Until the 15th of January of 2012, the Centro de Arte Andaluz Contemporáneo de Sevilla (Andalucian Contemporary Art Centre in Seville) presents the work ‘Constructing/Dismantling. Margin and city’, by the Austrian conceptual artist Andreas Fogarasi. The work which will be presented in the Claustrón Sur (South), corresponds to the first individual exhibition of the artist at the CAAC, and it’s under the frame of the Margin and City session.

Andreas Fogarasi was born in Vienna in 1977. He studied fine arts and architecture. He works of the political, social and economic role which culture and art in particular carry out, as a mean to understand the own mechanisms of production and reproduction. His reflection and critique to the economic and political interests which are hidden in the art world and the way in which they influence the spectator, is what his work reflects in a brilliant way.

As an architect and expert in how cities are articulated, constructed and reconstructed, Fogarasi focuses in a special way on contemporary cities. He takes architecture and urbanism which conform them according to the hegemonic vision of dominant culture, after hiding certain social and economic connotations, such as poverty, segregation and obscene richness in a minority.

The recurrent topic in all of his work is the commercialization of the city, built on stereotypes which mark images which go in detriment of plurality and heterogeneity of urban identity.

‘Constructing/Dismantling’ gathers a few of his interesting works. ‘Süden’, for example, made in 2005, investigates the process of the emergence of populations around the great car factories in the 20th century, and the culture of industrial development. This urbanization process begins with the process of development of the bourgeoisie of the 18th century, where the factory settles next to the house of the owner and it develops shacks for the workers to live in. As capitalism got stronger, the owners looked for more inhabitable areas where to install their mansions and the workers carried on living next to the factories, and as the welfare state st in, the shacks became populations and commerce emerged in the immediate vicinity of the large factories.

In his other works, such as ‘Kultur und Freizeit’ of 2006, Fogarasi makes a wooden construction as a device so that spectators observe and interact with the videos which are projected in the cultural centres of Budapest, where they’re given different uses to those which were meant in their construction, due to the political changes which happened after the fall of real socialisms. ‘Folkenmuseum’ made in 2010 documents a Norwegian museum in which they reconstruct the history of country life through a fictitious town.

‘Constructing/Dismantling’, made in 2010, is a video-installation which gives its name to the exhibition. It’s three videos which show different spaces in a city, and in this case it’s Santiago de Compostela. He focuses on representative buildings taking the City of Culture of the architect Peter Eisenman and other locations of temporary use such as fairgrounds.

For more information: http://www.caac.es/programa/foga11/frame.htm

Nancy Guzman

apartments in Seville is waiting for you to decide to spend a few relaxing days of good vibes in this city open to culture and difference. So come and visit this wonderful exhibition.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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Film in Europe has always characterized itself for having a much more subjective and questioning cut, in comparison to the great Hollywood machinery. This doesn’t mean that no blockbusters or great commercial films are made in Europe for a sector who is much more interested in entertainment than in ‘culture’. The problem once again is in approaching the way in which film is being addressed recently. Hence that a film festival like the European Film Festival in Seville is used to provide a mapping for recent productions, new directors, producers, actors and actresses, as well as seeing up close how the film industry and market has been working in this part of the world.

Unfortunately it has to also be considered that, like many other cultural institutions, spaces which dedicate themselves to the alleged production of knowledge, the quantity of film festivals which have spread all over Europe is considerable. The economic crisis seems to not have much to do with culture, apparently. From where do the funds that finance these events come from? Actually, many of these organizations are self-financed or sponsored by local institutions. The European Film Festival in Seville is organized by the Institute of Culture and Arts of Seville and the Andalucía Film Commission.

Film festivals are great touristic potential for any region, and that’s why they invest in an event of such magnitude, just like they do in Barcelona or Sitges for example. Maybe it’s a good time to re-think what an adequate cultural offering really is, and in what measure is it a democratic offering to which everyone can access. The parade of celebrities which usually represents these events is nothing more than the interest to validate and give prestige to the institution that organizes certain events, festivals or ceremonies. Little does it have to do with the approach of the public towards directors and film stars but more about the media impact that the presence of these people can have on the festival.

Seville is a city with plenty of charm and, definitely, it’s one of the best places for this festival. If you’re a film lover, leave everything you’re doing and come to this festival which seems to be an interesting outlook on what’s been cooking in the film industry in recent times. Also, this year, the European Film Festival in Seville will have a section dedicated, as a tribute, to Russian film. In some way, today, films made in Russia are still not very popular among the other European countries and on a wider international level, despite being quite a broad industry. In the same way, this Russian film showing can be beneficial and encourage people to be part of the screenings that the European Film Festival of Seville offers for this 2011 edition. As you know, the festival runs from the 4th until the 11th of November. For more information visit the following webpage: http://www.festivaldesevilla.com/

Alexa Ray

Get apartments in Seville and be part of this European Film Festival. Seville will thrill you with its beautiful streets.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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On the 27th of October, the Andalusian Center of Contemporary Art in Seville opens its exhibition “Margen y Ciudad” from Spanish artist Lara Almarcegui. The artist has done some incredible work themed around cities and forgotten spaces, evoking the idea of loss of memory of those places which reside on the margins of the city’s collective consciousness as a result of being ruins.

Lara Almarcegui was born in Zaragoza in 1972. She studied Fine Art at the University of Cuenca, and later at the Art Department at the University of Lisbon. In the 1990s, she was invited by Werner Büttner to the Art Department at Hamburg, and later attended the School of Fine Art in Nantes in France, and also completed a post-grad at De Ateliers 63 in Amsterdam.

Her work in installation and intervention is known as Demolitions, Auto-constructions and Wastelands, and has led her to be a key figure in the studies of Urban Art, as she pays a special attention to the development of cities, and its treatment of its forgotten spaces. These are the spaces Almarcegui seeks out – those ruined, ignored areas of a city – in order to give them cultural visibility once again.

In her work Auto-construction Installation in Amsterdam, made in 2004, she focuses on auto-construction and recuperation, with a series of 26 photographs on 20x30cm, and texts of 10x15cm which are placed on tables. With these interventions, Almarcegui hopes to draw to the attention of the public, and the urban community, and encourage them to acknowledge these spaces, and how their abandonment has become a part of collective memory.

This project was carried out in the French city of Saint Nazaire, where she used different recuperated and salvaged parts from the city’s shipyards, bringing them to the attention of locals. Each individual part spoke of the context and the society which had been created by its inhabitants – but above all, it referred back to the moment in the past when these abandoned elements had been of use, and how different the city was then.

Her conceptual work is an intense pursuit of the idea of memorialization – of the engagement of a city’s inhabitants with its past, and the changing circumstances which have been forgotten through time; and of the different models of the construction of the city, whereby many places have been condemned to abandonment, such as the big factories which prevailed during the high era of industrial capitalism, occupying now disused spaces, along side the also empty old worker’s houses.

The territory used by Almarcegui is the city. It is there where she conducts her dissection – in those areas well off the beaten path of the tourist trail. What she is looking for are the derelict and abandoned places which have been reclaimed by inhabitants without the knowledge of its past identity, or what its function or use was before it was empty. This could be anything from a trail line no longer in use, an old dockyard, or simply a family home which has been fled.

For more information http://www.juntadeandalucia.es/cultura/caac/programa/alma11/frame.htm

Nancy Guzman

A great work which connects us to the city, and its collective memory. “Margen y Ciudad” is on until 4th of March. So don’t miss out on your chance to see it when you rent apartments in Seville in the wonderful city of Seville.

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Translated by: Poppy
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The Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (Andalusian Centre of Contemporary Art) exhibits, until the 13th of November, the collective exhibition ‘La Chanson’ in the frame of the aesthetic which explores ‘The Song as a Transforming Social Source’. With this proposal, the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo ventures into the changes that emerged from music during the 20th century and especially with the surge of the 50s and 60s French movement, which was labelled ‘La Chanson’.

The exhibition is organized with visual and sound facilities which follow the metaphoric line which inspired the French movement which began with Edith Piaf and carried on with Boris Vian, Serge Gainsbourg, Jacques Brel, Juliette Gréco, Léo Ferré and Georges Brassens among others.

The outlook of music as a part of a culture which manifests itself in everyday behaviours, such as fashion, design and everyday life activities, is an interesting way to observe the 20th century and its social and political transformations using art as its form of expression.

Participating in this singular exhibition which looks to venture in the influence of music on a political and personal level through art, are the works of John Baldessari, Douglas Gordon, Johanna Billing, Jérôme Bel, Marta de Gonzalo and Publio Pérez Prieto, Susan Philipsz, Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa, Mika Taanila and Paul Rooney among others.

John Baldessari is an American conceptual artist who works on the narrative potential of the images with associative power which bring language in the space of the work. From his beginnings, Baldessari explores the relation that the spectators have with his work, how they look at it and the way in which they make associations and comparisons. In 1970, causing perplexity to critics and spectators, he burned all of his works as part of his work ‘The project of Cremation’ which explored the natural cycle of life, declaring the death of painting. Today he’s considered as one of the most interesting conceptual artists of the 20th century.

Johanna Billing is a Swedish conceptual artist who works preferentially with video. Her work takes time as a factor in learning, in the political sense in which time plays a key role in political processes as a conceptual focus of her work.

Jérôme Bel is a French choreographer and dancer who has carried out interesting dance performance works. Due to his interpretative quality and innovative aesthetics, quite a few of them have been brought to films which have been screened at Sao Paulo’s Biennial, Porto Alegre, at the Georges Pompidou, at the Tate Modern in London and in many other galleries and museums.

Douglas Gordon was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and works in video where he ventures into memory, making a game with sequential image repetitions, deconstructing the time sequences, creating emotional responses in the spectator.

For more information: http://www.juntadeandalucia.es/cultura/caac/programa/chan11/frame.htm

Nancy Guzman

For those who think that music is an agent for social change, this is a great exhibition that you can’t miss if you’re in apartments in Seville

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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The world’s most famous circus is touring Spain; it is the famous Canadian circus, Cirque du Soleil that this time comes to Seville with Corteo.

Cirque du Soleil has become one of the most acclaimed shows around the world. The unique combination of theater arts and street performances in a circus environment, have conquered the lovers of performing in all corners of the planet.

Staged for the first time in Montreal in 2005, Corteo has been seen by millions of people worldwide. Corteo, which means in Italian Cortege, displays almost in a wild way the contrast between big and small, comedy and tragedy and the magic of perfection against the charm of imperfection. At the same time, the show masterly represents the wisdom, goodness, strength and fragility of the clown, accompanied by the rhythm of energetic music played live to exaggerate the emotions of the play into a world where fantasy and reality are the same thing.

Guardian Angels watch over the silence of death, while a real carnival erupts to commemorate, the sweet clown’s imaginary death, only to show us the human part that still resides in the recesses part of our bodies, the one that viciously mocks our realities.

In this world of farcical, there are acrobats hanging from chandeliers, “kids” jumping in trampolines dressed as beds, tightrope, juggling, human puppets, acrobatics on ladders and swings, while the silliness of the clowns awake the joy of public.

From the 7^th of September to the 16^th of October “Corteo” will be presented at carpa blanca, Charco de la Pava in Seville. You can find the complete schedule of the show: http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/es-es/shows/corteo/default.aspx on this website, you can buy tickets ranging from 35 to 174 euros.

Hans

So, let the joy of a clown’s imaginary death get a space in your agenda when you rent apartments in Seville

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Translated by: Hans
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At just 31 years, Aberdeen, Scotland-born Ruth Ewan is fast becoming known as one of the key faces of the contemporary European art world. The young artist has devoted herself to the investigation of cultural activism, and the analysis of ideas which circulate the world which are not necessarily the ones which are used for official communication; as well as songs, myths, and how different important moments in history can affect the present, in different ways, and then how to use these effects in order to be able to give them new meaning and interpretation.

The art works Ewan creates, in the shape of drawings, and installations, are amongst the most varied around, as she is in constant contact with the worlds of both art and music; painting, historians, activists, student, and much more besides.

Her pieces have been described by critics as conceptual works which have the intention of referring to social development, and which, for the most part, also take the histories and pasts of different societies as a key reference point. She refers to both more recent changes and others further back in the past – Ewan explains that her opinion is that history is not something which has passed, and is finished with, but something which is still totally connected to the present, and is full of ideas for the future.

Ewans is bringing these thoughts to the Andalucia Center of Contemporary Art (CAAC), at the Monasterio de la Cartuja de Sevilla, for a presentation of her work called The Ephemeral Past, taking place between the 30th of June and 16th of October. Especially interesting, as it is the first time in Spain for the artist who has previously shown in Tate Britain and the ICA in London.

More information: http://www.juntadeandalucia.es/cultura/caac/programa/ewan11/frame.htm

Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo: Américo Vespucio, 2, Sevilla, España

MiLK

If you feel like discovering the work of promising and exciting Scottish artist Ruth Ewan, you could rent one of the apartments in Seville and discover the beautiful city too.

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Translated by: Poppy
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The Andalusian Centre of Contemporary Art is showing exhibition “Prensadas,” from artist Inmaculada Salinas, until the 12th of June. The show, commissioned by María Luisa López Moreno, is part of the series La constitución política del present, and looks at how the Spanish artist has dealt with themes such as women as a social subject.

Inmaculada Salinas was born in Guadalcanal, Seville, in 1967. Having studied Fine Art at Seville University, her work came to tackle the complex narrative of the woman in society, through different means of communication, and to reflect upon how painting has historically made ornaments of women, and used them as the objects of power.

The exhibition Prensadas is comprised of works completed between 2008 and now, which have been organised into four series; Espejos, Visión de las vencidas, Prensadas and Como fondo.

The first series, Espejos, is made up of 40 small white cards created in 2008, on which Salinas writes the word woman with both hands, drawing attention to the dramatic tension between the two different brushstroke styles. This conceptual idea of the visible and the invisible, as expressed through the repetition of an image, has become an important part of her work with the image of woman as a social subject.

La visión de las vencidas takes its title from a book by anthropologist Miguel León Portilla about the writings of the indigenous Mexicans, and is a series of works from 2008-09, which identify and point out the parts of the book where the word “woman” appears, in relation to her role in society.

Prensadas is related to the word “press” – and is based on the presence, or absence of women in the press, and how they are represented by it, with a collection of pieces from 2009.

Como fondo refers to the role of painting in the public sphere, using press cuttings of people in the public eye. Salinas devalues the prominence of the different people by covering them with her art work.

This interesting intellectual, artistic approach is a reflection of the extensive work Salinas has done in developing the discussion of the social representation of women – by using themes such as invisibility and visibility within the media, and publicity. Her objective is not to offer any answers, but confront the ways in which the woman’s image, and the idea of “feminine” is manipulated and distorted, whilst identifying the collective stereotypes which have no bearing on the reality.

For more information http://www.juntadeandalucia.es/cultura/caac/programa/inmsal11/frame.htm

Nancy Guzman

To understand better the social representation of women in art, this is great opportunity to see things in a new way – especially if you are already renting Seville accommodation

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Translated by: Poppy
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Until the 26th June, The Museum of Art and Popular Customs is holding the exhibition Plegarias Atendidas. Colección de exvotos mexicanos. The show is an interesting collection of Mexican exvotos, or alterpieces compiled over the years by Margarita Contreras and Luís Vicente Elías Pastor, the result of extensive ethnographic investigations in Mexico.

Religious art in Mexico, as in the whole of Latin America, is without a doubt the most remarkable and rich part of the legacy of religion and the Spanish rule between the 16th and 18th centuries. Of the Baroque era, the art pieces are a symbolic representation of the religious beliefs which formed much of the popular imagination – likewise the churches, sculptures, furniture, and religious objects.

Popular religious art developed from the 17th century, with an intense wave of paganism and Christianity along with the Spanish cultural dominion which the indigenous world in crisis. Of this process, Octavio Paz writes “it was not only a military and political conquest, but a spiritual one too,” referring to the radical shifting from one culture to another – not just materially, but in terms of religious imagination too, with the previous more or less eradicated to make way for the new. This was how the ritual of offerings to the Gods was transferred to Catholicism with the “exvotos” (offerings), and alter pieces.

Exvotos are small paintings of religious thanks, or appreciation which ask for miracle or favour. The giver prays to the Virgin or their chosen saint, requesting to be granted a miracle or a favour – if these come to pass, a kind of shrine is made to illustrate the situation, in return for the favour.
In other words, exvotos are the illustration of a miracle which acts as an offering to who might make it happen.

In these rituals is a strange mix of elements – the popular imagination, people and situations which reflect a cosmogony previous to Catholicism, reflecting the paradoxes of faith.

Behind every exvoto is a personal story, and a story of the country. They are imprinted with the most important values of each generation, and the things that move, and motivate a society. In their images, historians find a perfect window through which to see the social changes suffered by Mexico. For instance issues such as, “is the current conceptualisation of miracle the same as it was the beginning of the 20th century and during previous centuries? or, how does religion manifest itself nowadays? These are the sort of questions which arise from the imagery of the exvotos.

For more information http://www.museosdeandalucia.es/cultura/museos/MACSE/index.jsp?redirect=act_expo_ficha.jsp&tip=4&pagina=1&idActExp=12683&novedades=1

Nancy Guzman

This interesting show, which narrates on the the stories from Mexico and Spain’s past, has been so popular that the museum has extended it. So if you are renting Seville accommodation there’s no excuse to miss out on this glimpse of history of popular art.

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Translated by: Poppy
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The Andalucian Centre of Contemporary Art in Seville is showing Cercanías by conceptual artist Rogelio López Cuenca, until the 15th of May, as part of the La Constitución Política del Presente cycle. The interesting new show is centred around Andalucia, addressing the urban and political changes suffered by the cities as a result of migration.

Cercanías is a critical metaphor on the violence and dominance exercised by Western cultures. In just a word, it sums up the reactions and reflections of its meanings, since Cuenca doesn’t just refer to the geographic proximity with the Arab-Muslim culture, but the inherited cultural history, where the barbarians were the Europeans, who left their aesthetic, linguistic, architectural and urban mark on what is today Andalucia.

Rogelio López Cuenca was born in Nerja, Malaga in 1959. He graduated in Philosophy, and during the 1980s, assisted in workshops at the Madrid Círculo de Bellas Artes cementing his involvement in the art world. His political stance marks his artistic works, which started out as performance in public spaces, and led to the video Poesie pur le Poivre in 1986. He became interested in Russian constructivism and Cubo-futurism, as part of the group Agustín Parejo School. Cuenca ended up turning his attention to the idea of art as a space for linguistic debate, and the subversion of the dominant iconography of publicity and the media, following the interesting theories of artists Barbara Kruger and Matt Mullican.

Cuenca’s approach to art is clearly expressed in his continual reference to the work of the artist and his role in society: “Art can no longer consist in the representation of exterior or interior, psychological landscapes, because its space is the discussion about the significance of what it is we share and the languages we speak.” Any copied visual image then, however beautiful it is, is not art, but just technique – art can only be found in that which connects us to the rest of society.

In this interesting theoretical debate, Cuenca develops his play on words and icons, where the conceptual is complemented by images taken from magazines, newspapers, publicity, maps.

The piece Corpus is particularly provocative. Constructed of three images reflecting death and violence, Cuenca prints the mythical face of Che Guevara dead onto an anonymous body. The work invites us to think about the fragmentation of discourse due to a discordant memory, as well as injustice and life.

For more information http://www.caac.es/programa/roglop11/frame.htm

Nancy Guzman

If you are in Andalucia, don’t miss this exhibition. And now that spring is here, don’t miss out on a chance to explore this beautiful city when you rent an Seville accommodation

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Translated by: Poppy
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The Photos of Alix (1980) is the title of the last film by French director Jean Eustache – who, shortly after decided to take his own life. Part of a group of films in which Eustache used unrelated experiences to tell us about his personal world; the things which moved and interested him, The Photos of Alix is a beautiful and unsettling 19 minutes, revolving around Boris Eustache, the director’s son, and his photographer friend Alix Cleo-Roubaud. After the commercial failure of the remarkable My Little Loves (1974) – in spite of also making The Mother and the Whore (1973), one of the most cult films in the history of cinema – Eustache was never able to return to making feature lengths.

As Alix shows the adolescent some of her photographs, they both discuss the images, which the viewer can also see, covering topics such as childhood, love, sex, travel, parents, suicide… Gradually, little by little, the viewer beings to notice a discordance between the photographs and Alix’s commentary, which becomes more and more sporadic, creating a gap between image and words, and a loss in our ability to make any connection between what we are seeing and the words we are hearing. A space is created in the mind for new, personal and unexpected associations.

Working in a similar way – though with more directly political intentions – is Malaga artist Rogelio López Cuenca, some of whose recent projects have been included in the Cercanías exhibition at the Andalucian Centre of Contemporary Art in Seville, on until the 15th May. Rather than a retrospective-style show, it seeks to set up a discussion between various different works. For more information visit the website: http://www.juntadeandalucia.es/cultura/caac/programa/roglop11/frame.htm

In López Cuenca’s work, text functions in an opposite way as an ordinary caption – the intention is that words are presented as though they are a misprint, giving the sensation that the caption is wrong, and doesn’t correspond with the image. This also takes place in reverse – sometimes, it is the image which makes the spectator question the information already given in a text.

Cercanías, the second part of the exhibition cycle La construcción política del presente is a definitively political act which meditates on the deconstruction of some of the popular myths associated with Andalucia – thereby inviting the viewer to reflect upon its representation.

Paul Oilzum

A stimulating exhibition which teaches us about the violence and impact that one image can have. Worth a visit when you rent Seville accommodation .

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Translated by: Poppy
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