Installations, videos and projects in public space by Oliver Ressler
Je profite d’un message d’Olivier pour vous présenter son remarquable travail : résistance, géographie, territoire, espace... l’artiste autrichien Olivier Ressler, joue et se joue de tout
►http://www.ressler.at/category/projects
1. Take The Square A 3-channel video installation, 2012
►http://www.ressler.at/take_the_square
The emergence of the movements of the squares and the Occupy movement in 2011 can be seen as a reaction by people who opposed and began to fight the massive increase in social inequality and the dismantling of democracy in times of global financial and economic crisis. The movements of the squares are non-hierarchical and reject representation; direct democracy shapes their activities. The occupation of public places serves as a catalyst to develop demonstrations, general strikes, meetings and working groups on different focal points. Successful site occupancies in one place often inspire occupations in other cities, without a linear relationship.
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2. After the Crisis is Before the Crisis
►http://www.wyspa.art.pl/title,OliverResslerSpatialOccupations,pid,44,oid,38,cid,381,type,4.html
Oliver Ressler will present a new body of work that addresses the starting points and implications of the global financial and economic crisis as well as the underlying flaws in the model of parliamentary democracy revealed by the crisis. Ressler’s films and installations are often based on interview situations in which the artist creates a platform for the concerns of his protagonists. Exemplary is the 8-channel video installation /What is Democracy/ (2009), which was shown at Wyspa Institute of Art in 2010, in which by means of interviews with activists he essentially formulates a global analysis of the deep political crisis facing the western model of democracy. This crisis is manifested in the fact that elections in parliamentary democracies increasingly become rituals devoid of meaning, while the real decisions are made outside of public debates. Ressler’s wall text /Elections are a Con/ (2011) alerts us to this danger, while the wall text /Too Big to Fail/ (2011) and the films /The Bull Laid Bear/ (2012, co-directed with Zanny Begg) and /Robbery/ (2012) explore the handling of the financial and economic crisis, the bailout of banks and its social consequences.
3. Cartographies of Hope: Change Narratives
►http://www.dox.cz/en/exhibitions/cartographies-of-hope-change-narratives
“It’s not the story of the battle; it’s the battle of the story!”
Patrick Reinsborough
In the last few years we have witnessed how the corrosion of the three main modes of social imaginary that defined modernity – the market economy, the public sphere, and the self-government of citizens – has reached a critical point. As a result, the increasing number of people in different fields, social scientists, artists, public intellectuals, and activists are calling for rethinking and reinventing social change. Such voices, however, are too often fragmented in their respective boundaries, and, consequently, they have not yet been able to articulate a compelling alternative metanarrative that the public would identify with and which would thus result in a major positive change.
4. Occupy Everything
Die mit der Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise verstärkt einhergehende Umverteilung von unten nach oben brachte 2011 neue Protestbewegungen hervor: den „Arabischen Frühling“, die Platzbesetzungsbewegungen in Spanien und Griechenland, und die von den USA ausgehende Occupy-Bewegung. Obwohl diese Bewegungen nicht direkt miteinander in Verbindung stehen, haben sie doch einiges gemeinsam: Es sind regional agierende, nicht-hierarchische Bewegungen, die Repräsentation ablehnen und Entscheidungen auf direkt-demokratische Weise fällen. Der Besetzung von zentralen öffentlichen Plätzen kommt die Rolle eines Katalysators für die Formulierung und Herausbildung politischer Projekte und Arbeitsgruppen durch die Beteiligten zu. Erfolgreiche Platzbesetzungen an einem Ort inspirieren dabei oftmals zu Besetzungen in anderen Städten.
