[spectre] Prague Biennale 1 (June 26-August 31, 2003)

[geert lovink]

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 <http://www.praguebiennale.org>
Email: praguebiennale1 at flashartonline.com
<mailto: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.