Abstract

This output consisted of a city-wide international biennial exhibition, a symposium and a publication. Art Sheffield 08: Yes, No & Other Options took place from 16 February – 30 March 2008 in venues across the city including Bloc, End Gallery, Millennium Galleries, S1 Artspace, Site Gallery, Yorkshire ArtSpace, temporary venues and the public realm.

Taking as its foundation a specially commissioned essay by Berlin-based art critic and historian. Jan Verwoert, this city-wide exhibition addressed the fact that in a post-industrial condition, one particularly pertinent to Sheffield, we have entered into a service culture where we no longer just work, we perform in a perpetual mode of ‘I can'. The output posed the question: “What would it mean to put up resistance against a social order in which high performance and performance-related evaluation has become a growing demand, if not a norm? What would it mean to resist the need to perform?”

Jeanine Griffin was the co-curator (with Jan Verwoert) of the city-wide exhibition, the co-convenor of the symposium and the editor of the publication. The exhibition included 39, locally, nationally and internationally-based artists and drew an audience of 130,000. The exhibition was critically well received with reviews in Art Monthly, Frieze magazine, and a feature in the Guardian G2 amongst other esteem indicators.

The 2 day symposium included international speakers (including Irit Rogoff, Nasrin Tabatabai, Deimantas Narkevicius, Annika Eriksson) and drew an audience of 300 and was documented online.

The publication 'Transmission: Host' is an edited transcript of a conversation between Jeanine Griffin and Jan Verwoert, discussing issues around the curatorial methodology in terms of hospitality and was published by Artwords, London.

A further outcome was an essay by Jeanine Griffin on the new work produced for the event by Slovakian artist Roman Ondak in his monograph: Roman Ondak: Measuring the Universe, published by Bawag foundation Vienna with JRP/Ringier to accompany his representation of Slovakia in the Venice Biennale 2009.

The project was funded from a variety of sources including Arts Council England (£170,000), Henry Moore Foundation(£28,000), Esmée Fairbairn Foundation (£38,000), Goethe Institute (£10,000).