News, Portugal, Lisbon, 15 October 2011
A Non-Biennial for Not-Art
Taking as example the emptiness of the model proposed by Venice Biennial (an artistic director who proposes a topic and curates an exhibition of invited artists, and several countries curaters that proposes one or several artists representative of the countries artistic scene), the Non-Biennale will be an assumed artistic project to take place on the Internet, questioning the model proposed above: first, the art director does not exist. The artists can participate freely. No contest. No selection. Without commissioners. However, while as a non-Biennale, all artists must submit himself's to the very idea that gives reason for the Non-Biennale: the Biennale is looking for non artistic images, images which generally are not categorized as art. The permitted areas are: photography, drawing and digital painting, video / animation, performative records, web art.
Questioning the Biennale of Art is questioning the role of the Biennale in society and in the world. And to question it is necessary to question the very function or the art role.
Contemporary art is increasingly uprooted from day to day life of people, in which to find meaning (they are bombarded every day with the role and meaning of art), they look at art as spectacle, spectacular art, the wonder of magnitude. Today, art captures the attention of the public, not by the message of the work or the context, but by the spectacularity: the higher the better, the more monumental... or showing us our petty reality of everyday life, the suffering that we endure each other... What art was gained in size is lost in depth.
And the noise of biennials that go around are just trial market balloons, focus or careless tourists in search of spectacularity.
Amid all this noise where is the real art? Where is it hiding?
This project seeks to uncover the Biennale's place of true art. An art away from the noise of galleries, festivals, fairs and biennials, all kind of spectacle. A Non-Biennale of true non art, by the setting gave by Kaprow: objects, gestures, images of today's world that are not identified with art. Or rather, objects that are not within the artistic beacons created by Duchamp (the object trouvé) and Warhol (the show bizz). Pictures, videos, concepts that are beyond the mere representation of everyday life but that refer it indirectly, such as advertising (billboards, posters, ads, televise spots, etc.), snapshots of marriage, parties, travel, family etc, etc, etc.. Images from the world where the concept art has not yet entered. Or constructed images that have this "world" as a reference.
All proposals that have this world theme and are devoid of the "look" artistic, will be accepted. These are grouped together by themes and techniques in order to prepare several exhibitions / virtual events. All these events will be displayed in the virtual space of Web Art Center.
When I speak of activities and contexts that don’t suggest art, I don’t mean that an event like brushing my teeth each morning is chosen and then set into a conventional art context, as Duchamp and many others since him have done. That strategy, by which an art-identifying frame (such as a gallery or theater) confers “art value” or “art discourse” on some nonart object, idea, or event, was, in Duchamp’s initial move, sharply ironic. It forced into confrontation a whole bundle of sacred assumptions about creativity, professional skill, individuality, spirituality, modernism, and the presumed value and function of high art itself. Alan Kaprow, in “Art Which Can’t Be Art” (1986)
Taking as example the emptiness of the model proposed by Venice Biennial (an artistic director who proposes a topic and curates an exhibition of invited artists, and several countries curaters that proposes one or several artists representative of the countries artistic scene), the Non-Biennale will be an assumed artistic project to take place on the Internet, questioning the model proposed above: first, the art director does not exist. The artists can participate freely. No contest. No selection. Without commissioners. However, while as a non-Biennale, all artists must submit himself's to the very idea that gives reason for the Non-Biennale: the Biennale is looking for non artistic images, images which generally are not categorized as art. The permitted areas are: photography, drawing and digital painting, video / animation, performative records, web art.
Questioning the Biennale of Art is questioning the role of the Biennale in society and in the world. And to question it is necessary to question the very function or the art role.
Contemporary art is increasingly uprooted from day to day life of people, in which to find meaning (they are bombarded every day with the role and meaning of art), they look at art as spectacle, spectacular art, the wonder of magnitude. Today, art captures the attention of the public, not by the message of the work or the context, but by the spectacularity: the higher the better, the more monumental... or showing us our petty reality of everyday life, the suffering that we endure each other... What art was gained in size is lost in depth.
And the noise of biennials that go around are just trial market balloons, focus or careless tourists in search of spectacularity.
Amid all this noise where is the real art? Where is it hiding?
This project seeks to uncover the Biennale's place of true art. An art away from the noise of galleries, festivals, fairs and biennials, all kind of spectacle. A Non-Biennale of true non art, by the setting gave by Kaprow: objects, gestures, images of today's world that are not identified with art. Or rather, objects that are not within the artistic beacons created by Duchamp (the object trouvé) and Warhol (the show bizz). Pictures, videos, concepts that are beyond the mere representation of everyday life but that refer it indirectly, such as advertising (billboards, posters, ads, televise spots, etc.), snapshots of marriage, parties, travel, family etc, etc, etc.. Images from the world where the concept art has not yet entered. Or constructed images that have this "world" as a reference.
All proposals that have this world theme and are devoid of the "look" artistic, will be accepted. These are grouped together by themes and techniques in order to prepare several exhibitions / virtual events. All these events will be displayed in the virtual space of Web Art Center.
When I speak of activities and contexts that don’t suggest art, I don’t mean that an event like brushing my teeth each morning is chosen and then set into a conventional art context, as Duchamp and many others since him have done. That strategy, by which an art-identifying frame (such as a gallery or theater) confers “art value” or “art discourse” on some nonart object, idea, or event, was, in Duchamp’s initial move, sharply ironic. It forced into confrontation a whole bundle of sacred assumptions about creativity, professional skill, individuality, spirituality, modernism, and the presumed value and function of high art itself. Alan Kaprow, in “Art Which Can’t Be Art” (1986)
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