Manual CC – Instructions for Beginners and Advanced Players
curated by Marianna Dobkowska
Manual in Action Event Sunday, April 6, 2008, 2 p.m. – open end
7 p.m: TV-screening by Marianna Dobkowska with videos around the idea of games and instructions
Duration of Phase I April 3 – 19, 2008
Phase II – Presentation of the Results of the Open Call
Opening April 25, 2008, 6 p.m.
Duration April 25 – May 17, 2008
Parallel to the 5th Berlin Biennial, uqbar is presenting the exhibition Manual CC – Instructions for Beginners and Advanced Players, curated by Marianna Dobkowska.
Manual CC is a set of game manual-scenarios, composed of “instructions for beginners and advanced users”, that have been submitted by artists on special cards, all of which are of the same size. During the exhibition, the cards are placed in special display cases with holders for copies of the original instructions, which can be picked up and collected by visitors. Following the manual instructions, the visitors can, inside or outside the gallery, recreate the artists’ projects, which are single player or group games.
On April 6, from 2 p.m. on a special event at uqbar gives the opportunity of playing together with others. An extra game by Wilhelm Sasnal will be on display. At 7 p.m. Marianna Dobkowska will show a video compilation arount the idea of games and instruction, including works by Zbyněk Baladrán, Agnieszka Brzeżańska & Marek Raczkowski, Aleksander Komarov, Igor Krenz, Kateřína Šedá, and Lucia Tkáčová & Anetta Mona Chisa.
The Creative Commons license (Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5) al¬lows for reassembly of the works after the end of the exhibition – in any place, time or configuration and without the authors’ knowledge. The format of the project is constantly changing and it is continually drifting towards unexplored areas by utilizing various media. For example, as magazine inserts, a table with cards in the gallery hall, a set of postcards, or e-mail attachments. The exhibition is not composed of tangible artworks, rather, it is an evolving set of instructions which can be used in many different ways. The playability, as traditionally understood, of many game manuals might be questioned. They are mostly conceptual projects, focused on the mere act of initiali¬zing a game – with/against oneself, other visitors, passers-by etc., mostly with an open ending and uncertain results. The assumption is that the works can be assembled with minimal or no financial resources. The construction stage is made even simpler by the fact that most artworks can be assembled without any extra items – manual instructions should be enough.
The number of participants, both artists and “users”, is constantly growing. Currently, over seventy artists are involved. For the show in Berlin, an open call to artists was initiated, the results of which will be presented at uqbar from April 25 on.
Manual CC was initiated by a group of twelve female-curators from the Jagiellonian Univer¬sity Curatorial Studies program. The project took its first manifestation in the form of an exhibition at Bytom’s Kronika in September 2007. Other embodiments of Manual CC include a book, and a series of interventions in printed art magazines. The next presentation will take place at CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw from April 25 to May 18, 2008.
At uqbar, Manual CC is presented in the framework of Alphabet (I for Instrukcja/Instruction), a curatorial project by Kronika, Bytom (www.kronika.org.pl
Artists, articipating in Manual CC so far:
4!, Mark Aerial Waller, Paweł Althamer, Vasil Artamonov & Alexey Klyukov, Anatka Barczewska, Zbyněk Baladrán, Kuba Bąkowski, Bas van Beek, Anca Benera, Sarmen Beglarian, Sanford Biggers, Tomek Bierkowski, Rahim Blak, Agnieszka Brzeżańska & Marek Raczkowski, Karin Bühler, Yane Calovski, Martin Conrads, Holly Crawford, Agnieszka Chojnacka, Hubert Czerepok, Jiří David, Oskar Dawicki, Marjan Denkov,
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