Impossible Exchange - Frieze Art Fair 2009

IMPOSSIBLE EXCHANGE
Curated by Filipa Oliveira + Miguel Amado
Commissioned for Frieze Projects


Frieze Projects, Frieze Art Fair
October 15 – 18, 2009

Frieze Art Fair
Regent’s Park
London NW1
www.friezeartfair.com


The Lisbon-based curatorial team Filipa Oliveira + Miguel Amado is presenting “Impossible Exchange”, a project commissioned for Frieze Projects at Frieze Art Fair that plays on the transactional nature of the art fair. “Impossible Exchange” comprises works by Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle, Fia Backström, Joana Bastos, Carolina Caycedo, Brina Thurston and Carey Young.


Exchange is central to everyday life, permeating all social fields – from the biological to the legal to the aesthetic. In the art market, of which the fair is an epiphenomenon, exchange plays the key role. This framework inspires “Impossible Exchange”, a project commissioned for Frieze Projects and curated by the Lisbon-based curatorial team Filipa Oliveira + Miguel Amado. Its title is borrowed from an expression coined by French theorist Jean Baudrillard, who once wrote that “Everything which sets out to exchange itself for something runs up, in the end, against the Impossible Exchange Barrier.” This project consists of a series of daily participatory events that play on the transactional nature of the art fair. Each day (including the VIP preview on October 14th), artists Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle, Fia Backström, Joana Bastos, Carolina Caycedo, Brina Thurston and Carey Young orchestrate different performances and displays at the booth of “Impossible Exchange”. Mining institutional critique, community-based movements, self-organization traditions and activism, these proposals address the production of symbolic value in the “age of questioned capitalism” – an expression suggested by the current global financial crisis. Through the socially engaged practice of these artists, “Impossible Exchange” establishes a counter-public sphere that radically envisions change on the economic, political and cultural levels.


Frieze Projects is a programme of artists’ commissions and other projects organized annually at Frieze Art Fair. It is curated by Neville Wakefield and this year includes seven new works as well as The Cartier Award and collaborations with 2009 partner institutions and curatorial teams CAC Vilnius (Lithuania) and Filipa Oliveira + Miguel Amado (Portugal).