www.grandtour.undo.net
Live starting June 6th on the web:
images, comments, interviews from the major summer art events in Italy
www.grandtour.undo.net is a new take on the literary tradition of the Voyage in Italy, visiting the Venice Biennial, the exhibition Boom! At the ex-Manifattura Tabacchi in Florence, the exhibition Il Dono at Palazzo delle Papesse in Siena, and related, simultaneous events. The Tour will be a group experience involving all users of the Internet through a work of web art that focuses on technological means the experience of the spectator.
In 2001 Grand Tour will be the voyage of the international art curators of the Association IKT, who will swap theories and opinions in a conference in Siena at the end of the trip. Along the way they will be accompanied by an intriguing character, a literary invention, whose identity will never be completely revealed. Together they will see the cities, the works of a great many artists, and they will participate in the most important artistic events of the summer. This literary character will narrate the entire experience and much more, with a constant flow of interesting information, in a fast-paced dynamic of facts and their interpretation on the web.
The progress of the itinerary through the cities, the events and the works of the artists will be visible on line every day, live, from June 6 to 11, at www.grandtour.undo.net. Images, comments and interviews in a chronicle that isn't about what things are, but about how to see them. The project will remain on line for one year, offering an overview of the major contemporary art exhibition of the summer in Italy and linking the events to the Italian art system as a whole. UnDo.Net has created a map showing which Italian galleries represent the Italian artists participating in the exhibitions. Thanks to this map it is finally possible to rapidly obtain information on the galleries and in-depth info on the artists.
In 1995 the UnDo.Net creative workshop, composed of artists and web experts, created the network of contemporary culture, for experimentation, development and communication of cultural projects on the Internet. Many of the projects of UnDo.Net have developed the concept of direct on-line reporting - www.undo.net/reportages - from the Venice Biennial in '97, all the events connected with the Art Fair of Basel, Madrid etc. Interactive projects that provide on-line previews of the exhibitions, allowing websurfers to get to know the artists, to sense the atmosphere, with behind-the-scenes glimpses of openings and parties attended by the protagonists of the art world and the eclectic personalities of the scene.
UnDo.Net is the creator of the first Internet art project to be shown at the Venice Art Biennial (in 1999), and still visible at www.undo.net/oreste.
www.grandtour.undo.net is a project supported by Fondazione Teseco per l'Arte and Teseco S.p.A., with the collaboration of Arsnova - Siena.
Digital cameras: FCF forniture cine foto, Milan
Info: staff@undo.net tel 0234931750
Press office for Fondazione Teseco per l'Arte:
Rosi Fontana tel 050 9711343 fax 050 9711317
BOOM!
ex Manifattura Tabacchi
Florence 10 6 - 20 7 2001
Boom! is the big bang announcing this important event: contemporary art, young Italian and foreign artists, new Italian galleries, the network of public and private associations, institutions, foundations in Tuscany, filling the magnificent spaces of the Manifattura Tabacchi. The opening of the spaces of the Manifattura Tabacchi, a gem of industrial archaeology, is an extraordinary event: 87,000 square meters of indoor space, of which over 15,000 will be utilized for dozens of artworks, performances, music and video. The Boom! project, under the direction of Sergio Risaliti, calls for the realization of five initiatives: Espresso: art now in Italy, curators Luca Cerizza and Gianfranco Maraniello; Playmakers: dynamics of competition & cooperation, curator Caroline Corbetta; Grand Tour 2001: a project of Undo.Net for Fondazione Teseco per l'Arte and Teseco S.p.A.; Confluenza: network open to contemporary art in Tuscany, curator Silvia Lucchesi; Great: opening party-concert organized by Mauro Pagani.
The event will open on June 10th, with the attendance of one hundred directors and curators of contemporary art centers and museums from all over the world, visiting Italy for the congress of IKT, International Association of Contemporary Art, held this year at Palazzo delle Papesse in Siena. The participation of the members of IKT, who represent the institutional universe of contemporary art and will evaluate and comment on the initiative, spreading the news around the world, is certainly a factor of great prestige for the city of Florence and the Tuscany Region.
The Venice Biennial. 49th International Art Exposition
Venice, Giardini di Castello.
6/6 to 4/11 - 2001
In 2001 the International Art Expo is entitled Platea dell'umanità, Plateau of Humankind, Plateau der Menschheit, Plateau de l'humanité: a place to see and be seen, where the public is the audience but also the protagonist, a large space in which to meet the artists, the works, the visitors. A new challenge, a renewed vital thrust for this "new Biennale" that is developing with continuous expansions and modifications.
"Plateau of humanity isn't a theme, but a declaration of responsibility regarding history, the events of our time. It is a dimension", says the director Harald Szeemann. The artists observe the world and address it, seeking out and narrating the multiple dimensions of contemporary Man. From the Italian Pavilion in the Gardens through the spaces at the Arsenale, the Corderie, the Artiglierie and the Gaggiandre, a long "promenade" ready to astonish visitors with surprise after surprise.
The Gift. Generous Offerings, Threatening Hospitality
Siena, Center for Contemporary Art Palazzo delle Papesse, via di Città 126.
2/6 to 23/9 - 2001
The exhibition, which gathers the works of about fifty contemporary artists including figures who have been in the foreground of the international art scene during the past thirty years and young emerging artists, proposes to explore the notions of gift, homage, dedication, offering, invitation and hospitality in all their ambiguity. In a world ever-more dominated by the rigid regulation of personal relationships and populated mostly by objects intended as products and commodities, certain works of art seem to underline the importance of disinterested and gratuitous gestures, capable of generating and symbolizing a new binding relationship between artist, work and viewer. Curated by Gianfranco Maraniello, Sergio Risaliti and Antonio Somaini
Strategies against architecture
Curator: Luca Cerizza
Promotion and organization: Fondazione Teseco per l'Arte, Pisa
Location: Laboratorio per l'Arte, stabilimento Teseco, Ospedaletto, Pisa
Strategies wants to combine the different schemes with which contemporary artists of the last generation developed a critical exploration on the languages of architecture and of town-planning, on how these languages involve the structures of power, ratification and coercion. The exposition will insert itself in an International environment that is becoming more and more sensitive to these types of themes. It also wants to affirm the interest that has been unveiled in the last generation of Italian and foreign artists.
The invited artists will be asked to consider two objectives when constructing their works. Projects will need to 'manifest' this analysis while others will need to 'employ' it, constructing the possibility of a different reality from the interior of the area of exposition.
In this way, the Fondazione Teseco laboratory will become, similar to previous undertakings made during the biennial M2 project, a sort of alternative plaza, a place where projects use the architectonic space differently and where there are reflections on the actual procedures of the presentation of contemporary art .
Invited Artists:
A 12 (I), Sergia Avveduti (I), Massimo Bartolini (I), Martin Boyce/ Simon Starling (UK), Elmgreen & Dragset (DK/NO), Jeppe Hein (DK), Stefania Galegati (I), Liam Gillick (UK), Luo Yongjin (C), Luisa Lambri (I), Guillaume Leblon (F), Mathieu Mercier (F), Manfred Pernice (D), Sean Snyder (USA), Italo Zuffi (I).