International Art World and Transnational Artwork: Creative Presence in Rebecca Belmore’s Fountain at the Venice Biennale

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily H. Merson
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Art World ◽  
Transnational Politics ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Video Installation ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Venice Biennale ◽  
Visual Interface

Drawing from and contributing to the International Relations (IR) aesthetics literature, I analyse how Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore’s 2005 Venice Biennale performance-based video installation Fountain is an enactment of creative presence at an intersection of international and transnational politics. Belmore’s aesthetic method of engaging with water as a visual interface between the artist and viewer, by projecting the film of her performance onto a stream of falling water in the Canadian Pavilion exhibition, offers a method of understanding and transforming settler colonial power relations in world politics. I argue that Belmore’s artistic labour and knowledge production is an expression of Indigenous self-determination by discussing how Fountain is situated in relation with Indigenous peoples’ transnational land and waterway reclamations and cultural resurgences as well as the colonial context of the international art world dynamics of the Venice Biennale. My analysis of Belmore’s decolonial sensibility and political imagination with respect to water contributes to IR aesthetics debates by foregrounding the embodiment of knowledge production and performance artwork as a method of decolonisation.

scholarly journals Sun and Sea (Marina). A Trap for Conventions and the Audience

Menotyra ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vaidas Jauniškis
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Performance Art ◽  
Sharing Economy ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Art World ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Counter Culture ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Venice Biennale

The analysis of the opera-performance Sun and Sea (Marina), the winner of Venice Biennale 2019, shows how the contradictory traditions of opera and performance enrich each other and break numerous canons of the art world. Opera, which at the very birth of the genre was titled the most conventional and unnatural art, earned the top position in the social pyramid amongst the arts. Performance art represented counter-culture due to its naturalness and liveness. In their work, Lapelytė, Grainytė, and Barzdžiukaitė suggest playing with different contexts and different social aspects and questioning traditions of the arts. Opera changes due to a performative turn, interdisciplinarity, and revolutions in the opera world (Wilson and Glass Einstein on the Beach) due to the society of sharing economy, participatory theatre, social networks, and an experiential turn.

Art and Global South: “Playing Venice” at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB)

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuela Ciotti
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
South India ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
Global South ◽  
Art World ◽  
Cultural Form ◽  
Origin Identity ◽  
Global Art ◽  
Venice Biennale ◽  
New Location

AbstractThis article employs artifacts from the KMB’s “material culture” as a lens into this institution’s branding process and, within it, its interaction with the Venice Biennale. It analyzes larger questions about the career of the biennale cultural form as it re-territorializes in a new location that is added to the art world map “in progress.” Historically, geographical location has been crucial for many biennales in the Global South to articulate their origin, identity, and claims vis-à-vis the global art world. Moreover, biennale proliferation especially in the South has produced cartographic re-imaginings aiming to destabilize the “center-periphery” configuration of the art world map. The article shows that the KMB does not reiterate ideological standings put forward by Southern biennales but crafts its positionality on different grounds. These entail simultaneously anchoring the KMB to histories of circulation in and out of South India tracing back at least two millennia and strategically weaving a relation with the archetypical Venice Biennale in the present.

scholarly journals An unlikely partnership? New Zealand–South Korea bilateral cooperation and Antarctic order

Polar Record ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Flamm
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
South Korea ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Vested Interests ◽  
The Status ◽  
Bilateral Cooperation ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract While the Antarctic Treaty System intended to keep Antarctica an area of international cooperation and science free from militarisation and international conflict, the region has not been completely shielded from global power transitions, such as decolonisation and the end of the Cold War. Presently, emerging countries from Asia are increasingly willing to invest in polar infrastructure and science on the back of their growing influence in world politics. South Korea has also invested heavily in its Antarctic infrastructure and capabilities recently and has been identified as an actor with economic and political interests that are potentially challenging for the existing Antarctic order. This article first assesses the extent and performance of the growing bilateral cooperation between South Korea and one of its closest partners, New Zealand, a country with strong vested interests in the status quo order. How did the cooperation develop between these two actors with ostensibly diverging interests? This article finds that what may have been a friction–laden relationship, actually developed into a win-win partnership for both countries. The article then moves on to offer an explanation for how this productive relationship was made possible by utilising a mutual socialisation approach that explores socio-structural processes around status accommodation.

Re-presenting Genocide: The Canadian Museum of Human Rights and Settler Colonial Power

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rita Kaur Dhamoon
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Settler Societies ◽  
Forced Movement

AbstractIn settler societies like Canada, United States, and Australia, the bourgeoning discourse that frames colonial violence against Indigenous people as genocide has been controversial, specifically because there is much debate about the meaning and applicability of genocide. Through an analysis of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, this paper analyzes what is revealed about settler colonialism in the nexus of difficult knowledge, curatorial decisions, and political debates about the label of genocide. I specifically examine competing definitions of genocide, the primacy of the Holocaust, the regulatory role of the settler state, and the limits of a human rights framework. My argument is that genocide debates related to Indigenous experiences operationalize a range of governing techniques that extend settler colonialism, even as Indigenous peoples confront existing hegemonies. These techniques include: interpretative denial; promoting an Oppression Olympics and a politics of distancing; regulating difference through state-based recognition and interference; and depoliticizing claims that overshadow continuing practices of assimilation, extermination, criminalization, containment, and forced movement of Indigenous peoples. By pinpointing these techniques, this paper seeks to build on Indigenous critiques of colonialism, challenge settler national narratives of peaceful and lawful origins, and foster ways to build more just relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.

La fotografia live istant come dispositivo costruttivo di booty Looting di Wim Vanderkeybus.

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Arianna Novaga
Keyword(s):  
False Memories ◽  
Art World ◽  
The Real ◽  
Photographic Image ◽  
Dance Company ◽  
Susan Sontag ◽  
Live Music ◽  
The One ◽  
Venice Biennale

The Belgian theatre-dance company Ultima Vez – founded by the director and choreographer Wim Vandekeybus – presented Booty Looting in 2012, at the Venice Biennale Danza. On the stage, a complex and apparently disordered narrative rhapsody, brings into play complementary diegetic coefficients: while a story straddles the real and the imaginary, the dancers become consumed actors, the actors dance and live music fills the empty spaces. But the real beating heart of the show is the photographer, who is entrusted with the delicate task of deciphering the feverish dynamism of the scene to move the public's attention elsewhere, as if to give them a relaxing break from the chaos. The photographic image, taken and reported in real time on the screen at the bottom of the stage, freezes some salient moments of that convulsive movement, almost to break it down anatomically into parts of a 'muybridgian' conception. The photographer, always active during the representation, is an integral part of the story, becoming a performer himself so that his intervention determines the dramaturgical development of the plot. The visual quality of the scene is strongly enhanced by live photographic images, which are often attributable to known visual models. Booty looting literally means stealing what has already been the object of theft, exactly as it happens in the art world, according to the perspective of Vandekeybus. Photography is seen here as an instrument that on the one hand makes it useful to prove the reality of facts, but at the same time declares its ability to lie, to deform memory, to create false memories, to become misleading echoes of experiences actually lived. Between truth and deceit, the photographic image plunders the world and gives us the feeling of being able to know and know it in depth - as Susan Sontag teaches - but it is only a distorted memory that confuses and falsifies the real.

Applauders and authors: Notes on the profits and losses of audience engagement

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Purchase
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Collaborative Work ◽  
Art World ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Audience Engagement ◽  
Building Relationships ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Venice Biennale

Social practices, whether described as socially-engaged, participatory or community-based, share the potential to transform audience members into active participants in an artwork or project. However, the purpose of this public engagement is sometimes in conflict with the private experience of the viewer, constructing a complex relationship between audience, artist and gallery. Beginning by contextualizing the historic position of the audience in relation to the arts, the present article uses this as grounding to unpick elements of the dynamic which exist today. ‘The audience’ investigates the reported social benefits of engaging in the arts, questioning how evidence of these positive effects is reported and judged. This article exemplifies Marcelo Sánchez-Camus’ work with patients in palliative care and Spacemakers’ community-based projects as artworks intended to instigate positive social change. Further, ‘The artist’ explores the relationship between those facilitating these projects and their audience. By breaking down the term ‘audience’ into viewers, participants, collaborators and co-authors, one can use levels of agency to segment those involved and the differing experiences of their involvement. Petra Bauer’s long-term collaborative work with SCOT PEP is used to demonstrate how a group’s agency and stakes within an artwork can be enhanced by building relationships on equal terms. Finally, ‘The gallery’, uses the high-profile examples of Tate Group and Venice Biennale to demonstrate how the more powerful entities in the art world can misrepresent engagement and participation as quantitative markers of success or accessibility. This article ultimately aims to question what motivates the production of social practice and how these entities are important in constituting a successful process and outcome, for audience, artist and institute.

scholarly journals Heritales 2017 - Beyond the academia. Re-thinking Heritage trough cinema and others art forms

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Zozaya-Montes ◽  
Nicola Schiavottiello
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Positive Feedbacks ◽  
The Public ◽  
Intangible Heritage ◽  
Future Events ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University

The UNESCO World Heritage city of Évora (Portugal) hosted the second Heritales – International Heritage Film Festival in September 2017. In this edition the festival focused on current and past sustainable communities, selecting works that explored and problematized the relationship and coexistence of modernity and sustainability when applied to human groups and societies. The films presented the everyday life, knowledge, crafts and know-how of ordinary people highlighting the changes and challenges that the expansion of consumer-based economies, globalization and world politics have brought. As organizers, by focusing on sustainability in heritage context, we wanted to go beyond current preservation strategies of the tangible and intangible heritage, to promote a reflection on the “culture of sustainability” itself, looking at how sustainable ways-of-existence have characterized various communities and cultural practices worldwide. Since its first edition, the festival has been a space for the promotion of a critical understanding of cultural heritage, aimed to the broader public. By using emblematic historical places as stage, Heritales has challenged the mainstream cultural heritage scientific communication. Its proposal is to approach heritage’s issues through multiple types of media and artistic work such as films and documentaries but also cultural heritage’s games, exhibitions, theatre and performance, with talks and several communication strategies to facilitate the encounter between the authors and the public. Although the festival has received many positive feedbacks and the support of various entities such as the UNESCO Chair of the University of Évora (Portugal) and the FCT (Science and Technology Foundation, Portugal) it is still at its early stage of action. In this paper we would like to present the results of our experiment and analyse its concept and results, so that more collaborative and sustainable methodologies can also become a part of our plan of actionfor the organization of future events.

New terrains: ‘Northern Irish art’ in the wider world

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Declan Long
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Art World ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
Departure Point ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
Global Art ◽  
Venice Biennale ◽  
Irish Art

Chapter two asks how ‘Northern Irish art’ of the post-Troubles era might be critically approached and appraised in light of broader contemporary conditions. The relation of shifts in Northern Ireland’s art to wider developments in the global art world are addressed and the chapter discusses the ways in which artists from Northern Ireland have been positioned and presented internationally in the post-Troubles years. This chapter takes the 2005 exhibition of art from Northern Ireland at the Venice Biennale as the departure point for an extended examination of how the representation of ‘local’ concerns is shaped in relation to wider cultural and economic forces.

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