AtWork: online exhibition
8 May–30 June 2012
www.atwork27.org
AtWork_Dakar
Workshop: 8–9 May 2012 directed by Kan-Si at Ker Thiossane
Exhibition: 11–21 May 2012, at
Institut Français de Dakar – Galerie Le Manège
Partners: Ker Thiossane and Institut Français de Dakar
Curator: Katia Anguelova / Advisor: Simon Njami / Design: Zetalab
lettera27 is pleased to present AtWork, a project starting from a collection of “art notebooks,” unique works of art created in Moleskine notebooks by different artists. The collection reflects the variety, richness, and complexity of contemporary art, involving artists from different backgrounds, languages, cultures, and generations; together, they constitute a very rich source of information for understanding authors’ creative thinking and inexhaustible imagination. Some of the notebooks contain stories, others are turned into sculptures, but all have one thing in common: they help reveal the creative process that leads up to a finished work of art, exploring the documentary power of “notes” and their endless possibilities of interpretation for reflecting on various modes of representation and on the current trends of creation.
AtWork is a platform that starts with an online exhibition, featuring the first 56 notebooks donated by various authors (www.atwork27.org), hosted also by the Bulgarian Cultural Institute of Hamburg (www.bic-hamburg.de).
Using this immensely valuable collection of notebooks, AtWork makes the works of art available under a free license (CC_BY_SA), creates new traveling exhibition formats, promotes critical discussions in various academies of fine arts, and organizes workshops with local communities.
Conceived in this way, AtWork becomes a breeding ground for artistic experimentation and innovation, where learning and knowledge are an integral and constitutive part of the process by which a work of art is created. Following the online exhibition, AtWork will continue to develop in different geographical and cultural contexts around Africa, adapting its format to each specific environment. AtWork is conceived as a project in process, the online display does by no means intend to come up with definitive solutions for the presentation of art in current times. AtWork creates a sort of “contact zone,” a meeting place and interactive forum for exchanging ideas, by following different strategies, and by developing it in multiple formats (workshops, exhibitions, meetings). By using the Internet not only as communication technology, but also as a tool for creating what Malraux referred to as an Imaginary Museum, AtWork turns the Web into a “knowledge platform” inspired by a “share, remix, reuse legally” spirit, where visitors are simultaneously users and contributors. AtWork, furthermore, does not limit itself to bringing together some works of art in a virtual space, but combines two different and, possibly, conflicting ways of collecting, recording, and filing experiences: highly personal physical notebooks on the one hand and available-to-many digital technologies on the other; manual skills and engineering, past and present.
During the online exhibition, AtWork will continue its activity in Africa, starting with Dakar. AtWork_Dakar is the first operational step of the project, with a workshop directed by Kan-Si and organized in partnership with Ker Thiossane. AtWork_Dakar is open to young people and students; participants are invited to imagine notebooks as a starting point for reflecting on issues concerning freedom of expression, intellectual property, and circulation of knowledge.
As a multifaceted project, AtWork proposes alternative methods for circulating and sharing knowledge and information, and constitutes one example of the role that art can play in knowledge society.
Authors: James Beckett, Beatrice Catanzaro, Baaba Jakeh Chande, Hsia-Fei Chang, Kenneth “Zenzele” Chulu, Daniel Chust Peters, Marco Colombaioni, Michelangelo Consani, Daniele Costa, Gabriele di Matteo, Nicola Grobler, Lauren von Gogh, Roberto Paci Dalò, Maurizia Dova, Malachi Farrell, Seamus Farrell, René Francisco, Mohssin Harraki, Iman Issa, Ethel Kabwato, Fréderic Keiff, Daniela Kostova, Ola-Dele Kuku, Jose Lasheras, Goddy Leye, Audry Liseron-Monfils, Polonca Lovšin, Juan Pablo Maçias, Jonatah Manno, Map Office, Adriana Mariutti, Sanna Marander, Jabulani Maseko, Alzek Misheff, Ivan Moudov, Alioum Moussa, Elena Nemkova, Gionata Gesi Ozmo, Cameron Platter, Luca Poncellini, Luigi Presicce, Andrew Putter, Slimane Raïs, Tere Recarens, Colin Richards, Ruth Sacks, Henri Sagna, Charles Seck, Pascale-Marthine Tayou, Tomaž Tomažin, Enzo Umbaca, Luca Vitone, James Webb, Sue Williamson, Hervé Yamguen, Virginia Zaharieva
Texts by: Katia Anguelova, Ivan Bargna, Clare Butcher, Cécile Bourne-Farrell, Simon Njami, Iolanda Pensa, Antonio Somaini, Sue Williamson
lettera27 is a non-profit foundation created in July 2006. Its mission is to support the right to literacy, education, and the access to knowledge and information. lettera27 is the 27th letter of the alphabet, the missing letter, the letter yet to be, the hybrid sign, the empty box, the link between oral and written words, the connection to the future, the intersection of analog and digital.
Katia Anguelova, freelance curator and writer; co-director of Kunstverein (Milan) www.kunstverein.it
Simon Njami, writer, art critic and curator; co-founder of Revue Noire magazine.
AtWork is supported by Moleskine.
For further information, please contact katia.anguelova [at] gmail.com or info [at] lettera27.org.