Bernd Behr - Alexia Goethe Gallery, London.
29th February – 7th April 2008
Daniella Saul

German artist Bernd Behr films and photographs his subjects much like an archaeologist might exhume his subjects for closer exploration and investigation. Part documenting and researching, part poetic meditations, his camera finds architectural sites steeped in history and recently abandoned, models for an investigation of failed structures. His method also acts on another plane, gradually unfurling the potential of such structures to be released from their architectural functions, testing their performative possibilities in front of the camera.
Behr’s 35 mm photographic slide installation “Amoy Gardens” (2007) was filmed in the eponymous residential and shopping complex in Hong Kong, found to be at the centre of the deadly SARS outbreak in 2002 when the faulty ventilation system was found to have freely spread the virus throughout the extensive complex. Behr films quick snapshots, the salient feature being the lack of human presence due to the mass evacuation that ensued following the disaster. The car park ramps, a ground floor doorway, a harbour shot from a balcony, a crumbling exterior staircase, broken plumbing, interminably long escalators and numerous ventilation shafts. A voice over accompanies the piece, of a Chinese woman stuttering through an English reading of Le Corbusier’s treaty on “Exact Air,” for the development of an efficient ventilation system for his housing projects in the 1930s. The camera simply records the empty aftermath of the evacuation, the building now a hollow shell. While the moving image element of the work retains a degree of independence from the audio, the voice over creates a proposition for the building, a possibility to rehabilitate it through twentieth century modernist architectural building practices. The incongruity at this point is emphasised subtly, yet unmistakably– despite, or as a result of massive Chinese economic expansion, lessons might still be learnt from older, European experimental practices that deal with such essential practicalities as an efficient plumbing system.
Also exhibited is a large photograph, “Topographic Obscenities” (2007) in which a vertical landscape of rocks, debris and plumbing are fused together with sprayed on grey metallic concrete. Not only does this work magnify and condense the effects of the disaster at the housing complex, it “fossilises” them, amplifying the pull of history and mystery to Behr’s chosen sites.
The interest in the idea of fossilising, or a kind of architectural sedimentation is an aspect of Behr’s work that reveals itself through a focus on structures that have entered the transitional stage between use and subsequent abandonment. Robert Smithson’s idea of the “de-architecturalised” structure feeds visibly into the “Amoy Gardens” work and into Behr’s other works where the structure in question becomes an entropic entity. It embodies a notorious history, but with no apparent future use it further encourages fascination and mystery. Similarly, another of Behr’s works “Hotel Palindrome 2006, before Robert Smithson” not on show here, directly references and borrows notions of cultivating mystery or allure to entropic, transitional sites, as originally explored in Smithson’s work “Hotel Palenque” (1969-1972) an old, stylistically aberrant Mexican hotel built on the site of Mayan ruins undergoing several cycles of renovation and subsequent decay.
Behr explores the idea for the Hong Kong housing complex to revive its actual potential and therefore its filmic characterisation as being not strictly documentary, through the introduction of the audio voice over enacting a developmental proposal.
Borrowing from historical examples, successful or failed is one method Behr uses to offer up the potential to resurrect architectural sites of abandonment, if not in reality then for their filmic presence and resonance.

Dubossarsky & Vinogradov - Vilma Gold, London

26.1.08 - 2.3.08
Daniella Saul

Having recourse to the past for a style of painting now decades removed from the ideological aims of its politics, Russian artists Vladimir Dubossarsky and Alexander Vinogradov’s paintings of the decadent life of the Russian elite are a jarring juxtaposition of Russian contemporaneity seen through Socialist Realist formal conventions. Very large in scale and brash and vibrant with use of colour, the clash of form and subject- matter is an apt method the artists take up by which to produce and comment on a set of dichotomies. A fantastically ostentatious object of wealth is painted with the same rigour and on the same monumental scale as a typical Soviet School painting of a political scene might have been. A Russian supermodel typifies the rags to riches story of a generation of young women returning to Russia as members of a new affluent, cosmopolitan and sexy social class. The hedonistic, party lifestyles of the elites with their taste for the gimmicky and the vulgar emphasises the idea of individual wealth and glamour and the independence and freedom it brings. This section of society is presented in stark contrast to how one might imagine the majority of the population who are not afforded the privilege and benefits of post – Soviet Russia’s relationships with the western world. This idea is addressed by the artists precisely through their use of a formal style associated with (a failed) Communist ideology. What is more, Dubossarsky and Vinogradov’s paintings do not narrate neutrally. Not only do they juxtapose aspects of contemporaneity with a formal framework that denotes a historically incompatible vision for it, the artists often punctuate their scenes with a self- consciousness that seems in some instances to point to the unfamiliarity and strangeness of western fads and gimmicks. This manifests itself through the outward gaze of a character in a party scene or with a less subtle, but amusing approach depicting an alien following the faddish trend of owning a Chihuahua dog. The artists’ measured brushstrokes paint busy scenes and aspects of pop culture with a vibrant colour palette of acidic tones combined with more muted ones, to create works that do not appear to just represent revelry and wealth. They also seem to suggest that this manifestation of Russian contemporaneity is one that is not quite sure what it thinks of itself yet.

Tim Etchells and Vlatka Horvat - Sophie Risner

Tim Etchells & Vlatka Horvat
‘Insults & Praises’ & ‘Promises & Threats’
Art Sheffield 08 (Sheffield Biennial)
‘Yes No Other Option*’

16.02.08 – 30.03.08

Millennium Galleries
Sheffield

Four white smallish seats sit neatly in a square formation around 4 TV sets. Each TV set has a pair of headphones attached as is gallery protocol when showing ‘video art’ within the context of the gallery space. A-mid the various video pieces within the show the work of Tim Etchells and Vlatka Horvat stands alone as an intriguingly honest re-presentation of the core theme at play throughout this years Sheffield Biennial. The two artists sit next to each other staring at the screen engaged in the moment of what could only be described as a dialogue of ideas, thoughts, rouses and contemplations. Not once do Etchells or Horvat look at each other throughout this torrid exchange - a wonderfully choreographed love affair enriched through a strong linguistic dynamic.

This years title of Yes, No Other Option sheds light on constructs of expectation, performance and failure. The readiness needed to live within a world dominated by a 24 hour work ethic alongside expectations to succeed and do better slip side by side with moments of abject failure, isolation and professional redundancy as tropes within contemporary Fine Art production. Occupational success and failure current idioms that dominate cultural production, resurfacing every now and then as we are expected to work harder, get up earlier and work later. The arrival of the digital age is also significant moment on the passage of this framework; as the Internet adapts the home into an office and visa versa.

To surface this through the work of Etchells and Horvat we can only but see how such images of expectation can mirror and reflect back onto the discourse of a contemporary relationship. Etchells and Horvat spend this digital journey abusing each other in vast extremes then adoring each other all through sharp one liners considerately and exquisitely performed. Often with the recourse of a sly smile or giggle planted between the lips of the two protagonists - these moments are the only insight into the mounting tension in the room. A portrait of the constant pressure unseen within the maintenance of a relationship. The trick of this pieces intriguing introvert qualities lies in the notion of the unseen - the comments normally ushered behind closed doors to each other in moments of rage, lust and exhaustion. The statements within this piece said so convincingly to one and another have the knock on effect of a representation of closeness but in truth this complex play lacks a coherent plot.

Etchells, a director for experimental Theatre company 'Forced Entertainment' is acutely aware of irony and the importance of a well conceived dialogue, or in this case a well placed monologue. As this play unwraps Etchells wit forms a clever moment from mere individual statements to a charged linguistic collaboration, that unites over dividing Etchells and Horvat. It's a love affair of the most peculiar kind - but yet stands as an impressive feight of direction and even more impressively a formidable observation of society.

Here, the theme of the Biennial must be re-evaluated, Etchells manages to look deeper into this concept of failure, it necessarily being the moment of success engrained within a work ethic nor is it our ability to function in a world which commands and demands more, far away from this stands Etchell and Horvats comprehension of this years Sheffield Biennial as a moment of success through communication at a very basic level. The two video pieces sat innocently in the middle of the gallery space do more than just look into the Biennials core them it attempts to strike a blow at our ability to actually talk to each other another and this, it does, with extreme success.

For more information please visit.

http://www.artsheffield.org.uk/as08/index.html

Laughing in a Foreign Language - Sophie Risner

30 Artists exploring humour around the world


The Hayward Gallery
Southbank Centre

25.01.08 - 13.04.08

Laughter is a tricky idea to represent - what makes us laugh and why we do it are two very different questions, thus under these conditions it can then be said that this is a bold move for the Hayward to attempt such an investigation into the theme. 'Laughing in a Foreign Language' sees a move towards the commodification of laughter in a 'time of increasing globalisation.' One of the first realities of this show is that it is incredibly weighed down with numerous video pieces. In an ever-digital age this is not particularly shocking but in curatorial terms it goes against the concentration of thought and time placed on this investigation. The shear historical importance of laughter per se means that any exhibition that tries to deal with it has to demand a certain attribute towards the past. Here, Brechtian 'alienation' is explored alongside themes of purposelessness and displacement. Generally speaking this exhibition seems to be overreaching its key themes and at many points seems to find the crafting of a pure assemblage of the funny more of a struggle than a joy. Samuel Beckett’s ‘Worstward Ho,’ 1983 has not only become the key text for recent explorations within art currently but integrates itself as a key paradigm within this exploration ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better,’ becomes a get out clause within this exhibition’s exploration, marking not only the justification of failure within the remit of this show but the misunderstanding of failure within comedy. It is one concept to create a dialectic on the quite popular theme of failure within art but surely to bind that to failure within art and laughter is an over prescription of optimism. Mami Kataoka attempts to address this over-prescribed condition of predicating failure to the possibilities of such a global investigation into art and laughter. Is it possible for a show to address such global differences and such different artistic approaches in a bid to unify under the complexities of the funny?

Olaf Breuning’s video 'Home2' explores through a westernised irony the concept of tourism and subsequent breakdown in communication; based in Japan, Papa New Guinea and the Swiss Alps the film finds Olafs protagonist donning masks, playing with locals and screaming ‘I’m gonna meet the natives!’ it’s an uneasy film that seeks substinance in English / American irony yet suffers from an over prescribed length that wilts the humour more than lets it flourish. The polar extreme to this can be found in Janne Lehtinens beautifully subtle comments on the age-old tale of Icarus, here Lehtinen dares to mastermind comedy through the photographic, not easy – especially as most of the show is tragically shown through a video lens, rendering the idea that comedy is something experienced as a moving quantity over the still. Lehtinens ponderous moments of failed Icarus experimentations sum up wonderfully the key element of failure, as through these mini-tales we unpack Lehtinens own inner frustrations and not just sympathise but can see the ridicularity embedded within them. If Lehtinen could be described as subtle then Kalup Linzy’s 'Conversations wit de Churen' is anything but. Linzy embarks on a soap-opera pastiche based on an African-American ghetto family. Most of the footage is badly shot and the over dubbing embaressingly mis-placed - making the work uncomfortable viewing yet essential when transcending the show. Explicit sexual scenes and jargon are interspersed with mundane moments exploring the central characters relationship all performed to one another by the means of mobile phones. Other video work include Kutlug Ataman's 'Turkish Delight,2006' which finds the artist performing for the audience a highly improvised belly dance, wearing traditional turkish attire the artist mocks what he perceives as the conventional global stereotype of Turkey through an almost 3D motion self-portrait. Meanwhile Guy Ben-Ner also finds comedy through self-portraiture, one of the most striking video pieces Ben-Ner's 'Wild Boy' filmed in the artist’s own house and featuring his son looks to the role of father and son within art theory. Here Ben-Ner's son plays a feral child adopted by Ben-Ner. As the tale unwraps we view Ben-Ner teaching his adopted son how to read and write, eat and become human. The end product is awkwardly haunting yet intriquing, there aren't any major moments for clarity of the funny, but it does push towards crafting a relationship that trivializes humanity rather than glorifying it.

On a pictorial note the English contribution to the show manages to bark the obvious, Jake and Dinos Chapman de-face William Hogarth prints with the same mis-placed irony that saw them de-facing Goya in their entry to the 2003 Turner Prize shortlist. Though nothing particularly new, these painfully illustrative moments reflect perfectly back onto the Samuel Beckett concepts of 'Try again. Fail again. Fail better.' The Brothers Chapman manage to mastermind dark European illustrative mischief whilst working so incisevely within the Beckett remit. Shrigley equally finds it hard to step outside of his comfort zone, plastering the walls of the last Hayward space with slogans, wordy commentary and images that staple some kind of injustice and failure to the artists life experiences. Sadly through his more-than-notorious style there is more of a sense of repetition than a crafting through the shows key idea of Laughter.

The problem when forming this debate comes from the innards of what comedy and laughter actually ‘do.’ The response to a claim that a show exploring general themes of laughter is far to obvious, less was the contract of genuine hilarity and more was a construct built on exploring how the weird and wonderful world we live in responds to the notion of unification through the funny. We may not have laughed, giggled and erupted our way around the Hayward but at least Mami Kataoka dared to formulate a dilectic between comedy and the contemporary issue of globalization. Some of the works integrate themselves into this discourse and truly become moments of global observation whilst others lean too heavily on the Samuel Beckett illusion plastering their purposelessness at their core. It is this juxtaposition of failure and intrigued success that finds the show at the Hayward not finding its discourse in the materials of comedy production but in the essence of comedy effect. 

Janne Lehtinen, Scared Bird, 1998 – 2004

Do

Does Janne Lehtinen really believe he can fly?
Janne Lehtinen, Scared Bird, 1998 – 2004
Laughing in a Foreign Language
Written by Robert Dingle

The Icarian Sea, near Icaria (an island southwest of Samos), takes its name from the story in Greek Mythology of Icarus and his farther Daedalus. Having been imprisoned by King Minos within the labyrinth (the home of the Minotaur), Daedalus fashioned a pair of wings for himself and his son made of feathers and wax. Ahead of leaving his farther advised Icarus not to fly, either, too close to the sun, as its heat would melt the wax, or too close to the sea, as the wax would dampen. Icarus being overwhelmed by the sublime feeling of freedom that flying gave him forgot his farther advice and sawed into the sky. The wax melted, his feathers disappeared and Icarus fell into the sea.

Scared Bird, a sequence composed of eight large photographic Lamda prints, sees the artist try to surpass Icarus in a series of unsuccessful attempts. In each image the artist is frozen, either poised at the moment just prior to an attempt being made or contemplating the unforeseen errors in the aftermath of an effort gone amiss.

In the former, the image captures a moment of indeterminacy. The expectation and intention is clear. The artist, surrounded by wings, fins and sails and adorned with a ‘do-it-yourself’ aesthetic, is seen preparing to undertake a leap of faith. Through an act of bravery and in the face of seemingly stacked odds, the artist is held to a point of potential; a moment of generative possibility where any number of latent outcomes still remain open.

In contrast, the other images depict the lone figure, no longer surrounded by his avaitory trappings or the expectations they formerly embodied, rather, he remains central to the image, but surrounded by wreckage. The risk has been taken and the outcome determined.

Our initial reading of this work leads us to believe that it makes clear the divide between expectation and reality. The ‘before and after’ images seem to explicate how the process of failure can operate i.e. when the distance between expectation and reality no longer meet but become misaligned.

But what happens when realization no longer equates reality? When reality becomes fiction? We cannot ignore the fact that the work harbors a conceit. Does Janne Lehtinen really believe he can fly? The answer, although I have never met him, I am certain would be ‘no’. This leads us to understand the work as a series of attempts that rely upon the staging of events. Lehtinen does not expect to fly, he does not enter a realm of doubt or not knowing, he expects to fail and his expectation corresponds to reality.

Scared Bird becomes a successful illustration or interpretation of the idea of failure and leads us to acknowledge the well-established paradox intrinsic to failure i.e. failure can never be an objective, as when achieved, reverts to becoming a form of success; one successfully fails.

Icarus can be read as a fictional metaphor for failure. He shows us that an unorthodox act entering into a realm of doubt can produce a space of opportunity. However as Icarus pushes the limits of this prospect the conjectural possibility of failure eventually becomes an actuality.

Fire under Snow: Darren Almond

Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, 14 Wharf Road, London N17RW
18 January – 30 March 2008

By Wiebke Gronemeyer

Upon entering the gallery’s premises 600 identical clocks forcefully carry out their task: keeping time. Nonetheless, the clocks in this sculpturally overloaded installation, Tide (2008), act out more than this, questioning the objectivity of the passage of time. Indeed, these 600 clocks are unstoppable: each time a digital number on the computer-controlled synchronised clocks flips over to mark the passing of another minute or another hour, the gallery space physically reverberates. However, this overload of homogeneity lets us question time and its duration: should we think more often of the difference between an apparently objective chronometry and our subjective tools of measurement, based on experience and constituted in our memory?
Ideas about memory in relation to the subjectivity of time permeate all of Almond’s works in Fire under Snow: Darren Almond, his new exhibition at Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art in London. In his film In the Between (2006), the artist deals with evocative meditations on time and duration, geography and displacement. The fourteen-minute long, three-screen high-definition film was shot in Tibet and China on the Quinghai-Tibet railway, the world’s highest train route. What Almond pictures is an ongoing itinerary, harnessing the symbolic and both the personal and historical potential of objects, places and situations. The visual juxtaposition of the outside landscape and the interior of a Buddhist temple turns out to be countermanded by the interference of the corresponding sounds: the clattering train and the monks’ monotone chanting. Thus, the linearity of this itinerary becomes undermined, affecting its narrative character. The work is on a very literal level still to be understood as depicting aspects of duration, both on screen and by means of sound. In addition, on a more abstract level, it is much more about a contemporary attitude that can be read through the train as a metaphor, making its way across a whole continent: a characteristic of an aesthetic of globalisation. Almond surpasses and subverts the notion of an itinerary as a means to an end that is not recurrent to itself. As he interlaces the different narratives – the train and the monks, the dominating and the controlled – the artist goes one step further of portraying the evident contrast between the industrial and the spiritual and reveals how even such a clash of culture can, in its narrative structures, have something in common – time, duration and the effects it has on the individual, on both sides of the story.
This nostalgic longing seems to filter through the other works in the show. Bearing (2007) is a single-screen projection depicting the daily routine of an Indonesian sulphur miner, monitoring him on his way in and out of the mine, carrying the toxic material. The more than evident beauty of the landscape strikes the moral disguise that is evoked by the harmful characteristics of the sulphur, confronting the viewer to position himself out of his comfort zone in front of a high-resolution screen in London towards the social reality in Indonesia. Aren’t our reactions, whether they be compassion of fascination, be understood as unethical and thus wrong?
Night + Fog (2007) consists of six large-scale black-and-white photographs of dead forests surrounding the nickel-mining towns of Siberia. Again, Almond highlights pollution and its damaging consequences, relating to our historical situation, recalling similarities to the symbolic potential of pictures taken in the woods surrounding Auschwitz and Birkenau. Is a longing for the past as a means to an end for a contention with contemporary culture to be understood as how Almond lately, more poignantly, introduces nostalgia into his work? Whether this is a path worthy to explore could be a question to address in the future. As for now, it seems not to detract from the political claims he makes with his work but to strengthen them through carrying the symbolic antipodes, beauty and barbarity, image and sound, to their extremes.

Sober Realism

Images of Society. Contemporary Painting at Kunstverein Hamburg, 27.09. – 31.12.2007.

By Wiebke Gronemeyer

The concern of the exhibition Images of Society. Contemporary Painting is expressed as “to explore the relation of painting to society”. More precisely, the question Yilmaz Dziewior posed in this recent show at the Kunstverein in Hamburg/Germany is one concerned with the political dimensions of recent paintings. The exhibition features several works by Minerva Cuevas, Eberhard Havekost, Victor Man, Corinne Wasmuth and Wawrzyiec Tokarski, among others, including easel paintings, murals and installations, that suggest relations between art, society and its politics, ranging from representational to repudiative characteristics. Thus, according to Dziewior, the works in respect to society advocate – referencing Jacques Rancière’s “aesthetical regime of the arts” – that in political matters there is no outside, since art and politics are but two different modes of articulating and dividing the sensory world; any hierarchisation of methods of productions becomes irrelevant.
Johannes Wohnseifer’s Spam Paintings present an attempt at a critical engagement with low-culture consumerism. For this exhibition he subscribed texts from Spam E-mails, offering Viagra, penis enlargement procedures and university degrees onto previously patterned aluminium plates. These patterns appear as cracks on the surface that disrupt any reading of the superficial words and sentences. Hence, Wohnseifer visually transports the de-coding system of the e-mails onto the surfaces intending to emphasize on their exemplary characters for the relationship of today’s society with those dangerous accidental by-products of digital communication.
Gunter Reski’s paintings of images and words introduce proverbial peculiarities: images could be read as literal and words strike through their visual figurativeness. Both elements complement each other in these works, where Reski ambivalently relates images and words without asserting any correct interpretation of that relationship, thus enhancing an oscillation between the painting and the viewer, ascertainment and doubt, identification and critical reflection.
Caroline von Grone’s way of countering the social is literally one of underpinning. The artist chose to work for several days in the subway of the underground station “Steinstrasse” in Hamburg; a highly frequented place, not so much as a tunnel for commuting passengers, as a home to drug- or alcohol-addicted women and men. The site-specific portraits, executed as “plein-air” paintings, picture the characteristics of the passage offering a correlating reality between the site as it is and the moment when one goes through it; usually this is one where the aesthetics of the site seem to be the reduced to their functionality. As the artist translates the three-dimensionality into the plane surface of the canvasses, she suggests an encountering with the site and the social circumstances it provides and/or evokes. Forasmuch, is the artist’s work for the exhibition to be understood as calling into attention an underpinning of social behaviour and attitudes or is it, far more, blaming us, as we seem to need a portrait of it on a canvas to actually encounter with real aspects of social life, whose issues we usually try to avoid?

The choice of working within the topic of contemporary painting seems to be not very obvious, as contemporary painting is deemed to feed art-market driven commodifying processes or conceived as attesting intellectual tediousness in the absence of any criticality whatsoever. However, in this case, the choice of painting was one that very well corresponds with the suggested Rancièrian set of ideas. Most of the works in Images of Society. Contemporary Painting follow the line of thinking of a conflict between politics related to and concerned with the social sphere, as thematised in the works, but at the same time encountering the politics of the social cultural context in which they were produced. Hence, in Rancièrian terms the lines between spectator and stakeholder, the sensible and the intelligible, art and politics, fade, enabling a discourse in which hierarchies within communication become irrelevant. According to Rancière’s definition of the Sensible communication is no longer pertinent to a system of truth and lies but offers possibilities of examining and observing that operate across the grain from usual narrations. So do the exhibited paintings, as they question an an encounter with the social sphere in a medium, to which the comeback of Realism was heavily attributed in recent art history. However, the relationship between image and its application on the canvas is one that – exposed inside the gallery walls – no longer awaits reality to position against it, or attack it; more so, the works depict tendencies of reality, in some cases proposing changes, but in no cases executing them through their own medium. They remain tendentious, as Walter Benjamin would have called it.
In a similar way does the curatorial approach, as some critics have emphasized, arguing that political matters remain in the realm of re-presenting social motives, rather than presenting an encounter with them. However, this could have been the intention, one that is a subtle, but no less provocative, if contemporary painting is understood as re-investigating its relationship with realism, which implies a comment on the existing characteristics of social reality and their politics, which are themselves tendentious. In this sense, the exploration of the relationship between painting to society was a fruitful one, communicating against the established narration, insofar as remaining within the boundaries of contextualising political issues, not raising new ones.

Cy Twombly, Three Notes From Salalah. The grand opening of Gagosian Gallery Rome (or La Dolce Vita gets diabetes) - by Valentina Ravaglia

15 December 2007

For months, the specialized press had been wondering what exactly had led Larry Gagosian to open his seventh gallery in Rome. Why spend a huge sum to restore an entire palace, only a few steps from piazza Barberini, to open a massive showcase in a city that has very little interest in contemporary art and a totally marginal space in the international market? The answer is irritatingly simple: as Gagosian himself has declared, he’s just always loved Rome and thought, why not? I’ll do it just because I can. Just for the sake of it. And, of course, for the sake of publicity.

An aura of secrecy and glamourous lure had surrounded the whole operation, in a well calculated market strategy that worked particularly well in the spleen of the Capital of ruins. Until three weeks before the actual opening of the space, no one even knew what the inaugural show would have been. The local gallerists were terrified, as if Tony Hawks had just nonchalantly entered an amateur skateboarding contest. And in fact, the city shook at his arrival as it had seldom done before. The Mayor and the Minister of Cutural (In)Activities showed up in the afternoon to bow in front of King Larry, offering him Gold, Incense and any archeological site he may want to use to run his projects, which will undoubtedly enrich the cultural life of the City and of the Nation (has anyone even told them he’s an art dealer? Do your asslicking with a little more discretion, for chrissake). The entire street was closed to the traffic, a micro-army of policemen and security staff was drawn up on the site to enforce a zero tolerance policy on gatecrashers. The last time something like this has happened, it was when Mussolini borrowed a bunch of backdrops from Cinecittà to cover the slums from the sight of his friend Adolf, driving through Rome for an official visit.

The crowd of randomly gathered starlets, botox-faced mistresses, presentialist celebrities and other socialites seemed to have no idea what exactly they were there for. Everyone raved about the instant-classic oval room, and at times someone even tried to say something about the new Twombly series that was hanging in there almost as an excuse for conversation - small talk that local journalists managed to publish as malicious “rumours on the X million dollar Twomblys”. Truth is that Three Notes from Salalah is an intense cycle, as lyrical and compelling as ever; maybe a little mannered, true, but still in the manner of a great master that manages to reinvent himself after nearly 60 years of pure visual poetry.

In the meantime, a minority of collectors and art savvy people were trying to make sense of the logistics of that sort of tragicomic carnival, in order to finally get to the official networking area, also known as “the bar”. With a rather subtle coup de théatre, the refreshments were served in the garage-like basement of the palace (I am still unsure whether that wanted to look like some form of radical chic warehouse style interior design or if the construction workers were simply behind schedule with the renewal), where the aforementioned herd of socialites found itself totally stuck, as the invigilators, for some misterious reason, wouldn’t allow anyone to go back into the gallery space. “I am afraid you will have to go out and re-enter through the main door, miss”. Fine. Let’s hope at least the dinner will be less painful.

If I ended up actually enjoying the dinner quite a lot, it is only because it was so bizarre that I frankly couldn’t help finding it quite amusing. As a friend commented, the space where the gala dinner was served inside Palazzo Barberini looked “very Eyes Wide Shut”, with black velvet on the walls and an eclectic combination of candelabra, opulent tables covered in culinary decadence and Philip Stark chairs. The evening simply couldn’t get any more Fellinian that that.

After all, such exploits ought to be recognized as an integral part of what having Gagosian animate the roman art scene means. I am not sure whether he himself expected such a display of provincialism from the local bourgeoisie, press, politicians and art professionals - at least the ones who perceived him as a threat rather than as a positive chance to finally shake things around a bit -, but he undoubtedly received all the attention he had planned on getting.

Dear frustrated gallerists, dear so-called art writers and journalists, let poor Larry fulfill his little dream of having his own white palace in the eternal city. What’s wrong with that? If you have nothing better to do than talk about his grand opening as the event of the decade, it’s definitely not his fault. And whatever hidden strategical reason he may have, it really shouldn't shock anyone, considering the current state of the art system. Things seem to be finally changing for Rome's contemporary art scene, with new museum wings, young galleries, Gagosian, and the first “real” season of art fairs seeing the light at the end of February. The direction this change will take, though, is still quite hard for me to forecast.

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.


kt

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.