Manifesta

Manifesta purposely strives to keep its distance from what are often seen as the dominant centres of artistic  production, instead seeking fresh and fertile terrain for the mapping of a new cultural topography. This includes innovations in curatorial  practices, exhibition models and education. Each Manifesta biennial aims to investigate and reflect on emerging developments in  contemporary art, set within a European context, touring around and staging in selected areas every year. Presenting local, national and international audiences with new aspects and  forms of artistic expression.

Inherent to Manifesta’s nomadic character is the desire to explore the psychological and geographical territory of Europe, referring both to  border-lines and concepts. This process aims to establish closer dialogue between particular cultural and artistic situations and the broader,  international fields of contemporary art, theory and politics in a changing society

On October 9, 2010, Manifesta 8, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art with its special focus on stimulating the dialogue with northern Africa, opened in the Region of Murcia in south-eastern Spain. Manifesta 8 showcases art from all disciplines featuring multi-media installation, film, performance, dance and music, and makes use of both traditional and unconventional art channels in co-operation with such media outlets as newspapers, radio, television and the Internet.

In the first week Manifesta 8 has counted the record number of more than 30.000 visits by local audience, artists, curators, art professionals from around the globe and over 500 international journalists (source: Regional Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Region of Murcia). 

Emerging from the experiences gained through former Manifesta Biennials, Manifesta 8 focuses on the concept of collective curating and has been developed by three curatorial teams coming from the most diverse areas of Europe including Scandinavia, the U.K., Central Europe and the Mediterranean as well as the Middle East and the U.S. The curatorial team of Manifesta 8 is composed of ACAF – Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (Bassam El Baroni, Jeremy Beaudry), CPS – Chamber of Public Secrets (Khaled Ramadan, Alfredo Cramerotti) and tranzit.org (Vít Havránek, Zbyněk Baladrán, Dóra Hegyi, Boris Ondreička, Georg Schöllhammer).

Manifesta Foundation places special focus on sustainability by building networks and creating goodwill in its host regions. “Manifesta 8 is not a social activists group, but many works in the biennial have been conceived in collaboration with unions, political parties, special interest groups, blind associations, the lottery, schools, and other educational services,” says Manifesta Director Hedwig Fijen. “By working with craftsmen, technicians and local professionals, Manifesta creates a greater know-how in the entire region, which remains longer after Manifesta has moved on.”

This is part of Manifesta’s spirit of collaboration, incorporating the use of otherwise discarded examples of local history, namely five previously abandoned buildings – Pavilions 1 and 2 at the former Artillery Barracks and the former Central Post Office in Murcia, the declassified San Anton Prison and the once popular El Parque Restaurant on the highest hill overlooking Cartagena. This is one of the sustainable effects of Manifesta in each of its successive editions. Manifesta leaves behind buildings which were under-utilized in the past, for future use for cultural and social events. 

I became very interested  in New Life Residency curatored by Khaled Ramadan and Alfredo Cramerotti from CPS ( Chamber of Public Secrets) for Manifesta 8, just completed recently. I contacted the curator and he kindly game me the details of the artists involved, so i contacted the five artists.

For one week each, five artists were selected to live and work in a dark, visually distorted exhibition space. To support them in their life and work for the week, the artist collaborated with the local Murician assistant who was blind. In cooperation with his/her assistant, the artist utilized the week long residency to create a guided tour of the non visual space and experience in which they were living. The guided tour took place on the last day of the residency and open to the biennial audiences. The blind assistant was the guide of the work in darkness.

Having contacted the artists involved in New Life Residency, I explained my interest, asking them about their experiences, influences, outcomes and what they felt they had achieved for the week long residency. I was very interested as top how they perceived their completely dark space for the first time, how they negotiated the darkness for one week, and how their work related to this space, experiences, reflections.

Helidon Gjergji

Dear Edel,

Hope all is well. Yes, it was an outstanding experience, although in such a short time (a week) I barely touched the surface of a world without sight. There is a great painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder: "The Parable of the Blind". Although the painting was done 5 centuries ago we tend to thing of blindness very much the same way. We use the term blind to talk about incapability of knowing. So, Cristina, my blind collaborator, did not show me what does it means to be blind, but she showed me around the city of Murcia -- she showed me the different cultures of her city, the different culinary traditions and so on. She was my guide, and by doing so, she killed the meaning of "The Parable of the Blind" in my head.

That said, although I attempted, it was impossible to fully comprehend how she was able to navigate the world with a whole set of different tools (senses) at her disposal. Trying to understand the use of those tools is equal to trying to understand a sophisticated discussion in a language you do not speak......

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'Waves' installation- Chelsea Art Museum

Gjergji was born in Albania and lived under communism growing up. There, TV was used for propaganda, an aesthetic blend of political and communist ideology. “So you have this propaganda art, it’s really beautiful but it was highly ideological and it has its goal,” Gjergji said. “Now we have the market aesthetic. It’s different but the relationship hasn’t changed, its form has.” Gjergji chose to change the tint of the screens with stained glass paint to emulate that progression of form.

'Ceci Est Un Miroir'- Painted TV-sets in a mirror environment.

His work deals with the illusion of boundaries and discrete identities. Having worked on the pervasiveness of ideology--both visible, permutated and invisible--in contemporary Western society and the post-Communist world.

Recently , He have been creating non-figurative paintings, by abstracting media images.  Creating environments in which the images of live television were reflected and refracted in a variety of ways to produce kaleidoscopic abstract paintings that are meant to dazzle the viewer with their colors while exposing the morphology of television programming. His abstract media 

and scapes are often accompanied by a cacophonous soundtrack of multiple live programs that reduce the media's message to a tower of Babel. In sum, his  media paintings tend to be ambitious, critical and yet refreshingly ironic: they espouse the transformative aims of modernism without the dogmas of its faith, subverting the ends of the media while staging our own entrapment, if not the exteriorization of our selves, in its enveloping world of simulacra. His  work both acknowledges and importantly gets beyond the modernism of a Nam June Paik and of a Marshall McCluhan to at once unveil and celebrate our reification in the heady aesthetic swirl of the mediascape.

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Matthias Neumann

'Dear edel -

Thanks for your interest, and I in turn would be interested to hear more about your research, in particularly in regards to how you apply this research to one particular urban environment. while I worked closely with my blind assistant, who was a student of psychology, throughout the project in Murcia, my primary concern was not to create something for "the visually impaired", i.e. to create work that predominately caters for the particular needs and capabilities of the visually impaired. But rather to heighten sensitivities and understanding of non-visual aspects of (architectural) space by excluding the visual. It's a fine but important difference.I have attached you a little text that talks more about the project and the process of the project that I wrote for publication in a Swedish magazine and that may or may not be helpful. One little detail in the process that you may find interesting: the first day of the residency when we measured up the space, my blind assistant also experienced the space for the first time - at the end of the day I had prepared a  scale "drawing" as a relief cut-out from card board of the plan of the existing space. Patricia my assistant was quite surprised about the proportions of the space - she had subjectively experienced the room much more elongated then it actually was. (also to be noted that it was the first time in her life for her that she was actually confronted with architectural plans - but she managed immediately to comprehend the spatial concept).'.............

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Neumann trained as architect in Germany, Italy and Canada, he  have been working in the interstice between art and architecture for the past 10 years. The guiding interest generating his work is the spatial implication of our senses, desires and means of expression. Within this context his work has been independently and collaboratively transgressing media while the focus on architecture as a three dimensional material environment has remained in the center of attention.

In 2002, He founded Normaldesign as an interdisciplinary platform based in New York City, which he has been leading as a professional design practice since 2004. His architectural work has been noted throughout, most prominently the entry to the World Trade Center Memorial in New York (2004) (as one of 8 finalists out of 5201 international entries) , and the winning competition entry for the Africa Centre, South Africa (2007). 

world trade center memorial, finalist entry- Neumann

World Trade Center Memorial, New York

Selected as one of eight finalist entries out of more then 5000 international submissions, The proposal for the memorial for the WTC in downtown Manhattan

 "creates a sloping meadow and renders the voids left by the two towers as a rectilinear yin and yang. The north tower becomes a shadowy, black granite block that rises from the bottom of the incline to street level; the south tower is an open box clad in white stone, which sinks from the sidewalk to the floor of the tub 30 feet below. [...] Campbell and Neumann are the only ones [of the 8 finalists, m.n.] to have adequately faced the problem of how to negotiate the passage from street grade to the depths or to have thought about how an office worker on a lunch break might experience the memorial park." (Justin Davidson, NewsDay, Nov. 20/2003)

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This is a very interesting site in relation to Manifesta 8, it gives a brief over view of some of the programs:

 http://www.manifesta8.com/medular/index.php?lang=en

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Another artist I have been interested in and have been in contact in with is American artist Clarinda Mac Low. 

''In TRYST we seek to point out the commodified structures of modern existence in a performance form that is simultaneously accessible and challenging. ting subtle alterations of everyday street life.'' 

TRYST was formed in 2003 by  Clarinda Mac Low, Paul Benney, and Alejandra Martorell. It  was set up as an artistic and social experiment, where interaction with the public became  its main focus. These interactions emerging as experiments releasing unexpected circumstances. 
Tryst Manifesto




SIGN LANGUAGE

TRYST collaborated with 14 children and 5 local shop-owners with the aim to create dramatic temporary shop signs for the hair salons that were tucked in a quietly historical nook of the city of Chicago, the signs would bring life and color and bring a new perspective to the oldest street in Chinatown. Using the children's original photos, each sign a secret map of the street that highlights the architectural details of that particular street that the children found of interest. The sign was  arranged in bold designs and after professionally printed and weather-proofed.

I like this project, a good collaboration between the local shopkeeper and the local children and the fact that the sign got a permanent home  to this ice cream shop lays proof that this collaboration must in some be form a success. But one must question if the shopkeeper/owner had collaborated with the children from the word go would the outcome be different?

Outline of Project ( from Youtube )

The final piece gets a permanent home

SECURITY ZONE

Security zone is another project of interest, two parties Tryst and System of Units came together in a park, they spent a weeklong creavive process on site in Manhattan. followed by one day profermence events. The two groups worked off each other, the environment and the familiars of the chosen location, becoming a group of mysterious workers in orange jumpsuits engaged in serious work/play.  As they "worked" they shook up perceptions of labor and public space, what we would expect from our daily interactions, passerbys, viewers  and our attitudes towards leisure and work. Intertwined with this was the constant question of security--what it means to be safe, or protected, and what we will do to get there.

Clarinda Mac Low involved in the two projects above was one of the artists in residence in Manifesta 8. Her work usually deals in the ephemeral and I was interested in how we allow suspicion, indifference and, of course, the sheer overwhelming number of possible interactions to narrow our focus and cut off our possibilities. With such technologies such as mobile  phones  and  on line social spaces, we are becoming programmed while breaking barriers and making chance encounters and in- person interactions less likely. I was interested to find out Clarinda's motivation behind her residency and the outcomes while working in collaboration with a blind person. 

What are your feelings towards space, society and your future work?

''One of the first things Maria Jésus brought to me was the observation that blindness was more disabling than it might be because the world was set up for the seeing.  I’ve often thought about this in relation to sight, in particular.  If you are unimpaired otherwise, but cannot see, social space is often unnecessarily cluttered with objects or devoid of tactile clues.  Recently many cities throughout the world have taken steps to remedy this, with textured sidewalk surfaces and other innovations, and this has made a big difference in many people’s lives.  I know that Maria Jésus’ navigation in the world was tremendously helped by any changed walking surface, and impeded by loud cacophonous noise.  Echolocation is a strong tool for blind people, and this is often difficult in the chaos of sound that bombards us every day.''