[aha] Expanded Box - Curatorial Statement

Sat Jan 31 16:13:05 CET 2009

Auguro al prezioso fiore di Domenico che matura sotto la neve ogni possibilità di vita e di maturazione. Quando esso sbocciasse, la soddisfazione di vederlo nascere varrebbe bene un po' di retorica e di ingenuità, che nessuno, se non qualche miserabile cinico, potrebbe rimproverargli.

Ho però i miei dubbi che quel fiore vedrà mai la vita, perché non vedo, fra i nutrimenti che gli vengono somministrati, il banale, volgare ma potente concime del rapporto con i movimenti che praticano la ribellione nella società, e non solo nell'arte. Richiamo scontato (credo) in una lista come questa, ma necessario visto che non ne trovo traccia nello scritto di Domenico. Le attività espressive dell'ultimo Novecento e oltre si nutrono (a mio modesto parere) tanto delle intuizioni e delle elaborazioni del gigante Duchamp quanto della conclusione dello stracitato (e poco meditato) saggio di Walter Benjamin sull'opera d'arte etc. etc., a cui va applicata naturalmente un po' di revisione terminologica:

"La sua [dell'umanità] autoestraniazione ha raggiunto un grado che le permette di vivere il proprio annientamento come un godimento estetico di prim'ordine. Questo è il senso dell'estetizzazione della politica che il fascismo persegue. Il comunismo gli risponde con la politicizzazione dell'arte."

gadda

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>From      : aha-bounces at ecn.org
To          : "Aha net culture" aha at ecn.org
Cc          : 
Date      : Sat, 31 Jan 2009 14:13:34 +0100
Subject : [aha] Expanded Box - Curatorial Statement

> Expanded Box - Caring for an Expanded Conception of Art
> Domenico Quaranta
> 
> [MORE INFOS AT: http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/ARCO2009.html]
> 
> In the vast, variegated panorama of contemporary artistic  
> experimentation there are various practices germinating that find it  
> difficult to carve a niche for themselves in the official discourse  
> and channels, despite the undeniable appeal they possess. The thing  
> that makes them so precious, and as delicate as a flower growing under  
> the snow, is not the fact that they use the "new media", because  
> everyone uses the media - and now they are anything but new. What  
> makes them so special is the fact that like the aforementioned flower,  
> they contain a new strength, and a new promise. The strength is that  
> of those who go about their lives without a thought for the rules that  
> govern the world they live in, and who create the conditions that  
> enable them to live, successfully, in a radically altered context; the  
> promise regards this radical transformation.
> 
> Everyone in the contemporary art field knows perfectly well that the  
> context in which artists operate today was by and large established  
> during the 20th century by Marcel Duchamp, and given structure and  
> supported by a renewed museum and market system. According to this  
> model, art no longer consists in the masterful implementation of a  
> technique (painting, sculpture, music or writing) to present a world  
> (the so-called "real" world, the unconscious world of the Surrealists,  
> etc.). Anything can be art, if given a specific discourse and a  
> specific conception, and if conveyed by means of a specific context.  
> The aura of a work of art, which may be lost and found time and again,  
> is now attributed by means of a precise process of consecration, which  
> takes place on the market and in the museums. Without venturing into  
> value judgements, it will suffice to consider the duration of this  
> model to understand that what comes into being within it now is pure  
> academicism. Murakami is to Duchamp and Warhol as Bouguerau is to  
> Poussin and David. The gradual, unstoppable transition to the  
> information society has radically challenged this model, nurtured in  
> the bosom of the industrial society, but has not succeeded in  
> destroying it altogether. It lives on as an act of faith, a consensual  
> hallucination, a superstition boosted by the fear of what is to come.  
> It survives, and continues to produce masterpieces, basking in the  
> splendour which characterizes all periods of decadence.
> 
> The new world is there, just round the corner - or, to return to the  
> cutesy flower metaphor - under the snow. It is in the art that exists  
> outside the confines of the art world, rejecting the "contextual  
> definition" of Duchampian origin which seems to persist, as Joline  
> Blais and Jon Ippolito wrote in their book At the Edge of Art, purely  
> by inertia; it is in the art that seeks out public space, media space,  
> biotechnology labs and the world of information, communications and e- 
> commerce as its operative environment; it is in the art that draws on  
> other practices and other specific fields of knowledge, to a point  
> where at times it has problems seeing itself (and being seen) as art;  
> it is in the art that enthusiastically embraces technological  
> reproducibility, the variability of data and the fluidity of  
> information, abandoning - and radically challenging - the status of  
> precious fetish, and it is in the art that is open to interaction with  
> the spectator, that forges and develops relationships, that breaks  
> down the wall which interrupts and conditions our mental and physical  
> dialogue with a work.
> 
> This art exists, and it is at once strong and delicate, timid and  
> aggressive, marginal and supreme. It is entrenched in the  
> contradictions of all revolutions: it rebels against a world, but  
> needs the cares of that world to resist. It has tried to escape, to  
> open up new channels, but in the end it will succeed in changing our  
> idea of art, defeating the academicism and opening the way to the  
> future by means of dialogue and mediation. A future, which as the  
> novelist William Gibson said, is already here, just badly distributed.
> 
> The historic function of Expanded Box, the last embodiment of an  
> enduring attention Arco devoted to new media and languages, is  
> precisely that of cultivating and redistributing the future, and  
> supporting an ?expanded? definition of art. In the last ten years, and  
> through different programs, Arco has done exactly that, hosting and  
> offering market opportunities to a growing number of galleries that  
> take up this challenge, at their own risk. When you see this compact  
> block of eight galleries that offer their space to monographic  
> projects - often decidedly ambitious - you could be forgiven for  
> thinking that Expanded Box is one of those typical cultural  
> initiatives increasingly staged on occasion of contemporary art fairs,  
> with the idea of accompanying the dialogue and exchanges between  
> galleries and collectors, but without attempting to compete with them.  
> This is not the case.
> 
> Expanded Box, today, is the place where Leo Castelli would go to sell  
> and Alfred H. Barr would go to buy. I am aware that this might sound  
> rhetorical, and possibly a little ingenuous, but I cannot find a non- 
> rhetorical way to say that there, more than anywhere else, the seeds  
> of an evolution are germinating. They rest, well protected, in the  
> machines of Lawrence Malstaf and the interactive environmental  
> installations by Pors & Rao; in the sound installations by Manas and  
> Moori and Thomson & Craighead; in the exploration of the dividing line  
> between matter and the dematerialization of the media undertaken by  
> the Korean Kim Jongku, and in John Gerrard´s 3D animations. They  
> reproduce at the speed of a virus in the works of Joan Leandre, who  
> upends the hyperreal interfaces that filter our rapport with reality,  
> while they lurk in UBERMORGEN.COM´s media hacking activities, which  
> uses low-tech tools to bring the giants of e-commerce to their knees.
> 
> For ten years Expanded Box has invested in this new current, the  
> novelty of which, we should reiterate, lies not so much in the media  
> that these works use, but in the culture they reflect and in the idea  
> of art that they open the way for.
> 
> 
> ---
> 
> Domenico Quaranta
> 
> mob. +39 340 2392478
> email. qrndnc at yahoo.it
> home. vicolo San Giorgio 18 - 25122 brescia (BS)
> web. http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/
> 
> "Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Human beings are  
> incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful  
> beyond imagination." Albert Einstein
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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