Projects 2003

pArt: Introductions

Gustavo Aguerre, (FA+) artist, curator, Stockholm: Strategies for Survival

Apartheid in Paradise?
- the constant re-definition of the self
- about going underground and coming in through the back door
- me as a cultural white svartskalle (niggerhead), triumph for whom?
Tactics
- re-definition of the creative process
- crossover, inter-disciplines, multi-media... anything goes?
- groups, projects, work in progress... what do we mean?
- it's all about money?
Do we want to have a public?
- about visual languages
- does your work works?



Kristina Ask, art worker, Copenhagen: Re/aktion

Does art have to break its own barriers to have an impact outside of an art
context? What position can art
have as a critical factor in a global context, without having an affirmative
function within a given local
structure?

Is the art sphere a possible basis for an act-oriented, critical and maybe
subversive notion of art, as a
social public factor? Concepts of fundamental value such as democracy,
community and identity, freedom
and power are central matters in answering these questions. Multitude – as
an important aspect of an
inevitable contemporary development – puts into perspective all the
above-mentioned concepts.

Re/aktion is a free newspaper investigating a notion of critical,
contemporary art of which the potential is
not yet fully displayed and the conception not yet fully defined. The
project Re/aktion is an attempt to
work simultaneously in parallel spheres – the art context and an outside
local public space.



Jakob S. Boeskov, artist, Copenhagen: My Doomsday Weapon

Jakob S. Boeskov and his fake hi-tech company Empire North has created
and marketed a non-existing hi-tech weapon, the ID Sniper, that sets
new standards for hi-tech crowd control in the urban battlefield of
the future. This fake weapon was greeted with much enthusiasm at China
Police 2002, Chinas first international arms fair.
Jakob S. Boeskov will talk about posing as an Scandinavian armsdealer
and about art as a weapon and weapons as art.
www.empirenorth.dk



Jean de La Ciotat, art consultant and writer, La Ciotat: Don't Think Project, Think Process

Jean de La Ciotat is an international art consultant specializing in the generation of consensual ideas. He lead a long-term research program tracking consensual ideas in the projects of well-known international artists and curators in some of the recent major international group shows all over the world. He's the author of The Jean de La Ciotat On-Line Dictionary of Contemporary Art (www.mudam.lu/Magazine). He’s also the author of several essays such as « Where does searching for what could constitute an issue today fit into Consensual Art? », « Rethinking Dialectical Intersection of Contemporary Art and Culture in Major International Shows (One International show’s Experience : Documenta11)”, « The lone Thinker is dead » or « Developing the Competencies of the Cultures » (www.mudam.lu/Magazine).



Suzana Milevska, curator, Skopje: Relations/relativity

What is so appealing and seductive in the term context so that there is hardly any text in the last few decades that doesn’t dwell on it, is one of the questions that I want to pose with my text. I want to argue that although I agree with the importance of the phenomenon of the context determined art, the context itself hides some dangers that we should think through more carefully.

Especially in the curatorial practice, but also within the project based art works, the context plays inevitably important role. Whenever there is no ‘white cube’ situation the space for the artistic or curatorial project usually is chosen and elaborated in order to fit to the concept of the work(s). Thus its historic, spatial or functional content and structure determine the future meaning of the project. The relations that are produced between the space, the art work/project, the artist/curator and the public became of the biggest importance (acc. Nicolas Bourriaud ‘relational aesthetics’).

The dangers that I want to reveal and put some emphasis on are dealing with the overwhelming relativity that results out of such relational thinking. Namely when allowing to the context to over determine the art work itself I see the danger in the fact that it usually starts to limit the internal and immanent nature of the arts transforming art work in programmatic action. No matter how open and liberal the relational art seems to be its frame, although invisible and immaterial, becomes much more firm, strict, and therefore more dangerous. The context conceived as a starting point can easily become obstacle to the endless artistic play with forms, colors, and ideas.

There is always a possibility to deconstruct and subvert the context as the final aim and principle. This is one of the constructive ways to overcome the limits of the context, but I am afraid that through the process of deconstruction we are still within the framework of the initial context only that the field of the frame is expanded.

I would also like to discuss the other approach towards the context that should be taken into account, an option that some of the artists are already using. It is a kind of deliberate circumventing of the context as a starting point and only afterwards, once when the work is already finished, dealing with it.