Nueva tendencia: El atrio en los centros comerciales usado como espacio expositivo para instalaciones artísticas

En el diseño de los centros comerciales del siglo XXI, encontramos un elemento que se repite: el atrio. Es un espacio interior vacío, al que asoman galerías de paso y tiene varias plantas. También está iluminado cenitalmente. Es un foco de atracción dentro del centro comercial. Los usuarios lo recuerdan positivamente, y lo frecuentan mucho más que otras zonas del centro comercial. Y muy recientemente, se observa una nueva tendencia en todo el mundo, que incrementa el interés de estos espacios: se pueden utilizar para exponer temporalmente obras de arte de gran tamaño suspendidas. Así, el centro comercial se regenera y se redime. No en vano, estos espacios son similares a espacios expositivos como el propio atrio del icónico Museo Guggenheim de Nueva York, o la Sala de Turbinas de la Tate Modern de Londres.

Where flesh meets bone: dance in the modern art museum

Dance has recently taken up an increasing presence in major modern art museums as core curatorial programming, occupying galleries throughout exhibition hours. Although time figures prominently in emerging literature addressing this trend, spatial analyses remain fragmentary. Yet, dance is distinctive from other time-based media because of its heightened relationship with space. This raises an important question: how does dance’s newfound presence ‘re-choreograph’ the spaces of modern art museums? Extending the work of Henri Lefebvre, this dissertation adopts an expanded definition of museum space encompassing physical, social and conceptual domains. Dance, an art concerned with the shaping of space, is examined as a transformative force, productively intervening with the galleries, encounters, objects, and historical narratives comprising modern art museum space. In this study, purity and atemporality are identified as the preeminent principles organizing modern art museum space, and dance, an ‘impure’ and process-based art, is theorized as a productive contaminant, catalyzing change. Using this theoretical framework and Using this theoretical framework and evocative descriptions of Boris Charmatz’s 20 Dancers for the XX Century (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 18-20 October 2013), dance’s unique collaboration with modern art museum space is analyzed. Socially, dance’s multisensuality pollutes museum goers’ ocularcentric experiences with art. Conceptually, dance diversifies understandings of objects and the androcentric history they uphold. Physically, dance is carving out new spaces, with performance venues being incorporated into the ‘bones’ of high profile institutions. Interspersed between these analytical chapters, evocative descriptions of Spatial Confessions (On the Question of Instituting the Public) by Bojana Cvejić and collaborators (Tate Modern, London, 21-24 May 2014) introduce observations beyond the analytical scope, opening up the liminal spaces of this document to ongoing inquiry. This dissertation contributes a sustained analysis of dance’s spatial impact on modern art museums. By investigating how dance intervenes with the limitations of the white cube, it critiques this supposedly ‘blank’ space, questioning its continued supremacy within these institutions. Moreover, as dance is ushered into performance venues within the museum’s expanding domain, this dissertation interrogates the modern propensity for specialization and master narratives pervading the spaces of these institutions, despite decades of interventional artistic and curatorial practices.

Where flesh meets bone: dance in the modern art museum

Dance has recently taken up an increasing presence in major modern art museums as core curatorial programming, occupying galleries throughout exhibition hours. Although time figures prominently in emerging literature addressing this trend, spatial analyses remain fragmentary. Yet, dance is distinctive from other time-based media because of its heightened relationship with space. This raises an important question: how does dance’s newfound presence ‘re-choreograph’ the spaces of modern art museums? Extending the work of Henri Lefebvre, this dissertation adopts an expanded definition of museum space encompassing physical, social and conceptual domains. Dance, an art concerned with the shaping of space, is examined as a transformative force, productively intervening with the galleries, encounters, objects, and historical narratives comprising modern art museum space. In this study, purity and atemporality are identified as the preeminent principles organizing modern art museum space, and dance, an ‘impure’ and process-based art, is theorized as a productive contaminant, catalyzing change. Using this theoretical framework and Using this theoretical framework and evocative descriptions of Boris Charmatz’s 20 Dancers for the XX Century (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 18-20 October 2013), dance’s unique collaboration with modern art museum space is analyzed. Socially, dance’s multisensuality pollutes museum goers’ ocularcentric experiences with art. Conceptually, dance diversifies understandings of objects and the androcentric history they uphold. Physically, dance is carving out new spaces, with performance venues being incorporated into the ‘bones’ of high profile institutions. Interspersed between these analytical chapters, evocative descriptions of Spatial Confessions (On the Question of Instituting the Public) by Bojana Cvejić and collaborators (Tate Modern, London, 21-24 May 2014) introduce observations beyond the analytical scope, opening up the liminal spaces of this document to ongoing inquiry. This dissertation contributes a sustained analysis of dance’s spatial impact on modern art museums. By investigating how dance intervenes with the limitations of the white cube, it critiques this supposedly ‘blank’ space, questioning its continued supremacy within these institutions. Moreover, as dance is ushered into performance venues within the museum’s expanding domain, this dissertation interrogates the modern propensity for specialization and master narratives pervading the spaces of these institutions, despite decades of interventional artistic and curatorial practices.

A origem das megaexposições internacionais e a arte do Brasil no Reino Unido

Após o impacto da exposição Magiciens de la terre (1989) e das mudanças geopolíticas que aconteceram depois do fim da Guerra Fria, as megaexposições periódicas de arte contemporânea, como a documenta de Kassel e a Bienal de São Paulo, têm se engajado num esforço para revelar a existência de “múltiplas modernidades”. Um exemplo notável é a exposição inaugural da Tate Modern, em Londres. Century City (2001) re-inscreveu o neoconcretismo nos cânones da história da arte ocidental e a arte do Brasil nas instituições britânicas. Neste artigo, para compreender esse fenômeno contemporâneo, eu me volto ao passado, olhando para a origem dessas megaexposições no século XIX e o seu o papel na definição de hegemonias construídas historicamente no campo das artes. Analiso, portanto, o caso da Exposição Internacional de 1862, em Londres, por ter sido a primeira a utilizar o modo de representação nacional por países em escala mundial. A partir da documentação consultada na National Art Library do Victoria and Albert Museum, reconstruo a primeira representação artística brasileira em Londres, com ênfase na galeria de pinturas. Por fim, eu argumento que o Império do Brasil buscava atender às expectativas cosmopolitas dos organizadores e do público e, ao mesmo tempo, responder às demandas internas que diziam respeito ao próprio processo de formação de uma arte nacional.

The Fearlessness of Vitality: Transforming the Sublime in Painting of the 2000s

The article is devoted to vitality in the art of the twentieth century, interpreted as the Sublime. Vitality manifests itself in art in a very diverse way. The dramatic attitude of the world, suffering, and pain are often synonymous with “vitality” today. But the art of oblivion is also permeated with vitality, “intoxicating”, helping to overcome the horror of existence; as well as art, attaching to the metaphysical source of being. It can be defined as sacred optimism and the ancient art and the art of the avant-garde are especially vividly evidence of it. In this case vitality is in direct contact with the Sublime. Seeking out the “other world”, overcoming the limitations of the mortal and suffering world is carried out through the transformation of the Sublime. Today the subject of the Sublime in art is at the peak of research interest. This is evidenced by the project The Art of the Sublime, launched in 2008 by the Tate Modern gallery (London, UK), dedicated to the study of this phenomenon from the Baroque era to the present day. It touches upon all types of visual art from painting to installation. Research shows how evolution goes from the natural Sublime, realized in the depiction of rare and impressive natural phenomena, to the technological Sublime, which declared itself in the second half of the twentieth century, to the distinction between the Sublime and the beautiful. In modern Moscow painting, we meet the implementation of the principle of the Sublime in the work of the artist Vladimir Matveev. Relying on the sacred art of Russian icons, and the avant-garde, the color discoveries of post-impressionism and the energetic abstraction of neo-expressionism, he creates his version of the Sublime in contemporary painting. In his large-format canvases, the artist expresses the essence of the vital as the Sublime, metaphysical and mental principles with the help of rich color and sharp juxtaposi- tion of abstract and natural forms.

Occupation of the Volksbühne or the missing figure of the proletariat

When in early 2015 it was announced that long-time director of Volksbühne Frank Castorf would be succeeded by the curator and director of Tate Modern Chris Dercon, theatre circles across Germany were infuriated. The general opinion was that this decision would lead to a radical deviation from the production model and the politics of Berlin’s famous left-oriented theatre. In the autumn of 2017, after the artistic group Staub zu Glitzer squatted the building declaring a collective directorship and turning the Volksbühne into a performative-discursive stage for discussions on social inequalities and gentrification, the situation was further antagonized. However, the occupation lasted only a couple of days as the squatters were soon evicted by police. In an essay ‘Towards the liberation of theatre’ written in the early 60s, Darko Suvin derives the thesis of socialization as that which is ‘truly revolutionary’. Suvin’s intention was to formulate a production model which ‘would be socialist in its structure and tendencies’ and aligned with the ideology of self-management. Using this concept, my text aims to test its epistemic potentiality to reflect on the squatting of Volksbühne. Is it plausible to invoke socialization in an attempt to articulate a discourse critical of commodification and precarisation? Can the occupation of the building on Rosa Luxemburg Square be regarded as a contemporary example of self-management?