A Dangerous Critical Present

A Dangerous Critical Present A Constructed World

Michele Robecchi

Like seagulls and many other species, eels endured a difficult co-existence with mankind.

On top of having to change and readapt their living and nutritional habits on a regular basis due to pollution and urban expansion, their popularity in global cuisine put them in serious danger. Their number has significantly decreased over the past three decades, with Greenpeace’s Seafood Red List currently listing three out of four kinds of commercial eels as close to extinction.

Explaining contemporary art to live eels by A Constructed World, the moniker Geoff Lowe and Jacqueline Riva chose to define their multi-faceted collaboration in 1993, is a partly redemptive, partly educational project where art critics and historians are invited to explain contemporary art to the eels, either in captivity (before being freed) or in proximity to the sea. On the occasion of the Bandits-Mages festival in Bourges (2013), for example, the group drove to a desolated marais on a rainy morning to serenade the eels for about an hour.

No human audience was present and very little documentation was taken, but the mission was nonetheless carried out in an atmosphere of dedication and optimism reminiscent of Alan Lomax and John Work Jr.’s field recordings of blues musicians in the Mississippi Delta region in the early 1950s.

The idea of engaging in conversation with animals has of course a few illustrious predecessors in art history, chief amongst them Joseph Beuys’ 1965 performance How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare in the gallery of Alfred Schmela in Düsseldorf. But whereas Beuys was performing in isolation, separated from the audience and addressing a dead creature, the symbolism and the signs attached to Explaining contemporary art to live eels are not meant to

surpass the original thing they describe. The gesture is effective, in the sense that there is an actual transmission of information, and the eels’ undetectable response brings in a note of mystery as well as validating the acceptance of the existence of an unknown dimension. Another thing that separates Explaining contemporary art to live eels from How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare is its inclusive nature. Not only all the people invited to contribute to the project so far have gladly accepted – they have taken the task seriously too, prompted by some form of responsibility towards the listening animals and their own participative/performative role. This is probably one of the key entry points to better understand A Constructed World’s philosophy.

Art Historian and Curator Sébastien Pluot, one of the ACW’s oldest associates, has succinctly but poignantly described this all-embracing concept with the words ‘A Constructed World – you have to have been in it’. And ‘being in it’ is indeed what a lot of A Constructed World’s art is about. ‘There is an unreasonable pressure on the viewer to know what they think. This is why a lot of people say they don’t know about or they’re not interested in art’, declared Lowe and Riva on the occasion of The Social Contract, their exhibition at Spring in Hong Kong in 2013, where viewers were asked to sign a binding agreement preventing them from discussing or documenting the art in the exhibition. ‘The audience doesn’t realize their own production in a work of art. It’s something that they go to a gallery to look at, they’re not really aware that they are the audience and that the work is there for them’.

Whilst these concerns sound close to the participatory art Nicolas Bourriaud labeled as ‘Relational Aesthetics’ in the early 1990s, there are a few important differences to be noted. The

question ‘What types of relations are produced, for whom and why?’ is not exactly the point as in a way it has already been answered. Relations are produced with the scope to improve the connection between artist and viewer. The actual question posed from the audience’s perspective here is rather ‘What does it have to do with me?’

A Constructed World’s position that their actions draw attention to the members of the audience as part of the production of the work, implying that they become producers of something in their consuming it, introduces a further set of interesting questions, because once a viewer is a participant, there is no contemplator or receiver, hence no viewer. What ultimately makes it work is that viewers become agents, but they never really become decision-makers. Their participation happens mostly through two factors. First, the actions they witness do not benefit from a fourth wall.

In A Constructed World’s performances, there are no walls at all. Breaking out of character is impossible because there are no characters to break out from, but rather different forms of characterization expressed through a series of recurring, esoteric and familiar costumes (the mirror man, the bear, the skeleton, Adam & Eve) or actions where characters quickly dissolve the barrier that separate them from the audience by delivering their lines in a casual manner more suited to the first day of rehearsal rather than the premiere night. Scripts and notes are plainly visible and regularly consulted, errors and mistakes are incorporated, and the moments of uncomfortable silence that marks the occasional glitches in the program are taken chin up.

Secondly, the provenience and the role of the collaborators involved – writers, musicians, philosophers, students, fellow collectives like Speech and What Archive, but even friends or perfect strangers recruited on the spot at the

very last minute – means that they are asked to take the stage with little familiarity with each other and the material they have to perform.

The resulting repertoire of songs, texts, and poetry successfully interrogates the notion of group as a cohesive entity and leaves room for discovering unexpected common interests or overlaps between the participants, creating in the process a visual representation of a dialogue that very much concerns the artists and their partners as well as the public. Participation, to conclude, takes place through observation as well as identification. The dynamics on stage leaves the door permanently open, a fact further emphasized by the frequent absence of a proper stage. The issue of site-specific-ness is seldom an issue per se, with the aforementioned costumes and other props recreating the required environments in the most diverse circumstances – museums, galleries, abandoned churches, night-clubs, foundries, and corn fields.

This brings to the more material side of A Constructed World. Although drawings, paintings and sculptures can be experienced as pieces in their own right, they invariably present a connection to the performances in the form of accessories or documentation. This doesn’t make them less enjoyable, as they maintain a visual appeal and a conceptual autonomy, but if unaware of the rest of the oeuvre they refer to, their fruition is not limited but definitely different. The Pre-emptive Drawings, in particular, offer a deep insight into the procedural aspect of some of the actions, with charts and drawings indicating the position of the performers, the track list, texts, and the overall narrative of the event. Similarly, Atheism and Luck, an edition of plastic carpets augmented by the presence of a lamp laced with all sort of amulets previously used as stage floor, is imbued with the same contrasts TS Eliot astutely put into words

when he said that the trouble when people stop believing in God is that they don’t actually stop believing. They just start believing in anything.

As for the musical part of the work, A Constructed World seem to distance themselves from the canonic experimental sound that characterize the majority of sound art performances. Old classics and semi-obscure gems like Joe Tex’s One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show or John Lee Hooker’s I’m Mad Again are dressed with new lyrics and executed in minimal fashion. One particularly successful piece is a rendition of Muddy Waters’ Long Distance Call, where the original cry of a man getting an unexpected phone call late at night to be informed of his love interest’s escapade is replaced by the contemporary problem of not being able to reach a person in spite of the multitude of technical devices available. (‘Call me, Skype me, Text me!’ shouts Lowe). The irony is further illustrated by Steve Piccolo’s spoken introduction about the song’s original premise that you can tell who’s calling on the phone by the intensity of the ring – a real possibility now but not then.

The format of A Constructed World’s performances is so flexible and open-ended that there is also room for a Trojan horse in the form of Chrématistique, French philosopher Fabien Vallos’ study on wealth after Aristotle.

Apparently detached from the rest of the show, Vallos’ monologues are in fact very much part of it, as they share with the group a concern for the erosion of values and the economics that defined the beginning of the 21st century. If viewed from this perspective, the title A Dangerous Critical Present sounds alarming if apocalyptic – the kind of remark you would hear when pessimism becomes a synonymous for realism, and the fear that a dramatic event forcing issues one way or the other is about to happen. Then one is

reminded that the present is always dangerous and critical, precisely because it is the present. It doesn’t provide the comfortable stillness of the past; it is not an abstract entity like the future.

Immediate and erratic, the present constantly creates and eliminates possibilities. It is neither an already written page nor a blank one, but the one that is about to be filled. Suddenly the thought of a dangerous and critical present no longer looks negative and scary, but rather exciting and enigmatic.

Welcome to A Constructed World.

A Dangerous Critical Present Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Villa Croce Genova curated by Ilaria Bonacossa 21 November 2014 - 8 February 2015