UNIDEE - University of Ideas
UNIDEE NOTEBOOKS 2017 | n. 8
Trauma & Revival: Contemporary Encounters.
A project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the EU
module mentored by Aria Spinelli with Alexei Penzin, Anna Zafesova, Viktor Misiano, JesĂşs Carrillo Castillo, Kuba Szreder, iLiana Fokianaki, Emanuele Riccomi
Cittadellarte Edizioni, 2018 ISBN: 978-88-98698-09-7 This booklet is part of the series of publications “UNIDEE NOTEBOOKS�. It has been realised by gathering ideas, images, impressions, thoughts and discussions from mentors, guests and participants during the modules. Curated and designed by Annalisa Zegna Under the supervision of Cecilia Guida Translations: Elena Pasquali
Cover image: The participants during the module at Cittadellarte. Credits: UNIDEE.
UNIDEE - University of Ideas 2017 Weekly residential module n.8
UNIDEE NOTEBOOKS 2017 | n. 8
Trauma & Revival: Contemporary Encounters.
A project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the EU mentor: Aria Spinelli guests: Alexei Penzin Anna Zafesova Viktor Misiano Jesús Carrillo Castillo Kuba Szreder iLiana Fokianaki Emanuele Riccomi participants: Željka Blakšić Eduardo Cassina Viktorija Eksta Krzysztof Gutfrański Suzannah Henty Olga Lukyanova Leonardo Mastromauro Kosmas Nikolaou Matt Rosen Vitalij Strigunkov 11 September / 30 September, 2017 Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella
MODULE OUTLINE
Developed under the framework of “Trauma & Revival. Cultural relations between Eastern and Western Europe”, this residential three-week module is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union (2015-2018). Coordinated by kim? Contemporary Art Centre and Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto, in cooperation with BOZAR, the residencies in Rīga (Latvia) and Biella (Italy) propose workshops, lectures, master-classes, discussions, encounters, debates, and open studio events gathering emerging artists and researchers from Eastern and Western Europe, including Russia. Thanks to its content, themes, and showcased artists, the travelling exhibition “Facing the Future: Art in Europe 1945-1968” (curated by Peter Weibel and Eckhart Gillen) serves as a point of departure for all residency participants, because of its historical and inspiring perspective on the above mentioned issues. A range of interdisciplinary tutors and presenters follow, support and contribute to the creation or learning process of the participants during their residencies. This initiative wishes to showcase and reflect on the East-West cultural connections since the Second World War by bringing together artworks and artists from both the former Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe, from the past and present. The project echoes the context in which Europe currently stands, and it will specifically reflect on artistic movements and cultural exchanges between the West and the East, since the Cold War until today. From an art-historical point of view, this project aims at problematizing the accepted canon of modern art enhanced by Western European museums, many of which, up till
now, continue to fade out the artistic creation, discoveries and history of Eastern European art. By giving young artists and policy-makers the chance to rethink existing East-West cultural relations and synergies, in particular with Russia, this project is an opportunity to engage with a largely unknown historic journey into Europe’s recent artistic past. Considering the time lapse of the 1945-1968, the residency at Cittadellarte - Pistoletto Foundation proceeds by focusing on how artistic and curatorial practices performatively participate in social and political processes through the frameworks of desire / utopia / alternative, rupture / revolution, mediation / language. The notion of performative is here inspired by American philosopher Judith Butler, who identifies the concept of performativity as a constructive process of identity activated through embodiment. This residency looks at several areas of research, in which invited experts guide critical discussions by relating their contributions to modalities in which art performatively participates in social and political processes. Through our public program, and together with the participants we analyse philosophical, social and political contexts of the aesthetics during the Post-WWII period. We focus on how arts and culture played an important role in large processes of social transformation in Europe and Russia. We finally analyse curatorship and sociological interpretations of art. In all three areas of research presented by our lecturers, the participants have the chance to engage with research and proposes ideas that are at the bases of the final presentation at the end of the residency.
TOPICS/ TAGS Trauma, East-West cultural connections, Revolution, Mediation, Cold War, Consumption, Desire, Political history, Art movements, Cultural diplomacy.
SCHEDULE
___________________________________ WEEK 1 GROUNDING THE RESEARCH SEPTEMBER 11TH 10.00 Guided tour to Cittadellarte (Curated by Elena Rosina), including the Pistoletto, Arte Povera collections and temporary exhibitions. Introduction to the Theorem of Trinamics, the symbol of the Third Paradise and the concept of Demopraxy. 13.00 Lunch 15.00 Introduction to the residency schedule 15.30 Presentation of UNIDEE by Cecilia Guida, Annalisa Zegna and Clara Tosetti 16.00 Q&A 17.00 Brief group introduction 17.45 Lecture by Aria Spinelli: “The Performativity of Art” SEPTEMBER 12TH 11.00 The Performativity of Art - Group Readings - J. Butler 12.00 Collective Discussions 13.00 Lunch 15.00 Lecture by Aria Spinelli: “The Performativity of Art – I. Cultural Relations Post-WWII in Iran: the Iranian cultural scene in the sixties through the eyes of Forough Farrokhzad” 16.15 Q&A 17.00 Presentation Session I SEPTEMBER 13TH 11.00 Lecture by Alexei Penzin: “The ‘Crisis of Ugliness’: Post-WWII Critique of Western Modernism in Soviet
Marxism and Aesthetics (Mikhail Lifshitz and Evald Ilyenkov)” 12.00 Q&A 13.00 Lunch 15.00 Lecture by Anna Zafesova: “Russian approaches to the West between 1945 and 1968”. 16.00 Q&A 17.00 Presentation Session II SEPTEMBER 14TH 11.00 Workshop with Alexei Penzin / Anna Zafesova – Session I 13.00 Lunch 15.00 Workshop with Alexei Penzin / Anna Zafesova – Session II 17.00 Presentation Session III SEPTEMBER 15TH 9.30 Tutorial Sessions I. Brainstorming about proposals 13.00 Lunch 15.00 Studio Time
___________________________________
15.00 Masterclass with Viktor Misiano – Session II 17.00 Studio Time SEPTEMBER 19TH 11.00 Lecture by Aria Spinelli: “The Performativity of Art – II. Cultural Relations Post-WWII in Cuba: Artistic perspectives on Culture and Politics after the Cuban revolution” 12.00 Q&A 13.00 Lunch 15.00 Studio Time SEPTEMBER 20TH 10.00 Tutorial Sessions II - Projects 13.00 Lunch 15.00 Studio Time 17.00 Participants Lectures 18.00 Q&A SEPTEMBER 21ST 11.00 Studio Time 13.00 Lunch 15.00 Studio Time 17.00 Participant Lecture 18.00 Q&A
WEEK 2
SEPTEMBER 22ND
ARTISTIC PRACTICES IN EXPANDED TERRITORIES
11.00 Masterclass – Session I Lecture by Jesús Carrillo Castillo: “Amnesia, disagreements and the power of memory in contemporary Spain (1975-2017)”. 12.00 Q&A 13.00 Lunch 15.00 Masterclass – Session II: workshop with Jesús Carrillo Castillo 17.00 Studio Time
SEPTEMBER 18TH 11.00 Masterclass with Viktor Misiano – Session I. Lecture by Viktor Misiano: “INTERPOL: Network versus Autonomy, Scandal versus Event” 12.00 Q&A 13.00 Lunch
___________________________________ WEEK 3 OPEN LAB SEPTEMBER 25TH 9.30 Tutorials Session III: final presentation – part 1 13.00 Lunch 15.00 Tutorials Session III: final presentation – part 2 17.00 Mapping the research SEPTEMBER 26TH 11.00 Studio Time 13.00 Lunch 15.00 Studio Time 17.00 Mapping the research SEPTEMBER 27TH 11.00 Preparation for the OPEN LAB 13.00 Lunch 15.00 Preparation for the OPEN LAB SEPTEMBER 28TH 11.00 OPEN LAB presentation. Session I. Lecture by Kuba Szreder: “The Art Worlds of Real Socialism” 11.45 Q&A 12.00 OPEN LAB presentation. Session II. Lecture by iLiana Fokianaki: “Curating Citizenship” 12.45 Q&A 13.00 Lunch 17.00 Studio Visits OPEN LAB SEPTEMBER 29TH 11.00 Preparation for the OPEN LAB 13.00 Lunch
16.00 OPEN LAB vernissage 19.00 Drinks and party SEPTEMBER 30TH Departures
REFERENCES
The mentor prepared a reader for participants with key texts, some of which were discussed during the week. The reader includes pieces by authors, artists, curators and intellectuals. Selected texts for the lectures titled “The performativity of art” by Aria Spinelli: - Excerpts from: Tom McDonough (Ed.), Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents (October Books), The MIT Press, February 2004. - Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”, Theatre Journal, Vol. 40, N. 4, 1988, pp. 519-531. - Judith Butler, “Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Streets”, transversal - eipcp multilingual webjournal, September 2011. - Excerpts from: Judith Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, Harvard University Press, 2015. - Janelle G. Reinelt, “The Politics of Discourse: Performativity meets Theatricality”, SubStance, Issue 98/99, Vol. 31, N. 2-3), 2002, pp. 201-215. - Anja Kanngieser, “Breaking Out of the Specialist ‘Ghetto’: Performative Encounters as Participatory Praxis in Radical Politics”, Thamyris/Intersecting, N. 21, 2010, 115–136.
- Maurya Wickstrom, “The Infinitude of Thought in Precarious Form”, Performance Research, Issue 2, Vol. 19, June 2014, pp. 4-13 - Jasmin Darznik, Forough Goes West: The Legacy of Forough Farrokhzad in Iranian Diasporic Art and Literature, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies Vol. 6, No. 1 (Winter 2010), pp. 103-116. - Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, “The social value of culture: learning from revolutionary Cuba”, International Journal of Cultural Policy, Vol. 20, March 2014, pp.155-169.
Participants’ presentation and brief group introduction.
Introduction to the module. Lecture by Aria Spinelli: “The Performativity of Art” How do artistic and curatorial practices performatively participate in social and political processes through the frameworks of desire / utopia / alternative, rupture / revolution, mediation / language? We focused on the notion of performative inspired by American philosopher Judith Butler: performativity as a constructive process of identity activated through embodiment. Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”, Theatre Journal, Vol. 40, N. 4, 1988, pp. 519-531.
Judith Butler, “Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Streets�, transversal - eipcp multilingual webjournal, September 2011.
Lecture and workshop with the guests of the first week: Alexei Penzin and Anna Zafesova.
Ewald Ilyenkov, The Concept of Ideal, Progress Publishers, 1977.
Short film by David Riff and Dmitry Gutov about Lifshitz and the 1960s.
Notes from Leonardo, one of the participants.
Lecture and masterclass with the guest of the second week: Viktor Misiano.
Lecture and masterclass with the guest of the second week: JesĂşs Carrillo Castillo.
Lecture with the guest of the third week: Kuba Szreder. * POSTARTISTIC EPOCH “Perhaps, even today, we do not deal with art. We might have overlooked the moment when it transformed itself into something else, something which we cannot yet name. It is certain, however, that what we deal with offers greater possibilities.” (JERZY LUDWIŃSKI, 1971) * THE ART MARKET CAN COMMODIFY EVERYTHING “Clearly, whatever minor revolutions in communication have been achieved by the process of dematerializing the object (easily mailed work, catalogues and magazine pieces, primarily art that can be shown inexpensively and unobtrusively in infinite locations at one time), art and artist in a capitalist society remain luxuries.” (LUCY LIPPARD, SIX YEARS, 1973) * DO WE LIVE IN ONLY ONE ART WORLD? OR ARE THERE MAYBE MANY ART WORLDS?
“(...) it is in fact artistic imagination, not art object, which once freed from the self-destructive narcissist ego, can enter this life and offer it not only salvation but put it on path to a better future.” (RASHEED ARAEEN, ART BEYOND ART, 1982)
Lecture and masterclass with the guest of the third week: iLiana Fokianaki.
> PRECARITY _ “after precarity” condition > PERIPHERY > performing cultural reparation through collaborative practices > de-colonization and de-modernization > “modern ghosts” (Greece, Italy...) **************************************************************** State of Concept, non-profit art space in Athens. “Future Climates - The School of Redistribution”, a three-month long exhibition, research and public programme. Future Climates is a platform founded by Antonia Alampi and iLiana Fokianaki with the objective to shape the forecast of institutional climates by addressing the precarious conditions of individual workers and small-scale organizations of contemporary culture.
Aria Spinelli proposed two non-European case studies in which the role of the woman was innovative and revolutionary within the specific local, cultural and historical processes. The following insights refer to the Iranian and the Cuban cultural scenes of the Post-WWII period.
Lecture by Aria Spinelli: “The Performativity of Art – I. Cultural Relations Post-WWII in Iran: the Iranian cultural scene in the sixties through the eyes of Forough Farrokhzad” with a Skype call with Italo Spinelli, film director, actor and writer. We analysed the relation between East and West through the Iranian cinema of the Post-WWII period, with some examples of modernity and freedom of expression. Specifically, we focused on the Iranian poet and film director Forough Farrokhzad, well known for her strong visual imagery combined with poetry. She faced the concept of ugliness to speak about love and affects, and she renewed the image of the woman within the Iranian society.
___________________________________
The House is Black (1963) is an Iranian documentary short film directed by Forough Farrokhzad. The film is a look at life and suffering in a leper colony and focuses on the human condition and the beauty of creation. It features footage from the Bababaghi Hospice leper colony. It was the only film she directed before her death in 1967, and during the shooting, she became attached to a child of two lepers, whom she later adopted.
Lecture by Aria Spinelli: “The Performativity of Art – II. Cultural Relations Post-WWII in Cuba: Culture and politics through an artistic perspective” Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, “Her Revolution, Her Life”, Monthly Review, Vol. 68, Iss. 7, 2016.
Haydée Santamaría (1922-1980) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who became one of the most prominent women in Cuba under the government of Fidel Castro. Haydée and her brother Abel fought beside Castro during the abortive 1953 coup that provided the name for his 26th of July Movement. Sentenced to seven months in prison for her role in the attacks, Haydée was later charged with deciphering and disseminating Fidel’s defence speech under the title ‘History Will Absolve Me’.
Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, “The social value of culture: learning from revolutionary Cuba�, International Journal of Cultural Policy, Vol. 20, Iss. 2, 2014.
Fernando Delgado, “The Rhetoric of Fidel Castro: Ideographs in the Service of Revolutionaries�, Howard Journal of Communication, Vol. 10, Iss. 1, 1999.
Mapping the research. Brainstorming with all the participants.
The guest Emanuele Riccomi wrote an article about the residency, published on the Italian OperaViva Magazine (6th December, 2017): www.operaviva.info/trauma-e-revival-dello-stato-nazione/
RESEARCH PROJECTS PRESENTED DURING THE OPEN LAB 29th SEPTEMBER 2017 AT CITTADELLARTE FONDAZIONE PISTOLETTO, BIELLA (ITALY)
ŽELJKA BLAKŠIĆ THE THIRD WAY “The Third Way” (working title) is a project that will integrate video, sound, photographs, text, objects, and reproductions of personal archival material. It originated from the artist’s research-intensive practice and her passion for collecting objects, texts and archival footage from Eastern Europe, more specifically Yugoslavia, the country she was born in that ceased to exist in the early 90s. The project is realized through two critical enquiries: the first examining archival material of START and the second looking into the contemporary spatial implications of architecture purchased under the Yugoslavian regime in the heart of the West. The starting point of this research is the 485th issue of START, a magazine published in the summer of 1985. START was one of the most popular liberal newspapers in the seventies and eighties throughout the territory of former Yugoslavia. It has a hybrid nature combining the characteristics of a newspaper that featured erotic elements with those of an intellectual magazine focused on progressive, emancipatory and critical analysis of current affairs that brings to light the various use of sexual discourse in the cultural and political context of socialism. The second element of this work is a video the artist will record at the Beeckman’s Mansion at 67th Street in NY, currently home to Serbia’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations.
EDUARDO CASSINA (METASITU) THE DEGROWTH INSTITUTE Master planning is, in itself, designed for catering to growing population numbers; but how do you strategize a territory whose population is declining? Far from considering population decline as a negative, The Degrowth Institute by METASITU proposes a paradigm shift: a transversal mobilization of civil society, government actors, urbanists and planners to come together to think how to plan for degrowth. What to preserve. What is to let go. How to do it. Here they present materials for three workshops to be executed in three different shrinking cities of the Donbass region (Eastern Ukraine), as triggers to a longer conversation to be had, foundations of a future platform dedicated to this research: My land, your land, our land proposes a cartography of love, memory and rituals in the city to be explored; Archaeology of the Future invites to reflect on the built and intangible heritage, the stories that are important in the now, and what is to be preserved; Future Telling is a customized tarot deck that structures the conversation on what the next steps to take are.
VIKA EKSTA FM (East and West) Vika Eksta’s research is focused on the Western gaze on the image of femininity and masculinity in Eastern and Central Europe. During the residency, she made three photobook prototypes with her own photographic collection taken between 2011 and 2017. The photographs presented in the photobook proposals revisit masculinity. She performed an exaggeratedly female identity to present the books, a character she constructed based on her own experience of images from the dating websites dedicated to women from Eastern Europe. The artist is planning on continuing researching, elaborating this character, and finishing the photobooks.
KRZYSZTOF GUTFRAŃSKY VITALIJ STRIGUNKOV NEWS FROM ELSEWHERE Perhaps anthem writing is a very pleasant way for planners of new countries to spend long winter evenings. (Carl von Clausewitz) Taking recent surge of nationalism, alt-right leanings and separatist yearnings as a point of departure, curator Krzysztof Gutfrański and artist Vitalij Strigunkov have joined their forces and combined research expertise on the impact of fictional state-building, from the ones grounded in recent digital war gaming between superpowers to those based on a search for new ways of sovereignty of micro-states and nations. Gutfrański and Strigunkov’s antiimperial anthem – AI-generated – was applied, via karaoke, to existing revolutionary and counterrevolutionary repertoire to “sonify” and “perform” what a different future might sound like, irrespective of the dreams of individuals and plans of superpowers. Altogether – with the display of photos, map and ephemera – played out with a fundamental and misleading implication that fiction is too often understood as an antonym to reality rather than being viewed as an example of a possible shape of things to come.
SUZANNAH HENTY BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER: LOOKING AT EAST AND WEST AS AN ARCHIPELAGO We cannot look to the past and examine events without first interrogating the implications that time has on today, or equally, the events that proceed a moment. The present exists co-dependently with the past and the future; an obsessive and compulsive need to examine, assess or redefine what happened to understand, to cope and to recover. Throughout this study of ‘Trauma and Revival,’ reading case studies from the ‘East’ and the ‘West’ can risk heavily depending on testimonies from territories that are directly implicated in the immediate narrative. These frontiers are important spaces for reading the traumatic experiences during the studied period (1945 – 1968) and beyond the post-Soviet decades into today. Yet, we have similarly referred to other territories, those of Iran and Cuba. Here, Suzannah Henty continues the expansion of examined territory to understand Australian presence in Palestine from an alternative perspective to understand ‘trauma’ in the neoliberal and settler colonial context. Taking the seemingly innocent form of a tree, she is interested in understanding the changing symbol of the Eucalyptus Camaldulensis. Zionists employed the tree as a colonial device to drain water and claim land under Ottoman law from 1873 onwards in Palestine. Here, she intends to trace the changing meaning of this tree, from its use and meaning for Indigenous Australians, to its connection to Australian settler population identity, its use by Zionists as a form of eco-warfare, its subsequent adoption by Israelis as a nation-defining tree and finally to the potential perceptions of this tree by Palestinians. Ultimately, this proposed study questions the meaning of a tree in two seemingly unconnected landscapes.
OLGA LUKYANOVA SOMETHING DOWN BENEATH There are wounds that will never heal without care. Left behind and abandoned, even in eternal frost, still, they stay present. And they grow, slowly corroding from the inside, in the either natural or social environment. The project juxtaposes processes of natural land erosion and toxicity of never addressed traumas, either personal or social. It looks at the Batagaika crater in the far NorthEast Siberia - the formation initially triggered by human activity and today rapidly developing with accelerating melting of permafrost - as a metaphor to such traumas, particularly ones of Soviet past. For that, it interlinks with another famous hole - the gloomy dystopian novel ‘The Foundation Pit’, written by Andrei Platonov, to critique Soviet, particularly Stalin’s domestic policies, to reveal allegorically traumatic experiences of individuals in the whirligig times of birth of new totalitarian regimes.
LEONARDO MASTROMAURO ALTAMURA/ PLOKŠČIAI: WHAT’S THE USE? In the framework of the Cold War, the artist’s research consisted in the analysis of the archaeology of military architecture in local contexts. Specifically, this research focused on two military bases, the USA base in Altamura (Italy) and a Soviet base in Plokščiai (Lithuania). The research’s aim is to understand and compare the contemporary uses of these two bases in their local contexts. In the first case, the local population developed a process of re-appropriation, converting the base into a cultivated site; in the second case the base became a Museum of the Cold War period. Thus in the case of Altamura, the base became part of everyday activities and was returned to the common sphere of local society as an architecture that can satisfy practical needs. In the case of Plokščiai, the base still is a private commemorative asset, where the only contact with the everyday life of local population is based on tourism. Starting from this understanding, the research questions philosophically and politically the «use of the common sphere» in our contemporary society.
KOSMAS NIKOLAOU JEANS TRAFFICKING from Kitchen Debate to Montana In 1952, in Moscow, the Soviet Union witnessed the symbols of the American culture for the first time, by visiting a so-called “American style” kitchen in a fair on American culture. The concept of a stand in a fair is the starting point for another episode of the so-called kitchen debate, a long-standing debate between the major players of the Cold War. The second point of departure is Montana, a denim brand that started in the ‘70s, manufactured in an uncertain location, banned in the Soviet regime right after gaining wide popularity. Style is not as innocent as it seems to be, and the design that creates style can be found in domesticity, everyday objects, clothes and services that are contouring the layout of everyday life, where identities, narratives and conflicts come to the fore. How can we understand the different territories, nations and narratives today? What is post- de- and meta-, looking to the West and the East, to the now, the past, the post, and the after? Through this project, the artist analyses how the style of objects generate political discourses and debates. In a capitalist world, where everything is branded and commercialized, previous political schemes and constructions, political powers and ideologies of identity and of nation-State seem defeated. Jeans trafficking is a proposal for a scenography of a fair stand, representing domestic everyday life in a post-Soviet, neoliberal world.
MATT ROSEN EXPLOITING THE ETHER Informed by a recently declassified trove of CIA documents, the testimonies of surviving radio amateurs from the era, as well as an unlikely chat show appearance from 1965, Exploiting the Ether examines the subculture of QSL cards, the sort of homemade business card with which Soviet and American radio amateurs would first initiate contact, and how they slowly and steadily transformed into their own form of outsider art, allowing enthusiasts to construct and curate imaginative versions of themselves and their national identities for global transmission. A student production of Shakespeare; Drew Barrymore’s first cousin; covert intelligence programmes; the acting teacher that made Jennifer Aniston famous; competitive mail art; and Donald Trump’s son-in-law — this documentary project navigates these disparate connections in order to recount the untold story of one man’s involvement in the world of amateur radio, and as such explore the tensions and aspirations of the Cold War.
On Revolution, Desire, Mediation. A short interview with Aria Spinelli.
1. In 2017, UNIDEE - University of Ideas programme has proposed an interdisciplinary approach to examine three macro-themes which are central to contemporary socialpolitical debates: Revolution, Desire, Mediation. UNIDEE’s director Cecilia Guida has invited you to present a three-week educational module on these key words, with a strong interaction between critical theory in the social sphere and participatory art practices. How does your curatorial practice relate to contemporary forms of protest in regards to the concept of revolution? Since the 2011 outburst of the Occupy Movements, artists have been more and more involved in politics and activism. These non-hierarchical, horizontal, temporary occupations of public spaces around the world fuelled a renewed discussion on forms of activist art. Former director of Creative Time Nato Thompson explains that artists and activists should reclaim the infrastructures and use institutions as ‘forms that need to be manipulated’ (Thompson, 2013). In his curatorial statement for the 2012 edition of the Berlin Biennial, artist and activist Arthur Żmijewski wrote ‘to open access to performative and effective politics that would equip us, ordinary citizens, with the tools of action and change. Art is one of these tools’ (Żmijewski, 2012). Following along these lines of thought, as a curator, I myself question how curatorial practice can intersect activism. In my projects, I am keen on focusing on enactments and embodiments through curatorial performativity. Through it, I question the political discourse and how it models artistic discursivities. By enacting these discursivities, I choose to collectively embody ideas, bringing artists to question themselves and their practice.
In his publication The Imaginary Institution of Society (1975), GreekFrench philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis claims that it is only through a process of self-awareness that individuals can begin to rethink society. In order to create an autonomous society, individuals should free themselves from social significations, which are imposed. Autonomy is therefore seen as a self-organised social endeavour (Castoriadis, 1989). In Castoriadis, the word revolution is rather paralleled to self-awareness, which I seek to revisit through my own curatorial performativity. With it, I reconsider autonomy and art as cultural forms of political resistance. 2. Thinking about desire, in the sense of movement towards someone or something that is missing, what is its role within the framework of your curatorial practice? If revolutions are built upon individual desires, how to assume what desire actually means or implicates? Žižek’s notion of jouissance in writings explains the dynamics of capitalism, and our complete complicity in its reproduction (1989). Keeping this in mind, I question the psychological dynamics and how they can be expressed. Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad, who killed herself at a young age (1935-1976), turned the desire of death into reality. In her poem Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season (1960), she anticipated her own death by writing ‘I am cold, I am cold, and it would appear that I will never be warm again... I am cold and I know, that nothing will be left of all the red dreams of one wild poppy, but a few drops of blood.’ This bares the question of whether desire is complicit
in the creation of an individual social reality. Within my own curatorial approach, I seek to create imaginary spaces where individual desires of the participants in my projects can become a temporary reality. 3. How did your practice as curator and mentor mediate and translate reality in the case of UNIDEE’s module? As curator of the “Trauma & Revival. Contemporary Encounters” module for UNIDEE’s 2017 programme, I proposed a three-week residency for ten international artists hosting six international experts on the concept of the performativity of art from 1945 to 1968. Being the module part of “Trauma & Revival. Cultural relations between Eastern and Western Europe”, a European cooperation project on cultural relations between Eastern and Western Europe (2015-2018), as a group we aimed at analysing the concepts of nation state, conflict and trauma from a contemporary perspective. I curated the selection of experts, choosing Alexei Penzin, reader at the University of Wolverhampton and member of the Russian art collective CHTO DELAT, who gave a lecture on Russian underground philosophical culture between the ‘50s and ‘60s. His lecture functioned as a counterpart to Italo-Russian journalist Anna Zavesofa’s contribution on the concepts of openness and closure in cultural diplomacy between East and West from 1945 to 1968. I chose to invite Viktor Misiano, who focused on the concept of conflict with curator and former head of public programmes at Reina Sofia in Madrid Jesus Carillo. They spoke of their experiences with shows such as Misiano’s Interpol (1996) and Carillo’s Desacuerdos (2005-2015).
Finally, the younger generations of curators, Polish Kuba Szreder and Greek iLiana Fokianaki addressed issues of radical opportunism in the neoliberal art world and the concept of citizenship in curatorial projects. My mediation was based on the fact that my selection of experts indicated a narrative around performativity and art, a western perspective on relations between the aesthetic and the sociopolitical. This functioned as a basis for the participating artists to choose their own conceptual constructions for their final project presentations at the Open Lab, which took place at the end of the residency. I closely followed the development of their work and we collectively discussed how each of their contributions fell into a unique critique of binary oppositions between est and west. My position as curator had, therefore, a double function: on the one hand, I defended and sustained my own critical position on notions of trauma, conflict and nation state, confirming the validity of my thesis around the performativity of art; on the other, I followed individual contributions to my own conceptual framework, discussing its validity and limits with the other participants. This brought to a common ground on which each artist and researcher individually proposed their own critical narrative within a common framework. My curatorship and mediation focused, therefore, on the creation of individual narratives within a collective aesthetic domain.
ARIA SPINELLI Aria Spinelli is an independent curator, a researcher and a co-founding member of Radical Intention, and a PhD candidate at the School of Arts of Loughborough University. She holds a BA (University la Sapienza, Rome, 2005), a MA (Naba, Milan, 2008) and is currently conducting a PhD at Loughborough University (UK). Her investigation is on the relations between art and activism with a focus on the work of Greek-French philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis, in particular on his concepts of the radical imaginary and the radical imagination. As co-member of the Politicized Practice Research Group of the School of Arts, she organised “Castoriadis Revisited: Questioning the radical imaginary in contemporary art and curatorial practice” (Loughborough University, 17th June 2015). She lectured at Loughborough University and contributed to conferences on art and activism (“Who is afraid of the Public?” at ICA, London, UK, 2013; “CADN” conference at OCAD, Toronto, Canada, 2014). She conducts workshops for artists and organises events on art and activism (“Curating as a form assembly”, 2015; “Elapsing Time in an Expanded Artwork”, Pistoletto Foundation in Biella, Italy, 2016; “Artistic Strategies & Workers Struggles”, MayDay Rooms in London, UK, 2015).
ALEXEI PENZIN
VIKTOR MISIANO
Dr. Alexei Penzin is Reader in Art at the University of Wolverhampton, Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow) and part of the Russian art group CHTO DELAT. He received his PhD from the Institute of Philosophy of Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. His research centres on contemporary interpretations of Marxist thought, continental philosophy and critical theory, contemporary art theory, and Soviet and post-Soviet intellectual and cultural history. Penzin has published his research in numerous journal articles in such journals as Rethinking Marxism, Mediations, South Atlantic Quarterly, Manifesta Journal, as well as in many edited collections. His essay “Rex Exsomnis” (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2012) was part of the dOCUMENTA13 series. Currently, he is preparing his book Against the Continuum: Sleep and Subjectivity in Capitalist Modernity for publication by Bloomsbury Academic in 2017. He has also presented papers and given lectures at many international conferences and academic and cultural venues, including Historical Materialism annual conferences, ‘Former West’ congresses, dOCUMENTA13 in Kassel, the Goethe Institute, the Serpentine Gallery, Yale University, and the University of Oxford.
Viktor Misiano, curator and writer, lives in Moscow and in Ceglie Messapica, Italy. He was a curator of contemporary art at the Pushkin National Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow (1980–90) and the director of the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Moscow (1992–97). In his freelance practice, Misiano was on the curatorial team for Manifesta 1, Rotterdam (1996) and curated the Russian section of the 3rd Istanbul Biennial (1992), the 46th and 50th Venice Biennale (1995, 2003), the 1st Valencia Bienal, Spain (2001), the 25th and 26th São Paulo Bienal (2002, 2004), the Central Asia Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale (2005), “Live Cinema/ The Return of the Image: Video from Central Asia”, Philadelphia Museum of Art (2007–08), and “Progressive Nostalgia: Art from the Former USSR”, Centro per l’arte contemporanea, Prato (2007, travelled to Athens; Tallinn, Estonia; and Helsinki). In 1993 he co-founded the Moscow Art Magazine and has been its editorin-chief ever since; and in 2003 he co-founded the Manifesta Journal: Journal of Contemporary Curatorship (Amsterdam-Ljubljana) and since then has also been an editor there. He has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the Helsinki University for Art and Design.
JESÚS CARRILLO CASTILLO Jesús Carrillo Castillo has been a lecturer at the Art History Department of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid since 1997, Head of the Cultural Programmes Department of the Reina Sofía Museum from 2008 to 2015, and General Director of Cultural Programmes of Madrid City Council from 2015 to 2016. He graduated in Art History (Murcia University), he has an MA in Historical Studies (The Warburg Institute) and a PhD in History (Cambridge University, King’s College). He has been Research fellow at the Huntington Library, Jonathan Brown Library, and the Anthropology Department, CSIC (Madrid), Tomás Harris Lecturer at UCL in 2003, Member of the Project team and editorial board of L’Internationale network from 2013 to 2015. He combines the history of early modern representations of nature and technology and their relationships with imperial powers, with a critical analysis of contemporary art institutions and narratives. His selected writings are: Arte en la Red (Madrid: Cátedra, 2004), Naturaleza e Imperio (Madrid: 12 calles, 2004) and Tecnología e Imperio (Madrid: Nivola, 2003), Oviedo on Las Casas (Turnhaut: Brepols, 2000).
He is editor of: Modos de hacer: arte crítico, esfera pública y acción directa (Salamanca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Salamanca, 2001), Tendencias del Arte. Arte de Tendencias (Madrid: Cátedra, 2003), Desacuerdos: sobre arte, políticas y esfera pública en el Estado español vols 1, 2, 3, 4, 8 (Barcelona: Macba, 2004-2015), Douglas Crimp: Posiciones críticas (Madrid: Akal, 2005), Martha Rosler. Imágenes Públicas (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2008).
ILIANA FOKIANAKI iLiana Fokianaki (1980, Thessaloniki) is a writer and curator based in Athens and Rotterdam. In 2013 she founded State of Concept Athens, the first non-profit gallery in Athens that promotes Greek and international artists through solo exhibitions, but also invites international curators to create exhibitions that comment on the current socio-political landscape. She has worked with artists like Laure Prouvost, Hito Steyerl and Keren Cytter among others. State of Concept also focuses on a pedagogical programme that enables Greek art students and artists through free consultations, to further their studies and develop their projects. It has also been operating as an open platform that hosts fellow curators and artists for talks, events and presentations. In 2016, together with Antonia Alampi she founded Future Climates, a platform that aims at proposing viable futures for small-scale organizations of contemporary art and culture, which firstly manifested in Athens between March and July 2017 with a threemonth school. Since March 2017 she has been curator of Extra City Kunsthal in Antwerp, Belgium. She has taught and lectured and taken part in panel discussions in various independent spaces and institutions worldwide (DAI, UMPRUM, IASPIS a.o).
iLiana is a contributing author of the book The International Art Markets, published by Kogan Page (London, New York, 2009) and the book Visions: Art as Transference (Plethron, Athens, 2005), and has written for e-flux, Frieze, LEAP, Art Papers, artagenda, Apollo, MetropolisM and Monopol, whilst extensively writing on culture and current affairs in Greek media between 2005 and 2015 as a journalist. She holds an MA in Arts Criticism from City University London under the supervision of Juliet Steyn and Judith Williamson. Her PhD research is focused on the synapses between art, identity, politics and economy.
KUBA SZREDER
ANNA ZAFESOVA
Kuba Szreder develops his research on independent curatorial practice. He is Lecturer at the department of Art Theory at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Graduated in Sociology at the Jagiellonian University (Krakow), he received a PhD from the Loughborough University School of the Arts. In his interdisciplinary projects, he carries out artistic and organizational experiments, hybridizing art with other domains of contemporary society. In 2009 he initiated Free / Slow University of Warsaw, with which he completed several inquiries into the political economy of contemporary artistic production, such as “Joy Forever. Political Economy of Social Creativity” (2011) and “Art Factory. Division of labour and distribution of resources in the field of contemporary art in Poland” (2014). He has been editor and author of several catalogues, readers, book chapters and articles. In his most recent book ABC of Projectariat (Polish edition, 2016), he scrutinizes economic and governmental aspects of projectmaking and their impact on an ‘independent’ curatorial practice.
Anna Zafesova is a Russian journalist who writes for the Italian daily La Stampa. From 1992 to 2004 she was the newspaper’s Moscow correspondent, since 2005 she has lived and worked in Italy. She is the author of E da Mosca è tutto (2005).
EMANUELE RICCOMI Emanuele Riccomi (1989, Rome) is a young curator and collaborator of the on-line Italian OperaViva Magazine. He graduated in History of Contemporary Art at La Sapienza University with a master thesis on the Istanbul Biennial, a city where he studied for a year. After graduating, he moved to Berlin to work for a few months at Galerie Neu, to then return to Rome to work for more than a year with the Baruchello Foundation. He attended Campo 16, the curatorial course promoted by the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. He has also worked with the archive of Daniele Puppi.
About Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto Cittadellarte’s aim is to inspire and produce a responsible change in society through ideas and creative projects. Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto was instituted in 1998 as a concrete action of the Progetto Arte Manifesto, where Michelangelo Pistoletto proposed a new role for the artist: that of placing art in direct interaction with all the areas of human activity which form society. Cittadellarte is dedicated to the study, experimentation and development of practices translating the symbol of the Third Paradise* into realty, implying it into every sector of society. It is a great laboratory, hosting many young artists, which generates unedited processes of development in diverse fields of culture, production, economics and politics. Cittadellarte is a vibrant international network of cultural and social innovators, individuals actively interlaced with their social contexts where they often act as catalyst of change. The interrelationship between people and projects is based on a common vision whose roots lie in an accumulative thought&practice process, developed by a wide range of thinkers, managers, innovators of all field. Pistoletto’s work, from the 60s to today, acts as a pumping brain for Cittadellarte’s communities. Cittadellarte has developed an extensive networks of collaborations with Institutions (various United Nations Agencies, Ministries, Universities and Educational Organizations) global enterprises and local businesses, civil society collectives, organizations and individuals from all fields.
* “The symbol of the Third Paradise, a reconfiguration of the mathematical infinity sign, is made of three consecutive circles. The two external circles represent all the diversities and antinomies, among which nature and artifice. The central one is given by the compenetration of the opposite circles and represents the generative womb of a new humanity”. Michelangelo Pistoletto www.cittadellarte.it www.terzoparadiso.org
About UNIDEE University of Ideas UNIDEE - University of Ideas is a higher educational programme based on a weekly modular format investigating the relationship among visual arts, public sphere and activism by combining critical theory with practice. Through residential dynamics, UNIDEE is designed to form artivators, people who intend to use art as a methodology, practice and language, in order to become agents for the activation of responsible actions and processes in the territories in which they live and carry out their professional activities. For its third year, and with a long history of residency programmes for international students (2000-2013) behind it, the new UNIDEE format proposes for the year 2017 a close examination of three macro-themes: Revolution, Desire and Mediation.
UNIDEE - University of Ideas 2017 Programme directed and curated by Cecilia Guida With the collaboration of Juan Sandoval Under the supervision of Paolo Naldini Programme Coordinator: Clara Tosetti Assistant Director: Annalisa Zegna
@unideeuniversityofideas unidee_universityofideas @unidee_universityofideas @_unidee unideevideo
www.cittadellarte.it/unidee/
UNIDEE - University of Ideas is made possible thanks to the support of: Patrons
Piedmont Region; Compagnia di San Paolo; Creative Europe programme of the EU; CRT Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Torino; Fondazione Zegna; illycaffè S.p.A.
Production Residency Collaborations & Scholarships RESÒ Network; A.M. Qattan Foundation (PS); Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation (IN).
Institutional Collaborations & Scholarships
ZKM Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe (D); kim? Contemporary Art Centre, Rīga (LV); Minister of Culture of the Republic of Albania (AL); National Gallery of Kosovo (RS); Jyvaskylan Yliopisto, Jyväskylä (FIN); Austrian Culture Forum Moscow (RUS); École cantonale d’art du Valais – ECAV, Sierre (CH); Fundación Universitaria Bellas Artes, Medellín (CO); Instituto Superior de Arte-ISA, La Habana (CU); École supérieure d’art et design – ESAD, Grenoble (FR); Università degli Studi di Torino (IT); Università IUAV, Venice (IT); Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan (IT); Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma (IT); Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze (IT); ISIA-Istituto Superiore per le Industrie Artistiche di Faenza (IT); IULM-Istituto Universitario di Lingue Moderne, Milan (IT); SACI Studio Art Centers International, Florence (IT); Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice (IT); Queens Museum, New York (US); Center for Fine Arts (Bozar), Brussels (B); Galeria Sztuki Wspolczesnej Bunkier Sztuki, Krakòw (PL); HYDRO, Biella (IT); Ordine degli Architetti Pianificatori Paesaggisti e Conservatori della Provincia di Biella (IT).
Media Partners
Giornale delle Fondazioni; Roots&Routes.