Pandemonium: Art in a Time of Creativity Fever
Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, 2011 will be an occasion for artists, curators, writers and thinkers to mull over the turbulence and turmoil that is today’s world. Is it only about a sense of hurly-burly, disorder and dismal confusion – of »sheer pandemonium«? Or is it also about transformation and creative emergence – the making of new worlds, possibilities and paradigms? What shape of Europe wells up from economic crash and nosedive? How is the project of »modernity and Enlightenment« it forged in earlier episodes of chaos and tumult shaping up today?
We have risk, uncertainty and disequilibrium at one end at odds with upturn at the other end, with the ascendency of Asia, the global South, »non-Western modernities«. But if we see turbulence narrowly in terms of »financial bubble«, of »boom and bust« – painful and devastating as its concrete consequences are for individuals, actual people and institutions – we overlook the fact that out of the maelstrom other modes and forms of order and designs for living are also brewing up. In this context, Pandemonium – Art in a Time of Creativity Fever grasps turbulence less as a point of utter termination and more as a phase of a dynamical system in which negative and positive pass over into each other – where order emanates out of apparent chaos – a creative, self-organising system, self-raising and self erasing.
Why Pandemonium?
In John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost (1671), Pandemonium is the castle built by Lucifer and his band after they had been booted out of heaven. It is the base camp from which they plot against the »old order«. But it is also a platform from which they seek to launch the project of another creation, a new kind of world albeit a »devilish« one. Through Pandemoinuim, Milton reflects on the turbulence and topsy-turvy of civil war England. Was this only chaos and hurly burly? Or was it also the birth of the modern world, of modern values and experience? It ushered in Atlantic and European modernity and Enlightenment – and the promise of a variety of paradises and utopias to come. The term, therefore, has both positive and negative connotations. From William Blake to Derek Jarman, from punk to pop bands and everyday »hubbub« of street sound and speech, it has been used to explore chaos and disorder that is at the same time about the emergence of new worlds, alternative global modernities and other possibilities.
For the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art 2011, Pandemonium is a LAB, an experiment zone, bubbling with ideas. Wary of »paradises lost«, of utopias that have turned sour or gone of the rails, it sounds today’s turbulent world for new possibilities and perspectives and alternative forms of life and living that are brewing up.
Sarat Maharaj, Curator
Curatorial structure
Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art is a process made up of essentially four components:
1. The Biennial process kicks off with a set of performative City Excavations that take place in the public space between June 16–19. City Excavations will involve explorations and investigations led by artists into various dimensions of Göteborg – the skies, earth surfaces, underground and under water worlds. The aim is to get a sense different dimensions of urban life and living in a directly experienced way – knowledge production through body, feelings, emotions, subjectivity and the senses. The data collected by participants and practitioners will be brought together for reflection, discussions and mulling over in a summing up workshop at the end of this series of sessions.
2. The second component is a set of Summer Academies. The aim is to explore the history of Göteborg-in-the-world – the city‘s international and global links opened up from the days of the Swedish East India Company that was launched from Göta älv; the experiments in more »humanizing« forms of industrial production at Volvo Uddevalla that have world significance in the history of work and labour; the opening out to the post-industrial world of work as cerebral activity and creativity; the present-day cosmopolitan links through migration and information technologies. The Summer Academy course River Run (referencing James Joyce), established in collaboration with the School of Photography at the University of Göteborg will explore historical and contemporary life, culture and work associated with the waterfront and Göta älv: The course North/South will continue the exploration of relations in politics and economics; as well as the search for new forms of labour and models of production.
3. The third component is the exhibition that will take place in the public space and in four venues: Röda Sten Art Centre, Göteborgs Konsthall, Göteborgs konstmuseum, Konsthallen–Bohusläns Museum
4. The fourth component is a series of critical and poetic reflections presented by the participants of the Summer Academies. The students’ presentations will be in the form of performative events connected to their own research as well as art works and artistic practices in the biennial exhibition. This is about interacting with the works, projects and perspectives in the exhibition expressed in modes of their own choice, whether through critical talks, writing, films, performances and the like.
Sarat Maharaj, Curator
