www.jennymarketou.com

http://www.zingmagazine.com/zing3/reviews/042_manifesta.html

Displacing Identity and Privacy. An analysis of Jenny Marketou's "Translocal: Camp in my tent" Amandaa beattie
Amanda_beattie@yahoo.com 2005

JENNY MARKETOU
Translocal: Camp in my Tent 1996-2001
Jenny Marketou (b. 1954, Athens) incorporates photography, video, film, radio, public interventions and using the museum or gallery as a place of production – she takes her subjects out of their normal context and explores them by converging reality and fiction, history and memory, identity and geography, agency , power and control in both the private and public domain.
Marketou lives in New York, has exhibited and lectured internationally since 1988 and has traveled extensively. Translocal: Camp in my Tent is a migratory performative public intervention art project that took place between 1996 and 2001 in the US, Mexico, Netherlands, Israel, Palestine, Germany, Cyprus, and Poland. The artist set up a tent in public spaces in these cities and filmed reactions and interactions with passers by, revealing their cultural differences in their diverse interpretations of her identity – for example, she was seen as a threat in Central Park, NYC, a prostitute in Rotterdam, and a political activist in Mexico City. A secondary part of the project took place in museums in the cities. A tent was set up and visitors were invited to an artificially beautiful tourist extravaganza surrounded by videos of the public locations, with surveillance camera and communication by internet to other participants.
Marketou is interested in social networks and visualizing things that are not in themselves visual. She poses many questions about migration and belonging as we observe the manner in which her identity transforms and is challenged by the different cultures. “Identity is always changing and cannot be defined by one thing,” she said. “Translocal: Camp in my Tent explores how technology including surveillance and control effects and transforms this. In both public and private spaces, our actions may be watched. Identities are malleable – they change and expand. They can be packed up and moved, just like a home.” www.jennymarketou.com

The idea of migration, unhominess, inbetweeness and not belonging represents our biggest fears and our biggest fantasies and desires The experience of setting up or leaving home is among the events and experiences that people remember. The events which took place during each of my intervention s distinctly influenced place consciousness and fostered the importance of a gendered public space in our culture.

Conceiving Translocal: Camp in my Tent I have been inspired by my experience camping out with nomad Bedouins between 1994 and 1996 in the Desert Negev in Israel as well as reflecting upon the contradictions and complexities of our daily life lived in a highly technological and decentralized society where our preoccupation with dwelling, identity and embodiment have been always negotiable.and are in continuous state of transformations.

Translocal/Camp in my Tent is a series of public interventions with my tent which started in 1996 and continue till 2001. I pitched my tent in cities where public place has cultural memory in contrast to the cities where the public space is structured and conditioned by the flows of tourisms. Each intervention result in a lot of agitation of the public space and was mediated through a series of linguistic confrontations, discussions, exchanges of hospitality, controversies between myself and the locals and sometimes the police.

While I was setting up the tent in Central park in New York City I was spotted by the surveillance helicopters and the park police enforced me to take it down immediately and I had to pay fine for using the public space .In Rotterdam while I was setting up my tent in the park where the prostitutes make their daily exchanges I was forced and harassed by the pimps and prostitutes to take down my tent because i was harming their business . Fortunately the local police saved me and helped me to set up my tent on the police boat in the citys harbor. In Ramallah, Palestine people were extremely friendly but as a single woman setting up a tent it was conceived as an act of prostituting myself and very soon a long queue of male spectators lined out side my tent.

http://www.jennymarketou.com/projects/translocal.shtml
http://cristine.org/borders/CD/IMAGES/Jenny_Marketou.JPG


* 1954 in Athens; lives and works in Athens [GR] and New York [USA]

Jenny Marketou studied photography and sculpture at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C. and received her Masters degree in Fine Arts at Pratt Institute in New York City. Currently she is teaching at Cooper Union of Art as well as at The New School for Social Research in New York City.
Since 1995 Marketou has been working in different media, including photography, video, telepresence environments and networking technologies.

Group Exhibitions/ Festivals | Grants and Awards | Bibliography | Recommended Links

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Group Exhibitions/ Festivals
[selected]

2001
»La Biennale di Venezia«, Venice [I]
»Dystopia + Identity in the Age of Global Communications«, Tribes Gallery, New York City [USA]
»The body - between condition and construction«, video program of the »International Women's University [ifu]«, Berlin [D]

2000
»Synopsis 1 - Communications«, The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens [GR] [2000 -2001]

»medi@terra 2000. International Art and Technology Festival & Symposium: neo[techno]logisma«, Fournos Center, Athens [GR]
»2e Interferences. Festival international d'arts multimedia urbains«, Belfort [F]
»Tenacity: Cultural Practices in the Age of Information and Biotechnology/ Widerspenstige Praktiken im Zeitalter von Informations- und Biotechnologien«, The Swiss Institute, New York City [USA]; Shedhalle Zürich, Zurich [CH]
»Through the Looking Glass«, Beachwood Center for the Arts, Beechwood, OH [USA]

1999
Center for Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki [GR] »Modern Odysseys«, Queens Museum of Art, New York City [USA]
»Viper«, Lucerne [CH]
»Wide World Festival, Amsterdam [NL]
»net_condition«, ZKM_Karlsruhe [D] [1999-2000]/ »steirischer herbst«, Graz [A]| ICC Tokyo [J]/ MECAD, Barcelona [E]

1998
»Sao Paulo Biennal«, Sao Paulo [BR]

1997
»techno.seduction«, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science & Art, New York City [USA]
» ART & IDEA«, Mexico City [MEX]
»Women and the Art of Multimedia«, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C [USA]

1996
»Manifesta 1«, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam [NL]

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Grants and Awards
[selected]

Research Grant, Media Center d'Art i Disseny - MECAD, Barcelona, 2001; International Artists Residency OMI, New York [USA], 2000; Artist-in residence, Hoherweg, Düsseldorf [D], 1999; Artist-in Residence, Institute for Studies in the Arts, College of Fine Arts, ASU, Tempe, Arizona [USA],1998; Artist-in residence, Banff Center for the Arts, Banff [CDN], 1997.

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Bibliography
[selected]

Weibel, Peter; Timothy Druckery [eds.], net_condition. art and global media, [exhib cat. ZKM_Karlsruhe/ steirischer herbst Graz/ MECAD Barcelona], Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001.

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Recommended Links

° Works/ Projects ::

- > »Trans I's« [video work], 1999 [ - > short description]

- > smell.bytes«, [internet project/ netbased installation], 1998 - > project description

- > »TRANSLOCAL, Camp in My TENT« [netbased project], 1996 - [ as part of »Borderhack 2001«, Tijuana [MEX], 2001]

- > »Eletric Eve« [interactive video installation], 1996 [ - > description]

- > »I Cannot Take My Eyes Off You« [video work], 1995 [- > short description]

° Texts ::

- > »z-niffing the net: hacking vs hacktivism«, Jenny Marketou in conversation with Claudia Gianetti, MECAD/Media Centre d’Art i Disseny, Barcelona [E], March 2001]

- >Jenny Marketou: »Hacking vs Hacktivism: Sniffing the net« [outline of her research during her grant period in MECAD, Barcelona [E], 2000-2001]

° Selected Group Exhibitions ::

- > »Dystopia + Identity in the Age of Global Communications«, Tribes Gallery, New York City [USA], 2000/ 2001

- > »medi@terra 2000. International Art and Technology Festival & Symposium: neo[techno]logisma«, Fournos Center, Athens [GR], 2000

- > »Through the Looking Glass«, Beachwood Center for the Arts, Beechwood, OH, 2000

- > »net_condition«, ZKM_Karlsruhe[D]/ »steirischer herbst«, Graz [A]| ICC Tokyo [J]/ MECAD, Barcelona [E], 1999 - 2000

- > »Tenacity: Cultural Practices in the Age of Information and Biotechnology/ Widerspenstige Praktiken im Zeitalter von Informations- und Biotechnologien«, The Swiss Institute, New York City [USA]; Shedhalle Zürich, Zurich [CH], 2000

- > »techno.seduction«, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science & Art, New York City [USA], 1997

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