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.
















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