Freedom of speech is one of the key issues in the current public debate and one that is becoming increasingly contested, given the steady erosion of civil liberties in many countries today. Denmark has always been at the forefront of the public debate on issues in relation to freedom of speech, but it has also suffered the so-called "trauma of free speech".
This makes the Danish Pavilion an appropriate vehicle from which to visualise and discuss these issues. Freedom of speech is highly relevant in relation to much of what is happening in the world politically today; from press intimidation and censorship, to restrictions on the internet, as well as debates on the limits of freedom of speech, increased surveillance and forms of control. The issue of freedom of speech is highly complex, often subjective - even relative - and invariably debatable. The boundaries surrounding it cannot easily be delineated.
The exhibition Speech Matters aims to provoke a considered debate and to complicate the issue of freedom of speech, highlighting the intricacies, ambiguities and grey areas inherent to the subject, and emphasizing the fact that freedom of speech cannot be exercised or applied in any programmatic or strictly proscribed manner. Finally, the exhibition also touches on the essence of visual artistic practice, which fundamentally entails conditions of freedom of expression. Eighteen artists from ten countries have been invited to participate. The majority will be producing new work for the exhibition.
The exhibition is curated by Katerina Gregos.
AGENCY (International, est. 1992)
Agency is the generic name of a Brussels-based agency established in 1992 by Kobe Matthys. Agency constitutes a growing list of things that resist the division between categories of “culture” and “nature”. These things are mostly derived from juridical processes and contested issues of intellectual property (copyright, patent, trademark, etc.). Intellectual property relies on the division between culture and nature. Each thing on the list invokes the moment of hesitation in terms of that division. Agency calls things forth from its list via varying assemblies inside exhibitions, performances, publications, etc. Each assembly speculates topologically on a different question. For the exhibition ‘Assembly (SPEECH MATTERS)’, Agency speculates around the question: “How can objects be included within art practices?” This entails an investigation into the way in which the intellectual property regime reinforces the split between classifications of subjects and objects. The nineteenth-century liberal notion of authorship assumed that for an object to be art, it should be expressive of a subject’s free individual creativity. Art that doesn’t fit this categorization is refused the protection of intellectual property laws.
For example, ‘Thing 000946 (Nomads of the Australian Dessert)’, relates to a controversy between an anthropologist and an Aboriginal group about a Aboriginal painting that was photographed and published by the anthropologist in a book. From an intellectual property point of view, the painting is part of their tradition and deemed to be within the public domain and as such can be published. By contrast, from an Aboriginal point of view, the painting is sacred: one has to be first initiated by the group in order to see it.
Throughout the duration of the exhibition, a “keeper” is present in order to invoke things from the list based on the concerns or questions of the visitors.
Agency is the generic name of a Brussels-based agency that was founded in 1992 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany by Kobe Matthys. Agency constitutes a growing list of things that resist the division between culture and nature. Recent solo exhibitions include: Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp, The Showroom, London (2011); The Front Room, CAM - Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis (2010); White Light, Düsseldorf (2007). Recent group exhibitions include: Les vigiles, les menteurs, les rèveurs. Erudition concrète 3, Le Plateau – Frac Ile-de-France, Paris, Animism, Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, History of art, David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2010); Animism, MuHKA, Antwerp, PhotoCairo 4: The Long Shortcut, CIC – Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo (2009); Un-Scene, Wiels, Brussels, Anna Kournikova Deleted by Memeright Trusted System: Art in the Age of Intellectual Property, HMKV - Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund (2008); On the way to: From/To Europe, Shedhalle, Zurich, Biennale de Paris, Paris (2006). Recent performances include: Salon 5, Argos, Brussels (2010); Clifford Irving Show, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, Performatik, Wiels, Brussels (2009); Disclosures, Gasworks, London (2008); When things cast no shadow, 5th Berlin Biennial, Berlin (2008); Mugatxoan, Fundação Serralves, Porto (2006).
AYREEN ANASTAS & RENE GABRI (Palestine, 1968 & Iran, 1968)
Inside the Danish Pavilion, the visitor encounters a room with two speakers and a hexagonal vitrine designed by the artists, which contains notes and materials relating to their work. Out of the speakers, one can hear fragments of a language lesson, which has apparently let go of the restraints tempering it from poetic and political inclinations. The notes and materials inside the vitrine act as anchors, points of reference, markers, passing glimpses of lessons, night studies, talks, conversations, readings, experiences, efforts to superimpose worlds, one upon another. But these elements alone do not comprise the work. The work rests beside these elements, between the words one hears, and in the moments that lead to and will emerge out of the materials inside the vitrine. For their project, the two artists proposed a work unfolding on several fronts and involving different processes. To explore freedom of speech within their own daily life, they proposed beginning a process of weaning off of the English language, by learning one another’s languages (Arabic and Farsi). To understand theorizations and uses of free speech, the artists consulted various contemporary and historical texts, events, and places.
Even before the recent upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa, the artists had proposed that the notion of free speech could not be understood without taking these regions into account. They had initially proposed a trip that would allow them to explore freedom of speech through lived experience. The events that began to take shape in December have only reinforced these initial convictions and confirmed that, indeed, a reclaimed notion of free speech may be emerging in the region. The artists started their trip in post-revolutionary Tunisia, and though they placed no demand on themselves to represent anything from this journey, some of their experiences and conversations may be traceable in the works at the Pavilion.
Ayreen Anastas was born in Palestine and lives and works in New York, USA.
She is only the imaginary contemporary of her own present: contemporary of its languages, its utopias, its systems (i.e. of its fictions), in short, of its philosophy but not of its history, of which she inhabits only the shimmering reflections. She always wants to expand the political in relation to art. Doesn't she know what Brecht seems to have written especially on that? We need a type of art which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself.
Rene Gabri was born in Iran and lives and works in New York, USA.
Today is March 3 2011, this short biography is being written, slightly past its deadline, a usual habit of mine. What is a biography, if not the markings of certain habits, born here, did that, a sentence or two about the ideas or questions one is concerned with, details, places of study, cities lived, a list of 'accomplishments'. How to punctuate and elaborate a habit, until it breaks, cracks open, begins to stutter, bleed, set itself afire, and disappear into a crowd. She said, a word or two different, a small mark, to say, nothing more intimate in saying no, stopping, refusing. Why not have this book write a biography of itself. Why not a language give an account of its life. Here I said this. Here it did that. Here she died, at this date, at this time, at this place. Here she was, when everything came together and folded. Here she did this work which would never live up to anything but what an other would make of it. Where to find this other?
ROBERT CRUMB (USA, 1943)
Robert Crumb is known internationally as one of the driving forces of the independent comix movement in the 1960s and 1970s, and continues to be a prolific cartoonist and illustrator. Crumb is the creator of a number of legendary cartoon characters and often portrays himself as a lascivious and geeky character in his own work. His work deliberately transgresses social taboos and aims to provide what the artist calls “release from the nervous tensions of society”. Crumb’s subject matter has ranged from sex and women, popular culture and music to darker more politicised narratives that hold up a mirror to America’s worst racial stereotypes, often causing controversy.
In When the Niggers Take Over America (1993), Crumb parodies US race relations, making literal latent racist fears in order to reveal the absurd logic of everyday prejudice. This particularly controversial work (narrated from a white suprematist point of view) imagines a scenario where African Americans violently take control of the USA. In an extreme reversal of historical reality, white people are enslaved and abused – in much the same manner as they had once shackled and abused African slaves. But Crumb does not only make blacks the target of his vitriolic pen: Jews, Latinos, Asians, corrupt politicians, Mafioso crime syndicates also enter into this corrupted, violent world.
Unhampered by political correctness, Crumb demonstrates how prejudices remain extant or latent in right wing society, revealing them for what they really are: malicious remnants of racist ideologies. Throughout his career, Crumb has unequivocally exercised his freedom of expression, ignoring societal norms and concerns about taste or decency, and constantly pushing the boundaries of this freedom. Although When The Niggers Take Over America was made almost twenty years ago, it acquires new relevance in light of right-wing attitudes and Christian fundamentalism currently gripping Middle America, as well as the rise of xenophobic politics in Europe.
Robert Crumb was born in 1943 in Philadelphia, USA. He lives and works in Sauve, France. Solo exhibitions include: The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb's Book of Genesis, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2009-2010) travelled to David Zwirner, New York, Portland Art Museum, Portland (2010), and to Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus (2010-2011), Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine (2011) and San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose (2011); R. Crumb, Baronian Francey, Brussels (2010); Robert Crumb, Galerie Martel, Paris (2010); R. Crumb's Underground, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2007), travelled to the Frye Art Museum, Seattle (2008), Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2008), Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston (2009) and Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana, California (2009); Robert Crumb: A Chronicle of Modern Times, Whitechapel Gallery, London and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2005). Recent group exhibitions include A moving plan B – Chapter ONE, The Drawing Room, London, Stations, Emerson Gallery, Hamilton College, Clinton, New York (2010); Heroes, Freaks, and Super-Rabbis: The Jewish Museum Berlin; Vraoum! Trésors de la bande dessinée et art contemporain, La Maison Rouge, Paris (2009); Glossolalia: Languages of Drawing, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008). Robert Crumb is represented by David Zwirner, New York, and Galerie Baronian Francey, Brussels.
www.crumbproducts.com
STELIOS FAITAKIS (Greece, 1976)
Stelios Faitakis trained as a painter and was one of the pioneering figures in the street art movement that flourished in Athens since the mid-1990s. His work is informed by graffiti and urban culture, Byzantine (and particularly Cretan) icon painting, Mexican muralism, traditional Greek shadow theatre, Japanese woodcuts, and old master painting. Faitakis’ figurative paintings and murals (which are a veritable assault on the eye) are political and social allegories, packed with visual information, multi-layered narratives and dense symbolism. The artist explores subjects culled from history, politics and current affairs, and issues relating to the abuses of power and authority. In his work, historical and religious references mix with elements from contemporary urban life. Faitakis’ view of humankind is dystopian: his works are dominated by fallen angels, corrupt officials, modern day sinners, perpetrators and victims; contemporary martyrs and miscreants boiling in the cauldron of a world gone awry.
For the Danish Pavilion’s neoclassical façade, Faitakis has made Imposition Symphony (2011), an ambitious large-scale mural in six chapters – each chapter representing a distinct story – with one “interlude”. The main narrative involves around six episodes all relating to questions of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and incidents of censorship and oppression (historical as well as contemporary), beginning with the story of a Greek photojournalist who documented a particularly violent episode between police and protesters during the riots in Athens in 2008, and whose work was subsequently censored. It goes on to reference Mao and the silencing of dissenting voices during the Cultural Revolution, and moves on to the book burnings of Wilhelm Reich, and the Holocaust. Imposition Symphony also includes details that comment on the repercussions of technology, industrialism, global consumerism, increased surveillance, and social apathy. The “interlude” features Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), the ostracised Serbian inventor and scientist, on his deathbed. Apart from its dense content and polemic narrative, Faitakis’ mural radiates raw energy and delivers a confrontational punch quite unlike any other contemporary painting.
Stelios Faitakis was born in 1976 in Athens, Greece where he also lives and works. He is a graduate of the National School of Fine Arts, Athens, and one of the pioneering artists of the Athens street art movement, since the mid-1990s. Recent solo shows include: ...towards a blessed land of new promise, The Breeder, Athens (2009); What A Great Day, The Breeder, Athens (2008). Recent group exhibitions include: Art in the Streets, MOCA – The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2011); Kunstsalon 2010, Freie Münchner und Deutsche Künstlerschaft, Munich (2010); Wynwood Walls, Miami, Borderline Pleasure, Galerie Michael Janssen, Berlin, The Beautiful is just the first degree of terrible, State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki (2009); Destroy Athens, 1st Athens Biennial, Gasworks, Athens (2007); Anathena, Deste Foundation, Centre for Contemporary Art, Athens, What Remains is Future, Patras Cultural Capital of Europe, Patras (2006). Stelios Faitakis is represented by The Breeder, Athens.
FOS (Denmark, 1971)
FOS' (Thomas Poulsen) practice connects static models of installation with active situations. His practice extends from large-scale installations and sculptures to music, performance and design, all brought together under the term “social design”, to describe this bridging of art and life. FOS explores how physical space acquires meaning through social interaction and how the aesthetics of social space challenge and transform social situations, behaviour, and our perception of space. His work constitutes an ongoing investigation into the physicality of social relations.
For the Danish Pavilion, FOS has realised perhaps his most ambitious project to date, Osloo: a 70 square metre floating pavilion. Osloo is a social sculpture that incorporates three formal elements: a stage, a bar, and a radio station. As a public space, Osloo is located outside the designated space of the Danish Pavilion in the Giardini, and is instead located within the urban fabric of the city of Venice. Osloo is an architectonic structure that comes to life through a range of events and audience encounters.
The programme aims to break traditional borders between disciplines, exploring the possibility of exchanging information in a public space through an aesthetic framework. International artists, musicians and poets perform alongside researchers, politicians, art historians, and other public figures, in order to create a set of alternative social situations. For four and a half weeks, the platform will host a regular programme of free public events, and will function as an accessible space for the citizens of Venice, tourists and Biennale visitors. A sculptural representation of Osloo will also be included within the Danish Pavilion itself.
FOS (Thomas Poulsen) was born in 1971 in Charlottenlund, Denmark. He was educated at the Danish Royal Art Academy, Copenhagen (1993-99). Recent solo exhibitions include: One Language Traveler at the National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen (2011); Another Place Yet A Place, Andersen's Contemporary, Berlin, Osloo, Copenhagen Harbour, Clutch, Max Wigram Gallery, London (2010); Memory Theatre Twig, Social Design #14, GAK, Bremen (2008); All this noise for nothing – nothing for something, Social Design #13, Statements, Art Basel, Basel (2007). Group exhibitions include Overlap – an Exhibition about Art and Design, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen (2011); The Grant Of Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen (2010); ReMap 2, Athens (2009); KURS: HAVNEN (with Osloo), KØS – Museum of art in public spaces, Køge, Denmark; U-TURN, Quadriennial of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen (2008); Busan Biennial, Busan (2006). In 2010 FOS was awarded the Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen Award, Denmark. FOS is represented by Andersen's Contemporary, Copenhagen/Berlin, and Max Wigram Gallery, London.
www.socialdesign.dk / www.osloo.dk
SHARON HAYES (USA, 1970)
An Ear to the Sounds of Our History (2011) is a wall-based installation that investigates the recording, production and dissemination of political speech in long-playing discs (LPs). It also excavates the complex web of intersecting and opposing ideologies represented by spoken word albums pressed and distributed during the heyday of the LP record (1948-84). Part of an in-depth exploration of this extant archive, An Ear to the Sounds of Our History utilises spoken word record covers arranged in different sized grids. These arrangements function as textual sentences that highlight complicated conditions underlying our notion of free speech.
An Ear to the Sounds of Our History mines the extant archive of spoken word LPs to investigate the heterogeneous desires involved in the collection and dissemination of recorded political speech. The albums document a number of violent and contested political struggles and the way in which these contestations were transformed, pressed and distributed to the average household. The dissemination of speech on vinyl was a critical part of a wide-ranging set of strategies to propagate certain ideas within political debate, to build political movements and political figureheads. The work attempts to trace various lines within these debates and to demonstrate the economic and logistical conditions that have contributed to our notion of so-called free speech.
For the last two years, Hayes has been working with this archive in its materialization – exploring meaning as recorded sound – through a series of spoken word DJ performances. In An Ear to the Sounds of Our History, she delves deeper into this project by using record covers to produce constructed relationships between individual political speakers. Reorganized and mounted in rectangular grids, Hayes uses precise articulations of spoken word record covers (which she leaves unaltered) to construct new sentences that speak about the impact of time, desire, history, blackness, gender, nationality, and personality on our understanding of the naturalized category of speech.
Sharon Hayes was born in 1970 in Baltimore, USA. She lives and works in New York, USA. Hayes attended the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York (1999-2000) and received her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2003. Recent solo exhibitions include: The Future is Unthinkable, Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp (2009); Nothing Will Be As Before, Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin, 9 Scripts from a Nation at War (collaboration with David Thorne, Katya Sander, Ashley Hunt and Andrea Geyer), Tate Modern, London, In the Near Future, Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2008); I march in the parade of liberty, but as long as I love you I'm not free, New Museum, New York (2007). Recent group exhibitions include: Lost in Translation, Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Other Tradition, Wiels, Brussels (2011); 2010 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Vectors of the Possible, BAK, Utrecht, To the Arts! Citizens, Serralves Museum, Porto, Greater New York, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, 4th Auckland Triennial, Auckland (2010); 11th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2009); Yokohoma Triennale, Yokohama, 3rd Guangzhou Triennial (2008). Sharon Hayes is represented by Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin.
www.shaze.info
HAN HOOGERBRUGGE (Netherlands, 1963)
Han Hoogerbrugge is an artist, illustrator, and animator whose work spans diverse media. Hoogerbrugge is regarded as one of the pioneers of internet art and has become known for the diaristic animations he has regularly posted on the internet. His work explores the contemporary human condition through graphic, monochromatic web-based animations. These feature a figure that is both a self-portrait and an alter-ego: a man dressed in a characteristic black-and-white suit. Hoogerbrugge’s vocabulary is sparce and minimal – he is not concerned with technological gimmickry and flashy effects, but rather with the content of his animations. His work presents an existentialist view of life at the dawn of the twenty-first century, dealing with timeless issues such as ageing, fear, sex, death, religion, and alienation.
For the Danish Pavilion, Hoogerbrugge has made a new animation entitled Quatrosopus (2011). A figure with four faces on a rotating head – each face representing a different point of view – voices a range of dilemmas, contradictions and inner struggles about the issue of free speech. Using acute but humorous quotes from sources including poet Ezra Pound, novelist Charles Dickens, and bandleader Les Brown, the animation plays out as a succession of gestures, statements and questions, and features Hoogerbrugge himself as its conflicted main character. The immersive, ambient soundtrack is occasionally interrupted by a guitar riff from Neil Young’s hit song Rockin’ in the Free World. Hovering between the poetic and the existential, the violent and the masochistic, the work intimates the problems that underscore the definition, and reality, of freedom of speech. Quatrosopus’ multi-faceted, quadruply split persona symbolizes the quandaries of assuming a fixed position, and hints at the dilemmas underlying the silencing of both provocative speech and unfettered free speech.
Han Hoogerbrugge was born in 1963, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, were he lives and works. He studied painting at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam (1983-1988). Solo exhibitions include: La Grande Fête #1, Sala Parpallo, Valencia, La Grande Fête #2, Le CABINET, Paris (2010); Profool, Base Alpha, Antwerp (2008); Black Bones-Black Holes, Espace A VENDRE, Nice (2007); Zoo, MU, Eindhoven (2005). Recent group exhibitions include: Animamix Biennial, MOCA – Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Smolet is beautiful, Espace A VENDRE, Nice, What you say is what you get, Dropstuff, collateral event, 53rd Venice Biennale, Venice(2009); H.E.C., Le Cabinet, Paris, Indépendants 2, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2007). Music videos include: Love etc. for The Pet Shop Boys; Sugar Candy, and Ready for the Fight, for The Young Punx (2009); MASHitUP, for The Young Punx (2008); You’ve got to and Make up Shake up for The Young Punx (2007); Landslide, for Dead Man Ray (2002). Internet projects include: Nails, (2002- ); Hotel, a Submarinechannel production (2004-2006); Modern Living/Neurotica series (1998-2002); ProStress 1.0 blog with Paul Hall (2006-2008); ProStress 2.0, daily comic (2008- ). Films include: Thunderstorm in a clear blue sky (2011); Hylephobia, 3d-animation (2005); Anthrophobia, 3d-animation (2007). Commissioned work includes for: de Volkskrant newspaper, the Netherlands, VPRO broadcasting company, the Netherlands, MTV, ING private banking and many others. Han Hoogerbrugge is represented by Espace A VENDRE, Nice, Galerie Le Cabinet, Paris, and Base Alpha Gallery, Antwerp.
www.hoogerbrugge.com / www.prostress.com
MIKHAIL KARIKIS (Greece, 1975)
Using voice and pre-recorded sound, Mikhail Karikis’ High-flyer (2011) is a performance that explores notions of aspiration, authority and self-censorship. Employing a stylised visual language that references children’s paper dolls representing different types of workers, the performance involves a staged public speech delivered in a state that oscillates between panic and grandeur, good behaviour and nihilistic frenzy.
While the character’s name alludes to overambition and speculative stock prices, it also reflects on Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s propagandistic publication Una Storia Italiana (2001). Delivered freely to 12 million homes in Italy, and later presented to Colonel Gaddafi by Berlusconi in person as a token of “political bonds” between Libya and Italy, the publication was a family album featuring photographs of the prime minister in the office, in the gym with actor Sylvester Stallone, and at home with his family. Among the photographs was one of Berlusconi’s son, his face smeared with marmalade – an image which possesses surprising visual similarities with the internationally reproduced photograph of Berlusconi’s own mouth smeared with blood, following an attack during an autograph signing in 2009. In a twisted inversion between private and public life, both images present moments of abject personal display: a state of excessive food intake and an uncontained flow of bodily fluids.
Karikis’ performance invests in the contradictions and disturbing similarities between these iconic images; it employs the voice as a material and transforms it into an uncontrolled, inarticulate, guttural discharge with an insatiable appetite for authority, display and masochism. Exploring the unspeakable within the normalised, High-flyer references, through voice, image and gesture, masculine role models given to children, and meditates on the popularisation of neoliberal aesthetics in mainstream culture.
Mikhail Karikis was born in 1975 in Thessaloniki, Greece. He lives and works in London, UK. He was educated at The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, London (1994-1997), and The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, London where he completed an MA (1998-2000) and a PhD (2001-2005). Recent solo projects include XENON: an exploded opera, Galleria Civica di Modena, Modena, Kings Place, London, Whitstable Biennale, Whitstable and the BBC Opera Season with the BBC Big Screen Tour (2010). Recent group exhibitions include Artist's Body, Space*C, Coreana Museum of Art, Seoul, 7th International Biennale of Contemporary Art, Gyumri (2010); Extraordinary Voices, Tate Britain, London, Hesperides II, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne (2009); For you, only you, Milton Keynes Gallery, Milton Keynes and Model Arts & Niland Gallery, Sligo (2008); Triple Echo, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea (2007-2008). Recent solo music albums include MORPHICA, Sub Rosa records, Brussels (2010), Orphica, Sub Rosa records, Brussels (2007). Collaborative albums include Sound Unbound, with DJ Spooky, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London & Sub Rosa records, Brussels (2008), Army of Me, with Björk, One Little Indian records, London (2005). Karikis's MORPHICA project was nominated with the 2010 Qwartz Electronic Music Award, France.
www.mikhailkarikis.com
THOMAS KILPPER (Germany, 1956)
Thomas Kilpper’s work has consistently investigated the relationship between history, politics, current affairs, the public sphere and collective memory. Often creating large site-specific and labour- intensive interventions, installations and floor carvings, the artist seeks to highlight contentious political and historical issues. For SPEECH MATTERS, Kilpper has realised the Pavilion for Revolutionary Free Speech (2011), an open structure built in, and beyond, the private garden of the Danish Pavilion. This ambitious project was created by the artist with a team of engineers, carpenters and builders, predominantly by using wood and material left over from the last edition of the Architecture Biennale in 2010. Kilpper’s lo-fi and highly tactile structure can be seen as a para-pavilion, or anti-palazzo, that both forms an extension of, and counteracts the more “official” permanent buildings of the Danish Pavilion, spreading into the gardens of the Biennale as an autonomous structure but also a kind of parasite. It is at once an area of refuge, hospitality and social interaction, but also a discursive space with a distinct function and artistic content.
As part of his pavilion, Kilpper has also configured Speakers’ Corner, an open platform-cum-balcony, 2.60 metres in height, where specially commissioned performances (for the Danish Pavilion), as well as a programme of lectures and events instigated by the artist will take place. Any visitor wishing to engage in a free speech act can also use Speakers’ Corner, with the aid of an outsized megaphone made of scrap car metal. Kilpper’s pavilion also contains a wealth of visual and textual information in the form of woodcuts, related to recent contested freedom of speech cases. As such it can be seen as a social sculpture, a political space, and a platform for the exercise of free speech, whether planned or improvised. The work reflects the diversity of emancipatory thinking and revolutionary free speech, but also the increasingly problematic abuse of speech in the name of freedom and democracy.
Thomas Kilpper was born in 1956 in Stuttgart, Germany and lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He was trained at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, and Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main. Recent solo exhibitions include: Punk statt Stasi!, Galerie Christian Nagel, Cologne, Anemonevej Surprises, Tumult, Nakskov (2010); State of Control, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, Galerie Olaf Stüber, Berlin (2009); A Lighthouse for Lampedusa!, Dispari & Dispari Project, Reggio Emilia (2008). Group exhibitions include: Encuentro de Medellín MDE11, Medellín (2011); Philagrafika – The Graphic Unconscious, several venues, Philadelphia, Fokus Lodz Biennial, Lodz, Mediation, Poznan Biennial, Poznan, Transient Spaces: The Tourist Syndrome, NGBK - Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin, and Fondazione Morra Greco, Naples (2010); IABR – the 4th International Architecture Biennial, Rotterdam, (2009); Prison, Bloomberg Space, London (2007); Momentum, Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art, Moss (2006); Critical Societies, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2005). Since 2006 Kilpper runs the Berlin-based exhibition space after the butcher. In 2011 Thomas Kilpper is one of the fellows of the Villa Romana, Florence. Thomas Kilpper is represented by Galerie Christian Nagel, Cologne/Berlin and Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London.
www.kilpper-projects.de / www.after-the-butcher.de
RUNO LAGOMARSINO (Argentina/Sweden, 1977)
Working in video, drawing, sculpture, installation, and photography, Runo Lagomarsino investigates how today’s political and social situations have developed through different discursive and historical processes. The artist explores how these processes then produce representations and metaphors through which we continue to read and re-read history. The artist has developed a distinct and subtle aesthetic in which image and text articulate a political discourse through poetic gesture. His work avoids linear narratives and didacticism, and opens up a space for the subjective imagination, ambiguity, doubt, and criticality.
This ambiguity and open-endedness is reflected in the series of drawings entitled Full Spectrum Dominance (2008). The work started with the artist’s reflections on slogans used by the anti-war movement in the USA. In order to investigate the context and historical force of these slogans, Lagomarsino juxtaposed them with quotes from other literary, theoretical and political sources. Lagomarsino’s assemblage of quotes visually renders for the viewer the manner in which images, words (and worlds), are read through language.
The work draws its formal inspiration from early photographic technique. The hand-cut letters were placed on sheets of paper and left out in the sun, which produced only the slightest of imprints. The form of the piece thus shores up its content: the slow-exposure method foregrounds context, temporality and creative evolution. These abiding concerns are given ironic summation in the title: “full spectrum dominance” was one of the key concepts in the original planning for the Iraq War; it is a military term refer- ring to total control of the entire spectrum of conflict: land, air, space, and information – the formal and contextual background of Lagomarsino’s work.
Runo Lagomarsino was born in 1977, in Lund, Sweden. He lives and works in Malmö, Sweden and São Paulo, Brazil. He was educated at the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York (2007-2008) and the Malmö Art Academy, Malmö (2001-2003). Recent solo exhibitions include Violent Corners, ar/ge kunst Galerie Museum, Bolzano (2011); The G in Modernity Stands For Ghosts, Centro de Artes Visuais, Coimbra Horizon (Southern Sun Drawing), Elastic, Zona Maco, Mexico City, Las Casas is Not a Home, Elastic, Malmö (2010); Those who control the past command the future - those who command the future conquer the past, Overgaden, Copenhagen (2007). Recent group exhibitions include Prague Biennale 5, Prague (2011); The Moderna Exhibition 2010, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, The Travelling Show, Colección Jumex, Mexico City, Vectors of the Possible, BAK, Utrecht, (2010); Free as Air and Water, Cooper Union, New York, Panorama of Brazilian Art, Museum of Modern Art, São Paolo, Report on Probability, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2009); Try again, fail again, fail better, Műcsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest, 7th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2008); Imagine Action, Lisson Gallery, London, 1st Thessaloniki Biennial, Thessaloniki (2007); We all laughed at Christopher Columbus, SMBA - Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, Amstedam (2006). In 2010 Lagomarsino was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize established by the Pinchuk Foundation, Kiev. Runo Lagomarsino is represented by Elastic, Malmö.
www.runolagomarsino.com
TALA MADANI (Iran, 1981)
Tala Madani has developed a unique painterly style that deftly weaves references to Expression- ism, American abstraction, popular illustration, cartoons, and naïf art. Rendered in loose, fluid but bold brushwork with a colour palette that ranges from sombre to candy hued, her paintings expound a darkly comic, perverse and sometimes absurd and pathetic universe, populated entirely by men. These men are mostly corpulent, bearded, middle-aged and presented in intimate groupings where they engage in a variety of activities ranging from the childishly stupid to the violent and orgiastic. Archetypes of male bonding, chauvinism, machismo, violence, coercion, homoerotic camaraderie, and the politics of group dynamics, are all hinted at with tongue-in-cheek humour and irreverent wit. Madani’s work infers a his- tory of male dominated societies, especially in the Middle East where the artist comes from.
In the series Pictograms (2010-11), human figures transform into alphabetic letters, and appear to engage in acts of sadomasochism and indoctrination. Open Mouth Line Man (2011) stands on a heap of books, as if seeking comfort in intellectual superiority, and engages in the metaphorical “emptying out” of the person who is his submissive subject. Smiley (2008) features a group of men covered in red and blue stripes (reminiscent of the American flag) holding drawings of happy faces in front of their own – an image that is reminiscent of the joyous masses portrayed in communist propaganda. These works all ex- plore what happens when words disintegrate, language collapses and communication breaks down. How does one then express oneself? Madani’s painted scenarios intimate the state of suffocation that occurs when one is denied language or when language is abused. At the same time, a latent subtext in the work hints at the mechanisms of human engineering and the shaping of human consciousness.
Tala Madani was born in 1981, in Tehran, Iran. She lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and between Oregon and New York, USA. She was a fellow at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (2007-2009) and the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown (2006). Madani received her Master's degree from Yale University, New Haven (2004-2006) and her Bachelors from Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon (1999-2003). Recent solo exhibitions include: Pictograms, Lombard-Freid Projects, New York (2010); Dazzle Men, Pilar Corrias Gallery, London (2009). Recent group exhibitions include: Open House, Singapore Biennale, Singapore (2011); The Future of Tradition, The Tradition of Future, Haus der Kunst, Munich, the 6th Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, Greater New York, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, (2010); The Generational: Younger than Jesus, New Museum, New York, The Symbolic Efficiency of the Frame (Episode One), 4th Tirana Biennial, Tirana, Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East, The Saatchi Gallery, London, (2009). Tala Madani is represented by Lombard-Freid Projects, New York and Pilar Corrias Gallery, London.
WENDELIEN VAN OLDENBORGH (Netherlands, 1962)
When thoughts are expressed between people in the public sphere, some voices can be heard more actively than others, and will have more resonance. In the Netherlands, with its open and democratic society, inconvenient voices are cut short by the way other forces in society react to them. This is also happening in other northern European countries where censorship is not a governmental policy. Supposing I love you. And you also love me (2011) brings the voice of the Swiss-Egyptian philosopher and theologian Tariq Ramadan into exchange with a group of five young adults of multicultural origin from Belgium and the Netherlands. Against the backdrop of a de Stijl-inspired broadcast building de- signed by Piet Elling, the Dutch architect and friend of Gerrit Rietveld, the work is set up as a polyphonic mini-tragedy. Unrehearsed forms of performance and speech form the building blocks of the “drama”. The adolescents act as a chorus in a playful interchange with Ramadan’s ideas and thoughts, which explore issues such as diversity, fear, conflict, and his own interrupted engagements in the city of Rotterdam.
The script was formed ad hoc, during the shoot, and was guided by the cast’s own real-life experiences and forms of expression. The final short montage of slowly dissolving still images and dialogue has been edited as a polyphonic composition of voices, musical tones and images – each discrete inscription resonating with the others in their difference.
Wendelien van Oldenborgh was born in 1962, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She lives and works in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She was educated at Goldsmiths' College, London, during the 1980's. Recent solo exhibitions include: The Past is never dead, A-Space Gallery, Toronto (2010); Lina Bo Bardi: The Didactic Room, Van Abbemusem, Eindhoven(2010); Après la reprise, la prise, Wilfried Lentz, Rotterdam (2009); Lecture/Audience/Camera, MuHKA, Antwerp (2008); As Occasions, Tent, Rotterdam (2008); Maurits Script, Apex Art, New York (2007); Maurits Script, Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht(2006). Recent group exhibitions include: Parallel Worlds, Berlinale Forum Expanded, Berlin(2011); Monumentalism, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2010/11); 29th São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo, Behind the Fourth Wall, Generali Foundation, Vienna, Practicing Memory, Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella, Life: A User's Manual, Art Sheffield, Sheffield (2010); 11th International Istanbul Biennial,Istanbul, Hidden In Remembrance Is The Silent Memory Of Our Future, Contour – 4th Biennial of Moving Image, Mechelen, The Demon of Comparison, SMBA - Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, Amsterdam (2009); Becoming Dutch, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Electric Palm Tree, Open circuit #1, Yogyakarta (2008); Die Regierung, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2005). In 2009 Van Oldenborgh was nominated for the Dolf Henkes Prize. Wendelien van Oldenborgh is represented by Wilfried Lentz Gallery, Rotterdam.
LILIBETH CUENCA RASMUSSEN (Denmark, 1970)
Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen works primarily with performance to explore a variety of issues such as gender, identity, socio-cultural relations, as well as questions of home and belonging. Her work explores how the self is constructed, examining the differences that are inherent in male-female role-play. Rasmussen’s productions often involve scripted texts and songs, composed music, choreography as well as precisely articulated visual elements such as specially designed costumes. Afghan Hound (2011) is a performance that includes four impersonations of voices from Afghanistan. The work addresses the complexities of gender in cultures where men and women are segregated, and masculinity rules. It also explores how, when sexuality is repressed, new gender constructions develop beyond the traditions of a given society and culture.
The four stories that unfold in the performance are recounted through a combination of music and song; the choreography is designed around the movements of a costume made out of hair, which was itself inspired by the tradition of Afghan hound racing. The transformation of genders and characters takes place through the use of this costume, which symbolises different sexualities and identities. Some of these are hidden or repressed; others function as signs of power or coercion. The lyrics of the first song, for example, employs quotes from the Afghan activist, writer and politician in exile, Malalai Joya; the second tells the tale of a Bacha Bazi (a young boy trained to act as girl, who dances at men’s parties but is also a sex slave); the third revolves around powerful male speech and masculine authority; and the fourth features a former Bacha Posh (a girl raised as a boy, when there are no sons in the family). Afghan Hound brings to the fore repressed voices, but also attempts to communicate stories from within Afghan tradition and culture by challenging the stereotypical, and sometimes reductive, western discourse on the Arab World.
Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen was born in 1970 in Manila, Philippines. She lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark and is a graduate of The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Artsin Copenhagen (1996-2002). Solo exhibitions include: Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg (2010); Renwick Gallery, New York (2008); Ego Show, the National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen (2006). Group exhibitions include: 2nd Thessaloniki Biennial, Thessaloniki (2009); U–Turn Quadriennale, Copenhagen (2008); Global Feminisms, Brooklyn Museum, New York (2007); Busan Biennale, Busan, Wake up! Biennale Balticum, Rauma (2006). Recent performances include: The Picasso Museum, Barcelona, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Hélio Oititica, Rio de Janiero, Location1, New York, Art in Public Space, Auckland, Liste, Basel (2010); Performa09, New York, Tate Modern, London, X Initiative, New York, re.act.feminism, Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2009); In Transit, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Lilith Performance Studio, Malmö (2008).
www.lilibethcuenca.com
TARYN SIMON (USA, 1975)
Taryn Simon’s works are the result of a long-term process of research and investigation. Her photographs and writing underscore the invisible space between language and the visual – a space in which translation and disorientation continually occur. In An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2007), Simon assumed the dual role of shrewd informant and collector of curiosities, compiling an inventory of what lies hidden and out-of-view within the borders of the United States. She examined a culture through careful documentation of diverse subjects from the realms of science, government, medicine, entertainment, nature, security, and religion. These unseen subjects range from radioactive capsules at a nuclear waste storage facility to the art collection of the CIA. Transforming the unknown into a seductive and intelligible form, Simon confronts the divide between those with and without the privilege of access. In examining that which is integral to America’s foundation, mythology and daily functioning, Simon creates a collection of works that reflect and reveal a national identity.
In her piece entitled Zahra/Farah Simon presents Iraqi actress Zahra Zubaidi playing the role of Farah in Brian De Palma’s film Redacted (2007). Simon created this photograph to serve as the final frame in this film. Zahra Zubaidi is currently seeking political asylum in the United States. Since appearing in the film, she has received death threats from family members and criticism from friends and neighbours who consider her participation in the film to be pornography. De Palma’s film is based on the true story of the gang rape and murder of a fourteen year-old Iraqi girl, Abeer Qasim Hamza, by U.S. soldiers, outside Al-Mahmudiyah, Iraq, on March 12, 2006. Abeer’s mother, father and sister were murdered while she was being raped. After the soldiers took turns raping Abeer, she was shot in the head and her body was set on fire. Four American soldiers of the 502nd Infantry Regiment were convicted of crimes including rape, intent to commit rape, and murder.
Taryn Simon was born in New York, USA in 1975. She was educated at Brown University, Providence. Upcoming solo shows include: Tate Modern, London (2011); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2011); Helsinki Art Museum, Helsinki (2011); Moscow House of Photography, Moscow (2011). Recent shows include: The Lever House, New York (2010); Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills (2010); Galerie Almine Rech, Brussels (2010); FOAM, Amsterdam (2008); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2007); MMK - Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2007); The Photographer’s Gallery, London (2007); Recent group exhibitionsinclude: Singapore Biennial (2011); How Soon Is Now? The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow, Russia (2011); Tasteful Pictures, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2011); 41st edition of Les Rencontres d'Arles, Arles (2010); I want to see how you see, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2010); Elles, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2010); Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, The Photographer's Gallery, London (2009);Political Minimal, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2009); Reality Check, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2008); Destroy She Said, Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf; Gwangju Biennial, Gwangju (2007); Click DoubleClick: The Documentary Factor, Haus der Kunst, Munich; Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2006). In 2010 Taryn Simon was the recipient of the Prix Découverte des Rencontres d'Arles. Taryn Simon is represented by Gagosian Gallery and Galerie Almine Rech, Paris/Brussels.
www.tarynsimon.com
JAN ŠVANKMAJER (Czech Republic, 1934)
Jan Švankmajer is an experimental film maker, whose work is connected with the Czechoslovak Surrealist group. He has become known primarily for his animation films, which he began producing in the early 1960s, using claymation and stop-motion animation techniques. These often involve inanimate objects being brought to life and propound morbid, absurd narratives that reference the human psyche and subconscious, underlining our often voracious and violent appetites. Today he is one of the most celebrated animators in the world, having made over thirty short and feature-length films and continuing to produce to this day. His most recent film Surviving Life premiered at the 67th Venice Film Festival in 2010.
Švankmajer began working in theatre, first in Prague‘s Semafor Theatre where he founded the Theatre of Masks, and then moved on to the Laterna Magika multi-media, non-verbal theatre (which combined dance, film and black theatre), where he worked with the film director and co-founder of the theatre Emil Radok. Apart from his trademark animation films, however, Švankmajer also made a number of short, black-and-white live action films, many of which can be read as political allegories on the communist state in Czechoslovakia – albeit encoded under the guise of surrealism. His work was eventually censored and in 1972 he was banned from making films for seven years.
The Garden (1968), one of his most scathing political critiques, is a story about two old friends, Frank and Joseph, who have been recently reunited. Frank accompanies Joseph to his country house and upon arrival is astonished to see it surrounded by a human fence, which Joseph promptly “un- locks” and enters. A series of quotidian exchanges ensue between the two men – all under a semblance of normality – but a disquieting narrative emerges between the lines. Though it is never spelled out, Joseph represents the archetypal drab Party official, while Frank is his naive victim, who at the end of the film willingly takes his place in the human fence. The film functions as a metaphor for subtle coercion, psychological pressure, the loss of any will to express oneself freely, and voluntary servitude. A subtle political critique, The Garden uncovers the mechanisms of social engineering and the politics of oppres- sion, both of which are related to the political traumas of Czechoslovakia under communism.
Jan Švankmajer was born in 1934 in Prague, in former Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic. He lives and works in Prague and Knovíz. He studied at the College of Applied Arts in Prague (stage design) and at the Prague Academy of Performing Arts in the Department of Puppetry (directing and stage design). He began working in theatre, first in Prague's Semafor Theatre – known as the "theatre of small stages" – where he founded the Theatre of Masks, and then moved on to the Laterna Magika multi-media, non-verbal theatre (which combined dance, film and black theatre), where he worked with the film director and co-founder of the theatre Emil Radok.
He has made over 30 animation, shorts and feature films, including, more recently, Surviving Life, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2010. Solo exhibitions include: Transmutation of the Senses, Art Gallery of the City of Segovia, Segovia – with Eva Švankmajerová (2010); Gallery of Moravia, Uherské Hradiště – with Eva Švankmajerová (2008); University of Essex, Colchester (2007); Geni Tzami, Old Archeological Museum, Thessaloniki – with Eva Švankmajerová (2006); Museum of Modern Art, Kanagawa – with Eva Švankmajerová (2005); Food, National Gallery, Prague Castle, Prague – with Eva Švankmajerová (2004); Recent group exhibitions include: A Vision of Central Europe, Groeningemuseum, Brugge (2010/11); Animism, MuHKA, Antwerp, and Kunsthalle Bern, Bern (2010). Švankmajer continues to make films and is today considered one of the most celebrated animators in the world.
www.athanor.cz
JOHANNES AF TAVSHEDEN
For the Danish Pavilion, the first contribution of the artist is assuming another’s name, or rather letting go of her own name. S/he exists in a name that is not her own. In calling herself Johannes af Tavsheden, s/he chooses to remain anonymous. Thus, his work is found, first and foremost, in her disappearance. Once the artist, as a name, or as a brand, has disappeared, the work of invention and fabulation begins.
He is interested in the construction of situations that defy the traditional context of museum and gallery environments, focusing on the fleeting gestures and social potency of lived experience rather than on material objects. Relying mainly on the human voice, bodily movement, and social interaction, af Tavsheden’s work nevertheless resists many of the parameters of conceptual art. Often, the works are not presented continuously during the operating hours of an exhibition but rather take place in their own time, with their own exigency. They cannot be bought and sold. They make no attempt to contribute new ideas to the alarming financialisation of public space, speech, and life. By virtue of being unrepeatable, the works live only in the traces of a potency that remains on the bodies touched and the stories generated.
af Tavsheden is interested in moments when individuals are able to exceed a given context and open up new spaces for thought and action. His name is a cipher and an invitation to all to question the assumption that individuals are capable of speaking freely in their own name.
For the Venice Biennale, through a series of announced and unannounced actions, the artist, or those who assume his name, will test the limits of a human speech that has been rendered ever more impotent by its inscription within commerce.
Johannes af Tavsheden
Johannes af Tavsheden constructs situations that defy the traditional context of museum and gallery environments, focusing on the fleeting gestures and social potency of lived experience rather than on material objects. Relying mainly on the human voice, bodily movement, and social interaction, af Tavsheden's works nevertheless resists many of the parameters of conceptual artwork with the exception of their inanimate materiality. They are not presented continuously during the operating hours of a set exhibition but rather take place in their own time, with their own exigency. They cannot be bought and sold. And they make no attempt to contribute new ideas to the alarming financialization of public space, speech, and life. By virtue of being unrepeatable and irreparable, the works live only in the traces of a potency that remains on the bodies touched and the stories generated by the work. af Tavsheden is interested in moments when individuals are able to exceed a given situation and open up new spaces for thought and action.
TILMAN WENDLAND (Germany, 1969)
Tilman Wendland’s constructions and architectural interventions emphasise, shift, or highlight the given character of a space through minimal and frugal methods. Wendland creates installations with an economy of means, using basic, light, humble, inexpensive materials such as paper, plasterboard, PVC, MDF, or white-coated fibreboard. These modern, anonymous materials are employed for their combination of stable and flexible properties, as well as their neutral appearance. For the artist, maintaining this economy of materials largely means working with the potential of the everyday; it also means knowing how to productively use the logic and function of a given space.
At the Danish Pavilion, Wendland took as his point of departure the existing architecture of the two connecting buildings, and “activated” or modified existing spaces and details, thus following the “rhythm” of the building but adding a new “melody”. By adding new architectural elements (extending beams, building a stage to an existing niche, devising three-dimensional structures), Wendland creates an imperceptible shift in the perception of the architecture and its spatial volumes. Other interventions, like a large freestanding wall that cuts through the main hall, creates a dramatic interplay with the interior architecture of this light, airy, uplifting space. There is a strong alternation between the horizontal and the vertical that is almost constructivist in appearance, which creates a dynamic juxtaposition of lines and volumes, and imparts a geometric, minimal sculptural character to the space. The aim throughout has been to keep the spaces as open as possible, but also to create intimate areas where the artists’ works can be viewed one-on-one.
Wendland’s focus has not only been on the architectural elements themselves, but on how the surrounding architecture frames the art works, and gives them prominence. His elegant, discreet, and sometimes-prominent interventions seem to effortlessly accommodate the large number of artists in the exhibition.
Tilman Wendland was born in 1969, in Potsdam, Germany. He lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He was educated at the Universität der Künste, Berlin(1992-1999). Recent solo exhibitions include: Kunstverein Arnsberg, with Lone Haugaard Madsen, Arnsberg (2011); Kunstverein Schwerin, Schwerin, Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg, Yellow Spot, Centre of Contemporary Art, Torun (2010); Autocenter, Berlin (2009); Jet, Berlin (2007); MMIII Kunstverein Mönchengladbach, Mönchengladbach (2006). Recent group exhibitions include: CAPC, or: Life in the Grip of Art, CAPC Musée d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux (2010); The World as Stage, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, Berlin 2000, Pace Wildenstein, New York, (2009); Megastructure Reloaded, Former State Mint, Berlin, The White-Haired Revolver, Musée de l'Objet, Blois, Appell, Museum Felix De Boeck, Drogenbos, Elefante Negro, Museo Diego Rivera Anahuacalli, Mexico City (2008). Wendland was the recipient of the 2010 Wemag Art Prize, established by Wemag AG and Kunstverein Schwerin.
ZHANG DALI (China, 1963)
Zhang Dali’s work has, over the years, explored the rapidly changing socio-economic reality in China. Zhang started out working as one of Beijing’s first graffiti artists, intervening in urban space, spraying on and carving into the walls of buildings scheduled for demolition (part of the country’s drive towards modernisation and commercialisation). Working with diverse media, from site-specific guerrilla interventions, to large-scale installations, painting and photography, Zhang’s practice traces the contemporary social history of a country in the throes of radical change.
A Second History (2003-10) is a photo- and text-based archival project that investigates the relationship between history and photographic images. The work consists of a series of images that feature copies of Mao-era doctored “official” photographs, juxtaposed with the unaltered originals. The project began in 2003 when the artist began collecting old news photos, visiting archives to find the original negatives and then comparing them with the published versions: shabby old houses transformed into multi-storey buildings where residents were leading “the good life”; ‘bonus’ pigs pasted into a farm to add the sheen of prosperity; revolutionary heroes moved into favourable locations; and famous politicians or public figures ‘airbrushed’ out of history.
For A Second History Zhang traveled from North to South China, visiting the archives of publishing houses, and researching into a plethora of documents: early and original photos and negatives, books (mainly photography books and albums), magazines, newspapers, and archival material not accessible to the public. All the images and texts were carefully studied and systematically compared in order to discover differences and identify the original image. The resulting work constitutes an illuminating over- view of a political era that marked China for decades, as well as providing insight into the manipulation or rewriting of history for political purposes, and the fabrication of memory.
Zhang Dali was born in 1963 in Harbin, China. He lives and works in Beijing, China. He was educated at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Beijing (1983-1987). Recent solo exhibitions include: Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, Extreme Reality, Tank Loft Contemporary Art Centre, Chongqing (2010); Pervasion, He Xiangning Museum, Shenzhen, The Second History, Space SZ Gallery, Beijing (2009); and Zhang Dali: A Second History, Walsh Gallery, Chicago (2006). Recent group exhibitions include: Reshaping History, CNCC, Beijing, 41st edition of Les Rencontres d'Arles, Espace Van Gogh, Arles, The Original Copy：Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, A Decade Long Exposure, CAFA Art Museum, Beijing, Exhibition Exhibition, Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Turin (2010); Images from History, Shenzhen Art Museum, Shenzhen, Collision, CAFA Art Museum, Beijing, Re-imagining Asia, The New Art Gallery, Walsall (2009); Re-imagining Asia, House of World Cultures, Berlin, Go China! Writing on the Wall, Groninger Museum, Groningen, China Gold, Musée Maillol, Paris, The Revolution Continues: New Art from China, Saatchi Gallery, London (2008); Red Hot, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, China Now, Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amsterdam (2007); Fever Variations, Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2006); Between Past and Future, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2005); Between Past and Future ICP – International Center of Photography, New York (2004).
Tilman Wendland
Exhibition architecture for the Danish Pavilion
View of Brummer Hall, Danish Pavilion
Courtesy the artist
Zhang Dali
Second History, 2003-2010
C-prints (22 works out of
a series of 130)
115,3 cm x 63,2 cm
Courtesy the artist
Taryn Simon
Zahra/Farah, 2007
Chromogenic print
152,4 cm x 196,8 cm
Edition of 5
© Taryn Simon. Courtesy
Gagosian Gallery, New York
Agency
Assembly (Speech Matters),
1992 -
Mixed media
Dimensions variable
Taryn Simon
Installation view
Six works from the series
An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, 2007
Chromogenic colour prints
Each 94.6 x 113 cm
© 2007/2011 Taryn Simon. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery/Steidl
Zhang Dali
Installation view
A Second History, 2003-2010
C-prints (22 works out of a series of 130)
115,3 cm x 63,2 cm
Courtesy the artist
Tala Madani
Installation view, 12 paintings
Sharon Hayes
Ear to the Sounds of Our History, 2011
Installation of found LP covers
30,5 x 30,5 cm
Courtesy the artist and
Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin
Storage and stand for Osloo
a floating pavilion, 2011
Wood, steel and coconuts
2,6 x 6,5 x 1,9 m
Courtesy the artist
From left to right
Runo Lagomarsino
Full Spectrum Dominance, 2008
Series of drawings (3 out of 8)
Newsprint paper
67,5 x 52,5 cm
Collection Dorte & Nils Stærk,
Copenhagen, Collection Sanz Esquide & Cortell, Barcelona, Private Collection
Jan Švankmajer
The Garden, 1968 (still)
35 mm film transferred to Blu-ray
16’
Courtesy Jan Švankmajer
Wendelien van Oldenborgh
Supposing I love you. And you also love me, 2011
Digital slide installation with sound
13’
Courtesy the artist and Wilfried Lentz, Rotterdam
Robert Crumb
When the Niggers take over America, 1993
6 drawings
Ink on paper
52,7 cm x 45,1 cm
Courtesy the artist, Paul Morris and
David Zwirner, New York
Wendelien van Oldenborgh
Supposing I love you. And you also love me, 2011
Digital slide installation with sound
13’
Courtesy the artist and Wilfried Lentz, Rotterdam
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Ayreen Anastas & Rene Gabri
Every Mine is a Line, 2011
Vitrine with notes, drawings, diagrams, maps, models, ephemera, paper, and wood
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artists
Stelios Faitakis
Imposition Symphony, 2011
Latex, acrylic and spray paint
4,67 x 20,02 m
Courtesy the artist and The Breeder, Athens
Thomas Kilpper
Pavilion for Revolutionary Free Speech, 2011
Installation, mixed media
20 x 12 x 6 m
Courtesy the artist, Galerie Christian Nagel, Berlin/Cologne, Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London
Thomas Kilpper
Pavilion for Revolutionary Free Speech, 2011 - Work in progress,
Installation, mixed media
20 x 12 x 6 m
Courtesy the artist, Galerie Christian Nagel, Berlin/Cologne, Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London
Thomas Kilpper
Pavilion for Revolutionary Free Speech, 2011 - In progress,
Mixed media
20 x 12 x 6 m
Courtesy the artist, Galerie Christian Nagel, Berlin/Cologne, Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London
Apart from the exhibition inside the Danish Pavilion, this year emphasis has also been placed on the public dimension of Denmark's representation in Venice, especially in light of the context of the Venice Biennale, which does not classify as an entirely public or open space. By its very definition, freedom of speech is negotiated in relation to the public, so extending beyond the confines of the exhibition in the Pavilion has been an important component of Speech Matters. To, therefore, counteract the reality of the more rarefied space that is the Giardini during the Biennale, this year the Danish Pavilion includes several public projects.
Firstly, FOS' Osloo is a floating pavilion positioned at the island of San Servolo, which consists of three formal elements: a bar, a radio station and a stage designed to host a programme of events, which is freely accessible to all (further information is enclosed in this press kit). Osloo extends the presence of Denmark outside the Giardini area to what is a genuinely public space.
Secondly, Thomas Kilpper has constructed a structure entitled Pavilion for Revolutionary Free Speech in and beyond the private garden of the Danish Pavilion. This anti-pavilion which aims to challenge the official, permanent architectonic structure of the Danish pavilion and its orthodox, established symbolic value – is a temporary, informal structure and meeting point, which is adjacent to the two more formal modernist and neo-classical buildings that together constitute the Danish Pavilion. Kilpper's pavilion will also host Speakers' Corner, an open space consisting of a raised balcony where a series of specially commissioned language-based performances by Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen and Mikhail Karikis will take place during the opening days. Speakers' Corner borrows its name from the original in Hyde Park, London, a space where individuals or groups freely adopt the right to speak – and a tradition that goes back to the nineteenth century and the Chartist workers' movement. Speakers' Corner is an integral part of Kilpper's pavilion, which is dedicated to revolutionary free speech. Kilpper will also instigate his own programme of lectures, encounters and events beyond the opening days of the Biennale.
Thirdly, Stelios Faitakis has realised an ambitious, large-scale mural entitled Imposition Symphony specially commissioned for the façade of the neo-classical building of the Danish Pavilion. The work unfolds in six chapters – each chapter representing a distinct story – with one 'interlude'. Its main narrative revolves around six episodes, all relating to questions of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and incidents of censorship and oppression, both contemporary and historical.
And, finally, Johannes af Tavsheden has organised a series of walks in the Giardini. On behalf of af Tavsheden, who wishes to remain anonymous, the artists Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri will be conducting these walks discussing the work and ideas of Johannes af Tavsheden. This performative walk will attempt to outline some of the issues af Tavsheden has been preoccupied with, ranging from various histories of the notion of free speech to his desire to connect thought to action. The walk will also put these questions in direct relation to artistic practice today, the context of the biennale and the notion of national representation in an era of transnational semio-capitalism.
Speakers' Corner
Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen and Mikhail Karikis will perform daily on Speakers' Corner throughout the opening days of the Venice Biennale 1-4 June 2011
• Daily Schedule:
15.00 Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen; duration of performance: 15 mins.
15.30 Mikhail Karikis; duration of performance: 15 mins.
Pavilion for Revolutionary Free Speech
Workshop on the topic of revolutionary free speech 24-25 June 2011
• The workshop will take place in Thomas Kilpper's Pavilion for Revolutionary Free Speech located in the garden area of the Danish Pavilion.
• Schedule:
24 June, 14.00-18.00
25 June, 11.00-18.00
Participants include: Regina Wamper (Germany, sociologist/political scientist), Salah Methnani (Tunisia, journalist, writer and translator), Gaspár M. Tamás (Hungary, philosopher) and Salong – student group from the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, who will do an anti-capitalist noise-performance.
Walking Tour through Giardini by Johannes af Tavsheden
Performed by Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri
• The walks take place daily on 1-5 June and 9-11 June 2011 at 11.00
• Meeting point in front of the Danish Pavilion
• Duration approximately 1.5 hours
• The tour is limited to 25 people
• Please sign up at the Danish Pavilion or show up just before 11.00 when the walks can be joined on a first come, first served basis.
Osloo – A Public Place In Venice By FOS
Osloo is a floating pavilion comprising a Bar, a Daily Event Programme and a Radio Station
31 May – 1 July 2011
Island of San Servolo, Venice, next to the vaporetto stop.
Open Daily 14.00-22.00
As a truly public space, Osloo is located outside the designated space of the Danish Pavilion in the Giardini, and is instead located within the urban fabric of the city of Venice, docked at the island of San Servolo. Osloo is an architectonic structure and a social space that comes to life through a range of events and audience encounters. The programme on Osloo aims to break traditional borders between disciplines and explores the possibility of exchanging information in a public space through an aesthetic framework. International artists, musicians and poets will perform alongside researchers, politicians, art historians, and other public figures in order to create a set of alternative social situations and exchanges. Osloo is a remaking of the pavilion Oslo from 1999, which was the first work that put FOS’ artistic concept of 'Social Design' into physical form. Osloo is closely aligned to the tradition of relational aesthetics, but takes its starting point in the socio-political context of contemporary society. On Osloo each night of events is programmed in relation to both the title of the evening and the overall theme of Osloo, which is ‘Language’. Throughout its duration more events will be added to the programme and every day Osloo will be providing the setting for improvised activities and informal social interaction. For four-and-a-half weeks this regular programme of free public events will function as an accessible space for the citizens of Venice and tourists as well as Biennale visitors. The bar Osloo is open every day from 14.00 to 22.00.
Location of Osloo
Osloo, San Servolo, Venice, next to the vaporetto stop 31 May – 1 July, 2011
Public Transport
Vaporetto line 20 departs from Riva degli Schiavoni, San Marco and San Zaccaria stops. The boat ride takes approximately 10 mins.
Programme
For a full programme of events see: www.osloo.dk – updated daily.
For a daily update on current events call +39 3421291543.
Venice Biennale Opening Days
31 May – 4 June 2011
• Tuesday 31 May: Kick–off (18.00-22.00)
Rastafari H.C. Andersen (speech)
Concert by Hype Williams (Great Britain)
DJ FOS
• Wednesday 1 June: One Language Traveler (18.00-22.00)
Lars Bang Larsen (Denmark, art critic) on Hélio Oiticica (lecture)
Michalis Pichler (Germany/Greece) sings Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (performance)
Tuomas Toivonen (Finland) performs One Language Traveler (music)
• Thursday 2 June: A Collection of Centres (11.00-23.00)
11.00-13.00 (guest lecture): What are the components needed to create a good platform for intercultural dialogue and art? A round table discussion organized by Tijana Miškovi (Denmark/ Former Yugoslavia, art producer and curator), Tine Bundgaard (Denmark, artistic director and curator SAIR), Michelle Eistrup (Denmark/Jamaica, visual artist and curator), Georges. H. Rabbath (Lebanon, curator) and Sithabile Mlotshwa (Zimbabwe/ Holland, Director of Thamgadi Foundation).
16.00-22.00: Henrik Plenge Jacobsen (Denmark, visual artist) performs Eierstock (performance) From Processology to Neo-Relationalism – chaos to consensus (panel debate on Neo-Relations) by Gallery D.O.R: Kristian Øverland Dahl, Steinar Haga Kristensen and Sverre Gullesen (Belgium/Norway) (performance)
DJ Fari Bradley (London-based Lebanese DJ, broadcaster and multi-disciplinary artist)
• Friday 3 June: A Financial Erotic Act (19.00-22.00)
The sex life of snails by David Salomon (Denmark/France, visual artist) (lecture)
Father Murphy (Italy) (concert)
Dorit Chrysler (Austria) performs The Theremin (concert)
Jesper Just (Denmark, visual artist) performs A Financial Erotic Act (performance)
• Saturday 4 June: Frontière et le Territoire (15.00-22.00)
Rio Bravo (Denmark) has put together the programme for the day. They have invited:
Model court (Great Britain, artist group) (performance)
A police band from Venice (Italy) (concert)
DJ STRA (Italy) Fusion Arabic (DJ set)
POF! Champagne (Italy), Fundance electronic concert (concert)
Throughout June: 5 June – 1 July
Amongst others: Awesome Tapes from Africa (USA) aka. Brian Shimkovitz, tape cassette DJ set with sounds from Africa; Reading by Cia Rinne (Sweden, poet); Collecting identities: I stay therefore I am by La Collezione di Carrozzeria Margot (Italy, gallery and artist collective), mimesis of a film production in 12 acts wherein the audience is involved in various ways; reading by Etel Adnan (Lebanon/USA, visual artist and poet); Enrico Malatesta (Italy, artist and musician) performance on drums; Revolution of the Mind, discussion with Fari Bradley (London-based broadcaster and multi-disciplinary artist) and Georges Rabbath (Lebanon, curator); Gamers in Exile (Italy) progressive electronica concert; Jooklo duo troglosound (Italy) free jazz concert; Lucky Dragons (US, collaborative music group) 12 hours video and sound performance; The Danish experimental record company ESCHO invites Thulebasen (Denmark, avantgarde band); Trentemøller (Denmark, electronica DJ) moist electro of the first degree.
Recurring events at Osloo
Translation: A Series of Double Translations: Language is a system of references and each language has its own. A number of subjects and their translations through different languages will be presented and discussed.
Mix Tape: 30 different musicians and artists are invited to make a mix tape: Mix Tape will represent and express music as a unifying force: we unify Italia through the radio Grotta Nuova at Osloo.
One Language Traveler: For One Language Traveler different musicians have been asked to make ‘music for the now’ on Osloo – and more specifically to create a “film score” around the ‘now’.
Danish Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale 2011
Commissioner
The Danish Arts Council Committee for International Visual Art.
The Danish Arts Council Committee for International Visual Arts serves as Commissioner for the Danish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, where Denmark has taken part since 1895. In compliance with its intention to consider Danish art in an international perspective, it is the aim of the Danish Arts Council Committee for International Visual Arts that the Danish Pavilion, through innovative artistic and curatorial practices, reflects upon the position of contemporary art in a globalized art world as well as the position of the Venice Biennale in this ever-changing art world.
The Danish Arts Council Committee for International Visual Arts consists of Christine Buhl Andersen (Chairman), Eva Koch, Mikael Andersen, Jakob Jakobsen, Gitte Ørskou (1 April 2007 - 31 March 2011) and Rune Gade (Chairman), Jesper Elg, Mads Gamdrup, Lise Harlev, Anna Krogh (1 April 2011 - 31 March 2015).
The project is funded by the Danish Art Council.
Curator
Katerina Gregos
Katerina Gregos is a curator and writer based in Brussels, Belgium. She is currently co-curator of the 4. Fotofestival Mannheim_Ludwigshafen_Heidelberg, in Germany (forthcoming September 2011), part of the curatorial team for Manifesta 9 (forthcoming June 2012, Province of Limburg, Belgium) and curator of Newtopia: The State of Human Rights (forthcoming, Mechelen, Belgium, September 2012). Previously, she served as artistic director of Argos - Centre for Art & Media, Brussels and director of the Deste Foundation, Centre for Contemporary Art, Athens where she organised numerous exhibitions. As an independent curator Gregos has also curated numerous exhibitions internationally including, among others, Hidden in Remembrance is the Silent Memory of Our Future, Contour 2009 - The 4th Biennial for Moving Image, in Mechelen, Belgium (2009); Give(a)way: on Generosity, Giving, Sharing and Social Exchange, the 6th Biennial E V+ A: Exhibition of Visual Art, Limerick, Ireland (2006). Other projects include Leaps of Faith: An International Arts Project for the Green Line and the City of Nicosia, Cyprus (2005), the first international contemporary art exhibition to take place on both sides of the divided city, and Channel Zero, for the Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam (2004). Katerina Gregos regularly publishes on art and artists in magazines, books and exhibition catalogues, and is a frequent speaker in international conferences.
Project Coordinator
Helga Just Christoffersen
Project Owner
Anette Østerby, director, the Visual Arts Centre, the Danish Arts Agency
Project Manager
Lotte S. Lederballe Pedersen, the Danish Arts Agency
Project Assistant
Naja Rasmussen
Project Interns
Katrine Møllebæk
Christine Tommerup
Coordinator and Technical Advisor in Venice
Emmepiùbistudio
Troels Bruun, Architect
Annapaola Passarini, Coordinator
Luca Delise, Architect
Roberta Facchettin, Accountant
Daniela Murgia, Studio Manager
Augustin Schoenmaeckers, Architect
Head of installations
Emil Krøyer
Visual Identity and Design
Mousse
Stefano Cernuschi, coordinator
Studio Mousse, design
Professional Preview
1 - 3 June 2011
Press accreditation for the professional preview is administered by the Venice Biennale.
For press accreditation please contact the Venice Biennale directly.
www.labiennale.org
Press Preview
The Danish Pavilion, Giardini, at 11:30 on Thursday, 2 June 2011
Opening
The Danish Pavilion, Giardini, at 15:30 on Thursday, 2 June 2001
Speech Matters is open to the public at the Giardini, Venice as part of the 54th Venice Biennale, and will remain on view through 27 November 2011.
The catalogue of Speech Matters is published by Mousse Publishing, Milan.
Buy the SPEECH MATTERS catalogue
Download the SPEECH MATTERS catalogue PDF
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Ayreen Anastas & Rene Gabri
Robert Crumb
Stelios Faitakis
Sharon Hayes
FOS
Han Hoogerbrugge
Mikhail Karikis
Runo Lagomarsino
Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen
Jan Švankmajer
Tilman Wendland
