Rousseau, Rancière and Hugh Fernley Whittingstall

7th, 8th, 9th January, 2008, Channel 4, 9pm
Written by Robert Dingle

The horse, the cat, the bull and even the donkey are generally larger in size and have a more robust constitution, more energy, strength and spiritedness than they do under our roofs.
Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality

Hugh Fernley Whittingstall’s Chicken Out campaign is a call to adopt a more ethical approach towards poultry farming with regards to meeting increasing consumer demands within the market. In light of recent success, over the past several years, getting people to switch eggs from battery hens to free range (27% of egg production now coming from free range farms), Whittingstall’s experiment addresses the pressure poultry farmers are under to produce domestic fowl as quickly and as cheaply as possible.

Based in a shed in Axeminster, Whittingstall’s Chicken Out experiment recreates the conditions of battery farmed chickens in one end, and free-range at the other (both following regulations and guidelines set by the British agriculture ministry). Everyday the experiment was filmed and recorded, from the weeks of preparation involved in installing equipment up to the moment when the chickens would be ready to go to the slaughter house. What the experiment showed was that intensively reared chickens often meant birds with shorter lives, living in cramped conditions without ever seeing natural daylight. On top of this they would commonly develop sever injuries and disabilities, associated with unnaturally fast weight gain and restricted movement.1 In contrast, the free-range chickens experienced none of these illnesses, playing with brightly colored toys and spending between 8 – 10 hours outside everyday.

Throughout the experiment Whittingstall invited local residents from Axeminster, supermarket executives, members of the press, poultry farmers and a BBC television crew to come and experience the conditions within his experiment.

This type of inequality, relating to the conditions in which poultry is farmed (intensive and free-range), can be related directly to the economic and informative inequality among consumers. This dialectic offers Whittingstall the basis for his inquiry and relates to a general understanding of the term ‘inequality’, which Jean-Jacques Rousseau provides us with.

The human species has, I think, two sorts of inequality: the one I call natural or physical because it is established by nature, and consists of differences in age, health, physical strength, and traits of the mind or soul; the other kind we can call moral or political inequality. This inequality consists of the various privileges that some persons enjoy at the expense of others – such as being wealthier, more honored, and more powerful than others.
Rousseau, Discourses on Inequality

Supermarkets currently offer poultry farmers 3pence per chicken and if a healthy chicken does not make the correct weight it is automatically slaughtered. Responding to consumer demands, supermarkets are forcing poultry farmers to raise more birds, in worse conditions, for less money. Whittingstall believes that, not only are the production methods unethical and the quality of meat much lower, but the only way for change is to alter consumer demands, thus forcing supermarkets to adopt a policy in line with consumer attitudes.

Whittingstall acts to identify a current issue that is out of the public consciousness. He creates numerous campaigns to bring it into the public eye: working with locals in Axeminister to provide them with chickens for their allotments. Demonstrating how to be more economic with poultry (making two separate meals from one bird). Implementing changes to convert the suffering cafeteria of Axeminister’s largest employer into a green canteen. Demonstrating the stark contrast in current poultry farming methods. Inviting all Axeminister residents to a public talk about the experiment and current poultry production methods in the UK. Initiating a campaign to convert Axeminister into the first free-range town.

Whittingstall, in Ranciere’s term, acts in a sense, to re-distribute the sensible by indentifying an issue, creating a public and giving it a voice within the public sphere. His campaign has acted to change the public sphere, not alone but through a joint effort with Jamie Oliver, they have managed to influence specific supermarkets into making agreements regarding better labeling and setting dates to stop endorsing intensively farmed poultry.

This is chef acting activist. As Walter Benjamin identifies the author as producer to be an ‘operating writer’, whose mission ‘is not to report but to struggle, not to play spectator but to intervene actively.’ We see Whittingstall discarding his apron, Grande Toque and Judge Sabatier to become an animal rights activist, protesting, educating and demonstrating for a cause with a need to change.

www.chickenout.tv

Keith Tyson - Sophie Risner

Keith Tyson

Studio Wall Drawings 1997 - 2007

21.11.07 - 05.01.08

Haunch of Venison

6 Haunch of Venison Yard
London
W1K 5ES

'The Studio Wall Drawing exists in a space somewhere between a map, a poem, a diary and a painting'

Keith Tyson

The very nature of Tyson's most recent exhibition at the Haunch of Venison Gallery is something of a visual totem pole to the treasure trove of ideas and mechanisms that explode within Tyson's constantly irritated mind. In total we bare witness to 55 large framed pieces exhibited in a tirelessly over worked format onto freshly painted brown walls. Whilst the ground and first floor take a very specific position as predictably curated illustrative moments, the second floor is more intelligently worked. Placed directly next to each other the result is the creation of something tangibly close to representing Tyson's thought process and fear of specificity. Unlike the ground and first floor here, we have wall-to-wall Tyson. The Haunch of Venison's largest and most powerful space is dominated by the illustrator and turned into a shrine symbolizing thought made process. Tyson is certainly not an artist terrorized by procrastination as more than anything this show serves to isolate and belittled the spectator by the shear strength of Tyson’s illustrative command.

'The thing that keeps me awake the most at night, I have no doubt, is a very general terror of the specificity of things'

Keith Tyson
http://www.haunchofvenison.com/en/#page=home.artists.keith_tyson

Here we find the main mechanism in understanding Tyson's feverish work ethic. His mode of representation is not one that finds harmony in the possibilities of subtly nor is he agreeable with an end product formulated by days or months of sifting and specifying. Tyson is an artist who wants you to bare witness to it all. The layering of ideas and irritations make up a complex poetry that demands hours to unpick. Mysticism is redundant in exploring Tyson’s path, almost walked over by years of negotiating the same artistic medium, it is evident that it is not the expanding of process that is key to Tysons work but moreover the expanding of the mind.

To expand on this intricate moment there has to become a moment of indulgence. Tyson is master of indulgence, most artists slave away forming a creation that at least heads in the direction of a conclusion, but with Tyson there is no fear of that, moreover the terror that Tyson brings us is the fear of conclusion itself. Shattering mere observation Tyson pulls at his thoughts to leave complexity in his wake. Problem in this expansion is not that it happens but that it serves to only create a hectic representation of an artist who seems unsure of his abilities, to counter what you think and produce is to criticize your approach whereas here Tyson merely embellishes his. The resistance to head towards conclusion makes this work often un-penetrable and predictable. So as I head towards my own conclusion I can’t help but question Tyson’s fear of specificity, does the fear of leaving out only mean that there becomes more room to put in?

The Heart is a Dark Forest

Nicolette Krebitz’s new film at its premiere in Hamburg, December 2007.

reviewed by Wiebke Gronemeyer

I didn’t really know what to expect, apart from assuming that Nicolette Krebitz’s second movie as a director would communicate across the grain from the usual event-movies of the young Berlin-school, as she already proved with her debut feature Jeans. My overall expectations for The Heart is a Dark Forest oscillated between anticipating a heavy romantic story and at the same time doubting that Jonathan Meese, only covered with a loincloth descending from the Cross as Jesus (or at least Jesus-like), could appear somehow romantic. It doesn’t, due to a beneficial lack of an overarching harmonious scheme; every scene in this film acts like a piece of a jigsaw-puzzle: at first it seems to fit everywhere but in fact fits nowhere; however, in the end, there is only one position; then, the moment, in which it is fitted, its particularity disappears and it is yet only one piece out of many.

This sense is reflected in the story of Marie (Nina Hoss), a mother of two, living in a typical middle-class bungalow with her husband, Thomas (Devid Striesow), who is a musician in the local symphonic orchestra. One morning she prepares breakfast for her husband and two children. An egg breaks on the floor. My attention has to adjust to the speed of the action, there is little to witness, little of what you would rather expect to happen on a stage than in your living room. The camera angle is as slow and without focus as Marie’s face is without any expression other then disorientation, boredom and lassitude. Short split screens show Marie and Thomas talking to each other, staged as a rehearsal for a theatre play. Marie is researching her relationship with her husband by imagining those clarifying communications, which seem to never have happened. If they had, maybe she wouldn’t have needed to cross the city of Hamburg by bike following her husband in order to give him his violin, as he had taken the case, in which his daughter had exchanged the violin for her puppet. Marie stops, where his car stops, but this is not in front of the music hall, but in front of another, very similar middle-class bungalow. Another, very similar young mother of a child opens the door. And on another, very similar breakfast table her husband sits and enjoys his second family breakfast that same morning.

These first ten minutes full of abstract scenes tell everything about this partnership and its complicity and let me think of this as a critical engagement with the perfidity of relationships in German bourgeois society. But this inherent criticism is not imposed on the story, rather, the at first assumed notion of a romantic relationship is deconstructed and at the same time the again romantic notion of Marie fighting for her relationship or evolving from this experience to emancipation could be established by the viewer. This change in style oscillating between romanticism, tragedy and the reference to a society’s reality continues and demonstrates Krebitz’s sensibility and set of filmic possibilities.

Marie is the centrepiece in this drama, which as she tries to orientate herself evolves into a surreal version of a contemporary Medea. In the evening of that same day she attends a masked ball. She roams around the inside and outside of a solitary castle, in which twenty masquerades celebrate, her husband included. By referencing Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut Krebitz fables a revery-like situation, Marie’s mental breakdown, which only leads to one possible end.

Throughout the whole film Marie’s eyes are strangely wide open, but only slowly throughout the film they seem to discover the function of seeing, the sense of perceiving. Krebitz’s work is about opening eyes, portraying a private, individual story behind which general assumptions emanate. In this sense it functions as a piece of sociological research about gender. To whom is Krebitz proposing this inventory?

By letting Marie decide over her life and the ones of her children, her position in the puzzle of scenes and situations is defined. The reading of this end and the film as a whole contains the possibility of either preserving a surreal romantic notion, or destroying it. Hence, as always it is a question of interpretation. But, as Marie observes and questions: “Have you ever asked yourself in a dream: have I just dreamed this or is it true?”

Klara Liden at the Hayward Project Space

Klara Liden at the Hayward Project Space
22 November 2007 – 17 January 2008

Valentina Ravaglia



Swedish artist Klara Liden is a space hacker. Her formal training in architecture must have proved her that the spaces we inhabit have an enormous potential that is repressed by their customary, socially regulated use. They are supposed to be spaces for living, but end up being reduced to physical constrictions, marketable boundaries, boxes or containers from which our deepest insticts are rigidly kept out or neutralized as “inappropriate” or “futile”. In the four videos shown at the Hayward Project Space, Liden gets rid of all cultural constructions on how our habitat is supposed to be used and unleashes her creative energies into the spaces of our everyday life. Her performances are politically charged gestures of reappropriation that could easily be labelled by local authorities as antisocial, while it is precisely a well-regulated social sterility that they address.

Paralysed (2003) was conceived as an experimental project in rethinking urban planning, consisting in a frenetic dance performed inside the trains of Stockholm’s underground. Halfway between classical ballet and punkrock slamdancing (the soundtrack is in fact a track by the seminal “rock’n’roll performer”, the Legendary Stardust Cowboy), her choreography is as inarticulated as it harmonizes with the space it explores through its ab-solutus, unconstrained movements. All this in front of the perplexed eyes of other passengers, who are so blocked in their status of surveilled social bodies that do not even attempt to express their reactions, being them of amusement, annoyance or disapproval, both hidden behind and confined by the self-constructed barriers of privacy.

550 Jamaica Avenue (2004) is quite different in its intimate atmosphere, but no less libertarian in its content and proposition. In the short video we see the artist in an old apartment she used to illegally occupy in New York, mysteriously abandoned by its inhabitant with all their personal belongings. It is a mess of everyday objects, pieces of furniture, books, pictures, cloths, handwritten notes, a dusty collection of lost memories that the lens of the camera explores as in an archeological inspection. The lo-fi aspect of the footage gives it a spy-cam quality that subtly amplifies the tension. Showing her naked back, as in a negation of her own (sexual?) identity, we see Liden perform a series of acts that result quite incongruous in this melancholic mess, like working out on a training bike or playing a dissonant melody on a piano, while singing in an indiscernible mix of languages about memory and materialism. She seems to be squatting someone else’s life, embodied in a mass of things once necessary and meaningful, and now transformed into mere rubbish waiting for clearance and the consequent oblivion.

Her latest work on display, Bodies of Society (2006), depicts another way to misuse an enclosed indoor space, this time an empty room in a common-looking apartment, with familiar, reassuring features as a wooden floor and a white curtain. What is not familiar in this setting is the raw, destructive action the artist performs on a bike the artist had made out of found pieces, now torn into pieces as she beats it with a crow bar. With the excuse of giving vent to her anger and frustration after her own bike was stolen, this violent impulse is actually directed towards the general social and cultural situation in her native Sweden, in particular towards homophobia and religious bigotry. This last piece, the first the visitor encounters in the Project Space, seems to be the less convincing in the show, with its quite didascalic, naive symbolism, and even as a direct expression of anger its tension seems to be weakened by the calculated dance-like quality of Liden movements.

On a final negative note, experiencing these videos in a total acoustic chaos really doesn’t do them justice. Each of them has a calculatedly noisy, cacophonic soundtrack, but the role of sound in the individual pieces gets lost as the three projection rooms are not insulated and let the sounds leak in the adjacent spaces. Especially 550 Jamaica Avenue would have benefited from a quieter atmosphere. By dismissing Linden’s well calibrated choices as just indistinct noise, the installation numbs at least half of the strength of her videos, reduced to little more than the amateurish clips of an arty anarchist’s weird adventures.

MRNG25141090 - A

I can remember the night of my first visit to Vienna, when I walked down the streets of this city that I did not know yet, barefoot.
This absurdity arose from the fact that my new shoes, which I had bought for the invitation I had received and attended, hurt my feet terribly and the only possible relief was to take them off.
It was in July 2003. It was hot.
The pavement reflected the heat it had accumulated throughout the day and managed to burn the soles of my feet on top of everything else.
On this important night I was accompanied by a man for whom the passion that I felt and was to feel for the next three years makes me feel this same burning sensation even today.
That night in July 2003, I fell in love with the city at the same time as I fell in love with this man.
This consuming passion slowly made me dependent on this city which contained this man in its bosom.
Every street, every façade made me think of him.
His eyes, had they looked at this building? His feet, had they treaded down this path, this sidewalk, this entry?
I wanted to dissolve into this city so that he would look at me, touch me.
This desire to be an integral part of the city was most intense whenever I was in his street, which was frequently the case.

Mariannengasse

At night the soft electric motor of the blue and yellow neon lights of a store, at the beginning of the street, became a remarkable benchmark, like the door to a city that is reduced to itself and that is sufficient in and for itself.
A city reduced to its essentials, my essentials. Its intense humming sound seemed hostile, whereas the swirl of water when arriving at the mouth of the sewage system, seemed to calm me. Light startled me here, shit attracted me.
Anxiously I arrived at number 52.
The door to the apartment building that opened for me so graciously when I was invited has suddenly and too often become hostile. All the same the door had its favourites, those that possessed these keys that I did not have. The door jeered at me this time, once again and closed itself in front of me.
Click.
If I didn’t get to know the neighbours themselves, than I at least got to know their habits. Second floor, third window, there was always light burning even very late at night. First floor, first window, an old curtain sometimes let me have a glimpse of a light turned yellow with time. An old woman lived there.
She closed her window very early in the evening after having quickly glanced down at the street, and having recognized me. Then she pulled her curtains shut and the light slowly died out.
What must she think of me? Maybe she had also been madly in love with a man once. Maybe she understood. Maybe she did not.

By studying and examining the building in all of its details, I wound up integrating it into my life and into myself.
It became a part of me, like the street that received it. Like the city that calms me when I am satisfied with my observations, but exhausted, the city strengthens and cheers me up on my way back with its calmness, its lights and its wide streets that seem to belong to me.
My observations, which I made daily, had reached the peak of my delirium, forced me to change myself into a hunter and the neighbours started having their justified doubts about my presence in their street….
A street has to flow. No urban furniture, no bench, no bus stop came to my rescue.
I did not have an alibi.
Not even the benefit of the doubt.
I had become a suspect, hence bothersome and a disturbance.
This street had become my street, a kind of extension of my personal space within a public space. The edge of the shop-window, of a shopkeeper for dentists’ utensils, had become my office and quite often I took out my computer and started working. But the neighbourhood had not integrated such concepts. I would therefore have to use stratagems, one more ridiculous than the other, so that I would once again be permitted to be in this part of the city.


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Archizoom Associati 1966-1974

Archizoom Associati 1966-1974
From the pop wave to the neutral surface
20 september-30 november 2007
Polytechnic School of Lausanne –- CH
Karine Teyssier

It is a succession of unfortunate political coincidences that gave rise to the exhibition Archizoom Associati 1966-1974. From the pop wave to the neutral surface, at the Polytechnic School of Lausanne (EPFL).

Archizoom Associati was a group of architects and designers founded in 1966 in Florence and disbanded in 1974.
Archizoom Associati 1966-1974 is also a book written by the head of the theory and history of architecture laboratory, at the EPFL, Roberto Gargiani.
And Archizoom is now the new name of the exhibitions and lectures space at the EPFL.

First: The book.
This publication of 336 pages is an important historical research and critic about the theories and productions from the utopian Italian group containing a lot of remarkable archives such as plans and photos.

Second: The restructuring of the teaching group in charge of the exhibitions and lecture, due to the retirement of its curator.
The program of exhibitions and conferences in the architectural department has always been pertinent, successfully combining a didactic approach for the students as well as contemporary reflections about architecture that concerned professionals too.
Although the exhibitions could have seemed modest in their presentation, this discretion matched quite well to the teaching of a rationalist less is more architecture.

Third: The international influence
The direction of the EPFL has been over the years punctuated by a fashion and cronyism politic; An architecture competition for the future “EPFL Rolex (!) Learning Centre” has been organised in 2004, inviting all the top people in architecture - Jean Nouvel, Herzog & de Meuron, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Kazuyo Sejima - to name only them.
This competition (won by Sanaa architects) has been an ideal opportunity to pump up the teaching body; In 2005, the department of architecture was proud to name Harry Gugger – a partner of Herzog & de Meuron- head of the Laboratory of the Architectural Production.
He teaches as well the project of architecture to the 4th year graduate students.

Whereas a good architect is not necessarily a good teacher, he could also be a bad curator.
From May 2007 Harry Gugger is also in charge of the program of the architecture exhibitions in the EPFL.; He says that the group set up a new global politic for the manifestation.
So, this new global politic begins with a new identity – a new name:

And what about Archizoom?

The justification of this appropriation is argued by Harry Gugger in this way:
(talking about Archizoom – the Italian group - )
“ The effort of ceaseless metamorphosis, the meaning facets, the notion of spectacle” are representative of the character that the team of co-workers intends in his turn to develop. It is not by coincidence that the new group (!) appropriated the name of the architects for its space of activities….

The engine starts up.
The concrete walls of the exhibition space are painted pink. A fake green grass covers the floor.
The original plans of the Archizoom projects are framed and hung on the pink walls while the textile production lie in showcases that are rationally arranged all over the grass.
Here and there some furniture of the group; the spectator is kindly asked to participate…by sitting on the sofas.
And because the relation between art and architecture is necessary, one of the lectures related to the exhibition will be given in the IKEA room (the official name of the lecture’s room) of the University of Art and Design of Lausanne.

Although the exhibition claims to promise a critical view of Archizoom Associati, this “show” is a poor literal translation of a book and the spectacle was not even entertaining. It is just the reflection of a “glitter and champagne” politic of a school that seems to forget its responsibilities toward the future architects it is producing.





Book:

Archizoom Associati 1966-1974
Roberto Gargiani
336 pages
Mondadori Electa
ISBN-10: 8837053320
ISBN-13: 978-8837053321

Exhibition:

http://archizoom.epfl.ch/

Sources:
http://actualites.epfl.ch/newspaper-article?np_id=1103&np_eid=80&catid=10

Dominic Rich-‘Strange Events Permit Themselves the Luxury of Occurring’- Camden Art Centre, Curator; Steven Claydon.

‘Strange Events Permit Themselves the Luxury of Occurring’ presents over forty artworks splayed throughout four gallery spaces. At first Steven Claydon’s exhibition, seems steeped in curatorial concerns. He investigates how an artefact's presentation and material demarcates its status within art history. He also examines what is at stake when an artifact is re-contextualised. Indeed, Claydon’s art practice includes issues shared amongst curators. He prolifically appropriates and wittily alters intervenes with the many branches and twigs of art history with a penchant for late British Modernism. This is evident in Aspirin Nathandria, (2005), in which he incorporated an image of Lyn Chadwick’s, Pair of Sitting Figures III (1973). By absorbing them into his work he questions the artwork’s connotations, he deviates the artwork’s history, destablising its status as a work of art.


Camden Art Centres invitation to curate an exhibition must have been well received. The opportunity to incorporate original artefact's into his practice; to work with Chadwick’s original sculpture and to de-plinth it! Pair of Sitting Figures III was literally sat on the floor under Keith Coventry’s, Endangered Species, (2005). The sculpture stares at a wood-chip table, which holds a cluttering of artefact's. This table would feel more familiar in a Flowers East storage room. Amongst these objects Eduardo Paolozzi’s Untitled Maquette; a cast of the Incredible Hulk, small and dismembered, stands in the gaze of Elizabeth Frink’s Goggle Head (1969). Is he simply creating a chaos out of the connotations, categorisations and hierarchies, the history of art has given different movements and materials or is he making an egalitarian stance. Either way, Busts, Maquettes, props, relics, photo and video documentation of sculptures and happenings, objects that evade specific labels, bronze, copper, plaster, gelatin silver prints, ceramics; taxonomies are flattened like a pyramid of cards.


It sounds like a mess. Contrarily, the presentation is dry and austere almost to the point of boredom. Boring until the juxtaposition of archetypal museum and commercial displays comes to light. The gallery space, displaying Frink and Paolozzis' works is furnished like an archetypal parochial gallery. Carol Bove’s A Setting for A. Pomodoro, (2005), is knowingly reminiscent of many galleries on Cork Street. Bonnie Camplin’s Cancer, (2004) plays on a primordial television set, a model ubiquitous throughout British primary schools of the 90’s. Twelve or so empty school chairs watch the screen vigilantly, this could reference to educational programs.(1)


The chance to curate has added a new dimension to Claydon’s art practice, allowing him to play with the taxonomies and connotations of curatorial styles. For a student of Art History, Fine Art or Curating, this exhibition will resonate long after visiting hours. However to a member of the general public, the chaos made of connotations, taxonomies, materials and movements of Art History may have been lost anyway.

(1) This is perhaps a remark on Camden Art Centre’s transparent reliance, as an educational charity on such ‘educational programs’ for funding

Dominic Rich, Did the Republican National Convention protests achieve Jacques Rancière’s interpretation of equality through ‘political struggle’?

In ‘The Politics of Aesthetics’ Jacques Rancière shares his notion of equality, which is better described as egality. It suggests an extreme levelling of social hierarchies through political struggle. For Rancière a political struggle manifests between these established social hierarchies as the excluded ‘part which has no part’; the unrepresented who attempt to establish their opinion as legitimate in the name of egality. Can Rancière’s notion of political struggle be compared to the events that unfolded during The Republic National Convention (RNC) in Madison Gardens New York, 2004?

The purpose of the RNC is to nominate a Presidential candidate; in 2004 George W Bush was standing for re-nomination. The announcement of the RNC’s venue caused a legal protest to be organised. The protester’s main gripes were the conceived inequalities in the present electoral system, Republican suppression of voters, not to mention the Bush administrations aggressive foreign policy.

Protesting can be a good and legal attempt to get objections heard and understood by an established power. But were their objections heard? Did the protest show the world that America’s indirect voting system misrepresented the electorate? Probably not, floors in the American electoral system have been globally understood for a long time. Did the Bush administration take heed to the significant opposition to the Iraq War? Definitely not! So what effect did the protest have, did it help create egality?

To answer this question the events of the protest must be explained further. On the night of the protest New York’s over zealous police force arrested 1806 people at the protest. One of whom, Mr Dunlop was not active in the protest; he was trying to pick up an order of Sushi from a takeaway. Mr Dunlop was charged with being physically aggressive and resisting arrest. The prosecution gave video evidence of Mr Dunlop that coincided with the charge. However Mr Dunlop’s defence submitted the same ‘unedited’ video evidence showing Mr Dunlop accepting arrest in a passive manner. This video footage proved that the police had given false evidence and that the prosecution had tampered with the original video footage. The case was dismissed along with 90% of the charges brought against the protesters. This scandal was scrutinised by the media, the term ‘Testilying’ became the buzz word to denote the corrupt behaviour of the NYC police force. The questions were asked, if it were not for the presence of independent ‘videographers’, would so many of the charges have been dismissed? Would the corruption have been exposed?

Since the inclusion of cameras to mobile phones almost everybody is an independent ‘videographer’, such events can be recorded almost by chance. Established Western governments’ use of surveillance can be seen as a psychologically and spatially intrusive form of control; it does not simply monitor spaces and events, it instills the fear of being watched into its people; causing self policing. In this case video technology monitored the activity of New York’s’ law enforcement, exposing corruption within it. This growth of a technologically equipped public may force the New York Police force to self police.

The RNC protest did not destroy the social order or create egality. It did not cause a revision of the electoral system or affect Bush’s foreign policy. However, Rancière’s notion of equality does not state that the destruction of a social order is necessary for an act to be considered a political struggle; the attempt to create change is enough. The video technology did enforce an individual’s right to act within the law, and the enforcer’s obligation to abide by the law. Although the RNC protesters’ real effect was coincidental and fortuitous the consequences were dependant on the initial malcontent and action of the protesters. This effect can be seen as a disruption if not a minor reconfiguration of hierarchies. Rancière’s interpretation of equality has not been met, but a change has been made.

Santiago Sierra - Sophie Risner

Antagonism and the Divide.

Santiago Sierra

30.11.07 - 19.01.08.

Lisson Gallery

29 / 52 - 54 Bell Street
London
NW1 5BY

Santiago Sierra is not the easiest artist to deconstruct. Born in 1966 the Spanish artist lives and works in Mexico City. Previous work have included paying drug-addicted prostitutes the price of a shot of heroin to have a line tattooed across their backs as well as hiring Albanian refugees to move concrete blocks by hand across a gallery space in Switzerland. In New York in 2002 Sierras '9 Forms of 100 X 100 X 600 cm each, constructed to be supported perpendicular to a wall' had groups of three to four workers holding on their shoulders forms constructed from different elements - such as wood and concrete. The workers were paid $12 an hour and were sourced from local job centres. This is but a brief insight into the work of Sierra. His work which in itself rest on the shoulders of concepts that are politically motivated and complex beyond belief.

In 2002 Sierra's first show at the Lisson saw the closing of the gallery entrance with corrugated iron and the last time he was at the Lisson in 2004 Sierra was to be found spraying a number of Iraqi volunteers with quick setting Polyurethane. It is almost as if the tune of a Sierra piece is monumentally repeated, using the same idea just a different social minority or a different aesthetic form. The rhetoric of Sierra's show are painfully similar, with only his methods shifting in representational politics or representational aesthetic from show to show, gallery to gallery, country to country.

Here in 2007 Sierra commands both of the Lissons sites on Bell Street. 29 Bell Street pulls together the culmination of works recently realised in Venezuela and Mexico. On entering the space the first aesthetic shift choreographed by Sierra is the complete blacking out of the gallery windows with black paper and tape. This creates an uncomfortable environment as with any small gallery space that has a doorbell entrance you feel on-entering that you have been let into the show unintentionally early and that the Lisson is mid-set up. This concept is exemplified by the rubbish and packaging detritus that litters the floor. To the left is a projection of 'Four Black Vehicles with the Engine Running inside an Art Gallery' which was first shown in Sala Mendoza and typically was a comment on the cities and other large cities pollution crisis, using the fumes as an unquantifiable mass being pumped back into our atmosphere. Opposite in the right hand room Sierras 'Concert for a Diesel Electric Plant,' set in Chicago uses a blacked-out room to disperse the turbulent sounds of a diesel electric plant. Played loud enough in a small blacked out gallery just off Edgware Road and the experience is Sierra antagonism at its best. Downstairs details one of Sierra's largest works to date; 'Sumision' is a project that saw the word Sumision (Submission in English) almost tattooed onto the landscape of Anapra (the Mexican side of the Mexico / America boarder). This word not only navigates the social housing and geo-political crisis of a country forced to abandon a whole community due to lack of state funds, but highlights the tragedy of poverty that cuts Mexico and America apart.

'Santiago Sierra's most challenging sculptural projects to date,' is based at the Lissons second site on Bell Street. '21 Anthropometric Modules made of Human Faeces by the people of Sulabh International, India' is a 2005 - 06 project that decides to focus Sierras political subjectivity on the 'scavenging' crisis in Sulabh, India. Here, mainly woman are employed to clean public latrines and open sewers, being forced to walk sometimes up to four kilometers with the content balanced on their head. This, coupled with the poor living conditions and the rainy season - which often finds the contents oozing from the baskets and into the scavengers hair and face means that disease is rife, with TB being the most common. For us though, we get 21 very precisely moulded rectangles of brown earth-like substance, treated with Fevicol and left to degrade to become completely harmless. There is always an element of safety needed to display within a gallery space, especially a European or American one. This leaves Sierras message isolated from the product and devalues its content creating an uncomfortable void between subject and object. Santiago Sierra obviously has an accomplished understanding of world problematics, but the question is how does this transcend into the gallery?

Claire Bishop in her critique of Nicholas Bourriads 'Relational Aesthetics' looks at the claim that Sierra's systematic exposure of social division creates a base for less confrontational work to exist harmoniously. To compare the work of Sierra to Nicholas Bourriads 'Relational Aesthetics' is an interesting one; as we certainly do not have any kind of relationship with the objects crafted by Sierra. In fact it can almost be said that Sierra intentionally wants to impose a distance on us; between what he creates and how we experience it. This creation of antagonism between the 'us' and the 'them' so beautifully and expensively moulded by Sierra lacks a justifications of education that would be tantamount in underpinning any politically motivated work. Unfortunately it merely leans on the repetitive nature of a formation well rehearsed and tirelessly activated and paid for by galleries who enjoy a stunt as much as they enjoy a good piece of work. Saying this the system of reading Sierras work is bursting with arguments waiting to happen. He begs for the separation of the 'us' and the 'them' yet he charges his concepts with the discursive fire that could only help to educate this very separation, here he tricks us and unintentionally the work becomes just as much us trying to pick our way to the 'them' as it highlights the division so articulately. Like pawns we fall into Sierras conditioning too easily. Essentially there's almost no way out of a Sierra, try with all your might through discussion to pick your way out of his manipulation of guilt and divide, you will still end up right where he wants you. This manipulation does well to justify his method of critique and finds not so much a controversial note within the gallery space moreover an appropriate note. In an age flooded with 'Live Aid' and the justification of charity it's a challenge to react to crisis through object, a challenge it seems Sierra work tirelessly to maintain.

Dominic Rich- Questioning Martin Kemps Notion of Consent in relation to Sex and Sadomasochism

In preparation for his recent exhibition; Seduced; Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now’, Martin Kemp assuredly stated that ‘consent is an important watchword for the show’.(1) He defines consent in relation to the act of sex as mutual action and reaction between two people.(*1) This statement is too general, it does not account for the possible contradiction between sex and consent. The idea of truly consensual sex is always negated by the act itself. It relies on a balance of power between a dominant person and a submissive person. The balance can be very complex; power can shift between the people involved. The balance of power can vary greatly, it can be very cordial, or can become one sided, even violent. The dominant person can assume all the power, turning the submissive person into a victim,(*2) at this point the notion of consent collapses; the act of sex becomes rape or sexual assault. Kemp chose a broad definition of consent to avoid this ugly and traumatising side of sex. Conversely, in displaying Robert Mapplethorpe’s X Portfolio; a depiction of sadomasochism through a collection of black and white photographs, Kemp has tested if not contradicted his definition of consent.(2)

To explain how, the legal definition of ‘Sadomasochism’ needs to be summarised. It is a relationship between a ‘Sadist’; one who gains pleasure from inflicting pain and violence on others and a ‘Masochist’; one who personally enjoys receiving pain and the infliction of violence. Sadomasochism that results in hurt and injury and interferes with the health and comfort of another is illegal.(3) One cannot consent to a sexual act which results in ‘actual bodily harm’. Documentation of such acts is also illegal. Although, Sadomasochism fits with the idea of mutual action and reaction between two people, the imbalance of power and violent nature of the act means one can not legally consent to it.(4)(*3) This causes one to question whether Kemp’s definition of consent accounts for the legal definition. Can X Portfolio be seen as documentation of ‘actual bodily harm’ through Sadomasochism?

Even though images that document ‘actual bodily harm’ through Sadomasochism are illegal it can be referenced or implied. X Portfolio definitely references homosexual sadomasochism, it is questionable whether it documents it. Most of the photographs show one person having pain inflicted on them in some way. The inflicter is not shown, only masochism is documented. However, there is one photograph that could be seen as documenting an illegal Sadomasochistic act. It shows two men, all that can be seen are the spread buttocks of the first man and the elbow and upper arm of the other man, his hand and forearm have been inserted into the first mans anus; the photograph depicts what is commonly known as ‘fisting’.

The question is; does ‘fisting’ constitute ‘actual bodily harm’?(*4) There is no doubt that it has potential to create long term disabling effects, or if performed vigorously will cause ‘actual bodily harm’. In the Case of Mapplethorpe’s ‘fisting’ photograph there is no concrete evidence of ‘actual bodily harm’ but it references an imbalance of power, submission and the potential of injury.(5) In displaying the act of ‘fisting’ Kemp has strained his notion of consent. He has generalised the term ignoring its complexity; undermining the legal definition of consent in relation to Sadomasochism.


1 ‘Seduced; Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now’, (2007-08) Barbican Art Gallery, Curated by Prof Kemp and Prof Wallace.

2Here, I use sadomasochism as a verb, in the case of Legal definition I use it as a noun, hence the change, ‘Sadomasochism’.

3 ‘…such an injury need not be permanent, but must, no doubt, be more than transient or trifling’. Lord Templeman, See R Vs Brown, 1993.

4 It is also because the masochist can only consent to the ‘nature’ and not the ‘quality’ of the act. He or she can agree to the idea of the act but can not predict the consequences of such an action. Since a masochist is often physically restrained; in the position of total submission, he or she may suffer pain and humiliation they did not expect. Code words are often used by the masochist to inform the sadist to stop the act, this can be argued to solve the problem, however if ‘actual bodily harm’ is created the act is still illegal.

5 The exhibition was police checked to make sure the exhibition did not include any illegal material

Comments by my Lawyer/Mother; L A Rich


*1 This very general definition is out of line with the legal definitions. It does not take into account a scenario where one party goes beyond the scope of the consent give,(the nature of the act) or misrepresents the purpose of the act (quality of the act) what would the position be for example, if the dominant party had an infectious disease that he knew about but concealed from the passive party? Would contraction of that disease have been consented to even if the act of intercourse or fisting was?

*2 It might well be, but consider the case that the passive party wants to be totally passive and allow the dominant party full reign. However, if the acts go beyond that consent that the passive party has given, then your assessment of the situation is correct. There was a case in which the passive (girl) consented to a mild spanking, but the dominant (male) gave her a severe beating.thus going beyond the ambit of the consent. See also http://www.rjerrard.co.uk/law/cases/tabassum.htm

*3 If done for the purpose of sexual gratification (R Vs Brown; A group of men performed sadomasochistic acts on each other resulting in actual bodily harm, It was agreed that an individual could not consent to actual bodily harm) but not if it was for body art, in this case consent maybe given (R Vs Wilson; with his wife's consent a man branded his initials in his wife's buttocks the act was compared to tattooing thus consent could be given)

*4 I think you need a legal definition for this which you will find in the case of Brown and also in Wilson. It is Section 20 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1892. if it does fit within the definition then it cannot be consented to ,according to the ruling in brown. However, if it has been done for the purpose of Art (does the photo turn the act into art?) then it could be that Wilson is the better case to follow. I think it is a dubious distinction and am a bit surprised that the police did not consider this porn.

“Is All Modern Art Left – Wing?”
Debate at the South Bank Centre, London 14/11/2007
Daniella Saul

An hour and a half of heated debate about the current state of contemporary art practice, was the promise on The Art Fund website. As part of a series of talks organised by the Art Fund and chaired by Tim Marlow, head of exhibitions at White Cube, this one attracted four high profile speakers to address the question. A controversial artist, Grayson Perry, a Tory politician, Ed Vaizey (also the Shadow Minister for Culture), an arts consultant for a research institute into multiculturalism, Munira Mirza, and Jonathan Yeo, the British celebrity’s portrait artist of choice who recently painted a porno- portrait of George W. Bush. After three tentative introductions by the panellists about themselves, Ed Vaizey proclaimed rather predictably that he would make his sound like a party political broadcast. In his opinion, all modern art is actually right – wing. Which art? Does this mean all Modern Art and Contemporary Art?

Surely in order to conduct a legitimate debate about art practice one must first define their borders. Assuming that the audience all know that he means Contemporary Art, he argues that since this art is highly individualistic, made by entrepreneurial artists and “is concerned with freedom of expression” this makes it art of the right, and not of the left. This sounds more like a Conservative defence of neo-liberal economics and its conditions for art-making rather than defining any political leaning in the content of the work. Any weighty counterpoint to this was unsurprisingly absent from Jonathan Yeo’s remarks, who’s only claim to fame is his rebellious schoolboy attempt at “leftist art” with his portrait of George W. Bush collaged from pornographic images. So far, all of Vaizey’s examples of contemporary art used to illustrate his points seem to have been plucked straight from typical sensationalist media coverage of the work of the old YBA canon.

If this art is the justification for his point that British Contemporary art is not engaged in current political debate, perhaps he should look more closely at what other artists besides Damien Hirst are doing. Grayson Perry’s glazed ceramic pots have long been surfaces on which to satirize the politics of the art world, and paint delicately worded messages from “Heteros Murder Children” to “Muslims Are Softies.” Surely this counts as an engagement with current political issues on some level. However, to suggest, as Munira Mirza does, that British artists should make work that explicitly addresses sensitive issues such as Islamophobia and immigration quickly turned the debate away from art and more into a Question Time style political discussion that Tim Marlow had to try hard to contain. Somewhat lost in the turn in the debate was one of Grayson Perry’s remarks which made more than enough sense as to what he thinks Contemporary Art should be doing with regards to politics: “Well it’s no good asking me. I put forward the question in the work. I don’t answer it.” Exactly that, asking the questions about the world we live in, not solving its problems.

Jaki Irvine - "In A World Like This" Chisenhale Gallery, 31st October - 9th December 2007 - Daniella Saul

The viewer entering the Chisenhale Gallery’s expansive space would be forgiven for thinking he has just walked into the fresh open-air again, not into the East –end chill outside, but into a rehabilitation centre for birds of prey. Irish artist Jaki Irvine’s new show comprises a nine screen video projection shot at the Irish Raptor Research Centre in County Sligo, Ireland. At The Eagles Flying Centre, Irvine recorded the rehabilitation processes of neglected, injured birds. The nurturing relationships fostered with their handlers are set to a cacophonous soundtrack of squawks, bells on the birds’ necks clanging intermittently and encouraged calls from their handlers.

The birds’ promising progress, captured by Irvine as a snapshot of typical day’s activity fosters a budding emotive type of spectating on the part of the viewer. This is achieved entirely through the arrangement and size of the projections onto the gallery’s walls and the timing of certain images onto the walls. This arrangement re-creates the probable spatial arrangement of the centre’s open terrain, with a focus on three poles of activity : the birds’ at rest, their trusting relationships with their handlers, and their flying exercises. The viewer enters the space into another almost square space in the centre of the gallery, built from two walls forming an L- shape, leaving the top left and bottom right hand corners of the space open. This is the flying arena, where the birds swoop from their handlers arms, in sometimes tentative and hesitant flight, to a target further away. The viewer is a privileged audience to a rare and triumphant spectacle. In this double L-shaped space, depending on the direction of the bird’s flight, the viewer must shift both their gaze and body in order to follow its direction. To the right hand side of the gallery space, a continuous projection shows resting birds perching majestically on various posts scattered in an expanse of greenery. To the left hand side, on four smaller screens, the nurturing relationships between the birds and their three handlers can be seen as the handlers seem to pose with their vulnerable charges perching on their elbows, as if for their portraits. The viewer’s sense of curiosity to repeatedly return to each of the screens is created by the sonority of bird calls across the gallery, impossible though it may be to be sure of any connection between them.

Linear narrative is eschewed here, in favour of creating a poignancy individual to each of the areas of activity one sees captured in the images. Irvine’s work is a looped projection and within it the activities depicted in each of the three areas all occur in real time. However, their duration seems interminable as this work captures a moment of progress in an ongoing enterprise, suspending it for the viewer to revel in its success.

I Make Up - Tom Trevatt

12th January 1765, 20th May 1990 and 2nd December 2005

…this actuality that calls forth I, preserved, persevered, sublimated. That holds back in ineluctable prominence. That maintains division, disillusion, distinction. This actuality dramatising the symbolic of inconsequential I-ness…

…as one ascends the escalator at Southwark station, the sky is presented as geometric patterns, blue glass on walls and roof of the intermediate concourse, a vaulted wonder, the dome…

… for the last time mascara is applied, small drops of tears carry black blobs of this stuff down cheeks staining the fucking sofa…

…Les Deux Plateaux, a non-monument, erupts as imagined planes across the Palais-Royal in Paris. Buren prefers the term “polygons” for these fluted columns due to their cross section, the trademark 8.7cm stripes offering the various sides to these shapes…

… IKB #002FA7…

…the subject is said to exceed itself in communication. This excess of the subject, whereby it overflows in communication, allows community as such to occur since it means we are not isolated as discrete identities…

…the architects Future Systems used International Klein Blue behind the aluminium disks on the outside of the Bullring in Birmingham…

…we play this game. You stand in a street, maybe a shopping centre is best. There are just two of you, it doesn’t work otherwise. And one person discretely starts following someone. The other person then has to follow behind and try and guess who it is the first person is following. The trick is to do it so casually that you fool them into thinking you’re not following anyone at all…

…I am indirectly responsible for, among other things, the death of adequate resistance, architectural incompetencies that caused the structural decay of a cottage in South Devon, the switch in swallow’s migration patterns, the Cold War, the death and mutilation of thousands of innocent children in Vietnam and Cambodia due to landmine accidents every year, Global Warming, the certain demise of a number of highly suspicious donkeys, lack of humanitarian aid, the spread of HIV, Syphilis and Chlamydia, Timothy McVey, the heartbreak of someone I love, the mounting trepidation one feels when watching a horror film, sunrise but not sunset, the abrupt reconciliation of subject into object, not putting out self-immolators (you wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire - for fucks sake I can’t go in a urinal if I think someone else is on the room), the decline of the Welfare State, increase in taxes, decrease in taxis and numerous counts of liver damage…

…on the outskirts of London there is no-one…

…so there’s this girl called Idriel or something, maybe Sara, and she is a empty vessel, so fucking representative of nothing that the only way she can express herself is by becoming a fan of something. A fanatic. So she starts up this website and on it lists all the things she is a fan of. Like Kill Bill, Douglas Adams, Dresden Dolls, Luna Lovegood (whoever that is), IKB, American Gods and so on. But she’s not just a fan of these things, she has joined a fan listing online to claim her fanship of this or whatever.Its crazy, like she defines herself by who or what she likes…

…even bare walls look barer now, its not as though they got less full of matter just in one day…

RCA Secret Exhibition - Sophie Risner

16 - 23 November 2007

Royal College of Art
Kensington Gore
London
SW7 2EU


‘Have we time, in this world of ours, to love things and see them in close range, in the plenitude of their smallness'

Gaston Bachelard
(http://dams.rca.ac.uk/res/sites/RCA_Secret/info5.html)

Postcards through-out history have been moments or 'extraordinary assemblages.' The recount of long forgotten places and lands discovered relayed back to loved ones. Whether they are hand-made or purchased by the side of the road they espouse meaning and discovery, whilst simultaneously managing to be a personally constructed account geared to a certain audience or set of eyes. Postcards are whimsically kept and ordered, filled into place by their receivers, only to be pulled out again through moments of nostalgia. Postcards it seems have become and still are, a perfectly viable form of communication through art and beyond tourism. As technology becomes the communication de rigueur in a world permeated by the world wide web it is still enamoring to see that postcards are still used and even better still embellished upon for the sake of art.

The RCA Secret exhibition is held annually at the Gulbenkian Gallery, the main space on entering the building which is situated next to the Royal Albert Hall. The show itself has been running for 14 years and has secured quite a substantial sum for young artists during their studies, with this years show raising over £90, 000. The shows main pull is the amount of celebrity artists that still submit work and this year was no exception, with the likes of Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Yoko Ono and Greyson Perry.

With a show such as this there is a difficulty in critiquing aesthetic as every detail of originality through curatorship is regimented through an age-old display model. I've been attending the show for 3 years and not once has the layout or the running system ever changed. This may be why the show neatly fits into the structured remit of a typically unadventurous RCA project. Steeped in tradition it's a show or rather showcase of work that doesn't beg you to unnaturally 'think.' It begs no questions and demands no authority. In fact the RCA Secret exhibition seems to barely make a blip on the London Arts Calendar at all. This is not to discredit its role, what it lacks in adventure and doesn't command in ambition, it makes up for in representation. I'm not talking about the obvious possibility of owning an original Hirst or walking away with a sketch by Quentin Blake, I'm talking about the role of representing art practice from outside of the London art network. Smaller practices up and down the country get the opportunity to become involved in a international show in a well known arts institution. This could be seen as charity in itself.

'The artist, freed from the burden of subjectivity, present their gifts from the other side of themselves, swaying as they do the timbre of the multitude.'

Richard Falls, November 2007

In this sense there is a structural coming-together of artists and their work, the unifying of latter known and famous artists under one roof with one rule and completely anonymous. This is the glory of the RCA Secret show. The fact that a smaller artist practice can rest on the same ledge and next to a well known artist is a dynamic that is rarely seen within the constructs of a central London art space. This isn't just a subtle comment for the shows success but the reason why year-in-year-out people find time in their busy schedule to visit it, and more importantly artists find time to create for it. What it lacks in theme and curatorial direction it makes up for in an autonomous appreciation of image as image not on merit of name as image. Another point of justification for the success of this show doesn't have to come from the amount of money it generates for RCA students, but as a bench mark moment of appreciation for works outside of London that wouldn't and doesn't get a voice within London. Saying this the very anonymous nature of the show could counter balance that. To reflect on the Richard Fall quote above is to justify that the small offerings by each individual artist are symbolic elements of the multi-faceted paralleling of practices throughout the UK and beyond. A major force in the art world this is not, but as a tributing factor that maintains and keeps alive many unspoken moments of artistic production and progression RCA Secret it is.

Capital Letters for Duplicity

(In a room with Robert Morris and Carl Andre)
Written by Catherine Borra

I looked away from the window for the light was too strong.
I turned back to the room and wondered if there would be any difference, yet no: all the steel square plates were there, arranged to form some bigger square: not great, nor grand; just bigger.
The squares reflected the blank, white shades of the room in the same, non-obvious, opaque way, just as they were doing before, and they themselves were reflected by the mirrored sides of four cubes engaged in an infinite mute dialogue, between each other.
Objects. Objects! You cannot have any great relationship with a motionless form that engages so little with its contingencies: the squares will stare up at the cubes like a bed-ridden old man that has lost his glasses, and the cubes will toss a glance back to them, still absorbed in their everlasting picture frame of uncontaminated perfectness. This could go on forever. I was clearly uninvited.
I was pushed back, put on a hold – numbed by the rigueur of this private act. I was to disturb if it interrupted the scene with some new reflection. What was left was me, with no particular need for prevalence, no expectation or special need, no need to step out from my own privateness, but willing to wait for a while.
And finally it happened: a horde of school-children rushed into the room, a horde of little prevailing Is, each with its own particular smell and voice-tone, so strong that they disrupted the silence of the cube and square dialogue.
Cubes and squares just had to look around, no matter how hard they concentrated. They were stepped on and they were contaminated with all kinds of fragmented reflections.
There were dashes of colour flying around the air.
This was enough to shake I out of its seclusion and join in the tension. I is a social individual after all.

Compagnie Beau Geste – Transports Exceptionnels – Southbank Centre’s Jubilee Gardens, London.

Sunday 7 October 2007


Reviewed by Catherine Borra


On Sunday 7/10, the experimental artistic group Compagnie Beau Geste presented a ballet called Transports Exceptionels at the Southbank Centre’s Jubilee Gardens.
This fascinating choreography is a duet accompanied by the music of Samson and Dalila by Camille Saint Saens, featuring the voice of everlasting opera star Maria Callas. The opera from which the music comes from is fundamental, because the protagonists of this piece are none but French dancer and choreographer Philippe Priasso, accompanied by a mechanical digger. Yes, a digger.
Maybe one wouldn’t think of such a machine performing contemporary dance - however experimental the ballet might be – but this challenge towards traditional and more harmonic forms of representation results into a surprisingly graceful and sometimes witty performance.
The man is creating a relationship with the machine, constantly moving between friendship and love: concepts such as protection (on the diggers side) and childish playfulness (on the Priasso’s side) emerge from this 360° sensual double act. Yet at times, something like rebelliousness and domination accompany the actors’ feelings, although we cannot be sure of who starts off. Of course, the digger is not just a machine as it appears to have a human origin/derivation: its spade is more like a huge hand than a bulk of iron whose intent is to dig wholes. The rise of humanity and of consciousness inside this contraption is similar to that of a robot: there is some struggle for the man to maintain his power despite of his physical weakness, but in the end the positions are decided and the digger bows its head / hand.
In a short story by sci-fi novelist Isaac Asimov called “Robby”, a family robot decides it wants to become human at any cost. Other than being an issue regarding so-called “robot psychology”, this is just a desire of belonging that we can often encounter between humans as well: surprisingly, despite its oversized metal clumsiness, this robot-like machine turns out to be more similar to a spoilt child in need of attention.

The Affirmation - Sophie Risner

The Affirmation

Chelsea Space (Chelsea College of Art and Design)
16 John Islip Street
London
SW1P 4JU

07.11.07 - 15.12.07
Curated by Andrew Hunt

Artists Involved:
Paul and Steven Claydon
Kajsa Dahlberg
Chris Evans
Robert Garnett
Babak Ghazi
Mark McGowen
Goshka Macuga
Elizabeth Price
Mandla Reuter
Jamie Shovlin
Matthew Thompson
Tris Vonna-Michell

Don't be fooled into thinking that this exhibition is in any way as obvious as its title - 'The Affirmation,' a show based on the same-titled 1981 novel by Christopher Priest is an incredibly enterprising collective exhibition. As you may witness from the large list of artists above 'The Affirmation' symbolizes an exuberance hard to comprehend within the realms of such a small gallery space such as the one offered at Chelsea.

The Christopher Priests novel looks into the mind set of Peter Sinclair a man 'tormented by bereavement and failure.' Sinclair, a man on the edge, decides to move into the countryside and a life of isolation after a failed marriage and losing his job in the city. Whilst hidden away Sinclair embarks on an autobiography. Sinclair soon finds himself writing the autobiography of another man 'affirming' a parallel identity in an imagined world, a persona whose sinister attractions draws him further in.' A tale it seems of tragedy that ends in ultimate madness.

Andrew Hunt, Co-Editor of 'Untitled' magazine and curator of this show requested that each of the thirteen artists invited respond through their work to themes of identity - in a push to mirror the personal exploration taken by Sinclair in Priests original novel. In doing this Hunt begs the artist to distort their approach to art history in 'a way that goes beyond mere ironic appropriation, and extends out towards a new and unfamiliar view of the world.' It is at this point that you can't fail but notice how ambitious this show actually is. Not only is the theme already quite complicated but to fit this negotiation into the small box of Chelsea Space is a very brave move indeed.

Like the book it details, Hunts complex curatorial concept is thoroughly multi-layered, not just with meaning, but with demands on the artists. Each work in 'The Affirmation' is a brand new piece created especially for the show. For this Hunt invited the artists to work directly with the Special Collection at Chelsea College of Art and Design Library boasting that every artist has managed 'to find their own connections within the library's archive.' I don't doubt this but what I do doubt is the general thematic indulgence in this show which unfortunately gets lost as one wanders around the space. It is highly plausible that this show could merely be a collective piece that asked the artists to work directly with the Special Collection at Chelsea Library, to then add the extra layer of the text by Priest doesn't just overly confuse the show but could also damage its credo.

Maybe the Priest novel was a starting point for the show? An inverted moment into the psychosis, referencing the role of madness and how as a society we 'affirm' concepts of identity - moreover how and what we do to sustain our own identity. This would tally with the highly charged historical element of the show and the use of the Special Collection. The contextual element seems to be a powerful curatorial theme in a lot of Hunts prior shows. Hunt seems to be exploring the role of a literary thematic to expand upon new possibilities for an aesthetic experience. The entire construct of the show is so brilliantly multi-layered and complicated that it somehow manages to actually 'work.' Hunt proves to be a genius in his physical multi-layering of the work, directing a mix-hang that forces us to come upon an artist several times as the majority of artists involved contributed more than one piece - again an adventurous insight into Hunts ambitious filling of the gallery space. The mix-media element helps to make the show increasingly visual as well as aesthetically beautiful. Each piece is worth its salt, as the artists have obviously taken time to produce something powerful and interesting (according to the publication provided, the show 'The Affirmation' has been a thought in Hunts mind ever since 2006).

This consideration and careful manipulation keeps the show very tightly curated and annoyingly hitch-less. I can't help but remember that as I appreciated each and every piece on their own merit I did observe how they all looked so 'right' together, this is a good systematic of a well conceived 'group' show. Saying this though as I did traverse the space and spend time getting to know each and every individual piece I couldn't help but only find slight tangible connections between piece and idea (theme). The broad nature of the theme means that it is ever easy to produce work that has a multitude of readings. This idea doesn't necessarily contribute to the first intention of the show and may in fact hinder its interpretation.

It's hard to look in detail at ever piece within such a large show (in such a small space). Goshka Macugas audio selection in the centre of the main space stands out as being some interesting extracts from the Special Collection but thought provoking moments of sound experimentation. Similarly Chris Evans 'The Affirmation, Letter and books, Dimensions variable 2004 / 2007' is a great introduction into the general 'gist' of the show. Other pieces such as Mark McGowens video 'Artist to set himself on fire' is slightly amusing but essentially lost thematically, especially when McGowen espouses the work as a protest on the war in Iraq.

Holistically this exhibition works beyond it's overly complex remit. Each of the work manages to do or say something and as an exhibition it is worth visiting twice or spending a long afternoon there. The surprise of this is based mainly on the size of the show in ratio with the quantity and quality of the work, though not the main reason this is definitely a contributing fact behind the loss of Hunts core theme here. An over indulgence of artists in a tightly curated small space doesn't help Hunts main idea. Aesthetically the show looks great and works well, but this could easily happen outside of the clutter of the theme. Equally the intentions embedded within that theme only hinder the clutter of the show to make this a very individualistic reading far away from Hunts uniting intention.

Unplugged (Remix), David Batchelor, Wilkinson Gallery
11 October-18 November 2007
Soledad Garcia
In Unplugged (Remix), the London based artist David Batchelor gives track for his new exhibition on his well-known exploration of the use and understanding of colour. This time, the usual illuminations through neon lights or ‘billboard effects’ have been replaced by the natural gloss and saturate colours of plastic objects. Ordinary commodities, such as strainers, dusters, combs, brushes, balls and small children’s toys, among others things, are elements that Batchelor gathered from different but common Pound Shops. Once again, he attempts to work with the urban environment, a scattered and transformable place where some unvalued and insignificant objects could be potentially changed to a high status.
Parapillars, the installation placed on the ground floor of the gallery, suggests the first transcendence for these accumulative utensils that are attached to a vertical matt metal structure. All the relevance resides in the common thread of colour; some of these objects are selected under a precise distinction of range and values, while others through chromatic improvisation or by types, creating an environment of decorative trees with attractive shapes. The aim is achieved. Everyday kitsch becomes objects of fascinating contemplation. Thus Batchelor's strategic assemblages could proceed to a new state in the viewer, one that, annulling their original use, promotes the desire to consume these industrial objects as art products. And finally, the inevitable impossibility, where this state takes place is a fictional illusion, only possible in the context of an exhibition venue.
In comparison to Batchelor's previous artworks like Brick Lane Remix (2003), where installations of second hand light-boxes and shelving units celebrate the electric coloring of a technological era, Unplugged (Remix) rescues modest elements whose technological value has disappeared. On the first floor of the gallery, electric cables were wound into a ball, while plastic and souvenir sunglasses were tied together building the skeleton structure of balls forms. The opportunity for the spectator to play with these objects is forbidden, drawing attention to what has been placed on the walls of the gallery: Batchelor's drawings of his Parapillars and illuminated installations, a practical metaphor which further distances these untouchable objects.
The seduction of the gaze is recognized by Batchelor through the use of the language of capitalist industry, employing layout methods that allow a formal distribution of space and make objects visually attractive and enlightening unnoticed objects. This type of manipulation considers the effort for the artist “to make these materials look better than they do in their raw state” , while the spectator consuming this ephemeral theatre and assuming their disillusion, returns to their consumable state (home). Nevertheless collectors enjoying this artificial scenario, accessing to these objects, break completely the barrier of consumption. Inevitability, art from the masses to the few.

Review on
Shibboleth, Doris Salcedo
Tate Modern, 9 October- 6 April 2008 by Soledad Garcia

Placed in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, Doris Salcedo’s exhibition is one of several shows that are included in the current Latin-American art programme. One of the distinguishing features of this exhibition is the intervention of a Colombian artist inside the venue, which overturns and replaces the classical and well-known retrospective of the Latin-American artist. This shift of perspective, from the legitimization of Latin-American artists through their historical artwork in the museum context to the opportunity of an artist to work with the legitimization of a modern museum, apparently opens a democratic interaction between centre and periphery; postcolonial concepts that are involved in Shibboleth, Salcedo’s large and sinuous crack that fractures the floor of the Turbine Hall.
Starting from the entrance of the Hall, a tiny and insignificant crack begins to separate the concrete floor. With a non-rigid and jagged shape, this broken path contrasts with the orthogonal order of the Hall, intensified by being on the middle of the building where the crack becomes a wide gap following a zigzag course. This allows us to see the inside reliefs: the traces of the museum foundations. At the end, the crack doesn't finish in the opposite wall, on the contrary, it continues along the other side of the wall. Indeed, the crack acts as a weak antagonist of this strong and impressive modern building. The Tate Modern becomes a symbol of hierarchies and classifications, due to the understanding of history. Reinforcing this idea through the title Shibboleth, the crack disrupts the criterion of identifying groups, which confronts this discomforting “Modern Shibboleth”.
Spectators crossing the unlineal crack, implicitly subvert what has been defined and fixed in eurocentric and colonial discourses, from differences based on race and territory to the fantasy expressions of otherness. Using only a simple gesture of form in the floor, Salcedo attempts to reveal imposing narrations that remains marginalized from the heritage of the Modern project. The confrontation of her artwork in this illustrious institution, commits the predictable risk of staying in the absolute silence of history, due to the recognized process of the Tate, i.e. their root foundation in the main Enlightenment heritage: this suggests a lineal reconstruction of the nation (art, history, identity) as well as the current assessment of the museum under the recognition of this still singular dominion. The Museum attempts to open its doors to pluralism and welcomes equality, while its nature on the contrary, attracts organizing contexts, knowledge and power relationships. At least this aspect is corroborative since Salcedo is curated by Achim Borchardt-Hume, curator of the Tate Modern.
The answer to these issues, as Salcedo knows, hasn’t been found, but at least her initiative explores and raises questions that confront our self-deception.

Dominic Rich-
Seduction; Sex and Art from Antiquity to Now. Barbican Art Gallery, London, 2007-08

In the proposal for his new exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery Martin Kemp asks ‘Where does art stop and pornography begin?’.(1) In an exhibition that purports to explore ‘the representation of sex in art through the ages” exploring the dichotomy of cultural codes of ethics, it would be expected that there was an even presentation of pornography through the ages. Questioning the morality and purpose of representing sex, the exhibition provides a chronological overview of over 300 works. Included are ‘Roman sculptures, Indian manuscripts, Japanese prints, Chinese watercolours, Renaissance and Baroque paintings and 19th century photography with modern and contemporary art’. Here the word ‘with’ suggests a divide between post nineteenth century art and that prior. The divide relates to Kemp’s question of the dual function of erotic art; as art and as pornography, titillation or arousal. It indirectly implies that arts function as an arouser is no longer pertinent.

It is not so much through what is exhibited but through what is left out that we can begin to answer Kemp’s introductory question. To elaborate, it is no secret that Greek and Roman culture’s use of sex was a lot more diverse and freely celebrated; depictions of sexual acts had religious reverence but were also used as decoration. As Catholicism created a millennium of prudes in Europe it is not surprising that there was a suppression of sex in life and art from the Renaissance to beyond the advent of photography.(2) During this long period explicit representations of sex were confined to the secret rooms of the British Museum, or such places as J M W Turners private sketch book. Photography and print expanded the circulation and quantity of representations of sex exponentially. Photography separated titillation from artistic thought allowing it to exist independently. Print created mass production of these images. Sex was turned into a global and highly lucrative industry: the ‘porn industry’. So why in this exhibition are contemporary representations of sex only represented by contemporary art and not also with the ‘porn industry’?

Sex and titillation are still prevalent in contemporary art, but are used to convey an ideology or often a critique of the ‘porn industry’. Contemporary art is never simply about pornography.(3) For instance, being heavily influenced by psychoanalysis, the Surrealists saw sex as a method of improving one’s psyche. Robert Mapplethorpe’s ‘sado-masochistic’ photographs have a political charge questioning the notion of consent.(4) Nan Golding photographs intimate accounts of lovers with their children, reinvigorating the romantic ideals of love and sex. This seems reactionary to the way pornography has de-humanised perceptions of sex. Unlike the ‘porn industry’, contemporary art’s explicit imagery always has a cause or excuse.

As Kate Bush assured, ‘it’s an exhibition not a sex museum… the show is not about pornography’. This attitude adds to a censorship of the history of sex, undermining the role pornography played in classic civilisations. Photographic images produced purely for arousal are ignored by this exhibition after the start of the 20th century. With regards to Kemp’s question ‘Where does art stop and pornography begin?’ this photography or early pornography is the most important element of the exhibition. It shows explicit sexual images existing independently of artistic ideologies and mediums. Kemp highlights where pornography begins to separate from art. Unfortunately, in excluding the current ‘porn industry’ the ‘Now’ part of the title has been undermined



1 Martin Kemp is Co-Curator of ,‘Seduction; Sex and Art from Antiquity to Now’.
2 I mean the suppression of the representation of coitus rather than the use of nudity in painting.
3 Apart from when it is bought; this is another debate.
4 If his photography was really to be Sado-Masachstic then it would be illegal.