New Art

Marek Cecuła. The sense of matter.

2008-07-22T00:28:00.007+01:00

I must admit I had no idea Polish design (well, design-related sculpture would be the more correct term I suppose) can be anything like this.
While I'm at it, I must also admit that the moment of becoming a little less ignorant, this moment of moving from a state of nothingness to the sudden illumination by something of this caliber is something delightful.

Last Supper (2005)

Porcelain Carpet (2002)
from the Hygiene series (1995)

from the Hygiene series (1995)

from the Eroticism series (2005)

from the Scatology series (1993)

It does not necessarily make sense. It does not necessarily say something, as in, a thing, as in, a message. It prefers to wink at us, like someone sitting in a waiting room winks at us, right after we finally managed to get our eyes of a gorgeous neighbor. Is that the "I know how you feel" wink? Or is it showing you he knows something both of you know he shouldn't and yet both of you know he certainly does? Is this something you share? A common interest? A common feeling of guilt? A feeling of risk, maybe? This winking, the one I feel when seeing Cecuła's works (not touching them, unfortunately, although that seems a perverse desire), is one of recognition, but also one of daring sensitivity, if not always sensuality. Touching is key? No, come to think of it, the not-touching, here, is what drives the senses right to the matter.
More on Marek Cecuła at his site.

(via)

The big Fuss: Who Killed Barack Obama?

2008-07-20T22:00:00.009+01:00

Once again, Peter Fuss (remember his "For the Laugh of God"?) manages to poke the finger in the right spot.
His most recent work, exhibited at the Out Of Sth exhibition in Wrocław (Poland) (which also has blu's animation on display) plays on our sense of reality.
What I like most about this work is something I didn't notice at first. The first reading, to me, was simple: knowing the fate of the liberal Americans who came to positions of power, it is difficult not to think of the risk Obama is facing. This also might be seen as a cool and lucid way of looking at politics. Can any ideal manage to survive? Isn't Obama, the Obama we know as fighting for "change", somewhat dead, already? Who killed him?
But what I really like about this work is not this seemingly political message. It is the way it portraits us and our own patterns of looking at reality.

The problem is not that Obama may get killed. The problem is our thinking of it as a fact. It is not Fuss's work that is cynical. We are.
Seeing the work on a billboard makes it even more obvious: we take it for granted that things are the way they are, and even if they aren't, too bad for the facts. The billboard is there, so Obama is dead. Who killed him? Guess who.

update/ps: A couple of months ago an Israeli designer created a shirt with a similar text. I think the differences between the two projects prove my point. Having/seeing this on a T-shirt and seeing it on a billboard are two completely different experiences. (Not to mention the completely different level of design). And that's what sets apart a good artpiece from a, well, another one. (Also notice the context - one is set in NY, the other- in Wrocław). Suffice it to say that already a few days after the opening of the exhibition two French tourists entered the gallery (you can see the entrance to the right on the second picture) saying they haven't had the chance to follow the news and they were quite terrified. Now, just to add another level of artsy-fartsy commenting, the person attending them answered they weren't to worry because it was "just an art installation". Ouch, now that's not what I would call effective art guidance. Or what she being ironic?

Muto by Blu

2008-07-15T10:42:00.001+01:00

More stuff by Blu here.

Interlining

2008-06-11T16:18:00.002+01:00

...there is enough machine within our eyes
to fill a thousand junkyards full
to make the stone break into plastic clouds
of colored dust
and happy play

...there are enough straight lines that bound a shape
to make us speak right to the point
to get us thinking we are right or wrong
beneath the clouds

See more of Jan Vormann's Dispatchwork here.

Less art

2008-05-18T01:35:00.004+01:00

At times it seems the smaller the intervention, the better.
No, I do not mean to follow a minimalistic path, at least not now.
Minimalism, to me, has a lot to do with purity, that is, starting from a point of nothingness and adding just the right touch.
What I'm thinking is more along the lines of accepting the impurity - starting from a point of overwhelming reality and accepting it. Then, the right touch is really just a point of focus, a frame. Was it Oiticica who walked around with his admirers and made art by simply pointing at objects, thus giving them their artness? Still, even this gesture seems like too aggressive, too intrusive. Is it the art-element that makes all tools (all ways of dealing with what appears to us) seem bulky and outdated? Or is it the over-confidence we have when pointing? Isn't this the pleasure of all the YouTubes and darling amateurs? The certainty of some basic form of humbleness?

At times it seems the smaller the intervention, the better.
Yet, I often wonder where does this leave me as an artist. Once I admit a view of some apparently insignificant piece of reality can be a more enriching experience than any work of art, how can I claim anything about my own work, other than the "need" to do it? Doesn't that reveal the horribly narcissistic character of art? But what if I do not want that? If I actually wish to be in harmony with my own tastes? Where does that leave me?
All the above pictures are by Will Simpson at Loshadka, and are part of the You Are Healed series.

(via)

Beirut Melancholy

2008-05-14T16:47:00.003+01:00

BEIRUT -Cliquot - From the FLYING CLUB CUP

Of course, of course, no art is ever new. Of course, of course, there is more beauty behind us than we will ever see. Of course, nothing can ever compete with harmony. Yet of course, harmony seems never enough.
Of course, there is a time for mourning, and yet of course, the harmony in the mourning chant outcries the cry.

found here

Sticking to it until you get stuck

2008-04-25T19:58:00.000+01:00

I suppose the following is a fair comment to this and to that:

More about The Leave Me Alone Box here.

Hendrik Kerstens: The distant view of the other

2008-03-09T19:14:00.001Z

Hendrik Kerstens is one of those artists who have managed to develop a career seemingly concentrating on one subject throughout the years. In his case, the model has been his daughter Paula. How different is she as a subject because of being his daughter? Not very. Which is as powerful a revelation as any. After all, one would expect some closeness, some special insight. Nothing of the sort. What we get is a serious young lady, as serious now as she was on the pictures being only a few years old. A gaze that refuses to talk. Our only partner in dialogue seems to be the light that paints the face gently, yet at least on surface, without the love one would expect. We see all the Vermeers and other 17th-century Flemish painters participate in this creation, yet this, here, is darker, less inviting. It doesn't pretend that something can come out of this encounter. Nothing more than a picture, a gaze, a world that is forever there, for us to admire, but not to discover.

Valentine's

2008-03-08T15:30:00.003Z

I found this at Happy Famous Artists. It was dated February 14. How come this seems fine on Valentine's Day, but has something offensive about it today?
Maybe it's because VD is for the individual, while today is for the group. And so, today it implies that this is the value I find important in a woman. While on February 14, it is about this one individual being gorgeous. Yet, isn't there something disturbing even about this appearing on Valentine's? The fact that what we celebrate is beauty?
Beauty. Can't live with it, but would have a hard time ignoring it either.

For (Visual) Art's Sake

2008-01-31T04:15:00.000Z

Danielle Van Ark's photos often seem unreal, directed. Yet reality seems to provide her with events so rich they seem definitely out of this world. Out of mine, for sure.
See also her great Taxidermy series...

EXITO=success / EXIT=exit

2008-01-29T18:00:00.000Z

I am delighted to inform you that I have been invited by the TR Warszawa theater (Warsaw, Poland) to create and direct a video department/workshop/center/section/thing. There is great enthusiasm concerning the project on both sides.
Thus, I am thrilled to be going back to Poland (at least for some time).
Thus, I am extremely sad to be leaving Portugal (at least for some time).

I hope to have more on this initiative in a few weeks.

For now, all my friends and friends of this blog are invited to a farewell party on February 2, at a place that will be disclosed any moment.

UPDATE>> we will be partying at the Lounge bar (www.barlounge.blogspot.com, although I have no idea how knowing the virtual address can help), at rua da Moeda n.1, in the Cais do Sodre area (by the post office, near the ETIC school). We'll be starting around 11pm. See you there!

Find New Jersey now and win!

2008-01-29T03:55:00.001Z

Is it possible to take a picture of New Jersey regardless of where you are in the world?

If you think you can answer this question with an image of your creation, accept the challenge of iheartphotograph and participate in the contest.

Two great Josephs

2008-01-29T02:08:00.000Z

"To be hopeful in an artistic sense it is not necessary to think that the world is good. It is enough to believe that there is no impossibility of it being made so."
- Joseph Conrad

quote taken from the lengthy and uneasy, but interesting Guardian article about Conrad.
(found here)
I should look better and find material that would do justice both to Joseph Beuys and to Joseph Conrad. However, the video above, although somewhat naive, does present Beuys at least in some respect, and has excellent footage from his I Like America and America Likes Me. For more resources go here, and a great overview of Beuys and his influence on today's art can be found on this Tate page.
As for the article about Conrad, its style does actually do justice to the Polish writer. And it is certainly enlightening. However, other suggestions are welcome.

What links those two? What impresses me? Beyond a difficult, though creative, dealing with one's identity - which that doesn't really make them stand out among artists... A sense of a profound and paradoxically bitter optimism. And amazing self-discipline.

Desert:

The Fat is on the Table
Maurizio Cattelan on Joseph Beuys

beuys is dead
beuys is also uniting love and knowledge
beuys is more present in a desert freak
beuys is sponsored by museum für moderne kunst
beuys is appointed professor of sculpture at the düsseldorf academy of art
beuys extends ulysses by two chapters at the request of james joyce
beuys is surely not a sartre follower, but of course there are many parallels
beuys is mentioned next to steiner
beuys is back in town
beuys is back in belgium, in berlin, US, active in germany
beuys is the contemporary artist responsible for the popular notion that politics is an aesthetic activity that anyone can engage in
beuys is inspired by steiner
beuys is not so reactionary as to deny the existence of the entire art history repertoire
beuys is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential post-war german artists
beuys is the identification with everything from mythological 9gures and historical personages to writers and artists
beuys is a mythical figure in the art world, however
beuys is particularly significant in the light of his introspective research on the possible reuni9cation of human and natural life
beuys is in the creation of the social sculpture
beuys is either loved or hated
beuys is considered one of the most
beuys is widely regarded as one of the most important german artists since world war II
beuys is demanding sun instead of rain/reagan
beuys is more like an evangelist
beuys is famous for an extraordinary body of drawings
beuys is such an obvious candidate; he started making art following a breakdown that was a result of his experiences in world war II
beuys is represented in depth in dia's permanent collection
beuys is
beuys is among the most famous of today's artists
beuys is one of the most famous performance artists
beuys is valid because wolfgang laib shares his belief in the transcendent power of art
beuys is another sculptor that
beuys is one of the major figures in post-war german art
beuys is known for his shamanistic artist's persona
beuys is among the world's most comprehensive
beuys is in these digital photographs represented not by him directly
beuys is a real people's artist understood by a professor
beuys is megjelent a kövek mellett és hamarosan heves vita bontakozott ki közte és a közönség között
beuys is a 1972 lithograph in which the essential feature is that of beuys as everyman
beuys is elvesztette
beuys is átvett és ami interszubjektiv jellege miatt nem volt
beuys is called to account by his presumptive offspring
beuys is veel materiaal verdwenen
beuys is questioned by the activities of maclennan
beuys is instructive
beuys is very important in mail art
beuys is understandable
beuys is known to
beuys is not completed by his death
beuys is i was never secure and happy in the world of galleries from the very beginning
beuys is and how it is pronounced
beuys is cleverly recontextualised in
beuys is of course enormously interesting
beuys is l'eminence grise of community building as an art form
beuys is interested in the proportions between crystal and amorphous states
beuys is able to evoke the experience of the past
beuys is a magnificent
beuys is based on three stages
beuys is a special case because of the build-up of a curious sense of obligation to respond positively
beuys is the generation of my father
beuys is talking about the much wider concept of creative potential
beuys is regarded as one of the most significant personalities of the past
beuys is steeped in the struggle of world war II
beuys is a big influence right now
beuys is unavoidable
beuys is purely a decorative artist
beuys is hype
beuys is cited as the great collaborator of the twentieth century because
beuys believed everybody was a potential artist
beuys is on e-bay
beuys is a mythical figure in
beuys is one artist i wanted to ask you about
beuys is one of the biggest art world phonies of recent years
beuys is probably unique in the history of art
beuys is supposed
beuys is a very controversial sculptor
beuys is grounded in a tradition of narrative sources that is often absent in american art of the same period
beuys is hardly a household name in the history of twentieth-century art
beuys is the great shaman of twentieth-century art
beuys is represented with his monumental work created shortly before his death, lightning with stag in its glare
beuys is best known for declaring "everyone an artist"; koons seems to declare that everyone is a consumer

Guerrillas looking for Budapest museum director

2008-01-27T23:59:00.000Z

The site claims:

Position Summary

Museum Director
Director I, Full Time

Monday - Friday, 9:00am - 6:00pm

Hiring Range & Group: 2-4.000 EUR / Month

Closing Date: Open Until Closed

The Ludwig Museum Budapest (LUMÚ) is one of the major Hungarian Museums and exhibition spaces, and holds the most important collection of modern art in Hungary. (...)
Our aim is to create an alternative platform for applicants in order to emphasize the opportunities which lie in this position in order to put LUMÚ on the global map with an internationally recognizable program.

If you wish to apply please send your application (concept) as told below. We do not evaluate but only post all applications on this website.
We hope all decision makers will consider all information collected on this page and will be influenced by your ideas and concepts. We hope they might consider the applicants for the official call. There have been precedents in Hungary where the highest positions have been hijacked by public initiatives in the midst of political status quo. We believe that if you are a sound applicant, you can become the director through public support.

Basically, here is a beautiful case: a group of people really passionate about contemporary art want to have a good museum. So they try to be active. They see that the formal way of solving the issue seems impossible. So they take matters in their own hands, and they announce a pseudo-contest. You can send your candidature, but - and this is the brilliant part - they will not judge it. They will limit themselves to showing those in charge that you exist. And, hopefully, those in charge will take you into consideration when looking for the right person.

Sounds impressive. Guerrillas fighting for justice. Guerrillas who don't want to take over, only think out-of-the-box to try and open minds. After all, if there are competent, interesting candidates out there, why not present them?
A few things worry me slightly: 1) As of today, there is still no candidature online. People don't take it seriously? Possibly. Or maybe, they are not ready to take the risk of becoming associated to something that seems quite a rebellious initiative (after all, it does suggest the Museum has a good chance of receiving the director the politicians will nominate, no questions asked)? 2) What can the real force of such an initiative be? Doesn't it remind you of the rallies that have been so popular these days, say, against the invasion of Iraq? The guerrilla tactics seem more like an interesting phenomenon than an actual force.
Now, the real question might be, what is the strength of this particular utopia?
I hope it does raise the issue of a fair selection. And even if a director is nominated from among the friends and relatives of the Right People, they will have to stand up to the challenge of being compared to the other candidates. The unofficial ones.
What better place to start this sort of initiative than a museum of modern art?
Now, this only works if competent people do send in their proposals. And impress the heck out of everyone.

(via)

Species p.2

2008-01-24T17:26:00.000Z

(via)

Species

2008-01-22T22:20:00.000Z

What is absolutely astonishing about this photo by Jill Greenberg is that it seems almost as if taken by chance. Although it is a carefully studied pose, its context is nowhere close to the conceptual play we see here. It is part of a series portraying primates in a relatively classical way - their faces showing somewhat human characteristics, with adequately human titles ("Anxious", "Dude", etc.). They are wonderful and funny pictures, but this one here is really something else. The title is "Mala Centerfold", and that seems an understatement. We are not in front of some cheesy centerfold here. Oh, no! - this is the real thing, this is the indecent Olympia, this is the lascivious Maja.
It is challenging Darwin to a truth-or-dare.
And it is delicious.

2 videos found by chance

2008-01-21T21:40:00.000Z

Star, by Alexander Reyna

Metalosis Maligna, by Floris Kaayk

A few amazing finds, and a very subjective text

2008-01-16T02:41:00.000Z

Magnus von Plessen, Felicity

It is hard for me to imagine a live performance that would have (that I would find to have) the density of some visual art. Yes, I distinguish those quite clearly, mainly by the dilating of senses I experience when watching most performance, as if there was no way of just getting to the point, or points, or of just hitting me with whatever they have. "Just". There is justice in this just, a sense of the right measure, like an object where the proportions feel right. I simply cannot recall a single performance I have seen where the proportions just felt right. It seems time and a live body introduce elements that are somehow completely out of the scope of my spectator experience.
Compare the best you've seen on stage to this:

The above images, by the astonishing Tim Hawkinson, are more than powerful: they range from publicity-like to classical sculpture to highly conceptual (the last one is a self-portrait mapping of all the area the artist sees on his own body, the picture before is a Balloon Self-Portrait, a blown-up mold of the artist), and yet each of them seems complete.
Or see these, by Huma Bhabha:

How are we to compete with the perfection of something that is? Another language, you will say. Another state of presence. And yet, the choice of what to lay my eyes on remains. And diversity is no argument, when time after time what is live seems to be disappointing, less thrilling, less surprising, exciting, fresh and bold than what remains there not waiting for the sight. But then again, it is also less exciting than film, which seems only to live when seen!
Indeed, it is perfectly useless to speak of the spectator's responsibility in all this, when the spectator admits he is not up to it and instead choses something less desperate, even as it may be darker and, at least on the surface, less active.
(Both poor quality reproductions are by Magnus von Plessen)
And yet, after having written all this, I still feel that live art somehow retains an incredible potential. Not because it is live, at least in the sense of having live people in front of you, but rather, in the sense of it being an event, and so, something that remains unexpected, but also unfinished, incomplete, and fragile in its egomaniacal form ("look at me!"). I'm still not sure where this is heading, it remains confused, but it might have something to do with the amazing phenomenon of enjoying something while it is bad, enjoying it because you appreciate it as an event, enjoying the fact that you are in the privileged position of

PS: Here is a picture dedicated to the effort of some colleagues from a theater project that has been on these days:
(The picture is by Amy Stein. I believe the title is Domesticated.)

Duane Michals and Schroedinger's Cat

2008-01-02T21:10:00.000Z

I really shouldn't. The above work, created by Duane Michals, should be left without a comment.
But how can I resist?
First, let's clear up one issue: anyone trying to better understand the Schroedinger's Cat thought experiment by getting acquainted with this work may be misguided. Although the work plays around with the idea of ontological ambiguity, its way, focus, scope seems to be different from that of the famous scientist. Nonetheless, I am sure Schroedinger himself would refrain from saying such a silly thing as "I wish I had never met that cat", had he gotten acquainted with this little beast (and its charming mistress).

Now, would you look at that. At the delightful play with the point-of-viewness (also, under various other circumstances, called perspectivism or sollipsism or more broadly subjectivism), this attitude of turning the object (of the onlooker) into a subject, and the subject (the spectator, the admirer of the work) into an object (the looked-for, if not the looked-at) is not only a development of motives in art and in philosophy, it is an exquisite retro (the work comes from 1998) portrait of a relation.
This relation is based on faith. Were we to know the cat is in the box, we could not feel the bond the way we do. And yet, this faith does not move mountains. It neither saves the cat, or condemns it. It is rather a sort of a "suspended disbelief" kind of faith, when one ponders, but accepts not to question what is impossible to discover. But this faith also includes accepting not to affirm, as a sort of worldly agnosticism. How are we to deal with what we cannot know or control? It comes to no surprise that Duane Michals cites Zen Buddhism as one of his influences.
Of course, the last picture is a light and funny way of escaping the question (into a new question), but the first two remain. And in them, especially in the first one, there is a hidden level. In Schroedinger's example, the cat is either alive or dead. So when Madame Schroedinger wonders if the cat is or is not in the box, she might not expect the box to be empty. So the question becomes: what is it that makes that presence so present?
The further we get away from the first picture into the next ones, the more delightful the experience becomes. But also the least powerful. From an existential inquiry into you-know-what, it turns into a fun - but not too ambitious - looking-outside-of-the-frame. The work looks at us? Yes, we know. Not a particularly new discovery. And to be honest, it doesn't need to be. Less ambitious? Maybe, and then we can always say, "Who needs ambition when there is such a splendid onlooker peeking out of the box?" I would rather say that since there is no way of knowing the answer to picture number 1, we might just as well accept that and move on. To another possible world - and yet another. Ours.

Question: Have you noticed the box on the first picture might fall if the cat is there and moves as a cat that is there might? Oh, Madame Schroedinger, snap out of it!
Question 2: Have you noticed how much bigger the box is in the 2nd picture? (And how it becomes a non-box in the 3rd...)

More about Michals in this great article.

Found the work here.

2008

2007-12-30T13:50:00.000Z

Congratulations to the very creative Spanish ad company DoubleYou (link to a non-site), who have various nice projects,among them the ingenious DoupleYou Loop.

Jonas Dahlberg - the melancholy of illusion

2007-12-28T23:29:00.000Z

There is a dark corridor, with just one passage through some light coming from the half-open door to a production room. The corridor is not long, so before I know it, I'm in a black room. There is apparently no light, except for three large, very, very dimly lit images. Actually, they seem more like windows, as what we see on them are interiors - at first glance it is hard to tell whether those are three rooms, or the same one. The rooms have a sensual, soft light, and everything about them seems dream-like.

That is a very comfortable place to be, delightfully melancholy, hidden in the middle, looking out into the private zone, the excessively private zone of what might have been a perfectly regular set of spaces, were they not so hypnotically absent.

If there is something at once appealing and haunting in this triple view, I am reminded that there was a TV set in the entrance. I go back, and the curator Katarzyna Krysiak tells me that although the video is an hour-long loop, it will start again soon and is worth watching at least the first minutes.
So I put myself comfortable. And the same room I saw on one (two?) of the pictures appears. And then, it starts melting. First, the back of the chair thins to nothing, and it falls apart. Then, progressively, the lamp gives way, the bookshelf (how could I have not noticed it before?), the table, the bed... The whole wax model (as it turns out) vanishes bit by bit.
According to the curator, this is the artists reaction to a friend's depression. It is inspired by how a physical space changes in such circumstances.
Johan Dahlberg is a master of disguise. But his masquerades are not about people. Rather, Dahlberg masks space. In his work (check out his site for several other interesting examples), illusion is the basis for questioning our relation with the space we see and feel. It comes as no surprise that among his favorite tools are models of rooms (their doppelgängers) and surveillance equipment. But contrary to many commentators, I have some doubts whether we can define Dahlberg's work through the prism of the "Big Brother" universe. There is so much more in his observing of our observing of an object! Be it with cameras and screens, be it through the nomenclature of surveillance and false spaces. But see, for example, this work from 2000, (Untitled) Billboard,presented in the Swedish town of Uddevalla:

The wonderful quality I find in these works is their capacity to confuse our sense of space, and question the order we assume as self-comprehensive. How mine is this space? Where am I in relation to it? And how sure can I be of it, of what it is?

The exhibition I visited at the Foksal Gallery (on until January 11) is part of an entire cycle called Quiet Home. What is the degree of irony in such a title? That depends on where you find yourself in relation to it, doesn't it?

The pictures from the exhibition courtesy of the Foksal Gallery.
Photos of Untitled (Billboard): copyright Jonas Dahlberg.

La la la

2007-12-17T20:15:00.000Z

Fragment of Amelia, a film by Edouard Lock and La la la Human Steps.

Another chapter of the film is here.

The unaccepted body

2007-12-17T14:18:00.000Z

Three pictures by Anoush Abrar. The first is in co-authroship with Aimée Hoving, and was a co-authorship, a Christmas Cover (!) for Das Magazin. The second comes from a series that answers the theme ""attractive and repulsive images". The second is from the Realdolls series portraying silicone dolls made in California.

Our human selves, as bodies, are shape, are skin, body hair... Manipulating the elements of the definition brings about strange creatures, disgusting and fascinating in their unworldliness. It isn't about the simulacrum, about the virtual dominion over our idea of reality. Rather, it is the exploration of our unrealness, the impossible shape that is human. What are we to do with it? How are we to deal with the body that is never quite what we feel it to be? So the question is not Who am I?, but What am I? How dare I include this and that, and for God's sake where is my perfection?! I deserve it. I deserve corresponding to what I believe in, to what I live as.
But doesn't the language of merit (of deserving) hide our incapacity to cope with the neutrality of what is, or to differentiate between what is and what our concepts allow us to believe?

How small is history?

2007-12-14T13:25:00.000Z

In a comment in the Portuguese daily newspaper Público, my colleague Tiago Bartolomeu Costa commented on a controversial artistic residency at the Gulbenkian Foundation, which ended in October with a presentation of the works. A number of young visual and performance artists were invited for a 2-month residency in the very space where the Foundation’s collection of contemporary Portuguese art is usually presented. The place was completely transformed into 30 large cubicles or divisions. Visitors to the museum could eavesdrop and discover how each artist develops his work, as the space opened for the general public during several hours in the afternoon. Theoretically, one could accompany the entire process day-by-day (I wonder if anyone tried).
The entire (impressive and extensive) program which incorporated this daring initiative is called The State of the World, and this very title makes me feel somewhat uneasy. But first, let's hear Tiago:

Generally speaking, the protagonists of the arts of the body that were present [during the day of presentation] seem to have wasted an opportunity to reflect about what it means to create today. (...) the propositions (...) had in common what the artist Christian Boltanski called "the small memory" (...), but which to many of the creators became a runaway solution [in Portuguese: escape]: an apology of the idea that a selection of immediate and generational references can substitute, without any loss, History's evolutive processes.

There are several very important statements implied in this short fragment.
1) That there is a History. And not many histories, stories, lines. Indeed, in this perspective it is clear that the artists Tiago speaks of missed the point completely. However, "History" remains to be proven. And although History's end has been suspended, this still does not mean we have but the choice of either facing it or questioning it. But the very fact that the word appears here, in all its capital-letter majesty, is not benign. It has to do with the very opinion that artists should work on something called "The State of the World". What World? What State? What are we to do of the the legacy of the last 40 years of thought (and Boltanski is in the midst of it), with its “shift from history to discourse, from a third- to a second-person address” (Craig Owen, quoted from a famous essay called The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism )?
2) That there is an evolution, and that it can be ceased. This does make sense if we see any change as evolution. And makes a very interesting point: how do we feel evolution today? Beyond terrorism and cell phones, how does our (my) world pulsate? What leaks? What swallows? What itches? What feels good? I quite agree with Tiago that there is a tension that remains to be read, deciphered, discovered. However,
3) Shouldn't we accept this sort of intimate storytelling as an acceptance of one's own limits, an artistic modesty that is praiseworthy? It might go further than the postmodernist paradigm described through Craig Owens’ words. There is a telling slip of the tongue in the comment. If we read it literally, it suggests that the "selection of references" cannot "substitute History". This, however, implies that the artists put the generational references as an ontological substitute for History's processes. Which they don't (nobody declares or implies that the processes are susbsitututed). The problem might be precisely this: in the case of some of the young performers, the artistic discourse doesn't seem to come near the question of histories vs. History. The modesty seems almost unconscious, more like a limitation than a choice or perspective.
So Tiago does raise an important issue: how can art deal with the world and its new type of globality? We are more conscious today of what the world is than ever before. Might that be why we are more reluctant to generalize, or even try and define its processes? But can we just turn away and ignore them? Of course we can. So why would we participate in an event called State of the World? On one hand, this "small talk" of the "small memory" could be saying a lot about the State of the World, seen from here and now. On the other, its difficulty with approaching these Capital-Lettered-Concepts could be a hint that maybe its time to start off without the caps.

Here is a poem by Wislawa Szymborska, the Polish Nobel-Prize-Winner:

No Title Required

It has come to this: I’m sitting under a tree
beside a river
on a sunny morning.
It’s an insignificant event
and won’t go down in history.
It’s not battles and pacts,
where motives are scrutinized,
or noteworthy tyrannicides.

And yet I’m sitting by this river, that’s a fact.
And since I’m here
I must have come from somewhere,
and before that
I must have turned up in many other places,
exactly like the conquerors of nations
before setting sail.

Even a passing moment has its fertile past,
its Friday before Saturday,
its May before June.
Its horizons are no less real
than those that a marshal’s field glasses might scan.

This tree is a poplar that’s been rooted here for years.
The river is the Raba; it didn’t spring up yesterday.
The path leading through the bushes
wasn’t beaten last week.
The wind had to blow the clouds here
before it could blow them away.

And though nothing much is going on nearby,
the world is no poorer in details for that.
It’s just as grounded, just as definite
as when migrating races held it captive.

Conspiracies aren’t the only things shrouded in silence.
Retinues of reasons don’t trail coronations alone.
Anniversaries of revolutions may roll around,
but so do oval pebbles encircling the bay.

The tapestry of circumstance is intricate and dense.
Ants stitching in the grass.
The grass sewn into the ground.
The pattern of a wave being needled by a twig.

So it happens that I am and look.
Above me a white butterfly is fluttering through the air
on wings that are its alone,
and a shadow skims through my hands
that is none other than itself, no one else’s but its own.

When I see such things, I’m no longer sure
that what’s important
is more important than what’s not.

I know, Tiago - the big question remains: is this, can this small memory be enough? Can we spend time watching little branches and the butterflies' wings, and claim to any sort of authority in regards to the State of the World, or the states of the worlds, for that matter?
It's a beautiful poem. One of the things I like most about it, though, is that Szymborska is not sure. There is a hesitation here. While us, poor contemporary creative bastards, often take it for granted. We just move on, as if this was it.

How many capital letters can we keep? How many should we? Is it a question of the times that are a-changin? The closest I ever came to a war was when the tanks appeared on the streets in Poland in 1981. I was 3. My memory of it is fairly clear. But do I need to have this memory to have my sense of what is important? Can’t we define the world as superficially as we feel allowed to? But shouldn’t a good artist be able to overcome the obstacle of taking all the caps off, and find a capital letter after all, say in the “l” that looks so much like a “1”? But then again, should she? Or is she better off in the small narratives?
Does the “I” only stand for “1”?

= =

NB: Notice that Tiago is a performing arts critic. Would he write something of the sort if he were a fine arts critic? It seems unlikely. The modernist paradigm of an artistic soul that needs not the sullied, exterior world to create, is still quite omnipresent in the fine arts. The performing arts, particularly theater, have quite a different point of view, with a tendency to see the work through the prism of its engagement with the public, its dialog with “society”. I feel more affinity with the latter position. But doesn’t it sometimes limit our appreciation of the generous universe of art?

(photo by Juan Rayos)

Gift idea

2007-12-13T01:44:00.000Z

Meantime.