Supermarket Issue#1

ISSN 2000-8155

the artist-run art magazine

WHERE IS THE CENTRE?

GHETTO

BIENNALE

EXTRA: SUMPTUOUS CENTERFOLD POSTER INCLUDED

MY NAME IS FASHION THE PATHS OF PARADISE

REARRANGING THE CHESSBOARD DJISÖS KRAJST!!!

DANIEL BIRNBAUM

IN DA HOUSE UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS AROUND THE GLOBE

Photo: Mnky Bizz Group (mnkybizz.com)

THE ABSENT HUB

Publishing Details

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS KAN KAN LIU • SINZIANA RAVINI • DR ODYOKE • ANNA-KARIN SANDSTRÖM • EVA-LOTTA HOLM FLACH • PAU WAELDER • HÅKAN NILSSON • ADRIAN BOJENAIU • MIKAEL ASKERGREN • ROBERTO N PEYRE • PAULINA WALLENBERG-OLSSON • PETER CORNELL CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS & PHOTOGRAPHERS MNKY BIZZ GROUP • ANDREAS RIBBUNG • FLOOR WESSELING • THOMAS GUNNAR BAGGE • MALOU BERGMAN • HELENE HORTLUND • JOSÉ FIGUEROA • PONTUS RAUD • MARTA SZYMANSKA • MARTIN WERTHMANN • LENA GUSTAVSSON • ANNA LARSSON • ADRIAN BOJENAIU • MIKAEL ASKERGREN • LEA GORDON • JEAN HÉRARD CELEUR • PAULINA WALLENBERG-OLSSON • TINA SCHOTT TRANSLATION BONGI JARNE MCDERMOTT • RICHARD GRIFFITH CARLSSON

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Content:

38 In memory of LENA GUSTAVSSON PONTUS RAUD

6 The Absent Hub KAN KAN LIU

27 Daniel Birnbaum in da House ANNA-KARIN SANDSTRÖM

50 DJISÖSS KRAJST!!!

MIKAEL ASKERGREN

39 Drifting HÅKAN NILSSON

56 Atis Rezistans & Ghetto Biennale ROBERTO N PEYRE / BLOT

8 The Wedding between Art & Agriculture PONTUS RAUD 31 Hama Goro and the Artist‑run Gallery Centre Soleil d’Afrique in Mali EVA-LOTTA HOLM FLACH

44 A Short Resolution about the East ADRIAN BOJENAIU

62 My Name is Fashion PAULINA WALLENBERGOLSSON

17 Centrifugal desires, temporary autonomous zones and axis mundi SINZIANA RAVINI

48 Mnky Bizz Group and the Evolution of the Cultural Industry 32 Rearranging the Chessboard PAU WAELDER

68 The Paths of Paradise PETER CORNELL

Malou Bergman “Santa Goza” 0 0

Centrifugal desires, temporary autonomous zones and axis mundi

by Sinziana Ravini

”When a large amount of energy comes together at one point, a com­ munity starts to feel somewhere in the centre of things. In other words, we felt we where, independently from what New York or Paris had, the centre of life on Earth”.

Boris Orlov 2008

GRaPHiC DESiGN: aNDREaS RiBBuNG

“Peripheries”, “rhizomes”, “escape lines”, “non-hierarchical organisations”...

There are many words with which the nomads of our liquid modernity are hiding their centrophilic desires. As Zygmunt Bauman claims in “Liquid Modernity”, fluidity and lightness have become the leading metaphors for the present state of our modern era. It has become very fashionable in the art world lately to claim that the world has lost its former centres. That New York, Paris and London are no longer the knots that keep the art world together, and that cities like Sao Paulo, New Delhi and Gwangju are equally important. Some even go as far as to claim that with the internet era we are living in, and with the rhizomatic structures of cultural production today, the idea of a “centre” as such has become obsolete.

As Deleuze and Guattari declared, the “rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.” In contrast to an arborescent concept of knowledge that is rooted, the nomadic structure of the rhizome spreads like the surface of a body of water, extending towards available spaces or dripping downwards through fissures and gaps, eroding that which is in its way.

The artists of our time don’t seem to orient themselves around centres any

more, but ideas, dreams and desires.

In that case, how do these new desires constitute themselves?

Has the network killed the centre? Or has this new so-called absent centre created a negative theology that produces an even bigger centre – the one in our heads?

With the arrival of postmodern theories of deconstruction, culture producers were hit by the same decentring logic that once mobilised Copernicus, realising that the white, upper class, male subject wasn’t at the centre of the world any more than the earth or the sun were the centre of the universe.

“Ethnocentrism”, “anthropocentrism”, “logocentrism” had become the new enemies that had to be fought. But in spite of Derrida’s decentring of all kinds of centres, the centre persisted and still persists in the language we are using. How can we get rid of the centre when we are constantly obsessed by its so‑called non‑importance? As we all know, absence is producing presence.

The more you deny the existence of an object or a phenomenon, the more it persists in reappearing.

If postcolonial thinking encouraged artists to exit all kinds of centres, looking for or even becoming the other, it definitely encouraged the so‑called “others” to look for those centres that those artists were trying to esacpe. Artists like Renzo Martens could travel into the heart of darkness of the Congo playing with capitalistic enlightment politics, trying to take people out of their poverty or encouraging them to enjoy it. The so-called others, like Pascale Marthine Tayou or Subodh Gupta, could enter the global art industry by sometimes mimicking, sometimes deconstructing the idea of what it means to be an African or Indian artist.

If the economically privileged artists dream of escaping the centres, the not so privileged dream of settling down in them, or at least – creating new centres

around themselves by inviting the world into their studios.

The problem with this commercially fruitful nomadism, is not so much the arrogant “I can get wherever I want in the name of free exchange” logic, nor the less arrogant politics of good intentions called “resistence to homogenisation and reification”, but paradoxically enough – its extreme success. In an overinformed globalised artworld, overexposed artists are hitting saturation points faster than ever. Becoming one with the centre is almost like putting an end to one’s career, if not economically, at least symbolically.

The rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, inter­ being, intermezzo.

Once you’ve hit the centre it is much harder to escape from it, or at least to afford taking risks, experimenting, etc.

That’s why a lot of artists start repeating themselves, thinking that repetition means consequence and that consequence means success.

Once you’re a part of the global art industry, it doesn’t matter anymore where you’re falling asleep and where you’re waking up. What matters is which gallery or curator promotes you. And those centres of symbolic production are central to ones work, no matter how liquidly the centres or the artists relating to them operate. That’s why artists have to resist their centrophilic desires, the need of being omnipresent, in every art fair, biennial, event or happening. As Duchamp famously said: “The next big artist will go underground”. But how long can one stay in the underground without starving to death?

It’s enough to look at the way the relation between artistic autonomy and economical survival is being used today within artist‑run galleries. Alternative and peripheric practices are drawn to one another and coming together more than ever, thus creating new alternative centres.

Every Biennale has an “Antibiennale”, every art fair has an alternative art MORE fair with artist‑run galleries.READ We have IN THE PAPER ISSUE!

Upcoming exhibitions

Artists’ Choice

DUNEDIN NEW ZEALAND Blue Oyster . – .4 0 Colleen altagracia, “the Fullness of Empty Pockets”

Upcoming exhibitions worldwide An important aspect of this magazine is the promotion of exhibitions in artist‑run spaces worldwide. In almost every city this type of event, independent and self‑organised, is becoming ever more common. It is a phenomenon that has as many names as the diverse groups that organise them, in an equally wide variety of spaces – artist led or artist owned galleries, artists’ co‑operatives, non‑profit galleries, alternative project spaces, artspaces, offspaces, the list goes on...

Many of the artists’ initiatives are operated on a non‑profit basis.

It can also be the case that the space belongs to a non‑profit making organisation. Therefore the term ‘non‑profit gallery’ could be used in these cases simply in order to differentiate it from a commercial gallery.

The question therefore begs to be asked – what does the label ‘alternative’ or ‘independent’ actually mean? How ‘independent’ are you when applying for funding or seeking out sponsorship? And, are you actually ‘alternative’ simply because you say so? What is ‘alternative’ about you?

Many artists’ initiatives are, of course, truly alternative, due to the fact that they are showing work not exhibited in the commercial sphere, or they could even be experimenting with alternatives to the gallery itself. Others though, do not fully view themselves as ‘alternative’, as they see themselves as part of the existing art scene while, at the same time, offering an alternative to it.

Artists, increasingly, no longer willing to be treated as ciphers to be picked up and dropped at the whim of commercial gallery interests, are forming their own initiatives. These initiatives explore how collaboration and exchange lends itself to a dynamic independence from the established hierarchy, repaying the artist with a joyful empowerment, all too often lost in the commercial world.

The label ‘artist‑run’ is widely used, even although this sometimes involves the input of curators. Should it still be called ‘artist‑run’ in that case? I would say yes, as it uses an already recognised term and establishes the concept that the curator shares the ‘artist perspective’.

I would argue that there is a difference between the aims and objectives of the commercial gallery and the artist initiative. On one hand we have the commercial interest of the gallery, which builds the career of the artist, and often caters to a limited audience of the financially strong, while on the other hand, the artist needs to communicate with the public, and to expand the audience’s interest in contemporary art.

However, if the artists, and the initiatives they are involved in, truly want to reach out, to attract the interest of the public at large, to occupy the space that is truly their own, they must seek ways to improve how they promote themselves, how to bring their audience to them.

Andreas Ribbung Art Editor and Contributing Editor

Colleen Altegracia is interested in exploring seemingly inconsequential actions, overlooked spaces and ephemeral materials, to reveal their potential and make the invisible visible. Through a performance, as a part of the Dunedin Fringe Festival, and an installation at the Blue Oyster Altegracia launches an exploration of pocketed space. Pockets in clothing are secret, personal spaces felt by the wearer and often containing hidden potential.

Altegracia’s performance involves series of repeated actions, forming a sort of controlled experiment, where casting foam is poured into participant’s pockets. Often to their surprise, participants experience the gradual emergence of a mass of foam from the private, concealed, virtual space of their pocket. The clothing with its foam casting sculptures, and a video recording capturing the actions and reactions of the participants in this and previous incarnations of the experiment, will make up the installation in the gallery. With the clothing hanging on display viewers will be able to see a shape of a person who has worn the pieces and where the foam castings have pressed and overflowed in the making process.

Blue Oyster Art Project Space Basement, 24b Moray Place, Dunedin, New Zealand www.blueoyster.org.nz blueoyster@blueoyster.org.nz +64 3 479 0197

Upcoming exhibitions VANCOUVER CANADA Or Gallery 0. – . 0 0 Matthew Buckingham

SYDNEY AUSTRALIA MOP 3.3–20.3 2011 “Speaks Volumes”/“Document II”/“The Quiet Never Meet”

COPENHAGEN DENMARK Koh‑i‑noor 17.3–31.3 2011 “Model Court”

Sarah Mosca, “untitled”, 0 0

The Or Gallery presents a solo exhibition

by New York-based artist Matthew Buckingham. The exhibition features a collection of works that focus on how cities are formulated, examining how places and their respective “pasts” resonate with and contradict each other. The works explore the enormous social and political shifts that have occurred over the past fifty years in port cities, while mapping the effects of global economic change on both an individual and a city.

The Or Gallery is a non‑profit contemporary art gallery and artist-run centre established in 1983. Its early role as a de facto curatorial residency for artists led to its longtime examination of the intersection between curatorial and conceptual art practices and more recent implementation of guest-curated programming to complement exhibitions and projects developed by the gallery’s curator. In December 2010, it opened Or Gallery Berlin, a new satellite gallery and project space located at Oranienstrasse 37, in Berlin’s diverse Kreuzberg neighbourhood.

Or Gallery 555 Hamilton St. Vancouver, BC V6B 2R1, Canada www.orgallery.org or@orgallery.org +1 604.683.7395

Gallery 1: “Speaks Volumes”: The Ron & George Adams Collection An art collection speaks volumes about their collectors. When artworks enter into private collections they join a family of other artworks that have been amassed according to an idiosyncratic criteria of taste. When artists are collectors, friendship networks often shape a collection – nothing beats, for example, the satisfaction felt when two artists have swapped their work with each other.

Ron & George have been collecting for as long as they can remember and while their collection shows their commitment to the contemporary Australian art world, it particularly reads as a who’s who of artists who have at one point or another contributed to a culture of artist‑run initiatives in Sydney.

Gallery 2: Document II: Sarah Mosca Sarah Mosca’s new work draws from her recent experience in Iceland where she attended an artist residency program collaborating with video and sound artist Tim Bruniges. Using different technologies and media including sound, installation and photography, the exhibition explores themes of minimalism and the experience of combining static images and sound.

Gallery 3: “The Quiet Never Meet”: Grant Hawkes What attracts on the banks of the Tigris, on a rooftop in Yazd. What is left behind at the base of one alley or found by sunlight on a wall in Mardin. What sleeps in a marketplace.

The Quiet Never Meet was photographed throughout Iran and Turkey.

MOP 2/39 Abercrombie St, Chippendale Sydney, NSW 2008, Australia www.mop.org.au mop@mop.org.au + 61 2 9699 3955

“Model Court” is an ongoing curatorial/ research project that was designed by the artists Sidsel Meineche Hansen and Lawrence Abu Hamdan and which also involves Lorenzo Pezzani and Oliver Rees. It uses the structure and technologies of the courtroom to interrogate the signifying and controlling role architecture plays in contemporary art and society.

The project that the Model Court group will develop in Koh‑i‑noor, will instigate a translation between the gallery and the court, in order to open a line of debate around the way in which the legal context challenges the way we see objects, models, films and other forms of production.

The exhibition in Koh-i-noor in Copenhagen will be the third incarnation of Model Court. The project has previously been exhibited at the Centre of Contemporary Art in Glasgow 2009, Ptarmingan, Helsinki, 2010 and recently contributed to the exhibition The Last News Paper in the New Museum in NY. Together with the Center for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University of London, 2010.

Koh-i-noor is an independent project space and non‑profit organisation run by a group of artists based in Copenhagen. Koh-i-noor was founded in 2004 and has since then produced a number of exhibitions, discussions, film screenings, and performances.

Koh-i-noor Dybbølsgade 60 1721 København V, Denmark www. koh-i-noor.org koh-i-noor@koh-i-noor.org

Upcoming exhibitions MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA Kings ARI . – .4 0 “Chora Choruses”/“{ultima forsan}”

ZAGREB CROATIA NANO Gallery 16.3–25.3 2011 Anja Planincic, “Forgotten”

aimee Fairman, {ultima forsan}

“Forgotten – The market keeps changing.”

Countries and nations unite, disunite and then unite again. While I was growing up, we passed through a period of “brotherhood and unity”, then the war, and now we are striving towards a united Europe. All those situations influence the market, that is, different markets. For a number of years, at the time of Socialist Yugoslavia, there was a big market of Eastern Europe which accepted products of our factories. We had production and many employed workers.

With the fall of the Berlin wall, the ideology also fell. What used to be the big Eastern European market vanished.

Countries, systems and values which we had known, disappeared.

The sculpture installation entitled “Forgotten” symbolises the passage of time and values. About thirty volumes of the original Russian edition of “Lenin”, covered with humus, worms and moss on a symbolic level, testifies about great changes which had happened during the last 20 years.

Litterature which used to be a symbol of status and prestige, of something which everybody had been streaming towards and sidled with, has no value today. Antique shops, libraries, or faculties don’t want it. All that we’re left with is about 10 kilos of old recycling paper.

With the change of ideology economic politics change and hence the market.

Front Gallery: “Chora Choruses”: Cath Robinson & Fiona Lee. Chora Choruses extends the idea of collaboration to include the kinds of interaction that are normally overlooked between audience, artwork and institution, within a musical framework.

Robinson’s work for Chora Choruses is a selection of ‘pause for thought noises’ from 33 Hobart contemporary artists considering their inspiration, able to be “played” on a keyboard by the audience. Lee’s work for this exhibition will be a remix of songs representing the Kings Committee’s current listening habits, professionally produced in collaboration with sound artist Matt Warren and performed at the opening.

Middle & Side Gallery: “{ultima forsan}”: Aimee Faiman.

The {ultima forsan} project is a kinetic sculptural and ephemeral installation developed from recent research on the 2009 residency at the Rondo Künstlerateliers in Graz, Austria. {ultima forsan}, meaning “perhaps the last”, combines a suspended constructed alpine landscape, a surgical chair as a tool for viewing, found objects, organic matter, sound, water‑vapour and fog machines, to explore notions of the mortality of time and the ephemerality of experience, to address the ecologies of our inner and outer worlds.

Fairman’s work centres on an exploration of the symbolic and Sublime landscape and its potential role as a vehicle to address psycho-geographical spaces, time, memory and narrative.

Kings Artist Run Initiative Lvl 1 / 171 King St. Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia www.kingsartistrun.com.au info@kingsartistrun.com.au +61 3 9642 0859

Anja Planinčić is born in Zagreb, Croatia in 1975. She has graduated sculpture at the Department of Sculpture, Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb. Majoring in Fine Plastic Art and Medal Art in 2000.

Nano Gallery was established in 2005 in Zagreb, Croatia. Since that time it held more than 60 exhibitions by young media artists.

NANO Gallery Gajeva 26 10000 Zagreb, Croatia www.artenativa.hr nano@artenativa.hr

CAPE TOWN SOUTH AFRICA BLANK PROJECTS 6.5–28.5 2011 Abri de Swardt, “On the Seventh Day (Alpha)”

Rendering metanarratives undone is central to the practice of emerging South African artist Abri de Swardt. A collagist operating fluidly between lens‑based media, performance and installation, the impetus behind his work resides in the deconstruction of regimes of Truth, whether it be preconceived notions of masculinity, the environment or belief itself, in order to access the Real. This profoundly ethical strategy has led him to reframe the spiritual and that which ignites it.

De Swardt employs religion, iconography, ritual, an aversion to commodity fetishism and corporate colonisation, self-effacement, apocalyptic murmurings and a pantheist conception of nature and the elemental in his various ruminations on consumption, death and transcendence. Ultimately, this is attained via Romanticist tropes of pathos, hyperbole and the Sublime; a fantastical narrative interweaving of historical, art historical, cinematic, literary, biblical, personal and contemporary threads; and a dismantling of the media texts that we are confronted with.

Blank projects is an independent, artist-run exhibition space founded in Cape Town by Jonathan Garnham in 2005. blank projects 113-115 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock Cape Town, 8001, South Africa www.blankprojects.com info@blankprojects.com +27 72 1989 221 �� +27 72 507 5951

Upcoming exhibitions RIO DE JANEIRO BRAZIL Ateliê da Imagem . – .4 0 a. C. Junior “Baixo Estacio”

Documentary photgrapher A.C. Junior has been extensively photographing Baixo Estacio, the neighborhood next to “Sambodromo”, the place where the official Carnival parade takes place in Rio. This traditional area of the city is where Samba was born and is a mixture of charm and decadence, a place that is always pulsing with life, but that truly comes alive around the Carnival.

This will be A.C.’s first solo show and is a different way of looking at Carnival and Samba, showing the loneliness of its less glamourous B-side.

Ateliê da Imagem was founded in 1999 by a photography collective as a space for promoting and teaching photography.

In 2004 it also became a cultural center dedicated to the visual arts. Under the direction of one of its founders, photographer and visual artist Patricia Gouvêa, it is considered today as one of the most important references in Brazil for research, reflection, and production of the photographic image. Since 2010, it further benefits from the co‑direction of the Italian curator and researcher Claudia Buzzetti.

In addition to working as a school offering courses on all aspects of theory and practice concerning the technical image, Ateliê da Imagem is a cultural center that promotes various activities, such as the “Sexta Livre” project, an twice-monthly open night featuring the work of a photographer, and a vast ongoing exhibition program in its own gallery (and in other places), including seminars, screenings, and other activities.

Patricia Gouvea Ateliê da Imagem Espaço Cultural Avenida Pasteur 453 Urca Rio de Janeiro, Brazil www.ateliedaimagem.com.br pgouvea@ateliedaimagem.com.br 0055 21 25416930 �� 25413314

GALWAY IRELAND 126 . – . 0 Ruti Sela ( 4 israel) & Maayan amir ( israel) “Beyond Guilt- the trilogy”

The series “Beyond Guilt” addresses the undermining of the power relationship between photographer and photographed, men and women, the public domain and the private sphere, object and subject. As the film’s directors, Sela and Amir take an active part in the event. They seduce the interviewees on the one hand, and turn the camera over to them on the other, as part of the this undermining of the power relationship between photographer and subject.

The choice of pick‑up bar services or hotel rooms as shooting locations strives to represent an underworld with its own language and signifiers.

The quick encounter before the camera calls to mind the ephemeral nature of intimate relations, but above all the works allude to the influences of the occupation, terror, and army as constitutors of an Israeli identity even in the most private moments.

The sexual identity and the military-political identity seem inseparably intertwined.

126 is Galway’s first artist‑led exhibition space. A non‑profit organisation, 126 was established in 2005 by local artists as a response to the urgent need for more noncommercial gallery spaces in Galway.

126 has developed a reputation as an organisation which supports traditionally unrepresented artistic projects. Because 126 is a non‑profit, publicly funded gallery space, it is able to make decisions on an artistic, rather than economic, basis. As such, 126 is gaining recognition and support as a place of cultural innovation in Ireland and is quickly becoming an integral part of Galway’s cultural fabric.

BUKOVJE SLOVENIA Conceptual Art Centre Bukovje .4– .4 0 Miltos Manetas “angels”

Conceptual Art Centre Bukovje is situated in a small Slovene mountain village called Bukovje. A mere twenty years after the first telephones were introduced in the village, CAC Bukovje is proud to present an exhibition of internet-based works by Greek multimedia artist Miltos Manetas.

In the 1990’s Miltos Manetas was categorized as one of the artists within the field of Relational Aesthetics and he was also included in Nicolas Bourriaud’s book with the same name. However, by 1996 Manetas abandoned performance and site‑specific installations to explore the possibilities of working with the internet and computer games as media.

Manetas has had an extensive international career and he has had solo exhibitions at both Gagosian Gallery and Yvon Lambert Gallery in New York, and he has also exhibited at, for example, the Palais De Tokyo in Paris and at the 2nd Prague Biennial. He was also the initiator of the Internet Pavillion at the 53rd Venice Biennial.

Curators: Nina Slejko and Conny Blom Conceptual Art Centre Bukovje Bukovje 35 6230 Postojna, Slovenia www.cac‑bukovje.com

READ MORE IN THE PAPER ISSUE!

126, artist‑run gallery, Queen St.Galway, Ireland www.126.ie contact@126.ie 00353‑91569871 4

Daniel Birnbaum

In Da House

by Anna-Karin Sandström photo: José Figueroa

Daniel Birnbaum has returned home to Stockholm as the new director of Moderna Museet after his nearly decade-long tenure as director of Städelschule in Frankfurt, and its Portikus exhibition space. During his “exile” he has also co-curated several biennials around the world, most notably the Venice Biennale in 2009.

SUPERMARKET asked a few questions.

READ MORE IN THE PAPER ISSUE!

Rearranging the chessboard PAU WAELDER

GRAPHIC DESIGN: MAGDA LIPKA FALCK

In his satirical and informative Manual of Contemporary Art Style, artist Pablo Helguera explains the relationships between the different professionals in the art world by comparing it to a game of chess. In this game, the museum director is the king, the collector is the queen, curators are rooks, dealers are knights and critics act as bishops. The pawns are, of course, the artists. According to Helguera, artists are “the least and most important piece of the game”, adding that “they are the most populous in proportion to the total of the pieces, (...) it is very difficult to value them individually at the beginning of the game”. Yet when an artist succeeds, he or she gains power and becomes a key player: “Once crowned, the pawn turns into a queen and is thereafter also able to maneuver with the same power as the most important piece in the game” [1]. With this metaphor, Helguera describes a situation that, although paradoxical, is quite common: the person who creates the piece around which the whole game revolves is in the end the least important player in the art world, except for the few who make it to the “top”.

4

BUT THIS IS NOT THE ONLY WAY to play the game. During the last two decades, an increasing number of artist-run initiatives have developed a different chessboard that extends over the peripheral neighbourhoods of metropolises and in smaller cities with an emerging artistic scene, inside traditional spaces or unusual exhibition venues. Seeking independence from the structures defined by the institutions and the art market, artist-run initiatives have proven to be able to create autonomous areas for artistic production and distribution, in the form of alternative galleries, art fairs and other events, but also to contribute to the enlivenment of the cultural scene in many cities (as well as unwillingly participating in the process of gentrification).

These initiatives are obviously not a recent phenomenon: it can be said that, for more than a century, artists have sought to create their own spaces of expression and articulate critical views on the established conventions of the art world. But in the last years the tendency to develop independent organisations for the production and exhibition of contemporary art (under denominations such as “artist-run”, “alternative”, “non-profit”, “non-commercial” or “self-organised”) has grown, as more and more collectives find their own ways into the art world and contribute to shape the cultural scene in their local community. These groups form what Maibritt Pedersen, quoting Gregory Sholette, describes as the “dark matter” of the art world: an unknown mass of independent cells that move within or in-between its critical and economic structures [2]. Although these initiatives tend to be underestimated or considered as amateurish self-promotion strategies, an increasing number of artist-run spaces has attained a degree of professionalism that is equal to that of any organisation in the institutional and commercial sectors of the art world. Many are, in fact, supported by their local governments and establish connections with other similar organisations on a national and international level. At this stage, the next step is to gain proper recognition as actors in the international art scene and establish a network that allows these independent initiatives to grow by supporting each other.

WITH THIS IDEA IN MIND, the organisers of the SUPERMARKET art fair, in collaboration with MICROWESTEN, set up a meeting of artist-run initiatives in Berlin between October 5th and 6th, 2010. The conference room at the Swedish Embassy hosted the talks between representatives of ten organisations from ten European Countries: Project Space 1646 (The Hague, NL), Alma Enterprises (London, UK), Alpineum Produzentengalerie (Luzern, CH), Alt_ Cph/Signe Vad (Copenhagen, DK), Fabrica de Pensule (Cluj, RO), Inquietart/Sant Marc (Mallorca, ES), Microwesten (Berlin, Munich,

DE), MUU (Helsinki, FI), SUPERMARKET (Stockholm, SE) and the Wyspa Institute of Art (Gdansk, PL). The objective of the meeting was to elaborate on the possibility of establishing a translocal network of artist-run organisations and developing a large cultural project that would take place in different cities across Europe. During the discussions, though, it proved to be as important to identify the common challenges that this kind of organisations have to face, as well as to get to know the specific situation in each local cultural scene. Some of the main problems detected were the following: the scope of an artistrun organisation is usually reduced to local network, it does not have enough staff to invest in bigger projects, depends on funding by local or national institutions (if it gets that funding in the first place), and most of all lacks visibility in the mainstream art world. These problems can be faced, the participants agreed, through the creation of an international network in which knowledge, funding and resources can be shared. This network will be created and expanded by a series of meetings in different locations, seeking to engage the local artist-run organisations and enhance the visibility of their spaces by inserting them into large scale project.

THE TALKS AT THE SWEDISH EMBASSY concluded with the creation of AIM – Europe, a project consisting of Artists’ Initiatives’ Meetings in the European region that will set the ground for a platform of exchange between alternative art organisations and shed light on the “dark matter” of the art world. Not intending to replicate the existing structures in the mainstream art world or collide with them, AIM presents itself as a nomadic project, highly adaptive and responsive to the specific conditions of each location. Generated by dialogue, it will be developed in different spaces and with a growing number of participants, escaping the constraints of local or national identity and the elitism that usually characterises art institutions. The aim is thus set: the next meetings will determine the outcome of this emerging model of collaboration that could lead to an evolved international art scene in which established mainstream art events and artist-run initiatives cohabit and influence each other.

READ MORE IN THE PAPER ISSUE! [1] Pablo Helguera, The Pablo Helguera Manual of Contemporary Art Style. New York: Jorge Pinto Books, 2007, 5.

[2] Maibritt Pedersen, “Where is the dark matter?”, in Alt_Cph10.

In Space. Copenhagen Alternative Art Fair catalogue. Copenhagen: The Factory for Art and Design, 2010, 64-67.

Dostoyevsky was obviously wrong. In fact, religious people in general are wrong: religion does not bring higher moral standards to societies. Religion will never do away with disdain or oppression or violence or crime. On the contrary, religion facilitates crime and immorality, facilitates moral double standards and warfare. Religion is not something harmless and cute. Religion is bad for you!

by Mikael Askergren 0

GRaPHiC DESiGN: aNDREaS RiBBuNG

DJISĂ–SS KRAJST!!!

Christopher Moltisanti is in hospital with a bad gunshot wound. Everyone in the extended family, especially Carmela and Tony Soprano, brood on their sins and their relationship to God, to religion, and to the Roman Catholic Church. (The Sopranos, season 2, episode 9: From Where to Eternity) However, the episode concludes with everything returning to “normal:” Christopher recovers and picks up his life in crime where he left off. So does Tony. And Carmela, as always, does – nothing. She remains at Tony’s side, forever enabling him in his career as professional criminal.

As always, the occasional onset of moral anxiety amongst the members of the Soprano family does not bring about any permanent changes in any of them.

One might wonder: how is it even possible for ruthless criminals such as these, and for their enablers, to be regular churchgoers, to be deeply and profoundly religious, and to consider themselves true Catholics? This is of course the completely wrong ques‑ tion to ask oneself. It makes so much more sense to ask: Why do so many of us tend to assume that religious faith will make people “better?”

Why Religion Facilitates Crime and Immorality Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880) famously declared that if people did not believe in God, there would be more im‑ morality and crime. Dostoyevsky was convinced that if people do not fear punishment from God after death, they automatically become thieves and rapists and murderers – while in fact, and contrary to what Dos‑ toyevsky would have expected, global secularization in the twentieth and 21st centuries has brought more law‑ fulness and higher moral standards to the world than organized religion was ever able to bring for thousands of years.

Plenty of statistics prove that truly secularized societies enjoy greater financial equality and greater

gender equality, their citizens are more law‑abiding, are less corrupt, experience less crime and fewer murders, put fewer people in jail, and trust their neighbors more than the citizens of religious nations do.

Believers do not behave “better” than atheists. If anything, religious people behave worse: transgressing secular law is never a completely foreign concept to a deeply religious person.

Religious people are often perceived by nonbelievers as “strict,” but all reli‑ gious systems of morality are in real‑ ity extremely pliable, flexible and fluid things: one can always find a religious reason for transgressing secular law and, say, start murdering doctors who performs perfectly legal abortions.

Or start robbing banks. One can always find a religious reason for pretty much any act, also for violent and sexist and racist acts, say. In the religious universe there never is a clear, undisputed line drawn be‑ tween acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

By contrast, in the nonbeliever’s universe, there actually is such a clear, undisputed line – the line drawn in secular law between “legal” and “ille‑ gal.” In secular society, and to nonre‑ ligious people, that which is “lawful” (albeit often an arbitrary distinction; in some countries it’s illegal to drive on the right side of the road, in other

countries it’s illegal to drive on left side) is a very important distinction indeed: it is tangible, it is concrete, anyone can tell you without much hesitation what is legal and what is not. Not much room for doubt or confusion. To break the laws of secular society and to cross the bor‑ der into lawlessness thus becomes – psychologically and morally – a very great leap indeed to make for the

nonbeliever. (Much greater than for religious folk.) And most nonbeliev‑ ers find great comfort and take great pride in being law‑abiding citizens.

(Non‑believers find much more com‑ fort and take greater pride in this than religious people do.)

In addition, religious people believe in a universe of hierarchies, in the existence of entities “above” us mere mortals (gods, goddesses) as well as entities “beneath” us mere mortals READ MORE IN THE PAPER ISSUE!

“What happens when first world art rubs up against third world art?

Does it bleed?”

ATIS REZISTANS &

GHETTO BIENNALE Roberto N Peyre/BLot

andré Eugéne. Photo: Leah Gordon

in December 00 , only a few weeks before one of the greatest tragedies in modern times wiped away roughly 0 000 individuals and stigmatised millions of people for years to come, there was for the first time in a long while, a sharp exceptional moment of unfettered creativity, great pride and visions of a slightly brighter future in the downtown slum area of Grand Rue in Port au Prince, Haiti.

over a month, about thirty more or less collaborative international art projects operated throughout, or in direct relation to, the sparse conditions that are the day-to-day reality for this run-down neighborhood. this was the spark that kickstarted the first grand international arts event in Haiti. the name of the event is GHEtto BiENNaLE.

This unique event was first envi‑ sioned, initiated and organised by the legendary local art collective ATIS REZISTANS in collaboration with the British photographer/ filmmaker Leah Gordon, and the American art curator/scholar Myron Beasley.

GRaPHiC DESiGN: aNDREaS RiBBuNG

this particular Grand Rue area and its inhabitants are at the tail end of an old tradition of arts and craftsmanship, but have become something of an free reeling visionary raft ashore the lost city of Port au Prince in the lost nation of Haiti on the lost island of Hispaniola (ayti). atiS REZiStaNS is a selforganized collective involving and organizing people around an acute contemporary arts practice operating throughout the popular and sanctified realities of the Haitian READ MORE here and now.

IN THE PAPER ISSUE!

artwork by Jean HĂŠrard Celeur Photographs: Leah Gordon

My Name is Fashion PAULINA WALLENBERG-OLSSON

IMAGES: PAULINA WALLENBERG-OLSSON, GRAPHIC DESIGN: MAGDA LIPKA FALCK

MY NAME My name is fashion, I am a narrative, a cultural warrior of the adorned body, a prophet inside a costume of imagery, I claim the centre and I invent it. Why wouldn’t I? I am the natural evolution, the ongoing fastforward mutation platform of style serving the street, the catwalk, the whole wide world. My method of procedure is to cast glances, seduce, and to create envy while delivering the most current kind of beauty.

Although, tweaked, still the beauty of divine symmetry, that trigger the signals processed by our animal brains and already programmed into our DNA. I see the splendour in you, my darling, and I dig into your inner turmoil. Your pain and meaninglessnesses turn into laughter. My code, my message, penetrates your mind.

MY CENTRE My old centres are dying and new are being born. Nobody knows how the river will bifurcate. The kiss of death is very slow and filled with the aroma of nostalgia. The future is not what it used to be. I am in the process of inventing something much more striking than the robotic; metamaterials that gain their properties from structure rather than composition and that can create invisibility and other optical illusions.

My aim is Promethean: continuous world-wide expansion, limitless possibilities. The acceleration of fashion will increase considerably as it has since the middle of the 14th century. Everything and every object will be fashionable, much like in ancient Egypt: pioneers in the arts of adornment, clothes, cosmetics and tattooing. In no country or culture has the concern with beautification been so extensive. It transcended class and gender lines. My apparatus of technologies and communication systems will create a new era of meaning. The value goes up when other people tell you it is worth more than you thought, and down when others say it is worth less. That’s why I work with the most interesting photographers and the rarest and most unusual models to create an endless flow of editorial critique and commentary to create the public opinion that can be found in magazines, on television, fashion websites, social networks, and fashion blogs. I am proud to say that the fashion mechanism operates in all fields of human endeavour, not just in clothing. Artists, psychiatrists and economists are blind to their immersion in the cycles of fashion.

MY WAY I am the subject of constant change. In order to survive I need to continuously renew myself. Therefore I can affirm that my creative processes are fearless, innovative and brave. Unlike the film and music industry I don’t let myself be controlled by intellectual property laws. No, on the contrary, I encourage exchange, copying, imitation, even theft, to create trends and to construct visions. All attempts to stop the ways of fashion have been in vain. Fashion is the pattern the world will follow more and more; it will create new standards of beauty, determine lifestyles, and trace out paths which will influence contemporary art, interior design, and popular culture. My dialogue between art and design are now generating radical hybridizations requiring new classifications and new manners of presentation within the structure of the exhibition. Even though art and fashion retain their own distinct languages, contemporary culture increasingly places them in a position of mutual influence. Fashion and design no longer seem so alien within the context of art. In all honesty, I have to say, that I never believed that my ambivalent status in contemporary culture would be as significant as it is in this moment. My aesthetic principles and optimism will set new standards for the daring and the original.

MY SILENCE In order to surprise myself, which I love to do, I will admit that my inner well is a place without chronology, no clocks or windows. You can let yourself go without any worries, dispel every other thought, let the world around you fade, turning one page after another in magazines filled with illustrations, memories, bizarre lush costumes, and handpicked models that capture the “zeitgeist”. Everything immersed in an eternal pose. We are immortal, forever youthful, men wear high heels and women have beards. We sleep and breathe in immaculately fresh make-up. Bodies are clad with rich heavy jewellery and wander around exotic locations saturated with decadence. We enter the mist of timelessness. The pleasure of this everyday act is always radically different. I am not bogged down by the burden of meaning. My love affair is with silence, the images from the lowest layers in the ocean, from the cellular level, that sink deep into the mind without a word being uttered. Rather than clear ideas; I present a complex set of intuitions, feelings. The magic of my art is its complete evasiveness, the refusal to admit the true nature of my subject matter: the failure of reality and the triumph of desire and dreams.

Paulina Wallenberg-Olsson works in the areas in between art, music and costume design, and her projects often are in collaboration with artists and creators working in various genres.

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