The first Tirana Biennale 2001, may become a turning point for contemporary art. It is directed by Giancarlo Politi-the editor of Flash Art, who invited more than 30 internationally well known curators and artists to select more than 200 "young and very young artists" from all over the world, from the "most diverse tendencies". Not just a Biennial as many others, he writes ," where one or two curator's eyes would determines choices and judgment: this exhibition is the real gathering of cultures and attitudes from every center and periphery. It is also an enormous show, realized with an impossible budget (30.000$)"

The exhibition opened in 10th Sept. until October 15, 2001, at the National Gallery of Arts, Bul. "Deshmoret e Kombit"; and National Fair Center, Bul and at Zhan D'Ark", Tirana, Albania. A 400 pages, full color catalogue, will document the show.

July 2001_ The invitation:

Miltos Manetas, has been invited to suggest some computer/Internet artists, he proposed 50. The budget for his section, was zero and the reality of Albania would guarantee nothing in terms of presentation for the computer works. Therefore, Manetas and the electronicOrphanage , decide that their section would be a webpage ( www.biennale.net)., which can be eventually expanded in a real-space exhibition. Like a .Zip archive.

10 hours

For the exhibition itself, electronicOrphanage, would travel in Tirana and would realize a 10 hours long demo/performance -presenting one by one the 50 projects. Because computer art, is something that may or may not look like contemporary art and because different of its creators are not professional artists but designers, music composers,web activists or just lost souls, a "theory" was necessary .

August 2001_ The "theory"

The 50 participants, have been invited to contribute one line of text each one for the construction of a "Manifesto". After Peter Lunenfeld's contribution though, ( We don't need a "Manifesto" for the 21 century, we need Utilities), this has been changed to "Utilities for a Manifesto" . A group of 3 Intellectuals -Peter Lunenfeld, Lev Manovich and Norman Klein- has been also invited to discuss the different projects and come with a 3 lines of text comment on them.

The "links"

Each of the 50 participants, has been invited to contribute his 10 best links. As old Greeks would say : "tell me about your Links and I'll tell you who you are"

August 2001 _The catalogue

Manetas, invited Experimental Jetset, to curate the 8 pages for his section. Here is what they did. Here is an e-mail which explains their design :" Our starting point was actually something you wrote us a few mails ago: "You must design the pages: it's important, because this section is a kind of manifesto. It has to be in total contrast with the rest of the catalogue." Right... So this is what we did:First of all, we turned the pages 90 degrees, so they would be formally in contrast with the rest of the catalogue. Then we decided to fully concentrate on the "utilities"... We really wanted it to look like a real, strong, urgent, "static" manifesto... So we spread out the manifesto over eight pages, and shattered in-between are little fragments of text. These fragments are the artists biographies. Actually, we've shown only the first few lines of the biographies, and ended each fragment with "more at www.biennale.net"... So the first few lines of the biographies are actually "teasers" to get people to the website... So they are more like "banners" than actual biographies... ...because, when we decided to concentrate on the manifesto, we also realized something else: All the other information would work better on the web. (For example, the ten links work better on the site because you can actually click on it. On printed matter the links wouldn't make sense...) Because the site is much easier to update, we decided to see the 8-page manifesto as a sort "clickable button" to the website... what we mean is, we decided to use the "static" information (the manifesto) on the pages, and refer to the website for the "dynamic" information...Does that make sense?"

Details

Everybody has worked for free.This is something unusual for a contemporary art show, where nobody would do anything if not paid well ,in money or reputation.