Artist is operating as fake delivery rider in Vienna.
Buuuuuuuuu curated by Lorenzo Balbi
Lorenzo Balbi is director of the MAMBO in Bologna. After his graduation in Cultural Heritage at Ca' Foscari in Venice, he specializes in Contemporary Art at the University of Turin. He collaborates with Il Giornale dell'Arte and Il Giornale dell'Architettura and he was the Artistic Director of Verso Artecontemporanea Gallery, Turin. Since 2007 at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo he has been dealing with the organisation and development of exhibition projects. He was one of the coordinator of CAMPO, the young Italian curators program.
"A Monument to Failure" by Pleurad Xhafa, 2015
The artist Pleurad Xhafa in his first collaboration with MAPS - Museum of art in public space, donates Tirana a monument dedicated to one of the most controversial events in Albanian modern history. The “Gerdec” suit. The Albanian government in cooperation with the United States of America and some private companies, were responsible for the dismantling of Russian-Chinese ammunition from the communist era inside the expressly dedicated factory in Gerdec a village in the municipality of Vora, Albania. In breach of contract and through false documents by the parties, at the factory, the ammunition were removed in miserable conditions by the inhabitants of Gerdec, unqualified people, women and children who lived near the factory.
As a consequence of all this at noon local time on Saturday, March 15, 2008, 14 kilometers from the city center, a large explosion caused the death of 26 people and injuring over 300 people. Nearly five years later, the Supreme Court of Albania classified the case of the explosion in the factory in Gerdec as a “technological accident”. It was indeed a technological accident considering the conditions in which it was carried out the dismantling of ammunition? Or maybe the problem exceeds the authority of a fragile justice?! Following in the footsteps of this accident the work “Monument to failure”, embodied on the basis of a cut tree, in itself a dead object with long roots hidden under the asphalt of the Deshmoret e Kombit Boulevard, 15 km from the crater of Gerdec. Pleurad Xhafa brings attention back on the avenue where the most important institutions of the Country are located and where are consumed some of the most emblematic events of the Albanian history. Only raised a few centimeters from the sidewalk in front of the Presidency Building, the trunk, once witness of the past, with the addition of the bronze plaque turns into a monument, a symbol of the failure. In front of this monument the viewer is unprepared as unprepared were the families of Gerdec victims, facing the final blow of the hammer of justice.
"Democracies" by Artur Zmijewski (video still), 2009
Presented on a row of monitors, this cacophonic video installation could also be understood as a series of individual, documentary videos. Zmijewski is exploring the free, public expression of opinion in the form of gatherings and crowds in different places in Europe. With this project, Zmijewski moves his work out of his typical sphere of staged social experiments into a more public realm of events.
For the “Democracies” (2009) project at the daadgalerie, Zmijewski departs from his work using recruited volunteers. In a series of short documentary films, he looks into the different symbols of nationalist and other movements visible in a variety of public spaces. All the clips depict public (and political) fervour in different places around Europe, Israel and the Westbank, like demonstrations, parades or re-enactments of historical battles. They include for example material from the European Football Championships in Berlin and Jörg Haider’s funeral in Klagenfurt. As in all of his work, also in these images of ordered and disordered crowds, Zmijewski places the human body at the focal point of his observations.
"Young Dictator's Village" by Paolo Chiasera, 2004
Nine guys decided to change their behavoir, their way of dressing and their houses, to undo the distance that keep them and their ideology apart. They decided to spit into groups - according to thir political creed - and found a village in disused countryside, where their need of emulation is perpetrated by looting, fighting and destroying. YDV is about fanaticism, loss of control, irrationality, destruction. Fanaticism relegated them to the fringe of society and of system, putting them into a condition based on violence and anarchy.
"Shadow for a while" by Mircea Cantor, 2007
The 16mm film Shadow For A While (2007), which shows the shadow of a slowly burning flag, could be read as a farewell to political symbols. The black rectangle on a white ground is gradually broken down by invisible flames, creating a mood that is more elegiac than revolutionary. As a shadow, it is impossible to identify the symbols or colours of any particular state on the flag; it could equally be a white flag of peace.
"3bisbis" by Xuanhe Wang, 2010
An installation based on a sick Plane Tree in wich the artist create a place with a post box in order to provoke the mail system and its rules. The artist sent mails to this address from all over the world without receiving any of his letters. Before the tree was cut by the municipality he received a letter from a passer by address to the "inhabitant of the Plane tree".
"A Monument to Failure" by Pleurad Xhafa, 2015
The artist Pleurad Xhafa in his first collaboration with MAPS - Museum of art in public space, donates Tirana a monument dedicated to one of the most controversial events in Albanian modern history. The “Gerdec” suit. The Albanian government in cooperation with the United States of America and some private companies, were responsible for the dismantling of Russian-Chinese ammunition from the communist era inside the expressly dedicated factory in Gerdec a village in the municipality of Vora, Albania. In breach of contract and through false documents by the parties, at the factory, the ammunition were removed in miserable conditions by the inhabitants of Gerdec, unqualified people, women and children who lived near the factory.
As a consequence of all this at noon local time on Saturday, March 15, 2008, 14 kilometers from the city center, a large explosion caused the death of 26 people and injuring over 300 people. Nearly five years later, the Supreme Court of Albania classified the case of the explosion in the factory in Gerdec as a “technological accident”. It was indeed a technological accident considering the conditions in which it was carried out the dismantling of ammunition? Or maybe the problem exceeds the authority of a fragile justice?! Following in the footsteps of this accident the work “Monument to failure”, embodied on the basis of a cut tree, in itself a dead object with long roots hidden under the asphalt of the Deshmoret e Kombit Boulevard, 15 km from the crater of Gerdec. Pleurad Xhafa brings attention back on the avenue where the most important institutions of the Country are located and where are consumed some of the most emblematic events of the Albanian history. Only raised a few centimeters from the sidewalk in front of the Presidency Building, the trunk, once witness of the past, with the addition of the bronze plaque turns into a monument, a symbol of the failure. In front of this monument the viewer is unprepared as unprepared were the families of Gerdec victims, facing the final blow of the hammer of justice.
Presented on a row of monitors, this cacophonic video installation could also be understood as a series of individual, documentary videos. Zmijewski is exploring the free, public expression of opinion in the form of gatherings and crowds in different places in Europe. With this project, Zmijewski moves his work out of his typical sphere of staged social experiments into a more public realm of events.
For the “Democracies” (2009) project at the daadgalerie, Zmijewski departs from his work using recruited volunteers. In a series of short documentary films, he looks into the different symbols of nationalist and other movements visible in a variety of public spaces. All the clips depict public (and political) fervour in different places around Europe, Israel and the Westbank, like demonstrations, parades or re-enactments of historical battles. They include for example material from the European Football Championships in Berlin and Jörg Haider’s funeral in Klagenfurt. As in all of his work, also in these images of ordered and disordered crowds, Zmijewski places the human body at the focal point of his observations.
"Young Dictator's Village" by Paolo Chiasera, 2004
Nine guys decided to change their behavoir, their way of dressing and their houses, to undo the distance that keep them and their ideology apart. They decided to spit into groups - according to thir political creed - and found a village in disused countryside, where their need of emulation is perpetrated by looting, fighting and destroying. YDV is about fanaticism, loss of control, irrationality, destruction. Fanaticism relegated them to the fringe of society and of system, putting them into a condition based on violence and anarchy.
"Shadow for a while" by Mircea Cantor, 2007
The 16mm film Shadow For A While (2007), which shows the shadow of a slowly burning flag, could be read as a farewell to political symbols. The black rectangle on a white ground is gradually broken down by invisible flames, creating a mood that is more elegiac than revolutionary. As a shadow, it is impossible to identify the symbols or colours of any particular state on the flag; it could equally be a white flag of peace.
An installation based on a sick Plane Tree in wich the artist create a place with a post box in order to provoke the mail system and its rules. The artist sent mails to this address from all over the world without receiving any of his letters. Before the tree was cut by the municipality he received a letter from a passer by address to the "inhabitant of the Plane tree".
Buuuuuuuuu curated by Astrid Peterle
As
a curator these days I am actually at a loss how one can react to the
humanitarian crisis we are currently facing. Nevertheless I still
believe in the political strength and energy artistic practice can
unleash not only in the field of art. I am most interested in those
moments where art penetrates into other social fields, where it
shakes people up from their daily routine, if only for a second, or
where it works to empower people who cannot or do not want to be part
of the artistic field (which in many ways often still is very elite
and disconnected from those who do not posses the
knowledge/education/resources to engage with it). I
picked a few projects that either directly react to the current
situations or which I discovered a longer time ago but fit into a
reflection of the many things going wrong theses days.
'Weaponise the internet' by One of My Kind (OOMK)
A
feminist project that deals with self empowerment of young Muslim
women, promoting a positive feeling of their identities in opposition
to the negative definition of being Muslim which is constantly
constructed by media and right wing politics in Europe and the USA.
The MigrationLab is a project that is active all across Europe to bring together migrants, refugees and host communities with means of art and non-formal education. One form of events they initiate was also established in Vienna during the last Vienna Design Week in 2015:
Welcome to The Living Room is a public living room co-created by migrants, refugees and locals in cities across Europe, where these communities share stories and reflections on migration using artistic expression.
Welcome to The Living Room is a public living room co-created by migrants, refugees and locals in cities across Europe, where these communities share stories and reflections on migration using artistic expression.
'True
Finn – Tosi suomalainen', by Yael Bartana, 2014
One
artist whose work I admire a lot is Yael Bartana. For the Finnish
IHMW Art Festival Bartana created a kind of utopian community of
people living in Finland with different religious, ethical and
political backgrounds, thus questioning what a national identity, in
this case Finnishness, actually constitutes.
I
have followed
Janez
Janša’s work for many years, dating back from when he worked as a
choreographer and director under the name of Emil Hrvatin. Together
with two fellow artists from Slovenia and Italy he created a
politically very challenging project by officially renaming
themselves with the name of the then ruling Slovenian prime minister
Janez Janša. To this day I find it thought-provoking in regard to
the issues of identity, nationality, and the relation between the
individual human being and society.
The
Austrian performance art collective God’s Entertainment has
recently produced a project for Kampnagel in Hamburg that they had
previously developed for Wiener Festwochen in 2012. The term
“Intergrationsfähigkeit” (ability/skill to integrate) is now
more topical as ever and all around us in the media and especially in
right winged political debates. After the collective had inquired the
Austrians passing by their “camp” about their will to integrate,
they now asked similar questions in Hamburg.
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"Overexposed" by Paolo Cirio, 2015Appropriated social media photos of U.S. intelligence officials posted to public walls
Buuuuuuuuu curated by Gerald Straub
Gerald Straub is an applied cultural theorist/ artist/
curator/ cultural producer.
His work interconnects spatial settings and
site-specific behaviours – examining how certain real or staged
situations relate to one another under various socio-political
conditions. Performative interventions as artistic pratctice are applied
in order to explore in/formal knowledge productions.
Lives and works
again in Vienna
www.geraldstraub.wordpress.com
"The Jean-Monnet-Bridge" by the Center for Political Beauty.
A bridge from North Africa to Europe in cooperation with construction company STRABAG and the Center for Political Beauty.
"Intelexit" by Peng!
An online exit platform for secret service employees.
Hervé Falciani is responsible for one of the largest leaks of banking data
Example for future artistic intervention and performative productions of space
www.geraldstraub.wordpress.com
"The Jean-Monnet-Bridge" by the Center for Political Beauty.
A bridge from North Africa to Europe in cooperation with construction company STRABAG and the Center for Political Beauty.
"Intelexit" by Peng!
An online exit platform for secret service employees.
Hervé Falciani is responsible for one of the largest leaks of banking data
Example for future artistic intervention and performative productions of space
"NEXT OPENING", Istanbul, by Elfo and BR1, 2014
In a Mediterranean geopolitical perspective, the positions of the Turkish Government are unclear on the Islamic terrorism conflict, although Turkey plays an important role due to its geographical position. This is not the right and proper place to discuss these topics. However, the interest of the artists focused on the new communication strategies of terrorist movements, especially IS’ communication, which increasingly make use of social networks, of viral videos, the hacked computer systems, film techniques and so on. The intervention of artists, probably the most provocative, is titled “Next opening,” as if the terrorist cell expansion into new territories was paradoxically announced through advertisements on billboards. In this case the two elements, the orange t-shirt - also used by guantanamo prisoners- and the knife, are the two symbols of the victim and the victimizer.
"Drone Strikes" by Forensic Architecture, 2013
On October 4, 2010, a US drone struck a home in the town of Mir Ali, North Waziristan, in Pakistan, killing five people. One of the surviving witnesses to this attack is a German woman, who lived in the house at the time with her two-year-old boy and her husband. Together with Forensic Architecture, this witness built a digital model of her home, which no longer exists. During a day-long process of computer modeling, the witness slowly reconstructed every architectural element of her house. Placed virtually within the space and time of the attack, the witness was able to recollect and recount the events around the strike.
"Heavy Weight History" by Christian Jankowski, 2013.
Jankowski invited a group of burly weightlifters to try and pick up a number of massive public sculptures in the Polish capital of Warsaw, including more than one Communist-era memorial, a statue of Ronald Reagan and the figure of Syrenka the Mermaid, a famous, often vandalised symbol of the city,
Jankowski invited a group of burly weightlifters to try and pick up a number of massive public sculptures in the Polish capital of Warsaw, including more than one Communist-era memorial, a statue of Ronald Reagan and the figure of Syrenka the Mermaid, a famous, often vandalised symbol of the city,
"Survival", 2008 an installation with oceanic life jackets on 16 monuments throughout the city of São Paulo by Eduardo Srur
"1700" is an online game based on Pizza Punks scandal in Vienna in wich 1700 Policemen "set free" a building occupied by 30 people. (read more on this)
"Roland Garros (Henman)", 2004, by Gianni Motti
Paris, semi-finals of the French-Open Tennis Championships between Tim Henman and Guillermo Coria. The artist sat in the VIP tribune of Paris’ Roland Garros with a bag over his head at the time of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal
"inVeritas", 2011, by Paolo Cirio
"The inVeritas.net platform enables screamers to be generated for all the major Italian newspapers. Everyone should have the right to inform, thus breaking up the monopoly held by the mainstream media in Italy, renowned for their factiousness and systematic servility, and the censorship and manipulation of information. inVeritas gives everyone the chance to speak and disseminate news directly through news-stands across Italy. .”
"Fensterln" from the project Tourist Office, Graz, Michikazu Matsune , 2011
The visitor is invited to look into a bedroom of a local resident.
"The Ruines of the Empire" Gianmaria Gava, 2011.
This work was shot in Tunisia at the beginning of the so called "Arab Spring", right after the former President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali left the country with his family. The wrecked surfaces of former luxury and wealth function as question marks about the relation between the management of power and the responsibility for it.
"Cada día tus ilusiones se cruzan con las nuestras" ciudad Valdeluz, photographie 2011, by Pierre Andrieux
Ciudad Valdeluz is a city on the outskirts of Madrid, boomtown struck by the subprime crisis and housing crisis, called ghost town by the media. The phrase painted by the artist was taken from a Spanish lottery advertising widely visible throughout the city of Madrid.
"Stazione Mobile" Two Italian Carabinieri crossing borders and operating out of there home country. Performance in Munich, By Aldo Giannotti e Stefano Giuriati, 2006
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