[aha] RE:akt! Reconstruction, Re-enactment, Re-reporting

[Domenico Quaranta]

Aksioma - Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana and
MNAC - National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest
present:

*RE:akt!*
Reconstruction, Re-enactment, Re-reporting
curated by: Domenico Quaranta
www.reakt.org


*MNAC - National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest*
Izvor St. 2-4, wing E4, Bucharest, Romania / Entrance from Calea 13  
Septembrie
22 January – 13 March 2009

Panel discussion: 22 January 2009 at 18:00
Exhibition opening: 22 January 2009 at 19:00

Featured artists:  Lucas Bambozzi, Vaginal Davis, Quentin Drouet,  
Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Irwin, Eva and Franco Mattes  
(aka 0100101110101101.ORG), OHO group, SilentCell Network (Mare Bulc,  
Janez Janša, Bojana Kunst, Igor Štromajer)

MNAC - National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest is proud to  
announce “RE:akt! Reconstruction, Re-enactment, Re-reporting”, the  
world preview of the works realized in the last three years within the  
platform “RE:akt!” conceived by Janez Janša and produced by the  
Slovenian cultural institution Aksioma.

During recent years the term re-enactment and the practices it refers  
to have enjoyed increasing success in the artistic context. On one  
hand, the success of re-enactment appears to be connected to a  
parallel, vigorous return to performance art, both as a genre  
practiced by the new generations, and as an artistic practice with its  
own historicization. On the other hand the term re-enactment  
accompanies two phenomena that at least at first glance have very  
little in common: re-staging artistic performances of the past, and  
revisiting, in performance form, “real” events – be they linked  
to history or current affairs, past or present.

“RE:akt! Reconstruction, Re-enactment, Re-reporting” tries both to  
research on the complexity of this concept and to get rid of it,  
approaching re-enactment not merely as “live action role-playing”  
or “living history” but rather as a strategy for cultural critique,  
analysis and artistic expression. “RE:akt!” – meaning not only  
“to act again” but also “to respond to / to react upon” and  
“Regarding: act!”– confronts current ideological and intellectual  
canons, power structures, policies, and distribution channels by re- 
enacting selected historical and culturally relevant events. Through  
processes of analysis, deconstruction, re-enactment and re-reporting,  
the intermedia research and presentation project “RE:akt!” examines  
media’s roles in manipulating perceptions and creating postmodern  
historical myths and contemporary mythology.


Thus, “RE:akt! Reconstruction, Re-enactment, Re-reporting”, curated  
by the Italian art critic and curator Domenico Quaranta, will collect  
ten different approaches to the concept ofenaction: from Ich Lubbe  
Berlin! (2005, SilentCell Network), a take on the 1933 burning of the  
Reichstag building in Berlin, which explores the contemporary meaning  
of symbols such as the Reichstag itself, and of concepts such as  
“communism” and “terrorism”; to Das KAPITAL (2006, Janez  
Janša), a performance which re-stages the 1969 occupation of  
Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces with the languages of popular  
street artists; from C'était un rendez-vous (déja vu) (Janez Janša  
and Quentin Drouet), a project that plays with the paradigmatic  
history of a well known artwork, the film C'était un rendez-vous by  
Claude Lelouch, from “cinema verité” to “media fiction”; to VD  
as VB (2007), a series of actions in which Vaginal Davis, the “grande  
dame” of the queer underground in Los Angeles, dialogues with Vanessa  
Beecroft's performances. In Mount Triglav on Mount Triglav (2007 -  
2008), the three artists Janez Janša, Janez Janša and Janez Janša re- 
stage a well known performance of the OHO group from the late Sixties,  
recently appropriated by the IRWIN group for their Like to Like Series  
(2004), performing it on the Mount Triglav itself, and then  
translating it into a monumental golden sculpture; while in Slovene  
National Theatre (2007), Janez Janša translates an infamous fact of  
recent racism against Gypsies – known in Slovenia as “the Ambrus  
case” - into a piece of theatre, re-invoicing it as it was featured  
by the mass media. In their Synthetic Performances (2007), Eva and  
Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG reenact on the virtual platform  
of Second Life a series of historical performances that are all but  
virtual, raising issues such as body, violence, sex and pain, thus  
exploring the meaning of these very issues in a virtual world. In SS- 
XXX | Die Frau Helga (2007), Janez Janšaagain adds details and proofs  
of evidence to an “urban legend” recently circulated on the Net and  
mainstream media, concerning the presumed creation of a cyber-sex doll  
by the Nazis. Thus, performance and reenactment are far from being the  
only strategies adopted in “RE:akt!”, which also involves  
strategies such as documentation, remix, re-invoicement,  
reconstruction and remediation (such as in the project The Day São  
Paulo Stopped 2009 by Brazilian artist Lucas Bambozzi), and media such  
as photographic print, video, media installation and even architecture  
(such as in the project Il porto dell'amore, by Janez Janša, an homage  
to Fiume as an example of pirate utopia).

On Thursday, January 22, MNAC will host a panel discussion featuring  
Domenico Quaranta, curator of the exhibition; Janez Janša, artist and  
director of Aksioma; and the italian theoretician Antonio Caronia, co- 
editor of the book RE:akt! Reconstruction, Re-enactment, Re-reporting,  
to be published on March 2009 (with contributions by Rod Dickinson,  
Jennifer Allen, Jan Verwoert, Antonio Caronia and Domenico Quaranta).  
On March 25, the exhibition will travel to ŠKUC gallery, Ljubljana  
(Slovenia) and then further to the Museum of Modern and Contemporary  
Art in Rijeka (Croatia).


*FREE IMAGES FOR PRESS and MORE INFO:*
http://www.reakt.org/

Production: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana
www.aksioma.org

Supported by
the European Cultural Foundation www.eurocult.org
the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia
the Municipality of Ljubljana

Thanks to:
Institut Français de Bucarest, Irwin, Claude Lelouch - LES FILMS 13,  
Moderna galerija Ljubljana,  MGLC - International Centre of Graphic  
Arts Ljubljana, RPS d.o.o.


*Contacts:*

Oana Tanase
MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest
Izvor St. 2-4, wing E4, Bucharest, Romania
phone: +40 – (0)21 318 91 37
e-mail: oana at spic.ro
www.mnac.ro

Marcela Okretič
Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana
Neubergerjeva 25, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenija
gsm : +386 – (0)41 250 830
e-mail: aksioma4 at siol.net
www.aksioma.org





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Domenico Quaranta

mob. +39 340 2392478
email. qrndnc at yahoo.it
home. vicolo San Giorgio 18 - 25122 brescia (BS)
web. http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/

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