1st BIENNIAL EXHIBITION OF THE END OF THE WORLD USHUAIA 2007

Organizer:
Fundación Patagonia Arte y Desafío
Sponsors:
Ushuaia Town Hall
Memorial da America Latina Foundation, Brazil
Malba (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires)
General Production:
Arte3, Brazil
Global S.A., Argentina
Honorary Chairman of the Biennial:
Major of Ushuaia, Engineer Jorge Garramuño
Major of the City of São Paulo, Brazil, Dr. José Serra
General Directors
Guillermo Ferreyro
Alberto Grottesi Errazu
General Curator
Leonor Amarante, Brazil
Co-curator
Ibis Hernandez Abascal, Cuba
Curator for Argentina and for Special-Projects
Corinne Sacca Abadi, Argentina
Co-curator
Florencia Battiti, Argentina

Direction Committee:
Luis Castelli
Ana Helena Curti
Horacio Zottig
Fabián Rodriguez
Executive Director:
Pablo Wolaniuk
Excecutive Coordinator:
Karina Maddonni
Coordination for the North-Polar Nucleus (Norway-Finland)
Norwegian consul in S?o Paulo, D. Jens Olesen
Executive Comittee:
Julio Lovece
Mónica Urquiza
Graciela Trebuck
Mónica Mendoza
Consulting Panel:
Chairman: Ticio Escobar, Paraguay
Fabio Magalhaes, Brazil
Justo Pastor Mellado, Chile

1st Biennial of Contemporary Art of the End of the World. Ushuaia- 2007.

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY
ART LINKS THE SOUTH AND NORTH POLES

Ushuaia City in Tierra del Fuego has just introduced the 1st Biennial of the End of the World into the circuit of Visual Arts. This Inaugural Edition will promote the satellite connection of the Earth’s South and North Poles through Art. The end of the Earth will be artistically joined in real time by means of an electronic station located in Usuhaia and others in the North of Canada and Finnish Lapland. In the hearth of the participating cities, screens will be installed for the passers-by to watch and witness the development of the video-artists’ work, to communicate, and also to participate in this multimedia performance.
In March 2007, the 1st Biennial of Contemporary Art of the End of the World will open in the southernmost city of the globe. The public space will be intervened throughout: Bahía Encerrada (Closed Bay), the airport, both public and private buildings, parks, hotels, bridges, and also avenues will become the stage for a unique event.
Several public and private institutions from Europe and the Americas are coming together every day to willingly participate in the Biennial taking place in the advent of the 2007 celebration of the International Polar Year. Such an expectation confirms not only the gripping interest that Ushuaia raises, but also the surmounting importance of such an occasion organized in an strategic Patagonian spot overlooking the Antarctica.

The 1st Biennial of the End of the World will have Canada as a Guest Country.

General Proposals:

Communication between the South and North Poles.
“Metaphors of time and space”

Ecological Urgencies. Present and Future of the Planet Earth. End // Beginning.

Pondering
at the end of the world
that others worlds are possible.

Works in situ. Occupation of Territories.
Urban and Natural Topologies.

Antarctica. Coexistance beyond flags. Nobody and Everybody’s Land.
Learning through the experience: starting again.

Experiencing a limit.
Against Gigantism in Art. Experiencing the small. Experimenting with other possible time and space readjusted to human scale.

Discussion Forums:
Coordinated by Ana María Battistozzi and Andrea Giunta

Web Site:
www.findelmundo.com

Special Projects:

1- Course of action to the refreshing of Ushuaia City.
Project directed by Architect Clorindo Testa aiming at re-coloring of the main public and private sites of the City.

2- AAVRA Group’s Project.
Raising, along the Bay of Ushuaia, 2000 flags performed by artists from all over the country portraying symbols related to the endangered fauna, flora, minerals and elements of Patagonian origin. A proposal for reflection upon the preservation of the natural resources with the attendance of specialists at the Debate Forums.

3- Fax- Art.
Gustavo Kortzars, an Argentine artist living in Paris, coordinates an international call of multi-participatory and performative Art to be exhibited at well-known Beban House.

4- An A-chronologycal A-temporal Dialogue among works of Contemporary Art and Archaeological work from different museums. Tariagsuk Video Center - Igloolik Isuma Production- Collection of Yamana, Ona, Paleo-eskimo, Tunit, Dorset, and Inuit Culture, among others.

General Concept:
Ethics is the true axis of the gathering that will attempt to link Art and Politics with Poetry and Ecology.
Contemporary Arts records the most changeable aspects of our activity developed in the world we live only to attest its constant mutations. The source for these creators can be found in a never-ending transformation that renders a new chase for languages adequate for describing new realities to come. The scene of Contemporary Art is built throughout uncertainty, and when dealing with it, finds a way to regenerate itself. The current forms of constructing a work force the art curator to assume an attitude of intense intimacy towards the artistic production.

A Contemporary Biennial
Art Biennials that have mushroomed around the globe lately, serve as an institutional framework to gather a collective exhibition of international works that are in line with market needs. Mega-budget organizations, somehow bureaucratic, stage immense shows that, for a while, are strolled across by hundreds of tourists and whose images are aired throughout the media for promotion.
It is our belief that Contemporary Art offers the very tools to urge the engaged audience’s emotions and sensibility, and it also serves as an appropriate vehicle for deepening the understanding of our conflicting world of today. And this is the reason why the Biennale of the End of the World furnishes us with different dynamics since a big amount of the artists invited to the event will be able to make their projects real from the singular perspective of these remote latitudes, in order to portray their own views of the world and, above all, to wonder what other world is possible. It is our desire to pose new questions, to devise brand new concepts able to stir principles anew that, in the end, shed oceans of refreshing waters onto our society. End and Beginning holding arms together for a shared purpose.

CIRCULARITY AND LIMITS OF TIME AND SPACE
Contemporary Art leads us to the End-Beginning of the world.

A Geography that looks infinite immerses and vanishes only to reappear later towards the ends of time and space. An Art without frontiers joins the South and North Poles, draws invisible lines that design other worlds produced with the very matter of their ancient origins. The supporting idea is that of connecting the contemporary way of seeing with History, Aboriginal Art with current productions. Art makes this possible.

A Biennial produced in situ.
This Biennale will spread throughout Ushuaia City, and the artists will intervene the landscape including the shore of the Beagle Channel. Artistic work will be performed within the urban sprawl stretching from the International Airport to the northern access to the City. During the time of production, workshops will be arranged in several neighborhoods with the help of the villagers. The proposal is to work with time, light, space, and materials available in Ushuaia City. Artists will be invited to first visit Tierra del Fuego in order to get acquainted with the Geography and to become part of it. They will return later in August to start their work and the final arrangements for the exhibition that will duly open on September 7.

Forums. A Pole of Thought.
As from September, Forums will be organized at the Auditorium of MALBA, the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The issues raised in the debate will be readdressed during the Biennale at the Forum in Ushuaia.

Proposed spaces for the development of the Biennale:

1- Old Prison.
2- International Airport.
3- Pedestrian’s Bridge.
4- House of Culture.
5- Main Yard at the Polideportivo.
6- Promenade of Roses.
7- Bahía Encerrada (Closed Bay)
8- Beban House
9- Malvinas Argentinas Park.
10- Civic Park .

NUCLEUS I
Circularity of Time and Space. End and Beginning.

This Nucleus is comprised by works performed with several techniques whose contents suggest a dialogue through analogue language. The aim is to promote a poetic-political reflection by means of using works with a reference to a past, present and future impact on Art, which are aligned to Society as an axis. Curatorship attempts to emphasize contemporaneity and to broaden a field for reflection. We are interested in examining the multiplicity of cultural influences that the continent has received from other peoples, countries, and a sustained migratory flux.

NUCLEUS II
Past / Future as a measure of Present. Freedom.

The Old Prison, today a historic national monument, will be used as one of the main stages of the Biennial. This prison of confinement was built between 1902 and 1920 by the inmates themselves according to Jeremy Bentham’s Model of Panopticism, on which Michel Foucault based his work titled “Discipline and Punishment”. The remains of San Juan de Salvamento’s lighthouse are kept there. Such lighthouse was built in 1884 on the inhospitable Isla de los Estados, and renamed by Julio Verne’s vivid imagination as the Lighthouse of the End of the World.
Big-size installations with scenic character will be arranged in the site and also small works that review and reconsider subjective experiences of time and space. Works blending languages will be performed accompanied by painting, sculpture, sound, and video.

NUCLEUS III
Topic: Time in Real Time, Linking the Poles through Art. (Canada, Lapland, Patagonia)

The population from Patagonia and Lapland will be able to communicate artistically by means of the Biennial. The 1st Biennial of the End of the World will not only enable the intercommunication of the two Poles of the Globe, but also promote a dialogue among the descendants of aboriginal cultures from the North and South Poles, both considered, among the oldest on the Globe.
Putting together electronic Art as a synthesis of the current path in use by the video-artists, Art and Computers, Nucleus III will be open to youth interested in music and electronics as well. In this segment, the similarity between Contemporary production and primitive historic expressions will be highlighted.

NUCLEUS IV
Intervened Time and Space.
Artists will work at different city spots. The shore of the Beagle Channel will become an open gallery portraying several artists’ works. At the Beban House a Fax Art Performance/ Installation will take place.
Urban intervention works will be conceived in situ, and will be distributed throughout the City. Time will play the role of a redefining element of the City’s symbolic order. Interaction with the public will be promoted in occasions to question the notion of a show by means of visitors’ participation and interchange.

PARTICIPATING COUNTRIES.
Argentina-Brazil- Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Denmark, Ecuador, USA, Spain, Finland, Mexico, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Venezuela, and Uruguay.
Guest Country: Canada