Friday 22 October '10
(from Grizedale Arts Blog)

Manifest-oh-no

I've just been to Spain on a package tour. I took a flight from Manchester to Murcia, surrounded by golf clubs and young families and the rest of my package group from the North by Northwest group of northwestern northwestern art organisations (ie those that aren't in Liverpool or Manchester).

Most people at Manchester Airport were in groups too. But they all had the same t-shirts with Malaga Muff Divers on the back. We all have the uniform of regional art administrators. As treasurer of the group I could not sanction Manifesta Muff Diver shirts, though it would make a nice change from the staple art cloth sacks favoured by the artnoscenti on these occasions. There's a Biennial project.

I'd never been to Spain before this. Being a white middle class art snob from Cheshire I always assumed the place would be full of British en mass, getting pissed and inflicting their culture on the locals. And so Manifesta proved.

Manifesta8, subtitled The European Biennial of Contemporary Art Region of Murcia (Spain) in Dialogue with Northern Africa, was constructed on a trinity of curatorial collectives who had spent too much time believing their own art theory. Manifesta in dialogue with northern Africa was therefore filled mostly with a European sensibility that manifests itself either as a) Lots of photocopied pieces of A4 paper that you don't want to read pinned to the wall or b) beautifully crafted HD projections of slow panning shots of nothing in particular happening.

If I counted right, there were only 8 artists based in Africa, out of about 100. One of the curator teams was the Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum who laid on something close to the British Art Show in the old post office building. The consensus amongst the visiting audience, composed almost entirely from UK regional art tours like ours, was that this was the best bit. And there were good works here and there of course, but they could have been good works anywhere. Alexandre Singh brought some humour into the equation, as too Simon Fujiwara with his big cock. Ryan Gander made a puddle, which was nice. Pablo Bronstein and Common Culture were in a minority who actually addressed the context with any real sharpness. It was hard to find elsewhere with works that waded through and wore their academic credentials like a celice.

This comes across an aesthetic system built on extrinsic values, rather than any intrinsic will to have an effect on the world. Africa really didn't get a look in, not even in the catering.

You pay £3.5 million to get Manifesta. For that you get the art circus come to town and credibility branding and a few parties. I reckon that there were maybe 500 people at the opening party and this was the prime audience for the Biennial. That would work out at about £7,000 per head then.

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 22/10/10 at 11:53 1 Comment