Free School for Art Theory and Practice
Seminar with Dora García and Chus Martínez

December 14-16, 2007

Participation in the seminar is free.

To take part in the seminar, please send a motivation letter to the
officetranzitinfo.hu address until the 5th of December.

www.tranzit.org

What role may an art institution play in our transforming cultural
landscape? What possible strategies can link the space of contemporary art
production and the social space?
What stand-up comedy and the art of the monologue can teach us, and how the
notions of "delinquency" and "disobedience" are related to institutional
practices?
The December 2007 seminar of the Free School for Art Theory and Practice
launched by tranzit.hu will be held by Chus Martínez, Spanish Curator and
director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein, and Dora García, Spanish artist,
living in Brussels.
In the seminar the lecturers will investigate the institution not only as a
place where to present and discuss contemporary art production but as a
complex social situation that demands interpretation. In the hope of
provoking a vivid discussion they include such topics for investigation like
delinquency and exhibition making, the residency as occupation of a place,
writing as a tool, as well as the situation of medium size institutions and
projects versus the museum or the kunsthalle.

Keynotes for discussion

"The art of the monologue
The expansion of culture as a new form of the entertainment industry has
transformed the space in which artists but also curators operate. If you
operate ignoring the parameters of cultural politics you risk to look like
the family run-shop next door to the supermarket. It is pointless to compete
for the same social ground as the supermarket. Clearly we need a different
space, a new cultural ecology. At the same time we are so focused in
protecting our corner that few energies are left to start this grand
exploit. That is why we propose to look at a master of the stand-up comedian
business. Performed night after night a monologue can affect the
unaccustomed ear.

Lenny Bruce
Lenny Bruce, the Jesus Christ of stand-up comedy, -who suffered prosecution
between 1961 and the moment of his death in 1966 because of the defiant,
daring and truthful (obscene for his enemies) character of his
uncompromising texts, his absolute refusal to accommodate to political
correctness or convention or decorum, and because of his reciprocal empathy
with the most radical 60's counterculture- is presented as a case study for
the complex relationship between artist and audience.
The stand-up artist who started his monologues in the 60's with sentences
such as "I am going to piss on you" (receiving cheers and roaring applause
>from his audience as answer) or "I am going to forbid entrance to my shows
to anyone younger than 20 or older than 40", or yet "I cannot speak to an
audience older than 60. To anyone older than 60, the only thing I can think
of saying is "No, thank you, I have already eaten"". or -and this is the
last quote- "I know they have placed an undercover Jewish cop in the
audience, to find out if I am obscene when I speak Yiddish", this stand up
artist is a model, as said, of the complexities of the feedback between
artist and target group.
The fracture between the institution (in the form of censorship, government
newspapers, police), the artist (Lenny), and the audience (clearly divided
between the loyal, the unbeliever, and the outraged), can be easily
translated into today's institutional critique landscape. The idea is to do
so while commenting on some of the most revealing and witty pieces of
Lenny's monologues".