Mathias Poledna
Organisation: Polina Stroganova
Kunstraum der Leuphana
Universitaet Lueneburg
Scharnhorststr.1
Hall 25
D – 21332 Lueneburg
[email protected]
http://kunstraum.uni-lueneburg.de
The exhibition deals with the stories and manifestations of a collective imagination structured by the polarity of centre and periphery and which can be generally subsumed under the title “Eurocentrism”. The title of the exhibition has been borrowed from a book by the literary scholar Mary Louise Pratt (Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, 1992), in which she delineates the manufacture of a European “planetary consciousness” on the basis of travel writing and the activities of collectors since the 18th Century.
The establishment of the systematic natural sciences since that time and parallel entrepreneurial European expeditions paved the way—along with adventure literature and travel writing—for a consciousness of European centrality, from which vantage point the rest of the world proffered itself both as an immense spectacle and as chaos in need of classification. Alongside the hardened techniques of economic exploitation and political control of overseas territories, “soft” literary, scientific and artistic techniques of surveying the world, the ordering of phenomena and the representation of differences shared in the consolidation of colonial ways of ruling, which in turn reached their zenith around 1900. The traces of the Eurocentric world view in the structures of individual consciousness and feeling extend beyond the colonial era, whereas since the mid 20th Century they have been subjected to post-colonial critique. The exhibition probes the current status of planetary consciousness on the basis of artworks concerned with the genesis of a European worldview in cross-genre stagings of the centre/periphery model against the backdrop of (post-) colonial dispositives. If one regards this worldview as mythical knowledge, then it is precisely artistic methods and procedures themselves that seem appropriate to evoke the often diffuse and conceptually challenging structures of feeling of centrality and planetary consciousness and furthermore to identify them—very much in Barthes’ description of the mythologies of knowledge—as “formless, unstable, nebulous condensation.”
“Planetary Consciousness” is carried out within the framework of translate.eipcp.net
and with the support of the Culture 2000 programme of the European Union.
Artists
Christine Meisner
* 1970, lives in Berlin.
Exhibitions (Selection):
2008: Peripherer Blick – Kollektiver Körper, MUSEION Bozen
2007: Uncomfortable Truths, Victoria & Albert Museum London/ Salford Museum and Art Gallery/ Ferens Gallery Hull
The Present, Centre of Contemporary Art Warsaw
2006: Every Day, Salzburger Kunstverein
2005: Fim de Romance, Musée des Beaux–Arts–Ville de Nantes/ Pinacoteca, Sao Paulo/ Museum of Modern Art, Recife
2004: Lagos – Stadtansichten, ifa-Galerie, Berlin/ ifa-Galerie, Stuttgart
Djemel, Ateliers d’Artistes de la Ville, Marseille
2003: Ex-Ikea, NGBK Berlin
Learning From *, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Wien
2000: Kunstbüro Wien
1999: Filmfestival Diagonale Graz
Mathias Poledna
* 1965, lives in Los Angeles and Vienna.
Exhibitions (Selection):
2007-2009: Crystal Palace, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles/ Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago/ New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (Cat.) (Solo)
2007: For a Special Place: Documents and Works from the Generali Foundation Collection, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York.
2006: Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum New York (Cat.)
Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Köln (Solo)
2005: Witte de With, Rotterdam (Solo)
2004: 20/20 Vision, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
3. Biennale für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Kunstwerke Berlin (Cat.)
2003: Museum für Moderne Kunst, Sammlung Ludwig, Wien (Solo).
2001: Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (Solo)
1996: Manifesta 1, Rotterdam.
Lisl Ponger
* 1947, lives in Vienna
Exhibitions (Selection):
2008: Lasst tausend Blumen blühen, Kunsthaus, Dresden (Cat.) (Solo)
2007: 21 Positions, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York.
Imago Mundi, Landesgalerie, Linz (Cat.) (Solo)
2006: All our Tomorrows, Kunstraum Lüneburg, Lüneburg
2005: Projekt Migration, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Köln (Cat.)
Schweizer Krankheit + die Sehnsucht nach der Ferne, Kunsthaus Dresden, Dresden
2004: Der Black Atlantic, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (Cat.)
Si j’avais eu l’autorisation … , Dak’art Off. Dakar, (Solo)
Tour-ism, Tapies Foundation, Barcelona
2002: Documenta XI, Kassel (Cat.)
Routes, Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (Cat.)
José Alejandro Restrepo
* 1959, lives in Bogota
Exhibitions (Selection):
2007: 52nd Biennal Venice.
2006: Artists Space, New York.
2005: Amos Anderson Art Museum, Helsinki.
2004: Botánica política. Usos de la ciencia, usos de la historia. Sala Montcada, Fundació “la Caixa”, Barcelona, Spain (Cat.)
Leçons de mémoire/Memory Lessons. Musée du Louvre, Paris, France
“Nous venons en paix…”/Histoires des Amériques. Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montréal, Canada (Cat.)
2003 : Machihembrao. Galería Valenzuela y Klenner, Bogotá, Colombia (Cat.)
Colombia 2003. Oscar Muñoz, José Alejandro Restrepo, Miguel Ángel Rojas. Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires, Argentina (Cat.)
90: Desplazamientos. Arte colombiano en los 90. Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá, Colombia (Cat.)
2002: TransHistoires. Histoire et mythe dans l’oeuvre de José Alejandro Restrepo. Ecole Supérieure des Beaux–Arts, Toulouse, France (Cat.) (Solo)
2000: 7th Biennal Havanna
For more information go to: http://kunstraum.uni-lueneburg.de