Manifesta III (review)

In its third incarnation, the nomadic European biennial Manifesto took place in the former 'East'. It opened in Ljubljana, Slovenia, a city Eastern Europeans considered their 'West'.  Borderline Syndrome, Energies of Defense. Its press conference had barely began when Russian art anarchist Alexander Brener materialized behind the speakers' backs. He sprayed a slogan on the projection screen, "Demolish Neo-liberaList multiculturalist Art-Sistem (sic) Now!" Then toppling the flower arrangements, he scrawled "Forget Europa Forever!" across the long table while his female accomplice flung manifestos into the air. But when he muffled the mike, he lost audience sympathy. A scuffle ensued, the table collapsed and two rebels spent the night in jail. Borderline syndrome, indeed. The exhibition itself, spread through three museums, one cultural center and several public spaces, is not nearly as dramatic Manifesto 3's four curators—Ole Bouman, Francesco Bonami, Maria Hlavajova and Kathrin Rhomberg— have created a low key event focused on the art of quiet gestures: smart, thoughtful, often politicized, occasionally overwhelming. Their premise refers to mental borders, defense mechanisms, and the concept of "borderline personality," as well as to issues of territory. They pose the question: "Where do we draw the line?" Eschewing spectacular gesture or megalomaniac installation, this biennial favors works that creep up quietly, such as Abdel Abdossemed's small birth announcement of a new TrinityMohammed Karl Pol Pot, alone in a room; Anatoly Osmolovsky's artillery gun aimed into manhole; or Francisco Tropa's live Snail. Despite the disagreements among the curators, and some complaints from some Eastern Europeans that the artists, though mostly new and unknown in the west, are not new enough, the exhibition (which continues through September 24) is coherent and edgy. Much of the best work deals with borders and borderlessness with a do-it-yourself initiative. Swedish/ Danish gay duo Micheal Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset install one of their 'powerless structures'—Ljubljana's first commercial gallery for local artists—within the museum room where Moscow artist Anton Olshvang's blowups anonymous rejected snapshots hang. De Geuzen, a three women Dutch team, offers a whole archive about cyber-culture and the stateless market on a camouflage carpet. The Rome-based group Stalker's Transborderline tunnel is strewn with migratory soccer balls. A pair of artists from Greece and Macedonia unites Macedonian apples and Greek oranges, free for the taking on a market stand: their less innocuous medley of nationalistic songs plays on a stairway. A Bulgarian artist set borrowed pots on electric burners, freeing the water within them as migrant stream. If works like these offer metaphors of the new Europe's crucial problems-expansion, contraction, exclusion, immigration, others, such as Slovakian artist Roman Ondak's second-hand images of tourist sites, are about different sorts of borderline mobility. Jo Ost Conijin's video film shows how with no prior aeronautical knowledge, he built an airplane and made it fly. Veil Grano's A Strange Message From Another Star recalls the life of a Finish immigrant in the U.S who dreamed of escaping the earth created NASA's first rocket fuel. The most haunting is refugee artist Adrian Paci's simple video of his child, who incorporates memories of Albania's recent civil war into fairy tales. A sporadic line of blue tape by Edward Krasinski meanders along hallways and stairs, recalling the arbitrariness of borderlines while giving the exhibition continuity. But while the New York art scene spirals in on itself in ever more minuscule fantasies of microidentity, at least artists and curators elsewhere are grappling with urgent issues of cultural conflict, macro-identity, exorcism and exploitation. At the least Manifesto 3 has more to do with including the formerly off-limits exoticized 'East' within an expanded Europe. It broadens the field by absorbing political issues. Meanwhile, scrawled on a wall near the train station in Belgrade according to a critic who changed trains there on the way to Ljublijana, a graffiti taunt rivals Brener's, "We are fucking you Columbus."

Field of study: Art