| art.description.project | I was invited by Sarita Vujković, PhD, Commissioner of the Pavilion of Bosnia and Herzegovina and director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Republic of Srpska to curated the National Pavilion of Bosnia and Herzegovina at La Biennale di Venezia - The 57th International Art Exhibition.
La Biennale di Venezia is the oldest and most prestigious exhibition of its kind internationally, and I curated this exhibition together with my colleagues Christopher Yggdre, Sinziana Ravini, Anna van der Vliet, and Hans Urlich Obrist. My curatoral role centered around the choices of the international artists Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Juan-Pedro Fabra Guemberena, Loulou Cherinet, Lamine Fofana, Geraldine Juárez, Joel Danielsson, Nils Bech, Ida Ekblad. and the development conceptualisation and theoritization of the initial proposal by artist Radenko Milak and Christopher Yggdre.
My research started with research investigation of the representation of disaster in the history of art, and conceptualize it in relation to the work of Radenko Milak.
Based on the result of this research the next step was to find artists that could ad more complexity into the University of disaster, based on the founding work of Milak, and his unique contribution through the technique of aquarelle to our understanding of the great disasters of the 20th century.
One fundamental starting point, was that even if disasters are represented all over, in massmedia and in political propaganda, could art be a place for understanding something more about its role our contemporary situation. Would it be possible to create new understanding of art in relation to disaster, that is not only for example repeating the idea behind Adorno´s famous words “Kulturkritik findet sich der letzten Stufe der Dialektik von Kultur und Barbarei gegenüber: nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch, und das frißt auch die Erkenntnis an, die ausspricht, warum es unmöglich ward, heute Gedichte zu schreiben”.
The choices of artist to ask to join the University of disaster, where not made on the desire to create a “flat” exhibition of examples, but rather to use the principle of contradiction, confrontation and struggle, to challenge the notion of smooth universal representation of disasters today, based on one organizing principle.
This artistic and methodological decision was made for two reasons.
To use the exhibition space as neutral site where anything can be included without any conflict according to one conceptual theme, would be to promote a non-dialectical and idealistic notion of the national pavilion, even if it on paper, included different artist from different countries. This would be just as problematic as if we would let one artwork from one country would represent that country and at the same time the universal notion of disaster.
The second reason was that, to be able to let the installation montage itself do something more, unexpected that could not be predicted from a conceptual point of view. In other words, the aim was to produce something knew, not yet captured by common notion of the disasters of our time.
The ability to combine theoretical work with the practical work of exhibition making and not let one of the determine the meaning of the other, was one of the research strength with the University of disaster. This is also where my art critical and theoretical research had most impact on the project.
My art theoretical research also consisted of trying to reflect on the art projects and artists that then was invited, in relation to the condition of production and specificities of the history of the national pavilion exhibition as form, in the history of the Venice biennale. One of the theoretical achievement was to be able to, through the method of speculation and experience of the practice itself, link the notions of crises and critique with the notion disaster and desire. Both as poetic functions within artworks, and as external forces that guides “human” life collective work. One of the outcome of this theoretical speculation was the essay Staying the curatorial trouble, published in the book, The university of disaster (in a spate folder, not to be public, due to copyright).
From this publication it is clear how the idea with the exhibition was to build on and develop former attempts to break the nationalism and the problem of representation embedded in the history of the Venice biennale. And doing that, not to hide all the difficulties involved in doing this kind project I a very limited time frame, with a very limited budget. The aim was not only to get a deeper understanding of the notion of disaster, the role that the modern concept of art had played in the production of the disasters of our time, but also to develop the very idea of what a national pavilion in the oldest and most important art biennale could be, and in so doing contributing to art and to the knowledge of what art can do in the face of past and future disasters.
In retrospect this exhibition project challenged two interconnected aspects of art. The first one was the notion of disaster as artistic theme and political problem. And it did so through researching the history of the representation of disaster in art history, as well as through contemporary artistic works dealing with the disasters of our time – from Hiroshima to the neo-colonial wars and migration to patriarchal power structures to global warming and unrequited love. The second one, was the form and notion of the national representation at the La Biennale di Venezia. And it was doing so through breaking with the convention of representing artist from, or artist based in the nation that the national pavilion represent. This is important but very difficult in the age of neo-nationalism on many levels of the economy of art. But this curatorial attempt made University of disaster to a project to one of the most recognized exhibitions at the La Biennale di Venezia, getting a lot of critical attention. Kate Sutton wrote, in Artforum International:
” In another cross-national project, Bosnia and Herzegovina hosted the “University of Disaster,” an initiative of artist Radenko Milak in collaboration with the congenial crew at Paletten, the Swedish art journal fronted by writer Fredrik Svensk and curator Sinziana Ravini. On the top floor of the palazzo, Milak’s gorgeous watercolors and hand-drawn animations of events like Chernobyl and Hiroshima may have set the tone, but from there, “disaster” took on extravagant interpretations. Sidsel Meineche Hansen’s Oculus Rift animation Dickgirl 3D(X), 2016, endowed viewers with magnificent breasts and an electric-blue plasma phallus used to repeatedly penetrate a giant chortling sex potato. I tried to avert my eyes from the bobbling mass, but the goggles wouldn’t let me look away. The most effective representation of disaster may have been the most intimate: Echo, a searing performance by Nils Bech staged in a tiny makeshift bedroom covered in a quilt of Ida Ekblad paintings. Curled up beside a small effigy on the bed, Bech drizzled his limoncello vocals over the room, crooning on loop: “It’s all over now . . , It’s all over now.” There wasn’t a dry eye (or an unbroken heart) in the room”
(link below).
This new curatorial project, breaking with the tradition of national representation will also work as an example to learn from, for other national Pavilions that would like to challenge the nationalistic tendencies in contemporary art, as well as the exhibition format as a biopolitical tool for steering the population towards nationalist passions.
The biggest research strength with this project was its ability not only to critically reflect on the notion of disaster from a predefine distance or yardstick, and from one point of view only. But to develop a method of research that was integrated at the core of an exhibition format, embedded in the production of the disasters of our today, and at the same time create a space of contradictions and conflicts about the issue of disaster that potentially leaves no space for safe contemplation of the state of contemporary life.
And if a lot of contemporary art projects are either looking for the artistic potentials in the margins of history, politics or technology, or meets the big universal issues with counter representations, my understanding is that what University of disaster perhaps achieved, was to use a central concern of our time, without falling into nor the desire for the marginal, or the desire for a counter representation of the state of things. And in so doing contributing to the understanding of the relation between art, desire and disaster in a way that has not been done in art before, nor in any massmedia, nor in any scientific representation. At least, I hope so.
This unique curatorial project was an integrated part in my ongoing research project on the biopolitical aspects of contemporary art and critique. | sv |
| art.description.supportedBy | ORGANIZATION AND PRODUCTION: Museum of Contemporary Art of Republika
Srpska, L’Agence à Paris
WITH THE MAIN SUPPORT OF: Ministry of Civil Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Ministry of Education and Culture of Republika Srpska, City of Banja Luka
WITH THE ADDITIONAL SUPPORT OF: Iaspis - The Swedish Art Grants Committe’s
International Programme for Visual and Applied Artists, OCA (Office for Contemporary
Art Norway), FCC (Fondo Concursable para la Cultura) MEC, Ministerio de Educación y
Cultura - Uruguay.
GALLERY | PRISKA PASQUER, La Balsa Arte, Les Filles du Calvaire Gallery, Duplex/100m2,
Galerija Fotografija, ICIA - Institute for Contemporary Ideas and Art, Paletten Art Journal. | sv |
