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| ../_EDIFICIO DE TABACALERA - FUTUR CENTRE NATIONAL DES ARTS VISUELS |
| Entrée
libre. Calle Embajadores, 53 - 28012 Madrid - Metro: Línea
3, Embajadores. |
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APRIL
16 - MAY 16
[EXHIBITION]
OPENING
on April 16 > 19:00
April 17-25
> 16h - 21h
April
26 to May 16 > 16h - 20h
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EVERY DAY
FREE ENTRANCE
UNTIL MAY 16
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"AFTER THE END / FAUX
RACCORDS"
THE VENUE: LA TABACALERA
La Tabacalera is a former tobacco factory which, after lying in
disrepair for almost ten years, is to become the future National
Centre for Visual Arts. A massive space with intriguing architecture
and history, its space and current halls loans themselves particularly
well to the exhibition of contemporary art works.
THE EXHIBITION
"After the end / Faux raccords" is a research project
about the possible images within our society of omnipresent images.
The project is approached critically and reflexively, using the
internet as a medium and singular aesthetic approaches in order
to essentially question our era: signs and images being recycled,
their misappropriation, their suspension, data circulation through
the internet, work, economy, utopia. This exhibition is interrupted
by breaks where links question our image within contemporary culture.
Patrick BERNATCHEZ: I feel cold today
Video, 16mm | 0:14:00
Canada | 2007
Addressing notions of decay, entropy and rebirth, "The Chrysalides
Trilogy" is a series of three seemingly unconnected videos
that prioritize moments of mounting tension but ultimately withhold
narrative conclusion. The first video of the series, for instance,
titled I Feel Cold Today, depicts a mundane office space that quietly
but increasingly fills with drifting snow. Although no living subjects
appear in the video, abandoned paper, books and office equipment
hint at previous human occupation of the space, lending the scene
an eerie apocalyptic mood that is difficult to shake.
Patrick Bernatchez lives and works in Montreal (Quebec, Canada).
Over the past few years, he has developed a multiform step characterized
by an aesthetic union of the marvelous and the monstrous; he explores
photography, the installation and video as well as drawing and painting,
his media of predilection. The topics of the body, change, sex,
death and the resurrection are explored with exuberance and a lyrical
combination of phantasmagoric and that what is nightmarish. His
interest is in the "chronicle of a death announced" through
the immutable run of time: that of living beings, individuals, and
partners. He is interested in the features of a certain social schizophrenia
between figuration and abstraction. These features are transmitted
as well by pictorial, photographic, filmic compositions as in the
form of sculptural and sound installations.
His work has been presented in many galleries, in particular: Chrysalides,
Centre des arts actuels Skol, Montréal (2008) and Galerie
l'Œil de Poisson, Québec (2008); Blossom, Galerie Donald
Browne, Montréal (2007); Mécanique et débordements,
Galerie d'art de Matane (2004), Galerie B-312, Montréal (2004).
He has also participated to several group exhibitions as "
Rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée, tout se transforme ",
Contemporary art Museum of Montréal (2008) ; " Les Intrus
", Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (2008)
; " VALEURS/VALUES/VREDNOSTI ", 11e Biennale des arts
visuels de Pan?evo, Serbie et Monténégro (2004) ;
" Bonheur et simulacres, Manif d'art 2 ", Québec
(2003).
Christophe BRUNO: Non Conservation Laws
Net-art, work in progress
France | 2009
"Nature is governed by conservation laws. These laws describe
quantities that remain identical before and after a particular event
has taken place within a closed system. We speak for example, of
energy conservation. Are such conservation laws relevant when we
consider production / distribution / consumption processes? The
examination will consider the question of works of art but might
generalize. The first study, presented here, will focus on time
of consummation and the life expectancy of art works. The title
has thus a double meaning: "conservation" is also used
in the sense of "conservation of art pieces".
Non Conservation Laws will be shown in its preliminary phase of
pre-production (and pre-consumption). One of the intermediate purposes
of the project, which is a long-term project, will be to relate
production time and consummation time." Christophe Bruno
Christophe Bruno lives and works in Paris. Since 2001 he has
worked on the phenomena of networks and globalization in the field
of language on iterature.com, work that is to be considered as a
readymade in progress. Iterature.com received a prize at the Ars
Electronica festival in 2003 for the Google Adwords Happening and
at the Share Festival in Turin for the performance Human Browser,
initially inspired by James Joyce's Epiphanies. His work has also
been presented internationally in many festivals, museums, galleries
and contemporary art fairs: FIAC Paris, ARCO Madrid, the Diva Art
Fair in New York, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, ArtCologne, MOCA
Taipei, the Musée d'Art Moderne of the city of Paris, Rencontres
Internationales Paris-Berlin-Madrid, the New Museum of Contemporary
Art à New York, the Biennale d'Art Contemporain de Tirana,
the Share Festival in Turin, the Transmediale in Berlin, Laboral
Cyberspaces in Gijon, the galerie Sollertis in Toulouse, the ICC
Tokyo, the Nuit Blanche in Paris, the File Festival in Sao Paulo,
f.2004@shangai, the ReJoyce Festival in Dublin, P0es1s.net in Berlin,
the Microwave Media Art Festival in Hong-Kong, the Vooruit in Gand,
Vidarte in Mexico City.
Claude CLOSKY: Flux
Video installation
France | 2004
"This piece by Claude Closky is tied to hyperconsumption signs;
and particularly advertising signs, among which can easily be included
the economic graphic vocabulary, for all that we would want to accept
that its meaning, its capacity for the effective representation
of reality, vanishes behind an entertaining abstraction, which produces
a tapestry effect. Closky values these signs by taking into account
only signifier enunciations and their voracious function of reality,
removing any message that benefits from a decorative motif, where
infinite variations produce just a tireless reproduction of itself.
Flux uses in a simplified manner, reduced to edulcorated logotypification
of inherited forms of a modernistic geometrical abstraction (circle
and line), one of the characteristic motifs of contemporary economy,
consisting in representing the displacements, material and immaterial,
between masses. By extracting these streams of all intention and
all context, Closky returns their intransitive movements to absurdity,
but shows also how they rise in value, without questioning them,
the notion of mobility, adaptability, flexibility …
Beyond the smooth surface of spheres and vectors, the fluidity of
their quiet animation would show through the violence of a reality
in which these representations, invariably positives, are wisely
erased: the violence of deletion of causes and consequences of these
exchanges." François Piron, Courtesy art-netart.com
Born in Paris in 1963, Claude Closky is a French plastic artist.
As Pierre Huyghe, he studied at the Ecole nationale Supérieure
des Arts décoratifs and he is a member of the famous group
of painters " Les Frères Ripoulin ". Today, his
work is pretty well different and covers almost all the art fields,
from drawing to painting until web sites and wallpapers creation.
He is teaching at the Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts
since 1994.
Tony COKES: Leeds.talk.trailer
Video | 0:04:00
USA | 2008
This video brings together a series of pointed anecdotes about the
vexed relationship between art criticism and art making in Britain
and the US during the 1960s and 70s. The video is based on an article
"Leeds talk" written by Los Angeles art historian Andrew
Perchuk. Its characters include noted figures like clement Greenberg,
Michael fried, Charles Harrison, Rosalind Krauss, Artforum, October,
and important cameos by Morris Louis, Lynda Benglis, and the late
sculptor David Smith (among others). Perchuk's text is edited and
sequenced as single white words on a black background (in a twisted
echo of Michael snow, perhaps). The techno house soundtrack functions
as a strong rhythmic counterpoint to the simple graphic animation.
Tony Cokes is a post-conceptualist whose practice foregrounds
social critique. His video, installation, and sound works re-contextualize
appropriated materials to critically reflect upon our production
as subjects. Cokes` video and multimedia installation works have
appeared in exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, MACBA,
Barcelona, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Centre Pompidou,
France, Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen, and the Guggenheim
Museum. His numerous media festival screenings include Oberhausen
Short Film Festival (1993, 2005), International Film Festival Rotterdam,
Seoul Film & Net Festival (2005), and Rencontres Internationales.
Cokes' projects have been supported by grants and fellowships from
The Rockefeller Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, Creative Capital
Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, NY Foundation for the
Arts, and NY State Council on the Arts. Cokes is a Professor in
Media Production, Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown
University, Providence. He is currently a Resident Scholar at The
Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.
Johanna DOMKE: Cuers
Video | 0:18:05
Germany | 2008
Johanna Domke's film Cuers is inspired by Franz Kafka's The Trial
and the filmic universe of Orson Welles. The audience is taken on
a fleeting and meandering journey through different sites in public
space, where people are exposed to long waiting. The individual
is presented as a singular being, confronting structures of public
space. The particular situations are represented in an inspirational
manner shifting in and out of each other. Time and space is dissolved
in kaleidoscopic pictures, which emphasizes how we physically as
well as mentally have trouble adjusting to our anonymous environment.
Cuers seeks to create a mental space through abstraction and subversion
of the familiar.
Johanna Domke's artistic practice derives from close observation
of urban structures and the psychology of public space. Her films
revolve around our experience of reality and the aesthetic tension
between the private and the public. She is preoccupied with the
authentic situation but alternates between documenting and staging
such situations. The subsequent technical processing of the material
reduces these situations to isolated phenomena that move between
the border of documentary and non-narrative fiction. Some exhibitions:
" Marginal Moments ", Art Agents Gallery, Hambourg (2008)
; " Unbreakable space ", Overgaden Institute of Contemporary
Art, Copenhagen (2008) ; " Sequent silence ", Bureau pour
l'art contemporain, Lyon (2007) ; " You´ll miss what´s
gonna stay ", Art Agents Gallery, Hambourg (2005) et Graduationshow,
Peep Gallery, Malmö (2004) ; " Still in motion ",
Galleri Gustaf Gimm, Copenhagen (2003). Elle a également
participé à de nombreuses expositions collectives
ou des festivals tels que " ENTER ", Kunsthallen Brandts,
Odense (2008) ; Rencontres Internationales, National Museum Reina
Sofia, Madrid (2008), " Young Identities " - Global Youth
/ EMAF Kunsthalle Dominikanerkirche, Osnabrück (2008) ; "
Ghosts in the Machine " 516 ARTS, Santa Fe, US, (2007) ; Locarno
Filmfestival, Locarno (2006), Pulsar, encuentro internacional multimedia,
Caracas, Venezuela (2006), etc.
Niklas GOLDBACH: Dawn
Video | 0:01:12
Germany | 2008
Dawn was filmed in the abandoned basement floor of the Palais de
Tokyo in Paris. The Palais was completed for the International Exhibition
of 1937. Though the palace`s 30s classicism exterior remained intact,
the interior has undergone a succession of alterations. In 2001
the Palais got partly reconstructed. The video shows around 60 people
lying motionless on sleeping bags in the still unrenovated basement
floor of the Palais de Tokyo while a disco ball is slowly rotating.
Niklas Goldbach was born 1973 in Witten, Germany.
He studied photography at the University of Bielefeld and `Experimental
Media Arts` at the University of the Arts Berlin where he graduated
with honours in 2004. In 2005 he majored in the MFA program `Integrated
Media Arts` at Hunter College, City University of New York and postgraduated
with a "Meisterschüler" degree of the University
of the Arts Berlin.
Since 2001 his work has been exhibited throughout Europe, the United
States and Asia. From November 2007 until June 2008 Niklas Goldbach
was participant of the artist in residency programs of "Palais
de Tokyo", and "Cité Internationale des Arts",
Paris.
JODI: GEOGOO
Net-art, installation
The Netherlands | 2008
JODI explores our representation of the world in the Internet and
Google era. Services such as Google Maps have changed radically
our perception by transforming the Earth into an immense shopping
space. By projecting the geometrical constructions of these on-line
tools into reality, and inversely, by superimposing their schemas
and tags, the physical place becomes the point of departure of a
symbolic and mysterious drift in an amplifying and deconstructive
association network crossing the town, network space and information.
In GEOGOO (Info Park) everything may create sense, it only depends
on your capacities to deconstruct and reconstruct.
JODI is formed by two artists, Joan Heemskerk (Netherlands) and
Dirk Paesmans (Belgium). Pioneers in net art, they are among the
first artists to create on-line works in the 90's. They explore
and sabotage Internet, computer software and video games conventions.
The work of JODI has been shown in Documenta X, ZKM ( Karlsruhe),
Netherlands Media Art Institute Montevideo (Amsterdam), the Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum ( New York), FACT Center (Liverpool), the Center
for Contemporary Art ( Glasgow), in Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid,
and Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam).
Thomas KÖNER: La Barca
Video | 0:06:40
Germany | 2009
"In a barque she sails across the high lands of the past.
The barque heads shimmer and glow at stern and bow, and that lights
her unseeable passage.
She calls to the spirits of this hour, and that is how we come to
even hear her voice. "
Born in 1965, Thomas Köner is a media artist working with
audiovisual installations, sound, video, photography, net art and
live performance.
His works are in the collections of numerous significant art museums.
Awards: (a.o.) Golden Nica, Prix Ars Electronica 2004; Transmediale
Award 2005; Golden Tiger Cub, Filmfestival Rotterdam 2005.
Joan LEANDRE: In the Name of Kernel Series - Lonely Record
Sessions
Video installation | 0:20:00
Spain | 2009
"It was a very bright day with a slow and easy sunset in the
valley where, breathing deeply, one's own heartbeat could be heard.
So I hoped someone would be there, or at least a distant rumor that
could make him warm up." It was a crisis of the ego, a shock
imposed by our own biology (now that things have lost their common
sense, contemplation keeps us together). The change in time takes
us to a dispossessed guide, to the spatial emptiness of dead rooms.
Four points of solitude and a narrow hallway which we should try
to find no matter what.
Joan Leandre was born in 1968. She lives and works in Barcelona.
She is a media interpreter, member of the OVNI Archives since 1994.
From 1994-1996 worked on the series of media interruptions MAP (Mega
Assemble Project), Fundación Zero and Serial Monuments, in
1995-1997 the Oigo Rom project, later in 1998 in Brooklyn was involved
with the President Archives. In 1999 she worked again with mass
entertainment software and started the projects retroyou (RC) and
retroyou (nostalG) and the long series still in process, retroyou
nostalg2 and the Black Boot Project. Another collective project
the artist has been involved with during these years is Velvet Strike.
She is currently at that floating point of several considerations
which brings the name of the Iron Bird screaming in flight through
the automatic dusk.
Thomas LEON: High latency
Video installation | 0:12:00
France | 2008
This is a film about time and experiencing a work of art. The form
and structure of video and the use of digital media and sound instill
emotional tension in an environment that otherwise lacks it. The
camera tracks forward and progresses into a snowy landscape. The
video is divided into two equal parts which are linked together
when the camera's angle moves towards the floor. From this moment
forward, the image slides from the representation of a physical
space to a rhythmic abstraction. When the camera lifts up again,
we are back at the beginning. Two successive soundtracks accompany
each part of this video.
Born in 1981 in Dijon (France), Thomas Leon currently lives and
works in Paris. His work is articulated mainly around the video
medium, in the form of complex and condensed installations, on the
border of narration. His achievements were especially chosen for
the following exhibitions: "The children of Sabbath 07"
with the Hollow of the hell, Centers Contemporary art of Thiers
(France) in 2006, Multipolar with the Market 14 of Leipzig (Germany)
in 2006, Filterbox with Glassbox (Paris) in 2006, "the syndrome
of Broadway" in the Center of Art of the Saint-Leger Park to
Pougues-les-Eaux (France) in 2007, "Science and fiction"
with General in Manufacture in 2008.
Antoni MUNTADAS: Stuttgart (for H.H.)
Video installation | dv | 0:09:11
USA | 2006
"There are two concepts that Muntadas has used on several occasions
to refer to some of his projects, and which are is worth reconsidering
when examining the piece Stuttgart (for H.H.) (2006). These concepts
are the idea of ritual and of protocol. Muntadas's understanding
of "ritual" comprises an entire series of dynamics which
unfold in urban contexts and are linked to such diverse phenomena
as tourist flows (City Museum, 1991-2007), indiscriminate cultural
consumption (On Translation: Stand By, 2005-07) and the perception
of the memory of a specific place (Media Sites/Media Monuments Buenos
Aires, 2007). In all of these projects, as well as in others which
delve in the same subject-matter, rituals are rendered a sort of
collective behavior which allow for an exploration of social, economic,
political and cultural factors under which lies a metaphor, or,
rather, a metonymy for the unmasking of the impulses which articulate,
reconfigure and define our perception of the city and history."
Valentín Roma
By considering the media as a socialization and normalization
instrument, Antoni Muntadas’ internationally renowned video and
media installations question the contradictory messages given by
the written and televised media, their organization and their language.
Through his work, Muntadas re-conceptualizes available imagery so
as to evoque a reflection on the significance of messages from the
spectator, creating thus a gap in the uniform construction of the
“media stream”. This flow of information is disseminated by advertising
agencies in their aim to consummate and raw of all analysis by the
public. In his film “Political Advertisment” (presented in cooperation
with Marshall Reese), Muntadas shows us the country of televised
politics. His film “Between the frames” focused on the world of
art and showcased interviews which revealed the structural links
establishing forms of art communication, their construction and
their trade.
Charly NIJENSOHN: Dead Forest - Amazonia (Storm)
Video | dv |
0:04:38
Argentina / Brazil | 2009
Thirty year ago, the Brazilian government authorized the construction
of the Balbina Hydroelectric Dam, in the heart of the Amazonia region,
with the aim to provide energy to the city of Manaus. As a result
of this development, the biggest artificial lake in Latin America
was created, flooding a substantial part of the Amazonian forest
and forcing the movement of the tribes Waimiri and Atroari from
their ancestral territories. Humans lost in the immensity of the
horizon and enduring the inclemency of nature are an image of the
confrontation between human fate and an indifferent universe.
Charly Nijensohn was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1966.
He is a self-taught photographer and video artist. In order to capture
the tensions of the human existence in the universe, he has chosen
desolate and remote landscapes as a poetical mis-en-scene for his
images. In 1997, he won the Antorchas Foundation grant to produce
"An act of intensity" in the Atacama Desert and a fellowship
in the Banff Center for the Arts, in Canada (2001), to work with
material he recorded in the South Pole. He received the Konex Platinum
Award (2002). In 2002 he moved to Berlin and represented Argentina
at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. In 2006, Nijensohn traveled
to the North Pole, invited by the Uppernavik Museum, to film "Beyond
the end - The polar project" in Greenland and then to Bolivia
to film "The Wreck of Men" in the Salar the Uyuni in 2008.
Nijensohn has participated in a number of exhibitions and art biennials,
including Singapore Biennale (2008), Triennale of Contemporary Art,
Prague (2008), Bienal del Fin del Mundo (2007), Bienal do Mercosul
(2001), Bienal de Valencia, Spain (2001), among others. Nijensohn
lives and works in Berlin.
Michael Takeo MAGRUDER: Data_plex (economy)
Net art, Multimedia Installation
United Kingdom | 2009
The Data_plex series of artworks utilise live data feeds from real-life
scenarios to generate three-dimensional geometry and textures in
real-time, creating virtual realms that refract ever-changing, volatile
forces in and upon the real world.
Data_plex (economy) reflects upon the unpredictability of the global
market and the capitalist institutions of which it is comprised.
The artwork is generated from a single live market feed of the most-cited
international stock market index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average
(DJI), compiled from the share prices of thirty of the largest and
most widely held public companies in the USA. A Java and VRML (Virtual
Reality Modelling Language) framework translates this stream of
fluctuating information into a metaphorical cityscape based on modernist
aesthetics of skyscrapers and urban grids. Ghosted structures of
the recent past shift alongside manifestations of historical highs
and lows - the fortunes of the market expressed in forms and colours.
The virtual world elements ebb and flow with erratic pace as vast
volumes of capital are shifted during the trading day, while after
hours, the realm sleeps in anticipation of the opening bell.
Michael Takeo Magruder was born in 1974 in the USA. He studied
biology at the University of Virginia. He now lives and works in
London. He works in the domain of new media and technological media.
He is also a researcher at King's College, London, in the new department
of technologies and visualization, where he works on movement capture,
immersive spaces and virtual environments. His artistic work has
already been shown in more than 175 exhibitions, in 30 countries,
including the Courtauld Institute of Art, in London, the EAST International
2005 at the centre Georges Pompidou, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum
of Photography and the Trans-Media-Akademie Hellerau. His work is
also shown in international new media festivals, such as Cybersonica,
CYNETart, FILE, Filmwinter, SeNef, Siggraph at Split, or VAD and
WRO in Poland. He has been supported by the Esmée Fairbairn
Foundation, the Arts Council England, the National Endowment for
the Arts, USA, and by many public museums in the UK and abroad.
He is also known for the creation of online pieces, projects ordered
by portals dedicated to net art such as Turbulence.org and Soundtoys.net.
He currently works on simultaneous use and the analysis of new technologies,
as a means of exploring formal structures and conceptual paradigms
in numeric fields. He is seeking to create works of art in which
there are no more divisions between technologies, aesthetics, and
concepts.
Erik MOSKOWITZ, Amanda TRAGER: Cloud Cuckoo Land
Video | 0:16:27
USA | 2008
Cloud Cuckoo Land is collaboration between Erik Moskowitz and Amanda
Trager. The title of the piece, Cloud Cuckoo Land is taken from
the Aristophanes' play The Birds. In the 4th Century BC, the notion
of utopia was already in play-and put into doubt. The narrative
encompasses a family's move to a contemporary commune. The central
character, Bianca, after years of fantasizing about the ideal way
to raise her child and with fixed, romantic notions of the "best"
way to live, is confronted by her own intolerance and inability
to integrate with the community. The video's narrative exploits
conventional cinematic devices (shot/reverse shot, music cues) and
is meant for exhibition in gallery and museum space as well as in
cinematic space. The video critiques assumptions too easily relied
upon when determining the difference between public and private
space. The prescribed boundary between art space and cinema space
functions as a model of the larger issue whereby artificial and
arbitrary boundaries are used to define conventions of personal
and societal comfort and safety.
Erik Moskowitz uses the relationship between cinema space and
gallery space as a point of departure for installation and film.
Amanda Trager fuses painting, sculpture, and installation with first-person
prose narrative. The artists' involvement with fractured narrative
or anti-narrative is of long-standing in their independent practices.
For Moskowitz it dates back to childhood, when Spalding Gray invited
him to perform in the Wooster Group's Sakonnet Point. His work with
Spalding continued for the next eight years; his relationship with
Joan Jonas dates from this period. More recently, Moskowitz has
been known for music/video installations based on excerpts from
literary sources. Erik Moskowitz exhibitions: Momenta Art, NYC (2008)
; Freight and Volume, NYC (2006) ; Holiday, NYC (2005) ; Le Sous
Salon, Paris (2005) ; "Exposition 5-31 Janvier 2009",
Ecole Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Cherbourg, France (2009)
; "Melodrama", Sara Meltzer Gallery, NYC (2008); Impakt,
Netherlands (2007) ; Antimatter, Canada (2007 and 2006). Amanda
Trager exhibitions: Momenta Art, NYC (2008 and 2001) ; Le Sous Salon,
Paris (2005) ; Clifford-Smith Gallery, Boston (1998) ; Annika Sundvik
Gallery, NYC (1996) ; "Exposition 5-31 Janvier 2009",
Ecole Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Cherbourg, France (2009)
; Tina B.-The Prague Contemporary Art Festival (2008) ; Brooklyn
Museum's "Open House" (2004) ; NextNext Visual Art program,
Brooklyn Academy of Music (2004); White Box Gallery, NYC (1998);
Feature Gallery, NYC (1996).
Josh MÜLLER: La construction du ciel
Video installation | 0:05:40
Germany | 2001
La Construction du ciel presented in the exhibition-can be interpreted
as a series of fixed images. Although there are a few very slow
camera pans, the main impression is created by the calm, static,
individual takes. We see a few airplanes on the runway of an airport,
they stand silently engulfed in the fog. The airport terminal also
disappears in the fog. Now and then the grayness clears and we recognize
a bit of the surroundings such as a stubble field. The camera captures
the tower and the planes from different perspectives. On the soundtrack,
however, much is happening: an electronically produced sound throws
a deep drone onto the images; it could be interpreted as an abstract
motor hum, changing minimally with the different camera shots. This
sound complements what is shown to the extent that it su gests that
there, where the images present uniformity and passivity, there
are certain, gradual differences in perception (and in their intensity)
as well as in the messages they transport. This method of production
shows a structural similarity to the fixed images of the U.S. filmmaker
James Benning. There, an excerpt of the world is shown in which
hardly anything happens, or at least there is no recognizable staged
action. Often depicted are nature scenes that are filmed for several
minutes from the same position. The static camera shot, however,
soon turns the viewer's attention away from what is actually shown
and toward a formally reflexive surface where the actual theme of
the film becomes the detection of an artistic method and its subliminal
signals. Patricia Grzonka (2005). Patricia Grzonka
Born in 1973 in Germany, Josh Müller lives and works in
Vienna. He studied at the University of applied Arts in Vienna and
at the Univeristy of applied Arts in London. His work has been shown
in many galleries and exhibitions: " this is what we did ",
Palais Lichtenstein, Feldkirch (2009) ; " multiplexed ",
Event Gallery, London (2008) ; " collection ", Photographic
Collection of the Museum of University of Alicante (2008) ; "
I will ", Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienne (2008) ; " A Matter
of Fact ", Nest &DCR, La Haie (2007) ; " grounded
", Event Gallery, Londres (2007) ; " extension turn ",
Austrian Embassy, Tokyo (2005) ; "Living and working in Vienna",
New York (2004) ; "Airplaines", FAD's Art Space, Tokyo
(2003) ; "cutting the edge", Kunstbuero, Arco Art Fair,
Madrid (2001).
Francis NARANJO: …agosto 2007…
Video | 0:18:00
Spain | 2008
"This video is the result of the collaboration between three
creative disciplines: image, Francis Naranjo; music, Jose Manuel
López López; poetry, Dionisio Cañas. "…agosto
2007…" is a beam of light, an encounter, of visual, acoustic
and poetic information. Three elements, image, music and word, are
combined in the virgin screen. The narrative resources of image,
music and poetry are synchronized by the aesthetic and existential
emotion. The three spaces, image, music and poetry, are interlaced
creating a spider web in which the glance, that "is waked up"
by the poetic word, catch the spectator in a mortal trap: the one
to see himself reflected in the video." Francis Naranjo
Francis Naranjo is a Spanish artist, born in 1961 in Santa Maria
de Guia, at the Canary Islands. He realize videos and video installations.
His work has been presented at the Arco of Madrid (Spain).
His work has been also shown at the AFA Gallery in Santiago (Chili)
; Institut Cervantès de Paris (France); Ecoteca in Pescara
(Italy); at the 108 Contemporary Art of Miami (USA); Vanguardia
Gallery in Bilbao (Spain); Casa de America in Madrid; the CAAC in
Sevilla (Spain); at the Centro Atlantico di Arte Moderno, Las Palmas
de Gran Canaria (Spain); at the Kunstverein Panitzsch of Leipzig
(Germany); at the Circulo de Bellas Artes of Madrid.
Benjamin NUEL: L'Hôtel
Game, Multimedia Installation
France | 2008
Built on the idea of the FPS, First Person Shooter, L'Hôtel
is a video game where all weapons have given space to a heavy absence
of hostility. As distant observer, the player discovers then the
protagonists of this playful video experience with unusual activities.
A terrorist plays the ukulele, farther away another one draws space
in the smoke of his cigarette. In a lounge with silent rustle from
a fireplace, behind a glass door three terrorists play cards. Music
accompanies constantly this strange stroll. Keeping his ironic gaze
and in coherence with his previous videos, Benjamin Nuel brings
us with Hotel into a fantastic situation: terrorist terrorized by
the boredom. The player attends impassible their conversations,
he discovers their non harmful movements, he easily reveals their
hidden strategies. Heroes deprived of all their means and waiting
for a non-existent conflict. Simply heroes: human beings all too
human! By ellipse, we discover at the heart of Hotel a utopian gameplay
where space forgets itself progressively and the time seems omitted
[]. Margherita Balzerani, curator and art critic […]. Margherita
Balzerani, curateur.
A graduate of the School of Fine Art of Strasbourg in 2005 with
honors, he works as a freelance artist, manages the distribution
of his video game The End of the World, and has produced for Cannes
a video installation for the festival "Cannes celebrates Gerard
Philipe". Laureate of the writing fellowship for the region
Rhone-Alpes, he wrote the film script for The End of the World,
which was produced by the le Fresnoy in 2006. As in other projects,
here we see a desire to construct an impossible world, slipping
between different notions of time. He has explored different genres
in a dozen self-produced films since 1999.
Hans OP DE BEECK: Celebration
Video installation | dv | 0:04:38
Belgium | 2008
In harsh desert surroundings, with rocks and cactuses in the background,
a wedding or some kind of celebration is taking place. It is blisteringly
hot. The camera is mounted on a tripod. The scene is a tableau vivant:
a living painting in which neither the view nor the picture frame
changes. The video offers the viewer a frontal view of a long, festively
laid table, with a line-up of seven waiters and two chefs in immaculate
white uniforms. Beside the table, to the right, two young waitresses
stand with trays of glasses and appetizers.
A gentle wind ruffles the clothing and the tablecloth. The waiters
and chefs are very different in terms of appearance and age, from
young to old, fat to slim. They are all poised motionless, staring
aimlessly in the direction of the viewer. In front of them, an over-the-top,
baroque still life of food is displayed on dishes, on stands and
under silver lids. Everything, from food to flowers, is beautifully
arranged. On the left, in the foreground, a portly, older man in
a suit is having a nap on a chair. The video has no pronounced narrative
line. The heat, the wilting food and the decoration already reveal
the vacuum that will be left behind after the feast, and so undermine
what should be a memorable moment. The staged scene of the feast
looks awkward and foolish in comparison with the impressive, timeless
landscape in the background. The surface image of chefs and waiters,
food, heat and landscape also contains the vacuum and the tragedy
of an uninspiring failure of a feast, showing how we celebrate our
own mortality with such rituals.
Born in Turnhout, Belgium, in 1969, Hans Op de Beeck lives and works
in Brussels.
Multidisciplinary visual artist, Hans Op de Beeck constructs and
stages characters, situations in fictitious contemporary and urban
places which seem extremely familiar to the spectator. It includes,
at the same time, convenient solitude places auspicious for reflecting,
and black spaces, crowded with people, populated by vague characters
who tell us something about the way we live nowadays. The work of
Hans Op de Beeck has been shown in numerous galleries and festivals:
" Extensions (part 2) ", Gallery Krinzinger, Shanghai
( 2008 ); " Rent ( 6 ) ", Westergasfabriek ( Holland Festival),
Amsterdam ( 2008 ); "Extensions", Centraal Museum, Utrecht
and Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy ( 2007 ); "Drawings",
Gallery The Girls of the Calvary, Bets 2006); "in their minds",
Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, NY, USA (2005), etc.
Diego DEL POZO BARRIUSO: El topo y la anguila
Animation | dv
| 0:05:02
Spain | 2007
"El Topo y la anguila" is a piece about Exchange, affective
work and the relationship between Economy and Affection. It is the
story of two clandestine groups that have invented another economy
in a period of war. The individuals who belong to these two groups
choose a somewhat precarious existence within an economy of supposed
abundance. It is the story of two groups of anonymous people who
belong to different levels of production and class. They look for
subjective action through emancipation in the chain of exchange
of affections. The city, the river, the island and the people's
networks work symbolically in the movie and force one to think about
contemporary contradictions and problems.
Diego del Pozo Barriuso lives and works in Madrid. He studied
at the Faculty of Fine Art in Salamanca and Madrid, and at the Gerrit
Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Artist and cultural producer, he
develops projects about the social production of the body and identity.
His work is based on his concern about affection, love and desire
and the way in which these emotions, associated with subjective,
private experience are conditioned by our social environment, by
power and by production methods. His work is based on the idea that
social control mechanisms are interiorised by individuals, and he
shows how the cracks in these tools of power come into conflict
and create contradictions within us. Using different techniques
and media- drawing, installations, video…- he brings us face
to face with a reality in which our desires, which we assume to
be our own and private, are exposed as constructions that prompt
consumption or social control. He also works with the group C.A.S.I.T.A.
His work forms part, among other collections, of the collection
of the MUSAC of León, Spain, and of the collection of DA2,
the Centre of Contemporary Art of Salamanca, Spain.
Noëlle PUJOL, Ludovic BUREL: Rien n'a été
fait
Documentary | dv | 0:39:00
France | 2007
Mrs. and Mr. B. have been running the M. K. factory for 20 years.
From a hundred twenty employees down to two, the firm has been approaching
its end for many years. Their main activity "perruquer"
("to go canny"). With their son, they use a "working
time" in a roundabout way, they recycle their machines tools,
some materials and files for household, artistic and various other
purposes. "They hedge for pleasure to create free products,
to make through their "work" known a peculiar skill and
to reply with an expense in solidarity with the working-class and
households. (Ludovic Burel)
Noëlle Pujol was born in 1972 in Saint-Bosoms (France).
She is a graduate from Ecole Nationale Supérieure of the
Art schools of Paris and National Studio of Contemporary arts Le
Fresnoy, in Tourcoing. Her artistic work explores the fields of
the documentary cinema and video installation. Her films were shown
at the International Festival of Documentary Film of Marseilles,
at the International Festival of Film of Belfort, at the Filmmaker
Film Festival - Doc11 of Milan, at the International Festival of
Locarno. In 2008, two personal exhibitions of the artist took place
in the Gallery of the Triangle in Rennes and at the ERBA of Valence.
The work of Noëlle Pujol was shown in many group exhibitions
in particular "Variations" at the Gallery the Girls of
the Martyrdom of Paris in 2007 and at the World Fair of Aïchi,
French house in 2005. She is currently preparing her first full-length
film "They were once monmon".
RYBN: Antidatamining III : WWSE
Net-art, Multimedia Installation
France | 2009
Antidatamining is a series of visualizations of financial data extracted
from the web. Economy is represented by its main agents - companies,
groups and holdings, stock exchanges, banks and investment funds
- and their interactions: capital relationships, geographic deployments,
structuralization on market places. Beyond the current crisis, its
mediatic and politic levers, Antidatamining is a permanent monitoring
device, which aims to highlight the structure of the contemporary
economy, seen as a complex dynamic system.
RYbN is a multi-field artistic collective based in Paris (2000)
and specialized in realisation of installations, performances and
interfaces by refering as well to the codified systems of the artistic
representation (painting, architecture, counter-cultures) as to
the human and physic phenomena (geopolitics, socio-economy, sensory
perception, cognitive systems). Their axe of research : the construction
of a " semantics of the convergence ", via the coupling,
the diversion and the perversion of writing and formalization tools
connected to the technologies of communication, information and
sensory - webs, data flows, smell, surveillance, audiovisual, interaction,
real time.
www.rybn.org. Some exhibitions: Skopje, Macedonia; the Laboral (Gij?n);
the Elisava Design School (Barcelona); the Rencontres Internationales
Paris/Berlin/Madrid; Kiasma Theater (Helsinki); Village Sonique
(Parc de la Villette, Paris); ISEA06 (San José, USA); Transmediale
06 (Berlin).
Manuel SAIZ: Buffer
Video| hdv | 0:03:00
Spain | 2008
The term buffer is used in computer technology to define a space
of memory in which the information is stored in preparation for
process or transfer. The buffer receives the information in a disorganized
and abrupt manner and delivers it regularly in packets adequate
for further manipulation. The film Buffer describes the functioning
of an architectural device executing metaphorically the same function,
ordering human been as data through its physical displacement in
space. Its mechanism refers to daily life situations in which the
population of big cities interacts with public services. The sculpture
depicted shows the basic structure of these situations. Visitors
experiencing the work would feel a repetitive and mechanic excitement
close to alienation.
Manuel Saiz is a London based visual artist. Since the middle
eighties he has been showing sculptures, photographic prints and
videos in art galleries and museums worldwide. Since 1995 he works
mainly in video and video installations. His productions have been
shown in many art film and video festivals, as Impakt (Utrecht),
VideoLisboa (Lisbon), Videoex (Zurich), Int. Kurz Film Festival
(Hamburg), Transmediale (Berlin), etc. His video installations have
been shown in commercial galleries and public spaces worldwide.
Recent shows include Parallel Universes at Moriarty Gallery (Madrid),
Nominal Politics at T1+2 Space (London) and the group shows East
End Academy at Whitechapel (London) and Save the Day at Kunstbuero
(Vienna). Specialized Technicians Required: Being Luis Porcar received
the first prize in the main competition of the Internationale Kurzfilmtage
Winterthur. As a founder member of TheVideoArtFoundation in 2003
he directed 25hrs (www.25hrs.org), a screening showing a selection
of 300 international video art works that made up a complete panorama
of video art creation since 1990. Other recent projects include
videoDictionary and Art Summer University, Tate Modern, September
2007 ; " Parallel Universes " at the Moriarty's Gallery
of Madrid; " Nominal Politics " at the T1+2 Space of London
; and the group show " East End Academy " at the Whitechapel
of London or " Save the Day " at the Kunstbüro of
Vienna. Manuel Saiz is represented by Galeria Moriarty (Madrid)
and Montevideo (Amsterdam).
Avelino SALA: Arde lo que será (fuego camina conmigo)
Video | dv | 0:01:36
Spain | 2006
"Il y a un mach de football sans fin, la balle est en feu,
tout le monde joue avec tout le monde, le match est éternel."
Deleuze asserts that today's society is not afraid of emptiness,
of poverty or of shortage. It is only afraid of one thing, the flood
spilled on the earth: "This is the drama. We found something
that collapses and we do not know what it is. It does not answer
to any codes, but flees underneath them." In this sense, Avelino
Sala's latest project is connected to the presence of spectacularity
in today's well-being society. And for that it takes advantage of
an image that represents a nocturnal game where a group of people
play with a swollen ball. A symbol of the artist's participation,
not only in society, but also before it. A burning degree where
fire becomes a way of escaping from what is secondary and from limitation,
knowing it is a dangerous game because some rules on the artist's
activity must be followed
As it befits Avelino Sala's career, in his work in progress he connects
spaces of multiplicity, both for his work as producer and for the
consideration of a reflexion regarding the emptiness found at the
heart of our society. It is the conspiracy of time that requires
a body bordering on madness typical of capitalism. A projection
of the need to research day to day what the artist wants to do with
his life. This association of life and art belongs to glimpse game
and fire, it is the approximation of the figures that hit a flaring
ball, a metaphor of time and space becoming present, paradoxically,
by being consumed. What else points to that existing fire when smoke
is what is left? What does the game become?
Above all, as risk. Avelino Sala ventures to not consider fire as
entertainment or as chance. It is the detached flame of value associated
to the artistic object. His venture into sculpture deliberately
showed a body without organs, made a void. By installing his figures
in subliminal areas, he projected a wish. Digging deeper into the
drawing, he follows the chance of a halted instant. This flare in
the desire's power is his persistence as an artist. There where
the game feeds the aesthetic ability of a society where barely the
show remains
Avelino Sala Live and work in Gijon and Madrid. He studied at the
Brighton University in United Kingdom. He has founded and managed
the review Sublime, arte+cultura contemporáneo. He has also
founded the "Espacio de Arte independiente" Subliminal
Projects in Gijon and has collaborated to several reviews and organisations
for diffusion of contemporary art. Some Solo shows: Gallery MCO,
Porto, Portugal (2006); Gallery Raquel Ponce, Madrid (2006); Gallery
Vostell, Berlin (2005); Contemporary Art Space, Salamanca (2005);
Salón Internacional de fotografía, Gijón (2004);
Gallery Mario Sequeira, Braga (Portugal, 2003); Gallery Sicart,
Barcelona (2003), etc.
Alexander SCHELLOW: Still Lives
Animation | 0:03:36
Germany / United Kingdom | 2007
Alexander Schellow constructs a series of thirty images in three
seconds of a journey in the London Underground and reassembles them
into a film. Three seconds, which corresponds to the perception
of the present by the human mind, the smallest unit of memory, from
which the past and the future is defined. This film becomes the
reconstruction of this moment, condensed to the maximum.
Born 1974 in Germany Hannover, Alexander Schellow studied "visual
arts" at the Universität der Künste Berlin and the
Glasgow School of Art. Since 1999 several solo- and groupshows in
Europe, works for performance-theatre and lectures - recently Steirischer
Herbst, Graz (film-installation) / Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (solo-show)
/ Centre Pompidou, Paris (lecture with live-mapping) / 1. Biennale
Thessaloniki / Galerie Ute Parduhn, Düsseldorf (solo-show)
/ Kunstsammlungen Zwickau (show of nominated artists) / Storefront
for Art and Architecture, New York (screening of "spots").
Publications 2007 beside catalogues of the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
and the Kunstsammlungen Zwickau include his book-project "STORYBOARD"
(published by Merz/Solitude, Stuttgart) and the DVD "still
lives" by Filmarmalade (London) such as contributions to magazines
as DOMUS or LICHTUNGEN. Recent performance-theater-work 2007/2008
with David Weber-Krebs, Amsterdam, and Philipp Gehmacher, Vienna.
2006/07 Alexander Schellow was resident fellow of the Akademie Schloss
Solitude (Stuttgart) and is Pechstein-fellow 2007. He lives in Berlin
and teaches at the Metropolitan University in London.
Corinna SCHNITT: About a world / Von einer Welt
Video, 35mm | 0:09:34
Germany | 2007
In Von einer Welt ["About a World"], Corinna Schnitt's
latest work, the world is an idyllic Alpine landscape of forests
and meadows. A man is striding through it, alone, to stand in the
next scene on a meadow with a dozen nude women lying in high grass;
each is draped as they would be if drawn from life by a painter.
The man, whose uncertainty an loneliness are palpable, approaches
each woman individually, one after the other, caressing and making
erotic overtures, at times tenderly, at others more overtly. His
attempts at making contact remain futile, however, as they produce
no reaction at all. The women seem to have become part of nature,
as if "from another world". Again a long shot of the scenery
appears, this time with passages from Jurgen Habermas The Theory
of Communicative Action, which can be read on the lower edge of
the picture. The excerpts dealing with "communicative rationality"
shift the sensory/sensual image to an abstract plane while also
providing the work with its title. With minimalist staging devices,
the artist opens a discourse on the forms of aphasia between the
sexes, between body and intellect, between the emotional and the
rational, between nature and culture, between one world and another.
Corinna Schnitt, born in Duisburg, studied art and film at the
University of Visual Communications in Offenbach and at the Art-Academy
in Düsseldorf, Germany.
AXEL STOCKBURGER: Goldfarmer
Video on monitor | 0:13:00
Austria | 2008
The video Goldfarmer addresses contemporary economical and cultural
transformations by interviewing a so called goldfarmer, the player
of a popular online game who generates an income by playing. The
player has been rendered anonymous by digitally adding the avatar
he embodies in the game environment over his face. The phenomenon
of goldfarming, that has become a viable form of work, specifically
in Asian countries, is used as a model to engage with the transformation
of the border between work and play that seems to be characterized
by the current dominance of economical paradigms over all other
areas of life.
Axel Stockburger is an artist and theorist who lives and works
in London and Vienna. He studied at the University of Applied Arts
in Vienna with Peter Weibel and holds a PhD from the University
of the Arts, London. His films and installations are shown internationally.
Among other projects he has initiated the independent art television
channel TIV in Vienna in 1998 and collaborated on international
projects with the London based media art group D-Fuse (2000-2004).
At present he works as scientific staff member at the Department
for Visual Arts and Digital Media / Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
Günter STÖGER: Exoearth
Video installation | 0:31:51
Austria | 2007
Model-like structures based on the actual remains of an existing
military infrastructure located in the salt desert of Utah slowly
glide through the movie frame, appearing as if implanted upon the
flat plain of a simulated space. The horizontal plane divides the
frame into two equal spaces and operates as a link between slow
superimpositions. A continuous low stimulus provokes instability
of perception and a transformation of patterns into symbols transpires.
Günter Stöger, artist and filmmaker, born in 1970,
studied film and audio engineering; in recent years predominantly
dealing with the investigation of perception by dislocating both
the spectator and the object of observation to different scenarios
where common references are no longer obvious and elements that
support perception are often absent.
UBERMORGEN.COM: Black n White : P’retty Ugly
Net art, installation
Austria | 2009
"Our intention is to work exclusively with the idea of the
pixel and with the pixel as raw material, the pixel is our paint
or wood or stone - black-n-white animated 1x1 pixel sized pixels
with different time intervals, 1/100, 1/10, 1 and 10 seconds.
We use the html-coding language as our brush or our screwdriver
and the Browser as both Canvas and Gallery or Museum. We abstract
digital remakes from well known conceptual art objects from Judd,
Lewitt, Graham, Haacke, IRWIN, etc und use these as our visual set
of instructions. We strictly transform images of these objects into
digital web-objects, sometimes producing different variations within
the same framework."
Übermorgen is an artistic duo created in Vienna, Austria,
by Lizvlx and Hans Bernhard, a founder of e-toy. Behind Übermorgen
we can find one of the most unmatchable identities - controversial
and iconoclast - of the contemporary European techno-fine-art avant-garde.
Their open circuit of conceptual art, drawing, software art, pixel-
painting, computer installations, net.art, sculpture and digital
activism (media hacking) transforms their brand into a hybrid Gesamtkunstwerk.
Übermorgen's work is unique not because of what they do but
because how, when, where and why they do it. The computer and the
network are (ab)used to create art and combine its multiple forms.
The permanent amalgamation of fact and fiction points toward an
extremely expanded concept of one's working materials, that for
Übermorgen also include (international) rights, democracy and
global communication (input-feedback loops). "Ubermorgen"
is the German word both for "the day after tomorrow" or
"super-tomorrow". Übermorgen have received the Arco-Beep
price in 2008.
Lawrence WEINER: Turning Some Pages
Video | 0:05:00
USA | 2007
"Turning Some Pages" was produced in conjunction with
the printing of a limited edition journal of the same name by the
Howard Smith Paper Group, a British paper merchant. The action of
reading a book informs the structure of this motion drawing. Abstract
arrangements of shapes and images of dice are interspersed with
cryptic aphorisms ("With the addition of explicit meaning,
the implicit sense of the throw of the dice becomes clear");
arrows suggest the turning of a page. Weiner adds another layer
of complexity and enigma by repurposing his droll 1981 audio work
Where It Came From as a soundtrack. Accompanied by Roma Baran on
the piano, Weiner matter-of-factly explains: "Art is not a
metaphor upon the relationship of human beings to objects and objects
to objects in relation to human beings, but a representation of
an empirical existing fact".
A key figure in Conceptual Art, Lawrence Weiner has long pursued
inquiries into language and the art-making process. From his pioneering
installation works of the 1960s and `70s through his new digital
projects, Weiner posits a radical redefinition of the artist/viewer
relationship and the very nature of the artwork. Translating his
investigations into linguistic structures and visual systems across
varied formats and manifestations, Weiner has also produced books,
films, videos, performances and audio works. In his recent series
of digital works, Weiner stakes out new territory even as he extends
these investigations. Evoking analytic philosophy and linguistic
games, Weiner deploys animated drawings and epigrammatic text that
interact in a symbolic language. Ultimately, these visual and linguistic
systems take on provocative narrative meaning. Lawrence Weiner was
born in the Bronx, New York, in 1942. He has received numerous grants
and awards, including the Skowhegan Medal for Painting/Conceptual
Art; Wolfgang Hahn Prize, Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany; the John
Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and the National Endowment for the
Arts Fellowship, among many others. Weiner`s works have been widely
exhibited internationally. Recent solo exhibitions have been seen
at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture
Garden, Washington, D.C.; Institute of Contemporary Art, London;
Dia Center for the Arts, New York; Musée d`Art Contemporain,
Bordeaux; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Walker Art Center,
Minneapolis; Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Museum Ludwig, Cologne,
Germany. His work has been included in major group exhibitions internationally,
including Documenta in Kassel, Germany, and the Venice Biennial.
He lives and works in New York. |
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