Vol.

3 Spring/Summer 2008 A quarterly publication of the Artist Pension Trust ®

Letter from the Editor

Creativity is 2. A New Kind of Performance

the crucible
of transfor-
mation and
possibility.
And inherent to creativity is invention and risk—
without which we would not have progress in science,
industry or society. This issue of APT Insight takes a
look at how artists have creatively approached per-
formance to transform the viewer’s experience of the
world through interactive, real-time events. Global
access through the Worldwide Web has resulted in a
virtual explosion of innovation in the field. The merging
of film, video and performance with refashioned ideas
about painting and sculpture has given way to inter-
disciplinary practices that might nearly characterize a
new class of art. It is an exciting time.
in China?
11. Discipline Without Restraint
The APT Web Gallery will launch in August with
our first commission exhibition curated by Miki
Garcia, currently the director of the Santa Barbara
22. Experiencing Performance Art
in India
Contemporary Arts Forum in California. Comprised
exclusively of work from the APT Collection, this
world-class exhibition is the first of many that will
31. Time to Play?
showcase APT artists and their works.
34. Performance:
We have a viewpoint piece on Douglas Fogle’s “Life
on Mars”, the 55th Carnegie International, and
When the Result Ceases to be Important
an opinion page that invites artists and curator/
facilitator Paco Barragán to share their thoughts on 38. Life on Mars
the ubiquitous art fair.
48. Insight/Art Fair
Our next issue welcomes our APT Los Angeles
Director, Irene Tsatsos, as our guest Associate Editor,
who will bring a fresh perspective from the Pacific
Rim and around the world.
Finally, watch for the new APT Blog, where leading
topics will begin flowing in September.
Yours sincerely,

Festivals centered on performance are showing up

Pamela Auchincloss _ Editor, APT Insight
everywhere—PERFORMA in New York City, Khoj Art
Center’s first performance event KhojLive08 in New
Delhi, Verbo Festival in São Paulo and Momentum
in Brussels, to name only a few. APT has taken a Publisher

supportive role by inviting a number of performance APT Holding Worldwide Inc. (BVI)
artists from around the world to participate in the
Editor
APT program. Artist Shaun El C. Leonardo’s piece on
Pamela Auchincloss
his performative intervention in Mexico’s lucha libre
wrestling world, Defne Ayas’s article “A New Kind of
Creative Director
Performance in China?” and Beth Citron’s contribution Jin Jung
on the KhojLive08 festival point to how remarkably
international performance has become. Managing Editor

Michelle Mounts

Contributing Writers

Pamela Auchincloss, Defne Ayas, Beth Citron,

Vicky A. Clark, Shaun El C. Leonardo, Carolyn
Yuen

Administrative Assistant

Yonni Walker

Copyright (c) 2008 APT Holding Worldwide Inc. (BVI)

All rights reserved.

-
Annual subscription US$40/€28
Individual copies US$10/€7
Plus shipping and handling.
Contact: subscriptions@aptglobal.org
 By Defne Ayas
A New Kind of Performance
in China ?

_ Xu Zhen, In Just a Blink of an Eye, 2007. Performance, Photo by Paula Court. Courtesy of PERFORMA, Long March Project and James Cohan Gallery
The history of Chinese contemporary art is
quite young, and the role of performance
art within that history has rarely been
investigated in depth. Many Chinese artists
who have come to be known as major figures
in the art world today have created influential
works in the form of performances.
3

No U-Turn (1989), for instance, carried all of the
characteristics of a number of avant-garde collectives and
movements that is now referred to as the ’85 New Wave.
This exhibition displayed an extraordinary range of open-
minded, ephemeral experiments by collectives such as
Xiamen Dada movement, led by Huang Yong Ping, and Pond
Society, formed by Hangzhou-based Zhang Peili, Wang
Qiang, Song Ling and Geng Jianyi. When artist Xiao Lu fired
a gun into her installation Dialogue (1989) with two shots,
not only did her action break some of the eggs that artist
Zhang Nian had prepared for hatching at the exhibition
(without permission from the authorities), but also lead
to the closure of this historical exhibition. At about the
same time, in Shanghai, the exhibition “M Conceptual Art
Performance Show” (1986) featured performances from
over a dozen artists, including an act of self-crucifixion by
Yang Xu, who was beaten until his back bled. In the Last
Supper – Second Concave Show (1988), 11 artists, including
Li Shan, Sun Liang, Li Xianting, Yu Sen, Yang Zhanye and
Pei Jing, dressed in robes and sat around a long table
scattered with Coca-Cola drinks and food.
_ Qiu Zhijie, The Thunderstorm is Slowly Approaching, 2007. Photo by Elizabeth Proitsis. Courtesy of PERFORMA and Long March Project.
In the early 90s Beijing’s East Village was the site of “Post-Sense Sensibility: Alien Bodies and Delusion” (1999)
continuous actions by artists such as Ai Weiwei, Zhang and “Post-Sense Sensibility: Spree” (2001), both organized
Huan, Rong Rong, Ma Liuming and Danwen Xing (APT by Qiu Zhijie (APT Beijing) in Beijing, set the bar for what a
Beijing). This charged art scene eventually stirred radical underground performance scene in China could be
up contentious debates not only about the place of like. At “Post-Sense Sensibility: Spree,” Qiu Zhijie asked
performance in Chinese art history but also about visitors to arrive at 3pm sharp to a theater in Beijing, after
authorship issues concerning the act of performance and which no one was allowed to enter or leave the venue.
its documentation. It was at this time that artists such The audience was forced to engage in performances
as Song Dong and Yang Fudong chose to create quieter involving food, spirits and pig’s blood, while live chickens
actions in their respective locations. Song Dong began his and rats ran around the theater causing mayhem.
Water Diary series in 1995. As he wrote in water, he left no All of the performances were filmed and broadcast
traces, and the only remaining proof of his work was the onto a video screen outside the entrance door. For his
unmarked stone upon which he had written. One of Yang performance Let’s Get Happy Together (2001), Liu Wei hired
Fudong’s first works was a performance during which he a professional female striptease dancer, and together they
stopped speaking for 3 months. danced inside a 2 square meter glass box. As their dance
became more erotic, Liu Wei began splattering the glass
walls with pig’s blood, creating a sexual scene at once
obscure and vulgar.
5

He Yungchang’s performances were also quite radical
and placed exceptional physical demands on his body,
in terms of both strength and endurance. He suspended
himself from a crane by his ankles over a river, which he
“cut” with the same knife he later used to slice his arm.
He Yungchang was part of the infamous “FUCK OFF”
(2000) exhibition, organized by Stars Group (active from
1979-83) member Ai Weiwei, together with the critic Feng
Boyi. This exhibition featured many shocking projects,
including a bloated horse cadaver, placed inside the
main exhibition hall by Yang Maoyuan, and Sun Yuan’s
sealed glass case containing a skeleton of a large dog
and, according to the artist, a type of nerve gas that
would instantly kill everyone in the exhibition space
if the glass were broken. Zhu Ming floated down the
Huangpu River in a plastic bubble wearing a diaper, and
in his performance Eating People (2000), Zhu Yu showed
photographs of himself boiling and eating what is alleged
to be a human fetus.
Zhu Yu, along with other artists of his time, were
instrumental in creating the association of performance
art with blood, still-born babies and human fluids,
leading to political repercussions such as censorship
_ Lin Yilin, Safely Manoeuvering Across Lin He Road, 1995, Performance, Duration: 90 min
and even more stringent punishments. In Shanghai, less
volatile and more conceptual performance exhibitions
occurred. “Art for Sale” displayed not only mass-
produced objects made for sale but also performance
works by artists such as Song Dong, Yang Fudong,
Yang Zhenzhong and Liang Yue, which took place at a
shopping mall. “Fan,” an exhibition that looked at the
“doppelganger” concept, is where Xu Zhen (APT Beijing)
created his psychological work March 6 (2002). This work
involved two people (one working-class, one university
student, both in pajamas) following each exhibition
visitor from the entry of the show to the site of his
installation. Dial 62761232 (2008), a courier-delivery
“service” for exhibitions, was Xu Zhen’s comment on the
quickie nature of art shows in China.
Until the early 2000s, most
of the aforementioned
artists were not interested
in creating objects but
in creating indelible
experiences for the
audience, and in exploring
their most trenchant, and
oftentimes radical, ideas.
With art market prices now soaring, hundreds of new
studios, Western private art galleries and Chinese-owned
private art museums are opening in big cities like Beijing
and Shanghai, there is a great deal of pressure on artists
to create objects and not performances.
Zhang Huan, one of the country’s seminal performance
artists, in the last few years ceased with performance
art and began to produce large-scale paintings and
sculptures made out of temple ash and animal skin.
Wang Jianwei, who is often considered the renaissance
performance artist of China for pioneering the conceptual
integration of new media into performance and theater—
and who also worked with filmmaker Wu Wenguang on
Bumming in Beijing (1989), as well as with choreographer
Wen Hui—has recently turned away from performance to
the creation of large-scale objects. An actionist in his own
right, and also a founder of Big Tail Elephant Collective,
an artist group known for its public interventions in
the hidden pockets of Guangzhou in the1990s, Chen
Shaoxiong’s (APT Beijing) Seven Days Silence (1991) was
a performance about a unique domestic space within the
confusion of China’s cities. Constructed in Chen’s home
city of Guangzhou, the artist built a small triangulated
space out of plastic and other temporary materials where
for seven days straight he doggedly painted out the
surrounding environment. Isolated and silenced by the
din of the city around him, this performantive intervention
can be seen as a comment on China’s failure to meet
the housing needs of the growing urban landscape.
Currently, his continuing investigation of China’s rapid
urbanization is through video and installation. His
most recent animation videos are based on Chinese ink
paintings and provide a humorous take on the aesthetics
of globalization.
Another member and co-founder of the Big Tailed
Elephant group in Guangzhou, Lin Yilin (APT Beijing) made
striking performative works in which he used sculptural
architectures as the framework (literally framing his body
in a wall of stone blocks) for this work. These works are
as much about the labor associated with constructing—
and deconstructing as in his work Safely Manuevering
Across Lin He Road (1995)—the work as they are about
the setting/backdrop around which Lin Yilin performs.
Like Chen Shaoxiong, however, he has gone on to expand
into video, installation works and photography, while
consistently inserting his commentary into the public
domain.
7
There are, fortunately,
a great number of visual
artists in China who are
eager to explore the cross-
disciplinary boundaries of
the visual arts.
There are those who collaborate with musicians, such
as the painter Yan Lei, who created collaborative
performances/installations with the punk band Brain
Failure throughout Istanbul during the 10th Istanbul
Biennial. Or those, like Zhao Bandi, who dare to create
an art-meets-fashion show such as “Panda Fashion”
(2007/2008); this couture project involved models
catwalking during a two-hour cruise down Shanghai’s
Huangpu River, dressed in panda-inspired attire,
respectively, as a teacher, a cop, a judge, a migrant worker,
a corrupt official, a real estate developer and a street
sweeper. And then there are those who articulate strong
cultural positions and conceptual strategies, through their
work, such as Qiu Zhijie. In November 2007 in New York,
he presented The Thunderstorm Is Slowly Approaching
(2007) as part of PERFORMA07, the city’s second visual-
art performance biennial. Working with a ceremonial
10-member dragon dance team and wearing a camouflage
costume, the artist used the traditional Chinese dragon
dance, and a festive public gathering in Chinatown, as
the starting point for investigating the pressure to hide
national identity within a host culture. Under the same
umbrella presentation realized in collaboration with
exhibition space and presenting organization Long March
Project, Shanghai’s art scene mover-and-shaker Xu
Zhen, known for his psychologically potent installation,
video and performance work, presented In Just a Blink of
an Eye. The artist created an optical illusion that made
it seem as though an empty room of a Chelsea gallery
were completely tilted, and viewers could see migrants
recruited from Chinatown lying upon metal frames inside
this tilted room.
Finally, there are those whose video and installation works
have the potential to become wonderful performance art.
Kan Xuan’s (APT Beijing) work, for instance, records daily
situations in minimalist and ephemeral ways. Her body-
oriented performances are carried out for video recording,
and multiple viewings, yet they seem singular, conveying
a kind of a Zen Buddhist beauty and spirituality. Chen
Xiaoyun’s anarchic, haunting video assemblage LASH
(2004) flashes images of a naked man carrying a sawed-
off tree along with fireworks, to a background noise of
loud industrial music. His more recent video work, DRAG
(2006), which shows a man pulling with all his might on a
rope whose end is fixed to a wall, has the characteristics
of a new kind of performance, one that includes live
music as well as dance. Beijing-based artist Yu Ji’s (APT
Beijing) performances and photographs navigate the
uncomfortable margins of ambiguity and violence. In
his work Fang and Fang’s Doll (2007) a very pregnant
woman wanders a desolate street, naked and apparently
disoriented. In the background, from a smoking car a half
visible figure has fallen from the car door.
The most anticipated performance of this year was
probably the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Games
opening ceremony, organized by a core group of artists and
planners including Cai Guo Qiang and Jennifer Wen Ma as
well as Zhang Yimou. Perhaps this event, along with the Ai
Wei Wei-initiated form in the background, will provide an
optimistic climate for discussion of Chinese contemporary
art, and the opportunity to encourage visual artists to
further explore the potential of performance.
In a recent student show in Hangzhou, where the
academy’s New Media Department Head Zhang Peili
has started offering courses on performance, promising
young artists born in the 80s, such as Huang Liya and Sun
Huiyuan, are experimenting with the medium and bringing
new energy to the field. Teachers at Hangzhou Academy
agree that the range of what performance is and can be,
in China, is quite broad, and it is time for artists to branch
out in new directions.
Defne Ayas is an independent curator and educator based in Shanghai.
_ Yuji, Fang and Fang’s Doll-1, March 2007, Photograph, 120 X 150 cm
9
 Discipline
Without Restraint

It takes only a brief

survey of galleries,
museums, alternative
art spaces and art
publications to note
that artists no longer
employ a singular
practice in the delivery
of their ideas.
By Pamela Auchincloss

_ Erick Beltran, Twijfel(Doubt), 2005, Performance in Ghent Belgium

11
Painters and sculptors have long moved freely between their respective
disciplines, and photographers and media artists have easily commingled
Artists have begun
still photography with video. But performance art has remained, until
recently, a singular and somewhat specialized practice on the periphery of
to reach across
the visual arts. During the past ten years, however, artists have begun to
reach across the spectrum of possibilities in search of the right medium
the spectrum of
for the message. Performance and installation art have flourished in this possibilities in
cross-disciplinary environment.
search of the right
In Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present, published in 1979,
RoseLee Goldberg provided the comprehensive documentation and medium for the
critical context performance art needed to be fully recognized as a
distinct art practice. Academic interest followed and performance was message.
soon integrated into art school curriculums. The publication and wide
circulation of Goldberg’s book, perhaps more than any other single event,
influenced what today has become an explosion and expansion of the
medium. Yale, Columbia, CalArts, UCLA, California College of Art and
Design and Pratt Institute, to name a few, currently offer courses on the
interdisciplinary. It is an extraordinary paradigm shift, from the classic art
education model of the academy to a widespread acknowledgement of the
complex possibilities of expression in the 21st century.

During the late ’60s and ’70s, Vito Acconci, Joan Jonas, Marina Abramovic,
VALLE EXPORT and Joseph Beuys, to name only a few, pushed the
undisclosed secrets of private life into full view. These constructed, live-
action tableaus presented real-time events in which piercing, binding,
exposing and depriving their bodies, often as acts of performative
endurance, made for charged and powerful statements. At times political
in content and shocking in its brutal display, performance art carried the

_ Gelitin, Sweatwat, 2005, Installation, Courtesy Gagosian Gallery, London

countenance of human emotionality and experience that pictorial and
sculptural representations could only allude to.

In January 2008, during a three-month residency program at the La

Curtiduria in Oaxaca, Mexico, Shaun El C. Leonardo (APT New York)
inserted himself into the spectacle world of lucha libre fighting as a way
of commenting on culture’s distorted practice of hero-creation in the
guise of good vs. evil. In the performance El Conquistador vs. The Invisible
Man, Leonardo’s persona fights an invisible opponent as a metaphorical
and literal representation of cultural stereotypes and masculine identity.
However, in Oaxaca the performance took an unscripted turn when
Leonardo entered the ring with a professional fighter. Leonardo took
punishing blows fueled by the frenzied chants of the spectators. As
Leonardo recounts in this issue (“Performance: When the Result Ceases
to be Important”) the line between performance and reality was quickly
blurred (if not entirely lost) as El Conquistador entered the public domain
of the luchadores and lucha libre.

13
_ My Barbarian, You Were Born Poor & Poor You Will Die, 2006, Performance
_ Fallen Fruit, Double Standard, 2008, A two channel hi-definition video on a single screen with text overlay, Duration: 30 minutes

Adrian Piper’s radical idea of performance in the late ’60s an alternative, cruelly critical narrative to the events painting, sculpture, drawing, photography or any other
was not unlike Leonardo’s though Piper’s created persona narrated in the raw footage, with crude, homophobic and art form presented in galleries and museums. And the
in no way sought to integrate into her community. In her racist comments mixed in with a few acute observations. reception across the art world of video as a credible and
Catalysis Series (1970) Piper altered her appearance In its play between action and commentary, Double collectible art form has enabled artists to move fully and
to present an image of the grotesque and walked, Standard challenges the simultaneity of the viewer’s exponentially into performance as a viable—which is to
unceremoniously, through the crowds of New York City. experience, creating a displacement between the “real” say a means to make a living—medium. Coupled with the
This act of artistic intervention moved performance from a and the “realtime.” The awkward and slippery space reach of social networking sites and internet platforms
staged event in which the audience chooses to participate between these two narratives begins to probe at the such as YouTube and MySpace, the extensive possibility of
to an open-ended, interactive and spontaneous venue question of authenticity or authentic experience as well as video art in our hyper-mediated world is producing a surge
—the street. casting a new look at the issues of public and private. of performance as artists step out from behind the camera
onto center stage.
Piper’s performance, and others like it, was unprecedented Many seminal works of contemporary performance
in the art world at that time. Today many artists use the art from the ’60s and ’70s went no further than the Both museums and galleries are aggressively
street and society as the backdrop for their work. Double curious and dedicated audience that saw them—largely incorporating performance into their exhibition
Standard (2008) by Fallen Fruit (APT Los Angeles), the artist undocumented other than through critical writing programming. This spring both the Whitney Biennial and
collective David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young, or, on occasion, photography. Today performance is Berlin Biennial had dedicated programs centered on
takes the viewer (in real time) through a tour of Fallen Fruit’s largely centered on the documentation and sometimes performance. More and more galleries are presenting
home neighborhood in Los Angeles. The two channels stands solely on the post-event medium of video. The performances at their opening receptions and hosting
are overlaid with a text block of comments from a public introduction of the hand-held video camera quickly events through out the week. (I have counted at least
television video of a recurring intervention work titled Fruit moved performance beyond an attendant, event-driven twenty opening receptions including performance since
Forage recently posted on YouTube. The comments create audience to a collectible artwork no different from the beginning of the year.)

17
 In 2006, P.S. 1 introduced a performance, within the broader
context of their first “Greater New York” exhibition, by a
young artist who was just finishing a residency at the Studio
Museum in New York City, Clifford Owens (APT New York).
The performance, titled Tell me what to do with myself
(2006), was presented over the course of the exhibition.
In four, two-hour-long segments the artist, who is out of
view, is told by his audience through a small peephole
what to do. His actions are then transmitted via video to
monitors outside the closed room. Following each live
show, what remains in the room is, as exhibition curator
Amy Smith-Stewart explained, “an accumulative trace of
each performance,” but the clues are so vague the viewer
is forced to come up with his or her own narrative of what
happened in the virtually empty space.

Also performed during the run of a curated group exhibition

at New York City’s Sculpture Center, Alex Schweder’s (APT
Los Angeles) Flatland (2007) was an extraordinary example
of architecture as sculpture, anthropology, intervention,
performance and endurance. Schweder’s objective, in
this work and much of what he produces, is to examine
how environment shapes behaviors and societies within
a controlled setting. Five individuals were invited to live
together in a confined space, which stood 24 feet high by
2 feet wide by 32 feet long, for two weeks during which
they built upon and refined their personal living areas. All
plumbing, cooking and sleeping needs were serviced within

_ Kalup Linzy, All My Churen, 2003, DVD, Duration: 4:30 min

the space, restricting the participants to the controlled
environment over the two-week period. The walls were
transparent allowing the visitors to the Center a clear view
of the activity within. Additionally, a live-feed web camera
made it possible for anyone anywhere with a computer
and an Internet connection to view the performance,
dramatically expanding the potential audience.

_ Alex Schweder, Flatland, 2007, Various construction materials, household appliances, 5 People, 2 x 32 x 24 ft, Duration: 3 weeks

The political remains very much a part of performance

today. In Plante Bandera (I Planted the Flag), a multi-media
work by Carolina Caycedo (APT Mexico City), the artist
refers to a hypothetical experience of crossing borders
and claiming a territory by planting a flag. In Caycedo’s
symbolic performance the artist swam one and a half hours,
approximately 3 miles, from Crashbot Beach to Aguadilla
Town along the northwest coastline of Puerto Rico. The act
was a personal test of endurance (and, perhaps, an homage
to the perilous feats of many undocumented immigrants),
but more significantly a symbolic representation of
reclaiming the territory. Caycedo often uses music to
weight the subtext of her work. Her soundtrack choice,
“Plante Bandera” by Tite Curet Alonso—who is famous for
a style known as “salsa with a conscience”—draws further
attention to Puerto Rican pride and nationalism.

19
Gelitin (APT London), a well-known artist collective
that includes artists Tobias Urban, Wolfgang Gantner,
Florian Reither and Ali Janka, creates elaborate,
interactive installations that require the audience’s
active participation to make the work whole. Sweatwat
(2006), constructed from what at first glance looks to be
everything and anything one might leave at the end of
the drive for the rubbish collector, required the viewer to
sign a liability release and remove his or her shoes before
entering. Cedar Lewisohn described the experience:
“It’s a cacophony of anarchy. You have to climb up and
over little mountains of old sofas and armchairs to move
forward. There are men walking around in hula skirts,
women drinking cider and a strolling minstrel strumming
his guitar.” In these extravagant and imaginative
installations everyone has a part defined and determined
by the artists, despite the self-consciousness one is
bound to feel wading through 6 inches of water.
Collaborations such as Gelitin’s often generate
performance-based works as also seen in the works
of Los Angeles-based My Barbarian (APT Los Angeles).
Since 2000 My Barbarian, founded by Malik Gaines, Jade
Gordon and Alexandro Segade, has captivated audiences
with their musical spectacles known as “showcore.”
Using allegory drawn from history and mythology in
a quasi musical theater setting, the group addresses
contemporary social and political conditions. Not
exactly your average rock ‘n roll show, the trio’s self-
styled costumes are a blend of sources as diverse as
Renaissance Faire, Studio 54 and Louise Bourgeois. Their
nerdy-yet-sexy exhibitionism and bawdy, Rabelaisian
humor work well with their play list that includes Solid
Gold, American Bandstand and Isadora Duncan.
Christodoulos Panayiotou’s (APT Dubai) Slow Dance
Marathon (2007) examines the engagement of “slow
dancing.” Panayiotou considers slow dancing radical in
comparison to other social dances given its emotional
familiarity and intimate space without the constraints of
any prescribed dance techniques. Slow Dance Marathon
involves a chain of people dancing to well-known love
songs. Each individual participates for one full hour, with
partners alternating every 30 minutes. The first rendition
occurs during a period of 24 hours, and the second
during a period of 48 hours. Panayiotou is interested in
the sociological interactions created by the situation. He
wants to create a relational space, and the way people
act within that space produces an opportunity for him to
analyze a spectrum of “amorous dialectics.”
Kalup Linzy (APT New York) is the protagonist in all of
his performative videos with occasional supporting
characters. In All My Churen (2006), Kalup plays out an
exchange between two black women (grand mother
and daughter) as a humorous —and tragic—pastiche
on the seemingly scripted dialogue that defines the
relationships and culture in black America today. Hidden
within the self-deprecating humor is a layered subtext
about the entrenched behaviors and complacencies that
complicate and shape issues around race, class, sex,
love, family and stereotyping.
Video and how artists employ this ubiquitous medium can
now move performance from the anecdotal experience of
a room full of spectators to a broadly available medium
that is comparable to feature-length films. This year’s
2008 Sundance Film Festival featured 18 visual artists,
including Robert Boyd (APT New York), Ravi Agarwal
(APT Mumbai), Koken Ergun (APT Dubai), Surekha (APT
Mumbai) and Abbey Williams (APT New York). Many of
these artists perform for the camera creating powerful
personal statements as well as abstract metaphors for
broader issues that touch upon the environment, race,
feminism, gender, homosexuality, war, conflict and, of
course, information technology. In every case, editing plays
a critical role as they craft a “picture” out of the moving
image.
Other interventionists that call upon the viewer’s direct
participation to activate the work include: Sean Duffy’s
(APT Los Angeles) installation The Grove (2007), a room-
sized installation strewn with light bulbs, turntables and
hundreds of albums that the viewer is invited to play and
Erick Beltran’s (APT Mexico City) provocative city-wide
papering of the streets with paper handbills carrying the
words MEZOGNA (lies) in Lucca, Italy (2004), TWIJFEL
(doubt) in Ghent , Belgium (2005) and the word STRAFE
(punishment) in Herdford, Germany (2005)—a sort of
call to action to think about these simple but meaningful
states of the conscience.
We are only just beginning to enjoy and comprehend
the ways in which this interdisciplinary medium has
changed the visual-art landscape. With the reach of the
Internet and the access to larger and larger audiences,
performance stands to eclipse more traditional, static
_ Sean Duffy, The Grove, 2007, 18 turntables, 18 tables, 18 amplifiers, 36 lamp speakers, 324 speakers, approximately 200 lps, 4 be, Variable
mediums. Video art and performance may well have the
potential, more than any other art practice, to popularize
art making until each one of us is an artist as we step out
from behind the camera and, yes, onto center stage.
Pamela Auchincloss is CEO and Director of APT New York
21
Experiencing
Performance Art in India By Beth Citron _ Surekha, Untitled, 2008, Performance at KhojLive08
 Alongside the
explosive growth of
painting, sculpture,
and installation
objects in India’s
contemporary art
world during the past
decade, performative
art practices have
experienced a tandem,
if less publicized,
launch into the
international public
sphere.

_ Mithu Sen, Tattoo, 2007, Video installation, Duration: 10minutes, Courtesy Bose Pacia Gallery, NY, Photo Credit: David Flores, 2007
Though often perceived as an isolated and recent phenomenon,
context for performance art today lies in seminal pioneering
developments by leading artists of the 1970s. Beginning in 1970,
Bombay and Baroda based artist Bhupen Khakhar began to integrate
Pop and Nouveau Realiste modeled “happenings” into his artistic
practice. Among his boldest gestures, in 1971 Khakhar staged an
opening of one exhibition of his paintings to simultaneously mimic
the rites of an Indian marriage procession and a governmental
inauguration. Poking fun at the overblown excessiveness of wedding
celebrations and at the formality of official public ceremonies, the
event generated polemical media publicity that questioned the role
of the professional artist in Post-Independence India. In transforming
his artist friends like Vivan Sundaram and Nasreen Mohamedi into
participants in the event, Khakhar became the first artist in India to
challenge the conventional interaction between artist and audience,
subverting the presence and necessity of spectators to come.

25
After a recession in the exposure of performance art in the 1980s, Khoj

_ Atul Bhalla, I Was Not Waving but Drowning, 2005, Archival pigment print, Edition 1 of 5, 12 x 18 in
International Artists’ Association launched in New Delhi in 1997, providing an
alternative institutional face to foster and promote experimental art practices
in India. Founded by a group of artists that included Subodh Gupta, Bharti
Kher, and Anita Dube (APT Mumbai), along with curator Pooja Sood, its long-
term Director, who is now also the Director of APT Mumbai, Khoj has focused
especially on creating opportunities for the often marginalized practices that
comprise contemporary performance art. This has been especially critical
because of the continuing lack of venues and institutional support for the
creation and exhibition of alternative art media in India.

Throughout 2008, Khoj is celebrating its historic 10th anniversary, kicking off
events with KhojLive08, an unprecedented six-day international performance
festival in New Delhi, from March 25-30, 2008. Artists from India including
Sonia Khurana, Neha Choksi, and Nikhil Chopra joined a diverse contingent of
international artists and media practitioners that included Steven Cohen from
South Africa, Doug Fishbone of the United States and London, and Da Motus!,
a Swiss troupe. Chopra performed the latest unfolding of a narrative centered
on his fictitious character Yog Raj Chitrakar, based loosely on the identity of
his grandfather as a member of the landed gentry in colonial Kashmir. After
leading his audience on accelerated foot from Khoj Studios to the top of a
nearby mosque, Chopra created a live charcoal drawing of the surrounding
landscape while transforming from the male Chitrakar into a costumed
female empress. This followed up on Chopra’s breakthrough 72-hour open
performance in Mumbai in December, in which the artist enacted a series of
physical transformations while creating a room-size drawing of the city harbor
over the course of three days. While drawing on personal and national historical
paradigms, Chopra’s acts more broadly question the boundaries inherent in the
mediums of both drawing and live art.

Beyond live events, Indian artists have broadly incorporated performative

gestures into artistic practices that rely on traditional media like photography
and painting. Most prominently, Pushpamala N. (APT Mumbai) has canonized
the medium of photo-performance by casting and posing her own body in
various characters and personae, which are then incorporated into groups of
photographs that invent layered narratives. Among her most well-known works
has been the series Phantom Lady or Kismet, a photo romance (1998) in which
the artist, dressed in a black mask and costume, staged various moments of an
action thriller, performing the archetypal role of “good girl-bad girl.”
 Other artists have used photo-performance to address
the critical problems and politics of life in urban India
today. Ravi Agarwal (APT Mumbai) and Atul Bhalla (APT
Mumbai) have both enacted performances that reflect
the dire pollution and scarcity of water in the capital
city of Delhi and many other areas of India. Agarwal
developed Shroud (2006) following a series of visits to
the contaminated Yamuna River between 2004 and 2006.
Standing near the river, which can appear almost solid and
stagnant in the places where it is thickest with pollution,
he cloaked himself head-to-toe in an opaque shroud,
which was then covered in a transparent cloth and bound
with rope. As an ardent environmentalist, Agarwal was
articulating his concern for the physical degradation of
the river and for Delhi as it globalizes; and as an artist,
the work represents a struggle with his own alienation
_ Ravi Agarwal, The Shroud, 2007, Photographic inkjet prints on Epson archival paper, 60 x 36 in
in a city he had always known. In Agarwal’s own words,
“Shroud represents an immersion and emergence. It is
my relationship to the dirty, polluted, but holy river which
is also the life-line of the city of 15 million people. At
another level, the mythical river is intimately linked to
the Hindu idea of life, death and rebirth. Upon dying, the
cremated ashes of the ‘mortal’ body are immersed into
the holy river, back to the five elements of nature. The
soul is reborn, in a new body, and the river becomes the
carrier of the emergence.” Environmental issues and the
urgent scarcity of clean water in Delhi have been recurring
and dominant trope in Bhalla’s work in various mediums
too, fashioning sand from the polluted Yamuna River into
water carriers in his sculptural installation Immersion.
In his photo-performance work, Bhalla has explored the
broad significance of water to Indian culture and history,
reflected in the importance of rivers like the Yamuna and
Ganges, which are at once sacred and contaminated. His
series of photographs I Was Not Waving but Drowning
speaks to the transcendent importance of water and
echoes Hindu ritual bathing practices in documenting 14
stages of the artist’s submersion into a still body of water.
Primarily a painter and installation artist whose work
narrates issues of personal migration, Hema Upadhyay
(APT Mumbai) integrates performance into her mixed-
media canvases by attaching miniature photographs
of herself in various poses and guises onto the painted
surface. Upadhyay inscribes a performative gesture
into the work itself in the painstaking fabrication of
installation projects like Dream a Wish, Wish a Dream
(2004-6), in which the artist reconstructed a detailed,
meticulous microcosm of Dharavi, the largest slum in
Bombay and all of Asia. In using images of her own body
and by the physical making of her installations, Upadhyay
challenges the viewer’s anticipated dialogue with painting
or installation works. Similarly, Surekha (APT Mumbai)
highlights femininity and a feminist position through
strategies that turn a two-dimensional surface into the
trace of a performative action, for example by stitching
flowers onto fabric in They Grow Everywhere (2007; shown
during her exhibition at Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai,
in August). Works like The Shield (2007) highlight Surekha’s
concern with the physicality of the female body through
an object that is meant to be conventionally beautiful
and protective, but which is left slightly vulnerable to the
viewer because it is permeable.
Recently, Mithu Sen (APT Mumbai) has questioned her
categorization as a drawing specialist through video works
like The Tattoo (2007, displayed at her solo exhibition
“Half Full” at Bose Pacia, 2007), which shows the artist’s
upper body as she wincingly withstands the pain of her
hand being tattooed. With characteristic wry humor, Sen
has scheduled a public performance, this spring, that will
document her attempt to “fly” above New Delhi’s India
Gate to wipe the dust and grime off the top of it because,
she suggests, it has probably never been cleaned; she
will ask passersby to attach a balloon to her arm to help
her achieve her goal, and at the end of the event, she will
gift a balloon to them in return. In this way, just as she
has always extended her drawings beyond the edge of the
paper onto surrounding walls, Sen hopes to reach beyond
the conventional gap between artist and audience through
her performative practice.
Reflecting an accelerated moment of critical
transformation and expansion in India’s art world, these
artists, through their dynamic and inventive engagement
with performance, are ready to lead us into new
experiences of viewing art itself.
Beth Citron is an independent curator living between Mumbai, India and New York City
29
Time to Play? By Carolyn Yuen

APT’s New Virtual Gallery

This gallery not
only gives us the
ability to explore
and research work
that we might not
otherwise know, web gallery exhibition, “Time to Play?,” the viewer walks
through a variety of subtle but complex structural spaces,
such as Erik Benson’s Diversion #4 (2004) (APT New York);
Shana Lutker’s House #2 With Art that I Dreamt Made
(2006) (APT Los Angeles); and Sangil Kim’s Mode: College
of Economics & Commerce (2006) (APT Beijing). The viewer
is not only exposed to the exterior façade, but also enters
the interior lives and spaces to question the notion of style
over substance, seen in the works of Miranda Lichtenstein,
The Wave (2005) (APT New York); Dan Holdsworth, Untitled
Contemporary artists continually push their limits with
10 (from the series ‘No Echo’) (2003) (APT London); and
new forms of art practice. As many gallerists and curators
Tilman Wendland, Schaumkopf (Bubble head) (2001)
investigate how to best present these works, and as
(APT Berlin). “Time to Play?” gently and humorously asks
the art market rapidly globalizes, we, too, are called to
the viewer to break out of the role of static observer, to
consider new ways of reaching the audiences of visual art.
actively experience and play along, in a world in which we
Artist Pension Trust® (APT) has developed a new exhibition
both observe and perform.
space accessible through the APT website: The APT Web
Gallery. This online gallery will present 4 exhibitions per
year selected by professional curators, and will draw from
the extensive APT Collection.

Curated by Miki Garcia, Executive Director at the Santa

Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum in Santa Barbara,
California, “Time to Play?” features 30 works by 27 APT As part of APT Curatorial, the APT Web Gallery is yet
but allows us to artists. Influenced by the 1967 film Play Time by French
filmmaker Jacques Tati, Garcia’s “Time to Play?” invites the
another platform by which APT will promote APT artists
and the APT Collection to new curators and museums
think and produce viewer to contemplate many of the same themes the film
investigates, such as obsessive materialism, feelings of
around the world. When we asked Miki Garcia to curate
our first APT Web Gallery exhibition she responded, “APT’s
imaginatively, displacement, and the utopian ideals promised by space- collection is vast, informed, and current... making it a rare
age technology. In the film, a group of American tourists pleasure to be able to work with material from the world’s
navigate a futuristic Paris, breathing nonconformity leading contemporary artists. This gallery not only gives
and love for beauty into the sterile environment. In the us the ability to explore and research work that we might
not otherwise know, but allows us to think and produce
imaginatively, without the practical restrictions of wall
space, schedules, shipments and so on.” The APT Web
Gallery is accessible through the APT website or directly
at www.aptglobal.org/WebGallery/TimetoPlay. The gallery
will feature an online exhibition and a video screening
room selected from the APT Collection, both of which will
be changed on an ongoing basis.

Carolyn Yuen is APT Director of Operations

without the practical
restrictions of wall
space, schedules,
shipments and so on.

33
Performance: When By Shaun El C. Leonardo

the Result Ceases to be

Important
I was awarded an Art Matters grant for travel to
La Curtiduría residency in Oaxaca, Mexico for the
following proposal:
In 2006 what began as an annual teachers’ strike over
wages grew into a grass-roots social movement that
temporarily took over the state government of Oaxaca,
Mexico. After an overly aggressive response to the
teachers’ strike, traditionally divided leftist movements
from across the state unified under the banner of the
Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) to oust
Governor Ulises Ruiz. By staging civil acts of disobedience,
_
rioting, and even barricading the outer city limits, the Sh
au
n
El
popular movement gained national and international C.
Le
on
ar
recognition as a revolution with growing strength. Soon do
,E
lC
enough, however, the federal government sponsored on
qu
is
ta
state-police-organized paramilitary counterattack do
r
vs
units to kill and torture leaders of the APPO. Weeks .T
he
In
of disappearances and violent repression followed, vis
ib
le
Ma
culminating in an open battle between protesters and the n,
20
08
Federal Preventative Police (PFP) in the narrow streets ,P
er
fo
r
of Oaxaca’s historic center. While federal police continue ma
nc
e
to carry out house raids and tactics of intimidation
against APPO’s leaders and supporters, the APPO insists
that its presence will remain, demanding the removal of
Governor Ruiz and the withdrawal of federal troops from
Oaxaca. I passionately believe, in light of the revolutionary In collaboration with La Curtiduría, a live/work residency
spirit thriving in Oaxaca, that the time is ripe to bring program located in the heart of Oaxaca, I intend to develop
performance art to the Mexican community. and continue two performance projects that poignantly
speak to the area’s rich yet conflicted history while
attempting to make connections to its current political
situation. The 3-month residency will take place toward
the beginning of 2008, which will allow me the time to seek
the proper avenues for holding the two performances in
the community. Furthermore, by modifying the costumes
and movement of the performances, I will be able to make
El Conquistador vs. The Invisible Man is a reoccurring
the work more culturally specific. Most importantly, I plan
wrestling event in which I portray a Mexican
to introduce new work to the immediate community in
wrestling luchador in order to fight invisibility both
a way that will foster relationships between myself and
metaphorically and literally. During more than three
Oaxaca’s citizens.
years of this performance, the match has become a
physical manifestation of not only a battle against
societal obscurity but also an internal struggle with the
complexities of my own masculine identity. In Mexico,
however, where lucha libre wrestling originates, the
concept of fighting invisibility will carry much more
meaning. My goal is to completely immerse and stage
the project within a lucha libre arena, in effect stripping
the performance entirely from an art environment. The
audience will arrive expecting a traditional lucha battle
of good versus evil, and instead they will see an invisible
opponent. After the initial shock and humor of what
they are witnessing, The Invisible Man may take on a
larger significance in the eyes of the Mexican audience.
He will not only embody a history of imperialism and
struggle; he will symbolize their current battle against
political forces, a system of repression so strong it
seems almost intangible.

35
 After a grueling, two-out-of-three fall match, El
Conquistador was defeated and verbally berated by his
opponent — Oaxaca’s own Juventud Audaz. Later, in
an unscripted portion of the evening, El Conquistador
returned to the ring to save the fallen Oaxacan champion
— a luchador by the name of Lalo El Loco — from a
beating at the hands of The Ice Eskeletors. With emotions
and tempers in the audience running high, chants to
remove El C. from the ring (along with requests to kill him)
brought the three rudos back to battle El C. Occupying a
space somewhere between spectacle, reality and art, El
C. was actually physically abused, demasked and publicly
embarrassed. In fear, the curator of La Curtiduría called
My experience as El Conquistador was an indelible one, for a stop to the event.
and certain aspects of that experience stand out in
my memory. I jumped off the top ropes to the outside
of the ring, something I have always dreamed of doing. Shaun El C. Leonardo (APT New York) is a painter and performance artist who resides in
New York City.
There were nights I could not sleep due to the daily
punishment of the ring, and a moment at which I may
have become addicted to painkillers. I was interviewed
on television, and newspaper articles were written about
me. I was reprimanded [by my trainer?] for revealing my
lucha identity — an unacceptable slip — to a 7-year-
old spectator. I worked with some of the most talented
wrestlers in the region — veterans and youths alike
— and was eventually accepted as one of the group,

Luchadores
forming professional bonds and friendships that may
last a lifetime. And during the very last week of my stay I nc
e
ma
or
was invited to lead the training session — in my eyes, the Pe
rf
0 8,
highest honor.

are more
20
n,
Ma
le
ib
vis
In
e
Th
vs.

than iconic
r
ado
st
q ui
n
Co
El
do,
ar
on

pop-cultural
Le
C.
El
n
au
Sh
_

This proposal did not happen as planned. Upon arrival, I
quickly realized that it would be far more complicated to
execute performance art in the communities of Oaxaca
than I had assumed. There were cultural specificities I
believed I understood when envisioning the projects, but
that I soon learned I did not fully understand. I decided to
put my plans on hold and spend a bit of time absorbing my
surroundings.
heroes.
They have surpassed their role as spectacle and gained
a place in society only definable in Mexican terms. As El
Conquistador, I had to learn and strictly follow a number
of cultural subtleties — rules that have been discreetly
constructed and obeyed by both wrestler and viewer
in the lucha world. The audience truly completes the
performance of lucha libra.

But this limbo period did not last very long. During the
first week of my 3-month residency, I approached a
wrestling promoter and asked where I might train. Perhaps
because I have wrestling experience and am a Latino-
American artist, somewhat of a novelty within a Mexican
wrestling context, I was invited to train with Oaxaca’s local
luchadores.
 _ Daniel Guzmán, Tristessa, 2007, from the series La búsqueda del ombligo (The search of the navel), 2005-2007, Ink on paper on wood panel,
82 11/16 x 70 7/8 x 1 3/8 in. (210 x 180 x 3.5 cm), Private collection, Cologne

with a Theme
“Life on Mars”
The First Carnegie International
By
Vicky A. Clark

39
Are we alone in the universe?

the strangers in our own worlds?

_ Daniel Guzmán, Batalla (Battle), 2005, from the series La búsqueda del ombligo (The search of the navel), 2005-2007, Ink on paper on wood panel
82 11/16 x 70 7/8 x 1 3/8 in (210 x 180 x 3.5 cm), La Colección Jumex, Mexico City
Do aliens exist? Or are we, ourselves,
These are the questions curator Douglas Fogle asked in the 55th version of
the Carnegie International, the second-oldest ongoing, international survey of
contemporary art and the only one so intimately tied to an art museum and its
collection. Established in 1896, its goals embody founder Andrew Carnegie’s
positivist attitude. The exhibition was to establish parity between American and
European art; educate and uplift visitors, especially those living in Pittsburgh; _ David Shrigley, Finger, 2008, Painted polyester, Courtesy of the artist

and spread peace and goodwill throughout the world. Carnegie also saw it as the
vehicle to secure the Old Masters of tomorrow, turning to the future instead of to
the past as his former partner Henry Clay Frick did by collecting the Old Masters.
From Winslow Homer’s The Wreck in the first annual to Vija Celmins’s Night Sky
#12 in the current version, the museum has purchased from and for the show.

17 Countries, 40 Artists,
204 Works of Art
Known as the Carnegie International since the 1980s, the exhibition is rarely
truly international in scope. In the early years, only European and American
work was included; a wider geographic representation is expected these days,
but, as others have already pointed out, the majority of the work this year does
_ David Shrigley, I’m Dead, 2007, Taxidermy kitten with wood sign and acrylic paint, Overall: 37 x 20 x 20 in. (94 x 50.8 x 50.8 cm),
Courtesy of the artist and the David Roberts Collection
come from the US, Britain and Germany. The number of women artists is still
sadly low, and most of the artists are known entities. Some work dates from
more than 25 years ago, which is a divergence from past selections. All of this
said—and we could repeat the same concerns for most of these international
extravaganzas—this International does, in fact, move in a new direction: for
the first time, it has a stated theme.

41
 In recent memory, themes have characterized certain shows.
In 1988 a millennial angst emerged from the works themselves.
Subplots were evident in 1991, when several critiqued the
Smithsonian-like institution housing the show. In 2004, “the
Ultimates,” a term applied by philosophers to the unknowable,
served as a subtext. “Life on Mars” serves as a fertile starting
point for an exhibition that ebbs and flows through the
galleries like a fascinating conversation concerning curator
Fogle’s key question: What does it mean to be human in an
increasingly complex and unstable world? Fogle has, in a
sense, installed an op-ed piece, giving his interpretation of art,
culture and life in the first decade of the new century. From
the shimmering gold paintings by Rudolf Stingel in the lobby to
the raucous street environment installed by Barry McGee (APT
Los Angeles) in a corridor to Mike Kelley’s spectacular models
of Superman’s Kandor, the works act in isolation and within
the larger context. Some think that a theme places art in a box,
limiting possible meanings, but here the works seem to gain
from the thematic context.

_ Richard Wright, No Title, 2008, Gouache on wall, Dimensions variable, Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery, New York; The Modern Institute, Glasgow; and BQ,
Cologne, Commissioned by 2008 Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Photo: Tom Little

43
 _ Ryan Gander, A sheet of paper on which I was about to draw, as it slipped from my table and fell to the floor, 2008, Forty 15 cm crystal balls, dimensions variable,
Courtesy Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam; and STORE Gallery, London (floor installation); Wilhelm Sasnal, a selection of paintings
Fogle’s thoughtful installation includes sensitive juxtapositions, such as Maria
Lassnig’s Bacon-inspired figural distortions placed next to Daniel Guzman’s (APT
Mexico City) comic-book Boschian figures, both of which speak to the human
condition. The next room, one of the best in the show, is filled with Matthew
Monahan’s faux caryatids. Carved out of foam and bound with moving straps, the
caryatids struggle like Michelangelo’s slaves to escape the bloc and as contorted
human specimens recalling the existential angst of Giacometti figures. The eerie
spectral figures of Bruce Connor’s life-size photographs complement the museum’s
casts of classical sculpture, fusing fact and fiction and creating a bridge between
past, present and future. The quiet night skies in Vija Celmin’s paintings are echoed
in nearby galleries by the fragile web of Ranjani Shettar’s map of the universe
and the vibrating wallscape by Richard Wright (APT London). Mario Merz adds his
obsession with the Fibonacci sequence as a path into the unknown. The artists’
effort to explore the human condition and imagine the unknown through sculpture,
photography, painting, maps and even mathematical formulas all add to the scope
and depth of Fogle’s endeavor.

45
Three artists
reflect the
diversity of
that endeavor.

Daniel Guzman uses the simplified drawing style of

the comic book to address phobias, fears and lusts; at
times, his work approaches the scatological and the
abject. He fuses comic books, graphic novels, zines and
paintings in a new hybrid form in which Boschian images
frequently float in an unarticulated field. These are visual
manifestations of dreams or nightmares of the everyman
trying to make sense of the world in which he lives. Other
artists included in the exhibition are Mark Bradford (APT
Los Angeles), Ryan Gander (APT London), Richard Hughes
(APT London), Wilhelm Sasnal (APT London) and Haegue
Yang (APT Berlin).
_ Haegue Yang, Three Kinds, 2008, mixed media (venetian blinds, light, and mirror),
David Shrigley (APT London) shares Guzman’s interest in Richard Wright’s (APT London) contribution moves into Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Barbara Wien, Berlin,

comics and cartoons, and his installation in the museum’s the realm of an imagined landscape as his straight lines Commissioned by 2008 Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Treasure Room, a small space usually filled with
decorative-arts objects, provides comic relief or release.
A taxidermied kitten stands on its hind paws, holding
a sign announcing, “I am dead.” Shrigley’s work moves
beyond the humorous gag, however, to thoughts about
knowledge, communication, assumptions and the futility
of much of the human endeavor.
of red painted golf tees create optical illusions, leaving
the viewer unsettled and dizzy, near vertigo. Grounded in
the traditions of minimalism and conceptualism, Wright’s
work takes off, into outer space, perhaps, as he transforms
an unremarkable site into a mesmerizing world.
It is always easy to criticize a large group show like the
International, but this version is both satisfying and
challenging, from Doug Aitken’s projections on the front
and rear facades to the crystal globes scattered on the
floor by Ryan Gander. Anchored by Douglas Fogle’s ideas
about the meaning of life, this International is both of and
about our times.

Vicky A. Clark is an independent curator and writer based in

Pittsburgh.

47
OPINION Paco Barragán
“Art Fair” The Art Fair
Curator, “New
For this issue of Insights we asked artists and curators to
submit their thoughts on art fairs. The artists are largely Fairism,” and
Relational
weary of the demands made upon them to produce
work for as many as four or five art fairs per year. Often

Curating
cutting into their output for a gallery exhibition, the work
shown at fairs is not reviewed nor contextualized within a
season of gallery exhibitions. While it is absolutely clear
the audience reached through an art fair is exponentially
From the “biennalization” of the ’90s we have moved
greater in scope than that of a regional gallery, thereby
towards the “fairization” of the world at the beginning
enhancing the possibility for sales and new exhibition
of the 21st century. Art fairs, just like globalization, are
opportunities, the artist often feels shortchanged. During
neither good nor bad; it simply becomes what we make of
a solo gallery exhibition an artist can stand apart from
it. Current critique of art fairs is merely based, I’m afraid,
their work and take a measure of their achievements—
on preconceived and boring notions we all know too well.
not possible in an art fair. The regional scene an artist
Why don’t we try to find an explanation of why art fairs are
participates in provides emotional, critical and largely
so booming instead of judging the present with the ideals
unconditional support—again, not available in an art fair.
of the past?
Where art fairs are concerned, business comes first.
In this “new spirit of capitalism” so accurately described Why not believe that we are facing a new development
Independent curator Paco Barragán offers a distinct
by Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, modern society offers in some curatorial practices, which are expanding from
counterpoint argument. As a curator and art fair organizer
an oneiric and emotional quality with different types and a museum or institutional sphere towards a much more
(CIRCA in Puerto Rico and photo MIAMI) he has a viewpoint
levels of experiences. The art fair as a concept represents, commercial sphere, where they seek to reformulate the art
that is informed and visionary, in its own right. The art
par excellence, the paradigm of this so-called “experience (market) system? Why insist on the idea that a fair must
fair becomes a platform for curators and ideas that might
economy;” a center where a limited offer of artworks only give priority to economic matters and not to cultural
not reach more conventional institutional venues such as
on sale allows one to transcend the mere category of and social ones? Why not resort to the term “New Fairism”
museums and Kunsthalles. In Barragán’s words the art fair
“spectator” in order to become a “role-player” through in a speculative as well as practical manner? Isn’t the art
is a place where “relational curating” occurs, allowing for
research, bargaining and (though not necessarily) buying fair similar to Malraux’s “Museum Without Walls”? Isn’t an
far more variables, relationships, experimental solutions
a work of art. Art fairs exist not only for the quality of art art fair a “cultural house” that takes art from city to city?
and unscripted events.
displayed but also for the quality of experience offered.
Unlike biennials and museums, the visiting public of During a brief period and within a very specific space and
What do you think?
art fairs is not a passive entity allowing large layers of time, elitism becomes popular. And thus, the relationship
society to access the latest art in a more democratic, less of the art professional with popular culture, as well as his
intimidating and more anonymous manner. participation in the art market, is called into question. If
art fairs have always been limited to merely commercial
NEW FAIRISM exchanges, I don’t see why a curator, in collaboration with
the artist and gallery owner, shouldn’t be capable of re-
New times suggest new contexts, which in turn demand launching and reformulating the art fair as institution and
new curatorial approaches. It’s a fact that art fairs have artistic structure in an attempt to make it more arresting
existed, such as we know them today, for already a few and interesting, that is, to turn it into an aesthetic or
decades, but it wasn’t until relatively recent times that intellectual experience.
we witnessed the “category of the new” in the shape of
the arrival of the curator in the world of art fairs, and the RELATIONAL CURATING
consequent promotion in the media of some of them as
“curated fairs.” Thus, the art fair is resorting to the curator I have always been a firm believer that if one participates
to act as an enabler or facilitator of a “positioning” via in certain international circuits—be they museums,
projects that are specifically created for the fair—Frieze biennials or art fairs—he/she should question the context
Projects for example—in order to stand out among the and not take anything for granted. If “institutions,” as
mass of fair proposals. In this type of entente cordiale the Iwona Blazwick tells us, “will tend towards systems of
fair benefits from the prestige, know-how and contacts display that reflect the complex socioeconomic and
of the curator. The curator, in exchange, gets access to geopolitical contexts within which they operate,” it is
a new curatorial platform. Besides, more curators are logical then that art fairs will represent their highest
progressively finding a place in selection committees, expression. “Can we combine,” Blazwick wonders,
which stems from a sense and desire for “transparency” in “continuity with the flexibility to embrace new modes of
order to avoid polemics directed at the selection process. artistic production and reception?”

49

Art fairs provide the possibility of working “on the
spot” with works exhibited at the art fair or presented
to specific projects facilitating an instant, riskier
and more experimental feedback in a context where
conceptualization, selection, production, exhibition,
inauguration and social interaction—unlike what usually
happens in a museum or a biennial—are all compressed
into 4 or 5 days. On the other hand, exhibitions curated
by the art fair curator bring the advantage that the
selected artworks are not subordinated to the concept,
something that group exhibitions are normally accused
of; the artworks themselves bring the concept to a less
intimidating and canonized place.
We could call this curatorial practice of dealing, exchange
and social correspondence “relational curating,” given
that this is the original and pre-Bourriaudian meaning that
the adjective implies. However, we could also interpret it
mutatis mutandis in terms of “relational aesthetics,” in the
sense that it is about a criterion of artistic curatorship or a
lecture about certain works, which facilitate an immediate
and experimental exchange of ideas among the people
who are present and involved. In that way, the art fair
curator appeals in his thematic exhibition to concepts like
“spectator’s participation” and “live experience.”
Art fairs present very hectic logistics and production
schedules that generate fast, sexy and arresting art that
requires a high level of concentration, which we are not
always able to attain. Undoubtedly there are still other
exhibition contexts that are very necessary and capable of
generating significance! But we can’t any longer deny that
art fairs have now become cultural events with their own
status, and being against art fairs, as Amanda Coulson
points out, is akin to being against art and artists.
Paco Barragán is Independent curator and author of “The
Art Fair Age,” 2008, CHARTA.
_ Michelle Grabner, Untitled 2, 2006, Etching on paper, 28 x 22 in
Michelle
Grabner
One can only imagine the witticisms Oscar Wilde would
levy on contemporary art’s abundant trade shows.
Perhaps something like: “The art collector is the man
who knows the price of everything but the value of
nothing.” Or: “A work of art is the unique result of a unique
dealer.” But I think Wilde’s brilliantly succinct “Everything
popular is wrong” is most befitting when considering the
phenomenon of art fairs today. Well, certainly wrong for
artists, anyway.
Fair organizers have tried to make art fairs artist
friendly with symposia and other art world sundries. Yet
pedagogical marketing is really unnecessary, because it is
the promise of networking that makes art fairs irresistible
to artists. And that is a great shame. Artists today don’t
know how to value their work unless they can see it on
shoddy temporary walls in an exposition hall while rubbing
shoulders with art world players.
Paradoxically, the art market has given artists the freedom
to explore a wide range of mediums and approaches—
yarn, clay, wood grain; figuration, abstraction, narrative
structuralism. But artists today have a difficult time
understanding the significance of their exploration unless
it sells or catches the eye of an international curator. This
parallels our wider cultural predicament that has many
of us constantly online, accumulating Facebook friends,
and the like, to establish our personal and professional
relevance.
Art fairs—big or small, in geographical centers or in the
margins, satellites or the main event—are the mastheads
of art world trade today. They are where dealers try to
earn their keep. I, like many artists, just stay away, unless
it is, for example, a metafair project sponsored by the
good folks who run The Milwaukee International. John
Riepenhoff, Nicholas Frank, Scott Reeder (APT New York),
Tyson Reeder (APT New York) and Elysia Borowy-Reeder
have pulled off transforming an art fair into a giant
sculpture, a two-day performance and a scathing critique
while still providing a setting for commerce and mastering
an impressive public relations stunt. Their Dark Fair at the
Swiss Institute during this year’s Armory show was both
brilliant and ridiculous. Everything art should be.
Michelle Grabner (APT Los Angeles) is an artist and critic
who lives in Oak Park, Illinois, where she also runs The
Suburban, an artist project space (Thesuburban.org).
_ Pedro Velez, CORRUPTED FDR WALL OF COLLAGES, 2007, 12 collages in mixed media
- (found book pages, paper, ink, acrylic, colored push pins, photographs),
Dimensions variable
Pedro Vélez
Art fairs have become just as much of a hassle for artists
as they have become an essential social tool for the art
business. Although fairs, unlike prepackaged biennials,
are great platforms for underrepresented artists and
regions to showcase work, the institutionalized and
predictable fair ecosystem is diluting the experience of
viewing, understanding and making art. At a fair, artwork
can be appreciated only in a fast frenzy; you have to
experience it and grasp its meaning, if you can, amidst the
suits, the partying and the schmoozing. Then there’s the
question of which fair to attend. With so many fairs taking
place at so many venues simultaneously, how does an
artist on a limited budget decide where to expend his or
her energies and funds? Such decisions are usually made
in the same way mainstream audiences tend to go for the
generic blockbuster movie in summer: by following the
pack.
There are a few exceptions in the US; take, for example,
the Milwaukee International, photo MIAMI, VOLTA and the
upcoming FAS/ Sound Art Fair in Puerto Rico, just to name
a few. These fairs are somehow accessible economically
for exhibitors, artists and collectives, and are organized as
curated events that cater not only to the market and art
advisors but to the broader public.
Amongst artists there exists an anxiety to be included in
at least one fair every year. When I started working and
showing in art fairs in ’99, it was tacky for an artist to
list art fair exhibitions on their CVs. Today, however, an
artist must take credit for art fair inclusion because it
gives the impression that he or she has made it in the art
market, or that his or her gallery is doing its job properly.
Participating in an art fair is becoming more important
to an artist’s career than is participating in a biennial or
museum show.
I think remote-control curators, desk curators and
institutionalized curators that double as advisors for
collectors and their artists are responsible for breaking
the market, not fairs. Sadly, the role of the artist is at the
bottom of the food chain. Art fairs are a self-sustained
business that keeps growing on demand and the artwork
is the colorful wallpaper decorating the circus.
My main concern is this: How can we artists make
meaningful work that cuts through, or bypasses
altogether, art fair frivolity, while managing to pay the bills
at the same time?
Pedro Vélez (APT Mexico City) lives and works in Puerto
Rico, Chicago and New York City.
51
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