PARANOIA [ARTISTIC PRACTICE]
Touring exhibition: 28 Jun-27 Aug 206, Leeds City Art Gallery, The Headrow, Leeds, UK; 4 Nov-9 Dec 2006 Focal Point Gallery, Southend Central Library, Victoria Avenue, Southend-on-Sea, UK; 10 Jan-11 March 2007 Freud Museum, 20 Maresfield Gardens London, UK. – – – At a time when the world has witnessed dramatic and shocking events that have created an atmosphere of uncertainty and unease, this exhibition takes a universal and all–too–present theme and explores it through the work of over 40 international artists, many from some of the worlds ‘troubled spots'. Through photography, moving image, installation and performance work, the artists provide a range of imaginative and sometimes oblique responses that get inside a state of mind that operates through distrust, suspicion, and fear, to bring about a deluded and distorted interpretation of events. – – – Artists participating: Oreet Ashery, Mireille Astore, Franko B, Maja Bajevic, Daniel Baker, Rana Bishara, Lisa K Blatt, Tim Blake, Laurie Halsey Brown, Mircea Cantor, Norman Cowie, Jeremy Deller, Martin Effert, Amy Feigley, Doug Fishbone, Juan del Gado, Catherine Graham, Sagi Groner, Hatice Guleryuz, Juul Hondius, Helmut Loehr, Avi Mograbi, Ricardo Giraldo Montes, Vesna Milicevic, Hillary Mushkin, Diane Nerwen, Jean-Gabriel Periot, Khaled D. Ramadan (with Alfredo Cramerotti), Karst-Janneke Rogaar, Paul Ryan, Jackie Salloum, Larissa Sansour, Nike Savvas, Santiago Sierra, Tatjana Strugar, Doron Solomons, Emilia Telese, Milica Tomic, Akram Zaatari, Katarina Zdjelar, Rachel Wilberforce, Roel Wouters – – – Curated by Predrag Pajdic. Image courtesy by Hatice Guleryuz (l), Jeremy Deller (r)
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Comrade Alfredo Neri, 2006
performance, video, sound
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Comrade Alfredo Neri is a "performative documentary" on media representation and identity construction through the media, by Khaled D. Ramadan and Alfredo Cramerotti.
The video is a constructed documentation, with real interviews and footage material, about the life of Alfredo Neri, the spokesman of the Italian fraction of the Skinhead Movement. The skinheads are affiliated with the neo-Nazis and are active in the European countries as well as in the former East Block. Neri is the representative and promoter of the Italian division of the skinheads, their international affiliations and events; in other words, the representative of the state of fear that envelops civil societies. In the documentary, he explains how the movement changed its strategy to suit contemporary global political tendencies, urging its members to operate as invisible as possible and infiltrate the political, economic, and cultural structures, with the ultimate aim to rule in Europe. They operate without being exposed and are directly affiliated with the neo-Nazi ideology. Is history about to repeat itself, changing only the outfit? The authors met Alfredo Neri during his visit to Scandinavia, on his travel to Helsingborg, Sweden, for the annual gathering of the neo-Nazi movement in Autumn 2005.
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The film is presented after a short lecture-introduction by Khaled d. Ramadan, followed by a discussion with the audience, in which the spokesperson, takes part unexpectedly. The whole project «Comrade Alfredo Neri» questions media representation and construction of identity through a fake documentary-portrait based on real facts, presented as Part 1 of the project. The audience expects Part 2 to come after the debate; instead, the audience itself becomes Part 2, the debate, discussion and sparking of stimuli injected by the film (Part 1).
– – – Presented at the Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen (2006), Hotel Pro Forma in Copenhagen (2006), and was part of the itinerant project «The Disappearance of the Public Space», curated by Goran Petrovic. The piece has also been shown on tv-tv Copenhagen (2006) and at the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Adelaide (2008)