Sunday, 18 July 2010

The Issue of 'Otherness' has Become a Cliché, But the Problem Still Exists

http://eipcp.net/policies/2015/alptekin/en

by Huseyin Alptekin

Tuesday, 6 July 2010

Post Colonial Discourse


In Post-Colonial Drama: theory, practice, politics, Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins write: "the term postcolonialism – according to a too-rigid etymology – is frequently misunderstood as a temporal concept, meaning the time after colonialism has ceased, or the time following the politically determined Independence Day on which a country breaks away from its governance by another state, Not a naïve teleological sequence which supersedes colonialism, postcolonialism is, rather, an engagement with and contestation of colonialism's discourses, power structures, and social hierarchies ... A theory of postcolonialism must, then, respond to more than the merely chronological construction of post-independence, and to more than just the discursive experience of imperialism."


Helen Gilbert, Joanne Tompkins, Post-Colonial Drama: theory, practice, politics, Routledge 1996

Monday, 5 July 2010

Political manifesto as curatorial project

It makes me say "Oh I wish I was in London in the year 2007/ I was 2 years late" But we can always follow up what had happened.

Should curators get involved in politics? Curators and artists look back, with reference to the ICA's political curating history.
A talk held at the ICA on Tuesday 27 November 2007.
From the post-WWII era to Vietnam and 'the war on terror', curators have used the political issues of the day to create relevant and provocative exhibitions. The ICA has often been at the forefront of this practice, playing host to the politically controversial Unknown Political Prisoner exhibition in 1953, offering solidarity in the early 60s to LA artists protesting against Vietnam, and most recently inviting artists' proposals for a Memorial to the Iraq War (2007). In a time which is often described as apathetic, but which has also seen some of the biggest anti-war demonstrations ever, should contemporary politics be the domain of the curator?
Speakers:
Liam Gillick, artist, and contributor to Memorial to the Iraq War;
Sophie Hope, co-founder B+B, co-curator, Real Estate for London in Six Easy Steps, ICA (2005);
Will Bradley, co-curator, Forms of Resistance: Artists and the desire for social change from 1871 to the present, Van Abbemuseum;
Marysia Lewandowska, Polish-born, London-based artist who has collaborated with Neil Cummings since 1995, and whose recent Enthusiasm project explored, through amateur films made by Polish factory workers under socialism, the potential of working outside 'official' culture.
Chaired by Andrew Brighton, writer, contributing editor to Critical Quarterly and painter, with an introduction on the history of the ICA's involvement in political projects by Ben Cranfield.
Please note: this is a recording of a live event. Sound levels and quality may vary, and the recording does not include audience discussion that took place at the end of the event.
60 Years of Curating is developed in association with Ben Cranfield and the London Consortium. Ben Cranfield is a collaborative doctoral award student at the ICA and London Consortium, currently working on an intellectual history of the arts in postwar Britain.

Saturday, 3 July 2010

Magicians Of Earth



PARIS, May 19— ''Magicians of the Earth,'' which opened Thursday at the Pompidou Center and La Villette, brings together contemporary art from all over the world, juxtaposing artists from New Guinea and Italy, Australia and England, Tibet and the United States. Every culture and countless artistic approaches have been appropriated in a spectacular post-Modern bazaar in which everything seems equally valid and available.

NYtimes,1989 http://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/20/arts/review-art-juxtaposing-the-new-from-all-over.html


The monster show presented in Paris during the summer under the title Magiciens de la Terre (Magicians of the Earth) will be remembered as the first-ever attempt at a planetary exhibition of contemporary art. Four years in the making, the show assembled works of one hundred artists from some forty countries--mostly countries and regions that have been largely overlooked by the mainline art establishment. It filled the entire top floor of the Pompidou Center as well as the whole of the six-plus acre converted cattle shed of La Grande Halle de la Villette. In many ways, Magiciens was more like a worldwide biennale of a new kind rather than a conventional exhibition.

http://www.worldandi.com/specialreport/1989/september/Sa16748.htm

Thursday, 1 July 2010

A Bigger Picture: why contemporary art curators need to get out more

Barrie attempts to see and show the bigger picture..

Text of Arthur Batchelor Lecture delivered by David Barrie at the University of East Anglia on 6 May 2010

http://cdobarrie.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/a-bigger-picture-why-contemporary-art-curators-need-to-get-out-more/