Anti-fascism: The Missing Monuments

Essay in the Third Text Anti-Fascism special issue edited by Angela Dimitrikaki. This article stresses the need for an investigation into how the wounds of colonialism are treated in the West European public sphere. It uses a decolonial lens to look specifically at artistic actions in the form of both monuments and interventions in existing public space that reference European guilt around the genocidal crimes of colonial occupation and the Holocaust. In the course of the research it became clear that little comparative work has been done on the monuments to these two catastrophes. The article therefore serves more as an introduction to the reasons why the Holocaust and colonial violence might be brought into closer relationship with each other, arguing that establishing such a relationship through public art, among other sites of critique, can and should contribute to contemporary articulations of anti-fascism in Europe. The article looks at art monuments by Jochen Gerz and Hans Haacke in the 1980s and 1990s and laments the lack of similar responses to colonialism in the continent. It looks further at more recent anti-colonial and decolonial public actions and at a few artists, such as Yael Bartana, who do draw parallels between the Holocaust and other genocides. Finally, the article speculates on how future monuments might respond to a broader understanding of the causes of land occupations, slave labour, ethnic cleansing and mass murder by thinking about the colonial matrix of power as a common European epistemology that developed after 1492

Discussion panel for Pilot:3

As part of the preview for the third edition of PILOT: during the opening week of the Venice Biennale, we are pleased to announce that we will be hosting a panel discussion in collaboration with PoCA, the Political Currency of Art research group. The discussion will focus on the historical trajectory of the Venice Biennale and its changing role within the shifting socio-political context of the city, as well as looking to issues within the art world in general regarding the role of art fairs and biennials within economic systems and the agents of globalization

An idea for living: realism and reality in contemporary art in Slovenia. U3 – 6th triennial of contemporary art in Slovenia.

This 6th U3 Slovenian art triennial focuses on how artists from across the generations reflect on realism and reality today. The works both depict (as in realism) and take a direct part in (as in reality) activities and relationships in the world. The exhibition foregrounds artistic proposals that suggest ways to read history anew, focus on the environment and the social and reflect intimate relations among communities, families and friends. In general, the works are not centred on the inner life of the artist but on his/her relationship to external conditions. This choice for reality was made because it reflects the current strengths of the Slovenian art scene. In addition it emphasises a continuity with Slovene artistic practices in which realism and, later, a readiness to include techniques and subjects outside of the traditions of l'art pour l'art are very present. For this reason works from the collection of Moderna Galerija going back to the 1940s have also been included in U3

An ambitious claim

The article sets out the origins and objectives of the project from the point of view of the Van Abbemuseum. It describes an institution dedicated to re-examining its modernist archive in the light of 21st century globalisation and how this project not only shifts possibilities within Palestine but alters the meaning and significance of the Picasso painting Buste de Femme when returned to Eindhoven. Having been painted in 1943 under one occupation, it’s brief visit to another occupation re-politicises its genesis while its relative anonymity in a provincial Dutch collection emphasises the differentials in cultural access between the Netherlands and Palestine

Afterall 7

This exhibition and series of events and seminars was the result of an invitation by Apex Art, New York. I chose to bring together two aspects of my research: theoretical writing and editorship of the Journal Afterall (since its inception in 1998 to the present); linked with my curatorial involvement in presenting contemporary art. I selected one issue of the journal (AFTERALL #7) where I had taken a central role in determining its theme and contents and which focused on the conceptual possibilities of the gothic as an aesthetic, political and social proposition exploring both the dark side (of artistic behaviour) and complex visual patterning. I embodied my concept for the show in the following quotation: “If the mind, while imagining non-existent things as present to it, is at the same time conscious that they do not really exist, this power of imagination must be set down to the efficacy of its nature, and not to a fault, especially if this faculty of imagination depend solely on its own nature – that is if this faculty of imagination be free” – Benedict de Spinoza. My general aim was to use the exhibition to explore the problematics of resistance in the context of – as I expressed it in the introduction to the exhibition - ‘ the default victory of capitalism, a tragedy waiting to happen for thirty years at least

Constructing a better contemporary ...

Europeans live their lives at a time when certain collective expectations of how the world should function no longer seem to describe their experience of what actually happens. This bifurcation of experience and expectation is causing some severe symptoms of dislocation. Truth turns relative and his- tory seems in need of radical revision. Even time itself seems topsy-turvy, in a way that some Messianic beliefs find very much to their taste. This is the hallmark of the contemporary moment and why, this essay will argue, that in lieu of any other generalising term, we need to make the most use of ‘contemporary’ and ‘contemporaneity’ for emancipatory purposes

Cork Caucus

I was invited, during Cork’s year as European Capital of Culture, to curate and organize a three week series of exhibitions, seminars and presentations in collaboration with Annie Fletcher. Cork Caucus was a completely new concept for a major visual arts event. Rather than commissioning a few artists to produce large-scale work for the public space, we determined to organise a long-term discursive event that brought participants in Cork together with major theorists. Artists were also invited to create work. We aimed to generate new ambition, horizon and possibility in the Cork art scene, through direct experience with artists and thinkers from the international milieu. At the same time, the Cork participants were able to prepare over the long term for their various visits and to provide a specific Cork context for their theories

It doesn’t always have to be beautiful unless it’s beautiful (S’ëstë e thënë që gjithnjë të jetë e bukur, përveç nëse është e bukur), the 9th Annual Muslim Mulliqi Prize International Exhibition

Charles Esche curated this exhibition with Galit Eilat. The 9th Muslim Mulliqi Prize Exhibition is curated by Galit Eilat and Charles Esche. The Muslim Mulliqi Prize is the most significant exhibition for contemporary visual arts in Kosovo and aims to be one of the most interesting contemporary art projects in southern Europe. The exhibition features 29 artists. They were selected from a national open call together with invited international artists. The concept of the exhibition began with the idea of how to reinterpret the idea of beauty using today’s social and aesthetic forms. The curators were inspired by the idea of the Kaleidoscope. The word ‘kaleidoscope’ is derived from the Greek kalos ‘beautiful’ + eidos ‘form‘ + scopeo ‘to aim or watch’ and means ‘aiming at beautiful forms.’ This ambition runs through all the works in the show, but the kaleidoscope not only aimed at beautiful forms but also produces a new, artificial idea of beauty through its fragmented images reflected through mirrors. In the beginning, the kaleidoscope was a competitor for photography and related ‘tele-views’ such as the telescope, later the camera, and eventually television that captured reality and projected it at a distance. The first produced imaginary images while the other precisely recorded what it ‘saw.’ The idea of production and fragmentation is related to the curators’ personal experiences in Kosovo. While the pressures from history and the present are evident, there is equally a real energy to produce new realities and to see beauty in the possibilities that might lie ahead. Indeed, the close historical relation between truth and beauty—the one being found in the other—inspired the choice of the title and the focus on beauty in everyday reality. As well as each person’s own perception of their own environment, there are other people that tell the stories to a wide public through the media. This is true in Kosovo, where the dramatic changes in recent years have been subjected to the harsh lens of the press. In our contemporary culture, we could speak of the media as a telekaleidoscope, a single machine that gathers, produces, projects, and fragments our view of reality at the same time. In this environment, it seems important to discover where beauty might be found outside its traditional expression, and to learn how to see and value what is in the immediate locality. This is what the individual vision of the artist can bring to the situation and help others to see what was previously invisible. The artworks in the exhibition are principally intended to be a way to understand what we might mean by ‘aiming at beautiful forms’ in the early 21st century, both here in Kosovo and further afield. In today’s art, beauty can emerge in a moment of discussion, in light falling on a suburban landscape painting, or in the movement of a hand in a video. The exhibition also responds to the transfixing visual beauty of an image of crisis or collapse that lingers even after we know the real stories behind the moment