Manifesta

MANIFESTA 11
11 June - 18 September 2016
ZURICH

What people do for money - some join-ventures

Professions are about more than making money. Many of us grapple with career choices our whole life long. And it often seems like the professions we pursue affect how we perceive ourselves as individuals – as well as how others perceive us. After a while, you might start speaking like a teacher, traveling like a salesperson, drinking like a barkeeper, thinking like a banker.

Manifesta 11 deals with professions, vocations and how they stand in relation to contemporary art. It aspires to see art in unexpected contexts and in relation to the work of colleagues from diverse industries. Each new project is the result of an encounter – a Joint Venture – between an international artist and a Zurich citizen who isn't professionally active in contemporary art. To start off, each invited artist was given a list of the over 1,000 professions practiced in the city today, compiled by the Institute of Sociology at the University of Zurich. Each artist chose one, and Manifesta found a corresponding host who practices that profession. The hosts took their artists by the hand, preferably picking them up straight from the airport, then showed them their place of work and the city. The relationships that developed between artist and host differed, but thanks to each host's expertise and connections in the city, the result was always a body of artistic work.

Each Joint Venture manifests itself in three places: an art institution, a place for art; a satellite venue, a place close to the host’s work; and the Pavillon of Reflections, created specifically for Manifesta 11, where each project will be reflected in the form of a film. In addition, for the duration of Manifesta 11, Cabaret Voltaire, the birthplace of Dada, will be transformed into a stage for joint-venture performances and home for the newly founded artists' guild.

The Historical Exhibition: Sites Under Construction

The joint ventures in the institutions Löwenbräukunst and Helmhaus are flanked by existing artworks and non-art materials from the past fifty years installed on scaffolding. The Historical Exhibition: Sites Under Construction, co-curated by Francesca Gavin, offers diverse perspectives on the relationship between art and professions, asking why and how artists have portrayed, questioned and interacted with the ideas and processes of other professions.

The Pavillon of Reflections

The Pavillon of Reflections is the architectural icon of Manifesta 11. An enormous timber raft floating on Lake Zurich, both open-air cinema and swimming pool, it was designed and built by the class of Studio Tom Emerson at ETH Zurich and supported by EKZ. The films shown there daily were shot by filmmaking students from the ZHdK. Onscreen, we see the ‘Art Detectives’, middle school and high school students from around Zurich who accompanied the artists and hosts as they produced the works and asked questions. At the end of the films we see the new works being shown to the hosts’ colleagues, clients and friends at private views in the satellites. So, we see other people observing and analysing art; reflection and reception are in close proximity here, overlapping.

Cabaret der Künstler – Zunfthaus Voltaire

Cabaret der Künstler – Zunfthaus Voltaire is Zurich's twenty-seventh guild, the first for artists, and the first to be gender neutral. Like all guilds, it has a Zunftmeister, Swiss artist Manuel Scheiwiller. Together, he and Manifesta 11 curator Christian Jankowski are organising the program of Joint-Venture Performances – in which one artist and one person from another profession work together to make a performance. Anyone who realizes a Joint-Venture Performance will become a member of the guild and can see all other performances – in the style of an exchange economy. The radical transformation of the old Cabaret Voltaire to look like a corporate office is the work of ETH professor Dr Alex Lehnerer, his assistants and students in collaboration with his partner Savvas Ciriacids (Ciriacidis Lehnerer Architects).

I don't think artworks are supposed to argue something directly. I find it much more interesting when an artwork both celebrates something – is an homage to something – and at the same time undermines it or considers it critically. Faced with this dilemma, the viewer might ask him or herself: "What is the artist's stance?" or even "How do I view this topic?" Even if it sounds moralistic, the title What People Do for Money is just a simple question. The biennial is neither merely about money, nor merely about work. As an art biennial, it is first and foremost about art. At the end, when the art stands there, we can be sure it will unmask us.


Curator: Christian Jankowski

Curatorial team: Francesca Gavin, Maria (Masha) Isserlis, Georgina Casparis, Gioia Dal Molin, John Beeson, Manuel Scheiwiller

Artists:

Evgeny Antufiev
John Arnold
Guillaume Bijl
Mike Bouchet
Maurizio Cattelan
Aslı Çavuşoğlu
Matyáš Chochola
Carles Congost
Ceal Floyer
Andrea Éva Győri
Pablo Helguera
Michel Houellebecq
Marguerite Humeau
Jon Kessler
Fermín Jiménez Landa
Leigh Ledare
Teresa Margolles
Shelly Nadashi
Jon Rafman
Torbjørn Rødland
Georgia Sagri
Marco Schmitt
Santiago Sierra
Una Szeemann
Jennifer Tee
Jiří Thýn
Mario García Torres
Jorinde Voigt
Franz Erhard Walther
Yin Xunzhi

All Artists:

Fatima Al Qadiri & Khalid Al Gharaballi, Evgeny Antufiev, John Arnold, Artist Placement Group, Evelyne Axell, Nicole Bachmann, Trisha Baga, Yto Barrada, Bhakti Baxter, Tjorg Douglas Beer, Karmelo Bermejo, Katherine Bernhardt, Guillaume Bijl, Mel Bochner, Alice Boner, Oscar Bony, Mike Bouchet, Chris Burden, Werner Büttner, Sophie Calle, Maurizio Cattelan, Asli Cavusoglu, Olga Chernysheva, Matyas Chochola, Steven Claydon, Anne Collier, Carles Congost, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Vuk Cosic, Plamen Dejanoff & Swetlana Heger, Thomas Demand, Simon Denny, Thornton Dial, Aleksandra Domanovic, Marcel van Eeden, Maria Eichhorn, Andrea Eva Gyori, Angus Fairhurst, Harun Farocki, Ceal Floyer, Damian Fopp, Coco Fusco, Mario Garcia Torres, Anna Gaskell, Kim Gordon, Andreas Gursky, Charles Gute, Chris Hadfield, Duane Hanson, Rachel Harrison, Pablo Helguera, Susan Hiller, Michel Houellebecq, Marguerite Humeau, Pierre Huyghe, Margrit Jäggli, Fermin Jimenez Landa, Daniel Kelly, Jon Kessler, Kippenberger & Akim S. aus 44, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Louise Lawler, Mark Leckey, Leigh Ledare, Mischa Leinkauf, Martin Liebscher, Armin Linke, Graham Little, Sharon Lockhart, Mark Lombardi, Marcos Lutyens, Jill Magid, Teresa Margolles, Megan Marlatt, Dieter Meier, Momoyo Torimitsu, Jonathan Monk, Gianni Motti, Bruno Munari, Shelly Nadashi, Kriszta Nagy, Ahmet Ogut, Yoshua Okon, Giovanna Olmos, Paulina Olowska, Julian Opie, Trevor Paglen, Amalia Pica, Sarah Pickering, Adrian Piper, R. H. Quaytman, Jon Rafman, Relax (Chiarenza & Hauser), James Roberts, Torbjorn Rodland, Daniela Rossell, Thomas Ruff, Ed Ruscha, Georgia Sagri, Fernando Sanchez Castillo, August Sander, Sabine Schlatter, Marco Schmitt, Jeremy Shaw, Alexander Shein, Santiago Sierra, Sister Corita, Jiri Skala, Michael Smith, Alec Soth, Frances Stark, Roman Stetina, Martine Syms, Una Szeemann, Pilvi Takala, Taocheng Wang, Andrei Tarkovski, Jennifer Tee, James Son Ford Thomas, Jiri Thyn, Rosemarie Trockel, Angela Vanini, Franz Erhard Walther, Matthias Wermke, Yin Xunzhi, Thomas Zipp