The Museo de Antioquia inaugurates the MDE11

The MDE challenges the conventional approach to biennials not only in terms of its periodicity, but also due to its interest in reaching out to internal agents and strengthening the local cultural playing field.

Through MDE, art events will take place throughout the city in the form of conferences, exhibitions, workshops, concerts, talks and another set of activities designed to promote a continuous, open dialogue with art practices conducted both within and outside the academic setting. The first MDE, held in 2007, focused on spaces of hospitality -a subject that gathered more than 280 artists and speakers in Medellín- and among other activities featured exhibitions, round tables and film festivals; it was attended by a total of some 300 000 people.

This year’s version (MDE11) will take place from September to December 2011 under the curatorial theme of “Teaching and Learning: Places of Knowledge in Art”, and the focal point of its activities will be different ways of shaping and recreating knowledge in and from art.

The structure and development of MDE11 are the result of a specific mandate from the Museo de Antioquia to work within the context of the city of Medellín and its social and cultural agents. In keeping with its mission, the museum seeks to promote educational and cultural interaction by encouraging the participation on a large scale and prompting reflection through polyphonic and interdisciplinary dialogue. Working in line with these aims, the MDE11 curatorship has become involved with varying collectives and agents ranging from academia to community-work contexts and the self-managed spaces that exist in Medellín. The general MDE11 project is the fruit of this collaboration.

It is interesting to note that the Museo de Antioquia, a hegemonic institution that is strongly involved in and committed to Medellín’s socio-cultural development, is at the forefront of a city-wide event that is drawing together different institutions in an attempt to weave complicities and strengthen a set of creative approaches encompassing the plastic arts, architecture, music, image and technology. The curatorial approach has been enriched through the establishment of relations with different local institutions and communities and dialogue with the city’s tragic, fascinating history. It is this history that has determined the way this project wants to operate.

The Museo de Antioquia is aware of the need to step up the learning processes around contemporary art practices and broaden Medellín and Colombia’s vision, particularly through the transformational capacity of art and culture, which is why it has established the MDE.

The focal point of the Encuentro Internacional de Medellín (MDE11) centers on the different ways of shaping and recreating knowledge in and from art, while also raising questions on the limits and challenges of pedagogical experimentation in institutional, artistic and community practice. MDE11 aims to bring to the fore the tension between regulated, institutional and academic knowledge and more experimental forms of knowledge based on collective, community and self-managed practices. These heterogeneous approaches connect players and resources in the art circuit with projects and experiments that go beyond that circuit and have resonance in other contexts.

Aware that the art experience always operates in the terrain of the unknown and is subject to experimentation, doubt and indeed ambiguity, MDE11 proposes an ongoing, open dialogue with art practices, research within and outside the confines of academia, and community strategies and pedagogies that are critical of visual arts that provide alternatives to artistic environments and traditional learning processes.

Based on an initial proposal put forward by José Roca, the curator team made up of Nuria Enguita Mayo, Eva Grinstein, Bill Kelley Jr. and Conrado Uribe, has structured the concept of MDE11 around three focal points: Laboratory, Studio and Exhibition, which in turn are subdivided into various “areas of activation”. The emphasis is on process-based, collaborative work aimed at proposing issues and possible forms of producing knowledge through art practices by various authors, communities, collectives and students both from Medellín and elsewhere. This approach stems from work methods focusing on processes designed to shed light on matters that have been passed over, hidden or not studied by traditional disciplines, i.e., on forms of organizing information that can lead to new ways of viewing and understanding our surroundings.

Curators: Nuria Enguita Mayo (Spain), Eva Grinstein (Argentina), Bill Kelley, Jr. (USA) and Conrado Uribe (Colombia).
Places: Museo de Antioquia and other spaces in Medellin
Supported by: Alcaldía de Medellín
More about the event and schedule: www.mde11.org