COLLECTIVE GARDENS(UNTITLED: GARDENING IN PROGRESS)

Curated by Julie Booms, Laura Lee Bral, Valérie De Neef, Benedicte Dierickx, Sarah Gallasz, Loes Gerits, Valerie Henau, Pieter Jennes, Katrien Loret, Rosan Meijer, Winke Noppen, Renée Pevernagie, Ilse Raps, Anna Scholiers, Elisatbeth Ida

COLLECTIVE GARDENS(UNTITLED: GARDENING IN PROGRESS)

When your eye meets this page, you are reading this introduction. Please continue! Browse through my pages and feel my content slide through your fingers. I am a subversive concept, a tilted garden, a dissident object, a unique book, an everlasting exhibition space. From the moment you laid eyes on me and picked me up, I changed. Now, I am fluid, constantly in flux, an endless circulation of ideas. You can appropriate, rearticulate and invade me. Do you already feel the urge to transform my body and structure? Perhaps, you can occupy my intentions? Exclude and infuse new objectives and expressions, or completely modify my appearance! I am a manifestation of Collective Gardens. I am a collection, a garden glossary of possibilities. I am a collective, tucked away in a disembodied host, waiting for interaction in order to make myself undying.

Participating artists: Astrid Bossuyt, Sven Dehens, Celine Drouin Laroche, Amine El Gotaibi, Mo Franken, Freddy K, Thomas Grødal, KubistaBolve, Wera Imie Nazwisko, Margherita Raso, Augustas Serapinas

Voice-over: Meet Hito. She’s a filmmaker and author. Maybe you’ve already heard people talk about her. She writes about all sort of things. Like for example, occupation.

Voice-over: A way of defining our curatorial position: as a stranglehold, a creative impulse, a liberation of the concept itself, a provocation in need for a counter-action, an unanswerable question, say what?!, or an incentive for re-articulation, to name but a few.

Voice-over: Imagine spaces, objects, processes, subjects, activities, dialogues converting into an amorphism. Let us go beyond physical space, diffuse a constellation of spaces as occupation is fugitive to it’s own predicament.

Voice-over: Imagine cultivating new parallel spaces of occupation, re-articulating flow, appropriating territory, weeding through the spatial divisions, invading the Other’s parcel, engaging in the final product-presentation,...

... pictures of my archive, that occupy ME.

(E-mail sent to curators, art-critics, art-historians, sociologists, artists,...)

Dear, The idea is to create a constellation of critical observations, thinking patterns, critiques and creative impulses that endlessly mediate our concept. By filtering our concept through the mind of others we can constantly re-think our position. We hope you like this idea and maybe you can send us a reaction in English before the 13th of May (maximum 50 lines)? As a little extra incentive, we give you the link to a film we made for approaching the artists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaW8YcApD3A Many thanks in advance.

New message

To:Copy: Subject: From:

(Email from Flurin Bisig)

1. Art as Occupation: Claims for an Autonomy of Life - Hito Steyerl, 20112. Use Collective Gardens as steppingstone to talk about Hito’s concept of occupation3. Occupation as hybrid mindset: as keeping busy, doing, (daily) activity, distraction, engagement, appropriation, colonization, invasion, blurring of spatial divisions, eternal process, negotiation, endless mediation, not merely as a territorial claiming4. Occupation as another way of regrouping situations that would normally be separated in a more traditional manner5. Collective Gardens as a flexible framework where situations & practices come together

First there are the utopias. Utopias are sites with no real place. They are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of Society. They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down, but in any case these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces.There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places—places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society— which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias.

Garden or place (topos) refers etymologically to the idea behind Thomas More’s Utopia; or to the origin of the word ‘paradise’, which derives from the Persian pairideiza, meaning ‘walled’ or ‘enclosed’. That also entails a danger of exclusion – the opposite of encircling and bringing together. What’s essential here is the dimension of the garden as a meeting place, where a dialogue can occur.

(Johan Grimonprez, On Radical Ecology and Tender Gardening)

(Michel Foucault, Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias)

... pictures of my archive, that occupy ME. (Email from Flurin Bisig)

Dear,thanks for getting in touch and sending your statement. I don't remember reading that Steyerl piece but it sounds remarkable, as it oscillates - I imagine - between occupation as that which occupies our working hours and different forms of repossession and spatial insurrec-tion. The idea of collective gardens is intriguing as well, but I hope you will understand that the framework you sketch does not really offer me ground to react to either the formulation of the concept or the relation between this concept and the future show, its components and juxtapositions. I find myself in a similarly problematic position with our september exhibition, which I can't really get to work - in terms of communicating the project to the outside world, garnering support etc. - in any 'middle way': it's either a dry 10-line statement or a 4-page abstract script no one seems to find time for. So I sympathis and keep fingers crossed. I doubt this helps but it's the best I could do, fingers crossed for your work, mm

From: Mihnea Mircan <mihnea.mircan@extracity.org>Date: 2014-05-20 22:57 GMT+02:00Subject: Re: A curatorial project

Art and Agriculture…Collectivity and Parallel PlaySome Observations Liam GillickFor TEBEAC at Academy of Fine Arts, Ghent, June 2014 The division of collective space is the heart of revolutionary potential and collapse.The commons have been enclosed.The enclosures have been privatized.The private has been visualized.Data has been collectivized.The farm has industrialized.Agriculture and art are quite compatible.Art and agriculture are romanticized. The division of private space can be collectivized.The collective has been privatized.The garden is not a farm.Gardening is not agriculture.Gardening cannot be collectivized.Agriculture cannot be rectified. Mediation within the context of two similar activities that take place within spaces of nurture and growth have potential only in relation to the degree to which they have a historical connection to the crisis inherent in therevolutionary potential of the collective. i.e. You can have a collective garden but you can’t collectivize it.Ergo. You can have a collective farm and you can’t do much with it. Somewhere in the space between these two impracticalities is the potential of the structure

Your work usually takes form in the exploration of spaces that are hidden. What made you so interested in hidden things?

I think there are a lot of interesting things about ‘the hidden’ and the concept of ‘hiding’ in itself. In the beginning I was very intrigued that by hiding you are showing more and through hiding you become more aware of the things you are showing. Also, it is important to state that the hiding can be seen as a political statement or strategy. Nowadays it is very popular to show and visualize everything, but the dominant visual culture is neglecting in its ways of sharing and representing. When you have a reason to hide something, you are always aware of how it can be shared. In these times, the act of hiding is of great value to me.

So hiding isn’t just about hiding, but about the act of hiding in itself. Why are you hiding? How are you hiding? For me, communication is an important aspect because I like to work with people when looking for places and their meaning.

Your conscious awareness of people is an interesting aspect of your work. It seems to me that you select your own public by making close connections with people. Is this something you think about during your process?

It depends on a particular work. Sometimes it comes afterwards. Sometimes I know it from the beginning.

Do you feel like it’s more important to make works for a selected group of people?

Yes. Some works are meant for a more selective group of people and some works are more common and thus for everyone. And that is something you need to decide. For me, every work starts within certain circumstances and within a certain space. It arises from its surroundings and in a way the work already exists there. You just need to find a way to it.

Is it then fair to say that the work grows through the people?

Yes, through every conversation. At least it goes like that for me. Sometimes I’m not even thinking about the work. I just like meeting other people and talking about things. That’s when the aspect of communica-tion becomes very important. A lot of works are very related to this conversational aspect. Sometimes I even arrange the space for a specific topic and bring people inside of the space to talk about it.

So your work is also a kind of a social experiment in its own?

Yes, but it’s also an experiment for the art world. I’m trying to do something honest, something in which I believe. But I am sometimes completely unsure about the things that I am doing. I only understand my work through the process. And I like to state that. Only through the process I can realize my work better. For me it is impossible to state something about the artwork from the beginning on, but in the art world you need to be concrete. Sometimes people want to know exactly what you will do for the exhibition. So it is harder to do process based activities, especially when you need a space for an improvisation. So in this way my work is an experiment to see how far I can go with this practice wherein people have to trust you and wherein I understand things only through the time. It could be very stressful, but I really appre-ciate this approach. It is more vital because everything is related and comes from a certain situation that relates to that time and the certain things around it. This way, you are more sensitive to the how and why things happened and that is what I am interested in. The space can amplify certain activities or generate new activities that are connected to the surroundings. I am not only interested in finding those hidden spaces, it is also important to think about the kind of activities that could take place in the space and what kind of effect it would have in relation to the environment.

My first reaction when I saw your work was that I felt like you were creating parallel universes within existing spaces. It seemed like you were creating new stories by further contemplating on what was already there and because you were working in unused spaces you could go back to the origins of those spaces and to the origin of its meaning.

Yes, it could be like that. It is related to how we get used to something and expectations or what you expect to perceive in certain spaces. For example, in a museum you know what to expect from the office

spaces, but then there are also other spaces of which people know they exist but are not paying attention to. It is important to realize how all spaces constitute the whole thing together. What kind of activities are going on in those spaces. Things are not one-sided. When you look at the cleaning staff, you notice that they have their own style of behavior. They make their own routes in the space. It is interesting how they construct their own space in the institution. But getting back to the hidden spaces, spaces that aren’t inhabited or don’t have any activities, it becomes a bit different, because they don’t have any traces of the current time, usually they have traces of activities that went on before, like some leftovers of the time when it was built. So you can really ‘read’ the specific time by entering those spaces. For instance, in which way someone installed the wire, or how funny the pipe was cut. You can see all these things that can tell you a lot. I like this. Then I think about what kind of activity I can insert.

And how do you select the activity you want to insert into a certain space?

Usually I don’t select. I just spend some time inside the space and I’m looking for what kind of activity the space proposes. Sometimes this comes very quickly, but other times it comes over time. You can think a lot, read a lot, but that is not that way it works for me. Some things just come over time and I can’t do anything about that. I just have to spend time, live with it, and then I start to understand. It’s like a con-versation between the space and me. This is how I understand what kind of activity should go on in the space. I usually choose simple activities like a coffee break room or a space for meditation. I like to open up the possibilities.

In Komplot you present a different kind of working method where you build on the existing structure instead of working in a hidden space. How does this relate to your other work?

The exhibition space of Komplot is made in the style of a white cube. But within this space there are certain tools like pipes, wires, sockets, doors, columns, stairs, etc. that reveal the original infrastructure of the building. For this exhibition I chose to add something to one of the existing pipes. I think the pipe was part of a radiator, which, over time, has been removed from the space, leaving the pipe without a purpose. I chose to extend the pipe by adding a fake pipe that will curve towards the space where the radiator was supposed to be. By making this kind of action, you play with the visitors’ attention in relation to the space. The visitors usually have certain norms and expectations about what they are coming to see. They know exactly that they are going to see art, so they are not paying attention to the sockets for example. So in a way you are excluding your gaze and ways of understanding in seeing things. That could be a problem these days, because you are losing that certain sensitivity, which makes your perception too narrow. There is a possibility that when you look at the pipe, you will notice that something is wrong and then you will pay attention to the things around it. Then the entire exhibition will start to look differently. It can give a new quality and value. In this way, the entire infrastructure also becomes part of the work.

So you mean to open the gaze of the visitors?

Yes it could be like that but it is also possible that it doesn’t work. For those who don’t notice it, everything will be the same. For me, it is important to expand the possibility within a certain context so we look at the things in a different light. I don’t want to point out the work, because then you will exclude this moment of finding it. It is something you need to discover yourself and then it becomes valuable. How you perceive a space is related to possibilities. In this I see a connection with my other works.

Your work rather functions on an immaterial level. I feel like this kind of practice becomes more and more important within the art world, but we don’t know how to deal with these kind of practices yet.

As an artist, I always need to explain my approach. It is important to point out why you do certain things. The more people will talk about it, the more it will become understandable for others.

Interview between Katrien Loret & Augustas Serapinas

From: Johan Grimonprez <johan@zapomatik.com>Date: 2014-05-10 16:13 GMT+02:00 Subject: A man, blind at his right eye, was hospitalized yesterday. A lost cauliflower seed had germinated behind his eyeball, and a 2 cm colli was surgically removed. He now sees again.

A man, blind at his right eye, was hospitalized yesterday. A lost cauliflower seed had germinated behind his eyeball,and a 2 cm colli was surgically removed. He now sees again.____________________________A newspaper story, quoted in Boon, L.P., Menuet(Amsterdam: Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers, 1955)—Well you can’t go to California, that’s the first place they’ll’ look for you_Johan Grimonprez

Disease in Bees

Book IV, verses 251-280 Since life has brought the same misfortunes to bees as ourselves,if their bodies are weakened with wretched disease,you can recognise it straight away by clear signs:as they sicken their colour immediately changes: a roughleanness mars their appearance: then they carry outdoorsthe bodies of those without life, and lead the sad funeral procession:or else they hang from the threshold linked by their feet, or lingerindoors, all listless with hunger and dull with depressing cold.Then a deeper sound is heard, a drawn out murmur,as the cold Southerly sighs in the woods sometimes,as the troubled sea hisses on an ebb tide,as the rapacious fire whistles in a sealed furnace.Then I’d urge you to burn fragrant resin, right away,and give them honey through reed pipes, freely calling themand exhorting the weary insects to eat their familiar food.It’s good too to blend a taste of pounded oak-appleswith dry rose petals, or rich new wine boiled downover a strong flame, or dried grapes from Psithian vines,with Attic thyme and strong-smelling centaury.There’s a meadow flower also, the Italian starwort,that farmers call amellus, easy for searchers to find:since it lifts a large cluster of stems from a single root,yellow-centred, but in the wealth of surrounding petalsthere’s a purple gleam in the dark blue: often the gods’ altarshave been decorated with it in woven garlands:its flavour is bitter to taste: the shepherd’s collect itin valleys that are grazed, and by Mella’s winding streams.Boil the plant’s roots in fragrant wine, and place itas food at their entrances in full wicker baskets.

(Virgil, Georgics)

Dear,

thank you for sending me this invitation and for sharing your exhibition concept. It is not common for curators to disclose their curatorial strategy before the exhibition has become a reality. In doing this, you make your ideas, your goals and your doubts clearly visible. I like this discursive transparency. It goes well with the concept of the ‘Collective Garden’ that you use as a curatorial grip. Collectivity has become a trend, and so has gardening. As a metaphor for a group show with the works of upcoming artists, both collectivity and gardening function wonderfully well. They refer to crucial issues that are at stake today, such as finding the nexus between (alternative) economies and (alternative) ecologies. One of the first shows I curated was titled Nature Morte?? Art and Ecology. It took place in the public space and the university buildings of Louvain, back in 1995. One of the locations of the project, the 19th century municipal Botanical Garden, also functioned as the campaign image. A that time, under the spell of 1960s land art (Robert Smithson!) and 18th century landscaped gardens (Capability Brown!), I was very interested in the artificiality of the garden as a metap-hor fo our urge to control and domesticate nature. I guess Postmodernism was still lingering on somewhere in my mind... Today, gardening has come to contain less aesthetical references than social and economical ones. Urban gardening and collective cultivating have become fashionable symbols of alter-native civic behaviour; they reflect quite a few new paradigms of the years that followed after 2008. Micro-enterprises and small communities show their ability of surviving a heavy econo-mical and ecological crisis. However, the way you combine these issues with the notion of ‘oc-cupation’ strikes me as being a bit odd. Ofcourse, ‘occupation’ has become an important social and intellectual theme since ‘Occupy Wall Street’ kicked off a lot of ‘occupy’-initiatives in 2011. Moreover, I also believe that gardening has a lot to do with occupation. So, strictly speaking, the connection you make between the two does make sense. But as a discursive and curato-rial tool it creates a paradox. After all, inviting artists to an occupation seems a bit awkward, doesn’ it? ‘Occupation by invitation’ or, even worse, participating in an occupation because someone (the curator or a teacher or the market) expects you to do so, reminds me a bit of the problem cutting-edge artists experienced when being ‘invited’ by Harald Szeemann to Docu-menta 5, back in 1972. While most of the artists simply seemed happy for being ‘invited’, only a few expressed their critical feelings about the way the curator managed to create a rigid set of narratives that encompassed the work of the artists. In the end, the most articulate ones, amongst them the French artist Daniel Buren and the American artist Robert Smithson, deci-ded to stand up in writing. The first lines of Cultural Confinement, Smithson’s only contribution to both the exhibition and the catalogue, still deserves to be read by contemporary artists and curators: Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits. Artists are expected to fit into fraudulent categories. Some artists imagine they’ve got a hold on this apparatus, which in fact has got a hold of them. By declining the invitation and reacting with words (his text also appeared in Artforum), Smith-son managed to mirror the curator’s approach and to ‘occupy’ a position that equaled the one held by the curator. A curator urging artists to ‘occupy’ anticipates (and therefore appropri-ates) this position, and I don’t believe that is your intention. Anyway, I suppose some of the artists will manage to deal with this challenge.

Johan Pas, Antwerp, May 2014

From: Johan Pas <johan.pas@ap.be>Date: 2014-05-09 23:37 GMT+02:00 Subject: Re: A curatorial project

From: Germann Martin <Martin.Germann@smak.be>Date: 2014-05-20 20:59 GMT+02:00Subject: RE: A curatorial project

Dear,

Apologies for my late answer.

My reaction is short:

I am very curious about in how far the simple truth that curators need artists more then way around will materialize itself in your exhibition!

All the best,Martin

Margherita Raso, 2014

Celine Drouin Laroche, 2014

I Survived Tunisia, Astrid Bossuyt, 2012

I Sur

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Tuni

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strid

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012

STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GARDEN, TURNING 360°

In this Collective Gardens possibility we address the different reactions we have received on our shared Collective Gardens video. Because the content is hybrid, the answered propositions are hybrid as well. Some artists responded with an already realised work, other works were conceived through dialogues with the curators and to some artists we asked a specific question.

Some played around with materials literally related to collective gardens.

While one focuses on the political dimension of Hito Steyerl’s understanding of the concept occupation, the other addresses this in a more formalistic manner by exploring space through a cinematic gaze.

The artists, that are presented at this Collective Gardens manifestation, touch in their works upon different aspects of our shared concept.

A reference to an eternal mediated song is indeed quite different from a work who chooses to zoom in on the institutional infrastructure in which this exhibition space is embedded.

Then again there are artists who rather deal with this (im)material twilight zone between spaces.

In other works, the notion of social, political and time-based spacestouching and interfering with each other is one of the primary concerns.

Sure collective gardens can be full of growing healthy plants all neatly lined up next to each other. Or it can be looking like that crazy haircut of the teenage girl living next door. You never really know how things are going to turn out eventually.

Margherita Raso

Celine Drouin Laroche

Mo Francken

KubistaBolve

Amine El Gotaibi

Augustas Serapinas

Astrid Bossuyt

Wera Imie Nazwisko

Sven Dehens

Thomas Grødal

Freddy K

Astrid Bossuyt (°1989, Bolivia) currently lives in Brussels. She studied Fine Arts at Sint-Lukas Brus-sels. She works with different media, such as sculpture, photography, video, installation and graphic art, dependent on the concept. In her artistic work she searches for the point where coincidence and setup meet. Therefore her work and life are closely interwo-ven, sometimes even inseparable.

Sven Dehens (°1990, Belgium) lives and works in Ghent. He received his Master in the Arts at Sint-Lu-cas in Ghent. The artist works with video and installa-tion. The form consists of constructed images in which specific environments, individuals, animals or objects are filmed, all referring to a certain content. The visu-al aspect of most video work takes precedence over the auditive. During the work process he always questions the basic principles of cinema (narrative styles, editing, the screen, the white light, Blue-key, etc.).

Celine Drouin Laroche (°1986, France) currently lives in Paris. She studied at the ENSAPC (École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris) in Cergy. In her artistic work she searches for different, sometimes even overlapping, presences in the actual time and space. The work of Celine Drouin Laroche consists of video installations, projections and sculptural forms.

Amine El Gotaibi (°1984, Morocco) currently lives in Tangier. He studied Fine Arts at the National Institute of Fine Arts in Tétouan, Morocco. During his studies he focused on diverse aspects of the visual arts, such as video, photography, installations, etc. His work comes into being within the specific socio-political context of his homeland. The artist therefore works with existential, universal preoccupations, such as migration, human rights, and the borders between countries/continents.

Chris Fitzpatrick (°1978, New York) is an inde-pendent curator. In 2009 Fitzpatrick got a degree in Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts. Three years later, after working in the US and Italy, he moved to Belgium where he became direc-tor at Objectif Exhibitions, a non-profit institution in Antwerp that provides space for diverse contemporary artistic practices. At Objectif Exhibitions different solo exhibitions take place simultaneously, on different phy-sical and temporal scales. Fitzpatrick’s essays appear in international publications and journals such as Spike Art Quarterly, Mousse and Nero.

Mo Franken (°1989, Belgium) currently lives in Brussels. She played the classical trumpet at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels and Antwerp. During the last six months she focused on Frank Zappa’s different versions of the Black Page. Because this song keeps on being interpreted in a different manner throughout the years, we asked Mo to make her own interpretation as part of our Collective Gardens project.

Freddy K (°1985, Belgium) lives and works in Ghent. He studied mixed media at Sint-Lucas in Ghent. His work consists of installations and performances. One of his projects ‘An exercise in happiness and frustration’ is an ongoing perfor-mance in which the artist blows confetti from one part of the space to the other. The amount of the confetti diminishes after each performance. It will end when the confetti totally disappears.

Martin Germann (Germany) is senior curator at the S.M.A.K in Ghent since September 2012. From 2008 until 2011 Germann was curator at kestner-gesellschaft Hannover. Between 2010 and 2012 he was part of the curatorial team for Made in Ger-many Zwei, a survey show of young international art at kestnergesellschaft, Kunstverein Hannover and Sprengel Museum. At the S.M.A.K. Germann prefers to draw attention to the younger generation. He is interested in the local artistic context and supports the platforms in which S.M.A.K. coope-rates, such as Het Paviljoen, a new collaboration with HISK and KASK, and the annual Coming People, a group show with graduation projects from KASK and the Faculty of Visual Arts Campus Sint-Lucas in Ghent.

Liam Gillick (°1964, U.K.) is an artist who lives and works in New York. From 1983-1984 Gillick studied at the Hertfordshire College of Art. In 1987 he graduated from Goldsmiths College with a degree in Fine Art. Liam Gillick was part of “the earliest Young British Artists” (YBA) during the 1990s and his artistic practice has encompassed a wide range of media including sculpture, writing, architectural and graphic design, film and music, as well as various curatorial projects. Gillick is interested in the aesthetics of social systems and forms of social organization. Central to his practice are the focus on modes of production, rather than consumption, and the publication(s) that function(s) in response to his art.

Thomas Grødal (°1978, Norway) lives and works in Antwerp and Oslo. Grødal graduated within the Department of In Situ / Painting at KASK Ant-werp in 2012. Without offering you floaties, Grødal throws you into the deep end of the pool where you will have to fend for yourself in interpreting his narratives. The language of his work consists of paintings, sculptures and mixed media instal-lations. Beneath the surface you will drown in a vast, surreal and mystical world. Like a daydream, or something you saw in the corner of your eye, his work will linger in your mind where the melan-choly visions will achingly haunt you.

Johan Grimonprez (°1962, Belgium) is a video artist as well as a curator and a teacher. In 1993 he got accepted into the Whitney Museum Inde-

Biographies

pendent Study Program in New York, which was followed by the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. He divides his time between Belgium and New York, where he lectures at the School of Visual Arts. His work balances on the line between documentary and art. In his work, he touches upon the status of the image in our cur-rent society and its impact on the viewer. With Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997) Grimonprez made his introduction in the international art scene. In this film, the artist throws a light upon media strategies. His latest work, The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade (2011), is the adap-tation of the book by Andrew Feinstein and deals with international weapon trafficking.

KubistaBolve or artistduo Kajsa Håkansson Bolve (°1988) and Anna Kubista Löfman (°1989) were both born in Sweden and currently work in Bergen (Norway) and Brussels (Belgium). Kubista and Bolve study at the Academy of Art and Design in Bergen. Kajsa Håkansson Bolve is currently studying at the Hogeschool Sint-Lukas Brussels as part of an exchange program. Their art consists of interventions, video works, instal-lations and performances concerning presence, inventions, nature, human contact, and so on.

Mihnea Mircan (°1976, Romania) is a curator and writer and since 2011 the artistic director of Extra City Kunsthal in Antwerp. From 2005 to 2006 Mircan was curator of the Pavillion at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Between 2004 and 2007 he curated several exhibitions at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest. In 2007 Mircan was also curator of the Roma-nian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale. As a curator he has a strong context-bounded vision. Mircan is currently preparing the long-term research project Allegory of the Cave Painting, subsequently, curating a group exhibition and launching the first volume of the accompanying reader in September 2014.

Wera Imie Nazwisko (°1983, Poland) cur-rently lives in Berlin. She studied Visual Arts at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Her work consists of installations that she made with found and collected objects. In her artworks the sepa-rate objects, all conveying their own meaning, function like words forming a sentence. She is interested in the culture of kitsch production, the question about the conditions for the existence of an artwork and the effect of presenting an object in several different combinations.

Johan Pas (°1963, Belgium) is Doctor in the Arts. Pas teaches modern and contemporary art at the Royal Academy for Fine Arts in Antwerp. Moreover, he is a curator and the author of

several publications. His main interests lay wit-hin the neo-avant-garde context, more specific in artist books and exhibition catalogues related to the movement. Over time, Pas has acquired a great collection of artist books. In the nineties, Pas dedicated a number of exhibitions and publications to the relationship between ecology and contempo-rary art. More recently, he focused on the work of several contemporary artists such as Fred Bervoets and Paul De Vree.

Margherita Raso (°1991, Italy) lives and studies in Milan. She is graduating at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, Milan. Her research includes the need to deal with different themes and forms without privilege to a specific medium. She is inte-rested in the mechanics of our perception and more specifically how we use them to perceive the world. In her work she often creates new spaces wherein different ways of looking and senses meet. In her latest artistic research she developed an interest in textile. Apart from her own work, she collaborates with Roberto Scalmana for the publication of Col-lective Gardens.

Augustas Serapinas (°1990, Lithuania) studied at the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Denmark. The work of Serapinas consists of installations and interventions where he implements new meanings and possibili-ties to existing spaces. With his work he questions the contemporary gaze and presents the viewer new opportunities of perceiving. Hito Steyerl (°1966, Germany) is a Berlin-based artist, writer and filmmaker. Steyerl’s work focuses on issues such as feminism and militarisation, as well as the mass proliferation and dissemination of ima-ges and knowledge brought on by digital technolo-gies. She speculates about the impact of the Internet and digitization on the structure of our daily lives. Her films and essays mainly take the digital image as a point of departure for entering a world in which a politics of dazzle manifests as collective desire. Stey-erl’s paper “Art as Occupation: Claims for an Au-tonomy of Life” shows her ongoing interest in the so-called militarization of everyday life. The point in this paper is that in today’s economic climate, the category of labour is increasingly replaced by that of “occupation”. Steyerl glosses the term as a space for “endless mediation, indeterminate negotiation, with no real outcome”.

Colophon

This publication is a production of TEBEAC, Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) Ghent, Belgium.This book was published on the occasion of the exhibitions:

Collective Gardens - Drowning in the garden, searching for a thrill25 June – 29 June 2014KASK, Ghent, Belgium

Collective Gardens - Standing in the middle of the garden, turning 360°20 June - 28 june 2014Komplot, Brussels, Belgium

Concept and compilation: TEBEAC

© TEBEAC, the artists

Printed in Belgium

The artist and publishers gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce the copyright material in this book. Every effort has been made by the artist, contributors and editorial staff to trace holders of copyright and to obtain permission for the use of copyright material. The publishers apologise for any errors or omissions. However, if any permissions have been inadvertently overlooked, please contact TEBEAC 2014, so that any oversights can be corrected as soon as possible.