Re.Act – performancekunst der 1960er und 70er jahre heute

Curated by Bettina Knaup and Beatrice E. Stammer “Re.Act – performance art from the 60s and 70s today” could be seen from December 13th 2008 through February 8th 2009 at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.

Documenting performative works from 24 artists spanning across two generations, the exhibition intended to document and reflect the diversity and complexity of feminist performative strategies which appeared within a wide range of social and political contexts. Including works by performance movements from Eastern and South Eastern Europe as well as the former GDR, the exhibition documented many artistic and socially critical strategies of the 1960s, 70s through today.
In the intersection between art and life, private and public, performance offered the ideal medium for examining, deconstructing or reinventing female identity back then, in this way forcing a certain reevaluation of the attributions of femininity in mainstream culture.

Among my favourite performers are Yoko Ono (J/USA) whose performance “Cut Piece” both in its historical and re-staged 2003 version could be seen, Valie Export, Ewa Partum and the younger Kate Gilmore (USA) with her strong sometimes mocking performances.

Without intending to be an historical survey but simply present historical positions together with more recent ones, establishing relations between both generations was really the goal. Moreover the exhibition intended to show women artists working today that what they are doing is more related to their predecessor’s achievements than they are ready to admit, sometimes out of blunt ignorance. What the exhibition failed to show however, is why today’s performers seem not to be interested in political strident, ideologically didactic but instead choose to mock certain gestures of the past and mostly transmit a certain sense of an impossibility of change or uneffectiveness of certain actions, thus undermining any possibility for idealism. Today’s disbelieve and sense of impotency or frustration remains to be understood and represents the most urgent question.

“Political/ Minimal” at the KW Berlin and the road conceptualism has travelled

Recently, while visiting „Political/Minimal“ curated by Klaus Biesenbach at the Kunst Werke in Berlin, I found myself wondering about the possibility of keeping on doing conceptual work today. Afterall hasn’t conceptualism exhauted all its self-reflexive possibilities already?

Done only one or two years ago, some of the works in the exhibition explore a classical reportoire of forms which are usually associated with minimal art from the 60s. Instead of repeating its typical hermetism this revived minimal brings forth all kinds of political issues.

I was specially impressed by Terence Koh´s piece, an unpretencious pink triangle which mimed the real one sewed in Men´s shirts to differentiate them as homosexuals in concentration camps. This fact alone explains and contributed to their small survival rate.

In Derek Jarman´s film „Blue“ (1993), an empty blue surface is projected together with a soundtrack revealing quotations from the artist´s diary as he went blind because of AIDS. The film, his final work, accompanies the disease process on an almost daily basis. Speaking of quotation, Tino Sehgal performed “Instead of allowing some thing to rise up to your face dancing bruce and dan and other things”, a dance piece based on some of Dan Graham´s and Bruce Nauman´s historical performances.
All works pointing to the fact that contemporary conceptual works seem to have abandoned the self-reflexivity and hermetic level which characterized conceptualism in the late 60s and early 70s to embrace aesthetic, personal or political experiences foreign to historical conceptualism.

In itself, this use of former formal structures and strategies to convey a whole new meanings represents an openness. No doubt, did self-reflexivity correspond to a specific moment in Modernism, in which different disciplines took themselves and their own field of research as their own prime subject matter, be it as a reaction to the threat of new disciplines popping up or, the trend of interdisciplinary methods or, a specific socio-political context.

Self-reflexive new media artworks conceptualize their own technical specificity, like Paik exploring things like the effects of magnets in electronic images or, pioneering live broadcasting or, Vito Acconci developing work which played with the possibilities opened up by closed-circuit, etc. in some sort of parallel to Greenberg’s ideas on self-specificity on painting.

Instead of representing a certain decay or a dead end, self-reflexivity has come to include a broader sense. The exhibition “Political/ Minimal” teaches us exactly how historical conceptualism surpassed its own hermeticism to embrace a whole new series of issues outside itself.

Given their specific nature, media art works occasionate an unforeseen and totally different relation with the society they are produced in and which they are produced for. Technology is part of all levels of our life, it is designed to be automatic and acritically assimilated, its is filled up with corporate values and hidden intentions (to force a new need upon us, to makes start a new behaviour, etc) and is distributed through whole different channels. It is in this sense that works reflecting upon the effects and consequences of technology could also be considered self-reflexive.

In this sense, some works no longer conceptualize around their specific technical functions and language but on their impact on us, on society at a larger scale instead.
Moreover, works dealing with self-reference, quotation, referring and reflecting upon icons of the past, should also be thought of as self-reflexive works – Duchamp´s Gioconda with a Moustache when mocking artistic value, cultural tradition, etc.

Self-reflexivity in media art thus includes works dealing strictly with the technical specificities offered by the medium (formalism), works dealing with the consequences for the individuum and society derived from the specific technical possibilities opened by the medium and works referring, quoting other works within a given cultural tradition (linguistics).

“Still Men Out There”, an exhibition by Bjørn Melhus in Istanbul

Until the middle of last April a selection of Bjørn Melhus’ works could be visited at the Amerikan Hastanesi Sanat Galerisi ”Operation Room”. Presenting key works within the artist’s oeuvre, such as “Again & Again “„The Oral Thing“ (2001) or „Still Men Out There“ (2003) – from which the exhibition borrowed its title -, the show also featured more recent pieces like his 2008 multi-channel video installation „Deadly Storms“.

The selection offered the viewer the opportunity to grasp several decisive aspects in Bjørn Melhus’ work. Namely, the artist’s multiple attention to the worlds of American commercial film, television pop music and publicity, the coexistence throughout his oeuvre of pieces in which the artists embodies all the media roles and pieces in which he consciously redraws himself from and which result more abstract. Finally, a certain performative aspect was made available through the documentation published in the catalogue for occasion of this exhibition showing the intense and rich pre-production work in Bjørn Melhus’ films.

Manifold, the exhibition provided the viewer with the opportunity to compare works regarded upon as „classical“ – those in which the artist himself appears and enacts different characters -, with a work like „Still Men Out There“. Less “recognizable” as a Melhus’ piece, “Still Men Out There” is basically a pure synchronized sound and light installation in which the artist consciously redraw his own figure from. Next to pieces which are figurative and in which Melhus embodies different roles, the artist has also created pieces in which images are reduced to abstract fields of color. Both strategies have in fact always coexisted in Bjørn Melhus’ production. His absence in some of his works is not as unusual as one might think and is not without consequences for the overall understanding of his work. Far from being an isolated example, one must only think of „Emotional Fields“(2007), „Murphy“ (2008) or Melhus’ successive tree houses to recognize just that. Significantly all these works have been produced in parallel to the ones in which the artist plays different roles, including that of a woman, and which the public specially identifies the artist for and critics have payed most attention to.

Thus missing a trademark – Melhus himself -, “Still Men Out There” (the installation) contains however other characteristics of the artist’s work, such as the exploration of the conventions of film (American war cinema in this case), repetition and multiplication of effects and found sound footage.
Placed on the floor in three concentric circles, the eighteen monitors show their screens facing up. Monochrome color fields alternate rhythmically, pulsing to the sound of machine guns. The soundtrack, composed of snippets from mainstream war movies includes everything a good war film needs, from marching troops, to tragic love, to gunfire, to heroic soliloquies. These sequences of monochrome image, script and sound produce a penetrating effect. At times full of pathos, other times purely kitsch, “Still Men Out There” stresses the highly entertaining and spectacle qualities present in American mainstream war cinema. The work’s sources are well documentated, “Still Men Out There” takes on sound footage from “Platoon” (Oliver Stone, 1986), “The Thin Red Line” (Terrence Malick, 1998), “Black Hawk Down” (Ridley Scott, 2001) and “We Were Soldiers” (Randall Wallace, 2002).
Melhus is interested here how cinema, as the greatest manipulative technical dispositive of all times, has been conditioning our feelings and behavior in respect to what our cultural notions, in this case of war and death, concern.

Regarding this, the artist has said in an interview: “Still Men Out There is not a statement about war or politics (even if the material does refer back to this reality), but is about evoking and exposing cinematic stereotypes”. But this is only partially true, for in the end the work does open into the ideological workings of cinematic war representation.

It is extremely significant that we are being offered the spectacle of war with no images (except for monochromatic images), in this way addressing directly what has been described as “American media’s refusal to show the American dead and injured in the war” in recent times. On the one hand the work pervades the idea that one can no longer trust any image of war to be authentic and that the only solution would be the renunciation of all imagery. This feeling is a direct consequence of the on-going control of images of war scenarios since the Golf War – from which only generic night shots of Bagdad under attack were divulged. And the so-called “embeded journalism” in practice since the Iraq war – when journalists march alongside the troops during their advance – which results in a loss of objectivity, and also contributed to a general sense of crisis due to the conflict of interests it generates.
On the other hand, because we can identify the audio sources of the installation, it is forcing us to deconstruct the cultural references regarding war on cinema, thus awakening all sorts of images of war which lie dormant in our heads and which obviously have been shaped by the mass media.
“Still Men Out There” is not only exploring the impact of American cinema on our collective memory but also forcing us to admit that some of our notions are being actively designed by it, against historical facts and in favour of specific ideologies.

The work is thus not only bringing cinematic stereotypes into light but also forcing us to consider the reception of cinematic war representation critically. The sound and its different moments borrow a narrative structure to a work, which is in itself abstract. As already noted, this “practice of fragmentation, destruction, and reconstitution of well-known figures, topics, and strategies of the mass media opens up not only a network of new interpretations and critical commentaries, but also defines the relationship of mass media and viewer anew” (Schmidt, Bremen, 2002).
By exposing the mechanisms of mainstream cinema, Melhus rebels against pre-established simplifications and global cultural standardization. Admitting that no images exist today outside of the corporate media, Melhus’ works contest such iconographic hegemony.

Both fascinated and disgusted by the American mainstream media culture, Bjørn Melhus has made his field of research what others would hastily judge as American “trash”. In a meticulous and consequent way he has been thus exposing the manipulative power of modern media by successively paying attention to several genres, including Hollywood films, news TV channels or the talk show format, just to name but a few cases.

With his systematic examination of different mass media frameworks, Bjørn Melhus has been exposing the stereotyped voices, gestures and slogans which are being conveyed on a daily basis and which seem to be dictating our behaviour despite of us. What to do with this awareness, a sort of pledge for responsibility, is the question left open to every single viewer.

(Excerpt of my review published in RES – Art World, Issue #02 May, 2009)

ON CENSORSHIP. “Imaginary Coordinates” at the Spertus Museum / Chicago

“Imaginary Coordinates“, an exhibition curated by Rhoda Rosen at the Spertus Museum in Chicago, originally scheduled to be open through September 7 suddenly closed in the end of June allegedly in response to pressure from the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago and individual donors. As Deanna Isaacs reported on May 29 on the Chicago Reader: “The Jewish United Fund, a major Spertus supporter, had taken a look and promptly canceled a May 13 fund-raising dinner booked for the tenth floor boardroom. Michael Kotzen, executive vice president of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, says he moved the event after hearing from “a number of people who thought the exhibit wasn’t appropriate” in “content and point of view”".

The exhibition showed maps (including palestinian maps) focusing on different geographic interpretations of the Holy Land some dating back to the 15th century together with contemporary art by nine Israeli and Palestinian women artists, in what appeared to be an effort to open up and reconcile the museum´s permanent historical collection with contemporary art.

Quoted by Lauren Weinberg on June 20th on Time Out Chicago, museum president Dr. Howard A. Sulkin said: “We came to realize that parts of the exhibition were not in keeping with our mission as a Jewish organization and did not belong at Spertus. This exhibition caused pain for members of our key audience who felt it presented anti-Israel points of view.”

The central polemic of the show is that several of the works “implicitly criticize” Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. And pro-Israel supporters object to seeing work that is critical of Israel and supportive of Palestine within a Jewish museum.

Though there has been a refusal to which speficif objects were considered deemed offensive, Museum´s chair and the Spertus board of trustees reject claims of censorship. On one hand they say that “Spertus is not interested in going around and hurting people’s feelings”, and on the other that they are “committed to asking the hard-nosed questions about a lot of things” ?!? – a clear example of “the schizophrenic nature of this conflict” as Richard Silverstein has put it.
As Patty Gerstenblith bluntly writes on the Chicago Tribune on June 24: “It is unfortunate when donors wield more influence over museum exhibits than the museum’s professional staff and that controversial topics cannot be raised because of objections from a local community. Presenting viewpoints that may be unsettling and challenging are precisely the role that museums should play in our modern society”.
This should give us something to think about next time we discuss changing museum funding in Europe to be more like the american private donorship system!

Margeret Ewing, who seems to be the only one critizing the exhibition without political or partidary motivations, refers to the display of maps as adding little to a furthered understanding of the question of how the land of Isreal and Palestine is defined and to the exclusiveness of female contemporary artists as insufficiently explained within the exhibition!! Which is extremely funny, if you think about the polemic the show has raised and that Ewing – a sort of authority in art exhibitions´ critique – dismisses the show as “weak” from the curatorial point of view!

Lynn Pollack of Chicago´s Jewish Voice for Peace gave a very interesting statement to the Chicago Tribune. She said: “These are not fringe Palestinian and Israeli artists. These are mainstream artists who are able to display in their own country. Why can´t this art be seen by American Jews? It´s really a shame”.

On his turn, Richard Silverstein who runs a blog on on politics, culture and ideas about Israeli-Arab peace and world music, asks if the Spertus Museum “must pull its punches by cancelling an exhibit most viewers and artists found well within the consensus of political and artistic discourse about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, hasn´t lost the right to call itself and art museum?”.
And goes on to react to the patronizing attitude by Michael Kotzin (executive vice president of Jewish United Fund/ Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago who said that pieces “like those videos lacked context”) saying: “We can think for ourselves, thank you Mr. Kotzin. We don´t need to be protected from dangerous art, art that makes us think”.

Usually I don´t comment on exhibitions which I didn´t see. But, since this one was shut before any of us had the chance to see it, discuss and make an opinion not to mention that the uploaded video of the exhibition is no longer available on the internet and catalogues became extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find (I am lucky enough to have held one in my hands!), I feel my usual criteria shouldn´t apply. For me this is a clear case of censorship and one of great gravity for money and religion overruled freedom of thought, critique and dicussion!

ARTE A FULL

Did you know there is a slum in Leipzig?

Living in or off a dump was the leitmotiv for Arte a Full, a three-day-exhibition presented by the Ser Humanos Foundation, which gathered artists from different countries working in different media in the Westwerk in Leipzig.

Art a Full brought forth several topics currently under discussion. See the full list of participating artists here >>
Concerning the concept of identity and the need to redefine it; Julia Gaisbacher for instance, questioned how our identity is being redefined in the information age, creating what she calls 21st century portraits by enlarging human finger prints thus stressing how portrait has changed from the depiction of a face to biometric data, more in accordance with our present surveillance society. Baluri Kim brought the gender issue into discussion by questioning what does it mean to be normal, in this way demanding an update of attitudes. Katia Klose´s installation, with photographs and recorded testimonies, also addressed how one builds one´s own identity, narrating one´s own story through, sometimes traumatic, past memories.

Concerning the image of the foreigner/ enemy, Alexander Jöchl and Victor Lopez reflected upon the concept of the „Other“ in relation to linguistic, territorial and economical borders. And Arcadio Ciccarese , Hein Petschulat and Martin Blankenhagen explored the different impacts the Media is having on our life today. In “The Next Best Superstar”, Ciccarese asks us to reflect if religious motivated fundamentalist attacks somehow don´t share a sort of 15-minutes-of-fame strategy we see on television castings every day. Unfortunately his question is far more interesting than the installation itself.
Hein Petschulat on his turn, considered the importance of headlines and breaking news, which we absorb both consciously and unconsciously on a daily basis. And Martin Blankenhagen´s manipulated photos not limited by trueness nor faithfulness to reality – just like the Media – which make use of violence and destruction, bringing it to a new aesthetic level, which – the author hopes – remind us of the responsibility each and any one of us has while dealing with such images today.

Questioning (the end of) ideologies in today´s world, Lucia Baruelli´s nomadic installation, playing with the interchange between the concepts of propaganda and communication, joined Kontantinos Goutos´ film “Pietà” in underlying exactly the schizophrenic gap between the political ideals of a few and reality for the most. As a flanêur, Goutos shot the scene without purpose nor plan, he tells us only when and where it took place. With our necessity to rebuild narratives, we presume that, meanwhile his accidental walk through the city of Athens just a few days before the parliament elections of 2007, he witnessed a girl lying on the ground – maybe because of drugs – and a friend possibly trying to help. On the background we hear a part of the elections campaign of the communist party in Greece, with popular, protest songs from the sixties, of Mikis Theodorakis… It unpretentiously shows the separation and incommunicability of worlds; how the blind struggle for power runs side by side with individualist escapist reverie.
“Wolfen Nord”, a documentary by Hagen Wiel, speaks exactly of the vacuum left behind by the failure of the socialist dream. Taking a new building style developed since the 50s that was part of a visionary project and what came out of it, he seeks to discover through his camera a possible meaning for a ghost landscape showing the essence of a time standing still.

Also concerning the passage of time and its consequences, Mirko Tzotschew´s „Moskauer Strasse“, depicted the frailty of thoughts and things under the unstoppable march of time. Experience which was dramatized by Roosevelt Asmani in his film „Kairo Intervention“, where velocity and our current hectic pace took the leading role.

Concerning documentary strategies, Claudia Balsters´work „Dallas.Von Menshen im Müll“, depicted exactly the daily life of those living off a dump. It made me think of Agnès Varda´s film ” Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse“, in which the director focuses exactly on gleaners, those who gather the spoils left after a harvest, as well as those who mine the trash. Throughout Varda´s documentary, different people present their reasons for living off a dump. Against what one might think, it doesn´t always happen for economic reasons. Of course that the majority exist on the leavings of others for poverty reasons, but there are also those who choose to do it following their consciousness, exercising their ethic, turning their findings into art or, believe it or not, just for fun. In Varda´s film we are surprised to find out about a man with a high-degree education who choose to live his life off a dump and sleep in homeless shelters as a reaction against a capitalistic consumerist society. In his case it´s a moral, ethic and political attitude, an utopic act of resistance. Varda´s film manifolds how much more complex the subject in fact is.

Diagnosing social, economic, political restraints and, in Oswaldo Macià´s case even proposing a revolution on how we should apprehend reality, all artists present at Arte A Full seemed engaged in examining the causes and problems undermining today´s society. And in this way making the limits of the systems that entrap us more visible. Though some works didn´t quite deliver the complexity they promised on a theoretical level, after visiting Art a Full one does get the feeling that the limits of our cage are a bit more recognizable.

The HORRIFC – Joe Coleman “Internal Digging” at the KW Berlin

Occupying three floors at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), “Internal Digging” from Joe Coleman, curated by Susanne Pfeffer, was the first exhibition to encompass all aspects of Joe Coleman´s work. Joe Coleman (born in 1955) paints, draws, performs, makes music and collects. According to the text that accompanies the exhibition, he has been collecting relics, specimens, documents and oddities in his apartment in Brooklyn for more than thirty years and these are his own source of inspiration and reference for his wax figures, paintings, drawings and films.

Though he states he has no idea how the whole image is going to look like when he starts it, his dense visual cosmos combines the compositional principles of icon painting with those of comic strips. He mostly portrays bikers, serial killers, hillbillies, escape artists, and elephant men, curiosities that both remind us of former cabinets de curiosité and fairgrounds, mixed with contemporary reality at times, directly dealing with perversity, mental disease, obscenity, pornography and murders.

Coleman´s wax figure, depicting himself inside a coffin – asks us: “Has it occurred to you that this may be your last farewell?” and then his laughter sounds just like an horror movie. There are in fact, some pretty horrible things to see and read throughout the exhibition and at the end of the visit one is reminded of Coleman´s disturbing question at the beginning of the show.

At some point, in one of his paintings, he compares himself to George Grosz and his country situation to the one lived in Weimar / Germany in the past. He says: “With a great savage cruelty Grosz attacked with pen, brush and paint what he hated and what he feared… humanity. I have always felt a strong kinship with him. I live in a society not unlike Grosz´s Weimar Germany just before the rise of Fascism. The disillusionment of the Vietnam war, the decadence of the sex and drug revolution all seem to mirror the world of George Grosz”.

The exhibition is truly a plunge into Coleman´s private obsessed and tormented world, where all the vicious and sick aspects of human kind are depicted in a detailed and propagandistic way, just like sensationalist press but on painting. Because we feel no empathy nor compassion, his work doesn´t qualify as grotesque, it´s purely horrifying. His vision is totally pessimistic and by the time we leave the show we are totally convinced that there can´t be no salvation! Specially disturbing is his painting on child murders, stressing how people, and even children, always took pleasure in performing the most horrifying acts.

Coleman´s paintings force the viewer to bring his own moral judgments into play, there is no possibility of detached contemplation nor visual pleasure. Coleman confronts us with your our own general desire to watch and observe but return us the sickest of visions. One is forced to speak and think of “evil” with no chance to understand it or, making it rational by framing it within a given social context. It is just there with no possible explanation. There´s no doubt on his technique but, one questions the pertinence of being confronted with such a vision. Why should his work matter?
He is emphasizing something that we all know that exists but, for in order to keep on living, we forget and trust that it is under control through laws, penalties, jail and in some countries death sentences. Unfortunately he only shows and explores it and takes no stand. Still, it could be argued that he is forcing the viewer to think about it. In this sense, his value would then be, by exploring our sick desire of looking into horrifying things, he would intend to make us feel something and force us to make a judgment. But is this strategy really of worth, when we are subject to violence and cruelty in other media on a daily basis? Has such an exposure really made us more political?

Coleman has exhibited at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (2201) and in Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2007) and is represented in many important art collections, specially in the USA.

Rundgang SPINNEREI Set.2007

This September´s edition of the Rundgang at the SPINNEREI was spiced up by three new openings, namely, Fred Gallery´s new exhibiting space, Kavi Gupta Gallery from Chicago as the new gallery-in-residence and, Laden für Nichts, whose concept implies constantly moving around and now has the Spinnerei for its latest location.

Angelina Gualdoni´s paintings at Dogenhaus exploring space and fusion, were very appealing in its dimensions, colors, spatial depictions and how acrylic gave the impression of watercolor sometimes.
I specially enjoyed Grit Hachmeister´s exhibition “Du alter Sack, was nun” where spontaneous drawings, rehearsed snapshots and collage with experimental and poor materials were to be found. Grit Hachmeister´s work uses the body as subject to address desire, violence and pornography as the most direct way to deal with how we use and exploit each other and ourselves in the most urgent and ruthless way. Furthermore, ASPN showed one of Hachmeister´s sculptures and in my view one of the best works at the Rundgang.

Another high point was Lutz-Rainer Müller & Jan Freuchen`s “Object Perdu” at Pierogi. Following “Object Trouvé” (2006). This 1:1 wooden replica of the Eagle (the lunar module that landed on the moon in 1969) with a wooden piano attached to its body, was originally chopped into small pieces by the artists and then thrown into a swamp. “Object Perdu” is born out of the recovery of the former broken sculpture from the swamp, in an attempt to re-create and re-built the initial project. Its constructed but sober look is specially attractive.

Also at Pierogi, William Lamson “SUBLUNAR“, a series of photographic and video works as well as an installation on the theme of human inability to fly without technical external help, caught my attention. Though small in its dimensions, “Jump” is a brilliant video animation were the naive wish to fly with no technical means goes hand to hand with its technique resulting in a dreamy atmosphere.

Melanie Manchot´s Film “Shave” in exhibition at Fred Gallery, shows – in a cold and distanced way despite the intimacy of the scene – a man having his head, breast and arms completely shaved by a barber and the small unavoidable wounds that open and bleed during the process.

Finally I would stress, Joachim Blank´s hybrid works, as not only they can be thought of as wall sculptures but also challenge both material and pictorial elements thus crossing borders. “He mixes digital production processes like laser cuts and Photoshop filters with industrially manufactured materials like acrylic glass, industrial wood, lacquer and adhesive (…) By using specific construction materials, he consciously cites the context of these materials and endows them with pictorial motifs”. (Filipprosbach press release)
Blank´s works are a knot where all aesthetic tensions under discussion nowadays converge and are mirrored. In particular, the use of industrial materials, in this way quoting the 70s But his works also join in a Formalist research and self-reflexive tendency that has shaped and been present throughout all XX century art.

Kavi Gupta´s ground floor installation by Danielle Gustafson-Sundell, depicting colorful humorous sentences on the walls, such as: “You are on my “to-do” list!” introduced the humorous tone that was sort of missing to the whole event.

Dokumenta KASSEL 2007

To Dora and Volker

For 100 days Dokumenta 12, spread across several venues in Kassel, namely the Museum Fridericianum, the Aue-Pavillon, the documenta-Halle, the Neue Galerie, the Schloss Wilhelmshöhe and Gloria Kino. According to its curators (Roger M. Bürgel and Ruth Noack), each of these buildings were meant to symbolize a specific century, a notion of the public and a concept of viewing art. And this was closely linked to this year´s program for the event. Reflecting on the concepts of modern, existence and education, Dokumenta 12 took on the challenge of answering the problem it choose to investigate: Is modernity our antiquity? What is bare life? And, what is to be done?

Having visited Kassel three weekends ago, I would say the major problem with Dokumenta 12 is exactly how the concept of “juxtaposition” was put into practice. It is a promising concept that allows art work confrontation, opening new readings and engaging a perspective that – we all expected – would answer the problem on the table.
But, throughout Dokumenta 12, such juxtaposition was mostly based on formal choices, sometimes to a point of complete obviousness, often remaining on a pure illustrative and pedagogical level. Works of the same artist were to be found in different points of the Dokumenta, in most situations without a real meaningful aim except for its formal resemblance to other works done prior or in another geographic context. And this was specially problematic at Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, were the interaction between Dokumenta´s works and the Museum´s permanent collection was very narrow.
It is not enough to insert two video installations within the museum collection, hang Kerry James Marshall´s “Lost Boys” (1993) depicting Afro-American people next to Karel van Mander´s “Hydaspes and Persina before the Painting of Andromeda” (1640) where colored people are to be seen, to proclaim this as pushing real dialogue between works of different time periods and engaging the public with it. Charlotte Posenenske´s wonderful works for example, were shoved into a corner and totally misplaced. Nor was she lucky at the Museum Fridericianum, where “Vierkantrohre Serie DW” (1967) – placed in the same room with Trisha Brown´s installation piece and performance “Floor of the Forest“ -, went completely unnoticed.

What seems specially true is the incorporation of new artistic territories, speeches, voices – though not really new problems – into the exhibition space. Many artists from Arabe and African countries were present. Amar Kanwar´s remarkable video installation “The Lightning Testemonies” (2007) for instance, tried to answer how can sound, image and photography document in a creative way a true and sad event.

For me, the real theme of Dokumenta 12 was “conflict” – be it political, racial, economical, religious, social, you name it. Every thinkable form of conflict was present, even the conflict with one´s self. Imogen Stidworthy´s installation “I Hate” (2007), depicting the photographer Edward Woodman (who lost his power of speech in consequence of an accident) trying to pronounce correctly “eight” and not “hate”, highlighted just that. But so did many other works, showing the different forms conflict can assume nowadays.

Churchill Madikida´s video Installation “Virus” (2005) for instance, focuses on personal and social conflict and disease, whereas Kerry James Marshall´s paintings approach social and racial issues. Dias & Riedweg´s film “Veracidad Máxima” (2003) and Ines Doujak´s “Siegesgärten” (2007) handle sexuality, economical conditions under globalisation and gender, in a very different and interesting way.

Meanwhile Bill Kouélany´s massiv papiermaché wall, a metaphor for all the walls of shame, with news cut out from international newspapers addressed the conflictive relation between politics and the media.
On its turn,in “The Exploitation of the Dead” Mladen Stilinovic collects war memorabilia together with a photo of Kasimir Malevich on his deadbed. And Guy Tillim´s photographs of democratic Congo document the first free presidential and parliamentary elections in forty years in that country.

Parallel to this manifold exploration of conflict and also battling but, in the field of aesthetics, self-reflexive art works were to be found. Gonzalo Díaz´s pieces “Al calor del pensamiento I” (1999) and the ironical “Eclipsis” (2007) mirrored just that. In this last, the viewer had to queue to view the installation only to read in the end: “To come to the heart of Germany, only to read the word “art” under ones own shadow”. Brilliant.

Accounting for minimalism tendencies, John McCracken ´s “Orchid” (1991) and Poul Gernes´ “Stripe series paintings” were specially worth noticing. And Lili Dujourie´s structuralist collage “Roman” (1978) was a great discovery for me. Dealing with fragmentation, disruption and meaning this work is extremely poetical and sensual.

Finally, Trisha Brown´s “Floor of the Forest” (1970), an installation and performance carrying the same name, stood up for interdisciplinary work. “Movers” (and not dancers) make their way through an undulating sea of wafting fabric exploring gravity, tension and its contrary.

In the end, I would dare to say, that the best works present at the Dokumenta, with few exceptions, were films or installation using film. The major example being, James Coleman´s “Retake with Evidence” (2007), performed by Harvey Keitel, and for me the best work in Kassel.

The Dokumenta did state and testify to a point of excess the ongoing forms of conflict but, failed to answer if there can “be a common planetary horizon for all the living and the dead”, thus, not really answering nor taking a stand to the question itself raised.

LISBON IN THE SUMMER – Contemporary Art Collections

If you happen to be visiting Lisbon right now and you enjoy contemporary art, you definitely should not miss the Berardo collection at Centro Cultural de Belém, the Ellipse Foundation in Cascais and the Museu do Chiado downtown. Museu do Chiado is currently presenting a specific overview of Portuguese art and its tradition, as the current exhibition unfolds works produced during the sixties both of the XIX as of the XX century. But as the curators underline, such choice does not intend to stress influences between the two periods since there are hardly any. Surely this choice is merely the result of exiguous available exhibition space and the long and still on-going dispute as to either Museu do Chiado should display XIX c. Portuguese masterpieces or contemporary art works. The current director and main curator tries to achieve a compromise here, offering both parties something to make them happy. Nikias Skapinakis´ “Uma Mulher Fugiu a Cavalo” (1969) and Simoes de Almeida´s marble sculpture “D. Sebastiao” (1877) are specially worth taking a look, if you are keen in Portuguese art and its history.

The Berardo collection and the Ellipse Foundation are born out of private investment and mirror exactly how contemporary art is being collected and made available to the public in Portugal. On the first case, so the collection remains in Portugal, the Government has settled for a ten year agreement, according to which a space for the contemporary art collection was found, rights of circulation and promotion for that period were acquired, furthermore the Government contributes with an amount of 5 million Euros per year for acquisition purposes (with no interference on what is bought) with the chance of eventually buying the pieces (at market price though).

On its hand, the Ellipse Foundation remains purely private investment. Initially, the Ellipse Foundation was though of as an investment scheme gathering investors from Portugal, Brazil and Spain that would bring together and invest a total of $25 million in contemporary art and after a four-year period would share in resale profits. But, it later took on a different direction evolving as a permanent collection, housed in an art center which is a renovated warehouse by the architect Pedro Gadanho, with educational department, a study-center and an artist-in-residence program and no immediate plans to sell the pieces. Except for a few pieces that still belong to anonymous collectors the majority of it is owned by Dr. Joao-Oliveira Rendeiro, President of Banco Privado Português. The curatorship is the responsibility of three curators namely, Manuel Gonzalez (former director of the J. P. Morgan Chase Collection), Pedro Lapa (director of Museu do Chiado), Alexandre Melo (Prime-Minister Cultural Adviser, art critic and curator at the Banco Privado collection). Since both Portuguese curators detain high positions within the Portuguese cultural scene, many objections have been raised in the media regarding their ethical role as evaluators and producers of value having a role within various institutions simultaneously.

Back to the works, Bob Wilson´s mixed media installation “Alice” and Douglas Gordon´s video installation “Film Noir” (1995) are absolutely remarkable. The first one created for the occasion of the premiere of the Opera with the same name, invites us to take our shoes off and drift in an white/ yellowish environment filled with cotton and surrounding music, the atmosphere assuming a plastic and poetic dimension. Douglas Gordon´s brilliant installation on its turn, perspires with references to Hitchcock, Michael Snow´s work and Kafka.

The Berardo and Ellipse Foundation collections have the merit of bringing and showing heterogeneous international contemporary art pieces in Portugal, making them available for the public. Furthermore, they also encourage and allow direct confrontation between contemporary Portuguese art and international art, thus opening dialog and favoring fresh readings. Basically, the Berardo collection has had an educational value over the last years, as it assembles and exhibits at least one work for every major name obligatory at any Contemporary Art History Manual. It is a sort of a live Art History seminar. The way the collection is now presented at CCB tries to overturn that. By taking the Tate Modern case into account, the works are exhibited through thematic subjects and not chronologically (thank god!). This has the merit of making the collection stronger from a theoretical point of view.

If I had to pick two highlights I would choose without hesitation Cristina Mateus´ video “Conta-me Coisas” (2007) and Vladimir Nikolic´s symbolic video “Death Aniversary” (2004) showing Duchamp´s family grave.

“Conta-me Coisas” (Tell me Things) is a short and incisive poem that is also a road movie. It is not about the passing of time but about duration itself. It unfolds a personal and emotional story meanwhile moving from A to B just like a traveling on cinema. “She told me she had riped her own eyes out”, we read. The same way we cannot really see, reality is veiled to us as everything is blurred. This experience is as if we are before an interior landscape, an emotional landscape. Such movement and its precision together with the blurred images against a minimal electronic soundtrack, makes us aware that we are traveling inside meaning and memories themselves. We are moving through passion, desire and intimacy made environment. And it is melancholic, painful and full of uncertainty. We experiment sadness, a sense of drifting and ultimate beauty along the way.

FIND OUT about Leipzig´s off art scene!

A 24-HOUR-EXHIBITION AT THE KARL-HEINE STRAßE 85

Leipzig, June 2007. When one first arrives in Leipzig, one cannot help to notice the empty streets filled with empty buildings. Downtown´s XIX century flavor contrasts with Leipzig´s urban industrial periphery filled with suburban and often abandoned buildings in badly illuminated quarters. The beautiful German word “Werkstatt“ finds here a bitter taste. One is often reminded of the high unemployment rate and how people moved to the west in search of work and how ownership became difficult to ascertain after the war and GDR times. Today getting a degree in Leipzig remains one very attractive option for students all over. Indeed, from its urban plan to its social condition, Leipzig is city of passages.

Last weekend and once again, Leipzig has won my heart. For thirteen editions in a row, GalerieRieRiemann organized a twenty four hour exhibition taking over this time around the usually deserted Industriearmaturenwerk in the Karl-Heine Straße 85. For twenty four hours in a row and under the motto “Kunst ist kein Spass” (Art is no fun), this industrial building housed works in all mediums, from people all ages, nationalities and very different levels of quality. Such process and history can be followed under: kunstistkeinspass.blogspot.com/

The result was an off exhibition that had the merit of escaping already institutionalized exhibition practices in Leipzig. Even if everything was joined together – just as in heaven! -, still its longing for the experimental, the unfinished, its the wish to achieve new insights and to approach proposals with an open mind cannot but to be praised.
Despite the very different levels of quality of the works presented, the outcome effect of the whole thing surely surpassed some boring and phony performative and conceptual works that laid among – which, truth be said, are even worse than just bad painting or just bad sculpture!

Torsten Pfeffer´s paintings for instance, were a positive surprise. They made me think of David Hockney´s work, renewing one´s hopes in the fascination painting can hold over the viewer still. Or, Schmitzkatz, that presented the best installation at the show. “Den Klang des Altags auf der Spur”, was conceived as a black corridor, with different hidden TV sets that successively screened images in synchrony to an audio background in which the viewer could, for instance, hear someone washing their teeth and see its respective visual referent.
Susi Sohnen Kalb´s “Kreativitäter”, made of intertwined plastic forks, introduced an humorous note finding a new and entertaining use for a discard and highly pollutive material.

On its turn, Zwen Gras´sensuous installation “TekTekTek” (Europe), on the events occurred during “czechtek 05”, a Tecnomusic festival that exists for 10 years already in the Czech Republic, introduced the perfect guerrilla note to go with the show´s spirit. This piece is voicing urban political resistance by testifying how:

“7000 people were dancing. After the first night 1000 policemen also joined the party, armed with smoke-bombs, teargas and water guns trying to clear the place with unreasonable hardness. The fight hold on for 3 days. An orgy with drugs and violence lasting for several days“.

Of a more quiet and poetic tone, Rolf Arnold´s interesting view shots and montage technique could be seen in diverse photographs – “Das Reh” being specially beautiful and dreamy.
Performed as if for the stage, Ginan Sedl presented a film on which a doll is stuffed with hair and is to be seen fighting with another doll. It seemed to reflect how women see and relate between and with themselves. Its slight dramatic and desperation tone could be said to recall Ana Mendieta´s work and Warhol´s “Lupe” from 1965, depicting the actress just before her death.

Several works took on the motto of the show as their own title, Konstantinos Goutos´ short film played exactly on that showing how every nationality can come together when it comes to the most basic things, as playing, having fun and laughing.

Next to families taking their Saturday walkabout, jealous art students who just didn´t-thought-of-it, and all sort of curious and art lovers, everybody had a great time. And some of the works were really refreshing and in agreement with the off scene spirit of the whole thing.