March 02, 2006
For All Audiences
Defying the Perverse Machinery of "Audience Dictatorship"
For All Audiences: 2 March to 7 May 2006; Opening: Thursday 2 March 2006 at 8.00 pm; sala rekalde, Alameda de Recalde, 30 Bilbao 48009 (Spain).
In this group exhibition, curated by Xabier Arakistain, 28 artists from the Basque Country, Spain and elsewhere in the world redefine the traditional concept of the public space. From the very beginning, publicity and the mass media have radically enlarged the idea of the public square, as the complex control mechanisms that regulate them have reached new levels of sophistication. A new panorama in which the intention to keep the invisible control nevertheless persists.
The exhibition informs of the new critical discourses that have been questioning in recent years the uses and abuses imposed on citizenship by marketing strategies, particularly delving into the revolutionary feminist theorisations of the division between the public and the private spheres. At the same time, the show proclaims sexist contents and other interests, both economic and ideological, that prevail in publicity messages today and shape these hegemonic spaces very often. brings together the work of 28 young artists which, being concerned about these issues, defy the perverse machinery of the so-called "audience dictatorship" that would want us to believe that critical contents are of no interest to a wider audience.
In the 60s of last century, the International Situationist - probably the most important artistic movement influenced by marxism - developed a series of artistic strategies in order to oppose to the traditions of the 19th century, that used to defend the "innocence" of art. Among those situationist strategies, the détournement prevails as a way to distort the meaning of different elements that have been gathered in order to reach a completely new meaning. The works of art showed in this exhibition can be considered as contemporary examples of détournement, as the world of publicity, urbanism, cinema, writing and the mass media are distorted through them.
Taking part in the exhibition are works of artists of the stature of Txomin Badiola, Cecilia Barriga, Anat Ben-David, Bene Bergado, Blami, Daniele Buetti, Minerva Cuevas, Kajsa Dahlberg, Tracey Emin, Chus García-Fraile, Miguel Ángel Gaüeca, Guerrilla Girls, Immo Klink, Jakob Kolding, Chris Korda, Elke Krystufek, Matthieu Laurette, Cristina Lucas, Mateo Maté, Carmen Navarrete, Itziar Okariz, Pripublikarrak, PSJM, Jill Sharpe, Carly Stasko, Zhou Tiehai, Mark Titchner and Li Wei.
The show will be accompanied by a catalogue published in Basque, Spanish and English, and extensively illustrated with works from the exhibition and installation shots taken by Begoña Zubero. The publication will also include essays written by Xabier Arakistain, the exhibition curator; and by the art critics Eduardo García Nieto, José Luis Brea, Itxaso Mendiluze, Beatriz Herráez, Emma Dexter and Leire Vergara. The catalogue published by sala rekalde will be designed by Rosa Lladó and distributed at an international level by Revolver Verlag.
For All Audiences has received the support of Bilbao City Council’s Department for Women’s Affairs and Development Co-operation, Biscay Provincial Council’s Department of Gender Policies and the Institut Français of Bilbao.
For further information, please contact:
Constanza Erkoreka, Press and Communication
Tel. +34 94 406 87 07
Fax. +34 94 406 87 54
salarekalde[at]bizkaia.net
Posted by jo at March 2, 2006 09:47 AM
