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Five years ago, three artists legally changed their name to Janez Janša and joined the conservative Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS.) So far, so almost normal. Except that Janez Janša is also he name of the leader of the party and Prime Minister of Slovenia. Suddenly there were more Janez Janšas acting together within the same physical and media space. Their experience is being turned into the documentary My Name Is Janez Janša in which individuals, artists and academics ponder about the meaning and purpose of one's name from both private and public perspectives. A debate arose in the media and art circles around the three Janez Janša's artistic gesture: What was its intent and significance? Was it a political critique? A work of activism? Pure provocation? Followers of the politicians didn't leave much space for discussion and subtlety when they launched a defamatory campaign and declared that My Name Is Janez Jansa was little more than a work of pornography. The cover of a recent issue of the conservative magazine Reporter illustrates the manoeuvre (the still images published on the cover are actually from Bruce La Bruce and Rick Castro's movie Hustler White which has been quoted in My Name Is Janez Janša.)
The artists have now opened a crowdfunding call to ensure that they'll be able to finish the post-production of the film and distribute it widely. I contacted the three Janez Janša, asked them to tell us more about the movie, the name change, the defamatory campaign and immediately realized that they haven't lost any of their sense of humour in the process: It's been 5 years already since you decided to change your names (Davide Grassi, Emil Hrvatin, and Žiga Kariž) to Janez Janša, the same name as the Prime Minister of Slovenia. I'm sure you were expecting that it would have an impact on your everyday life but what were the effects of the new names on your work as an artist? Janez Janša: Let me correct you first. My legal name is Janez Janša while the politician's legal name is IVAN Janša. He has been called Janez since his childhood, but he never changed his legal name into Janez Janša. Janez Janša: Interestingly enough, when he appears in front of the court, as he is involved in many legal cases, he does it with his legal name Ivan Janša while in his political life, when he represents Slovenia, when he signs state documents, he uses a pseudonym, Janez Janša. Janez Janša: I was expecting him to change his legal name in the same name we have, Janez Janša.
What has the experience brought you? Janez Janša: My life didn't change because of the name changing. I still live the same kind of life and my artistic work is still my main profession. Janez Janša: Shakespearean Juliet maintains that the name of the rose does not affect the sweetness of the rose itself. Yet, it is right my new name that makes now other people smell me different. Janez Janša: The name is what you put forward when you introduce yourself to others. It streams your figure into public life. Other people use your name much more than you do. When you change your name, you don't change yourself. You change your "interface". That is why your name change affects other people more than it does affect you. Janez Janša: ...as one's death. It affects more relatives and friends than the one who actually died. How do you feed the discoveries and experiences of the past 5 years into your work as artists? Janez Janša: They basically feed by themselves into our work as artists because the name change practically merged our art with our life.
I read this afternoon in El Pais that the documentary had faced censorship. Can you explain us what happened exactly? Janez Janša: This issue around our documentary is far from being over so I wouldn't use the pass tense here. It is rather difficult to summarize the whole story. Maybe the best is if you can point your readers to the on-line document that contains the chronology of facts. Then they can make up their minds about the issue. I'm not even sure I will call this a case of censorship. It's more a case of "preventive media pillorying", an attempt to disqualify the work in front of the public opinion before it even get released... Janez Janša: ...this way creating conditions for the public opinion to easily accept the censorship that might follow. The rhetoric used for achieving this goal is of a very populist kind. All the media close to the conservative government agree to define the movie as a "merely pornographic" and "highly offensive" product. A kind of "art" that shouldn't be allowed any further to be supported and produced with taxpayers money. Janez Janša: The funny thing is that all the discrediting arguments are based on "something" that "somebody heard" that "someone else has seen". No one of the journalists attacking us has actually seen the work as the movie is not even finished yet. But were you not expecting to be challenged and criticized when you decided that the 3 of you would adopt the name of the PM of Slovenia and join his own party? Surely that gesture must have been interpreted as a political position? And probably not as one that pays homage to his person and politics? How did he react to it? Janez Janša: The first reaction by the Prime Minister was silence, and his silence was a very clear reaction. There was a lot of speculation in the media whether our name change is to be understood as a gesture of support or criticism to the politician. Janez Janša: It is only in February 2011 that Janša, at the time the leader of the opposition, commented on our gesture. In an interview he gave for the 1st channel of the National Radio he said that he was receiving invitations to appear in front of the court and invoices for fines related to crimes we've done.
Janez Janša: After Janša made his public statement also conservative media and intellectuals started to comment on our name change especially highlighting the way public money were spent and for which kind of "politicized art". Some of the progressive critic instead maintained that by changing our names we helped the politician to himself to the public under a better light. Other accused us of doing a mere marketing operation to gain more visibility and therefore get more money. Janez Janša: But all of them basically agreed on the fact that this name change would be a short exploit in our careers and that soon we will all change our names back, or further. Janez Janša: Well, they were right, at least in my case. I've changed back my name to Žiga Kariž in January 2009 and now I'm still using Janez Janša as a pseudonym especially when I do some work with these two guys, Janez Janeša and Janez Janša... Thank you Janez Janša! The documentary My Name Is Janez Janša is in its post-production phase, and it needs financial strengthening. Help the artists finish the film and reach worldwide audience. |
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On Tuesday i was in Amsterdam for a conference titled "I'm not a Barbarian, I'm an Alien' at the Dirty Art Department of the Sandberg Institute (with titles like that how could i refuse the invitation?) but i also found some time to visit Sonic Acts - Travelling Time at the NIMK, an exhibition of artworks that explore different modalities of time. What i might not find is the time to blog the whole show before it closes on 15 April 2012. But it's so good i should at least make space for a quick mention of one of the participating pieces:
Nummer negen: The day I didn't turn with the world is a time-lapse photography showing the artist standing alone on a barren, icebound plain. Guido van der Werve spent 24 hours in almost complete immobility on the axis of the world at the geographic North Pole. His only movements consisted in turning slowly clockwise as the planet under his feet turned counterclockwise. This means that in these 24 hours, he didn't indeed "turn with the world" but let the Earth rotate around him. The physical tour de force would be enough to make anyone admire the work. But the images are as stunning as the performance. The solitary silhouette, the shadow moving around the artist, the slowly changing sky, the unsympathetic landscape. And then there's that quiet, dream-like piano piece composed by van der Werve.
In Nummer negen: The day I didn't turn with the world, time and Copernican system seem to be suspended. It's an absurd, poetical and almost heroic work. Sonic Acts - Travelling Time remains open at NIMK (the Netherlands Media Art Institute) in Amsterdam until 15 April, 2012. Don't miss it if you're in or around Amsterdam! |
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So far the work of Kris Verdonck was mostly a privilege reserved to the aficionados of theater stages but Z33 in Hasselt has invited the theatre-maker and artist to invade its rooms with wonderful machinery, installations, videos and even a metaphorical garden made of some of the most invasive non-native plant and animal species in Belgium. It's the artist's first 'gallery' exhibition. Hence the title of the show. His works are incredibly invigorating because of their originality and poetry but a few moments spent in their company reveals their dark undertone. The work of Kris Verdonck (...) focuses on the confusion of man in an estranged world due to technological development. The tension between man and machine, between living species and dead materials creates an atmosphere of Unheimlichkeit or eeriness. This 'current state of the world' - with its environmental problems, ecological disasters and wars - is the central theme through his oeuvre.
In the solo exhibition in Z33, Kris Verdonck focuses on the one hand on the confusion and eeriness of man in his environment. On the other hand, his work is about the confusion of the world itself in which the Apocalypse already took place. EXHIBITION at #1 is a bold move, the challenge was to prove that Verdonck's pieces, many of which the artist describes as "big installations that are displayed in a theatrical context", were strong enough to stand on their own two feet in a contemporary art gallery. I had never experienced any of his works in theatres before so i had no preconceptions nor expectations. All i saw were absorbing videos, stunning installations and an earnest robot.
DANCER #3 is one node of ACTOR #1 which explores the metamorphosis from chaos to order. One of the starting points for this work was the history of the creation of the 'homunculus', the artificial miniature human that philosophers, alchemists and scientists have sought over the centuries since Greek Antiquity. DANCER #3 is a robot trying to stand up straight; he always falls down again, but never gives up. His energy and clumsiness display the optimism of a clown who's always tripping over. In Box, a glass cube contains the strongest possible light source that can be concentrated on such a small surface. As spectators --equipped with protective glasses-- watch the light, they hear the voice of the actor Johan Leysen who speaks, in German, the apocalyptic texts by dramatist Heiner Müller: Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten (Despoiled Shore Medea Material Landscape with Argonauts) (1982-1983.)
Light that normally allows us to see was made so strong by the team of engineers Verdonck collaborated with that it turns us blind. BOX is the second installation in a series of installations that examine "the end of the world" from different points of view. Its light could be the luminous flash of a nuclear explosion, a never ceasing, eye-burning lightning that announces the end of the world.
The most jaw-dropping moment for me was when entered a big room on the first floor of Z33 filled with the appliances and objects developed by the artist for live shows. Most of them would normally be kept behind the scenes. The machines often look like medieval instruments (of torture). At the same time, they are often high-technological objects, that fulfil complex functions. They form a large contrast with the extreme esthetical images that they produce. The overview of machines by Kris Verdonck addresses the field of tension between man and machine in today's society. What relationship can/must/do people want to enter into with technology? How difficult is the balancing act between human control and submission to machines?
For the IN performance, an actress remains motionless for an hour in a transparent cube filled with water. The distortion to her senses caused by the environment she is in makes her go into a trance. The sounds of her breathing and movement are amplified by microphones.
MOUSE shows - enormously magnified and in extreme slow-motion - a mouse walking into a trap. The trap closes, the iron breaks the small body. A camera with super slow motion (10,000 images/sec) was used to unravel the mechanics of a movement, just like Muybridge did. The technique makes us experience an extremely upsetting emergency situation in the slowest possible way. We eat meat every day but we don't want to be remembered that animals have to be killed before they land on our plates, and we definitely don't want to be confronted with it visually. MOUSE is an image of our daily hypocrisy turned into a slow motion opera that fills a whole room.
The figures in the large-scale projection FRIEZE look like your typical posh office workers. Neatly dressed, impassible and modern. After a few minutes however, their sharpness starts to crack. No matter how hard they try, the businessmen loose their decorum as their bodies slip, tumble and move awkwardly around the claustrophobic space they are confined to. The characters in FRIEZE could be considered to be a modern version of the majestuous Greek caryatids. These sculpted female figure were functional as well as ornamental and emanated gravitas. The caryatids in FRIEZE on the other hand, display their vulnerability in the extreme. The catalogue of the exhibition is available online. Kris Verdonck - EXIBITION #1 closes this week at Z33 House for Contemporary Art in Hasselt, Belgium. Previously: EXOTE, an indoor garden for invasive alien species. |
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The Casino de Luxembourg has, once again, put up an show worth a trip to the capital of the tiny Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Second Lives: Jeux masqués et autres Je raises questions about the blurring of identity in contemporary society. I'll review the whole exhibition later on this week but in the meantime i'd like to single out a work i found particularly striking.
In February of this year, Art Orienté objet (Marion Laval-Jeantet & Benoît Mangin) were at galerie Kapelica in Ljubljana to perform Que le cheval vive en moi (May the horse live in me), a bold self-experiment that aimed to blur the boundaries between species. The French artistic duo has been exploring trans-species relationships and the questioning of scientific methods and tools for 20 years now. This time their work involved injecting Marion Laval-Jeantet with horse blood plasma. Over the course of several months, the artist prepared her body by allowing to be injected with horse immunoglobulins, the glycoproteins that circulate in the blood serum, and which, for example, can function as antibodies in immune response. The artist called the process "mithridatization", after Mithridates VI of Pontus who cultivated an immunity to poisons by regularly ingesting sub-lethal doses of the same.
In February 2011, having progressively built up her tolerance to the foreign animal bodies, she was injected with horse blood plasma containing the entire spectrum of foreign immunoglobulins, without falling into anaphylactic shock, an acute multi-system allergic reaction. Horse immunoglobulins by-passed the defensive mechanisms of her own human immune system, entered her blood stream to bond with the proteins of her own body and, as a result of this synthesis, have an effect on all major body functions, impacting even the nervous system, so that the artist, during and in the weeks after the performance, experienced not only alterations in her physiological rhythm but also of her consciousness. "I had the feeling of being extra-human," explained the artist. "I was not in my usual body. I was hyper-powerful, hyper-sensitive, hyper-nervous and very diffident. The emotionalism of an herbivore. I could not sleep. I probably felt a bit like a horse.'
After the transfusion, Laval-Jeantet, perched on stilts, performed a communication ritual with a horse before her hybrid blood was extracted and freeze-dried. Video documenting the performance: As a radical experiment whose long-term effects cannot be calculated, Que le cheval vive en moi questions the anthropocentric attitude inherent to our technological understanding. Instead of trying to attain "homeostasis," a state of physiological balance, with this performance, the artists sought to initiate a process of "synthetic transi-stasis," in which the only constant is continual transformation and adaptation. The performance represents a continuation of the centaur myth, that human-horse hybrid which, as "animal in human," symbolizes the antithesis of the rider, who as human dominates the animal. The work was awarded the Golden Nica at the Prix Ars Electronica 2011. Second Lives: Jeux masqués et autres Je remains open at the Casino de Luxembourg - Forum d'art contemporain through September 11, 2011. |
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The latest installation and videos by Demitrios Kargotis and Dash Macdonald are inspired by the exercises performed by members of Casualties Union (CU), a charity organisation funded during the Second World War as a course where acting, made-up casualties were recreated to provide added 'realism' to civil defense and rescue training exercises. For over 60 years, their methodologies and exercises have been showing actors how to simulate 'authentically' both the emotional shock of disaster and physical trauma.
The title for this exhibition currently on view at Lanchester Gallery Projects comes from a CU training script for displaying the different emotions associated with disaster; in this case 'shock'. Through working with the Casualties Union West Midlands region to produce exercises which test and expand their methodology, the exhibition addresses the reach of theatre into everyday life and the dependence of acting in preparations that constitute applied policy on civil defence. The first work in the new series, Exercise 1: 'Trapped Under Piano in Real Time' is an experiment in endurance acting that challenges a qualified member of the CU to realistically portray the physical and psychological symptoms of their prescribed injuries for as long as possible; exploring the need of acting casualties to sustain an 'authentic' performance throughout the entirety of training exercises. The 03:03:35 hour film Contrasts the often 'hyper-real', fast paced, edited portrayal of disaster that we are accustomed to through television and film.
The disaster scene in this first exercise is re-created from a training exercise detailed in the book The Struggle for Peace by Eric Claxton, founder of the Casualties Union.
Exercise 2: 'A Study in Laser Wounds' reflects the fact that The Atlas of Injury, the CU publication that guides its members how to act, fake and stage the signs and symptoms of injuries with medical accuracy has expanded over the course of the past 60 years in response to technological developments both in warfare and everyday life. Laser weapons have hit battlefield strength for the first time and although currently used to counter missiles and projectiles, laser technology is on course to develop anti-personnel weapon systems in the years to come. Based on non-classified papers on laser bio-effects such as Explosive Onset of Continuous Wave Laser Tissue Ablation, Kargotis and MacDonald challenged the CU to expand the Atlas of Injury to include the effects of laser weapons on human tissue.
The photographs document three speculative laser wounds starting with the current Advance Tactical Laser, at hundred kilowatts strength with a ten centimeter diameter at the target; moving up to higher power and smaller beam diameters which might be available in the future. Finally, Exercise 3: 'Heart Attack in Repetition' challenged a CU member to repeatedly deliver one of their 'signature' injury simulations for the duration of forty minutes. This
Thime for a quick question and answer exercise with Macdonald and Kargotis! Have you at any point been tempted to train with them and perform the casualties yourself? It was interesting over discussions at lunch to hear how each CU member had approached this in a different manner from being uncooperative and impatient to quietly sobbing and shaking. The performances you ask from the members of CU seem to be intense. On the other hand, CU works in a context which is quite different from yours. I had first thought they worked for the cinema industry but their website states that they work for "public benefit education and training in first aid, the treatment of illness, nursing, rescue, accident prevention, care in the community and similar activities". So how did they welcome this collaboration with you? Were there directions where they were not ready to go?
It is not the first time you explores 'amateur acting/staging skills'. I'm thinking of Imagine Being a World Leader. Is SHOCK: 'It...all...happened...so...quickly' a continuation of the former project? Or is it an entirely different investigation? "The exhibition addresses the reach of theatre into everyday life.' is this presence of theater into reality something we should embrace or do you feel that this is an invasion that should be kept under control? Any upcoming project of DASHNDEM you could share with us? DASHNDEM - SHOCK: 'It... all... happened... so... quickly' is running at the Lanchester Gallery Projects until 28 January 2011. All images courtesy DASHNDEM. See also Tatjana Hallbaum's IN-BETWEEN photos as described in the post Manipulating Reality - How Images Redefine the World. |
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One of the artists whose work i was most happy to discover at the exhibition Alter Nature: We Can in Hasselt a few days ago is Antti Laitinen.
The young Finish talent fills one room of the art space with a video triptych and a series of photos from It's My Island. The work documents Laitinen's sisyphean attempt to build his own island (and therefore micro-nation) in the Baltic Sea. He is seen filling hundreds of bags with sand, dragging them to the sea amidst relentless waves and conditions, until the island starts to emerge above the water surface. The idyllic landscape took 3 months to shape up. Large storms reduced it to nothing in next to no time.
A year after, Laitinen embarked on Voyage. He constructed yet another paradise island complete with a little palm tree and a white beach, except that this one was not anchored anywhere. There's more, he rowed it through the Baltic Sea, in Greece and on the Thames in London.
Laitinen, i thought, was perfect material for a short interview on the blog: It's My Island documents your quest to build a paradise island in the Baltic Sea. Did you take some time to enjoy your own little territory between the moment it was built and the day it was destroyed by a storm? Or was the 3 month long construction process what mattered most to you? The whole project took 3 months. Half of the time I was building it and during the other half I was taking photos of the island. In this half I also had to repair it every time a storm destroyed it. When the island was ready I invited some of my friends to visit it. It was kind of the opening of my island. There were around 15 of us at the same time.
Voyage is quite different. You are still building an island but this time it's a traveling one. Are you exploring nomadism rather than territoriality with this series of performances? Voyage is a little bit of both. It is fantasy that you have your own island but you are free to go where ever you like.
I was also interested in the fact that you chose to use bark to build some of your vessels. Is there any reason for that? We have lots of pine trees in Finland. Almost every Finnish person has built small bark boat when they were children. They took piece of bark and carved it in the shape of a small sailing boat. I wanted to make a larger bark boat which I could really use. When it was ready I sailed with that across the Baltic sea.
Micronations such as the Principality of Sealand struggle to be officially recognized, this sometimes leads to diplomatic clashes with surrounding nations. Is that something you've experienced while sailing on the Thames, the Mersey River or anywhere else? i read in particular that you were almost arrested by the London police? Can you explain us what happened and if you had similar experiences anywhere else? I rowed my palm island down the Thames with the aim of rowing through the centre of London. After a few kilometres of rowing the police pulled me over in front of MI5 and stopped my performance. They asked me if I knew what building I was beside and I said 'yes, that's along were I am going.' They didn't agree, and towed my island and me back up river. One year later, the police stopped my performance in Athens when I was building an island using small stones. Because we didn't speak the same language, I couldn't understand what the problem was. Anyhow, the police went away after a while and I could continue my project.
Once your island is launched on the sea or river, you are at the mercy of the weather and other natural elements. Things could go wrong. How much external support do you have? Or are you relying on your own strengths? I want to do things as independently as possible but I do not want to compromise my safety. My water vessels are not so seaworthy so sometimes I have a safety boat nearby if there is the risk that something could go wrong. You took your islands and vessels on the Baltic sea but also on rivers. Is the way you approach the open sea very different from the way you prepare yourself for a trip on a (i assume) easier to control river? A river is a lot busier than the sea. A small area has a lot of traffic. For this reason, it is difficult to obtain a permission to put your vessel onto river and if you go there without permission then the police might stop you.
Thanks Antti! Curated by Karen Verschooren, Alter Nature: We Can remains open until March 13 at Z33 in Hasselt, Belgium. Previous posts about the exhibition Alter Nature: The flying tree and Alter Nature: We Can. |
