It is worth to check out this great article by Peter Schjeldahl published in New Yorker on Nov 24, 2008.

“Come On Down. The New Orleans Biennial beckons.”

Seen from the historical perspective of a FULL week later, the long weekend of October 30-November 2 certainly ranks as one of the happiest of my life.  After nearly three years of pushing, shaping, struggling, finessing, pleading, bargaining, and cajoling, Prospect.1 New Orleans finally took flight, with some 7,500 attendees taking part in Opening Weekend festivities spread all over the city. At least half of these viewers were in from out of town, as evidenced by the clusters of people roaming the streets of CBD with maps, or tooling around the Lower 9th Ward on bicycles or in cars. Many of them were stunned by the ambition of the exhibition and by the sheer beauty of the city – it was an absolutely flawless weekend – and literally hundreds of people came up to me during the four days, effusive with the most heartfelt compliments about everything we’d accomplished.

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Please follow the ongoing activitities through biennial’s Events page: http://www.prospectneworleans.org/hear.html

Join Tatsuo Miyajima’s Work Shop On Line for PILE UP LIFE 2008 to be exhibited in the Biennale!

To see this lively video interview about the P.1 please visit:

http://www.vimeo.com/1871825

Exactly a week ago, the entire world seemed to be transfixed by the gradual movement of Hurricane Gustav in the direction of New Orleans. The epic dimensions of the 2005 Katrina catastrophe, with its attendant proportioning of failure and blame, was very much on people’s minds as they envisioned a second hurricane striking, and perhaps laying waste, to a city still struggling to regain its momentum and equilibrium.

Fortunately, that didn’t happen, and while this news is itself a source of great consolation, the aftermath of Gustav’s relatively minor sideswipe remains to be measured. I arrived back in New Orleans – I didn’t evacuate, since I was in New York at the time – last Thursday morning (September 4), and was immediately struck by what this city looks and feels like post-evacuation. There was evident relief and even jubilation in seeing old friends, and in celebrating the news we had once again dodged a bullet, and that New Orleans would live to party another day.

But all is not good cheer and frivolity in New Orleans. Much of the city remained without electric power through the weekend; contradictory messages from public officials have left far-flung residents uncertain about when they should return; a strictly enforced curfew is in place (French Quarter establishments hasd to close their doors by 2 a.m.); and those parts of the city that have not fully recovered (i.e., the Lower 9th Ward) were left more isolated than ever.

Hanging over New Orleans is a feeling of displaced trauma. It appears to me that the courageous and passionate citizenry of this city, in their collective and individual struggles to pull themselves out of the muck and mire of three years ago, also tried to put Katrina behind them. The desire to forget, or at least set aside for a while, the nightmare of suffering and destruction from three years ago, seems to have won out, at least until Gustav roared into the Gulf of Mexico. Today the people of New Orleans are jittery, and a bit glum, as they face the first tangible evidence since Katrina of what a hurricane can do. The ubiquitous tree branches and broken glass are not just themselves – they are also symbols of the death-knell that hasn’t happened yet, but of which the people of New Orleans are justifiably terrified.

The good news, if I can call it that, is that everybody involved in Prospect.1 is fine, the biennial sites all seem to be relatively damage-free, and the only outdoor work that was already installed (Ghada Amer’s) made it through Gustav without a scratch. Installation of Prospect.1 begins today, as planned, and artists are steadily beginning to arrive. Tony Fitzpatrick is in town as of yesterday, Alexandre Arrechea arrives today, and Sebastian Preece will arrive tomorrow. The last two are producing pretty complicated works, so they’ll be with us for a while.

This is also the week when we publicly announce the Opening Weekend schedule, so that events become more official, and visitors who plan to be here October 30-November 2 will be able to plan their itineraries in greater detail.

I think that it’s important to frame the above bits of information in the context of everything that’s gone on here over the last week. It’s not simply that people have asked whether Prospect.1 will go forward, although they have. What concerns me the most is that it now feels more incumbent on us than ever before to follow through with Prospect.1.  People here need a reason to celebrate their city beyond all the usual suspects, and people outside New Orleans need to feel that they can participate in the cultural rebuilding of the city, which we believe Prospect.1 will accomplish. I guess it’s a way of saying that Gustav has convinced me – if I was ever in doubt – that organizing Prospect.1 is the right thing to do.

Plum’s cultural correspondent, Dennis Scholl, invited curator Dan Cameron to his house to talk about curating the first international contemporary art biennial in the U.S.–Prospect.1 New Orleans.
To see the video click:
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About ten days ago — May 15 to be exact — Prospect.1 New Orleans swung into public New York view in a way that hadn’t happened yet. Four of the artists – Janine Antoni, Jacqueline Humphries, Wangechi Mutu, and Nari Ward – joined me for a panel discussion at Cooper Union’s Great Hall, and we had an audience of about two hundred people listen intently as each presenter went into detail about what he or she is doing in New Orleans, and why.

The panel was a great opportunity to make the point that Prospect.1 is a primarily humanitarian endeavor, but one that just happens to have incredibly high artistic standards. There were a lot of artists present in the audience, which I felt was definitely a good sign. An even better sign was how passionately the four artists on the panel spoke about their individual projects.

The questions afterward were not complacent or cynical, an indication that for many in the New York art world, Prospect.1 might just seem too good to be true. To those whose spirits have been hardened in the trenches of Chelsea, Soho and the Lower East Side during the hyper-accelerated art boom of the past few years, there is an understandable need to keep turning Prospect.1 over and over, relentlessly examining it from every possible vantage point until its fatal flaw is uncovered. One questioner asked us if we were aware of our responsibilities, while another thought that having a free-admission policy was letting out-of-town visitors off the hook too easily.

In all, this was the kind of public forum that I wish we could see more of. I get the impression that Prospect.1 New Orleans seems like a kind of novelty for many people, while for even more it is still under the radar. The more we have the chance to talk about what this project means to those of us who are involved in it, the greater the likelihood that we will bring even more people into the discussion.

Moderator: Dan Cameron, Founding Director and Chief Curator of Prospect.1 New Orleans
Panelists: Janine Antoni, Jacqueline Humphries, Wangechi Mutu, and Nari Ward, Prospect.1 artists
Introduction by Saskia Bos, Dean, The School of Art.

6:30PM Thursday May 15, 2008
The Great Hall at The Cooper Union, 7 East 7th Street at Third Avenue, New York, NY

Introduction, Dan Cameron

To Watch the rest of the panel, click (more…)