The questions below from the future were received by Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy (NYC), Raimundas Malasauskas (Vilnius) and Alexis Vaillant (Paris), the curators of BMW, the 9th Baltic Triennial of International Art, that took place at CAC Vilnius and ICA London 23 September – 20 November, 2005.
Žemiau išvardintus klausimus iš ateities gavo Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy (Niujorkas), Raimundas Malašauskas (Vilnius) ir Alexis Vaillant (Paryžius), kuravę BMW, 9-ąją Baltijos tarptautinio meno trienalę, kuri vyko Vilniaus Šiuolaikinio meno centre ir Šiuolaikinio meno institute Londone (ICA) nuo 2005 m. rugsėjo 23 iki lapkričio 16 d.

Did you finish the show?

  

What is forbidden today? How long is it forbidden? How could you recognise any ‘forbidden stuff' in our western society, from which point of view? Why did you consciously choose not to locate any ‘specific' BM content into the show?

 

Can BMW be a subject ever? (of course not a theme, you are not theme-parkers!)

 

Is imagination still a BM drug?

 

Do you think BMW show can be considered as a full-scale emergency kit built into one's brain, plus a crash course in disaster survival, real and imagined?

  

Is it a coincidence that Vilnius, a schizophrenic city per se, was chosen as a stage of the project? How many more coincidences are in BMW?

  

Will the actual exhibition – or similar format you use – present possibilities or spaces for black markets to exist within it?

  
New Ways of doing Nothing! How do you think a society where a large proportion of people will never work, can be run?  

Did you find extremes in the quest for new ways of doing nothing?

  

Have you ever talked about BMW communities?

  
Do you think BMW's people are new Bonnies and Clydes gathered to challenge the suburbian values?  

BMW's topics don't seem to be taken from the desert neither from a shopping mall nor business parks. Why?

  
Was it possible to ‘curate' a triennial?  

Do you have anything to say about the psychology of curators? (when differenciated selector/curator/carpet cleaner)

  
Do you think ‘interesting' curators work is to provoke, challenge, unsettle, question and offer the viewer the keys to a door he or she has never noticed in a side-corridor of their minds?  

How a triennial/biennial can become a show?

 

Was it easy or not too difficult to curate a show that seemed that seemed not to have been recruited neither straight from Disneyland nor from idealistic ways of practicing criticism today?

 

Did you work from our attraction to danger?

 

How did you become two? Were you one or three in the beginning?

  

Who kissed the frog?

  

Did the frog transform into a prince?

  

Didn't Sony express any discontent with the fact that Soni and Shanel had their ads in the publication of the triennial?

 
Do you think the topics your are approaching, for example, from black markets to magic to the occult, represent an obstacle in the understanding of the Baltic region's pursuit for more open, transparent, democratic endeavors?  

BMW=Home?

 

Is BMW a permanent crisis?

  
Claiming that ‘black markets are always agnostic' are you trying to say that the same statement applies to the exhibition? And is it true that you are trying to mimick the logic of operation of black markets?  
How did you react to the fact that part of the exhibition in London and Vilnius was hacked and re-created in Tallinn without your consent? Was it a surprise or just a part of the script? Kaip jūs reagavote į faktą, kad dalis parodos iš Londono ir Vilniaus buvo pagrobta ir perkurta Taline be jūsų sutikimo? Ar tai buvo netikėtumas, ar scenarijaus dalis?
Have you learned any magic tricks?  

Did you sell your souls to the devil?

 

Will there be works in the exhibition that cast spells on the audience?

 

Will audiences be ‘enchanted' with the works on exhibition?

  

Black markets are commonly referred as shadow economies. Will this exhibition cast any type of shadows?

 

I heard through the grapevines that a series of weird, un-natural phenomena would potentially haunt the CAC and ICA alike during the exhibition period. This sounds weird, but is it true?

 

Do you remember the first time you got paid for it?

 

Does that show can be based on a statement like: everything is repackaged into something with more consumer appeal (i.e. Black market within the art world and without any will of being alternative).

 

Can we consider that BMW is made of mass paranoias about new diseases?

 

How many ghost-artists were invited to the show?

 

What about the clones?

 

Why did the guard cry? If this is a piece - then who made it?

  

How did BMW (artists, curators, writers) invest the fact that we live in deeply uncertain times?

  

Why didn't anyone talk about alternative and progressive schemes of exchange provided by artists, theoreticians and street vendors?

  

Were you naive or oblivious to expect that black market and shadow networks aren't as hierarchic as any corporative oligarchy?

  

Who stole the show? Vilnius or London?

 

How did you manage to loose control and allow parallel structures to happen? Or was it all carefully planned and staged?

  

Can a schizoshow become a simultaneous structure whether contradictory or not, like describing some shadow zones and keeping them activated, having a future and a past at the same time? Is that the reason why you subtitled the triennial a shizoshow? Was it necessary to choose a side?

  

Is BMW an extreme position in curatorial field?

  

Why did you communicate with a worldwide unclear distribution of logos from March to the activation of a midget in Venice Biennale, with the creation and distribution of a new word (Ultimiere) to be googled to lead you somewhere else?

  

We understand that you introduced your exhibition with the word , but we are sitting here in the future, and sadly we still do not really know what this word means, can you elaborate?

  

Is that show ‘for sale'? Do you consider it as its main future or supposedly so, like if black markets and e-bay systems were not so far from each other?

  

The ultimate conceptual car will move so fast, even at rest, as to be invisible. Do you think artworks, curating practices, dematerialised work, are concerned by car will?

  

‘Small quantities, direct networking, niche marketing and superdistribution' - what does that mean?

  

Is BMW an endless show?

  

Did you engage in any illicit activities during the research period prior of the exhibition?

  

Is BMW toxic?

 

Does the invention and careful maintenance of a secret life lead to freedom? Is it about being non- transparent or about being double at least?

  

Does that ‘BMW shizoshow' has a future?

 

Do you think BM systems go faster than entropic ones?

  

Is BMW because as curators you wanted to deal only with the flux? Like: what will I do and where will I play in five minutes?

  

Like Ballard suggested: “if the future is a marriage between Microsoft and the Disney Corporation, what can the rest of us do about it?” Do you have any plans from that show?