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 Manifestation internationale d'art de Québec |
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MANIF D'ART 5 MANIF D'ART 5from may 1rst to June 13th 2010Manif d’art 5 Selects Atlanta-based CuratorManifestation internationale d’art de Québec is pleased to announce the appointment of Sylvie Fortin, Editor-in-Chief of the award-winning international contemporary art magazine ART PAPERS, as curator of the Manif d’art 5, to be held in 2010. Manif d’art will celebrate its 5th anniversary with Fortin’s project in 2010. Claude Bélanger, Executive/Artistic Director of the Manifestation, remarked, "I am delighted to entrust the curatorship of the Manif’s 2010 edition to Sylvie Fortin, whose work has consistently tackled challenging, timely questions through informed, yet unorthodox, artistic choices. Fortin’s project will explore provocative ideas and showcase the work of today’s most fascinating artists. The Manif’s international profile has been consistently growing over the past decade. Fortin’s appointment reiterates our commitment to both our community and the world. In addition to her experience and renown, Fortin has previously lived and worked in Quebec City. As such, she understands the unique character of the Quebec art scene, Her Biennale will bring the globe to our city, while reflecting our event’s unique role as both nexus and catalyst." Fortin said "I am honored to have been selected to curate the 5th Manif d’art. I look forward to take on the challenge of creating an exciting, citywide event that brings some of today’s most provocative artists and thinkers to Quebec City in 2010. I hope to use this opportunity to commission challenging works, put together a high-energy, thought-provoking event, and engage the public in fresh, meaningful ways. The Manif’s format—citywide thematic exhibition, symposium, publication, and public programs—provides the ideal vehicle to work through timely ideas. In addition, the rich mix of arts and cutural institutions in Quebec City, and their impressive production capacity, provide a unique context from which to focus on artists, ideas, and production." Sylvie Fortin’s appointment will be announced tonight at a reception hosted by the Québec Government Office in New York on the occasion of the Armory Show and other art fairs in New York. In late March, Fortin will reveal the theme of the 5th Manif d’art. Haut de page SYLVIE FORTIN
Sylvie Fortin is an independent curator, art historian, critic and editor who has worked internationally since 1991. She became Editor-in-Chief of ART PAPERS in October 2004, spearheading the magazine’s redefinition and redesign, which positioned it as a leading international contemporary art magazine. ART PAPERS now counts subscribers in over 50 countries. She became Executive Director/Editor of ART PAPERS in November 2007. Fortin was Curator of Contemporary Art at the Ottawa Art Gallery (Ottawa, Ontario, 1996—2001), Program Coordinator at la chambre blanche (Quebec City, Quebec, 1991-1994), and a long-term collaborator with OBORO (Montreal, Quebec, 1994-2001). Her critical essays have been published in Canadian, American and European catalogues, and her reviews have appeared in many periodicals including Art Press, C Magazine, Espace, Fuse, NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art and Parachute. Fortin studied Art History at the University of Toronto, Université Laval, and Duke University. She has received numerous significant grants and awards as a critic and curator, as well as for her academic research. Fortin was named Lexus Leader of the Arts in December 2007. Haut de pageTHE THEMECatastrophe? Quelle catastrophe! While catastrophe dominates the contemporary imaginary and mainstream media, its real work remains elusive. Its hypervisibility safeguards its foundational, requisite invisibility. Which is to say that the omnipresence of the catastrophic event acts as a smokescreen, ensuring the very invisibility of catastrophe's real work. Politically, the catastrophic event is used to legitimize the enactment of states of exception. But in recent years, catastrophe has also been put to preemptive use. We no longer need a catastrophe to be subjected to the logic of catastrophe. As such, its temporality has shifted, its operational terrain expanded to the entirety of time and space. So much so that catastrophe has become the condition of contemporary life. If, in the midst of WWII, Walter Benjamin could define history as "one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage," Slavoj Zizek has recently demonstrated that catastrophe has expanded to the future, "the true catastrophe already is this life under the shadow of the permanent threat of catastrophe." Daily life is now the playground of low-level, yet dreary, incessant, inescapable, catastrophe. It is also the theater of exception where democracy and equality are reduced to mere form. Once the climax of Greek plays and poems, catastrophe is now the wallpaper of our daily lives, the score of our everyday drama. But the concept of catastrophe operates in an expanded sphere, which includes mathematics and biology, in addition to literature and theory. This project will bring together new and recent art work from artists working around the world in order to discern and present strategies of resistance to the wreckage of catastrophe's slow, incessant, non-spectacular work. In order to do so, it will deploy a number of complementary platforms over an extended period of time--working groups, conferences, publications, exhibitions, screenings, performances, as well as an online seminar. The project will delve into a number of questions, which will concomitantly refine the notion of catastrophe and pressure visual arts' foundational concepts: 1. Imaging catastrophe / Image as catastrophe / The catastrophic image |
