ABOUT 1.8 million euros will be spent in total for an international art school that will be the major component of the Manifesta 6 Art Biennial planned to take place in Nicosia between September and December this year.
“So far, we have secured one million euros from three main sponsors: the Ministry of Education and Culture, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism and the Nicosia Municipality,” explained general co-ordinator of the biennial and director of the Nicosia Municipal Art Centre Yiannis Toumazis.
The school, according to its organisers, will be based on the experience of the Black Mountain College created in America in the 30s and also draw from the educational ideas of such prominent artists as members of avant-garde group Fluxus – George Maciunas and Joseph Beuys. It will be postgraduate, international and trans-disciplinary, comprise three departments and consist of about 60 to 100 students. A certain number of places is to be reserved for Cypriots from both the north and the south.
“We will work with certain artists, writers, journalists and political activists, and some of them will be from here and some from abroad, from Europe and other places,” said Russian Anton Vidokle, who along with Egyptian Mai Abu ElDahab and German Florian Waldvogel form the Manifesta 6 curatorial team. “Together in collaboration with these people whom we invited to our first Coffee Break, we are developing a specific programme, lectures, workshops, exhibitions, works, performances, or any kind of other interventions.”
The first Manifesta 6 Coffee Break, which owes its name to the fact that, according to organisers, the most interesting discussions at any conference happen during coffee breaks, took place in Nicosia at the end of January.
“What we did was different from previous Manifestas because here in Nicosia we opened a discussion to the general public nine months before the actual biennial takes place,” commented Waldvogel. “In a normal case, you arrive somewhere, you do something and you have to eat it or leave it but here it was different. And I must say it was really cool because the people wanted to know what was happening. They had questions. And this is how things should start – through communication.”
“I liked the fact that there were so many international people around,” said Stella Angelidou, a Greek Cypriot artist and art educator who attended the two-day conference both at the Pancyprian Gymnasium in south Nicosia and the north’s Arabahmet Cultural Centre. “It was a very open meeting and it worked as a dialogue. A lot of people had a chance to talk and intervene. It was very successful and gave a lot of food for thought.”
Despite these positive comments, both the curators and some participants admitted that many of the questions were much tougher than the usual ones asked during such discussions.
“To be honest the audience had negative electricity,” said one of the speakers, Anber Onar, a Turkish Cypriot artist and university lecturer. “Quite a few of them were opposing the idea immediately. But
I understand why some people felt so apprehensive. They think ‘we are giving all this money so we have right to question’. There’s nothing wrong with it, but they should remember that art is not going to solve politics.”
“Although the speakers did make interesting contributions, the ensuing discussion was a disappointment as the focus was misplaced,” commented another participant, Greek Cypriot art activist Pavlina Paraskevaidou. “The local community was anxious to know how ‘we’ will be involved, but what I was left feeling was that the ‘we’ did not extend beyond the ‘I’. In Cyprus ‘we’ only work as ‘I’ and unless we are able to comprehend the value of collectivity, we can’t build anything on individualism.”
Many concerns expressed at the conference echoed the earlier accusations published in the local press that said both Amsterdam-based International Manifesta Foundation (IMF) and the curators were planning to exploit the political situation in Cyprus, “colonise” the Green Line and bring in an “international clique” who by getting involved in the project will “add valuable points to their CVs”.
But the curators, while admitting it was true that Nicosia was chosen because of its local and regional contexts, insisted the event itself would not concentrate on the Cyprus Problem.
“The Green Line?” said Vidokle. “We don’t want to do anything with the Green Line. Why would you want to place Manifesta there? I mean it is an interesting idea visually but… Somebody (at the conference) stood up and said there is this airport and it is abandoned now and the school should be in the airport, but we want to be where people are, not somewhere in a remote location that nobody can access.”
“We won’t be a tool of political powers, neither Greek Cypriot nor Turkish Cypriot,” added Waldvogel. “We have to be completely autonomous. The whole stuff we heard about the airport and the Green Line is the wrong way to start. Both the airport and the Green Line have become a sort of stage in a theatre and we are supposed to be like actors who play on this stage. Of course, as we all know, in every city the airport is the most symbolic place and the question was also in this direction, but no, thank you, we are not interested.”
The curators seemed, however, quite enthusiastic about the potential outcome of placing the biennial in a place with existing political conflict.
“A lot of people who came to the conference from other places, particularly the people from Beirut, said they really hoped the project was not going to be hijacked by the local politics, but I am very optimistic,” said Vidokle. “I think the issues we are trying to address are unbelievably interesting because they really test certain limits of contemporary culture production and whether it can stand up to these very serious problems or it is going to seem redundant and trivial by comparison. It is a very important question and it is great that we can try to address it here openly. It would be much more difficult to have such a discussion in Berlin or New York.”
“This is precisely why we chose the format of an art school,” he continued. “Because maybe when you try to deal with so much more complex problem and you address it only by a representation it is not enough. Maybe it is a little bit outside of the limit of an exhibition scope. But the school will last for three months. We are actually trying to build an institution, whether it is temporary or permanent. We will be forced into entering a whole set of relations with a specific location, with specific groups of people, government organisations and businesses, so our involvement will become much deeper and not only fixated on visual temporal spectacle. It is not going to be ‘I saw and I left’. So I really think that in Cyprus we have a possibility to try to engage in a more intelligent and comprehensive way.”
Some of the members of the local art scene share this point of view.
“Yes, of course, they chose Nicosia for its local context,” said Garo Keheyan, the Chairman of The Pharos Trust. “But I think this local context can be also treated as universal because it touches such issues as identity, language, ethnicity and religion. So there is a possibility to transcend the local context and build a global dialogue in the artistic community.”
“It is true that Manifesta is coming here because of the situation but I believe it doesn’t matter,” commented Onar. “The same is true about Greek Cypriot artists going to India and exploiting resources there or Turkish Cypriots going to the UK and working on issues there. Yes, Manifesta has an agenda but we should concentrate on how to use it for ourselves.”
And what about the accusation that the art school w
ill be elitist and available only to chosen few?
“We said it during the conference,” answered Vidokle. “I hope that people understand that we are still forming and shaping our ideas and adjusting them to what is happening, and that is why we still can’t really inform everybody about every aspect of it. Because we don’t know what it will be like ourselves and it is still in development. But if anybody is seriously interested in being engaged in this project, ask questions and apply, we are so easy to reach. We are just an e-mail away.”
“I think they want to talk to everybody,” commented Angelidou. “This coffee break was open to all. Everybody was free to say their opinion. Even too much so.”
“I am not concerned if Manifesta internationalises one local curator or one local artist who will then go on to create elsewhere,” added Paraskevaidou. “If Manifesta manages to bring public awareness of contemporary art to the local community, as far as I am concerned it will have achieved a major goal. OK, somebody, and that is we, is paying a huge amount of money for Manifesta coming to Cyprus but so what? We paid a lot of money in the past for much worse art.”
