Article published in A*DESK, 2012

Conscious of how vast and vague Biennials and other international exhibitions and events can be, Manifesta 9 focuses on a very specific subject that is currently highly significant.

The curator of Manifesta 9, Cuauhtémoc Medina couldn´t be clearer and more precise in the text he wrote for the catalogue: “For years now, visitors and participants to the world’s biennials have been complaining of a feeling of despair. Artists have the feeling that the specificity of their practices gets lost beneath the grand thematic and theoretical claims of the biennials organizers. Critics have the feeling that the tyrannical egos of the curators are given free rein. Audiences suspect that the proliferation of contemporary biennials around the world is contributing to a global cultural homogenization, favouring a ’usual suspects’ list of artists while perpetuating stereotypical representations of local or regional forms of practice. At best, biennials are regarded as a ’necessary evil’, rather than as an institutional structure that is constitutive of the experience of art today. Art biennials have become increasingly industrialised. With their lack of internal segmentation, hundreds of contemporary artists, and thousands of hours of videos, films, talks and actions, they demand days of hectic and frequently incomplete absorption from professional and amateur viewer alike. (…) It is no accident that the title of Manifesta 9: The Deep of the Modern insists on calling attention to the abyss of modernism’s temporality. Although modernisation and capitalism do indeed have a threatening and overpowering appearance, we, the curators, are not convinced that the best cultural strategy today is to mimic their monstrosity”.

Awareness, a self-critical attitude, precision and focus are implied in such a statement. This, and the claimed in-depth research into modernism and its individual and collective memories, may lead to a better understanding of the world we are living in today – a theme that had already been highlighted in diverse contributions at the Coffee Break (http://www.a-desk.org/spip/spip.php?article1281) at Manifesta 9 in December 2011.

Somehow it feels as if the party is over, the huge international art presentations are something of the past, as now they are financed and politically supported more for reasons connected to urban development and tourism, than for any genuine cultural function. Even worse, they have become increasingly self-alienated, increasingly resembling, moreover, the format of theme parks, with the adverse effects mentioned by Cuauhtémoc Medina above.

Totally in coherence with this, the international biennial Manifesta 9 is abstaining from any superficial glamour and doesn’t make any substantial compromises in either content or form: Cuauhtémoc Medina, together with the associate curators Dawn Ades and Katerina Gregos, takes the former mining site at Waterschei in Genk as a case study and point of departure for mapping the social, economic and political processes of the last century that have defined our present. And Manifesta 9 does it through quite a clear structure that occupies only one venue (the Waterschei), which is divided into different sections. These incorporate the pre-existing local museum dedicated to the history and memory of the miners in Genk. Thus Manifesta presents art works, from the 19thC up to the present day, in the same context as objects, documents and historical files all related to mining.

The exhibition and the catalogue, available online (http://catalog.manifesta9.org/en/) can be seen as an Encyclopedia (or better a Subcyclopaedia) where art works don’t just illustrate a curatorial idea but are respected in their specificity as self-contained sources of knowledge, in an interdisciplinary and penetrative analysis of modernism. Some of the issues explored by the exhibiting artists are; the extremely hard working conditions of miners, present in Henry Moore’s drawings that depict the underground as a sort of living hell, the photomontage “Mineurs au travail” by Olivier Bevierre and the film “Coal Face” by Alberto Cavalcanti, with music by Benjamin Britten, an experimental montage of industrial scenes. The repercussions of Fordism, the consequent alienation and repetitive labour are commented on by Kozakis & Vaneigem in the video “Un moment d’eternité dans le paysage du temps”, where some workers start to build a house at the foot of Mont Athos in Greece, but stop and stand still, just to look at the wonderful landscape. The organisation of mass manufacturing economies are considered by Jota Izquierdo in his research into fake brands and Edward Burtynsky with his photographic documentation of China’s industrialisation. The disempowerment of the labour force is the main subject of “The Battle of Orgreave” by Jeremy Deller and the filmmaker Mike Figgis; a documentary re-enactment of the clash between miners and police on the occasion of a mine closure in the 1980s. This disempowerment is also emphasized by Mikhail Karikis & Uriel Orlow in their film of an ex-coal miners choir reproducing the sound of a working mine, as well as by Oswaldo Maciá, who brings back the working atmosphere via a sound composition based on hammers playing flamenco rhythms. Entrepreneurship and economic restructuring are explored by Duncan Campbell in the film “Make it New John”, a kind of parody of a real case, the DMC-12, a futuristic automobile whose production was thought to be a way of also solving conflicts in Ireland. A current topic, like the fictitious money and funding of capital is presented by Goldin+ Senneby through an installation that investigates the clandestine zones of global finance, exemplified by Headless Ltd., a real offshore company registered in the Bahamas.

The bottom line of it is: our present is no brighter (and in some aspects even worse) than it was in those mining times. Thus, Katerina Gregos summarizes in the catalogue “the principle of profitability is now imposed on society as a whole. This need for growth reinforces social regression and destroys social cohesion”. This statement can be considered an implicit, but urgent call, for a change in curatorial and artistic practices that have become rhetorical.

Indeed, contemporary artistic practices in particular, understood to be individual processes, have to take responsibility for once again defending the value of “Singularity” against the all-embracing culture industries. And art curators, critics, theorists and other art professionals ought and need to take seriously, once again, their role as independent, critical communicators of – and guides to – the world of art production. In this sense, Manifesta 9 has put up a strong and convincing statement for the biennial as an art institution that creates independent and even idiosyncratic knowledge beyond any short term and speculative interests. What is more, “Manifesta 9: The Deep of the Modern” is an art exhibition, which has voluntarily limited itself to an experience that can be undertaken within a reasonable time and in so doing returns the notion of sustainability to its primal meaning. And this eventually has motivated the title of this review, “Mastery is revealed in limitation”, which is actually taken from the sonnet “Natur und Kunst” (“Nature and Art”) written in the year 1800 by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – more than 100 years before Ludwig Mies van der Rohe coined the iconic phrase “less is more”. The Modern is really deep.

Link to the article in A*DESK

Documenta has become the contemporary art event, par excellence. Proclaimed as the thing that marks the pace for art of the moment, it is hardly surprising that it provokes expectations and deceptions in equal measure.

If Documenta is a referent, it is logical that the artistic director of the moment feels the weight of the institution and is aware that the position constitutes the maximum point of visibility of his/her professional career and all too often (or at least this is what occurred in the last two editions) ends up getting lost in gestures, or worse, in justificatory posing behind conceptual pirouettes. In contrast to the previous ambiguity and the numerous justifications of curatorial discourse, we confront dOCUMENTA (13) with as open a mind as possible.

Prejudices

Loads. The prior indicators couldn’t be worse. The artistic direction of dOCUMENTA (13) proclaimed a no-concept; a never-ending team, not of curators but of agents (secret? with a licence to kill?); another generous list of participants amongst whom figured artists, scientists, thinkers, writers, etc; a secret list of artists that wasn´t revealed until the moment of the press conference (zealously guarded in an envelope like in the Oscars ceremony?) and a proliferation of locations that harbingered the visit was going to be exhausting, very exhausting…

Critical aspects

The excuses soon started flowing: a press conference in which the artistic director insisted on her “no-concept”, to then begin reading her essay, of which she omitted pages and pages; the explicit desire to evade direct communication, that would purportedly belie the complexity of reality and the present day; a catalogue that isn’t called a catalogue, but wait for it, “The Book of Books” (“Das Buch der Bücher”) like the Bible, in fact; curators that aren’t called curators but agents; an educational programme that is called “The Maybe Education and Public Programs”; the constant repetition that it is an experiment or study; the claim that the aim is to reproduce simultaneity, proliferation and speed, and that its choreography points towards a lack of harmony and the frenetic…. In short, doubt as a leitmotiv and scepticism as the stance. Nothing to object to, quite the contrary, as long as it’s not all used as a defensive shield.

All this makes one suspect that the time and energy is lost in the meta-artistic discourses, in redefining the denominations, in hiding behind notions of “experiment” or “study”, as a way of evading making statements and defending them, of offering a vision that obviously can be erroneous, but that at least can generate discussion and debate. And also the sensation of self-irony, that maybe functions in a ‘making of’ or in petit comité but not as a declaration of principles.

dOCUMENTA (13) is an unstructured document, in which the accumulation and exaggeration (the number of artists, participants, sites, events, projections, publications, encounters, seminars) does nothing more than distract attention. Because what is dOCUMENTA (13) about? Everything. No doubt everyone in the world can find something to grasp onto. DOCUMENTA (13) is like a large department store, with a week dedicated to both Afghanistan and Cairo, where no doubt we will find something that fits.

Positive aspects

The art. The re-encounter with artistic proposals and stances: the almost empty entrance to the Fridericianum, in which the cold air of Ryan Gander marks the threshold to the stories that we are going to be told. What also stands out is the recuperation of certain artistic positions that are neither obvious nor comfortable, artists who at a certain moment in time decided (or had no other choice) to be long-distance runners, even at the risk of being left out of the game. One could think of Ida Applebroog and her exploration of the human being in all its complexity, of the musician and artist Llyn Foulkes, always resisting being pigeonholed, of Fabio Mauri and her conviction about the linguistic compression of the world, of Sanja Iveković and her investigation of certain details from more recent history or the abstraction (political and mental) of Etel Adnan.

What stands out are also the magnificent works that are nothing more than solid proof of very individual perspectives: Mark Lombardi’s obsession for gathering information related to political and financial scandals and capturing them in mental maps; the personal narrations of Mario García Torres, based on specific references in recent art history, exemplified by the case of Alligiero Boetti and his stay and experiences at the One Hotel in Kabul; the obsession and meticulous labour in the images by Geoffrey Farmer or Yan Lei; the reflection on time and modernity at the hands of William Kentridge; the exploration of narrative forms by Dora García, that on this occasion adopt the format of a programme of televised debate that will be broadcast every Friday from Kassel. The transformation of everyday or familiar elements (in this case, images extracted from a book that seems to be about perception) as in the work of Roman Ondák, through subtle observations that open up many possible perspectives or, of experience, in the fullest sense of the word; the darkness, uncertainty, emotion, discovery, awareness, diversion and pressure of the experience prepared by the always radical Tino Sehgal.

The experience of the exhibition makes it clear that the political does not come simply through the documentary, that to try to understand the world we maybe have to cast our eyes towards other scientific practices, such as quantum physics and that the production of thought can’t be understood within closed categories, so much as in the movement and constant flux of ideas and references, that can at times seem chaotic.

And after the experience of the exhibition, reflection, the reading of a curatorial essay which pinpoints ideas, a plan of action, moments of reflection and an analysis of the present and of art. So what’s with all the coquetry and prior posing? Why so much false dandyism? Why so many justifications? dOCUMENTA (13) is a vast document, but for this it offers a multitude of possible pathways and, there is no doubt, its success lies in triggering this search for meaning.

Beyond its philosophical connotation, time can be an element to question the limits: of the institution, of perception, of the spectator, of the work, of the artist…

The shot in which Carey Mulligan performs the song “New York, New York” is eternal in Steve McQueen’s film “Shame.” And we are not in a museum. “Shame” is in the circuits of commercial cinema. Alexandr Sokurov’s cinema expands the notion of time so much that it challenges the conventions of its exhibition. In “Sleeping,” Andy Warhol filmed an eight-hour night of sleep by the poet John Giorno. Real time and cinematic time overlap. Martí Anson makes a pseudo-road-movie “Walt & Travis” that shows the moments in which nothing relevant happens.

Time can also expand in such a way that we are not able to encompass all the work. In “24 Hours Psycho”, Douglas Gordon slows down Alfred Hitchcock’s film “Psycho” so that its duration coincides with the 24 hours in which the film’s plot unfolds. Christian Marclay builds an installation from the editing of film scenes in which clocks appear, talk about time or actions linked to it are carried out, synchronized with the moment in which they are projected.

Dora García’s proposal at the 2011 Venice Biennale was equally unfathomable. “Lo recomendado” consisted of a series of performances that were carried out throughout the months that the Biennale lasted, so that hardly any spectator was able to follow the project in person in its entirety, except for the artist herself.

In other cases, perception changes because it focuses on the experience of reality. The time spent visiting the exhibition is transformed into a time of experience or conversation, as occurs with the “constructed situations” by Tino Sehgal. Or a time of surprise, as in Martin Creed’s “Work No. 850” which consisted of a sprinter running the 86 metres of the neoclassical corridor of the Tate Britain at full speed every 30 seconds.

Modifying temporal codes has to do with experience and, whether through expansion, freezing, slowing down or compression, it is related to exploring the limits of the institution and the very definition of the artistic fact: what is the work? How should it be presented? How should it be perceived? What is the role of the artist? What is the role of the spectator?

[Article published in Bonart, 2012]

Article published in A*DESK, 2012

Many artists propose exploring the limits of the museum, questioning the institution or redefining artistic practices. However, often it is not through grand visions, so much as through simplicity, that one can call into question all the categories that a priori seem immovable. Xavier Le Roy at the Fundació Tàpies considers various key questions about the artistic experience.

Bruce Nauman tried to do it by creating impossible corridors that placed the spectator in very uncomfortable situations; Dan Graham confronted the public with the image of itself; Abramoviċ/Ulay obliged the visitor to enter the exhibition space through the narrow passage permitted by their nude bodies. If all these experiences have something in common, it is the fact that they have modified the experience of the spectator to a certain extent and obliged the spectator to behave in a way that was different than usual in a museum. A few years later, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Philippe Parreno and others also created new situations in institutions, cooking or organising talks. Once again, the change in time and experience of the spectator completely modified the role and perception of the institution.

At the moment Xavier Le Roy offers us the possibility of experiencing the Fundació Tàpies in a totally different way, temporally as much as spatially. The “Retrospective” that he proposes comes from the retrospective experience of the interpreters in relation to some of the solos in his choreographies. Without videos, objects or deactivated documents (with the exception of one of the spaces), the empty rooms of the Fundació are occupied by six interpreters, who recreate fragments and strike up conversations with the visitor, to whom they explain aspects of their personal experiences in relation to the piece. In reality, the simplicity hides a slightly more sophisticated mechanism in that the setting of the scene contemplates not just the typologies of the solos that are evoked and what they recount, but also the entrances and exits of the interpreters in relation to the entrance of new visitors, or the balance between the more interactive and more performatic aspects.

As a visitor or spectator, the codes are clear, in an exhibition space as much as in a theatre. However, what happens when the codes are interchanged? Well then time and space are seen totally altered. There are no labels, nor explanatory texts, it is solely the experience of what we are recounted and how we incorporate it that generates a new perception in relation to the work of Le Roy and to the institution itself. Stripped of theories, prejudices or cuirasses, the visitor is confronted with a real experience. And, in this sense, one can’t avoid referring to Tino Sehgal, to whom A*DESK dedicated an article a while ago and who, incidentally, formed part of Le Roy’s company in diverse projects. In the “constructed situations” of Sehgal it can happen that museum security guards can carry out strange choreographies, different couples can recreate famous kisses from the history of art or the visitor can be asked by a child about what he thinks progress is.

In “Retrospective” we learn what the different interpreters were doing when Xavier Le Roy presented some of his choreographies and we can discuss our own experience. The work ends up taking shape out of the interpretations, time and the spectator, it is the result of the interaction between the public and the interpreters. The simplicity and direct contact redefine what the work is and what are the roles of the artist, the spectator and the interpreter.

It may sound trite, but it is true that we are living a change in paradigm. There exists a conflict between the patrimonial vision of art, those objects and documents that have to be preserved and another approximation, one that responds to a change in modes of production, distribution, presentation, perception and of course, preservation and collection. Tino Sehgal is present in the art circuit; however, he doesn’t allow his works to be commercialised in a traditional manner. Experience takes precedence over memory. With coherence, he redefines the conventions of the market, in order to avoid falling into the same trap as the conceptualists. Xavier Le Roy presents his choreographies in theatres and also in the art context. He lays the emphasis on presence, the experience and representation. The documentary recordings are just that, documents to be consulted, not commercialised. Questions hover in the air: what is the role of the institution? Of the spectator? Of the act/the piece/the work? Propositions such as that of Le Roy and others set all these questions in motion.

Joseph Beuys said that “every human being is an artist. In every human being there is a virtual creative faculty. This does not mean that every person is a painter or a sculptor, but that there is a latent creativity in all spheres of human work.”

At a conference on education and creativity, the writer and educator Sir Ken Robinson explained that his interest in education was based on the fact that it takes us to a future that we cannot understand. Sir Ken Robinson, a reference in the field and also an advisor to different governments on educational issues, argued that all children have tremendous talent and we waste it ruthlessly. He reasoned his judgment by pointing out that the entire educational system is based on the idea of ​​academic ability and claimed the need to rethink the concept of intelligence. For him, creativity should be as important in education as literacy and, therefore, should be given the same importance.

I don’t know if the creators of Factoría de Sant Andreu, the educational programme of Sant Andreu Contemporani in Barcelona, ​​are aware of these theories, but they certainly share them. Directed by the artist Jordi Ferreiro, Factoría de Sant Andreu consists of a monthly programme of workshops aimed at schools and also at a family audience. The format is quite simple: each month an artist (participant in the Miquel Casablancas Prize Visual Arts Competition) is invited to present his or her work and then a practical workshop is held in which children learn about contemporary art through direct experience.

At Factoría de Sant Andreu, with Jordi Ferreiro as master of ceremonies, children attend presentations by emerging artists to learn about the unconventional ways of working and thinking in contemporary art. They then carry out various activities in a fun and relaxed manner with very basic and everyday materials, which can range from making sculptures with straws (workshop by Fermín Jiménez Landa), to filming a movie sequence (weareqq), rebuilding a town destroyed by a monster (Quim Packard), drawing and expressing desires and claims (Ana García Pineda), turning the space into a physical recreation of how the Internet works (Georgina Malagarriga) or designing a CD cover and recording a record as if the children were the vinyl itself (Ainara Elgoibar).

At the Sant Andreu Factory, there is no talk of shapes and colours, techniques or volumes. When artists talk about their work, they do so based on their own experiences, their concerns, worries and what motivates them, and through the activities they propose, they invite children to explore topics such as relationships between people, the representation of reality through various media, the way the Internet connects us or how we see ourselves and how others see us, to name just a few. And so, as if it were nothing, they contribute with their grain of sand to bringing contemporary art closer, to stimulating creativity, personal ideas and, ultimately, free thought. Not much.

[Article published in Bonart, 2012]

Article published in A*DESK

Kaspar König is retiring and doing so with a group exhibition at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, the institution that he has directed for twelve years. With “Before the Law”, König once again makes a declaration of principles: art should talk about the big issues, whatever the circumstances. And the subject, in this case, is the human condition.

Skulptur Projekte in Münster, Portikus in Frankfurt and Städelschule in Frankfurt are just a few of the projects/institutions that have been founded or directed by Kaspar König, a key figure in determining the criteria and discourse that have governed the art scene in the last few years. With “Before the Law”, König makes clear his way of understanding art and his relation with it, as well as his curatorial vision. The exhibition takes its title from a story by Kafka, in which a man from the country endeavours to gain access to where the law is. The desired moment never arrives, as a doorkeeper eternally postpones his entry. Kafka’s parable, in which there is a within and without of the law, translated into spatial terms, connects not just with the fragility of the man from the country, that extends to the human condition, but also with questions surrounding who determines the law, for whom, who is excluded and how.

To make the reflection more timeless, or more current, the exhibition takes a very specific historic moment as its starting point, the years following the Second World War, as the paradigm of the annihilation of human rights and dignity, and links it directly to the present, when there hasn’t been a great war, but yes many, dispersed, continuous and even some underground wars, in which the human being once again becomes extremely vulnerable. It seems as if we have access to a lot of information, that we are conscious of our rights, however, at the same time there are a lot of contradictory signs. Have we lost our liberty? Or have we gained it? Is it possible that one day the question will be raised publicly of whether we can still permit human rights?

“Before the Law” is a classical exhibition in its approach as much as in its formal presentation. König talks of the humanistic potential of contemporary art, of the need for art to propose existential questions. The works (figurative sculptures and installations, as indicated in the subtitle of the exhibition) have room to breathe there is no interference between them, albeit a connecting thread guides the spectator through the rooms. The pieces are left “to speak for themselves” (and it seems they do). There is no specific contextualisation, nor documents, publications, or documentary videos or films. Even though the subject would permit it. Though there are various talks being held in different cities (Brussels, London, Köln, Munich and Berlin). And there is a confrontation between the post-war figurative sculptures, which transmit all the insecurity and fragility that can accompany the human being and the contemporary installations, more resigned and ironic. While in the post-war sculptures the beings that appear represented cry out for shelter and protection, the contemporary proposals, that evoke the same fragility as their predecessors, can no longer call for this refuge, as they know that it doesn’t exist. And in this comparison numerous pathways are traced: the one that begins with the sculpture of the isolated leg (1958) by Alberto Giacometti, continues on the carousel that turns in slow agony dragging the animal cadavers of Bruce Nauman (1988), leaps to the lucky coin (a tiny centime shown in a huge vitrine) found by Andreas Slominski (1996) and ends with the fragmented and recomposed tree (1997/2011) by Zoe Leonard. And another possible itinerary that goes from the “Sibylla (Justitia)” (1957) that Joseph Beuys made for the law courts of Düsseldorf, continues with the South African conflicts of “Felix in Exile” (1994) by William Kentridge, contemplates the derogatory way that the North American authorities (starting with Roosevelt himself) saw the Native Indian Americans in “Building a Nation” (2006) by Jimmie Durham, and ends with the remake of the burgers of Calais (defending a city under siege in the 15th century) converted into “Bródno People” (2010) by Pawel Althamer, with the collaboration of the citizens of Bródno, or the “exclusions” carried out by the powers that be (legislative, executive and judicial) through the abundant material collected up by Andreas Siekmann in “Dante and Virgil walk through the World” (2011). It seems that things have changed a lot during this last century, but in some essential aspects we are closer to the post-war era than we imagine.

Aside from its quality, indisputable, “Before the law” is a agile exhibition in many senses: it functions as a “curatorial statement”, it incorporates an intergenerational dialogue by including Thomas Trummer as the co-curator and the collaborations of Anna Brohm and Andreas Prinzing, it includes a considerable number of pieces from the museum’s own collection and reckons with the necessary co-production of the Siemens Foundation.

There are times in history when subterfuge, cynicism and double meanings dominate discourses and ideologies. The early years of the 20th century were particularly dark and turbulent, years of crisis at all levels in which the only possible reaction was through fury: “Punch yourselves in the face and drop dead.” That was the end of the sixth of the seven manifestos written by the Dadaists.

A little later and with the situation still unresolved, Luis Buñuel also sought not only to “épater le bourgois” but to awaken the spectator from his lethargy, to make him uncomfortable and to make him react. And his strategy could not be more effective: “The Andalusian Dog” begins with a memorable scene in which a man holds a razor (Buñuel himself) and dissects a woman’s eye. Indifference has no place, and neither does comfort. In 1973, Bruce Nauman followed the same tactic to shake the viewer in an engraving in which the following warning appears inverted: “Pay attention mother fuckers”.

The first decade of the 21st century is proving to be as turbulent as the 20th century, but perhaps less clear. There has not been a great war that has swept away everything, but many and very subtle transformations that have made the ground of certainties break beneath our feet. “Sorry, we’re fucked”, writes Kendell Geers about a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected.

These days we meet again with Kendell Geers who presents a magnificent exhibition of his work at the ADN Gallery in Barcelona. His way of working and his forms of presentation could not be more pertinent not only in relation to the global context but
also to that of the anaesthetized (especially culturally and institutionally) Barcelona. Geers began to articulate his work from a feeling of guilt due to his condition as a white man born in South Africa. A witness to countless injustices, Geers quickly chose to apply a direct and uncompromising style. At the antipodes of political correctness, Geers defines himself as a “terrorist”, that is, “he exhibits reality in an impudent manner, without the ideological, moral or religious filters that usually alter it”, as Pierre Olivier Rollin, curator of the exhibition, writes.

These are some of the works on display. A decorative derivation of Robert Indiana’s “LOVE”, transformed into a huge mural in which the letters form filigrees in which the word “CUSSY” can be read; variations (in the form of explicit added penises) on various motifs such as religious, popular or political icons or an installation in which bricks hang from the ceiling, like those used by anti-apartheid activists who suspended bricks from bridges so that they would hit the windows of cars when they passed under the bridge.

Like the Dadaists, Buñuel, Nauman and so many others, Geers doesn’t let us relax. “Sorry, we’re fucked.” Let’s see if we react.

[Article published in Bonart, 2012]