AN OPEN HOUSE, BY LEONOR ANTUNES

Two weeks after the election of Donald Trump, I held a small event in Amsterdam in a place called the Hubertus House, which was designed by the architect Aldo van Eyck in 1959. I called it An Open House. I have been working on this project for quite a long time; I was invited to do it by the curating collective If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution. Van Eyck designed two interconnected buildings to host single mothers and their children in a private foundation that provided day care, as well as other support. Initially, I didn’t plan to work on this project in the way that I did but after the shock of the election, I couldn’t think of anything else apart from reacting somehow. 

The project included 12 women, myself included, from different backgrounds and origins – we all look very different from each other. Tess van Eyck, the architect’s daughter, joined us, sitting on a sofa reading her newspaper. For one hour, we all stood on the balconies of the building and behind the windows. The public was told nothing about what they might see; they were allowed access to one of the two buildings, but not the one we were occupying. We were all dressed in the 12 different colours that Van Eyck used.

(Text published on frieze.com) 

23:16 - By Unknown 0

STANDING MAN, BY ERDEM GÜNDÜZ

Erdem Gündüz is a Turkish dancer, actor, performance artist, choreographer, and teacher who, as a result of his actions during the 2013–14 protests in Turkey, has become "the face of the protest movement against the Turkish government." He became internationally known as "The Standing Man" in June 2013 when he stood quietly in Istanbul's Taksim Square as a protest against the Islamist government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

14:01 - By Enrique Veganzones 0

THE TWO FRIDAS, BY LAS YEGUAS DEL APOCALIPSIS

In 1987, Pedro Lemebel co-founded with Francisco Casas the collective Yeguas del Apocalipsis (The Mares of the Apocalypse), an arts performance group. The group performed in exhibitions and cultural events reaching its intended audience through actions that ranged from performance arts, video, installation, transvestism and photography. Many of their performances challenged the heteronormative social paradigms of gender and sex and invited individuals to reflect on the plight of minorities repressed under Pinochet and then further stigmatized with by the advent by AIDS.

The Two Fridas is the transvestite scenography of the painting by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo "The Two Fridas" (1939). In this reenactment, the setting of the members of the art group is reversed compared to the original painting. The artist on the right wears a typical Mexican dress and his heart is closed, whereas the one on the left wears a Victorian dress and has an open heart. They have bare torsos and oil paint on the skin, holding hands and connected through a blood catheter, just the way it is depicted in Frida Kahlo's painting.

Website

19:08 - By Unknown 0

THE FLOWERS FAIR, BY NÚRIA GÜELL

The Flowers Fair Colombia, 2015-2016 The Flowers Fair has consisted in organizing and conducting a series of guided tours through the works of the Colombian artist par excellence, Fernando Botero, at the permanent collection of the Museum of Antioquia in Medellin. The visits are peculiar because are carried out by minors exploited by the growing business of sex tourism in Medellin. The young girls guide the visitors through Botero’s works in which the artist used prostitutes as models to represent the female body; Thus, these atypical modern art guides rely on their personal experiences around child sexual exploitation, the deshumanization of the female body as well as on the catalogs selling virginity that circulate on city streets and through which tourists -mostly from the U.S, Spain, Israel, Germany and Mexico- select the girl or boy whose virginity want to buy.

Medellín is defined as a progressive, cosmopolitan, innovative and cultural city, known as “Medellin Miracle”. Despite several social achievements, one of its worst consequences is hidden under this lucrative “face-lift”: child’s sexual exploitation in the growing sex tourism industry. From the "encounter" as an exhibition display and by using the symbolic power of the art institution, I seek to expose the problem and to confront the social acceptance of this form of contemporary slavery. Approaching to a critical review of the narrative that Art History draws up, I intend to reflect on the structural nature of this phenomenon.

Núria Güell's website.

10:03 - By Unknown 1

STATE OF PALESTINE, BY KHALED JARRAR

Khaled Jarrar, a Palestinian artist, decided to declare the existence of a non-existent state. He created a passport stamp for the State of Palestine, challenging the Israeli border regime. Jarrar undertook his first stamping action at the central bus station in Ramallah for people arriving from the checkpoints. When he goes abroad, he uses any occasion to mark people’s passports (a couple hundred so far) and thereby develops a campaign based on nonviolent resistance. These stamps represent a sovereign independent country and opposition to the violent fragmentation of the Palestinian territory. Those who agree to have the stamp put into their documents sustain claims for Palestinian sovereignty and perform an individual political coming out which defines one’s position.

A community of supporters grows. Official documents become a manifestation of citizen’s disobedience. And if you have a stamp, you might run into trouble: your entrance to Israel might be denied by border control at the Ben Gurion checkpoint, or you might be sent back to your country of origin. We even know of Israeli passports that have been cancelled due to the unauthorized stamp. Together with the 7th Berlin Biennale, Jarrar also produces postage stamps from Deutsche Post, which have a Palestine Sunbird and the inscription "State of Palestine" printed on them. Over 20,000 have been made so far. Used on letters and postcards, they have circulated worldwide.

Jarrar’s passport and postage stamps tell the story of a state-to-be. But reality goes against him and other Palestinians. Instead of continuing again and again the discussion about a one- or two-state solution, using these stamps is a simple gesture that helps to create normality.

20:12 - By Unknown 1

EL SILUETAZO, BY EDUARDO GIL

"The realisation of silhouettes is the most memorable of the artistic-political practices that lent a powerful visuality to the public space of Buenos Aires and many other cities of the country on the demands of the argentinian human rights movements in the early 1980s. This consist of a simple design in the form of the outline of a man-sized body on paper, later pasted on the city walls as a way of representing the 'presence of an absence' of the thousands of prisioners who 'disappeared' during the last military dictatorship" (text by Ana Longoni).

This video by Marcelo Expósito includes interviews with the art historian and researcher Ana Longoni, and Guillermo Kexel (one of the three artists who originally conceived 'El Siluetazo', before this practice was adopted and pushed forward by Madres de Plaza de Mayo in 1983), as well as original photographs by Guillermo Kexel and Eduardo Gil. This video is part of the collective research project: "Images of 'El Siluetazo' and other creative strategies of the human rights movement in Argentina", carried out by Fernanda Carvajal, Marcelo Expósito, Cora Gamarnik, Ana Longoni and Jaime Vindel, within the framework of the Red Conceptualismos del Sur / Southern Conceptualisms Network, produced by Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid (2010-2011).

19:58 - By Unknown 0

LOOKING FOR A HUSBAND WITH EU PASSPORT, BY TANIA OSTOJIĆ

In August 2000 Tanja Ostojić launched her project Looking for a Husband with EU Passport in which she published an online advertisement with the same title. Over the next few months the artist received numerous offers from men from around the world, and exchanged more than 500 letters with them. One of them was Klemens G. from Germany. Ostojić met him in 2001, as part of a publicly staged performance on the lawn in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade. One month later the two were wed in Belgrade, and then—with the international marriage certificate and other necessary documents in hand—Ostojić applied for a German visa. With her first three-month visa she moved to Düsseldorf, where she registered officially with the authorities and received additional visa extensions over the next three-and-a-half years. In the spring of 2005 her temporary residence permit expired and, instead of receiving a permanent residence permit, Ostojić was only granted an extension for an additional two years. Subsequently, she and Klemens G. divorced, and on July 1 the installation Integration Project Office was launched in the project room of Galerie 35 in Berlin, with a divorce celebration.

With her project Looking for a Husband with EU Passport Ostojić addresses the political injustices, exclusions, and delimitations that still exist in Europe beyond the global digital realm. Ostojić made use of the World Wide Web to shed light on the plight of immigrants and the limitations imposed on lifestyles, through artistic self-exploration.

Tanja Ostojić's website.

06:55 - By Unknown 1

NIKE GROUND, BY EVA AND FRANCO MATTES

Eva and Franco Mattes, born 1976, are the Brooklyn based artist-provocateurs behind the infamous Web site 0100101110101101.org. Since meeting in Madrid in 1994 they have never separated, living a nomadic life throughout Europe and the United States. Among the pioneers of the Net Art movement, they are renowned for their masterful subversion of public media. Over the last fifteen years, the Mattes’ have manipulated video games, Internet technologies, feature films, and street advertising to reveal truths concealed by contemporary society. Their works create a permanent state of insecurity by blurring borders between reality and fiction, art and offence, intention and action. Their off-the-wall performances—which have involved them in several lawsuits—include stealing dozens of fragments from art masterpieces (Stolen Pieces, 1995), rolling out a media campaign for a non-existent action movie (United We Stand, 2005) and even convincing the people of Vienna that Nike had purchased the city’s historic Karlsplatz and was about to rename it Nikeplatz (Nike Ground, 2003).

"We set up a fake Nike advertisement campaign using a website and a huge hi-tech container we installed in a public square in Vienna. The news went out nationwide: “Karlsplatz, one of Vienna’s main squares, is soon to be renamed Nikeplatz, and a huge monument in the shape of Nike’s famous Swoosh logo will be built in Nikeplatz”. The campaign provoked the reactions of Vienna’s citizens, city officials and the Nike group, which started legal action. Against all odds we won against the giant."

06:39 - By Unknown 0

AFRICAN REFUGEES PROJECT, BY GHANA THINKTANK

Ghana ThinkTank is an international collective that “develops the first world” by flipping traditional power dynamics, allowing the “third world” to intervene into the lives of the people living in the so-called “developed” world.

They collect problems from communities throughout the USA and Europe, and send them to think tanks we created in “developing” communities. The think tanks – which include a group of bike mechanics in Ghana, a rural radio station in El Salvador, Sudanese refugees seeking asylum in Israel, an artist collective in Iran, and a group of incarcerated girls in the Boston penal system, among others – propose solutions, which are then implemented in the “first world”.

Ghana ThinkTank’s innovative approach to public art reveals blind spots between otherwise disconnected cultures, challenges assumptions about who is “needy,” and turns the idea of expertise on its head by asking people in the “third world” to solve problems of people in the “first world.” This process helps people overcome their own stereotypes while being exposed to the stereotypes that other cultures have about them.

Ghana ThinkTank was founded in 2006 by Christopher Robbins, John Ewing and Matey Odonkor. Maria Del Carmen Montoya joined in 2009. The project began with think tanks in Ghana, Cuba, and El Salvador, and has since expanded to include Mexico, Iran, Serbia, Indonesia, Sudan and Morocco.

The African Refugee is one of the Ghana ThinkTank projects. It focuses on facilitating contact between groups that are historically or politically polarized in the Middle East.

In 2014, Ghana ThinkTank was invited by ArtPort Gallery in Tel Aviv to create an interchange between African refugees seeking asylum in Israel, and local residents who resented their presence.

Working with Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers along with local Israelis, they organized think tanks that collected problems from residents of the neglected neighborhood of South Tel Aviv as well as African refugees living in that same neighborhood. They asked each group to solve the problems of the other. Community members, the organized think tanks, and local organizations created plans to implement the proposed solutions. Solutions included an all female civilian patrol outfitted in uniforms of African cloth (image).

This effort to create constructive contact between groups was featured as part of a Tel Aviv-based art show “The Infiltrators.”

Ghana Thinktank's website.

22:10 - By Unknown 0

DO WOMEN HAVE TO BE NAKED..., BY GUERRILLA GIRLS

Guerrilla Girls are an anonymous group of feminist, female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world. The group formed in New York City in 1985 with the mission of bringing gender and racial inequality in the fine arts into focus within the greater community. Members are known for the gorilla masks they wear to remain anonymous. They wear the masks to conceal their identity because they believed that their identity is not what matters as GG1 explains in an interview "...mainly, we wanted the focus to be on the issues, not on our personalities or our own work.". Also, their identity is hidden to protect themselves from the backlash of prominent individuals within the art community.

21:22 - By Unknown 0

FLESH TO WHITE TO BLACK TO FLESH, BY BRUCE NAUMAN

Presenting his bare torso to the camera, Nauman meticulously applies, and removes, layers of white and black pigment, to his face, arms, and chest. Beyond the link to body art, and the idea of treating the human body as artistic subject matter and material, Nauman enacts a process of self-transformation—a masque applied and removed—as the tape ends where it began. This title was in the original Castelli-Sonnabend video art collection.

Full video: https://youtu.be/HjEAtc0Ee4M

12:50 - By Unknown 0

WHOLE IN THE WALL, BY HALED JARRAR

Inspired by everyday events and experiences, Jarrar’s practice incorporates performance, video, photography and sculpture to document his observations on life in an occupied Palestine. The restrictions imposed on him and his fellow citizens have become the catalyst and subject of his occasionally satirical artistic output.

One of the highlights of the exhibition is an installation which will see Jarrar construct an imposing concrete wall extending along the length of the gallery; confronting the viewer immediately upon entering the space. In order to pass through the wall visitors will have to clamber through a hole shaped like Palestine - an allegory for the process endured by people crossing the apartheid wall in the West Bank in order to reach their homes in Palestine.

Alongside this installation, Jarrar will show a series of video works and new and recent concrete sculptures based on sporting paraphernalia: footballs, volleyballs, basketballs and ping pong rackets. These are formed from materials secretly chiseled by the artist from the separation wall. By making reference to the footballs left by the wall by children who use the area as a site for their games, and by repurposing this found material, Jarrar seeks to provoke a dialogue about possession and reclamation.

22:36 - By Unknown 0

A SECRET MEMORIAL FOR CIVILIAN CASUALTIES, BY MATT KENYON

Artist Matt Kenyon wants you to write a letter to the US government—and he’s even supplying the paper.

Under a magnifying loupe, the ruled lines in his ordinary-looking legal pads reveal the names and details of every Iraqi civilian killed during the first three years of the US-led invasion of Iraq, starting in 2003. To produce the pads, Kenyon used micro-printing, a special process typically used as anti-counterfeiting technique for banknotes.

The project is a memorial to the war’s casualties, similar to Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC—only Kenyon’s in the form of a palette of yellow stationery that is currently stored in his Michigan studio. His goal is to draw attention to the thousands of Iraqis who have perished without much acknowledgement from the US government. Kenyon claims that the pads have been smuggled into the halls and supply closets of US congressmen and senators. The pads are also now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Kenyon, who is also an associate professor at the University of Michigan, isn’t just interested in archiving the pads for posterity.

“Every letter sent to the government is recorded, archived, and filed,” he explained at the TED conference in Vancouver, Canada. With every letter sent, the sheets of paper are activated, acting like Trojan horses that carry the names of the fallen into the national record.

“I started this project in 2007 but I felt that it was appropriate to present it again, given the fact that the US just reauthorized military operations in Iraq,” Kenyon tells Quartz. “For the price of postage, I’m happy to send them to anyone interested in helping spread the word.”

Watch Matt Kenyon's TED talk.

17:29 - By Unknown 0

COLOUR ME, BY BERNI SEARLE

The series 'Colour Me' is a play on the racial classification 'coloured' under apartheid legislation, a contentious term which is heavily debated in post-apartheid politics, particularly in the Western Cape. In the work, I chose to cover myself with various colors - red, yellow, white, brown, in an attempt to resist any definition of identity which is static, or can be placed into neat categories. Placing myself or my body in the work, exposes other aspects of my identity, for example, gender. Exposing myself therefore involves a process of claiming and points to the idea that there are a range of axis that inform identity which are inter-connected, determining relationships of dependency and domination in any given context.
Berni Searle's website

17:51 - By Unknown 3

MERMAIDS, BY SIGALIT LANDAU

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LUNARES, BY PILAR ALBARRACÍN

16:39 - By Unknown 0

AAA-AAA, BY ULAY ABRAMOVIC

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SEMIOTICS OF THE KITCHEN, BY MARTHA ROSLER

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THE OTHER, BY ULAY ABRAMOVIC

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ART MUST BE BEAUTIFUL, ARTIST MUST BE BEAUTIFUL, BY MARINA ABRAMOVIC

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