Prague Biennale 1 press release

[anna balint]

From: "Flash Art International" <flash_art at tin.it>
 
  Prague Biennale 1
  June 26–August 31, 2003
  National Gallery/Veletrzni Palac
  Prague



  Opening days: June 26-27-28


  Info: www.praguebiennale.org
  Email: praguebiennale1 at flashartonline.com



  Organized by Giancarlo Politi and Helena Kontova, editors of Flash Art
  magazine, together with Milan Knizak and Tomas Vlcek, directors of the

  National Gallery in Prague, the inaugural edition of the Prague Biennale,

  “Peripheries become the center,” is one of the major art events of the year.

  This benchmark exhibition showcases the work of around 260 emerging artists
  from all over the world, selected by a team of 30 influential curators, to

  create a pluralistic vision of contemporary art today. A huge survey

  realized with a low budget (compared to other blockbuster exhibitions), the

  Prague Biennale has pushed its organizers to face amazing challenges, but
  these constraints represent a move towards new horizons, new solutions, and

  new exhibiting philosophies.


  The title of the Prague Biennale, “Peripheries become the center,” refers to

  the dissolution of the dichotomy between “periphery” and “center” and to a
  liberation of plurality in terms of both identity and artistic practice. The

  distinction articulated in this dichotomy has become increasingly irrelevant

  due to information technology, the mass media, migration, and nomadism. The

  escalating phenomenon of globalization and the seeming collapse of physical
  distances brought about by the Internet have changed the terms in which the

  relations between periphery and center are negotiated, and even the

  definitions of what these two places are. The proposal that “Peripheries

  become the center” is a point of departure for the curators of the Prague
  Biennale, opening up space for investigation of their own diverse areas of

  research and interest.


  One of the main focuses of the exhibition is new trends in painting. Lazarus

  Effect is an impressive panorama of works by emerging painters represented
  each by one or two large-dimension works, most of which were made specially

  for the Biennale. Curated by Luca Beatrice, Lauri Firstenberg and Helena

  Kontova, Lazarus Effect is an attempt to assess the health of the medium of

  painting, which constantly manifests its possibility and vitality through
  young painters’ forays into diverse styles including abstraction, collage,

  figuration, and hyperrealism. Superreal, curated by Lauri Firstenberg,

  further considers hyperrealism, investigating the return to the traditional,

  historical, slow territory of realist painting in an age informed by
  advancing digital technologies and accelerating speeds of information.

  All the artworks at the Prague Biennale will be presented not in national

  “pavilions” but in a pluralistic mix. In this way Mission Possible, the

  Czech section curated by Michal Kolecek, is open to other European
  nationalities and aims to rethink the identity of Central Europe. This view

  opposes the typical understanding of Central Europe as an intersection of

  European East and West, and focuses instead on the North-South axis,

  underlining the significant role of the Czech state.

  The melting of the opposition between center and peripheries is explored as

  a potential ground for new creativity in the section entitled When the

  Periphery Turns Center and the Center Turns Periphery, curated by Jens

  Hoffmann. This section of the Biennale gathers the work of artists coming
  from places that directly express the ambivalence of the terms “center” and

  “periphery,” for whom issues of racial, sexual, political, or social

  identity have become an optional reference but not necessarily an

  unalterable doctrine.

  In the contemporary globalized cultural situation, Space and Subjectivity,

  curated by Lauri Firstenberg, intends to examine the concept of the masses

  vis-à-vis Hardt and Negri’s model of the multitude. A selection of

  photography and video, from portraits of urban life in Mexico City to
  anonymous Israeli suburban borders, explores the anxiety between

  homogenization and difference in the constitution of identity.


  In the same vein, alone/together, a section of artists from Northern Europe

  curated by Jacob Fabricius, examines the relation between the individual and
  the collective, focusing on artistic strategies that challenge the

  restrictions of society. Beautiful Banners: Representation/Democracy/

  Participation, curated by Marco Scotini, similarly addresses artistic

  practices as the meeting point between the public and symbolic sphere in the
  new global order; and The Art of Survival, curated by B+B (Sarah Carrington

  and Sophie Hope), presents tactics, strategies, and attempted expeditions by

  artists working towards a space of self-determination, independence, or

  resistance.

  Overcoming Alienation, curated by Ekaterina Lazareva, considers what

  globalization means for the art world today. Demonstrating a wide

  interpretation of the Biennale’s themes, the selected Russian artists are

  all engaged in overcoming the alienation of cultures, languages, and
  religions, by addressing topical subjects such as consumerism and

  corporations, immigration, communication, and social relations.


  (Dis)locations, curated by Julieta Gonzalez, proposes that mobility and the

  diaspora are direct consequences of the globalization of the art world, and
  accordingly presents works by Latin American artists who either currently

  live abroad or have done so for a long time during their careers. An

  awareness of the “location” of the work, not only within the exhibition

  space, but also within the more general sphere of the art world, is an
  articulating thread in all the selected works. Through their

  problematization of space as the site of power, knowledge, and culture; and

  with their dislocation of given concepts, situations, and myths, the

  selected artists contest the stereotypes the West has imposed on the rest of
  the world.


  The Prague Biennale explores new trends in digital art as well. The image

  chosen for the catalogue cover and the poster for the Biennale is a digital

  manipulation by Jean-Pierre Khazem of one of the icons of the Western visual
  tradition, the Mona Lisa.


  IMPROVisual, curated by Lavinia Garulli, ventures to explore the ways in

  which the liveness of digital media performances brings a new kind of

  contact with reality into the audio-visual work. Electronic music is a pure
  sound event in which there is no specific image of the sound source,

  allowing the music to suggest new visual landscapes. Works investigating the

  live interaction of sound and image are freed up to concentrate on

  improvisation instead of reproduction, as reality no longer means an
  external thing. For the first time a Biennale proposes live VJing as a kind

  of artistic practice.


  Virtual Perception, curated by Laurence Dreyfus, presents an international

  selection of digital artists. Innovative and unclassifiable, these inventors
  of images use different forms of expression: animated film, Flash, net art,

  analogue and digital images. Different types of reality confront each other

  and mix together, often with the appropriation of narrative figures from

  video games or interactive fictions that progressively move away from
  traditional video. From an aesthetic point of view, these images do not

  resemble any others: they are flat, pixilated, super-colored, rapid, and

  unusual.


  In addition to the changes brought about by digital technology, the issue of
  retaining a national identity as the art world becomes increasingly

  globalized is a subject of debate and investigation. Several sections of the

  Biennale focus on diverse artistic scenes: Leaving Glasvegas, curated by

  Neil Mulholland, presents work by artists active in the Scottish cities of
  Dundee, Edinburgh, and Glasgow; individual “atypical” presences in the

  Hungarian art scene are gathered together by Judit Angel in Differentia

  Specifica; Fragments of Contemporary Identities, curated by Charlotte

  Mailler, exhibits works by (mostly Swiss) artists examining the
  representation or value of tradition in contemporary culture; Italy: Out of

  Order, curated by Luca Beatrice and Giancarlo Politi, surveys contemporary

  art from Italy; Dorothée Kirch has selected artists as different as possible

  for Global Suburbia to paint a picture of contemporary art in Iceland; The
  Deste Foundation presents a panorama of contemporary Greek art curated by

  Xenia Kalpaktsolgou; Francesca Jordan and Primo Marella present a survey of

  Chinese Art Today; Tomas Vlcek highlights work by leading historical

  protagonists of the Czech art scene in Special Homage to Czech Women
  Artists; and Seduced (by Speed and Movements): Towards active agencies of
  fictions and realities in Polish art, curated by Adam Budak, maps the vast

  cultural territories in which Polish contemporary artists construct

  multilayered and fluid structures of meaning, immersed in a process of

  constant shifting between the real and the fictive, the active and the
  passive, the mobile and the fixed.


  Other thematic exhibitions include Come with me, curated by Gea Politi,

  which presents works by experimental filmmakers, including Alfonso Cuaròn,

  director of the upcoming Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; Aión: An
  Eventual Architecture, curated by Andrea Di Stefano, a survey of digital

  architecture; Collecting, Channeling, curated by Sofía Hernández, which

  exhibits three projects that collect and channel a range of views,

  interests, and objects of material culture; Illusion of Security, curated by
  Lino Baldini and Gyonata Bonvicini, which presents works that investigate

  questions of surveillance and “insecurity” culture; Disturbance, curated by

  Helena Kontova, which gathers a small group of contemporary artists intently

  pursuing their own singular visions; and Brand Art, also curated by Kontova,
  for which three artists were commissioned to create works interpreting the

  Mattoni brand on billboards around the city. The Prague Biennale also

  presents special projects by Oliver Payne and Nick Relph, curated by Gregor

  Muir; Sigur Rós, curated by artist Francesco Vezzoli; and Pass It On, an
  exquisite-corpse video project by Raimundas Malasauskas.