programm 2003/2004

EXHIBITION


17.5. - 6.7.2003
Making Peace. Shifting Paradigms of Peace and War
Public Opening: 16.5.2003, 19:00
Performance by Pablo Helguera: 19.30
Acoustics: sofa-raï by vera & niki
Whereas in the classical-modern paradigm, peace was understood as absence
of war, in today's new global 'order' such a distinction disintegrates. We
now see a hyper-modern maxim allowing for overlap, even synchronicity:
Peace nothing but (global) war against (local, real) wars.
Thus, when war and peace are undergoing an incremental, yet unerring
hybridisation, the question arises upon which notion of peace an authentic
pacifism today should rest.
Artists, video activists and theorists trace a paradigmatic shift in peace
thinking and raise questions about how ordinary, peace-loving people can
engage global and local power and pose alternatives to dominant political
agendas of public security.

Mary Beth Edelson, Meir Gal, Pablo Helguera, hybridvideotracks, Lyn
Löwensten, Khan and Masha Muftic

Programm
"Making Peace. Shifting Paradigms of Peace and War"

Workshops:16.5./17.5/18.5/21.5

critique is not enough
15.2. - 13.4.03
eröffnung 14.2.02
workshops 15./16.2.03 und 12.4.03

Presstext

A documentation of the first version of the exhibition can be found in Cittadellarte, Biella in summer 2002 :
http://www.cittadellarte.it/agora/index_follow_e.html

EXHIBITION

29. November - 22. December 2002

KONSEQUENZ
Intro
Crossing Points East-West
Let’s begin by giving a bit of background on the project itself, Communication Front.
CFront is a curatorial project so far with three consecutive editions in Plovdiv, from 1999-2001. Its fourth edition is planned for 2003. CFront is an international event oriented towards the production of works and analyses on a clearly delimited and concrete topic, chosen to raise pressing and critical questions of immediate concern to media art and culture and the Internet community. CFront is organized in close collaboration with and with the organizational support of the "Art Today" Association.
CFront emphasizes the artistic approach rather than technical aspects and strives to create an platform appropriate for communication, discussions, the development of common ideas and artistic strategies. Around 40 participants from Eastern and Western Europe, the US, Canada and Australia come together in Plovdiv for two weeks of intense and concentrated work – artists, theorists, curators, net and political activists. CFront is not a festival. It does not have representative character and avoids entering the discourse of cultural and entertainment industry. In its form, it is rather close to the Temporary Media Labs as proposed by Geert Lovink.
CFront develops the idea of an open community of varying size which constantly regroups and migrates to new ideas forming new temporary nuclei around new projects. It starts out with the concrete time span of the intensive two weeks of the project, and unfolds in the long term, as the common work practice, the friendships and mutual interests of the participants extend into the future in different form through the channels of communication that have been built up. But Communication Front is not intended as merely a communication channel in which information is exchanged. Communication is a process that is much more complex than just transporting information from A to B and from B back to A. Communication is not just free-floating bytes traversing the Net. Every message, every sign is influenced by the context it is carried by, and in turn influences that context. There is no communication without social relations, just like there are no social relations without communication.
It is no easy task to discover how to use the new interfaces. If we do not make special efforts to search for a fundamentally different approach based on a new understanding of the essence of the media, "the information overload (…) leaves a feeling of over-saturation and stagnancy, the new is regarded as the old, innovations become something banal. (…) Communication leads an existence without aims, without understanding" in interactive space. Vertical methods of measuring are still applied to culture, and the possibilities offered by information technologies exceed those of the user. The question is not simply how to come to an agreement, but to look for ways of overcoming apathy, established stereotypes, tiredness, aggression. We need a new alternative, a chance to hear the other side.
This book is closely linked to the second edition of Communication Front /international project of electronic and media art and culture/, which took place in Plovdiv, Bulgaria in June 2000 under the motto "Crossing Points East-West." One part of the texts included were produced on the spot in Plovdiv during the working seminar of CFront, inspired by the debates and discussions of the round table in the context of the theoretical meeting. Others are investigations into the topic written specifically for the book when it became clear that we would have the possibility to publish it. We took the liberty of extending the circle of authors beyond the immediate participants in CFront 2000 and included well-known texts by "veterans" of our topic – texts that seemed important to us in terms of clarity and power of exposition of the problems presented in the book.
The deliberately eclectic selection of texts in the CFront book ranges from strictly theoretical, through anecdotal texts to some fervent manifestos or experimental forms that are more characteristic of hypertext and the Net.
With this book we hope to give a "push ahead" to the local Bulgarian context linked to the development and theorizing of media practices and art. We’re far from wanting to prove ourselves as experts in the topic raised. With our selection of texts we strove to satisfy also the emotional side of the questions posed, looking for a critical approach to media and art. At the same time we left the authors to express their personal position free of curatorial pressure, outside the weight of institutions imposing boundaries or limiting the creativity of language. We tried to overcome self-censorship and the restrictions so typical of the recognized profile of the "whining" East European who offers no resistance, not only in totalitarian times, but also over the last years.
It is typical not only of Bulgarian artists and curators, but more generally for the East-European context, that they have a rather pragmatic approach to communication, which they do not share with the rest of the community – it serves to further their own careers. We would be happy if this book could contribute to a search for other forms and other reasons for communication, which lie outside the immediate and narcissistic purposefulness.
If you are a young Eastern European artist, researcher and theorist, critic or curator still studying and with not much experience with new technologies and media, we hope that we can be of some help to you in the general flow of information, or lack of it, in the ocean of diverse information, not only with the texts published in this book, but also with the links and references we carefully selected and attached to each text, as consistently as our strengths allowed. With this we hope to raise the question of visibility on the Net, visibility of information itself, the question of developing skills not only to make use of technology, but also of the complexity and variety of information that is useful not only for making informed decisions and building up some artistic career.
If on the other hand you are a street-wise media artist, theorist or curator who feels right at home with East-West discussions and has long felt tired of stereotypes linked to this discourse, or if you belong to the group of "embittered" local media activists and have by now grown up and shaken off your initial impulsive local enthusiasm, we hope that this book will help you think back to almost-forgotten aspirations, ideas and episodes if you are willing to, or may just offer you entertainment, and why not hold something completely new and unexpected in store for you among the well-known and familiar old stuff.
If the Western art community and system has a special meaning and is of crucial importance for East-European and Balkan artists, theorists, curators and critics, what is its meaning for our cultural history, and what can we offer in return? It is said that tolerance is an approach typical of Western democracies. At the same time, everybody acts according to their own ideas, because there is no cross-cultural platform that may translate between the different locations. Developing such a platform will turn out to be beyond our strengths as long as we don’t depart from the superficial political correctness typical of many projects. If we do not wish to copy the pyramidal structure of Western art, what alternative shall we build for the East?
And of course, networking is not everything. As Steve Bradley, artist and curator from the US, said in one of the discussions at CFront: "What will I do with all this information? How will I apply it to my own local context, when I’m back in the States teaching my students?"
Dimitrina Sevova and Alain Kessi

Why ‘Communication Front’?
[Crossing Points East-West]
"In the ‘free world’ of Western Europe, they’re not welcomed with open arms at all: Western Europeans used to readily sing praises to the dissidents and refugees whose struggle went to corroborate the correctness of their own journey; they do not need crowds seeking jobs, doubtful individuals ready to sell everything at any price. Irreproachable when they had been slaves, their Eastern brothers and sisters became undesired in liberty. In a word, after the fall of the Wall there was no one around to rejoice at the former victims and to reward them."
Tzvetan Todorov
Dear ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,
Welcome to the Communication Front 2000!
I am often asked the question: "Why ‘Communication Front’? The word ‘Front’ sounds rather aggressive."
Yes! – I then answer, indeed, it’s not accidental that we chose the word ‘FRONT,’ as a kind of ‘aggression,’ just like the conditions of media practices and contemporary art not only in Bulgaria, but more generally in the Balkans, are an aggression. These less than favorable conditions are reinforced by the lack of substantial interest from the outside. Communication Front is indeed radical in terms of the local cultural sphere, because it is aimed at the inside and the outside and tries to circumvent the established local rules.
Over the last ten years the public language in Bulgaria has dramatically changed. There are of course two sides to this question, but despite the frequent and mostly well-founded criticism, there is no doubt that the positive aspects of this process outweigh the negative. The meaning of many words has been deeply compromised by the previous system of government, the communist dictatorship. These words, overused to the point of saturation and laden with meanings by the old system, have practically disappeared from public space. I am speaking of words like peace, solidarity, comradeship, etc. One of these words perceived as symbols of the old system is ‘front,’ even if the word in Bulgarian has several meanings. Bulgarian public opinion connects the word with the largest mass movement and public organization in the country in totalitarian times, the Fatherland Front.
Founded a few months before the end of WW II, the organization was supposed to symbolize the wish of Bulgarian citizens to set up a broad front for the nation-wide struggle against fascism and capitalism, and was afterwards turned from a militarized into a civic organization. It’s main role was then to observe and publicly blame unconscientious socialist citizens, like those who would listen to foreign radio stations like the BBC, or who would try to obtain and distribute any other sort of forbidden and dangerous information, like jokes, forbidden books and other items undermining the socialist morality. As a matter of fact, almost to the fall of the Berlin Wall, membership in the FF was mandatory for all Bulgarian citizens. At the same time, formal and long-term membership in the organization signified that you were not eligible to be admitted into the Communist Party, which granted membership only for special and confirmed merits. After all, the members of the Communist Party were the elite of the society. These historical facts are sufficiently absurd, ridiculous, sad and tragic in themselves.
We came to an agreement that there would be a particular touch of parody in the combination of the words ‘FRONT’ and ‘COMMUNICATION’ in the public space in our local context. Opting for the present name of the project we decided in a way to try to rehabilitate the meaning of the word ‘front’ in Bulgarian, putting a completely new interpretation into it while at the same time making a deliberate reference to the history outlined above. We wanted to use ‘front’ in the double sense of ‘face’ and of the military term, in order to lay the grounds of the international project for electronic and media art and culture Communication Front.
At the same time we were fully aware that the ‘Local Community of Media Artists’ was barely noticeable at the time in the art scene, as it went through its period of ‘political, historical and chronological inadequacy’ with respect to the global process at the time, with the sole exception of a few prominent figures such as Iliyana Nedkova, Luchezar Boyadjiev and Ventsi Zankov who presented a more playful, provocative and critical approach toward cybernetic culture and the electronic online environment. As a matter of fact, this situation had its objective reasons. At the time, the access of the local artistic community to technology was not only substantially limited but non-existent as a dimension in their professional lives. In this line of thinking, I would like to quote the critic and art historian Svilen Stefanov:
"Even today you will easily notice that to the extent that our institutions engage in cultural exchange, this exchange is unable to disrupt decency in the sphere of art by introducing radically innovative elements. The Other is accepted only to the extent that he resembles us. If the qualities of a foreign cultural product are beyond the discriminating capacities of our institutions, it is not recognized as such."
In the same context, in his book ‘Cultural Dimensions of the Visual,’ published by Graffiti Publishing House, Sofia in 1998, S. Stefanov further remarks:
"These elements of profanization on an institutional level are due also to the fact that ‘senses’ need to be cultivated, which is a long and laborious process. The current distrust of the West toward us is due also to people in peripheral and marginalized situations simulating structures of meaning. The semantic clusters are superficially emulated while no one has any idea of the actual functioning of these structures. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall came the time of getting to know each other. History shows that this is often not a one-way process. It is known that a few years after the discovery of America, while the Spaniards were dispatching committees to ascertain whether the natives have souls, Indians were drowning white captives to see if their corpses would undergo decay.
In the concrete case of the Balkans, things tend to be even more undefined in terms of assessments, since cultural peripheries are most often semi-transparent to the outsider’s gaze."
A large part of the active creative activity of the contemporary artist is directed to the ‘inside’ of the art system itself and caters for its inner functioning. His efforts are mainly directed towards integrating himself into the system, maintaining certain established norms, statutes and hierarchies defined by the institutions, such as the large biennials, important international exhibitions and conferences, prestigious galleries, the few collectors of contemporary art, some museums…
The social life of the artist turns out to be more of an incessant inner struggle within the art system. His work with information and communication is rather oriented inwards, towards strengthening and regenerating this structure.
The overwhelming influence of the Soros Center for Contemporary Art until just a few years ago is a well-known fact. It was the only institution funding contemporary art in this country. That undoubtedly gave it the status of the most powerful structure shaping and influencing the development of the policies in contemporary Bulgarian art, which is characterized by a lack of interest in multimedia and in the electronic online environment. At the same time, the Ministry of Culture and other smaller organizations, entangled in their numerous problems, played the part of passive spectators and had no wish to take the initiative and energetically intervene in the sphere of art.
Perhaps this explains in part the generally positive attitude of the Bulgarian community of media artists toward the Internet. They see in it a powerful instrument for developing and democratizing the existing system for disseminating information. Naturally, this increased interest led to distinct novelties in the strategies for presenting and financing projects of Bulgarian artists and organizations. The wish to bypass local state and non-governmental institutions in the field of culture and art is only too apparent, given their passivity and complete lack of interest in new media in the arts. The local art community has entered a period in which we can discern the appearance of global traits and tendencies that stretch beyond our idea of being self-sufficient, in an attempt to overcome at least in part our provincial problems.
text by dimitrina sevova
Translated from Bulgarian by Ivan Ivanov and Alain Kessi

B O Y S
The Construction of Manhood

April 19th -  June 16th, 2002

Who chooses to take on the role of a man, in which context, and why? What is great about boys and what is annoying? BOYS will show images of quite different forms of every-day, produced and constructed boy-/manhood.


Since the 60's feministic theories have been examining the meaning of the role of the woman in the public and thereby set the focus on the investigation of "femaleness". Recent theories, which describe the sex as a constructed social or cultural idea, play a crucial role.
Examples from different cultures (e.g. the Philippines) show that gender/sex  is an allocation, that expresses itselves differently in each society and can not be reduced to the dichotomy of "male/female" — the given western-binary outlook.

So far maleness and its critical self-manifestation has been a rare topic. Only in the last years has the male become a current subject, be it in an emancipatory men's movement or as the content of scientific investigations in Gender or Queer Studies, cultural sciences or visual theories in the area of film, art, media and pop-theories. The exhibition BOYS will concentrate on different concepts of maleness. BOYS proceeds from a maleness, of which meanings and symbols are in constant motion and can change. BOYS inquires the association of maleness, and the association among men themselves. BOYS shows glamour and in addition uncertainties. BOYS shows the drama of maleness and its dissolution.

Invited artists
Judith Duesberg
Dominic Eichler/Ninon Liotet
Michael Hilton
Keith Farquhar
Mark Matter
Sands Murray-Wassink
Barbara Naegelin
Friedrich M. Ploch


Curator

Elke aus dem Moore


Screening

27th Mai 2002, 7 pm
Bombay Eunuch
Alexandra Shiva , USA 2001, 71', Digital Video, OF

300 Mäuse
About personal relations with the phenomenon of money

15th February to 7th April

300 Mäuse is a Kunstszene Zürich exhibition, investigating the phenomenon of money and the emotional, cultural and social values attributed to it.
Is money really the central nervous system of all things, the nervus rerum? If yes, then how can it be that people around here speak so little about it? The exhibition will want to break this mute discourse.
Catchwords such as Davos, WTO, banking secrecy, and others trigger more than just political trains of thought. The effects of the neoliberal, capitalist system have emotional consequences, and even cause personal crises. These and other effects of the phenomenon of money will be dealt with in this exhibition by artists living in Zurich.



Never Look Back
Politics of Friendship -Critical Art Practice
Shedhalle Zurich
Archives, Events, Collaborations -1st June -22nd July 2001
International Meeting from 1st -4th June 2001

We would like to invite you to a 4-day meeting under the title &Mac179;Politics of Friendship„, from 1st -4th June 2001, that will take place in the framework of &Mac179;Never Look Back„ in Shedhalle Zurich. It is important to us to instigate a discussion on the institutional and formal conditions of the political and cultural strategies of projects that have taken place up to now in Shedhalle, as well as in many other locations, institutions and self-organised contexts. This discussion will also lead on to the development of a perspective for further projects and collaborations.

Never Look Back
Since 1994, Shedhalle has been defined as a place for experimentation with, and production of, new forms of contemporary artistic and cultural practices. The starting point for the majority of the projects, exhibitions and discussions, developed in this framework, was the examination of modes of questioning and complexes of topics with socio-political relevance, and the conscious expansion of the pure artistic field of action into the interdisciplinary fields of feminism, and critical city sociology, as well as cultural and post-colonial studies. The exhibition was considered as an independent medium, which was particularly suitable for the combination of knowledge, modes of action and cultural products from various social spheres. A knowledge-producing practice emerged in accordance with the ideas from &Mac179;social movements„. This was influenced by aesthetic considerations, experiences, collective political actions and desires, which were created with the aid of spatial arrangements of information and the versatile references thus created, as well as meetings, discussions, events and actions by the individual producers. The exchange between theorists, artists, architects, students and activists, as well as the collaboration with many independently organised groups, and befriended projects, initiatives and institutions was crucial for such projects and considerations.
Parallel to the Shedhalle programme, the cultural environment in Zurich and elsewhere has changed drastically through the course of the nineties. A great number of independent and self-organised projects with quite different requirements emerged from the original opposition between alternative and established culture scenes. Self-organisation and the pop-culture hypes launched through this, as well as the desires of institutions to be part of sub and youth culture, temporarily disabled the established order between &Mac179;subculture„ and &Mac179;high culture„. In the meantime, the crossover between visual arts, graphic design, fashion and music has produced a new segment of a present-oriented trend and fun culture that is capable of winning the masses. However, there is more to this. Art practices of Western European art institutions now also represent marginalized subjects and productions, which are set in an environment of feminist and postcolonial discussions. There is hardly an exhibition organiser who wouldnít want to place herself or himself in such a context, or who would not at least want to mention a work of art that is based on critical practices or examinations. How do these shifts and integrations actually effect critical cultural practice?

Never Look Back has the aim of defining a status quo by formulating questions in different ways, and by reappraising step by step the lateral links between various projects of the nineties, according to their strategies and methods. Observations of a continuous devaluation of collectively structured activities, in contrast to a continuous increase in value of singular phenomena, in the framework of institutional commodification, play an important role. Never look back will continue the examination of an appropriate, content-oriented, formal and institutional setting for the most independent possible production and mediation of culture. It will examine the function (or the lack of function) of its own (success) story, and spotlight as an alternative to logic, and commodification - once more - the importance of social correlation and friendly relationships and collaboration.


The Meeting, 1st June to 4th June 2001

The programme starts on Friday 1st June. On the basis of subjects relating to culture-political, social and urban preconditions, as well as developments of the nineties, the immediate context of critical cultural work and its changes in recent years will be discussed as a central theme. As an example of the local situation, the evolution of Zurich No. 5 district (Stadtteil 5) will be presented.
On Saturday and Sunday several project presentations and talks will take a closer look at the format of exhibition, as a frequently used, strategic medium of critical art practice in the nineties.
Also, on Sunday 3rd June, in the framework of concrete projects, there will be a presentation of, and a discussion on, the question of sexual politics, involving central aspects of feminist cultural practice, as well as the question of social networks and their practical approaches to politics of friendship.
On Monday, on the last day of the event, the institution-critical discussions, which were important up to the middle of the nineties in visual arts, will be taken up again by involving different protagonists who, through their work, are excluded by Western European cultural institutions, or who make this exclusion a part of their work.


The Exhibition 1st June -22nd July 2001

The exhibition focuses on four archives, which were formed during the nineties in different cultural contexts and in different places. This will not only provide access to the materials used for many projects, but simultaneously lead on to discussions on various archiving strategies, as well as on how to deal with our own history.

The Parasite archive was developed in New York and unites project documentation of several North-American artists who have been committed to political and social causes for some time. The archive is based on lists of artists and groups whose work is to be made accessible through it. The varied activities of the Parasite group, as well as their archive, are an attempt to counteract the indifference that established institutions harbour towards this type of art production.

The pelze collection comprises an extensive archive of all the activities of the autonomous artistsí pelze multimedia project, which emerged in the Berlin of 1981 from a street project and existed up to the mid nineties. Besides the locational setting, which was an important part of the autonomous womenís movement of Berlin, the city itself played an important role by providing the space for self-organised exhibitions, performances, discussion events, readings, film bars and infamous parties, as well as enabling international exchange between artists.

The Shedhalle archive has been reworked, expanded and made accessible on a permanent basis. It discloses information, publications and videos of projects from the nineties onwards that deal with subjects and issues such as critical views on GM technology, technology and economy in general, gender politics, city development, pop culture, media practice, and political art, as well as post-colonial discourse.

The archive of Kunsthalle Oerlikon documents a chronological collection of invitation cards, press releases, reviews, and the collected correspondence and photographs produced during their 10-year history as an exhibition space organised by artists. This institution was of great cultural and political importance for the alternative scene of Zurich, creating space and publicity again and again in a variety of places in the city for the most varied needs and positions.

In order to examine the tension/interrelations of public and private, a private archive provides insight in the fields of memory of two artists. The politics of forgetting and repressing is investigated, as well as the question of success and its measurability: what are our value systems based on? How is continuity developed without having to submit to prevailing tastes? Friendly relationships in Zurich, Amsterdam and New York are common links.

Conceptualisation/coordination:
Renate Lorenz (Berlin), Elke aus dem Moore (Zurich), Rayelle Niemann (Zurich), Marion von Osten (Zurich/Berlin), Peter Spillmann (Zurich)

Archive:
Susanna Perin (Zurich), Marc Matter (Zurich), Alice Cantaluppi (Zurich), France Santi (Zurich/Lausanne)Charlotte Tschumi (Zurich), and others

Organisation:
Peter Spillmann, Sarah Mehler (Zurich), Elke aus dem Moore (Zurich/Hamburg), Marc Matter (Zurich/Cologne)

Further information and the current programme can be obtained from Shehalle Zurich.
Tel. 0041 1 481 59 50 or e-mail info@shedhalle.ch

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