1 18/19.10.2008Manifesto Pamphlet A pamphlet for the Serpentine Gallery Manifesto Marathon 2008: 1. The historic avant-gardes of the early 20th century and the neoavant-gardes in the 1960s and 70s created a time of radical manifestos. 2. We now live in a time that is more atomised and has less cohesive artistic movements. 3. At this moment, there is a reconnection to the manifesto as a document of poetic and political intent. 4. This is a declaration of artistic will and new-found optimism. 5. New modes of publication and production are a means to distribute ideas in the form of texts, documents, and radical pamphlets. 6. This futurological congress presents manifestos for the 21st century. This event is urgent. Gilbert & George (1969)18/19.10.2008 In an exciting journey to discover the future of travel and relaunch their brand, Kuoni has partnered with a series of prominent experts from the worlds of contemporary lifestyle, fashion, art, architecture, music and literature. The latest in its ongoing series of collaborations sees Kuoni partner with the Serpentine Gallery, and, from 18 – 19 October, Kuoni is proud to be the headline sponsor of the Serpentine Gallery Manifesto Marathon. Through the sponsorship of the Manifesto Marathon, Kuoni will collect new perspectives on travel and develop these into a ‘new culture of travelling’–a selection of luxury, unique and authentic travel experiences.   The Kuoni and Serpentine Gallery relationship is based on a common sense of curiosity and passion for innovation. Moreover, the concept of the Manifesto Marathon closely mirrors the Kuoni Getaway Council –an ever-evolving group of prolific experts and innovative thinkers from different fields, industries and countries– which was set up as a platform for exchanging ideas and finding new ways to innovate in travel. With a deeper understanding of contemporary culture resulting from these forums, Kuoni aims to cross new borders and deliver services that go beyond the conventional travel agency. Kuoni believes that service and knowledge, across the worlds of contemporary lifestyle, fashion, art, architecture, nature and urbanity are fundamental to the new culture of travelling and to driving the industry standards forward into the 21st century. Remo Masala Director Corporate Branding & Marketing Kuoni Travel Holding Ltd. SPONSOR’S FOREWORD Manifesto Pamphlet 3 in his stylized painting of braids and human faces that often accompany his sculptural works. Recent projects include: We All Turn This Way, the Serpentine Gallery, London (with Nick Laessing, 2008); Sing Sideways / Sing from the Middle to the Start / End, Alessandro De March, Milan (2008); and eponymous exhibitions at: the Breeder, Athens (2007); Max Wigram Gallery, London (2007); and the Arquebuse Gallery, Geneva (2008). Pier Vittorio Aureli Professor Pier Vittorio Aureli (born 1973, Italian) is an architect and educator. He studied architecture and urbanism at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia, Venice, and the Berlage Institute, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, before receiving his PhD from the Berlage Institute / Delft University of Technology. His studies focus on the relationship between architectural form, political theory and urban history. Aureli teaches at the Berlage Institute, where he is Unit Professor. He, together with Martino Tattara, is the cofounder of DOGMA. In 2006, they shared the first prize in an international competition for a new administrative city for 500,000 inhabitants in South Korea. They also received the first Iakov Chernikov Prize forYoung Architects in 2006. Christian Boltanski The artistic career of Christian Boltanski (born 1944, French) began when he left formal education at the age of 12, at which point he started painting and drawing. Since the 1960s, he has worked with the ephemera of the human experience from obituary photographs to rusted biscuit tins. Several of Boltanski’s projects have used actual lost property from public spaces, such as railway stations, creating collections which memorialize the unknown owners in the cacophony of personal effects. Nicolas Bourriaud Nicolas Bourriaud (born 1965, French) is a curator and art critic. From 1999 to 2006, he was co-founder and co-director of the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, together with Jérôme Sans. He was founder & director of the magazine Documents sur l’art (1992-2000) and Paris correspondent for Flash Art (1987 - 95). In 2009, Bourriaud will curate Marina Abramovic´ Since the beginning of her career in 1970s Belgrade, Marina Abramovic´ (born 1946, Serbian) has pioneered performance as a visual art form – the body has always been both her subject and medium, exploring her physical and mental limits in works that ritualize the simple actions of everyday life. From 1975-88, Abramovic´ and the German artist Ulay performed together, but she returned to solo performances in 1989. She has presented her work at major institutions in the US and Europe, including:Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands (1985); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1990); and Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (1993). She has also participated in many large-scale international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (1976 and 1997) and Documenta VI, VII and IX, Kassel, Germany (1977, 1982 and 1992). Upcoming projects include a retrospective at MoMA, NewYork. Rasheed Araeen Rasheed Araeen (born 1935, Pakistani) is a London-based conceptual artist, sculptor, painter, writer and curator. He graduated in civil engineering from the University of Karachi, Pakistan (1962), and has been working as a visual artist since his arrival in London in 1964. In 1972, he joined the Black Panther Movement, and six years later he was founding editor of the journal Black Phoenix, which in 1989 became Third Text, one of the most important journals dealing with art, the Third World, post-colonialism and ethnicity; he described it as an attempt to ‘demolish the boundaries that separate art and art criticism’. Araeen is one of the pivotal figures in establishing a black voice in the British arts, and his work demonstrates a concern with the problems of establishing an identity for Third World artists. Athanasios Argianas Athanasios Argianas (born 1976, Greek) studied at Goldsmiths College, London (2003-05), and he lives and works in London. Argianas’s works stem conceptually from his exploration of the complexity and beauty of sound, capturing acoustic vibration as voluminous cast alloy sculptures and precious wood constructions. These naturally repetitive forms are alluded to PARTICIPANTSAn Artist’s Life An artist’s conduct in his life An artist’s relation to his love life An artist’s relation to the erotic An artist’s relation to suffering An artist’s relation to depression An artist’s relation to suicide An artist’s relation to inspiration An artist’s relation to self-control An artist’s relation with transparency An artist’s relation to symbols An artist’s relation to silence An artist’s relation to solitude An artist’s conduct in relation to work A list of artist’s possessions A lists of an artist’s friends A list of artist’s enemies Different death scenarios Different funeral scenarios * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Different reincarnation scenarios Life after death An artist’s conduct in work during their after life List of an artist’s possessions in their after life A list of artist’s friends in their after life A list of artist’s enemies in their after life Marina Abramovic´ Manifesto Pamphlet 18/19.10.2008 54 Trilogy’ of albums (Low, Heroes, Lodger). As producer, his credits include notable albums like Talking Heads’ Fear of Music (1979) and U2’s The Joshua Tree (1987). In the 1990s, Eno pioneered what he called ‘generative music’: creating musical systems using musical software, and co-founded The Long Now Foundation, a group commited to the encouragement of longterm thinking. As an artist, Brian Eno creates art installations, writes a newspaper column in The Observer and has created (with Peter Schmidt) Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards, each bearing a cryptic remark. He has used these cards extensively in his record productions. Henry Flynt Henry Flynt (born 1945, American) attended Harvard, but dropped out to give his full time to original work. Flynt is known as a wholesale critic of the existing civilisation. Less well known is that Flynt has made many intellectual proposals which, when woven together, were meant to point to a post-capitalist, post-scientific civilisation, as documented in his Blueprint for a Higher Civilization (Multipla Edizioni, 1975). Flynt has swerved in and out of public cultural life over the past few decades. He has often published his work to make it part of the public record. About 20 albums of his music have appeared, and he resumed public music performance this year. Represented by art dealer Emily Harvey until her death, he participated in the 1990Venice Biennale and the 1993 Lyon Biennale. Yona Friedman Yona Friedman (born 1923, French) studied architecture at the Technical University, Budapest (1943), but he left Hungary in 1945, completing his training in 1948 at the Technion, Haifa, Israel, subsequently teaching there. In the 1950s, he came to believe that requirements generated by technological progress and demographic growth were too great to be solved by traditional social, urban and architectural values and structures. In 1957, he settled in Paris and co-founded the Groupe d’étude d’architecture mobile (GEAM) with: Paul Maymont, Frei Otto, Eckhard SchulzeFielitz, Werner Ruhnau and D.G. Emmerich. The group’s manifesto was Friedman’s L’architecture mobile (1958), in which he rejected the idea of a static city. In contrast, he developed the principle of ‘infrastructure,’ a skeletal metal ‘space-frame grid’ of several levels, on which mobile, lightweight ‘spacedefining elements’ could be placed. Gilbert & George Gilbert (born 1943, British) met George (born 1942, British) as sculpture students at St Martins School of Art, London. They soon adopted the identity of ‘living sculptures’ in both their art and their daily lives, becoming not only creators, but the art itself. Their reputation was established in 1969 with The Singing Sculpture. Standing together on a table, they danced and sang ‘Underneath the Arches’. It was a telling choice, harking back to vaudeville, while also identifying with society’s fringes. Gilbert & George were invited to present The Singing Sculpture all over the world. In order that their audience was not restricted to those in their presence, they began to create films and pictures. In 2007, they had a major retrospective at Tate Modern, London. John Giorno John Giorno (born 1936, American) is a poet and performance artist. He founded the artist collective Giorno Poetry Systems and developed its mass communication experiment Dial-aPoem. He became prominent as the subject of Andy Warhol’s film Sleep, 1963. In 1968, Giorno founded Giorno Poetry Systems in order to connect poetry to new audiences, using innovative technology. This intuition turned out to be very influential on later approaches to poetry, like ‘spoken word’ and ‘slam poetry’. Some of the poets and artists who recorded or collaborated with Giorno Poetry Systems were: William Burroughs, John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Mapplethorpe. Since 2005, along with his solo poetry performances, he has done some music-poetry shows with the avant-garde Spanish composer and musician Javier Colis. Fritz Haeg Like a system of crop rotation, Fritz Haeg (born 1969, American) works between: his architecture and design practice (Fritz Haeg Studio), the happenings and gatherings of Sundown Salon / Schoolhouse, the ecology initiatives of Gardenlab (including Edible Estates), and other various combinations of building, designing, gardening, exhibiting, dancing, organising and talking. Haeg studied architecture at Venice’s Istituto universitario di architettura di Venezia and at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he received his B.Arch. His first book, Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, was published by Metropolis Books last Ekaterina Degot Ekaterina Degot (born in 1958, Russian) is an art historian, art critic and curator based in Moscow. She has worked as a senior curator at the State Tretyakov Gallery, art columnist at Kommersant Daily and is now chief editor of www.openspace.ru/art. She has taught at the European University, St Petersburg and has been a guest professor at various American and European universities and teacher at Moscow Alexander Rodchenko photography school. Exhibitions she has curated or co-curated include: Body Memory: Underwear of the Soviet Era (City History Museum, St Petersburg); Moscow–Berlin 1950-2000, Martin-GropiusBau, Berlin, and the History Museum, Moscow (2003-04); and Soviet Idealism, Musée de l’art wallon, Liège, Belgium (2005), Citizens, Mind Yourselves: Dimitri Prigov, Museum of Modern Art Moscow (2008). Her books include: Terroristic Naturalism (1998), Russian 20th Century Art (2000) and Moscow Conceptualism (with Vadim Zakharov, 2005). Jimmie Durham Jimmie Durham (born 1940, American) is a sculptor who now lives and works in Belgium. During the early 1960s, he was active in theatre, performance, and literature in the Civil Rights Movement. He became a political organiser in the American Indian Movement, 1973-80, Director of the International Indian Treaty Council and representative at the United Nations. Exhibitions include: Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Ghent, Belgium; Palais des beaux-arts, Brussels; ICA, London; Documenta, Kassel, Germany; Kunstverein in Hamburg; FRAC, Rheims, France; Wittgenstein Haus, Vienna; Whitney Biennial, NewYork; Kunstverein München, Munich; and the Venice Biennale. His book of poems Columbus Day was published in 1983 (West End Press), and he was included in Harper’s Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry. Phaidon Press published a monograph on him in 1995. Brian Eno Brian Eno (born 1948, British) is a musician, producer and artist who is known as ‘The Father of Ambient Music’. Art-school-educated, he first became prominent in the 1970s band Roxy Music. Upon leaving them, he began concentrating upon abstract soundscapes, in his Discreet Music (1975) and Music for Airports (1978). In the late 1970s, he collaborated with David Bowie in the avant-garde ‘Berlin the 4th Tate Triennial at Tate Britain, London. English-speakers know Bourriaud best for his publications Relational Aesthetics (1998) and Postproduction (2001). Relational Aesthetics, in particular, has come to be seen as a defining text for a wide variety of art produced by a generation who came to prominence in Europe in the early 1990s. In Postproduction (2000), Bourriaud relates DJing to contemporary art practice. Andrea Branzi The architect and designer Professor Andrea Branzi (born 1938, Italian) graduated in 1966 in Florence, where he was brought up, but has lived and worked in Milan since 1973. From 1964 to 1974, he was a member of the group Archizoom Associati, at the forefront of the Radical Architecture movement, and whose projects are preserved at Centro studi e archivio della comunicazione, Parma; Branzi’s graduation theme and other projects are archived at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. In 1987, he received the Compasso d’oro award for his career in the fields of: industrial and experimental design, architecture, town planning, education and cultural promotion. He is professor and president of the graduation course in interior design at the Facoltà di interni e design of the Politecnico di Milano. Paul Chan Paul Chan is an artist living in NewYork City. Peter Cook Sir Peter Cook (born 1936, British) is an architect, teacher and writer. He studied architecture at Bournemouth College of Art (1953-58), then the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, graduating in 1960. In the 1960s, he became a founding member of the Archigram group. This avant-garde collective that drew inspiration from technology to create hypothetical projects was awarded the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture by RIBA in 2002. Cook was Director of the ICA in London (1970-72), and in 1984 was appointed Life Professor at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, which he helped to establish as one of Germany’s foremost architecture schools. Now director of CRAB Studio, building the municipal theatre of Verbania, Italy, and social housing in Italy, he is also Emeritus Professor at UCL and Joint Professor at the Royal Academy. Manifesto Pamphlet 18/19.10.2008 Manifesto Pamphlet 18/19.10.2008 6 7 world in the early 1980s. Home now writes novels as well as cultural commentary, and he continues to make films and exhibitions. He is currently editing the Semina experimental fiction series at Book Works and also performing as a ventriloquist. His 12th novel, Memphis Underground, was published by Snowbooks in 2007, and the follow-up, Blood Rites of the Bourgeoisie, is due to be issued by Book Works in 2010. Charles Jencks Charles Jencks (born 1939, American) divides his time between lecturing, writing, and designing in the US, the UK and Europe. He is the author of the best-selling The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (reissued as The New Paradigm in Architecture, 2002). He has also written numerous other books on contemporary arts and building, including What is Post-Modernism? (4th edition, 1995), The Architecture of the Jumping Universe (2nd edition, 1997) and The Iconic Building: The Power of Enigma (Frances Lincoln, 2005). His celebrated garden in Scotland is the subject of his book The Garden of Cosmic Speculation (Frances Lincoln, 2003); in 2004, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, won the Gulbenkian Prize for Museums for his design, Landform Ueda. Terence Koh Terence Koh (born 1977, Canadian) rose to prominence in the mid-1990s, under the nom de pinceau asianpunkboy, for his eponymous website and ‘art-porn’ zines. His sprawling body of work, which includes paintings, photographs, sculptures, drawings, and performances, quickly drew a large following in the queercore underground and in the larger art world. Since ‘killing off’ asianpunkboy in 2004, he has concentrated in producing room-sized installations and performances. In 2005, along with gallerist Javier Peres, he opened Asia Song Society, an exhibition space in New York. Koh lives and works in Beijing, New York and Berlin, and is represented by Peres Projects and Thaddaeus Ropac. Solo exhibitions include: Love for Eternity, MUSAC, Leon, Spain (2008); Captain Buddha, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2008); and Terence Koh, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2007) and Kunsthalle Zürich (2006). Silvia Kolbowski Silvia Kolbowski (born 1953, American) is an artist based in New York. Her scope of address includes the ethics and politics of history, sexuality, culture and the unconscious. Her project Proximity to Power, American Style, aslide / audio work about the relational aspects of masculine power, was part of a oneperson, three-project exhibition, Inadequate… Like… Power, at the Secession, Vienna (2004). In 2007, she exhibited a revised version of her 1999 An Inadequate History of Conceptual Art at the Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej, Warsaw. Her most recent project, a video and photo work entitled After Hiroshima Mon Amour (2008), opened as a solo exhibition at LA>