Oro maldito

Alejandro Vidal at Kunstverein Medienturm, Graz , Austria, Season start September 2011

Alejandro Vidal, A uncontrollable accumulation of unintended consequences
set of digital c-print, 30 x 40 cm each, 2011

HAUNTINGS – GHOST BOX MEDIA

Secret and uncanny presence in media, art and pop

EXHIBITION September 25th – December 17th 2011

Opening 24.9.2011, 11am

Artists:

Yto Barrada, BIT Bureau of Inverse Technology, Minerva Cuevas, Leif Elggren, Michael Esposito & Carl Michael Von Hausswolff, Harappian Night Recordings, Julian House, Mike Kelley / Scanner, Jakob Kolding, Claudia Larcher, Moon Wiring Club, Baron Mordant, The Otolith Group, Walid Raad, Dr. Konstantin Raudive, Markus Schinwald, Zineb Sedira, Alejandro Vidal, Apichatpong Weerasethakul

The open, electronic archives of our time radicalise this suspicion even further, as there is hardly a media artefact left that isn’t haunted by a ghost of the past. 

What are the characteristics of this secret presence or uncanny absence in contemporary art? How is the facticity of the simulacrum, the “presence of a ghost” (Jacques Derrida) manifested? 

What undead beings haunt an art whose main characteristic is its claim to contemporaneity? What “sinister resonances” (David Toop) are currently at work here?

Based on a small cross-section of a wide range of media, visitors can experience all the things that continue to pursue and haunt us in today’s art forms.

 Curated by Thomas Edlinger and Christian Höller

HAUNTINGS – SONIC SPECTRES

Ghosts, shadows and revenants in today's music

CONCERT SERIES / 06.10-08.10.2011 / generalmusikdirektion

Artists:

Harappian Night Recordings, Demdike Stare, Leyland Kirby, Dopplereffekt, Vindicatrix, Shackleton

For around five years now, the expansive field of music between Sampledelica and Dub Noir has been operating under the name of “Hauntology”. 

What these artists in this heterogeneous scene have in common is their work with ghostly echoes and vintage sounds from the past, sometimes interpreted as the projection of a lost future. 

Characteristically, they have a penchant for paranormal (media) phenomena, invoking their uncanny closeness in many different ways. 

In addition, they often play with effects of intimacy and distance and tap into pools of references from obscure film and television soundtracks. 

An exploration of music aesthetics, that has long since cast off its retro label.

HAUNTINGS – CINEMA

Hölle Hamburg (Peter Ott / Ted Gaier, 2008)

FILMSCREENING / 10.10.2011 / Cinema Hotel Mariahilf

Agitprop as a revenant grown savage, revolt and voodoo or the invocation of a past in the service of a future that deserves this name.

Talk following with Ted Gaier & Thomas Edlinger

Kunstverein Medienturm

Josefigasse 1, 8020 Graz

http://www.medienturm.at

Tue–Sat, 10 a.m.–1 p.m., Wed–Fri 3–6 p.m.

Special opening hours 25.9.–16.10.2011, Mi-So 10.30 a.m.–6 p.m.

Press conference 23.9.2011, 12 a.m.

Now my garden is gone at Galería Joan Prats until mid September

Now my garden is gone

artists

Aleksandra MIr

Perejaume

Carla Zaccagnini

Knut Asdam

Alejandro Vidal

GALERIA JOAN PRATS

Rambla de Caralunya, 54

08007 Barcelona Spain

www.galeriajoanprats.com

Alejandro Vidal, Paradise of exception, 2011, C-print 100 x 160 cm each

Alejandro Vidal, Paradise of exception, 2011, C-print, 100 x 160 cm each

Knut Asdam, Finally, 2006-2007, set of c-primt, 81 x 101 cm

Aleksandra Mir, The seduction of Galileo Galilei, 2011, C-Print, 124 x 186 cm

Perejaume, Les lletres i el dibuix, 2004, c-ptint, 185 x 144 cm

Carla Zaccagnini, E pur si muove, 2007, single channel DVD

Alejandro Vidal: Art/42/ Basel / Galeria Joan Prats: Hall 2.1 booth P6

     Alejandro Vidal , Paradise of exception, 2011,digital c-print, 100 x 160 cm




GALERIA JOAN PRATS
Art | 42 | Basel
Hall 2.1 Booth P6

Artists in Art | 42 | Basel

Knut Asdam
Erick Beltrán
Fernando Bryce
Cabello/Carceller
Carla Zaccagnini
Carles Congost
Enrique Martínez Celaya
Aleksandra Mir
Muntadas
Javier Peñafiel
Perejaume
Fernando Prats
Caio Reisewitz
Juliao Sarmento
Eulalia Valldosera
Alejandro Vidal
___________________________________________

More information: galeria@galeriajoanprats.com

Alejandro Vidal at IL CAOS in Venice, Italy Opening 3rd June

IL CAOS_#3 conflicts

JUNE 3rd – JULY 17th 2011

Isola di San Servolo, Venezia

Opening Friday 3rd June at 19.30

ARTISTS

Gabriele Basilico (Milan, 1944), Raffaella Crispino (Naples, 1979), Regina Josè Galindo (Guatemala, 1974), Kaarina Kaikkonen (Iisalmi – Finland – 1952)  Tigran Khachatryan (Yerevan – Armenia –, 1980), Piero Mottola (Caserta, 1967), Alejandro Vidal (Palma de Mallorca, 1972), Amir Yatziv (Karmiel – Israel‐, 1972).

Curated by Raffaele Gavarro

Information:

San Servolo Servizi in collaboration with the Province of Venice

Info: Tel. 041 2765001 – fax 041 2765402 –

www.sanservolo.provincia.venezia.it

IL CAOS is an exhibitory project promoted by Società San Servolo Servizi in collaboration with the Provincia di Venezia, carried out over the course of three years, with three exhibitions which each time consider themes essential to the life of our society: that of work in 2009, migration in 2010 and this year that of conflicts.

The trilogy is dedicated to Pier Paolo Pasolini and takes its title from the column which the poet wrote from the 6th of August, 1968, to the 24th January, 1974 in the weekly magazine “Tempo” and which followed an earlier theme which had been presented in the preceding column “Dialogues with Pasolini”, which the author and director had written for “Vie Nuove”. This represented a fundamental and complex moment both in the life of Paolini and Italian society. A profound crisis had begun with the new development of capitalism and the trauma of 1968 and Pasolini offered a deep and

illuminating opinion on the happenings of that time.

Naturally the nature of our times is much different, as are the events which mark it, but not withstanding this there are many similarities and analogous tensions which allow one to reflect on those pages and on those thoughts which Pasolini succinctly and bravely insisted on. For around twenty years now art has changed its approach to the world, choosing to concentrate on a comprehension of reality and of the reporting of the most complex and contradictory aspects of our society. Particularly in the last decade there has been a movement of its field of action from a more aesthetic dimension to a more ethical one, finding a new role and new function in our complex current environment. The trilogy Caos intends to be a witness to this state of art, confronting in an explicit manner social and ethical situations and themes, via the work of those artists who are working specifically in this field.

To support this condition, and also to demonstrate the differences with images of pure documentation or narration, each year we have presented a docu‐film, which has held the double function of opening a window directly onto reality , but also in order to mark the differences in terms of language and meaning with those of the works of the artists.

This year for the theme conflicts artists of International importance have been invited. From these artists an exhibition of extraordinary surprise and variations has been formed, which moves from Basilico’s photos of Beirut to Crispino’s strange images of the beaches of Tel Aviv, then to the powerful photos by Galindo and the spectacular installation by the Finnish artist Kaikkonen, continuing with the equally suggestive sound installation by Mottola. A journey which continues with the violence of the images by Vidal and the Armenian artist Khachatryan, ending with the surreal video work of a pretend battle (real war game) between a Nazi army and the Israeli army realized by Israeli artist Yatziv. There will also be a special and double homage to Fabio Mauri and through him to Pier Paolo Pasolini. The film “Intimità di Pasolini” of 2005 will be projected.

As a window on reality this year a short version of the particularly evocative docu‐film by Monica Maggioni “Ward 54” will be presented which tells the story of a ward in a military hospital in Washington D.C. ‐ Ward 54 – where ex‐marines are treated who have suffered mental disorders on return from missions.

With the exhibition a third catalogue will be published by Maretti Editore, which together with the preceding two will support the exhibitory experience of “IL CAOS

ALEJANDRO VIDAL AT QUAD, DERBY, UK

ALL THAT FITS: THE AESTHETICS OF JOURNALISM

QUAD  28th May - 31st July 2011  - Opening - Friday 27th May 6:00pm – late

Curated by Alfredo Cramerotti & Simon Sheikh.

QUAD / Market Place, Cathedral Quarter / Derby

DE1 3AS UK

T +44 (0)1332 285430

www.derbyquad.co.uk

Alejandro Vidal. Somewhere in a great country, 2010, series of 20 c-print, 30 x 40 cm 

ARTISTS

Sammy Baloji (DR Congo), Yael Bartana (Holland/Israel), Eric Baudelaire (France), Ursula Biemann (Switzerland), Ross Birrell (UK), Michael Blum (Canada/Israel), Broomberg and Chanarin (UK/South Africa), Abraham Cruzvillegas (Germany/Mexico), Anita Di Bianco (Germany/USA), Marcelo Exposito (Argentina/Spain), Douglas Fishbone (UK/USA), Zachary Formwalt (Holland/USA), Wynne Greenwood and K8 Hardy (USA), Tamar Guimaraes (Brazil/Denmark), Lamia Joreige (Lebanon), Graziela Kunsch (Brazil), Michael Takeo Magruder (UK/USA), Renzo Martens (Holland), Oliver Ressler (Austria), Katya Sander (Denmark), Slum-TV (Kenya), Hito Steyerl (Germany), Walid Raad/The Atlas Group (USA/Lebanon) and Alejandro Vidal (Spain).

Presenting seemingly incompatible components such as aesthetic experience and political activism; community events and private investigations, the exhibition All that Fits: The Aesthetics of Journalism provocatively advances the idea that art and journalism are not separate forms of communication, but rather two sides of a unique activity, the production and distribution of images and information. What the project brings to surface are the ways of communicating this nexus of imaging and informing, and the aesthetic principles used in such an ordering, in such acts of transmission. As aesthetic regimes, both journalism and artistic makes claims for the truth, albeit of a different kind. One is a coded system that speaks for the truth (or so it claims), the other a set of activities that questions itself at every step (or so it claims), thus making truth.

Whereas journalism provides a view on the world ‘out there,’ as it ‘really’ is, art often presents a view on the view, truth posited as acts of (self)reflection. All that Fits: The Aesthetics of Journalism will examine both as types of truth production, as systems of information that defines truth in terms of the visible: producing not only what can be seen, but also what can be imagined, and thus imaged. As such, the exhibition will revolve around the aesthetics of journalism, how images are produced and how they are produced to appear as truthful. Here, we start to get closer to the core of reality itself when we make our reality not a given, irreversible fact, but a possibility among many others.

Referring to the late work of Michel Foucault, the question of the truth-sayer will be examined: who can speak the truth, and does require certain types of speaking as well as certain subject positions? As single figures, both the reporter and the artist has throughout modernity been viewed as authentic voices and heroic figures. Simultaneously, they are constantly vilified as being complicit and corrupt. The artistic positions in the show generate a principal question: is it possible to work with aesthetics and informatics, to be both reflective and precise? To both employ documentary techniques and journalistic methods while remaining self-reflecting and critical on those means? Ultimately, the artist’s work here is not about delivering information but questioning it, reversing the tradition of both fields (art and journalism), to highlight both the aesthetic workings and trappings of reportage and the informational turn within current aesthetic production.

Artworks are presented in groups, juxtaposing different formats and approaches in dialogue with each other while each responding to the overall theme. This will take the form of a rotating display of works, figuring in different constellations that all revolve around the key questions of truth, images and information, while at the same time reflecting the rotation of the news cycle, albeit at a different, slowed down speed. This change of scenery and topicality will be made visible through changing exhibition design as well as the change of works according to three chapters: The Speaker, The Image and The Militant.

The Speaker (28th May-19th June 2011) concerns itself with a specific figure; the speaking subject or author, its figures of authority and figures of speech, as well as its framings of the real in terms of editorial processes and camera angles. How does this figure emerge through discourse, and what are its functions? What can be said and not said in order for a speaking subject to appear as real, as authentic, as authoritative and/or as truthful. What is implied in certain speech acts and subject positions, such as the figure of ‘the reporter’ and ‘the artist, as well as the ‘witness’ and the ‘source’?

The Image (22nd June-10th July 2011) examines how images are ideologically produced, through the framings and positionings of the above-mentioned categories, but also how counter-images can be created. Here, the very makings and politics of image production will be reflected, discussed and deconstructed, proposing an aesthetics of journalism and documentary as that which can get to the truth of the ideology of mass-media images, in opposition to their claim neutrality and pragmatism.

The Militant (13th-31st July 2011) continues the strand of counter-images and counter-information, but through the artistic employment of journalistic traits such as expose and research. However, the practices highlighted here often works instead of the media, and uncover what it does not, going where it does not go, and thus returns to some of reportage’s initial claims, that have been left behind in an increasingly commercial and corporate media industry.

A few views of the current exhibition at Travesia Cuatro in Madrid

     Alejandro Vidal 'Paradise of exception' 90 x 160 Cm each, digital c-print