FOUND IN TRANSLATION – ART PERFORMANCE BY DORA GARCÍA
The European Kunsthalle has invited the artist Dora García to bring the durational performance The Messenger to Vienna. A performer (The Messenger) receives an audio message that she/he has to memorize. The only information the messenger is given is that the message is composed in a language spoken by one of the many linguistic communities calling Vienna their home. She/he is neither able to understand the message nor capable of identifying the language. The messenger’s task is to find a person who speaks the language and deciphers the message’s meaning.
García’s durational performances often build on and investigate intra-relational constellations between audience, work and place, giving ample agency and authorship to the performer who carries out the commissioned task.
The Messenger is not primarily a search for the meaning of the message, nor do translation programs help the performer to fulfil the task. Rather, a personal interaction between the messenger and the Viennese community, speaking the language of the message is necessary to achieve meaning and significance.
As the artist explains, the deciphering of the message and the explorations this requires are meant to take place in what she calls “low-intensity mode”: integrated into the performer’s everyday life, activities, errands, interests, curiosity, strolls and rides through the city.
For The Messenger Vienna, the performer reports about his inquiries in a day-by-day online diary (read here). The diary allows to share observations through text and photos, and to report back on personal encounters. The diary entries also serve as an interface to a wider public where we, as readers, enter the work. As a place on its own, it speaks via the messenger’s thoughts and statements of Vienna’s social, historical and current conditions, its citizens, narratives and codes as well as cultural gaps.
The Messenger first took place in Brussels in 2002 and has since been realized in ten other cities: Paris (2006), Barcelona (2006), Metz (2008), Hong Kong (2008), Copenhagen (2008), Nice (2010), Toulouse (2010), Guadalajara (2010), London (2015), Chicago (2017).
Related Topics
May interest you
SOMXS PODEMX - VIDEO PERFORMANCE BY PONCILÍ CREACIÓN FOR EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO
Known for their fantastical and improvisational approach to puppetry, Poncilí Creación is an art collective composed of identical twin brothers Pablo and Efrain Del Hierro who describe their practice as “speculative alchemy.” For their newly commissioned performance Somxs Podemx, the group takes to the streets for a durational progression across the neighborhoods of San Juan, the duo’s hometown and where they have been in quarantine during the global pandemic.
ABSENCE/PRESENCE: LATINX AND LATIN AMERICAN ARTISTS IN DIALOGUE AT ANOTHER SPACE NEW YORK
Guest curated by independent curator and art historian Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and produced by ANOTHER SPACE, the exhibition examines the dynamics of exclusion and violence affecting Latinx and Latin Americans, as well as artists’ strategies to embody justice and creative and personal freedom. Featuring artists from twelve different countries, diverse ethnicities, and multiple generations in a conversation around three intersecting themes: affectivity, justice and self/being
OPEN CALL - SEND YOUR ARTWORK INTO OUTER SPACE
As humanity expands into the solar system, so will art. Moon Gallery proposes to send a collection of ideas into space for future generations to hold onto. Each idea has a big role to serve as a seed of a new culture, but they are small enough to fit into one-cubic-centimeter space travel casing. This is a symbolic gesture, offering an opportunity to discuss what art and culture mean to us at the beginning of the multi-planetary epoch of humanity, and presenting a remote cache of artifacts for future humans to discover and enjoy. Application deadline: August 8th, 2021.
DOCUMENTA FIFTEEN AND IT’S COMMITMENT TO SUSTAINABILITY
documenta fifteen becomes part of the network for sustainable material circulation. On July 23 and 24, 2021, documenta fifteen hosted a symposium on material circulation within the arts and cultural sector. The temporary nature of art exhibitions results in the short-term implementation of resources, which is why documenta fifteen has become involved in the subject of sustainable material distribution.
DATING APPS AND ARMED CONFLICT - INÉS MOLDAVSKY EXHIBITS AT THE GALERIA MUNICIPAL DO PORTO
Curated by Guilherme Blanc, Wall is the result of an invitation made to the Argentinian-Israeli artist Inés Moldavsky to revisit and expand, in an installation context, her film The Men Behind the Wall, Golden Bear winner at the Berlinale in 2018. In this filmic work a dating app is used to create a set of conversations and personal meetings with Palestinian men living in the Gaza strip and the West Bank.
TO THE BIENNALE’S QUESTION “HOW WILL WE LIVE TOGETHER?” THE DANISH ANSWER WITH “CONNECTEDNESS”
Con-nect-ed-ness: The Danish Pavilion at the 17th International Venice Architecture Biennale focuses on people’s connection with each other and with nature, in a total installation consisting of a giant cyclic system of water collected locally in Venice.
LEME NFT: GALERIA LEME LAUNCHES PROJECT TO COMMERCIALIZE NFT ART
Over more than 15 years of history, Galeria Leme has always aimed to promote contemporary art in its multiple scopes, understanding the complexity and constant change that are part of it. It is in this sense that, in 2021, the gallery initiates Leme NFT, a project conceived to produce, promote and commercialize art in NFT format, as well as to develop this still-rising market. The project was launched last Monday, August 16th and its English version can be accessed on their website.
ANSWERS TO A TIME: MARÍA TERESA HINCAPIÉ 1987- 2006
Carried out by Casas Riegner in collaboration with the 1Mira Madrid gallery, and curated by Paula Bossa, Respuestas a una época: María Teresa Hincapié 1987- 2006 (Answers to a time) is the first posthumous exhibition held in Colombia that is dedicated to the artistic practice of one of the pioneers of performance in Latin America.
“VANISHING POINT” – BIENALSUR’S EXHIBITION EXPLORES MIGRATORY ISSUES
BIENALSUR, the contemporary art international biennial that was crafted in the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, in Argentina, has recently disembarked with “Punto de Fuga” (Vanishing Point), a collective exhibition set in another university, the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, on Thursday, September 9th. The display features artists from countries as diverse as Argentina, Germany, Ecuador, Iran and Switzerland, and is set in the university’s Art Center.
TO THE SOUTH OF THE SOUTH - BIENALSUR EXHIBITION IN MÁLAGA
In its third edition, BIENALSUR, icon of the resistance and resilience of art in times of pandemic, travels to La Térmica as the first venue in Spain in 2021. The project shows invisibilized realities through the work of Latin American artists Voluspa Jarpa, Agustina Woodgate, Graciela Sacco, and Paola Monzillo
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME ON PERFORMANCE ART ARGENTINA
Argentina Performance Art, with the support of the Centro Cultural Recoleta, organizes two days of debate, exchange and collective reflection on Argentine Performance Art. This discipline has seen exponential growth, nationally and internationally, both in its visibility and in its circulation and in its impact on the media in recent years. This is why Argentina Performance Art considers it essential to build room for reflection around this practice, focusing on the historicity of the discipline and its incidence today.
