15/12/2008
Cindy Smith
Pedagoski Muzej, Belgrade
Teach-in. The American artist examines the evolution of protest, disseminating the space of the museum with a series of installations, performances, videos and sound pieces, and introducing elements as diverse as a veteran forge, text, drawings, a performed reading of Letter to Jane, contemporary counter-recruiting activities by American High School students and a playful exploration of counterculture symbols. Curated by Cecilia Canziani and Chiara Compostella.
Curated by Cecilia Canziani and Chiara Compostella
American artist Cindy Smith examines the evolution of protest, disseminating the space of the Pedagoski muzej with a series of installations, performances, videos and sound pieces, and introducing elements as diverse as a veteran forge, text, drawings, a performed reading of Letter to Jane, contemporary counter-recruiting activities by American High School students and a playful exploration of counterculture symbols.
Conceived for the museum,Teach-in positions itself between two textual boundaries - Letter to Jane (Investigation of an Image) by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin (1972) and October magazine #123, where six questions are posed to artists and academics concerning responses to the U.S. led invasion of Iraq - in order to examine the processes of protest in 1972 and now. With these digressions the work hopes to ironically offer solutions and models of protest, and to come to terms with the outdated language and the inadequate scope of the questions posed in the current years.
Cindy Smith is an artist who has been making interdisciplinary, project-based work since the early 1990’s. Smith’s work has explored the role of gender in American history and popular culture as a subject for artistic practice. Her investigations have been manifested in installations, museum exhibitions, curatorial projects, writings, lectures and publications throughout the United States and Europe . Smith’s projects have been included in numerous exhibitions at institutions including Artists Space, NYC; The Huntington Beach Art Center, Huntington Beach, CA; The New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC; The Wexner Center, Columbus, OH; White Columns, NYC; PS1 Center for Contemporary Art, Long Island City, NY; The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland and Accademia Filarmonica Romana, Rome, Italy among others.
Teach-in is presented in the frame of Transmission, an on going project that acts as a platform for cultural exchange and communication conceived by curators Cecilia Canziani and Chiara Compostella in collaboration with the Pedagoski muzej. Previous appointments in Belgrade included a workshop with Tim Brenan, which resulted in the exhibition Belgrade Studiorum presented simultaneoulsy at Pedagoski muzej and MSUB, December 2005.
Sponsored by:
City of Belgrade - City Gouvernment - Secretariat of Culture
Pedagoski Muzej
Uzun Mirkova 14, 11000 Beograd, Serbia