First hand. When a series of artistic proposals look for specific people as receivers it seems logical to respond with a personal, subjective and particular point of view. Forgetting universalism, contemporary art approaches specific people with forms of contact that seek to please or displease, in equal measure. And what is the role of criticism? To explain pieces that can’t be seen? To enter pieces through the eyes of another? To enter the world of fiction?
Faced with a series of works which many people won’t be able to access, at A*DESK we want to investigate critical formats, the frontier between critical narration and distanced analysis. That is if the first can be separated from the second.
In this issue of A*Magazine we present three critiques written in the first person, three narrations about three pieces, three works where the passing of time and its activation is important. Frederic Montornés writes about "Te oímos beber" (We hear you drinking) by Alex Reynolds, Lorena Muñoz-Alonso about the new proposal by Ryan Gander, commissioned by Artangel, and Marti Manen about "Cooking Catastrophes" by Eva Meyer-Keller and Sybille Müller.
The creation of filmic situations in real contexts leads to the practice of performance activating atavistic fears, raising questions about our context and leaving us, as users, faced with a sea of doubts about communication, truth, fiction and our own fragility. Frederic Montornés participates in "Te oímos beber"(We hear you drinking) and narrates, first hand, his reactions.
An abandoned industrial warehouse in the east of London is the scenario chosen by the British artist Ryan Gander to represent his latest and until now most ambitious project, commissioned by the prestigious producer, Artangel. The choice of the verb “represent” is not incidental: “Locked Room Scenario” is a hybrid, somewhere between an art exhibition, a theatrical play, a mystery novel and a paranoid mental trip.
Mossutställningar, a flexible platform that produces all sorts of artistic projects, presents a performance in Stockholm, bringing together food, cooking and art. Two artists and some chefs working around the idea of catastrophe.
