'How Buildings Learn' and 'Civilization and its Discontents'

Two site-specific installations, How Buildings Learn and Civilization and its Discontents for Values , the 11th Biennial of Visual Arts , Pancevo, Serbia, curated by Svetlana Mladenov and Igor Antic. These were funded by the British Council. Other exhibitors included Daniel Buren (France), Jeremy Deller (UK), and Mark Wallinger (UK).

The context of the Biennial was the degraded economy, polity and culture of former Yugoslavia, following a civil war of ethnic cleansing , nationalist dictatorship, economic embargo and a NATO bombing campaign. The two works by Cornford and Cross advanced knowledge by stimulating public debate on the relationship between contemporary art, the social contract and the limits of political obligation.

How Buildings Learn: In the Public Records Office of Pancevo, Cornford and Cross used documents and books to completely block a doorway. The installations surface belied its dense mass of material, and the labour that produced it. How Buildings Learn acted as a paradoxical sign: for the futility of effort, and for the painful work to be done in relating history to memory.

Civilization and its Discontents: The artists signalled a call to Anarchy, but from a position of security as foreign nationals. The flags referred to Ad Reinhardt s final black paintings; by flying them from civic buildings throughout the city, the artists questioned the split between the philosophical ideal of Anarchy and its political associations with destructive chaos.

Both projects for Values made minimal use of materials to engage with the specific political and cultural conditions of the exhibition context. The black flag fused a gesture of negation from Modernist art history with a politically ambiguous challenge to territorial identity. Blocking the doorway involved citizens in a symbolic act that questioned the contingent value of collaboration.

David Cross began collaborating with Matthew Cornford while studying at St Martin's School of Art in 1987, and graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1991. Cornford & Cross have produced installations for City Limits, Stoke on Trent; EAST International, Norwich; 'In the Midst of Things', Bournville; ISEA 98, Liverpool; Tra Monti, Rome and 'Values', Pancevo, Serbia.

Their work has been exhibited at Basekamp Gallery, Philadelphia, the Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, Marcel Sitcoske Gallery, San Francisco, Nikolai Fine Art, New York City, Nothern Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sunderland, and in London at Camden Arts Centre, the ICA, Nylon Gallery, the Photographers' Gallery and the South London Gallery. One of their recent projects, 'Childhood's End' was produced by Film and Video Umbrella and purchased by the Contemporary Arts Society, and showcased in a solo at the Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art in Sunderland in 2005. Cornford & Cross are currently working on a retrospective book about their work since 1991, which will include new essays by John Roberts and Rachel Withers.

• Author