Festival NRMAL / 2010 / Monterrey, MEXICO

Festival NRMAL / 2010 / Monterrey, MEXICO

EXPLORING THE RETURN OF REPRESSION

rum46

presents the exhibition
EXPLORING THE RETURN OF REPRESSION
March 5 - April 8, 2010
Opening: March 5 17.00-20.00

Participants:

Luke Fowler (GB),

 Hanif Kureishi (GB),

 Thomas Hirschhorn (CH),

Renzo Martens (NL/CG),

 Taller Popular De Serigrafia (AR),

 Michel Tournier (FR). 

Curator: Razvan Ion

Assistant curator: Silvia Vasilesco

The return of the repressed is a crucial theme, a key to understanding recent history. "The project of the West, the Nietzschean project, has been to drive out religion and to produce a secular society in which men and women make their own values because morality is gone. Then suddenly radical religion returns from the Third World. How can you not laugh at that? How can you not find that a deep historical irony?" (Hanif Kureishi, in International Herald Tribune).

According to Freud, the very act of entering into civilized society entails the repression of various archaic, primitive desires. For Freud repression is a normal part of human development; indeed, the analysis of dreams, literature, jokes, and "Freudian slips" illustrates the ways that our secret desires continue to find outlet in perfectly well-adjusted individuals. However, when we are faced with obstacles to satisfaction of our libido's cathexis, when we experience traumatic events, or when we remain fixated on earlier phases of our development, the conflict between the libido and the ego (or between the ego and the superego) can lead to alternative sexual discharges.

The return of the repressed is the process whereby repressed elements, preserved in the unconscious, tend to reappear, in consciousness or in behavior, in the shape of secondary and more or less unrecognizable "derivatives of the unconscious." This return of the repressed, of ideologies forced to marginalization, of sexuality subject to forced secrecy, has resulted, in recent years, in an almost dramatic change of a society filled with anguish, hallucinations, repression imposed by unnecessary regulations that serve to the repressive violence of governments against their own citizens. (Excerpt from the text "Exploring the return of repression" by Razvan Ion).

Publications:
EXPLORING THE RETURN OF REPRESSION
Edited by Razvan Ion. Texts by: Andrei Craciun, Tatiana Greif, Daraka Larimore Hall, Razvan Ion, Rolling Thunder, Ronald F. King, Urban Larssen, Jose Louis Meiras, Suzana Milevska, Naeem Mohaiemen, Maria Eva Blotta & Diego Posadas, Eugen Radescu, Michel Tournier.
31,5 x 42 cm, 32 pages, black & white, English/Romana
Published by Pavilion, Bucharest.
Distributed for free. 

Free download of pdf version:

http://pavilionunicredit.ro/ziar_ETRR.pdf


This exhibition is a version of the "Exploring the Return of Repression", exhibition presented at PAVILION UNICREDIT, Bucharest, Romania.

Image: Taller Popular de Serigrafia, "Serigraphy Workshop for the Masses - Dario and Maxi presents / Work, Dignity, Social Change", July 26, 2002. Image printed for the first time at the cultural day celebrated at the Puente Pueyrredón (province of Buenos Aires, Argentina), a month after the shooting execution of Maximiliano Kosteki and DarioSantillán assasinated by the state armed forces, in the name of democracy. "Work, dignity, social change" was the principal slogan of the politically active organization, the Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados (MTD)-Anibal Verón.
 
Opening hours:
Thursdays 14.00-17-00 and by appointment

( All this Information via Pavilion Unicredit)

EXPLORING THE RETURN OF REPRESSION

Instruction Pieces

The use of words as primary tool on Art practices, pushes the limits of more traditional creative orders and often involves the active engagement of viewers. This engagement, as a practice of art, is ephemeral, as every other life act. 
The huge difference :  "doing" and "done". 

Three art movements that aim to evoke fun, ephemeral, lack-of-worth ( monetary speaking ),and  "anti-art" discourses, and involved with the use of words, were Fluxus,Happenings and conceptual art .

For over fifty years , Yoko Ono has played a decisive role in these three art movements. 

Ono´s interdisciplinary approach to her artistic practice, which uses words as primary tool, has reached contemporary art, and consumed many of the definitions conceptual art assumed.Her famous and assertive approach to Art as words in included in her book Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings by Yoko Ono (Simon & Schuster 2000).

 When presented the book in New York (circa 1961) , it was called "concerts" . These concerts comprised three pieces: A Grapefruit in the World of Park, A Piece for Strawberries and Violins and AOS.In this later work, Ono wrapped two performers in gauze, back to back, and dangled an assortment of empty bottles and cans from their ankles and waists. Their instructions were to walk from one end of the stage to the other, without making any noise. This injunction against sound, coupled with the difficulty of one performer moving backwards while the other moved forward, and caused them to move extremely slowly, an effect which resembled a slow-motion film.

 Now the viewer / the reader / the "instructions follower", is the artist and the artistic element, the center piece.The result, an ephemeral event  that can be understood as art. / Eva Guerra Luján

My personal Selection
( based on the last Ono´s Exhibition in 2009 /
Arsenale Section 93 - Venece Art Biennale)

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Instruction Pieces (Yoko Ono )
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PAINTING TO ENLARGE AND SEE (1961)

Write five hundred telephone numbers on a canvas in a space as large as your palm. The numbers can be overlapped with one another. Also, the numbers can all be the same. Observe the drawing by enlarging it with a microscope. Also, you may take a picture of the drawing and enlarge it to the size you prefer.

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SNOW PIECE (1963)

Think that snow is falling. Think that snow is falling everywhere all the time. When you talk with a person, think that snow is falling between you and on the person. Stop conversing when you think the person is covered by snow.

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FLY PIECE (SUMMER 1963)

Fly.

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COUGH PIECE (WINTER 1961)

Keep coughing during a year

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BOX PIECE (SPRING 196Y)

Buy as many boxes.

Ask your wife to select one.

Dream Together.

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Note: You can print this page, cut each instruction

and give it to someone you´d like to watch performing this

for you.( That Piece could be called : Dictator Piece)

Instruction Pieces

I DON’T WANT TO SEE THE MONA LISA, I JUST WANT TO HAVE MY PICTURE TAKEN WITH IT

The “no pictures” has to be the second most popular sign among museums, just behind “don’t touch”. On her very useful blog, Museum Two, Nina Simone lists five reasons why museums won’t allow you to take pictures in their exhibit rooms. First of all, there’s conservation. Yes, your camera flash will damage stuff in there. You don’t think so? Go on and leave a paper sheet under the sunlight for a day and see how it turns. Second reason is intellectual property. Museums don’t allways own the rights of the collections they host. Third comes security. Just as banks do, museums don’t want you to have a blueprint of their facilties so you won’t end up sneaking in at night to steal a Warhol. Finally, Nina mentions revenue streams and aesthetics of experiencie as the fourth and fifth reasons. The first and second reasons appear to be the only serious ones, and they could simply ask you to turn your flash off or mention which objects can or can not be photographed; but is clearly way more practical just to print a lot of “no pictures” signs and post them all over the place.

This rules come from long time ago. They come from radically different photographic times, when cameras actually had film in them. Just 12 years ago, taking a picture was a ritual, an event. Every shot mattered. Somebody not holding still or the flash not working when you clicked was a disaster.

Today things are not the same. Pretty much everybody carries a digital camera in their pockets, with full capacity to capture anything at any time and with almost endless oportunities to do so. Even my 4 year old daughter owns a digital camera since she was 2. And this is the scenario faced by museums now. A society armed with cameras.

And so... why are museums struggling against pictures? Conservation might be the only valid reason, but museum’s staff members could esasily be trained on how to turn flashes off. Intelectual property... not so sure. Why would somebody take a picture in a museum? To make profit selling copies of a painting? To put a historical object in a catalogue? Such means would imply a very specific kind of photo shoot, the kind that uses tripoids and light sets. The kind that would be obviouslly detectable by guards and staff members.

Visitors don’t want a catalogue picture. Visitors don’t care about portraits. Visitors are not interested in stealing from the museum. They are not even interested in the boring postcards for sale at the front desk. All they want is a snapshot of themselves. All they want is to remember they were once part of something culturally meaningful and to have proof of it.

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has taken a step further, not only allowing visitors to take pictures but encouraging them to do so. Even more, they ask them to share the pics and use them in their It’s Time We Met marketing campaign.

The result? A museum taken by people. A place with real interaction between objects and visitors.

Aside from keeping their visitors from building this meaningful experiences, museums not allowing pictures are also missing a huge marketing impact. And I’m not talking about stealing the Metropolitan’s campaign off, but about the power of social media. Most of this pictures will end up posted on Facebook, Twitter and the likes, showing everybody else what a great time a visitor had at a certain museum.

So, museums, you heard me... let us take pictures. Let us continue snapshooting our lives.
Guso Macedo

*This article's title was taken from an idea presented by Dr. Luis Gerardo Morales during his conference "Museum's Narration, Context and Learning" at INTERCOM 2009.

I DON’T WANT TO SEE THE MONA LISA, I JUST WANT TO HAVE MY PICTURE TAKEN WITH IT

WORTH SURFIN´

Organika.tv is an animation , audio and visual effects studio based in Mexico,City / Mexico since 2002 with only one goal : Always Pushing their creativity to the limits in order to fulfill the objectives of their customers. That´s the best someone can offer you.  Besides that, you can´t imagine the amazing webpage the have. Take a break and surf it. It´s worth every second of your time. ( PLUS: This image below is the Creative Process Map ...INCREDIBLE HU?)/ I love it !! / Eva Guerra...........

WORTH SURFIN´

(Not so) Random

“I wanted to construct something that would be a kind of mathematical equation, very simple and direct, connecting three elements: material power, spiritual power, and a kind of unavoidable, historically repeated consequence of this conjunction, which was tragedy. I wanted a sky of bones, a floor of money, and a column of communion wafers to unite these two elements.”

This work is called Mission/Missions (how to Build a Cathedral) and it is a breathtaking piece of visual allusion.This exhibit by Cildo Meireles ( Brazil)  includes 600,000 pennies, 2,000 hanging hanging bones, and a pillar of 800 communion wafers. I saw these master piece at MACBA, Barcelona,Spring Art Exhibition 2009.

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(Not so) Random

The Art Pack // Rest In Polaroid

The Art Pack // Rest In Polaroid