Category: CORE course

CREATIVE JOURNAL—RCA MA in Curating Contemporary Art

I’ve yet to visit this show myself, so the following may seem quite harsh given I have no personal experience of the projects, but these are just my initial thoughts, reflecting a review and information from the show’s website.

Apropos my continuing investigations into (the state of) institutional critique, I came cross a review of the RCA MA in Curating Contemporary Art, entitled Various Small Fires. The review was posted on Art Reviews’ mySpace blog, by James Westcott (aside: I have a real problem with the fact that mySpace layouts look awful in the Safari browser, to the extent that I think it reflects really badly on any site using this service. But getting back to my original subject . . .).

Towards the end of his review, James Westcott critically contrasts this set of fledgling curators’ efforts with those of previous graduates of the course. And not only their peers but also other artists who have worked in the same space or with the same ‘material’.

Initially, though, he makes the connection with Yves Klein’s Le Vide, the empty gallery as void as object to be displayed, undoubtedly a seminal piece for the practice of institutional critique, and one which the present set of curators are perhaps being unfairly compared to. I don’t think there’s much to gain using Klein as a point of comparison for any recent curators, especially given the actual content of the current RCA degree show. While you can’t get away from the knowledge of Klein’s act, there’s been so much water under the bridge since then that I don’t think it’s possible to extricate these current examples from every other influence that has appeared since Klein.

The introduction to the show from the RCA website aligns itself with a practice very much concerned with the physical spaces involved:

The exhibition hinges on the use of the galleries’ architecture and what emerges through the bare coexistence of the different artworks. Another concern of ours has been to expose the galleries’ interior architecture . . . 1

And as Westcott highlights, this is an ambivalent solution:

Reacting to the given space is an elegant solution to the potential organizational and aesthetic problems of a group of curators (all of them with something to say and something to prove) putting together a group show. But it is just that: a solution, a kind of expedience, rather than a demonstration of inspiration, or an assertion of something.2

I also wonder how this is in any way radical? The obvious rejoinder to that question would be, why should it be radical at all, and what would ‘radical’ look like in this context?

The “bare coexistence” mentioned in the introduction to the website just seems to be a license absolving the curators of any requirement to assert their own presence with the works they’ve picked – although that’s perhaps not what one would want anyway, it’s a common complaint to say that the curator has hijacked a particular show of another artist’s works.

Well, perhaps this license allows them the freedom to depart from any over-bearing structure of narrative and theme, but where does that leave us? I’m left wondering what this adds to discourses which took place in the 90’s, which dealt with apparently similar concerns?

Must find out more . . .

  1. RCA (2007). Various Small Fires. In Royal College of Art: Curating Contemporary Art [Internet]. Available from <http://www.cca.rca.ac.uk/beta/varioussmallfires/> [Accessed 19 March 2007]
  2. WESTCOTT, James (2007). Various Small Fires at the RCA (with video footage). In ArtReview: blog. Available from <http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=101870701&blogID=241774729&MyToken=78e8339e-adde-465c-bbdd-44592d8381fd> [Accessed 19 March 2007]
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CREATIVE JOURNAL—Daniel Buren—Institutional Critique?

In the course of researching my essay on Daniel Buren, I’ve come across an interesting, and somewhat confusing, statement by Jean-François Lyotard regarding Buren’s works, and their place in the genre of institutional critique.

In ‘The Pragmatic of Works’, an piece from 1979 published in the journal October, Lyotard states:

We would be mistaken to assume that the metapragmatic function of contemporary works of art is the critique of ideological superstructures, the calling into question of institutions, and other critical strategies of that order. (Lyotard, 1979, p.65)

He then claims that Buren ‘once held such a position . . .’ (Lyotard, 1979) and as an indication of this change, Lyotard then quotes the following by Buren:

The work in progress has the ambition, not of fitting in more or less adequately with the game, nor even of contradicting it, but of abolishing its rules by playing with them, and playing another game, on another or the same ground, as a dissident. (Buren, 1977, p.73)

Pragmatics/Metapragmatics

In this article Lyotard defines pragmatics as being a set of effects corresponding to Wittgenstein’s language games. Although pragmatics apply equally to any form of symbolic communication, for art this means the effects of the ‘game of visible forms.’ Interpretation (of an artwork, for instance) is one effect of this game.

Alluding to some conceptual art practice, with particular reference to Art & Language, he goes on to characterise a work which is its own interpretation, ‘presenting the effect of the work as the work.’ Looked at another way, he conceives of a work which is ‘reduced to its own effect’ and which thereby becomes ‘it’s own interpretation.’

Lyotard sees Buren’s art as the ‘exposition of a hidden pragmatic of art, veiled by the context of exposition.’ So context, what I would normally take as the subject of institutional critique, is here posited as the mask of the artwork’s pragmatic. The subject of the artwork is then this unveiling process, its method and the result of that method. The context is purely a side-show (or distraction?) in relation to this process, which is the metapragmatic function of the piece.

Institutional Critique

So what does this mean for institutional critique? Can the category still help us to understand Buren’s work? Is it a concept that can be applied to any, some or all of his works?

Buren’s work is classed as ‘experimentation with the pragmatic condition of the work: on the reverse side of the canvas, its material and moral supports, the artistic confines of the museum and gallery, and what Buren calls the cultural limits.’

One might expect work produced to this specification to be within the limits of institutional critique, but I think what Lyotard is suggesting is that Buren’s work is an indirect movement, for which a critique of an institution is a concomitant result but not the primary function of the work:

The function of the work of art, therefore, is not reconciliation, enlightenment, or veracity, but the invention of another language game, another artifice.

Lyotard sees the works as a ‘refinement of the strategies that give efficacy to the work of art’ by using the pragmatics of art, the veiling of its pragmatics in this case, as it’s own pragmatic and hence Buren’s pieces have a paradoxical tendency—at their most effective—to disappear.

‘. . . artists today are engaged not in the deconstruction of significations but in extending the limits of sense perception: making visible (or audible) what now goes unobserved, through the alteration of sense data, perception itself.’

This statement seems to be Lyotard attempting to recuperate traditional values of sensory gratification for conceptual art, even if this means that the term ‘sensory’ must be adjusted to accommodate these works. But I think that’s a rather a limited interpretation of his words.

End

That was a very confused post, and didn’t really go anywhere. The subtleties of this argument are just out of reach to me at the moment. Posting about it here has helped me start to get to grips with the matter and I’ll be pursuing it further when I write the essay.

  • Buren, Daniel (1977). Reboundings. trans. Philippe Hunt. Brussels: Daled & Gevaert.
  • Lyotard, Jean-François (1979). The Pragmatic of Works. In October, vol.10 (Autumn). pp.59–67.

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CREATIVE JOURNAL—Mujeres Creando—Art and Political Activism

In Lab last week I was quite negative about the Bolivian feminist performance/action group Mujeres Creando1, mainly with respect to their relevance and effectiveness, but also with their translatability to the present state of affairs in Europe and particularly Britain.

This reaction was sparked by an anecdote about their presence at a conference last year where they performed and talked about their work. Apparently their presentation was greeted with a degree of scepticism by the audience as to it’s effectiveness when taken out of the Bolivian (or South American) context. The way the response was described, the audience were put off by the group’s less than academic style (given the context within which they were presenting), and the methods proposed as being those which Britain had seen from activist groups in the 80’s and 90’s and which had proved to have had little effect on politics and society in general.

After this we watched a video of one of Mujeres Creando’s performances in Bolivia. It took place in a public square, with a woman throwing pots of red paint (possibly blood) over the floor while haranguing the assembled crowd. Another member of the group, gaudily dressed as a caricature of someone from the upper-middle-classes (I think). The performance leads to the involvement of the police, performing a predictably heavy-handed eviction and arrest of the troupe. Much struggling and screaming ensues.

And here lies a problem with all works, it depends for it’s immediate effectiveness—it’s affectiveness?—on some knowledge of the context on the part of the viewer. Speaking personally, for this work I have only the vaguest idea about the background in Bolivia, about the treatment of female and/or gay members of their society. So my first contact with the piece lacks the necessary information for me to make anything of it (and given that I do not speak Spanish, I cannot gather anything from the dialogue), and I am hence only able to interpret formal aspects of the show, and relate what I am seeing to similar events I am aware of.

Is this a surmountable problem? In the context of the performance itself, is it a problem in the first place? The Performance only loses it’s context—it’s meaning—through the recording, so when performed I assume the piece works for it’s audience, and only by being mediated does it fail (at least on that front).

So what can be done to regain that context, if that’s all that’s necessary to make the piece work? At a very basic level, the video would need to include a lot of extra information to situate to performance within the social and political milieu, and this information would need to be tailored to a certain extent to the particular audience viewing the piece.

So what can be said about the reaction of the English audience to their work? Many will have no direct knowledge of experience of the situation in Bolivia, thus losing any possibility of an empathetic reaction. The performers at the conference may be able to engender an affective reaction through their engagement with the issues and ability to communicate with their audience.

So is this particular (lack of) reaction just apathy or a reasonable suspicion of this type of activism? Has performance of this type lost it’s effectiveness in Britain?

And what about it’s status as art? Is that relevant anymore? Does being classed as art neuter the work’s political aspirations? Again, does ‘art’ give the work some caché in Bolivia that is lacking in Britain? Have the British become inured to art? Is art not the place to make any kind of statement, if you want that statement to be taken seriously? Has the avant-garde tradition of épater le bourgeois been emasculated?

It’s very difficult for me to relate to what is undoubtedly a very serious situation in Bolivia. Using performance art to address it leaves me with conflicting emotions – on the one hand I can see that in it’s place it could have been effective; on the other I am repelled by the methods that seem to me to be embarrassingly ineffective. But of course, I am only thinking of them in relation to myself, one person’s reaction. Just because I do not react well, does not prevent the work from being effective with other people. I feel bad for being so negative now. I was being very limited in my thinking. I should ask myself what I would do in this situation.

  1. Mujeres Creando

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CORE COURSE—Tino Sehgal research

It’s difficult to find textual information on Tino Sehgal, probably because he exercises a policy of no objects and no photos or recordings, which makes it difficult to research the essay I’m writing on his work.

Here I’ve collected some quotes from online sources that may prove useful.

de Selby is in some places transcribing the artists own words, so while they will be useful in themselves as opinion or critique, I’m also trying to get hold of the recording of the original talk for the source material.

The Moisdon article is perhaps the most interesting from a theory point of view, while the Frenzhel piece has lots of Sehgal’s own comments.

As Moisdon says, the works make for an interesting situation for a writer, leading you into what could easily become “tautological traps” – I see this as an opening for some philosophical debate, and I’m looking forward to writing the essay.

. . . his art takes place on the macro level of institution and medium more than on the micro level of an individual work. (de Selby, 2006)

. . . the subject of any particular piece was secondary to it. (de Selby, 2006)

Sehgal said once again that he was not interested in adding more things to the world and that he was interested in figuring out an alternative form of production and exchange. (de Selby, 2006)

. . . he turned to the social institutions of art deliberately because its character and structure lent itself to this sort of experiment. (de Selby, 2006)

His most caustic remark, though—and he apologized for possibly being reductive—was about the antimarket attitude of many twentieth-century avant-garde artists. He said he thought they were misguided and naïve. (de Selby, 2006)

One cannot write about Tino Sehgal’s works without committing a first anomaly, by attempting to give them a title, to describe or to list them, that is, to enter into rivalry with the form of the work itself, which is the affirmation of what it is. (Moisdon, 2003)

. . .a series of traps, which render the artist and the viewer complicit, more by means of play than by default, of the context in which they come about, of the place in which they are exhibited; of the mercantile system which will, in order to sell them, inevitably seek to extract them from the trap. (Moisdon, 2003)

This work opposes certain illusions of what one could call the militant modern avant-garde, whilst nevertheless observing the mechanisms by which the art work is a spectacle destined to sacralise merchandise, to dissimulate regulations/deregulations of a system that precisely never really succeeds in distinguishing itself. (Moisdon, 2003)

Even though his pieces sometime appear destined to reveal the relationship of dependence that links the artist to the economic system, they are nonetheless also completely autonomous. and disalienated from this critical and political perspective. (Moisdon, 2003)

He aims for a mental reality beyond a visual reality and rediscovers the implacable (which is not irony) of affirmation. (Moisdon, 2003)

Sehgal’s tautologies (This is good, This is propaganda) are true by definition, and serve to situate the exhibition spaces. (Moisdon, 2003)

Via these affirmations, which contain their own solution, he renders obvious the retreat of knowledge, expertise; this competence, which allows to determine the meaning of an enunciation. Tino Sehgal’s signature does not dominate the representation of the space, it doesn’t refer to him as a real individual; it represents a place which allows ample space for other, equivalent identities. By means of repetition of the signs of self, Tino Sehgal’s enunciations finally liberate the work from the character of the author . . . (Moisdon, 2003)

The museum guards and gallery staff are part of this system of communication; they are the instruments, the relays that allow the artist to pursue his demonstration. Neither subjects now objects, they simply form part of the material elements of a proposal that seeks to verify the post-Duchampian question of the museum as medium, to know whether it is the museum that makes the work or the work that makes the museum. (Moisdon, 2003)

Duchamp affirms that only the artist’s signature suffices; that it is stronger than the institution. With Buren, the signature is the institution; he has no need to place his signature. Tino Sehgal inscribes himself into this perspective, in producing a third voice, a displacement; a subversion of the historical function of the signature and the readymade. (Moisdon, 2003)

That which Tino Sehgal bestows upon the place of his signing, is precisely this space of invention, its necessity: why invent? Why even «present a world» which would «add to» reality? To produce a discourse, a fiction, a representation? Perhaps merely for the creation of employment. (Moisdon, 2003)

Sehgal stages situations in which the observer is directly addressed and required to react. He surprises his viewers without making unfair demands on them. (Frenzhel, 2005)

. . . one wonders more about the framework in which the actions take place than about the actions themselves. (Frenzhel, 2005)

“My work belongs in a museum.” (Frenzhel, 2005)

“What intrigues me in art is the tradition of Duchamp, the possibility that a thing can become different and at the same time remain the same. The objectness of art however, never interested me. Because every object-based artwork affirms the highly problematic mode of production – the transformation of material because it is produced in the same way.” (Frenzhel, 2005)

There are no photographs, no videos of his works – they are saved exclusively in the memory of the participants. (Frenzhel, 2005)

Sehgal wants to go beyond emptiness without losing himself in metaphysics. “For me it’s a matter of looking: what comes after emptiness, how can I create something beyond asceticism or pure negation? One element is certainly the empowerment of the viewer.” (Frenzhel, 2005)

“My work exists in the form of a potentiality – they are realised when the visitor enters. And what happens then is not entirely in my control.” (Frenzhel, 2005)

The tautological trap snapped shut: the discussion had become the work, which had the goal of becoming the object of a discussion. (Frenzhel, 2005)

“The thing can only work because there are certain conventions and the situation plays with these conventions.” (Frenzhel, 2005)

. . . situations in which the distinction between artist, work and viewer are blurred. At this point zero of the white cube logic, something happens which in its fleetingness defies an attempt to interpret; something that is significant but whose significance cannot be pinned down. (Frenzhel, 2005)

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