IN A sudden move, the non-profit organisation Nicosia for Art (NFA), established by Nicosia Municipality for the sole purpose of overseeing European Contemporary Art Biennale Manifesta 6 (M6), has terminated its contracts with both the Amsterdam-based International Foundation Manifesta (IFM) and three curators responsible for developing the biennale’s concept and implementation, Florian Waldvogel, Anton Vidokle and Mai Abu ElDahab.
“Last night we received a letter from Mr [Michalakis] Zampelas, the Mayor of Nicosia, saying that we are effectively fired from the project,” said Vidokle yesterday.
“That is what happened. It is very sad that the project comes to this end and we are being arbitrarily fired.
“We have been notified that they cancelled Manifesta 6 and we are very much regretting that this is all taking place,” commented IFM executive director Hedwig Fijen.
“We were looking forward to having Manifesta in Nicosia. At the present moment, the Board of Manifesta Foundation is considering its possible strategies.”
The curators told the Cyprus Mail that the letter of termination they received contained a paragraph stating they could not reveal any of its content and that if they did so they would be immediately sued by the Municipality.
“So at this point it is best not to mention the content of this letter,” said Vidokle.
Meanwhile NFA’s president and Nicosia Mayor Zampelas and its board issued an official statement explaining that the main reason for terminating the contracts was the insistence of both the curators and IFM on locating part of the Manifesta 6 Art School in north Nicosia.
“NFA made repeated efforts to lift the deadlock calling upon IFM for a discussion of the issues involved,” said the letter. “NFA also called upon the curatorial team to engage in mediation in accordance with the terms of the curators’ contracts. IFM declined to engage in immediate talks with the purpose of lifting the existing deadlock; the curators also rejected any form of mediation.”
But both the curators and Fejin were adamant that, contrary to the Municipality’s claim, they had made every possible effort to end the deadlock.
“We tried to resolve the problem during the official final mediation between us [the curators] and the spokesman of the municipality last Friday,” said Waldvogel.
“During the meeting the municipality disagreed with every point we wanted to discuss with them.”
“They didn’t want to negotiate,” agreed Vidokle. “There was no attempt on their side to find some kind of acceptable compromise in any part of the problems, whatever they were, logistic, administrative or financial. Nothing. There were no negotiations.”
According to a report in yesterday’s Phileleftheros, NFA called IFM and the curators to an eleventh-hour meeting aimed at averting the crisis, with NFA representatives even travelling to Amsterdam. “However, neither the curators nor IFM agreed to the meeting,” the paper said.
Fejin denied such a version of the events.
“We are always ready for mediation but it was impossible for us to organise such a meeting with such a short notice,” she said. “They sent us a request on Tuesday evening and came to Amsterdam without even waiting for us to reply. They seem not to understand that it was impossible for us to bring people who would participate in such a panel to Amsterdam within 48 hours. We proposed an alternative date, a week later, but they didn’t want to wait.”
Manifesta 6, one of the most important European art biennales, was to take place in Nicosia from September 23 to December 17.
