The importance of the re-contextualization of an art fair, in “The Exhibitionist”, December 2017 (original) (raw)

n ncyclopedic Art Biennale in Venice

This article ofers an anthropological view of the last, 2013 edition of the Biennale Internazionale d'arte di Venezia. Taking advantage of the simultaneous presence of exhibitions from many countries, independently run by local curators, the viewer is invited to try to catch the inspiration of the artists in their own culture. And this, in turn, reflects the general theme of that edition, the utopia of an all-encompassing approach to art collection.

Art and Capital, Venice Biennale 2007

The thing that I found interesting about doing some work on capital in Venice was that the Biennale and a Venetian financial history presented the literal and material connections we can make between art and capital. Given this, what I want to draw out today is how although many recent art practices as well as the Biennale itself has aimed to emphasise the literal and material nature of art, that grounds art in experience, this has paradoxically seemed to aid and abet the logic of financial capital giving it a privileged status as a ubiquitous and formless power. So, it was Venetian financiers who dominated and controlled a huge international bubble of currency speculation from 1275 to 1350. These financiers led the banking families of Florence and were under license of and also controlled major revenues to the Papacy and international royalty. For Venetians, these unregulated far reaching economies was a trade not in goods but in value itself, Venice was seen as " the greatest commercial success – a city without industry, which came to bestride the Mediterranean world and to control an Empire through mere trading enterprise " (Braudel). This financial oligarchy of small companies in fact were megaspeculators, thriving on the instability of nation states and the value of value itself. A trade in abstractions, in fiction and free trade mythology that resisted and deformalised physical borders and ideological boundaries. This description of the effect of capital can and has been levelled at today's economy driven politics. This is globalisation as 'the integration of trade, finance and information that is creating a single global market and culture' 1 The description of the field of capital often then, appears like this: it is material and ideological; it appears as an open territory where routine and stability is rejected, all bets are on and speculation and risk are paramount. The key problems then are that Global Financial capital is groundless and abstract whilst also being seamless and total. And, secondly, if we want to position a critical relationship to capital, we have to acknowledge somehow that a love of deregulated freedoms is paramount to a liberalism that has been fostered by not only capital but stands for the ethics of a critical art practice. This is not so much that art is assimilated or commoditised by capital but a deeper philosophical point that they operate with the same principles. I find this particularly relevant to the Biennale in both the aims of the business of the art project as a whole, as well as its curation and the artworks that make it up. So if art and capital share this liberalist credo, what this means then is that our descriptions of the power of capital are now central to what we understand as critique-and vice versa. Just to rehearse this then, this is especially so when we can identify capital as the most pervasive substantive force written through our lives and yet we understand that our predisposition to a faith in individuality, and free agency, does not guarantee any opposition to capital but rather seems to substantiate the freedoms of capital. These questions and problems seem to ask for resistance, but here I want to argue that resistance limits agency. What I want to go through now, is how discourses on experience, temporality and the evental nature of art have extended rather than negotiated these problems. And I think this is worth dealing with not only because of the Venice Biennale, but through what is now a comprehensive shift in curation and art making to discourses on experience and exchange. The interest in experience that I want to address is not the anti-aesthetic of Hal Foster, nor is it the 1 (Thomas Freidman, 'Roll Over Hawks and Doves', the New York Times 2 Feb, I: 15)

Exhibit! La Moda Esposta: lo Spazio della Mostra e lo Spazio della Marca

2017

(abstract in Italian and English) EXHIBIT! esplora lo sfaccettato panorama della mostra di moda da diversi punti di vista − socioculturale, storico, estetico − con particolare attenzione alle contaminazioni tra arte e mercato. La prima parte del libro è dedicata alla storia, alla teoria, ai diversi approcci al curating di moda e alle sue recenti trasformazioni nei principali paesi in cui questa pratica si è sviluppata: Europa, con un focus sul caso italiano, Stati Uniti e Asia. La seconda parte del libro propone alcune ipotesi di ricerca sulle relazioni tra lo spazio della mostra e lo spazio della marca, dal negozio, ai cosiddetti “fashion hotel”, fino alle fondazioni d’arte a nome dei grandi marchi del lusso. Nel tracciare un’inedita prospettiva sul consumo culturale, il volume offre al lettore una visione originale della cura della mostra con l’intento di problematizzare sia lo statuto della moda sia quello della marca nel contesto contemporaneo. LUCA MARCHETTI, semiotico di formazione e specializzato sulla moda, è professore a contratto per chiara fama all’Università di Bologna, visiting professor e ricercatore alla HEAD di Ginevra e senior lecturer all'IFM a Parigi, dove lavora anche come curatore e consulente per aziende internazionali. Oltre alle collaborazioni per riviste come Vogue e Domus, è autore di pubblicazioni come Fashion Curating / La Mode Exposée (HEAD – Ginevra, 201 6) e Simplifier (con E. Quinz, it:éditions, 2017). Tra i suoi progetti curatoriali: Object of Ordinary Madness (Kühlraum Gallery, Vienna, 201 4), Foulards (Biennale Internationale de St. Étienne, 201 3), Basic Instincts (con E. Quinz, Berlino, 2011 ; Shanghai, 2012) e Dysfashional (con E. Quinz, Lussemburgo, 2007; Losanna, 2008; Berlino, 2009; Parigi e Mosca 2010; Jakarta, 2011). SIMONA SEGRE-REINACH, antropologa culturale, è professore associato presso l'Università di Bologna. Il suo ambito di ricerca riguarda la globalizzazione e la rappresentazione della moda. Tra le sue pubblicazioni principali si segnalano: Orientalismi (Meltemi 2006), La moda. Un'introduzione (Laterza 201 0), Un mondo di mode (Laterza 201 1 ). Fa parte del comitato scientifico di riviste di moda internazionali, quali Fashion Theory, International Journal of Fashion Studies, Critical Studies on Fashion and Beauty. Ha curato progetti allestitivi e mostre, tra cui 80s 90s Facing Beauties. Italian Fashion and Japanese fashion at a Glance (Rimini Museo della città 2013, curatela) e Jungle. L’immaginario animale nella moda (Torino, Venaria Reale 2017, direzione scientifica e co-curatela). EXHIBIT! explores the multi-faceted field of fashion exhibitions curation from a socio-cultural, an historical and an aesthetic angle. The main features and approaches that characterize this practice internationally are considered within the frame of contemporary popular cultural, with a particular attention given to the contaminations between the art and the market. In the first part of the book the authors discuss the theory and practice of curating, analysing the critical-historical transformations within geographical and cultural variations. Specific relation with art and the museum entails different curation styles in Northern and Southern Europe, the United States and Asia. The second part of the book suggests some innovative research hypothesis on the evolving relation between the art space of the exhibition and branded spaces, such as "shops”, "fashion hotels" and "art foundations" in the name of major luxury brands. Sketching a new perspective on cultural consumption, the book drives the reader's attention on the curation of fashion in space as an emerging practice to explore both the status of fashion the nature of nowadays brands from an original point of view. LUCA MARCHETTI is professor and researcher at the HEAD – Genève (CH), Contract Professor of Highest Repute at the University of Bologna (I) and Senior Lecturer at the IFM Institut Français de la Mode (Paris, FR). Based in Paris, he also works internationally as brand consultant and exhibition curator. Beside his collaborations with magazines such as Vogue or Domus, he regularly contributes to editorial publications on fashion and design. Among his curatorial projects: Blasé (with Hadas Zucker, Shanghai-Bologna, 2016), Tillmann Lauterbach: Object of Ordinary Madness (Vienna, 2014), Foulards (Lyon, 2013). The exhibitions Basic Instincts (Berlin, 2011; Shanghai, 2012), Dysfashional (Luxembourg, 2007; Lausanne, 2008; Berlin, 2009; Paris and Moscow 2010; Jakarta, 2011) and EN:TRANCE (Bolzano 2004, Paris 2007) were co-curated with Emanuele Quinz SIMONA SEGRE-REINACH is a cultural anthropologist and Associate Professor of Fashion Studies at Bologna University. She has written extensively on fashion from a global perspective. in the books such as Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion (2010), The Fashion History Reader (2010), Fashion Media. Past and Present (2013), as well as published articles in Fashion Theory, Fashion Practice, Business and Economic History, and Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty. She is also involved in Fashion Curation Studies. She sits in the Editorial Board of Fashion Theory, Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty and The International Journal of Fashion Studies. She has done field work in China on Sino-Italian joint ventures contributing to a collaborative study in Cultural Anthropology. In Italy she authored: Mode in Italy. Una lettura antropologica (Guerini 1999), La moda. Un’introduzione (Laterza 2005 and 2010), Orientalismi. La moda nel mercato globale (Meltemi 2006), Un mondo di mode (Laterza 2011). She curated the exhibitions “80s-90s Facing Beauties. Italian Fashion and Japanese fashion at a Glance” (Rimini Museo della città 2013) and “Jungle. The Imagery of Animals in Fashion” (Torino, Venaria Reale 2017).