dogmatik on Sun, 13 Jan 2002 04:20:39 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> Miss Croatia & Miss Brasil Read Zizek & Chomsky |
[via geert lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>] Dear Friends, We feel that it is very important that we inform you about the unpleasant incident which is happening even as we write on the relation Sanja Ivekovic - state policy. A state selector has invited Sanja Ivekovic to represent the state on the Sao Paolo Biennal. But when Sanja Ivekovic submitted the project "Miss Croatia & Miss Brasil Read Zizek & Chomsky" the state selector has, using laughable and confused arguments, more exactly the totally unprovoked "doubt that of this project will be realized in full and on time", refused any possibility that this project could represent the state on the Sao Paolo Biennal. There is no further need to explain, if you only took a casual look at the project, what the misunderstanding between the artist and the state is. What we would particularly like to underscore here is that it is quite unfortunate, for both sides, when state "has" an artist wiser than itself. Kindest regards, Branimir Stojanovic & Milica Tomic Beograd, 8. 1. 2002 -- Original proposal: To: Noam Chomsky, philosopher Slavoj Zizek, philosopher Re: art project by Sanja Ivekovic «Miss Croatia and Miss Brazil Read Zizek and Chomsky» to be presented at 25th Sao Paolo Biennial (March 23 - June 2, 2002) CONTEXT OF THE PROJECT At the forthcoming Sao Paolo Biennal of Contemporary Art that is happening this year under the theme «Metropolitan Iconographies» and among the artists that are selected by national curators I will be representing Croatia. For this purpose I would kindly ask you for your collaboration.. Namely, regarding the main theme of the Biennal, I conceived the video-installation entitled "Miss Croatia and Miss Brasil Read Zizek and Chomsky".The project has been enthusiastically supported by Alfons Hug, the chief curator of Sao Paolo Biennal. ABOUT THE ARTIST I am a visual artist, born in Zagreb, Croatia where I teach at The Women's Studies in Zagreb. I have been involved in the Anti-war Campain in Croatia (Arkzin) and was a founding memeber of several local NGOs. Her art production has spanned a range of media such as video, performance, photography and installations. In my artistic practice I always address different aspects of social reality, with a special concern as to the impact of the mass-media in the process of construction of public opinion. I do not consider the area of art as autonomous and neutral, but indeed as a social practice which constructs our idea of reality. In that sense, all of my works are explicitly (gender)sensitive, as well as critical towards various social phenomena. ABOUT THE PROJECT Conceiving her Sao Paolo project I was fully aware of the fact that to exhibit at a big and important international exhibition such as the Biennal, means to appear in the function of national representation, where the organizing principle can be compared to other kinds of national representation, for example to the Miss World selection. On the other side, in recent times such exhibitions attract remarcable attention from the media and they basically function in much the same way as show-business. Aiming to address and to question stereotypes such as femininity, spectacle, national representation, as well as to stress the fact that contemporary visual culture (including art) cannot avoid the rules of consumer society and global power structure, I decided to produce two video tapes of Miss Croatia and Miss Brasil reading texts written by two contemporary philosophers which she admire greatly. Her decision to select these two philosophers is based not only on their world fame but also on the fact that both philosophers are well known for their analitical and highly critical writings on contemporary consumerism, i.e. on the notion of spectacle characteristic to consumer society.For example, after the attack on WTC, Zizek and Chomsky immediately published a brilliant analysis of its causes and possible consequences. For the purpose of presenting the original art work for Sao Paolo Biennal (to be shown as a video-installation consisting of two simultaneous video projections) I would kindly ask you to produce a short text which would be written for this purpose. We would especiallybe interested in working with texts that deal with subjects such as the culture of resistance, globalization, i.e. politics and present everyday life. THE PRODUCTION & SCHEDULE I am fully aware that this is a terribly late call. We would be very grateful to receive the texts in about a week or so. I would like to infom you that , miss Rajna Raguz and miss Sandisleia Guiterrez have both already accepted the proposal to take part in this project.According to my concept the shooting of the videos will take place on several locations in Zagreb and Sao Paolo where they will be reading the texts addressing the camera directly. Miss Croatia and miss Brazil will be reading in their native language Croatian and Portuguese and in English.The duration of each video (edited) will be around 15 min.The schedule for the shooting of the videos is planned for the 11, 12, 13. of January (Zagreb) and the 16, 17, 18. of February (Sao Paolo). I am are very much looking forward to your collaboration in this project. Again, we would like to apologize for this haste. Thank you in advance, Sincerely Sanja Ivekovic, artist # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net