PLAY! Recapturing the Radical Imagination
7 September–17 November, 2013
Professional preview: 5–6 September
Göteborg International Biennial
for Contemporary Art (GIBCA)
Röda Sten 1, 414 51 Göteborg, Sweden
T +46 (0)31 12 07 76
stina.edblom [at] goteborg.biennial.org
edi.muka [at] rodasten.com
PLAY! Recapturing the Radical Imagination
Throughout modern history artists have used the hidden workings and the agency of play to push boundaries and change norms, to render language delirious and experiment with form, and to insert art into a variety of narratives, ranging from the personal and social to the critical, political and historical. But in our globalised world what seems to be at a constant risk of failing is the very human imagination. New ground for reclaiming the radical imagination needs to open up and alternative ways of thinking and living need to be created. Art remains one of the last frontiers where creative playfulness and activism, social experiments and philosophical deliberation can meet uninhibitedly and spark such alternatives.
Curatorial Structure
The boom of biennials across the world has affirmed our time as that of curating, suggesting that we rethink this practice as an art in its own right. GIBCA 2013 introduces a new structure that aims at harvesting the energy of innumerous curatorial strategies abounding in our time. Stina Edblom (co-curator GIBCA 2011) and Edi Muka (co-curator GIBCA 2007) have been appointed artistic directors of the biennial. They have formulated the conceptual framework and invited four international curators to develop individual episodes, using this framework as a starting point. Together, and through very diverse curatorial perspectives, these episodes will give form to GICBA 2013.
Curators
Katerina Gregos is an art historian, curator and writer based in Brussels. She has curated several large-scale international exhibitions including, more recently, Newtopia: The State of Human Rights (Mechelen & Brussels, 2012) and Speech Matters, the Danish Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennial, an international exhibition on freedom of speech (2011). She was co-curator of the 4th Fotofestival Mannheim Ludwigshafen Heidelberg (Germany, 2011). Currently she is also artistic director for the 2013 edition of Art Brussels and co-curator (with Luigi Fassi) of an exhibition for the Steirischer Herbst Festival in Graz, Austria.
Ragnar Kjartansson in collaboration with Andjeas Ejiksson
Kjartanson is an artist whose experimental practice is rooted in a tradition of acting and performance. His work is characterized by the tragicomic spectacle of human experience where sorrow collides with happiness, horror with beauty, and drama with humor. Kjartansson has exhibited widely and represented Iceland at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. He lives and works in Reykjavík, Iceland.
Ejiksson is an artist, writer and editor based in Stockholm. His works draw on the theatricality of writing and its different mediations and experiences, with a particular interest in the relation between art, bureaucracy and life. Ejiksson has been a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, Netherlands, and was until recently editor of the Swedish art magazine Geist.
Claire Tancons is a curator, writer and researcher focusing on carnival, public ceremonial culture and popular movements. The associate curator for Prospect.1 New Orleans, a curator for the 7th Gwangju Biennale, guest curator for CAPE09 and, more recently, associate curator for research for Biennale Bénin 2012, Tancons develops alternative genealogies and methodologies for thinking and presenting performance. Since 2012, she has been teaching a curatorial seminar on the processional as artistic and curatorial medium at IUAV University, Venice. She is the recipient of a 2012 Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award. Born in Guadeloupe, French West Indies. Tancons is based in New Orleans.
Joanna Warsza is a curator for visual, performing art and architecture, living and working in Berlin and Warsaw. She founded the Laura Palmer Foundation and was an associate curator of the 7th Berlin Biennale. Joanna works mostly in the public realm, examining social and political agendas, such as the invisibility of the Vietnamese community in Warsaw, or the legacy of post-Soviet architecture in Caucasus. Together with Krzysztof Wodiczko she runs a seminar on conflict and art at the SWPS Warsaw and with Florian Malzacher on political choreography at the UDK Berlin. She is curator of the Georgian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2013.
GIBCA 2013 – Sweden’s International Art Biennial, is organized by Röda Sten Konsthall, Göteborg, Sweden.
