"Understanding cultural diversity is perhaps one of the greatest challenges of our global interdependence. As economic borders disintegrate and political borders shift, what remains are cultures."--Henry Kaufman, economic forecaster
How does art change with a changing world? A four-year museumwide initiative that put the Walker Art Center's visual, performing, film/video, and new media curators, and its education staff in close contact with colleagues from around the world and took them to Brazil, China, India, Japan, South Africa, and Turkey has resulted in a season of multidisciplinary programming that rethinks how contemporary art and culture are defined and presented in a global context. Anchoring the initiative, supported by a grant from The Bush Foundation, is the exhibition "How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age," premiering in Minneapolis February 9--May 4. Over the course of the Walker's 2002--2003 season, film, performance, Web-based art from around the globe, and an array of educational and interpretive programs aim to explode expectations of what art is and can be, across borders and artistic disciplines. How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age, curated by Philippe Vergne with Douglas Fogle and Olukemi Ilesanmi, will travel to Torino, Italy; Houston, Texas; and additional venues to be announced.
A Walker After Hours Preview Party on Saturday, February 8, features live performances throughout the evening by the Rio-based Cabelo; South African artist Robin Rhode; the Los Angeles-based band the Melvins performing the soundtrack to the Cameron Jamie film "BB"; and choreographer Ralph Lemon and Dje Dje Gervais from Africa.
How is art from other latitudes being made and displayed? How does it travel and translate from the locales where it is conceived to the global arena? Are new meanings being produced and original assumptions lost over the journey? A grant from The Bush Foundation in 1999 allowed for the formation of a global committee made up of curators and scholars from around the world: Walter Chakela, Director, Windybrow Theater, Johannesburg, South Africa; Vishakha N. Desai, Senior Vice President/Director, Galleries and Cultural Programs, the Asia Society, New York; Hou Hanru, Paris-based independent curator-critic with an emphasis on contemporary Chinese art; Paulo Herkenhoff, independent curator, Sao Paulo, Brazil, and former Adjunct Curator, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Vasif Kortun, Director and founder of Proje4L and Istanbul Contemporary Art Museum, Istanbul; Hidenaga Otori, theater critic, Tokyo, Japan; and Baraka Sele, Curator and Producer, New Jersey Performing Arts Center World Festival, Newark, New Jersey. Committee members met at the Walker twice a year for five days each time to expand the theoretical reach of Walker curators and educators, critique Walker programs, and help Walker curators make contacts in their home countries. The results of these conversations and travels are highlighted in a season of programming featuring an array of new work from countries represented by the Global Committee members, as well as Argentina, Cuba, the Czech Republic, Mali, and Pakistan.
While the coming year's programming is the culmination of four years of work, it's also a beginning. Becoming a good global partner required the Walker to examine its own practices while learning how art is defined and made in cultures across the continents. The theme of both the exhibition and the programs suggests a level of experimentation and an opening to the world that gives contemporary art a new kind of latitude. The issues raised in "How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age"--how global change impacts art, the blurring of lines between disciplines, how a global sensibility takes physical shape--will continue to be a part of the Walker's mission.
The exhibition "How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age" examines ways that globalization, or the "new internationalism in art," is affecting visual culture. Twenty-eight artists, both emerging and mid-career (many making their American debut), from Brazil, China, India, Japan, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States are represented. Their work is determinedly individualized, yet provocatively informed by its cultural context. Their practices transcend national boundaries without surrendering their specificity.
Ranging from drawings to architectural structures, new-media installations to documentary films, the works in How Latitudes Become Forms resist simplistic artistic designations. Engaging and challenging as they might be, these multifaceted pieces invite us to acknowledge that there cannot be a homogenous definition of what constitutes a work of art and that the criteria of evaluation should constantly be reassessed. Many of these works dwell in a realm between technical and conceptual borders, combining popular culture, the mundane, and tradition to reveal the subversive, expansive power of art.
Often creating site-specific, collaborative works and privileging process over form, the exhibition artists stretch the definitions of their media. Embracing a sense of civic responsibility that redefines activism, they seem to prefer "making art politically" rather than "making political art." Their work explores concepts of the local and the global, but avoids making a distinction between the two. "How Latitudes Become Forms" presents projects intended to be explored by artists and audiences together in an alternative and open-ended reflection on the ongoing shifts in our global age.
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