About the Necessity of Discussing Social Functions of Contemporary Art

A  project by Ellen Blumenstein and Carla Zaccagnini .

Partners: Goethe-Institut, Centro Cultural São Paulo, Forum Permanente

Content:

1. What?
2. Why?
3. How?

1. WHAT?

- Realization of an artistic residence where traditional ways of artistic representation will be discussed by Brazilians and foreign artists getting together for two weeks in an isolated environment outside of big urban centers.

- Open to public presentation in the course of one week, aiming at amplifying the range and scope of the developed discussions and elaborations - through including new participants in the dialogue.

- Development and realization of a publication which will expand the debate initiated during the residency.

Realization period: October and November 2008

2. WHY?

The main idea of this project is the interchange between the public and the participating artists. By a structure of a residency,Agulhas Negras seeks to create an proper OR suitable space for analyzing and examining artistic practices that question traditional ways  of representation and circulation of art.

Conceived by Ellen Blumenstein and Carla Zaccagnini , the idea for this residency started from similar interests in and questionings of the concerns of contemporary artists working in our context. Agulhas Negras intends to be a space for sharing knowledge and doubts and to experiment on artistic processes and practices.”

In this sense, it is taking its main references from the Black Mountain College which thought formation as an integral process, the studies, the experience of living in a small community and the manual work and from the book The ignorant schoolmaster by Jacques Ranciére, where he avouches learning as a self-reliant process. The idea of the academy is taken as an alternative to the formats of the exhibition and the gallery space or the museum for the production and discussion of art, emphasizing the necessity for us to disconnect from daily life and routine, to avoid full schedules which organize our time, and to concentrate on new ideas and arrive at unexpected places.

This residence intends to investigate functions and (social) options of contemporary art beyond the rules of the market by creating a temporary collective space for the discussion and development of artistic projects that not necessarily produce a concrete result.

3. HOW?

The Residency is the starting point of the project. Artists from different countries meet in a secluded place, far from the “daily life”, developing activities which call into question current artistic representation.

a) Residency

In residency over the period of two weeks in a place to be defined, each day one or more participants will be responsible for suggesting an activity to be carried out by the group. These activities, of variable duration, shall create an opportunity (and alternative) to discuss each one’s proper projects and perspective on art, to test or to try out a new practice or process, to do something together which is not possible or wished to be made alone, etc. We want experiments on forms of communication to extend and to deepen our concerns, our interests, our agreement and our practices, beyond the traditional ways of teaching and learning.

b) Presentation

After the residency, the artists will make the results of the discussions and the projects they developed or are developing public - by engaging in an interchange and discussions with an interested audience. The structure of this presentation will be constructed at the academy itself according to the activities and discussions generated during these two weeks of living together.  This presentation will – in a strict sense - not be an exhibition , but it will use spaces as platforms, by which it will be possible to establish a communication with the visitors.

In any case, different formats will be possible, from talks to panels, concerts, dialogues, film projections or documentary presentations, any kind of medium or proposition which suits  the participant’s artistic strategies best.

c) Publication

After the summer session, its results – being it either an artistic work, a completed discussion or one in progress between two or more participants, newly established ideas to be developed in the future, lectures or workshops - will be published in a book in four languages (Portuguese, Spanish, German and English). This publication will be independent/autonomous, being able to be readseparately from the residence experience, a book About the Necessity to Discuss the Social Functions of Contemporary Art. Thus, it will function as another space where the process and the results of the academy can become public.