Thursday 10 June 2010

Do you believe in reality? - The Berlin Biennial.

“Do you believe in reality? What a question, you’ll reply. Reality isn’t something you believe in. It proverbially catches up with you anyway – always. But then what are we talking about here? Maybe we could talk about the fact that you so often hear people saying something was different ‘in reality’? Or about why it has become so customary to add a ‘really‘ or an ‘actually’ or an ‘in fact’ to so many of the things we say? Let’s talk about the cracks in reality, about the gap between the world we talk about and the world that’s really there. But why this distinction? Because reality is always the other? Or the others? Everything that’s waiting out there?
Let’s talk about the self-deceptions where reality becomes too painful. Let’s talk about the fictional arsenal of the mass media and consumerism, about the rhetoric of distraction and appeasement. Won’t that ultimately lead us to question contemporary art, and its relationship to reality?”
– BB6

On the occasion of BB6, the International Curators Forum will mediate a group response to the Biennale’s open question in the form of selected studio visits and presentations with Haegue Yang, Nasan Tur, Libia Castro and Olafur Olafsson, Thomas Kilpper, Ming Wong, Omer Fast, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Mayaan Amir and Ruti Sela. Thinking and moving around this question of what constitutes ‘reality’, each encounter will approach and consider the core question in relation to individual research and practice informed by the conditions of trans-nationality, migration, autonomy and community.

Partipants will include: Kitty Anderson, Adelaide Bannerman, Nadege Derderian, Wiebke Gronemeyer, Karli-Jade Fontiverio Hylton, Shahira Issa, Sally Lai, Axel Lapp, Nigel Prince, Barbara Scheuermann, Gary Thomas and Mark Waugh.