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I'm having a fairly busy week but i promised myself i wouldn't abandon my blog as i tend to do when i'm on the road. So... quick post about an installation i was hoping to see earlier this month at Vooruit's festival Almost Cinema in Gent. Sadly, i couldn't make it to Belgium that week. But, youpiiie! Feedforward. The Angel of History, the exhibition that LABoral which opened last Thursday, gave me a second chance to finally get to see Smoke and Hot Air. Designed by Iranian artist Ali Momeni and Robin Mandel, with participation of artist Matthew Brackett, Smoke and Hot Air reflects Momeni's concern about the relentless threats that Iran has been receiving from many other countries in recent years.
The system searches for sentences including the words "attack Iran" on Google News. The sentences go through a text-to-speech synthesizer. The voice is in turn picked up by a microphone, analyzed, and translated into rhythmically corresponding smoke rings from a quartet of wooden smoke ring makers. Reflecting on the perception of countries as they are shaped by the news and media landscape, Smoke and Hot Air reverses the general view of Iran, which is frequently depicted as aggressor. The recent global support for the uprising after the 2009 Iranian election showed how quickly the general attitude towards a country can shift. Translating the news into old-fashioned smoke signals, Momeni's and Mandel's project illustrates how the complexities of national and political identity can get reduced to false impressions, deceit, and posturing.
I found the artwork particularly moving. Is simplicity can only be equaled by its efficiency and its peacefulness by the distressing political situation in the Middle East. The quiet and smoky atmosphere incites you to make a pause and reflect on the issue at stake. Also in the exhibition: Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad 1798-2006. |
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Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón, North of Spain has opened a very very very good exhibition a few days ago. FEEDFORWARD - The Angel of History addresses the current moment in history where the wreckage of political conflict and economic inequality is piling up, while globalized forces--largely enabled by the "progress" of digital information technologies--inexorably feed us forward. I'll write about it in details in the near future but i'd like to share with you straight away one of the most interesting artworks i've discovered there.
Hasan Elahi (you probably know his ongoing project Tracking Transience) Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad 1798-2006 (2009) Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad is a transparent map that documents the use of U.S. Armed Forces by means of 22LR caliber bullets. Shooter from the Olympic Society of Shooting in Gijón shot from a distance of 25 meters (the Spanish law wouldn't allow for a closer shot) into the polycarbonate map at the precise location where each incursion has occurred since 1798. According to Congressional Research Service report for Congress, Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2006, there have been approximately 330 instances "in which the United States has used its armed forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or for other than normal peacetime purposes", or more than 1 per year.
In places, the resulting map is a literal wreck due to the number of incidents in certain areas. It is also a map of the expanding sphere of influence of the United States, as its military reach matches its economic scope of activities. FEEDFORWARD - The Angel of History is on view until April 5, 2010 at Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón, Spain. |
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A couple of months ago, i was invited to Laboral in Gijon to visit the exhibition AUTO. SUEÑO Y MATERIA (See my reports: Cars and landscapes, Artists' automobiles, Manufacturing cars, and Artificial traffic jam in the mountains.) As much as i enjoyed the car show, the artworks i found most meaningful and engaging were in other rooms, the ones that hosted another exhibition called El pasado en el presente y lo propio en lo ajeno (The past in the present and the near in the far).
The exhibition reveals how "the ghosts of memory", as sociologist Avery F. Gordon calls them, reach out from the past and haunt the present, influencing how we understand and construct it. More precisely, the show investigates the mutual influence between this phantom of memory and the territory. El pasado en el presente y lo propio en lo ajeno is not a pop nor ready-to-eat exhibition. You have to take it slowly, read carefully some historical background on almost every single piece on show and sit through many videos. Everyone knows i'm not video art's best friend. Yet, i caught myself enjoying most of the films i saw there. The first video came with the magic words: "a work by Jeremy Deller". Jeremy, i love your work. I didn't see The Steam Powered Internet Machine but it looked too poetical to ignore. I did get to visit From One Revolution to Another, an exhibition Deller curated for the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and found it ballsy-awesome (if any of you reads swedish, here's my take on it.) For El pasado en el presente y lo propio en lo ajeno, Laboral was screening Battle of Orgreave. With the help of film-maker Mike Figgis, Deller reenacted what is often regarded as the most brutal and controversial confrontation between police and picketing miners that took place under Thatcher's reign. All i knew about the event was this photography of a striker wearing a toy police hat and facing of police lines:
The Battle of Orgreave took place on 18 June 1984 in Orgreave, South Yorkshire. After weeks of picketing, some 5,000 miners and supporters were protesting outside the coking plant. A few bricks were thrown. The police commander responded by sending in the mounted police. It was a serious overreaction and events quickly escalated, with force out of control and delivering baton beatings to unarmed miners, the cavalry entering Orgreave village, etc.
The event symbolizes the end of the coal industry, the resistance to Thatcherism's attempt to crush miners' community and reactionary police apparatus. Its reenactment is extremely moving. Actors are members of amateur historical re-enactment groups but also ex-miners who returned to the former battleground to relive a moment in the destruction of their livelihoods and community. A few ex-policemen were there too. Personal testimonies are intertwined with perspectives on a wider social history of the '80s. The hypocrisy of the time and media's role in covering up the truth are also highlighted.
You can check out Jeremy Deller's video over here.
Another work i found particularly striking is Fernando Bryce's series of ink drawings on paper that revisit historical events by meticulously reproducing the printed materials that they generated. The artist scours through political pamphlets, posters, calendars, newspapers, magazines, portraits, tourist publications and official correspondence to investigate his subject, favouring often relatively obscure or 'minor' records. The first series, The Spanish Revolution, reproduces the covers of the English version of the newspaper POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, or Workers' Party of Marxist Unification), published between 1936 and 1937. In the second, The Spanish War, Bryce compiles and draws an extensive archive of the Civil War.
Over the last two years Avelino Sala has been researching and cataloging the different locations of representation of imperial power through one of its most popular symbols: the eagle. One of them is in fact located in the central courtyard at Universidad Laboral, a few steps away from the Laboral exhibition center, and acting thus as a souvenir of Spanish dictator Franco's role in the conception and construction of the colossal building. In Laboral, the eagle is probably familiar to those who experienced this recent past and is, thus, a persistence of memory as an imposition.
It's easy to go from Sala's eagles to Unsettling the Fragments (Erschütterung der Fragmente), the artwork that Martha Rosler created for the 2007 Münster Sculpture Projects.
The American artist decided to conjure up the ghosts of the city's most uncomfortable hours and, therefore, of the history of Germany. She relocated historical remains to their previous places, drawing attention to past traumas which citizens would rather not to think about. For example, she returned to its original site (right in the middle of the shopping district) the reproduction of a Wehrmacht's eagle on a pole preserved in the city's history museum. She also placed in front of the municipal library the metal cages that were used to display the corpses of heretics after their torture and execution in the 16th-century. Images of the exhibition on Laboral's flickr set. El pasado en el presente y lo propio en lo ajeno (The past in the present and the near in the far) is open until September 28, 2009 at Laboral, Gijon, Spain. Related stories: History will repeat itself (part 1) , (Part 2) and The Problem is Civil Obedience. p.s. Jeremy Deller's Procession is up at Cornerhouse, Manchester International festival until 23 August. |
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Anyone visiting LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre before September 7 will get face to face with a mysterious installation by young artist Félix Luque Sánchez. Chapter I: The Discovery is an impenetrable, geometric object and a series of videos restaging the moment of its discovery, as if it were a scene from a sci-fi movie, where the hero is suddenly confronted with an alien, slightly chilling figure.
Chapter I: The Discovery questions the viewer's perception about the truthfulness of what is shown, right from the visioning of videos with synthetic images and ending up in an encounter with an interactive object which co-opts information flows, sound and light transmission. Rather than answering questions--such as, How can technological advances be controlled? On what ethical bases can its purposes be chosen? Who is entitled to decide on the ultimate mission of machines? Can machines destroy us?--this installation, on the contrary, is about reformulating those modern philosophical questions through the use of images associated with the popular culture of science fiction. Wow! That's quite a programme!
Video of the installation: I had to ask Félix for more information about the installation: Your essay about Chapter 1, the Discovery draws parallels with science-fiction. You mention authors such as Arthur C. Clarke and Philip K. Dick. who are the scifi writers today who, in your opinion, do a similar job of "opening up unforeseen possibilities that are sure to become realities in a very short time"? Don't you feel sometimes that technological progress is going faster than science-fiction anyway? First, I have to say that I'm not a SF expert. I am interested in SF because I like the freedom and potential it has to explore its central subject: the relationship between humans and machines, society and technology. A subject that is central for me in digital art. Science fiction is for me a perfect framework for artistic expression with technologies, given that it questions the role of science and technology in the definition of the human. I think that you could find examples that go both ways. For me Science Fiction mirrors reality in the same way as reality mirrors science fiction. As such, the relationship is confusing, with one continually projecting onto the other. So what I find very interesting is the fact that being a cultural production, the visions of the present, near or faraway future it makes, are in fact reflections of the society we are living in and its relationship to machines and technologies. We can then use SF to reinvent trajectories crossing the past, present and future of the relationships between man and technologies. For me, the most interesting things about these works are what they tell us about our present culture, more than what they predict about our future.
The description of the work says: "As the viewer gets closer, the machine detects the movement and tries to engage in communication by generating a light and sound code." Can you give us more details and explain which kind of 'interaction' (if that's indeed an interaction) takes place between the piece and the viewer? The interaction is very simple : it is one to one. If someone approaches the dodecahedron, the zone facing the visitor detects his presence and reacts to it with a series of lights animations. These series of lights animations change depending on the distance of the visitor from the zone of the dodecahedron. The object's code is made by these changes, which generate different light animations resulting in a light-sound code (in the piece sound is made out of the electronic circuits dimming the light tubes). The importance of the interaction resides in its meanings, which try to convey the idea of artificial intelligence. The interaction is meant to simulate this very complex concept through a language of very simple behaviours. In order to fully engage with "Chapter 1, the Discover", how much does the public need to know about the work and the way it functions? Is it necessary to keep some mystery and guessing? Or would you rather communicate as much information about it beforehand? I think that there is no need to know anything before experiencing the piece. In fact the narration through the whole installation is quite simple. You first enter a room where you watch several videos with different versions of the same moment: the discovery of a strange object in the form of a dodecahedron. Once you move to the second part of the installation, you physically encounter the object, and it reacts to your presence. It tries to communicate. It's not important for me if the visitors can read the interaction clearly; I only want them to feel a certain reaction from the object to their presence. By this simple process I hope that people will ask themselves about the meaning and the reality of this experience.
Finally, can you tell us a few words about the aesthetics of the machine? It seems to be quite unfriendly (as opposed to the openly fun, entertaining, playful installations one can see in many media art festivals and exhibitions today), at the point of being slightly alienating? The object is a representation of a technological alter. The piece explores the concept of alterity from an anthropological point of view: The fear of the other, the exotic, the "primitive" or as in this case the technological other. The choice of the dodecahedron as a sculptural form is grounded in its symbolism in science fiction and in popular culture in general. My goal is to use the symbolic potential of this figure to favor its conscious or unconscious mental association with images from that popular "subculture". The aesthetics of the object resides then in its capacity to become unfamiliar, to make it appear as a machine more than a sculpture. To attend this goal we had to express the apparent simplicity of the form, make disappear the technology, create an indistinct surface, texture, and matter. Thanks Félix! Chapter 1, the Discovery is on view at LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre in Gijon, Spain, until September 7 , 2009. |
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Previous stories about AUTO. SUEÑO Y MATERIA : Cars and landscapes, Artificial traffic jam in the mountains and Manufacturing cars.
Leonardo Da Vinci was credited with sketching the world's first self-propelled vehicle back in 1478. But da Vinci was a Renaissance Man, a man at ease in front of a religious scene to paint as much as in front of a technological challenge. There's no artist from the Renaissance in the AUTO. SUEÑO Y MATERIA exhibition, the majority of the works exhibited come from the last two decades but they demonstrate that contemporary artists do not need to graduate as engineers to re-invent the car... even if the result of their experimentation has no ambition to compete with what comes out of a Porsche factory.
Very few of the artists participating to the exhibition are as pragmatic as Pedro Reyes. Reyes is from Mexico City, a place where car use has doubled over the past few years. There are currently over 7.9 million cars on the roads of Mexico City and around 400 000 cars added to that total every year. Traffic is beyond control. Although the government is trying to curb air pollution through public transport improvements and new laws to control emissions of new cars (source wikipedia), carbon dioxide emissions create a smog layer that severely affects the air quality of the entire Mexico Valley, damaging the health and quality of life of all its inhabitants. Reyes' Bicitaxi aims to provide an answer to the problem. If mass-produced the Bicitaxi could be spread all over the city center and provide transport services for short distances. The benefits of this "human-propelled vehicle" would be many, including creating an alternative for self- employment. There's quite a few European cities which have tried to offer bicytaxi services at some point but they were so ugly most people wouldn't want to be caught dead in one of those. Reyes' version, on the other hand, has an almost futruristic and toy-like appeal.
Sometimes compared to da Vinci, Panamarenko is best known for the whimsical blimps, saucers, backpack helicopters and other flying (but mostly non-flying) machines that he spent decades building and experimenting with. The were modeled on natural elements, such as bird's wing or the motions of insects in midair. He has now retired from the art world and started selling his own brand of coffee instead.
Panamarenko's first design for a flying car dates from 1972. One of the prototypes on show at LABoral is not a flying car but a very appealing and simple rubber car. Polistes (1975) is propelled by two turbines that, when turned the other way, make brakes superfluous. Since the propulsion is direct, i.e. not via the wheels, gear changes are not necessary either (via). Panamarenko doesn't really care if his machines flew or not. As Alberto Martín, the curator of the exhibition, wrote: His works embody the technological dream confronted by its very own nature, its free evolution and right to failure, beyond the feasibility or performance studies proper to industry. He seems to be reminding us that the future has always been located on the shore of dreams and ideals.
Erwin Wurm's UFO doesn't fly either. Neither does it have any functional ambition. UFO is the epitomy of fanciness and futuristic dream. It is shiny and evokes the flying cars that no engineer has ever managed to pull out of their sci-fi setting.
At the other hand of the spectrum is Xavier Veilhan's Vehicle. That one as minimal as it can get: chassis several pipes, holding a small jet engine and sustained by four bicycle wheels. The vehicle works perfectly but is absolutely useless, its a schematic reduction of the automobile, a prototype with no other quality than its own essential nature. The "primitivism" and extreme reduction of the car is at odds with the sophistication generally associated with car design and technology. Is a vehicle reduced to its most basic functions still be regarded as a vehicle? How far can its reduction go till we don't recognize its essence anymore?
Roman Signer followed the same path of reduction and minimalism with Wagen: four wheels a fan generating energy to produces motion. Here again, spectators are questioned about the true nature of the vehicle they have in front of their eyes: Is it still a vehicle? Is it drivable? What is it for? Wagen brings to the surface the mechanisms implicit in our relationship with the goods around us.
I'll close this post with one of my favourite works in the show, the sublimely absurd Pull by Michele Bazzana. Once again a minimal vehicle but this one it is powered by two drills that probably consume much more energy than would normally be required to move such a basic vehicle.
Related post: Panamarenko retrospective. Auto. Sueño y materia, curated by Alberto Martín, runs until September 21 at Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial. |
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Previous stories about the exhibition: AUTO. SUEÑO Y MATERIA - Cars and landscapes and AUTO. SUEÑO Y MATERIA - Artificial traffic jam in the mountains. At the beginning of the 20th century, cars were hand built by small teams of highly skilled craftsmen and women. Only an elite could afford to buy one until Henry Ford developed a system of mass-producing cars on conveyor belt-based 'assembly lines' and introduced standardized interchangeable parts. The mass production lowered the unit price of cars, making them affordable for the average consumer. Tobias Rehberger takes history backwards. In 1999, the artist embarked on a project that saw him sending simple sketches, composed essentially from memory, of iconic cars such as a Porsche 911 and a McLaren F1 to a workshop in Thailand.
The artist who grew up near Stuttgart -often nicknamed the cradle of the automobile- selected Thailand, the Detroit of Asia, because the country is also known for its knockoffs of pretty much anything 'the West' produces. The instructions, sketches, clippings from newspapers and renderings he sent in Thailand didn't contained any measurements nor technological details. The only requirements were that the cars had to be drivable and built to human scale. No matter how carefully the Thai craftsmen worked, the resulting vehicles can only reflect the meagre instructions the artist sent them. But Rehberger likes the imperfections because the way they enhance the personal stories behind his work. For the Renault Alpines (the model currently on show at Laboral), he just gave the men the info over the phone. Rehberger claimed that he wanted "to create a car that is in itself a sculpture." The series makes us re-consider our idea of authenticity. It also softens the line that separates a consumer good from an artwork.
Stéphane Couturier's series Melting Point superposes two photographs taken in an automobile assembly plant in Valenciennes to create an almost abstract image. However, workers, machines, car parts, belts and surroundings can still be clearly identified. The series examine the connection between the introduction of new technological tools and the inevitable emergence of changes in our vision and perception of reality. Auto. Sueño y Materia, curated by Alberto Martín, runs until September 21 at Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial. |
