Manifesta 10
The European Biennial of Contemporary Art
28 June–31 October, 2014
The State Hermitage Museum
St. Petersburg
Russia
Curator: Kasper König
Curator of the Public Program: Joanna Warsza
Manifesta Director Hedwig Fijen said:
“Installation of artworks by 50 contemporary artists has begun at the State Hermitage Museum and other sites and venues, and more than 1,500 media and arts professionals have confirmed their attendance for the opening days. A further 10,000 school students have pre-booked for the education program, which will run throughout the 125 days of MANIFESTA 10.
Despite many challenges, obstacles, and the occasional impasse, MANIFESTA 10, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, is opening to the public on 28 June, 2014, and is set to be a historically significant, challenging, and engaging Biennial. Manifesta originated in the post-communist period in the 1990s. It aimed to balance the information gap between East and West, North and South. It has chosen to operate within contested areas due to a belief that art plays a vital role in helping us better understand our place in this complex world.”
The opening program will include Paola Pivi’s Grrr Jamming Squeak (2010–ongoing) at the Kuryokhin Modern Art Center. Throughout the Biennial, visitors are invited to enter a fully equipped recording studio where they can play and record music accompanied by animal sounds for free.
Commissioned by MANIFESTA 10, Guy Ben-Ner’s Surplus Leisure (2014) will be located in the Voronikhin Square garden. Exercise equipment in a nearby fitness studio will be connected to cables that generate electricity and power the projection of a speech by Arnold Schwarzenegger on body-building and the merits of the free market economy. Drawing on Marx’s concept of surplus labor, the piece behaves like a parasite, deriving power (electricity) from other people’s “labor time.”
Nathalie Hoyos and Rainald Schumacher (office for art, Berlin) are the curators of Unlooped-KINO. The program is composed of over seventy individual film and video works from 1970 to the present, as a comprehensive survey of artistic development in the period. The program comprises works from respected private and public collections, each with a particular specialization in the field and with a strong focus on collecting, preserving. Continuous screenings are held at two locations, free of admission: at the General Staff Building (Ground Floor) during official opening hours, and at Vitebsk Station (Zagorodny prospect, 32) from 11:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. daily.
The opening days of MANIFESTA 10 also feature the launch of the Public Program curated and commissioned by Joanna Warsza. Part of this program,Apartment Art as Domestic Resistance is a series of exhibitions reflecting on the history of art exhibitions in household and kitchen settings as a form of resistance in St. Petersburg.
Image: Erik van Lieshout, The Basement, 2014 (working title).