International Conference on "Borderline Syndrome"

Concept by Renata Salecl Friday,
7 July and Saturday, 8 July 2000
Cankarjev dom, Cultural and Congress Centre; Prešernova 10, Ljubljana

Theoreticians, artists, psychoanalysts and art critics from Great Britain, USA, France, Austria, Israel and Slovenia will gather at the international conference of Manifesta 3 to discuss the topic of "Borderline Syndrome".

Manifesta 3 will explore the issues of Defence Energies and drawing borders in contemporary world, where globalization intertwines with regionalization, where the universal capital is counteracted with the national, ethic and other excluding values. Namely, in contemporary world the defence against political, economic and cultural homogenisation is also reflected on the field of culture. Manifesta 3 will expose the search for borders in contemporary art and analyse the tendency of implanting art into certain cultural values.

International symposium, taking place during the exhibition, will attempt to enlighten the topic from the point of view of contemporary theoretical treatises on art theory, philosophy and psychoanalysis. The participants will be asked to try to shed light on the serious topic of Manifesta 3 - Borderline Syndrome, Energies of Defence - from their point of view.

In psychoanalysis, for instance, the idea of borderline syndrome is used as a concept characterising the border states between neurosis and psychosis. Since contemporary art embodies many artistic practices that bring up the question of where the border between "madness" and "sanity" can be placed (e.g. some forms of body art), it is necessary that the issue of borders in art be also analysed from the viewpoint of psychoanalysis. The issue of borders in art will be discussed by theoreticians, analysing contemporary art from the view of philosophy, in treatises on the correlation between universal - particular. What is the universal language of art in this day and age? Do Western cultures comprehend the artistic language of other cultures and vice versa? To what extent is art today still founded on the particular values of individual cultures? Curators and theoreticians engaged in contemporary art will especially expose the issue of borders in art. The question will be raised to what extent is the curator the one to tell the visitor of the show what is and what is not art. In light of the fact that Manifesta 3 will take place in Ljubljana, a city on the border between the East and the West, between the ethnical turmoil on the Balkans and the democratic Europe, the symposium will also touch on the political issues of defending and opening borders to art.

Lectures will be delivered by:

Parveen Adams (Great Britain), faculty member at the humanities department of the Brunel University in London.
Ariella Azoulay (Israel), faculty member at the Curatorial Studies Department, Camera Obscura School of Visual Art, Tel Aviv.
Mark Cousins (Great Britain), faculty member at the Architectural Association, London.
Frederic Jameson (USA), faculty member at the Comparative Literature Department at the Duke University.
Henrietta Moore (Great Britain) faculty member at the Anthropology Department at the London School of Economics.
Genevieve Morel (France), psychoanalyst, Paris.
Robert Pfaller (Austria), faculty member at the University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz and visiting professor at the University of Art and Design, Berlin Weissensee.
Adrian Rifkin, faculty member at the Art Theory Department , Goldsmith College, London.
Adrian Rifkin, Middlesex University.
Renata Salecl (Slovenia), researcher at the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana and visiting professor at the London School of Economics.

Programme:

Friday
10 am opening
10.15 Adrian Rifkin "Dejected Masculinities: Mattia Preti and the Promises of Pain"
11.15 break
11.30 Robert Phaller "The Game, the Border, and the Art"
12.30 lunch ( sandwiches)
14.30 Genevieve Morel "Joyce and the Extension of the Symptom"
15.30 break
15.45 Parveen Adams "Turning Oneself into a Picture: A Case of Joel-Peter Witkin"
16.45 longer break
18.00 Frederick Jameson "From Metaphor to Allegory"
20.00 reception, party

Saturday
10.00 am Renata Salecl "The Art of War and the War of Art"
11.00 break
11.15 Henrietta Moore "Art and the Social"
12.15 break
12.30 Mark Cousins "Policing the Border of Art"
13.30 lunch (sandwiches) participants see the exhibition
17.00 film by Ariella Azoulay "A Sign from Heaven" (55 min)
18.00 lecture by the author, discussion
19.00 Break
20.00 dinner

A Sign from Heaven / film by Ariella Azoulay
Screenplay and Director: Ariella Azoulay
Producers: Ariella Azoulay, Erez Harodi - Osim Zilum
Photography: Nurit Aviv Editor: Eliav Lilti
Graphic Design, Animation and Music: Itae Amit 55 minutes
Short description:
A Sign from Heaven concerns three famous recent episodes of violence: Rabin's "assassination" by Igal Amir, Carmella Buhbut's "killing" of her husband Yehuda, and the "elimination" of the "Engineer" Yehiya Ayash by Israeli security forces. The film examines aspects of each of these episodes and exposes a surprising network of similarities connecting them. The manner in which an episode is presented as "murder", "killing" or "elimination", determines the distinction between these categories. How the photography, physical evidence, and reconstruction of the scene of the violent act are used to justify, stigmatise, erase or memorialise a particular episode? The film goes beyond boundaries of documentary. Each of its 22 segments is part of a lexicon defining terms from A to Z including "ID card", "Peace", "State", "Trauma" and "Violence". Apart from the narrators, all of the speakers in the film hold positions in various institutions related to the three episodes. A Sign from Heaven casts doubt upon familiar ideological formulas and shows the way in which different types of language - scientific, legal, liberal-democratic- further complicate the web of violence, giving it legitimacy in certain cases and blurring its origins in others.