Wednesday, May 19, 2010

cool city cool biennial bb4

Handlung. On Producing Possibilities.
by Felix Vogel


"It is because of this already existing web of human relationships, with its innumerable, conflicting wills and intentions, that action almost never achieves its purpose; but it is also because of this medium, in which action alone is real, that it 'produces' stories with or without intention as naturally as fabrication produces tangible things. These stories may then be recorded in documents and monuments, they may be visible in use objects or art works, they may be told and retold and worked into all kinds of material."
Hannah Arendt: The Human Condition (1958)

I. Handlung

Is there a difference between actions and stories? The German term Handlung serves not so much as a translation for both words, but much sooner it refers to the very semantic level. It is impossible to differentiate 'actions' from 'stories', both meanings are intrinsically linked to each other and generate each other. It is exactly this ambiguity of Handlung that should be stressed here and be made productive. The 4th Bucharest Biennale suggests an experimental set-up to scrutinize different modes of action, possible courses and capabilities of action. It will try to examine various stories, interweaved plots, and fictions and how all this is bound to or detached from concepts of agency. How is agency proposed and what instructions for taking action are necessary or have to be developed? We will examine practices that criticize, rewrite, correct or queer established narratives as well as yet other forms that play with the set of conditions of constructing narrations and history. It will be about the appearing of things in the blinding bright light that shines out of the public realm. With this project, we will investigate how, who, and where these possibilities of action are produced, how one can intervene in common patterns and how other and new possibilities of Handlung can be generated. In a critical manner, the set-up of this project will be based on the urban and spatial organization of Bucharest with its different historical and political layers and thus trying to examine how urban structures and architecture act as agents to allow, interdict and produce Handlungen.

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Participants:
Magnus Bärtås (SE)
Martin Beck (AT)
Kalle Brolin (SE)
Pablo Bronstein (AR/UK) & Eleonor Vonne Brown (UK)
Kaucyila Brooke (US/AT)
Cabello/Carceller (ES)
Elena Ciobanu (RO)
Stefan Constantinescu (RO/SE)
Claudia Cristóvaõ (AO/NL)
Angela Ferreira (MZ/PT)
Field Work / Nis Rømer & Lise Skou (DK)
Zachary Formwalt (US/NL)
Andrea Geyer (DE/US)
Charlotte Ginsborg (UK)
Goldin+Senneby (SE)
Ion Grigorescu (RO)
Sabrina Gschwandtner (AT/US)
Nicoline van Harskamp (NL)
Marcel Iancu (RO)
Maryam Jafri (US/PK/DK)
Alexander Kluge (DE)
laBOMBA (RO)
Christine Meisner (DE)
Asier Mendizabal (ES)
Stina Östberg (SE)
Olivia Plender (UK) & Unnar Örn (IS)
Emily Roysdon (US)
Fia-Stina Sandlund (SE)
Lina Selander (SE)
Société Réaliste (FR/HU)
Åsa Sonjasdotter (NO)
Pilvi Takala (FI/NL)
The Otolith Group (UK)
Fereshteh Toosi (IR)
Lan Tuazon (PH)
Florin Tudor & Mona Vatamanu (RO)
Judi Werthein (AR)

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