DIAS & RIEDWEG - MOVING TRUCK AND RECENT WORKS

Mauricio Dias (born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1964) and Walter Riedweg (born in Lucerne, Switzerland, 1955) have been working together since 1993, using their respective former experiences in the visual arts and performance in collaborative interdisciplinary public art projects. Their work investigates how private psychologies affect and constitute public space and vice-versa, having as its main characteristic the involvement of the audience in the creation and execution of the work itself. Dias & Riedweg are currently represented by Galeria Vermelho, Sao Paulo and Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon.
They received the jury prize at Festival Video Brazil, Sao Paulo (2007) and recognition grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, New York and Fondation Pro Helvetia, Switzerland. Dias & Riedweg have realised art projects and exhibitions in Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Egypt, China, Japan, the United States and in several countries in Europe. Their work was exhibited in important art institutions such as Centro Cultural do Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro; MACBA Barcelona; KIASMA Helsinki; and Le Plateau Paris, as well as in major international exhibitions such as “Conversations at the Castle”, by Homi Bhabha and Mary Jane Jacob, Atlanta (1996); “L’État des Choses” by Catherine David, at Kunst-Werke Berlin (2001); and “The Populism Project” (2005). They also participated in several biennales, including: Venice (1999), Sao Paulo (1998 and 2002), Istanbul (1998), Havana (2003), Liverpool (2004), Shanghai (2004), and Gwangju (2006), as well as at Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany (2007). They currently have solo exhibitions at Galerie Bendana-Pinel, Paris, and at the Americas Society, New York.
The work of Mauricio Dias and Walter Riedweg explores issues of otherness and exclusion. Their video installations, which have been shown in the world’s most important exhibitions and which are included in the collections of several museums, explore social politics and subjectivity using experimental practices that connect the centre with the margins of urban society. At the invitation of Kunstenfestivaldesarts 09, Dias & Riedweg now have their first comprehensive exhibition in Belgium, which will include a selection of five recent works and a new creation, Moving Truck, at Argos.
This selection of works, which addresses issues of racism, immigration, social clash, hybridism and cannibalism, was conceptually developed by the artists for this show departing from their piece “Funk Staden”, created for Documenta 12 in Kassel. This intoxicating work ties the musical scene of “Funk Carioca” (funk originating in the favelas of Rio) to the story of a journey to the New World. It shows how representations of the Other in the 16th century differ little from the methods used by today’s media to marginalise certain social groups in the age of the global economy.
“Moving Truck” is their new creation for the exhibition at Argos, produced for the festival. A removal van, regularly used by people to change address, will move through different neighbourhoods of Brussels, screening their piece “Throw” (2004) in a journey which questions the boundaries inscribed on the fabric of the city.

The Other begins where our senses meet with the world
by Mauricio Dias & Walter Riedweg
The act of naming is only a poetical assumption. Names need to be constantly redefined in order to exist. The act of naming is in itself a resonance, and exists only as an action with explicit temporality. This constantly changing resonance directly affects the associative context of each significant. To sound, to say something, to attain a poetic/erotic presence in life, an individual needs to find him/herself in a position in which the inner/outer and outer/inner flow are ensured. Without this practice, existence stagnates. Poetry and eroticism are found in every life context, independent of economic conditions.
Every person possesses a complex and hybrid identity. Also complex are the means that determine and produce the singularity with which we identify each other and that differentiate each individual from the rest. Each of us organises and names that which he/she sees, hears or touches through a unique system of meanings. Perception is an exercise of confrontation between different systems of meanings. These tensions generate the need for the creation of a poetic field, in which each person’s specific worldview may become open to question. With the creation of this poetic field, an individual may turn his/her unique worldview into potentiality.
The dignity of every person is based, among other things, on the fact that only he/she sees the world as he/she does. That’s why it’s interesting to listen to the Other. Even though we work with the Other and about the Other and, in most part, through interactive and interfering processes, our work is not intended to judge, classify, teach, cure, improve or even change anything in the Other’s life. We understand our work mainly as meetings with the Other. They are poetical practices bringing together ethics and aesthetics. They are processes that could almost be taken as performances in which a group of people meets and gets closer, and the reactions of such meetings, either of an individual-psychological or collective-social order, are recorded in a poetic form, mainly through video-installations.
Our projects try to open spaces where the natural polemic that follows poetry and art renders the singularity of each one visible, thus also making visible the dignity of each person who shares the space in which we live. Our work investigates how private psychologies affect public space and vice-versa. We understand Art as a subversion of Culture, in order to create a field of action where the meanings and the states of things are constantly revised.

„Weitergesagt wird nur das, was die Weitersager weiter bringt.“
(Told further is only that, which brings the teller further) Peter Sloterdijk

All pieces are conceived, filmed and edited by Dias & Riedweg
Assisted by Juliana Franklin

Moving Truck is a new creation for The Kunstenfestivaldesarts Brussels

The artists are currently represented by:
Galerie Bendana-Pinel, Paris; Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon and Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo.

Further exhibitions at the present time:
Solo shows:
Galerie Bendana-Pinel, Paris
18 April - 6 June
Americas Society New York
12 May – 1 August
Group shows:
2nd Bienal de Canarias, TEA, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain
6 March – 3 May
Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo, Spain
15 May – 14 June
Centro Galego de Arte Contemporaneo, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
15 May – 1 September