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Features
68
Profile:
alejandro cesarco
a b o ok i h av e n’ t w r i t t e n
a n d prob a bly n e v e r w i l l ,
t he s e l f as a projec t,
rom a n t ic a r c h e t y pe s a n d
m e l odr a m at ic c l ic h é , t he
t wi s t s o f s e l f - e x p o s u re ,
a r e p u r p o s e d u t t e r a nc e ,
t he pro b l e m o f hi s to ry
76
City Focus:
istanbul
t h e mo s t be au t i f u l a rt
l i br a ry i n t h e wor l d,
t r ac es o f o p u l e n c e a nd
we a lt h , a n i m p orta n t
pe r iod of e x pe r i m e n ta l
f l ou r i s h i ng , e du cat io n
a nd at t e n t io n
84
Profile:
esther shalev-gerz
a r e a l l mon u m e n t s
i n h e r e n t ly fa n ta s t ic?
t he in co mme n s u r a b il i t y of
t r a n s l at io n , t h e v i ta l ,
h u m a n, imp o s s ib l e nec es s i t y
o f t ry in g , a va s t ou t p u t
artreview
67
In the opening scene of Alejandro Cesarco’s
five-part black-and-white 16mm film Everness
(2008), a handsome young man sits beside a
brimming bookcase, discoursing measuredly on
the ideas of an unnamed literary thinker. The latter,
the figure onscreen tells us, defines
tragedy as “the arrival of an enigmatic,
supernatural message that the hero
fails to fully and timely comprehend…
for the person who has to decipher
it, it’s a life-and-death situation,
something like having to understand
a text under a death threat”. The
scene switches: Caetano Veloso’s Maria Bethânia
(1971) spins on a turntable (“Please send me a
letter/I wish to know things are getting better, better,
better”), the singer’s request now existentially
enlarged. It switches again, to a scene adapted
from James Joyce’s short story ‘The
Dead’ (1914). Our armchair critic
An artist reveals how to be contemporary
reappears, sitting with his girlfriend
in an elegant lounge. His interior
and come to terms with art’s history
monologue clarifies in voiceover that
By Martin Herbert
they’re estranged, that she loves a
Portrait by Jack Pierson
now-dead former lover and that he
cannot speak of it. Then another
rotating record, this song funereal, and a final scene
wherein the couple take breakfast in uneasy,
honest silence.
If the 12-minute Everness exemplifies the
thirty-seven-year-old New York-based, Uruguayborn artist’s work – which also encompasses
indexes, diagrams, photography, drawings, the
sending of flowers – it’s not only in its cool literary/
cinematic deportment but in its compressing of
roiling philosophic implication into tight contours.
Attempts to voice our feelings, Cesarco’s patchwork
of borrowings suggests, invariably sieve through
what we’ve seen, heard, read, and so we don’t
really express ourselves at all. (Even the work’s
title comes from a Jorge Luis Borges poem.)
This, though, is only Cesarco’s departure point.
Email the artist and ask him to elaborate, as
ArtReview did, and it’s hard to decide if the
undisclosed thinker in Everness would be Borges,
whose stories sometimes involved messages only
one person can read, or the artist, who goes a
desolate step further:
“I think that a truly authentic, individual and
original expression would be a completely hermetic
utterance in an incomprehensible, unshared code,”
he writes back. “Our use of language, of any
language, is always already mediated.” That there
are distressingly large cultural consequences to
this is spelled out in Zeide Isaac (2009). Here
Cesarco filmed his grandfather – a Holocaust
Alejandro
Cesarco
68
Profile
ArtReview
71
survivor – performing, he says, “a
script that I wrote based on his
personal story”. Testimony is shaped
not only by events but also by prior
testimony and by ideology, hence the
consistency of Holocaust witnessing.
To bear witness is to generate cultural
memory – utterly necessary with
regard to the atrocities of Nazism –
but the witnessing itself, Zeide Isaac
says, is imperfect. Time is no helper.
In Present Memory (2010), Cesarco
filmed his doctor father, recently
diagnosed with cancer, in his practice
in Montevideo, then screened the
footage he’d shot in the room where
he filmed it and refilmed that with a
video camera, the explicit mediation
turning his father soft-edged,
prematurely ghostly; finally, Cesarco
showed the same footage in three
different sites in Tate Modern, visitors’
encounters and reencounters setting
up a structure of remembering and
anticipating that pivots around the
fleeting present.
“Time and memory, as topics,
are central to many of my works,”
Cesarco concurs. “I think that time is
ultimately a preoccupation with the
ends of lives, in both senses: its
purpose and the place of death.
Memory is often described as both
the object and the instrument of our
desire. Memories, in this sense,
this page, from left:
Present Memory, 2010, HD video
installation, colour, sound, 3 min
(loop); When I Am Happy Drawing
19/02/06, 2006, colour pencil on
paper, 29 x 23 cm (framed 33 x 27
cm); Retrospective (With John
Baldessari), 2007, silkscreen on
aluminium, 122 x 91 cm
facing page, from top:
Index (A Reading), 2008
(installation view, Art Pace, San
Antonio, 2010), digital c-prints,
A-Z in ten panels, 76 x 61 cm
each; Index (A Reading) (detail),
2008, digital c-prints, A-Z in ten
panels, pgs. 223, 224, 76 x 61 cm
preceding pages:
Five film stills from Everness,
2008, 16mm film transferred to
digital, b/w, sound, 12 min (loop)
70
remind us of what we want.” And so
Present Memory performs the
bittersweet task of turning Cesarco’s
father to memory while he still lives,
for both the artist and his viewers.
Again, coursing through this is
the notion – and the psychic
repercussions – of a flawed conveyance, a rift between how we represent
something and how we feel inside.
How to speak, knowing that our
speech is defective?
Cesarco seemingly approached
this gulf early in his career: in Flowers
(2003) – a self-described ‘performance for a public of one’, memorialised in photographs of bouquets
and flower-shop receipts – he sent
flowers to ten women artists and
authors including Roni Horn, Vija
Celmins, Lynne Tillman, Yoko Ono
and Sherrie Levine. The last figure, a
pioneer of appropriation art, seemed
a particularly fitting choice – to send
flowers being at once to express
yourself and to adopt a common
cultural language – though at the
same time, Cesarco has written, the
project was intended as ‘a way of
making someone happy’. (Happiness
is an elusive but much-pursued state
in his art: see his series of modularly
multicoloured, would-be serotoninboosting text drawings, When I Am
Happy (2002–), which read, ‘When I
am happy I won’t have time to make
these anymore.’)
In 2006 Cesarco was mentored
by John Baldessari, under the
auspices of the Rolex Mentor and
Alejandro Cesarco
Protégé Arts Initiative award, and
collaborated with him on Retrospective (With John Baldessari)
(2007), a series of screenprints that,
modifying the droll elder
conceptualist’s censoring style,
blanked entire pages of text in bright
block colour except for circles
containing numbers, which
corresponded to footnotes at the
bottom of each page, below which
was an additional text, crookedly
conversing with the footers. ‘11.
A strategy for renewing the possibility
of what was – that which is impossible
by definition, the past,’ read one,
followed by the phrase ‘It is better to
be a has-been than a never-was’.
“I think art is, in many ways, a
form of art history, a way of furthering
a dialogue with the past,” Cesarco
says of this work. That dialogue is
double-edged. As much as we might
want to inhabit the past, voices from
it skew and colour the present: it’s
hard to say exactly who is speaking
in Retrospective, just as it was when,
for Broodthaers (2008), he reproduced the stationery that Marcel
Broodthaers produced for his 1969
Musée d’Art Moderne, Département
des Aigles. A repurposed utterance
can, in Cesarco’s hands, at once
reflect sincere feeling and stereotype
it, as in Us (2008), a photograph of a
found tablecloth with place settings
labelled ‘moi’ and ‘toi’: ‘A visualisation’,
according to notes on his gallery’s
website, ‘of the classic trope of lover,
beloved and the space between
them.’
“I THINk ART IS ,
i n m a n y way s ,
A F ORM OF ART
HIS TORY, a way
of f u rt h er i ng
a di a l o gu e
w i t h t h e pa s t ”
It’s worth noting, though, that for
all the figured melancholy and
dramatising of flawed intersubjectivity
in his projects, Cesarco’s practice
seeks to be not fatalistic but
purposeful. “When the reference is
most apparent,” he says of his explicit
borrowings, “when a source text is at
the forefront of the work – as in the
film The Two Stories (2009), which
retells a story by Uruguayan author
Felisberto Hernández, and India Song
(2006), which uses establishing shots
from Marguerite Duras’s 1975 film –
it is done with the intention of
transforming discursive practice
through repetition. A text is retold and
allowed to perform differently. I
believe, of course, that difference is
created in these acts of repetition, in
these ‘creative infidelities’, as Borges
would name them, at the time of
translating, adapting, borrowing and
re-presenting a previous text.”
Diversely expressed, this
pervasive sense of striving towards
something while apprehending the
complications within the effort is the
hallmark of Cesarco’s work. For Index
(A Reading) (2008), he created ten
pagelike c-prints representing an
extensive alphabetised index, of the
type that might be found at the end
of a book, mapping intellectual and
emotional interests. You might
anticipate that the ‘B’ section would
enfold Roland Barthes, John
Baldessari, Walter Benjamin and
‘Bloom, Harold, 50; The Anxiety of
Influence, 165’, and that the lengthiest
subentries would fall under ‘memory’
and ‘reading’. But Index is a fiction of
sorts – the appendix, Cesarco says,
ArtReview
71
this page:
Methodology, 2011, HD video
installation, colour, sound,
7 min (loop), two tripod stands,
gator-board screen
facing page:
Four Modes of Experiencing
Regret, 2012, archival ink-jet
print, 76 x 102 cm
72
Alejandro Cesarco
all images:
Courtesy Murray Guy, New York,
and Tanya Leighton, Berlin
of “a book I haven’t written and
probably never will. In this case a
romantic novel of sorts. A repetition
of romantic archetypes and
melodramatic clichés.” (Eg, ‘solitude,
52–54; and affinity with oneself, 169;
need for vs. bitterness of ones
loneliness, 200’.) What at first
resembles self-exposure twists into
a problematising of it. How well can
we recognise ourselves, even with
help? Look at Four Modes of
Experiencing Regret (2012), an
image/text chart that divides up into
‘Romantic’, ‘Comic’, ‘Tragic’ and
‘Ironic’, and you might find yourself –
mine is the last-named, I’d say – and
simultaneously feel narrowly typecast.
In Cesarco’s superb recent show
at Mumok, Vienna, Four Modes… took
its place within, in Cesarco’s words,
“three constellations of work that
have to do with secrecy, enigma and
regret”. The first category includes
Methodology (2011), previously shown
in the Uruguayan Pavilion at the 2011
Venice Biennale, a video (augmented
by photographs) whose murmurous
dialogue between a man and a
woman revolves around a letter the
content of which we, as viewers, are
not privy to. The second takes up the
conventions of crime fiction, involves
photographs of flowers ostensibly
found at crime scenes, a textual
slideshow narrated by Lawrence
Weiner and a set of footnotes on the
wall, and, says Cesarco, equates “the
reader/viewer with the detective, the
crime with the text, and the author/
artist with the criminal… in opposition
to the multiplicity of meaning
proposed by secrecy, the enigma is
a game with only one solution”. If, as
Cesarco elaborates, the ‘regret’
sequence relates “to paths not taken,
a retrospective look at our choices
and how our lives could ultimately be
told as an exhaustion of possibilities”,
it’s possible to see the trifecta of
works as a tiered meditation on what
it is and is not possible to know – and
accommodating both the knowing
and the not knowing – that might be
ego-bruising and hopeful at once.
Equally, it’s a clarification of
Cesarco’s self-possession as an
artist, one who manages to fold the
process of influence into the
conceptual armature of his work, who
can cross-pollinate clean-lined
conceptualism and dancing notes of
feeling, and whose work partakes of
the cerebral clarity and design that
characterises the work of Borges or
Vladimir Nabokov or Alain RobbeGrillet. If Cesarco’s voice is interlaid,
then, with those of others, he’s
uncommonly absolved given his
structural emphasising that, to some
degree, that’s the case for all of us;
it’s in the mindfulness of this and
other limit conditions that one might,
his art suggests, move forward. The
‘S’ department of Cesarco’s Index
includes entries for ‘Saturn’ and
‘Sontag, Susan’. ‘The mark of the
Saturnine temperament’, writes
Sontag in her 1979 essay on Walter
Benjamin, ‘is the self-conscious and
unforgiving relation to the self, which
can never be taken for granted. The
self is a text – it has to be deciphered…
The self is a project, something to be
built.’ One hears Sontag’s voice in
Cesarco, but the reverse is also true.
Alejandro Cesarco: Words Applied to
Wounds is on view at Murray Guy, New
York, through 12 January
ArtReview
73
critics' picks April 2010
San Antonio
Alejandro Cesarco
ARTPACE SAN ANTONIO
445 North Main Avenue
January 14–May 2
Alejandro Cesarcoʼs latest exhibition
begins with twelve photographs of
indices to books that never existed;
these alphabetical directories are their
sole physical trace. Additionally, the
artist screens The Two Stories, 2009, a
video that includes repeated, tender
slow pans of an empty parlor. In the
latter, the narrator describes an author
reading to a room of people the viewer
cannot see. This house of wealth holds
a wealth of absence: The figures
referred to never materialize. This is a
psychic territory where objects and
people are alluring because they are
unlocatable. Both the videos and
indices refuse a singular interpretation Alejandro Cesarco, The Two Stories, 2009,
of what has been evacuated, in things still from a 16-mm film transferred to video, 9 minutes
bodily and political.
In The Two Stories, the camera sieves the space, but Cesarcoʼs negative impression of romance
and authorship is evident in his inclusion of objects turning toward the past: a classical statue,
ornamental wallpaper, a formal tropical garden, which are all grayed out. The intelligence of this
work lies in its ability to linger in that twisting––nostalgiaʼs growth permanently delayed because it
is held in the act of becoming, head-locked.
In Index (A Novel), 2003, the artist alphabetically lists, like any index, subjects and their page
numbers: GAZE, 59; GAZEBO, 43; GENET, JEAN, 23, 88. The indices, simply magnified pages
of a fictitious novel of Cesarcoʼs own construction, coolly organize the pathology of our love for
the past. Half-turning to read the unwritten, he makes our twist comic and lovely and sobering, all
at once.
— Mary Walling Blackburn
Alejandro Cesarco
Kunsthalle Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
Alejandro Cesarco, installation view, 2013
Alejandro Cesarco’s exhibition ‘A Portrait, a Story, and an Ending’ at the Kunsthalle Zürich is the first in a
series to test the institution’s library space. Since the Kunsthalle returned to the renovated rooms of the
Löwenbräuareal last summer, this room has stood in limbo, a low-ceilinged area marking the end of the
Kunsthalle’s lower storey following a chain of larger galleries, home to a few books and host to occasional
talks. The main galleries currently house a retrospective exhibition of the work of Yang Fudong stuffed full
of video, film and photography. Cescarco’s spare presentation is a welcome hiatus: as its title suggests, it
consists of a portrait, a story and an ending.
The portrait is A Printed Portrait of Julie Ault (2013), in which glimpses of recent material written and
published by Ault are visible behind the kind of a mount in which one might display a group of family
photographs. Judging by the texts Cesarco has assembled, Ault has been thinking recently about the legacy
of Group Material, the artist collective she co-founded; Sister Corita Kent; the use of archives; the
exhibition ‘Cultural Economies’, which she curated at the Drawing Center on the alternative art movement
in New York; and Felix Gonzales-Torres, fellow member of Group Material. Ault herself has been a
subject of recent, well-earned attention in the German-speaking world, given her involvement in last year’s
Documenta and the exhibition ‘Tell It To My Heart: Collected by Julie Ault’ at the Museum für
Gegenwartskunst in Basel. While nominally culled from her collection, this latter show forms another
portrait of Ault and her diverse career, as the works were largely given to her as presents by artists with
whom she collaborated. Cesarco himself is also represented in her collection, and his A Printed Portrait of
Julie Ault refers to Gonzales-Torres’s Untitled (Portrait of Julie Ault) (1991), a large work using words and
events supplied by Ault herself to document a moment in her life and practice.
Next to the portrait appears the story, or rather a pregnant moment within a narrative. The digitalized 16mm
film Shortly After Breakfast She Received The News (2013) is seven minutes long, but effectively consists
of one still image of a white tablecloth with crumbs and reading matter, abandoned after reception of the
news. Dust and the grain of the film demonstrate that time is passing, but events have moved away from
this setting.
The ending, to complete the show, is Index (An Orphan) (2012) – six sheets of photographic paper printed
with the index of an unwritten book whose entries such as ‘Allen, Woody’; ‘bike, little green’; ‘Bergson,
Henri’; ‘boredom’; ‘legacy’; ‘Oedipus’; ‘Wizard of Oz, The’; and ‘woes’ cover written works, films,
emotions, the anecdotal and famous figures.
Alejandro Cesarco, installation view, 2013
A small printed booklet containing an interview between the artist and Beatrix Ruf accompanies the show,
in which they muse on libraries, Jorge Luis Borges – of course – and portraits. As an opening gambit in the
discussion of what the Kunsthalle’s library could be, Cesarco’s works suggest literary possibilities: the
portrait immediately offers tangents that could be followed and is a starting point for the potential crossreferencing and exchange of ideas, albeit a privileged exchange for Cesarco as he knows the author. The
film confirms the cliché of images being better in your head, providing a catalyst for the imagination rather
than showing us the story. And the index, the latest in a series by the artist, uses references with which the
viewer can generate another multifaceted impression.
Cesarco’s version of a library is thus one open to collaboration and generous with his sources. But it is also
problematic, as problematic as the idea of the library itself today. The folded periodicals that lie on the
table in Cesarco’s film and the texts that surround us tell us that we’re amongst reading friends. Is this
enough? The sucker punch of Borges’s stories like ‘The Library of Babel’ was the way he harnessed the
notion of the unlimited potential of books and libraries, but now that the very mention of Borges operates
as shorthand with which to piggyback on that effect, are we not in danger of forgetting the concentration
and duration required for reading? Seen in isolation, these works are somewhat akin to lingering in an
antique bookshop to enjoy the smell of the leather binding and expecting to absorb knowledge by osmosis.
In the interview Ruf eventually concedes that this library will not be the library of the publications that
have been gathered and generated by shows in the Kunsthalle, but a space for a taster of it. The main
archive will be elsewhere; the open library will be ‘the communal space or living room’ for browsing. In
light of this, Cesarco’s work becomes interesting in terms of the attention given to what one sees in a
gallery context – reading versus looking. But even if he generates books without the legwork of writing (as
in his Indexes), libraries are hard work, whether they are places for research or for the discussions that
research could trigger. Right now, given our shortening attention spans and access to so much information
online, libraries are both essential and impossible. Cesarco – or Ruf, as curator – provides a whiff of a
library fetish, but not a solution to the library problem.
Aoife Rosenmeyer
SEPTEMBER2010
Mousse 25 ~ Alejandro Cesarco
tion as a practice of reading. And by reading, I mean to include the network
of relations that every text presents and, again, to understand how meaning is
possible and by what means. I am referring to the conditions that make the text
possible, as well as the consequences or effects that this text produces.
lf:I like this notion you suggest of reading as an act that opens up a network of different relations. It seems memory plays an essential role within
this network, even as a way of classifying meanings. In Zeide Isaac (2009),
your grandfather reads out a script you wrote for him that addresses the
philosophical meaning of remembering. It becomes clear from the first
words of the text that your grandfather was in a concentration camp during
the Second World War and has been engaged in figuring out a way to bear
witness to what he went through there, to struggle against oblivion and dissolution. The work explores the shift between history and memory, facts
and feelings. How did you handle this subject?
ac: Zeide Isaac is less a traditional documentation of a survivor bearing testimony, since it actually describes my grandfather’s experience only tangentially, and more of a way to explicitly address the possibilities, limitations and
responsibilities of testimony. What does it mean to testify? From what point
does one testify and for whom? As you mention, the script is about the role
of testimony in the psychological evolution of the witness and of the collective conscience. My grandfather, in this case, represents the embodiment of a
troubling conflation between personal and collective memory, attesting to the
past and to the continuing presence of the past in the present. Zeide Isaac addresses the evolution of testimony over time and cautions against the misuse of
“remembered facts” and their possible reduction to sound bites, especially now
that most direct witnesses to the Holocaust are slowly dying off. This layering
of narrative voices and the passage of time between the event and its retelling,
from first-hand experience to the third generation, is allegorically implied in my
grandfather’s passage from witness to actor.
lf:In this work, the text read by the voice-over plays a seminal role as
a way to shape and convey a discourse. I would like to know more about
how you see the notion of text, which comes up in different ways and with
different implications throughout your practice. For instance, you seem to
use it to move in a subtle space between fiction and reality.
ac: I’m interested in the idea that the framing – that is to say, the context
and the reader’s own expectations of the text – are what ultimately constitute
the text itself. In other words, one text might differ from another, no so much
because of the text itself but the way in which it is read. And I’m interested in
this idea, both because it hints at defining a set of responsibilities for the reader
(or in this case, viewer) and because I think that at the core of these responsibilities is the definition of reading as a creative, generative act. Your question
also inevitably brings Roland Barthes to mind; as you know, he is often equated
with the pleasure of reading and the reader’s right to read idiosyncratically. All
of this leads me to the idea of translation, which seems to be a perfect metaphor
for the possibility of reading as writing. In fact, the idea of translation and the
notion of narrative, more precisely, the notion of a translated narrative, is a
recurrent concern in my work.
lf: This reminds me of the seven readers described by Italo Calvino
in the next-to-last chapter of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. Indeed,
each of those readers approach reading as a generative act defined by a
diverse set of subtle and nuanced expectations. Some years ago you also
did a piece inspired by that book, Untitled (Dante/Calvino) (2004). More
recently, in The Two Stories (2009) you have addressed the multifaceted
notion of reading.
ac: The first work that you mention consisted in ten different published
translations of the first canto of The Divine Comedy, each titled after a chapter
in Calvino’s book. The chosen translations spanned over a hundred years, so
they reflected not only differences in interpretation but changes in the language
itself. In short, the work addresses the impossibility of faithful repetition. In
The Two Stories, a story is being read out loud to an audience in a private family
room. What we hear, in voice-over, is actually not the story being told, but the
thoughts of the person reading the story; the instances of distraction, nervousness, etc. The camera follows the reader’s gaze as it goes from the text to the
different objects and people in the room. The work presents an environment or
mood where meaning is created. It is, in a way, a “shy” work of art, in the sense
that it directly addresses the discomforts of its own presentation. The narrative
takes as its starting place a text by Felisberto Hernández, a Uruguayan author
from the first half of the 20th century. The point of view of re-reading this text
is to self-consciously look at the text as text – a very modernist trope. The work
seems to be asking how the text carries its significance, how autonomous it is
of its reader, and in keeping with the slightly
surrealist tone of the original, how the text
understands itself. How does it articulate
new relations? And to turn the table around
a bit, isn’t your work as a curator and critic
also primarily centered on questions of reading, storytelling, and forms of appropriation? Perhaps this is a fundamental and unanswerable question, but what do
you think constitutes the differences, or the need to differentiate, between our
activities?
lf: Curating, as you suggest, is a system of coexistence between reading,
storytelling and appropriation. I think this coexistence of diverse elements
and centers generates a hermeneutic of curating, which consists more in
accompanying meanings than producing them. I see curating more as a
mode of understanding, coming always and only after the artist’s activity.
But I’d like to ask you now what the seminal references have been in your
investigation focused on the role of the text. Everness (2008) seems to be
another clue in this regard. The central part of it is a remake of the last
scene in Joyce ’s short story “The Dead”, from Dubliners. Literature and its
theory seem to be the strongest influence in your practice.
ac: I should point out that I am not academically trained in either literature or theory, so all my readings are in fact made from
the position of an amateur. A position that
abounds in insecurity and indeterminacies.
But does this address your question? In regard to Everness, it is a film comprised of five
chapters: a remake of the very last scene of “The Dead”, a monologue on the
meaning of Tragedy, a breakfast scene, and two songs: one from the Spanish
Civil War and another from Brazil’s Tropicalista movement. The work is about
first love and the loss of innocence, and relates them to notions of classic literary tragedy. As you say, the work primarily centers on an emotionally handicapped couple at the moment when their inability to access their own passions
is articulated through language. The work also attempts to address how one can
continue after admitting this. That is, how does one go on after admitting one ’s
inability to match a previous intensity, how does one continue with oneself after
admitting such defeat?
lf: You are the director of Art Resources Transfer, a publishing house
engaged in publishing a series of artists’ conversations. It seems to be almost an intersection of art and literature, as well as a concrete, book-based
realization of some of your thoughts about the notion of text, a temporary
landing place for your indeterminacies as a reader. Do you keep a clear line
of separation between this project and your independent work, or, as I assume, do you consider it a part of your practice?
ac: The conversation series “Between
Artists” has been a wonderful opportunity to
somehow eavesdrop on a specific chapter in
the oral history of art. The series is set up in
a way where I invite an artist and they select
the person to have a conversation with. In
this way, I delegate my curatorial responsibility somewhat and try to keep the series from being merely a reflection of
my own interests. But in fact, the series often times ends up being a three-way
form of collaboration. The series considers artist-to-artist conversations to be
an interesting point of intersection for art criticism, art history and personal
histories of contemporary practice. I do consider the books to be an extension
of my practice, and though I think for some people this adds a different layer
of context and meaning, the books are intended to stand on their own and refer
more to the two other participating artists.
lf:Another interesting book project you realized is Dedications (2003),
a book collecting all the dedication-pages from your personal library. It
reveals the authors’ thoughts and affection for mentors, friends and lovers.
You have described this work as a definition of audience. I am interested in
this, since it reminds me of what you were saying before about the notion
of text as something constituted by framing and context.
ac: I think of the Dedications book as both a definition of audience and as
a compilation of affection. Again, I think that what every book presents is
an axis of relationships. The dedication page somehow indicates the author’s
intended first reader, or ideal reader, thus justifying why and for whom the
work was made.
135
Alejandro Cesarco's apartment
in Brooklyn, New York.
Top – Everness, 2008.
Courtesy: Murray Guy, New York.
Fade Out, 2002. Courtesy: the artist
and Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin.
Mousse 25 ~ Alejandro Cesarco
D I Lu i g i Fa s s i
Incentrato su lettura e narrazione, il lavoro di Alejandro
Cesarco indaga il concetto filosofico di testo, e il modo
in cui un testo veicola il proprio significato e la propria
autonomia. L’artista newyorchese s’interessa al network
di relazioni che s’instaurano tra un’opera e il suo fruitore,
tentando di definire le responsabilità insite nell’atto stesso
dell’interpretazione. Parlando dello spazio di libertà del
lettore e di come tale spazio si sposti nel testo, Cesarco
tocca memoria e perdita, indaga il significato della tragedia
classica e le possibilità creative della traduzione.
luigi fassi: Mi affascina il principio di classificazione che attraversa la tua pratica artistica. Sembra un principio logico, che utilizzi in modo
molto personale, quasi intimo. Penso, per esempio, a “Index”, una serie di
opere che fornisce citazioni, fonti e nomi che fanno riferimento a numeri di
pagina specifici di libri che in realtà non esistono. In che modo hai sviluppato questo interesse?
alejandro cesarco: Per quanto riguarda la classificazione come metodologia operativa, credo che riguardi il fascino per i modi in cui il significato
è costituito e percepito, cioè per come un sistema organizzativo costruisce e
sviluppa una narrazione. Per esempio, nell’opera “Index” da te citata, mi servo
di riferimenti autobiografici e intellettuali per mettere in scena un testo che è
sempre oggetto di allusioni ma mai esplicitato. Uso almeno due sistemi di classificazione e li mescolo l’uno con l’altro. Le opere sull’indice pongono in primo
piano la classificazione stessa: i suoi limiti, le sue incoerenze e la sua natura
soggettiva. In effetti, non si ha mai l’impressione che a operare sia un unico
sistema di classificazione. Non mi riferisco solo alla classificazione che avviene
nel momento in cui l’opera è prodotta, ma anche – cosa forse più importante –
ai sistemi impegnati nella sua decodifica. Le differenze tra leggere e guardare,
i riferimenti alla cultura e alle tecnologie del libro, la svolta linguistica che avviene all’interno del concettualismo storico e i differenti insiemi di aspettative e
responsabilità determinati dai loro rispettivi usi. Come vedi, continuo a girare
intorno a questioni che riguardano l’atto della lettura. È questo che m’interessa,
continuare a occuparmi dell’atto della produzione come pratica di lettura. E
quando parlo di lettura intendo anche la rete di relazioni che ogni testo propone
e, ancora, la comprensione di come sia possibile il significato e di quali mezzi
esso si serva per significare. Mi riferisco alle condizioni che rendono possibile il
testo e alle conseguenze o agli effetti che questo testo produce.
lf: Mi piace la nozione da te proposta di lettura come atto che apre la
strada a una rete di rapporti diversi. Sembra che il ricordo ricopra un ruolo
essenziale in questa rete, anche come forma di classificazione dei significati.
In Zeide Isaac (2009), tuo nonno legge un testo che hai scritto per lui e che
tratta del significato filosofico dell’atto di ricordare. Nel testo appare chiaro,
fin dalle prime parole, che tuo nonno è stato in un campo di concentramento,
durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale, e si è impegnato nel cercare un modo
per testimoniare quello che aveva vissuto in quel luogo, per combattere contro l’oblio e la dissoluzione. Le opere si occupano di questo slittamento tra
Storia e memoria, tra fatti e sentimenti. Come hai trattato questo argomento?
ac: Zeide Isaac non è, in realtà, il tradizionale documento di un sopravvissuto che porta la propria testimonianza. L’opera racconta solo tangenzialmente
l’esperienza di mio nonno e lo fa più per discutere le possibilità, i limiti e le re-
138
This column – Zeide
Isaac, 2009.
Courtesy: Murray Guy,
New York.
Opposite – Index (a
reading), 2007-08.
Courtesy: Murray Guy,
New York.
Mousse 25 ~ Alejandro Cesarco
sponsabilità della testimonianza. Che cosa significa testimoniare? Da dove e per
chi si testimonia? Come hai detto, il copione parla del ruolo della testimonianza
nell’evoluzione psicologica del testimone e della coscienza collettiva. Mio nonno in questo caso rappresenta l’incarnazione di una fusione problematica tra
memoria personale e memoria collettiva, che attesta il passato e la sua presenza
continuativa nel presente. Zeide Isaac tratta dell’evoluzione della testimonianza
nel tempo e ci mette in guardia sugli usi scorretti dei “fatti ricordati” e sulla loro
possibile riduzione a spezzoni sonori, in particolare adesso che i testimoni diretti dell’Olocausto stanno lentamente morendo tutti. Questa stratificazione di
voci narrative e il lasso di tempo tra l’evento e il momento in cui viene rinarrato,
tra l’esperienza di prima mano e la terza generazione, sono allegoricamente rappresentati dalla trasformazione di mio nonno da testimone in attore.
lf:In quest’opera il testo letto dalla voce fuori campo gioca un ruolo
essenziale nel dar forma e nel veicolare un discorso. Vorrei che mi dicessi
qualcosa di più sulla tua concezione di testo, che è presente, in forme diverse e con implicazioni diverse, in tutta la tua pratica artistica. Per esempio, pare che tu te ne serva per muoverti nello spazio ristretto
che separa la finzione e la realtà.
ac: M’interessa l’idea che la cornice – cioè il contesto e le aspettative del lettore riguardo al testo – sia ciò che in definitiva costituisce il testo stesso. In altre parole, è possibile che un testo differisca
da un altro meno per il testo in sé che per il modo in cui è letto. E
quest’idea m'interessa sia perché suggerisce la necessità di definire un insieme di responsabilità per il lettore (o, in questo caso, lo
spettatore) sia perché penso che al centro di tali responsabilità vi
sia la definizione della lettura come atto creativo, generativo. La
tua domanda, inoltre, richiama inevitabilmente alla mente Roland
Barthes. Come ben sai, egli viene spesso messo in rapporto con il
piacere della lettura e il diritto del lettore a una lettura idiosincratica. Tutto ciò mi porta all’idea di traduzione, che sembra essere una
metafora perfetta per la possibilità della lettura come scrittura. In
effetti, l’idea di traduzione e la nozione di narrazione – più precisamente la nozione di una narrazione tradotta – sono temi ricorrenti
nel mio lavoro.
consiste più nell’accompagnare i significati che nel produrli. Vedo l’attività
del curatore più come una modalità di comprensione che viene sempre e
solamente dopo l’attività dell’artista. Ma adesso mi piacerebbe chiederti
quali sono stati i riferimenti più importanti per te nella tua indagine sul ruolo del testo. Everness (2008) sembra offrirci un altro indizio a tale riguardo.
La parte centrale di quest’opera è un remake dell’ultima scena de “I morti”
di Joyce, una novella tratta da Gente di Dublino. La letteratura e la sua teoria
sembrano essere l’influenza più importante nella tua attività artistica.
ac: Devo precisare che non ho ricevuto una formazione accademica né in letteratura né nella sua teoria, per cui tutte le mie letture sono fatte a partire dalla
posizione del dilettante. Un luogo che abbonda di insicurezze e indeterminazioni. Ma con questo ho risposto alla tua domanda? Per quanto riguarda Everness,
si tratta di un film diviso in cinque capitoli: un remake dell’ultimissima scena de
“I morti”, un monologo sul significato di tragedia, la scena di una colazione e
due canzoni: una della guerra civile spagnola e una del movimento tropicalista
brasiliano. L’opera parla di un primo amore e della perdita dell’innocenza e li
mette in rapporto con le varie
nozioni di tragedia letteraria
classica. Come dici tu, l’opera
è incentrata principalmente su
una coppia con difficoltà a livello emozionale, ritratta nel
momento in cui l’incapacità
dei due di accedere alle loro
passioni è espressa attraverso il
linguaggio. Il lavoro cerca anche di discutere il modo in cui
è possibile continuare dopo una
simile ammissione. Cioè, come
si va avanti dopo aver ammesso
la propria incapacità di essere
all’altezza di un’intensità precedente? Come si può continuare
dopo aver ammesso una simile
sconfitta?
lf: Questo mi ricorda i sette lettori descritti da Italo Calvino
nel penultimo capitolo di Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore.
Infatti ciascuno di quei lettori si accosta alla lettura come atto
generativo definito da un insieme variegato di aspettative sottili e ricche di sfumature. Alcuni anni fa anche tu hai realizzato un’opera ispirata a quel libro, Untitled (Dante/Calvino)
(2004). Più recentemente è in The Two Stories (2009) che hai affrontato la
nozione di lettura e del suo carattere multisfaccettato.
ac: La prima opera da te citata consisteva in dieci diverse edizioni tradotte
del primo canto della Divina Commedia, ciascuna recante per titolo quello di
un capitolo del libro di Calvino. Le traduzioni scelte coprivano un lasso temporale di un secolo, perciò riflettevano non solo differenze interpretative, ma
anche cambiamenti nella lingua stessa. In breve, l’opera tratta dell’impossibilità di una ripetizione fedele. In The Two Stories, una storia viene letta ad alta
voce a un pubblico in un ambiente domestico, familiare. Quella che sentiamo,
attraverso la voce fuori campo, in realtà non è la storia narrata, ma sono i pensieri della persona che legge la storia; questioni che riguardano la distrazione,
il nervosismo, ecc. La macchina da presa segue lo sguardo del lettore mentre si
sposta dal testo ai diversi oggetti e alle persone presenti nella stanza. L’opera
presenta un ambiente o uno stato d’animo nel contesto del quale viene creato il
significato. È, in un certo qual modo, un’opera d’arte “timida”, nel senso che si
occupa direttamente dei disagi legati alla propria presentazione. La narrazione
prende come proprio punto di partenza un testo di Felisberto Hernández, un
autore uruguaiano della prima metà del Novecento. La prospettiva implicata
nella rilettura di questo scritto è quella di una visione consapevole del testo in
quanto testo – un tropo decisamente modernista. L’opera sembra chiedersi in
che modo il testo veicoli i propri significati, quanta autonomia abbia rispetto
al lettore e, in sintonia con il tono vagamente surrealista dell’originale, in che
modo comprenda se stesso e articoli i nuovi rapporti. E, per rovesciare un momento le posizioni, il tuo lavoro come curatore e come critico non è anch’esso
incentrato principalmente su questioni relative alla lettura, al racconto e a forme di appropriazione? Forse è una domanda fondamentale e priva di risposta,
ma da che cosa pensi siano costituite le differenze – o la necessità di individuare
delle differenze – tra le nostre attività?
lf: L’attività curatoriale, come da te suggerito, è un sistema in cui coesistono lettura, racconto e appropriazione. Penso che questa coesistenza di
diversi elementi e centri generi un’ermeneutica dell’attività curatoriale, che
lf:Sei il direttore di Art
Resources Transfer, una casa
editrice impegnata nella pubblicazione di una serie di conversazioni tra artisti. Sembra
quasi un’intersezione tra arte e
letteratura ed è anche una realizzazione concreta, in forma di libro, di alcune tue idee sul concetto di testo, un punto di approdo temporaneo per le
tue indeterminazioni come lettore. Mantieni una linea di separazione netta
tra questo progetto e le tue opere indipendenti, o, come suppongo, consideri questa attività una parte della tua pratica di artista?
ac: La serie di conversazioni “Between Artists” è stata una splendida opportunità per ascoltare, in un certo senso di nascosto, un capitolo specifico della
storia orale dell’arte. La serie è organizzata in modo tale che sono io a invitare
un artista e lui (o lei) sceglie con chi conversare. Così, in un certo modo, delego
la mia responsabilità curatoriale e prendo le distanze, cercando di fare in modo
che la serie stessa non sia un semplice riflesso dei miei interessi. Ma, in effetti,
essa finisce molto spesso per diventare una forma di collaborazione a tre. La
conversazione tra due artisti è vista come un interessante luogo d’intersezione
per la critica e la storia dell’arte e per storie personali di pratiche artistiche contemporanee. Considero questi libri un’estensione del mio lavoro. Però, sebbene
pensi che ciò aggiunga uno strato ulteriore, in termini di significato e di contesto, i libri sono pensati per essere autonomi e si rapportano in misura maggiore
agli altri due artisti partecipanti.
lf:Un altro interessante progetto di libro da te realizzato è Dedications
(2003) un volume che raccoglie tutte le pagine con dediche della tua biblioteca personale. Esso rivela i pensieri e l’attaccamento degli autori a mentori, amici e amanti. Hai descritto quest’opera come una definizione di pubblico. M’interessa questa affermazione; mi ricorda quel che dicevi prima a
proposito della nozione di testo come qualcosa che è costituito dalla cornice
e dal contesto.
ac: Per me il libro Dedications è sia una definizione di pubblico sia una raccolta di affetti. Di nuovo, ritengo che ciò che ogni libro ci propone sia un asse
di rapporti. Le pagine con le dediche, in un certo senso, indicano quali fossero i
primi lettori, o i lettori ideali, a cui pensavano gli autori, giustificando in questo
modo perché e per chi l’opera veniva creata.
139
revieWs
Alighiero Boetti’s Mappa (Map, 1971), the
first of his series of geopolitical wall-carpets,
which he produced in Afghanistan. In the
Rotunda, there was Goshka Macuga’s Of what
is, that it is; of what is not, that it is not 1
(2012), a 5-by-17 metre tapestry with a photorealist Kabul-motif, as well as the communist
Hannah Ryggen’s tapestry series, including
the ‘Antifa’ wall carpet Etiopia (1935), which
was created in reaction to news reports about
the invasion of north-east Africa by Mussolini’s
army. This work, with its earth-brown tones,
impressive narrative and arte povera aesthetic,
had an immediate visual appeal. From these
examples, one might conclude that carpets
can weave nearly anything to everything else:
historicity, current affairs and politics, art and
crafts, far off places, art value and use value,
ornament and figuration.
The reason that carpets never really disappeared may be due to the versatility of their
materials and the ‘hand-made technology’
behind their production. But their meaning
has fundamentally changed: from craft to
mass-produced decoration to art. The triumphal expansion of the carpet across the floors
of Western homes revealed patterns of cultural appropriation, Orientalism being the
most prominent and early example. In the
living room, this ultimate piece of nomadic
furniture became a symbol of success. As art
works, such symbolic meanings can shift
once again; take Rosemarie Trockel’s carpets,
which thematize gender difference and women’s labour in the domestic realm. But carpets
can become boring when they are used liberally just to fill up a big space for a temporary
exhibition. Lately, some artists have proved
themselves to be major purveyors of flooras-wall coverings: Ai Weiwei in Munich’s Haus
der Kunst (So Sorry, 2009), Rudolf Stingel
in Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie (Live, 2010),
or J. Mayer H. in the Berlinische Galerie
(Rapport, 2011).
WINTER 2012
Carpets are
are also
also aa must
must for
for curators
curators with
with
some kind of transcultural
transcultural agenda.
agenda. Nothing
Nothing
works better as
as aa leverage
leverage against
against Eurocentric
Eurocentric
certainties than
than textiles
textiles that
that are
are familiar
familiar to
to
the public and at
at the
the same
same time
time full
full of
of traces
traces
of the Other. What
What else
else could
could be
be conveyed
conveyed –
–
apart from a familiarity
familiarity and
and foreignness
foreignness –
– by
by
the haptic installations
installations of
of the
the art
art collective
collective
Slavs and Tatars:
Tatars: whether
whether the
the simply
simply folded
folded
carpet in PrayWay
PrayWay (2012)
(2012) or
or the
the layers
layers and
and
layers of rugs on
on aa wall
wall in
in the
the exhibition
exhibition Project
Project
98: Slavs & Tatars
Tatars (2012)
(2012) at
at New
New York’s
York’s MoMA?
MoMA?
You don’t have
have to
to be
be clairvoyant
clairvoyant to
to predict
predict
that we will be
be seeing
seeing aa lot
lot more
more of
of such
such
culturally informed
informed carpets
carpets in
in the
the near
near future.
future.
The days are
are long
long gone
gone when
when it
it was
was still
still
possible to beat
beat some
some aesthetic
aesthetic value
value out
out of
of
the West German
German drive
drive to
to decorate
decorate wall-to-wall.
wall-to-wall.
This everyday,
everyday, tendentiously
tendentiously petty
petty bourgeois
bourgeois
core made the art
art carpets
carpets of
of yesteryear
yesteryear so
so
attractive; think
think of
of works
works by
by the
the likes
likes of
of
Dieter Roth and
and Ingrid
Ingrid Wiener,
Wiener, Albert
Albert Oehlen,
Oehlen,
Martin Kippenberger
Kippenberger or
or Thomas
Thomas Bayrle
Bayrle (a
(a
trained weaver
weaver and
and dyer).
dyer). The
The group
group show
show
Mehr Teppich // More
More Carpets
Carpets in
in 2010
2010 at
at Berlin’s
Berlin’s
Isabella Bortolozzi
Bortolozzi gallery
gallery offered
offered aa curated
curated
historical overview:
overview: from
from Carol
Carol Rama’s
Rama’s minimal
minimal
Tovaglia (Tablecloth,
(Tablecloth, 1951)
1951) to
to Sergej
Sergej Jensen’s
Jensen’s
readymade from
from IKEA,
IKEA, Untitled
Untitled (2004).
(2004).
Yet today’s
today’s tapestries
tapestries are
are more
more likely
likely
to come from another
another type
type of
of source:
source: digital
digital
photographs. Their
Their pixels
pixels can
can be
be not
not only
only
translated into
into weave
weave and
and warp
warp but
but also
also
enlarged, far beyond
beyond the
the standard
standard sizes
sizes for
for
photographic paper.
paper. The
The Belgian
Belgian company
company
Flanders Tapestries
Tapestries is
is turning
turning artists’
artists’ photophotographs into super-sized
super-sized tapestries
tapestries –
– an
an
example being
being Craigie
Craigie Horsfield’s
Horsfield’s Kunsthalle
Kunsthalle
Basel show last
last summer
summer Slow
Slow Time
Time and
and the
the
Present, which
which featured
featured wall
wall hangings
hangings made
made
from photographs,
photographs, including
including the
the ruins
ruins of
of
9/11 or a rhino
rhino in
in hay.
hay. Thanks
Thanks to
to digitization,
digitization,
every carpet can
can begin
begin in
in the
the camera
camera lens.
lens.
Translated by Dominic
Dominic Eichler
Eichler
17
17
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112222
29.10.12
29.10.12 11:57
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revieWs
17
Alejandro Cesarco
Methodology
2011
Film still
18
Alejandro Cesarco
Fragile Images That Keep
Producing Death While
Attempting To Preserve Life:
Flowers found in
crimes scenes_003, 2011
71 × 53 cm
18
Schwarzweißfotos, die in starken Ausschnittvergrößerungen laut Titel „an Tatorten
gefundene Blumen“ zeigen (Fragile Images
That Keep Producing Death While Attempting
to Preserve Life: Flowers Found in Crimes
Scenes, 2011) und zwei „Fußnoten“ (Footnote
#4 und Footnote #19, 2011), die als Wandtexte
einen Satz aus Alfred Hitchcocks Film Vertigo
(1958) und eine Passage aus André Bazins
Qu’est-ce que le cinéma? (1958–62; Was ist Film?,
1971) zitieren, findet sich die Dia-Installation
The Reader (Der Leser, 2011). Über projizierte
Texttafeln und eine synchronisierte Tonspur
gibt diese englischsprachige Exzerpte aus
Detektivgeschichten und theoretische Reflexionen über das Genre wieder. Analogien
werden gezogen zwischen Detektiv und
Leser: „Das Genre der Detektivgeschichte
verhandelt Geschichten des Schreibens und
Lesens insofern als diese das Hervorbringen
(Delikt) und Entschlüsseln (Ermittlung)
eines Plots betreffen“ ist in konzeptualistischer
Manier – weißer Schrift auf schwarzem
Grund – zu lesen.
Was sich für die Museumsbesucher wie
eine konzeptualistische Erörterung über
das Produzieren und Betrachten von Kunst
ausnimmt, besitzt dabei eine feine Ironie:
Die vermeintliche Konzeptkunst-Schrift
changiert zuweilen ins Rosa oder Hellblau
und es ist ausgerechnet Lawrence Weiners
Stimme, die die Projektion aus dem Off
begleitet. Das wirkt hier weniger wie eine
auktoriale oder patriarchale Anrufung als
vielmehr wie eine augenzwinkernde Selbstverortung des jungen Künstlers. Wenn er
Weiner lesen lässt, dass „ein Brief eintrifft,
ein Brief, über den gesprochen, der aber nie
gezeigt wird“, spielt er damit auch auf seine
F r i e Z e d /e n O . 7
136-157_Back_Reviews.indd 123
Winter 2012
Methodology an. Als ein Reigen aus Querverweisen schließt sich der Kreis um den
Betrachter. Doch während dieser versucht
die Zusammenhänge zu entschlüsseln,
spinnt Cesarco seine Geschichte nur scheinbar nach den Regeln der Detektivgeschichtenkunst. In einem kleinen, als Multiple ausliegenden Heft, das diese Regeln auflistet,
kommentiert der Künstler auf der letzten
Seite: „Regeln sind dazu da, gebrochen
zu werden.“
Alejandro Cesarco’s first museum exhibition
in Austria wove together a tight web of associations. This web included the tradition of
Conceptual art – a tradition which Cesarco
clearly understands and posits himself as heir
– along with the literary genres of the detective story and epistolary exchange. Through
this wealth of references, he addressed questions of authorship and re-enactment as
well as the relationship between the producer
and the viewer.
A video and slide installation in the exhibition space looked like an experiment since
the projectors and projection screens were all
attached to tripods, recalling cameras. The
surrounding walls featured texts and framed
photographs so that Cesarco’s presentation
appeared as one hermetically sealed work.
The video, with the programmatic title
Methodology (2011), captures a discussion
between a man and a woman speaking in
Spanish. Sitting in front of a bookshelf, they
talk about various love letters: not only those
they have written to each other, including
one that was obviously part of an exhibition,
but also two fictional letters kept hidden in a
desk by the narrator in the late Uruguayan
author Juan Carlos Onetti’s novel Los Adioses
(1954; Farewells, 1992).
The man and the woman pose questions
about what is said, what is left unsaid and
how a story unravels in the blind spots.
But their dialogue also works like a metareflection about themselves. For instance,
the woman says: ‘And again the conversation
about love becomes a conversation about
writing.’ This moment refers explicitly to
Onetti and the Uruguayan poetess Idea
Vilariño, who dedicated publications to each
other; covers of their books accompany
Cesarco’s video in his photographic diptych
The Gift and The Retribution (2011).
Cesarco stages allusions, omissions and
the obscure. Methodology is constantly interrupted by short sequences of black, empty
screen. In the video, one of his protagonists
admits blatantly: ‘Then again, in that staging
which is so artificial, so planned, it’s absolutely necessary that the concealment be
seen. In the sense of: “know that I am concealing something from you.“’ In these words,
one might well hear an echo of Adorno’s
belief: ‘that art works say something and in
the same breath conceal it.’
The Enigma series – in which the detective story genre plays a central role – ponders
the ‘enigmatic’ nature of art as outlined by
Adorno in Ästhetische Theorie (1970; Aesthetic
Theory, 1984). The slide installation The
Reader (2011) could be found between black
and white photographs, which, according to
their titles, depict ‘flowers found at a crime
scene’ in enlarged, cropped close-ups (Fragile
Images That Keep Producing Death While
Attempting to Preserve Life: Flowers Found in
Crimes Scenes, 2011). There were also two
wall text ‘footnotes’ (Footnote #4 and Footnote
#19, both 2011), which cite, respectively, a
passage from Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and
one from André Bazin’s Qu’est-ce que le
cinéma? (1958–62; What is Cinema?, 1967–
71). This work offered, via projected text and
a synchronized soundtrack, excerpts from
detective stories and theoretic reflections in
English instead of Spanish. Analogies drawn
between the detective and the reader were
left open: ‘The detective genre is concerned
with stories of writing and reading insofar
as they are concerned with authoring
(crime) and deciphering plots (investigation).’
What might have looked to viewers like
a discussion about making and looking at art
was marked by subtle irony. The projected
texts – in a simple, clear typeface, occasionally changing colour from pink to light
blue – were read by none other than Lawrence
Weiner. With this collaboration, the artist
seemed to be knowingly positioning himself
more than invoking an authorial or patriarchal
challenge.
As Weiner reads Cesarco’s script –
‘A letter arrives. A letter is talked about but
never shown’ – he is referring to Cesarco’s
Methodology. Like a dance of cross-references,
the circle closes around the viewer. As they
attempt to decode the connections, Cesarco
weaves his story, only loosely following the
rules of a detective story. He lays out his
approach in a small publication, which ends
with a telling remark: ‘Rules were meant to
be broken’.
Translated by Dominic Eichler
123
29.10.12 11:57