[spectre] The Manifesta Decade

[Geert Lovink]

> Roomade and the International Foundation Manifesta are pleased to 
> announce the publication The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary 
> Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post- Wall Europe. This mutual 
> publication is a result of a three years collaboration between Roomade 
> and The International Foundation and includes essays, critical debates 
> and a view of the historical material from the Manifesta archives, the 
> public accessible archives at Manifesta at Home in Amsterdam, The 
> Netherlands.
>  
> Editors Barbara Vanderlinden and Elena Filipovic focused on the 
> mechanisms of contemporary art biennials and international exhibitions 
> at a moment when contemporary art biennials  in Europe and the world 
> continue to proliferate and few critical studies examining their 
> mechanisms exist. The Manifesta Decade takes Manifesta, the first 
> itinerant European biennial for contemporary art, as a case study but 
> also explores the broader, post-wall landscape from which it emerged. 
> The varied contributions to the anthology treat the effects of 
> communism’s collapse on Eastern Europe, the role of international 
> perennial exhibitions in the context of globalization, the complex 
> definitions of “Europe,” and the history of exhibitions attempting to 
> address these shifts. The result is a complex picture of Europe and 
> its exhibition paradigms at the end of the twentieth and the beginning 
> of the twenty-first centuries.
>  
> The International Foundation Manifesta will organize in the run of 
> 2006 a series of Book launches not only  in the former Manifesta Host 
> Cities but also on different international locations such as: 
> Rotterdam, Luxembourg, Ljubljana, Frankfurt and San Sebastian. Please 
> check the Manifesta website (www.manifesta.org) for more concrete 
> data.
>  
> The Manifesta Network program, an initiative of the International 
> Foundation Manifesta, Amsterdam, has commissioned this publication. 
> The Manifesta Network Program is a multi-faceted resource and research 
> program, encompassing the Manifesta Biennial exhibition, the Manifesta 
> Journal, the Manifesta Coffee Breaks, and the Manifesta publications.
>  
> The European Commission’s Culture 2000 program amongst others is 
> funding the Manifesta Contemporary Art Network.
>  
> Roomade in Brussels acts as the publisher of this book and The MIT 
> Press is in charge of the distribution, so if your local bookshops, 
> libraries, or institutions have inquiries, you can direct them to: 
> http://mitpress.mit.edu/0262220768 or Barbara Vanderlinden at 
> barbara at roomade.org
>  
> In the meantime, we would like to make arrangements for getting your 
> copy of the book to you. Please send a current address to 
> barbara at roomade.org and we will have it sent to you shortly.
>  
> Yours,
>  
> Hedwig Fijen
> Director Manifesta Foundation, Amsterdam
>  
> Barbara Vanderlinden,
> Director Roomade, Brussels