Visit to Manifesta 9 - Genk - with Wiebke Gronemeyer.
The curator Cuauhtémoc Medina on the opening guided tour, at Haifeng Ni's piece Para-Production, 2008
Ana Torfs - [...] STAIN [...] 2012
Ana Torfs - [...] STAIN [...] 2012
"The starting point for [...] STAIN [...] is an investigation into synthetic colours derived from coal tar, a by-product of coke manufacture. In 1856 the first coal tar dye, generally known as mauve, was patented by the Bristish chemist W. H. Perkin (Garfield 2002). This discovery led to the growth of an entire industry built around manufacturing synthetic textile dyes, which now number several thousand, and subsequent developments in pharmaceuticals, explosives, photography, food colouring, etc." (Excerpt from Manifesta 9, The Deep of the Modern: A Subcyclopaedia)
Ana Torfs - [...] STAIN [...] 2012
Bea Schlingelhoff - I Am Too Christian for Art, 2012
"Her 'graphic monument' to French visionary philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943), displayed on the walls of the balcony of the Waterschei mine, pays homage to Weil's systematic pessimism about the fate of industrial civilisation in the 1930s." (Excerpt from Manifesta 9, The Deep of the Modern: A Subcyclopaedia)
Bea Schlingelhoff - I Am Too Christian for Art, 2012
Nicoline van Harskamp - Yours in Solidarity, 2009-12
Nicoline van Harskamp - Yours in Solidarity, 2009-12
"Yours in Solidarity focuses on the history and Future of anarchism and revolves around the archived correspondence of the Dutch anarchist Karl Marx Kreuger (1946-1999), now housed in the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam. Kreuger maintained extensive correspondence with around 400 fellow anarchists worldwide. After studying the letters from 60 of them - focusing her investigation on their respective political observations and analysing their handwriting - van Harskamp cast actors of the appropriative ages and nationalities in order to reconstruct the correspondents' life stories after the last date of writting, imagining what would happen if they were to meet today." (Excerpt from Manifesta 9, The Deep of the Modern: A Subcyclopaedia)
Nicoline van Harskamp - Yours in Solidarity, 2009-12
Nemanja Cvijanovic - Monument to the Memory of the Idea of the Internationale, 2010
This was the most pervasive piece in the whole exhibition, since there was this massive sound system outside the building broadcasting every time a visitor used the music box.
"With this piece Cvijanovic pays tribute to that other, sadly unrealised Monument to the Third International, designed by Vladimir Tatlin. Sound builds up in a geometrical progression, in the paying homage to the cumulative logic of working class solidarity and the dream of the proletarian revolution encoded emotional propaganda values of L'internationale." (Excerpt from Manifesta 9, The Deep of the Modern: A Subcyclopaedia)
Magdalena Jitrik - Revolutionary Life, 2012
"By intervening in the space of the former Waterschei mine in Genk with an installation of free floating abstract paintins, Jitrik perforates the layers of meaning of space in the 20th century. Her abstract paintings also appear in relation to an overview in drawing form, of the critical exchanges between Belgium writer and activist Victor Serge (b. 1880, Brussels; d. 1947, Mexico) and Leon Trotsky on the fate of working class dissent in the Soviet Union, which marks on of the Left's most important moments of self-critique, along with panels with imagined covers of Victor Serge's books." (Excerpt from Manifesta 9, The Deep of the Modern: A Subcyclopaedia)
Claire Fontaine: The House of Energetic Culture 2012
CF "exhumes the recent history of Pripyat, a city founded in 1970, three kilometers away from Chernobyl. Evacuated after the nuclear disaster, it was once the symbol of a very specific dream of soviet progress, namely that of energetic self-suficiency. ... The neon is extinguished in all existing images of the location; here it acts as a reminder of the disaster, or as a warning come too late. The constant danger posed by nuclear disasters form part of an intolerable state of emergency that is in fact the rule rather than the exception."(Excerpt from Manifesta 9, The Deep of the Modern: A Subcyclopaedia)
Claire Fontaine: The House of Energetic Culture 2012
Rossella Biscotti: Title One: The Tasks of the Community 2012
this piece "borrows its title from the 1957 treaty that established the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), one of the documents that serve as basis of the European Union, to take an ironic, post-minimal stance toward the ideologies of environmental regulations and recycling on a broad, continental level. On December 31, 2009, despite extended popular resistance and profound economic consequences, Unit 2 of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in Lithuania was closed under pressure of the European regulatory bodies. Paradoxically, as part of the EU-financed dismantling process, in 2011 several materials from the site were put up for auction as what the Ignalina plant's website described as 'unnecessary property'. Biscotti attended two public auctions held at the plant, acquiring lead and industrial copper cables, which she then imported to Belgium to be used at the venue for Manifesta 9. She used the lead to produce a floor-based sculpture, and had the copper recylced into new electric wires to supply electricity to the show." (Excerpt from Manifesta 9, The Deep of the Modern: A Subcyclopaedia)
Rossella Biscotti: Title One: The Tasks of the Community 2012
The Ashington Group: Oliver Kilbourn Windy Day
The Ashington Group
The Ashington Group
"Thirty eight students, mostly miners working in the Ashington Collieries, turned up to Robert Lyon's Art Appreciation class in October 1934 (Feaver 2008). Amazingly, forty years later several of that initial group were still meeting, same time very week, to look at art and talk about it and show each other their latest paintings. That's because Robert Lyon had been inspired to get the men to appreciate art by doing it themselves." (Excerpt from Manifesta 9, The Deep of the Modern: A Subcyclopaedia)
Embroidered Sayings - 1870 - 1930, Selection of 31 linen, half-linen or cotton embroidered napkins (selected out from more than 200), variable dimensions. Collection: Museum van de Mijnwerkerswoning, Eisden.
Embroidered Sayings - 1870 - 1930, Selection of 31 linen, half-linen or cotton embroidered napkins (selected out from more than 200), variable dimensions. Collection: Museum van de Mijnwerkerswoning, Eisden.
Embroidered Sayings - 1870 - 1930, Selection of 31 linen, half-linen or cotton embroidered napkins (selected out from more than 200), variable dimensions. Collection: Museum van de Mijnwerkerswoning, Eisden.
Eva Gronbach: Was Vergeht /Was Besteht / Was Ensteht, 2012
"Under cover of the public's familiarity and comfort with the universe of fashion, Eva Gronbach brings her audience face to face with repressed or traumatic histories in order to foster a process of collective healing. Her German Jeans collection addressed the transformative historical and cultural processes of de-industrialisation in Europe, incorporating oiginal coal miner's uniforms into the flashy world of haute couture." (Excerpt from Manifesta 9, The Deep of the Modern: A Subcyclopaedia)
Eva Gronbach: Was Vergeht /Was Besteht / Was Ensteht, 2012
Haifeng Ni's piece Para-Production, 2008 on the following day, already with participants.
There were other works that I did not document, some because of restrictions imposed by the artists (such as Avalon), or because I haven't actually seen them (work by Lara Almarcegui), or because I forgot.
Maryam Jafri - Avalon 2012
"Maryam Jafri's Avalon examines the manufacture of fetish clothing and accessories for the sex industry. ... this video straddles the boundary between cinema and theatre, documentary and fiction. It begins in an unspecified Asian country where an entrepreneur (whose face is concealed) describes how he founded a clandestine, million-dollar business that exports fetish wear, with a small start-up investment from his father. The women who work as seamstresses in his small factory believe that they are sewing body bags for the US Army, straight jackets, and accessories for circus animals, though they have their doubts." (Excerpt from Manifesta 9, The Deep of the Modern: A Subcyclopaedia)
Lara Almarcegui - Wasteland (Genk) 2004-16
"She conceived Een braakliggend terrein in Genk in 2004, under the auspices of FLACC (Workplace for Visual Artists). For her project, Almarcegui identified a neglected plot of land situated between the Jaarbeurslaan and Europalaan highways in Genk. Accompanied by a local nature guide, she carefully scouted, surveyed and described the land. Through negotiations with the city of Genk, Almarcegui then arranged to protect the terrain from development for a period of ten years, preserving the wasteland in its untouched state and allowing nature to take its own course, subject only to the forces and the temporality of wind, rain, sun, vegetation, spontaneous use and litter. ... For Manifesta 9, the city of Genk has agreed to extend the work for an additional two years, and is currently in the planning stages of protecting it in perpetuity."(Excerpt from Manifesta 9, The Deep of the Modern: A Subcyclopaedia)
Beehive Design Collective
The True Cost of Coal, 2008, "is an epic banner produced collectively by a number of 'bees', following two years of collaborative research, story development, and meticulous drawing. The banner examines the impact of coal mining on human and ecological communities and unfolds as an intricate and encyclopaedic narrative revolving around the history of coal and insdustrialisation, and the effects of mountaintop removal coal mining."(Excerpt from Manifesta 9, The Deep of the Modern: A Subcyclopaedia)
