My Last Life, Netwerk, Aalst (B)

My Last Life Netwerk centrum voor hedendaagse kunst, Aalst (Belgium)

December 10 - March 3, 2012.

January 20 : In dialogue with Christian Kravagna & Lidwien van de Ven

February 7 : Prospectus - discursive platform with guests :

Corinne Diserens /Jean-Pierre Rehm / Didier Debaise / Yvan Flasse / Fabrizio Terranova / TJ Demos / Olivier Marboeuf/Pierre Huyghebaert/

Atlas Critique, Parc Saint léger (France)

Atlas Critique, Parc Saint léger (France)

17 mars > 27 mai 2012
Vernissage vendredi 16 mars à 18h30
Avec les œuvres de :

Erick Beltrán, Lia Perjovschi, Vincent Meessen, Claire Fontaine, Allan Sekula & Noël Burch, Phillippe Rekacewicz, Fernand Deligny, Stalker, Michael Druks, Berger & Berger,
Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza, Pedro Lasch, Lewis Caroll & Henry Holiday, Adriana Varejão, Endré Tot, Nastio Mosquito, Internacional Errorista, Francis Alÿs, Chto Delat ?, REP Group,Radek Community & Dmitry Gutov, James Wentzy & AIDS Community Television, Société réaliste, René Gabri & Ayreen Anastas
Avec une performance de : Patrick Bernier et Olive Martin Avec des conférences de : Razmig Keucheyan et Teresa Castro
Commissariat : Aliocha Imhoff et Kantuta Quirós / le peuple qui manque

Sweet Protestations, Argos center for art & media, Brussels

Sweet Protestations 
Argos center for art & media, Black box
January 29 - April 01, 2012
With Angel Vergara, Wolf Vostell, Vincent Meessen, 
Messieurs Delmotte, Luc Deleu, Filip Francis & De Nieuwe Coloristen

Opening Night 28th January 2012

As a prelude to the Festival van de Verwarring (Festival of Confusion) 2012 / Sapere Aude in the Beursschouwburg, Argos presents the Black Box programmeSweet Protestations. Five short to medium-long video documents examine and illustrate the role of the artist who enters the public domain in order to question the surrounding ’reality’. In the works the maker becomes personally transformed into a ‘sweet’ intruder, into an object that encroaches upon the surroundings without concomitantly changing to direct confrontation: interactions which raise a field of tension between the onlookers and the singular actions of the artists. In these ‘documents bruts’, which engender credence, ridicule and even real civil protest, the artists employ an idiosyncratic jargon which often borders on ritual. InThe Intruder Vincent Meessen moves silently through the busy shopping streets and market squares of Ouagadougou, cocooned in a suit of cotton blossoms: Burkina Faso’s ‘white gold’. The white figure expresses the object of attraction and surprise or of aggression and ridicule: for the passers-by he is an image susceptible to appropriation, a symbolic mirror bulging with implicit political, social and economic significance. A 1995 cultural exchange project between Europe and Africa forms the introduction andgives rise to Messieurs Delmotte’sTourist Renouncement, an artist whose filmed mini-performances attempt to transcend reality and its limitations. This early work strings together critical actions, steeped in bitter-sweet humour in which he theatrically interprets the historical relationships and clichés between the two continents. Less direct in nature is Straatman Lottery in which Angel Vergara Santiago chops up recordings of performances in Birmingham under his alter ego, Straatman, with images of the city’s population, an entirety interspersed with sketches and textual comments. Although the title refers to an imaginary lottery which he organized there, Léo Ferré sings/muses on L’impossible to a text by Arthur Rimbaud. Although Zwei Betoncadillacs in Form der Nackten Maja on close inspection forms a documentation of the realization of the sculpture of the same name by Wolf Vostell in the West Berlin of 1987, this period piece – at the time the work was inaugurated to celebrate the 750th anniversary of Berlin; in 2006 it was restored to its original form – can also be read as a recorded performance. The debit for that is the role of the onlookers who protest against the work (“Wasting tax money is no art”, “That kind of art here? No thank you”) but also the position of Vostell himself who as a real maestro directs his team and the works. In addition, the historical Inktpot (Ink-well) by Luc Deleu, Filip Francis & De Nieuwe Coloristen (The New Colourists), in which the artists transform an abandoned Second World War bunker in the Koksijde dunes into an ink-well, the register of recording rises as a result of inserting items including animation and images of a snow-covered Brussels during the editing.

Programme:

Vincent Meessen - The Intruder
2005, video, colour 7’26”, multiple languages spoken, English subtitles.
Messieurs Delmotte - Tourist Renouncement
1995, video, 19’07”, sound.
Angel Vergars Santiago - Straatman Lottery
2000, video, 5’41”, sound.
Wolf Vostell - Zwei Betoncadillacs in Form der Nackten Maja
1987, video, 6’30”, sound.
Luc Deleu, Filip Fancis & De Nieuwe Coloristen - Inktpot
1971, video, 5’14”, silent.

Spectres of History: Documents in Contemporary art, Amsterdam

Spectres of History: Documents in Contemporary art 

University of Amsterdam

January 25, 2012

With Sven Augustijnen, Vincent Vulsma, Wendelien von Oldenborgh, Vincent Meessen & Sophie Berrebi

L'avenir du passé: politiques de l'archive, ENSA Bourges (F)

L'avenir du passé: politiques de l'archive
ENSA Bourges (F), january 4, 2012
Giovanna Zapperi & Alejandra Riera's seminar

Manifesta 9, Coffee Break, Genk (B)

Manifesta 9
Coffee Break
Genk (B)
December 9-10, 2011

Friday December 9, 2011 12:30 Doors open, Registration 13:30 – 14:00 Welcome Coffee 14.00 - 14.10 Introduction by Hedwig Fijen, director of Manifesta 14.10 - 14.30 Introductions on The Contemporary at Service of the Past by Cuauhtémoc Medina, Manifesta 9 Curator 14:30 - 15:00 Jeremy Deller, artist, lives and works in London Screening So Many Ways to Hurt You, the Life and Times of Adrian Street (2010) 15:00 – 15:30 Dawn Ades, Associate Curator Manifesta 9, in conversation with Jeremy Deller 15:30 – 15:45 Short Break 15:45 – 16:00 Sneak Preview: Manifesta Journal #13 16:00 – 16:20 Vincent Meessen artist, lives and works in Brussels On Vita Nova (2009) and the research behind 16:20 – 16:45 Johan de Boose Doctor in Slavic Studies, author, lives and works in Ghent Martyrs (Bloedgetuigen), 2011. A short reading 16:45 – 17:30 Moderated talk with Vincent Meessen and Johan de Boose moderated by Katerina Gregos, Associate Curator of Manifesta 9 17:30 – 18:15 Ibro Hasanovic, Bosnian artist based in Rouen (FR) on The Short Story, on oral narrative traditions. Screening The Short Story (2011) 18:15 – 18:30 Conclusions of the day by Cuauhtémoc Medina 18:30 - 21.00 Buffet Saturday December 10, 2011 10:00 - 10:10 Introduction / Memory fresh up previous day by Cuauhtémoc Medina 10:10 - 11.20 Conversation by Christopher Fraga, PHD candidate in ethnography at NYU based in New York with Cuauhtémoc Medina, Katerina Gregos and Dawn Ades on their practices, on Manifesta 9 11:20 - 13:20 Workshops: All Coffee Break participants divide up in three workshops. The artists will develop different strategies in collaboration with the audience in order to approach the theme of the “Contemporary at the Service of the Past”. 1. Phil Collins, Berlin-based British artist 2. Yan Tomaszewski, Paris-based Polish artist 3. Eva Gronbach, German fashion designer, based in Cologne 13:20 - 14:00 Short presentation workshops 14:00 -14:30 Lunch 14:30 - 16:15 Victor Misiano, Moscow based curator of Manifesta 1, Chairman of the Manifesta Foundation, on Progressive Nostalgia 16:15 - 17:00 Ekaterina Degot, independent art historian, art critic, and curator from Kiev - Curatorial case study: 1st Ural Industrial Biennial: Shockworkers of the Mobile Image 17:00 - 17:45 Moderated conversation by Cuauhtémoc Medina with Victor Misiano and Ekaterina Degot - in search for the tension between fear of nostalgia versus fear of the past 17:45 - 18:00 Final conclusion of Manifesta 9 Coffee Break by Katerina Gregos and Cuauhtémoc Medina 18:00 Goodbye toast, cheers!

Wäscherei Kunstverein, Zürich

Wäscherei Kunstverein, Zürich

December 16, 2011.

Organized by The Postgraduate Programme in Curating

Zurich University of the Arts

Pensées achipéliques + Routes, voyages et traductions, Nantes

Pensées archipéliques
ENSA Nantes (Emmanuelle Chérel's seminar)

December 12, 2011

10-12 AM

Routes, voyages et traductions

Contrechamp /Le Cinématographe

Nantes

December 12, 2011
8PM

Partant du film expérimental culte de Peter Kubelka Notre voyage africain (1966), on s'aventurera plus loin dans deux films récents qui proposent eux aussi des relectures d'images. Dans Why Colonel Bunny Was Killed, Miranda Pennell travaille les images d'archives coloniales britanniques au corps jusqu'à ce qu'elles révèlent leur "inconscient optique". Avec Vita Nova, Vincent Meessen revisite une icône de la critique postcoloniale, l'image d'un enfant de troupe coloniale française commentée en son temps par Roland Barthes dans ses célèbres Mythologies. 

Unsere Afrikareise (Notre voyage en Afrique) 
de Peter Kubelka 
1961-1966, 13 min 
À partir de plusieurs heures dʼimages et de sons prélevés lors dʼun voyage en Afrique, Kubelka a monté ce film en suivant plusieurs lignes métaphoriques, rythmiques et chromatiques. Par le truchement du montage audio-visuel, il articule, en autant de confrontations, les relations entre le colonisateur et le colonisé, le chasseur et le chassé, le sujet percevant et lʼobjet regardé. 

Why Colonel Bunny Was Killed 
de Miranda Pennell 
2010, 27 min 
Prenant comme point de départ un récit d’exploration écrit par un médecin missionnaire anglais en 1909,Why Colonel Bunny Was Killed est entièrement composé de photographies datant de l’époque coloniale prises à la frontière nord-est des Indes Britanniques. Tentant de faire émerger une réalité refoulée de ces photos prises au cours du conflit colonial, le film joue subtilement image contre son. Il nous amène à examiner l’argumentaire et la symbolique coloniale à travers ses discours, ses codes vestimentaires, ses meubles, ses trophées… 

Vita Nova 
de Vincent Meessen 
2009, 27 min 
Vita Nova revisite une image parue en couverture de Paris Match en 1955 et montrant un enfant de troupe coloniale au salut. Devenue célèbre suite à sa déconstruction par Roland Barthes (Mythologies, 1957) et à la fortune critique que connu cette analyse, particulièrement dans le monde anglo-saxon, cette image est devenue une icône de la pensée sémiologique moderne. Meessen part au Burkina Faso à la recherche de l’enfant qui figurait en 1955 sur la couverture du magazine avant de poursuivre sa quête en Côte d’Ivoire et dans divers fonds d’archives. En chemin, il convoque différents régimes narratifs pour "dire l’histoire" et faire de Barthes un personnage de sa propre œuvre. Il recontextualise des extraits de textes de Barthes et leur donne un sens nouveau. Il éclaire ainsi un pan tout à fait oublié de la biographie de l’auteur qui, pour déclarer " la mort de l’auteur" en 1968 avait argumenté l’inutilité du biographique.