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NOWISWERE
Contemporary Art Magazine
Issue Nr. 4 May 2009
NOWISWERE invites personalities to talk about
their creativity with a subjective involvement.
The passing of the ‘nows’ and the accumulation
of the recent ‘nows’ does not only produce an
urge to grasp and evaluate and understand but
also to feel the unexpectability of the future.
NOWISWERE aims to actively involve in the
production of the ‘now’ through taking each now
and then into account.
NOWISWERE
Contemporary Art Magazine
Issue Nr. 4 May 2009
Cover comissioned by
Tanja Widmann 2003/2009
Cover Layout Design by Johannes Porsch
NOWISWERE is open for submissions.
Please contact [email protected]
Impressum:
Co-Editors: Veronika Hauer, Fatos Üstek
Contributors: Mara Ferreri, Nicole Miltner, Claire Louise
Staunton, Tobias Hering, Gernot Wieland, Margit Neuhold,
Oona Peyrer-Heimstätt, Jurga Daubaraite, Martina Steckholzer,Veronika Hauer and Fatos Ustek.
Thanks: Adeena Mey
Layout: Luca Hauer
Contact: [email protected]
www.nowiswere.blogspot.com
Announcement:
This image had to be removed from
our site in reaction to an agreement
between the modelagency and the
artist, regulating the timely use of the
photograph for publication.
TH Image Contribution.............................................................3, 4
Rudolf Steckholzer
EF Black Box...................................................................................6
Julius Pasteiner
SF A Leopard, Some Monkeys, Numerous Butterflies,
Dozens of Peacocks and a Sublime Vista*....................................8
Edward Clydesdale Thomson
CC ‘I’m Thinking of You’
Franko B .......................................................................................14
Lisa Skuret
TH POST-PROPAGANDA
An introduction by Jonas Staal......................................................16
Jonas Staal
TH EMPTINESS IN THE POST-COMMUNIST
CONDITION : Struggles of Self-Definition..................................22
Jurga Daubaraite
TH P(r)océder..............................................................................26
Jelena Martinovic
CC Gulliver’s Travel into an Art Installation:
On History, Identity and Difference
Yinka Shonibare, MBE – Egg Fight.............................................30
Rana Ozturk
Editors: Veronika Hauer & Fatos Ustek
Layout: Luca Hauer
Editorial comments and proofreading: Marianne Mulvey, Ola
Wlusek
Founded in January 2008
Copyrights of the magazine are the property of Veronika Hauer
& Fatos Ustek. All rights of the contributions are the property of
their contributors.
CC Hurvin Anderson
Peter’s Series 2007 – 2009 ........................................................33
Marianne Mulvey
AS Tu Zeng..................................................................................35
Fatos Ustek
TH Image Contribution...............................................................39
Martijn in’t Veld
THematics: Texts up to 1000 words or image based contributions
up to four pages focusing on a single theme.
TH Looking at digital pictures:
The image as part of an epistemological system.......................40
Claus Gunti
EF (Expecting Future): Subsection of THematics. EF hosts texts
on the possibilities of the future and the potentials of the tocome-true. As expecting of any future requires awareness of the
present, this section will consist of gathering a variety of practises,
attitudes and tendencies.
CC Leap into Imagination
The Islanders: An Introduction by Charles Avery......................43
Rieke Vos
AS (Artist Specials): Reviews on and/or interviews on/with artists.
CC (Critics’ Corner): Reviews of exhibitions, performances,
events..
SF (Special Feature)
CC Smadar Dreyfus
Mother’s Day ................................................................................46
Fatos Ustek
TH Image Contribution........................................................49, 51
Rudolf Steckholzer
Julius Pasteiner
Black Box
At some point after the line up in a Patpong brothel, the
exotic thoughts, and her request for me to shower, the urge
to be up there, above it all, flying over the world struck
hard. I remember her saying “don’t be scaredy boy, take it
off; clean”, rubbing her triangular muff with a small caramel
hand. And for an instant things were clear; I saw myself, eyes
hungry, standing with one hand poised on my belt buckle. Is
he really going through with this? I thought.
To see yourself from above, looking down upon yourself is
a queer thing, no doubt. Wholly incredible if you think about
the physical impossibility of it. But for an instant there I was,
watching myself standing next to the bed, caught between
desire and some weird ethical questioning. I just know he’s
thinking this girl is probably poor; that this is her only way
to earn a decent wage; that the slippery man with gold rings
who asked him to “take your pick” receives the biggest cut
and no doubt exploits, even abuses her; that this action will
only continue her misery; that she has experienced hundreds
of vile western men probing her with an entire kaleidoscope
of cocks: small, long, stubby, bent, knobbled, STD infected;
that she has lost all sense of what it is to be anything but a
sexual object; perhaps this is all she has ever known? Perhaps, he thought - his mind swinging to another tact - in this
city she is doing well for herself, considering her starting
point; that to please a man is a skilled trade; that this will put
her in good stead for a life of social climbing; that the money
will put her through college; that she’s a Buddhist and sex
has none of the sinful connotations of Christianity; that this
will be the best sex of his life; and what would that mean?
Maybe she even enjoys what she does - gets off on it in some
way. But the act with all those vile cocks must be abhorrent, it must be; that at some point just prior to ejaculation
she’s going to chop his cock off - she’s right to, who would
blame her? And that maddening squeaky voice is saying, ‘I’m
all yours, anything you want’ throughout. And I’m thinking
this boy knows nothing, I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.
He’s turning inside out. I’m witnessing it happen, but there’s
nothing you can do.
Before I can slap him out of it, I’m sucked from my vantage,
dragged into the harsh white light of a cheap hotel toilet, and
I’m doing exactly what she said…
My hands are cracked and bloody. I have evaporated all
the complementary bars with my furious scrubbing, and my
emergency supply was on the other side, past the doorknob,
in the front pocket of my duffle bag beside the bed. And the
girl waiting dutifully beneath the sheets, probably eyeing the
ceiling with dazed boredom, is completely unaware of my
predicament. She hadn’t made a sound. She knocked an hour
ago. I think it was her? The knock was so gentle, hardly audible, as you would imagine it would be. Completely immersed
in removing all this filth, all the residue that had collected on
my body I had ignored it. The soap is constantly diminishing
and the dirt, well, it’s the very basis on which I stand; how
can I compete?
It could have been the booze withdrawing but the walls
were moving into the sound of my heartbeat. Inching; imperceptibly. I was trapped. My clothes lay on the dresser outside,
and there was no clean conduit to hand. How it had come to
this? I was thinking that the trip would have to be cut short.
I was also making a mental note never to shut doors when
naked. To carry soap at all times: essential. But first to get
out; to pass through a solid wall, ghostlike, without touching
a thing.
Taking the toilet roll I run it under the shower for several
minutes until it resembled a well-sucked Polo. Then I layer it
over my hands to form a pair of mittens. I catch my naked
self in the mirror: I’m just under 6ft, pale, except for my
forearms and bellow my knees which have a sandy glow to
them. I think I’m basically plain looking though people say I
have boyish good looks that I’ll mature into. My eyes have
an ephemeral glint that I’m slightly proud of. A teacher once
told me they were beguiling, another said they had the shiftiness of a thief; I suppose it’s all a matter of perspective. I’m
eyeballing myself: I am ready.Yet the nagging thought of what
the sweet girl would think was prodding my confidence. Already at the hostess bar the sight of so many girls wincing
at the surgical gloves I had misguidedly chosen to cover my
hands with - the hideous thoughts I could see they conjured - had been a lot to bear. Could I go through with this?
If I waited she may just go, content with the thought I had
passed out like so many other Western travellers before me
in an alcoholic, drugged torpor. But I couldn’t stay here; I
could feel the blood trickling, soaking into the recently constructed mitts and soon it would butcher them; and butcher
my chances. I had to be brave, take on my psychology.
A doorknob is just a doorknob, my hands are clean - everything is in its right place. I took hold of it and twisted. There
was no grip, my mitts slipped round the polished chrome
helplessly. Flippers; I had constructed a pair of flippers to
do an intricate task. I’m a moron, I can’t think clearly. I must
get out. So I wipe the sweat from my brow, rip off the soggy
towelling, throw it to the ground and with a burst of desperation grab the handle, twist, and hurl myself through and
into the bedroom. I land face down on the carpet (it has an
aggravating scratchy texture to it, like wool on teeth). The
lights are off so I get to my feet and pad around the walls
for a switch to bring light to the situation. As soon as it
comes on it’s obvious that the girl is gone; the bed’s made,
her clothes are nowhere to be seen, my clothes are piled
neatly by the dresser. Checking the mini-bar, several drinks
are missing. It was probably me sobering, trying to keep my
obsessions at bay, but Coke’s a strange choice to maintain
alcoholic sedation. It must have been the girl?
Not to see her lying in the bed, the sheets tucked up to her
head, waiting for me, was a surprise. A surprise tinged with
relief, regret and a wearisome embarrassment. It crosses my
mind that maybe she was never there at all. I try to recollect
what she looked like but I can’t. I mean, she was Thai and she
had characteristics you would ascribe to a Thai girl, there’s
just this otherness, a kind of arousing difference that flirts
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with me. Trying to invoke a clear image of the girl I see a
note on the top of my clothes so I read it: littleblueeyes112@
gmail.com. Bizarre! I thought.
I retrieve the Khao San Palace soap from the duffle and
disappear into the bathroom to clean up. It’s a cheap soap
coloured like white fat that crumbles like chalk. So dry looking it precipitates an icy shiver down my spine (I think this
initial shivering has been inscribed into the ritual now). I turn
the tap to a warm dribble and place my hands palm down
underneath. At first glance they appear like an elephant’s
arse; wrinkled, creviced, pinched with a dusty dry skin covering. To my mind, the more I look at them, they resemble
an upheaval, as if my skin were the earth’s crust being disrupted by volatile fires beneath, splitting open the surface
along weak fault lines. As though it were the aftermath of
an eruption, my skin helplessly floats on the currents of a
bloody lava. Letting the water trickle down from the tips of
my fingers I watch it gradually fill the crevices and spill over
into the next, like irrigation, channelling through the cracks
until the entire network is overflowed from section to section. I then crack the soap in half, run one half under hot
water until it becomes a paste, rub it all over my hands and
scrub vigorously, feeding it into all the joints and gaps. This
can take anything up to thirty minutes, usually I stop when
all the soap has evaporated. Sometimes I repeat this with the
second half, but today I must really want to leave this Hotel
room. I wash away the remaining soapy residue with cold
water. I can’t see any dirt being removed, but I know it is, I
know these hands are now clean, safe; my own. Carefully I
dry them with a fresh towel or tissue, which I carry with me.
It is an arduous bitter-sweet procedure that, embarrassingly,
is the central part of my life at the moment. It keeps me, in a
strange way that I don’t thoroughly understand, more myself,
in touch with Stanley Ventris.
After the event the pain of the lesions start to kick in, and
I am utterly frustrated with myself for giving in so easily to
these ridiculous compulsions. Blood oozes out of the deep
cracks on my knuckles and I can barely move my fingers
because of the pain. Sudden actions can rip the skin and
open up new wounds, causing further bleeding. The cycle is
continual, squared: the more you wash the more you damage your skin, causing it to appear contaminated, increasing
the chance of infection and the more you feel the urge to
wash again… The source of these debilitating compulsions
is obvious: it’s the dirt and grime that accumulates on everything. I have a heightened awareness to it like a Aborigine to
animal tracks. Nothing escapes, I see it on the screen of your
mobile-phone, on the underside of a jowl, in the dullness of
unpolished silver, but mostly on these dumb hands of mine:
the grimiest hands on earth. There’s nothing you can do.You
can’t run from it, or hide. Stand still and dead skin, hair, dust
encroaches like the inevitable clarity of dawn.
I let the tap drip twelve times then turn it off. I check my
watch, 7:15. I must have been in there hours; no wonder she
left. I layer my joints with a light emollient stored in my bag,
put on my clothes, stuff the note into my pocket, weigh up
if the surgical gloves are necessary but decide against them,
put on my favourite Nike Cortez and leave.
The hotel reception is quiet. The walls are white, carpet
brown with beige box patterns. It all looks very familiar but
expanded, bigger than previously. I’m sure this is the way I
came in? The boy at the desk hands over the bill. It’s as I arranged but the extras are nearly double the room. Whisky,
rum, two Cokes and bottle of champagne all tallied up. How
they managed to check my mini-bar and get the message
down to reception is beyond me; I had just left my room. He
waits for me to pay up slouching casually, one hand flat on
the desktop. His eyes have this knowing glint, like my face is
ironic, like I’m a joke who doesn’t know he’s a joke. I’ve noticed this look before; it’s common to all Bangkok hotel staff
when dealing with Western men. We’re all the same in their
eyes: one big fucking cliché. Not to be insulted I think of the
surgical gloves and the 23 bars of Khao San Palace in my bag,
and my once embarrassing secret has shifted, morphed into
reassured self loathing. I know I’m a fucking joke, you just
don’t know I know…
EF + 7
Edward Clydesdale Thomson
*A Leopard, Some Monkeys, Numerous Butterflies, Dozens of Peacocks and a Sublime Vista*
Part One
*Tails from the Zoo*
In the spring of 2007, I visited Rotterdam Zoo, expecting to find animals in cages presented for me to stare at. Assembled
from every corner of the globe, they would be confined in small, bare, barred cages and pointed at by wide-eyed children
armed with ice-cream and candy apples. I found that the animals, cages, children and ice-cream had a very different effect on
me than I’d anticipated. I was intrigued, and to my surprise wholly enjoyed walking around, captivated by the experience.
There were no bars on the cages, no sawdust on the floor, the enclosures appeared spacious, suggesting the natural habitat
I would have imagined for each animal. The enclosures were not lined up in a row along a path, nor integrated into the landscape, but together they formed the landscape.
During the subsequent weeks I returned time and again, observing, trying to understand the illusion and extract what I found
so fascinating about it. The physical structure of the illusion became quickly visible, but knowing how the architecture that
created the illusion was built, is not the same as knowing how the illusion works.
I continued to visit and observe the way visitors reacted to each situation. Some behaved in the most unsympathetic manner,
banging on the glass boundary of an enclosure to attract an animal’s attention. Others meandered along talking with friends,
seemingly oblivious to the zoo. Some looked immersed in the experience, mesmerised. Patterns of behaviour became visible and it seemed certain locations attracted particular reactions, even conditioned particular modes of behaviour.
Over the course of this essay I want to examine architectural tableaus as the material embodiment of political discourse.
The seemingly perceivable effect, of the differing enclosures architecture, on the zoo’s visitors, compelled me to journey
from one architectural tableau to another, in search of an answer as to how these constructions possessed such control
over their users. Beginning with observing the manipulation of the observer in the zoo, I soon became attracted by a potential promise of equality of power, between the architecture and its user, I sensed in the English landscape garden. There
the effect of the architecture on me became both the subject and object of study. This shift of focus led me in search of an
architectural tableau where I thought the effect of its construction would determine the relation of power between me and
its other occupants.
Foucault’s general understanding of discourse as having a material effect on the technologies of power and discourse as a
set of material practices that shape reality and the subject, affordes me a starting point to begin to deconstruct the power
structures at play in these tableaus and compare their effect on the spectator. As Foucault starkly concludes in “The Means
of Correct Training”, a key chapter of Discipline and Punish: “The individual is no doubt the fictitious atom of an ideological
representation of society; but he is also a reality fabricated by this specific technology of power that I call ‘discipline’. […] In
fact power produces; it produces reality, it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production.” (Foucault,1995[1975] p.194)
*Order In the Leopard Den*
A winding path leads around the leopard den. Along the entire length of the path it is possible to see inside the enclosure,
though not very clearly due to the dense vegetation, in which the fence is hidden. There are two points where the vegetation is cleared and the fence replaced with a large pane of glass. From these points the enclosure is designed to be seen, its
typography rising in a semi-circular form that creates a spectacular landscape, the end of which cannot be seen. You hold
the position from outside looking in – from an impossible, all encompassing, viewpoint. Despite this vantage point, I did not
feel in any position of control or mastery; the staging required nothing of me. I felt disconnected from what was happening
on the other side of the screen, though everything was laid out in front of me.
I often sat at a bench, adjacent to the viewpoint, and almost half of the spectators I observed stood with their noses to glass,
banging and waving their hands, in a futile attempt to provoke a reaction from the leopard. The glass was smeared with
blotches and stains of greasy hands.
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In “Techniques of the Observer” Jonathan Crary theorises a fundamental change that occurred during the 19th century,
in the construction of the viewer, whereby the “modern observer” incorporated his own subjectivity into viewing: the individual’s physicality became part of perception. “Modernity, in this case, coincides with the collapse of classical models of
vision and their stable space of representations. Instead observation is increasingly a question of equivalent sensations and
stimuli that have no reference to a spatial location.”(Crary, 1992 p.24) This could be compared to the previous modal of
the construction of observer, the era of ‘classical observer’. The Camera Obscurer, by isolating the viewer’s senses from the
subject, in a space of only visual projection, is the characteristic technology of the ‘classical observer’ because it denies the
subjectivity of the body, in favour of a monocular Cartesian certainty of absolutes where truth can be measured. In terms of
the way the observer is positioned there are certain parallels between this ‘classical’ mode of attention and the technology
of display in the leopard den.
Manipulating its viewer, the den first builds up intrigue by shrouding its mysteries behind a line of trees, before delivering a
sense of wonder within the careful choreographed landscape that unfolds as you address the window into the den. Looking through this window provides a spectacular diorama like cinema-scope image. It’s here that the den begins to mislead
you, supplying you with an all-seeing vantage point, the position of Olympian-eye, and at the same time disconnecting all
other senses than the visual, from the dens interior.Your are made to feel in a position of power and control over the den,
yet nothing you do will change anything on the other side of the glass. I did not feel engaged nor enchanted by the image I
saw through the screen despite its attempts at seduction. Perhaps this dissatisfaction came because the relation between
observer and object was constructed in such an artificially ‘classic’ manner that I felt an attack on my ‘modern’ sensibilities.
I too felt like the visitors who feel the need to bang on the screen in order to provoke a reaction on the other side. The
den in control of its reading because it controls not only what, but how you will see in the moment of encounter, provoking
discontent and a sense of powerlessness in the zoo’s audience.
*Mutiny On the Monkey Island*
Something different appeared to be happening at the Monkey Island. The visitors did not attack the enclosure, nor were they
even compelled to look at it; more often they seemed content to continue chatting as they passed by. A narrow strip of water separates it from the land, with a path leading around the island. Looking away from the island the ground slopes steeply
up in rocky, sparsely vegetated outcrops, becoming dense as they rise. There is an open view onto the island along almost
the entire length of the path.There is nowhere what you could call a ‘viewpoint’, rather there is an open view spanning three
hundred and sixty degrees of the island’s perimeter. I mostly observed people meandering around, stopping intermittently
and looking toward the island. What was it that made the difference - surely the same people visited both attractions?
Obviously the danger associated with leopards heightens the excitement of looking at the animal; the technology of observation embedded in the architecture exaggerates this, acting as a catalyst. The primary difference between the two is in
the mode of looking that each architectural configuration demands. The leopard garden requires a spectacular form of vision
where the event unfolds before you through the frame provided by the screen. The monkey island is a social form of vision
where one chooses the point from which to observe, and viewing involves moving, walking around the island, hearing the
noises, smelling, feeling the same breeze as the monkeys, mirroring Crary’s description of the ‘modern observer.’ There is
no vertical barrier between you and the island, no desire to permeate the boundaries because they are invisible. It is social
because neither the display nor viewer exerts a subjugating force over the other. In this way the monkey island allows the
visitor to experience it within their sovereign subjectivity: at one’s own pace. In constrast, the leopard den subjects the
viewer to a predetermined visual experience.
*Bewilderment In the Butterfly House*
The third location, the butterfly house, seems to have elements of both the active spectatorship around the leopard den and
the rather melancholy passive viewing of the monkey island. It is a large traditionally constructed glasshouse. The planting
is so dense it practically obscures the glass walls. The fleeting butterflies are the space’s attraction, innumerable yet almost
invisible their presence fills the enclosure.
I first visited the butterfly house on a quiet day. A young boy, about eight years old, stood in the middle of a path just inside
the entrance. He held his arms out in a manner that looked a little like he was sleep walking. He looked happy, immersed
in the space, enjoying the experience of letting the butterflies flutter around him. I found some kind of relief in this, and
frequently returned looking for others so immersed in this experience; it wasn’t hard to find them. But this was not the only
repetitive behaviour I noticed: there were many who would stalk the butterflies, sneaking up on them to get as close a look
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as possible, without the butterfly flying off. How does this relate to the previous locations?
The fundamental difference between the butterfly house and the leopard den or monkey island, is that here one is inside
the enclosure. The creatures ‘on display’ are so numerous and distributed so diffusely, there is no scopic hierarchy. Perception is fully immersive. The hierarchy of display, the relation between viewer and object, is broken so completely that it is
impossible to know where to look. Everywhere you look flickers with activity, yet as soon as you focus on one point that
activity has moved. The architecture neither determines from where you will look, nor onto what. The breaking down of a
fixed visual positioning allows for various reactions: with immersive vision the viewer determines the activity or passivity of
their spectatorship, entirely on their own terms. Some attempt to take control by using their camera to fix a viewer subject
hierarchy. Others refrain from trying to master the space and stand mesmerised by the eerie stillness of the constant activity around them.
Part Two
*Island Discoveries*
My experiences at the zoo made clear to me the manipulative powers an architectural construction holds over its users,
and pointed out the possibilities in manipulating the hierarchies of power from one space to another.The spaces in-between
displays at the zoo seemed, somewhat like the monkey island, not to subject any controlling force over me. They reminded
me of an English landscape garden with their winding paths and distant follies.
In “Suspensions of Perception” Jonathan Crary shows that material discursive practice has shaped successive scopic regimes
through the construction of various modes of observation. One’s mode of attention is constructed by a particular discourse
of looking. Modern “Attention implied that cognition could no longer be conceived around the unmediated given-ness of
sense data. […] it made a previously dyadic system of subject-object into a triadic one, with the third element constituted
by a ‘community of interpretations’: a shifting and intervening space of socially articulated physiological functions, institutional imperatives, and a wide range of techniques, practices, and discourses”. (Crary, 2001 p.45/46)
The English landscape garden’s end as a contemporary style coincides with Crary’s proposed shift to a modern mode of attention. Visiting the Pfaueninsel, the epitome of an isolated ‘English’ landscape garden (though situated in Germany), a 19th
Century Xanado located on an island in the river Havel, I meandered freely along its many paths. I tried briefly to take
pictures on the way, but somehow it did not seem right. Initially unimportant, this inability to stop and make a photograph
began to puzzle me.
As I wandered along winding paths happening upon events, my journey around the island felt like a real adventure. The landscape was clearly completely artificial: the follies, especially the castle, were so crudely built they looked almost amateurish.
This type of illusionary architecture I usually find utterly contrived. Yet the further I moved into the island the more ‘real’ it
became. Had I become more willing to suspend my disbelief? Had the setting become more convincing? Had the durational
experience of being on the island created a new logic in my perception of reality?
Although the buildings looked out of place at first, the way one approached them, like a new discovery each time, seemed
entirely natural. How did these proscribed paths that are perhaps more contrived than the follies, make the experience of
wandering around the island appear so natural and enjoyable? I did not feel in any way subject to any form of power from
the garden, it felt more like I was being encouraged to collaborate with it in a game of interpretations.
*The French Formal Garden*
If the English landscape garden embodied a ‘modern’ attention then what of its predecessors. The French formal garden is
the direct predecessor to the English landscape garden. On a trip to Paris I visited the gardens of Versailles, the paradigmatic
French formal garden. Despite the vastness of its scale, the formal patterning of the garden is repeated into the tiniest details.
Walking around it was quite bewildering: the control over nature deployed over such a vast area was awe-inspiring. Yet
the experience was often exceptionally boring, with every path straight and usually lined by dense borders. It was never
a surprise to reach something after twenty minutes walking towards it; still, there were moments of amazement. Sublime
vistas, overwhelming by their scale and the power in cultivating such an enormous area. Sublime in order, so regular, neat
and formal that it even felt soothing to gaze upon them. Subjected to this sublimity, it was almost as if the park controlled
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the very experience of it. Walking around in the garden was merely to become part of it. It could not to be experienced
as a subjective eye exploring and discovering what it found. My experience of the garden was twofold: both soothing and
imposing. Leaving the park felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, and yet it was mentally more strenuous.
Perhaps this dual response, of being both subject to and pleased by the garden, was connected to a feeling of being under
its control, or the one who sat in the castle above the park, presiding over it.
*The Photographic Need*
When I walked around the grounds of Versailles I instantly felt the need to photograph. I had taken my camera but had not
expected to use it after the unwillingness to photograph I had experienced at ‘Pfaueninsel’. This need began as I was walked
through one of the maze like areas to the left of the central axis. I took about sixty images, though I knew at the time I
would not use them. It is not the images that are interesting, but the need to photograph as apposed to the unwillingness I
experienced on ‘Pfaueninsel’.
Why did one of the gardens produce a need, and the other an unwillingness to photograph? Is it related to the garden’s
political construction and specific positioning of the viewer? In Versailles I somehow needed to mediate my viewing with the
camera. The act of photographing establishes a new power relation between subject and maker, giving the subject a degree
of ownership over his surroundings. My reaction to the imposing force of the sublime grandeur experienced in the gardens
of Versailles was to photograph them, to create a new relation between myself and my surroundings through the camera.
Certain objects and situations expect to be photographed. ‘Pfaueninsel’ is one of these situations. Its design begs to be
photographed, even staging the images for you. As an artist working within photography I also feel an expectation to photograph, an expectation coming both from within, and from a cultural presumption that I should photograph. But despite
these imperatives, I did not photograph on ‘Pfaueninsel’. The landscape felt incomplete, its illusion was not hermetic and I
was deeply engaged there. In fact the degree of open-endedness allowed me to use my imagination as I wandered around. I
even tried to photograph but it did not feel necessary. I had lost myself within the garden, it had annulled this imperative, I
felt satisfied by just experiencing the garden.There was no need for me to negotiate my position in relation to the landscape
through a camera, no need to assert my position in the landscape by taking photographs?
Part Three
*Peepshows and Panopticons*
The landscape gardens shifted my attention away from abstractly observing the reaction of spectators to varying architectural constructs. The experience led me to perceive my own attention as historically constituted and as a material practice.
My attention and its reactions to my changing environments had become my subject of study. In search of a concrete location in which to examine the effect of a given situation I became attracted to the idea of visiting a peepshow, as there the
construction of power would not only relate to me and my environment, but also to directly to other people. In terms of
the politics and architectural construction of visuality and visual pleasure, the peepshow is exemplar of the most extreme
contrivance of power relations.
The peep show consisted of a large central cylinder formed by multiple narrow doors, each numbered with a small cubical
behind it. One third of the far wall was covered in a sheet of opaque glass, below which was a slot to insert money. A twoeuro coin turns the light off and the glass becomes transparent, revealing the center of the cylinder.This room is larger than
the cubicles, and contains a circular rotating bed, lit by spotlights. The artist performs on the rotating bed, allowing them
to address each spectator individually.
The similarity between Bentham’s Panopticon and the peepshow is striking and fascinating, particularly in their subtle differences. In the peepshow it is clearly possible to see the performer at the center of the cylinder, they are spotlit for spectators lurking in the shadows. This construction performs a reversal of the panopticon, where the surrounding rooms are lit
so that the person in the center may see in to them, without being seen themselves.
As a spectator I was physically disconnected from the event happening before me. This separation of the visual stimuli
and the body of the observer is reminiscent of the division the camera Obscurer makes. I looked from a darkened room
through a void onto an object of desire, a super display, the performer. The performer absorbed my gaze yet when I took
my eyes off them, I could make out, secluded in darkness, other spectators like myself. I found the reflection of my position
as spectator startling. Suddenly it is possible to see myself from outside. This double separation of the visual and the visceral
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reminds me of Zizek’s description of the real. The moment I saw myself from outside, the thing I had been looking at, the
performer, itself became a void. According to Zizek “the Real is not the pre-reflexive reality of our immediate immersion
into our life-world but, precisely, that which gets lost, that which the subject has to renounce, in order to become immersed
into its life-world – and, consequently, that which then returns in the guise of spectral apparitions”.(Zizek,2008 p.17) And
he, reading Hegel, describes “a split which cleaves the One from within, not into two parts - but between Something and
Nothing, between One and the Void of its Place.- And it is in this gap that the Real emerges: the Real is the “almost nothing” which sustains the gap that separates a thing from itself.”(Zizek, 2008 p.26) Looking away from the performer of the
peepshow, the object of my gaze began oscillating “between One and the Void of its Place”.
The performer occupies the position of the panopticon guard, yet by being on display, the power they relinquish in becoming
visible is recuperated through their visual attraction demanding the spectator’s attention. The rotating performer looks at
each spectator, using their gaze to compel each one to keep watching. One reading of the situation, would put power firmly
in the hand of the performer who is able to see everyone and control their view. Yet Zizek illuminates the mechanisms at
play in this complex viewing situation, when the object of the spectator’s gaze becomes a void, and the rotating body on
display is overlooked. This reading puts power in the individual choice of where to look, and is not tied to the positions
defined by the apparatus. It challenges my earlier analysis of the zoo’s power structure, presenting the possibility that there
can be ‘an outside’ to the constructions determinism.
In the peep show I felt the controlling gaze from the performer, and was confronted with an uncomfortable feeling where
I had to choose between a whole host of socially accepted gazes in return, none of them adequate. This inadequacy made
me look away and in doing so I saw the other spectators, at this moment the performer now inhabited a spot at which I
could not look. Here in this apparatus of display where I had imagined the architectures subjecting force to be the most
controlling of all the tableaus I had investigated, the relation of power rather than being produced by the architecture, as
in the zoo, was now a negotiation between the performer and me. Could an understanding of ones gaze as a political tool
provide a key in subverting architectures determinism?
Bibliography
Crary, J 1992 Techniques of the Observer, Cambridge, Massachusetts,The MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-53107-0
Crary, J 2001 Suspensions of Perception, Cambridge, Massachusetts,The MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-53199-2
Foucault, M 1995 [1977] Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York:Vintage, ISBN 0-679-75255-2
Tagg, J 2007 [1988] The Burden of Representation, Essays on Photographies and Histories, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, ISBN 0-333-41824-7
Zizek, S 2008 For they know not what they do: Enjoyment as a political factor, London:Verso ISBN 1-844-67212-3
References
Barthes, R 2000 [1980] Camera Lucida, London:Vintage, ISBN 0-09-922541-7
Deluze, G 1992 Postscript on the Societies of Control, essay in October 59, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-75209-0
Grundberg, A 2004 [1990] The crisis of the real: Photography and the Postmodern, one of a collection of essays in, The Photography Reader, London:
Routledge, ISBN 0-415-24661-X
Lutz, Collins 2004 [1994] The photograph as an Intersection of Gases: The Example of National Geographic, one of a collection of essays in, The Photography Reader, London: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-24661-X
Foster, H 1996 The Return of the Real, Cambridge, Massachusetts,The MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-56107-7
Solomon-Godeau, A 2004 [1983] Winning the game when the rules have been changed, one of a collection of essays in, The Photography Reader, London:
Routledge, ISBN 0-415-24661-X
Sontag, S 2002 [1977] On Photography, London: Penguin Classics, ISBN 0-141-18716-6
Sween, M 2002 Inventing the Victorians, London: Faber and Fabe, ISBN 0-571-20663-8
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Lisa Skuret
‘I’m Thinking of You’
Franko B
Visions of Excess at SHUNT Vaults, London
as part of Spill Festival of Performance
12. 04. 2009
I found Franko B illuminated (awash in gold spotlight, naked
and smiling) on a converted gilt playground swing in one of
the archways opening onto the dank corridors of Shunt. Accompanied only by the tinklings of a simple piano tune, the
seemingly endless loop of swinging and sound carried with it
the nostalgia of music boxes and lullabies. Occasionally making eye contact, Franko glanced as if in invitation to those
watching him while enjoying a chat and a drink. Perhaps an
attempt to welcome us into the fantasy, the invitation was an
extension of one that Franko had made earlier in his open
call for participants to inhabit the installation at hourly intervals. And as time unfolded, another ‘performer’ assumed
his place on the swing, extending the image in cycles over a
period of twelve hours.
The multiple levels of repetition in ‘I’m Thinking of You’
seemed to echo like the persistent refrains in Franko’s past
work.These have revolved around love (and the beloved) and
around ideas of home (the place where love lives).‘Oh Lover
Boy’... ‘I Miss you’ ... ‘Blinded by Love’ .........................blinded
by love, I wonder what he can see in front of him? Can he
see beyond a persistent image from the past? And if his performances are a type of re-enactment, what compels him
to go back for more? Doing. Re-doing. Doing again. Magical
undoing. A child hostage appealing from a state of abjection?
When asked about this piece, Franko responded that it was
not about him. (Indeed, he also reminded a few performers
who may have been drawing attention to themselves, that it
was not about them either.) Perhaps now, working with light
instead of blood, performances which might previously be
read as melancholic (re)enactment, circling around a central
loss, act more as revelation coming in a blinding flash of love,
or a blinding flash of love coming in revelation…
In his most recent performance work, ‘Don’t Leave Me
This Way’, the audience, temporarily blinded by light, was
left with a perceptual afterglow. An image, similar to that
created after looking at the sun for too long, temporarily
persists. By contrast, in ‘I’m Thinking of You’, Franko, seemingly bathed in the light of romance, was the lived afterglow.
The re-occurrence of this flickering image over an extended
period of time invited us (some, literally) to enter into it
while, at the same time, the twelve hour duration seemed to
collapse into an extended residual image. Indeed, the participants and audience members that I spoke to remarked that
the performance stayed with them, manifesting in feelings of
“happiness”. An activating, affective takeaway?
Franko B, ‘I’m Thinking of You’, 2009 Photo: Richard J. Andersen
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‘I’m Thinking of You’, was brought to life in the context of Visions of Excess, a live art event co-curated by Ron Athey and
Lee Adams as part of the Spill Festival in London. Billed in
the supporting publicity as a “12 hour communion with the
ragged spirit of Georges Bataille”, from 9pm until 9am Visions of Excess occupied its time with work from a number
of international artists including Bruce LaBruce, Ron Athey
and Kiera O’Reilly. In the main stage areas, David Hoyle acted as compère/health & safety, rep/sideshow host(ess) and
tour guide for the performances. Tragicomic experiments in
personal transformation were explored in works such as in
‘Til Death Do You Part - Marry Yourself!’ a one to one performance with an “encouraging priestess” where the participant had an opportunity to devise and enact a ceremonial
commitment to themselves. In Zackary Drucker’s ‘work in
progress’, the audience, encouraged by an acousamatic voice
(reminiscent to that of a guide from a self-help audio tape),
was invited to collectively build-up and channel negative energy (derived from personal failure) into the hair follicles of
the artist dressed only in a blond wig, stilettos and panties.
As a finale, in a futile collective act of gender re-assignment,
the participants, now armed with tweezers, were encouraged to pluck hair from the artist’s body to the accompaniment of the disembodied voice’s chants of “you will never
be a woman”.
Franko B, ‘I’m Thinking of You’, 2009 Photo: Richard J. Andersen
Looking back at Franko B’s past, and following from Deleuze
and Guattari’s work on ‘refrain’, one might say that the refrains in his body of work act together to create a territory
or a terrain. But maybe this ‘home’ does not function merely
as domestic refuge, but has the potential to become a more
enduring act of production. By continually invoking an ‘image’ of home, home is brought into being. By externalising
and actualising a need (to have a home and the love and
security that, ideally, it contains), he has potential to integrate his creation and to carry it with him. A mobile home?
In a similar way, by playing with a clichéd image, as he does
in ‘I’m Thinking of You’, Franko B does not return to the
nostalgia of personal memory only to repeat it in the future.
By using a fictionalised image of ‘the past’, he opens up new
possibilities for the future of that image. A processional self?
By returning to a fictive time that has been ‘lost’, actualising a time which never, and possibly could never, exist (an
ideal), something new is created in the slippage of that image’s boundaries.
Albeit it in different ways, the work in Visions, responds to
alienation from societal ideals ingested and then enforced by
our ‘selves’. Captured by ‘images’ of perfection we are forced
into repetitive patterns of behaviour. Our vision thus guided
and media-driven, we get caught in the productivity of sterile
cycles of consumption. And try as we might, steered by a
hunger for completion never satisfied, we never quite manage to shoehorn into the confines of the ideal. In this way,
happily ever after, we are destined to fail in the pursuit of
an ideal romance modelled after an ideal childhood. And in
these closed and enclosed economies, the excess produced
by, while at the same time, excluded from the system, is neatly kept out of sight.
Working with his own blood in previous live performances,
Franko B’s wound was open to be interpreted in a variety of
ways.The skin acted as a landscape to the visible surfacing of
an individual psychological conflict (as in historical readings
of persistent skin disorders such as eczema), marked him
out as the bearer of stigma, and represented a collective
vulnerability, and disgrace. A scarlet letter radiating a burning heat.
As Erving Goffman examines in Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, stigma is something that marks the
bearer out as different from existing, desirable, social norms.
It is a mark, however small, of some defect in presentation
of or deviation from the identity categories that form us and
which we reiterate our self in relation to. Stigma, therefore,
has to be ‘managed’ to a greater or lesser extent. Informa-
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tion needs to be controlled, so that the individual is not labelled as different and then marginalized, or excluded. Since
identities are relational, stigmatization may precipitate a crisis in self-perception that would require a readjustment of
personal schema. For these reasons, the visibility of stigma is
controlled wherever possible and concealed. When it does
surface, so does a feeling of shame. And this shame may lead
to anxiety and avoidance of social contact.
Goffman goes on to explain that the stigmatized and the
‘normal’ are not so different from each other, in fact, he says
that they run in parallel to each other and that “every individual participates in both roles”.1 As both a part and a
product of a shared framework and system of rules, they
are reciprocal and dependant upon one another. Even the
so-called normal shares some, however small, stigma, as they
desire but can never fully achieve an unattainable social ideal.
In Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari, in a concern with how
to proceed in a war fought against what they recognise as a
sick (neurotic) society, explore how a feeling of lack is created, maintained, and exploited by society and it’s mechanisms
of power through repression (for example, in capitalism’s
exploitation of the free floating desire created by repression). Similarly, this constant striving for, but never achieving
a state of completion in an idealised and stable identity (itself
an unattainable social ideal), creates a feeling of lack in the
subject.
As I see it, it is this lack, maintained in the self-perpetuating
closed system of the ‘I’, which can be made manifest through
stigma as excess. In this way, stigma performs as a symptom
(as a positive symptom, perhaps), as a defect in the cultural
machine, surfacing repressed desire and alterity. Surfacing
what is kept out of conscious awareness has the potential
to remind us of our ultimate alienation from the ideal, and
by extension, society (and ourselves created in relation to
it) - the alterity internal to ourselves. It also has a role to play
in escaping the system.
While some of the work at Visions of Excess was literally
playing with systemic waste (think auto-fisting, blow-jobs,
blood-letting), Franko B played with an ideal by bringing it to
life.........and invited others to join in. In ‘I’m Thinking of You’,
I see Franko B bringing a fantasy to light. This is not just a
personal/reparative phantasy, or an idealised and fetishised
image, but extends to include that of social ideal. There did
seem to be some catharsis to be had in having the opportunity to temporarily embody (and in the process reconfigure
the shape of) an ideal childhood/romance. In this piece, it is
not the scars left by his past performances, nor the tattoos
that capture my attention. Is it the face of an image with no
fixed identity, collectively owned? Strangely, I noticed that
once performers took to the driving seat, that they, although
altogether physically different, shared a similar look. As one
participant explained to me, his experience on the swing oscillated between self-awareness, “it’s cold”, “people are look-
ing at me”, and loss in what he described as ‘non-personal’
reverie...Blinded by love is he having a romance with himself?
Has he, escaping capture, ‘returned’ home? And as an audience participant, over time, I can’t help but feel the image’s
eidetic affect.
1 Goffman, Erving. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, Penguin Books, 1968, (163).
Jonas Staal
“Art is seen as one of democracy’s most essential pillars: it is
the space par excellence for the free expression of ideas, the
experimentation with new models of society. However, when an
artist takes this role too seriously and becomes too straightforwardly political, s/he is accused of demagogy or simply discarded
as bad art” 1
POST-PROPAGANDA
An introduction by Jonas Staal
I.
Since modern art has seemingly successfully obtained its status as a sovereign métier, the concept of propaganda has possibly become the greatest taboo for all cultural producers
in the field. The trauma of the 20th century ‘state-art’ – art
made in favour or under pressure of totalitarian regimes2 –
has had a huge impact on our thinking on the relationship
between art and politics.
Contemporary art when concerned with socio-political issues is generally perceived as an arena of criticality, which
‘reveals’ to us the dangers of ideology. An arena that counters populist strategies and which instead of pleasing the
spectator, challenges him to see the world around us as an
area of multiple truths. The fear of propaganda is the fear of
the unambiguous (political) positioning of the artist. Today
it is expected from artists to show to us the world as an
ambiguous place. To show us the world as a place which exists by a variety of truths. To show us a world that is in need
of a continuous interest in others. This doctrine is based on
the fear of stigmatizing (again) those who have suffered from
totalitarian regimes in the past.
To affiliate with those conservatives that represent the contrary, the ‘dangerous’ and inevitably ‘violent’ nature of truth
seeking, is to affiliate with propagandists. For every claim on
the truth or on the framework of reality as such would mean
that other truths and realities would be rejected. Ideology
within contemporary art is continuously discussed as a doctrine: as an inevitable first step to mass-murder and violent
repression, even though the claim on ‘true’ art as a field of
multiplicity and ambiguity is not any less dogmatic at all.
In my essay ‘Post-propaganda’ I claim that placing the artist in this role as a ‘questioner’, as someone who merely
‘shows a mirror’ to society, is just as much – and even more
– representing the current state of ideology as those artists whom we have learned to reject for their unambiguous
bond with ideologically driven organisations. For the ideal of
multiplicity, the ideal of the artists showing ‘mirrors’ to the
world around us, the ideal of the artist ‘revealing’ the secret
mechanisms of ideology and the ideal of the artist to exercise continuous tolerance are values that are obviously not
at all free of an ideological basis.
Stating that every form of ideology is per definition a rejection of a world that consists of a multiplicity of truths and
realities is of course an ideologically driven proposition in
itself. There is even a clear system of consensus that represents exactly these ideals: I claim that this is what we call the
democratic project, to which I refer to as democratism.
Contemporary art constitutes the perfect face of democratism when it is self-critical, inquisitive, open, tolerant, continually under development and full of interest in others. And it
is from this perspective only logical that our politics speak
about how much it wants to leave art ‘free’ and ‘independent’.
For this ‘freedom’ and ‘independence’ are exactly among the
core values of democratism and we as artists have become
to constitute the perfect representatives of these values.
For me the crucial question is the following: what does this
specific notion of criticism mean in a society in which contemporary art is expected to be critical as such?
I do not think we can speak of real criticism at all once these
expectations are met. I state that real criticism is to be found
at the moment when the profound entanglement between
art and politics takes its place at the heart of the artist’s
work. Or at least: when this entanglement forms the basis of
operations performed in artistic practice.
II.
The first of my projects that I wish to introduce within
this line of thinking was realized in direct cooperation with
politician Ronald Sørensen, leader of the Rotterdam-based
right-wing populist party Leefbaar Rotterdam. 3
In 2007 PvdA left-wing labour party member Zeki Baran
proposed to realize a ‘Monument for the immigrant worker’
in the Afrikaanderwijk in Rotterdam. The Afrikaanderwijk is
a neighbourhood built in the 1920-30s and is named after
farmers of Dutch decent in South Africa. On August 10th
1972 severe confrontations took place when native citizens
of Rotterdam invaded into immigrant workers’ homes and
forced them to leave their houses with all their possessions.
The reason of this violent intrusion was the amount of illegal housing that was offered to immigrants, which gave the
impression that they were treated better then the native
citizens, who also suffered from a shortage of affordable living spaces.
The ‘Monument for the immigrant worker’ was meant to
honour those immigrants who after the ending of WWII
helped to rebuild, and settled in, the city of Rotterdam, which
had been severely bombed by the Nazis. And of course, the
monuments would also function as a plaster for the treatment the immigrants received when violently forced out of
their houses.This monument was supposed to be realized by
asking families of this first generation of immigrant workers
to each donate one euro.
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Monument for the chased-off citizens of Rotterdam - Interview still, 2008; Interview by Vincent van Gerven Oei and Jonas Staal
Politician Sørensen reacted furiously when hearing of Baran’s
statement and immediatly proposed to realize a countermonument: a monument that he called the ‘Monument for
the Chased-Off Citizens of Rotterdam’.
The sketching phase for this monument was executed after
several statements made by Sørensen in the media,4 and
through a series of telephone conversations, to picture exactly what Sørensen had in mind. I presented a 3D model
to Sørensen and the arts and culture representative of the
party Anton Molenaar, while interviewing both of them. This
conversation was conducted together with writer Vincent
van Gerven Oei.
In this interview Sørensen, in strong opposition of Baran’s
suggestion of a monument for the immigrant worker, said
the following on the issue:
“A statue so as to express gratitude to and commemorate the
hard-working immigrant, which would have given us our prosperity. Again, you don’t do such a thing, that’s nonsense. [...] Because
that would entail that we owe our wealth and prosperity to these
so-called guest-workers and that is absolute nonsense. It’s untrue.
It’s only a hyper correct manipulation of history which always
intensely annoys me and which is used time after time again. So,
when Baran said “We need to erect a monument for all those
people to which we owe all of this,” I said “Get real, this a lie insistently kept alive by the multicultural Mafia.” If you really want to
honour someone in this city, to whom we owe our prosperity and
wealth, it should be those people that worked their ass off for this
city after the war. [...] But those people don’t feel themselves at
home anymore in the Afrikaanderwijk, they have all left, or have
been chased-off. So if you want to honour someone, honour the
chased-off citizens of Rotterdam.” 5
When the model of the desired monument was presented
to them for the first time during the interview, their response was as follows:
“Ronald Sørensen: I think it’s beautiful. It’s a total surprise for me,
but I think it’s beautiful.
Anton Molenaar: Yes, I think so too. I’m not sure whether it’s on
purpose, but it’s not really provoca¬tive. It’s just objective, there
are many possibilities, so...
RS:Yes, I think it’s beautiful.” 6
Obviously Sørensen’s statements concerning the realisation
of this monument were, in first intention, only meant as a
polemical strategy. His proposition was meant to force media attention to Baran’s – yet unrealized – ‘Monument for
the immigrant worker’. It is therefore that he states that
“It’s a total surprise for me” when he is confronted with the
sketch that can be used to create the actual monument.This
does not keep him from wanting to have it realized: it is just
for the first time that he is actually considering its realization,
as he himself never took his own proposition seriously in the first
place.
It is in this line that other comments from him are interesting as well. For example when in the beginning of the
interview he states that “I have no background in art. And as
a politician, I don’t want to be involved with it.”7 This statement
sounds highly familiar when thinking of the artist or the art
institution which does reflect upon subjects of a sociopolitical nature, but when asked further, will always deny direct
political involvement. As of course, consensus demands from
contemporary art to always question, but never to acknowledge a direct ideological bond with what is being questioned,
or the way in which this model of questioning functions. For
this would make him a propagandist or at least a politician.
Certainly not an artist.
One could say that in the case of my production for Sørensen, my role is that of a propagandist: the role of a state
artist in the most traditional sense of the word. But I claim
that a great difference lies in the element of choice: my conscious choice to be involved with the representatives of the
Leefbaar Rotterdam party. It is this element of choice that
shows a difference in the balance of power when comparing
my position with that of the classic propagandist. For it could
just as well be stated that I am an instrument of the Leefbaar
Rotterdam party for the representation of their political
program, as that they are an instrument in my attempt to
analyse and dissect the meaning and ideological structuring
of democratism.
I will try to specify this position by introducing a second example of a work that I realized for a local Rotterdam representative of the PvdA left-wing labour party named Robert
Baruch.
In 2006 Baruch proposed to start an investigation concerning the history of the street names in, again, the Afrikaanderwijk in Rotterdam. Baruch’s proposal was based on a petition that a group of African actors had sent to him. These
actors had been shocked to find out that the street names in
Afrikaanderwijk referred directly to the former Apartheidregiment. These were names that found their origins around
the year 1900, when the people of The Netherlands were
highly engaged with the Dutch-speaking ‘Afrikaanders’ who,
led by Paul Kruger – also known as ‘Oom Paul’ (Uncle Paul)
– fought in the ‘Boerenoorlog’ (The ‘Farmer’s war’) against
English oppressors.
In an interview Baruch stated that he was thinking to change
the street names into names that would symbolize a ‘new
Africa’.8 Among others he proposed to change the Paul Krugerstraat in the ‘Shaka Zoeloestraat’, named after the former
leader of the Zulu’s, Shaka.
After having initiated a public intervention in which I had
the street sign changed according to Baruch’s wishes, I gave
the assignment to Sign & Traffic – the organisation in the
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Monument for the chased-off citizens of Rotterdam - Model, 2008
3d model by Sjoerd Oudman
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Netherlands who produces all official public street signs –
to realize an actual street sign that could replace the Paul
Krugerstraat. Together with a letter signed by me on March
17th, these were shown in two art shows before being send
to Baruch.9 In the letter I stated that I hoped to have been
“at his service”10 in the continuation of his initiative: “Ik hoop
u hiermee voldoende van dienst te zijn in het voorzetten van uw
initiatief.”
III.
In both works, the ‘Monument for the Chased-Off Citizens
of Rotterdam’ as well as the Shaka Zoeloestraat, political
representatives state to represent the voice of the people: in
the first case the voice of the male native worker, and in the
second case the voice of the immigrant worker. Even though
the goals of both propositions are seemingly different, both
cases claim to give a voice to those whom are not heard at
this moment. This is in line with the ideological framework
that both Leefbaar Rotterdam and the Pvda claim to represent, namely that of democratism.
At the same time both propositions function based on undemocratic grounds. For Sørensen and Baruch’s proposals
are propositions by two individuals that are obviously in
power: at least in power to make such propositions and create public attention by it to strengthen their political stances.
But so far nobody controlled or forced neither Sørensen
nor Baruch to make a concrete proposition for the realisation of their monuments (I consider the street sign to be
a monument as well). Until I took both Sørensen and Baruch
seriously, both propositions were dying a silent death in the
realm of rhetoric strategies.
I state that we should put the concept of the state artist
to discussion once again. We should not be fooled by the
current consensus ruling contemporary art production that
there is always some kind of ‘independent’ role or function
for artists, within which the concept of ‘propaganda’ – similar to populism – has become a dirty word par excellence.
Especially in The Netherlands, where a large part of contemporary art production is subsidized by the government the
question of who is in power is in need of an urgent answer.
For as artists we, by our mere existence, form the face of
democratism, representing its values of tolerance, freedom
and the capacity of being (self)critical. If indeed we are the
conscious or unconscious propagandists of the system, how
then to address our actual hosts, politicians, who assign us
this task to represent the values of democratism? How do
we address them when they state that contemporary art
has its own sovereignty of which they do not wish to comment or make any judgements when at the same time they
are laying down the exact framework that we continue to
represent?
And think of how perfect this form of propaganda is in comparison to the propaganda of the past. For we as artists work
for the system, but the system itself does not have to be held
responsible for this. We constitute a face for democratism
that nobody dares to wear publicly. Politicians will always
claim that the art made today is a ‘free’ art: free of the totalitarian influences of the past. But I find this concept of
‘freedom’ ridiculous when exercising and representing it is
exactly the task given to us.
My claim is that today the role of the state artist is not only
to redefine democratism, but also to educate politicians. To
educate them in the powers that they themselves represent,
but do not acknowledge as such. To renegotiate the slogan
‘Power to the people!’ into a public questioning of the balance of powers by asking: ‘Power?... To which people?!’ And
as artists, we should also allow ourselves to be educated and
directed by politicians. Our inevitable position as state artists should be acknowledged both ways for “I would say that
we are all always already serving”.11 The first objective is the
following: to re-design politics as an artistic domain, and to
redesign art as a domain of the political.
And is it not interesting in this line of thinking to see how a
right-wing political party such as Leefbaar Rotterdam, which
in classical populist terminology claims to represent ‘the
voice of the people’, a party which represents the ideal of
direct democracy and rejects all forms of ‘totalitarian’ ideology from the past, from communism to socialism and fascism, when describing their wish for a ‘Monument for the
Chased-Off Citizens of Rotterdam’ to basically describe an
image based on the most representative aspects of socialrealism? And is it not interesting to see how a left-wing labour party such as the PvdA, in this case represented by a
non-African politician, decide themselves who ‘new African
heroes’ should be? And to choose an African warlord that
most westerners only know from a 1987 Hollywood film
that romanticized his existence?
Is it not fascinating how the image, much more then the spoken vocabulary of politicians, is able to dissect the ideological
grounds on which these proposals are truly based on? Not
by means of an ‘outsiders’ critique, but from a fully embedded point of view. An embedment in which art and power
are no longer falsely separated, but share one and the same
spectre and objective: namely to redesign the meaning and
the means of implementation of democratism today.
1 ‘Always Choose the Worst Option – Artistic Resistance and the Strategy
of Over-Identification’ by BAVO, Episode Publishers, Rotterdam, 2007, p19.
2 ‘Did someone say totalitarianism?’ by Slavoj Zizek, Verso, London-New
York, 2001.
3 Leefbaar Rotterdam – translated as ‘Live-able’ or ‘Endurable Rotterdam’
– is a local political party that came to being in 2001. During the elections of
March 6th the former leader of the party, politician Pim Fortuyn, won 34.7%
of the votes and thereby at once became the largest party in Rotterdam.
Fortuyn was murdered two months later by an animal rights activist.
4 ‘LR wil beeld voor ‘verjaagde Rotterdammer’’ by Antti Liuku, AD Rotterdams Dagblad, 2007.
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Jurga Daubaraite
5 ‘Monument for the chased-off citizens of Rotterdam - interview’ conducted by Vincent van Gerven Oei and Jonas Staal in 2008 and exhibited at
Stroom,The Hague. Published in ‘Monumental Research’ by van Gerven Oei
and Staal, Stroom, The Hague, 2009, p.14-17.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 ‘Apartheid-straten weg’ door Antti Liukku, gepubliceerd op 4 juli 2006
in het AD Rotterdam
9 These exhibitions were subsequently ‘Body-Double’ at the Nieuwe Vide
in Haarlem (NL), curated by Emilie Oursel and ‘ACTIVISM DOUBT’ at De
Veemvloer in Amsterdam (NL), curated by Radek Vana. Both exhibitions
took place in March and April 2009.
10 This brings to mind the political slogan ‘At your service!’ with which
populist politician Pim Fortuyn entered the 2002 Dutch elections before
being murdered by an animal rights activist.
11 Andrea Fraser, How to Provide an Artistic Service: An Introduction, 1994.
http://i1.exhibit-e.com/petzel/b82e289c.pdf
EMPTINESS IN THE
POST-COMMUNIST
CONDITION
STRUGGLES OF SELF-DEFINITION
“Future
I saw a field full of sunflowers.They were all looking wrong way.”
Dan Perjovschi
Continuous displacements that operate discursively on the
post-communist subject, result in a collective unconscious
fear for the ‘new’ and the ‘other’. And in a paradoxical way it
prevents a critical historical inquiry - nostalgia and a rather
glorified historical victimisation become more reasonable
ways of dealing with the complex aftermath of the communism.
A certain psychological comfort was lost during the first
decade of independence due to lack of promise of a comfortable stability that was previously a safety catch for the
communist system. Therefore today in the times of capitalist market economy and democratic rule one can freely
purchase nostalgically branded Soviet bread and mending
tools etc. in a supermarket. “The post-soviet subject is longing for unified ideology and total order, according to which
he would construct his life.The easiness and irresponsibility
of everyday life supplied by accommodation are more important values for him than independence and freedom to
decide for oneself.”1 Amorphous and unsettled times of still
something else to come, are on an individual basis perceived
with confused fear and disbelief so, as theorist Putinaite suggests, “reality released from ideological control reveals the
‘abnormality’ and doubtful reliability of those past everyday
traditions. For instance, now a business relation based upon
friendship is being called corruption.”2 Since the past is to
be declined, terms and traditions revised, the self-perception of the post-communist subject becomes incomplete,
dazzled and lacking a point of reference.
It is relevant to compare these identification struggles with
contemporary Lithuanian artist Arturas Raila’s work: Forever
Lacking and Never Quite Enough, is a video cut of newsreels
and short propaganda features from the 1940s.When it was
shown for the first time in the Contemporary Art Center in
Vilnius (2001) the artist invited dissident Genius Strazdas to
read his patriotic-nationalist poetry alongside the screening
of edited archive material. It is important to point out that
the video material was provided by Lithuanian Image and
Sound Archive, which as the curator of the show explains,
is: “a state-run and chronically under-financed institution,
over 30.000 films are kept in precarious conditions, but all
those reels contain very few frames that we today would
call ‘documentary’. Like its counterparts in other formerly
totalitarian countries, the Lithuanian archive is a museum
of the manipulated and manipulative moving image”. 3 In a
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Jurga Daubaraite
Lithuanian Song and Dance Celebration; Nemunas Magazine
sense Raila’s piece is a distanced creation of a critical situation, where one ‘truth’ of ideological material is combined
with another; resistance ‘truth’. Here the artist’s personal
position is partly invisible, as voided, all there is represented
is documentary archives and witness of the struggles during
occupation. The focus is on their relation, between different history narratives of two perceptions of nationalism and
resistance. As the edited footage continues rolling and the
poet reads his poetry no “right questions” are being asked.
Allowing both sides to perform, Raila approaches the manipulative silencing issue of post-communist discourse.Thus
the artist says he dedicates this work to the stereotypical
“older-generation” viewer in Lithuania - “this means someone who is an involuntary product of totalitarian worldorder and who does not have any of the conceptual tools
to deal with recent history (or current world affairs) that
are taken for granted by those brought up in some of the
liberal, post-modern communities further to the west.”4
The screened images provide supportive conclusions about
the paradigmatic self-image of an ethnically defined ‘self’ and
latter modes of restructuring it after the fall of soviet state.
Raila’s film could also be approached as a simplification and
blurring of the current inquiries of history and memory,
as he edits out the actual manifestations of events during
occupation and leaves the spectator to encounter his (?)
– our (Lithuanian) imaginary. “His idea is rather to visually
re-create people’s unreflected, ingrained and indeed almost
“automatic” reactions to the accounts of war and occupation that are traded in situations where there is little ideological control.”5
In addition to an un-questioning relation with the recent
past it is important to point out the regional reception of
these transition period’s processes, and the specific construction of a national identity as demonising attitude to-
wards the Western system just melting away, in turn it shapes
‘our own’ nationalist solution for the unanswered questions.
Theorist Marius Babias’ article The Euro-self And The Europeanism explains the way, in his opinion, ideology of Europeanism reconciles socialism with capitalism and constructs a
specific national discourse:
“The preferred model, interpreting communism as a wrong way
or a dead end is too limited.The contemporary process of restructuring the postcommunist society, as well as the self, as “European”, in the conditions offered by the dissolution of the communist
past and by its profound cultural impregnations is not based on a
critical approach to history, but tends to present a continuity of its
national history, myths, traditions and cultural self-appreciations;
but this heterogeneous presentation, offered by the new elites,
represents the product of the “national discourse” of communism,
dressed up as liberalism, which is dominant now.” 6
Although a positive EU identity policy aims to construct a
pan-European community, where cultures and values would
be shared, and diversity celebrated, in reality one can see
creation of a new kind of hierarchy in the regions of Eastern Europe – according to the obtained level of Europeanism. Concerned with the integration processes a subject
is struck by the double necessity to embody amnesia and
become equal. Therefore authenticity issues are approached
as a modern act of self-identification.
This simulated reality of a numbed collective memory was
lauded during the nationalist rally, if taking the Song and
Dance Celebration as an example, which has a tradition of
a hundred years in Lithuania, and was also accredited by the
soviet system.Annual celebrations were the biggest and most
prosperous cultural events organised, and were unavoidable
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for everyone living in the capital cities. To participate and
wear a ‘national’ costume gave the possibility to demarcate
one’s identity collectively – to celebrate it – on a basis of
emotional national euphoria. Folk type songs and dances,
that had been rewritten, harmonised by soviet composers
and choreographers were a numb comfort for the occupied nation. (Putinaite names one of the many examples of
invented abstract identification symbols during soviet times
as the Baltic Sea; somehow entrenched as symbol of Lithuanian-ness and pureness, it was carolled in the songs and
poetry of the period.) This kind of nationalist stream was a
societal process, encouraging euphoria and solidarity within
community. And again, after the decline of the communist
system, these rooted traditions of self-articulation embarked
on struggles within the search for some kind of ‘new’ authenticity, being able to avoid the right-wing nationalist wave
of slogans. The locations of the so-called ‘Lithuanian-ness’ or
other similarly defined identities still reflect the communist
promoted salvation. The poet and academic Tomas Venclova,
who has been living and working in the West since 1977, asserts such a position:
“Eastern Europe is lagging behind from the viewpoint of civilization – partly for historical reasons formed over the course
of centuries, and partly because of the unsuccessful “socialist”
experiment that lasted fifty years. One should not worship this
civilization lag and treat it as a sign of nobility or inner depth. Far
more often, it testifies only to obscurity, sluggishness, and submission to cruel and limited patriarchal norms, which we tend to
think of as national values or primeval goodness lost in modern
society.” 7
The ambiguous and ambivalent situation of today’s postcommunist subjects’ self-definition could be traced in continuation of this National Song and Dance Celebration tradi-
tion today and its according current official rhetoric vaguely
different from soviet propaganda. Therefore representation of national identity attributes to myths and appropriate re-interpretations of history. In 2008 an official website
for Song and Dance Celebration hosts an article analysing
the “tradition and symbolism” of this event. Here are some
parts quoted from it:
“From the cultural point of view the national song and dance
celebration tradition is an expression of cultural-national identity
based on a mass art lover movement of choir singers, dancers,
and musicians.The artistic product they create as well as their existence per se performs the function of an intermediary between
archaic cultural layers and modern professional creation. From
the cultural historical point of view, the national song and dance
celebration tradition largely contributed to the cultural development of Lithuania at the end of the 19th century and the first
half of the 20th. It proved to be the most important manifestation
of Lithuanian national-cultural identity and a form of its preservation. It continuously emphasised the most significant part of
traditional cultural heritage (especially singing that has been universally acknowledged to be the most valuable aspect of the song
and dance celebration) as well as the most noteworthy treasures
of professional contemporary and historical art. At present, the
song and dance celebration tradition is well balanced. /…/
From the civic and political points of view, the song and dance celebration tradition has always been, especially during occupation
periods, a means to maintain the national identity and a secret
weapon to protect aspirations for independence.The fact that the
independence in all the three Baltic countries was restored with
the help of a ‘singing revolution’ in 1990 is largely a result of the
mentality nurtured by the song and dance celebration tradition.”8
On the other hand Venclova, during the international conference in Vilnius (2008) Fall of the Berlin Wall: From Budapest to
Arturas Raila, Forever Lacking and Never Quite Enough, 2002-03; Installation view
www.mke.hu/news/index.php?func=showarticle&art=14781d9e3e0f57
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Vilnius profoundly expressed concerns related to such nationalist spirit tradition.
“One of the weaknesses that Lithuanian dissent nurtured was
quite often exaggerated fight for Lithuanian national identity.
Communist rule was not erasing, but castrating the nations – forbidding ideas about independence and democracy, therefore after
Stalin’s death there wasn’t much emphasis on ethnical decline. So
called “nationalist self-protection”/…/ sadly quite often was interwoven with anti-modernist position, provincial isolationist attitude,
chauvinist, xenophobic, and even racist elements. The Lithuanian
identity itself was understood narrowly, confused with “blood and
soil” categories, peasant mentality and psychology.” 9
Thus I wonder what could be the authenticity definition for
a generation that did not experience occupation and is not
that easily manipulated by myths of the past. How could one
re-articulate identity without ready-made and inherited patterns affirming the cultural and political designations “Lithuanian”, “European”, “communist”, etc.?
Observing the current interpretations of experiences of
daily life, political agenda and cultural definitions one could
see an oppressive shift – a certain lamenting for a despairing
dream. A prominent figure in the movement for independence V. Landzbergis uses H. Balzac’s “lost illusions” analogy
of “inheritance always behind” to describe how a meaningful
way of being is struggling in Lithuania today, and why there
are so many lost illusions. “A previous regime in its new
shape persists within its ruled territories, much wider than
Lithuania. It is not gone, but strives to be, establish, fixate
itself, and where possible – to avenge. Is it failing really? We
have to answer it for ourselves.” And this situation scarcely
repeats the concerns and hopes of the generation that lived
during communism- that insecure lamenting over historical
and cultural memory, when a possible real touch upon authenticity has been voided of its recognition.
The post-communist self deals with inherited uncertainties
arriving from the dualistic soviet reality, consisting of two
parallel experiences: an ideological, representational one with prescribed ideals, feelings and values - and a personal,
‘real’ reality - experienced through everyday, where authentic
lack of meaning and belief dominates over simulated utopia.
The effect produced by this inability to be(come) authentic
is a disrupted self-perception and deceitful representation of
the (post)communist identity.
“Democracy
All the democratic and economic achievements of Romania in
recent years resemble the success of the Romanian world boxing
champion Leonard Doroftei: After the victory we are taken to the
hospital.”
Dan Perjovschi
1 Nerija Putinaite (2007). Nenutrukusi styga.[Unbroken String. Accommodation
and Resistance in Soviet Lithuania], trans. J.D (p.205).
2 Ibid, (p.206).
3 Anders Kreuger (2008), Muted Realities seminar paper
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Marius Babias (2006), “The Euro-self And The Europeanism”. IDEA, 24.
7 Tomas Venclova (1997). “Berlyno sienos paunksmeje” [In the Shadow of
the Berlin Wall]. Kulturos barai, 10 (394)/1997.
8 Dalia Rasteniene, “Tradition and Symbolism of the Song and Dance
Celebration Process in Lithuania”. http://www.dainusvente.lt/index.
php?1686180731.
9 Tomas Venclova (2008). “Etninis nacionalizmas padejo totalitarinei sistemai pratesti valdyma” [Ethnic nationalism tradition supported the power of
totalitarian system]. http://www.lrytas.lt/print.asp?data=&k=news&id=1212
7553891212719115.
10 Vytautas Landzbergis (2008). From talk given in a conference Fall of
the Berlin Wall: From Budapest to Vilnius, trans. J.D, http://www3.lrs.lt/pls/inter/
konferencija?p_r=5887&p_k=1&p_d=77674.
Jelena Martinovic
P(r)océder
2008
Inkjet print. Plate of glass (20.9 x 29.7 cm),
bichromated ammonium, arabic gum, sugar, water, pigment powder.
Ink on paper (20.9 x 29.7 cm)
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Rana Ozturk
Gulliver’s Travel into an Art Installation: On History, Identity
and Difference
Yinka Shonibare, MBE – Egg Fight
Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane
Yinka Shonibare, MBE, Egg Fight, 2009
Courtesy of the artist, Stephen Friedman Gallery (London) and James Cohan Gallery (New York). Photo: Eugene Langan
In Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, the first voyage of adventurous, travel loving Gulliver brings him to Lilliput, the land
of little people, where in time he changes from a dreadful
giant, to a friend of the country who is granted the highest
title of honour and to a traitor that needs to be captured
and blinded. In all these positions the relationship between
Gulliver and the Lilliputians is one defined by the difference
between them. The physical difference is actually an embodiment of Gulliver as an outsider, an observant of the country with all its absurdities and differences as they appear to
Gulliver. Yet, the issue of difference is also manifested in the
battles between Lilliputians and their neighbours, the Blefuscidians, which have been going on for “six and thirty moons”
over the dispute about whether eggs should be broken from
the larger end or the smaller end before eating. Seemingly a
minor argument for Gulliver, the issue has actually become a
display of power and authority for the two enemy countries
that are seemingly identical to each other. This fight over
eggs is the inspiration for Yinka Shonibare’s commissioned
installation Egg Fight at Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane.
The installation is set up on a stage resembling a theatrical
set in the first hall of the gallery space. Standing on the stage
are two headless human figures wearing clothes made of
African fabric cut in the style of European aristocrats’ clothing. They are pointing their guns at each other with a wall of
eggs in between them. It is a tense moment; the battle has
already started as it is evident with the hole in the wall and
broken eggs on the floor, but the figures appear to be waiting to find the right position and timing for the next deadly
blow against one another. The viewer encounters the work
as soon as they enter the gallery. The position of the installation in the middle of the space forces the viewer to walk
around the platform to see the work in the round, which
also enables the position of the each figure to be seen from
the other’s point of view. As the viewer, our bodily movements also participate in the moves that the two figures
might be making and we are left in a position to determine
which party we would like to side with. However, it is also
obvious that whoever wins the battle, the result will be the
same: the eggs that are the cause of this fight will be de-
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stroyed and wasted, regardless from whichever side they are
broken. So delicate the eggs are, and so futile the fight is.
With the possible death of one or both of the parties, the
fight becomes a lose-lose situation.
This particular story found in Gulliver’s Travels provides a
solid ground for Yinka Shonibare to go into the territory
that is constant in his work, which targets issues about identity, race, class, exoticism, questioning of the British history
and colonialism. Published in 1726, Gulliver’s Travels is a satire
of human conditions as observed by Jonathan Swift. In the
book, Swift also criticizes the politics of England at the time
of George 1st, as well as imperialism and the thirst for finding new land with colonialist ambitions, which had made England a great centre of power at the time. The war between
the Lilliputians and the Blefuscidians that is parodied in this
installation is a critique of the prolonged war with France,
and the triviality of the battle between Catholics and Protestants and their constant fight for power.
As an artist coming from a Nigerian family and living in
England, Shonibare produces works that deal with his own
mixed identity, extending towards a critical look at the formation of cultural identities and otherness as fictional constructs formed in the clash of different historical engagements with the other. Against the preconceived notions of
specific national identities, this fictional identity is actually a
hybrid one that appropriates and entwines different inputs
through cultural, economic and political interactions to the
point that what is original and authentic becomes questionable. As in many of his other works, in Egg Fight, Shonibare
has dressed the two mannequins in traditional Dutch wax
printed fabric, associated with the African culture. The paradox comes from the fact that these two figures actually posses the posture and the dress style of European noble men,
with their guns completing their image. The beautifully made
cloths suit them well, despite the fact that the fabric they are
made of does not belong to the general clothing codes of
western men. With this combination, however, a whole history of colonialism, international trade, European wealth and
culture as opposed to slavery, formation of African identity,
exoticism and all that is excluded from the western identity
are intertwined.
The artist often uses African fabric as a critical tool to indicate the entire relationships between different cultures. In
the words of the artist himself:
“African fabric: signifies African identity, rather like American jeans (Levi’s) are an indicator of trendy youth culture.
In Brixton, African fabric is worn with pride amongst radical
or cool youth. It manifests itself as a fashion accessory with
black British women in the head wrap form and it can also
be found worn by Africans away from the home country.
It becomes an aesthetics of defiance, an aesthetics of reassurance, a way of holding on to one’s identity in a culture
presumed foreign or different. African fabric, exotica if you
like is a colonial construction.To the Western eye this excessive patterning (difference) carries with it codes of African
nationalism; that has become its contemporary use, a kind of
modern African exoticism.”1
However, the story of how the fabric ends up being a national symbol of Africa demonstrates that it is far from being
an original ethnical product, but rather an ambiguous byproduct of colonial transactions. These textiles have actually
been produced in the Netherlands to imitate the Indonesian
fabric and taste in order to be sold to Indonesia, another
Dutch colony, at the time. However, upon unexpected failure in the Indonesian market, the textiles were started to
be sold to the West African merchants around the end of
the 19th century with several new design patterns that the
people of Africa would identify with. The popularity of the
textiles increases gradually to the point that they become a
signifier of the African modernization and politics. Especially
after the gain of African independence in 1950s, wax printed
fabric became a sign of authenticity, nationalism and a break
from the European standards of fashion. It has also been
used as a way to express one’s political affiliations through
the designs printed on the fabric. Nevertheless, after all the
transformation the fabric has undergone, it just stands as one
of the products of global transactions, even while it is worn
as a way to subvert global consumption of fashion market
with its assumed authenticity. The more powerfully it represents the national identity for Africans, the more exotic it
becomes for the Westerner. By dressing the western body in
a fabric identified with the Africans, Yinka Shonibare makes
the complexity of these relationships visible. The satire and
humour both in the story of Lilliputians and the artist’s own
approach, as well as the beauty and delicacy of the whole
installation scene work well in dealing with all the profound
historical issues that still resonate in the culture and politics
of today.
Today, what is considered to be exotic is even closer to the
western eye, through migrant and Diasporic communities
living in the West. It is more about a look within rather than
a look from the outside. The distances and relationships between cultures are much closer, therefore harder to ignore.
It has become even more difficult to make a straightforward
definition of ethnicity and cultural identity in a cosmopolitan
city.There is no pure identity, but all identities exist in a multiplicity that is in constant change and interaction with others. As subtly manifested in Shonibare’s work, Englishness,
Europeanness, Africanness, etc. are all shaped by centuries of
contact through wars, slavery, colonialism, trade, migrations,
which appear to continue in similar but transformed interactions in the so-called global market nowadays. It is also
significant that this installation takes place in Ireland, with its
colonial past and turbulent history with England, as well as
its current position as a home for a large number of immigrants coming from many different cultures and nationalities.
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Yinka Shonibare, MBE, Egg Fight, 2009
Courtesy of the artist, Stephen Friedman Gallery (London) and James Cohan Gallery (New York). Photo: Eugene Langan
While Irishness has a complex history in its interaction with
the English, now it is also being permeated by other identities. This is even complicated with the notion of Europeanness as opposed to being non-European, and construction
of new identities through political formations. What is Irish,
what is European, what is foreign, what is exotic, what is
local and native, what is it that makes it ‘from here’… How
do we deal with the assumed commonality and difference
between people and communities? Besides its historical implications, the installation also gives food for thought on our
own identities, as well as our daily interactions and experiences with each other.
1 Quoted by Okwui Enwezor, in Yinka Shonibare, Dressing Down, Ikon
Gallery and Henie Onstad Art Centre, February 1998.
Apart from Egg Fight, a new series of collages entitled Climate
Shit Drawings by the artist are also exhibited at Dublin City
Gallery, The Hugh Lane. Currently on show until 30 August
2009.
http://www.hughlane.ie
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Marianne Mulvey
Hurvin Anderson, Peter’s Sitters 3, 2009 (Oil on canvas 187 x 147 cm)
Courtesy Saatchi Collection, London
Hurvin Anderson
Peter’s Series 2007 – 2009
Tate Britain Art Now space
Tuesday 3 February – Sunday 19 April 2009
A white, white ceiling lifts off into nothingness. Hurvin Anderson’s paintings of a small attic barbershop are unexpectedly
vibrant and full of light – without being cheerful. Old gloss
skirting-board, wood veneer and an assortment of mirrors
and picture frames all reflect light, but do not give anything
of their location away. Just how much of this intimate space
to reveal is a question that haunts Peter’s Series, 2007 - 2009
in Tate Britain’s Art Now gallery.
Hung with eight of Anderson’s elegant paintings, a sense of
coolness pervades the room. Turquoise hues dominate the
central portion of each: the walls of the attic-space we are
peering into. Three relatively empty canvases washed with
simple blocks of white, green and a burnt orange begin the
series, variously punctuated with objects from the barbershop set-up coming into view. The direction of Anderson’s
washes give the small attic room a verticality that opens up
what we might think of as an intrinsically closed, cramped
and dim space. It appears quite open to our presence, and
yet we are unable to locate the room and it’s operation
within our sphere of reference.
Peter’s III has “pared back the space” to its bare structural
elements, musing only on the configuration of walls that hint
at the attic’s hidden corners. Seen through a blue-green lens,
the room at the top of the house appears to have been
flooded with seawater. This watery view bordering on abstraction reflects Anderson’s conscious method of representing it, which is only ever half-remembered, and partially
revealed. The artist’s protectiveness of Peter’s intimate history is (paradoxically) made clear through his simplification
and obscuring of the space. For migrant communities such
as those arriving in Britain from the Caribbean in the 1950s,
who created their own services and entertainment centres,
the barbershop was, and still is, a sacred social space. Thus
Anderson, who was born to Jamaican parents in Birmingham,
carefully negotiates the barbershop’s privacy, which his own
father visits.
The regularity of trips to the barber’s – at least fortnightly
to get one’s cut or shave “sharpened” – makes it familiar
as a friend’s kitchen, a place to sit and talk freely with fellow customers whilst waiting in line. For many of Tate’s visitors, the black barbershop is an “other” space they would
not normally be given access to. The poignancy of precious
memory in Peter’s Series brought me back to a sunny afternoon in 2006 when artist Faisal Abduh’Allah set up his Live
Salon in the Hayward Gallery, affording a handful of visitors
privileged access to the barbershop.
The artist set out a red leather barber’s chair and a low table
with few utensils: comb, clippers, brush. Shaving an intricate
looping pattern into the back of his son’s head, he spoke
about the history of barbering, his beginnings in the trade
and how his shop both supports and informs, his artistic
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Hurvin Anderson, Peter’s Sitters 2, 2009 (Oil on canvas 187 x 147 cm)
Courtesy Zabludowicz Collection, London
practice. Faisal Barbers in Harlesden functions as meeting
place for the local black community: both a vital forum for
discussion and breeding ground for juicy gossip, snippets of
which Abdu’Allah shared. Not only is shaving akin to drawing for Abdu’Allah, but his barbering and artistic practice are
intrinsically linked: “if I gave up the barber shop, my work
would die… There’s no end to the experiences and stories
that I inhale in the shop.”1 Speaking and shaving with equal
finesse, the artist opened up what is typically an “other” cultural and often gendered space, revealing it as discursive and
performative.
The performance of intricate skill and entertaining talk of
Abdu’Allah’s Live Salon is only implicitly present in Anderson’s paintings of the tiny attic barbershop. The final three
works in the series depict a customer seated in the barber’s
chair. His upper body is covered in a delicately rendered
pinstripe towel, and only the back of the head and nape of
his neck are revealed to the viewer. Negotiating between
the revelation and obscuring of Peter’s interior, Anderson
also controls our encounter with the subject of his paintings.
The art gallery is itself an increasingly performative and discursive space, hosting numerous discussions, performances
and events such as the Live Salon I have remembered above.
Anderson offers a view of a different social space, but in this
most public of places – the art gallery – we are not met by
the barber’s chatter, only the silence of his customer’s back.
Thus the paintings in Peter’s Series, with their luscious turquoise and reflective surfaces invite us only part of the way
in. In this way Peter’s Series hints at the marginalisation of migrant communities, the struggle to find space for their own
practices within a dominant culture, of a barbershop pushed
into the attic, but will never tell the whole story.
1 Michael Edmands, The Guardian, 30 June, 2001
Fatos Ustek
Tu Zeng
Untitled Dawn, Winter/Spring 2008
(Selection of 5 from a series of 12 photographs)
AS + 35
“Life is made up of contents that are increasingly impersonal and that tend to alter our personalities. In order to face up to these
conditions, man adopts a patina of indifference in his search for commitments for survival”
Georg Simmel
In the picturesque views of a town, one wanders around looking for liveliness. Colours are sought for: colours to associate,
to feel, to imagine… Tu Zeng displays a series of photographs from the town he is from, where smog is more present than
anything else, except rain. He photographs from above, in detail. The town is haunted by the details of silences. Like the
shrimps in the aquarium, waiting their turn to be consumed, sitting on top of each other. Their aimless swimming in a tank
is like wandering through the town. The time spent waiting in silence, in a density of calmness intrigues me, occasionally. On
the occasion of viewing his photographs, one after another, I try to form a prologue for a city. I imagine the city through
these images by Zeng. The skyscrapers appear to contain nothing but their concrete. The ducks in the faint garden are as if
surprised by ‘a’ gaze through a pointed camera. Another image from the series is marked by the pattern of continuity from
trees to car bonnets. The nature within the built, and the built within nature exposes a mystery: a mystery of nothingness
within people’s conditioned lives.
The series is comprised of twelve photographs, Untitled Dawn, which picture Zeng’s hometown ChongQing in winter and
spring, 2008. As a viewer of Zeng’s imagery I am intrigued. I recall Camus, especially the starting sentence of his short story
‘Summer in Algiers’ where he says: ‘The loves we often share with a city are secret loves’. I try to excavate the love of Zeng
from the different tones and colours of his hometown. I try to decipher the secrecy of the images through my gaze. I take
one and then another and then go back to the start. I wonder about the dilemma of impersonal and personal in the secrecy
of love. How one crosses the zones of both, and how one can survive in the intersection. The image as once captured no
longer there, causes a challenge, to visit, interpret and associate the town and an artist’s uncovering of its presence. I wonder
about the love and the agony and joy that come from within. Where the state one is in, is the state one is…
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AS + 37
Martijn in’t Veld
TH + 38
Claus Gunti
Looking at digital pictures:
the image as part of an
epistemological system
had entered a “post-photographic era”3, in which this indefinable bond was broken.4
During the same time-frame, roughly from the early to the
late 1990’s, a growing number of photographers made use of
the newly available capturing and postproduction tools. According to the aforementioned theories, their images should
thus be considered “post-photographic”, because of the inherent differences they are supposed to bear. But interestingly, only a small amount of those images has been tagged
as such. Early academic and institutional projects, but also
more recent ones, have established a body of images5, whose
central feature is not their digital “nature” – many of them
do not even involve digital tools – but the fact that they
look digital. Mainly concerned with the representation of an
altered and manipulated state of the human body, those images are reminiscent of an era where technological developments in science (such as plastic surgery, genetic manipulations and cloning, etc.) as well as graphic design (morphing,
3D models, and Photoshop, etc.) have changed our conception of corporality.
Thomas Ruff, Jpeg bd01, 2007 (C-Print with Diasec 266.1 x 185.1 cm)
Copyright Thomas Ruff /David Zwirner
When in the beginning of the 1990’s digital photography became growingly popular, a wide spectrum of scholars claimed
that photography had undergone an irrevocable shift. Photography as such, historically defined by the bond between
image and the depicted subject Walter Benjamin or Roland
Barthes had tirelessly tried to define, was now gone, undermined by the digital nature of the new capturing apparatus.
The claim that the medium had undergone a radical change
was dominantly based on an ontological approach, whose
legitimacy relied primarily on a technical understanding of
the medium: the fact that the digital image could be broken
down into “precise and definite”1 units and that there was
no original – a claim which paradoxically2 had already been
used to question the legitimacy of photography as art in the
early 20th century – was argument enough to argue that we
This brief reminder of the developments of digital photography shows two things; the history of photography has always,
until very recently, tried to define photography, rather than
photographic practice. Furthermore, it also shows that the
relationship between the image and the subject it represents
is often invoked to try to define the medium, disregarding
the image itself, its formal features, the way it is perceived
or the discourse it produces. Nowadays, if this rhetoric of
radical rupture tends to fade, so does the interest for the
digital as category. Even so, it seems legitimate to argue that
computing did alter contemporary imagery and it seems
therefore necessary to try to understand how it has done
so.While technical differences between analogical and digital
photography do not seem to be that important anymore –
primarily because the spectator has grown familiar with the
new aesthetics and uses of digital photography – a whole
array of features directly linked to computer technologies,
never systematically studied, seem to play an important role
in photography. The first, maybe the most obvious, is the
digital as subject. Image compression algorithms developed
mainly for the needs of the Internet and consumer electronics, are probably the most apparent feature of the digital in
photography. Widely used despite their relatively poor quality compared to lossless digital images, they do not seem to
evolve much despite the exponential evolution of computing
power and transfer bandwidths. As if they were accepted because they were recognizable, they seem to embody the paradigmatic digital aesthetics. Many artists have thus made use
of this feature, directly addressing the digital in photography.
The most famous example of this approach, Thomas Ruff’s
.jpeg series, embracing not only the aesthetics but also the
name of the most commonly used compression algorithm,
consists of a selection of images found on the Internet, edited and printed as large scale photographs, thus triggering a
TH + 39
dialogue between the virtual image and the object, between
the low definition image and the artistic photograph or between the internet and the museum or gallery.
A second implication of the digital in photography, also present in Ruff’s .jpegs, is the digital as apparatus, a system based
on computing and exchange of information. While explicitly
addressing formal issues in the .jpegs series, Ruff also engages
the media itself, as a vector of exchange of data, recycling
images that are very commonly consumed: using generic images (such as pornographic iconography) or documentary
images everybody is familiar with (such as the burning World
Trade Center), Ruff appeals to our relationship to images,
addressing a new kind of spectatorship, focusing primarily
on the image as part of a system, rather than reflecting on
the image as archive.
4 Even though a critical historiography of those theoretical developments
has yet to be established, some scholars have
noted their inherent discrepancies and incoherencies. See for example
Bernd Stiegler, Theoriegeschichte der Photographie,
München,Wilhelm Fink, 2007 or Martin Lister, op.cit., chapter “Photography
in the age of electronic imaging”.
5 Nancy Burson, Keith Cottingham, Aziz & Cucher, Orlan or Inez van Lamsveerde are some of the commonly quoted artists of this “movement”.
6 According to Crary, this shift is primarily based on the development of
the status of sight in its relationship to knowledge.
See Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: on Vision and Modernity in the
Nineteenth Century, Cambridge (Mass.),
MIT Press, 1992
7 Biopolitics probably being the most eminent.
Building on this discourse on the way digital technologies
influence our relationship to pictures, one could draw a
third level of the digital in photography. Taking into account
the omnipresence of computers, the role the internet plays
in daily communication and the impact it might have on vision and perception, we could argue that such development
must – at this stage of our research this is a mere hypothesis – not only find an echo in artistic production, but that
such a phenomenon necessarily implies a whole new system
of producing knowledge, which unavoidably interacts with
artistic production. If we examine the way Jonathan Crary
has unearthed an epistemological break during the 19th
century, which implies fundamental transformations in vision and perception mechanisms6, it seems appropriate to
suggest that digital technologies, and in particular the role
of the photographic image as a vector of transmission of information, play a fundamental role in this hypothetical development. While investigating those transformations, we have
to take into consideration that in recent days, the theoretical framework of numerous disciplines (and not only those
primarily concerned with images), seems to undergo a shift
towards epistemological considerations and, more generally, be responsive to issues addressing the mechanisms of
knowledge production7. Our hypothesis thus derives, not
only from the mere observation of a phenomenon, but also
from the fact that many disciplines try to understand the
way discourse is produced. Nevertheless, despite the methodological problems this coexistence presupposes – is epistemology a necessity to understand digital imagery or is it
merely a trend ? – the question of whether contemporary
technologies impacts on our habits of seeing is definitely
worth considering.
1 Martin Lister, in Liz Wells (ed.), Photography. A Critical Introduction,
London, Routledge, 2008, p. 334.
2 The very idea of the original in photography is extremely ambivalent.
3 William J. Mitchell’s book, The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Postphotographic Era, Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press,
2001 (1992), is one of the first to assert such a shift.
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Rieke Vos
Leap into Imagination
The Islanders:
An Introduction by Charles Avery
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Charles Avery, Untitled (Stone-Mouse Sellers), 2008 (96cm x 132.5cm (framed), pencil and gouache on card & brass plate)
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Charles Avery is an explorer of his imagination. His art
evolves from the ‘anthropologic’ journeys he undertakes to
an imaginary world. In 2004, he ‘discovered’ an island, which
remains nameless until today. Since then, he has been profoundly exploring it, collecting many souvenirs that enlighten
its curious features and inhabitants.
The extensive show The Islanders: An Introduction at The Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam presents these artefacts
and engages its visitors in the complex absurdity of Avery’s
discovery. The artist’s lyrical descriptions and detailed epic
drawings inform about the rituals of daily life, while maps,
models of the landscape and sculptures of different creatures shape an encyclopaedic imagery of the island.The body
of work – as presented in the show – is most reminiscent of
a natural history museum, whereas Avery’s attitude is similar to that of an 18th century collector of anthropological
curiosities.
The island, nameless as said above, is inhabited by different
communities, some of them are natives (Avery names them
Gods and If’en) and others are stranded pioneers and researchers, who live together in tense harmony. Large-scale
drawings show them hanging around in bars or on the local
market. They spend their days debating and arguing on various philosophic issues; particularly about the issue of the
existence of the Noumenoun. This is a mythical beast that
noone has ever seen and that lives in the inaccessible Eternal
Forest. Its name is not coincidental, as it refers to Immanuel
Kant’s concept of the unobservable thing-in-itself (ding an
sich).
Other curious objects at the exhibition are samples of the
Stone-Mouse, a creature that lives on the island, “part animal, part mineral, whose heart beats only once every thousand years and for whom even the slightest movement is
an agonising contortion” (wall text). The jars of Hendersons
Eggs, are another one of Avery’s souvenirs.This local delicacy
consists of eggs pickled in gin, to which most of the island
dwellers are addicted.
The drawings, sculptures and objects are appealing because
of their formalistic craftsmanship, while their story allows
for many layers to unravel. By inventing an island, Avery created a place, a ‘topography of land’, where he can ‘play’ with
mythologies, philosophical theories, and mathematical con-
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Charles Avery, Ridable, 2008 (156cm x 51cm x 150cm, taxidermy)
cepts, without having to connect them in systematic logic
or conclusion. Discrepancies, obscurities and misinterpretations that may sneak into his explorative research will not
challenge the credibility of the project, but rather provide
unexpected turns and openings for the audience to disentangle. This facet, again, is emphasised by the setting of
a natural history museum, in which the visitor is not being
transported into another world, but rather challenged to
educate himself on the subject through the artefacts handed
to him/her.
Naturally, Avery is the dominator of his world and his imagination, and he fully determines both the appearance and the
content of ‘his’ island.Yet, his position is that of a discoverer,
rather than that of an all-seeing God. In a way, his creation
thus parallels the natural biases that occur in actual science
and philosophy.
In this show, it is not about the ‘real’, in fact it is not even
about the actual artworks that Avery produces. It is about
the creativity of the thinking-process. Avery himself underlines this aspect by his proposition to consider art as a quality, ‘artiness’ as a feature of artworks and artefacts.1 The
source of the artiness, in this case, lays off course in the
mind-frame of the overarching, on-going project and the adopted procedure by which the artist is working on it. Avery
says he is planning to spend many more years on his island
and is even hoping to go back there after his retirement.2
Charles Avery, Untitled (Traveller) 2008
(Pencil and gouache on paper, 59.4 x 42 cm)
Image courtesy of the artist and Photographer Andy Keate.
Copyright courtesy of the artist
So now, can we talk about a new approach, a new interest
that characterises this work? According to Nicholas Bourriaud we can. In the Tate Triennial 2009, held recently in London, Bourriaud presented Avery as one of the models for
his newest art historical catchphrase ‘Altermodernism’. This
rather hollow-sounding terminology is clarified in a manifesto by a number of theoretical notions, one of them being:
“a new type of form is appearing, the journey-form, made of
lines drawn both in space and time, materialising trajectories
rather than destinations”. 3
This description seems to apply very well to Avery’s work.
Indeed, The Islanders articulates an itinerary, through a place
that is too big to convey as a whole, without putting a definite ending to it. But, as explained earlier, in the context of
Avery’s work, the logic of such theories is given an unexpected turn. This becomes literal in a drawing, Untitled (Traveller), 2008. The drawing is part of The Islanders-project. It
depicts Nicholas Bourriaud closely inspecting a table with
Island-souvenirs. So, while Bourriaud is attempting to include
Avery in his over-arching story of art, Avery appears to be
much more successful in including Bourriaud in his story
of the island. It is within this gesture that we can begin to
understand the logic of Avery’s practice, deprived from the
inexhaustible source that is called imagination.
1 Morton,Tom. “Cosmopolity of an Island. Charles Avery on The Islanders”
in: Metropolis M, #5 October/November, 2007.
2 Morton,Tom. “Cosmopolity of an Island. Charles Avery on The Islanders”
in: Metropolis M, #5 October/November, 2007.
3 http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/altermodern/manifesto.shtm
Charles Avery’s The Islanders: An Introduction is showing at
Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, until June 7 2009.
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Fatos Ustek
Smadar Dreyfus
Mother’s Day,
Extra City Antwerp
September 2008
It was past three, in the morning. I was staying at a friends
place in Dalston, in her room where the large windows
face the street. I was in between being awake and asleep. I
heard someone cry out from the street. I struggled to decipher whether the cry was joyful or full of pain. A person
was screaming out loud: were they crying because of some
violation, or were they intoxicated and celebrating? There
was another person at whom the yelling was addressed to,
who did not make a sound, who is possibly the cause of this
indecipherable situation. I could not make out the identity
of the person screaming. When I convinced myself it was a
woman who was violated, the voice shifted towards masculine. I could only be certain of the fact that the source of the
voice was singular. I turned in bed and was too afraid to get
up and look out of the window. I could not understand what
was being said. Except for the cursing words, the language
was unclear. My memory tends to construct a narrative associated with the situation as a way of clearing the smog in
my head. Though there are gaps that cause me to remain
unconvinced. The image in my head comes purely from the
voice I heard. I try to recall details, and I am haunted only by
the strength of the image I produced during the event rather
than the sounds, the tone and the words.
…
My first experience of Mother’s Day took place in the studio
of Smadar Dreyfus in London. I did not know much about
her work, except her piece Lifeguards, which was premiered
in the 9th Istanbul Biennial, 2005. I first saw the film Mother’s
Day on a computer screen and was impressed by its strength
in revealing such a condition in a subtle way. I was impressed
and saddened by the separated state of youngsters from
their mothers due to a political condition. Seeing the piece
was a flowering encounter, which Deleuze would possibly
call ‘affective’. The piece produces a double imagery: the
viewer’s imagination as to the sources of the voices in the
film, and the image of the place where they encounter them.
Beyond the intriguing content of the piece, lies the aesthetics of production where the artist has involved herself. That
is to say, the piece displays a strong political condition and its
circumstances through a delicate sensitivity.
Mother’s Day was filmed at the Israeli-Syrian ceasefire line in
the Golan Heights, across which the local Druze community
has been geographically separated for several decades, in the
absence of a peace agreement. However, the Syrian Government offers free higher education to the Druze under Israeli
occupation, and Israel cooperates to make this possible: with
the mediation of the UN and the Red Cross, the students
can cross into Syria at the beginning of the academic year.
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Smadar Dreyfus, Mother’s Day 2006-08, a three channel HD video and 5.1 channel audio installation, 15 min. stills from video.
Ten months later they cross back for the summer holidays,
but in between they have no way to visit their families in the
occupied part of the Golan.
On the 21st of March, Mother’s Day, the students are allowed to travel to a hill across the cease-fire line from their
village to greet their mothers through megaphones. Known
as the Shouting Hill, the place is constantly monitored by
both the Israeli and Syrian armies and a United Nations observation post is also positioned at the top. A sound system
of megaphones is set up for the occasion, where mothers
and children greet each other one by one, without being
able to see one another clearly across the divide. Mothers
recognize daughters and sons through their voices. As a result of this controlled occasion, the greetings are generic
rather than intimate. The voices become the only bearer of
deeper content: a longing for togetherness that accumulated
throughout the months spent apart.
In Extra City, Antwerp, the work is installed in an elegant
way. Upon entering the installation, the audience is immediately surrounded by the piece as if they are included in the
actual moment and place of the encounter, between mothers and their children. The exhibition space has been specifically constructed so as to embody the installation. In other
words, it is less an exhibition space and more an extension
of the location of the event itself. As a viewer entering the
installation, one blends into this challenging space of accumulated emotion and imagery. A heightened platform with a
balustrade where the audience stands, acts like the viewing
point for a sublime landscape, where clouds are floating over
the hills. However, the sounds heard shift the pleasurable
experience into a political encounter, the association of feelings in the viewer reproduce the socio-political condition of
the original event. The piece alternates between video and
sound, one displaying the landscape, the other carrying the
voices of students and their mothers, in turn, where meaning
conveys the medium.
On a visit to Extra City in Antwerp, I attended a talk by
Mladen Dolar, the Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist,
film critic, and author of the book ‘A Voice and Nothing
More’. The talk was entitled ‘What’s in a voice?’ under the
framework of Dreyfus’ solo exhibition. His talk on acous-
matic sound was ‘an experience’ almost like a performance.
The combination of listening to his talk, delivered in his mesmerizing voice enabled one to experience the concept he
was explaining. The fact that the subject’s states of joy, agony,
pleasure, and insecurity are present in his/her voice was demonstrably audible in Dolar’s own calm voice sharing his
thoughts.
The voice as object of study did not come to major importance until the 1960’s when Derrida and Lacan, simultaneously proposed it as a central theoretical concern. Dolar, in
his book on voice, takes the Derridian idea of phonocentrism further and positions the voice as an embodiment of
the psychoanalytic object (objet a). Moreover, quoting Dolar:
‘I will try to argue that apart from those two widespread
uses of the voice—the voice as the vehicle of meaning; the
voice as the source of aesthetic admiration—there is a third
level: an object voice which does not go up in smoke in the
conveyance of meaning, and does not solidify in an object
of fetish reverence, but an object which functions as a blind
spot in the call and as a disturbance of aesthetic appreciation.’ Hence, Dolar proposes a third way of understanding
the voice, besides the two common receptions, that is, voice
as an object that can be seen as a lever of thought. Dolar
investigates the object voice on many levels such as: the linguistics of the voice, the metaphysics of the voice, the ethics
of the voice (with the voice of conscience), the paradoxical
relation between the voice and the body, and the politics of
the voice. Within these investigations, one wanders through
intersecting zones of meaning, aesthetic pleasure and psychology of the voice-source in its socio-political spheres.
When one hears the meaning, does one overhear the voice?
Does the source communicating meaning overcome its aesthetics? Or is it rather a blended state of layered causalities?
What do we come up with when we think of Dolar’s argument that aesthetic pleasure obfuscates the object voice,
turning it into a fetish object when the concentration on the
voice is only on aesthetic reception, and the voices of the
protagonists of Dreyfus’ piece?
In this relation, how can we articulate the voices we hear as
the audience of the piece? Since the voices we witness are
actually voices that are decoded by its recipients over famil-
Smadar Dreyfus, Mother’s Day 2006-08, a three channel HD video with 5.1 channel audio installation, 15 min.
Installation view at Extra City Center for Contemporary Art, Antwerp, 2008
iarity.That is to say, mothers and children are familiar of each
other’s voices, their separated state increases the longing
for hearing the voice, as well. Hence, once the voice of the
beloved is heard, in the Golan Heights, it is an intermingled
state of aesthetic pleasure and object voice. As the audience,
we lack this familiarity but we fulfill with imagining a similar
condition where the kin sensations rise.Therefore, my question follows: Is it possible to only concentrate on the aesthetics of the voices, and not what they convey in conditions
marked by socio-political decisions? For instance, one of the
daughters starts singing to her mother, a song that bears the
intimacy of longing in its lyrics, carry the similar impact in its
tone. Can we, besides this double state of conveyance only
receive the aural presence? In Dreyfus’ piece, the longing
for being together is marked by the longing of hearing the
other’s voice. The voice is the point of entry into complex
relationships between individuals and society, between the
social and the political, between what is said, what we select
to hear, how we make this selection.Voice immediately resonates the self-presence, whereas in Mother’s Day it becomes
the intersection of presence and absence.
Mother’s Day in its scale makes a significant impact as Dreyfus’s first solo exhibition in Antwerp. Not only through the
installation of the piece and its inclusion of the venue as
the place of itself but also through the presence of its artist
as she positions herself in-between the two sides, where
she is both participant and observer. Hence Dreyfus’ careful
choice on the voice, which is the medium of communication (across the ceasefire line) in the Golan Heights, as the
object and subject of her work Mother’s Day is the main line
of strength in her work.
…
While I am finishing this text, another mother’s day is due.
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This image had to be removed from
our site in reaction to an agreement
between the modelagency and the
artist, regulating the timely use of the
photograph for publication.
Contributors
Edward Clydesdale Thomson
is a Scottish/Danish artist based in Rotterdam. He is a graduate of the MFA program at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam and the BArch architectural program at the Glasgow
School of Art. Notable shows include ‘Observing Construction’, Netherlands Architectuurinstituut (NAi) Rotterdam.
‘My Travels with Barry’, Tent, Rotterdamt. ‘JUST WHAT IS IT
THAT MAKES THAT THING SO DIFFERENT, SO APPEALING?’ Expodium, Utrecht. ‘tracing changes’, Schloßmuseum,
Quedlinburg, Germany. ‘Edward Clydesdale Thomson’ SECONDroom, Brussels. ‘cells st. peter’s seminary Permutationen’ Superhorst, Berlin. His practice revolves around the
politics of representation.
Lisa Skuret
is an independent writer and artist writing in the intersections of contemporary art, politics, and life. Lisa received an
AHRC supported MA in Contemporary Art Theory from
Goldsmiths College and she has produced art projects for
live performance and online intervention. Her installation
and moving image work has been programmed as part of
the National Review of Live Art (NRLA), and the Dance on
Screen Film Festival and she has collaborated for live performance including at the ICA and ROH2. Lisa’s forthcoming
writing projects include publication essays on Sharif Waked,
and Lara Baladi and she is currently writing a series of pieces
on ‘optimism’. www.lisaskuret.com
Jurga Daubaraite
[email protected]
Jonas Staal
studied monumental art in Enschede, The Netherlands andBoston MA, USA. His work functions in the domain of public interventions: installations, performances and Aktionen,
executed (illegally) in public space. His artistic research anticipates and deals with the political developments in contemporary society in form of lectures, essays, pamphlets and
exhibitions in the public domain as well as institutional contexts. Staal works and lives as a visual artist in Rotterdam,
The Netherlands. http://www.jonasstaal.nl/
Claus Gunti
is research and teaching assistant at the Film Studies Department of the University of Lausanne (UNIL). He teaches in
the Humanities program of the Federal Polytechnic School
of Lausanne (EPFL) and is lecturer at the University of Art
and Design Lausanne (ECAL). He is currently writing a thesis
on the impact of digital technologies in the photography of
the Düsseldorf School.
Jelena Martinovic
* 1981 (CH), lives in Lausanne, Artist and Researcher. She
currently holds a fellowship in the Ph.D. program Pro*Doc
Art & Science, supported by The Swiss National Science
Foundation (SNSF).
Marianne Mulvey
is a freelance writer and curator. Marianne completed her
MA in Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths 2007-2008
and curated performance programmes for the Hayward
Gallery and Gasworks, London. In September 2009 she will
begin a PhD in Performance Studies at Goldsmiths, provisionally titled Hollow words, failed relationships.
Rana Ozturk
currently lives and studies in Dublin. She is originally from
Istanbul, where she completed her BA in Management at
Bogazici University and MA in Art History at the Istanbul
Technical University. Until now she took on various roles in
the art field including writer, curator, translator and coordinator for different art events and organizations.
Julius Pasteiner
spent most of his time thinking anthropologically, writing
commercially and wishing for that dream job. Recently he
scrapped it all to write fiction under the pseudonym Julius
Pasteiner: he’s a well staring at the stars.
Rudolf Steckholzer
Artist - lives and works in Vienna and London
Fatos Ustek
Independent art critic & curator, lives and works in London.
Martijn in’t Veld
* 1979, studied in Rotterdam, Berlin and Bergen. Lives and
works.
Rieke Vos
*1981 is an art historian currently based in Rotterdam. Her
fields of interest range from site-specific art and curating
to urbanism and architecture. She is now working as a researcher, editor and exhibitionmaker for the architectural
office Powerhouse Company.
Tanja Widmann
works as an artist, author, curator. Lives in Vienna. Recently: Group exhibitions: Miete Gas Strom (INSTITUT [for
contmporary art] at Quartier21, Wien 2009), Empfindung.
Oder in der Nähe der Fehler liegen die Wirkungen. (Augarten Comtemporary, Wien 2009). Curated shows: Nichts
ist aufregend. Nichts ist sexy. Nichts ist nicht peinlich. (Performanceseries at Mumok, Vienna 2008). Co-editorial (with
Emily Pethick, Marina Vishmidt) of An Ambiguous Case. CascoIssues XI. Utrecht/Rotterdam (2008). Regular contributions for Texte zur Kunst, springerin.
This image had to be removed
from our site, due to an agreement
between the artist and the modelagency, regulating the timely use of
the photograph for publication.