Portfolio of recent work and texts by David Goldenberg (original) (raw)
Related papers
Desire and Form: Transnational Art Events and Artistic Positions
Active Withdrawals: Life and Death of Institutional Critique, 2016
The collapse of the bi--polar world order with the demise of the Berlin Wall has triggered a previously uncharted cartography of the art world. The incorporation of the newly emerging contemporary art contexts into the globalized art scene, which operates on the claim of democratizing the art system and absorbing yet "undiscovered" cultural territories, has arguably followed the trajectory of neo--liberal economics. The newly discovered art worlds for the increasingly globalizing art system have been those with natural resources, financial markets and geopolitical currencies. This economic and cultural expansion has been often coupled with the post 9/11 Bush doctrine that hails negative liberty as a positive notion by coercively imposing "freedom" onto various post--colonial contexts formerly aligned with one of the Cold War vectors of power. We can call these contexts post--peripheries since with globalization and increasing transnationalization of capital, the age--old center--periphery distinction is no longer viable. However, this does not mean that peripheries are extinct, but rather this suggests that power itself is dispersed to the extent that it becomes intangible. Dispersion and fragmentation of power and the subsequent complexity of center--periphery distinctions mask the real operation of capital that is always a totality. I define post--peripheries as discursive, geographic and cultural spaces that can and do exist in traditional centers of power and not only in the formerly colonized territories: increasing marginalization of the working classes and the structural exclusion of the unemployed from social life in the UK and the US post 1980s is one example of a post--periphery. Post--peripheries are those spaces and discourses wherein technologies and techniques developed in the center are consumed rather than produce. But these can also be consumed subversively, by misuse or misappropriation. Transnational art events such as biennales and festivals structurally reproduce the characteristics of the post--periphery: the means of representation and the discursive tropes emanate from the center, yet these are used and consumed in other geographies sometimes with conformism and at other times critically and subversively. Geographically dispersed and varied, transnational art events often promote a mobile cast of cultural workers and artists with repeated appearances in Gwangju, Sharjah, São Paolo, Istanbul and Dubai sequentially or at time synchronically. What the political and cultural geographies of various post--peripheries share is the ways in which the globalized art scene has constructed the notion of the art event which in turn relies on the
What is the scope of 'global art' and who drives its framing within the current climate of corporate globalization? In what ways do the recent global turn and curatorial turn underwrite meaningful global inclusivity and visibility, and to what degree does this globally shared art constitute mutuality? Does 'global art', including the accompanying process of biennialisation, allow for local narratives in a way that seriously accounts for a geopolitical view of contemporary art in the twenty-first century? While the inclusion of 'new art worlds' in what Belting, Buddensieg and Weibel (2013) term 'global art' is framed as a democratisation of contemporary art and the demise of the western art canon, it is important to raise questions regarding the blind spots of this supposedly global, post-1989 expansion. In this article I analyse the current discourse of 'global art' as articulated in The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds (Belting, Buddensieg & Weibel 2013), focusing on its origin, transcription, mapping, consumption and ultimately, I suggest, its emergence as a function of privilege. Challenging the charting of supposedly new art regions (Belting et al. 2013:100), which 'writes-out' local narratives and counter-narratives, I argue for a logic of subtraction in place of a logic of addition. While the latter triumphantly implies that 'new' art worlds have been added to the dominant core, the former is useful to a geopolitical perspective that strips away normative vision and actively seeks that which people often fail to see. In this paper I analyse the work of CAPE Africa Platform in South Africa, which, while briefly and erroneously used as "evidence” of biennialisation and global expansion in The Global Contemporary, was locally referred to as 'not-another-biennial'. Discussing what some see as the shortcomings of the Cape 07 and Cape 09 exhibitions, I propose a reconsideration of measures of 'success' and 'failure', suggesting that an embrace of 'failure' can enable new ways of seeing the privilege of the contemporary art world. It is only when blanks, failures and things presumed not to exist are carefully regarded, that the goal of achieving mutually shared art on a global scale might become possible. Only then does it become apparent that the global south can have a certain edge over what is viewed as the prevailing art world.
Image & Text : a Journal for Design, 2015
What is the scope of "global art" and who drives its framing within the current climate of 'corporate globalization' (Demos 2009:7, emphasis in original)? In what ways do the recent global turn and curatorial turn underwrite meaningful global inclusivity and visibility, and to what degree does this globally shared art constitute mutuality? Does "global art", including the accompanying process of biennialisation, allow for local narratives in a way that seriously accounts for a geopolitical view of contemporary art in the twenty-first century? While the inclusion of "new art worlds" 2 in what Belting, Buddensieg and Weibel (2013) term "global art" is framed as a democratisation of 1. Thank you to Dr. Alexandra Dodd for the insightful feedback she provided. 2. This term is used in the title of Belting, Buddensieg and Weibel's 2013 book, The global contemporary and the rise of new art worlds.
Contemporary Art Biennials - Our Hegemonic Machines in Times of Emergency
Julia Bethwaite, Dorothee I Richter, Henk Slager, Daniela Labra, Rime Fetnan, Dr. Shwetal A Patel, PhD, Ronald Kolb, Dr Katerina Valdivia Bruch, Nathalie Zonnenberg, per gunnar eeg-tverbakk, giulia colletti
OnCurating - Contemporary Art Biennials - Our Hegemonic Machines in Times of Emergency, 2020
Biennials are each in their own way a complex constellation of different economical and geopolitical, and representational cultural aspects within its own power relations. With all their underlying deficiencies (canonical, hegemonic, colonialist, hot money-funded, politically influenced, hierarchical), biennials tend to establish international discourse, at best, rooted in local cultural specificities and contexts. With this edition of the journal, we wanted to include a variety of cases and research areas, not ordered along a historical trajectory, but rather, ordered by theme. With a mix of over sixty new contributions and reprints of important articles for the biennale discourse this issue is like a biennale: too much to experience at once. Contributors Agustina Andreoletti, Rasheed Araeen, Defne Ayas, Marco Baravalle, Alessia Basilicata, Julia Bethwaite, Amy Bruce, Sabeth Buchmann, Vasyl Cherepanyn, Sven Christian, Ana Paula Cohen, Giulia Colletti, Catherine David, Ekaterina Degot, Diana Dulgheru, Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbakk, Okwui Enwezor, Brandon Farnsworth, Rime Fetnan, Patrick D. Flores, Natasha Ginwala, Eva González-Sancho Bodero, Resmi Görüş, Martin Guinard, Bregtje van der Haak, Catalina Imizcoz, Răzvan Ion, Andrés Jaque, Melody Du Jingyi, Anni Kangas, Daniel Knorr, Omar Kholeif, Ronald Kolb, Panos Kompatsiaris, Yacouba Konaté, Daniela Labra, Ilse Lafer, Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, Bruno Latour, Teobaldo Lagos Preller, Eva Lin, Yung Ma, Anna Manubens, Sarat Maharaj, Oliver Marchart, Federica Martini, Vittoria Martini, Lara van Meeteren, Louli Michaelidou, Christian Morgner, Gerardo Mosquera, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Rafal Niemojewski, Ksenija Orelj, Anita Orzes, Shwetal A. Patel, Delia Popa, Farid Rakun, Raqs Media Collective, Dorothee Richter, Roma Jam Session art Kollektiv, Miriam La Rosa, Mona Schubert, Henk Slager, Robert E. D’Souza, Nora Sternfeld, Fatoş Üstek, Katerina Valdivia Bruch, Mirjam Varadinis, Raluca Voinea, Wilson Yeung Chun Wai, Bart Wissink, Beat Wyss, Xinming Xia, Nathalie Zonnenberg
A biennial is a recurring agent, grounded on and contributing to the consolidation of globalization. The study of contemporary biennials has focused on artists, curators, and art institutions; the rest of society indirectly affected by biennials has been largely left out of view. In this essay, I propose to analyze the contemporary biennial Manifesta, the first itinerant European Biennial for Contemporary Art, which emerged in a post-Wall, globalizing Europe. The paper attempts to go beyond organizational and curatorial critiques of Manifesta, and examine how Manifesta’s “will to influence” worked in the social and cultural sphere from its first edition in 1996 to its third edition in 2000. To understand Manifesta’s social and cultural influence, one has first to ask what is the social and cultural context, and then investigate Manifesta’s response to its context. As its founders understood, Manifesta directly addressed the Post-Communist condition of Europe, a situation of determining significance for both Western and Eastern Europe. They envisioned Manifesta accomplishing such goals as “transgress[ing] the existing regional, social, linguistic and economic barriers in Europe.” This goal appeared not only unrealistic to critics, but also retrospectively to Manifesta’s administrators. One of the weaknesses that Manifesta displayed in its earlier years was its uncritical acceptance of the concept “former East;” both cultural critics and its curators have criticized Manifesta’s contribution to this Western-contrived idea. For the purpose of this paper, it is worthwhile investigating how exactly Manifesta, as an agent, deployed artists, as well as institutions, and produced art works to construct the “former East.”
What concepts of "the contemporary" are there around the world? What are their historical contexts? What cultural, aesthetic and artistic theories and practices did they generate? The concept of "the contemporary" in art and culture has its own history; paradoxically, contemporaneity in itself is historical. It is also determined by the many cultural and regional contexts in which ideas of the present and contemporaneity are negotiated. Hence, there are varying histories of the contemporary, each informed by specific socio-political conditions and geo-political power structures. Historical turning points such as the end of the Second World War in 1945 or the end of the Cold War in 1989 prompted certain narratives of contemporaneity and shaped specific historiographical modes through which people in different places reflect on meanings and patterns of the past in relation to the present and tell stories in different ways. The conference combines socio-political, historical and other theoretical perspectives, seeking appropriate categories for these different historiographical genealogies. It is conceived as a kick-off event for the international and cross-disciplinary "Research Network for Critical Transcultural Perspectives on Artistic and Visual Practices" (preliminary title) – a critical, interdisciplinary and international research association of post-doctoral researchers, who study phenomena and processes of cultural exchange.
The future of art in postcultural democracy
Futures, 2007
Has the future of art fallen irredeemably into the grip of the 'creative industries' directed by a consortium of public and private cultural entrepreneurs? Is democracy the natural guardian of artistic independence? Or has the cultural policy agenda of neoliberal democracy solidified into a managerial instrumentalization of art geared to the functions of the market and the state? European Cultural Policies: 2015 provides a model introductory text for a discussion of these vital issues in near future forecast. The authors of the report are independent curators operating from dissident research groups whose aim is to challenge the dominant neoliberal model of cultural enterprise and offer viable alternatives to it. This paper examines the report's diagnosis of a symptomatic cultural predicament and its proposals for future recuperation. r