On Difference #3. Politics of Space

The publication “On Difference #3: Politics of Space” is the third and final part of the “On Difference” project initiated by the Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart.

In two exhibitions and various series of events (2005–2006), the project looked into the question as to how and whether the relevance of local realities can be brought into play within global conditions – of politics, society, culture and the economy. Moreover, the project was driven by an interest in reflecting on, presenting and practising collaborative forms of art and knowledge production.

The two exhibitions were conceived by two different groups of curators: among them artists and curators from Europe, Asia, North and South America, whose everyday practice is connected with creating critical action spaces: be it in the form of exhibitions, workshops, archives, magazines or Web forums. They were invited to develop and design an exhibition section based on their own very different production contexts. The result was two extremely heterogeneous and many-voiced exhibition situations involving more than one hundred artists, curators, theorists, architects, urbanists, activists, etc.

The fields of conflict examined in “On Difference” essentially revolved around urban developments, processes of social transformation, the structures of inclusion and exclusion in the art industry, and the corporatisation of culture. These rather general fields of conflict were negotiated against the foil of specific local situations: for example with regard to the “House of the People” in Bucharest, the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, the island and free trade zone of Kish in the Persian Gulf, or the Guggenheim museum in Rio de Janeiro that was not built.

The more than 650-page publication “On Difference #3” is both a documentation of the project and a multifaceted collection of material on the expropriation and re-appropriation of social, political and cultural action spaces. Without claiming to be complete, it presents a compact, heterogeneous array of critical artistic practices and their widely ramified production conditions, as were created particularly in “non-Western” contexts.

In addition to the numerous texts and pictures, directly connected to the two exhibitions, the publication contains a series of contributions that run through the documentation as discursive passages.

An extensive index, finally, collates information on all actors and action spaces involved in the project.

With exhibition contributions by: Nancy Adajania, AGITPROP, Tata Amaral, Daniel García Andújar, APSOLUTNO, Arab Image Foundation, artesvisuais_políticas, Negar Azimi, Lara Baladi, Pablo Leon de la Barra, Yto Barrada, Sándor Bartha, Ricardo Basbaum, Solomon Benjamin, Balázs Beöthy, Big Hope, Mirela Brezoi, Broadsheet Collective, Capacete Entretenimentos, Center for Art Analysis, Eduard Constantin, Ştefan Constantinescu, Curator’s Association Budapest, Cybermohalla Ensemble, Angela Detanico/Rafael Laín, Petko Dourmana/Kyd Campbell, Duo van der Mixt, George Dupin, Eastwood, E((O GROUP Fouad Elkoury, e-valencia, Ex-Amics de l’IVAM, EXO experimental.org, Harun Farocki/Andrei Ujica, Luka Frelih, Javor Gardev, Ioan Godeanu, Ion Grigorescu, IRWIN, Joon Ho Jeon, Vladan Joler, Ruchir Joshi, Sanjay Kak, Šejla Kamerić, Tamás Tibor Kaszás/Viktor Kotun, Bahman Kiarostami, Tae Jung Kim, Riyas Komu, Kuda.org, Cezar Lăzărescu, Yong Baek Lee, Ligyung, Kristian Lucić, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Mohammad-Hassan Malekpour/Gelayol Mosaed, Manamana, Middle Corea, Nita Mocanu, Mono magazine, Hyungmin Moon, Ivan Moudov, Ciprian Mureşan, Vlad Nancă, Ioana Nemeş, Vladimir Nikolić, Ligia Nobre, Suntag Noh, Pages, Satyajit Pande, Zoran Pantelić, Dan Perjovschi, Lia Perjovschi, Maani Petgar, Cristian Pogăcean, Marjetica Potrć, Tobias Putrih, Walid Raad, Alireza Rasoulinejad, Jae Oon Rho, Cătălin Rulea, Salvem El Cabanyal, Lucien Samaha, Sarai Media Lab, Ravikant Sharma/ Prabhat Kumar Jha, Mihai Stănescu, Mladen Stilinović, Technologies To The People, Milica Tomić, Gabriela Vanga/ Mircea Cantor, Evgeni Vasilev, X-TENDO, Yangachi, Akram Zaatari, Želimir Žilnik, ZONA FRANCA.

On the Expropriation and Re-appropriation
of Social, Political, and Cultural Spaces of Action

Publication
Ed.: Iris Dressler, Hans D. Christ

With texts by: Nancy Adajania, Daniel García Andújar, Judit Angel, Álvaro de los Ángeles, artesvisuais-politicas, Ricardo Basbaum, Helmut Batista, Hans D. Christ, Galia Dimitrova, Iris Dessler, Alenka Gregorić, Ciprian Mureșan, Ligia Nobre / Cécile Zoonens, Zoran Pantelić / Kristian Lukić, Dan Perjovschi, Christine Peters, Raqs Media Collective, Valentìn Roma, Lucien Samaha, Hedwig Saxenhuber/ Georg Schöllhammer, Nathalie Boseul Shin, Kristine Stiles, Nasrim Tabatabai / Babak Afrassiabi, Ștefan Tiron / Vlad Nancă, Joseba Zulaika.

656 pages, German/English
ISBN: 3-930693-29-1

Further information and order at:
http://www.wkv-stuttgart.de/en/publications
wick@wkv-stuttgart.de
Tel: +49 (0)711 – 22 33 716