UNFAIR PROJECT
An initiative of Parachutartists in collaboration with De Service Garage.
Parachutartists Foundation and De Service Garage are proud to present UNFAIR PROJECT, an international group exhibition with performances, lectures and discussions exploring the phenomenon of the contemporary art fair and art economy.
In collaboration with various art initiatives, art magazines, writers and curators, UNFAIR PROJECT illuminates experimental, non-commercial and socially engaged art. The exhibition seeks an interaction with site-specific installation, performance and event.
The project explores the value and function of art in the age of post-neoliberalism. What impact does the credit crisis have on the position of artists and the art world?
UNFAIR PROJECT’s finissage on June 6 will include the launching of the catalogue before a lecture and debate program, which strives to provoke stimulating and intellectual discussions about art, cultural value and the free market.
Artists list and images of their work:
.jpg)
-c.jpg)
Cabieses-Valdes´ practice explores individual and private acts of violence, acts that are integrated into routine or habit and barely recognizable. The use of domestic accessories allows the artist to transform their more common function into evil torture machines. His work develops through precise technical control as he uses situations of domesticity to explore desire and manipulation.
_____
Francisco Camacho (1979 CO) The value and function of art.
How do you extract cocaine out of cocaine leaves?
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
Abraham Lincoln (1809-65), U.S. President.
Speech, 18 Dec. 1840, to Illinois House of Representatives
The basic formula for cocaine starts either by purchaising or making tropinone, converting the tropine into 2-carbometroxytropine (also as methyl-tropan-3one-2-carboxylate), reducing this to ecgonihe, and changing it into Cocaine. This synthesis is certainly worth performing with the high prices that cocaine is now commanding.
__________
For de Boer, describing a painting as ‘vibrant’ refers to an unmistaken vitality. Through installation de Boer incorporates this vitality of the unfinished as a way of creating a constant renewal of itself. De Boer's work is thus a cyclical incorporation and digestion of its previous self. Loud and smoky manifestations.
The works are documented on video, and this is the only remnant.
The videos are edited and incorporated into one continuous footage.
This installation is a collage of all moving home appliances that turn into a chaotic repetition of sound and image.
This installation will also be documented and fragments will in-turn become new works contributing to the video collage.
1646 [sixteen forty-six] (NL) is an artist-run space based in the centre of The Hague. Run by four practicing artists of different international backgrounds, 1646 focuses on the production, reception and function of art in present times. The organisation distinguishes itself through a particular combination of prerequisites: the primacy of the artist, art to be experienced rather than theorised, the stability and history it has achieved as an independent art space, the international character of its organisers, participants and its projection to an international art audience.
________
Ehsan Fardjadniya (1980 NL/IR) For the love of losers.
Fardjadniya likes to describe his practice as created from the viewpoint of a frustrated iconoclast. A such he comes into conflict with the appeal to get rid of all images and representations of value as an iconoclast and the need to respect them as the only possible mediation in the role of an iconophile. For the Love of Losers exists in between this polarity, critically commenting on contemporary issues of valorisation. Here the performative reaction against mis-valorisation in art, as represented by the diamond skull, consists of throwing rotten tomatoes at it. This process itself is the creation of a work that in its own right becomes subject to its function as a continuous fiction in the context of its valuation.
What is to be done with value? Its destruction simply empowers it. Fardjadniya builds on this double-bind using an iconoclast strategy that is itself bound in the circularity of action and reaction, attestation and resistance. The artist references the most prevalent assumption and fear in any iconoclast debate, which is that the viewer misguides his adoration towards the image rather then to the issue represented by the image. Fardjadniya accentuates this debate by inviting the destruction of what represents commercial art, an action that nevertheless completes his own piece of work. Wiebke Gronemeyer, Independent curator, based in London and Hamburg.
________
Maartje Fliervoet (1973 NL) Deconstruction within Construction, Part of "The Political Documentation in Art" together with Raymond Taudin Chabot and Dmitry Vilensky (Cheto Delat?)
Raymond Taudin Chabot (1974 NL) Archive Project
Taudin-Chabot started collecting newspaper clippings a long time ago and his Archive Project is still ongoing today. The 26 minute video with the same title dating from 2007 shows us a large amount of carefully selected and edited newspaper photographs of men that hold powerful positions. This focus on the media representation of these men again leads to an absurd experience of time and space. Deprived of context, the men step out of the actuality of the day, and start leading a life in which time becomes more like a vague notion of a certain era. Instead our focus is redirected to the expressions of power radiating from their body language and the field of psychological associations that interconnect them. Text by Maartje Fliervoet
Dmitry Vilensky (1964 RUS) Chronicles of Perestroika, 2009.
Documentary film transposed to video. Running time: 16:46. Music: Mikhail Krutik.
Vilensky is a member of the St. Petersburg - Moscow based group Chto Delat? (What's to be done?). This group consists of writers, philosophers, and artists who formulate alternatives to recent capitalist developments in their country and abroad through political theory, activism and art. They have a website and produce a newspaper on a regular base, exploring themes such as: Knowledge in Action, Debates on the Avant-garde, What is the Use of Art?, and Experience of Perestroika. What is the Use of Art? will be available for free in the show. Besides producing political theory, they participate in numerous global art manifestations and produce artworks both individually and as a collective. In this way, they engage in an autonomous knowledge production that reflects and redefines their cultural practice.
Chronicles of Perestroika is based on 16 mm documentary footage of demonstrations in St. Petersburg during the Perestroika era between 1987 and 1991. The video begins with relatively conventional looking black and white shots of a crowd carrying banners, reminding one of revolutionary Russia. As the camera zooms in on the activists, the intentionally anachronistic clothing of the people becomes apparent. The musical composition is also a contemporary score. An interesting experience of time lapse thus occurs as the video continuously rolls back and forth between recent history and the early 20st century. Text by Maartje Fliervoet
_____
Francesca Grilli (IT) Enduring midnight
Performance, soprano/ Lina Vasta, pianist/ Diego Mattiello.
For Enduring Midnight, the memory of the opera, so beloved by Grilli’s grandma Fedora, inspires the interpretation of a soprano in the middle of the night. For this piece Grilli invited soprano Lina Vasta, who now lives in the retirement home for musicians Giuseppe Verdi after a long and glorious musical career, to perform again. Vasta sings with the accompaniment of a pianist, in front of a standing audience in the middle of the night and in semi-darkness.
This evocative gesture suggests an alternate story-line; instead of the simple revisitation of a past experience the artist chooses to focus on the present and to possibly imagine a better future.
This performance transcends any linguistic boundaries and evokes a gust of emotion that momentarily links everyone witnessing the event. Text by Caterina Riva, writer and curator, based in London.
_______
Idan Hayosh (1979 IL) AH64a
Karantzi likes to challenge rationality, functionality and systems of thought that we take for granted. She tends to adjust her works in their environment, to abuse her materials and to focus on the supposed functionality and purpose of the work at the expense of a rational approach and a sleek finish. Underlieing the apparent humour of the work is pessimism and mistrust, The work is an attempt at anarchy and change, but this too is cancelled by misconception. Karantzi’s work is mostly a proposition for an alternate approach to life, using ‘art’ as the testing grounds for a new utopia.
__________
Komplot (Curators Collective from Brussels)
Note: Letter of Victor Convert to his son, Jean-Philippe who made a research for the UNFAIR project. As an answer, Komplot launches the Komplot's shares, unique certificates made by artists, giving access to parts of Komplot's capital by donations. Komplot is a collective of curators based in Brussels: "www.kmplt.be
Komplot launches the first 1000 € Komplot shares by Jean-Philippe Convert, Dany Devos, Aline Bouvy / John Gillis, David Evrard, Simona Denicolai & Ivo Provoost, Jacques Lizène with a video by Kosten Koper.
My dear son,
We of course possessed Russian bonds which as a matter of fact, were the
origin of family arguments in the 1920's. Your grandfather told me this
and said that a certain Auray, a remote cousin and former bank
clerk, was judged responsible for advising the entire family to subscribe…
After the fall of the USSR, an agreement was made between Russia and the
creditor nations, under the terms of which, a symbolic system of refund
was put in place and the citizens of those countries who accepted it,
also for their part, renounced any financial claim or appeal in regards
to the bonds.
My father gave me the bonds which remained with him. Then, I put
them into the TPG bank at Saint-Lo, which six months later, transferred
four or five hundred francs to me. I am not really sure of the exact
details, and… obviously I did not hold onto anything any more.
There you have the entire history of our Russian bonds!
So long.
Your father
______
Schirin Kretschmann (1980 GER) Şimdi, Contributed by Nazli Gurlek, independent curator and writer based in Istanbul.
Kretschmann’s ice-piece consists of a bag filled with coloured ice-lollies. The bag is placed in the exhibition space just before the viewer is expected to visit. As the ice melts and seeps out, a coloured stain spreads over the gallery floor. The architectural features of the gallery as well as the temperature conditions inside the space affect both form and span of the work to such an extent that they become part of the actual installation. Kretschmann’s implementation of the architectural aspects of the space allows for what is normally ignored or considered as backdrop, to gain peculiarity and poetic resonance.
Kretschmann’s overall practice is driven by an epistemological interest in the construction of image. This research is developed through artistic construction of the idea of painting. However contradictory, painting here holds a processual becoming in time, its limits are stretched up to the liminals of the space in which the work is conceived; and rationally-controlled-constructions of pictorial composition and bi-dimensionality are abolished in favor of chance mechanisms, tri-dimensionality and multiple viewpoints. In various installations, ice-blocks are just left on the floor to let the painting occur. In other words, the work is let alone by the artist to generate itself on a repetitive basis to produce its own language. Text by Nazli Gurlek, independent curator and writer based in Istanbul.
_____
Matthieu Laurette (1970 FR ) Opportunities: Let's Make Lots of Money
DIY instruction piece :
1/ Choose a blank paper or a wall (size doesn't matter).
2/ Choose a black marker for paper, a black spray paint or a vinyl lettering (size doesn't matter).
3/ Write : LET’S MAKE LOTS OF MONEY
4/ watch and think about it as long and as often as you want.
_______
Dan Shaw-Town (UK) “Much ado about nothing”
Shaw-Towns’ current practice has been consumed by ideas of Entropy and theatre. The act of producing something through a process of extensive erasure, the result of an action that has seemingly brought things back to zero, ready to start again. In so doing the work attempts to create a space, allowing room for contemplation and uncertainty. It is about what’s not there as much as what is.
There is a specific questioning of the transformation from the object to the artwork. Content and function have been sacrificed for style and appearance, a casual attack at the potential of difference in sameness. However there is no illusionism here, decisions and materials are laid bare, they are what they are, even if what they want to be is something else.
Shaw-Town puts his work and his role as the artist in positions of vulnerability, often displaying pieces in situations where they might be overlooked or appear unfinished. These explorations in temporary modes of display show a clear questioning of the purpose of this moment in an effort to understand the intentions of ‘the exhibition’.
Sebastian Milner (Curator and writer)
_____________
Edwin Stolk (1974 NL) War of Currents 'eliminator of possibilities' .
As a radical phenomenologist and a subjective terrorist, I am studying structures of consciousness. This particular installation is created after walking the streets around The Service Garage. I noticed the street names like Stephensonstraat (George Stephenson), George Westinghousestraat and Rudolf Dieselstraat, all great inventors who inspired ‘War of Currents’. The confrontation between George Westinghouse’s promotion of AC power distribution and Thomas Edison‘s DC power system became known as "the War of Currents." Electricity is for me a subjective phenomenon which in itself reaches a high level of connectivity. War of currents in this context refers to the elimination of present time, 'the present' as 'eliminator of possibilities' that transfers future into past.
_______
Conrad Ventur (USA) thelatemarilyn
You can find Ventur online, culling-out formerly televised music performances, ‘personal’ clips from YouTube, ‘political’ appeals found in songs and films, poignant rights of passage captured on video, and taking this footage and reworking/ representing them in installations, bringing new agency therein. He is interested in activating the space of reception with kaleidoscopic ‘affects’, like projecting video through rotating crystal spheres or off spinning mirrors. In a current project, Ventur is revisiting all of Andy Warhol’s screen tests, by filming the living subjects as they are now and projecting the ‘new’ version next to the 'original'.
