Micol Forti is the curator of the Vatican's first pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The Holy See is participating for the first time with an exhibition in the Sale d'Armi, a series of spaces the Biennale has restored and converted into permanent pavilions.
Charlotte Higgins reports in today's Guardian that Forti, who is also the curator of 19th-century and contemporary art in the the Vatican museums, thinks that involvement in the biennale is a significant opportunity for the Roman Catholic church. "It's very important for the Holy See to be here: it's a different situation where you can create a space for a dialogue with different ideas, different ideological thinking, different religions," she said. "Here at the biennale, it is not important where you are from: the only important thing is that there is a place where you can speak."
In commissioning for the Pavilion, they had deliberately steered clear of work that engaged directly with Catholic themes or imagery, she said. "For Cardinal Ravasi, it is very important to distinguish between religious and liturgical artwork and that which engages with spiritual ideas. The Sistine chapel is a church: it contains completely revolutionary artworks but it is still a church.
"[The Holy See pavilion] is not a church; this is a completely different context. We respect this context: it is a place for international art from different contexts, philosophies, culture and religions."
Forti said that she and the selection committee for the pavilion "never asked the artists whether they believed or not. We started from the topic of the exhibition: for me it was important that there was intellectual honesty, a clear path in the artists' thinking."
The Holy See pavilion takes the first 11 books of Genesis as its starting point. Its title – Creation, Uncreation, Re-creation – hints at ideas "fundamental for culture and for church tradition", according to Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the president of the pontifical council for culture and the figure behind the Holy See's appearance at the biennale.
Three rooms of works take on the themes in turn: interactive videos by the Milanese collective Studio Azzurro focus on creation; then come stark images of man's destructiveness by Czech photographer Josef Koudelka. Paintings hinting at hope and renewal by American Lawrence Carroll complete the lineup.
Higgins has also written about another work at the Biennale which connects to religious themes; Ai Weiwei's SACRED. Situated in the church of Sant'Antonin, it consists of six large iron boxes, into which visitors can peek to see sculptures recreating scenes from the artist's detention. Here is a miniature Ai being interrogated; here a miniature Ai showers or sits on the lavatory while two uniformed guards stand over him. Other scenes show him sleeping and eating – always in the same tiny space, always under double guard. (The music video refers to some of these scenes with a lightly satirical tone that is absent from the sculpture.)
According to Greg Hilty of London's Lisson Gallery, under whose auspices SACRED is being shown, and who saw Ai in China a week ago, the work is a form of "therapy or exorcism – it was something he had to get out. It is an experience that we might see as newsworthy, but for him, he was the one in it."
The ecclesiastical setting, the title of the work, the appearance of the metal crates (which might resemble a reliquary or saint's coffin) suggest that Ai is positioning himself as a martyr. According to Hilty, however, "He is not pretending to be a saint, but the setting does suggest things such as the stations of the cross, or the temptations of St Anthony, to whom the church is dedicated. But these are human, universal things that go beyond Ai Weiwei … he's not saying he's a saint, or that he is wholly right or good. He's just being honest."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ai Weiwei - Dumbass.
Showing posts with label c. higgins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label c. higgins. Show all posts
Saturday, 1 June 2013
Wednesday, 18 July 2012
New forms of interconnectivity?
Great to see that, through The Tanks and the next Turbine Hall installation, Tate Modern is to feature more relational art, much of it also being art which critiques commercialisation. So, Charlotte Higgins writes in the guardian:
'The desire for live encounters, by both artists and audiences, was partly a reaction to the economic and political climate, said Dercon. Artists and audiences were expressing a disillusion with the impersonal systems that dominate modern life, and reaching for the human encounter.
"I'm not going to talk about politicians and banks, but we are completely surrounded by systems that do things to us and at us. Performance proposes a new form of interconnectivity."
The desire to focus work without physical form, that cannot straightforwardly be bought and sold, may also express a wider dissatisfaction among the art world for the vagaries of the art market and the extreme commercialisation of art before the financial crash of 2008.
According to Catherine Wood, Tate's curator of contemporary art and performance, "there is a desire for community among artists, and a desire to get away from the dominant news story about art, which is 'Damien Hirst sells for £50m'".
Serota added: "At a time of austerity, people are rethinking their values and looking at art that doesn't straightforwardly have a market … Artists want to make work that engages directly with audiences and is not so susceptible to commercial development."
Tino Sehgal, whose Turbine Hall commission will be unveiled next week, says in his guardian interview:
"Our culture is hung up on and overemphasises what can be derived from material objects," he says. "I think this is something quite new, over the past 200 or 300 years – that life has become about accumulating material wealth. The 21st century is not about accumulating material wealth like the 20th century. It's already eroding. I'm not against material things – I just don't work with them."
Objects, he suggests, offer false promises of stability and security ..."
Higgins explains that:
"Sehgal did not train as an artist: instead he studied dance and political economy, in tandem, in Berlin and Essen. A peculiar combination, you might think, but for him each unlocks the other. The paradox of economics, he believes, is that "we derive income from transforming the earth into goods, but you can't keep on transforming the earth. I felt I wanted to study that." And dance? "Dance for me was a solution. In the sense that I could solve this paradox at least for myself. It was about how I can derive an income from something that does not involve this material transformation. At the same time, I'm not against the economy or the idea of the product. Art is essentially something that is produced. What I think is overestimated is the power and potential of things. My work is a product, though – not a thing."
Still, Sehgal belongs in the art world rather than in the world of the performing arts: museums rather than theatres provide the best environment for tackling the kinds of questions that interest him. "The museum is a place where we think about how to produce material things. That is my question – not the question of choreography, which is 'How can a body move?', but 'What can we do instead of producing objects?'"
The paradox which doesn't seem to be fully addressed, however, is that it is commercial activity (galleries and sponsors) which funds much of the art which critiques commercialisation. Sehgal may dispense with contracts when he sells his works (that is, the right to perform them) to museums but they sell nevertheless for five-figure sums, something that, as Higgins notes, has prompted his critics to cry emperor's new clothes. Similarly, Tate director Nicholas Serota has praised non-doms who donated money to the Tanks at Tate Modern - saying: 'It's a very visible answer to the criticisms that have come from government and others about non-dom taxpayers not making a contribution to the cultural life of the country' - while using the money they provide to show art which critiques the commercialisation from which, in the main, their money derives. There are unresolved or unacknowledged issues here - having your cake and eating it - particularly where art which has become accepted by the cultural and critical establishment is presented as though it remains defiantly avant-garde.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mumford and Sons - Whispers in the Dark.
'The desire for live encounters, by both artists and audiences, was partly a reaction to the economic and political climate, said Dercon. Artists and audiences were expressing a disillusion with the impersonal systems that dominate modern life, and reaching for the human encounter.
"I'm not going to talk about politicians and banks, but we are completely surrounded by systems that do things to us and at us. Performance proposes a new form of interconnectivity."
The desire to focus work without physical form, that cannot straightforwardly be bought and sold, may also express a wider dissatisfaction among the art world for the vagaries of the art market and the extreme commercialisation of art before the financial crash of 2008.
According to Catherine Wood, Tate's curator of contemporary art and performance, "there is a desire for community among artists, and a desire to get away from the dominant news story about art, which is 'Damien Hirst sells for £50m'".
Serota added: "At a time of austerity, people are rethinking their values and looking at art that doesn't straightforwardly have a market … Artists want to make work that engages directly with audiences and is not so susceptible to commercial development."
Tino Sehgal, whose Turbine Hall commission will be unveiled next week, says in his guardian interview:
"Our culture is hung up on and overemphasises what can be derived from material objects," he says. "I think this is something quite new, over the past 200 or 300 years – that life has become about accumulating material wealth. The 21st century is not about accumulating material wealth like the 20th century. It's already eroding. I'm not against material things – I just don't work with them."
Objects, he suggests, offer false promises of stability and security ..."
Higgins explains that:
"Sehgal did not train as an artist: instead he studied dance and political economy, in tandem, in Berlin and Essen. A peculiar combination, you might think, but for him each unlocks the other. The paradox of economics, he believes, is that "we derive income from transforming the earth into goods, but you can't keep on transforming the earth. I felt I wanted to study that." And dance? "Dance for me was a solution. In the sense that I could solve this paradox at least for myself. It was about how I can derive an income from something that does not involve this material transformation. At the same time, I'm not against the economy or the idea of the product. Art is essentially something that is produced. What I think is overestimated is the power and potential of things. My work is a product, though – not a thing."
Still, Sehgal belongs in the art world rather than in the world of the performing arts: museums rather than theatres provide the best environment for tackling the kinds of questions that interest him. "The museum is a place where we think about how to produce material things. That is my question – not the question of choreography, which is 'How can a body move?', but 'What can we do instead of producing objects?'"
The paradox which doesn't seem to be fully addressed, however, is that it is commercial activity (galleries and sponsors) which funds much of the art which critiques commercialisation. Sehgal may dispense with contracts when he sells his works (that is, the right to perform them) to museums but they sell nevertheless for five-figure sums, something that, as Higgins notes, has prompted his critics to cry emperor's new clothes. Similarly, Tate director Nicholas Serota has praised non-doms who donated money to the Tanks at Tate Modern - saying: 'It's a very visible answer to the criticisms that have come from government and others about non-dom taxpayers not making a contribution to the cultural life of the country' - while using the money they provide to show art which critiques the commercialisation from which, in the main, their money derives. There are unresolved or unacknowledged issues here - having your cake and eating it - particularly where art which has become accepted by the cultural and critical establishment is presented as though it remains defiantly avant-garde.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mumford and Sons - Whispers in the Dark.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)