatic woman, who marks her presence throughout the entire trilogy in the manner of ghosts. It seems she is invisible to everyone except to the visitor. A specter of a kind.
There are also some remarking sequences, such as men crawling under the water surface, supported by a powerful soundtrack made of undistinguishable electronic beats in crescendo, which refers to drowning men and their desperate attempt to survive.
The video suddenly cuts into another scene and the pace slows down, we see/hear water dripping and an intruder – a woman who becomes a witness.
The devastation is contrasted by the grandeur of Palazzo Gangi (the famed location from Visconti's masterpiece The Leopard), which is full of rumors and this is where the black magic woman finds herself in, unfocused and invisible in front of the confident and greedy blond beast (a lady) and in the midst of and ambient highlighting the presumed European supremacy of the past centuries.
She walks between the luxury gathered on colonial and religious quests; chandeliers, clocks on which time has frozen, and absurd amounts of gold, while men (somehow out of place in this setting) roll down the staircase or struggle on ceramic tiles that bear a visual testimony of European history, a history of violence. A colonial history and the representations of the Other, half-human, half-beast.
The fishing boats are left to rot in a junkyard in the Sicilian village Agrigento.
For a long time we are left watching the ruby red cloth floating in the water, at the same time beautiful and scary, that turns out to be an immigrant's T-shirt.
A few meters away from the white sandy beaches, where locals and tourists lie undisturbed, are corpses of men covered with shiny silver aluminum foil.
Do we exist only as a mirage of ourselves as is suggested in another sequence?
Or is it that we continuously see and project that which doesn't exist?
These uncanny moments perpetuate thru the entire work and leave the visitor with an ambiguous feeling, despite of the beauty of the imagery, yet unseen.

Western Union: Small Boats de Isaac Julien

Museu do Chiado, no âmbito do Festival Temps d’images

Western Union encerra a trilogia de instalações audiovisuais da autoria de Isaac Julien que teve início com True North (2004) e prosseguiu com Fantôme d’Afrique (2005). Estas obras lidam com a condição pós-colonial, com o estabelecimento de novas relações globais e com as suas consequências, levantando questões filosóficas e explorando o tema da raça e do género, sendo ainda enriquecidas por uma frenética dança contemporânea.
As obras partem de uma intensa pesquisa na área do cinema e do suspense, fundindo o género ficcional com o género documental, compondo uma entidade densa que se recusa a contar uma história de forma linear, como habitualmente sucede na produção cinematografíca, dando lugar a uma narração fragmentada, paralela, polifónica e não-linear.
As projecções simultâneas em diversas telas tornam impossível captar tudo ao mesmo tempo. Não é possível encontrar aqui um ponto de vista único e panóptico, no sentido foucaultiano. Não estamos aqui perante uma composição totalizante, mas sim diante de várias peças relativas a uma história (feita de diversas histórias entretecidas) que é diferente de cada vez que é vista. Deste modo, o visitante não constitui um mero receptor passivo, mas sim um editor activo do material fornecido pelo artista.
Os vídeos de Isaac Julien não obedecem a uma lógica temporal, o que também se verifica no trabalho de outros artistas contemporâneos, embora possuam um referente espacial específico (neste caso, o mar Mediterrâneo), contrariamente à tendência das últimas décadas para apresentar trabalhos de vídeo “neutrais”. O espaço re-emerge assim como um paradigma nestas obras cujo objectivo e desenvolvimento é deliberadamente situado.
O título da obra remete para a instituição financeira com o mesmo nome, a Western Union, que organiza transferências de dinheiro entre a Europa Ocidental e o resto do mundo, as quais são constantemente efectuadas por imigrantes provenientes de África, do Brasil ou da Europa de Leste que assim enviam dinheiro às suas famílias, pagando por este serviço um preço maior ou menor, consoante a quantia e o país. Esta obra, contudo, debruça-se sobre a viagem que é efectuada em sentido contrário, para a qual o preço a pagar é bem mais elevado.
Assim, conta-se nesta obra a história dos trabalhadores oriundos da África subsaariana que atravessam o Mediterrâneo em pequenos barcos de pesca, em direcção à Sicília, procurando fugir à fome e à guerra, em busca de uma vida melhor. Alguns destes migrantes económicos, se não a maioria, ou não atingem sequer o seu objectivo ou então nunca regressam.
Esta obra foi concebida em parceria com o coreógrafo de dança contemporânea Russel Malliphant e conta com a participação de uma mulher enigmática que assombra toda a trilogia como um fantasma. Essa mulher parece ser invisível para todos, menos para o visitante. Como um espectro.
Assinalem-se ainda algumas sequências notáveis como aquela em que se vêem alguns homens a nadar debaixo de água, que é acompanhada por uma poderosa banda sonora, constituída por batidas electrónicas em crescendo, impossíveis de distinguir, que remetem para o afogamento daqueles homens e para a sua desesperada tentativa de sobreviver.
Esta cena é subitamente cortada, dando lugar a outra na qual o ritmo abranda e se assiste a um fio de água a pingar e ao surgimento de um intruso, uma mulher que se torna numa testemunha.
À visão da devastação é agora confrontada a grandeza do Palazzo Gangi (célebre cenário da obra prima de Visconti, O Leopardo), povoado por sussurros, onde se encontra a 'black magic woman', desfocada e invisível, diante de um monstro confiante e ávido, uma mulher loura, remetendo este ambiente para a suposta superioridade europeia dos últimos séculos. A mulher caminha por um ambiente luxuoso que evoca os tempos coloniais e uma atitude religiosa; os candelabros, os relógios nos quais o tempo parou e quantidades absurdas de ouro. Por outro lado, os homens (de algum modo deslocados neste cenário) descem pela escadaria ou debatem-se em cerâmicas que patenteiam um testemunho visual da história europeia, uma história de violência; uma história colonial, feita de representações do Outro, figurando-o como meio-humano, ou meio-animal.
Os barcos de pesca apodrecem em depósitos de sucata na cidade siciliana de Agrigento. Durante bastante tempo somos levados a observar um pano vermelho-rubi que flutua na água, simultaneamente belo e assustador, que se descobre ser a camisola do imigrante. A alguns metros de distância das praias de areia branca onde habitantes locais e turistas repousam calmamente, encontram-se os cadáveres daqueles homens, cobertos por folhas de alumínio, brilhantes como prata.Existiremos apenas como miragens de nós próprios, como numa outra sequência se sugere?Será que constantemente vemos e projectamos aquilo que não existe?
Estes momentos perturbadores prosseguem ao longo de toda a peça, entregando o visitante a um sentimento ambíguo, apesar da beleza das imagens, até então nunca vista.

The Double Life of Dona Ermelinda (DocLisboa)

Festival Doc Lisboa se je letos zgodil tik pred predsedniskimi volitvami v ZDA, z retrospektivo filmov Frederica Wisemana iz zacetnega obdobja njegovega ustvarjanja v katerem se sistematicno in neizprosno loti institucij, ki jih v razlicnih formah(sole, vojske, bolnice, policija, pravni sistem) preizprasujejo tudi ostale sekcije festivala.
Festival odpre Z 32(Avi Mograbi): reziser da priloznost izraelskemu vojaku iz specialne enote, da pove svojo zgodbo o sodelovanju v 'misiji' v kateri je umrlo vec nedolznih palestincev, brez zadrzkov. Film se giblje na tezko dolocljivi meji med motecim pricevanjem in filmsko reprezentacijo le-tega.
Del tekmovalnega programa je tudi nagrajen End of the Rainbow Roberta Nugenta, v katerem
multinacionalka transferira vecjo enoto v Francosko Gvinejo, kar povzroci spremembe in konflikte med prebivalci tega ruralnega obmocja namesto obljubljenega napredka.
Iz Izraela prihaja Six Floors to Hell(Jonathan Ben Efrat), zgodba o ilegalnih palestinskih delavcih v Tel-avivu, v iskanju sheme za prezivetje. Jalal cez dan opravlja priloznostna dela, prenocuje pa v kleti nedokoncanega komercialnega centra, sest nadstropij pod zemljo, z namenom, da zasluzi denar za poroko.
To See If I'm Smiling reziserke Tamar Yaron, ki je kot vecina njenih rojakinj sluzila vojaski rok na zasedenih ozemljih, je dramaticno pricevanje sestih kolegic, ki so tako kot ona sprejemale ukaze: ponizevale civilno prebivalstvo, se izzivljale ter ubijale nedolzne.
Kratki filmi v tekmovalnem programu:
Merely a Smell(Maher Abi Samra) je Beirute, konstantno v vojni. Evakuacija tujcev. Med lucmi in sencami, zivljenjem in njenim koncem, trupla definirajo meje drugih trupel, in vonj po smrti prekrije vse.
Izpostavila bi se My Kabul(Whahid Azir) portret mesta, med zaporednimi vojnami in napetim sedanjikom, skozi oci taksista in njegovih sopotnikov, s katerimi je v neprekinjenem dialogu.
V casu ko pisem ta tekst je Lizbono zajel 'monsoon', zrak je vlazen in fiktivni zapiski izpred vec kot enega meseca nazaj vzpostavijo tropske relacije.
Investigações:
Frantz Fanon: The Memories from the Asylum (Zahzah, Ridouh) je film o psihiatru, filozofu, revolucionarju, teoretiku in enem izmed najvplivnejsih avtorjev post-kolonialnih studij, ki je bil vec kot stiri desetletja inspiracija afriskim gibanjem za neodvisnost. Njegovo delo v psihiatricnih bolnisnicah velja za predhodnika teorij Michela Foucaulta.
Anna, Seven Years on a Frontline.Masha Novikova spremlja od blizu zadnja leta zivljenja novinarke in prijateljice Anne Politkovskaye, angazirane intelektualke ubite oktobra 2006 po dolgotrajnem porocanju o konfliktu v Ceceniji, ki je do konca razbesnilo avtoritete iz Kremlina.
V Divorce Albanian Style(Adela Peeva) gre za tri nasilno prekinjene ljubezenske zgodbe iz casa Hoxheve diktature, v katerih se mladi Albanci 'drznejo' porocit s tujkami. Trije zlocini s strani drzave, ki odsevajo na tisoce drugih na katere so njihovi izvajalci se zdaj ponosni.
Uspesno izvedena druzbena revolucija v Argentini v casu ekonomske krize, katere protagonistke so nezadovoljne delavke tovarne Brukman, je dala razmah razlicnim druzbenim gibanjem in postala socioloska 'case study'- The Women of Brukman(Isaac Isitan).
Sessões especiais:
Standard Operating Procedure Errola Morrisa podrobno analizira podobe iz Abu Ghraiba in njihov kontekst skozi pricevanja usluzbencev-avtorjev fotografij in tistih, ki so na njih upodobljeni. Kako se lahko dejanja ponizevanja in mucenja(najveckrat nedolznih in zaprtih po nakljucju) po ameriskem pravosodnem sistemu kategorizira kot “Standard Operating Procedures”(Rutinske procedure)?
Uncle Rithy(Jean-Marie Barbe)- Reziser iz Kambodze se na snemanju filma loti revizije dvajsetih let svojega filmskega ustvarjanja, od casov ko je bil begunec do zadnjih dokumentarcev in seveda njegovega najbolj znanega dela S21- La Machine de Mort Khmère Rouge, o taboriscu, smrtonosni masini rdecih kmerov v mestu Phnom Penh, kjer je bilo eksekutiranih na tisoce nedolznih.
Retrospektiva Wiseman:
Highschool je film o ameriskem solskem sistemu, ki ni samo institucija za podajanje znanja ampak zagotavlja tudi nemoten prenos ideologije iz generacije v generacijo. Posnet (revolucionarnega) leta '68, bi se lahko dogajal tudi danes.
Petindvajset let kasneje se Wiseman vrne v srednjo solo in opazuje razlike. Highschool II je film o uspesni alternativni ustanovi v spanskem Harlemu v New Yorku, katere program zajema med drugim debate o rasi, razredni delitvi in spolu.
The Last Letter je film o Anni Semyonovni(v interpretaciji igralke Catherine Samie), ki temelji na poglavju iz romana “Life and Destiny” Vasilyja Grossmana. Leta 1941 so naciji zavzeli ukrajinski geto in zidovsko prebivalstvo obsodili na smrt. V srediscu terorja zdravnica diktira pismo svojemu sinu, ki je zunaj dosega sovraznika. Pismo, ki vsebuje podrobne opise vsakdana v getu, izrazi strah, pogum, krhkost, socutje, ponos in druge nasprotujoce si emocije te izredne zenske.
Titicut Follies, prvi Wisemanov dokumentarec, je brezkompromisen portret zivljenjskih pogojev v drzavnem zaporu za psihiatricne bolnike v zvezni drzavi Massachusetts. Filma dokumentira kako so zaporniki obravnavani s strani varnostnikov, socialnih delavcev in psihiatrov in nas sili v refleksijo o limitih cloveske brezcutnosti.
Pred nadaljevanjem si bom postregla sveze izstisnjen mango sok, zrel sadez uvozen direktno iz Brazilije.
Tveganja&Eseji:
Aka Ana, francoskega kontroverznega fotografa Antoine D'agata se inspirira v Cesartsvu Cutil in je bila posneta med zacasnim bivanjem na Japonskem. Prostitutke dajo vpogled v svoje vsakodnevne prakse in transgresivna odkrivanja noci, podana v vsej svoji sladkosti in nasilju.
L.H.Leeson povabi vec igralcev, da interpretirajo resnicno zgodbo Steva Kurtza, univerzitetnega profesorja in ustanovitelja umetniske skupine Critical Art Ensemble, ki je bil leta 2004 osumljen 'bioterorizma' in zaprt brez dokazov, na podlagi materialov, ki so del njegovih umetniskih instalacij, in mu grozi zaporna kazen do dvajsetih let. Strange Culture evocira tveganje kateremu je umetnik izpostavljen danes, ce si dovoli podvomiti v politiko varnosti po 11. septembru.
Made in China:
Trg nebeskega miru, Tiannamen, znan po nasilno prekinjenih studentskih protestih leta 1989, leta ki je zaznamovalo tudi padec berlinskega zidu in razpad sovjetske zveze, in po katerem se je nemir razsiril v globalne sfere. Umetnega suspenza iz casa hladne vojne je bilo za vedno konec.
The Square(Zhang Yuan, Dua Ying-Chuan), posnet pet let po eventu se izogiba kakrsnemukoli politicnemu ali zgodovinskemu razmisleku in se raje posveti vsakdanu tega trga.
Medtem ko A Day to Remember(Liu Wei) registrira odgovore nakljucnih mimoidocih na istem trgu 4. junija 2005 na vprasanje “Kateri dan je danes?”. Vecina se ne spomni zakaj je ta dan pomemben ali pa le nemo buli v kamero.
Druzine in Identitete:
Nova sekcija festivala sinhronizirana z akademskimi krogi in posvecena filmom s queer tematiko. Finalmente.
Be Like Others, film Tanaza Eshaghiana dokumentira dogajanje na pomembni kliniki za spremembo spola v Iranu, zloglasni drzavi z dvoumnimi zakoni, ki finacira spremembo spola hkrati pa redno prakticira smrtno kazen za homoseksualnost. Kot smo lahko videli na vec primerih v zadnjem casu, ko so iranski drzavljani(in med mnogimi drugimi tudi slovenski) zaprosili za azil v Evropi na podlagi spolnih preferenc in z njimi povezane nevarnosti bivanja v lastni drzavi, bi tudi tukaj nekateri najraje uzakonili smrtno kazen ali kako drugo sankcijo, ce bi se le dalo. Barbarizem ni stvar Drugega, je v samem srediscu Evrope, nezamenljiv del njene zgodovine in sedanjosti, ter na novo zdruzenih politike, religije in ekonomije.
Nádia Kamel, dolgoletna asistentka egipcanskega reziserja Youssefa Chahina, v Salade Maison vizualizira zgodbo svoje druzine, raziskujoc kompleksne niti modernega Egipta. Ko se njen necak odzove na poziv k Sveti Vojni, se odloci da bo spregovorila o svoji babici Marii, ki je bila na pol zidinja, kristjanka, muslimanka in poleg tega se feministka, komunistka, italijanka in arabka. Film zagovarja kulturno raznolikost v nasprotju z napetostjo politicnega ekstremizma.
Kot bomo videli kasneje nima samo Veronika dvojnega zivljenja.
Filmski dnevniki:
Znana fotografinja Nan Goldin v I'll Be Your Mirror dokumentira v gibljivih in staticnih podobah new-yorsko underground sceno, katere del je ze od osemdesetih dalje.
The Long Holiday je zadnje potovanje cineasta Johana Van der Keukna v Nepal, Brazilijo, Afriko , itd. potem ko mu preostane le se malo casa za zivljenje. Film nas sooci z neozdravljivo boleznijo, koncem vseh stvari in zivljenjem samim.
V A Tale of the Wind Joris Ivens ponovno snema “nevidno”- veter, ki nastopa kot metafora za spremembe v druzbi in kulturi.
Videoletter je rezultat korespondence med reziserjem Shujijem Terayamo in pesnikom Shunatarom Tanikawo. Gre za “liricno in somracno, vcasih dotikajoco in ekstravagantno izkusnjo, kjer se diskutira o filozofiji, talentu, modrosti in smrti. “
V filmu Memoirs of a Tropical Jew, Joseph Morder konstruira fiktivne zgodbe iz majhnih detajlov na podlagi svojega otrostva prezivetega v Ekvadorju(ki jih na dan privlece poletna vrocina v Parizu) brez da bi podal kakrsnekoli podobe latinske amerike.
Heartbeat:
Notoricni fotograf Bruce Weber dokumentira dekadentno zivljenje legende jazzovske zgodovine in gej ikone Cheta Bakerja v 80.-ih in temu doda posnetke iz zacetkov kariere trobentaca v 50-ih letih. Let's Get Lost... Lost in each others arms...
O Mistério do Samba(Lula Buarque de Hollanda, Carolina Jabor) je hommage pevke Marise Monte
tradicionalni sambi iz sole Portela. Odpravi se lastnorocno posnet pricevanja sambistas veteranov iz cetrti Oswaldo Cruz, na severu Ria de Janeira. Carioca...
Stari operni pevci in glasbeniki v penziji podozivijo svoje vloge v vsakdanu polnem spominov na minule spektakle v Il Bacio di Tosca.
Moçambique:
V trenutku, ko se portugalci koncno zacenjajo ukvarjat s svojo zgodovino, s casovnim zamikov dvajsetih let za Evropo, eden izmed najvidnejsih mozambikanskih reziserjev Lícinio Azevedo posname Hóspedes da Noite, nocne goste najvecjega hotela iz kolonialnih casov s 350 sobami, luksuznimi suitami, olimpijskim bazenom... ki je danes le se zgradba v rusevinah, brez vode in elektrike, in dom 3500 osebam(nekatere med njimi tam zivijo ze dvajset let).
Kuxa Kanema(Margarida Cardoso) je ime popularnega filmskega casopisa, ki ga je izdajal drzavni institut za film(prva iniciativa vlade po osamosvojitvi). Po letih vojne in pozaru,ki je zajel institut leta '91 in ga skoraj popolnoma unicil so se na sreco ohranili arhivskih posnetkih prvih let po neodvisnosti, zazamovanih s socialisticno revolucijo.
Filmski arhiv Mozambika, z njim je v sedemdesetih sodeloval celo Godard, kateremu Doc Lisboa posveca pozornost letos, nadgrajuje tudi The Double Life of Dona Ermelinda. Film v katerem reziser Aldo Lee raziskuje skrivnostno zivljenje svoje babice, ki se pri 72 letih po razglasitvi neodvisnosti Mozambika odloci za radikalno potezo- zanika svojo kolonialno preteklost in se zaljubi v temnopoltega moskega.
Tako zakljucujem tekst o festivalu Doc Lisboa, med realnim in fiktivnim, na povrsini reprezentacijskih struktur.

I SALT AND PEPPER MY MANGO (QueerLisboa12)

trans entities.heavenly delights.different time zones.
imperialni cuti.purple orhideje.half-naked moon.
if one thing matters.queer lisboa 12.

V Lizboni se je pri 34stopinjah v senci in rahlem vetricu iz Atlantika zgodil ze 12. festival queer kinematografije.
Poleg tekmovalnega programa za celovecerce, dokumentarne in kratke filme sta letos odprti novi sekciji Panorama, ki ponuja vpogled v spregledano aktualno produkcijo in Queer Art, namenjen nepricakovanim srecanjem med filmom in vizualno umetnostjo. Nadaljuje se tudi Queer Pop s serijo glasbenih videev, ki sooci zgodovino popa s sedanjostjo in vpliva na oblikovanje identitet queer skupnosti.
Screening je uravnotezen z debatami o eksplicitni seksualnosti in mejah pornografije v filmu, o 'zacasni' homoseksualnosti v casu kolonialnih vojn (africani bi jih imenovali vojne za neodvisnost) ter o pogajanjih med religijo in homoseksualnostjo.
Glede na to, da so nocno sceno v Lizbonski cetrti Bairro Alto zaceli prav geji v osemdesetih s klubom Frágil, kjer se se zdaj telesa spajajo ob electro glasbi, je bilo za pricakovati da bo festa, razdeljena med nove nevralgicne zone ekstaze, vsako noc do madrugade.
Med sto tridesetimi filmi prikazanimi na letosnji ediciji je bilo kar nekaj izstopajocih, vrednih analize in ponovnega ogleda.
Druzina 21. stoletja je zastopana v Finn's Girl- dve mami, dve karieri in en otrok. Po nepricakovani smrti svoje partnerice se doktorica Finn znajde globoko v krizi in zaradi tega skoraj izgubi naklonjenost njune hcerke. Prekine delo v znanstvenem laboratoriju zato, da bi se lahko posvetila partnericini kliniki za splave. Zacnejo se problemi z anti-abortus aktivisti, ki grozijo s smrtjo njej in hcerki. Resen film, ki se izogiba vsakrsnim klisejem in hkrati obravnava tako razlicne teme kot so istospolno starsevstvo, splav, verski fundamentalizem, medrasni odnosi, homofobija, etc.
Senteurs je kratkometrazec mlade reziserke Laure Schroeder, ki uporabi za izhodisce tipicno druzino srednjega razreda z enim otrokom, navidezno zadovoljno v svojem vsakdanu, ki pa je nepricakovano prekinjen. Zena se znajde ujeta v ljubezensko zgodbo z Japonko, v zenski verziji cesarstva cutil.
If one thing matters je dokumentarec o Wolfgangu Tillmansu, enem izmed najbolj znanih umetnikov danasnjega casa, ki se je uveljavil v devetdesetih s fotografijami nocnega zivljenja in rave partyjev. Reziser Heiko Kalmbach ga diskretno spremlja stiri leta med Londonom in Berlinom, ob pripravi na pomembe razstave v Tate Modern in Hamburger Banhof, v studiu s tropskimi rastlinami, med instalacijo abstraktnih fotk iz serije Lighter ali senzualne Peaches na stene bele kocke, in na snemanju videa za Pet Shop Boys, ko se zadnji trenutek odloci da bo uporabil posnetke misk iz londonskega Undergrounda. O njegovem osebnem zivljenju ni podano skoraj nic, to ni namen filma, kljub temu pa pogovor po telefonu s prijateljem po otvoritvi v Tate pokaze, da je noc prezivel z nekom ob katerem se ni zbudil. In, da ima asistente odkar Jochena ni vec...
Ena izmed njegovih najlepsih crnobelih fotografij je prav ta kjer se jelen in mlad fant gledata iz oci v oci.
Iz Berlina je bila uvozeno Obsceno v organizaciji Manuele Kay iz tamkajsnjega porno festivala. Joy Stick, Joy! v produkciji brazilskega kolektiva Xplastic pokaze do kje gre eksplicitno v nakljucnem srecanju dveh punc. The Apple v reziji Emilie Jouvet, ki nas je lani spravila do klimaksa z One Night Stand, serijo vnaprej dogovorjenih srecanj za eno noc z neznankami posnetih v zivo, je tudi tokrat o prepovedanem sadezu. Schwarzwald: The Black Party je cisti vizualni delirij s trans porno zvezdo Buck Angel.
Bruce La Bruce, star znanec festivalov nam postreze z 'gejevskim zombie pornicem' Otto; or, Up with Dead People, ki ga bo mozno videti tudi na letosnjem LIFFu ob polnoci.
Med dokumentarci so izstopali Bi the Way, o bi-generaciji, A Jihad for Love, o nenehnem boju za ljubezen muslimanskih gejev, in The Quest for Missing Piece, animacija o tradicji obrezovanja in njenih implikacijah.
Nagrado zirije za celovecerni film je nepricakovano prejel tropski Antonia Tate Amaral, o puncah iz São Paula, ki se odlocijo odpraviti iz favele v svet s pomocjo glasbe, ki jih najprej zdruzuje, potem pa locuje. Odlocitev, ki je temeljila predvsem na druzbeno-kriticni obravnavi aktualne tematike je bila kritizirana s strani gledalcev, saj je v filmu bolj malo queer elementov, ce izvzamemo gej brata ene izmed pevk, ki pa ga hitro ubijejo v navalu predmestnega nasilja in 'sumljiv', ceprav le rahlo nakazan, odnos med prijateljicama.
Every girl must have a toy...

Gold Teeth Thief

new bass and beats plus live guests(musicians, Djs, poets) and an ear for the global south. Cumbia. Dubstep. Gangsta synthetics. Sound-art. Maghrebi. International exclusives.

Two nights left. Two nights before going to New York where the breakbeat producer dj/rupture runs the weekly radio show Mudd Up! inbetween his frequent tours around the globe.
While I'm writing this article in my Lisbon apartment, I can hear the boat calling the passengers aboard, a trumpet-like sound, that probably hasn't changed for one century, arriving through my varandah as I live relatively close to the docks.
Rupture has a background in jazz, free and improvised music, and after living in UK and US spent some post 9/11 years in Barcelona where he was diggin' in maghrebi sounds, to return later back to brooklyn with fresh mix of transnational tunes.
Jace Clayton, that's his ID name, is also in front of the Soot records, 'a strike against geography' , established in 1999 and showcasing the artists such as Maga Bo from Rio who records street sounds world wide for documentaries and does collaborations with some of the greatest african musicians; a pirate percussionist Filastine, arab flavoured and politically loaded; or cumbia chefe Sonido Martinez, to add latino rhytms to the plates.
In 2001 he formed together with Matt Shadetek a label called Dutty Artz, a tropical multimedia storm... a monsoon.
His articles on music appear in Frieze magazine(surrounded by contemporary art), NY Times and recently in Abu Dhabi's leading newspaper. They're not simple journalist revues, but rather complex essays on sound, economy and power relations.
For shorter, though no less articulate opinions check the entries at his blogue Mudd Up! , which is dirt, lit and sound according to him. Where the watermelons fall instead of bombs, to be more precise...
The radio show that Rupture continously presents for over a year now at NY independent volunteer-run radio station WMFU broadcasted live and available also as a podcast is exactly what it says- a great mixture of unexpected bass beats(to include freshly squeezed bassline and grime), new heat coming from London(dubstep, strings and beats), live guests from his record labels, music bloggers and internationally acclaimed producers, and an ear for global south( 'too happy' socca rhytms, cumbia, etc. from America Latina to West Africa). Not to forget the gangsta rap from the East to the West coast, occasional sound-art pieces to frieze your mind and touch the neuralgic points, maghrebi classics, recent pop and hip-hop by local tongues, and 'international exclusives' like the virtuose Kora player (an african instrument of thousand and one strings) from Mali Toumani Diabaté or 'crying' Rebekah del Rio, straight from Mulholland Drive.
The shifts between the tracks are almost imperceptible, the use of headphones or the latest amplificador highly recommended, it can multiply the pleasure of listening, as all those noisy unadapting beats migrate in a perfect flow. A sonic experience to be repeated, played over and over again.
Hold me close for now I let you go/ llorando por tu amor/ you make me hot I make you hot/ yo te quiero mas mucho mas que ayer/ can't you see I'm all loose and strings I can't get no/ e no fim da noite pode pagar um café e vamos dançar o 'tchaka-tchaka' até o dia amanhecer/ we should shine a light on light on night on.
During the 2nd World War, Lisbon was known to be a refuge, an exile for artists, intelectuals and others running from Nazi Germany, before departing for New York. Traversing the Atlantic by boat which took one month.
The flux of people between the two cities is still very present, however now the transformation happens in the air, high above the ocean, in most transitional of all zones that, according to 'satanic' Salman Rushdie(yet another NY resident), apt in verses, was made possible by the 20th century and in turn made that century possible.
Two nights left. One night and a night.
A celestial spirit, a living sun
was what I saw...

How to Blow up Two Heads at Once

Check-list Luanda Pop
Curators: Simon Njami and Fernando Alvim
A part of the Venice Biennial 2007 (the Arsenale section)


The exhibition Check-list Luanda Pop, the first official African appearance in Venice, curated by Revue Noir's Simon Njami and Angola's leading artist and cultural promoter Fernando Alvim, caused a lot of controversy in international press even before it was opened to the public.
Basing the selection on works from Sindika Dokolo's collection, known to be the continent's model, it got critiqued by the global North press, which equated it with corruption on a large scale, reported by various NGOs to be the case, and spreading from a Congo bank to diamond traffic in Angola, all linked to a single man, Dokolo. (For the spicy details read the articles in ARTnews.)
However, the black continent got divided, too: while Okwui Enwezor and Salah Hassan got involved in direct confrontation with the curators that had its finale in long letters published in Artforum in autumn 2007, and the artist Barthélémy Toguo dropped out, Olu Oguibe decided to support the Biennial's director Robert Storr, who stated he had not been aware of the controversial nature of this show.
Not about orange.
But let's concentrate on the works, which seem to be left out from any discussion. We have heard enough about the Rockefellers and MoMA by now. Entering the exhibition hall from the back side I first got struck by the power of Shonibare's headless human-sized figures, dressed in 'authentic' African cloth, invented in Holland during the colonial times, and pointing a gun at each other. Colonizers in a duel. Or a colonial subject ready to extinguish himself in one shot. Able to eliminate the show as well. How to blow up two heads at once is the central piece in the room, and due to its successful installation all other works seem to relate to it or establish invisible connections with it. How to ...? Here you go.
Slowly emerging out of smoke were the features of Ghada Amer's paintings, which at first gaze look like Abstract Expressionism and destabilize your comfortable position as a viewer for the reason that they seem out of place in a 21st century exhibition of contemporary art, especially due to its supposed emphasis on Africa, though a closer observation reveals something else. What you get are the pornographic images of women; that is where their political potential lies. To be more precise: the color splashes (a highly masculine attribute in art history) are placed on top of teasing erotic scenes of women couples in poses worthy of the Kama Sutra, and occasionally individual women, displayed in repetitive patterns echoing Islam and delicately threaded in a web of love, politics and desire.
No, Ghada's paintings are not about orange, even though it is the prevalent color. There's much more to her art, and art-history canons can get lost! now. More dangerous than How to blow ... Politically-loaded, intellectually sharp and beautiful. Getting the governor's attention well enough to stop his killing. A 21st century Scheherazade, who lives in the West.
In a recent study, Abstract Expressionism was perceived as a cultural product of the Cold War that in turn made Cold War possible.
Her paintings, flown in straight from NYC across the Atlantic, get re-framed in a formal coupling with a photo by the young Luanda artist Nastio Mosquito, entitled Mulher fósforo, girl with matches. An ambiguous image showing a transsexual sitting on the street after a night out, giving visibility to the invisible LGBTQ community of Angola, is a rather chilling material ... What was her night like? She seems disillusioned. Her eyes are the saddest in the world. Probably she prostitutes herself. Now she is empty. The future is not hers. “… and we should shine a light on light on night on...” goes the bassline track from London.
Big artists are big people.
Another strong piece in the show dealing with the colonial subject is a work by the Haitian artist Mario Benjamin and consists of two Untitled paintings (a diptych), two portraits of a man, who looks like a zombie, his face consumed by fire tongues, a ghostly figure emerging from an impenetrable dark background.
In the heart of darkness, the survivor and witness of an unprecedented catastrophe.
The paintings differ from one another only, if substantially, in their chromatic specter – while both extremely vivid, one leans more towards orange and the other towards purple, blazing all night.
Marlene Dumas hits us with her black-and-white-ink drawing Big Artists Are Big People and raises some doubts about it. Are they? Not necessarily. Big artists are not always ‘big’. And the canvas can be, as is the case, very small and can nevertheless deal with important issues. And complicate further the 'c'eci n'e pas un pipe' paradox.
Next, a close encounter with a cut-off head of a black man placed on eye-level in the large Noyau Noir drawing by Miquel Barcelo, side by side with a formally similar canvas, bearing a text that deals with the daily pressures of (patriarchal) society on women from the woman's perspective, taking the form of a first-person confession.
Post pop fuck.
Moving forward, a well succeeded Pop triangle, a ménage à trois, consisting of (from left to right) Warhol's boxer Muhammad Ali, Post Pop Fuck by Kendell Geers, that is, a huge white wall covered with black 'authentically African' 'traditional style' symbols that turn out to be fake, a construction (as much as art history for example), and – what a shame – suggest an on-going sex scene, an orgy rather. Black on white. Not about color. Finally, a very large (XL) photo of the owner of the legendary Luanda bar by Kiluanji Kia Henda that gives the title to the exhibition and launches the Angola art scene into international waters.
What is missing in this otherwise excellent show is a wide-scope comprehensive catalogue, enabling better access and easier decoding of the works, some of which demand a knowledge of specific histories and contexts, though they are generally placed within the global circuits of power.
What is remarking is the way they name it: African collection of contemporary art. And not a collection of contemporary African art. A shift from identity politics. Ethnic traffic, racial misconceptions, etc. Instead, they re-claim history. This can be observed also in Eastern Europe and other places distant from the self-proclaimed capitals of Modernism (London, New York, Paris). Because history is not given. It is conditioned, same as the present.
The strategy that proves viable in this concrete situation is the fact that, in order to showcase Luanda Pop, an institution in the West has to finance the exhibition in Africa.
It is what already the Looking Both Ways exhibition quietly pronounced; the shock of being seen has to be bidirectional.
Is that the reason why we could not see it in Lisbon despite of continuous negotiations between Fernando Alvim and Museo Chiado?
To end: Je suis le seule femme de ma vie, porquoi faire.
(An appropriation of the work by Bili Bidjocka)

Go and Back: Fiction and Reality

Go and Back: Fiction and Reality
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian,Lisbon
Curator:Christine Van Asche
Architect:Didier Fiuza Faustino
Artists:Laurent Grasso, Rachel Reupke, David Claerbout, Stan Douglas, Melik Ohanian, Chris Marker, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Jordi Colomer, Isaac Julien, Alexandre Estrela.

This is a story of a woman marked by an image from her past.

The exhibition aims to reflect upon some modes of use of the moving image on the international art scene according to the curator, blurring the frontier between fiction and documentary genre.
It was a commission made by the Gulbenkian foundation to Pompidou's curator for new media Christine Van Asche, whose recent exhibition on new media works from the collection on view at Lisbon's rival institution made a huge success. Not an unimportant fact in a time when institutions, lacking governmental support and facing the disappearance of the bourgeois subject, starve to get more visitors in order to run their programme.
Fiction and Reality, however, was on display for as long as six months.
The reasons for this are ambiguous. If the father of the foundation, an Armenian émigré and art lover, knew what was going on within the walls of the museum's headquarters and exhibition spaces he would begin to turn in his grave.
The strategy of extending the exhibition's time-frame could be perceived as an attempt to position the museum (a private foundation with public interest) as a central institution, giving it (spectral) visibility by displaying the desirable new media works with an emphasis on the new. Apart from that, this is also a remarkable (or not so) business model of how to earn a lot of money in spite of moderate ticket price and ensure the profit even before the exhibition opens.
The exhibition design by Didier Fiuza Faustino follows the logic of separate units, designed according to the attributes of each singular work and installed one after another in a linear fashion, thus resembling the narrative structure of most of the pieces in the show.
The overall view is interrupted by the CCTV, which is, apart from their formal links, the only interconnecting, but also unnecessary element between the individual pieces. At the entrance, the visitors are informed that from there on, they will be a part of the show. This in fact sounds no more comforting than the awareness of close-circuited public spaces from our quotidian environments.
To quote the opinion of the architect, as expressed in roundtable discussion, the intention was to create an experience similar to eating sushi, when we have a bit of gengibre before moving on to another kind of fish, in order to neutralize the taste and get ready for the new one. Unfortunately, the experience was more like going from one store to another in a shopping centre, except that here you face the foundation's collection of modern art on the other side of the hall.
Exhibited works draw on a large number of references, ranging from blockbusters to the suspension of disbelief, in a general movement proceeding from fiction towards documentary, with a film positioned in the centre of the exhibition.
La jettée, the endlessly quoted film consisting of still black and white images and a voice-over narration, often examined in regard to its references to Nazism, is essentially a tale about lost love. A temporal vertigo that marks an end of a certain paradigm.
Destaque goes to Isaac Juliens' Fantôme Afrique, a triple screen cinematic exploration of the phantom notions such as colonial history, set in Ouaga, the capital of both African cinematography and Burkina Faso, with its Place des cinéastes, where the failure of the modernist project is inscribed in architecture. Employing contemporary dance and non-linear narration, it is again a story about love. More precisely, it is about lovers moving through the city like phantoms, marked by an image from the past, destined to never meet, since spectres are invisible (even to each other). Here, a visible shift towards spatial paradigm can be observed.
The so-called international selection of artists is actually quite Eurocentric, and even here one part of Europe seems to be excluded, despite of the many artists who have been employing cinematographic references in their work since the early eighties. Do they need a visa to enter the exhibition? Do they need a visa to become artists?
Far more intriguingthan Go and Back is the current artistic project held at the same institution, the E-flux video rental, which enables the public access to approximately nine hundred artists' videos. In the words of Anton Vidokle: It's about circulation ...
The first video presented at the screening was by no coincidence 'An Artist Who Cannot Speak English is No Artist'.

She knew that what she saw was the moment of her death.

*The beginning and the end of this text corresponds to the beginning and end of the film La Jettée, one of the most paradigmatic works in the history of moving images.
Besides providing quite an unusual frame to the art critic,it also introduces another slight shift in perception for those who know the 'original material'. In other words: with the transfer from film to text a first person account of a man got female attributes.