Charles Esche – författare

Föreställ dig ett museum år 2050. I staden, i glesbygden eller någonstans däremellan. Vilka är där? Vad upplever de? Kommer de att komma tillbaka? Den här boken handlar om dem, om framtidens besökare och deras förväntningar, beteenden och drömmar. Riksutställningar har bett 17 visionärer från olika expertområden att närma sig framtiden utifrån sina perspektiv, som rymmer alltifrån vår tids normkritik till megatrender som digitalisering, automatisering och urbanisering. Kartan de tecknar visar hur museernas uppdrag att spegla nutiden, minnas historien och öppna dörrar mot framtiden har potential att spela en central roll genom de kommande decenniernas samhällsförändringar. Att sjunga långsiktighetens och minnets lov, och samtidigt befinna sig i ständig rörelse, är en utmaning. I denna antologi står det klart att det är med besökaren i centrum som utmaningen behöver bemötas.

Perhaps the most notable development in the art of the past decade has been 'relational aesthetics' -- social, collaborative, participatory art that is concerned less with producing objects than with composing human interactions. Although most critical attention has focused on its development in Western Europe and the United States, relational art has flourished in regions with less developed art economies --decommodified contemporary art scenes being a natural habitat for dematerialized artworks. Although Pawel Althamer (b. 1967) was originally trained as a sculptor, his work bears many of the marks of relational art. Often dematerialized to the point of invisibility, this work also increasingly enlists human participants in what the artist describes as 'reality directed'. For Motion Pictures (2000) Althamer choreographed actors to perform everyday actions in a public square (greeting a friend, feeding pigeons) at the same time every day for three weeks. Viewers who did not know what to look for or who did not return a second time could not know whether they had seen the artwork at all. Another major element of Althamer's work is institutional critique.For a 2003 exhibition at his Berlin gallery, Neugerrieumschneider, he transformed the high-design space into a litter-strewn shell -- essentially returning the gallery to its dilapidated pre-gentrification state. Invited to show at Paris's Centre Pompidou this autumn, he has rounded up fifteen local artists who have never exhibited in a major public space in their home city to create an ongoing project in the museum for the duration of his show. Althamer belongs to a vanguard that is freeing art from a single dominant culture (both art historical and pop cultural), creating works that are as much at home in a square in Ljubljana as they are on a sidewalk in Pittsburgh. His work has been included in Documenta X (1997) and numerous international biennials, including Berlin (2006), Istanbul (2005) and Venice (2003). In 2004 he won the prestigious Vincent van Gogh Award for Contemporary Art in Europe.

Throughout the vast interior of the United States, contemporary artists are responding to the world around them and reshaping it in unexpected ways. Published to coincide with an exhibition of the same name that first appeared last year in the Netherlands and will open in fall 2009 at the University of Chicago's Smart Museum of Art, "Heartland" offers an idiosyncratic look at innovative forms of cultural production taking place across the region. In this engaging book - part critical reader, part catalog - contributors, including novelist Dave Eggers, scholar Hasan Kwame Jeffries, and journalist Rebecca Solnit, explore the region through topics ranging from art to music to urban farming to political history. An illustrated section introduces over twenty artists featured in the exhibit, including both established figures like Kerry James Marshall and exuberant newcomers like the group Whoop Dee Doo. An appendix rounds out the volume by surveying the lively state of independent and artist-run cultural initiatives from New Orleans to Detroit.Produced by the Van Abbemuseum and the Smart Museum of Art, "Heartland" challenges expectations of place and illuminates a diverse assembly of artists who are redefining the cultural terrain of the American heartland.

This catalogue raisonné of printed works by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov comprises some 90 works from 1981–2023. Some of these are series and consist of several prints. This graphic part of the Kabakov oeuvre, recently acquired by the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, offers insight into the varied work of these two artists, comprising drawings, works with garbage, albums, paintings, and installations.

The project takes its name from the demand for the transfer of power and other things to the newly independent Indonesia in 1945. It travels through time, from European colonial occupation through the development of the republican state to the trans-national contemporary cultures of today. It looks at the various international exchanges that happened in the territories of contemporary Indonesia, through the images and ideas of artists. These exchanges were of different kinds: trade, culture, religion, ideology and war. They produced a variety of results: violence, oppression, racism, creativity, spiritual awakening, and other things. The ideologies and challenges of modernity are common ways in which Indonesia has been depicted by others and has defined itself over the period. As this modern period recedes into history, the project will seek ways to remember how it has influenced contemporary understanding and ask the current generation of artists to look back in order to rewrite the past and potentially create the conditions for a different future. The catalogue and the exhibition will follow a broad chronological narrative, allowing readers and visitors to learn more about how this huge archipelago has changed over the past two centuries and to observe how it has responded and adapted to influences originating from both inside and outside the islands. The influence of the imperial Dutch and Japanese occupations naturally form a significant element in the narrative of the exhibition as does the constant struggle for different forms of independence or equal treatment by the Javanese and other Indonesian cultures. The importance of Chinese and Arab influence on Indonesia's cultural history will also feature as the exhibition tries to look for alternative ways, alongside the post-colonial, for understanding the present. The presentations will include work made during the residencies as well as new commissions.

In Richard Deacon's solo exhibition Some Time, a refabricated version of his sculpture Never Mind takes pride of place among more than twenty-five other works. Over time, the original sculpture, made in 1993, proved to be incompatible with the natural environment of an open-air museum. Now, after a period of critical reflection and discussion with the artist himself, what he calls a 'refabrication' has taken place. Follow the artist and the museum's quest for an innovative, sustainable solution to the renewal of (or variation on) a monumental sculpture that offers a potentially new line of approach for the future.This book not only represents the Some Time exhibition, but thanks to its diversity of material, ranging from original sketches and intimate correspondence to construction photos from the workshop and installation shots, it also gives a unique insight into Deacon's working process. At the same time, it provides a moment of critical reflection from the perspectives of the various authors who have contributed to it.Text in English and Dutch.