topside down - Milliken Gallery

Transcription

TOPSIDE DOWN
“BATTER MY HEART, THREE-PERSON’D GOD.”—JOHN DONNE*
”I SET OFF TO CREATE A NEW WORLD. LEAVE THIS ONE, FUCK IT, IT’S FUCKING FUCKED.”—LISI RASKIN
LISI RASKIN AT MILLIKEN GALLERY, STOCKHOLM
While the rest of us watched the world turn via Google Maps and CNN, artist Lisi Raskin invested in a custom
van and embarked on a classic American West road trip. She committed to sending drawings, sculptures and
artifacts of her experience to curatorial students at Bard College as she motored through deserts and valleys,
but postcards of Arizona’s Grand Canyon or Tennessee’s Graceland were not forthcoming. Instead, Raskin
interpreted relics from nuclear test sites and strategic missile facilities constructed above and below ground
during the Cold War. If the Bard grad students never learned that the heat of the first atomic test in New
Mexico was 10,000 times hotter than the surface of the sun, and that a few months later no less than
240,000 Japanese civilians were incinerated within seconds, they would not believe that the American West
was anything but cowboys and Indians; a few yellow warning signs might as well be referring to dangerous
cacti or snakes.
With “the windshield as my projection screen,” and a travel itinerary including Arizona’s Titan Missile
Museum and New Mexico’s White Sands Bombing Range, Raskin’s TOPSIDE--a continuation of Mobile
Observation (Transmitting and Receiving) Station--begins as an education in war architecture, but more
significantly draws the viewer toward the moral question of WHAT THE FUCK? Above ground, a traveler can
still find small drab buildings which housed security police, a cook, and support personnel surrounded by a
security fence and number of radio communications antennas. But buried 40-100 feet below ground, 20-150
miles away, are completely self-sufficient Launch Control Centers designed exclusively to destroy whole
countries. When the U.S. government began its marriage to the A-Bomb, not only was livestock penned at
various points from ground zero, but artillery men were ordered to charge into mushroom clouds--both
experiments studied the effects of radiation and estimated suffering in the event of a “real” blast.
Raskin’s sculptures and installations are like theatrical sets designed especially for civilian Missileers
interested in spending spa-time in an atomic shadow. Computer-aided visual effects are not special anymore,
but her deliberately curious cardboard, balsa wood and tinfoil creations are as absurd as a homemade
Styrofoam yacht floating in the Sahara desert. TOPSIDE is Raskin’s intelligent attempt to construct and mock
the doctrines of modernist progress: from tactical nukes and Uranium tipped munitions to the Space Shuttle
disasters and the weapons that make Russia’s current saber rattling so, well, evil.
“ . . . lately in my studio, I feel like the technician who is assembling the control panels, dials and gauges for my Control
Room, but for some reason I can become this technician without naming him. And tomorrow, I could just as easily become the
real estate agent trying to sell you plots of land on Mars—there is no difference in the characters, really. I mean they are all
about allowing for a space that is about interacting with (enacting) my obsession with the diabolical.”
Raskin’s precocious tomboy flair for architecture, art and landscape--too crude for Disney and too
sophisticated for the Florida State Science Fair-- and willingness to “try to sell you plots of land on Mars” is
not intended to change anyone’s moral compass. Rather, like a winning contestant on the reality show Fear
Factor, her skillful entrances and exits into potentially catastrophic environments are point-blank invitations
to take a seat on her bus ride through an unreal, diabolical world. Before Ken Kesey and his Merry
Pranksters’ postwar psychedelic American road trip, no one imagined that on July 16, 1945 at Trinity Site in
New Mexico, the first atomic blast would unleash a brilliant scientific innovation capable of turning millions
of humans into prehistoric kindling.
--LAURIE HAYCOCK MAKELA, 2008
“TOPSIDE” AT MILLIKEN GALLERY, STOCKHOLM, THROUGH OCTOBER 5.
Lisi Raskin, a Brooklyn-based artist, was born 1974 in Miami, Florida and received an MFA from Columbia
University School of Arts in 2003. Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions like
Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, CAC in Vilnius, P.S.1 in New York, and IASPIS in Stockholm.
TOPSIDE is a continuation of Command and Control and Mobile Observation (Transmitting and Receiving)
Station, both commissioned by Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in 2008. Command and Control
was part of the exhibition High Resolution, at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City and Mobil
Observation (Transmitting and Receiving) Station is currently on view at the Hessel Museum at Bard College.
*Head scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer based the name Trinity in part on Holy Sonnet XIV by John Donne, a
16th century English poet and sermon writer. The sonnet started, “Batter my heart, three-person’d God.”
Lisi Raskin (US) Selected images courtesy Milliken, Stockholm
Installationview, Moscow, 2010. Mixed media installation, dimensions variable
Command & Control, Control Panel. Installation view at Milliken Gallery 2008.
Surveillance Monitors, 2008. Installation view at Milliken Gallery. Paper, chipboard & plywood.
Topside, Missile Park. Installation view at Milliken Gallery, 2008.
Topside, Missile Park, installation view at Milliken Gallery, 2008.
Topside, Missile Park, installation view Stockholm Sweden 2008
Missile Park (Pine Cone Warhead), 2008. Pine cone, armiture wire, krazy glue, model part, 165 x 22 x 22 cm
Missile Park (Fire Cracker), 2008. Fire cracker, wood glue, tin foil, 136 x 34 x 35 cm
Missile Park (Silver Plane), 2008. Model plane, dowels, balsa wood, dowels, enamel paint, 129 x 52 x 36 cm
Topside, 2008. Installation view at Milliken Gallery. Graphite on paper drawings, 57 x 76 cm
Topside (Tipsies), 2008. Graphite on paper drawings, 57 x 76 cm
Topside (Crew Vehicles), 2008. Graphite on paper drawings, 57 x 76 cm
Command and Control, 7th Regents Armory, New York, 2008, multi-media installation, wood, paper, glue
Sunday Punch, Installation View at 7th Regents Armory (Manhattan), 2008, As Installed: 304cm" W x 198cm" D x 31cm" H, Table and drawing: 304cm" W x 198cm" D x 48cm" H, Pap…
Squelch, 2007. Installation at Iaspis, Stockholm, curated by Maria LInd particle board, saw horses, cardboard, paper, and light bulb dimensions variable
Project Esrange (and other research) 2007. Installation view Konstcentrum Gävle, Sweden
R E C E PT I ON
6 _ 1 0
Lisi Raskin / Wolfgang Hauptman Kriegswichtig
Opening and Performance Friday, Oct. 8, 2010, 6 – 9 pm
Oct. 9 – Nov. 20, 2010
LR: We met serendipitously in the fall of 2001. I had placed
an advertisement in the newspaper looking for someone to
sublet half of my studio, and you answered. For years, I had
no idea that you were a painter, because you were so deeply
involved in the research and study of nuclear accidents. At
the time our interests overlapped nicely, much as they do
presently, as I think is evidenced in this show.
WH: This is true. I think that before our friendship, I did
not consider myself a painter. In my fantasies, I had always
wanted to be a painter. I think one positive result of our
conversations was that I realized I already was what I had
been striving to become. Also I had never shown my work
to anyone before you. I am very happy that it made sense to
make a show together. I am also very excited to be showing
work in Germany.
LR: Yeah, the fact that you never showed your work to
anyone blows my mind. So let’s talk about this body of work.
When did you make it? What were the circumstances that
brought these paintings into the world?
WH: It was 1983, no, ’84, when I first came across my father’s
copy of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. I was
shocked. Each page I flipped through taught me more and
more about how the Allied forces used strategic bombing to
demoralize the German civilian population.
LR: Had you never considered this possibility before?
WH: Well, to give a bit of background, I was born in the
German Settlement in the colonies on Mars in 1964, and my
parents censored all of the information they could so that
my childhood was filled with the teachings and utopian visions of people like Rudolph Steiner and movements like the
Bauhaus. I had no exposure to anything that might upset me.
And so my own nostalgic relationship with Germany was not
that of an expatriate whose family was fleeing an impossible
post-war situation, but rather it was built around the fiction
that my parents’ exodus was an act of free will. In fact, my
parents emphasized the importance of German cultural
movements on Earth, specifically during the interwar period
of Modernism.
LR: That is strange and interesting on so many levels. So
you found the Strategic Bombing Survey that day. What was
your reaction?
WH: Oh, I was very upset. I mean I had no idea about the
scope of German suffering due to strategic bombing. In my
meditations, it kept coming up as a focal point. I was deeply
impacted on an energetic and physical level by this new (to
me) information.
LR: What is the Strategic Bombing Survey, anyway?
WH: The Strategic Bombing Survey is comprised of several
hundred volumes outlining the effects of Strategic Bombing
on industry, productivity, civilian morale, outbreak of disease, anti-government sentiment, willingness to surrender,
suicide, and depression. In fact, the United States knows
exactly how the bombing of civilians affects all of these fundamental aspects of wartime human life. They have known
since the late 1940s.
LR: And what kinds of documents are contained in the
journal?
WH: Well, there are photographs of German cities in ruin,
bomb plot schematics, and excerpts from the [Albert] Speer
Report relaying statistical data about how the arms industry
was impacted by the Allied air war. I find the Speer Report
very compelling.
LR: I’ve seen your excerpts of the Speer Report. You made
some drawings about this, right?
WH: Yes, I have drawings that depict the pages from the
Speer Report, verbatim, as they appeared in the Strategic
Bombing Survey.
LR: These appear in the show, but you also used these drawings as part of the informational underpinning of the paintings, correct?
WH: Yes, the graphs that appear in the paintings are direct
translations of the graphs as drawn in the Speer Report
tables.
LR: And what kinds of information did the report relay,
specifically?
WH: Well, the charts describe, for example, the number (in
thousands) of landmines, booby traps, and hand grenades
made over a number of years. There are all kinds of armament categories: heavy artillery, bombs, mortars, etc.
LR: So the Speer Report deals with the build-up of arms.
WH: Exactly.
LR: And why did you choose these graphs as the basis for the
paintings?
WH: Oh, well, I was thinking about the war situation as an
energetic dynamic. I was trying to address the notion of
German suffering from a root level, not simply based on
the suffering caused by the Allied bombings, but rather the
suffering that is also implicit in the act of going to war and
building up armaments.
LR: Ah, okay, I think I understand. So your idea is that
German suffering started with the intention to go to war,
which—for all intents and purposes—drew the widespread
bombing on the part of the Allies into their experience.
WH: Right. Because of Nazi policy to build up armaments
for war, the majority of industry was energetically focused
on building an arsenal for war. Hence, the Germans drew the
experience of war to themselves energetically.
LR: But doesn’t this line of thinking just blame the victim?
WH: Well actually, no. As I see it, everyone involved in war is
a victim. And traditionally the notion of Germans as victims
of WWII is not publicly or even intellectually acknowledged.
Conventional wisdom holds the German in the place of the
aggressor in this context. The jury of the world came back
with this verdict a long time ago. But I am not so interested
in a victim/perpetrator, right/wrong polemic. I am interested
in getting into the heart of the matter and healing, balancing, and opening the energetic vibration of the situation.
LR: So can you explain a bit more about energies and how
your notions of healing took the form of painting?
WH: Yes, yes, of course. At the time, I was studying chakra
energies, and it seemed most important to channel energy as
part of the healing process.
LR: Can you explain what a chakra is?
WH: Sure. A chakra is an energy point on the human body. I
focused on seven of them, although some references would
say there are more. Each chakra controls energy specific
to its point on your body. For example, your solar plexus
chakra is all about you sense of self or ego. The energy that
flows through the chakras is called different things in different cultures: The Chinese call it chi, and in yogic traditions
it is referred to as prahana. Basically, this energy is life force
itself.
LR: I am fascinated by the fact that a scientist would study
these ancient forms of energy and healing so closely.
WH: I believe that there is an element of the magical in all
scientific explorations; it is a wonder that the world is physically formed. I also think that Western science during Modernism projected a clear arrogance. Despite its best efforts,
I don’t think that science presents an absolute truth. In fact,
science is all about uncertainty.
LR: But to get back to the paintings…
WH: Yes, in my studio on the colonies, I set out to complete
a series of paintings that would deal with all seven chakras,
heal the “body” of German suffering, and attempt to heal
the landscape as well. Our intentions within this show are so
different though, Lisi. Do you think that perhaps you should
talk a little bit about how you address the Strategic Bombing
of Germany as your subject matter?
LR: Actually, this installation has everything to do with
perspective.
WH: How do you mean?
LR: When I first saw your paintings and we talked about your
process, I was fascinated by the idea that you were on Mars
contemplating WWII, in a sense looking down upon another
world at war. Later, it dawned on me that you occupied a
physical perspective that was similar (at least conceptually) to that of the pilots and technicians aboard the very
planes that flew reconnaissance and bombing missions over
Germany.
WH: That is a completely eerie thought, Lisi. I am surprised
that I was not able to put that together until now…
LR: This notion of shared bird’s-eye perspective, or removed
observation, is incredibly relevant to the way our projects tie
together for the show but also in terms of the way America
fights present day-wars with drone aircraft. I am interested
in exploring these kinds of tensions and relationships spatially and experientially. This will be at the forefront of my
brain when I improvise my installation in Berlin.
WH: I really admire your ability to simply improvise in a
space.
LR: That is so nice of you to say. I also admire so much about
your process and have learned so much over the last years of
preparation for this show. For example, learning about your
work and process prompted my interest in participating in
rituals that try to heal the energy at post-traumatic sites.
There is actually a formal gathering of people who practice
something called harmonic convergence.
WH: Right, the people who go to sites of trauma and try to
heal the land… Would you like to do something like that,
Lisi?
LR: Oh, yes absolutely, someday… But let’s get back to you,
Wolfgang. Can you talk a bit about your process?
WH: Sure, on the days that I painted these works, I spent the
mornings meditating and opening my chakras, and then in
the afternoons and evenings I went into the studio and basi-
cally extended my meditation practice into my painting
practice. I would keep my mind focused on the sound that
accompanied whichever chakra I was working on.
LR: I think this sounds a little bit misleading. I mean, the
way you set out to make the paintings was not about the
quest for finding a particular energy and channeling it,
right?
WH: No, you’re right, the compositions are quite rational,
actually, and the colors are based on the colors that already
correspond to the chakras. Maybe the way I am talking about
energies and meditation could be loosely compared to the
way Buddhist monks and nuns use energies, sounds, and
meditation when they create (and destroy) their sand mandalas. I wanted to be a channel for a certain kind of healing,
and it seemed natural to me to use the same methods during
painting that I use in my own healing meditations.
LR: What about the mandala shapes?
WH: Oh yes, these are my interpretations of the symbols for
each chakra.
LR: So in a way, you were borrowing from a preestablished
aesthetic that related to a spiritual corollary.
WH: Actually, I looked at the ancient chakra symbols and the
colors that corresponded to each chakra but designed these
symbols myself after meditating on how they should look.
LR: Okay. I wanted to change the subject for a moment and
talk about your relationship to German painting in the
1980s/1990s. Were you looking at any of this?
WH: Well, of course I was looking at artists like Sigmar Polke
and Martin Kippenberger, and while I have always admired
their work, I simply have never been able connect with the
ironic, cynical, and even nihilistic sentiment that their work
seemed to evoke, even though I can understand how feelings
of helplessness and lack of agency might be a huge part of
German identity in the second half of the twentieth century.
I understand the paradox at play.
LR: Right, Polke and Kippenberger do represent a certain
reactionary response to the problematics of Germany’s
twentieth-century history. But beyond this, Polke’s work
from the 1960s takes the piss out of the spiritual aspect of
Abstract Expressionism, for example.
WH: Right. I don’t align my paintings with Abstract Expressionism. I am more interested in Emma Kunz, for example.
Now she was a healer, first and foremost. I am very interested
in practicing a healing intention, and through that, perhaps
my artwork can be part of a larger dimension of healing
energies. I think we could use this.
LR: Yes, indeed.
News
RECEPTION shows Luig Ghirri at art berlin contemporary
At abc / art berlin contemporary with the title light camera
action we show a fine selection of vintage photographs from
the 1970s by Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri (1943–92).
October 7–10, 2010
Opening: October 6, 2010, parallel to the art forum berlin
Location: Marshall Haus,
see also: artberlincontemporary.com
at the gallery: Jens Ullrich, Guy Allott, Luigi Ghirri, Annette Weisser, Michael Buthe, Koenraad Dedobbeleer,
Flo Gaertner, Heiko Karn, Katrin Mayer, Eske Schlüters.
Further RECEPTION participated in The Armory Show 2010 in
New York.
We look forward to the exhibitions to come!
Special Opening Hours
On Saturday, October 9 the gallery is open from 11 am – 8 pm.
One Year Anniversary of RECEPTION
Upcoming Exhibition
In September 2009 Christine Heidemann and Victor Gisler
have opened the RECEPTION gallery space in Kurfürstenstraße
in Berlin. In this first year the following artists have shown
Guy Allott Recent Wrecks
November 27, 2010 –January 8, 2011
Opening: Friday, November 27, 2010, 6–9 pm
Contact
Opening Hours: Wed–Sat 11–18 and by appointment
Copyright: RECEPTION berlin contemporary GmbH, the artist
List of Illustrations
cover:
total shell production, anti-aircraft, field guns,
mortars (7.5 cm to 21cm, excluding bazookas),
and solar plexus chakra, 2010, oil on linen, 82 x 51 cm
left page:
will to resist, 2010, graphite, ink on paper, 40,5 x 30,4 cm
right page:
cancelled, 2010, graphite, ink on paper, 40,5 x 30,4 cm
old reich, 2010, graphite, ink on paper, 40,5 x 30,4 cm
Design: Hayn / Willemeit
RECEPTION
Christine Heidemann
Kurfürstenstraße 5/5a
10785 Berlin
T. +49. (0)30. 26 93 14 55
[email protected]
www.reception-berlin.de
lisi raskin - artforum.com / 500 words
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Left: Lisi Raskin, Armada (work in progress). Right: Lisi Raskin, Armada, 2009, wood, paint. Installation view, Blanton
Museum of Art, Austin, Texas.
Over the past ten years, the Brooklyn-based artist Lisi Raskin has explored fear, cold-war tensions,
and sites that rely on nuclear power in her works. Here she speaks about the process of making
Armada, a new installation on view until June 21 at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of
Texas, Austin.
THE "MOBILE OBSERVATION" SERIES began over a year ago. The first part of the project,
Command and Control, was commissioned by Bard College and was exhibited at the Park Avenue
Armory for the ADAA fair in 2008. Following that, I was commissioned by Bard to take a road trip to
expand the series, and I traveled to several sites near Tucson: the Titan Missile Museum, the White
Sands Missile Range in New Mexico––which is the site of the 1945 Trinity nuclear test––and a large
empty lot of airplane carcasses, called the Bone Yard, whose proper name is the Aerospace
Maintenance and Regeneration Group. Armada, my work at the Blanton, is based on the Bone Yard.
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I wanted to use my road trip as source material as the "Mobile Observation" projects unfolded.
Normally, I make site-specific works within institutions and galleries, but this project also includes an
element of working with the landscape and a question of how to engage space in a more direct way.
When Risa Puleo, a curator at the Blanton, approached me, I was beginning to think about the
landscape of the Bone Yard. The project emerged pretty organically and intuitively once I visited
Austin and decided to use her backyard as a production site and to make the work with a team of
local assistants there. I knew I wanted to create a telephone line from my inspiration in Risa’s
suburban yard in 2009 to my initial inspiration in a backyard in 1984 in Coral Gables, Florida, when I
first became aware of the possibility of war, nuclear annihilation, and these kinds of test spaces.
There were several experiences I tried to conjure when I was working on the installation. For
instance, I remembered sitting in my van in the Bone Yard: I looked toward Davis-Monthan Air Force
Base, and there was a huge plume of gray and black smoke that fighter jets were flying into; they
were basically running an intense drill. Another day, I parked the van next to a chain-link fence, and it
turned out that I was directly under the flight path of the pilots who were out for the day’s exercise.
After lunch that day, I parked my van, serendipitously, again under the path as they were coming
back.
I connected these memories to other, very specific visceral moments. When I was a kid, I used to sit
on the hood of my mother’s Chevrolet Malibu Classic and look up at the sky and watch the planes go
by. I would imagine what it would be like if I were to witness a bomb falling down from one of the
planes. Because a backyard, or a suburban site, was the first location that served as a backdrop
while these fears and desires developed within me, it was motivation to use Risa’s backyard as a kind
of memory space.
Working in her backyard, however, created an interesting duality regarding site-specificity and project
identity within the actual museum itself, which is not like a kunstverein, or P.S. 1, where I’ve
previously had installations. There are nineteenth-century landscape paintings in the Blanton that we
had to be very careful around. Although I wanted to take over the project-space room completely,
there were things I had to be cognizant of, like fire codes. This was new for me. Using the backyard
as the space of production allowed me to leap over the rules of the institution so my creative process
went unhindered.
While I had memories, drawings, and notes with which to work, once I began on Armada I realized
that I didn’t really want to control or deal with any of the preconditioned ideas I had about what the
project might look like. Instead, I wanted to try to abstract it and forget about the idea that abstraction
always references something. I thought about the wings and nose of the airplanes and how to make
shapes that might communicate those elements, but I was able to dispense with this tendency pretty
early on. I was also playing with how I could tweak the scale of such massive planes by using cheap
materials. I made two twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot paintings, which is something I’ve never done before.
I rejected all my impulses that might have made me treat the work as though it were precious. The
construction was direct, improvised, and intentionally precarious so that if there were accidents on the
way to the museum––we transported it in an open truck––I could incorporate them. I think this
element added another layer to the project, and in a way it was also an avenue to explore and utilize
http://artforum.com/words/id=22331
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lisi raskin - artforum.com / 500 words
2009-08-19 15.05
element added another layer to the project, and in a way it was also an avenue to explore and utilize
failure.
— As told to Lauren O’Neill-Butler
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Page 2 of 2
Omkonst - Lisi Raskin, Milliken Gallery
9/4/08 11:07 AM
www.omkonst.com:
En mer sublim ondska
Lisi Raskin, Milliken Gallery, Stockholm, 28/8 - 5/10 2008
Text: Björn Larsson
Lisi Raskin har i tidigare projekt använt östtyska atombunkrar,
det slitna kärnkraftverket i Ignalina av tjernobyltyp och Esrange i
Kiruna som utgångspunkt för verk som ifrågasätter teknologins
och vetenskapens föresatser och resultat. I utställningen Topside
down utgår konstnären ifrån ett besök på den nedlagda
provsprängningsanläggningen White Sands Bombing Range i New
Mexico. Det var där man på fyrtiotalet provade ut vad som
senare skulle komma att brisera i Hiroshima och Nagasaki.
Utställningen handlar om maktpolitiska instrument och
föresatser. Men det är inte genom pyrotekniska effekter, utan
genom återgivningar av kontrollrum, avfyrningsramper,
© Lisi Raskin
materialbodar och uttjänta jeepar som konstnären skildrar och
förhåller sig till vetenskapliga strategier, utrikespolitiska intressen,
och propagandarelaterade beslut. Det är de ”klantiga”,
kulissliknande, skildringarna av kontrollrummens apparatur som
ger utställningen ett skimmer av något diaboliskt; rampernas,
staketens och terminalernas arkitektur tycks härbärgera något
förljuget, och bakom panelerna smyger den galne forskaren ifrån
1940– och 50–talets amerikanska antivetenskapliga
skräpsciencefictionfilmer förbi. (Må så vara att de lite väl påhittiga
raket- och flygplansmodellerna drar ner helhetsintrycket.)
Av någon anledning tänker jag hela tiden på den elake
grannpojken i filmen Toy Story när jag ser den här utställningen;
en presumtiv diktator med osviklig talang för ondskans estetik,
som vanställer och bygger om sina leksaker och tejpar fast dem
vid sprängraketer som sedan ska skjutas iväg… Och vilket är det
utopiska projektets slutmål? Ja det spelar liksom ingen roll, bara
det blir en stor smäll! I Topside down handlar det också om
© Lisi Raskin
storhetsvansinne, destruktivitet och trashestetik men
beskrivningen tar omvägen genom en metonymisk representation,
och får därmed en nimbus av mer sublim ondska.
Stockholm 2008-09-04 © Björn Larsson
© Lisi Raskin
Milliken | Omkonsts startsida
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Milliken Gallery, Stockholm: Lisi Raskin (28/8-5/10)
http://www.konsten.net/arkivet/raskin.html
Snarare än verk eller installationer verkar det nästan
vara en bana som Lisi Raskin har gjort på Milliken.
Ungefär en sådan bana som barn gör när de intar ett
nytt rum, men hon har också gjort krigsarkitekturen
och provsprängningslandskapen som den går
genom. Längs den gör man på vissa ställen vissa
saker av inget annat skäl än att bekräfta att banan
finns. Man lyfter på luren vid kontrollbordet i
bunkerrummet, tittar på skärmarna, ställer sig
framför övervakningskameran. I nästa rum känner
man på de ugnsfolieklädda väggarna, medveten om
att det orangeröda ljuset som kommer underifrån
golvet uppför väggarna nog ändå inte hade kunnat
värma stanniolen så mycket. Man förväntar sig
faktiskt ingenting av de där handlingarna, inget ljud från telefonen eller något annat. Idiotiska handlingar, helt klart,
ändå oundvikliga och frivilliga, ja kvasikreativa. De ingår i banan, man utför dem som en hund lyfter på benet: för att
”göra” sitt territorium.
Utan explicita anvisningar normerar banan alltså beteendet samtidigt som den inympar en känsla av frihet i lydandet.
Banan är själv en makt. Glädjen i den här utställningen är inte att ta miste på, den infinner sig som ett tecken på att
man verkligen gör banan, att man gör något. Det är kreativitetens glädje som är ingången till verket, eller snarare till
utställningen. Det är genom vissa aspekter och detaljer som den där känslan väcks och knyter åskådaren till ”verket”,
nämligen själva detaljrikedomen och den air av hemmagjordhet som allting utstrålar. Vi är långt ifrån repliker av
verklig arkitektur och verkliga instrument, det är ingenting som Kienholtz fängelseceller eller mentalsjukhusrum.
Kontrollbordet är gjort av papper, spånskivor, plywood och färg; de metallblänkande väggarna som ser ut som kulisser
till sommarens super-8 science fiction – den är liksom självlysande av hemmagjordhet, där görandets iver är vad som
förmedlas.
Samma glädje måste ligga bakom det detaljerade arbetet med exempelvis kontrollbordet. Detaljer som varken
genererar någon viss mening genom sina inbördes relationer (som i mer traditionella konstverk) eller motiveras av
trohet till förlagan (som i modeller och leksaker, eller realistisk konst). Det är alltså genom det amatörmässiga i
framställningen och detaljrikedomen i det framställda som passionen bakom tillverkningen, besattheten, förmedlas:
just den som får folk att nörda loss på vad som helst, massförstörelsevapen till exempel. Atombomber, missiler,
högteknologi, krigsarkitektur, olika sätt att dö – det är rubriker för förlägna passioner. ”Även detta är gjort av kärlek”
lär det stå över helvetets portar.
Mitt eget beteende var oklanderligt tror jag,
åtminstone någorlunda diskret – men jag hade
intrycket av att rusa genom utställningen med en
enslings entusiasm av själva löftet om lycka. Här
råder alltså själva löftets njutning, därframme hägrar
någonting utlovat som drar en framåt. Det som
bestämmer både platsen och rörelserna på vägen
verkar sitta i väggarna. De rundade hörnen i
”bunkern”, de elskåpsliknande luckorna i väggen som
liksom har maskerats, förlängningen av mönstret
ned i en gummimatta på golvet – allt gör att rummet
välver sig som en skyddande kapsel kring en.
Krigsarkitekturens massiva stabilitet råder. Det är en
tillvaro där stegen liksom är dova och ingenting kan
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skaka under fötterna – en seismografs mardröm. Genom apparaterna får man ändå en känsla av att behärska vissa
viktiga platser i världen, man har all viktig info, vilket får rummet att kännas som en rustning: man sväller i den, blir
stor, fyller ut den. Bunkern blir min hud som förmedlar kontakten med omvärlden, och jaget blir en enda utskjuten
bröstkorg. Samtidigt ger väggarna upphov till en annan upplevelse. Mönstret som fördelar dess lugna färger är
nämligen så stort att det hänvisar utöver det slutna rummet till någonting öppet kring byggnaden, en himmel kanske,
en öppen horisont, en ledig eftermiddagstimme. Nu är det världen som är väldig där ute.
Förminskningen av en själv fortsätter i nästa rum. Golvet av plywood är upphöjt, lite sluttande, ljudet av steg
annorlunda. Golvet går inte ända ut i väggarna utan låter ett orangerött sken ge sig till känna. Som av lava ungefär
(som jag föreställer mig det), men inte hett. Främmande och… främmande, säkert skadligt, tänker man. Det känns
ostadigt därinne. Den ugnsfolieklädda väggen ser också den ranglig ut. Mot en annan väg står något som måste kallas
ett trädgårdsstaket lutat. I närheten av det, ett hål i golvet där en utsågad del av folieväggen sticker upp. Om det förra
rummet gav en känsla av kontroll, så är man helt förlorad här. Här drönar man inte i onödan det finns inte ens något
ställe där det faller sig naturligt att stanna till: man tittar sig undersökande, orienterande omkring i hopp om en
ledtråd. Bristen på vilopunkter gör att allt söker stöd i ens kropp. Man blir en verklig centralkropp, en ”nollkropp” som
Husserl någon gång sa, men en som alltså förlorat allt sinne för rum och riktning, och som dessutom är instabil – en
nollkropp på skakiga ben. ”Topside” heter rummet, ett ord som generellt benämner ett översta ytskikt av något, men
mer specifikt (som adverb) skulle översättas till ”upp på däck”. Och det är väl det: den fenomenologiska nollkroppen är
ryckt från den stabila landsortsmiljö som fenomenologin traditionellt och utan vidare resonemang ser som privilegierad.
Den har hamnat på ett underlag som inte är stabilare än en båt, kanske ett vulkaniskt landskap, och vill inget annat än
att vingla fram öppningen i väggen.
Där står man ovanför ett ljust rum. Effekten är omedelbar: solsken och vida utsikt över ett lägre liggande landskap
utan skog och växtlighet. Märklig effekt i ett så litet rum, med så små medel. En brant, hemmasnickrad trappa leder
ned till ”missilparken”. På femton hemmagjorda piedestaler står primitiva missil- och flygplansskulpturer av diverse
material, mest balsaträ, ståltråd, folie, några använda fyrverkeriraketer eller smällare. Det ser tillfälligt ut, både i
termer av varaktighet och urvalsprincip för materialen. Det finns något prydligt i det hela som understryker stoltheten i
den lite taffliga tillverkningen. Det väcker ömhet.
Man är fortfarande på banan, man gör den med liv
och lust, rusar fram då den plötsligt tar tvärstopp.
Man har då gått uppför en trappa in i ett smalt,
svartmålat rum med golv som sluttar uppåt mot en
vägg, lutad ut över betraktaren (för det är det,
betraktare, man plötsligt blir här). På väggen finns
halvstora teckningar (57x76 cm) av, ja låt säga
utomhusarbetsplatser. Det är en mer vardaglig miljö,
lite främmande för banan. Stora maskiner som
snarare säger ”kraft” än högteknologi, höga stolpar,
kanske tjocka slangar att pumpa någonting med,
grovarbete. Folktomma bilder. Eftersom det bara är
väl tilltagna överdrifter som ens kan närma sig
sanningen måste jag säga att det är som att gå rakt
in i en svingande container. Man har svårt att se bilderna, man känner inte riktigt marken under fötterna – kanske har
banan, genom att ha koncentrerat den estetiska manipulationen till känslolivet via rumskänslan, förändrat ens
perceptionen. Man förstår inte var man har hamnat. Helt klart: utanför banan. Banan är slut.
Utställningen däremot, så som den övergripande formen för vad som är gjort här, är däremot inte slut: man är helt
enkelt framme vid den punkt där den bryter av, där den avviker från eller överskrider sig själv inom sig själv. Det är
fantastiskt! Du är längst in i lokalen, så djupt in i ”verket” du bara kan komma, och där brister den i två delar ”som inte
rimmar” (Hölderlins ord om cesuren som definierar stora konstverk). Vägen tillbaka genom utställningen är inte
densamma som vägen dit, även om banorna i rummet fullständigt sammanfaller. Relationen till den som gjort sakerna,
till den kreativa glädjen, är borta. Bara det gjorda är kvar. Man kontemplerar de små missilskulpturerna. Materialen i
dem, även de som inte är återanvända, upprättar en relation till en svunnen tid. Därav en viss känsla av nostalgi inför
dem. Också destruktiviteten framträder, den meningslösa världsordning som byggde upp en gigantisk vapenarsenal,
det teknologiska förnuftets vansinniga drivkrafter. Men missilparken andas också fetischism. Och någonting
monumentalt vilar över den, som vore den en kvarlämning efter en primitiv stam, uppkommen efter det att bomberna
slutgiltigt föll. Även kraften och enkelheten i missilerna väcker saknad. En enda kraftkälla, och en enda sak som sätts i
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9/26/08 10:47 AM
rörelse av den, från en bestämd plats till en helt annan. Inga nätverk, inget återanvändande, inga försök att leda
krafter vidare, skarva, upprepa etc. bara förbruka, förbränna, detonera, här och nu. Hur mycket sundare ter sig inte
sådana krafter, musklernas, aggressivitetens, än vårt (teknologiska) förnufts drivkrafter, dess vilja till trygghet och
försvar och kontroll, dess värld av möjliga scenarier, möjliga hot som utan att vara verkliga helt dominerar vår
existens! Man saknar plötsligt tider då man kunde komma undan, lämna en plats och komma någon helt annan stans,
bryta totalt, bryta sig loss. Skylten ”Exit” som Raskin satt över dörren ut från bunkern hånflinar åt en – det här är
liksom en situation man inte tar sig ur. Banan har artat sig till en Golgatavandring där man bär den rådande
världsordningen som sitt kors.
I misströstan över krigslogiken, dvs. över sakernas tillstånd, händer någonting paradoxalt (jodå, det är utställningen,
eller världen, men inte jag, som är pervers). Vurmen för missilerna återvänder. Omöjligt att låta bli att tänka på dem i
nästan utopiska termer: ”enda vägen ut ur eländet är att bomba sönder det.” En plötslig längtan efter en ny
morgondag gryr. Det ska vara dagen efter atombomben. Jag är en av de antagligen få överlevande. En ny fräsch värld,
man kan gå ut och göra vad som helst, allt är tillgängligt, enkelt, befriat. Att få världen att bli som den borde vara, dvs.
min. Kanske överlever man inte bomben med så många dagar, men vilka dagar skulle det inte kunna vara! Hoppet
lever! Man ger sig in på banan igen. Men nu är glädjen i görandet intimt förknippat med löftet som ligger i
massförstörelsen, bunkern är vägen ut ur jämmerdalen. Ja, den är det glada budskapet som dödandets utopiska
drivkraft kommer med: krigsarkitekturen, visar Raskin, är helt enkelt dödandets messianska inre.
Adress: Luntmakargatan 78
2008-09-24 Lars-Erik Hjertström Lappalainen (text),
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3 of 3
9/26/08 10:47 AM
I ’ ll Le t Yo u
Be In My Dream
If I Can
B e I n Yo u r s
In a January 2005 correspondence
over e-mail Lisi Raskin and Marc
Handelman talk about Errol Morris’s
film The Fog of War, their work, and
some other things relating to killing.
M A R C : You know, The Fog of War left me in a bit of a fog
myself. I got sort of confused by all the different lessons.
I’ve got them all written down here, but some of the most
interesting things that came up were often smaller points
he just touches on. One thing in particular that I thought
of regarding our work was when he said, “The human
race needs to think more about killing, about conflict.”
Strangely, [ r o b e r t ] McNamara is coming at it from the
point of view of both the “master of war” and the pacifist—
an architect of violence and a humanist. You’ve talked a
lot about your need for an imagination about death, and
clearly it’s right there below the surface of nearly every
piece you make. But it always seems less a political or
conceptual engagement for you than a psychological and
deeply personal one. You almost seem to take as much
pleasure in those thoughts as you do in freaking out over
them. Maybe your anxiety is really about your attraction
to the diabolical?
L I S I : It’s true that my engagement with the subject
matter, that of killing and conflict, is more of a personal
and psychological one. In fact, it is rooted in my search
for artistic leaps that are only possible within the climate
of fear of death. If I can get scared enough, then my fear
becomes a conduit. I find that this desperation allows
me to take chances or make moves that otherwise might
not occur to me. In these moments (artistically speaking)
nothing is at stake because the objects themselves would
be instantly evaporated by the shockwave of a thermonuclear explosion. But my imagination is activated by
this fear and this is as much a strategy for making art as
anything else. This is also why I like to smoke pot when
I think about nuclear war. Marijuana causes you to lose
your short-term memory. So instantly, I can overcome the
fact that I can’t get as scared as I used to when I was little.
Marijuana overrides the mechanisms that I have developed
to keep myself from getting paralyzed by my fear.
M A R C : A friend of mine recently told me about a true
story that he read years ago that always stuck with him.
In it there’s this woman who is totally beside herself,
in a state of near paralysis because she thinks there’s
an atomic bomb inside of her. The doctors exchange
glances and smile, but of course the deepest pathology
is that rational human beings made atomic and nuclear
weapons in the first place. Those buffers become part of
that pathology and I suppose are as necessary as they are
perverse. But while we can’t all just sit around immobilized by fear, you can really understand someone losing
their mind in the face of the potential for that level of
annihilation. A lot of us have those nightmares anyway.
It reminds me of that Dylan song “Talkin’ WWIII Blues.”
You’re on the psychiatric couch and you’re telling the
doctor that you’ve had a bad dream. The doctor says “oh
those dreams are only in your head,” but of course your
nightmares are never totally pure fantasy. McNamara’s
comments on how incredibly close we were to a nuclear
war during the Cuban Missile Crisis reminded me of how
fragile that threshold really can be. Dylan’s song gives a
sense of the mixture of lunacy and normalcy created by
living in a nuclear age.
L I S I : I think we are in an interesting generational space,
regarding the lunacy and normalcy of living in a nuclear
age. I mean, we grew up during the Reagan era, when the
country had long given up hopes of surviving a nuclear
war. We had stopped the practice of those absurd duckand-cover drills yet continued to stockpile intercontinental ballistic missiles that were thousands of times the
strength of the bomb dropped at Hiroshima. It’s almost
as if we acknowledged our imminent doom and cast aside
the stupidity and optimism of modernism and progress.
Dylan’s characterization of nuclear war, one in which there
are only a few people remaining in America, is definitely
a post-Hiroshima fantasy. That level of annihilation could
really only be achieved by a full-on arsenal exchange. It is
funny though, I mean at the height of the Cold War, eight
Soviet missiles would have hit New York City and let’s say
ten warheads per missile—well, that’s eighty blasts. So
imagine if you survived that—this is so unlikely that it’s
comical—you’d probably only live for three extra days
before you died a horrible death from radiation poisoning
LISI RASKIN & MARC HANDELMAN
and shat out your own stomach, but nonetheless you’d be one
of the only ones around. I don’t know if you’d be up for stealing
a Cadillac and having sex with the last woman on earth.
But I agree that the prospect of the human race thinking
more about killing and conflict is a compelling point. Maybe
that is why I wanted to watch The Fog of War with you in
the first place, although the film itself is sort of arbitrary.
But that firebombing shit about Japan was astounding, I
mean after all of that firebombing, how the fuck could they
drop atomic bombs? And I think to myself, after you melt
and liquefy people, can the atom bomb be worse? Well
the atom bomb fucks with your genetics so now you have
Japanese babies with no noses! Dropping the bomb on the
Japanese killed their culture on a cellular level.
M A R C : It kind of freaked me out when you suggested
that my Japanese grandparents, who died young from
leukemia and cancer, probably suffered the effects of
radiation exposure. Strangely I never put that together.
You know, my grandfather saw the flash from as far north
as Tokyo. He was fishing at a lake and thought it was just
beautiful. In the film Atomic Café that we watched last
year together there’s a scene of the pilots on the runway
outside of the Enola Gay [ a i r p l a n e ] right after dropping
[ t h e n u c l e a r w e a p o n ] Fat Man. One of them said to
the reporters: “it was pretty as a picture.” And now they
actually have a pretty coffee-table book of nuclear test
explosions called 100 Suns and they are unbelievably
beautiful, just gorgeous.
The iconic quality of the mushroom cloud is important
too. I think part of the psychology of the A-bomb was
this very feature. An atomic bomb was one detonation,
one blast, one light source and its simplicity in terms of
how totalizing its destruction was, as a concept, becomes
almost aesthetic. It was the bomb of all bombs. And as far
as McNamara’s lessons are concerned, unlike the firebombing of Japanese cities, proportionality was considered. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were to have saved lives.
In that light it almost sounds ethical, but atomic weapons
are fundamentally designed for maximizing destruction.
If the technology had been available in 1945 to make
the A-bomb as powerful as a nuclear missile, we cease
to have such a “life-saver” of a weapon. But there are
more uncomfortable ironies too, including one my dad
told me about: after Nazi Germany fell, we sent in a team
of American scientists to search for enriched uranium
and plutonium and to see just how far along Nazi atomic
capabilities had been developed. As it turns out we not
only found some radioactive substance but also used it in
the bomb for Nagasaki. So the actual radioactive material
from what would have been the most diabolical and ter-
NDP
#2 JUNE 2005
rifying Nazi weapon became an American one, and one
that was used.
So now that we are having nightmares about “dirty
bombs” . . . I wonder if September 11 for us was like a
conduit to an imagination about death. It does seem like
the country has more of an imagination about death these
days, maybe even more so than during the Cold War.
L I S I : Yeah, apparently the Nazis attempted to send the
Japanese some uranium via a U-boat [u - 2 3 4 ] but it never
got there. Maybe that is the uranium your Dad was talking
about, from boat U-234. I named my most recent installation after that boat. But nightmares about dirty bombs or
not . . . Was September 11 a conduit for imagination about
death? Well for you and me definitely, 9/11 was an invitation to ponder all of the wonderful ways to die, but I only
got to this imagination space via experiencing the horror of
9/11, being traumatized by the media, and finally resolving
to ignore the media. I remember when I decided to stop
looking at the news because it was around the time of the
anthrax scare. I was walking down the street with Halsey
[ r o d m a n ] and there was an armed guard at the 125th street
1/9 [ s u b w a y ] station and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I
mean, I kept having these fantasies about everybody dying
on the subway and some weird longing and nostalgia for
my own demise. But I’m not sure what happened with the
majority of the country. I mean what effect did the images
of the towers have on people? I was in New York as you
were. I saw the second plane hit and watched the towers
start to burn from the safety of the twenty-second floor
of my apartment building on 125th street. This afforded
a certain perspective; I was not immersed in the hysterical unreality of Ground Zero. But I do remember this
confused feeling, like a desire for a mirror for my experience. It wasn’t enough for me that other people saw it too,
I needed the news media to confirm what was going on
before my own eyes. And boy did they. They chose one
image and replayed it over and over again. They usurped it
and lathered it up with a nationalistic agenda before there
was even time to formulate a considered response to the
tragedy. This was the first preemptive strike.
So I think a conversation about the place we’re in as a
country as a whole needs to begin with the removal of
the firsthand experience of being in New York during 9/11
and the discontinuity of living in a place that was simultaneously the most likely and least likely target for another
attack (according to the statistics of a plane crash, if one
just went down the plane you are on is somehow safer). So
situate yourself in another location in America. I’m not sure
what happens then. But I don’t think that the entire country
has more of an imagination about death right now. I mean
imagination—at least my imagination—is greatly aided by
images, of course, but I also need the time and space to
consider these images. With 9/11, we were already told
(wanted to be told) what to think about it. It was so fast
and radical that there was hardly a moment for contemplation. The response by the media was too immediate. And
regarding Iraq, we hardly have any images of this war. I
am still waiting to see my first nineteen-year-old homeless
amputee veteran—god forbid. I mean how can you invent
with no muse? An imagination about death thrives on the
same principles as drawing from life. Even if you are using
your information in the most metaphorical and least pedestrian of ways, drawings from information are always more
interesting and developed than drawings from memory.
There is a triangulation that occurs between the object,
your brain, and the paper. And the term “drawing from
memory” isn’t even accurate; it is more like drawing from
a lack of information.
M A R C : I know what you mean about the void of images
of the war in Iraq right now. The government learned its
lesson about the media during the Vietnam War. On the
other hand—and this applied especially during the Cold
War—the lack of images today elevates the ambiguity
of the situation and how you can manipulate people’s
feelings about it. What McNamara really needed was
a complacent populace. Today’s administration needs
America to be afraid, and in a way to “draw from memory.”
In particular, the threat of terrorism grows bigger and
stranger in our minds if the only thing we can see is the
afterimage of the twin towers or “Code Orange.” But
Ground Zero is the ultimate image of the void. Like the
nineteenth-century Sublime, it replaces thought, and is
beyond expression. Against all this our imaginations
rush to fill out the other narratives including what could
happen to us again.
L I S I : But there wasn’t a lack of images about the Cold
War. Movies like Failsafe, The Day After, and Dreams,
contributed to the zeitgeist, as did post-punk music, new
wave pop, Kathy Acker, Samuel Delaney—I mean the list
is endless of literary, filmic, and musical imagery about
nuclear war. In this imageless climate what America is most
afraid of is any disruption in the ease of our lifestyle—much
more so than dying at the hand of a terrorist. I think people
have reacted to this war in a very external way. I mean
if there had been a World Trade Center attack in every
state maybe it would be different but since the majority
of America has not experienced civilian casualties on a
firsthand basis, especially to the degree that people in
other parts of the world have, it is easy to keep this war in
Iraq at an arm’s distance or not think about it at all. I think
that images would both greatly aid the humanization of
this war and up the ante on fear experienced by the public
in this country.
M A R C : Well, I think there is a difference between the
fear of the war in Iraq and the threat of terrorism. With the
threat of terrorism, like the former threat of communism
and a Soviet missile attack, there is a kind of codependency of ambiguity and invisibility that stirs paranoia
and creates fear. And it is the invisibility of this new
threat that fosters complacency towards a war like the
one we are in right now. I really agree with you though
about the need for more images.
L I S I : But wouldn’t you say that if anyone were really paying
attention, they would realize that our soldiers are being
“terrorized” (for lack of a better term) in Iraq with actual
terrorism (or non-conventional warfare) as opposed to the
state-sponsored propaganda about a pending threat? I
mean those guys can’t drive a mile without someone being
blown up by an improvised explosive device or a whole
group blown to smithereens at lunchtime. I mean fuck, let’s
think about how that would feel tonight at dinner if half our
dinner guests blew up. The problem with Americans right
now is that we are exactly like Sam Lowry and his mother
in the film Brazil when they’re dining in that fancy restaurant and there is a bombing—nothing happens to their
particular party so they just move tables and continue
with their meal. When I think about the war in Iraq, I think
about the insurgents and how successful their campaign
to demoralize and destroy the U.S. military presence has
been. I agree that on a domestic level, the administration’s
“war on terror” functions according to the principles you
mentioned, but the ontological reality of the war in Iraq
has everything to do with the kind of bricolage terrorist
effect/action orchestrated by the type of factions that
envisioned the 9/11 attacks—ingenuity with little means
and a tremendous imagination about killing and death.
When contemplating the blind spot of the American
public right now it feels really relevant to think about Henry
Kissinger: the insidious character who has permeated our
cultural consciousness. In many ways we have become
him. We are living in an age when the American public
has no conscience. Like Kissinger we will never confess,
never admit anything. I guess I wanted to start with The
Fog of War because the first time I saw it, Kissinger’s ghost
lingered in the living room with me, making McNamara
seem more pathetic at every turn. Kissinger is diabolical
because he leads a double life—on one hand he is hyperaware of the atrocities he has committed and on the other
L I S I : I like [ s t a n l e y ] Kubrick’s caricature of Kissinger
as Dr. Strangelove. Incidentally, the title of my [ f e b r u a r y
2 0 0 5 ] lecture at the American Academy [ i n b e r l i n ] is “Time
and Space Travel or How I learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb.” Kissinger is on the board of trustees [ a t
t h e a c a d e m y ] ; maybe I will get to meet him. But regarding
McNamara versus Kissinger and even [ d o n a l d ] Rumsfeld,
I think it is interesting to distinguish between those who
portray themselves as helpless and smart men who just
got caught up in the machine and those who play the
ridiculous role of the poker-faced innocent obscuring the
fact that they are diabolical killers totally obsessed with
their legacy. And if we make this kind of distinction, what
happens? I mean is McNamara worse than Kissinger? Is
Hitler worse than [ a u g u s t o ] Pinochet? Were the Germans
living under Hitler who were complicit and ignored the
slaughter of millions really worse than we are in present
day America? Who is Rumsfeld? How do we evaluate evil?
famous Goya etching of a man at his desk with demons
descending on him in his sleep, The Sleep of Reason
Produces Monsters. But sueño [ s l e e p ] also translates
as “dream,” creating very different implications. For
McNamara, the idea is that in hindsight these rules
might just bring you above the fog to give you some
perspective, but in a way the insanity and confusion
of modern war, the fog itself, seems to grow out of all
of these pathologies of reason. For example, you have
IBM tabulation machines calculating bombing runs for
Americans against the Japanese, and simultaneously
[ i b m s u b s i d i a r y d e h o m a g i s ] customizing Hollerith
tabulation machines for the Nazis to organize and map
the Jewish populations, streamline transportation
to the camps, and have the whole thing running like
clockwork. The empirical, the scientific, and Reason
as liberational truths? I mean, rationality itself begins
to dissolve against something like the Holocaust, but
these pathologies are much bigger than simply those
of the Germans. When McNamara talks about inefficient proportionality of deaths in the firebombing of
Japanese cities . . . well that kind of logic is like the
softer padding they now use on lethal injection tables!
On the one hand, one of McNamara’s lessons reminds
us “rationality will not save us” and another cautions to
“maximize efficiency.”
M A R C : Evaluating and even defining evil would get
really blurry here. But this was what was so threatening and radical to many when Hannah Arendt wrote
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.1
She redefined the parameters of what constituted the
roots of evil and dissolved the model of the diabolical and
conscious mass killer into the unconscious bureaucrat.
This whole idea of banality really freaked people out—it
was just too extreme a notion for many to handle. Arendt’s
thinking was that this particular kind of evil came out
of an incredible shallowness, and an inability to reflect
and think critically about what one did—in essence, an
inability to locate meaning in one’s actions—and that
this thoughtlessness was what allowed evil to spread.
She uses the metaphor of the spreading of fungus,
with its inability to “go deep,” rootless and spreading
quickly across the surface. Arendt does ask an interesting question: does examining and reflecting on one’s
actions conditions men against evildoing? McNamara’s
reflections and ultimately his lessons are his attempt on
some level for redemption, but many aspects of his logic
are their own undoing.
The metaphor of the fog here is a little ironic too, particularly for a modern war. Like the dreamy space in that
L I S I : Yes, once you have McNamara deconstructing or
even describing the events it is like he is right back there
at the think tank reliving the glory days when the fate of
the entire world was in his hands. And I love how he built
his career as a number cruncher obsessed with data. So we
see firsthand how even McNamara’s memory has buffers,
even his hindsight has dangerous implications. For me,
deconstructing my ability to obfuscate fear through the
rational and undo the social dose of Xanax that I was prescribed is the key to conscience. Otherwise it is too easy
to feel innocent and I am not innocent, my credit card debt
and CitiBank student loans are in part financing the war.
I’m really glad that you bring up Arendt! And I am glad
we are co-reading the book together. I found something
that I wanted to share with you, and it is the answer to the
question of why no Jew revolted. According to Arendt,
“There are many things worse than death, and the S.S. saw
to it that none of them was ever far from their victims’ minds
and imaginations.” 2 So this is imagination about dying that
is dying being everything that leads up to that moment of
death, which is actually a release. Incidentally, this year
is the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz
and there are programs all over German television about it
from documentaries to dramas.
hand he denies them and is just obsessed with his legacy
and lifestyle. I find this dichotomy fascinating!
M A R C : I think I know what you mean about that kind of
fascination. You want to know how people are capable of
the unbelievable things they do. Just how conscious are
they? Or are we?
NDP
#2 JUNE 2005
M A R C : This is an imagination about death and killing
of the “master of war.” But I think that having an imagination about the diabolical gives you some agency and
some comfort only if it prevents you from believing the
illusion that you are totally immune to those horrors as a
victim, but more importantly as a perpetrator.
L I S I : So Marc, when you were obsessed with the Hollerith
machines and putting yourself into the role of the inventor
behind things like lethal injection mechanisms, I was interested in the space you created for yourself—I mean the
space that made it alright to talk and think about such
horrible things because the final product was art.
M A R C : There’s a really long, and probably still confused
answer to that. I think ultimately there was this feeling,
and there still is, of discomfort, fear, and fascination of
what incredible violence and destruction human beings
are capable of—and I’m not talking about Jeffrey Dahmer
or killers here, but “normal” people. I can remember
looking through all of my dad’s books on Nazism growing
up, and fixating on a bowl of fruit, or a cat in the background of a photo of an S.S. office or something. It’s about
a kind of banality, or normalcy, only some of it related to
Arendt’s banality. So both of our fathers are obsessed with
Hitler—like a lot of Jewish men—but I’m always thinking
about the civilian population, the everyday Germans
under the Third Reich, some teenagers in love, a family,
carpenters, engineers, designers . . . even artists.
Anyway, fantasizing and attempting to get close on
some level to those horrible things rendered them a little
less elevated, a little less privileged, and it de-radicalized
them. I guess I felt that if on some level you could identify
with some aspect of these pathologies within yourself,
well then somehow there was some kind of agency
afforded, or, I don’t know . . . redemption? Not from any
acts committed, but from the fear and guilt I have from
the simple fact of the human potential for it all. But this
kind of self-implication becomes forced and always
artificial in the context of art. To go back to Arendt, you
can’t really simulate banality. The banality she’s talking
about negates any process where one seeks meaning. So
I started thinking more specifically about images at that
point—like how could these machines be aestheticized
to promote them and their pathologies, and where do
certain blind spots in image making for me link up with
correlating features in propaganda, like beauty, desire,
and pleasure? But for the real engineers and designers
it’s so much less lofty—it’s just a job. So, in your work, have you left behind the roles of the scientist and businessman? What about the role of the artist?
L I S I : I don’t feel like I have left behind the roles of businessman and scientist. Lately in my studio, I feel like the
technician who is assembling the control panels, dials and
gauges for my Control Room, but for some reason I can
become this technician without naming him. And tomorrow, I could just as easily become the real estate agent
trying to sell you plots of land on Mars—there is no difference in the characters, really. I mean they are all about
allowing for a space that is about interacting (enacting)
my obsession with the diabolical. Sometimes the diabolical is really close to home, and sometimes I have to invent
the specifics—they aren’t so autobiographical. But my
protagonists always know that they are up to no good.
Maybe because this is the most subversive and powerful
position until it is named—like Kissinger has been named
so some of his power has been taken away.
M A R C : So it’s become about the mode of work or design
and less about the character of the maker? In your world
there are scientists, engineers, space cadets, nuclear
technicians, real estate agents, soldiers . . . are there
artists too? As you know, one of my favorite paintings is
by Phillip Guston and is called The Studio. In it there’s
a Klansman, hooded and all, painting a self-portrait
by a window. For Guston, artmaking was ethically unelevated, but very much a part of the rest of the world:
drinking, smoking, reading, sleeping, and, of course,
“plotting and planning.” There’s a bit of the “banality of
evil” in that entire series of paintings don’t you think?
Where does “making art” enter the imaginative space of
your work?
L I S I : I’m not really sure. Maybe in the form of the “toxic
event” as abstract expressionism. I once heard that all of
Pollock’s drip paintings were about the A-Bomb. Maybe
it is where art and other activities overlap? I mean the
tradition of bricolage sculpture and the tradition of improvised explosive devices is pretty close both aesthetically
and conceptually. The imperative is to make something
that works with the stuff you found or have lying around.
M A R C : Well, one of McNamara’s lessons is “Belief and
seeing are both often wrong.” I guess the bomb scare
at Columbia University from your bricolage sculpture
speaks pretty well to that slippery slope. Still, I know
what you mean when you’re just walking around and
benign things start presenting themselves in really dark
narratives . . . but then again those radioactive fallout
shelter signs all over the city don’t exactly help.
Footnotes
1 [Eichmann in Jerusalem was originally published as a series
of articles in The New Yorker reporting on the 1961 trial of Nazi
Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann. Arendt’s critics lambasted her
for using the trial coverage as a front for meandering philosophical investigations of the Holocaust. In defense, Arendt added a postscript to the book, stating that her report was solely for the purposes
of evaluating whether the Jerusalem court properly executed justice.
First published in book form in 1963, Arendt’s text remains a seminal
work on the nature of justice in the modern world. Ed.]
2 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem:A Report on the Banality
of Evil, rev. and enl. ed. (New York: Penguin Press, 1994), 12.
NDP
#2 JUNE 2005
LISI RASKIN
Born in Miami, Fl, lived and works in Brooklyn, NY
ACADEMIC PREPARATION
2003
1996
Master of Fine Arts, School of the Arts, Columbia University, New York, NY
Batchelor of Arts: Fine Arts, High Honors, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
SOLO PROJECTS AND EXHIBITIONS
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
Raskin/Hauptman: Nicht Kriegswichtig, Reception, Berlin
Mt. Disappointment, The Company, Los Angeles
Warning Warum, (web project), Dia Art Foundation, New York
Sunday Punch II (Barbarossa Style), Art Berlin Contemporary with Milliken Gallery
Launch on Tactical Warning, Riccardo Crespi, Milan
Armada, Workspace Series, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX, USA
Topside, Milliken Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden
Able Archer 83, Riccardo Crespi, Milan, Italy
Mobile Observation Station (Transmitting and Receiving Station), Bard Center for Curatorial Studies/Hessel Museum, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Command and Control, ADAA Fair, New York, NY
Switchyard, Guild and Greyshkul, New York
Project Esrange, Signal Galleri, Malmö, Sweden
Project Esrange (and other research), Gävle Konstcentrum, Gävle, Sweden
High Positive Void Coefficient, Riccardo Crespi, Milan, Italy curated by Gabi Scardi
Jack Shack, PS1 MoMA, Queens, NY
(Remote Location) Observation Station, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland
Spring Loaded Amalgam, Art Forum Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Parallel Telegram, Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2010
2009
2008
2007
2007
Catch Me! Grasping Speed, Kunsthaus Graz, Austria
NapTime, as part of Anna Craycroft's Object of Study/Subject of
100 Years, PS1/MoMA, Queens, New York
Do They Love Their Children Too?, Milliken Gallery, Stockholm
2nd Athens Biennale, HEAVEN . Curated by Chus Martínez, Chief Curator of MACBA, and independent curators Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, Nadja
Argyropoulou, Christopher Marinos and Diana Baldon.
11th Istanbul Biennale What Keeps Mankind Alive? Curated by the Croatian curatorial collective What, How & for Whom (WHW)
The Red Thread, Tanas Gallery, Berlin
The Stars in the Sky are Still Boss, Reed Gallery, University of Cincinnati
Project Esrange (and other research), 3 person show at The Company, Los Angeles
Katastrophenalarm, NGBK, Berlin, Germany
Self-Storage, The Hardware Store Gallery, San Francisco
Through the Glass Darkly, Redline Art Center, Denver
Soft Manipulation: Who’s Afraid of the New Now, Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg, LU
The Possibility of an Island, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami, FL, USA
Green Dreams, Kunstverein Wolfsburg, Germany
Formalities, IASPIS Project Space, Stockholm, Sweden, curated by Maria Lind
What Remains, Lambretto, Milan, Italy. Curated by Marco Tagliafierro
The Line of Time + The Plane of Now, Wallspace and Harris Lieberman Gallery, New York, NY
Pensée Sauvage - von Freiheit, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Germany and Ursula Blickle Stiftung curated by Chus Martinez.
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS CONTINUED
2007
Jardins D'amis, Immenance, Paris, France
Shared Women, LACE, Los Angeles, CA
Emergency, curated by Thierry Geoffroy, PS1 MoMA, Queens, NY
2006
Written in Light, Bloomberg HQ/Art in General, New York, NY. Curated by: Zeljka Hembele
2005
Atomica, Lombard Fried, New York, NY
Hunch and Flail, Artists Space, New York, NY
Greater New York 2005, PS1 MoMA, Queens, NY
Who’s the Protagonist, Guild and Greyshkul, New York, NY
2004
Salad Days, Artist’s Space, New York
Skull Turner, Year Project, Brooklyn, New York
Field, Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, New York
Art in the Office, Global Consulting Group, New York, NY
2003
Research Station, High Desert Test Sites3, Joshua Tree, CA
24/7, Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, Lithuania
MFA Thesis Exhibition, Columbia University, New York
2002
Observatory, High Desert Test Sites 1 with Artists on Tour, Joshua Tree, CA
Ides of March Biannual, ABC No Rio, New York, NY
AWARDS AND DISTICTIONS
2008
2007
2005
2003
2002
2001
1998
1996
Artist in Residence, CCS Bard College
Artist in Residence, IASPIS, Stockholm, Sweden
Guna S. Mundheim Berlin Prize, The American Academy in Berlin
American Austrian Foundation Hayward Prize
Joan Sovern Sculpture Award
Teaching Assistantship, Columbia University
Viar Merit Fellowship, Columbia University
Mortimer Hays Traveling Fellowship
Louis P. Rabinovich Award: Painting and Sculpture
Teaching Assistantship, Brandeis University
SELECTED CONFERENCES AND PRESANTATIONS
2009
2008
2007
2005
2004
2002
2000
1998
MoMA, New York, NY
RISD, Providence, RI
The Blanton Museum, Austin, TX
University of Texas at Austin
New York University, New York, NY
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN
Bard CCS, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
Royal Academy of Art, Stockholm, Sweden
Jan van Eych Academy, Maastrich, Netherlands
Valand School of Art, Göteborg, Sweden
Institute of American Universities, Provence, France
IASPIS, Marabouparken, Sweden
New York University, New York, NY
Universitaet der Kuenste, Berlin, Germany
American Academy in Berlin, Germany
The New School, New York, NY
Pratt Institute, Visiting Artist, Brooklyn, NY
16 Beaver as part of “Women Don’t Lie” Speaker Series
Living with the Genie Conference, Columbia University
Warren Wilson College, Asheville, NC
Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
CATALOGUES
Lisi Raskin: Mobile Observation. 2009 ed. Hauptman. Riccardo Crespi
11th International Istanbul Biennial. 2009 ed. IKSV
Vitamin 3 – D, 2009 ed. Phaidon
Through the Glass Darkly. 2009 ed. Schlenzka/Redline Art Center
Soft Manipulation. 2008 ed. Casino Luxembourg
Katastrophenalarm. 2008 ed. NGBK
Green Dreams, 2007 ed. Kunstverein Wolfsburg
Formalities, 2007 ed. Iaspis
Pensée Sauvage, 2007 ed. Frankfurter Kunstverein/Ursula Blickle Stiftung
Lisi Raskin, Thought Crimes, 2005 ed. Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien
Greater New York Book, 2005 ed. PS1 Contemporary Art Center
The BMW Book, 2005 ed. Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius
BIBLOGRAPHY
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
Ekroth, Power. “What Keeps Mankind Alive? The 11th Istanbul Biennial,” Flash Art International.November/December 2009. p. 30.
Bailey, Stephanie. “Heaven 2nd Athens Biennale,” Art Papers. September/October 2009. p. 40-41.
Fuller, Daniel. “No Nukes,” Art 21 Blog, August 2009.
Green, Kate. “Lisi Raskin: Blanton Museum of Art.” Art Lies. Summer 2009. p. 85.
O’Neill-Butler, Lauren, Raskin, Lisi. “500 Words,” Artforum.com, March 23, 2009.
Rosenberg, Karen, “Cheeky Hipsters in the Halls of Victorian Brigadiers”, New York Times, February 22, 2008.
Yablonsky, Linda. “Best in Show”. Artforum.com. February 24, 2008.
Johnson, Paddy. “The ADAA Fair”, Art Fag City. February 25, 2008.
Bryan-Wilson, Julia. "Julia Bryan-Wilson on Lisi Raskin," ArtForum. May, 2007.
Cotter, Holland. "Lisi Raskin Switchyard," The New York Times, Friday, May 11, 2007.
Casavecchia, Barbara, "Lisi Raskin at Riccardo Crespi," Flash Art, Dec - Jan. 2007.
Thiele, Carmela. “Eine Minute Niagrafall,” Badische Neue Nachrichten, June 22, 2007.
Cruewell, Konstanze. “Begugnung mit dem Fremden,” Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung, June 25, 2007.
Hebert, Niels. “Nyfiken American staeller ut raketbas i Gaevle,” Arbetarbladet, Saturday, August 18, 2007.
Widegren, Bjorn. “Man maste se upp pa Konstcentrum,” Gefle Dagblad, Satruday, August 18, 2007.
Waltenberg, Lillith. “Raketkoll,” Dygnet Runt, 4 – 10 May, 2007.
Pesapane, Lucia, Lisi Raskin at Riccardo Crespi, Tema Celeste, December.
Mick Peter, Lisi Raskin at Transmission Gallery. C Magazine, March.
Ben Rutter. It's Pronounced Nu-cle-ar, Ny Arts, Vol. 10, No. 9, Sept - Oct.
Carrie Moyer, Not By Design, The Gay City News, Vol. 75, No. 29, July 21 - 27.
Holland Cotter, ART REVIEW; Fanciful to Figurative to Wryly Inscrutable, The N.Y. Times, July 8.
Marc Handelman and Lisi Raskin, I'll Let You Be in My Dream if I Can Be in Yours, North Drive Press, June.
Kirsten Reinhardt, Besuch im Bunker. Berliner Zeitung, 29 January.
Ken Johnson, Field: Science, Technology and Nature, The New York Times, July 23.
Tom Johnson, Field: Science, Technology and Nature, The Brooklyn Rail. September.
Kristina Inciuraite, Time and Space Travel: An Interview with Lisi Raskin, 24/7 (catalogue) September 12.

topside down - Milliken Gallery

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