Monument to Transformation

The exhibition, conceived as imaginative and analytical space, presents the outcome of more than two years of team research into "social transformations" (vocabulary, exhibition fragments 1-8, texts, panel discussions, publications, videojournals, etc).

The curators do not believe that art can provide easily applicable answers to political and social problems and conflicts. However, art does create a space which provides the basic pre-requisites on which thinking, dreaming and discussions about politics and society are based.

Thinking about transformation is conceived as being structured in the tension between various methods of social scientific and artistic practice. In the context of transformation studies, the so-called Eastern European region has its own specific characteristics that originated in the geo-political division of the world irrevocably decided at the Yalta Conference as a consequence of the Second World War.

While researching transformation processes, we abandoned the reductive theories of the region that we come from and that we represent. We extended research to encompass artistic and theoretical work that reflects the transformations in Greece, Spain, Portugal, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, China, Mexico and Argentina. This attempt to newly formulate trans-local specifics of transformation meant abandoning the stigmatic construction of so-called "Eastern Europe" and opting for a differentiated, authoritative and new map of the world of transformation.

One possible ways to approach this exhibition is to see it as an "assemblage" structure. In the terminology of archaeology, this means a layer with various artefacts that are mutually connected. The motive of this common return to the past is the need to destroy the clarity and definiteness of the view of the "transformation" that one has gained through individual experience. This is almost an ontological need to subvert the essence of one's own experience with this past – it is necessary to shed paranoia on the things recently lived. The suspected and experienced contradiction, conflict and complexity of the transformation period are negated by too much clarity and trust in one's own experience. The only past is the "present past": therefore, we carry out this attack on the "clear" representation of the transformation period with respect to the current state of thoughts and to the "future pasts" that we try to provoke in this way.

BOOK The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive publication entitled Atlas of Transformation. This book, with its almost 900 pages, is organised in the format of a dictionary and supplemented with a number of maps and diagrams. Several dozen authors from all over the world contributed to the book and some influential period texts were republished in it. Maps created by various artists provide subjective localisations of selected dictionary entries. The book is published in Czech and in the first half of 2010 will be published in English by the JRP-Ringier publishing house.

Artists Lida Abdul, Vahram Aghasyan, Vyacheslav Akhunov, Lara Almarcegui, Babi Badalov , Yael Bartana, Ricardo Basbaum, Pavel Braila, Eric Beltrán, Mircea Cantor, David Černý, Edwin, Miklós Erhardt & Dominic Hislop (Big Hope), Patricia Esquivias, Harun Farocki, Günter Forg, Anastas Ayreen & René Gabri, Andrea Geyer, Sharon Hayes, Ivan Grubanov, Joāo Maria Gusmāo & Pedro Paiva, Hafiz, Lise Harlev, Nicoline van Harskamp, Thomas Hirschhorn, Ifa Isfansyah, Sanja Iveković, Zdeněk Košek, Jiří Kovanda, Lucky Kuswandi, Little Warsaw, Mark Lombardi, Aníbal Lopez, Roman Maskalev, MeeNa & Sasa[44], Peggy Meinfelder, Ivan Moudov, Ciprian Mureşan, Deimantas Narkevičius, Nikolay Oleynikov, Anatoly Osmolovsky, Boris Ondreička, Park Chan-Kyong, Yan Pei-Ming, Lia Perjovschi, Dan Perjovschi, Anggun Priambodo, Walid Raad /The Atlas Group, Anri Sala, Fernando Sánchez Castillo, Wilhelm Sasnal, Sung Hwan Kim, Kateřina Šedá, Taller Popular de Serigrafía, Avdey Ter-Oganyan, Tomáš Svoboda, Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Vangelis Vlahos, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Wisnu SP, Haegue Yang, Artur Żmijewski.

Monument to Transformation
Organisation: tranzit.cz
City Gallery Prague, Municipal Library
Kuratoren: Zbynek Baladran, Vit Havranek

Künstler: Lida Abdul, Vahram Aghasyan, Vyacheslav Akhunov, Lara Almarcegui, Babi Badalov , Yael Bartana, Ricardo Basbaum, Pavel Braila, Eric Beltran, Mircea Cantor, David Cerny, Edwin , Big Hope  (Miklos Erhardt & Dominic Hislop), Patricia Esquivias, Harun Farocki, Günther Förg, Anastas Ayreen & Rene Gabri, Andrea Geyer, Sharon Hayes, Ivan Grubanov, Joao Maria Gusmao & Pedro Paiva, Hafiz , Lise Harlev, Nicoline van Harskamp, Thomas Hirschhorn, Ifa Isfansyah, Sanja Ivekovic, Zdenek Kosek, Jiri Kovanda, Lucky Kuswandi, Little Warsaw , Mark Lombardi, Anibal Lopez, Roman Maskalev, MeeNa & Sasa44, Peggy Meinfelder, Ivan Moudov, Ciprian Muresan, Deimantas Narkevicius, Nikolay Oleynikov, Anatoly Osmolovsky, Boris Ondreicka, Park Chan-Kyong, Yan Peiming, Lia Perjovschi, Dan Perjovschi, Anggun Priambodo, Walid Ra´ad / The Atlas Group, Anri Sala, Fernando Sanchez Castillo, Wilhelm Sasnal, Sung Hwan Kim, Katerina Seda, Taller Popular de Serigrafia , Tomas Svoboda, Avdei Ter-Oganian, Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Vangelis Vlahos, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Wisnu SP , Haegue Yang, Artur Zmijewski.