Manifesta 8 Curators
Announced September 2009
Manifesta 8, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art
Manifesta 8, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, will take place in 2010 in the Region of Murcia, Spain, in dialogue with Northern Africa.
The curatorial team of Manifesta 8 is composed of:
ALEXANDRIA CONTEMPORARY ARTS FORUM
CHAMBER OF PUBLIC SECRETS
TRANZIT.ORG
Manifesta 8 taking place in the Spanish cities of Murcia and Cartagena in 2010, will be curated by Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, Chamber of Public Secrets and Tranzit.org as the three collectives, who will together form the curatorial team of the next edition.
In keeping with Manifesta’s aim to experiment with innovative curatorial models and methodologies, no individual art professionals were considered for the position of curator of Manifesta 8. Instead, curatorial groups, artistic and interdisciplinary collectives and/or existing institutions were invited by the Board and the Director of the International Foundation Manifesta to propose a new working model for Manifesta 8. In doing so, the Board wishes to initiate a transcontinental collaborative strategy, connecting regions and institutions located around the Mediterranean.
Opening on October, 2010, and continuing through the autumn in the Region of Murcia (Spain) in dialogue with Northern Africa, Manifesta 8 will explore the idea of Europe in the 21st century, focussing on the boundaries of the continent, and thus strengthening its international and intercontinental character. More specifically, the aim of Manifesta 8 will be to engage with Europe’s present-day frontiers and its interrelation with the Maghreb region.
As with each edition, the newly appointed curatorial team will develop Manifesta 8 in close collaboration with the permanent team of the Amsterdam based home offices of Manifesta together with local producers in Murcia and Cartagena.
Inherent to Manifesta’s nomadic character is the desire to explore the psychological and geographical territory of Europe, referring both to border-lines and the notion of nationality. This process aims to establish closer dialogue between particular cultural and artistic situations and the broader, international fields of contemporary art, theory and politics in a changing society.
ALEXANDRIA CONTEMPORARY ARTS FORUM
Curator/Team Executive: Bassam El Baroni
Associate Curator: Jeremy Beaudry
Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), founded in Alexandria (Egypt) in December 2005, focuses on contemporary art, new media and discursive practice, cultivating a deeper awareness of art in relation to all aspects of contemporary life and culture. Central to its mission is an ongoing engagement with projects that bring together established and emerging artists, university students, and diverse practitioners, in contexts that recognize the value of an informal, non-hierarchical, open-ended circulation of information and experience. The ACAF is in a constant state of flux and incorporates innovative activities, guided by its socio-cultural compass.
CHAMBER OF PUBLIC SECRETS
Curators/Team Executives: Khaled Ramadan / Alfredo Cramerotti
Chamber of Public Secrets (CPS), based in Copenhagen (Denmark) and the Middle East, works as a network of artists, curators and thinkers who have been collaborating since 2004 in the organization, production and circulation of film and video festivals, art exhibitions, TV and radio programs, political fictions and documentaries. CPS also develops forums for debate and publishes books and articles about socio-political and cultural issues such as migration, mobility, representation, colonialism, gender and difference. CPS wishes to stimulate the role of debate, while reconstructing the role of art, its responsibility and its relation to society.
TRANZIT.ORG
Team executive: Vít Havránek
Team assembly: Zbyněk Baladrán, Dóra Hegyi, Boris Ondreička, Georg Schöllhammer
tranzit.org is a network of autonomous art associations, existing since 2002 in Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, who cooperate working across borders – between nations, languages and histories. Each tranzit group operates independently from each other, using different formats and methods – such as discursive platforms, exhibitions, publications and research initiatives – but always aiming to generate a deep involvement in the local artistic and intellectual context. At the same time each tranzit group carries out a re-assessment of contemporary history, challenging the canons, geography and master-narratives of post-war European (art) histories. The aim of tranzit is to act trans-locally, in constant dialogue with cultural narratives on a local and global scale.
In the next few months the three selected collectives will define a mutual working methodology which will culminate in the concept and realization of Manifesta 8, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art.
Manifesta 8 is an initiative of the International Foundation Manifesta in collaboration with the Comunidad Autónoma de la Región de Murcia (CARM) and Murcia Cultural.
The International Foundation Manifesta is supported by the European Commission Culture Framework program, The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science of The Netherlands.
Sponsors and Collaborators
Government of the Autonomous Region of Murcia · City Council Murcia · City Council Cartagena
Hedwig Fijen, Director
International Foundation Manifesta, Amsterdam
Redeye Network Meeting
Tuesday 19 May 2009, 7.30pm
Speaker: Alfredo Cramerotti
Alfredo Cramerotti will present his recent project Faulty Lines. Shot in various cities around the world, the project explores the relationship between the two-dimensional photographic image and a three-dimensional built environment. Alfredo Cramerotti is an artist, curator and writer based in Derby. His work as an artist is primarily concerned with questions of narrative in photography, installation, video, performance and text. Organised in collaboration with Open Eye Gallery, Redeye’s Liverpool Network meetings take place every couple of months. They offer photographers of all kinds the chance to meet, catch up on news and gossip, meet members of the Redeye and Open Eye Gallery teams and see short talks and presentations of work.
ARTIST TURNS AUTHOR
Derby Evening Telegraph
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
A STAFF member at Derby’s Quad arts centre has published his first book.
Exhibitions officer Alfredo Cramerotti’s book, called Aesthetic Journalism: How to Inform Without Informing, looks at how writing about art has become more journalistic in recent times.
Alfredo Cramerotti is an international artist, curator and writer and has worked in radio, TV and publishing.
Aesthetic Journalism: How to Inform without Informing
Intellect Books
In print from September 2009
Aesthetic Journalism
How to Inform Without Informing
By Alfredo Cramerotti
ISBN 9781841502687
Paperback 112 pages 230x174mm
Published September 2009
Price £19.95
As the art world eagerly embraces a journalistic approach, Aesthetic Journalism explores why contemporary art exhibitions often consist of interviews, documentaries and reportage. This new mode of journalism is grasping more and more space in modern culture and Cramerotti probes the current merge of art with the sphere of investigative journalism. The attempt to map this field, here defined as ‘Aesthetic Journalism’, challenges, with clear language, the definitions of both art and journalism, and addresses a new mode of information from the point of view of the reader and viewer. The book explores how the production of truth has shifted from the domain of the news media to that of art and aestheticism. With examples and theories from within the contemporary art and journalistic-scape, the book questions the very foundations of journalism. Aesthetic Journalism suggests future developments of this new relationship between art and documentary journalism, offering itself as a useful tool to audiences, scholars, producers and critics alike.
Art and Design Industrial Liaison Committee
University of Derby
Faculty of Arts, Design and Technology
27 February 2009
Dear Alfredo
Out of respect and in recognition of your contribution to the creative industries you have been nominated by University of Derby, Art and Design academic staff for membership on the newly formed Art and Design Industrial Liaison Committee.
The committee is to be understood as a positive and dynamic link between the creative industries and respective subject areas of Art and Design education at the University; it will operate in an advisory capacity for future programme design, delivery and curriculum development; enabling us to maintain a relevant and pertinent portfolio of programmes which are in tune with the needs of industry and providing our students a more critical and creative edge when preparing themselves for future employment.
Scott Green
Head of Subject: ART
University of Derby
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
The17: Slice Through Derby / Bill Drummond on METRO Newspaper and Derby Evening Telegraph
METRO Newspaper & Derby Evening Telegraph
20 May 2008
The17 performance in Derby Market Place
As part of the run up to the opening of QUAD, Derby’s new centre for art and film, a unique performance piece entitled ‘The17’ will take place on Derby’s’ Market Place on 22 August 2008. The performance involves 1,700 people from Derby and the local region, and has been created with QUAD by renowned artist and musician Bill Drummond.
During six weeks over the summer, Bill Drummond and QUAD assembled 100 groups of 17 people from members of the community, and included groups of photographers, punks, pirates, hairdressers, Bach Choristers, Media Workers and MacDonald’s Staff.
Each of the groups attended a recording session, making one note with their voices for five minutes, and these 100 separate recordings will be mixed together to create one huge piece of choral music. All 1,700 participants have been invited to the Market Place for the evening of the 22 August 2008, to hear the one and only play back of this recording, before it is deleted forever. The only audience to The17 will be the singers themselves, so to hear The17 you have to have been part of it!
The17 participants also had a group photograph and group video portrait taken when they attended the recording session. The17 photographs will be included in the first exhibition inside QUAD, which will be open from Friday 26th September, and will also be published in a special The17 book, which available from QUAD. The17 videos will be shown in QUAD digital screens and on the BBC Big Screen.
tv-tv LAP TALK 03: MemeFest
LAP TALK is a series of introduction to various non-mainstream forms of communication through web platforms. It is part of Chamber of Public Secret’s TV program broadcast on the independent television platform tv-tv.
LAP TALK 03: Memefest memefest.org
archive at chamberarchive.org/laptalk.html and alcramer.net
(first broadcast 12.04.2005)
tv-tv LAP TALK 02: Sarai
LAP TALK is a series of introduction to various non-mainstream forms of communication through web platforms. It is part of Chamber of Public Secret’s TV program broadcast on the independent television platform tv-tv.
LAP TALK 02: Sarai sarai.net
archive at chamberarchive.org/laptalk.html and alcramer.net
(first broadcast 29.03.2005)
Curatorview [Alfredo Cramerotti] 
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