Dates: Opening: 27 October, 2006 | Workshop: 28 - 29 October, 2006 | Exhibition: 28 October - 21 January, 2007
Location: Gallery for Contemporary Arts Leipzig, Karl-Tauchnitz-Strabe 11, D-04107 Leipzig
Following the launching of LIMINAL SPACES / grenzrume in March of
this year, we are now looking back on eight months of work with the
artists, which took place under increasingly difficult circumstances. The
project has endured the deterioration of the political situation in the
Middle East - including the Israeli war on Lebanon, which has further
radicalized communities and cultural producers alike. The Palestinian
artists participating in the project, especially, have had to rethink their
involvement in it.
During the course of this project, we have had to repeatedly reiterate and
clarify its aim; we underscored the fact that it is not an attempt at
normalization, and that it is not meant to offer a model for peaceful
coexistence between two equal partners. Rather, we reasserted that the
main aim of the project was to serve as a platform of resistance and vocal
opposition to the ongoing Israeli occupation, and to its direct effects on
the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank. This project operates in a
context in which the distinctions between art and politics are blurred. We
wish to examine the possible role of art as a catalyst for political and
social change and to trigger a more active form of political engagement
within the art world. We feel that the clear political stance of the
participants and the curators is the basis for the network that Liminal
Spaces / grenzrume presents.
The circumstances we have endured have meant that as curators, we have
had to adjust ourselves to conditions in which it has become almost
impossible to conduct simple joint meetings. Due to the constantly
increasing level of closure imposed on the Territories, we have had to take
a series of conceptual and logistical decisions, including shelving our
ambition to establish a center for conference, meetings, lectures and
production in Qalandia.
We are happy that despite all these added difficulties, the artists have
been determined to continue working. We can thus now present a series
of new works examining the condition of everyday space, borders,
physical segregation and cultural territories within the reality of the
occupation. These art works suggest the potential of art to serve as a tool
for challenging existing systems and power structures within the radically
divided and fragmented urban region of Jerusalem / Ramallah,
laboratory for an urbanism of radical ethnic segregation. Following their
individual residencies, European, Palestinian and Israeli artists embraced
the opportunity to research tactics and artistic strategies for addressing
the physiognomy of specific sites and their everyday operations, and for
exposing the spatial and contextual politics of the Israeli occupation.
The future library spaces of the Gallery for Contemporary Arts Leipzig
(GfZK), including the already acquired shelves of Vito Acconci’s library
installation at Documenta X, provide an unusual exhibition context. They
generate mutual resonances between LIMINAL SPACES as an evolving
archive of research and production in the Middle East, and between the
GfZK’s ambition to build up a public library.
We are currently facing a series of crucial questions:
ow can this unique body of artistic research be made accessible?
Will this work process be continued?
What responsibility have we curators and artists taken on by engaging
with this body of work?
The exhibition gives us the opportunity to meet each other again at a
distance from the researched space, and to reflect on the evolution of the
process so far. Meeting outside the region raises new questions regarding
the perception of the Middle East and the image of Palestine and of Israel
in Europe, and especially in Germany. These questions are directly
related to the question of responsibility, and to the different resonances of
this term in the Middle East and in Europe.
We would like to further explore the political and social responsibilities of
artmaking and to discuss current trends that are changing the roles of
institutions, artists, curators and activists. Specifically, we would like to
focus on the notion of “responsibility” in the context of the Middle East,
which has witnessed the escalation of violence and of human and civil
rights violations; the continuation of the Israeli military occupation; the
building of an apartheid wall; and the complete breakdown of the peace
process. We would also like to examine this notion in the context of post-
Fordist Central Europe, where the erosion of social democratic principles
is challenging artists and institutions to survive in a harsher social climate,
and to fight for the acceptance and the engagement of a wider public.
For us, this exhibition represents a single stage in a longer process; we
have therefore decided to combine the exhibition with an international
workshop. This workshop will allow all participants to reflect and to
debate, creating an additional opportunity for both individual and group
encounters as well as for external contributions and feedback.
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Schedule
DAY 1: FRIDAY, 27 October 2006
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7.00 PM
Exhibition opening
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DAY 2: SATURDAY, 28 October 2006
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FORUM 1: Reflections on the LIMINAL SPACES project
Moderator: Francis McKee
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11.00 AM
Short presentations by artists participating in the LIMINAL SPACES
project
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1.30 PM
Lunch Break (for invited participants only)
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3.00 PM
Project presentation by the curators: Reem Fadda, Philipp Misselwitz,
Eyal Danon and Galit Eilat.
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4.00 PM
Open session
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5.00 PM
Coffee Break
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5.30 PM
Panel discussion - Cultural Territories: Wolfgang Knapp, Salwa Mikdadi,
Nina Montmann, Erzen Shkololli, Hito Steyerl
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6.30 PM
Conclusion
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7.00 PM
Joint dinner (for invited participants only) followed by party
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DAY 3: SUNDAY, 28 October 2006
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FORUM 2: Crisis and Potentials of Institutions
(The Middle East, Near East and Europe)
Moderator: Francis McKee
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11.00 AM
Nina Montmann: Art and its Institutions ? Current Conflict,Critique and
Collaborations
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11.30 AM
Case study 1: Jumana Emil Abboud: Al Mamal Foundation, East
Jerusalem. The establishment of The Museum of Contemporary Art
Palestine (CAMP)
12:00 PM
Barbara Steiner: The Leipzig Gallery for Contemporary Art
12.30 PM
Case study 2: Eyal Danon: Jaffa ‘An Autobiography of a City’. Untold
stories of different national, ethnic, religious and gender groups within
Israel
1.00 PM
Case study 3: Boris Buden: EIPCP - European Institute for Progressive
Cultural Policies
1.30 PM
Case study 4: Salwa Mikdadi, Institutionalization of Art Practice under
Occupation/Palestinian Artists Working Under Siege (West Bank, East
Jerusalem and Gaza.)
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2.00 PM
Case study 5: Erzen Shkololli: Exit Institute for Contemporary Art in
Peja, Kosovo - the dramatic transformation of the region, connected in
particular with the disintegration of the local totalitarian regimes during
the 1990s
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2.30 PM
Lunch Break (for invited participants only)
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3.30 PM
Open session
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4.30 PM
Conclusion
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Screening program
02 November 2006 : 8.00 PM : CINEMA
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Trespassing, selection of Israeli short films and videos
curated by Eyal Danon:
Artists without Walls, April 1st (19′30”, 2004)
Avi Mugrabi, Details 3&4 (9′, 2004)
Annan Tzukerman, Anxious Escapism (26′, 2005)
Ruti Sela & Ma’ayan Amir, Beyond guilt #2 (18′, 2004)
Ruti Sela & Ma’ayan Amir, Alei Zahav aerAlizaBegin (5′30”, 2005)
Nira Pereg, Souvenir (5′, 2005)
Ruti Sela & Clil Nadav, Loopolice (6′55”, 2003)
An event organized for the Friends of the GfZK Leipzig.
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07 December 2006 : 8.00 PM : CINEMA
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Pasolini Pa* Palestine by Ayreen Anastas (Jerusalem, 2003)
An event organized for the Friends of the GfZK Leipzig.
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04 January 2007 : 8.00 PM : CINEMA
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Quelques miees pour lesoise aux-Some Crumbs for the Birds
by Annemarie Jacir (France/ Jordan, 2005)
Avenge But One Of My Two Eyes by Avi Mograbi (Israel, 2005)
An event organized for the Friends of the GfZK Leipzig.
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