A bridge between the symbolic world and nature: LOOP Barcelona and its highlights
Ayça Okay wrote about her impressions of the annual LOOP Video Fair organised in Barcelona.
The 21st edition of the LOOP Video Fair, held annually in Barcelona, met with an international audience on November 21–23, 2023, with the energy surrounding the three floors of Almanac Barcelona. Since its inception in 2003, the fair has been a platform for studying and promoting video art. In collaboration with international artists, curators, galleries, collectors and institutional managers, the fair develops projects that aim to explore video and film at the centre of contemporary artistic debates. In this process, it strengthens its ecosystem by producing knowledge and artwork and providing visibility by encouraging encounters. Undoubtedly, the most tangible support for this is the loan of selected works from the LOOP Video Collection, built over the years, to MACBA (The Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona), contributing to making the museum’s considerable video collection. The fair also aims to provide a common platform for creative ideas and discussions in moving images through panel discussions and meetings organised under the title “Professional Meetings”, bringing together international art professionals. These events are scheduled to share industry developments, exchange experiences and pave the way for new collaborations.
Under the title LOOP Festival, exhibitions, screenings and live performances are spread across the public space in different parts of the city. A series of events focuses on proposals for creating moving images. This year’s festival, artistic directed by Victoria Sacco, has become a synchronised event on an extraordinary scale with the participation of nearly 100 art spaces. Bombon Projects and Galerie Senda, two of the leading art spaces located on the famous Trafalgar Street in the city with its warm Mediterranean climate in November when the sun shines brightly in the sky, exhibit works by artists such as Eva Fabregas and Robert Mapplethorpe, while MACBA and the Picasso Museum host video installations and performances.
Planning a significant festival itinerary in Spain’s second most densely populated city, Barcelona, with its rich historical and cultural sites, can take time and effort. Like other European cities, Barcelona is best suited for pedestrian circulation. In the past, the town presented a challenging environment for pedestrians due to industrial centres, narrow historic streets, and inadequate walking and cycling routes. However, local dynamics, culture, identity and historical artefacts were brought together as part of the urban regeneration plan to transform the city into a structure that meets the needs of its inhabitants.
While quickly visiting the art spaces and installations at different distances where the festival is spread, I am reminded of the words of Fulya Erdemci, curator of the YAYA exhibitions, who was a guest on Eraslan Sağlam’s broadcast on Açık Radyo in 2005: “What we call a city is where people live, let’s make the city a more livable place. Secondly, what we call public is something beyond the distinctions of class, religion, language, let’s open spaces for the citizens” and makes us think about the possibilities of multi-participatory, large-scale and pedestrian-friendly art events in the outdoor life of the city we live in.
This year, the conceptual unity of LOOP participating artists’ works focuses on exploring the strong links between the symbolic world and the concept of nature. The treatment of basic ideas filtered through encounters with the sciences of physics, history, philosophy, literature and history is presented from the unique perspective of lens-based artists. The moving images explore the concept of social memory, which is transformed through beliefs, values, structures and symbolic expressions, in addition to the awareness of individual memory, which is formed by examining the creatures, objects and situations around us in the process of perceiving the world we live in.
Represented by Berlin-based gallery Esther Schipper, Ugo Rondinone’s “Burn To Shine” takes symbolic inspiration from a Buddhist saying describing the coexistence of life and death. Gathered around a fire in the desert, 12 percussionists and 18 male and female dancers perform a thought-provoking performance about the five essential elements of nature, natural phenomena and the conditions of human existence. The breathtaking scenery of nature and the cyclical movement of the earth, combined with the dancers’ rhythm, reference the Greek mythological story of the immortal phoenix being reborn from the ashes.
Courtesy to Bendana | Pinel Art Contemporain & Seba Calfuqueo
Knowledge derived from acts of sensation, which play a fundamental role in creating social memory, transforms into an aesthetic narrative over time with the influence of geography. In this context, in Seba Calfuqueo’s video “TRAY TRAY KO”, the concept of flowing waterfalls, which Seba Calfuqueo evaluates through the Mapuche worldview, stands out with its various meanings in different cultures. The body’s fragility, lost in the boundlessness of nature dominated by striking colours, also suggests the functional analysis of traditional experience memory.
Among the most striking videos of the fair is Mimiko Türkkan’s Earth Fight, projected in 4K. Mimiko Türkkan, an artist living and producing in Turkey, is participating in the fair with Analix Forever. “Earth Fight”, which was recently exhibited in the Waves of Intention exhibition at Pilot Gallery and the 10th Mediations Biennial, draws attention to the dystopian image of an entire ecosystem destroyed by the fires in the Aegean Region two years ago. It reflects on the damage caused by natural processes, profit-oriented decisions, human rights and excessive interventions in an attempt to restore the environment. It evaluates the situations that arise when climate emergencies are declared worldwide.
“Showing Earth Fight at the Loop allowed us to engage one-on-one with an audience interested in the video and with art professionals visiting the fair. Since the main theme of the work is about the forest fires that are unfortunately happening in many parts of the world, I internalised that I had made a work that established a direct communication channel with the audience through the ‘exchanges’ at Loop, and this was a great source of inner satisfaction. The fact that a work that was challenging for me and resulted in powerful feelings touched the different sensitivities of the audience from a wide range of backgrounds and that they shared their emotions with me face to face was a valuable experience that I can rarely experience in Turkey.” Gözde Mimiko Türkkan.
At Fragments Gallery in New York, an aurally and visually powerful performance residue is presented to the piano music of a mesmerising Bach piece. Young-Jun Tak, a Berlin-based artist, bases his practice on performance and video on establishing unconventional channels of communication between radical Christian organisations and queer communities that are in constant conflict in the context of global media discourse. By combining religious iconography and contrasts, such as anti-LGBTQ+ printed materials, to reveal the similarities between these communities, Tak exposes the discrepancies between the images of worship and the core messages and actions of the organisations. For the 18-minute Wish You a Lovely Sunday, Tak pairs two choreographers and two dancers to create a new choreography in the church “Kirche am Südstern” and the queer club “SchwuZ” in Berlin. Churches and queer clubs may at first seem to be used for different purposes. Still, both spaces have exciting similarities in that they require certain rituals, norms of behaviour and attitudes closely related to the role of the space. After days of rehearsals, the areas designated for the dancers are changed, and they have to reprogram their choreography according to the new architectural features and atmosphere of the changed location. Reshaped by the natural behavioural parameters and codes of two different performance spaces, the church and the queer club, the mesmerising dance figures keep the audience under their spell for a long time.
Based on the question, “Will all the birds in the world be counted one day?” Barcelona-based photographer Xavi Bou’s Reveal Flight project, realised in collaboration with UCLouvain University in Belgium, explores the social trends shaped around the greedy themes of ownership and control due to neo-liberal policies. Bou is creating a model that will make it possible to identify visible birds in flight, questioning whether, in the future, we will reach a point where all living things on the planet will be registered. An ongoing project, Reveal Flight, will focus on productions that observe the movements of insects in collaboration with National Geographic in the coming period.
This year’s winner of the LOOP Fair Prize, determined by the selection committee consisting of Isabelle & Jean Conrad Lemaître, Haro Cümbüşyan, Renée Drakeve and Josée & Marc Gensollen, is “How Was History Wounded?” by Taiwanese artists Wang Jun-Jieh and Cheang Shu Lea, represented by Taipei-based Chi-Wen Gallery, which focuses on issues such as abuse of power and media control. Shadi Habib Allah’s “M1”, represented by Rodeo Gallery, is included in the LOOP Fair collection and will, therefore, be on loan to the MACBA collection.
Courtesy: the artists and Chi-Wen Gallery
Supported by: Ministry of Culture Taiwan R.O.C
AYÇA OKAY
NFTIFY
This article was initially published on NFTIFY.com.tr and has been accurately translated into English by NFTIFY.
Original Article: https://nftify.com.tr/sembolik-dunya-ve-doga-arasinda-bir-kopru-loop-barcelona-ve-one-cikanlari/
