A look at the recently launched Manchester International Festival
A vulture flies through the gallery. A woman is blending garlic, shrimp paste, and Chinese parsley in the corner. A group of cleaners sweep their brooms across the floor. With these gestures, the Manchester International Festival (MIF) recently launched 150 different performances, installations, and other activities as part of curator Hans Ulrich Obrist’s do it, an open-ended, generative project of artists’ instructions, to be realised in galleries, homes, in the street, and other locations internationally.
This iteration of do it, whose nexus will be at the Manchester Art Gallery until July 21, features newly commissioned instructions, archive do its, a room dedicated to do it TV, a games room, and an homage room, where artists have realised the instructions of other artists who have passed away, including Tracey Emin responding to Louise Bourgeois. For her contribution, Yoko Ono – an early participant of the Fluxus movement, whose anti-art aesthetic has influenced do it – is asking people to send in photos of their smiles. A version of her ‘Wish Tree’ has also been realised for the exhibition. Other participating artists include Gilbert & George, Adrian Piper, Paul McCarthy, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Maria José Arjona.
"Curator Hans Ulrich Obrist’s do it is an open-ended, generative project of artists’ instructions, to be realised in galleries, homes, in the street, and other locations internationally"
This marks the 20th year of Obrist’s participatory curatorial project, inspired in part by Marcel Duchamp’s instruction work, John Cage’s experiments with musical repetition, as well as influential curator Seth Siegelaub’s own conceptual approaches to exhibition. In his opening speech, Obrist recalled the early 90s and the growth of the internet, a time at which he and artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier first conceived of the idea for do it in a Parisian café. “It felt like a moment of globalisation,” he said. And with do it, he continued, “you can see how the same instructions have been realised in many different sequences again and again, and how each one has been influenced by the local context.”
As part of their 7th year of artist-led premieres, the last week of the MIF also saw performances by Massive Attack v. filmmaker Adam Curtis, theatrical production The Old Woman, with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Willem Dafoe, and a residency by The xx.
The Manchester International Festival runs until 21 July at venues across the city. The do it compendium is out now, published by Distributed Art Publishers.
Text by Ananda Pellerin
Ananda Pellerin is a London-based writer and regular contributor to anothermag.com.
