Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (b. 1965, Strasbourg, FR) has come up with an extremely varied range of work ever since she started in the early nineties. It includes film projections, photography and spatial installations, but she also enters into joint ventures with such fellow artists as Pierre Huyghe Liam Gillick and Rikrit Tiravanija. She incorporates different media in her artistic practice such as photography, film and video, and installation. Interested in the transitory interspaces in our everyday environment, her works articulate the relationship between place, object and user/beholder.

She has worked out scenarios for the French chansonnier Christophe, designed displays for Balenciaga's fashion boutiques in New York and Paris and designed a house for a collector in Tokyo. When she won the 'Prix Marcel Duchamp' in 2003 it was a confirmation of her international recognition. The most important group exhibitions she has taken part in include 'Utopia Station', the Venice Biennale (2003), the Tirana Biennale (2003), 'Documenta 11', Kassel (2002), the Liverpool Biennale (2002), the Yokohama Triennale (2001), 'Do it', Museo de Arte Carillo Gil, Mexico DF (2001), 'What If', Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2000), 'Cities on the move', Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen (1999) and the Berlin Biennale (1998). In 2004 she mounted the 'Alphavilles' exhibition at deSingel. It was accompanied by two publications: 'Alphavilles' (208 pages) and 'Tropicalisation' (40 pages). For "Skulptur Projekte" in 2007 in Munster she gave her personal version of the history of this event, creating a theme park composed of 1:4-scale replicas of selected sculptures from exhibitions – concrete and metal quotations of the original works. In 2008 with "TH.2058" in Tate’s Turbine Hall, Dominique Gonzalez Foerster looks 50 years into the future. She is also participating in the Venice Biennale 2009.

Her work for the Ladonia Biennial is a Lecture Performance.

  

Jorge Otero-Pailos, born 1971, Spain; MIT, Ph.D 2002, is a theorist of contemporary preservation and architecture, whose research probes the boundaries between these two disciplines. He is the Founder and Director of Future Anterior, one of the preeminent scholarly journals of preservation history, theory and criticism.

Otero-Pailos teaches courses on the history and theory of preservation and architecture, which deal with architectural transformation, interpretation, and the history of Modernism in North and South America.

His projects on The Ethics of Dust have been shown in Manifesta 2008, Bolzano and in the Venice Biennial 2009.

VIDEO

Project in Ladonia Biennial: The Ethics of Dust: Wotan’s Tower

Marjetica Potrč (b. 1953, Slovenia) received degrees in architecture (1978) and sculpture (1986, 1988) from the University of Ljubljana.

Potrc’s work inevitably points to the dangers of globalization, climate change and unsustainable urban growth. However, firmly imbued with an aesthetic of hope, it shows how rural living can offer a model for the future; a vibrant community that is both self-supporting and globally connected.

Her work has been featured in exhibitions throughout Europe and the Americas, including the Sao Paulo Biennial in Brazil (1996 and 2006); Skulptur. Projekte in Muenster, Germany (1997); The Structure of Survival at the Venice Biennial (2003); and FarSites at the San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA (2005). She has had solo shows at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (2001); the Max Protetch Gallery, New York (2002, 2005 and 2008); the Nordenhake Gallery in Berlin (2003 and 2007); the PBICA in Lake Worth, Florida (2003); the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts (2004); the Portikus in Frankfurt/Main, Germany (2006); The Curve, Barbican Art Galleries in London (2007); Venice Biennial 2009. 

"Finding an energy and a certain poetry in the architecture of the disenfranchised, Potrc creates an anti-monumental art that rethinks the concepts of publicity and privacy."

  

Project in the biennial: How to build a sustainable shelter in the style of C.D Friedrich

Moscow Poetry Club

This literary club was founded in 2007, chaired by Kirill Kovalzi and curated by Evgeny Nikitin. The nucleus of the club is a group of poets-metarealists and poets of the "Poetry" club - Evgeny Bunimovich, Jury Arabov, Mark Shatunovsky, Vladimir Aristov, Alexander Eremenko, Alexander Samartsev, Sergey Strokan, John High, and also young poets Andrey Rodionov, Alexey Korolev, Alexander Pereverzin, Gennady Kanevsky, Igor Karaulov, Evgeniya Vorobyeva and Evgeniy Nikitin. The name is an important connection with the legendary Moscow Poetry Club which was founded in the 1980s. Among the founders is the well-known poet Viktor Korkiya (b. 1948). 

Moscow Poetry Club, the poetic club in the form we see today, is the form (however unostentatious) of a dialogue between the modern art and poetry. The club participated in Venice Biennial 2009 with the theme Making Words.

  

In the Ladonia Biennial Andrey Rodionov is performing a revised poetry version of Viktor Korkiya’s play "The Invincible Armada"(after Lope de Vega). The famous Spanish author Lope de Vega participated in the battle of the Armada in 1588 and survived.

Music: DDT, Peter Tchajkovsky Manfred, Francisco Guerrero, Sililoquios, text by Lope de Vega.

Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) studied architecture at Cornell University but never practiced conventionally as a professional. Instead, he married the idea of art and architecture to develop his artistic process. In the early 1970s, Matta-Clark was interested in the idea of entropy, metamorphic gaps, and leftover/ambiguous space, what he called "Anarchitecture." He had come to see buildings, rooms, urban spaces, neighbourhoods, and places where people gather as situations in which his planned "interventions" could create something new.  

After his death his influence in contemporary art increased especially since 1990.    

In Ladonia Biennial Gordon Matta-Clark’s film Tree Dancing from 1971, is to be seen in a new context and in a new form: Tree Ghost Dancing

Amy Simon, born in New York City 1957, lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. She works with photography and installations. Her work is about memory and affiliation. Exhibitions include Kulturhuset, Stockholm 2008, Venice Biennial 2009.

In Ladonia Biennial Amy Simon is showing a photo project, A Similar State of Mind. This picture is showing the special Door Handle in Ladonia. For Ladonian citizens it is a symbolic gesture to seize this handle.

Picture HERE.

Joan Jonas was born in New York City in 1936. She is a pioneer of video and performance art and one of the most important female artists to emerge in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She began her career in New York City as a sculptor. By 1968 she moved into what was then leading edge territory: mixing performance with props and mediated images, situated outside in natural and/or industrial environments. She has developed her performance to be a combination of live performance, videowork, drawing, reading, sound, music, and installation. Today she has become one of the most well-known artists in the contemporary artworld.

 She is exhibiting her work all over the world. She participated in Documenta 2002, São Paulo and Sydney Biennials and Yokohama Triennial in 2008, Venice Biennial in 2009.  

Her work in Ladonia Biennial: Reading Dante. 

Paul Chan was born in 1973 in Hong Kong and currently lives in New York City. He received his BFA in video and digital arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and his MFA in film, video, and new media from Bard College. His recent solo exhibitions have been presented at the New Museum, New York (2008); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, (2007); Serpentine Gallery, London (2007); The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, (2006-07); Portikus, Frankfurt, (2006); Magasin 3, Stockholm Konsthall (2006); Para/Site Art Space, Hong Kong (2006); UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2005); and The Institute of Contemporary Art Boston (2005). Selected group exhibitions include The Venice Biennale 2009, The Turin Triennale, Turin (2008); The Istanbul Biennale, Istanbul (2007), The 2006 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; New Work/New Acquisitions, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2005); 8th Biennale d'Art Contemporain de Lyon, France (2005); Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2004).

His homepage is worth visiting.  

Work in Ladonia Biennial: Homage to Henry Darger