Is Art a Form of Debate?
Venice Agendas V
ARTISTS, GOSSIPS AND CRITICS
2007
IS ART A FORM OF DEBATE?
'There is an optimism deficit, almost, and at the same time as this optimism
deficit increases, we need a way to consume the optimism.'
Richard Grayson
A panel discussion chaired by Dr Jasper Joseph-Lester and Dr Sharon Kivland
Panellists: John Beagles, Polly Gould, Richard Grayson, Dan Perjovschi
, Lia Perjovschi, Cesare Pietroiusti
Biographies
Dr Jaspar Joseph-Lester, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University, is an artist based in London. He is Leader of MA Contemporary Art Curating at Sheffield Hallam University and is co-author of 'Disorientation and Spectacle in Retail Architecture' (Artwords Press, 2004). His video work was recently included in 'All for Show: an international retrospective of UK Video', and he co-curated touring shows 'Episode' and 'One Way Street'. His writing, collaborative research projects and video works are documented in 'Pilot: Archive', Monastery of St Damien and St Cosimo, La Giudecca, Venice, 8-17 June 2007.
Dr Sharon Kivland, Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University, is an artist and writer, living in London and France. Her work has been shown widely in Europe and North America, and is represented by Domo Baal Contemporary Art, London, and Galerie Bugdahn & Kaimer, Duesseldorf. Currently working on a series of books following the holidays of Sigmund Freud and a series of works on women’s fashions of the French Revolution, she is Visiting Fellow in the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, where she is happily following the differences in translations in the Freudian canon. www.sharonkivland.com
Drs Joseph-Lester and Kivland are editors of the lecture and publication series: Transmission: Speaking and Listening, and will be starting a new series: Transmission:Host in October 2007. They have guest edited ‘Text and Art’, art-omma, the online art journal (www.art-omma.org , issue 11), and have co-authored ‘Transmission’ in Dialogue Issue 3, Inside the interview: Exploring the workings of the artist interview, July 2006 to January 2007.
John Beagles is an artist, writer and lecturer in the Centre for Visual and Cultural Studies at Edinburgh College of Art. Since 1997 he has exhibited as Beagles and Ramsay. A comprehensive overview of their work as well as examples of John’s numerous reviews and catalogue essays can be viewed at www.beaglesramsay.co.uk.
Polly Gould is an artist and writer who makes drawing, sound, video and performance works concerned with our relationships as speaking subjects exploring questions of voice, power and desire, and presented in a live form as performance lectures. Recent work includes a story in a collection of fiction by contemporary British artists entitled Alpine Fantasy of Victor B. She lectures at the University of the Arts, London.
Richard Grayson’s solo exhibitions include ‘Messiah’, Matt’s Gallery London 2004, ‘Intelligence’, Matt’s Gallery 2005 and ‘Suspicious Fires’, Yuill/Crowley Gallery Sydney 2006. He was curator of the 2002 Sydney Biennale “(The World May be) Fantastic’ and the recent Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition ‘A Secret Service - art compulsion concealment’ and the Arts Council Touring exhibition ‘This Will Not Happen Without You’. He is a contributor to Broadsheet Australia and Art Monthly UK. He is currently Research Fellow at the School of Arts and Culture, University of Newcastle.
Dan Perjovschi became internationally known for his installation rEST in the Romanian Pavilion at the 1999 Venice Biennale. Perjovschi covered the floor of the Romanian pavilion with drawings, and political graffiti that looked at life under post-communism as well as the role of Eastern European art in the cultural exchange with the West. Perjovschi also has a background in journalism, and from 1991 joined Bucharest 's prominent weekly 22 Magazine, as political illustrator. In 2004 he was awarded the George Maciunas Prize. His recent solo shows include The Room Drawing at Tate Modern in 2006 and "What Happen to US" at MoMA New York this year.
Lia Perjovschi is a research artist and was born in 1961 in Sibiu Romania. She is founder of CAA /CAA (Contemporary Art Archive / Centre for Art Analysis (active under different names since 1985). Dizzy dent (from the English “dizzy”) in my local context and a detective in the international art context. Lia says “ I am interested in normality as the exception, rather than the rule. To make sense out of what I knew for the others. To empower people, to make a difference.”
Cesare Pietroiusti is an artist born in Rome in 1955, he lives in Rome.
He has a degree in Medicine with an essay on Psychiatry (1979), he is
a Co-founder of the Artist-run space ‘Jartrakor’ in Rome and
of the magazine ‘Rivista di Psicologia dell'Arte’ (1979-1984).
He was co-ordinator of the ‘Oreste’ projects (1997-2000) and
received the Premio Alinovi award 1999. He was co-founder of ‘Nomads
& Residents’, New York, 2000. He currently teaches at the Laboratorio
di Arti Visive, IUAV University, Venice, (2004-) and is co-curator of
the Sound Art Museum, Rome (2004-) He is member of the Advisory Board,
Fondazione Ratti, Como (2005-).