Today we continue our week-long series, Summer of Utopia, through the work of artists Rosa Casado and Mike Brookes. Spanish performance artist, Rosa Casado and British visual artist, Mike Brookes initiated a long-term collaboration in 2000 focusing on performative engagements in social spaces,  informed by seminal works addressing utopian ideals of social equality,  self-organization and ecological sustainability.

In Paradise 2 – the incessant sound of a falling tree, Casado recites a text based on Jorge Furtado’s Ilha das Flores, a film examining humanity within capitalism. Reflecting on her ability to holiday in Mali having “profited” from work, Casado deftly draws diagrams of her voyage on the ground. Her gestures are interspersed with deliberate consuming of chocolate trees from a chocolate island, each eaten tree activating a sound that creates a loop. She narrates and draws out the voyage taken by Ibrahima Boyé, from Senegal where he was unable to make “sufficient profit” and travels to Spain for work. Though alike in intellect and core physical characteristics, Casado’s journey is one of a tourist, while Boyé’s is that of an immigrant. In an era where consumption and profits form progress, a sense heightened by the rhythmical percussion sound increasing in beats as the trees are eaten by the end of the 40-minute performance, how do we consider our desires and value of human dignity?

Similarly, Some things happen all at once comprises an installation typifying a community within a 45 minute durational set, represented through 150 ice trees, 60 ice houses and an ice church on the ground. A reading drawing on writings of architect, Buckminster Fuller and scientist, Philip Ball, muses on the extraordinary ways earth maintains the balance of energy exchange and humankind’s capacities to develop survival strategies. As the audience’s heat hastens the ice melting, attempts are made to sustain the village through a bicycle powering a cooling system. The balance between hot and cold senses, and solid and liquid visual properties display the inter-dependence of humans and nature. Against the possible fate of the earth as a heat reservoir, the interventions to foster sustainability provoke thought on the realities of human presence, action, and negligence.

Human interventions as a critical part of systems takes precedence in One thing leads to another, a durational piece involving the movement of 50 small toys forwards. Visitors become agents of change, articulating the game’s rules and deciding how the game progresses. This action varied across contexts. In June 2008 in Polverigi, it was developed through the streets of the town. In October 2009 in Singapore, participants developed a game which expounded personal meanings of progress in workshops, culminating in a public presentation where visitors played the games, opening discourse and making visible assumptions of social rules and progress.

Casado and Brookes do not pronounce an all-encompassing utopian vision and acknowledge decay and destruction as inevitable scientific processes. Yet, a palpable utopian quality at the core of their works rests in the belief in the human conscience which, when activated, enables meaningful action.

Casado trained in ballet, studied physics at the University of Madrid and theatre at Istituto d’Arte Scenica. Brookes is a Creative Wales Award Recipient 2007 and a Creative Research Fellow at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Paradise 2 will be presented on 26 September 2010 at Teatre Municipal de l’Escorxador, Lleida, Spain. A new work, Just a little bit of history repeating exploring how a place acquires meaning through time will feature at the b-side multimedia arts festival, Weymouth and Portland, Dorset, UK which runs from 17 to 26 September 2010 and at Festival BAD in Bilbao, Spain in October 2010.

While the act of mapping conveys authority – giving credence to that which it records – mapping cannot remain entirely static and must be revised to represent changes in power structures.  In efforts to better understand or better represent the world, many contemporary artists eschew two-dimensional map-making in favor of addressing the ways in which traditional maps are transgressed by global complexities.

Whose Map is it? new mapping by artists currently on view at the Institute of International Visual Arts in London (Iniva) offers creative alternatives to a stale representation of global organization.  Capitalizing on the potentially transformative nature of mapping, nine contemporary artists deconstruct conventions in favor of introducing previously ‘off the map’ concepts.  Whose Map is it? is inextricably engaged with the larger theme of globalization for the way that this present condition problematizes the traditional two-dimensional nation-state map structure.  Presenting new and recent work in diverse media, the exhibition offers freshly layered, content-wise approaches that creatively reposition map-making to more fully represent today’s mobile world.

The deconstruction of existing map structures is central to the exhibition.  In Milena Bonilla’s Variations on a homeogeneous landscape (2006), traditional scientific cartographic means are questioned by presenting repositioned and disoriented fragments of familiar maps.  In a different vein, Bouchra Khalili’s Mapping Journey films the marking through and across of a two-dimensional map in order to illustrate a path of actual, experienced migration.  As the moving image overrides the flat, two dimensional map, the viewer sees that mobility has become the new global landscape as it crosses political boundaries.  Also mapping in an innovative way, Gayle Chong Kwan’s new commission Save the Last Dance for Me charts the movement and migration of Rumba.  The resulting large-scale, global cultural map is accompanied by a sound piece offering Rumba dance instruction.

Map structures take on Post-colonial concepts in Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa’s new commission A continuing survey of syntatic parsing.  In this work, Wolukau-Wanambwa charts British colonial conquest narratives in juxtaposition with bourgeois British civilian life of the same period.  Also of Post-colonial theme, Alexandra Handal’s Labyrinth of Remains and Migration (2000-01 & 2010) draws visually spare ‘mental maps’ that represent Palestinian dispossession.

The gallery audience is charged with mapping their own Middle East in Oraib Toukan’s interactive magnetic puzzle piece entitled The New(er) Middle East.  This work references the region’s divisive geo-political history that has been marked by Western intervention.  More specifically, Toukan’s work playfully alludes to the catch phrase introduced by the Bush administration’s Condoleezza Rice in 2006 conceptualizing a more stable Middle Eastern political map through further Western interference and map restructuring.

Globalization’s free-trade economics define the ever-more global face of the world and are therefore addressed by multiple artists in this exhibition.  Artist Susan Stockwell’s site-specific commission, River of Blood, focuses on the world’s growing urban populations by highlighting economic disparity in London along a commonly recognized North-South divide.  River of Blood is on one hand a map of the Thames River and its tributaries.  On the other hand, its red vinyl cut-outs resemble human arteries, thereby emphasizing the visceral socio-economic, geographic divide between the haves (of North London) and have-nots (of South London).

Esther Polak’s NomadicMILK (2009) is engaged with mapping the movements of a particular contemporary economic system.  This work tracks the movements of nomadic Fulani herdsmen and dairy transporters throughout Nigeria using GPS technology to illustrate the constant movement required to execute the work of a single industry.  Focusing on a site of dramatic economic transformation, Otobong Nkanga’s Delta Stories (05/06) illustrates the ecological ramifications of harvesting oil repositories in a Nigerian delta region.

Whose Map is it? new mapping by artists was initiated by Iniva curators Christine Takengny and Teresa Cisneros in conjunction with a full schedule of educational events including the Crossing Boundaries Symposium that took place 2 June.   Upcoming events include a July 8th talk entitled The Content and the Meaning of the Spaces We Encounter with Paul Goodwin and Alex Vasudeum.  On 15 July a screening will be held of visual essayist Ursula Biemann’s film Sahara Chronicle, followed by a discussion with visual culture scholar Irit Rogoff.

Whose Map is it? new mapping by artists is on view at Iniva’s Rivington Place in London through 24 July.

The Serpentine Gallery in London presents Nairy Bagrhamian and Phyllida Barlow.  The exhibition features new and recent work by two contemporary artists exhibited together for the first time.  The Serpentine Gallery suggests Baghramian and Barlow represent ‘two positions on sculpture in the 21st century’.  The pairing of the two artists offers new insight into their respective sculptural practices.

Baghramian and Barlow’s work is displayed separately, in solo rooms, and also in deliberate dialogue.  While offering different approaches, both artists are inspired by the gallery context and capitalize on characteristics of the space.  Their large-scale installations are often in arranged in tension and certainly inhabit the space of the gallery visitor.  For all of these characteristics, the installation demands a physical viewing experience.

Nairy Baghramian was born in Iran.  She now lives and works in Berlin and is represented by Galerie Daniel Buchholz.  She is known for photography in addition to her sculptural and installation work.  Baghramian is inspired by politics and literature as well as the legacies of minimalism, design and modern architecture.  She often engages with context, institutional framing and the production and reception of contemporary art.

Phyllida Barlow lives and works in London.  She graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art where she has served as professor for some time.  Barlow’s work utilizes mass produced materials that she typically combines on-site and later recycles.  Her sculptural work is often realized in the large-scale, installation environment.

Nairy Baghramian and Phyllida Barlow is on view at the Serpentine Gallery from 8 May through 13 June 2010.

Artist Francis Upritchard’s work titled “Save Yourself” seems to be a constructed reference to b-grade movies, in which the artist has unearthed an ancient tomb below the gallery that contains a mummified figure. However scary this scenario would seem, the mummy is constructed with rags and a glass eye and vibrates, powered by an electric cord visible on the floor. Upritchard derives many of her images and objects from the archived collections of the Pitt River Museum and the Wellcome Collection. Using dark and haunting metaphors, the artist is able to transform her make shift objects that often contain faux-clay pots, medical instruments and animal heads into relics of natural history or odd tourist shop memorabilia. Upritchard was born in New Zealand and now lives and works in London. Recent exhibitions included works with the Andrea Rosen Gallery and Salon 94, both in New York. The artist has also completed an artist in residence with the Camden Arts Centre in London and has exhibited in New Zealand with the Ivan Anthony Gallery and Artspace in Auckland.

British artist Ian Dawson produces large-scale sculptures out of a variety of materials. The artist has used colorful industrial plastic containers that are modeled into exotic forms through heat manipulation in several new works. Through this process, the object is stripped of its original use and begins to exist in a position between painting and sculpture. Other projects include large sheets of screen-printed paper that have been crumpled and seemingly tossed randomly into a corner. Each piece underlines the notion of dematerialization and seems to refer to the disposability and waste of Western societies. The objects also possess a life-like quality, often becoming animated and with an apparent potential for movement. Dawson attended the Royal College of Art and the Winchester School of Art in England. The artist recently exhibited with Galerie Xippas in Paris and Hales Gallery in London. U.S. exhibitions include “Tilt Trucks and Free Fliers” at the James Cohan Gallery in New York and a self-titled show with Grand Arts in Kansas. Dawson is a recipient of the Margaret Hall-Silva Award and will be exhibiting in “Cold Climate” March 9 at the Living Art Museum in Reyljavik, Iceland.

Internationally renowned British sculptor Antony Gormley is currently exhibiting his “Critical Mass” installation with the Museo d’Arte Donna Regina in Naples, Italy. In this work, the artist cast more than 60 figures in a variety of poses and then placed the casts in a large group on the gallery floor. Gormley’s work investigates the body and makes reference to internal and external space. The artist lives and works in London and is currently represented by White Cube Gallery. Gormley has had countless exhibitions, including work in the Sydney Biennale (2006), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, England (2003), and the National History Museum in Beijing, China (2003). Antony Gormley is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and has been a Royal Academician since 2003. He also has a full artist book with Phaidon Press.

English painter Richard Patterson takes miniature toys and covers them with voluminous paint, photographs the object and then recreates it in oil on canvas. The artist largely focuses on formal issues in his work literally reducing representation and figuration by covering the figurines in globs of visceral paint. Patterson also draws a connection to art history by referencing color field painters of the modernist period. Richard Patterson is a graduate of Goldsmiths College (1986), and recently exhibited with Timothy Taylor Gallery, London. The artist has also exhibited with the Dallas Museum of Art (2000) and with the James Cohan Gallery, NYC (1999). In 2007 Patterson will have three paintings exhibited in the Rowan Collection at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, and will be the first artist commissioned by Wallpaper* Magazine to collaborate on a feature and have work on the cover (March 2007).