The Idiot - Introduction

This is the blog for a project called ‘The Idiot’.

The blog serves as the arena for a dialogue between a network of young New Zealanders and the Russian artists Gluklya and Tsaplya. The blog and the network will be coordinated by Marcus Williams; New Zealand based curator/artist.

Based in St Petersburg, the ongoing project of Gluklya and Tsaplya is the Factory of Found Clothing (FNO) for which clothing forms a central signifier of human fragility. Through collaborative projects and public interventions art serves as a vehicle for social transformation in the FNO operation. The outcomes often involve the direct participation of other individuals and groups in projects where art and direct action are inseparable; projects which involve performance, video, installation and intervention. The longest running project within FNO is the Utopian Shop of Clothing which produces and retails re constituted clothes/art objects made and sold by young female collaborators from all over Russia. The Utopian Shop generates its networks from magazine articles and advertisements and operates as a kind of resistance to market consumerism and the world wide phenomenon of label fetishism. The manifesto of FNO states; “The place of the artist is on the side of the weak. Weakness makes a person human, and it is by overcoming weakness that heroes are born”.

The Moving Image Centre http://mic.org.nz/ in central Auckland will exhibit and host the FNO project in Auck;and; forming the hub of the workshops and resulting projects generated by this collaborative network. This iteration of the Factory of Found Clothing will form part of the Visual Art Program of the 2009 Auckland International Arts Festiva; AK09 http://www.aucklandfestival.co.nz/. FNO will work with young New Zealanders from a range of backgrounds and facilitate the development of artworks aimed at social transformation

Gluklya and Tsaplya will be Artists in Residence at the School of Design and the schools Snowwhite Gallery http://www.unitec.ac.nz/?955E7D8E-D07C-459F-A675-547AB533278F will accommodate aspects of the Auckland venture including a concomitant exhibition with MIC. Over the coming months; conversations will begin through this blog. FNO will arrive in Auckland in February 2009; the workshops will then begin and the Festival opens in early March. After the opening of the festival a Symposium about art, design and social transformation will happen at the School of Design. This will be followed by a second symposium in Otago focused more on contemporary Russian art.

The workshops and projects in Auckland will draw on a novel called ‘The Idiot’ by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Written in 1862 the book is a bitter critique of the ruling class revolving around the somewhat guileless and generous spirited ‘Prince Myshkin’ who gets drawn into the vitriolic and self centered world of the Russian aristocracy.

Gluklya and Tsaplya will utilize this story and its central character to weave a discourse around which the New Zealand collaborators will develop their projects.

Marcus Williams