IC-98: Hours, Years, Aeons - Pavilion of Finland

Finland is proud to present Hours, Years, Aeons, a new site-specific installation by the artist duo IC-98 (Patrik Söderlund, b. 1974 and Visa Suonpää, b. 1968) at the 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia. The exhibition is commissioned and produced by Frame Visual Art Finland and is curated by Taru Elfving, PhD, Frame’s Head of Programme.

IC-98 projects often take the form of installations or publications, combining research, drawing and animation. Their intensely abstracted, identifiable visual language weaves myriad bridges between the material and mythical, individual and collective, nature and culture. The investigations running through the works concern the body politic, social formations and architectural constructions, heresies and pure systems of thought, and the presence of history in everyday life.

“IC-98 has an extensive catalogue of ambitious projects to date and a committed critical practice engaged with international debates and urgencies. My curatorial aim is to offer the artists an opportunity to produce a new, site-specific work for the Biennale. The philosophical and political themes at the core of the works of IC-98 resonate profoundly against the rich context of Venice.” Taru Elfving, curator of the exhibition.

IC-98 will present their work Hours, Years, Aeons in the Finnish Pavilion, designed by Alvar Aalto and completed in 1956. The exhibition is commissioned and produced by Frame Visual Art Finland.

“It is exciting to work with IC-98, who are making their international breakthrough, and to take them to perhaps the most important contemporary art forum. Frame Visual Art Finland is delighted to have the responsibility over the Finnish representation at the Venice Biennale.” Raija Koli, Commissioner, Director of Frame.

The 56th La Biennale di Venezia is open from 9 May to 22 November 2015.

Finland is proud to present Hours, Years, Aeons, a new site-specific installation by the artist duo IC-98 (Visa Suonpää, b. 1968 and Patrik Söderlund, b. 1974) at the 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia.

The exhibition is commissioned and produced by Frame Visual Art Finland, and it is curated by Taru Elfving, PhD, Frame’s Head of Programme. The mixed media installation consists of a pencil-drawn digital animationAbendland (Hours, Years, Aeons), sound, tar, charcoal and jute. The music for double bass and electronics is composed by Max Savikangas.

IC-98 are known for their animations and installations creating metaphorically charged realms of uncertain coordinates. These landscapes are shaped by interlaced forces of nature and technology, navigation and exploitation, climate and migration. In Venice the viewer is invited to enter this world: The timber architecture begins to creak and tremor, while the smell of tar transports us back to early trade routes and charcoal evokes the origins of civilization as we know it.

The scene is set by Alvar Aalto Pavilion of Finland, built in 1956. As a historical document, the building tells the tale of the nation and its growth. The welfare state and its arts scene owe their existence to the ‘green gold’ of Finland’s vast primeval forests. The wooden structures used here reflect the post-war housing boom, while the pavilion itself was a philanthropic project funded out of fortunes made in the timber industry. Today, the legacy of the forest industry consists of vigorously managed fields of trees, with wealth accumulating and liabilities dispersed across the globe. Not far from the very forests that yielded the funds for the Pavilion will soon lie a tomb for nuclear waste, the repository Onkalo, dug deep into the bedrock.

IC-98 transform the Pavilion into a chamber that guides viewers into the Giardini on another plane of temporality: Deep time begins to resonate through fleeting cycles of life, and space appears as infinite dark matter. Here may stand not the last man, but the last tree, left to spin yarns of the past into a distant future. The garden as a microcosm of knowledge and colonial power over the world of cultural diversity, as well as biodiversity, now appears as a realm governed by the transformations that only a tree can live through.

Within hours, myriad flows have passed. Within years, natural resources have been exhausted and houses transformed into abodes for diverse other lifeforms. Within aeons, buried repositories have been depleted, while forests have reclaimed the earth. So it may be. Yet, within aeons, the ground may have shifted and the planetary order have been redrawn. As the entanglement of different time scales and causal relations in the work of IC-98 suggests, teleology fails us here and future horizons falter. Trees may well inherit the land, but what kind of a land we must ask.

“Hours, Years, Aeons encapsulates the artists’ long-term critical investigations – from boardrooms of power and bounds of public space to ecological frontiers – into an epic new work within which matter and myth merge in the face of today’s seismic shifts,” says Curator Taru Elfving.

Frame Visual Art Finland has responsibility for Finland’s participation in la Biennale di Venezia. Finland has taken part in la Biennale di Venezia since 1954, and its participation is financed with funds from the Ministry of Education and Culture of Finland. Frame’s Director Raija Koli is the commissioner of the Finnish exhibition.

 

Artists: IC-98

Commissioner: Raija Koli

Curator: Taru Elfving

Deputy Curator: Anna Virtanen

Communications: Heljä Franssila, Laura Boxberg

Organisation: Frame Visual Art Finland

Biographies

IC-98, artists

IC-98 (originally Iconoclast, founded in 1998) is an artist duo comprising Visa Suonpää (b. 1968) and Patrik Söderlund (b. 1974). Their projects often take the form of installations or publications combining research, text, drawing and animation. Their intensely abstracted, readily identifiable visual language weaves myriad bridges between the material and mythical, the individual and the collective, nature and culture. Their work is rooted in investigations into the body politic, social formations, architectural constructions, different ecologies and the presence of human and natural history in everyday life. They often collaborate closely with other arts professionals such as poets, composers and architects.

IC-98 has exhibited extensively both in Finland and internationally. Their solo exhibitions include this year’s forthcoming shows at Dundee Contemporary Arts, Scotland, and Helsinki Art Museum, Finland, and previous appearances in Conde Duque Madrid, Spain (2014), Beaconsfield, London UK (2014) and Turku Art Museum, Finland (2013). Their works have been presented in numerous group exhibitions, most recently at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, Germany (2014), Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City (2014), Quartair, Netherlands (2014), Moonshin Museum, South Korea (2014), Kiasma, Helsinki (2014), MAMba, Argentina (2012), Reykjavik Arts Festival (2012), KUMU Art Museum, Estonia (2012), Loft Project Etagi, St Petersburg (2011), IPCNY, New York (2011). IC-98 has also had solo art fair presentations at Moving the Image Art Fair, New York (2015), ARCOmadrid (2014), Volta, New York (2013) and Volta, Basel (2012).

Works by IC-98 are found in numerous private and public collections in the Nordic countries. IC-98’s prize-winning self-publishing initiative, Iconoclast Publications, has brought out 16 publications to date. IC-98 were nominated for the prestigious Ars Fennica award in Finland in 2014.

Taru Elfving, Curator

Taru Elfving is a curator and writer on contemporary art and theory, based in Helsinki, Finland. She is Head of Programme at Frame Visual Art Finland (2013-), in which capacity she has curated the Finnish Pavilion for the Venice Biennale 2015, the multi-faceted parallel programme for ARCOmadrid #Focus Finland in 2014 and the Finnish participation in Manifesta 10 On Board in 2014. She is editor-in-chief of Frame publications, the most recent being an artist monograph on IC-98 and the Altern Ecologies anthology. Her previous positions include Programme Director of the HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme (2012-13) and Artistic Director of CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago (2009-11).

Elfving’s curatorial practice focuses on nurturing cross-disciplinary encounters and context-specific artistic investigations and interventions with a long-term commitment to critical discourses on sustainability and feminism. Her prior curatorial work includes the Frontiers in Retreat research and production platform (EU-funded residency network, HIAP, 2013-2018), the Contemporary Art Archipelago exhibition and symposium (Turku 2011, European Capital of Culture), the Centrifugal cross-disciplinary research network (Belfast, Helsinki, Zagreb, London 2005-ongoing), and the Towards a Future Present biennial exhibition (LIAF Lofoten International Art Festival, Norway 2008). She has also realized curatorial projects at the Tate Modern, the Dundee Contemporary Arts centre, Site Gallery Sheffield, the Whitechapel Project Space, Helsinki Kunsthalle, and Turku Art Museum.

Elfving has published an extensive body of research and art criticism in journals including Parkett, Metropolis M, and Kunstkritik; artist monographs on Alfredo Jaar (Kiasma 2014) and Eija-Liisa Ahtila (Tate Modern 2002); the anthologies Girls!Girls!Girls! (Intellect, UK 2011), In Medias Res (Eetos, Finland 2008); exhibition catalogues for the Turku Biennial (2009) and the Sydney Biennale (2004), and other titles such as Girls’ Night Out (OCMA 2003). She has lectured regularly at the Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts as well as other Nordic Art Academies including Stockholm, Copenhagen and Trondheim. She has been a guest lecturer and conference speaker at the MIT, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Tate Modern, the Hayward Gallery, the Gothenburg Biennial and the University of Amsterdam. Elfving holds a PhD in Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London, her thesis having focused on Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s practice and the problematics of address and witnessing.

Commissioner

Frame Visual Art Finland is an advocate for Finnish contemporary art. Frame supports international initiatives, facilitates professional partnerships and promotes the advancement of the visual arts by arranging grants, visitor programmes and residencies, seminars and talks, exhibition collaborations and network platforms. As Director of Frame, Koli is the commissioner of Frame’s major international collaborations, including Falling Trees at the 55th Venice Biennale, featuring Terike Haapoja (the Nordic pavilion) and Antti Laitinen (Alvar Aalto Pavilion of Finland).

Prior to her engagement at Frame, Koli spent five years working as Director of the Finnish Institute in London. During her tenure she transformed the Institute into a think/do tank by commissioning several boundary-crossing landmark pieces in London, including the HelYes! restaurant in 2010, the REDDRESS London concert in 2011 for the London Design Festival and the ViewPoint Pavilion at Regent’s Canal (a collaboration with The Architecture Foundation for London Wildlife Trust).

Koli’s background is in the performing arts and urban events. In her previous career she has commissioned and produced events for the Helsinki Festival and Helsinki 2000 – European City of Culture Foundation as well as for several theatre companies and other cultural organizations. Koli is a literature/arts graduate from University of Tampere, where she also worked as a lecturer in the Faculty of Art. She is currently working on her PhD, which addresses the topic of authorship and copyright. She is a regular contributor to critical discourse through research projects such as Capitalising Culture. Transnational Re-articulations of Economy and Culture and New Reading Communities, New Ways of Reading (both University of Tampere, Media Studies). She has published treatises on issues concerning authorship, translated several key works (Toril Moi, Rosi Braidotti, Terry Eagleton) and worked as editor for the Finnish journal of women’s studies, Naistutkimus.

Catalonia in Venice - SINGULARITY

Catalonia in Venice  - SINGULARITY 

Collateral Event of the 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia 

The Institut Ramon Llull presents a new work from maverick filmmaker Albert Serra curated by Chus Martínez 

The artist and curator address the question of how the cinema machine creates a mind. 

The Institut Ramon Llull presents Catalonia in Venice at the Biennale di Venezia for the fourth time. A film installation by filmmaker Albert Serra will be shown within the curatorial frame- work of Chus Martínez. The title of this project isSIN GUL A RITY. Under this rubric, the artist has conceived a new piece, an immersive film installation projected onto 5 screens arranged in a dynamic structure taking up the entirety of the exhibition space. Specifically conceived for this presentation in Venice, the installation choreographs not only a wide range of views on today’s world but also the visitors’ movement through the space. 

As Chus Martínez states, “The original inspiration for this eight-hour-long moving image installation was a discussion between the artist and myself about the notion of the singularity. The singularity is the concept that mathematicians and artificial intelligence researchers use to name the moment where our relationship with the machine changes, when technology ceases to be a tool and becomes a companion to the human species. But what is the singularity here referring to? It names a contemporary condition, defined not just by the conditions of capital and economy but by a new epistemological turn in which we share our lives with machines and nature in a different way. Or put another way, the singularity is another name for cinema. Cinema represents one of the most eloquent and close relationships mankind has established with a device. We entrusted the camera with completely recreating our way of describing our deepest insight into our feelings, in the same way our eyes relate to our sense of life. And so we can assume that cinema has learned something from us and that the cinema machine, this very special machine intelligence, is transforming the future of the very idea of a picture in movement. 

Albert Serra poetically interweaves what look like contemporary images filmed in Lleida, Catalonia (in PLANTA Sorigué) with less clearly realistic ones, thus creating a sort of ancient myth—like a fable. Some sections of the film are composed of a flow of purely visual and beautiful material. But in others the artist Albert Serra tells us stories that for him represent “ancient” and novel ways of talking about cinema. This very special piece by Serra attempts to create a “leg- end”—a visual and sensory memory for the viewer based on motifs that will mark a shift in our under- standing not of what cinema is able to tell but of the way cinema can transform us and prepare us for a different future of the image, man and the machine.” 

In the words of Albert Serra, “In the 21st century, images are on the run and don’t turn back; the many screens cast them and they explain them- selves. The artist perhaps creates them, grasps them, exposes them in a baroque and titanic effort. In their death throes, images can still serve to illustrate the world with visual suffocation, but also with the ambition to narrate, with imagination. From mining pioneers to the gold rush of the early 20th century to the present-day regulated and technical industry of land use, SIN GUL A RITY explains the last major transition, the last with man at its core and the last that can still sustain the presence of the body as the driving force of all human transformation. Afterwards, the machines...” 

This project includes a 32-page publication jointly published by the Institut Ramon Llull and Mousse which will be available as a free download on the project’s website. The exhibition will also be accompanied by a website:http://venezia2015.llull.cat  Graphic design for the project was done by Omar Sosa and Ana Domínguez and Guri_Casa- juana Arquitects are the authors of the exhibition interior design. 

Martínez’s proposal was selected by a jury chaired by Marta Gili, Director of Jeu de Paume. The other members of this jury were Bartomeu Marí, Director of the MACBA; Joan Minguet, President of the Associació Catalana de Crítics d’Art (ACCA); Xavier Antich, President of the Board of Trustees of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies; Martina Millà, Head of Programming and Pro- jects at the Fundació Miró; Llucià Homs, Director of Cultural Sector Promotion at the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona; and Damià Martínez, Head of the Creation Division at the IRL.

Chus Martínez

Chus Martínez (La Coruña, 1972) is currently Head of the Art Institute of the Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz (FHNW) in Basel, Switzerland. She holds a BA in Philosophy and History of Art from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and also completed a master’s degree in curatorial stu- dies at Bard College in New York. Over her career she has held the positions of Artistic Director at the Sala Rekalde in Bilbao (2002-2005), Director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein (2005-2008) and Chief Curator at the MACBA (2008-2011). More recently she has worked at the Museo del Barrio in New York and was a member of the curatorial team for dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, Germany. 

In 2005, Martínez curated the National Pa- vilion of Cyprus for the 51st International Art Ex- hibition of la Biennale di Venezia. She was also a member of the advisory team for the Carnegie International exhibition in 2008 and participated as a guest curator in the 29th São Paulo Biennial in 2010. In addition, she has organized exhibitions around the world, has spoken at numerous semi- nars and conferences and has served as a member of juries for a number of prestigious events. She publishes regularly in art journals. 

Albert Serra

Albert Serra (Banyoles, 1975) is a film director and producer. His first film Crespià, the F ilm N ot the V illa- ge(2003) was not screened commercially. He later presented H onor de cavalleria (winner of the 2006 Barcelona Film Prize for Best New Director and for Best Film in Catalan) and El cant dels ocells (for which he won the 2009 Gaudí Prize for Best Film). 

In 2009, he was chosen as the avant-garde cinema icon of the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at the Cannes Film Festival. 

In 2012, he was one of the artists selected to participate in dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, where he showed his film Els tres porquets. The follow- ing year he became the first Catalan director to win the Golden Leopard prize for Best Film for Història de la meva mort (2013) at the Locarno Film Festival. 

He has recently been invited to show work at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (2013) and Bozar in Brussels (2014), where he was given carte blanche. 

Institut Ramon Llull

The Institut Ramon Llull is a public consortium established in 2002 with the aim of promoting the Catalan language and culture abroad. This mission is accomplished by providing broad international exposure to writers and artists, encouraging artistic and cultural exchanges, and supporting Catalan language and literature studies in universities. Cur- rently, the consortium is formed by the Govern- ment of Catalonia and the Barcelona City Council. 

This will be the fourth time that the IRL brings Catalonia in Venice to the Art Biennale as part of the eventi collaterali, and it follows its second participation at the Architecture Biennale last year. 

Catalonia in Venice. SINGULARITY

Cantieri Navali, Calle Quintavalle, Castello, 40 

Private view: May 7th at 11hrs

Helen Sear per il Galles

 Below English

Arts Council of Wales è lieta di annunciare che Helen Sear è stato selezionato per rappresentare il Padiglione del Galles a Venezia alla 56a Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte, la Biennale di Venezia in esecuzione dal 9 maggio al 22 novembre 2015. Curata da Ffotogallery questa sarà la prima volta per il Galles nel presentare una mostra personale di un'artista femminile.

Conosciuta come una delle più significative artiste contemporanee del Galles, la pratica di Helen Sear può essere caratterizzata dalla sua esplorazione del crossover tra fotografia e arte, la sua attenzione sulla co-esistenza umana, animale e mondo naturale.

info dal sito http://www.wai.org.uk/news/6121

Press release:

Arts Council of Wales is delighted to announce that Helen Sear has been selected to representCymru yn Fenis/Wales in Venice at the 56th International Art Exhibition, the Venice Biennale running from 9 May to 22 November 2015. Curated by Ffotogallery this will be the first time for Wales to present a solo exhibition by a female artist.

Known as one of Wales’ most significant contemporary artists, Helen Sear’s practice can be characterised by her exploration of the crossover between photography and fine art, her focus on the co-existence of the human, animal, and natural worlds.

With an exemplary track record for producing high quality, conceptually rigorous work, Helen Sear’s current work shows particular maturity and sophistication, seamlessly moving between expanded notions of photography, sculpture and video, with the artist exhibiting great command of different materials and production processes. These developments, coinciding with renewed interest in and critical acclaim for the artist’s work and profile internationally as well as in Wales, make this the perfect moment for Helen Sear to represent Cymru yn Fenis/Wales in Venice.

Helen Sear’s photographic practice has developed from a fine art background in performance, film and installation work in the 1980s and she continues to explore ideas of vision, touch and the representation of the nature of experience, combining drawing, lens-based media and digital technologies. Her work challenges accepted notions of photography as a documentary and creative medium.

Wales’ first ever female solo exhibition in Venice is led by Ffotogallery; the national development agency for photography and lens-based media in Wales, who will be working with Stuart Cameron, curator of Helen Sear’s first major exhibition at Chapter, Cardiff and longstanding supporter of her work. He has worked with a number of major artists, within Wales and internationally, to develop new work, most recently The Art Party Conference 2013.

Louise Wright, Commissioner for Cymru yn Fenis/Wales in Venice and Portfolio Manager for Visual Arts at the Arts Council of Wales said:

"We are very excited to be working with Helen Sear and Ffotogallery. Cymru yn Fenis/Wales in Venice 2015 is a significant opportunity to develop and present new work at the world’s most prestigious international event for the Visual Arts."

Helen Sear said: "Having lived and worked in Wales since 1984, the opportunity to be part of Wales in Venice has been an ambition of mine for several years. The photographic image in art practice has never been so diverse or contested, and, with the acceleration of new digital technologies, the material presence of the image is now more than ever at stake."

David Drake, Director Ffotogallery said: "We are delighted with the news, for Ffotogallery has championed Helen Sear’s work over a number of years and witnessed many exciting developments in her practice. For Cymru yn Fenis/Wales in Venice 2015 the artist will be creating a beguiling new body of work which is both rooted in the local and familiar landscapes of Wales, and also responding to the wider context of the Venice Biennale."

Wales’s presence at Venice has been a vital part of the artistic calendar ever since the country first burst onto the International Biennale’s scene in 2003 with the exhibition, Further. Since then the Biennale has provided a superb platform for visual art from Wales, strengthening its international profile and reflecting back into Wales through exhibition tours and related initiatives such as the Invigilator Plus programme, educational resources and talks.