A mobile exhibition using a converted rickshaw to travel through different areas of Dublin, projecting artists’ videos that related directly to that area and its inhabitants, on to building facades, monuments and temporary structures.

The International Guerrilla Video Festival (IGVFest) was initiated as a means to combat the monopoly of the billboards, advertisements and screens that have come to dominate the urban landscape. It works with artists and micro–communities in sites of contention to articulate the diversity of perspectives, share stories and provide a public platform to intervene directly on the city itself through mobile exhibitions. These interactions open up the visual environment, moving beyond the concerns of the market to engage with the discourses of the area. The videos, comprised of works originating inside the community as well as artists working in different locations, are projected directly on the buildi gs in area, providing a site for communal gathering where a multiplicity of voices can emerge to create informal networks of knowledge.

The festival moves through the city to sites of contention involving: the confluence of visible and unperceived boundaries, the effect of past and present migrations, and idiosyncratic architecture in the landscape. The site itself becomes an integral part of the exhibition. It enters into a process of exchange, whereby its particular characteristics form and alter the artwork as the videos themselves simultaneously inscribe another identity on the space.

On 19 and 20 February 2009 in collaboration with Open Spaces, the festival travelled to Dublin and focused on three different areas of the city steeped in layers of history that continue to transform the people and their surroundings; the immigrant communities of Parnell Street, the co-habitation on Talbot Street of traditional culture modes and recent diversification, and finally, the rapid development that is ongoing in Rathmines.

The artists presented work in collaboration with the neighborhoods, people and ideas that come from the areas.

Artists:
Alessandra Arnó, Fred Adam & Veronica Perales, Ismail Bahri, Olive Barrett &
Louise Marlborough, Fletcher Boote, Michal Brezezi?ski, Mark Clare, Patrick
Corcoran, Sergio Cruz, Antóin Doyle, Sarah Evans, Fan Liu, Áire Ní Fhaoláin, Roch
Forowicz, Raquel Friera, Cristina Garrido & Nuria Guell, Shimrit Golan, Mihai Grecu,
Sandra Isacson, Stephan Koeperl & Sylvia Winkler, Jay Koh, Tatjana de Luxe, Eva
Marosy-Weide, Sinéad Mc Cann & Naomi Sex, Conor McGarrigle, Katia Meneghini,
Valentina Vetturi & Vera Uberti, Wrik Mead, Julie Meyer, Maarit Murka, Niall
O'Connor, Kelly O'Connor, Jean-Gabriel Périot, El Plan, Tim Portlock, Jaime Quinto,
Romain Sein, Mehrdad Shikhan, Stefan Riebel, Marike Schuurman, Tracy Staunton,
Seán Taylor, Hui-Ying Tsai, Anan Tzuckerman, WAZA, Winstan Whitter, Zorka
Wollny, OOZOOS (Nicky Seok H. Won, Jua Kwon, Eun Hye Chae)

Project website: www.igvfest.com

Dublin City Council commissioned Sarah Searson to write an essay about the project. Download essay.

Jason Waite
Jason Waite is a curator and holds an MA in Art and Politcs from Goldsmiths College, London. He was the co-curator of the 4th Biennial of Young Artists in Bucharest and is the founder of the nomadic exhibition, the International Guerrilla Video Festival, which has been held in Milan and Florence. He has previously worked with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto, Italy and Independent Curators International, New York. He has contributed to a number of catalogues and magazines as well as the recent publication Critical Cities Vol. 2 (2010) and the forthcoming Curator’s Handbook (2011).

Fiona Whitty
Fiona Whitty is a visual artist presently based in London. Her practice is multidisciplinary, socially interactive and engaging, as well as  interested in creating sustainable models for future arts practice. Fiona is recipient of the LAUNCH Emerging Artist’s award 2006. She has participated in the Unidee residency in Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto in Italy in 2007. Selected group exhibitions include Antwerp, Bangkok, Milan, Lagos, Nigeria, Jamaica and her her native Ireland. Fiona holds a BFA from D.I.T Ireland Fine Art and an MFA from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London. Her work has involved research in communities in Nigeria, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, the Irish community in London.