54th International Art Exhibition—Venice Biennale 2011 / Tomislav Gotovac and BADco

4 June–27 November 2011, Venice, Artiglierie, Arsenale

Artists: Tomislav Gotovac and BADco

Project: “One Needs to Live Self-Confidently… Watching”

The exhibition “One Needs to Live Self-Confidently… Watching,” represents the work of the conceptual artist Tomislav Gotovac a.k.a. Antonio G. Lauer and the performance collective BADco.
The foundation of the exhibition “One Needs to Live Self-Confidently… Watching” is one of Gotovac’s statements which describe his work: “I am constantly bewildered by what lies between my eyes and what I am seeing.” Artist Antonio G. Lauer (a.k.a. Tom Gotovac) is presented by curators with paradigmatic films and performances.

The performance collective BADco. has placed a site-specific installation and intervention titled /Responsibility for Things Seen: Tales in Negative Space/. The main focus of the work is the question of mediated responsibility, the relationship to the events we witness in pictures and different ways of looking. The Venice exhibition, as a theatre of other means, will build a field of tension, clash between the power of images to bind our collective imagination, to open and close the horizon of the future, and different dispositions of looking, which open up space for critical and transformative looking.

The exhibition has been realised in cooperation with the Croatian Film Association and the Zagreb Youth Theatre. Architect Ana Martina Bakić has also worked on the exhibition, while the design of visual materials has been entrusted to a member of the WHW curatorial collective, Dejan Kršić.

http://badco.hr/hr/home/
Exhibition catalogue



Curatorial collective: ‘What, How & for Whom / WHW’—Ana Dević, Ivet Ćurlin, Nataša Ilić, Sabina Sabolović

‘What, How & for Whom / WHW’ is an association for visual culture which has been active in Zagreb since 1999, and since then they have developed different models of cooperation based on the collective mode of work, creative use of public space, bringing together partners from different areas of activity and questioning the social role of art. Since their beginnings, they have been involved in many local and regional collaborative networks of non-institutional initiatives. Although primarily based on exhibitions, the collective’s projects are envisaged as broader platforms for rethinking contemporary cultural production and reflection on social reality.

Apart from several exhibitions in Zagreb, WHW have organised numerous international exhibitions and projects in galleries and museums in Ljubljana, Vienna, Belgrade, Prague, Kassel, Graz, Copenhagen, New York, etc. Since 2003, WHW have been in charge of the programme of the Nova Gallery in Zagreb. In addition to contemporary art exhibitions, the gallery’s programme includes a series of lectures, discussions, presentations, and issuance of gallery newspapers. WHW have organised several exhibitions of Croatian and international artists from different generations in the Nova Gallery.

The WHW curatorial collective were the first winners of the Igor Zabel Award in 2008. The award is given for exceptional cultural activities in Central and Southeastern Europe. In 2009, WHW were the curator of one of the most famous world contemporary art exhibitions, the Istanbul Biennial. The WHW curators designed the 11th edition of the Biennial under the title “What Keeps Mankind Alive?” During their collaboration, the curators from the WHW association held many lectures on contemporary artistic production in Croatia and their work at European and world universities, museums, and galleries.