Budget Bureau - Centre d'art contemporain, Genève
Duration: 2nd March - 17th April 2005
Clare Goodwin, Sandi Paucic & guests
with a videoinstalltion by Thomas Isler
guests:Ines Agostinelli, Paul Harper, Lucy Harrison, Rahel Hegnauer, Beverley Hood, Keran James, Heinrich Lüber, Rivane Neuenschwander & Cao Guimaraes, Isabel Nolan, Silvia Orthwein-Erhard, Gabriele Rérat, Samir, Karin Sander, Adrian Tobler/Judith Schäfer/Regina Hügli, Tipos Moviles UK(commissionné et produit par Jaime Gili)
The Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève presents BUDGET BUREAU for language and applications, an evolutive and performance-strong project conceived by artists Clare Goodwin and Sandi Paucic, complemented by a video installation by Thomas Isler.
The starting point of the exhibition is the project made at the Grünau housing estate, Zurich (2002-2004), where the Budget Bureau for Language and Applications (Budget Bureau für Sprache und Anwendungen) was initially lounched in November 2002 and situated in one of the vacated flats. The Budget Bureaus main goal is to investigate language through a fine art context: “budget translations”, publications, performances, visting artists, all within a multicultural context. It highlights the many common miscommunications, poetic aspects of translingual encounters and the results of language research undertaken by artists. Language is often used by artists as raw material – sometimes more playfull, sometimes critical: Shifting meanings, babylonic confusion, the language barrier as a cultural phenomenon and the evidence that language defines societies are a fertile base for art works.
Parallely to the activities of the Budget Bureau, Thomas Islers video installation ‘Utilisation Transitoire’ tells on 13 videoscreens and with interacitve accustic elements the story of the recent events at the Grünau: The installation is a piece that documents a vanished multicultural society in the developing area of west Zurich. It takes place in a major residential complex which was gradually transformed into artist studios, before beeing abandonded and demolished in Spring 2004. Going beyond the description of a specific Zurich area, the videos open up a discourse on the role of art in a permanently changing and culturally complexe society.
The reconstructed appartment and its activities during the show in Geneva represent the side of the artist which playfully deals with the artistic curatorship of contemporary art in the example of Clare Goodwins and Sandi Paucics ironic Budget Bureau. This enclosed and protected artist space is complementary to its environment – the video installation. This work by Thomas Isler asks by using the example of the Grünau important questions on the role of the artist in society. All of a sudden the small ‘private’ office opens up to a ‘public’ space. The artists and their recipients are forced to localise themselves in society and take a defined position. And by doing so, the two elements of the show build together a powerfull unit.
11.2.2005,
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