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While writing my review of Artissima, the contemporary art fair that closed earlier this month in Turin, i left one project aside. I was so interested by Milica Tomic's Container that i decided to take some time to document it more thoroughly. The work, which was brought to Turin by Charim Galerie (Vienna), challenges the 'representation' (or lack of thereof) of past violent events. Container recreates the Dasht-i-Leili massacre, a war crime committed in Northern Afganistan in 2001. Thousands of Taliban prisoners were locked inside cargo containers without food nor water and carted off through the desert to prison on a journey that took several days. When they begged for air, the Northern Alliance troops shot at the containers, "to make holes for air to come in." Some were killed by the bullets, others died of suffocation. Those who survived were subsequently shot and buried in mass graves. Information about the massacre appeared in the media only two years later. Not a single image illustrated the story. But there were eyewitness reports, and there is a documentary, Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death. Milica Tomic decided to produce the non-existing war image. The images would not only be fake, they would also be made in other locations and contexts. And with every reconstruction, Tomić came across new information linking host countries to various war zones or local episodes of violence. The scene of the crime was first repeated on an empty cargo container in Belgrade, in a sport club where you can hire a "shooting service". Three professional shooters shot at the container. They received monetary compensation and did not ask any question. The artist and her team later moved the container to downtown Belgrade, where they photographed it with about 100 people inside.
The artist quickly realized that during the crime reconstruction in Belgrade, more crimes started to emerge: those committed during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. In order to pierce the thick container metal,, the shooters hired by the artists had to use Kalashnikov and the bullets AK-47/7.62 x 39mm. The bullets were produced in 1988 in Bosnia, and then used during the war in Kosovo until 1999, when the Yugoslav Army brought them to Belgrade, following the retreat from Kosovo.
Repeating this reconstruction in different countries produced different scenarios. In Australia, the (re)construction had to take place only on private property. The only professionals who accepted to shoot at the container were roo-shooters, the kangaroo hunters. This time, the bullet used were the same that were used by the Australian army fighting the US-led war in Iraq.
Another reconstruction of the crime took place in Gyumri, Armenia, where shooting at a container would have been far too disturbing for the population. Containers were indeed used after 1988 to house many Gyumri residents who had lost their homes to the earthquake. Some are still in use today. Besides, a total weapon ban had just been imposed in the country because of demonstrations that had ended in bloodshed a couple of months before Tomic's arrival in Armenia. This time the (re)construction of the war crime didn't go further than the renting of the container.
In Great Britain, this artwork was only possible within the BBC studios production. Another option was to take the container out of the country, and return it perforated to Great Britain. The networks of military, economic and political relations, which appeared active during the process of reconstruction and begun to tell us its own criminal story. (...) By simulating this crime the discussion on global violence, hypocrisy of American wars in the name of democracy and anti-terrorism opens by default. Previously: As seen at Artissima this month. |
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Another edition of the Artissima art fair just ended in Turin, another Artissima report on wmmna. I've always found Artissima brainier, edgier and less art supermarket than other art fairs (let's say that the mercantile side of the operation is a bit more subtle here.) I thought my first visit to Frieze in London last month would dethrone the Turin fair from its pedestal but that didn't happen. Frieze is not as avant-garde as its reputation wants it. At least not anymore. I hope to find time to blog about it soon-ish. Along with the 102 galleries that form its Main Section, Artissima also introduced young galleries, which have been up and running for less than five years. Another section, Emerging Talents, is dedicated to emerging artists while Back to the Future brings the spotlight on artists who were active in the '60s and '70s and whose work has much affinity with current art practice. I'm going to mix and match everything i've seen in a single, almost devoid of any comment, post:
I love love love David Shrigley:
Views from the exhibition space at the Oval (images from the press kit):
Gabriele Arruzzo's proposal of a coat of arms for Italy celebrates the past glories of the country as much as some of the embarrassing clichés that characterize its current identity (or at least the way it is perceived.)
Elia Alba paid homage to disco and its influences, and in particular to club Paradise Garage in New York City and its legendary DJ Larry Levan.
In 2008 the Croatian artist Igor Grubić began a series of micro-political actions dedicated to the revolutionary movements of 1968 that ranged from personal dedications to provocative interventions in public spaces.
The retro section, Back to the Future, ended up being my favourite of all.
When in 1972 Franco Mazzucchelli abandoned some PVC inflatables (A. TO A.) in front of Alfa Romeo he involuntarily triggered a road block as factory workers played with the plastic shapes and created a barrier to block the cars.
My images on flickr. |
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I'm just back from the Galleria Franco Soffiantino in Turin where i saw a pretty amazing creepy thought-provoking drama by Melanie Gilligan, an artist whose previous 4 part video Crisis in the Credit System received much attention back in 2008. I've just discovered that the 5 episodes of Popular Unrest are available online too. I wish i'd known before because the screening at the Turin gallery was as uncomfortable as humanly possible.
Popular Unrest is set in a fictional future that looks very much like today's London. The drama explores a world in which the self is reduced to physical biology, directly subject to the needs of capital. All exchange transactions and social interactions are overseen by a system called 'the Spirit'. Hotels offer bed-warming servants with every room, people are fined for not preventing foreseeable illness, weight watching foods eat the digester from the inside and the unemployed repay their debt to society in physical energy.
The film starts at the moment when things start to go wrong in the world that was so far impeccably controlled by 'The Spirit.' Unexplained killings are taking place across the globe. Sometimes the assailant strikes in public but no one has ever seen it/him. Just as mysteriously, groups of unrelated people are suddenly coming together everywhere, forming groups that are becoming bigger by the day. They feel a deep and inexplicable sense of connection to one another.
Shot in London with a cast of twelve main actors, the film is inspired by the current state of politics, technology as well as public debates about privacy, capitalism and societal organization. Popular Unrest owes also a lot to David Cronenberg's 'body horror' and American television dramas CSI, Dexter and Bones, where reality is perceived through a pornographic forensics of empirical and visceral phenomena. Popular Unrest is on view at the Galleria Franco Soffiantino in Turin until July 16, 2011 and on your computer screen. |
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On Tuesday, it was almost sunny, i was bored, i thought that a few moments at Franco Soffiantino would sort me out. The Turin art gallery's ongoing show has indeed a very promising title: Thai Body Massage and other works. Jens Haaning bought every single object that happened to find itself in a thai massage centre. Body oil, painting reproductions of Thai landscape, portrait of the King of Thailand, carpet, chairs, etc. Even the handbag of the owner of the massage center. Every object has now found a new home in the gallery. Haaning had previously moved that same massage studio to Kunsthal Nord in Aalborg, Denmark where it was fully operational. Visitors of the art center could thus book an appointment and get a massage.
Anyway, the work that i found most interesting in this exhibition deals also with relocation, immigration and integration. In 2009, the artist went to Albania, caught dozens of pigeons, put them in cardboard boxes, loaded the boxes in the truck of his car and drove to Greece. He released the birds in a square of Thessaloniki where pigeons usually gather. Simple. Yet he had performed an illegal act: bringing live animals inside the European Union borders is forbidden to avoid "the transmission of diseases to either the public or other animals" unless you carry the relevant health certificates. Yet, pigeons, migratory birds, even seeds cross borders every day. This post is dedicated to the stern customs officers who stop me after immigration in the US because i forgot that i have an apple in my handbag.
Images from the show. |
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While i ponder on my inability to be the queen of sexy titles, i'm going to give you a last breath of Artissima:
The first time i saw Jan Håfström's work was at the Venice Biennial. I remembered thinking that i wouldn't mind seeing it over and over again. The Brändström gallery in Stockholm has no idea how happy when they decided to fill their booth with Paradise Lost, Walker, Incidents of Grandma's Travel and The Eternal Return to Artissima. The cut-out wood panels create an instant dark cult atmosphere evoking Gustave Moreau, Edgar Allan Poe, secret burial ceremonies and Boris Karloff's hypnotic eyes in The Mummy.
What happened? Why did i miss Francis Upritchard at the last edition of the Venice Biennial?
Now the question i like to ask myself when i'm in an artfair is "if money was no object which work would i want to bag for my penthouse?" At Artissima, i'd have bought a Damien Deroubaix.
I came across the work of David Shrigley at Galleri Nicolai Wallner's booth. I'm now very fond of his Modern Thought animations.
In 2007, Daniel Knorr decorated four trams in Bucharest with the symbols of key institutions: The Army, The Orthodox Church, The Red Cross and the Police. This intervention materializes the Kafkian relationship between institutions and citizens who live physically such relationship in regard to the tram (either if they are inside or outside it, either if it is empty or crowded), always repeating the same run (via.)
Gianni Pettena was one of the leading figures of "radical architecture" in Italy. The little i've seen of his work makes me think that he was a brilliant man, to say the least. Carabinieri were giant word-objects built out of corrugated cardboard erected in a courtyard and abandoned to the wear and tear of time and weather. 'Carabinieri' (the national gendarmerie of Italy) is an old word and it evokes authority. Rain and humidity have quickly and quietly reduced it to pieces.
Zebiba, by Hrair Sarkissian, is a series of portraits of pious men in Egypt who all have the 'Zebiba' or prayer scar on their foreheads, caused by kneeling on a prayer rug or a Mussallah (Stone of God) and touching the ground with one's forehead. On one level, the worshipper aspires to disinvest himself from earthly culture. Paradoxically, the desire to become invisible when facing God, renders him more visible within his social environment.
Best discovery for me was the work of Andrea Salvino at the booth of Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea.
I had always associated Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi with sarcastic political drawings so i was surprised to see documentation of his tattoo "anti-performance." In 1993, while his country was facing a national identity debate, and a negative image abroad, Perjovschi participated to a Performance Festival in Timişoara with an "anti-performance" for which he had the name of his country tattooed on his shoulder. Ten years later, he removed the tattoo in a surgical procedure that involved a laser bombardment of the tattoo, each black dot splitting into millions of pieces and each of the pieces carried away through his skin by molecules. The tattoo was not erased but instead spread throughout the whole body of the artist.
And that's it for the 17th edition of Artissima!
Previously: Artissima - the installations, Artissima: Architecture, photo, decay, Artissima - the House of Contamination and Artissima, first images. |
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Olala! I'm ridiculously late with the remains of my reports from the Artissima art fair which took place in Turin last November. I posted a couple of quick stories a while back then got on a plane and left catalogues, scraps of papers, hasty notes and memories home. I know new year's resolutions are made never to be respected, but i do hope 2011 will see some form of organization in the way i schedule my reports.
The last edition of Artissima was good. But then i'd usually say such thing because i love art fairs. The booth ladies always wear fancy, sexy attires, none of them has ever heard about the existence of art blogs, i see free booze in my fancy press bag, the concept of a fair makes it possible to ask questions you'd never dare to ask in a gallery or museum, and there are more artworks than even i can absorb. The event this year took place at at the comfortable and luminous Oval - a pavilion built for the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Turin.
Artissima offered dance shows, performances, mega structures made of trash (see Artissima - the House of Contamination) and a few young galleries and artists i was happy to discover. This post will focus on the installations i found particularly striking: One of the most amazing, yet simple, works at the art fair was a light projection by Ulrich Vogl. Neatly aligned projectors from all brands and sizes were casting onto the wall of the booth slide images that, seen together, suggested the night-time skyline of a distant metropolis.
In 1997 Carl Michael von Hausswolf initiated a series of works under the title "Operations of Spirit Communication", inspired by his research on Electronic Voice Phenomena techniques. His ready-made machines were showing the possibilities of ghosts and other kinds of life forms living inside a certain space or inside the electricity grids. Unfortunately for me the lovely person in charge of the Niklas Belenius booth was a friend of the gallerist and he could not give me much information about this particular piece. He merely gave me the name of the artist and had me press a couple of buttons.
Superflex was showing the Anti-Piracy Machine, from its Free beer / Counter game strategies series. Anti-Piracy Machine models the struggle against counterfeit goods. One player (the 'pirate') places bootleg material (represented by potatos) into the marketplace (represented by the launching tube). The other player (the 'police') uses the subtle and finely-tuned instrument of the law (represented here by a hammer) to remove pirate material from circulation. Five points to the pirate for every potato missed, one point to the police for every potato hit.
Niklas Belenius's booth (again!) had photo documentation of John Duncan's installation The Rage Room, part of The Dream House in which each room is specifically designed to evoke a specific state of consciousness.
Susan Norrie's stunning video installation was dedicated to the people of Porong and East Java who are battling the biggest mud volcano in the world. In 2006, an eruption at the Banjar Panji 1 gas and oil drilling well created an environmental disaster in the region that continues to this day. Company officials claimed that a distant earthquake had triggered the eruption; others believed that the catastrophe was primarily due to the mining company's operational negligence.
The toxic fumes spreading from the well include hydrogen sulphide, which causes long-term neurological and physical effects. The mudslide inundated villages, leaving more than tens of thousands of people homeless. It is expected that the flow will continue for the next 30 years.
Lou Reed lighting a cigarette on the first track, side one, of the LP Take No Prisoners, recorded live at the Bottom Line, New York, May 1978. The sound is played through a microphone connected to the headphones output of a 1970s reel-to-reel tape recorder.
And a very happy new year to you dear readers. Previously: Artissima - the House of Contamination and Artissima, first images. |
