[spectre] unitednationsplaza inaugural conference: October 27-29, 2006

[Andreas Broeckmann]

unitednationsplaza
Platz der Vereinten Nationen 14a
Berlin, 10249
http://www.unitednationsplaza.org


unitednationsplaza is exhibition as school. Structured as a
seminar/residency program in the city of Berlin, it will involve
collaboration with approximately 30 artists, writers, theorists and a wide
range of audiences for a period of one year. In the tradition of Free
Universities, most of its events will be open to all those interested to
take part. unitednationsplaza is organized by Anton Vidokle in collaboration
with Liam Gillick, Boris Groys, Martha Rosler, Walid Raad, Jalal Toufic,
Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Nikolaus Hirsch and Tirdad Zolghadr.

On October 27-29, 2006, The UN Plaza will be proud to present the inaugural
conference entitled: Histories of Productive Failures: From French
Revolution to Manifesta VI, organized by Anton Vidokle & Tirdad
Zolghadr. The conference will be followed by a two week seminar with Boris
Groys: After the Red Square, October 30 through November 10, 2006

Admission is free but space is limited,
please register with magdalena at unitednationsplaza.org

Conference schedule:

Friday, October 27

18:00 Manifesta VI Ghost: A specter is haunting Europe
Panelists: Haris Pellapaisiotis, Mete Hatay, Pavlina Paraskevaidou, Anton
Vidokle, Rana Zincir Celal
Moderator: Anselm Franke

21:00 Inaugural dinner with Adrienne Goehler (by invitation)

23:00 Rock You Like A Hurricane: drunken dance party with Julieta Aranda


Saturday, October 28

14:00 Program: Liam Gillick

18:00 Respondent: Maria Lind

19:00 Happy Hour

Sunday, October 29

14:00 Diedrich Diederichsen
The event will be conducted in seminar form. All participants are to commit
to attending the full four hours' duration. The seminar will attempt to link
"failures" of two different kinds. On the one hand, drawing on
recent experiments in art academy formatting, it is the incommunicado -
possibly structural - between audience and lecturer which shall be explored.
On the other hand, it is a broader matter of political ideology that will be
addressed; the elusive nature of collective ideals in a situation where the
political projections at hand are lacking in any adequate referent to latch
on to.

18:00 Respondent: Tirdad Zolghadr

19:00 Closing remarks: Vasif Kortun

Keywords: no pain no gain, breakdown, stoppage, malfunction, crash,
collapse, fiasco, letdown, its such a cliché, can I speak to the
manager?, disappointment, disenchantment, disillusionment, deprivation,
loss, social democracy, euphemisms, bitterness, real-politic, good
intentions, preaching to the choir, bad news, tough luck, too bad, misery,
malaise, ennui, it'll pass, can't get any worse, the show must go on,
silver-lining, too many cooks, world weariness, regret, guilt, shame, swamp,
muddling through, non-event, anti-climax, amnesia, its not the same anymore,
character building experience, failure as an option, faux-pas, blunder,
resignation, embarrassment, hangover, lose/lose, whatever, pyrrhic victory,
envy, obsolescence, tautologies, flops, bankruptcy, told you so, it wasn't
my idea, nice try, you are too sensitive, white elephant, elephant in the
room, submission, sellout, compromise, commodification, globalization,
surrender, retreat, concession, deconstructi
on, I don't want to talk about it, I knew this would happen, let me come
clear with you, access denied, this won't hurt a bit, talk is cheap, but you
promised, just say no, institutional critique, co-optation, preemptive
strike, soft targets, collateral damage, friendly fire, the lesser evil,
easier sad than done, the party is over, urban failures, failures of nation
states, failure of internationalism, martyrdom, better sad than sorry, it's
the thought that counts, retirement, victimization, sacrifice, bring it
back, suicide, ideological collapse, get well soon, you are so negative, art
world defeatism, morning after, same old same old, moan fest, doom, the
eternal return, heartbreak, you've got problems, weltschmerz, delusions of
grandeur, window dressing, cul-de-sac, been there done that, self-help, if
you only knew, charity, pity, burnout, running on empty, too little too
late, inferiority complex, over the hill, not knowing when to stop, knowing
your place, implosion, no show, cancellation, stand by, indefinite
postponement, you are beginning to piss me off, I did not mean it, come on
its only a show, repentance, payback, I cant work like this, better luck
next time, back to square one, can't help you, what did you expect, we are
going to have to let you go, you are telling me now, easy for you to say

About conference participants (in order of appearance):

Mete Hatay works as the Project Leader at the PRIO Cyprus Centre. In 2003
and 2004, he worked extensively with PRIO's Public Information Project aimed
at providing accurate and non-partisan information on the 'Annan Plan'. He
has for many years conducted research on different minority groups in
Cyprus. Hatay is the author of 'Beyond Numbers: An Inquiry into the
Political Integration of the Turkish 'Settlers' in Northern Cyprus' PRIO
Report 4, PRIO, 7 September.

Haris Pellapaisiotis has lived with his family in Nicosia, Cyprus, since
2001, where he works as a visual artist and lecturer in photography and
visual culture. Prior to that he lived in London where he lectured on
photography at Goldsmiths College. He is the founder and a director of
Artalk Ltd. Haris is currently co-editing a publication on Nicosia entitled
'Thinking the City'.

Pavlina Paraskevaidou founded and ran Archimede Staffolini - a contemporary
art gallery in Nicosia, Cyprus from 1998-2005. She holds a law degree LLB
(Hons) and an MA in History of Art. She is currently a research student in
Visual Cultures at Goldsmith's College, University of London.

Rana Zincir Celal is Vice President for Programs at the Chrest Foundation, a
US foundation with grantmaking programs in Turkey and Cyprus. Prior to that
she was working as a consultant in Istanbul on a number of projects
including a research effort on philanthropy with the Third Sector Foundation
of Turkey and a cultural policy initiative with Anadolu Kultur and the
European Cultural Foundation. She was the initiator of "Leaps of Faith", an
international contemporary arts exhibition which took place on both sides of
Nicosia and the Buffer Zone. Prior to her work in Istanbul, she was based in
the Economic Development Unit of the Ford Foundation in New York. She is a
member of the Greek Turkish Forum and a board member of the Domini
Foundation, which is a donor advised fund operated in partnership with the
UN Foundation. Her educational background is in political and economic
development from Columbia University and the London School of Economics.

Anton Vidokle was born in Moscow and is currently based in Berlin. His work
has been exhibited in shows such as the Venice Biennale, Dakar Biennale and
at Tate Modern, London; Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana; Musee d'art Modern de
la Ville de Paris; Museo Carrillo Gil, Mexico City; UCLA Hammer, LA; ICA,
Boston; Haus Der Kunst, Munich; P.S.1, New York; amongst others. With
Julieta Aranda, he put together e-flux video rental. As founding director of
e-flux, he has produced projects such as Next Documenta Should Be Curated By
An Artist, Do it, Utopia Station poster project, and organized An Image Bank
for Everyday Revolutionary Life and Martha Rosler Library. Anton Vidokle was
a co-curator of Manifesta 6.

Anselm Franke, independent curator and critic, lives in Berlin. He is the
curator of KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin (until fall 2006) and
works for various institutions in Germany and abroad. He has contributed to
magazines such as Parkett, Cabinet Magazine, and ARCHIS. He curated and
edited numerous exhibitions and publications, such as Image Archives , the
exhibition series Productions 1- 8 , Territories. Islands Camps and Other
States of Utopia , The Imaginary Number (KW Berlin, 2005, together with Hila
Peleg), B-Zone - Becoming Europe and Beyond and Forum Expanded, a new
section on cinematographic installations within the International Film
Festival (Berlinale) in Berlin. Anselm Franke is currently a PhD candidate
in Visual Cultures/Center for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College
London.

Adrienne Goehler served as the curator for the Hauptstadt Kulturfonds
(capital city cultural funds) of Berlin. She has also served as a deputy in
the Hamburg Parliament as part of the Women's fraction of the Green Party,
headed the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg and was Senator for Science,
Research and Culture in Berlin.

Julieta Aranda is an artist who sometimes likes to play music. Her last
drunken dancing episode in Berlin took place at Cafe Bravo, for the opening
of e-flux video rental in Berlin, and is still fondly remembered by those
who were there.

Liam Gillick was born in Aylesbury (U.K.) He attended Goldsmiths College in
London between 1984 and 1987 and has been teaching at Columbia University in
New York since 1997. Numerous solo exhibitions since 1989 include Literally,
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2003; communes, bar and greenrooms, The
Powerplant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, 2003; Exterior Days, Casey
Kaplan, New York, 2003; The Wood Way, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2002; A
short text on the possibility of creating an economy of equivalence, Palais
de Tokyo, 2005. Selected group exhibitions include Singular Forms,
Guggenheim Museum, 2004; 50th Venice Biennale, 2003; What If, Moderna
Museet, Stockholm, 2000 and documenta X, 1997. Numerous public projects and
interventions include Ft. Lauderdale Airport in 2002 and the new Home Office
government building in London in 2005.

Maria Lind is the director of IASPIS (International Artist Studio Programme
in Sweden) since 2005. During 2002-2004 she was the director of Kunstverein
München where she ran a programme which involved artists such as
Deimantas Narkevicius, Oda Projesi, Bojan Sarcevic, Philippe Parreno and
Marion von Osten. The format of a retrospective, or survey, was explored in
a one-year long retrospective with Christine Borland 2002-2003, only ever
showing one piece at a time and a retrospective project in the form of a
7-day long workshop with Rirkrit Tiravanija. The group project "Totally
motivated: A sociocultural maneouvre" was a collaboration between five
curators and ten artists looking at the relationship between
"amateur" and "professional" art and culture. From
1997-2001 she was curator at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and, in 1998,
co-curator of "Manifesta 2", Europe's biennale of contemporary
art. Lind curated "What if: Art on the
Verge of Architecture and Design", filtered by Liam Gillick. Lind was
one of 10 contributing curators to Phaidon's "Fresh Cream" book,
and she has contributed widely to magazines including "Index",
"Site", "Frieze", "Art Monthly" and
"Parkett", as well as to numerous catalogues and other
publications.

Diedrich Diederichsen is an author on art, music, fillm, theatre and
politics . His work has been widely published in art and culture
publications. He was editor of the magazines Sounds and Spex, and he
frequently writes for Texte zur Kunst, Art Forum, Tageszeitung, Theater
heute, and other publications. He is currently a professor at Merz Akademie,
Stuttgart, and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna. His recent
publications include Golden Years Dokumente und Materialien zur queeren
Subkultur 1959-1974, (Co-Editor); Graz 2006; Personas en loop, Buenos Aires
2005; Musikzimmer, Cologne 2005; Sexbeat (new edition) 2002; Schallplatten
von 1979-1999, 2000; Der lange Weg nach Mitte, 1999; Loving the Alien
(Editor), 1998; Politische Korrekturen 1996; Yo! Hermeneutics-Schwarze
Kulturkritik: Pop, Medien, Feminismus (Editor) 1993. Selected exhibitions
and theatre-projects include Die Kraft der Negation, Theater der Welt
Cologne / Volksbühne Berlin; BildSchirmAuge, Bauhau
s Archiv Berlin; Cross Gender / Cross Genre, Steirischer Herbst, Graz;
Loving the Alien; Berlin

Tirdad Zolghadr works as a freelance curator, writes for frieze magazine and
has also contributed to Parkett, Bidoun, Cabinet, afterall, Neue
Zürcher Zeitung, Straits Times Singapore and other publications. After
his MA in Comparative Literature he began work in the field of journalism
and documentary film, being a co-founder of the Tehran-based online
publication Bad Jens in 1999, and co-director of "Tehran 1380"
(with Solmaz Shahbazi), a documentary on Tehran mass housing in 2002. His
recent "Tropical Modernism" explores the history of Iranian
socialism and was premiered at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival 2006.
Since 2004, Zolghadr has curated events at Cubitt London, IASPIS Stockholm,
Kunsthalle Geneva, various Tehran artspaces and other venues. He was
co-curator of the International Sharjah Biennial 2005, and is currently
preparing a long-term exhibition and research project addressing social
class in the art world that shall take place at Gasw
orks London, Platform Istanbul and Tensta Konsthall. Zolghadr is also a
founding member of the SHAHRZAD art & design collective and will shortly
publish his novel "Softcore" with Telegram Books, London.

Vasif Kortun is an educator, writer, advisor and curator on the field of
contemporary art. He is the director of Platform Garanti Contemporary Art
Center, in Istanbul. His writing and interviews over the last years have
appeared in many books, magazines and exhibition catalogs. Jahresring 51:
Szene Turkei: Abseits aber Tor, a book on Turkey co-authored with Erden
Kosova was published in December 2004. Exhibitions in 2005 were 9th
International Istanbul Biennial (co-curator) Ahmet Ögüt, Mala
Galerija, Ljubljana and Normalization 1 through 4, (co-curator), Platform.




For more information go to: http://www.unitednationsplaza.org