The yearlong project initiated by the Manifesta Foundation called the Platform for (Un)Solicited Research and Advice developed in collaboration with the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) has resulted in a parallel project at Manifesta 8. The Platform for (Un)Solicited Research and Advice was set up as a means to actively involve art students in the discourse of Manifesta and the development of the Manifesta Biennial, by providing a forum to further research into key themes surrounding Manifesta’s projects and to provoke contextualization of topical issues. The primary modus operandi of the platform is based on the so-called ‘brief’, presented each month by an artist, curator, academic or other professional connected to Manifesta. Guest lecturers included: Hedwig Fijen, Marieke van Hal, Barbara Visser, Fay Nicolson, Alfredo Cramerotti, Denis Isaia, Boris Ondreička, Erick Beltrán, and Jeremy Beaudry.

As a result of the project the participants have set out to realize a parallel project at Manifesta 8 called Temporary Art Souvenirs.

Temporary Art Souvenirs from the Netherlands will create a temporary mobile shop during Manifesta 8 in Murcia and Cartagena. They are going to sell specially tailored art souvenirs to as wide an audience as possible. The Temporary Art Souvenir Shop will open exclusively during the opening fortnight of Manifesta 8, appearing between 7th and 17th of October 2010 at a different location each day. They will not only pop-up at the Manifesta venues but also set up the shop on local squares, the shopping mall, migrant neighborhoods and tourist centers.

Temporary Art Souvenirs forms an engaging commentary on the double nature of art as symbolic object and art as commodity and will explore the effects and possibilities of a temporal art event. The shop’s mobility allows it to transverse the boundaries between different social spaces, enabling art and ideas to reach a wide range of audiences.

Temporary Art Souvenirs is devised, organized and run by artists Lauren Alexander, Lado Darakhvelidze, Jimini Hignett, Anna Hoetjes, Jeroen Marttin, Eva Olthof, Julio Pastor and Patricia Sousa.

The Dutch Art Institute (DAI) is the Master’s program in Fine Art of ArtEZ, in The Netherlands. The DAI targets energetic and inquisitive artists with a critical attitude towards traditional art centers and their hierarchies, by providing them with an international platform for exchange and dialogue with peers as well as with established visual artists, theoreticians and practitioners from other disciplines.

for more information on the Temporary Art Souvenirs Project please see: http://temporaryartsouvenirs.blogspot.com/

Reckoning with Unknown Knowns:

a brief for Manifesta PLATFORM FOR (UN)SOLICITED RESEARCH AND ADVICE

The development of ACAF’s curatorial contribution to Manifesta 8 begins with a quest to identify the ‘unknown knowns’ of the contemporary art system. What do we believe, but don’t know we believe, about contemporary art and curating? And what about politics, human geographies or histories, and the communication of cultural difference through today’s culture infrastructure? What codification occurs along the points where the mundane details of everyday life meet with the industries of politics and culture?

Art appropriated as a tool for a social and political agenda has inhibited us in locating the deep beliefs and knowledge that we are not fully aware of, but which we harbour in our collective unconscious. It is time to begin understanding this collective unconscious of art and locate what might be the actual problems at hand, or even better, what could even offer some solutions.

The Theory of Applied Enigmatics is rooted in an analysis of the condition of art today, and from there looks to operate as a kind of cultural algorithm, leading us towards some resolutions for the questions above. Through its application, the theory should lead towards the emergence of a multi-layered and complex project that while remaining part of what we call the ‘art system’ makes a route to its goal without using most of the widely accepted or highly criticized paths to a ‘successful project’.

Brief

Following from our work for Manifesta 8, we would like each of you to submit your own art practices and beliefs about art to a similar set of criteria in order to begin to understand the ‘unknown knowns’ of the contemporary art system as it impacts the how, why, and what of your artistic production, as well as its reception within this system and beyond. We want you to question your assumptions about the role (and limits) of art within the socio-political realm and dominant contemporary art system. This is not intended as a purely academic exercise, but rather can be used as a tool to help you expose the inner-workings of the system you are apart of with the goal of increasing the potency of your art and generating new meaning within the field of cultural production.

We will use two analytical tools during this process:

Future, Backwards

This exercise is designed to help participants gain a shared understanding of their challenges and the broader context. The exercise helps participants to increase the number of perspectives that they can take in understanding their past, and of the range of possible futures. It can also help to identify patterns of past perception that are determining a future. The exercise invites participants to reflect on the past and to compare and contrast different aspirations for the present and the future. The exercise is designed to generate shared insight to support the group to move forward in collaboratively and creatively solving its problems.

Assignment: an ARPANET text chat*

The creative assignment we propose is that, using the results of the above process, you (working in groups of three or four) will invent a plausible dialogue between a few individuals who you find instrumental in the evolution of received notions about art and cultural politics today. The individuals may be theorists, artists, critics, public intellectuals, philosophers, politicians, or economists for example. The prescribed format for the dialogue is a rudimentary text chat held via ARPANET, the earliest instantiation of the present-day Internet which was developed by researchers at the United States Dept. of Defense in the 1960s. Please observe the following guidelines when creating your text:

• The text chat will take place during the decades of the 1970s and 1980s.
• Your chosen individuals should be contemporary with each other such that a conversation between them is plausible (this creates the pretense of shared space of history, world events, cultural references, and language, at least on a cursory level).
• It is important that you can articulate a link between each individual’s thinking and current ideas, attitudes, or policies that impact the contemporary art system.

* Nota bene: One of ACAF’s contributions for the Manifesta 8 catalogue is a dialogue in this format. It documents a conversation between Ronald Reagan, Edward Said, Marcel Broodthaers, and Jane Fonda.

“I would like it to be read over the loudspeaker in a shopping mall”
Lauren Alexander

“Survivors of an airplane crash due to volcanic ash cloud contemplating in a rubber boat.”
Eva Olthof

Dear Friends,

Since we will meet next Wednesday and as a way of creating common ground between us, I would like to propose a very simple though intense game.

1- Could you make the biggest list of fundamental questions that you need to find an answer to?

Let me rephrase it (adding focus): Which are the questions that you really feel should be solved in order to reach a sense of wide contact with the world?

Another rephrasing: As participant of the world who is in a constant interchange within its particles, there are a lot of incomprehensible things, plenty of gaps, hundreds of misunderstandings, infinite false starts and mistakes, seems most of this communication is just guessing a going with the flow. Which are the doubts and questions that if solved would fill up that gap?

Eager to meet you,

Erick

My work is an investigation on the concept of edition. I concentrate on the mechanisms that define, value, order, classify, select, reproduce and distribute images to create social, cultural, political and economical discourses in contemporary societies. The way the figure of edition determines the way we define and approach the world and regulates the different forces within groups of people. How images acquire certain value? Which images should be reproduced? Which are the reasons to reproduce those images? Which are the technical procedures and mediums used to reinforce their messages? Which are

the different weights of images in different supports? Who makes the selection in public printing to reproduce an image? In which ways distribution is part of printing process?

Erick Beltrán

(México D.F. 19 de Febrero de 1974)

Who are we?

1. Rousseau defines constitutional law as an “expression of a general will.” Whose general will is involved in this case? Who will establish the content of this constitution?

The participating artists establish the content. These artist are currently students at the Dutch Art Institute and the (soon to be ex-) members of the Platform for Unsolicited Research and Advise. FG will be available as a mediator, facilitating and initiating discussion, helping to distill a goal. Artists can ask FG, his role is not fixed or obligatory and he will not participate unless asked.

2. Are these people the artists and curators and invited advisors – during the preparatory phase of the exhibition?

Participating artists can invite advisors, but the invited advisors won’t be part of the constitution.

3. Do we also include other groups and individuals?

No.

How do we work?

5. What will be the principle for preparing the CTD?

The preparation for the CTD will take place in two parallel ways. The personal trajectory is the individual input and research, which is influenced by and running sideways with the communal vehicle for carrying out the personal research.

6. What form and structure of discourse do we establish? And how will the on-site physical dialogue then be conducted during the installation and opening period, and then for the duration of the display?

The participating artists will communicate through meetings and presentations in person. On the digital side: e-mailing and contributing to the blog-platform. The work on-site will be communal: everybody agrees to commit to put an equal amount into the group. The work on-site will be divided, so not everybody has to focus on all the points. There will be a division for preparation, installation, set up and execution.

7. Can any member of the established body contribute? Only with a limited number of articles or as many articles as he or she wants?

Yes, but all articles can be discussed by anyone in the group (can not must).

8. What are the rules for decision-making? (general agreement, vote, veto…)

General agreement would be best. No time to accept veto at this stage. Goal is to try and all agree, otherwise the situation will tell if the majority vote is acceptable.

Roles, duties and division of labor

11. What is the role of the curators? What is the role of the artists in this setup? Shall we follow the usual matrix that the curatorial collective is responsible to the organizational body?

The artists are the curators.

12. Do we want to find another procedure, inviting all the artists or their representatives to be part of curatorial decision-making?

Everyone is part of curatorial decision-making.

The Temporary Display

About autonomy

16. To what extent can the exhibition space become an autonomous polis?

Not much, it depends too much on licence, permits and the relationship with Manifesta. The project should be a parasite, without having to justify to Manifesta. A symbiosis is also possible, a good platform to benefit both.

17. Can we proclaim that in the exhibition space different – provisional – rules will apply that are different from those in the space beyond?

Yes. Daily change is possible.

18. If at all, in which sense shall it be autonomous?

An atonomous symbiotic parasite.

About form and content

19. Are there any rules and restrictions?

No work from one person should prevent others from being. Work should be tested to the guideline. The platform allows for critique, it is free to question products. One rule (in relation to licences etc.) is that there will be no products for consuming (in a food/drink way).

20. If so, what is it forbidden or allowed to do/ show/ perform in the exhibition space?

See 19.

21. Shall we state the possibility to do/show/ behave in unusual ways in the exhibition space?

Yes, possibility for interventions.

About the organization of resources

Space

22. How do we want to organize the existing space inside the exhibition?

Each product should be considered individually, but don’t get in the way of other members’ space.

23. Should the curatorial collective be responsible for the scenario of the display?

Yes.

24. Do we have to start from a division of the space into projects?

No.

25. How should we organize the non-existent space of the exhibition (i.e. all the virtually existing and usable spaces)?

Decide on that later.

26. Are we interested in procuring the use of any other kind of space besides the one that is available in our proposal?

Not inside this project. If someone is still interested, it won’t be part of this project.

Money

27. How to deal with the budget?

28. Do the artists accept the curators’ role of being responsible for budget sub-management (in the hands of the production office of the organizer / initiator / inviting institution…) and the division of the space for the exhibition?

29. If not, by whom and how shall this distribution be made – who will select the amount of contributions for each project, and according to which criteria?

30. Shall all the artists receive a similar flat fee, with the rest of the production budget being distributed according to the projects? (We suggest that there should be a flat fee of x Eur for each artistic project and participation in the constitutional process.)

31. Can we create some sort of budget that will be allocated to developing the constitutional processes? (We think that this is an important point and we are in favour of it.)

Access and Time:

32. When should the temporary display be opened?

It should be open for approx. 2 weeks, starting at the official pre-opening.

33. Do we accept the logic of an official (given) opening, coinciding with the end of production? Should our activity start any time from now on – earlier or later than the opening?

An online shop will be opened ASAP, that can go on after closing. The shop itself has a definite time, to keep it a group project. The aim is to end the project with a bang, a definite closing.

34. If we decide that our project has started right from the moment of discussing the Constitution – how can we make it public?

Website, e-mail, e-flux, blog, banners. The blog should be used to show souvernir-research.

35. Would we consider scheduling the dates of the exhibition differently?

Yes, but keep the 2 week structure.

36. Would we consider having work / works being on show during regular opening hours and during the entire period of the exhibition? Or do they or you generate/ need another temporality?

Preference is temporality, but nothing is excluded. Up for discussion in each particular case.

37. What is the notion of opening hours for you?

Mainly to do with practicalities (visibility, visitors and weather)

About the audiences

38. How should we include the voices of the audience?

Personal choice of group members. If there are serious visitors to the blog, there should be an option to comment on the blog.

39. Will the visitors and audience of the exhibition be invited to further develop the constitution after the opening?

No.

40. How do we deal with the already existing access restrictions – all of those who are unable to come for various reasons (visa, economic situation, illness, etc.)?

Can’t cover it all, but the project will visit some.

41. Do we want the audience to be involved in a participatory process?

Personal choice.

43. What options should we offer visitors? Viewing, contemplating artworks, studying, relaxing, eating, socializing, sleeping?

Personal choice again. Still up for discussion. Everything between ‘buy or die’ and ‘inviting for a chair and a chat’

QUESTIONS ON THE CONSTITUTION FOR TEMPORARY DISPLAY

tranzit.org proposes creating  THE CONSTITUTION FOR TEMPORARY DISPLAY to challenge all stereotypes that biennials (and exhibition formats in general) bring.

tranzit.org would like to submit the mechanisms of the biennial (and exhibition formats in general) to the critical consideration of the artists and advisors, with a desire to make the constitutional proclamation happen and to translate it into concrete steps for action.

Who are we?

1. Rousseau defines constitutional law as an “expression of a general will.” Whose general will is involved in this case? Who will establish the content of this constitution?

2. Are these people the artists and curators and invited advisors – during the preparatory phase of the exhibition?

3. Do we also include other groups and individuals?

How do we work?

5. What will be the principle for preparing the CTD?

6. What form and structure of discourse do we establish? And how will the on-site physical dialogue then be conducted during the installation and opening period, and then for the duration of the display?

7. Can any member of the established body contribute? Only with a limited number of articles or as many articles as he or she wants?

8. What are the rules for decision-making? (general agreement, vote, veto…)

9. Will the principle of a democratic vote be followed – i.e. the majority of the members of the body decides?

10. If we opt for a democratic vote, which of the two major legal models for democratic decision-making as described by Ronald Dworkin[1] do we apply? Do we follow the majoritarian or partnership democratic model (see the footnote)?

Roles, duties and division of labor

11. What is the role of the curators? What is the role of the artists in this setup? Shall we follow the usual matrix that the curatorial collective is responsible to the organizational body?

12. Do we want to find another procedure, inviting all the artists or their representatives to be part of curatorial decision-making?

13. What will be the rules for such a procedure?

14. What is the role of the administrators, i.e. the executives of the decision passed by the members?

15. Shall this be part of the constitution as well? (We think so.)

The Temporary Display

About autonomy

16. To what extent can the exhibition space become an autonomous polis?

17. Can we proclaim that in the exhibition space different – provisional – rules will apply that are different from those in the space beyond?

18. If at all, in which sense shall it be autonomous?

About form and content

19. Are there any rules and restrictions?

20. If so, what is it forbidden or allowed to do/ show/ perform in the exhibition space?

21. Shall we state the possibility to do/show/ behave in unusual ways in the exhibition space?

About the organization of resources

Space

22. How do we want to organize the existing space inside the exhibition?

23. Should the curatorial collective be responsible for the scenario of the display?

24. Do we have to start from a division of the space into projects?

25. How should we organize the non-existent space of the exhibition (i.e. all the virtually existing and usable spaces)?

26. Are we interested in procuring the use of any other kind of space besides the one that is available in our proposal?

Money

27. How to deal with the budget?

28. Do the artists accept the curators’ role of being responsible for budget sub-management (in the hands of the production office of the organizer / initiator / inviting institution…) and the division of the space for the exhibition?

29. If not, by whom and how shall this distribution be made – who will select the amount of contributions for each project, and according to which criteria?

30. Shall all the artists receive a similar flat fee, with the rest of the production budget being distributed according to the projects? (We suggest that there should be a flat fee of x Eur for each artistic project and participation in the constitutional process.)

31. Can we create some sort of budget that will be allocated to developing the constitutional processes? (We think that this is an important point and we are in favour of it.)

Access and Time:

32. When should the temporary display be opened?

33. Do we accept the logic of an official (given) opening, coinciding with the end of production? Should our activity start any time from now on – earlier or later than the opening?

34. If we decide that our project has started right from the moment of discussing the Constitution – how can we make it public?

35. Would we consider scheduling the dates of the exhibition differently?

36. Would we consider having work / works being on show during regular opening hours and during the entire period of the exhibition? Or do they or you generate/ need another temporality?

37. What is the notion of opening hours for you?

About the audiences

38. How should we include the voices of the audience?

39. Will the visitors and audience of the exhibition be invited to further develop the constitution after the opening?

40. How do we deal with the already existing access restrictions – all of those who are unable to come for various reasons (visa, economic situation, illness, etc.)?

41. Do we want the audience to be involved in a participatory process?

42. If so, what types and structures of participation do we prefer?

43. What options should we offer visitors? Viewing, contemplating artworks, studying, relaxing, eating, socializing, sleeping?

-Yes
-Yes
-Biennials try to tell me what is art, even if it isn’t that nice.

Ideal Media, Biennale Cuvee 10

I could mention several different things that have surprised me for this or that, for more or less logical reasons. Having to think of one I decided to choose this image. It is for me a beautiful image.

The image depicts a bridge and spectators on a ship’s deck looking at the surrounding landscape. It was certainly taken by someone that was also traveling on that ship.

What strikes me is the contrast between the intention of capturing an image of the bridge as a monument or a big remark of engineering and the simplicity that the moment seems to embed. The moment itself could be translated as an interruption, a break in order to be present and to look at what is to be seen. This is the reason why I like it. Though I do believe that several and diverse interpretations could still be drawn around it.

I found this picture at a second hand shop mixed with all different kinds of 35mm slides. I don’t know the author or where and when it was taken. At the first moment I thought about collecting this one and other slides of the same set so I could eventually later incorporate it as visual material on my work. This was the motivation that lead to an obsession, and that later ended with the decision of not using it as my first intention. Instead I decided to invite friends [and friends of friends] for evening sessions at the studio and present all the slides I had been collecting; then, sitting and listening to their comments.

Perhaps the author of this picture was an artist. Or perhaps these slides where assembled together and where once part of an installation of another possible artist that at a certain point of his life gave up of being an artist and sold all his work to a second hand shop. [And the list could go on and on] Several possibilities could be imagined in order to think of authorship and if this image has ever been part of the art world. If it did or not doesn’t change its meaning to me.

I do consider this image as art but not for the reasons I mentioned before, not because I like it. But because it was able to promote an encounter, exchange and somehow generate knowledge. Likewise, I think of biennials as empowered platforms to extend this same principle.

After reading this question I was thinking about my road trip to Morocco that turned out to be a road trip through Andalusia, Spain. After my passport was stolen out of our old camper van. In my mind I passed by the cultural buildings I had seen there: la Alhambra in Granada, la Mezquita in Córdoba and el Archivo del Indio in Seville. Interesting things. Cultural things. Nice things.

But not so exciting as the idea of driving to and in Africa! And now, instead of being true adventurers, we didn’t dare to leave our temporarily home on wheels anywhere else than at a camping site safely in between the white camper vans of hibernators. And instead of being in Morocco the only thing I could do was read about it.

So during our stay in Spain I read “Marokko achter de schermen” (Morocco behind the scenes) by Steven Adolf (correspondent for NRC newspaper) that deals with history and present day Morocco. It discusses subjects like the strongly interweaved corruption of mighty political figures and the suppression of the Berber people but also about the first travel reports, the hospitality of Moroccan people and couscous. And I have to say in the end Andalusia’s cultural heritage, of the time when the region was called Al-Andalus, did make up the disappointment of not being able to go there.

What I like about traveling is this strange position you have being a tourist. This vacuum of being there in real life but always at a sideline; never completely understand what is going on simply because you are a stranger. Unfortunately this, as I experienced can make you an easy target to get robbed. But on the other hand also local people recognize you and the question “where are you from?” has a low threshold.
Like a guy we met in a bar, who asked us where we came from, and told us in English he had been studying in Groningen at the Hanze Hogeschool and he had a lot of Dutch friends: Hans, Nienke and Dirk. We talked about nice places near Seville and that we had visited Aracena a small city one-hour drive from Seville what we really liked because of the green and hilly landscape. The barman became really enthusiastic because he happened to be born in the province of Huelva and told us in Spanish that the food there was great.

Our perception of great food, considering endless advertisement about Andalusian delicatesse: jamón, differs. As a hardcore vegetarian and food lover it was a pity but it came not as a surprise that Spain really is a meat country. Everywhere from the Carrefour to the local tapas bar you find a lot of meat. Especially hams of Iberico pigs, in this region. This billboard promoting an international congress about dry-cured ham! The idea these people talked three days about a pig’s cushion seemed kind of hilarious.

“Sí, más jamón” I replied “pero soy vegetariana”. We laughed and ordered another caña without tapa but with lasagna (verde).

These things are “nice” and they happen to be art. Some have been shown at biennials and others not.
Above works- are a selection from the works of Otobong Nkanga and Meschac Gaba.

Beware of beautiful surroundings. You may be overcome by a sense of melancholy which lurks in the spectacle of such beauty. The melancholy of its impossibility. The beauty of the individual parts, the trees, the grass – her seductive softness, which actually isn’t soft at all but prickly, full of ants and thorns, only the idea of softness – these stir up a longing for a memory in which the grass really is soft, really is green. The sadness has something to do with the impossibility of that memory.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A week ago I was asked for a publication to react visually on the question: ‘What do you like to look at?’I remembered this picture and thought it was just screaming for some pink.

Respond one question at a time, without thinking of the question that follows. You do not need to respond to all of the questions. If you do not like the question that follows, or if it does not suit you, do not go any further.

- Is there anything nice you have seen? (In a general sense, thinking of your experience, of what you have done, seen, read, or lived)

- Are you interested in knowing if what you consider nice is art?

- In which way can you relate the big biennials with the two previous questions?

The Death of the Author

The Death of the Author is an important text from structuralist and critic Roland Barthes, published for the first time in 1967. But more imporant the Death of the Author is a concept in art theory about the giving of meaning. Barthes argued that the viewer was the one who was important for the making of meaning. The author was the one who wrote the story down (or painted it on a canvas) and afterwards his job was done. He might have put his own meaning in it, but a viewer could still extract a totally different meaning. Barthes believes that a viewer normally makes meaning by examining signs in an image. The viewer creates a interpretation of a text, he is not looking for a final definitive meaning. An interpretation starts with a viewer objectively looking at a text and describing what he literally sees in or reads from the text. This literal description of the text is what Barthes calls denotation, a descriptive and literal level of meaning shared by virtually all members of a culture. What these signs mean for a person calls Barthes the connotation; the personal associations a viewer has with the signs.
Does this mean that an author or artists leaves the work of art behind after the completion? Wouldn’t an author have any influence on the signs the viewers are going to see? Or does an artist consciously leave traces behind, a path he wants the audience to follow? Can he make certain signs more noticeable and with this steer the interpretation in a desired direction?

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is the largest web-based encyclopedia available. It was launched in 2001 and currently has around 14 million articles, written in 272 languages. The name is a combination from the Hawaiian word ‘Wiki’, which means quick, and the word ‘encyclopedia’. What makes this web-based encyclopedia special and popular is that every visitor can add and edit articles.

Although it has been stated that Wikipedia contains less errors and mistakes (through to the continuous editing) than printed encyclopedias, this editing model is also the main point of critique on Wikipedia. Every visitor can change an article to whatever he decides. There is a strong controlling apparatus with moderating users, but no guarantee whatsoever. Former editor-in-chief of the Encyclopaedia Britannica Robert McHenry called Wikipedia a ‘faith-based encyclopedia’ and even Wikipedia’s own founder, Jimmy Wales, disencourages academic use of his creation, for there is simply no possible way to prove all the information there. Trying to include false information is becoming more and more popular, an example can be seen on the facebook group If Wikipedia Says It, It Must Be True where people post screenshots of the Wikipedia articles they find (or make) to be incorrect.

Interesting is to see how the unreliability of Wikipedia is included in Popular Culture. The quote ‘Citation Needed’ appears on Wikipedia when a moderator (or visitor) questions the reliability of an article.

Official Invitation (scribble-down letters!) / Photo by Timothy Greathouse

Media-Savvy

Coined ‘The Royal Drag’ by the SOHO-news, Topo Grajeda & Jimini Hignett’s wedding performance planned to challenge Charles and Di’s monopoly of prime-time news on July 29th 1981, was a wonderful combination of art and media-savvy. Performing in New York in the early 80’s under the name ‘Christians from Outer Space’, Topo and Jimini topped their usual aim of having their name appear in the local listings each week – performing at off-off-Broadway locations on the Lower East Side and on the sidewalks midtown – with this cross-dressed version of the Royal knot-tying making onto the Channel-7 news. Unfortunately no video footage of the event was made (and channel-7 refused to allow their tape to be copied) but the late Timothy Greathouse took great publicity stills, and Jo Ann Porter made some fantastic shots on the day.

Asylum Seekers

“See Asylum Seekers” – was a planned residency project by Jimini Hignett in which a family of asylum seekers were to be given the keys to a free apartment with all amenities in the Dutch city of Delft in return for which, they would be the exhibit in the final exhibition to take place showing the work of various artists in residency there, and visitors would be invited to come in and look at them.

Hignett’s intention was to both to provide housing (albeit temporary) for people in need and to encourage discussion of the treatment of asylum seekers and artists in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, due to the credit crunch, the new housing for the original occupants of the apartments was delayed and this plan was cancelled. (For more on the plan which Hignett did carry out, see Negotiating Equity.)

The photograph shows the empty apartment in question.

Maerten in Cyberspace

In 1996 over the space of just seven days, an enormous 17th century triptych by Dutch master Maerten van Heemskerck which had been shipwrecked off the coast of Sweden is scanned and ‘returned’ in cyber-piecs to the Netherlads via internet to the Grote Laurens Kerk in Alkmaar, where a computer controlled plotter, under the eye of the public, ‘repaints’ the 6 by 8 meter triptych in the very location for which it was originally intended. The event was followed closely on the local and national media and the finsihed triptych was unveiled by Queen Beatrix.

Werkmij crew posing in front of the triptych

Photos from the website of Kees Bolten

Cargo

Cargo was an extremely controversial project executed in 1992 by the Dutch Werkmij group. In the middle of the kilometres long Afsluit-dyke which was built to enclose the former Zuyder Zee, a steel giant constructed form electrical pylons, and ‘bricked up’ with 20,000 loaves baked on-site using grain from the polders and sea water from the adjacent former Zuyder Zee formed an enormous sacrificial image entitled the ‘National Gift to the Sea. Due to be ‘sacrificed’ this project, which took place at a moment when the news was full of drought and famine, caused national uproar as children collected signatures, politicians and other dignitaries complained of blasphemy. The planned submergence of the sculpture was prohibited and following its disappearance and the discovery of loaves of bread washed up along the Belgian coast it left in its wake a new national myth and an unsolved mystery.

National Gift to the Sea - Afsluitdijk - 1992

Kees Bolten of Werkmij with loaves

Clandestine dismanteling of the sacrificial statue

All photos from website Kees Bolten

Hogerhand

The Hogerhand People’s Front is a civil defense militia set up to defend the Netherlands in the event of an invasion by the US army following the so-called ‘Hague Invasion Act’ which president Bush signed on August 2nd 2002. A group of concerned Dutch citizens operating entirely within the law and armed soley with the willpower embodied in their simple motto, trans corpus mortuum: ‘over my dead body’! this peoples militia of unarmed guards patrol Dutch beaches around the clock, forming a human shield against the absurd invasion plans of our ally on the other side of the Atlantic.

Hogerhand Civil Defense at Castricum

Hogerhand People's Militia at Scheveningen

Media / Mass Media

Ion Barladeanu, Romania, 1946 (submitted by Jimini Hignett) – Barladeanu lived in the garbage room of a block of flats where he made collages critical of the Ceausescu regime using images torn from old magazines until he was ‘discovered’ in 2008. Nowadays he lunches with Angelina Jolie in Paris.

Ion Barladeanu - Untitled

Ion Barladeanu - Realpolitik

Martha Rosler

Martha Rosler’s work has long drawn on subjective documentary material in what could be seen as a classic example of aesthetic journalism – her project ‘The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems, a series of printed photographs and texts, dealt with issues underlying Manhattan’s skid-row The Bowery. (See also H for Housing&homelessness.)

To circumvent any possible copyright infringements, the photographs of the Bowery project are re-photographs of reproductions, the next is a photograph taken during a re-enactment of the work ‘Semiotics of the Kitchen’ performed by school children during Thomas Hirschhorns ‘Bijlmer Spinoza Festival’, as is the video.

Re-photographed reproduction of print from The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems

Re-photographed reproduction of print from 'The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems'

Re-enactment of Martha Roslers (1974) Semiotics of the Kitchen, during Thomas Hirschhorn's Bijlmer Spinoza Festival 2009 Photograph-Jimini Hignett

Still from video of re-enactment of Martha Rosler's Semiotics of the Kitchen (1974) during Thomas Hirschhorn's Bijlmer Spinoza Festival 2009 - photo-Jimini Hignett

Kitchen Semiotics re-enactment from Jimini Hignett on Vimeo.

Click on ‘re-enactment’ above to see the video on vimeo

Housing & Homelessness

‘If You Lived Here: the city in art, theory & social activism’

- a collaborative project by Martha Rosler, brought together a great many people from many different disciplines and backgrounds, presenting a wealth of (largely) documentary information in widely diverse forms and formats to produce a landmark work on the issues of housing and homelessness, in NYC in the late eighties.

Publication: If You Lived Here, Rosler et al

Per.cep.tion

n.
1. The process, act, or faculty of perceiving.
2. The effect or product of perceiving.
3. Psychology
a. Recognition and interpretation of sensory stimuli based chiefly on memory.

b. The neurological processes by which such recognition and interpretation are effected.
4.
a. Insight, intuition, or knowledge gained by perceiving.
b. The capacity for such insight.

The meaning of information is –in contemporary thought– subjective. It can be perceived as truth, nonsense, art, and of course many other things. Yet, the power of news is that it is generally perceived as the truth. This assumption of truth might be the reason why artists practice aesthetic journalism more and more as a way to critique the perception of information.

Spoof

News satire has been a strategy to critique society for long as news exists. In the late 19^th century, when the newspapers were more widely spread, fake news became a frequently used tool. One of the most famous spoofers was Mark Twain. His hoaxes were so successful and believable, that one newspaper after another fired him. His realization that lies travel faster then the truth, comes back in his later work. As the internet provides more accessible ways to spread news, it gave a whole new dimension to the phenomenon of satire. The most recent successful example are of course the Yes men. A successful Dutch site is www.speld.nl, but the Onion might be the most widely spread one, as well as www.fakingnews.com.

EGBG

EGBG is a Dutch registration research company set up by artist Martijn Engelbrecht in 1994. The company conducts market research on several levels, for his own practice and commissioned. Engelbregt deals with information and privacy issues (his company name actually stands for ‘Once Given Remains Given’ or ‘Engelbregt Information Management Group’). He was one of the people starting to look for the borders of what people voluntarily fill in on questionnaires.

At the hight of the telephone market research hype, EGBG created a guide to counter attack telephone interviewers. The one being questioned becomes the one questioning and the other way around. He also worked for the critical Dutch TV network VPRO, where he mapped the information of all the VPRO employees.

http://www.egbg.nl/

Sois Belle Et Vote (‘Be Pretty and Vote’ ) was a sentence used for a political advertising campaign that took place in Lebanon in 2009 by the occasion of the parliamentary elections.
Together with this sentence the billboards showed an image of

a young woman, as commonly represented by fashion and beauty brands. This controversial advertisement, being accused as sexist and offensive, brought up reactions at different levels among these, new versions of this image, whose content was changed according with the protests.

What happens in this specific situation is that the adoption of an aesthetics is not only used to communicate and idea to a particular audience – the young hip Lebanese women – but mostly aims to create a public discussion based on its controversial aspects and consequently generating visibility and promotion for its own benefit. This is not something surprising when thinking about political advertising but what is interesting to note here is that the appropriation of this kind of aesthetics (even if still operating at a commodified level) serves not only the purpose of this campaign as, propaganda, visibility, public discussion, etc, but also by making the appropriation itself visible, indirectly exposes the structure which is based on.
By critically examining political advertising and the different ways it has been dealing with the existing media structures, I believe one can find an interesting place for observing advertising and mass media structures.

In 1983, the French newspaper Libération invited Sophie Calle to publish a series of 28 articles. Having recently found on the street the address book of a man called Pierre Baudry, Sophie Calle photocopied the content and afterwards
returned it to its owner (his address was written in one of the first pages of the book). Later on, she visited and interviewed some of the people who were listed in the book. Sophie Calle’s concern was to build up a portrait of the man according to what his acquaintances had to say about him. The articles were published next to some pictures that Calle took of the man’s favourite activities.

According to an interview that Sophie Calle had with Stuart Jeffries for The Guardian, the owner of the address book (a documentary film maker) threatened to sue her for invasion of privacy after he discovered the articles. However, once that the Libération newspaper agreed on publishing a nude photograph of Sophie Calle, he felt things were even. “He was trying to be very aggressive. He disliked what I did.” Sophie Calle said.

Things had a much different ending in Paul Auster’s novel Leviathan. For the book, Auster describes some of the works of Sophie Calle as carried out by a fictional character known as Maria Turner. To tell the whole story of Maria would be inappropriate for this blog (and to some extent also repetitive). However it might be enough with saying that the Address Book project eventually leads Maria into another story where she ended with her jaw being broken along with a wrist, a couple of cracked ribs and bruises all over her body.

It seems having a naked picture of yourself published in newspaper might not be that bad after all.

Nayruz Holdings

A fictitious holdings company, created by Jordanian artist, Oraib Toukan. The company proposes to auction off the Middle East in the year 2012,

based on a 100-year leasehold, factoring in inflation and perceptions of political and economic risk now and in the future. Toukan assesses each county’s risk, by consulting various game theorists, image consultants and diplomatic representatives, in order to gain a plausible picture of the sellability of the the various Middle Eastern countries. Her corporate intervention was presented in 2009 at the Istanbul Biennial, under the name, “The Equity is in the Circle” (2007-2009) where she included video interviews, email correspondence, and her very own branding campaign for Nayruz- with the slogan being: “Own this view, and everything in it.”

www.oraibtoukan.com

WTO

Generally WTO is the abbreviation for the World Trade Organisation. However, culture jamming activists called “The Yes Men” placed a fake WTO website, at the domain www.gatt.org, posing as the WTO, in order to bring “corrected” information about the activities of the real organisation. Subsequently, they we invited by several organisations and conferences in order to give lectures to an audience, such as at the International Payments Conference on April 28, 2005, where they proposed to the audience that they should purchase a golden suit, they claimed would allow productivity to increase, as managers would not have to oversee workers in person but could keep track of them via images on an attached screen as well as implanted sensors.

www.yesmen.org

De Volkskrant, Wednesday 3th of February 2010
Port au Prince Haïti, 25th of January 2010, photo Tomas Bravo/Reuters

De Volkskrant, Wednesday 10th of February 2010
A Friday afternoon in North Brabant, Holland photo Erik Haverhals/ANP

De Aarsman Collectie/The Aarsman Collection
Every week on Wednesday Hans Aarsman (photographer/writer) writes about photo(s) in a spread in the Volkskrant, one of the biggest newspapers in The Netherlands, that caught his eye in the ‘news feed’. He discusses all kind of photos but mainly news photos that are not ‘digestible/interesting’ enough for the norms of a daily newspaper. He is a kind of mediator between the ‘feed’ of the newspaper and its readers.

He ‘zooms in’ on these photos, grasping every element that is visible and could lead to a new interpretation of what we are seeing. Little details can be the starting point of new interpretations and a better understanding of what is happening.

“There is not one truth. At least there are seven”. (Quote from Hans Aarsman, De Aarsman Collectie, 2005 Nai Publishers, Rotterdam)

Hans Aarsman is on twitter: twitter.com/Hansaarsman

Angels FM 98.0

Moniek Toebosch

Located on the Houtrib dyke between Enkhuizen en Lelystad in The Netherlands drivers could tune in to a radiofrequency and listen the whole length of the dyke (29 km) to the singing of angels. It was located there between 1994-1999.

The GLOBAL BIENNIAL ASSOCIATION was started in 2009, by a group of international exhibition makers and art-historians who have been involved in the growing global rise of the art biennial phenomenon. The GBA has it’s main headquarters in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, but is active all over the world. We take on a fresh, young and critical approach towards the global art world, creating new, ambitious and successful formats.

Due to the increasing number of biennials appearing over the last decade, many questions arise about the function and context of biennials in general. The Global Biennial Association maps current trends in relation to the connection between artists, biennials and the places which they are held in. Together with the already existing information on the political and economical value of international biennials, we would like to use this information to develop a format for an Ideal Global Biennial that can live up to all dominating international standards and desires.

To gain this information we have created a questionnaire that we will spread among our network of artists. This will help us to create a better image of the current existing ideas about biennials; not only based on the opinion of a group of established artists, but also on that of the next generation of artists.

The outcome of this research will be tested within a pilot-project at Manifesta 8 in Murcia. Artists and locals will be involved in realization of a critical yet profitable format. The GBA sees Manifesta as an example of a recognized biennial, which is not afraid to take on a self-reflective and experimental approach.

On the Manifesta blog for “Unsolicited Research“, we will be posting our progress.

For our first posting we share our questionnaire. If you would like to participate in the creation of the Ideal Global Biennial, please download >> the questionnaire as pdf, and email your results to: global.biennial.association@gmail.com

• Why use and explore media platforms as an artist or curator?

• What is the relationship between (mass) media and art in the past and present, and what are the possible future scenarios?

• Can media platforms renegotiate a relationship between art and the locality in a Biennale model?

Through operating as a roving biennial Manifesta must each time address and negotiate a different context with specific geographical, historical and political structures. In this way, Manifesta offers its curators the opportunity, and the challenge, to engage with local, global and networked communities using a variety of platforms and approaches.

CPS’s approach to curation encompasses (mass) media platforms such as television, radio and newspapers, alongside more traditional exhibition formats. In the context of Manifesta 8 we ask what is the media’s relationship to the construction of a local reality, how does it relate to ideas of truth, fact and history, and what are its possibilities for engaging with new audiences and existing local/global structures?

One of the theoretical bases that informs CPS’s approach to art and the media is the notion of ‘aesthetic journalism’: LINK. This is a huge body of research undertaken between 2004 and 2009. We (Alfredo as writer/curator and Fay as artist) have recently collaborated to ‘unpack’ this concept using a practical approach; Fay developed an ‘ABC of aesthetic journalism’ which is published as a blog: LINK. We would like to involve DAI students in this process of progression from a (theoretical) notion of aesthetic journalism to a practical implementation of this concept (as could manifest itself in biennial models such as M8).

We invite you to engage in the ABC blog by responding to a post/s or by creating your own. You can add to, comment on, critique, extend, oppose or digress from the current content. Responses can take the form of text, image, video, audio or web link. Directly or indirectly consider our opening bullet points in relation to this invitation. Your approach can be academic, artistic, communicative, reflexive, objective or personal. The only rules are that you cannot delete existing content and that responses are indexed in their respective alphabetical category. You will be given the username and password to the blog for the duration of the project.