MJ Manifesta Journal

MJ Manifesta Journal is international magazin focused on the theories and practices of contemporary curatorship. It is based on the concept developed by curators Viktor Misiano (Moscow) and Igor Zabel (Ljubljana), chief editors of the first generation of MJ Manifesta Journal being published between 2003 and 2005 by Museum of Modern Art Ljubljanaand International Foundation Manifesta (IFM).

Concept

Manifesta Journal is an international magazine analyzes and investigates current developments, related to the developments in the Manifesta Biennial over the course of the past decade. The main aim of the journal is to give a stronger voice to the up-and-coming group of non-institutional curators, intellectuals, theorists and critics, who together can use this opportunity to articulate their positions and discuss their professional stance within a pan-European and transcontinental context. Justified by what is now the “stable” status of the curator, by the diversity within the broader community of professional curators and by the network of curatorial schools, programs and courses in Europe and beyond, Manifesta Journal intends to fulfill an otherwise vacant duty – the establishment of curatorial self-reflection and investigation.

History

Three years after Manifesta 3, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art, which was held in Ljubljana in the summer 2000 under the topic Do You Suffer From A Borderline Syndrome? Where do YOU draw the line? Viktor Misiano and Igor Zabel as concept originator and chief editors started to publish in 2003 MJ Manifesta Journal. In English language published journal appeared then twice a year.

After Igor Zabel, Slovenian Manifesta 3 coordinator, senior curator of the Moderna Galerija and one of both chief editors of MJ Manifesta Jornal, in July 2005 passed away, as a tribute to him was in the year 2008 published the recollection of all JM Manifesta Jornals including the new sixth addition. The publication in two pats is entitled First Six Editions: Reprints.

Since 2009 the new era of the MJ Manifesta Journal has been commenced. For a two-year period International Foundation Manifesta started to work on the second series of six of Manifesta Journals. Manifesta Journal is still the initiative of the Manifesta Foundation, Amsterdam and it is in its second era published together with Italian publication partner Silvana Editoriale Spa, Milano.

Contents of all MJ Manifesta Journals

2003-2005: First Era of the MJ Manifesta Journal

MJ#1 The Revenge of the White Cube? (Spring / Summer 2003)

About how cultural strategies in the 1980s and 1990s were turned against the white cube, trying to relate the works, projects and exhibitions to actual time and space and to the social and political realities. The "white cube" was considered to be out of time and space, an ideal, a sterile, utopian place for no less sterile autonomous art. Several recent exhibitions and other events, including the last Documenta XI, indicate a different understanding of the "white cube" and a new importance of white cube strategies for curatorial work today. With contributions by: Beti Žerovc, Boris Groys, Hedwig Fijen, Art & Language, Bart de Baere, Iara Boubnova, Branislav Dimitrijevic, Charles Esche, WHW, Viktor Misiano and Igor Zabel.

MJ#2 Biennials (Winter 2003 / Spring 2004)

About the complex role of biennials of contemporary art and other big art events in a globalizing society. There has been a lot of discussions of importance and role of these events. The extraordinary, global expansion of the number of such events, not only in big centres, but also in smaller cities and sometimes in transitional situations has been both criticized as hypertrophied and praised as a way of decentralizing art system and connecting it to a wider global audience. The aims of the issue are both a reflection upon the role and possibilities that such art events in different social and cultural contexts and a reflection upon the background of these developments. With contributions by: Okwui Enwezor, Pablo Helguera, Thomas Wulffen, Slavoj Žižek, Rosa Martinez, Francesco Bonami, Carlos Basualdo, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Vasif Kortun & Serkan Ozkaya, Lev Evzovich, Michele Robecchi, Isabel Carlos,and Edi Muka.

MJ#3 Exhibition as a Dream (Spring / Summer 2004)

About how there have been a lot of exhibitions and other events dealing with the issue of dreams recently. Dreams have been connected to art for a very long time. What is important, however, that they have become one of the major cultural paradigms of the last century. They are a key concept in the Freudian understanding of the unconscious, a crossing point of the personal and social, and a compromise between desires and cultural repression. Moreover, the concept of dreams has an even more obvious social dimension as 'social dreams', utopian way of thinking. In both contexts, dreams are tightly connected to curatorial work. The issue discusses the concept of dreams as it appears in the recent curatorial work, and point at the issue of the role of curator's unconscious. With contributions by: Viktor Mazin, Valery Podoroga, Udo Kittelman, Robert Fleck, Nicolas Bourriaud, Luca Cerizza, Raimundas Malasauskas, Giacinto di Pietrantonio, D.A.E., Alia Rayyan, Maria Hlavajova, Kathrin Rhomberg, Gregor Jansen, Victor Palacios, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jochen Volz, Pavel Pepperstein, Una Szeemann, Alicia Framis, Tobias Berger, WHW.

MJ#4 Teaching Curatorship (Autumn / Winter 2004)

About how the curator of the contemporary art is a relatively new feature in the world of contemporary art and how it has developed and established itself very quickly. An important part of this process has been the development of an educational system for curators. There have been a growing number of curatorial schools and courses, from short workshops to full programs of graduate studies. Just as it is the case with art education, however, curatorial education seems to be a complicated issue. What can be taught and learned in such a process? Can curatorial schools transmit merely technological skills and general information or can they shape and develop one's fundamental positions and understanding of art? Are such schools merely a system of self-reproduction of the system, or do they enable their students positions that oppose conventions and routines? A number of people involved in the process of curatorial education are invited to reflect upon these and other issues. With contributions by: Zoran Eric, Stevan Vukovic, Paul Brewer, Mercedes Vicente, Rainer Ganahl, Dominic Willsdon, Kate Fowle, Angela Vettese, Sasa Nabergoj, Catherine Hemelryk, Alice Vergara-Bastiand, Robert Fleck, Pier Liugi Tazzi, Cloe Piccoli, Teresa Gleadowe, Pip Day, Natasa Petresin, Karina Ericsson Warn, Mans Wrange, Richard Flood a.o.

MJ#5 Artist & Curator and Archive (Spring / Summer 2005)

Discussing the circumstances under which the distinctions between those who create and those who mediate, in terms of organiser, facilitator to collaborator in the creative process with the artist, have become blurred. Is curating a meta-discourse or does it exist on the same level as an art practice? What influence has institutional critique had on institutional practice? Should artists influence the structures and processes of institutions? Why, when, and how? With contributions by: Ami Barak, Francesco Manacorda, Andrew Renton, Beti Žerovc, Huib Haye van der Werf, Jens Hoffmann, Alex Farquharson, Marieke van Hal, Viktor Misiano, Barbara Steiner, Lu Jie, Anton Vidokle, Issa Touma, Maria Rus Bojan, Janka Vukmir and Michele Robecchi.

MJ#6 Memory of the Show (Autumn / Winter 2005, first published in the book Reprints in 2008)

About how the memory of the show explores the task and meaning of the archive, as both a facility and a concept in the field of contemporary art. Artists’ archives and archives related to museums (such as its permanent collections) have gained prominence in our cultural discourse since the turn of the millennium. But how should an exhibition or a biennial be documented or archived? And is a curator’s archive worth keeping for memory? With contributions by: Chiara Bertola, Francesco Manacorda, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Arlette Farge, Bruce Altshuler, Sandra Frimmel, Jurgen Harten, Matthias Müller, Peter Piller, Rafal Niemojewski, Vadim Zakharov, Yasmine Van Pee, Leif Magne Tangen, Frédéric Maufras, Anton Vidokle, Marieke van Hal, Roomer’s Sight and Henry Meyric Hughes.

2008: First Six Editions: Reprints

As rupture between both generations of the MJ Manifersta Journal the book in two parts First Six Editions: Reprints tributed to Igor Zabel was published in the year 2008.

since 2009: Second Era of the MJ Manifesta Journal

The first issue of the new series the Manifesta Journal 7 entitled The Grammar of the Exhibition was launched on the 17th 2009 from by the Manifesta Foundation and hosted by Fonds BKVB in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

MJ#7 Grammar of the Exhibition

The seventh issue of MF Manifesta Journal Grammar of the Exhibition focuses on the fundamental aspects of curating. In this context, grammar is defined as the linguistics and vocabulary of curating, and it also considered an accepted methodology to help interpret and define the ideas, decisions and actions of the curator. Subdivided in various sections, a differentiated group of authors has been invited to contribute to MJ#. Within the section Positions, Anselm Franke investigates the grammar of exhibitions under the conditions of the society of control. Within Discourse, Mieke Bal undertakes an analysis of the curatorial syntax by comparing the exhibitions 2MOVE (Belfast, Oslo, etc. 2007-2008) and Partners (Munich, 2002-2003). Mary Anne Staniszewski traces the grammar of exhibitions at the New York art institution Exit Art by making a close reading of their long-term program in the section Studies, while Cathleen Chaffee focuses on Marcel Broodthaers and his Musee d’Art Moderne exhibitions. Documents includes RoseLee Goldberg's seminal text Space as Praxis (1975), which is republished as an important document on the definition of space in artistic and curatorial practices. MJ#7 includes contributions by: Zeigam Azizov, Mieke Bal, Cathleen Chaffee, Anselm Franke, RoseLee Goldberg, Milena Hoegsberg, Bartomeu Marí, Isabel Tejeda Martín, Peter Osborne, Filipa Ramos, Marco Scotini, Mary Anne Staniszewski, Markéta Stará.

External links

MJ Manifesta Journal

Contents