[spectre] Fwd: The 2nd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art

[Andreas Broeckmann]

The 2nd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art
September 13–October 22, 2012

Opening week and press preview: September 12–15, 2012

Ekaterinburg, Russia

http://www.uralbiennale.ru


Initiator: Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, The National
Center for Contemporary Arts (NCCA)
Co-Initiators: Governor's Office of the Sverdlovsk Region, The
Sverdlovsk Regional Government, The Ekaterinburg City Administration
Organizer: The Ural Branch of the National Center for Contemporary Arts

Biennial Commissioner: Alisa Prudnikova
Curator of the Main Project: Iara Boubnova
Curators of Special Projects: Dimitri Ozerkov, Valentin Dyakonov, and
Vyacheslav Samodurov

Biennial venues
Main Project: former Ural Worker Printing Press
Special Projects: Ural Heavy Engineering Plant, Ural Transport
Machinery Plant, Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts
Art Residences: Pervouralsk Mining Equipment Plant (Pervouralsk),
Nizhny Taghil Museum-Factory (Nizhny Taghil), Nevyansk State Museum of
History and Architecture (Nevyansk), "Titanium Valley" Special Economic
Zone (Verkhnyaya Salda), former Experimental Skates Manufacturing Plant
(Verkhoturye)

Main project participants: Adel Abdessemed, Kutluğ Ataman, Zbyněk 
Baladrán, Malevich's brigade, Lise Harlev, IRWIN, Anna Jermolaewa, Igor 
Eskinja, Adam Frelin, Peter Kogler, Olga Kroytor, Irina Korina, 
Agnieszka Kurant, Cristina Lucas, Boris Mikhailov, Elena Nemkova, Dan 
Perjovschi, Lia Perjovschi, Timofey Radya, Raqs Media Collective, 
Recycle, Vladimir Seleznev, Société Réaliste, Slavs and Tatars, Nedko 
Solakov, Monika Sosnowska, Anton Vidokle, Where Dogs Run.


In 2010, the 1st Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art took over
factory spaces in and around Ekaterinburg to take on the problems of
material and symbolic production, industrial and artistic labor, the
industrial and the post-industrial in the context of the city of
Ekaterinburg and the Ural region. Once the center of the Soviet
industrialization drive and a world-renown destination for
Constructivist architecture, now the region is defined by its
"intermediate" economy. It is neither post-industrial Europe, nor
industrial Asia, but rather, a hybrid that links the two, thereby giving 
a global significance to the local socioeconomic situation.

The 2nd Ural Industrial Biennial**of Contemporary Art develops the key
concepts of set by the first, with a focus on the possibilities of going 
beyond the binary of production vs. consumption in artistic, cultural, 
and social spheres. The biennale will explore the potential of 
contemporary art as a means to appropriate and reconfigure
(non)exhibition spaces and local audiences. With a roster of exhibitions 
in a variety of venues (including both operating and abandoned factories 
of the Ural region), the Biennial will both re-conceptualize the 
cultural forms of the industrial era and actualize the productive 
dimension of contemporary artistic processes.

The Main Project of the Biennial will address the problem of artistic
vision in today's world of the vanishing past and unsteady futures. The
exhibition draws its title - "The Eye Never Sees Itself" — from Joseph
Brodsky's "Report to the Symposium," written in 1989, just on the eve of 
the fall of the Berlin Wall. That historic event not only marked the
collapse of the bipolar world but also kick-started neo-capitalism with
its crisis of cultural models and the global migration of industries,
people. and financial capital. In her study of the potentialities of
artistic vision, curator Iara Boubnova focuses on the interdependences
between the eye and the world and explores art's ability to defuse the
world from its dangers while reinventing its own specificity as art.

The accompanying Special Projects will take place in Ekaterinburg's
largest industrial and museum venues. Dimitri Ozerkov, the head of
Contemporary Art Department of the State Hermitage Museum, will curate
the project "From Production to Creation", which addresses the crisis
of the idea of progress in contemporary social consciousness,
investigating the ongoing archaization of the notion of production,
which reverts to medieval rituals and symbols. A Special Tour,
prepared by the critic and cultural scholar Valentin Dyakonov, will
reinterpret a traditional museum exposition in Ekaterinburg as an
integral installation and valorize its significance amidst contemporary
artistic and social processes. In its collaboration with the Biennial,
the Ekaterinburg State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater will present an 
experimental ballet custom-made for an industrial venue. Performed by 
classic dancers and directed by the choreographer, dancer, and art
director Vyacheslav Samodurov, the one act ballet synthesizes modern
choreography, electronic and classical music, contemporary art, and
industrial architecture.

Six cities of the Ural Federal District will host an
artist-in-residence program. Nizhny Taghil, Nevyansk, Pervouralsk,
Verkhnyaya Salda, Verkhoturye, Degtyarsk, and industrial areas of
Ekaterinburg (Uralmash and VIZ) will open factory sites and city
institutions to the artists from the USA, Russia, and France, who will
develop their site-specific projects based on the analysis of the
cultural and industrial heritage of each city and the specific features
and materials of their host venues.

The intellectual platform of the Biennial, organized in partnership
with the Ural Federal University and curated by Dr. Andrey Shcherbenok,
is a series of conferences, seminars, and roundtables that have been
going on in Ekaterinburg since March 2012 and will culminate in the
Biennial's symposium. The platform engages the international community
in discussing questions that the biennial poses for both its local and
global environments; it seeks to contribute to the formation of a common 
language that would make the biennial and contemporary art in general 
more meaningful and consequential for its diverse audiences.

The parallel program spread across local museums, galleries, and other
exhibition venues will pick up the themes of the Biennale, challenging
local and European artists to respond to industry as a metaphor and
context. The projects of the parallel program are produced independently 
by curatorial staff of the host institutions and are based on either 
already established collections or works of invited artists.

This year the Biennial will expand its coverage globally, with James
Morgan's artist-in-residence project in the "Titanium Valley" Special
Economic Zone forming a part of the inter-biennial partnership with
ZERO1 Biennial, San Jose, USA. Launched in the virtual reality, this
innovative project will stand as a platform for unique public art
objects hosted by the Ural city of Verkhnyaya Salda and the capital of
the Silicon Valley.


Press Agent in Moscow:
ArtManagement: Julia Grachikova, Anastasia Mityushina
T +79057196685 / +79032829426 / ural.biennale2012 at gmail.com