ARTISTS: Sammy Baloji / DR Congo / Yael Bartana [Holland–Israel] Eric Baudelaire [France] / Ursula Biemann [Switzerland] / Ross Birrell [Scotland] / Michael Blum [Austria–Israel] / Broomberg and Chanarin [UK] / Olaf Breuning [USA] / Abraham Cruzvillegas [Germany–Mexico] / Anita di Bianco [USA] / Marcelo Exposito [Argentina–Spain] / Zachary Formwalt [Holland–USA] / Tamar Guimaraes / [Brazil–Denmark] / Lamia Joreige [Lebanon] / Graziela Kuntsch [Brazil] / Michael Takeo Magruder [England–USA] / Renzo Martens [Holland] / Rabih Mroue [Lebanon] / Katya Sander [Denmark] / Slum-TV [Kenya] / Hito Steyerl [Germany] / Alejandro Vidal [Spain] / and Walid Raad | The Atlas Group [USA-Lebanon]
Presenting seemingly incompatible components such as aesthetic experience and political activism; community events and private investigations, the exhibition All that Fits: The Aesthetics of Journalism provocatively advances the idea that art and journalism are not separate forms of communication, but rather two sides of a unique activity, the production and distribution of images and information. What the project brings to surface are the ways of communicating this nexus of imaging and informing, and the aesthetic principles used in such an ordering, in such acts of transmission. As aesthetic regimes, both journalism and artistic makes claims for the truth, albeit of a different kind. One is a coded system that speaks for the truth (or so it claims), the other a set of activities that questions itself at every step (or so it claims), thus making truth.
Whereas journalism provides a view on the world ‘out there,’ as it ‘really’ is, art often presents a view on the view, truth posited as acts of (self)reflection. All that Fits: The Aesthetics of Journalism will examine both as types of truth production, as systems of information that defines truth in terms of the visible: producing not only what can be seen, but also what can be imagined, and thus imaged. As such, the exhibition will revolve around the aesthetics of journalism, how images are produced and how they are produced to appear as truthful. Here, we start to get closer to the core of reality itself when we make our reality not a given, irreversible fact, but a possibility among many others.
Referring to the late work of Michel Foucault, the question of the truth-sayer will be examined: who can speak the truth, and does require certain types of speaking as well as certain subject positions? As single figures, both the reporter and the artist has throughout modernity been viewed as authentic voices and heroic figures. Simultaneously, they are constantly vilified as being complicit and corrupt. The artistic positions in the show generate a principal question: is it possible to work with aesthetics and informatics, to be both reflective and precise? To both employ documentary techniques and journalistic methods while remaining self-reflecting and critical on those means? Ultimately, the artist’s work here is not about delivering information but questioning it, reversing the tradition of both fields (art and journalism), to highlight both the aesthetic workings and trappings of reportage and the informational turn within current aesthetic production.
Artworks are presented in groups, juxtaposing different formats and approaches in dialogue with each other while each responding to the overall theme. This will take the form of a rotating display of works, figuring in different constellations that all revolve around the key questions of truth, images and information, while at the same time reflecting the rotation of the news cycle, albeit at a different, slowed down speed. This change of scenery and topicality will be made visible through changing exhibition design as well as the change of works according to three chapters: The Speaker, The Image and The Militant.
The Speaker (28th May-19th June 2011) concerns itself with a specific figure; the speaking subject or author, its figures of authority and figures of speech, as well as its framings of the real in terms of editorial processes and camera angles. How does this figure emerge through discourse, and what are its functions? What can be said and not said in order for a speaking subject to appear as real, as authentic, as authoritative and/or as truthful. What is implied in certain speech acts and subject positions, such as the figure of ‘the reporter’ and ‘the artist, as well as the ‘witness’ and the ‘source’?
The Image (22nd June-10th July 2011) examines how images are ideologically produced, through the framings and positionings of the above-mentioned categories, but also how counter-images can be created. Here, the very makings and politics of image production will be reflected, discussed and deconstructed, proposing an aesthetics of journalism and documentary as that which can get to the truth of the ideology of mass-media images, in opposition to their claim neutrality and pragmatism.
The Militant (13th-31st July 2011) continues the strand of counter-images and counter-information, but through the artistic employment of journalistic traits such as expose and research. However, the practices highlighted here often works instead of the media, and uncover what it does not, going where it does not go, and thus returns to some of reportage’s initial claims, that have been left behind in an increasingly commercial and corporate media industry.
CURATED BY:Alfredo Cramerotti and Simon Sheikh
INFORMATION:QUAD / Market Place, Cathedral Quarter / Derby | DE1 3AS UK
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www.derbyquad.co.uk
