Sequences VII 2015: Alfredo Cramerotti appointed Artistic Director
IAC Newsletter November 2014
03.11.2014
Sequences VII 2015
Alfredo Cramerotti Artistic Director
Alfredo Cramerotti has been appointed as the next artistic director of Sequences Real Time Art Festival that takes place for the seventh time in Reykjavik, Iceland, April 10-19, 2015.
Sequences is an independent biennial, established in Reykjavik in 2006. The aim of the ten day festival is to produce and present progressive visual art with special focus on time-based media, such as performance, sonic works, video and public interventions. An offspring of the dynamic art scene that thrives in Reykjavik, Sequences is the first art festival in Iceland to focus on visual arts alone. New artistic directors are hired to reshape each edition of Sequences according to their vision, making it unique and different every time.
Following a successful Sequences VI in 2013, under the artistic leadership of Markús Thór Andrésson, it was decided to cultivate the power of the festival and further its development by seeking abroad for the next artistic director. Alfredo Cramerotti is a writer and curator working across TV, radio, publishing, media festivals and exhibition making. He directs MOSTYN, Wales’ leading contemporary art institute and co-directs the roaming curatorial agencies AGM Culture and CPS Chamber of Public Secrets. Amongst other major exhibitions, he co-curated the Maldives Pavilion and the Wales Pavilion at the 55th Venice Art Biennale, Italy, in 2013, and Manifesta 8, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, Region of Murcia, Spain, in 2010. The curatorial and organisational team of Sequences VII is made up of Cramerotti, Edda K. Sigurjónsdóttir, curatorial consultant and project manager and Edda Halldórsdóttir, managing director.
When asked about his interest in curating a visual arts festival in Iceland, Cramerotti said that:
“Reykjavik has one of the most active and cutting-edge scenes in contemporary culture. Just notice the presence of Icelandic artists and programmes on a global scale in visual arts, music, digital imaging, theatre, dance, etc. To be able to go through the creative process of discussing themes, inventing formats, commissioning new work, and organising exhibitions, performances, conversations and more in the Iceland art scene is a great opportunity.”.
Sequences VII will include approximately 25 artistic positions, from the established to the emergent, from around 10 different countries. The complete list of invited artists, partnerships and the festival theme will be announced soon. Exhibitions, performances and events will take place in various official venues and public spaces across Reykjavik. Alongside the main program, an Off-Venue program – introduced for the first time in the previous edition of Sequences, during which works from Matthew Barney and many more were exhibited – will be presented. Registrations for the Off-Venue program will be welcomed and advertised later.
Sequences is an artist initiated festival and has grown from the grass-root art scene in Iceland. It aims to be a progressive international visual arts event of significance, a valuable platform for artists to develop their practice, further their careers and facilitate increased participation and visibility in the international art scene. About the development of Sequences, Cramerotti said that:
“Sequences has done great things in the past six editions. Sequences VII will have an impact internationally and at the same time a strong local purpose, combining a range of cross-disciplinary works, curatorial approaches and multiple venues in Reykjavik. I am utterly enjoying the process, and looking forward to seeing the results myself. “
The organising bodies and responsible for Sequences are the Icelandic Art Center, The Living Art Museum and Kling&Bang Gallery.
For further information:
Edda Halldórsdóttir +354 848 8351
Edda Kristín Sigurjónsdóttir +354 897 4062
Alfredo Cramerotti @ Wysing Retreat: Of Our Own Making
Wysing Retreat: Of Our Own Making
Alfredo Cramerotti – Curating oneself. An exploration on curating and ‘the curatorial’ beyond exhibition-making.
Friday 23 May 2014
Wysing Arts Centre
Bourn, Cambridge, CB23 2TX, UK
In light of increasing connectivity and the pressure of a transforming environment, this retreat, entitled Of Our Own Making, will address the question ‘how do we want to live together?’ The retreat curators are MA students Jennifer KY Lam, Marenka Krasomil, Olivia Leahy, and Sophie Oxenbridge-Hastie.
Across five immersive days a programme of invited speakers and group activities will offer possible interpretations of this question, endeavouring to address its social, environmental and metaphysical implications.
Commencing the retreat, artist Cally Spooner will lead a workshop session and host presentations and discussions by participants on their work. On the following days, Anthony Davies and Jaya Klara Brekke of the MayDay Rooms, a safe house for vulnerable archives and historical material linked to social movements, experimental culture, and marginalised figures, will initiate discussion on current social movements and alternative communities in regards to collaborative ways of living.
Writer, curator, editor and artist Alfredo Cramerotti, director of MOSTYN art gallery, Co-Director, AGM Culture and collective Chamber of Public Secrets, will address the relations between society and the environment, situated within a concept of ecology influenced by the separation of nature and culture. His presentation and open-floor debate will focus on collective curating, Venice pavilions, digital culture, and curating our own future.
Finally, the retreat will examine visionary ideas for the future, with the theoretical and scientific research of English author, theoretician in the field of gerontology and co-founder of the SENS Research Foundation, Aubrey de Grey, on proposed techniques to stop aging. Contributing to this conversation, Richard Noble, lecturer in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, philosopher and writer, primarily on the intersection of art and politics, will also lead a talk on the politics of utopia in artistic practice.
Selected participants for the retreat are: Love Enqvist, Rose Gibbs, Lina Hermsdorf, Gareth Lloyd, Vipash Purichanont, Amy Spencer and Anna Stephens.
On Expansion: Photography’s Status in a Digital World
On Expansion: Photography’s Status in a Digital World
News Story and Vimeo Links
On Expansion was a roundtable discussion that recently took place at King’s College London on 21 January 2014. It was a closed-door workshop led by curator Alfredo Cramerotti (Director, MOSTYN) in partnership with artist/researcher Michael Takeo Magruder (Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London) that attempted to unpack certain aspects of the status of photography in an increasingly digital world. It is part of the AGM conversation series and was recorded as part of Alfredo Cramerotti’s ongoing research in this area.
The event focused on two lines of enquiry, namely: What is photography’s ontological status in the world today when thought in relationship to the omnipresence of the digital image and video? and How does this (digital) photographic moment in the history of image-making change the methodology of artistic and curatorial inquiries, their value, and their justification?
Discussion topics included:
- considering how the visual translations of ideas through various networked social systems have a major impact on our artistic and curatorial practices; examining how – now – images are made, distributed, recycled or found; and how curators are curating contemporary artists using new technology to reflect upon its meaning today.
- exploring how the artistic and curatorial act of making, manipulating, distributing and ‘digesting’ pictures is hybridized by devices like mobile phones, tablets and computers but, also, virtual reality glasses and game consoles.
- discussing the work of some artists and theorists in relation to these networked systems.
With an invited group of specialists and practitioners from diverse backgrounds, On Expansion looked at the ways in which conceptions about photography, art, digital practices and curating are in flux, and how these shifts – particularly in the artistic production and curatorial presentation of photography – can engender new ways of thinking about archives, collections, exhibitions and display.
Discussants included: Anna Bentkowska-Kafel (King’s College London), Gair Dunlop (University of Dundee), Marialaura Ghedini (University of Sunderland), Andrew Prescott (King’s College London), Anna Reading (King’s College London) and Gillian Youngs (University of Brighton).
Organisers:
Alfredo Cramerotti
Writer and Curator
Director, MOSTYN; Head Curator, APT Artist Pension Trust; Editor in Chief, Critical Photography series, Intellect Books; Research Scholar, eCPR European Centre for Photography Research, University of South Wales
http://www.alcramer.net + http://linkedin.com/in/alcramer
alcramer@gmail.com
Michael Takeo Magruder
Artist and Researcher
Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London
http://www.takeo.org + http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/ddh/people/affiliate/magruder
m@takeo.org
Links:
AGM Culture
http://agmculture.org
On Expansion video documentation
(part 1) http://vimeo.com/85040796
(part 2) http://vimeo.com/85046523
(part 3) http://vimeo.com/85054088
(part 4) http://vimeo.com/85069770
(part 5) http://vimeo.com/85069771
Alfredo Cramerotti: curating across disciplines
Alfredo Cramerotti, Director of Mostyn, Wales, and next co-curator of the Wales in Venice Pavilion 2013 will give a talk about his curatorial work across different disciplines, and will revisit his endeavour of art & media curating for Manifesta 8, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art which took place in the region of Murcia, Spain, in 2010.
2pm, Tuesday 16 October 2012
H6, Rathmell Building,
Caerleon Campus
Newport
NP18 3QT
Alfredo Cramerotti is a writer, curator and artist based in the UK. His cultural practice explores the relationship between reality and representation across a variety of media and collaborations such as TV, radio, publishing, internet, media festivals, photography, writing and exhibition curating. Cramerotti is Director of Mostyn, the leading publicly funded contemporary art gallery in Wales, and was co-curator of Manifesta 8, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art (2009-2010) and Senior Curator, QUAD Derby (2008-2011). He co-directs AGM Culture, roaming curatorial agency; CPS Chamber of Public Secrets, media and art production unit and is Visiting Lecturer in various European universities among others NTU Nottingham Trent University, University of Westminster and DAI Dutch Arts Institute. Cramerotti is also Editor of the Critical Photography book series by Intellect Books, and his own recent publications include Aesthetic Journalism: How to inform without informing (2009) and Unmapping the City: Perspectives of Flatness (2010).
Alfredo Cramerotti: The Future of MOSTYN
Alfredo Cramerotti, Director of Mostyn, Wales, will give a talk about his future vision for the gallery.
5pm, 14 March 2012
H6, Rathmell Building,
Caerleon Campus
Newport
NP18 3QT
Alfredo Cramerotti is a writer, curator and artist based in the UK. His cultural practice explores the relationship between reality and representation across a variety of media and collaborations such as TV, radio, publishing, internet, media festivals, photography, writing and exhibition curating. Cramerotti is Director of Mostyn, the largest publicly funded contemporary art gallery in Wales, and was co-curator of Manifesta 8, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art (2009-2010) and Senior Curator, QUAD Derby (2008-2011). He co-directs AGM Culture, roaming curatorial agency; CPS Chamber of Public Secrets, media and art production unit and is Visiting Lecturer in various European universities among others NTU Nottingham Trent University, University of Westminster and DAI Dutch Arts Institute. Cramerotti is also Editor of the Critical Photography book series by Intellect Books, and his own recent publications include Aesthetic Journalism: How to inform without informing (2009) and Unmapping the City: Perspectives of Flatness (2010).
Links
http://www.alcramer.net
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/books/view-Series,id=19/
http://www.mostyn.org
TVE Metropolis – Manifesta 8: AGM 10 feat. Comrade Alfredo Neri (excerpt)
(Spanish below)
Special Metropolis TV format from TVE Spain about Manifesta 8 / CPS Chamber of Public Secrets / AGM 10 feat. Comrade Alfredo Neri (2006).
A ‘performative documentary’ about Alfredo Neri, the spokesman of the Italian neo-nazi movement Skinheads. The work was presented in Manifesta 8 by AGM 10 which selected a number of archive pieces from CPS archive.
A powerful analysis of the media construction, representation and mediation of facts, identities and historical narratives through the documentary language.
(Spanish)
Una de las piezas más impactantes de la emisión será el fragmento del trabajo de AGM 10: CPS (Italia), titulado: Camarada Alfredo Neri (2006-2010) Un documental de corte ficticio para hacernos reflexionar sobre la construcción de los relatos y del lenguaje documental.
AGM – Call for host organisations
AGM
agmculture.org
Image credit: AGM Conversation ‘On Translation’ saw the participation of Michael Takeo Magruder, Fay Nicolson,
Nada Prlja, Alfredo Cramerotti, Yesomi Umolu, Hannah Conroy, Jeffery Baker.
Contact
agm@agmculture.org
Hannah Conroy
Phone: 0044 (0) 7943639832
Fax: n/a
Address
agmculture.org
AGM
1 Thoresby Street
Nottingham, NG1 1AJ
England
Ongoing call for project partners
AGM accepts now proposals for future editions of its annual, international symposium, an itinerant and ‘expanded’ form of gathering that may include debate, exhibition, screening, performance and other formats.
Proposals from host organisations or project partners can be sent to agm@agmculture.org
Please include contact details, and an outline or relevance for collaboration. Further information can be seen on our website: http://www.agmculture.org
—
AGM is a curatorial project with some of the inbuilt features of a parasite. Each time, by changing partner, location, form and content, its primary focus is to explore the peculiarity of the hosting body – be it a site, an institution or a theme.
Through the creation of encounters and cultural exchange, AGM promotes the development of a network of cultural centres working around Europe. Our goal is to create and consolidate international collaboration, foster knowledge exchange and support international mobility of cultural workers, theorists and artists.
AGM is orchestrated by Hannah Conroy (UK), Iben Bentzen (Denmark), Yesomi Umolu (UK) and Alfredo Cramerotti (UK/Italy). Recent projects included the ongoing Conversation Series symposia, which provide an open forum for sharing and exchange with no underlying pretext but to consider the current state of affairs at various moments in the lead up to the exhibition or research process. Also, the collective presented AGM 10:Collectivus CPS, at Manifesta 8, Spain (2010) which sought to explore the collective process as emphasised in the selection of three collectives to curate the biennale this time around.
This year sees the beginning of a three year project AGM_Loci, which will facilitate public events that seek to encourage international collaboration and foster knowledge exchange between artist and theorists across Europe. Starting in 2011, curators and artists from Manifatture Knos, Lecce, Italy; One Thoresby Street, Nottingham, UK; Walden Affairs, Den Haag, Holland; Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen, Innsbruck, Austria will initiate a dialogue to generate a public agenda and ignite discussions on the issue of shared memory of urban spaces.
Every AGM Culture edition poses a series of questions challenging pre-conceived ideas of the hosting body and the relative cultural productions taking place in/through that environment.
One Thoresby Street, 1 Thoresby Street, Nottingham, UK, NG1 1AJ
+44 (0)7941 470145 (Alfredo) or +44 (0)7943 639832 (Hannah)
AGM Conversation Series, Cairo Session: On Dialogue
AGM Culture Conversation Series, Cairo Session: On Dialogue
During the upcoming Cairo Biennale, AGM will coordinate a recorded conversation between curators, artists and cultural producers on the 16th December 2010. This one day session will focus on social and geo-political topics relevant to the Mediterranean region, opening up to some tactics for producers and audiences to employ via modes of aesthetic journalism, ficto-criticism and political fictions. Having recently interrogated the nature of collective production and collaboration as part of Chamber of Public Secrets’ contribution to Manifesta 8, AGM wishes to expand on this to address the term “dialogue”. If, as in the realm of cultural diplomacy, dialogue is to be understood as a reciprocal act and as a prelude to collaboration/cultural understanding, then the session asks: who sets the terms of dialogue, where is it enacted, how does it function and what are its inherent asymmetries? More specifically, we hope to delve into the realm of questioning the instrumentalisation of “dialogue” in contemporary art and institutional practices as well as on the geo-political scale.
This session will be disseminated through attendees networks and on agmculture.org.
Participants
Khaled Ramadan (Lebanon, Finland & Denmark) Alfredo Cramerotti (Italy & UK) Hannah Conroy (UK) Yesomi Umolu (UK), Khaled Hafez (Egypt), Aida Eltorie (Egypt & USA), (Dermis Leon (Spain), Achilleas Kentonis (Cyprus) Patrizio Travagli (Italy) Giuseppe Moscatello (UAE), Alexandre Gurita (France), Michael Thoss (Germany).
Sponsors/Supporters
Allianz Stiftung
European Union House of Delegation Cairo-Egypt
About AGM Conversation Series
The AGM Conversation Series brings together, in different configurations and venues, artists, curators, thinkers and contributors variously involved in processes of “knowledge production” via art, media, research or other forms of critical engagement. Adopting AGM’s itinerant format, these sessions seek not only to assess the “state-of-play” at various moments in the lead up to the exhibition or research process in which they are involved at that time, but to continue discussions around thematics that are central to their approach and productions.
A significant feature of the Conversation Series is that they have taken place in semi formal settings, requiring no audience but a camera and an amassed group of participants. They sit somewhere between the formal setting of the commonly used artists talk /seminar format and the informal nature of social/networked conversations between arts practitioners and producers. The sessions provide an open forum for sharing and exchange with no underlying pretext but to consider the current state of affairs.
The edited versions of the AGM Conversation series are distributed online through open networked communities such as Facebook, Vimeo, LinkedIn, Flickr, Twitter and also on agmculture.org.
About AGM
AGM Culture is a curatorial project with some of the inbuilt features of a parasite. Each time, by changing partner, location, form and content, its primary focus is to explore the peculiarity of the hosting body – be it a site, an institution or a theme. Previously, AGM has explored new modes of knowledge production within art and the media in Austria, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the U.K. and in the Web space
AGM 09 under_ctrl Exhibition and Performance
AGM 09 under.ctrl
QUAD Derby, UK & Radiator Biennial Festival of New Media Art Nottingham, UK
The 7th edition of the media/art project AGM (www.agmculture.org) is this year part of the Radiator Biennial Festival and Symposium (www.radiator-festival.org) and includes an exhibition, video installation, performance, music and talk; exploring our behaviour with technologies of surveillance and counter-surveillance in QUAD. From 15th to 25th January 2009, eight international artists, designers, writers and performers respond to the cultural environment generated by CCTV and (self) recording.
On screens throughout QUAD, 15th – 25th January 2009
Artworks by plankton (media collective, Austria), Chris Oakley (videomaker, UK), Miska Knapek (new media designer, Denmark/Sweden), Scott Jon Siegel (game designer, USA), and ZimmerFrei (art collective, Italy).
AGM is an art/media project that happens once a year and changes its form, content and location every time. Previous editions were held in Italy (performance event, 2003), the Netherlands (radio programme, 2004), Canada (sound installations, 2005), Denmark (public screenings, 2006), Austria (symposium, 2007), and the Internet (2008).For previous editions please visit www.agmculture.org. Curated by Iben Bentzen and Alfredo Cramerotti, QUAD Exhibitions Officer.
The fourth Radiator Biennial Festival and Symposium brings together artists with academics, geographers, urban theorists, scientists, sociologists and fellow citizens in the discovery of a new topography of the city, based on the understanding that digital networks are transforming our notion of public and private space. The symposium “Exploits in the Wireless City” at Broadway in Nottingham (http://www.broadway.org.uk) features theorists, architects, journalists, urban planners, and artists’ works. The symposium aims to instigate discussion, debate and new interdisciplinary research networks. Curated by Anette Schäfer and Miles Chalcraft.
METRO Newspaper
14th January 2009
Derby Evening Telegraph Newspaper
9th January 2009
QUAD Latest News
12th December 2008
Curatorview [Alfredo Cramerotti] 
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