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October 2009, White Space Zurich
Re- Interpretation of The Aesthetics of Terror- a Slide Show in Two Projections
curators of the Zurich issue: Siri Peyer, Dorothee Richter, Joshua Simon.
curators of the original Aesthetics of Terror, Exhibition at Academy of the Arts, Berlin: Joshua Simon und Manon Slome
artists: Josh Azzarella, Daniel Bejar, William Betts, Blue Noses, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Zoya Cherkassky, Jeanette Doyle, Harun Farocki, Johan Grimonprez, Kent
Henricksen, Jenny Holzer, Jon Kessler, Fransje Killars, Yitzik Livneh, Bjørn Melhus, Claude Moller, Richard Mosse, Yves Netzhammer, Miguel Palma, Cristi Pogacean, David
Reeb, Roee Rosen, Martha Rosler, Stephen Shanabrook, Ivana Spinelli, Avdey Ter-Oganian, Jan Tichy, Sharif Waked, Catherine Yass
The exhibition “Aesthetics of Terror” by Manon Slome and Joshua Simon was initially planned for November 2008 at the Chelsea Art Museum Manhattan, New York City. It was cancelled at short notice because the exhibiting institution confronted the curators with various conditions and requests for changes – from the title to the list of works: to an extent that called the integrity of the project into question.
As a result, the curators of EMBEDDED ART ( Olaf Arndt, Moritz Rappard, Janneke Schönenbach, Cecilia Wee) in Berlin offered virtual asylum to the exhibition “Aesthetics of Terror” as late as December 2008 and asked curators Slome and Simon to think about a digital presentation with their artists within EMBEDDED ART’s existing video transmission system. This proposal resulted in a weekend where, instead of the Berlin exhibition, the works from the New York exhibition could now be seen once.
Afterwards “Aesthetics of Terror” was continued as a book project and presented at the Venice Biennale 2009.
In the media presentation in Zurich, we now question the visual material according to its use in political space: how are communities established through images, how are they then positioned in historical space? What does it mean when artists work with media images and question them? What new narrative does an exhibition open up and how does its message and commentary change in relation to Terror in New York 2008, Berlin 2008/2009, Venice 2009, and Zurich 2009? From what specific contexts did the works emerge, in Israel, US, Switzerland? If exhibitions mostly de-historicize and de-contextualize, what community do they call upon?