Catherine Bertola / Matt Stokes: Innsbruck International. Biennial of the Arts

Innsbruck International. Biennial of the Arts Je,./I,./Ich,...   10. - 20.03.2016 opening: 09.03.2016, 19.00 Gotischer Keller, Hofburg Innsbruck http://www.innsbruckinternational.at   Catherine Bertola, Jacob Cartwright & Nick Jordan, Cinématons (Klaus Händl, Lissie Rettenwander, Heidrun Sandbichler, Filmemacher: Guillermo Tellechea), The Forman Brothers` Theatre, Rachel Goodyear, Isaac Julien, Marmo & Harmlos, Michette & Michette, Muntean/Rosenblum, Linda Fregni Nagler, Pipilotti Rist, Heidrun Sandbichler, Matt Stokes, The Strangers, Lois Weinberger    Catherine Bertola Unseen By All But Me Alone, 2013, Gold Thread, Dimensions Variable. Matt Stokes Cantata Profana, 2010, Six-channel HD video and audio transferred to synced hard-drives, Duration 06:48 minutes, looped   Innsbruck International. Biennial of the Arts is a biennial of contemporary art that invites national and international artists to make use of unusual locations around the city of Innsbruck. The second biennial, with the theme of Je,./I,./Ich,... includes artists from the worlds of fine art, film, audio, sound and theatre who engage with the idea of authorship in a time of excitement about the self.   This is because, in our social age, the self is based on infatuation, a constant re-performance of a self that is influenced by idols, role models, stars but also memories and the portrayal experienced on social media or on Facebook, exactly the place where the 'I' becomes flexible and can be constantly reinvented. This personal design process happens in public but affects the private person. It occupies the border where the self disappears and something new is created, as seen in the phenomenon of the selfie, which is examined in their work by the artist duo Muntean/Rosenblum. The authenticity of portraits - as perfected down to the last detail by painters over centuries - is suddenly placed in question by the spread of selfies, which represent the new mirror for the self, because the 'I' only exists in the form that we ourselves would like to see. Virtual space therefore becomes a spiritual space where ambitions and fears are sounded out without disappearing into free fall (Claudia Jolles). Something that Linda Fregni Nagler explores in photographs where she shows people in traps without going into any more details about their personal circumstances. Just as with the video projection by Jacob Cartwright & Nick Jordan, and their story about the search for the 'I' somewhere between film and science, for the 'true' form of emotional expression employed by portraits and their understanding.   The search for the 'I' and its enduring state of uncertainty is (allegedly) understood as freedom, but one that assumes a duality because it claims that distance is connection and writing is direct communication. A highly complex situation that makes a high-wire act of the experience of the self in relation to the world. But at the same time, in the experiment of breaking down and building up ("solve et coagula"), new paradigms are created. A process that Heidrun Sandbichler investigates through the spectrum of past lives and death and that is reflected in the ink, capturing that particular excitement for the self that was already playing an important role in the past when communication was via exchanging portraits - as we can still see today in the Habsburg portrait gallery at Schloss Ambras. This is also a situation that Claudia de Medici (1604-1648) was confronted with. She was regent of Tirol during the minority of her son for 14 years and had to recreate her lost self with the aid of art, allowing her to live the life she imagined for herself. Tours with Per Pedes but also the 'Parfum der Claudia de Medici' - newly simulated by Apotheke Winkler - dives into this real world of richly decorated churches, monasteries and buildings, just as Catherine Bertola scatters her delicate and easily overlooked interventions - in spaces where hard lives and works of the 'I' are mostly erased or set within a different system of values.   The 'I' as displayed for us by Obludarium, the Forman Brothers' Theatre, has therefore always been an amalgamation of fiction, narrative and reality, from written, spoken and sung words, that flaunt the absurd, catchy, mournful, living and animal, recurring in the drawings and animations of Rachel Goodyear. A simply never ending journey through possible identities and genders, which Pipilotti Rist can not completely answer, but holds so much the finer in abeyance when she has the character in the video nonchalantly say, "Love is unclear." Matt Stokes, on the other hand, embarks on a search for the feeling of collectivity, in order to investigate whether it is perhaps music that forms people's identity.   Lois Weinberger in 2013 was the first mark left by Innsbruck International, and in 2016 Innsbruck International continues the process and breaches further realms of imagination, places and borders, as Innsbruck International attempts to reinvent the 'I' of Innsbruck International. There is a new collaboration with twin city Grenoble and the École du MAGASIN, to provide training for future curators, and there is also a new Innsbruck International Special Recognition, awarded to Tirol's creative artists to elevate them to the international stage, promote their development and raise their profile.

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