Manifesto Series: DOUBLE
Tuesday March 6, 2012
MANIFESTO SERIES: Double
March 6, 2012
6:30pm–9:00pm
Manifesto Series: Double marked the arrival of Serkan Ozkaya’s David (inspired by Michelangelo) in New York. The event at Storefront included a live staging of manifestos, on the topic of Double by a group of distinguished panelists consisting of artists, architects, critics, historians and theorists, discussing the effects, desires and implications in the act of doubling, replicating or copying. The presentation of the manifestos was followed by a discussion between the presenters moderated by Ozkaya.
Participants included Christopher Eamon (independent curator), Cristina Goberna (Fake industries), Alanna Heiss ( Clocktower Gallery) , Spyros Papapetros (Princeton University), Hrag Vartanian (Hyperallergic), and Ines Weizman (Architectural Association School of Architecture London).
DOUBLE is now available as a publication, as one of the first publications to be born out of the Manifesto Book Series. Click here for more.
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The Manifesto Series is part of an effort to encourage the formulation of positions in relation to selected topics and instigate spirited discussion and exchange in a dynamic and polemical context. The format therefore differs from that of a typical symposium.
The event concluded at 9pm with the launch of David (inspired by Michelangelo) on its journey home to 21c Museum . 21c Museum acquired the work by Ozkaya in 2010, and in 2011 commissioned the 30-foot-tall sculpture’s journey from Istanbul to New York and on to the museum’s home in Louisville, Kentucky.
About David (inspired by Michelangelo)
David (inspired by Michelangelo) is a double-size, golden replica of Michelangelo’s David. Based on Stanford University professor Marc Levoy’s computer model, Ozkaya’s sculpture was constructed by six people over the course of six months. Originally created for presentation at the 9th International Istanbul Biennial in 2005, the sculpture collapsed days prior to the opening of the Biennial and the artist later restored the damaged replica and cast two additional copies, one that remains in Turkey and one of which has been recently acquired by 21c Museum in Louisville, Kentucky.
Ozkaya notes, “I wanted to use the potential of the 3D model to recreate the most precious man-made object; one which I had never seen for myself. I took the liberty to imagine it twice as tall and in gold. The realization of David (inspired by Michelangelo) has been a multi-step process: first it was executed and erected, and it then collapsed in Istanbul. After being rebuilt in Turkey, 21c Museum arranged its recent transfer to New York. Soon it will emerge on the streets of the city and head towards its home at 21c in Louisville.”
David (inspired by Michelangelo) and its collapse are featured in Danila Cahen’s film, Friendly Enemies (2010). The process is also documented in the 340-page Rise and Fall and Rise of David (inspired by Michelangelo), published by 21c Museum and Yapi Kredi (2011). The book will be available for sale at the event.
About the artist
Serkan Ozkaya (b. 1973, Istanbul, Turkey) is a contemporary conceptual artist whose work deals with topics of appropriation and reproduction, and typically operates outside of traditional art spaces. Ozkaya lives in New York City. He holds a Ph. D in German Language and Literature from Istanbul University and an M.F.A. from Bard College, New York.
Ozkaya’s latest works include Spaghetti Chair, made from fifteen sticks of spaghetti; David (inspired by Michelangelo), made from a 3D rendering program at two-times the size of the original; a site-specific sculpture called A Sudden Gust of Wind, simulating the sudden and unexpected scattering of papers; the hand-rendering of newspapers including the Turkish daily Radikal, and the front page of the Louisville Courier-Journal; and a contribution to a walking museum, Atlas, wherein Ozkaya constructed a rock to be strapped to the curator’s back and promenaded daily throughout the streets of New York. Ozkaya is the author of nine books, including Genius and Creativity in the Arts: Schoenberg, Adorno and Thomas Mann (Pan Publications, Istanbul, 2000), It’s Not What it Looks Like! I Can Explain (Baglam Publications, Istanbul, 2003), Today Could Be a Day of Historical Importance (artwithoutwalls, Louisville, 2010), and The Rise and Fall and Rise of David (inspired by Michelangelo) (21c Museum and Yapi Kredi, Louisville, 2011).
About the Presenters
Christopher Eamon is a New York-based independent curator and writer. He is the former Director of the New Art Trust, San Francisco, and Curator of the distinguished Pamela and Richard Kramlich Collection, San Francisco. He was previously an Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and has curated shows of video and new media art at PS1/MOMA, ICA London, and SFMOMA, among others. Recent curated exhibitions included Rearview Mirror: New Art from Central and Eastern Europe at The Power Plant Centre for Contemporary Art, Toronto, Alexandre Singh (Solo Presentation) at Spruth Magers, Berlin and Beyond Cinema: The Art of Projection at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum.
Cristina Goberna is a fencer, architect and faculty member at GSAPP, but overall, she orchestrates – with Urtzi Grau – Fake Industries Architectural Agonism, an architectural office of variable humor and questionable taste that explores the power of Replicas that is, the potential of copies and positive disagreements as engines for the advancement in the field.
Alanna Heiss, Director of ARTonAIR.org and the Clocktower Gallery, is a leader of the early 1970’s alternative spaces movement in New York City, beginning with Under the Brooklyn Bridge, a 1971 outdoor exhibition she organized with Gordon Matta-Clark, and featuring installations by pioneering American and European artists. She founded the legendary Clocktower Gallery in 1972, founded P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in 1976, and was its Director until 2008. Heiss has organized over 700 exhibitions at P.S.1 and in art spaces around the world, including the inaugural P.S.1 exhibition Rooms (1976); New York, New Wave (1981); Stalin’s Choice: Soviet Socialist Realism, 1932-1956 (1993); Greater New York (2000 and 2005, selecting curator), and Arctic Hysteria (2008); as well as solo shows including Robert Grosvenor (1976); Keith Sonnier (1983); Alex Katz: Under the Stars, American Landscapes 1951-1995 (1998); John Wesley: Paintings 1961-2000 (2000), and Gino De Dominicis (2008), among numerous others. In 2003 founded Art Radio WPS1.org, the Internet radio station of P.S.1 and first ever all-art museum station. Among her numerous publications are catalogues of the work of Janet Cardiff, Alex Katz, Dennis Oppenheim, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Katharina Sieverding, and John Wesley.
Heiss was Commissioner of the 1985 Paris Biennial, and Commissioner of the 1986 American Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. She is the recipient of the Mayor’s Award for Contributions to the Artistic Viability of New York City, France’s Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in the Légion d’Honneur, the Royal Swedish Order of the Polar Star, the Skowhegan Award for outstanding work in the arts, and the CCS Bard Award for Curatorial Excellence.
Spyros Papapetros is Assistant Professor, History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University. He is an art and architectural historian and theorist whose work focuses on the historiography of art and architecture, the intersections between architecture and the visual arts, as well as, the relationship between architecture, psychoanalysis and the history of psychological aesthetics. A former Fulbright scholar, he is also the recipient of a scholarship from the Townsend Center for the Humanities at Berkeley and two postdoctoral Research Fellowships from the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. During 2002-2003, he was an associate fellow at the Warburg Institute in London where he researched the unpublished manuscripts of Aby Warburg. In the spring of 2006 he was a visiting Scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles contributing to the theme of “The Persistence of Antiquity.” In 2007-2008, he returned to the Getty Research Institute as a Getty Scholar contributing to the yearly theme “Change.” He is the author of On the Animation of the Inorganic: Art, Architecture, and the Extension of Life (forthcoming by the University of Chicago Press, 2011) and the editor of Space as Membrane by Siegfried Ebeling (London: AA Publications, 2010).
Hrag Vartanian is editor of Hyperallergic and a member of the Triangle Arts Association board. He’s a Brooklyn-based writer, editor and art critic who has written extensively about street art , performance art, the internet and issues of multiculturalism. He tweets a lot.
Ines Weizman is an architect and theorist based in London. She was trained as an architect at the Bauhaus University Weimar and the Ecole d’Architecture de Belleville in Paris, Cambridge University, and the Architectural Association where she completed her PhD thesis in History and Theory. She taught at the Architectural Association, Goldsmiths College London, the Berlage Institute of Architecture in Rotterdam and currently London Metropolitan University. She researches and publishes on the ideological spectacles enacted by Soviet-era architecture, particularly on the urban historiography of what was East Germany. Attempting to understand figures and practices of dissidence in architecture, she is organizing an international conference “Architecture and the Paradox of Dissidence” that will take place in London in November 2012. www.dissidence.org.uk Her recent project for an architectural re-enactment of Adolf Loos’ 1927 ‘House for Josephine Baker’ in Paris is conceived as an excise in critical appropriation, and radical copying. Following this project, she is at present, together with Sam Jacob directing a research cluster at the Architectural Association on “Architectural Doppelgangers.”
About 21c Museum
21c Museum is North America’s first museum dedicated to solely collecting and exhibiting the art of the 21st century. The 9,000-square foot Museum is part of the 21c Museum Hotel, located in downtown Louisville’s art and theater district. Opened in 2006, 21c was founded by Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, arts patrons who are committed to bringing works of art to the public through innovative exhibitions and programs that integrate contemporary art into daily life. 21c Museum features permanent installations and special exhibitions by both emerging and established artists. Currently on view is Alter Ego: A Decade of Work by Anthony Goicolea, organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art and Telfair Museums, Savannah, in collaboration with 21c Museum. Over 35 exhibitions have been featured at 21c since its opening, including Cuba Now, Simen Johan: Until the Kingdom Comes, Creating Identity: Portraits Today, All’s Fair in Art and War: Envisioning Conflict, and Hybridity: The Evolution of Species and Spaces in 21st-Century Art.
