Manifesta 8 - The European Biennial of Contemporary Art in Dialogue with North Africa
Murcia and Cartagena, Spain
Opening 02.10.2010
First General Curatorial Statement
The situation of Manifesta 8 is comprised of a set of particular and significant conditions that determine the context within which each of the curatorial collectives works on the biennial. First is the institution of Manifesta itself and its brief but established and well-documented history, its insistence on curatorial innovation and desire to push experimentation within the biennial format, and its nomadic structure which renews the challenge of site-specificity in each manifestation. Following from this last element, the second of these particulars is the Region of Murcia and all of its attendant qualities -- the current social and political landscapes of Murcia and Cartagena and the historical, geographical, and cultural trajectories that shape its characteristics. And the final given of Manifesta 8 is the request to the curatorial teams to locate within the biennial a dialogue with North Africa, a continuation perhaps of earlier histories but certainly an attempt to consider more recent contact between Murcia, Spain, and the EU nations with the societies and cultures of North Africa.
These points of departure form the frames of a shared space of engagement and conceptualization that envelops the three curatorial collectives. It is a substantive ground which functions simultaneously as both a mark of reference as well as a set of conditions to work against and around. In the final analysis, the various projects produced by the collectives will exist as autonomous curatorial contributions, individualized responses which are each independently generated according to a different logic and methodology -- but also clearly given as an offering to reflect on this shared set of contextual elements. This approach produces charged, multivalent conceptual currents and complex, complementary in structure but even contradictory in attitudes in the projects presented by the curatorial collectives.
Curatorial Contributions
Manifesta 8 will consist of three curatorial contributions. Each of the collectives has developed its own scheme that in each case will span across both the cities of Murcia and Cartagena in a variety of indoor/outdoor locations, media spaces and new/historical buildings.
Related not to a geographical given, but a condition of transformation that can be found in any society, tranzit.org invites the viewers to interface with a wide range of artistic narratives, experiences and specific art histories that explore the significance of the current. The group is working with the format of the exhibition as a multi-authorial space, an assemblage of installations, performances, moving image, text, sound, print and signage, a temporary space of negotiation, experimenting with the model of the exhibition as a polis.
Chamber of Public Secrets conceives of their project as a series of ‘transmissions’ that critically use artistic, relational and media(ted) strategies to explore ideas of what Spain/Europe is today and focus on its boundaries and relationship with Northern Africa encouraging a questioning perspective from viewers. By challenging artists and contributors to explore new terrains beyond their usual practice, CPS searches out and engenders dialogues, placing them in the public realm through the practices of media production, documentary, artistic research and aesthetic journalism. CPS’s approach to curation encompasses (mass) media platforms such as television, internet, radio and newspapers, alongside other exhibition formats.
Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum’s curatorial project proposes to move away from the prevalent instrumentalization of art as a tool for social and political development by embracing the complex webs of signification that characterize the experience of early 21st century life.
Using their Theory of Applied Engimatics as a methodological tool to work through and around dominant ideologies embedded in the collective unconscious of contemporary art, ACAF’s exhibition and performance program exists as a solutions-based approach wherein deeper beliefs and knowledges can emerge as signs pointing towards future innovations in cultural projects.
At the intersection of the Biennial the curatorial collectives will present formats that they have selected to respond to the challenge to the posed notions of trans-regional and trans-continental dialogue. They range from a publication to a series of televised debates and to setting up an incubator for researching the feasibility of a Pan-African roaming biennial.
ACAF, CPS, TRANZIT.ORG
