Cargo Cult

Reenvío #0: La triste muerte de Luther Blissett

Tomorrow I'm heading for Valencia for the presentation of the first issue of the digital magazine "Reenvío": "La triste muerte de Luther Blissett" ("Luther Blissett's Sad Death").

The project was designed by Ángela Sánchez de Vera for Otro Espacio, an independent art venue in Valencia run by Juan José Martín / Jujo, Greta Alfaro and David Ferrando.

Rather than an exploration of the tactics and devices of distributed cultural production inherent in this heteronym, the magazine explores the aura of the mythical character, and is a rather ironic gaze into his biography/ies.

For this purpose, a call was launched last summer, which received the responses of artists Greta Alfaro, el bandolero Lacabra, Alfonso Barranco, Juanli Carrión, Iñaki Domingo, Jeny Espín, Joel Gómez, Saúl Hernández, Jorge López, Jaume Marco, Juan José Martín, Benjamín Martínez, Regina de Miguel, Ángel Pastor,Marta Pina, Esther Rivas, Fernando Santa Pau,Ana Soler, Anna Talens, and Sergio Zavattieri.

On the basis of the (n-1) project I directed last spring for Liquidación Total, Ángela and Jujo also got in touch with me. At the opening, which will take place tomorrow at 19:30 in the Magatzems Wall & Video space, I will present the talk "Smash the Individual! Collective Myths and Unstable Identities".

Kamen Nedev

section7books: Un agréable mouvement dans les idées

Simultaneously to the exhibition "rendez-vous: nowhere", curated by Beatriz Herráez, last September 27th-28th the Montehermoso Cultural Centre in Vitoria invited castillo/corrales to organise a seminar at the centre. I was lucky to be invited to attend.

castillo/corrales is an independent art space in Paris, run collectively by a group of artists (the core team being Oscar Tuazon, Thomas Boutoux, François Piron, Benjamin Thorel and Boris Gobille). Part of their activities includes the section7books bookstore, an initiative designed as a sustainable project, and focusing on a carefully curated selection of independent publications on art, design, and critical theory. The bookshop focuses on small-scale publishing initiatives, which often remain below the radar of the mainstream distribution networks.

Our Bodies, Ourselves

The last thing I was expecting when walking into this exhibition was that new formulations of gender conflict, queer identity and non-affirmative construction of subjectivity could surprise me any more. Or, rather, it takes a good curatorial job to really make one realise to what extent a particular mode of art production, however politicised, is really threatened by stagnation. At least, in my case, this reminded me, even better than Kathleen Hannah, that these things can still be a lot of fun.

“Our bodies, Ourselves” is the fifth installment in “Contraseñas”, a series of curated audio-visual exhibitions held on a regular basis at the Montehermoso Cultural Centre, in Vitoria.

Manifesta 7 - Principle Hope:

Manifesta 7 - The Soul...: Marcus Coates

Probably the weakest link in this year’s Manifesta (despite its highly prominent location in Trent’s beautiful Post Office building), The Soul (Or, Much Trouble in the Transportation of Souls) still manages to provide a good selection of artists and works.

Especially interesting is Marcus Coates’ “Dawn Chorus”.

Manifesta 7 - Principle Hope: Ragnar Kjartansson

Despite being situated at the far end of the courtyard of Rovereto’s Manifattura Tabacchi, Ragnar Kjartannson’s “Schumann Machine” is by far one of the most prominent and most intense pieces in Principle Hope, the Manifesta 7 exhibition set at various locations in the town of Rovereto.

A huge cut-out painted fire, almost grotesque in its dimensions and its school-play like character, greets (if we could use this term) the visitors as the enter the yard. A door in the middle of the prop opens up to lead us into a small room, something like a bachelor pad, fully imbued with the signs of decadent debauchery - empty champagne bottles and glasses, full ashtrays, remnants of truffles, an unmade bed, a dodgy-looking piano...

Manifesta 7 - Principle Hope: Guido van der Werve

Guido van der Werve constructs possible scenarios and imaginary realities where various geographies collide in order to generate momentary sensations of unusual, dream-like intensity.

Manifesta 7 - Scenarios: Adriana Cavarero

Scenarios, the exhibition centred on Fortezza, is the north-most outpost of this year’s Manifesta. Located at the recently de-classified site of a 19th-century fortress that was never attacked and never saw combat, the exhibition aims at shedding a critical outlook on the fortress as an imaginary scenario, one where we play out our phobias and identitary acts. Unlike the exhibition at Bolzano, which focused on the remains, on the residue, here we have the case of an endless potentiality which has never really been fulfilled, an infrastructure whose role, much like that of today’s “Fortress Europe”, is a mystery.

The curatorial design (Scenarios is the result of the joint effort of the full Manifesta curatorial team: Adam Budak, Anselm Franke and Hila Peleg, and the Raqs Media Collective) takes on a radical nature - the venue is left as is, deserted and lifeless. All the pieces in the exhibition are sound pieces and silent films. Mostly, the only visible additions are exhibition props and infrastructure such as the furniture designed by Martino Gamper, and the excellent sound installations designs by Hannes Hoelzl.

This sets the building itself at the forefront of the visitors’ reception, as a scenario for scripted texts and voice recordings. Contributions by Mladen Dolar, Arundhati Roy, Hélène Binet and Thomas Meinecke, among many, form a multitude of voices configuring a haunted space.

The endeavor is very brave indeed, and, while not always successful, really manages to face us with a building come to life.

Manifesta 7: The Rest of Now

As is usual in its purpose to situate itself in a conflictive, problematic, liminal or simply “difficult” area in Europe, this year’s Manifesta has opted to establish itself in the Italian Southern Tyrol, a culturally- and linguistically diverse region on the border between Italy and today’s Austria.

Contrary to earlier editions, this year the biennial also diversifies its focal points - the exhibitions are centred around four locations in the region: Fortezza, Bolzano, Trento and Rovereto.

This diversity is also translated in the curatorial criteria that have driven the exhibition design and production. Instead of settling on a single viewpoint or curatorial thesis, each location is not only assigned a specific curatorial team, but also deals with a different subject matter.

New Issue of Что Делат? Confiscated and Under Investigation

It seems plain obvious that the recent events in international politics are not happening in some kind of vacuum. Here's how far the tightening of the freedom of the press that has been going on in Russia has gone. Its latest victim - the fantastic Что Делат?, one of the participants in last year's Documenta magazines project.

(via transform.eipc.net)

On the evening of August 27, the new issue of the newspaper Chto Delat (No. 19: What Does It Mean to Lose? The Experience of Perestroika) was confiscated during a militia raid at the printers in Petersburg.

The raid on the printer’s workshop was connected to an earlier incident, when a Petersburg activist was arrested by Petersburg militia at the gates of the Kirov Factory for handing out a flyer to workers. The flyer aroused suspicion because it contained material critical of the Russian-Georgian conflict, and the militia raided the printer’s workshop at which the flyer had been produced, where they discovered the most recent edition of Chto Delat. They confiscated the entire edition of 3,000 newspapers and detained Chto Delat editor Dmitry Vilensky for questioning.

Vilensky himself is surpised by this turn of events, since, in his own words, this is one of "Cho Delat"'s most "artsy issues so far; it contains almost no references to the current political situation."

It seems that what triggered the raid, and the connection between the newspaper handed out to the workers - "For Worker Power" - is an article titled "A Coercive Peace", by Alexei Drosdov. "Chto Delat" have translated it and published it on their blog.

Currently, the full print run of the newspaper is in custody, and Vilensky is under investigation. The issue will not be presented at the U-Turn Quadriennial in Copenhagen, where it was to be a part of a video installation.

This hasn't affected the digital edition of the newspaper, which is still available online.

The printer's workshop where it was produced, Polyarnaya Zvezda - one of the last printers to publish opposition leaflets and publications in Saint Petersburg, has been cordoned off as a crime scene, and all its employees questioned.

Good night, and good luck.

Kamen Nedev

*Update: Excuse my lack of optimism, but, indeed, if things were looking bad, they seem to be getting even worse.