Tanja Ostojić: Strategies of Success / Curators Series, 2001-2003 (2004) [English/Serbian/French]

“Tanja Ostojić is an interdisciplinary artist from Belgrade who lives and works in Berlin. In her provocative performances, she investigates the position of women within contemporary cultural and political power regimes. She uses persiflage, provocation and irony as strategies to expose and subvert the exclusionary mechanisms of European immigration policies and the hierarchies within the Western art world.

In the years 2001 to 2003, Tanja Ostojić worked on the series Strategies of Success / Curator Series, which consists of performances, installations, photographs and a journal. In I’ll Be Your Angel (2001) she accompanied the curator Harald Szeemann during the opening of the 49th Venice Biennale, never leaving his side. She “presented” her conceptual body art work Black Square on White (2001), in which her pubic hair was trimmed in a square, by keeping it hidden. Tanja Ostojić’s other public actions include taking a bubble bath with the Italian curator Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and art critic Ludovico Pratesi in the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome as the lovely ending to a shared gala dinner, and washing the feet of the Belgrade-based curator Stevan Vuković in Sofa for Curator (2002). The only traces of the non-public performance with the Albanian curator Edi Muka, Vacation with Curator (2003), are the photographs taken by the paparazzi she hired. In her work Politics of queer curatorial positions: After Rosa von Praunheim, Fassbinder and Bridge Markland (2003) she and the Slovenian curator and theorist Marina Gržinić re-enact an iconographic scene featuring Gabrielle d’Estrées, mistress to King Henry IV of France, and one of her sisters.” source

With texts by Marina Gržinić, Suzana Milevska, Tanja Ostojić.

Publisher Galérie La Box, Paris, with Student Cultural Center, Belgrade, 2004
Translations by Laurence Chamlou, Danielle Charonnet, Dušan Djordjević Mileusnić
ISBN 2910164322, 9782910164324
144 pages

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Andrea Fraser: L’1% C’est Moi (2011–) [EN, ES]

Andrea Fraser’s essay “L’1% C’est Moi” focuses on the direct relationship between art-market trends and income distribution. The essay’s title refers to the statement “l’état, c’est moi” (“the state, it is me“), attributed to Louis XIV and often evoked to illustrate the principle of absolute monarchy, as well as to Gustave Flaubert’s famous remark, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi.”

“How do the world’s leading collectors earn their money? How do their philanthropic activities relate to their economic operations? And what does collecting art mean to them and how does it affect the art world? If we look at the incomes of this class, it is conspicuous that their profits are based on the growth of income inequality all over the world.

This redistribution of capital in turn has a direct influence on the art market: the greater the discrepancy between the rich and the poor, the higher prices in this market rise. The situation, it would seem, urgently calls for the development of alternatives to the existing system.” (from the essay)

First published in Texte zur Kunst 83, Berlin, September 2011, pp. 114-127
7 pages

There’s No Place Like Home, another essay by the author, contribution to Whitney Biennial 2012
Art and Money by William N. Goetzmann, Luc Renneboog, Christophe Spaenjers (2010)

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English: PDF, PDF
Spanish: PDF, PDF (trans. 2016, added on 2016-12-18)

Önder Özengi (ed.): Relative Positions (2011) [English/Turkish]

This book is based on the April 2009’s exhibition which took place in Suriye passage, Istanbul. The exhibition was focused on creating a temporary art institution during 15 days.

The book consists of the articles departing from art works produced for the exhibition, transcriptions of the talks organized around the exhibition and articles that extend the issues and debates focused by the exhibition itself.

Contributors: Ahmet Ogut, Ashkan Sepahvand, Borga Kanturk, Boris Buden, Brian Holmes, Burak Arikan, Caner Aslan, Deniz Gul, November Paynter, Onder Ozengi, Pelin Tan, Ulus Atayurt.

With works by Borga Kanturk, Inci Furni, Kanalkayıt (Can Altay, Basak Akcakaya, Emrah Kavlak, Taylan Hacirustemoglu, Deniz Erdem, Cagri Kucuksayrac, Pelin Gure, Gulsah Taskin, Sevgi Aka, Nesli Yagli, Kaan Birol), Merve Sendil, Pelin Tan, Vahit Tuna.

Published in October 2011, Istanbul
ISBN 978-605-5612-016

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