On the occasion of the 7th Berlin Biennale, curated by Artur Zmijewski and Joanna Warsza, Outset supported the accompanying publication Forget Fear.
Forget Fear includes texts and conversations with political leaders such as Antanas Mockus, former mayor of Bogotá, who has significantly contributed to social change with a political theory stemming from art; theater-maker Árpád Schilling, who abandoned bourgeois theater to act directly within the political context of right-wing Hungary; Voina, who doesn’t believe in art without engagement; Tímea Junghaus, who uses art in a struggle against the oppression of the Roma people in Europe; the Brazilian underclass tagger group Pixadores, who attacked the São Paulo Biennale, and the Icelandic Best Party, which came to power after the financial crash in 2008. All these actors use performative tools in order to make their cases, and to reveal the social and political forces and interests lurking in the background.
This publication, which served as a reader and manifesto for the bienniale, includes multiple articles by writers, historians, artists and curators which are divided into thirteen sections individually referring to geopolitical events, historical themes and cultural references. The authors of these articles include Olafur Eliasson, Joanna Warsza and Renzo Martens. The publication also includes a CD entitled ‘Goodbye City’ by Teresa Margolles for which the Mexican Artist asked a number of music groups from Ciudad Juarez to interpret Pedro Infante’s famous song, La Barca De Oro.
In his forward, Artur Zmijewski writes: ‘This publication is a report on the process of arriving at real action within culture, at an artistic pragmatism. What interested us were concrete activities leading to visible effects. We were interested in finding answers, not asking questions. We were interested in situations in which solutions are implemented responsibly. We were interested neither in preserving artistic immunity nor distancing ourselves from society. We consider politics to be among the most complex and difficult of human activities. We met artists, activists, and politicians who engage in substantive politics through art. The book is the result of our encounters with those people.’
With this publication, the curators aimed to present leftist engagement not only as a critical, self-referential condition, but also as a proposition for empowerment and a productive set of political practices.
With contributions among others by Pawe? Althamer, Gábor Bakos, Yael Bartana, Einar Örn Benediktsson, Daniel Blatman, Christian Boltanski, Galit Eilat, Olafur Eliasson, Julián García, Jón Gnarr, Jan Tomasz Gross, Jerzy Hausner, Péter Juhász, Gideon Levy, Renzo Martens, Antanas Mockus, Joanna Mytkowska, Luis Ospina, the Pixadores, Sr?a Popovi?, Alison Ramer, Dorota Sajewska, Árpád Schilling, Marcin ?liwa, Igor Stokfiszewski, Hans-Christian Täubrich, Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, Fernando Vallejo, the artist group Voina, Zofia Wa?licka and Rafa? ?urek as well as a CD by Teresa Margolles
ON VIEW: 27th April – 1st July 2012
