Selected excerpts from the archive of e-flux announcements between
August–December 2005

Through its progressive development over the last two centuries, tourism has made a major contribution to our illusion of the world as a global village. Destined to become the most important industry worldwide in the near future, it can be seen as an important metaphor of current cultural globalisation, as well as an extremely suitable area for developing critical approaches to the socio-economic mutations taking place across the globe. Consequently, it comes as no surprise that many artists today are employing the language of tourism in their work, continuing an interest in tourism that has developed over the last couple of decades but working along different lines than the traditional approach.

— W139, posted 12/14/05

The starting point of the exhibition Spaces of Transition, construed by Art Director Meta Gabrsek Prosenc, speaks about places: "These are places, where the artist's sensibility always discovers new sources of his creativity. To expose, reveal, intensify the existential crisis of the lonely, disoriented human in a globalised world, in which old ideologies, religions and values have lost their significance, it means that the artist himself must think about searching for the way out."

— MARIBOR ART GALLERY, posted 11/30/05

Kiosk is a travelling archive of independent publishing projects within the field of contemporary art. With contributions from more than 250 alternative and self-organised publishing houses, Kiosk comprises a diverse and illuminating range of artists’ books, periodicals, alternative magazines and audio and video projects. First presented in 2001 at Galerie Karin Guenther, Hamburg, Kiosk has since travelled to various public institutions, galleries and artist-run spaces across Europe. These include Manifesta 4, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main; Witte de With, Rotterdam; Kunst-Werke, Berlin and the 9th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul.

— Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, posted 12/13/05

With a film, a projection of images, posters, and the publication of a book, the artist invites us to take a look at these cities with a population of less than 100,000, where 10% of the world's population still lives today, but which have no truly specific character--on the whole they are invisible cities.

— Frac Bourgogne, posted 12/06/05

In an effort to understand the ongoing processes that are taking place around us in the spheres of contemporary culture, the 4th issue of Framework sketches the conditions for creating concepts of meaning and worth in an era characterized by a sort of permanent transience, a state in which exception and insecurity take the upper hand. In the midst of constant movements, migrations, displacements and transformations, the general dissolution of the borders between various spheres of life has had deep consequences on the traditional understanding of knowledge creation. New global tensions arise and are reflected in local scenes, often in violent forms.

— framework: the finnish art review, posted 12/07/05

‘Home Works: A Forum on Cultural Practices’ is one of the premiere international cultural projects hosted in the Middle East. In its last two editions, Home Works has managed to reveal the strength of home-grown expression, affirming the region's and its Diaspora's cultural dynamic.

— Home Works III, posted 11/13/2005

Through a series of departures and returns, artists have occasionally deployed the recurring motifs of the journey: exploration, discovery, revelation and transformation. This strategy has allowed them to critically navigate the global spaces of displacement and diaspora, and the high anxiety of belonging.
Focusing on the formation of new perspectives through an extensive range of artistic journeys, this symposium explores some of the current concerns facing artists working on and across the borders of art, moving image and time-based practice. Within this moment of extensive mobility and migration, artists come together to consider how being elsewhere might, like alchemy, transform the practice of art.
Necessary Journeys: an international symposium about artistic journeys, departures and returns

— Art council England, posted 11/10/05

PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY, a term coined by the Situationist International in the 1950s and appropriated by contemporary artists, is used to describe projects that produce AFFECT in relation to the geographic environment. Rather than making maps in the traditional geographic sense, these artists utilize maps and geography to conduct located experiments with (among other things) people, trash, bikes, clothes, the sky and the gallery space itself. Often making use of mobile technologies and existing in the hybrid spaces of the Internet and the physical world, their projects produce new understandings of location and identity as shifting, fluid, singular and irreducible.

— Art Interactive, posted 10/26/05

220 galleries exhibited at Fiac 2005. 26 countries were represented.
115 foreign galleries and 105 French galleries participated.
The overall volume of transactions is considered to be extremely positive by the vast majority of exhibitors, French and international alike, with a marked increase in sales with regard to previous years.

— FIAC 2005 – REPORT, posted 10/18/05

International network in the visual arts field is an important qualification.

— Argos, posted 10/14/05

This year, the Biennial's total budget amounts to EUR 5.5 million. Numerically speaking, the Lyon Biennial is the third largest biennial event in the world with roughly 170,000 visitors of whom close to 40% are foreign, and 1,200 are art critics and writers from across the globe.

— Biennale de Lyon 2005, posted 10/10/05

It is our view that decides whether, and how, we see migration. It is the nation’s perspective that turns people crossing our borders into “the others”: aliens that we must research and understand, defend ourselves against and control, exploit and integrate. Whether with empathic openness, economic pragmatism or racist exclusion: the nation needs these “others” in order to place itself centre stage. This is how the narrative of the majority and its minorities comes into existence.

— Kölnischer Kunstverein, posted 09/28/05

“Francis Alÿs walks a lot. He walks the streets of the world’s largest metropolis, Mexico City, where he has made his home for the past 15 years. He has also walked the streets of Copenhagen, Sao Paulo, Jerusalem and London.”

— Artangel, posted 09/28/05

EVR started a year ago in a small storefront on the Lower East Side in New York - the international headquarters of the Electronic Flux Corporation. Since then it has traveled to venues in Berlin, Amsterdam, Miami, Frankfurt and will soon appear in Seoul and Vienna amongst other locations

— Portikus im Leinwandhaus, posted 09/22/05

Works by more than 1,500 artists from all genres of contemporary visual art will be on view, presented by 129 galleries from 25 countries from four continents.

— ART FORUM BERLIN 2005, posted 09/14/05

“Everybody was speaking about this flight yesterday night, at the opening of the Lyon Biennial. And, well, here I was: waiting for it at the airport. On my way to Istanbul. With the entire company of contemporary art jet setters. Great. As soon as I sat down in the plane, Judith Schwarzbart, near the window, dressed in pink and excited, asked me if I received the call, this call from this great actor, from the TV series, The Incredible Hulk. Then the guy on my right started nodding, pretending that Lou Ferrigno did call him from LA, just 30 minutes ago, and invited him to the Baltic Triennial, a filtered Hollywood art phone call concept by Matthieu Laurette. And Judith was now screaming "Hulk's gonna be in Vilnius".

Jealous, I was checking my messages when the Turkish hostess spoke as if she was the Vilnius' mayor or a big star: she was celebrating the inauguration of the Baltic Triennial, as Gabriel Lester asked her to do so.

I felt quite uneasy: what's going on man? Is this flight a schizophrenic joke? Is Vilnius the final destination? I was about to ask the pink fan of the TV green monster. But she was now sleeping for good, like almost everyone in this scary plane for zombies. Actually, listening to the music in the headphones, a very loud sound to be precise, nothing to do with the usual cheesy jazzy music, I started to feel tired too. I recognised the hypnotic piece signed by Loris Greaud, the French artist. Before I slept, I drank some grey Champagne, served fresh for the Baltic air party, kind of black market situation on board. This was the second opening of the IX Baltic Triennial, see you in Vilnius 23rd of September for more.

— The IX Baltic Triennial, posted 09/13/05

At the same time the international exhibition tour of the Generali Foundation Collection, entitled Occupying Space, is to be made better known in Vienna. Following the exhibition in Munich at the Haus der Kunst, the exhibition was hosted in Rotterdam/Netherlands at the Nederlands fotomuseum, Witte de With and TENT. until the end of August. From 28 October to 9 December 2005 the Generali Foundation Collection will be presented in cooperation with the Museum for Contemporary Art in Zagreb/Croatia.

— Generali Foundation, posted 09/12/05

En Route: Via Another Route is an exhibition that will take place on the Trans-Siberian train departing from Moscow, Russia and arriving at the final destination of Beijing, China where it will terminate, occupying the same moment in time as Capturing the Moving Mind: Management and Movement in the Age of Permanently Temporary War a train conference organised by the politics journal Ephemera.

— EN ROUTE: VIA ANOTHER ROUTE, posted 09/10/05

Absent from her natal country since she was 17 years old, we find ourselves before an artist whose education and artistic production has been basically developed in the United States, which makes the study of her diasporas and trans-cultural experiences necessary for the understanding of her work.

— Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castillay León — MUSAC, posted 09/06/05

Previously BEYOND organized the outdoor exhibition Parasite Paradise. This transitory town of mobile architecture was a plea for a more flexible form of urban development.

— Bureau Beyond, posted 09/05/05

Born in Jerusalem and based in Berlin, Fast is considered to be one of the most innovative video artists working today and inIVA will be presenting his first UK solo exhibition.

— inIVA (Institute of International Visual Arts) posted 08/29/05

The exhibition, preceded by thematic residency, puts into the artists’ hands the multi-layered and multi-faceted cultural construct of the last quarter-century in Poland. “Dockwatchers” refers to cultural memory, its aberration, re-enactment and displacement.

— Wyspa Institute of Art, posted 08/26/05

He made a selection from the youngest visionaries of international video-art. Next to Flemish artists, are global participants hailing from Great Britain, Switzerland, Portugal, Turkey, Argentina, China, the United States, and elsewhere.

— Contour 2005, posted08/15/05

The Gwangju Biennale aims to resolve the twofold problems of tradition and contemporaneity, localism and globalism, etc.

— Gwangju Biennale 2006, posted 08/08/05