Fragile in Venice
Public Performance: November 5, 2010
Tina b, International Art Festival with Fashion Univeristy IUAV
Fondazione Claudio Buziol Venice, Italy
Friday, November 5th 2010
press conference, 11.00 am
performance FRAGILE, by Jenny Marketou, 2.00 pm
Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana
Cannaregio 4392, Venice
Please, confirm your presence sending an email to ffw@fondazioneclaudiobuziol.org by 12.00 pm of the day before.
The Fondazione Claudio Buziol hosts one of the events of TINA B. Festival of International Art of Prague, which will take place in Venice from the 5th to the 21st of November.
After the press conference we invite you to take part in the FRAGILE performance by Jenny Marketou.
FRAGILE is a public performance/action which combines art and fashion using the medium of the body, sign and paper in order to stimulate reflections about public spaces, social meetings and art itself.
FRAGILE is enacted by living bodies dressed in paper dresses specially designed for FRAGILE while they are walking doing things as a collective creative process and they create situations throughout a predetermined route around Venice. The artist has determined the route of FRAGILE and it is based on the trail that Ralph Rumney (the only English member of the psycho geographical association) undertook in Venice (1957).
Jenny Marketou, born in Athens, Greece, based in New York City. Her work exists in the intersection of social public art, new media, video, installation, public performances . Her work is ephemeral but structurally repeatable and has the ability to engage viewers participation and to create interaction between context and creativity. The performance will take place at the headquarters of Fondazione Claudio Buziol, Mangilli-Valmarana palace, and after it will move across Venice’s significant places returning at last to the starting point.
Download here he press release of TINA B. in Venice.
Press Release - Elena Bari
t
+39 02 47956722
t
+39 328 9781241
press@newrelease.it
Public Performance/Action/ Participatory Art
Curated by Tina B
In collaboration with Fondazione Buziol and the fashion School at IUAV University in Treviso.
November 5, 2010
Venice, Italy
“FRAGILE ” is the title of a series of public performances/actions, which combines art and fashion by using the medium of the body, sign and paper with the conscious attempt to create situations where new ideas and possibilities can unfold and stimulate thought. It celebrates beauty and autonomy and at the same time charges with meaning the public space of the city of Venice and addresses the meaning of the word FRAGILE as the most relevant condition in our culture.
The primary material, medium is the body of 80 participants (boys and girls), who call themselves FRAGILE people, who are dressed in A shaped dress wear made out of colorful recycle paper designed and produced by the artist especially for this project. Each paper dress is conceived by the artist as an alternative cultural marker and for this reason is bearing the word FRAGILE as a cut out. Through the performance the human presence and fashion function as a symbol, a storyteller or/and entertainer; the body interacts with the space to create an experience or a situation, which triggers bodily and cognitive responses.
FRAGILE calls into our mind the disposable pop paper fashion of the 60’s in US and Europe as well as the “parangoles” of Helio Oiticica the Brazilian artist of the 60’s which were dresses designed to be worn by the public during public events in order to create a space of liberation and to provoke actions during animated walking or demonstration.
ROUTE
The trail of the performance/ action FRAGILE has been determined by the artist and it is based on the trail that Ralph Runmey (the only English situations) undertook in Venice with the goal of intensifying the experience of certain neighborhoods and sites in Venice, and the relationship of urban architecture and the human body.
ITINERARY
The performance is by foot and in a group of 80 participants and the whole journey is planned to last for three to four hours. Through a series of repetitive and non-hierarchical walks and gestures which the artists calls “protest” each participant becomes an agent who understands urban space and time as an autonomous field.
The starting point of the performance is Fondazion Buziol, which is established in the Venetian Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana facing the Grand Canal where all participants meet, sign in and get dressed in FRAGILE.
FRAGILE from Foundation Buziol at Strada Nova moves through to Campo di Ghetto Nuovo; then to Campo St Leonardo; and via vaporeto to Canale Grande to Rialto; cross Ponte Rialto and walk through Merkato to Ponte Accademia; cross to Academia and then via vaporeto to Canale Grande and Canale di San Marco; go to Campo Arsenale; from Arsenale walk through Piazza San Marco and back to Foundation Buziol at Strada Nova by Canale Grande.
OBJECTIVES FOR A CITY LIKE VENICE
The challenge presented is in this technological era to create a body capable of becoming the precarious space for concepts, which materializes itself while weaving the concrete and at the same time FRAGILE thread of life.
It is very important that FRAGILE takes place in such a city as Venice a city with rich and dynamic cultural practices, intellectual circuits, architecture and social institutions and offers to all participants of FRAGILE a novel form for expression, experimentation and research. FRAGILE seeks to bring a diverse public together into a playful and transgressive way, which opens numerous possibilities to reveal another way of discovering the “fragile” city of Venice through a sense of physical liberation.
FRAGILE seeks to create a space where civic freedom, individuality and agency can re-write the canon in the urban landscape.
Wearing FRAGILE is creating wonder, joy and other playfully stimulating experiences as a tool that can be used to break down barriers, to explore processes for new interactions, communication and practices in the city.
The objectives of FRAGILE is through our ability to perform publicly to exercise our power to create and to collect signals and to send messages as we all work together towards the same performative action.
As we perform we feel this matters because we live in a FRAGILE society.
As we perform we express in our own style and choice our FRAGILE U and we use our body in motion.
As we perform we try to keep our FRAGILE dress charged with meaning but as intact as possible.
As we perform we are taking into account the physical challenge, which each paper dress presents because FRAGILE is designed to be ephemeral, fragile, humble and poetic in nature. The most destructive elements are liquid, fire and violence.
NOTES
FRAGILE will be documented on video and photos from beginning to end and it will be posted along with the photographs of each participants along with his/her comments at my website and Foundation Buziol.
FRAGILE can be seen as a documentary video at the Fondazion Buziol during Tina B Festival in Venice.
FRAGILE @ ITS, Ritopek, Belgrade, Serbia
September 11, 2010
Curated by Maja Ciric
in collaboration with David Goldenberg
FRAGILE AND STILL MOVING AROUND
A performance enacted by three beautiful living bodies dressed in paper FRAGILE transforming each act into a situation.
During the Last Supper Salon at the 3rd Ward in Brookyn
curated by Alison Levy
Sat 9.18, 2010
FRAGILE @ Kunsthalle Athina - The BAR
Kunsthalle Athina-The BAR, Athens, Greece
May 13 -17, 2010
Open Event/ Performance/Intervention/Protest
www.kunsthalleathena.org
A FRAGILE PROJECT
FRAGILE is a hybrid between a performance and a public intervention, which combines art and fashion within the social structure of a social gathering with the conscious attempt to politicize public space without taking an overt political position. I like to call it sociable art which creates contexts for interaction and communication in public space .To achieve this the audience is dressed in A shaped dresses made out of paper which are bearing the word FRAGILE as a cut out. The paper-thin wearable have been designed and produced by the artist especially for this event.
The idea for the title and the use of the word FRAGILE stands for the mankind’s current “fragile” state in the art, the social space and its function, the environment and the commerce from which we are immunized or/and are protected from the constant visible fear instilled by the culture of chaos and in its most radical forms of communication such as the tabloid media and the spokesmen of violent radical consensus.
By using the word FRAGILE again and again the repetition disintegrates language and at the end the word becomes an empty space. A space made out of language. FRAGILE is not a message any more but a force which invigorates the “body”.
Thin as Paper
With their seductive and colorful beauty one hundred (100) A shape (34” L X 28” W) garments made out of recycle paper in red, yellow, blue, magenta, which each of them bears in front and back as a cut out the word FRAGILE are distributed for free to 100 guests to be worn over their street clothes during the entire opening night of the exhibition.
Yet their beauty is precarious leading deep and reflecting on the conditions of life. All guests by wearing FRAGILE they are aware that they are placing him or her self consciously in the role of the performer and they accept to be part of a peaceful demonstration of protest against the fragile state of our culture in the presence of such overwhelming financial crisis and chaos which has affected the cultural, the social, the environmental and the political space in the entire world. It is up to each participant as to what and how she/he wants to unveil or to express her/his FRAGILE U that evening.
Each paper dress stands as a symbol of our determination to restoring balance, democracy, peace and priorities to constructive action, responsibility and justice and caring.
At the end of the evening participants keep FRAGILE to take home no matter in what condition it is unless she/he prefers to write their name and drop it in the X container for recycling after the end of this event.
