Oliver Ressler will discuss the alter-globalization movement along the path of some of the projects he worked on in the last couple of years.
He produced a video on the hour-long encirclement of demonstrators by the police at a demonstration against the World Economic Forum in 2001 in Salzburg, and one on the "Disobbedienti" (with Dario Azzellini). "What Would It Mean To Win?" (with Zanny Begg) was filmed on the blockades at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany in June 2007 and focuses on the current state of the alter-globalization movement. Ressler created banners for demonstrations (with David Thorne) and was involved in the self-organized collaborative art project Holy Damn It (www.holy-damn-it.org), that produced 50.000 posters to mobilize for the resistance movements against the G8 summit in Heiligendamm.
Through his work Ressler outlines different strategies to intervene with art in political movements.

Oliver Ressler (b. 1970, Austria) produces exhibitions, projects in the public space and videos which try to blur the boundaries between art and activism. His projects have been exhibited in solo-exhibitions at the Berkeley Art Museum; Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul; Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade; Kunstraum der Universitat Luneburg, D and Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Madrid. Ressler participated in group exhibitions at the MASS MoCA - Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, USA; Itaucultural Institute, Sao Paulo; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem, NL; International Festival of Video/Arte/Electronica, Lima; and in the biennials in Prague, 2005; Seville, 2006; Moscow, 2007 and Taipei, 2008.
His ongoing project "Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies" was produced in 21 cities around the world and published as a book by the Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk in 2007. Ressler is currently preparing the 8-channel video installation "What Is Democracy?". www.ressler.at


Razvan Ion (b. 1970, Bucharest) is political activist, theoretician, curator and cultural manager. He is the co-editor (with Eugen Radescu), of the magazine PAVILION, co-director of Bucharest Biennale and in 2008 he was appointed as director of PAVILION UNICREDIT- center for contemporary art & culture. He lectured at University of California -Berkeley, Headlands Center for the Arts-California, Political Science Faculty - Cluj, Art Academy - Timisoara, La Casa Encedida - Madrid, Calouste Gulbenkian - Lisbon, etc. He write in different magazines and newspapers. Now he is working on the curatorial project "Exploring the Return of Repression". Lives and works in Bucharest.

Image: "Don't Purchase a Better World, Fight For a Better World", a billboard by Oliver Ressler on gated communities in Warsaw. Courtesy of the artist.

Oliver Ressler is supported by Austrian Cultural Forum.