The Gesture. A Visual Library in Progress

During the late Sixties experimental practices have argued new cultural conditions by collapsing form and content into a constantly fluctuating state. Emphasizing the body art these artists amplified the role of process over product and extended the boundaries of painting and sculpture into real time and spatial movement. What began in the late Forties, as an awareness of the gesture in painting became gradually an understanding of how process informs practice. Yet, live arts are impossible to classify within the narrow definition of “performance”. They usually diverge between physical manifestations, conceptual acts, activism, happenings, demonstrations, and events, private or public, constructive or destructive gestures. Contemporary artists are able to create a new dimension of space, time, power and awareness within human relations and the geopolitical arena.

Under this view, ‘’The Gesture’’ will be an exhibition in progress bringing together a fluid mix of physical, emotional, personal, political and social gestures made by artists from the Sixties to the present day. The exhibition will explore and present the theme of gesture in the visual arts, set up in different modalities, as gesture of love, impossibility, transcendence, resistance. Combined in a non-linear way the different “documents” will be presented in the form of a visual library, providing a site of exchange, pleasure and investigation; a play-off to the conventional codes of visual art history.

The exhibition, will be organised as a “visual library”, featuring video documentation, photographic material, films, records of ‘historical’ visual art performances by international artists. The aim is not to map out the interventions and performances that artists have made over the years nor to account the political and cultural consequences of their gestures, but to see how the interrelations of these actions are part of an ongoing attempt to survive in this world. The “Gesture” is a critical presentation intending to provoke a physical and mental “displacement” where the public can find paradigms of gesture crossing geographical and cultural borders. A space composed of enigmatic intersections referring to the physic and social condition of the global culture and memory.

A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition with texts by Achille Bonito Oliva, Nikos Papastergiadis, Pier Luiggi Tazzi, and others.

www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline (Situationistische Internationale) www.gestureineurope.net

The Gesture. A Visual Library in Progress
Projekt: Marina Fokidis, Sergio Risaliti, Daphne Vitali
Organisation: Fondazione Fabbrica Europa, Florence and Oxymoron, Athen

Künstler: Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Dennis Adams & Laurent Malone, Allora & Calzadilla, Francis Alÿs, Fikret Atay, Manolis Babousis, Joseph Beuys, John Bock, Pavel Braila, Chris Burden, Gao Brothers , Sophie Calle, Paolo Canevari, Carlos Capelan, Letizia Cariello, Giuseppe Chiari, Collective Action Group, Nikos Charalambidis, Michele Dantini, Jeremy Deller, Daniela de Lorenzo, Christina Dimitriadis, VALIE EXPORT, Lara Favaretto, Makis Faros, Anna Galtarossa, Alexandros Georgiou, Douglas Gordon, Mona Hatoum, Thanasis Hondros & Alaxandra Katsiani, Mike Kelley & Paul McCarthy, Rustam Khalfin & Julia Tikhonova, Yves Klein, Elke Krystufek, Ketty La Rocca, Ma Liuming, Marcello Maloberti, Jenny Marketou, Gordon Matta-Clark, Yerbossyn Meldibekov, Ana Mendieta, Marzia Migliora, Aleksandra Mir, Scott Myles, Massimo Nannucci, Maurizio Nannucci, Bruce Nauman, Maria Papadimitriou, Leda Papakonstantinou, Lygia Pape, Mike Parr, Nicola Pellegrini & Ottonella Mocellin, Joao Penal va, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Pipilotti Rist, Georgia Sagri, Giorgos Sapountzis, Carolee Schneemann, Gerry Schum, Santiago Sierra, Stalker , Georgina Starr, Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger, Vibeke Tandberg, Lina Theodorou, Salla Tykkä, Uri Tzaig, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Piotr Uklanski, Ben Vautier, Cesare Viel, Gillian Wearing, Li Wei, Sislej Xhafa, Vadim Zakharov

Stationen:
22.07.05 - 18.09.05 Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki
06.10.05 - 13.11.05 Quarter, Florenz