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14/4/2001

TheBigShow

NICC, Antwerp

Over the course of 2001 the NICC will organize TheBigShow, a series of critical, international exhibitions on globalization. Three highly demanding constellations, separated in time, will feature a critical platform for approaching issues of exoticism, political correctness, collective memory and alterity, in a confronting way.

In three parts, TheBigShow will conduct a critical investigation into the phenomenon of globalization. A research into what globalization entails as an overall denominator, can probably not be undertaken without at first, mapping out the different, and at times contradictory stakes that it goes with.

The cliche of a world growing smaller, the metaphor of the "global village", as a mainly Western phase of economical and geopolitical networking, that gradually evolved over the course of the 1950s and 60s has, in its aftermath, led to yet another change in scale: From a psychological point of view, the world has grown infinitely bigger. Distance is a concept that can no longer be conceived in terms of physical accessibility, or information traffic, to the extent that these concepts can lead to a moreover inaccurate and distorted view. The ever more compelling confrontation with colonial history as a focal instance, but also the evolution from communism to post-communism are challenging Western collective memory, in favor of a more neutral picture. In as far as that state of affairs can be translated or taken as a whole, multiple realities are being generated, that call for the abandonment of a single perspective.
More than one exhibition has been dedicated to this shifting perspective, built up from a seeming ëdegrÈ zeroí that should allow for a kaleidoscopic image of the surrounding real. In a more concrete sense, this evolution has led to an ever-growing participation of non-Western artists in biennials and theme-exhibitions and generally to a growing number of initiatives that mirror the model of the contemporary art biennial, which are mainly aimed, with the support of international art magazines, at a Western public. Both evolutions are being widely acknowledged as main instances of cultural globalization.

It goes without saying that the West plays an important role in an overall debate. Many interests are tied up with access to, or exclusion from its networks, and attention is emphatically aimed at the mechanisms through which it is embodied. The terms that are called upon to criticize this normative structure apparently lead to the abandonment of oppositional reasoning and its ruling principles, in what is merely a reversal of its own premises; on the one hand, a new favoring of inclusivity and pluralism have led to a widened postmodern ëanything goesí (Lyon biennial, 2000.) On the other hand, the deconstruction of authenticity and originality of non-Western art plays a central role in a politically more elaborated discourse on global culture. It serves a radical deconstruction of the concept of naivety and, in this way, forces the inclusion of non-Western image production in the meta- or reflective order of contemporary art (the order of the simulacrum).

A state of affairs of contemporary art itself, that is being pleaded for, allows for a more nuanced picture: admittance to the Western market is under the precondition of compromise; the exoticizing of oneís own background or the active dialogue with the institutional practice of art on the basis of that, seem to be the preconditions for active admittance to the existing exhibition and critical structures. With regard to non-Western art, a recuperation has taken form, that in its dimensions can no longer be brought back to merely the growing smaller or bigger of the (art)world. An emotional trauma is accessory to a cultural discourse on globalization, which remains dubious as long as it cannot conceive of itself other, than the reversal of a challengeable mechanism of exclusion.

To partly retrace the idea of inclusive globalization to the Western world, is a momentous but highly critical project, that can be successful in as far as it allows for a broader perspective; a full understanding of the implications of political, economical and mental changes of scale; how these shifts, from the part of the West, lead to a cultural and political agenda of apparent self-criticism, with a numbing of critical structures, as a consequence. A more accurate representation of non-Western artists along an inclusive paradigm is all too often mistaken, for a more far-reaching evolution, that is enacting itself on a personal and a collective level.

In three parts, TheBigShow will go deeper into how notions of guilt and repair have determined not only cultural politics, but also arts main undercurrent over the past decades. Notions of the exotic, authenticity or irreparability will be of main interest as to their functioning on the level of content and intentionality, in a broader field of images and meanings that, all in all, stands apart, from an institutional metamorphosis. On a broader level T H E B I G S H O W will look into how exoticism, or a colonial past today in the West, are being mediated by a (Western) collective memory, rather than trying to minimize the Westís accessory role, in favor of a more neutral perspectival point. Position is indirectly taken, against an institutionalized postcolonial discourse that is encapsulating cultural and political realities in historicist revisionism, of confined systems of reference and reproduction.

TheBigShow presents three separate constellations: the first part, "A Man of Mercy - A Congo Chronicle," will be historical. It will focus on colonial history in two specific instances. A second part, "Healing," will depart from the present moment, by looking into the problematic relationship between representation and an ever expanding real. A third part, "Demonstration Room: Ideal House," is utopian, in the realization of architectural models, based on concrete artists proposals. Part1
A Man of Mercy - A Congo Chronicle
April 15th - June 3rd 2001

Part2
Healing
June 24th - September 2nd 2001
Demonstration Room: Ideal House

Part3
Part 3, Demonstration Room: Ideal House
September 23rd - November 25th 2001

TheBigShow is inevitably part of a climate of postcolonial cultural research, without fully identifying with it. Each exhibition will question the possibilities of subsuming a debate on cultural dialogue, to a process that outreaches the limits of political and cultural revisionist thinking.
Eventually the question will be raised, to what extent the recent reversal of center-periphery thinking, can be considered to be part of a "mental" decolonization, of institutions and public opinions; while art as a Western institution is being reproduced and reiterated on the basis of a model of cultural colonization, going in a limited amount of directions, and highly dependent upon the compromising preconditions of access to its networks and discourse.

A Man of Mercy was curated by Wim Peeters for the NICC. A Congo Chronicle was curated by Bogumil Jewsiewicki for the Museum for African Art, New York Healing was curated by Wim Peeters for the NICC. Demonstration Room: Ideal House was curated by Jesus Fuenmayor and Julieta Gonzalez for the Museo Otero in Caracas 2000-2001.

For more information, please contact Win Van den Abbeele at NICC, New International Cultural Center, Antwerp Pourbusstraat 5, B-2000 Phone + 32 3 216 07 71 Fax 216 07 80

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