[artinfo] Manifesta 5

[e-Flux]

Manifesta 5

JUNE 11 2004 - SEPTEMBER 30 2004

Donostia - San Sebastian and Pasaia,
Basque Country, Spain

...POLITICAL RUMOUR / CULTURAL LANDSCAPE / PRESENT IMPERFECT / RUINS IN 
REVERSE / ZONES OF CONTINGENCY / UNDER CONSTRUCTION / SPIRITUAL NOISES / 
PROJECT AND ACCUSATION / LANDSCAPE MANUAL / ENCOUNTER WITH AMBIGUITY / CITY 
FOLDED OVER ONTO ITSELF / TWO WAY MIRROR / DOUBLE EXPOSURE / BIPOLAR CITY / 
POWER OF IDENTITY / POTEMKIN VILLAGE / STAGED MATRIX / TRICKLAND / SILENT 
FACTORY /... TO BE CONTINUED

Manifesta 5 as curated by the team of Marta Kuzma and Massimiliano Gioni 
opens on June 11th, 2004 to include over fifty artists from throughout 
Europe. The project in Donostia - San Sebastian is organised by the 
Amsterdam based International Manifesta Foundation together with the Basque 
Government, the Territorial Council of Gipuzkoa and the Donostia-San 
Sebastian City Council.

Departing from the notion of the city as a territory, the curators refer to 
Manifesta 5 as an instrument of investigation into Donostia-San Sebastian 
as a privileged social site and catalytic trigger to launch the formulation 
of their project. Deferring from the spectacle of the political and 
bypassing contemporary art's recent obsession with global geographies, the 
works within Manifesta 5 illustrate how the cryptic, opaque and enigmatic 
may reveal the subtlety of the polemical and the potential of its 
transgression.

Manifesta 5 attempts to explore cultural landscapes as they get refracted 
through hieroglyphic languages. The projects developed in Manifesta 5 
concentrate on the formulation of intricate and idiosyncratic structures 
that translate reality into enigmatic forms, corresponding to a more 
stratified understanding of the complexity of one's relationship to the 
world. Such complexity reveals contradictions and simultaneity - between 
the demand for order and the will for formlessness, between the rational 
and irrational, construction and expression, the performative and static, 
and between symmetry and chaos, violence and rupture.

In approaching Donostia-San Sebastian and its broader Basque territory as a 
zone of contingency, Manifesta 5 and the artists involved in the project 
turn to time and space as malleable, locating their works within a temporal 
gap that houses at once the past, the present and the future.

The articulation of the exhibition endeavours to reflect those tensions 
endemic to the region and the spectral doubling of place by occupying both 
the historic centre of Donostia-San Sebastian and its industrial, 
peripheral counterpart - the port town of Pasaia. Extending beyond the 
symmetry, order, homogeneity, and leisure of San Sebastian into the 
polemics of its neighbouring Pasaia, Manifesta 5 aims at revealing the 
essence of something that is simultaneously economic, political, historical 
and aesthetic.

In looking for clues within the physical space of its inception, the 
curators initiated the Office of Alternative Urban Planning in September 
2003 with the Berlage Institute, a Rotterdam based post-graduate laboratory 
of architecture and urban research, directed by the architect Alejandro 
Zaera Polo. Together with a designated team of architects led by Sebastian 
Khourian, the curatorial team explored how Manifesta, as a cultural 
project, might enable the reinvigoration of Pasaia as one of the most 
impoverished areas in the Gipuzkoa territory located outside San 
Sebastian's city center.

The Collaboration with the Berlage Institute (Office of Alternative Urban 
Planning)
The collaboration with The Office of Alternative Urban Planning (OAUP) was 
not merely focused on the essence of its findings, rather on its possible 
effects of research. This method of investigation proved one way to 
abstract from the built environment and from the irregularities relating to 
the traditional flow of city, region, province and state, implicit of the 
Basque territory to find new articulations of political, cultural, and 
social formations.

The involvement of the OAUP was also crucial in overcoming the bottlenecks 
associated with the complicated layers of public administration to 
facilitate the role of curators, artists and cultural producers as 
negotiators. As a laboratory of ideas, OAUP provided scenarios that 
extended Manifesta's role into a feasibility study as to how cultural 
agents and artists may provide alternative solutions to reviving areas such 
as the port city of Pasaia. Since the programme's inception, Pasaia has 
been designated as a priority within the region whereby Manifesta 5 serves 
as the catalyst in diversifying an area formerly cut off from its community.

The Formation of a Forum of Cultural Production as an Open Source
The Office of Alternative Urban Planning and the integration of artists who 
have also been in direct negotiation with the city and regional 
administration pressed for a type of activation of a former dead zone 
within the industrial port of Pasaia - within a disgarded warehouse 
referred to as Casa Ceriza and a former ship building plant, Ondartxo: both 
venues will not only function as sites for the duration of Manifesta 5, but 
they will remain as pilot projects for cultural production beyond the 
closing date of the exhibition. In this way, the curatorial team has 
attempted to broaden the category of Manifesta 5 as an art event and to 
focus on its performativity. This approach extends the decision not to 
entitle Manifesta 5 with one title or unique theme, but with numerous 
concepts that relate both to the complexities of the region housing the 
project, and the open diversity of today's art and reality.

Working List of Artists and Participants
Bas Jan Ader, Victor Alimpiev and Sergey Vishnevsky, Huseyin Alptekin, 
Micol Assael, Sven Augustijnen, , Zbynek Baladran, John Bock, Michael 
Borremans, Sergey Bratkov, Carlos Bunga, Duncan Campbell, Cengis Cekil, 
Iliya Chichkan and Kyrill Protsenko, D.A.E. (Peio Aguirre and Leire 
Vergara), Jan de Cock Angela de la Cruz, Jeremy Deller, Andrea Faciu, Inaki 
Garmendia, Geert Goiris, Kim Hiorthoy, Laura Horelli, Kulli Kaats, Johannes 
Kahrs, Leopold Kessler, Mark Leckey, Maria Lusitano, Mark Manders Asier 
Mendizabal, Boris Mikhailov, Oksana Pasaiko, Anu Pennanen, Garrett Phelan, 
Kirsten Pieroth, Paola Pivi, Office of Alternative Urban Planning (Veronica 
Arcos, Jose Arnaud, Sannah Belzer, Sebastian Khourian, Claudia Strahl, 
Monica Villate, Constanze Zehi), Marc Quer, Daniel Roth, Michael 
Sailstorfer, Silke Schatz, Markus Schinwald, Conrad Shawcross, Eyal Sivan 
and Michel Khleifi, Hito Steyerl, Misha Stroj, Patrick Tuttofuoco, Vangelis 
Vlahos, Gillian Wearing, Amelie von Wulffen, Cathy Wilkes, Yevgeniy Yufit, 
Olivier Zabat, David Zink Yi, Darius Ziura

The Venues
Arteleku houses the OAUP. Partipating artist projects located throughout 
Donostia-San Sebastian - in the cultural center of Koldo Mitxelena, Kubo 
Kursaal within Rafael Moneo's Kursaal, Museo San Telmo, the Aquarium and 
Soto of the Aquarium, a former storage house for boats in the historic port 
of San Sebastian. In complement to the projects in San Sebastian, artists 
projects will also be located in Pasaia- in the former fish warehouse of 
Casa Ciriza and the former boat building space of Ondartxo.

The Catalogue
A full catalogue will include artists' representation and contributions, 
the Manual produced by the OAUP, and introductory essays by each of the 
curators, Andrew Benjamin, Alexander Garcia Duttmann, Dan Graham, and Peter 
Osborne. Additional essays in relation to OAUP by Alejandro Zaera Polo and 
Sebastian Khourian.

Programming
An additional academic program related to the issues explored by Berlage 
and within the exhibition will be held at the time of Manifesta 5.

OPENING DATES:
Thursday 10th of June
9.00-16.00 h: Exclusive press preview. Press accreditation necessary.
16.00-20.00 h: Professional preview. Professional accreditation necessary.
Friday 11th of June
10.00-14:00 h: Professional preview.
11.00 h: Press conference. Professional and press accreditation necessary.
18.00 h (time to be confirmed): OFFICIAL OPENING.
21.00 h: Opening event.

Organizers: Basque Government, Territorial Council of Gipuzkoa, 
Donostia-San Sebastian City Council. Additional Sponsors. Culture 2000, 
Kutxa Obra Social Allianz Kultrustiftung, El Diario Vasco. Collaborator: 
Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte of Spain. Other sponsors and 
partners. Association Francaise d'Action Artistique (France), Association 
Tranzit (Czech Republic) Berlage Institute (The Netherlands), British 
Council (Union Kingdom), Center for Contemporary Art (Estonia), Critical 
Voices (Ireland), Department for Land Development and Promotion of the 
Territorial Council of Gipuzkoa (Spain), European Cultural Foundation (The 
Netherlands), Federal Office of Culture (Switzerland), Fundacao Caloustre 
Gulbenkian Servigio de Belas-Artes (Portugal), FRAME Finnish Fund for Art 
Exchange (Finland), International Renaissance Foundation (Ukraine), 
Ministry of Culture and Tourism (Turkey), Ministerie van de Vlaamse 
Gemeenschap (Belgium), Office for Contemporary Art (Norway), Port of 
Pasajes, Port Authority of Pasajes, (Spain), Scottish Arts Council (Union 
Kingdom), The Mondriaan Foundation (The Netherlands), Untitled Art 
Consulting (Spain).

For more information:
manifesta5 at manifesta.es
Telephone: + 34 943 44 13 00 Fax :+34 943 42 09 22
press: comunicacion at manifesta.es
http://www.manifesta.es