Expanded Violences by Brumaria
Expanded Violences is a project realized in the framework of Manifesta 8, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art.
IS VIOLENCE
THE ONLY MEANS TO CHANGE THIS
DEADLY WORLD?
Expanded Violences
Throughout the past two years in Brumaria, we have been working on and over multifocal-terrorism art-war relations. A product of this has been a series of forays— Art and Terrorism, Iconoclasm-Iconolatry, and now Expanded Violences— which, by means of different formats—research projects, exhibition projects, artistic work, seminars and publications—have permitted us to affirm the amplitude of these topics and the conceptual, thematic, and discursive gaps that today persist in the art institution both in the Spanish region and in the world of global art.
We understand that we neither want nor are able to isolate contemporary art from the world in which it is produced, commercialized, or museumized, especially if we keep in mind the present characteristics of armed conflict and if we affirm that we live in a state of permanent war. Although in the past war (the institutionalized phase of violence) defined itself as a conflict among sovereign nation-states, given that in the last few decades this sovereign authority of the nation-state has been decaying in favour of the emergency of a supranational sovereignty, the nature and the conditions of both war and political violence in our present times have necessarily and considerably changed, leaving behind the memory of the defeated, the humiliated, the offended…the murdered. In our current environment war is a global phenomenon. We live in a state of ubiquitous, brutal, and permanent “civil war”: a new and monstrous state of exception.
Expanded Violences focuses its attention on a triangulation between violence as representation strategically administered by power, the operation by which mass media and the use of art form a critical vertex of this multiple dialectic. If it seems obvious that there exists interdependence between political and economic power and the strategic operations used in mass media, the role of art is not so clear in this context.
• Theodor W. Adorno & Max Horkheimer • Aeschylus • Giorgio Agamben • Louis Althusser • Anonymus (Deuteronomy) • Aristotle • Antonin Artaud • Graco Babeuf • Alain Badiou • Jean Baudrillard • Walter Benjamín • Ursula Biemann • Bertlolt Brecht • Pierre Bourdieu • Gustavo Bueno • Stokely Carmichael • Pedro Casaldáliga • Paul Celan • The Clash • Leonard Cohen • Alfredo Cramerotti • Noam Chomsky • Mike Davis • Guy Debord • Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari • Jacques Derrida • Terry Eagleton • Albert Einstein • Friedrich Engels • Euripides • Frantz Fanon • Michel Foucault • Sigmund Freud • Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi • Jean-Luc Godard • Antonio Gramsci • Peter Handke • G. W. F. Hegel • Jimi Hendrix • Eric Hobsbawm • Homer • Dolores Ibárruri • Peter Kropotkin • Jacques Lacan • Lao Tse • Sylvain Lazarus • Maurizio Lazzarato • Vladimir Ilyich Lenin • Robert Linhart • Lucretius • Rosa Luxemburg • Jean-François Lyotard • Malcolm X • Mao Zedong • Nicolò Machiavelli • Filippo Tommaso Marinetti • Karl Marx • Vladimir Mayakovsky • Mario Moretti • Muhammed • Jean Luc Nancy • Nawal El Saadawi • Antonio Negri • Friedrich Nietzsche • Anton Pannekoek • Cesare Pavese • Fernando Pessoa • Plato • Nicos Poulantzas • Khaled Ramadan • Jacques Rancière • Wilhelm Reich • RETORT • Los Reyes Católicos • Arthur Rimbaud • Maximilien Robespierre • Martha Rosler • Louis de Saint-Just • Saint Augustine • Saint Matthew • Saint Paul • Jean-Paul Sartre • Carl Schmitt • William Shakespeare • The Smiths • Sophocles • Susan Sontag • Baruch Spinoza • Hito Steyerl • Tacitus • Leon Trotsky • Tristan Tzara • Ramón María del Valle-Inclán • Víctor Hugo • Virgil • Paul Virilio • Paolo Virno • Oswald Wiener • Jean Ziegler • Slavoj Zizek • Joseba Zulaika •
With a foreword by Alejandro Arozamena, Darío Corbeira & Daniel Patrick Rodríguez
Brumaria works #1
– Double installation with moving images, sound and temperature.
– Two publications in English and Spanish.
– A seminar.
Mediascapes. Nolens Volens 4
This fourth issue of Nolens Volens has been edited in collaboration with Alfredo Cramerotti, member of the curatorial group Chamber of Public Secrets, in the framework of their participation in Manifesta 8.
The subject explored was “mediascapes”. And the contributors have worked with the concept of how the media construct rather than reflect the world; they are hardly a public forum, and have transformed into an industry which has a powerful influence and exerts discursive manipulation over the audience and society.
Extending the notion of reality as a construct, as symbolic coordinates that determine our experience of reality, the central importance of the media in the definition of the framework in which reality takes place in the contemporary world is evident. Since the spread of what is denominated as communication technologies, the construction of reality through the media establishes the limits of our possible experience in a construction of the world with a totalizing vocation. Baudrillard’s critical considerations of simulacra and hyper-reality or Debord’s spectacle are positions which, although they are an efficient diagnostic of the state of matters, do not leave many options for operating in an effective way in the construction of a set if images that determines our experience of reality from other positions, opposing the versions of media power. Thus, the experiential framework proposed by the business conglomerates of communication should be confronted with other forms of treating, narrating and, finally, constructing this certain sense of reality.
Lastly, we are printing an excerpt of Alfredo Cramerotti’s book “Aesthetic journalism: How to Inform Without Informing” (2009), published by Intellect, which discusses how the production of truth has shifted from the domain of the news media to that of art and aestheticism, which marks a new approach to the debate of the possibility of the critical potential of art within the aestheticization of the information.
The contributors to this issue are: Los colaboradores de este número de Nolens Volens son: Carlos Jiménez, Alfredo Cramerotti, Arturo/ fito Rodríguez Bornaetxea, Jesús Aguilera, Ramon Parramon, Anders Eiebakke, Erlea Maneros Zabala, Andreja Kulunčić, Daniel García Andújar, Extrastruggle, Michael Takeo Magruder, Nada Prlja, Nemanja Cvijanovic, GenderArtNet, Virginia Villaplana and Michael Baers
On Failure
Video, sound essay, 15 min, on the downsides, prestiges and spaces of failure, via the figure of Orson Welles, who is paradigmatic for his relationship with failure. Among our contemporaries, failure has no space, no room for development –in other words – it should not exist.
But failure is a precious space where we can stretch our boundaries and experiment with another dimension of living. At this point, most of you will feel the urge to ask why should we fail. It’s not that we should fail in order to live better. Rather I believe we should allow ourselves the space, the mental dimension, of failure.
Welles is considered not for what he manage to realize in relation to his non-materialized ideas, rather for the way he – through the notion of failure – involuntarily played a game according to his rules.
Manifesta 8, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art
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| Manifesta 8, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, will take place in the Region of Murcia (Spain) in dialogue with northern Africa, from October 9, 2010 until January 9, 2011.
Preview days: October 7 and 8 |
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| In the framework of Manifesta 8, a trio of independent projects is being initiated by the three curatorial collectives responsible for the artistic content of Manifesta 8, in order to further investigate the potential for establishing a closer dialogue with northern Africa.
Alexandria Contemporary Art Forum (Egypt) has already initiated a series of discussions aiming to research the potential for the creation of a new pan-African roaming biennial, tranzit.org (Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia) will develop an in-depth publication to examine the various links, narratives and discrepancies between Post-colonial and Post-communist communities, while Chamber of Public Secrets (Scandinavian Countries, Italy, Lebanon and U.K.) will set up a collaboration with the popular Arab language talk-show Heewar Maftouh (Open Dialogue), broadcast on the Al Jazeera network. Bringing you the answers before we know the question: four positions regarding the idea of a pan-African roaming biennial The project aims to facilitate the articulation of critical positions regarding the notion of a pan-African, roaming art biennial. The Incubator will avoid assumptions or simple assessments of what a biennial looks like, what is its context, what effect it has, and whether it can even be done. The Incubator will identify and bring together perspectives from curators, artists, cultural producers and active sponsors, whose current activities reveal the desire to find room for autonomy and progressive experimentation within their respective contexts. Articulating this research should bring together a set of historically and politically informed viewpoints, while paying attention to infrastructure and pragmatic issues. These will happen through several means: the symposium taking place during the opening of Manifesta 8; a website; a workshop which will take place in an African city in April 2011; the appointment of key voices as planners; the production of a publication in September 2011. The Incubator and its platforms should register these positions as an (uneven) landscape upon which others may imagine a new biennial, a roaming biennial, an alternative structure or a model responding to a different set of priorities entirely. Post-colonial / Post-communist Reader For their project, tranzit.org decided to establish a critical counter-check and revision of the so-called post-colonial, the de-colonised and the post-communist conditions of transformation. This will be the subject of a Reader published by the Manifesta Foundation in collaboration with tranzit.org and Erste Stiftung after the closure of Manifesta 8. The aim of the book is to facilitate the transfer of critique, research and thinking between specific notions and concepts of post-colonial thought, and to provide post-communist and transformational inquiries. One of the major challenges of the publication is to establish an exchange of some of those imaginary utopias, disappeared since the end of the Cold War. ¿The Rest is History? Chamber of Public Secrets’ (Alfredo Cramerotti and Khaled Ramadan) choice to work intensely with the media, as both a constructive and divisive agent, addresses the concept that reality is not a fact to be understood, but rather an effect to be produced. In keeping with this engagement, CPS is collaborating with Ghassan Ben Jeddou, a prominent journalist and host of the talk show Hiwar Maftouh (Open Dialogue), regularly broadcast on the Arabic Al Jazeera network. Over the past 10 years, through its perceptive programming, this international news network has taken an intensive role in recording and re-writing Arab history. Accordingly, during Manifesta 8, Ben Jeddou will produce two broadcasts focusing on some of those narratives shared between Spain, northern Africa and the Arab world. These will address the complex nature of this transnational dialogue which, despite giving birth to a project of great potential for multiple perspectives, also reveals itself as negotiating history in parallel terms of honour and denial. For more information: |
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Manifesta 8 – In Dialogue with Northern Africa VAGA Tour 6-8 October 2010
VAGA Visual Arts and Galleries Association Newsletter
13 August 2010
Manifesta 8 takes place in the Spanish cities of Murcia and Cartagena. It is being curated by Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, Chamber of Public Secrets and Tranzit.org and explores the idea of Europe in the 21st century, focussing on the
boundaries of the continent and engaging with Europe’s present-day frontiers and its interrelation with the Maghreb region. The South of Spain, specifically Al-Andalus, has been a historical blend of Islamic, Judaic and Christian cultural influences co-existing together.
Wednesday 6th October 2010
MURCIA
6.00pm
Introductory Talk with Alfredo Cramerotti, Co-Curator of Manifesta 8, part of the
Chamber of Public Secrets curatorial collective and Curator at QUAD in Derby.
Media Lounge Espacio Molinos del Rio-Caballerizas C/Molinos 1
Pure Water Vision: Acea EcoArt Contest 2010
Contest deadline postponed to October 31st and nominated new curatorial team (Laura Cherubini, Eugenio Viola and Alfredo Cramerotti).
12 August 2010
Pure Water Vision: Acea EcoArt Contest 2010 is the international contemporary art contest created by the EcoArt Project cultural platform and sponsored by Acea. The contest will award the Acea EcoArt Prize 2010, consisting in an acquisitive prize for the value of € 10.000,00 to the winner artwork that will become part of the Acea collection, it will also publish the “EcoArt Book Two” catalog (see EcoArt Book One already online) with 30 selected artworks and organize an exhibition in Rome for 10 finalists.
The theme of Pure Water Vision: Acea EcoArt Contest 2010 requests artists to express their creativity to represent the relationship between water, man and the environment with relation to sustainable development of the planet. This reflection can also be extended to water pollution, water as source of life, water as source of renuable energy, process of desertification and emergency situations. All of which themes which simultaneously grip the planet and ask a series of burning social, anthropological, political and cultural questions.
The objective is to highlight little known aspects of the water cycle, to stimulate, through the universal and metaphorical language of art, a series of reflections on what lies behind the apparent simplicity of pure water and what happens before and after the distribution of this precious resource that flows from taps in our homes and through waterworks, sewers and water treatment facilities.
The contest is curated by Laura Cherubini, art critic, curator and teacher of Contemporary Art at the Fine Art Academy of Brera, Milan; Eugenio Viola, art critic and curator of the Project Room of Museum MADRE (Contemporary Art Museum DonnaREgina) of Naples; Alfredo Cramerotti, curator QUAD Derby, co-curator of the biennal Manifesta 8 and art critic.
Submissions are now open until october 31st. To participate go to www.ecoartproject.org at the Pure Water Vision box.
Finally, we present you with a preview of GAD – Green Art Database the new project of the EcoArt Project platform made possibile thanks to the support of our Sponsors Acea Group and Kaspersky Lab. GAD is the online global archive of the works coming from international competitions organized by EcoArt Project and of those of noted artists who follow our initiative exhibiting in our virtual galleries.Sustainable development and respect for the planet are the themes to which all the works present on GAD refer. GAD will be used to create communication and cultural marketing projects, exhibitions, events and online promotion for artists.
info@ecoartproject.org
Symposium: How to Inform without Informing, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh
Symposium at Collective, City Observatory, Calton Hill
Edinburgh, UK
Friday 30 July 2010
To celebrate the launch of two new commissions, Collective devised a symposium which took place on 30th July 2010 featuring exhibiting artists Hito Steyerl, Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth. Other speakers included theorist Alfredo Cramerotti (author of Aesthetic Journalism), Francis McKee (curator and writer), Lisa Panting (Director of Picture This, Bristol) and Collective director Kate Gray. The symposium was chaired by Ian White (LUX, London) and was held at the City Observatory atop Calton Hill.
Audio of the Symposium available at: http://collectivegallery.podomatic.com/entry/2010-08-15T09_36_37-07_00
MANIFESTA 8 | Collective Curating: Means in Common at Art Basel 41
ART BASEL 41 | Art Salon Program
Friday June 18, 2010
Participants:
Alfredo Cramerotti, Chamber of Public Secrets (CPS), Denmark, Italy, Lebanon, Member of the M8 Curatorial Collective
Esther Regueira, General Coordinator, Manifesta 8, Murcia
Georg Schöllhammer, Member of the collective tranzit.org, Central Europe.
No Such Place: A Partial History of Imaginary Maps
To tie in with Ground Level, QUAD commissioned Artist Cathy Haynes to curate an exhibition on the theme of imaginary maps. In a ‘residency of maps’ she journeyed utopias and fantasy lands with a list of questions such as: Did we really believe the earth was flat before Columbus? How have map-makers filled gaps in known territory? Can a map ever be perfectly true? What counts as an imaginary map? Can a map shape reality? Can it even alter our sense of identity?
To find the answers, she looked at maps from the Age of Discovery that combine new scientific thinking with mythical beasts and puzzled over secret codes and private jokes inscribed in official land surveys. She complemented this with research of Ocean charts, peppered with phantom landforms, including one respected scientist’s theory that the earth is hollow, plus a blueprint for straightening the Thames through central London.
Through the findings of her research process, she has made a collection of extraordinary maps and map-making stories from the history of cartography, engineering, philosophy, literary fiction, interwoven with pop culture, propaganda, contemporary art and feature films.
Image: The Carta Marina by Olaus Magnus, 1539: the most accurate map at the time of the Nordic countries.
Ground Level
Hayward Touring Curatorial Open II
QUAD Gallery 18th September – 31st October 2010
Ground Level explores how contemporary art practice, mapping and cartography collide. Traditionally the role of the cartographer has been to provide a geographically precise description of the landscape. However, rarely has it been a wholly objective enterprise. While technology increasingly grants access to the precision of satellite imagery, the cartographer’s work has moved further from the ground into more contested areas such as ownership, rights to land, and the flows of people.
This exhibition brings together international artists who perform their own personal forms of cartography. The resulting works suggest maps and surveys, but rather than portraying a singular worldview they put forward idiosyncratic readings of language, peoples and signs, as well as geography.
The exhibition is curated by Kit Hammonds, winner of the 2010 Hayward Curatorial Open, a platform for innovative curatorship in the UK.
Artists include: Maria Thereza Alves; The Atlas Group; Ricardo Basbaum; Heath Bunting and Kayle Brandon; Center for Land Use Interpretation; Simon Evans; Yolande Harris; Christian Philipp Müller; Eyal Weizman; Stephen Willats. Ground Level is a Hayward Touring exhibition selected and developed in partnership with John Hansard Gallery; QUAD, Derby; Oriel Mostyn, Llandudno and Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum.
Click here to see a video interview with Curator Kit Hammonds.
Publication
Ground Level accompanies the second Hayward Touring Curatorial Open exhibition devised by writer and curator Kit Hammonds. This limited edition publication features work by Maria Thereza Alves, The Atlas Group, Ricardo Basbaum, Heath Bunting with Kayle Brandon, Center For Land Use Interpretation, Simon Evans, Yolande Harris, Christian-Philipp Müller, Eyal Weizman and Stephen Willats.
It also includes an illustrated essay by Hammonds exploring the way in which mapping relates to contemporary visual art as an experiential process that requires a direct relationship with the landscape, geography and people.
Exhibition copies feature a specially produced Risograph facsimile of Island Time by Simon Evans. Ground Level is published by Hayward Publishing and is available in all good art bookshops and at QUAD during the exhibition.
Images:
Maria Thereza Alves, Seeds of Change (Bristol), 2007 © the artist, 2010
Heath Bunting with Kayle Brandon, Borderxing, 2004 © the artist, 2010
Center For Land Use Interpretation, The Hydraulic Models of The Army Corps of Engineers, 2010. ©the artist, 2010
Curatorview [Alfredo Cramerotti] 
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