MALTA CONTEMPORARY ART PRESENTS
PARALLEL BORDERS 1
MONUMENTS & SHRINES TO CAPITALISM
FORUM STADTPARK GRAZ, AUSTRIA
27 SEPTEMBER - 18 OCTOBER 2014
ANGELO PLESSAS Athens
SILVIA GIAMBRONE Rome
TOBIAS SPICHTIG Zurich
FRANZISKA VON STENGLIN Frankfurt
JÜRGEN OTS Brussels
MARK MANGION Paris / Valletta
TOM DALE London
INGIBJÖRG MAGNADÓTTIR Reykjavik
HELMUT WEBER & SABINE BITTER Graz / Vancouver
Founded by Mark Mangion in 2011, Parallel Borders is an extensive cross-field collaborative platform designed as an itinerant extension of Malta Contemporary Art. Reflecting upon geopolitical and spatial narratives and physical borders via cyber, public and other accessible structures, a series of collaborations were initiated in 2012, generating a discourse with a diversity of artists and practitioners from other fields, invited to contribute to an explorative platform of site-specific fieldwork in various regions around the world. A journey was embarked upon, creating a foundation for historical research and anthropological mapping, storytelling and geo-political cultural examination against a backdrop of a deflating capitalism, environmental instability, technological revolution and ideas and disputes of borders; physical, territorial, scientific, philosophical.
The first edition of Parallel Borders, Monuments & Shrines to Capitalism proposes a collaboration with 8 artists in 8 cities in Europe beginning at the end of 2012. This cross-border project questions ideas of consumption and power, protest and awakening, pilgrimage and fracture, architecture, monument and shrine reflecting a decay in western culture propelled by an addiction to capitalism. Commencing in Athens, a journey to Reykjavik via stops in many of the most significant cultural, political, historical and financial cities of Europe was embarked upon marking a cacophonous and politically engaged fault line from South East to North West Europe. Questioning capitalist monoliths, a series of temporary projects were created engaging with public, private and virtual spaces.
Parallel Borders 2 / Landfall (2014 -) proposes a series of parallel platforms composed of visual and textual contributions, site-specific projects and collaborations with artists, architects, writers, filmmakers and other contemporary practitioners whose research and work is connected to the Middle East. Reflecting upon complexities of borders and territoriality, referencing a multitude of rich and diverse historical contexts, this collective platform questions ideas of physical and metaphorical narratives via collaborative and discursive meditations on this land and people founded upon relationships to archiving of historical, visual and philosophical connections to specificity of time, place and culture.
Chronicling ideas of architecture and community, power and fracture and powerful symbols representing the landscape in harmony and conflict with social and political urbanization, a visual and textual trajectory is created. Mapping spaces and narratives through stories and documents, Parallel Borders manifests the physical in virtual flux as a borderless and accessible platform setting out to interrogate parameters of the designed, democratised and social nature of digital space through a cumulative, adaptable and renewable structure.
