Trie
Grand Tour 2007
2007
videoinstallation, performance
Grand Tour is a dialogue between the four initiatives: 52. Venice Biennale, 38. Art Basel, Sculpture Projekte Münster 2007 and Documenta 12, Kassel. This new partnership in joint promotion has been formed based on a corporation model, which takes the conventional formula of economic progress and is applied to generate a stronger and more dominant entertainer in art economy of the 21st century in Europe and perhaps worldwide. Effectively Grand Tour campaign acts as a reflection of the consumer world and seems to be an attempt to chair this division’s monetary power. This economic phenomenon has flooded many areas of the consumer art world and is now offering yet another unforgettable experience to the consumer art tourist. One of their last invention is the attempt of (re)building the old route used by the Bourgeois in the 19. century: the so called Grand Tour. They are using or else abusing the word Contemporary art in terms that it has become just a facade used to cover the money machine hidden behind art dealers, art owners, art renters, museums, galleries, etc. These institutions have basically become the Ryan Air of Art (providing the customer with a complete service). In their interest to accumulate the real and the symbolic power, they are forgetting about the most important thing: The question of the CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT! The Grand Tour is not about art but rather it is about the ideology of power hiding in the very concept of their strategy. Through such an event the consumer of contemporary art is also presented with a chance of taking over a whole new lifestyle of art-traveler or arttourist, which includes different activities that uniform the consumer’s way of thinking with that of institutionalised art system. Merging art with tourism and commodity logic means isolating it into its own privileged place, away from its politics and ideological backgrounds.
sponsored by:
Amidas, CULT and Luminus
producer:
Pavelhaus