Visual Foreign Correspondents

Credit for Image: Erhan Muratoglu, Turkey, No Parking, 2007

Visual Foreign Correspondents is a monthly series of audio-visual artworks for a number of screen-based platforms. Distinguished artists from around the world are invited to give their personal visual commentary on events and situations from their locally situated perspective.

Visual Foreign Correspondents launches in February at Federation Square with works by Erhan Muratoglu (Turkey), Shahram Entekhabi (Iran), Igor Stromajer (Slovenia) and Lin Yilin (China).

Curator : Nanette Hoogslag

This project is presented by The Globalised Chrystal Ball. Funding Partners include: Amsterdamse Fonds voor de Kunsten, VSB and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds

www.visualcorrespondents.com

For exact times and dates, please see 'Fed Stuff' on the Fed Square Screen Guide.

WORKS INCLUDE

Artist: Lin Yilin, China

Title: One Day 2006

‘One Day’ is based on a scene witnessed by the artist in Haikou, a provincial capital in China, in 2006. The event was a thief being taken to the police station with his wrist shackled by a handcuff to his own leg. The impacts of witnessing this arbitrary cruelty lead Yilin to this video performance. In the video the artist shuffles along, desperately trying to keep up with the city’s furious pace. In this work Yilin momentarily embodies something beyond a local situated experience of China today, he also reflects the lives of many around the world struggling to keep pace with the effects of fast and furious globalization.

Lin Yilin, (featured in Dokumenta XII, 2007) has emerged as one of the leading members of a group of artists working Guangzhou, China, know as “Big Tailed Elephant” who came to international prominence during the 1990s. Yilin exemplifies the way in which these artists have succeeded in refreshing the established parameters of the western avant-garde visual art by juxtaposing this language with the lived experience China’s turbo capitalism.

Artist: Erhan Muratoglu, Turkey

Title: No Parking 2007

In ‘No Parking’ Erhan Muratoglu contemplates the current condition in Istanbul where human beings and their physical surroundings are clashing more and more. The globalisation, increasing prosperity and expanding urbanisation are causing shortage of public space. People, cars and public space are hindering each other continually. The short animation looks like a videogame as Grand Theft Auto; with the difference that here the city strikes back. No parking….

Other works by Erhan Muratoglu also originate from the still faster changing impressions and situations of the –urban- surroundings and the problematic consequences these can have for individuals. Muratoglu is an interactive designer/digital artist living and working in Istanbul. He makes computer-generated projects that are being exhibited in Turkey, Europe and the United States and has received awards at many festivals for his experimental videos.

Artist: Shahram Entekhabi, Iran

Title: Haji Firouz 2007

In Iran Haji Firouzis a clownesque character in blackface, traditionally heralding the Persian New Year: Nowruz, with song and dance. Set within a busy shopping street in West-Berlin, Entekhabi enacts his own version of Haji Fairuz. However, his continuous efforts and increasingly exaggerated gestures to attract attention and become included are widely ignored by the busy Christmas shoppers. Their own preoccupation with performing the festive season themselves, by means of consumption, disallows them to see an element that seems out-of-place. Entekhabi’s Haji Firouz challenges normative behavioral patterns by pushing social and racial boundaries; it becomes clear within these parameters, that participation in a particular system, is based on exclusivity and conformity.

Shahram Entekhabi born in Boroujerd, Iran lives and works in-between London, Berlin and Tehran. In his performative actions, installation and digital media he chooses to highlight individuals who are ordinarily perceived as marginalized. The question of visibility and invisibility is a prominent theme in his work.