ciudadMULTIPLEcity (Panama)

[Randy]

ciudadMULTIPLEcity
Arte>Panamá 2003


MultipleCity.
Art>Panama 2003
Radical International Urban Art Event
March 20 - April 20, 2003


Image: Gustavo Araujo, Things are tough


ciudadMULTIPLEcity
Arte>Panamá 2003

MultipleCity. Art>Panama 2003
Radical International Urban Art Event
March 20 - April 20, 2003

Organized by the non-profit Art>Panama Foundation (ARPA), MultipleCity. Art>Panama 2003 launches as a challenging new international urban art event. The event, co-curated by New Museum of Contemporary Art adjunct curator Gerardo Mosquera and ARPA director Adrienne Samos, is timed with the Republic of Panama’s 100th anniversary of independence. During four weeks of public programming, site-specific installations and performances by 14 leading international and local artists will debut at various times, provoking a Latin American metropolis full of contrast into a dialogue that will have a lasting impact on the city and its inhabitants.

“MultipleCity is not conceived as a long interactive experience of foreign artists with the city and its communities but as a response to its fragmentation, hybridization and rapidity,” says curator Gerardo Mosquera. “What we wanted is the artists’ reactions to the urban environment of Panama, both as passersby and natives.”

One of the most anticipated performances will be Cildo Meireles’ humorous play with Panama’s great historical icon, the Panama Canal. On April 19, the Brazilian installation art pioneer will navigate “Panamini”, a scale model of the large Panamax ships that cross the canal, by remote control, beating the world record of the smallest ship ever to pass through the canal.

Other highlights include Panamanian artist Brooke Alfaro’s video projections of two opposing street gangs in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods, featuring them singing the same song by popular local musician Rookie. Mexico-based Francis Alÿs will provoke pedestrians crossing a specific public site in the city into asking each other for silence, thus forming a public “1 Minute of Silence”, while local artist Gustavo Araujo will invade empty billboards with the phrase “La Cosa está dura” (“Things are tough”), an ironic twist of a common Panamanian idiom. Cuban artist Yoan Capote inverts aesthetic as well as social values by upholstering a dozen garbage containers in various parts of the city, and New York-based Ghada Amer will work with six painters to interpret Chinese proverbs on a billboard placed strategically in a different urban site, where each proverb will act as a critical comment on the city’s contradictions at that particular place.

MultipleCity. Art>Panama 2003 will be accompanied by a series of lectures and documented in a 15-minute video by American video artist Rich Potter. Later this year, a bilingual (Spanish/ English) catalog, edited by Alberto Gualde, Gerardo Mosquera and Adrienne Samos, will be published. The 300-page volume will not only document the event itself but also include essays by diverse scholars and experts, to examine the complex dynamics of Panama City and assess the pressing urban problems of Latin America’s metropolises.

For more information, the complete list of works and an event calendar, please visit http://www.artepanama.org/ciudadmultiple/english

Participating Artists

Brooke Alfaro
Born in Panama/ lives and works in Panama City

Francis Alÿs
Born in Belgium/ lives and works in Mexico City

Ghada Amer
Born in Egypt/ lives and works in New York City

Gustavo Araujo
Born in Panama/ lives and works in Panama City

Gustavo Artigas
Born in Mexico/ lives and works in Mexico City

artway of thinking (Stefania Mantovani/ Federica Thiene)
Born in Italy/ live and work in Venice

Yoan Capote
Born in Cuba/ lives and works in Havana

Cildo Meireles
Born in Brazil/ lives and works in Rio de Janeiro

Juan Andrés Milanés
Born in Cuba/ lives and works in Nueva Gerona

Rafael Ortega
Born in Mexico/ lives and works in Mexico City

Jesύs Palomino
Born in Spain/ lives and works in Seville

Humberto Vélez
Born in Panama/ lives and works in Manchester

Gu Xiong
Born in China/ lives and works in Vancouver