While global economic relations penetrate our lives even up to the last limps of our private bodies, while the interconnectedness of every particle seems to be self-evident since the impacts of climate change are perceivable, there are still artists, curators and art spaces perpetually circling around the same spheres. Not to raise any objection to autarchic practices, but "Dreams of Art Spaces Collected" takes up the challenge of getting into the myriads of affiliations between different spaces around the globe. The frame "art space" is used as a common denominator to be followed through very different spaces worldwide. Collecting the diverse approaches of art spaces from various points of view can also be seen as a rethinking of the frame "art space" itself.
As an artistic research project, "Dreams of Art Spaces Collected" does not perform in the neutral and objective mode of traditional science. The involved artists themselves act as parts of networks and build up new connections. Perhaps similar to what Édouard Glissant describes in Poetics of Relation: "The reality of archipelagos in the Caribbean or the Pacific provides a natural illustration of the thought of Relation. – What took place in the Caribbean, which could be summed up in the word creolization, approximates the idea of relation for us as nearly as possible. It is not merely an encounter, a shock (in Segalen’s sense), a métissage, but a new and original dimension allowing each person to be there and elsewhere, rooted and open, lost in the mountains and free beneath the sea, in harmony and in errantry. – If we posit métissage as, generally speaking, the meeting and synthesis of two differences, creolization seems to be a limitless métissage, its elements diffracted and its consequences unforeseeable." (Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, University of Michigan Press, 1997, p. 34.)
Dorothee Albrecht, 2008
Read the introduction to the 2008 video collection 'Starting from Europe, China and Australia' here.
The extensive video interviews, realised and compiled by Dorothee Albrecht, Alf Löhr, Andreas Schmid and Moira Zoitl, can be viewed online here and can be ordered in a DVD box at the IGBK office in Berlin.
We would like to thank the following people for their contributions: Laozhu, Li Xiaoshan, Liu Hao, Liu Libin, Florina Limberg, Peng Junjun, Peng Juntao, Teng Yuning, Bignia Wehrli, Ann Wertheim, Wu Lei, Sibylle Zeh, Zhang Hui
The exhibition, workshop and documentation were supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media
Publisher: Internationale Gesellschaft der Bildenden Künste (IGBK), Dorothee Albrecht, Alf Löhr, Andreas Schmid, Moira Zoitl - Graphic design DVD booklet: Moira Zoitl - Project design: Bruno Dorn
© Internationale Gesellschaft der Bildenden Künste (IGBK), authors, Berlin 2008
