Details on artists in Trading Places

Zeigam Azizov
Zeigam Azizov was born in Azerbaijan and is based in London. Azizov employs video to investigate notions of mobility in urban settings. Through his work, Azizov attempts to represent a state of constant temporality. Recent projects include Moneynations (Shedhalle, Zurich, 2003) and Routes (Grazer Kunstverein, 2002). For Trading Places, Azizov will premiere a new video work made during his recent residency at the Bauhaus in Dessau that explores the impact of a racist killing on the city.

Big Hope
Big Hope is a collaborative project group, initiated by Miklos Erhardt and Dominic Hislop in 1998. Recent projects include Commonopoly (with Elske Rosenfeld,
Berlin, Feb 2004), Manamana Protest Songbook (Graz, Jul 2003) and
Talking About Economy (Dunaujvaros/Berlin, Mar 2003). Trading Places will be Big Hope’s first representation in a public gallery in London. They will be presenting Re:Route, an alternative map of the city of Turin, Italy, illustrated with photographs, sketches and text, based on the view and experiences of recent immigrants.
Big Hope will be taking part in the discussionRepresentation or Action on Saturday 22 May 12 – 4pm

Ursula Biemann
Ursula Biemann is an internationally renowned artist, curator and theorist based in Zurich. Her work investigates the geographical spheres generated by the human economic circuits required by the global market. Specifically, she deals with the experience of migrant women and their relationship to technologies of surveillance and control. Recent curatorial projects include Geography and the Politics of Mobility (Generali Foundation, Vienna, 2003). Her work has been shown at major international exhibitions including at MOMA, New York, MACBA, Barcelona and Manifesta 3, Ljubljana. In Trading Places Biemann will present two video essays, Europlex (2003) and Remote Sensing (2001). Remote Sensing is a video work investigating the traffiking of female sex workers in South East Asia and from Eastern and Central Europe to the EU. Europle is a collaboration with Visual Anthropologist Angela Sanders and traces the journeys made on the edge of Europe in Southern Spain, as Moroccan workers move back and forth between two continents each day.
Remote Sensing will be screened duringTraded Bodies on Thursday 13 May 6–8pm

Phil Collins
Phil Collins was born in Runcorn and has lived and worked in Belfast, Belgrade and New York. Collins works in photography and video and is concerned with the effect of socio-political conflict on individuals. Collins’ work has been shown at Modern Art Oxford (2004), Tate Britain (Artnow, 2003) and the Barbican (Witness, 2003). In 2003 he had solo shows at Maccarone inc., New York and Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast. Collins is producing a new work for Trading Places, an extension of I only want you to love me, a recent commission from Photoworks for the Brighton Photo Biennial. Collins will carry out an exchange project in which he will travel to Kosovo to present a portrait he recently took of a family living in London to their relatives. Collins will take on the role of a go-between, crossing borders that are currently closed to the family.

Petja Demitrova
Petja Demitrova was born in Bulgaria and lives and works in Vienna. She is a member of Dezentrale Medien, a group who develop media projects with teenagers from migrant backgrounds. For Trading Places, Demitrova will present Nationality (2003) a new video work that traces the artist’s decision to become an Austrian Citizen.

Esra Ersen
Esra Ersen lives and works in Istanbul. Ersen’s work was featured in Manifesta 4 and in the Gwangju Biennale in 2002. If you could speak Swedish was commissioned by Moderna Museet, Stockholm in 2002. Ersen worked with recent immigrants to the city, inviting them to convey a phrase or sentence of their choosing. She then documented each of them trying to learn and pronounce what they wanted to say, presenting a frank portrayal of the human side of the official ‘integration’ process. Trading Places will be the first presentation of Ersen’s work in the UK.

Sejla Kameric
Sejla Kameric lives and works in Sarajevo. Her projects move between works in film, theatre, fashion and photography. Recent exhibitions include Balkan Consulate (<Rotor>, Graz 2003) and Peripheries become the centre (Prague Biennale, 2003). Her practice pursues a provocative perspective on the experience of living and working in a post-war zone. In Dream House (2000), Kameric transports a refugee camp into different landscapes and backgrounds, reflecting on the aspirations of movement felt by its inhabitants. Trading Places will be the first presentation of Kameric’s work in the UK.

Klub Zwei
Klub Zwei is a collaboration between Simone Bader and Jo Schmeiser. Founded in 1992, Klub Zwei make video documentaries, publish text works and posters that explore forms of mediation and representation. For Trading Places they will present Things. Places. Years., a documentary that began in 2001 with a series of interviews with Jewish immigrant women in London, many of them refugees from Nazi Austria. It has since been edited through dialogue with the participating women and has remained a documentary in process for two years. This final version will be premiered in the UK at Trading Places.
Thing. Places. Years will be screened at Documentary in Process on Thursday 20 May 6 – 8pm

Martin Krenn
Martin Krenn is an artist and activist based in Vienna. Krenn initiates public interventions, video works and photography in response to political and social circumstances. Recent projects include European Corrections Corporation (Kunstraum, Munich 2003) and Border Crossing Services (Kunstraum Lüneburg, 2001) with Oliver Ressler. His ongoing research project City Views, developed in cooperation with repuplicart, is realised in cooperation with migrants across Europe. Krenn photographs sites in urban contexts that have an association to emancipation or sites that negate a public presence for his collaborators. Trading Places is the first realisation of City Views in London. City Views has been funded by European Union Culture 2000.
Martin Krenn will take part in the discussion Representation or Action on Saturday 22 May 12 – 4pm

Grassroots Collective
Grassroots Collective was created in London in 1999 by Leticia Valverdes, photographer and artist, and Maia Woodward-Dyason, journalist and activist. For Trading Places, they will present the project, A Day out Can Make a Difference ,
a photographic project with migrant communities in LLondon initiated in 2001.

Edina Husanovic
Edina Husanovic is an artist and curator from Bosnia who is currently based in London. For Trading Places she will present a performance relating to notions of movement and leaving home. The work has been developed in response to her residency at Hackney Community College and she will collaborate with students on the work. Recent projects include research into the relationship between the policy of promoting cultural bridges in the Balkans and local networks of artists.
Edina Husanovic will be directing a performance at the launch of Trading Places on May 7 1900h.

Adla Isanovic
Adla Isanovic works in video and is based in Sarajevo. Recent projects include Myths of Memory (Schauspielhaus, Vienna 2003) and Call me Sarajevo an international video project that Isanovic organised. Mi/Me (2002) is a video work in which we see anonymous faces walking through a street in Sarajevo. A voice makes contradictory statements ‘I am an artist, I am not traumatized … I have lived through war, I am not a hero.’ Simultaneously, significant dates in Balkan history run across the base of the screen. It effectively conveys the complex process of constructing a self out of a specific social and political situation, one that is generalised by Western Europe. Trading Places will be the first presentation of Isanovic’s work in the UK.
Alda Isanovic will take part in the discussions Representation or Action on Saturday 22 May 12 – 4pm and Artist as Channel: Broadcasting and Reporting on Thursday 27 May 6 – 8pm

Kristina Leko
Kristina Leko lives and works in Croatia. Leko works in video and photography, using each medium as a tool for communication and exchange. She has exhibited her work internationally as well as producing video documentaries for Croatian television. Sarajevo International (2001) is Leko’s portrait of the city through the eyes of new and recent arrivals. Through video portraits of foreigners currently living and working in Sarajevo, she presents one of many possible pictures of Sarajevo today. Trading Places will be the first presentation of Sarajevo International in the UK.
Kristina Leko will take part in the discussion Artist as Channel: Broadcasting and Reporting on Thursday 27 May 6 – 8pm when her film Sarajevo International will be screened.

MAIZ
MAIZ is an independent organisation that has been working with issues of female migration and sex workers rights since 1994. Rubia Salgado co-founded the group, which provides assistance, advice and advocacy as well as cultural projects. MAIZ is founded on the belief that participants in projects must be the protagonists of their representation. Recent projects include: Geography and the Politics of Mobility (Generali Foundation, Vienna 2002) and Cartographies, Austria. For Trading Places, MAIZ will realise Cartographies in London in collaboration with migrant women living in the city.
MAIZ will take part in the discussion Representation or Action on Saturday 22 May 12 – 4pm.

P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art
P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art (PMCA) is a symbolic virtual institution run by Tadej Pogacar who lives and works in Ljubljana. In recent projects PMCA deals with research and analysis of parallel information strategies and parallel economic models in selected urban areas. Code:Red is an ongoing project which involves collaboration with organisations working for the rights of sex workers to set up platforms for debate and protest.
Tadej Pogacar will take part in the discussion Traded Bodies Thursday 13 May 6–8pm

Photoinsight
London based artist John Nassari set up the website Photoinsight to offer a platform for discussing issues of ethnicity, identity and cultural difference.There are extensive reading lists and links, a bulletin board and chat rooms . Experiences is a section of the website which celebrates new work by Refugees with images and text that explores reflections of home and here. John Nassari will be presenting the Experiences project in Trading Places.
John Nassari will be facilitating Representation or Action Saturday 22 May 12 – 4pm
 
Lisl Ponger
Lisl Ponger’s photographic works and films have received international acclaim. Since the early nineties, Ponger has investigated issues of representation and exoticism. Ponger’s work was featured in Documenta XI (Kassel, 2002) and recent exhibitions include The Bourgeois Show, Heisenberg (2003) and Phantom Vienna (Vienna Museum, 2004). Wild Places depicts the artist getting a tattoo on the inside of her arm that reads, ‘mercenary, missionary, ethnographer, tourist (all crossed out), ARTIST’. This image serves to summarise Ponger’s self-conscious approach to the complex negotiation of the roles and expectations of depicting ‘otherness’.
Lisl Ponger will take part in the discussion Representation or Action Saturday 22 May 12 – 4pm

Marko Raat
Estonian artist Marko Raat has made documentaries, shorts, TV productions and art projects. In his film AGENT WILD DUCK (2002) Hans "Wild Duck" Gens is an old school spy trying to cope with brave new methods of making business. His confidence and concentration are disrupted when a new consultant Florian, a performance artist from Germany arrives and agent Wild Duck´s position in company becomes even more unstable. For Trading Places, Raat is showing the film For Aesthetic Reasons (1999), a film about a young Estonian art historian Andres Krug and fan of Danish modernist architecture who goes to Denmark and tries to find out if he can live in Denamark purely for aesthetic reasons.

Isa Rosenberger
Austrian artist, Isa Rosenberger was artist in residence in Sarajevo in 2001 during which time she made a film, Sarajevo Guided Tours, as a tourist trying to find out the stories and experiences of the war. She asked eight young people to choose a location in the city that has a special significance to them and films them at that site talking about why it is important.
Sarajevo Guided Tours will be screened at Artist as Channel: Broadcasting and Reporting on Thursday 27 May 6 – 8pm

Social Impact
Social Impact, based in Austria, was founded in 1997 to realise sociopolitical artistic interventions in public space. Documentation of their project Border Rescue will be presenteds in Trading Places. This project was developed in reaction to the strengthening of fortress Europe and the price refugees have to pay to enter this fortress. Social impact have been researching and documenting safe immigration routes along the Austrian-Czech border. Maps, guides and video documentation will be shown in the gallery.

Szuper Gallery
Susanne Clausen and Pawlo Kerestey founded Szuper Gallery in 1995, iand operate from their respective homes in London and Munich. For Trading Places, they will be showing documentation from their ongoing project Lift Archive, a glass lift in the foyer of the immigration office in Munich. Clausen and Kerestey have been curating a series of events and exhibitions in the lift, such as TAZ – Temporary Autonomous Zones, in collaboration with Alun Rowlands and Do we need a new anti-imperialism? in collaboration with Schleuser.net.

Wochenklausur
Wochenklausur are an activist art group based in Vienna. The group operates from the belief that art can bring about change in society. The group has carried out social intervention projects since 1993, using art institutions as temporary locations for their activities. Their name is translated as ‘Weeks Closed’, referring to their policy that a project should require no more than eight weeks to complete and achieve tangible social improvements. In 1995, Wochenklausur undertook an intervention in labour laws in Graz. In a bid to assist immigrants living in the town, they discovered a loophole in the law that allowed registered artists to live and work as long as they could support themselves from their art. Wochenklausur set-up workshops for immigrants helping them to develop artistic projects and remain in Austria. Documentation of their intervention into immigrant labour issues will be presented at Trading Places.

Moira Zoitl
Berlin-based artist Moira Zoitl has an interest in issues of women and work. For Trading Places she will presentdocumentation from Chat(t)er Gardens. Stories from and about Filipina workers, a project developed following her visit to Hong Kong in 2002 and research in London. While in the city she interviewed Mary Buneo, a domestic helper from the Philippines. Through this meeting she became interested in highlighting the situation of Filipino women who work in Hong Kong. Moira started to work on a newsletter, bringing together diverse views on Filipino workers with a concentration on stories told by the domestic workers themselves. Questioning the different levels of representation of women within the city and media Moira Zoitl tries to interfere in dominant narrations.