Manifesta 14 veut laisser des traces au Kosovo
About the European nomadic biennial Manifesta 14, which takes place in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, until 30 October 2022.
Manifesta 14, here we go! Since 22 July, the 14th edition of the travelling European biennial of contemporary creation has been held in Pristina, Kosovo, for 100 days. The event, founded in the early 1990s by Hedwig Fijen, a Dutch art historian, was held for the first time in France in 2020, in Marseille, and generated more than 120,000 visits in the city and its surroundings despite the context made particularly complicated by the Covid-19 epidemic and its early closure.
For Manifesta is not just another exhibition. Intended to rethink the relationship between culture and society, through a continuous dialogue with the social sphere and the communities of the host territory, allowing the exploration of positive social changes through contemporary culture in order to better catalyse them, Manifesta has clearly become, over the course of its editions, a formidable multidimensional and inclusive instrument of civic experimentation. The focus is not on works of art for sale, but on urban studies of its host cities and the creation of innovative democratic projects, as seen in Marseille with "Le Tour de Tous les Possibles", which brought together hundreds of Marseillais from all walks of life to exchange and produce together ideas and projects that were as audacious as they were possible.
With Manifesta, it is a question of thinking differently. And we can imagine how important the societal stakes are this year in the youngest capital of the Balkans, where it is a question of connecting art, architecture and civil society to imagine a new public space after a war and a self-proclaimed independence, by revealing the assets of a city that aspires to emerge from its quasi-invisibility. Yes, contemporary art, contemporary creation, contemporary culture, can be a real catalyst for social change. "It is not a question of putting exhibitions in the city and hanging paintings," Hedwig Fijen stressed at the opening of Manifesta in Pristina on 22 July. And yet we see paintings, sculptures, installations, videos and all kinds of contemporary art in Pristina. But they are there to concretely change the world. To live in society.
In the contemporary art magazine Art Press, published in July and August, the Berlin-based art critic and curator Thibaut de Ruyter wrote a very convincing article about Manifesta's ambition to have a concrete local anchor, as if to respond to the critics who often accuse this kind of major cultural event of being disconnected from the context in which it takes place. It must be said that he met Catherine Nichols, the Berlin-based Australian who was entrusted with the curatorship of this edition of the famous nomadic biennial. The young woman is convinced that Manifesta's typical sustainable and contextual approach, based on urbanology, really makes all the difference.
She therefore began by studying the urban study commissioned this year from the Carlo Ratti Associati architectural firm, which went far beyond simply identifying the places that could host the event's exhibitions, performances and other artistic interventions. The aim was to define a long-term strategy that would leave local cultural institutions capable of continuing the work initiated by Manifesta after 30 October 2022, the date of its closure. Catherine Nichols has thus chosen emblematic places such as the Grand Hotel Pristina, whose imposing architecture is coupled with a turbulent history, and the National Library of Kosovo: major examples of the former Eastern bloc's impressive "modern socialist" architectural style. It is of course "natural that the biennial should appropriate them and demonstrate their potential for the future", writes Thibaut de Ruyter. At the risk of seeing them swallowed up in the contemporary ruins, as they have difficulty finding their place in the world heritage.
But the art critic is pleased to note that "Manifesta will also be found in a brick factory, a very Soviet 'Palace of Youth and Sports', a cinema, the Museum of Ethnography and various public spaces". Rather than listing the artists who will be present at Manifesta 14, he prefers to explain to us how Catherine Nichols is finally writing a book in Pristina. How she carries out her curatorial work like an author. By placing "her reflection under the aegis of Hannah Arendt who defines story-stelling as a social and political practice". Thibaut de Ruyter believes that the English word "storytelling" is the most appropriate to explain Catherine Nichols' approach. "Her exhibitions 'read' like stories," he writes.
According to him, the long title of Manifesta 14 Pristina, "it matters what worlds world worlds: how to tell stories otherwise", is both poetic and programmatic. With, in French, "Peu importe quels mondes monde mondes: comment raconter des histoires autrement", Catherine Nichols takes up the challenge of exploring new ways of telling collective stories. Her concept literally places storytelling at the heart of how we live as a society. Without hierarchies or boundaries. He sees the creation of stories as a way to open our minds to new ways of thinking, so that we can imagine a new future for the city of Pristina in particular, and for Kosovo in general.
Seven floors, seven chapters. Transition. Migration. Love. Speculation. Capital (economic). Water. Ecology. "By making a famous hotel the starting point of the artistic journey through the city, Catherine Nichols is not only choosing a building that loses some of its old-fashioned luxury every year, where Tito probably slept, where Vladimir Nabokov wrote for years. She chose "one of those spaces where we all have our stories. Whether it's the nightly encounters at the bar, the guests we observe at breakfast, or the interactions with the staff, hotels are places of self-invention.
The art programme features more than 100 participating artists in 25 locations, 37 of whom are from Kosovo and 23 from the Western Balkans region. As Thibaut de Ruyter points out, with this programme, which gives pride of place to local artists, Catherine Nichols demonstrates above all "that any self-respecting biennial must take into account the actors of the local scene, to put them forward - and she invites us to discover them".