--->> e-f l u x video rental (EVR) // the building <<---

(courtesy of eflux website)

The building can be found hidden behind a supermarket at the Platz Der Vereinten Nationen (Berlin.) Once tracked, it offers an excellent selection of videos chosen by a group of 'local artists, curators and writers' (eflux website), which can either be watched in the building itself, or can be rented. [NB, if you are interested in renting the films, that they are only offered on VHS.] I haven't had much of a chance to delve into the reading room that is offered, but from a quick scan, it appears to present a vast range of literature all contributing towards one of those home libraries that you always wish you had.... Screenings and talks are also held.

Only open until August 2009! (Thursday - Saturday 12-18 o'clock). Check out the website for more contact information:

http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5803

/// Paul Michel Foucault, né le 15 octobre 1926 ///

Michel Foucault discussing the problem of desire vs pleasure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNcQA3MSdIE

(unfortunately the Embedding has been disabled...)

/// :: Mad For Real :: Questioning art & society ::: ///

Cai Yuan and JJ Xi (collectively known as ‘Mad For Real’) are Chinese performance artists working between the UK and China. Their work is often used to address and challenge the exclusivity of the West-centric art institutions. The performances for which they are best known are: Two Artists Jump On Tracey Emin’s Bed (1999) and Two Artists Piss on Duchamp’s Urinal (2000).




















Mad For Real, 'Two Artists Piss on Duchamp's Urinal' (2000)

Mad For Real, 'Two Artists Jump On Tracy Emin's Bed', (1999)

Mad For Real [MFR] recognised that they literally had to ‘break’ into the airtight Western art canon if they were to get its attention.
In light of this, in MFR's performance: Two Artists Jump On Tracey Emin’s Bed (1999), they physically broke the established Western code. Here, without a word of warning, they jumped onto Tracey Emin’s Turner prize exhibit, My Bed (1999), and in doing so challenged the way in which art institutions see themselves. We can suggest that the act alluded to Pierre Bourdieu’s social critique of the gallery. For instance, Bourdieu’s important text Aristocracy of Culture postulates that in order to fully engage with a work of art, one is required to have relevant educational or cultural capital and that it is the dominant social class which determines the criteria of high art. I also see this work as an example of Foucault's theory of the West's need to assert dominance over the East, particularly reinforced by the Tate's refusal to acknowledge their intervention as a work of art and subsequently MFR being arrested and escorted off the premises. MFR's performance piece was not a violent act upon themselves or another person, but it was the metaphorical violation of the cultural code which hit hard at the established institutions that mattered.

MFR’s other tongue-in-cheek performance Two Artists Piss on Duchamp’s Urinal was designed to lampoon the exclusivity of a purportedly progressive gallery, such as Tate Modern. In the course of their performance, the artists urinated on Marcel Duchamp’s 1912 work Fountain. Cai and Xi said that they had specifically chosen Fountain to urinate over, due to the: ‘controversy which erupted when Duchamp first exhibited the urinal as a work of art although he had merely found it.’ [Tom Sykes, Performance art takes the…, from Mad For Real ] Mad For Real's performance piece acted in a way of broadening the context of Duchamp's original work, exactly in the same spirit in which it was made. Cai and Xi reiterate in an interview with Nick Paton Walsh: ‘Modern British art is getting worse and worse. They haven’t taken any risks. The mainstream are caught in a circle, and we are outside that circle – pissing in.’ [http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,330551,00.html ]

In a discussion I had with Cai Yuan, he told me that the Tate’s stated reason for not recognising their performances was that they were considered not ‘conceptual enough’ and that they could not produce works which were aesthetically sufficient for their tastes.


With both of the interventions taking place at the Tate, it resulted in MFR being issued with the following statement (and were subsequently banned from setting foot on any of Tate's premises):

"The Pleasure of our visitors has twice been disrupted by two artists who have threatened works of art and our staff. Tate will be taking action to protect the interests of visitors, the safety of the works of art in the collection and its employees." (citing Nick Paton Walsh, It’s a new Cultural Revolution, from http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,330551,00.html )

Ironically, it is this fax which stands as testimony to what Mad For Real were trying to eradicate. It is a proof that Western society has not offered Cai and Xi the artistic freedom that it had purported to extend to one and all.

The irony of Tate's statement, became farcically apparent, as the Tate, who not only position themselves as the cornerstone of Britain's forward-thinking artistic contingent, but during their 2007 Liverpool exhibition: 'The Real Thing: Contemporary Art From China,' they invited Mad For Real to hold a talk: The Ones that Got Away: Performance Artists Cai Yuan and JJ Xi in Discussion with Simon Groom. When I posed the question to Simon Groom (who at the time was head of exhibitions and collections at Tate Liverpool), as to why, when Tate consider themselves to be at the forefront of contemporary art, they had failed to recognise Mad For Real's avant-garde contribution towards the canon, and were simply dismissed with a fax, (and thus in Tate's eyes - denied their performances an artistic status), and now, once MFR have been critically acclaimed and their interventions recognised as art in its own right, the Tate have put their authorative stamp in 'allowing' MFR to enter into 'their' canon.
Simon Groom, downright refused to answer my question... which in itself, speaks volumes.



I also find it important to mention Transfiguration (2006-2007), as it is very different to MFR's usual tongue-in-cheek intervention pieces, rather - it holds a much more sombre feel and can be considered a durational performance piece. Transfiguration acts an important work reflecting on Britain’s socio-political prejudices about of immigration. It tackles the tragic death of fifty-eight illegal immigrants who suffocated aboard a tomato truck crossing into England in June 2000. During Vital: International Chinese Live Art Festival 2006, held in Manchester, UK, Mad For Real first performed Transfiguration which consisted of Cai and Xi sitting for forty-eight hours in the back of a white van. With their faces painted in Monkey King style (as seen in the Transfiguration illustration), symbolising their ‘Journey to the West,’ they invited passers-by to come inside and join them in the drinking of tomato juice. With the passers-by on board, the Mad For Real artists closed the doors shut and commenced the blending of tomatoes.

MFR, Transfiguration, 2006, Manchester, UK

The work was exceptionally poignant, and to me, proved that MFR stand as some of the most critically important performance artists working in the UK. They address and question socio-political issues with such immediate relevance to the current Western ethos, and refuse to be ignored. Unfortunately, their website does not appear to be working at the moment, but if I hear of any forthcoming performances, I will be sure to post them here.

MFR, Transfiguration, 2007, London

/// Prof. Mgr. Věra Chytilová (* 2. února 1929 Ostrava) ///

Last week at Basso, they showed the 1966 Czech film Daisies (Sedmikrásky) by Věra Chytilová, and I have to say I absolutely adored it, and would highly recommend it to anyone and everyone.

Věra Chytilová's 'Daisies (Sedmikrásky)' is considered one of the key works of the Czechoslovakian New Wave movement, which, as I am just learning myself, can be better understood by clicking this wiki page link.

Chytilová's rejection of traditional values, both within the film's narrative (the two protagonists [female] make a pact to behave 'badly' within their patriarchal society and subsequently create whirlwinds of bizarre and humorous situations), and formally, Chytilová's experimental avant-garde methods of cinematic representation both compliment and encourage the film into the unconventional. By encompassing both of these methods, Daisies, stands for me as a dynamic film, reminiscent of the experimental formal expression of the early short surrealist films ((Len Lye // Hans Richter // Duchamp etc etc)) and the surrealist films carrying more of a narrative, such as Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon (1943).

However, for me, Chytilová's Daisies narrative, instead of focusing on the individual within identity politics, it provides a much larger comment on society. While there is no denying that Daisies has obvious roots within the feminist genre, to name but one scene: where we see the girls cutting phallic shaped food with a pair of scissors.... Rather, I am proposing that the narrative shows a desire for rebellion within the suppressive and uniform regime, which was indicative of the political situation in Czechoslovakia at the time. Of course issues of gender politics are particuarly highlighted as this was made during the feminist second-wave movement (although I am not sure how Czechoslovakia fairs within the feminist movements per se), yet it certainly also positions itself within the general counter-culture rejection of traditional values, both within the narrative and experimental forms....

The surrealist and campy humour which Chytilová portrays is utterly infectious, and I can't wait to get my hands on another one of her works.....


For a more detailed reading of Věra Chytilová's films, follow this link;
http://www.kinoeye.org/02/08/radkiewicz08.php

Watch the trailer for the film here:


(apologies to those who don't speak Czech or Spanish, I could't find a clip with Eng subs... but you can still get the idea...)

~~~ The Berlin Man With A Movie Camera ~~~

There is a man who travels around the Berlin gallery openings. Pretty impossible to miss, is he, as he is always to be found sporting a construction site helmet with a video camera taped to the top. Often a flag will drape off the helmet and I have seen him more than once in a white bomber suit and let's not forget those wonderful aviators...

What is he doing...? I have often wondered, labelling him as one of the arty farty-ies. Well, it actually turns out that (yes, of course the label can still stay on) but he is also doing quite an interesting project. His name is Konstantin Schneider (if indeed that is his real name...) and he travels around the Berlin openings in order to get a bona fida account of the event / the scene / the people etc etc, and more often than not includes an interview with the artist (habitually looking embarrassed / confused and a bit shy). I guess, his idea in theory should provide an interesting archive of a well-documented and authentic Berlin art scene, but in practice, you can see everyone becoming increasingly shifty once his presence is felt. Still a great character and his small films are interesting to watch - check out his website for more: http://www.berlinerkunstkontakter.de/

The man at work....

/// Judith Butler (* 24. Februar 1956 in Cleveland) ///

Here are my notes from: Judith Butler lecture "Frames of War" at the Dahlem Humanities Center der Freien Universität Berlin.....



- What obligations, if any, do we have to preserve life?
-What are the conditions that put us under this? What lives do we consider should be preserved?
-Apprehension / heightening of violence
- Bodily Ontology - bodily persistence / desire / language etc
- Fundamental structures of being. None exist outside political and social interpretation.
- Social significances the body assumes. The body = a social ontology.
-Existential notion = departure for rethinking progressive + leftist politics // New ways of administrating precariousness.
- Ethical problem of preserving lives
- Normative productions of producing bodies, H/E Normative schemes = disrupted // power structures etc.
- Does life exceed these norms?
Construction of lives - need time... therefore job never done??
- Exercising crafting power.
- Hegel = social ontology of the body - phenomenology of spirit, an "other" appears.
- Me + I --> question of comprehension
- Localising the body - relation to space - not a fully bounded being
-Capacity to be somewhere else but this becomes a certain sense of loss - not quite bounded in space as once assumed.
- Limit of what you can call "yourself" - tension between me + I.
- Life also refers to non-persistence... trajectories // time before + after I exist - other people existing outside of our own --> as a shape. "I" am not bound to others.
- The questions that come - help us to live...
- Who is this "I" who is also substitutable?
- Non-substitutable idea = idea of conceiving existentialism // society etc. Society = trajectory of idea of maintaining and bonding of society... also = apprehension etc.
- Recognition of life only through social norms or in relation to the not normal.
- Whose lives are grievable?
- Apprehending + recognising a life
- Utterly limited in recognising through existing norms of recognition.
- What new norms are possible? Egalitarianism - democratic results?
- Shifting schemes of intelligibility, i.e. debates of abortion - what constitutes life or death? (i.e. death of heart / brain etc) or death of animals - how are they negotiated? B/C of debates = discursive models, therefore "norms" are recognised.
- Failure assumes a figurative form.
- Living figure outside the "norms" of life = the problem is that ontology cannot be secured - neither living nor dead (N.B. - like Žižek's extension of Freud's Todestrieb complex??)


- Frames feature as an editorial - frames guide the interpretation i.e. if criminal framed then their life becomes the object inside the frame. H/E the frame ignores // does not determine what was in it - within its intended context. i.e. War photography departs from its context, but takes on a new context.
- What gets out of hand is what breaks the context - frames breaking from itself. --> media phenomena.
- Conditions of reproductability in order to succeed --> Frame therefore subject to a temporal logic - therefore need to understand the frames ethically. Shifting temporal conditions.
- Movement of the image outside its confinements.
i.e. War photography - outside the context & framed - proposes worldwide horror // i.e. facilitating widespread outrage photos from Guantanamo
- Exploiting the frissure in ontological fields - frames breaking from themselves - therefore becomes possible to fuel apprehension for something that is neither living nor dead.
- The norm exists in being able to undo its being
i.e. Thinking of the recent Gaza / Israeli war - what do the numerical doings evoke? Numerical frame - what does it provide for our ethical practice (& political)?
- normal therefore based on apprehension & precariousness

-Life needs social & economic situations to be repeatedly met in order to be "normal".
- Birth of an infant = an institutional social norm and therefore the value of life will matter.
-Life exists as a condition that is grievable
-Conditions are our political & ethnical responsibility

Israel vs Palestine
- one thought - survival depends on I must attack in order to survive
- H/E politics on the left - freedom
- Precarity as a shared distribution strong notions of equality - seeks to address basic needs in order to survive.
- Frames of war produce the materiality of war
- Media representations are military operations - frames of perceptions.
- Therefore... war = ontology = bound + constrained in frames of power
- "The Enemy" = losable B/C already considered lost.
- Shields of War
- The task is to live with people that we have never known.

/// Nobuyoshi Araki (jap. 荒木 経惟 Araki Nobuyoshi; * 25. Mai 1940 in Minowa, Tokio) ///

Nobuyoshi Araki stands as being one of the most controversial contemporary photographers who challenges our preconceived ideas of art vs pornography. Often his works depict women tied / bound and hanging half naked: naturally giving him the misogynist status amongst many feminists. It is a difficult one to shout really, does he deserve this title? And decidedly more importantly, who gives him this title? Through researching this, it is Western criticism which draws in the majority of the shots... now, this is not intended to be a post which enters into the dialectics of post-colonialism and feminism, but it is interesting to me that in watching Arakimentari (2004, Travis Klose, 85 min), however bias it may be, the queues of women - literally lining the corridors, just waiting to get one photograph taken by Araki, speaks volumes?

In an interview between Nan Goldin and Araki (read here) she writes:

‘In Japan, where women’s roles are in a period of flux and the idea of female identity in the Western sense is a new one, many young women find Araki’s images liberating. To show their bodies, to flaunt their sexuality, feels like freedom; teenagers flock to Araki to be photographed by him.'

(from Nan Goldin 'Naked City')

Perhaps there is something slightly misogynistic and perverse about Araki's work, at least it definitely makes for an easy interpretation. I can't help but feel that there is much more complexity to Araki's work and find it somehow compelling....
Despite all of his disputed works, Araki remains as one of my favourite photographers. For me, the concentrated interest in his controversial works, overlooks some of the most talented works in photography. His 'normal' photographs pay attention to the small things, the things we notice but do not notice - (yes it may well be the tried-and-tested foolproof photographers cliché) - but there is something slightly haunting about his photographs.

Two of his most wistful series of works, and the most poignant, (both series published into books) Sentimental Journey and Winter Journey (1991): Sentimental Journey is a photograph collection from their honeymoon and Winter Journey - perhaps the most deeply melancholic of the two - is this set of photographs, best described as a photo diary, portraying his wife Yoko's last days (she died from a terminal illness) through her funeral and a bit after.

I am not usually one for such a tragic romantic narrative, but maybe it's because this is not a fictional one. For me, each photograph encompasses his absolute suffering as he prepares and battles with a very real sense of loss, pain and love... it is almost desolate or devoid or perhaps almost empty, and for me it is one of the most unreserved and honest accounts of someone's isolated contemplation....