walking guide [ PDF, 2,81 MB]

ENGLISH
MIKA ROTTENBERG
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Exceptional women, such as the strapping Heather Foster, the sizeable Queen Raqui
(‘Her body utterly amazing, her agility astounding’), and the super tall erotic model
Bunny Glamazone, become absurd characters in the colourful films of the artist Mika
Rottenberg (°1974) – striking women who use their bodies as production machines.
Rottenberg shows working processes in which physical waste materials such as sweat,
blood, hair, nails or tears sometimes combined with salad or make-up to produce new
products in loops consisting of series of rather enigmatic scenes.
It’s said that Rottenberg, who was born in Buenos Aires, grew up in Tel Aviv and now
lives in New York, makes ‘seriously political art that is preposterously funny’. After all,
with her almost surrealist films, Rottenberg comments on existing ideas about female
self-determination, the idealisation of the body in the media and advertising world, and
the position of workers in a globalised, capitalist economy. She makes us think about
the ways in which value is created. In this the starting point is often the miraculous
nature of reality. The artist said: ‘I see a lot of magic in so many mundane moments’.
Rottenberg is a visual storyteller. Her humorous, candy-coloured films, look like a sort
of cross-over between fairytales and advertising films. She presents her films in complex
installations which consist partly of her film sets. They can be experienced as ‘viewing
machines’, and ensure that the viewer also has a physical relationship with the work.
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MUSEUMDAK
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CINEMATOGRAPHY Mahyad Tousi SOUND DESIGN Tina Hardin, Pomann SOUND / SPECIAL EFFECTS & INSTALLATION Katrin
Altekamp, Edo Born, Deville Cohen SPECIAL THANKS TO Robby Williams’ Flying W Air Ranch petting zoo & airport VIDEO STILL
FROM Cheese, 2008 | Multi-channel video installation | Dimensions variable | Julia Stoschek Foundation, e.V., Düsseldorf
This video’s plot is loosely based on the “Rapunzel” fairytale by the brothers Grimm
and the seven singing Sutherland Sisters. In the nineteenth century the daughters of
Fletcher Sutherland toured through the US with a live show and sold a product for
hair growth developed by their father. This film shows magical women in an isolated
farm, far from the modern world, who are able to grow things from their bodies (in this
case, hair) in order to make a living. The wooden hut-like installation is made from the
remains of the self-built farm where the film was made. In doing so, the world which
can be seen on the screens is repeated in the space where the viewer is at that moment.
With “Cheese” Rottenberg caused a furore at the Whitney Biennale in 2008.
CHEESE, 2008 | GALLERY 17
CINEMATOGRAPHY Mahyad Tousi SOUND DESIGN Tina Hardin, Pomann Sound INSTALLATION VIEW FROM Fried Sweat, 2008 |
Single channel video installation | Duration: 2 min. | Edition 1 of 5 | Pasquale Leccese Collection, Milan | Courtesy Le Case D’Arte
Through a peephole on the left-hand side of the chimney, the video “Fried Sweat”
becomes visible. It was recorded in the Pocono Resort in America (‘kind of like a
glorified McDonald’s’), in a kitsch hotel room which enjoys a certain reputation
because of the two-meter tall cocktail glass full of champagne. Sometimes reality is
absurd enough to serve as the décor in Rottenbergs videos. Although they have a
fairytale character, Rottenbergs films seldom have a conclusion, a moral or a happy
end. They are sketches or loops in which sometimes carnivalesque, but always very
singular figures are involved in almost alchemical processes. The figures here include
a sweaty bodybuilder whose physical appearance gradually disintegrates and dissolves
into pure energy.
FRIED SWEAT, 2008 | GALLERY 16
CINEMATOGRAPHY Aaron Young SOUND DESIGN Paul Ruest VIDEO STILLS FROM Tropical Breeze, 2004 | Single channel video
installation | Duration: 3:45 min. | Dimensions variable | Edition 4 of 5 | Pasquale Leccese Collection, Milan | Courtesy Le Case D’Arte
“Tropical Breeze” is an early work by Rottenberg which shows her interest in how
pronounced physical characteristics – extreme height, bunched-up muscles or obesity
– can serve as a means for self-determination. When Rottenberg made this film she was
fascinated by Karl Marx’s economic theories in “Das Kapital”. To put it simply, people
use time, a part of their lives, to make a product. Therefore the sale of industrial products
means that a part of the lives of the workers is also being sold. In a sense this is also the
case for the main character in this video: Heather Foster, a professional bodybuilder with
impressive biceps.
It’s a warm summer’s day. ‘Tropical Breeze Lemon Scented Moist Tissues’ are made of
tissues of her sweat with the help of agile toes of the willowy dancer, Felicia Ballos. These
tissues are for sale on eBay ‘in real life’. The way in which the machine is simply run with
the use of physical effort can be seen as a parody of completely computerised factories.
The body movements of the women and their consumption – energy drinks and chewing
gum – are essential ingredients for the end product. By presenting the female body as a
source of raw materials, Rottenberg shows that they are in control of their welfare and
well-being. They are self-sufficient and independent.
Rottenbergs films are often analysed from feminist or Marxist perspectives. However,
the artist points out that her works are not academic treatises or ideological statements:
‘It is true that I was totally into “Das Kapital” when making “Tropical Breeze” and it’s
been in the background of most of my videos ever since, but the “Communist Manifesto”
by Marx has never interested me in relation to my work. What fascinates me is Marx’s
theory of labour and value, but in a poetic sense, not in a political sense. If you simplify
it: people use their vitality in order to make products; therefore every product contains
part of the lives of the various people that were involved in making it. I like the idea of
measuring the value of something not by its ‘use value’ but by the processes that were
invested in its making – the amount of ‘life’ that was put into it.’
TROPICAL BREEZE, 2004 | GALLERY 15
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Cheese, Squeeze and Tropical Breeze.Videowork 2003-2010
JULIE
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M • L. VANDERKELENSTRAAT 28, 3000 LEUVEN • T +32 16 27 29 29 • WWW.MLEUVEN.BE
IN COOPERATION WITH: De Appel in Amsterdam and Nottingham Contemporary
COORDINATION: Tine D’haeyere and Tom Van Camp
GRAPHIC DESIGN: Daneel Bogaerts
CURATOR: Eva Wittocx
Authors: Linda Williams, Hsuan L. Hsu, Efrat Mishori, Mika Rottenberg, Ann Demeester, Heather Foster, Raqui and Leona
Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co.| 204 colour pages| € 25 at the M-shop
Recently the first comprehensive book on Mika Rottenbergs oeuvre was published, in partnership with De Appel, Amsterdam, Nicole
Klagsbrun Gallery, New York and M – Museum Leuven.
PUBLICATION
VIDEO STILL FROM 5 Second Party, 2006 | Single channel video | Duration: 0:26 min. | Courtesy of the artist
This video shows Queen Raqui, a 600-lbs fetish worker (a ‘squasher’) posing in
different scenarios in a hotel room.Rottenberg looks into the different shapes and
forms of gravity, while she, herself, continually defies them, using balloons, the
woman’s massive hair, the watering of the plants or the man getting squashed into
the sofa.
5 SECOND PARTY, 2006 | ANTICHAMBRE
VIDEO STILL FROM Time and a Half, 2003 | Single channel video | Duration: 3:40 min. | Edition 5 of 5 | Courtesy of Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery
“Time and a Half ”, which progresses from extended slow-motion close-ups of
fingernails tapping a countertop to longer shots of a long-haired Guamanian woman
and the Chinese restaurant where she is employed, features a form of immaterial labour
that consists primarily in waiting. In a subtle visual pun on the etymology of ‘ manual
labour’ and the conventional designation of labourers as ‘hands’, Rottenberg presents
close-ups of a hand that is not making anything at all. Although the camera in Time and
a Half pans across a lush landscape filled with exotic buildings, a longer shot reveals
that this is merely a decorative picture of an Asian landscape; likewise, the wind that
blows the woman’s hair is generated by a fan, not by the weather. The work’s title — an
allusion to overtime pay — enhances our sense of the woman’s boredom: perhaps no
one is coming into the restaurant because it is a holiday, or perhaps she is tired from
having already completed a full shift…
TIME AND A HALF, 2003 | GALLERY 5 (COLLECTION)
VIDEO STILL FROM Julie, 2003 | Single channel video | Duration: 3:30 min. | Edition 5 of 5 | Courtesy of Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery
“Julie” is one of Rottenbergs earliest videos. The scenario is much simpler than in
her later work. There is no plot or story. It is more like a sort of moving painting
which shows an unusual situation. A woman walks on her hands across a snowy
ceiling, as though there is no gravity. This early film already shows an intriguing
aspect of Rottenbergs oeuvre as a whole, namely that the absurd always borders
on what is recognisable. In that sense her work can be described as magical
realism.
JULIE, 2003 | STAIRCASE BETWEEN GALLERY 13 AND GALLERY 14 (COLLECTION)
OTHER VIDEOS BY MIKA ROTTENBERG IN M:
CINEMATOGRAPHY Mahyad Tousi SET ENGINEER Quentin Conybeare SPECIAL EFFECTS Katrin Altekamp SOUND DESIGN Ronen
Nagel, Trim POST-PRODUCTION / PRODUCTION Andrew Fierberg VIDEO STILLS FROM Squeeze, 2010 | Single channel video
installation and digital C-print | Duration: 20 min. | Edition of 6 | Courtesy of Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery
In “Squeeze” all the basic forms from Rottenbergs earlier films are combined in a
large-scale, complicated factory. Underground sweat shops in New York are connected
by means of holes to an existing lettuce farm in Arizona and a rubber plantation in
India. On the internet Rottenberg contacted the team leader: Bunny Glamazon (1.90
m, 101 kilos), a popular fetish professional in real life. The large woman who keeps the
whole factory running with her meditation is Trixxter Bombshell, who generally earns
her living by sitting on men. Like all the other characteristic characters in Rottenbergs
universe, they are unique personalities who benefit from their extreme bodies in daily
life. However, the cast of this film also consists of anonymous women from a range of
cultural backgrounds who perform hard manual labour. On this subject Rottenberg
says: ‘I – for the first time – used what you could call documentary material that is
not shot or staged in the studio or within a constructed artificial film set. That footage
however looks exactly like the so-called fictional film material. It is all fiction. The
driving force of capitalism is fiction. It thrives on a form of storytelling that inflates the
importance and value of objects and it works like a kind of magic: ‘If you buy this, you
can become this’. In shooting this ‘documentary’ material I wanted to get out of my
own world, creating a direct portal to the real world, but it is not an attempt to make
my work more realistic, it is maybe an attempt to show that reality is as bizarre as my
own fiction.’
This video appears to be more explicit in its political message: the expressionless
execution of tasks by these anonymous non-Western workers shows the shadow side
of globalisation, mass production and capitalism which often remains invisible to the
(western) consumer.
SQUEEZE, 2010 | GALLERY 18