Call for art the 1st International Roaming Biennial of Tehran

Urban Jealousy
the 1st International Roaming Biennial of Tehran
30th May - 6th July 2008
Curated by Serhat koksal and Amirali Ghasemi

Download the Application in WORD documents here (Choose Your Langugae)
Farsi, French, English and Turkish

Dead line: Monday 21st of April 2008

The theme of this biennial is URBAN JEALOUSY. A Jalousie * (“jealousy” in French) is a window that one can see through but not be seen; barriers that allow us to observe the world without being invited to the table. Iranian artists are given an understanding of what goes on in the world without being offered a single opportunity to communicate their thoughts—outside of our very own jalousie window: a rigid ethnic frame within an extremely politicized context.

Of all the huge urban areas around the world, Tehran stands out as a different kind of Megalopolis. It boasts one of the most dynamic art scenes in the Middle East even as the city itself deals with a rudimentary public transport system, an exploding population crisis, and an ever-increasing sprawl of mass housing; An unsightly city of experimental architecture that swallows entire villages and towns without offering them any sort of public services.

Despite its complicated urban situation—which according to experts has already spiraled out of control—artists’ societies in Tehran continue to hold numerous biennials in semi-tribal fashion. A great number of these events are government-sponsored projects whose outlook and also their premises can shift 180 degrees from one year to the next. Each community has its own set of ceremonies, as a result of which, any sense of solidarity among the artists is lost.

The Tehran Visual Arts Festival, The Calligraphy Biennial, The Sculpture Biennial, The Cartoon Biennial, The Painting Biennial of the Islamic World, The Graphic Design Biennial, The Children’s Books Illustration Biennial, The Painting Biennial, The Poster Biennial, The Poster Biennial of the Islamic World… the list is endless.

Although the legendary "TEHRAN BIENNIAL" goes back 50 years, not a single one of the above-mentioned events can be considered a biennial by prevailing and accepted international standards". An arts society recently published a call to boycott the upcoming Painting Biennial in order to demand a professionally curated exhibition, protesting the open call process and a “jury” they deemed unacceptable.

It seems impossible to have a proper Tehran biennial in Tehran, so our sprawling city and its elitist art scene remain excluded from the highly competitive art market in the region despite being surrounded from all sides by lucrative biennials and auctions. We may have great artists living and working in Iran, but we don’t have a chance to share the profits.

Tehran, as one may suppose, does not seem interested in presenting itself as a desirable destination for cultural tourism, by playing it ‘cool’ like other global cities, or scramble to be hip by coughing up the membership dues to be in the international art market.

So, to jumpstart the process, and after a long discussion with my friend, Serhat Koksal — a critic of the global biennialization process — we decided to curate a ‘mini’, on the move, Tehran biennial. To not only stop complaining about the current situation but to benefit from the advantages of it. An independent, low- budget, traveling exhibition which can be presented almost anywhere. We will travel like nomads, carrying artwork, objects, texts, and whatever, in a package no bigger than a medium-sized suitcase, preferably weighing less than 20 Kg., so it can be carried on any cheap flight.

Urban Jealousy will end its journey in May 2010,but Tehran’s Roaming Biennial will carry on.Feb 2008

I don't know what else to do with myself!*

I don't know what else to do with myself!*
9. December. 2006
Saturday / AK28
Krukmakargatan 28, Stockholm

Program
Video Screening 20:00
Artist Talk: 21:00
After Party: 22:00

artists:
david blandy (uk),
selim birsel (Belgium),
amirali ghasemi (iran),
unni gjertsen (norway),
tsui kuang-yu (taiwan),
adnan yildiz(turkey)

Curated by esther lu and adnan yildiz

Esther Lu and Adnan Yildiz invite us to a discussion around the
role-position of artist today in reference to the changing structures
of contemporary art. Today, artists are traveling a lot due to
residencies, biennials, grandiose exhibitions and etc. And they do not
like to be involved into these processes as "tourists" but they are
also somehow tourists in this game… In relation to their research in
Stockholm, Yildiz and Lu select inspirational videos in order to
trigger a discussion around how artist
deconstruct-fictionalize
-establish-reproduce him/herself in/through
their works in this given traveling context. The curators introduce
the concept of 'universal traveler' and contextualize the issue around
the hot topics like ''new-internationalism", "mobile identities", "art
market-ing" and "globalization-alism".

AK28 is the venue of this show for its identity as being an artist-run space.
Supported by Cultural Division, Taipei Mission in Sweden

• a title of a song by white stripes is transformed.
• video screening is also the premiere of S.G.F.S. (survival guide for
stockholm), a research based curatorial project by Adnan Yildiz
Wednesday December 6, 2006 - 10:10am (PST) Edit | Delete | Permane

amirali and adnan in the same project, exociti at september in İstanbul!

adnan yıldız / a very beautiful miracle



exociti

Any updates? Here are some!

Does any one know anything about the project which Clio, Paz & Cristiana organized in Germany? If the answer is yes please share it with us in the blog!
the blog is collecting dust & I'm really sad about that, so I'm trying to break this silence with a friendly post which don't look like copy & pasting into a massage board!!

About a month ago I had a one week trip to Istanbul where I met our good friend Adnan which was a real pleasure & we talked about future collaborations & projects one of them is called exocity in early sepia 2006, which you can check it here.

You may all heard about my Deeper depression project its was on in Tehran in four different venues from June 23 to July 5, 2006. and yes It was so crazy! 247 participants, 4 openings, 2 weeks! & Cedric also gave us the pleasure of a contribution in Tehran university's art gallery. The exhibition had some other events including a press conference & some artist talks.
It was a real low budget exhibition, parkingallery spent 1200$ for all of the costs & fees from printing to transportation & etc. & both 2 sponsors also spend a little money; 300$ on printing the international participants' artworks & 200$ a small poem/flash fiction book.
I'll update the website of the exhibition very soon then I'll announce it here.

That's all for now

SALA vs. BARNEY

Sala as an antidote for Barney


The lines you are about to read are stones carefully laid down for you. In order to start sliding through the following paragraphs, my (quite rampant) request –with a Zizekian enfant terrible attitude- from the reader is for him to walk slowly on this stony road –with patience. Because both Matthew Barney and Sala demand this from us with their contents and claims. Those who want to do so, might go on and change the channel to continue with structuralist readings of Star Wars. Today in cinema our interest (at least my interest) centres on escape -break from the discourse rather than structure. All this is meaningful –again- within the language problematic. Finally, if language is a structure, we were doomed to be imprisoned here.


EPISODE I –The Fall of the Truth


In this worldliness that we are lost, we hold on to certain piece-islands that bring us together with light and meaning in inter-times. These pieces in a sense work as ‘representation tools of the world’ and show us how truth disappears from illusionary perspectives. Everything up to here is from Paul Virilio. Among the pieces that we hold on to, the phenomenon of Matthew Barney that has been bedazzling us for years has a distinctive place. If understanding today’s world / art is to approach art as a language, then it is essential to deal with the aesthetics that Barney offers. Barney’s ‘balance of horror’ can in a sense be understood with visual alphabets that create their own codes within and that are
provided with transitions between past, present and future. At this stage, when we evaluate editing in films, we realize the impossibility of solving Barney’s language without getting lost in his strategies. This is somewhat like not being able to beat Kasparov without playing chess. As Paul Virilio readers are
familiar with, the question of the aesthetics of extinction of reality in image empires and the acceleration of truth is very related to our situation. It is at this point that Barney’s works become meaningful. The basic area that the artist works to create a unique cinema combining two distinct traditions such as
sculpture and performance is the cultural metamorphosis that the body produces while becoming physical. In other words, the forms of meaning and culture that the body produces as a physical reality. At this point, Deleuze’s help is inevitable. The operation and form of the society of control and its fictitious nature and operation are created through ritual and the contemporality of that which becomes ritual. Barney produces films that can be read both with Virilio’s and Deleuze’s works and he screens them not only in galleries and museums but also movie theaters. His professionalism that also includes solving production and PR problems shows also how much he knows about the system. This is a
situation similar to Fight Club’s box office success.


EPISODE II – The Ressurection of Truth


Anri Sala, born in Tiran, is a young artist who lives in Berlin. In his works, mainly videos, we can see that movement slows down, the image approximates painting and there is almost no camera movement. Through the details that emerge as we watch and visual awarness, Sala follows the path of that which ‘appears.’ Anri Sala carries within his works the concept of existence that renders possible the confrontation of things in real sense –that a good Heidegger reader will remember as (Verlassenheit) or (Geworfenheit), and he insists on telling ‘the end’ without showing it. If we consider the forms of existence that emerge from within life and remind us of ‘finity’ which is the basis of Heidegger’s philosophy, Sala’s photograph, “no baragan! no cry!” (2002), becomes very meaningful. A white horse left on a metal cylinder is similar to an ordinary mythical scene, but very real at the same time. On a roof, in the blueness of the sky, it is both fiction and reality. Sala’s choice of editing and atmospheres are the areas where his works ‘twist.’ Sala is in a sense an antidote because he prefers the characters that clash with ‘the creature that is towards death’ in Heidegger’s sense. He awakens what Barney codes as plastic reality, the world that slides from a plane of science fiction to a plane of knowledge-fictional with ‘the reality of death.’ From the sleep of speed. This fracture is actually a darkness that cuts the dazzling light of Barney!


EPISODE III – Who wins?


Barney and Sala can be considered together with their works that feed on sculpture and performance and stratify through the nature of speed-movement of image. This exercise will give us many clues on the whereabouts of future cinema. The effect that Barney creates by using a dystopian montage which I call ‘New-Nightmare-ism’ clashes with Sala as its antidote while he plasticizes Barney and brings to world a form of abstraction through pleasure. Actually the car that moves from city A towards the one that moves from city B first clash, then are reborn in a Spinoza-like imagination of physicality. For the poison and its antidote, to go back to the source of desire, to flow, look for the next encounter as they domesticate language.


Finally, if cinema is to move beyond the non-linear and collage montage that it deals with for the last ten years, the resurrection of the story is a must for a new language of cinema. The condition of both of them to be obsessed with sculpture is the evidence; the cinematic element as an elevated object will always and inevitably win. The body lives, the language remembers.

Deep Depression deadline

Deep Depression deadline Extended for international participants!
Deeper Deepression is a Group Contemporary Art Practice by parkingallery which will launch in Summer 2006.
History: In fall 2003 parkingallery published a call of entry for Deep Depression Project for the 1st time in these categories : Video installation, Audio installation, Performance, Photography & Typography; and 43 Iranian & international artists joined our project which was on view in Feb 2004 In Tehran in two galleries in Tehran. You can check the previous exhibition's website here: .
Click here to see the previous exhibition's website!
All artists from all over the world can participate in this project for free.This time we will have a selection committee to select the artworks for the upcoming exhibition in June 2006.The deadline for the applications is May 25, 2006.

Download the English Regulations/Enrty Form here: Microsoft word and PDF versions.
Curator: Amirali Ghasemi
Poster designer: Farhad Fozouni

I'm realy asking for your help to send this to all of your artists how may be interested in this project.
Thank you in advance
amirali

ETHNIC MARKETING in Tehran

ETHNIC MARKETING
Tracing the Limits of Artworld Internationalism
Contemporary Art Exhibition


Artspace: 13 Vanak Street & Azad Gallery, 41 Salmas Square
Conference and Screening: Shahid Avini Auditorium, University of TehranTehran, 14th – 27th of April 2006.

This project raises the question of what is expected or demanded of an artist who attempts to penetrate the “international art circuit”. What does the European market, in particular, wish to buy, and why does it wish to do so. It is now plain to see that the West is not a mere observer of globalized cultural flows, but a consumer playing a decisive role. Just as any other demanding client, it actively defines the supply. Which strategies might be useful when facing such hegemonic structures? This theme was addressed at curator Tirdad Zolghadr’s 2004 exhibition “Ethnic Marketing: Art, Globalization and Intercultural Supply and Demand” (curated with M. Anderfuhren), and is now revisited in Tehran.

The event includes:

• April 14th, 4 PM: opening of group exhibition with seven artists at 13, Vanak Street: Shirin Aliabadi, Bilal Khbeiz, Farhad Moshiri, Erkan Özgen, Sener Özmen, Natascha Sadr-Haghighian
• April 14th, 6 PM: opening of group exhibition with eleven artists at Azad Gallery: Atlas Group, Ursula Biemann, David Blandy, Jakup Ferri, Shahab Fotouhi, Jens Haaning, IRWIN, San Keller, Ahmet Ögüt, Sener Özmen, Michael Snow, Peter Stoffel
• April 18th, 5:30 PM: film screening at Shahid Avini Auditorium, Tehran University, with films by: Fikret Atay, COM & COM, Dirk Herzog, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Sener Özmen, Space Campaign, Hito Steyerl, Erik van Lieshout
• April 19th, 4 PM: conference with Giovanni Carmine, San Keller, Farhad Moshiri, Natascha Sadr Hagighian, Solmaz Shahbazi & Tirdad Zolghadr.
• a catalogue in Farsi and in English
  
• student workshops (on invitation only)