Andrei Siclodi
Andrei Siclodi
Private Investigations
Private Investigations
Private Investigations
Edited by Andrei Siclodi
Private Investigations Paths of Critical Knowledge Production in Contemporary Art
Private Investigations
Alfredo Cramerotti
Unlearning Journalism, Misapprehending Art 21
Andrei Siclodi
Private Investigations—Paths of Critical Knowledge Production in Contemporary Art 11
Geoffrey Garrison
A Kind of Collaborative Desire Including a Conversation with La ura Ho re lli
Judith Fischer
Reading the Hidden, Writing the Liminal 30
Alison Gerber
Real, Not Real
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Including a Text Contribution by A nd re i Siclod i
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Brigitta Kuster
L’avenir est un long passé
Ana Hoffner
Was ist Kunst—A Product of Circumstances? 76
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Ralo Mayer
How to Do Things with Worlds, 26a 111
Including a Conversation with A nd rei Siclod i
Alexander Vaindorf
Detour
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Including a Conversation with Nina Mรถnt m a nn
Private Investigations—Paths of Critical Knowledge Production in Contemporary Art A nd rei Siclod i For some time now, one aspect of contemporary art has been en vogue in theoretical discussions: art as a field of, and medium for, the production of specific knowledge. Especially in relation to the discipline that the academic establishment calls “artistic research,” the persistent need for a stable basis for artistic knowledge production has been continually emphasized—above all in academia; knowledge production in art, so the mantra goes, must go hand in hand with a socially critical (self-)reflexive approach toward art and its producers. In the globalized knowledge-based society of the twenty-first century, we are told, art must position itself quickly in order to assert its own social relevance and insure itself in the long run. With such arguments, the academic standardization of artistic criticality is aided and “tenured” by national educational policy. Yet can this top-down criticality, standardized through academic curricula, have any real impact outside a self-referential framework? Despite all its good intentions, does this not rather serve to entrench existing hegemonies and (distribution) economies of knowledge? And what alternative strategies might be used to counter an increasingly dominant discourse on the theory and practice of “artistic research?” In recent years it has become fashionable to deal with the subject of “artistic research,” or with “knowledge production in art,” both in an affirmative and in a critical manner. Countless publications have appeared on the topic, attempting, from all possible perspectives, to show that “artistic research” is socially meaningful and to establish its relevance outside the art world. The concept of research used in this connection usually comes from the (economically validated) natural sciences or else, sometimes, from the social sciences—the latter especially when the practice in question employs interviews and methods of evaluating data. These references to scientific fields may understandably cause confusion, since this implies that art entails a systematic search for new discoveries, that it is a method for gaining new forms of knowledge to be exploited and commodified also outside the arts. This view, however, overlooks fundamental qualities of art: its autonomy and versatility—in the sense of adaptation and resistance. The autonomy art
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process of this search for new concepts, the phrase private investigation emerged, which I propose as an alternative to the dominant term artistic research. To avoid any misunderstandings, it should be stated that this is not intended to suggest that artists, like private investigators, collect facts and observations that their client can use “in court,” that is, as arguments in a dispute. I definitely do not want this term to be understood as it would be in reference to a detective. On the contrary, private investigations in art are not comissioned by clients and are certainly not a method, but rather an artistic position. Such a practice takes its point of departure from a very personally formed interest in a situation or issue that extends beyond the personal. The “clients,” then, are exclusively the artists themselves. The approach to the situation or issue is research-based and investigative, although in this case the particular path to the possible goal is subject to an individual artistic standpoint. Similarly, the artistic method is open: the investigation can, but does not explicitly have to, flow into how the work is realized. A critical approach to existing knowledge and the experts associated with it is rather the central issue. In cognitive capitalism, to research something or to search for something implies searching for a general rule, for a validity of the object of research that objectifies it, leads to a generally valid conclusion, and finally commodifies it. To investigate something in the sense of a private investigation means radically questioning it in order to formulate a critique with artistic means that can resist the impending commodification. By this I do not mean that this practice must inevitably be an activist one. Nor is it necessarily about formulating an explicit critique of something, since criticality can also be articulated implicitly, by reformulating existing positions and questions into new, meaningful connections. Essential to this is the ability to generate an actual knowledge surplus through simultaneously insuring the crucial qualities of a critical artistic practice, namely, autonomy and versatility. In the end, my interest in artistic investigative practices stems from years of collaboration with the artists and theoreticians who have worked at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen within the framework of the International Fellowship Program for Art and Theory; the fellows and their projects contributed to the development of this institution to a great degree. The experiences gained from this have led me to the conclusion that a residence-based fellowship program, like the one organized at Büchsenhausen, represents a relevant and effective institutional framework for the critical practice
claims is only productive when it activates art’s ability to exercise an effective critique of existing conditions. Art’s versatility ensures in the end that it can adjust to new circumstances, so that the critical process can take place anew even when signs have changed. The second position that views art as a specific form of knowledge production—for which I entertain a certain sympathy—often mistakes “transference of knowledge” for “knowledge production.” Whereas “knowledge production” suggests the creation of a unique knowledge that does not exist outside art because it would not be possible for it to exist there, “transference of knowledge” signifies a communicative knowledge exchange between the art context and other areas of society. This knowledge transfer is bilateral, but with completely different intentions on each side. The transference of knowledge from art above all takes a form that represents the work method and lifestyle of the artist in a broadly naïve, Romantic way as one that assists creativity and innovation; it therefore views and implements art as a model for a completely flexible labor market. This conception of the artist has in fact been instrumentalized in order to justify the progressive social destabilization of more and more areas of life. In contrast, the transference of knowledge into art appears almost harmless because it most often takes the form of aesthetic actions of a symbolic character, whose effects can be observed outside the art world only in very few instances. A practice that originated in the nineties, for example, continues to be in favor in regional art scenes: “publicizing” information and situations from non–art world fields in order to raise consciousness in the public about negative developments or conditions in society. This practice greatly overestimates its own influence because it largely ignores the fact that its “readership” is primarily made up of its own core art audience, and it therefore cannot expect to reach the mainstream. The potential “criticality” inscribed in these art practices can only be viewed as a self-referential artistic design principle used to create products that will sooner or later be commodified within the art market. New perspectives are therefore necessary for understanding what a critical artistic knowledge production could be and how it may function. One viable alternative is to do away with tired concepts like “research” and “science” and to look around for other options that can describe, in the most non-hegemonic way possible, the critical artistic practices that are actually in use. In the
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described here, because it provides a sufficiently neutral environment and guarantees autonomy for the practices within that space.1 One essential difference between a residence-based fellowship program and other art institutions (gallery, museum, academy, Kunsthalle) is that a residency not only unites production and representation under one roof, it also melds these together institutionally. This contextual coextensivity is indigenous to a residency. This means that the processes of investigation, production, and reflection themselves become the subject of questions about representation, causing the art and art-related production (theory) to experience, and condition, other forms of representation than in the canonical White Cube. Additionally, a residency offers, temporarily, time and means to artists and theoreticians. This tends to result in preproduction investigation taking on a central, if not exclusive, position in the array of activities engaged in during the residency. If we take into account the diverse practices of acquiring and processing knowledge within this context, it becomes clear that investigation constitutes a further field that exists in a coextensive relationship to production and representation. The notion of temporariness, as it has been formulated by Charles Esche, plays a crucial role in this context. Esche states that “Temporariness or provisionalism, by which I mean projects or programs that are constantly up for negotiation and alteration at every possible moment, can be, I believe, one trigger for a constructive remaking of art’s relation to the social and the emancipatory. . . .” 2 “Temporariness or provisionalism” is inherent to any residency. As the parameter that determines the frame, it not only decisively influences the participants’ own strategies, it also enables institutional self-critique. The processes of artistic production and reflection that take place under these conditions, in turn, determine the forms of representation the art and its discourse take, which in this case appear heterogeneous, fragmented, and transitory. For this reason, I have proposed discursive and performance formats to represent the artistic practices in this kind of environment. These formats seem necessarily incomplete and transitory, since they themselves reflect only a snapshot of the current state of affairs at the moment they were produced. This is also their strength, because through the openness necessitated by their process, they appeal to a responsive audience that can potentially contribute to the process itself. This introduces the possibility of a displacement, in the sense of a coming together of positions from which participants and non-participants, those affected and those addressed, each speak. The knowledge produced in this
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way is at the same time also inherently an act of subjectivization. This is what makes this kind of knowledge fundamentally different from academic knowledge, which can easily be instrumentalized by others for ideological or economic purposes because of its normative and standardized quality. ** This book is not primarily intended as a formulation of a theory in opposition to the hegemonic idea of “artistic research.” Instead, the practitioners— who because of their respective practices are hastily shelved as “artistic researchers”—are given the opportunity to speak up for themselves. An integral commonality among the artists and cultural producers presented here, however, is that their investigative practices are able to resist this categorization. These are artistic practices that attempt to infiltrate hegemonic discourses of knowledge that are currently emerging in the art context itself, while simultaneously proposing individual paths for acquiring and processing knowledge. All the contributions to this book, with one exception,3 are published here for the first time and were commissioned for this purpose. They have all been produced within the last five years—during or after exhibitions and events that took place at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen. The authors were invited to propose or design texts and images about their artistic practices. The result is a visual reader with eight separate formats, each an attempt to reflect the artist’s individual practice and thinking through content and layout. What if we consider art and journalism not as two clearly distinct areas, but rather as a shared, multilayered activity? In his examination of the relations between these two fields, which in different yet, to a certain extent, similar manners deal with processing and publicizing information, Alfredo Cramerotti embarks on a journey through the interactions between the representation and production of reality. Journalism and art are here viewed as two sides of the same coin—a coin that seems to be spinning faster and faster, so that it is no longer possible to tell heads from tails. Questioning dominant regimes of perception and mindsets about reality in general forms a consistent thread running through the contributions found in this book. Alison Gerber’s Artists’ Work Classification, for instance,
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takes the everyday reality of the artist as a point of departure, drawing up a systematic “universal handbook” of artistic labor. The importance of such an endeavor is advocated because, among other things, the mostly immaterial labor that the artists perform is generally not even perceived by society. As a result, old-fashioned, Romantic-modernist conceptions of artistic production continue to be reproduced. Although Gerber’s Artists’ Work Classification resembles the results of a sociological investigation, it is anything but: in fact it is a subversive act undermining the reality of dominant discourses about the reality of art and its producers. The reality of art is juxtaposed by Ana Hoffner with the reality of the various forms of racism and discrimination that are generated and supported by the national and global apparatuses of power in our day and age. Hoffner’s lecture performances combine reenactments of historically relevant artistic works—in this case, a lecture performance by Xavier Le Roy and a performance by Raa Todosjevic´ —with current discourses on artistic research, and with critiques of postcolonialism and racism. The result is an act of emancipatory subjectivization: a vigorous staging whose dramaturgy culminates in the demonstration of established mechanisms for the violent exercise of power and for subjugation, thereby rephrasing the question “What is art?” as “What is life?” “What is life?” is also a central question in Alexander Vaindorf’s work. The artist discusses his practice in a conversation with the curator and critic Nina Möntmann, using two projects as examples. These works are about the different ways the individual is valued within society in various economic and social structures in relation to the European Union: on the one hand, in the formerly exemplary welfare state of Sweden, and, on the other, on the level of the micropolitics that relegate migrant workers from outside the EU (in this case, from Ukraine) to a non-negotiable position at the bottom of the ladder of law. For the second, Vaindorf is concerned with making these micropolitics visible and comprehensible, which he does artistically by engaging in an expansive, semidocumentary “field research.” While Vaindorf relates to his subjects from the position of the artist, he attempts, as far as possible, to overcome this distinction. The other work deals with the role of the institutions of public education in forming the relationship between citizens and the state in Sweden. Using a classic conceptual artwork from Sweden from the nineteen seventies, Will You Be Profitable, Little Friend?, by Peter Tillberg, Vaindorf asks teenage students in Stockholm, in a workshop
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setting, about this generation’s personal connection to the government, in order to induce a discussion about the progressive extension of individualistic ways of life. The interest in micropolitics, which can often tell us more about the state of society than an overarching narrative can, is also shared by Brigitta Kuster in her work about the relationship between South and North. Following the spoors of German colonialism in Africa, a historical chapter long overshadowed by the legacy of National Socialism, she undertakes a journey through a specially assembled library of colonial knowledge, whose inventory not only consists of European reports of colonial presence, but also includes stories about this period transmitted orally in Africa. Upon closer observation, it becomes clear that the “imagined” (oral transmissions) and the “real” (archived testimonies) are not so different in their veracity—a finding that substantially enhances the meaning of the fundamental question as to what a document is. The special achievement of Kuster’s investigations and methods is that she constantly maintains an equal distance from all the testimonies and discourses that come into play—even on the level of the smallest details in the production of her own video works.This is seldom achieved even in scholarly fields. Whereas ghosts for Kuster are testimonies to a past that we thought we had overcome, Judith Fischer, though also interested in the process of haunting and its sites, focuses more on how it forms images and on the possibilities for “capturing” these artistically. Through a practice of concretizing intermixture, she places her triad of image, text, and film on a level that treats all media equally in the process of production. In the end, the hybrid discourse over what an image is feeds on a plethora of theoretical and fictional reciprocal overwritings and reformulations, materializations and disappearances, copies and corrosions; the knowledge gained is then stored itself in new images, texts, and films. Scrutinizing the real is also central to Ralo Mayer’s conceptual practice. The artist uses the performativity of language as the basis for an artistically synthesizing process, which leads to literary narrative ends, preferably in the form of science fiction. Chameleon-like, Mayer adopts the position of the ghostwriter in order to construct literary “worlds” in which an abundance of disparate information, from all possible (mass) media sources, is brought together in a new, meaningful arrangement. Social critique above all results here from the artist’s formulation of (science-)fictional alternatives to the
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status quo. The textual work forms the basis for all of Ralo Mayer’s further artistic articulations—to a certain extent, it generates the script for the work. Geoffrey Garrison’s practice deals directly with scripts, specifically those for films. His own film works, in turn, result from deconstructing and recontextualizing existing movies whose plots strike his interest for specific reasons that are initially subjective. These plots, as well as the way they were realized in the original film, function as points of departure for Garrison’s screenplays, in which biographical, political, and social aspects—actors, locations, etc.—are introduced from his investigations into the background of the original films. The newly developed screenplays are finally realized in fragments, condensed to their essential elements as the artist sees them. ** This book, to a certain extent, aims to open up a field of discussion about whether or not art in the twenty-first century can be relevant for society outside the art world, and if so, how and where. We are now only at the beginning of this endeavor, but the direction, in my opinion, is already set: it is clear that criticality, resistance to economic instrumentalization, and a productive maintenance of autonomy as well as versatility will play a crucial role as parameters for artistic practices. Yet not only artists and cultural producers who act according to these criteria are needed; institutions that are as free as possible from national forces and neoliberal agendas are required as well in order to offer these productions an appropriate platform.Therefore, new concepts for institutions need to be devised and discussed. There is still work to be done.
1 I have argued this position in an earlier text. See Andrei Siclodi, “Private Investigations: The Way We Want Them,” in Vector, vol. 3 (Ias¸i, 2006), pp. 62–71. 2 Charles Esche, “Temporariness, Possibility and Institutional Change,” in Simon Sheikh, ed., In the Place of the Public Sphere? Oe—Critical Readers in Visual Culture, no. 5 (Berlin, 2005), p. 122. 3 The texts by and about Alison Gerber originally appeared in the Artists’ Work Classification (The CF Pod Press, 2007).
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Michael Wolf, from A Series of Unfortunate Events
Unlearning Journalism, Misapprehending Art A lf re d o C ra m erot t i I would like to invite the reader to take a brief journey into the world of information processes such as newsmaking, investigative journalism, and reporting, and, in addition, into the world of art practices dealing with these. What I am interested in disclosing (a little) is the complex relationship between the information produced and distributed by journalism and the information generated by art. My idea is that the notion of truth has undergone a shift in the last
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decades: once clearly a domain of the journalistic method (what happened in the world, why it happened, and what the foreseeable consequences were), it is increasingly becoming a preoccupation for artistic activity (why things are presented in certain ways, whom they benefit, and in what conditions). An emergent way of researching, producing, and distributing information about people, “histories,� and situations today no longer passes through
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broadcast or media journalism; still, it reaches a (specialized) worldwide audience: the public of the “globalized” circuits of art exhibitions, biennials, film festivals, and so forth. However small this public may be in terms of time (the last few decades from the nineteen-sixties onwards) and space (146 biennials worldwide to date, for instance), this reception and redistribution of “knowledge” has affected, and still affects, our idea of the way we know things about the world and about ourselves. This “interaction” between art and journalism is something more than a trend, and it is different from socially responsible art. It has developed to the point of forming a new mode of journalism, an “aesthetic journalism,” varying in intensity according to the degree of journalistic method applied by the artist. Aesthetic journalism is that mode of investigation on social, political, geographical, economic, or cultural issues carried out through the circuits of art. It is now a phenomenon that lends itself to an examination of the information produced and the approach adopted.
Reality and Fiction Just for a moment, imagine journalism and art as a multilayered single activity rather than as clear-cut separated fields. Journalism provides a view on things, art a view on the view (feeding back on the first). Even if one is a coded system that speaks for the truth (or so it claims), and the
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other a set of activities that questions itself and its means at every step (or so it claims), in the end both are methods of representation and mediation for the human condition. Humans act and think (and represent what they think) in a perpetual ballooning between reality and fiction. When a journalist undertakes an investigation about this or that history, problem, or situation, s/he selects a number of images and words out of a continuum of life. In this case, there is a subtraction from a huge and complex number of relations and processes (what we call reality). If an artist makes an artwork on the same subject (a film or an installation, for instance), s/he creates a narrative where there was none or a different one. In this case, there is an addition to reality. The flux between adding and subtracting creates the environment in which we live. In terms of representation, there is very little change if a story is “factual” or “fictional”— an account and a depiction is produced. What changes dramatically, however, is how this story is told and distributed, and the consequences that will affect our behavior.
the work of the artist (as it has been conceived so far). Since the age of Enlightenment, when addressing the public interest was of primary concern for the bourgeoisie, the profession of the journalist has become an object of negotiation. It is now a constant process of conciliation between the sources of information, the employer’s interests, the power exerted over the subject of the reporting and over the audience, and the expectations of the very public it serves. This negotiation between multiple terms is the reason why journalism is today conducted in the pressroom, and not in the field. As something (we are told) is happening somewhere, we get instant access to broadcast footage in real time, mediated by experts that comment on the live feed of the images and by digital editors that mix, overlap, crop, and insert graphics and running text. What we get in omniscience we lose in context and sense. We no longer know in which situation something takes place, since the context is very much constructed, mediated, and delivered to the viewer for consumption. More news any time, more journalism universally coded, more events thanks to the multiplication of newsworthiness. We have reached the point that we need to have “meta-media,” the explanatory industry. We consider everything as either reliable or manipulated and rely for judgment on media watchers and critics, commentary programs, articles on the interpretation of other articles, and so on.
The profession of journalism implies almost an ethical stance: to serve the highest number of people possible and to be a witness of history, not its maker. In this process, the journalist may or may not pronounce her or his biased view and fallibility in the pursuit of truth. This has consequences on the public actions, unlike
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In this context, to explain means also to influence.
Questioning and Delivering Aesthetic journalism works on the borders of reality and fiction, using documentary techniques and journalistic methods but self-reflexively examining its own means; ultimately, it is not about delivering information but about questioning it. What I consider worth examining is a cultural practice that meshes the criteria of journalism and art, questioning and possibly reversing the tradition of both fields: an activity—produced either by artists or journalists—that queries the realm of fiction as the site of imagination and that of journalism as a site for reality. We start to get closer to the core of reality itself when we make our reality not a given, irreversible fact but a possibility among many others. From its origins, journalism has constantly struggled between its “mission” and its power position. Art, on the other hand, is no less implicated in a dualism: artists are keen to appeal to a particular audience (the art audience of the globalized circuits as described earlier), pursuing at the same time something beyond the artistic field, as if “more real than reality.” Often non-fiction work by artists is uncritically taken for reliable information, as a valid counteraccount to media journalism. However, since an act of interpretation is never neutral, art and journalism
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often satisfied with an overview of a problem, quite content to not join in a critical, specific analysis.This, probably, is not enough. Should we—as audience—not be called into question for accepting things “as they are?” A public becomes an audience The problem occurs when an artist when it takes the liberty to add somefeels obliged to strip down his inves- thing to the narrative offered by the tigative work to bare facts. It is more work of art, the documentary film, or important, in my view, to vary one’s the journalistic reportage. As an auvocabulary according to different con- dience member, I should be able to texts than to continue to propose the analyze the relation between “what dichotomy of facts/fiction. These are happened” and its representation, be no longer two distinct ways of deal- it a video projection in a gallery or an ing with the world around us—one article in the morning paper. In this objective and the other fictionalized; sense, seeing and frequenting “jourthey are rather types of a single ac- nalistic art” is no more relevant than tivity of producing and distributing watching CNN; reading, making, or information.We could consider adopt- critically engaging with art does not ing the label “media worker” not only happen without putting one’s agenda for journalists, TV, or Internet editors and interests at play. What I consider but also for artists, performers, mu- real or as truth—as well as what I sicians, storytellers, and poets. Pro- think is purely imagination and conducers who include the use of imag- struction—is very much shaped by ination, open-ended meanings, and the way that information relates to individual interpretations of docu- my world. I would call “aesthetics” ments could fruitfully expand the precisely that experience of relating journalistic (and artistic) attitudes. information, signs, and symbols to The hybridization of journalism with my background and life. art adopts imagination, narrative, and abstraction to implement the re- There is an inevitable division besearch and delivery of information; it tween the individual experience of does not attempt to be objective at all something and its representation, costs, nor discard creativity in favor and we cannot escape this. Our personal experiences cannot be true of neutrality. for someone else; its “knowledgeable” representation, on the other hand, Audience and Public goes beyond the individual experiI will admit that I am the first person ence. This gap between the actual to rarely take the extra mile; I am incident and its “model” is no more find themselves on the same level regarding the narratives they propose; this brings us back to my earlier invitation to imagine a notion of information which includes the artistic treatment of reality.
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no less than the difference between the coded journalistic representation and its artistic counterpart. This is the value of journalism “being” aesthetic, rather than journalism using aesthetic means (which it does very well and has always done). Since journalism adopts the knowledgeable mode (providing a representation as a substitution for the accident reported), it has become the modus operandi for dealing with that which cannot be experienced firsthand. Journalism is necessary for us to help deal with an increasingly complex civilization, separations of roles, and procedures in administration, science, culture, and technology. The specialized activity of the journalist mediates these fields to those who have no direct experience of all the multifaceted aspects of society and its occurrences. Since the journalistic attitude is so successful in proposing the model as the event, it has spread into many other areas outside the journalistic field, constructing the boundaries of normalcy for both representation and reality. In this sense, the journalist is an artisan, someone who carefully designs information (declaring, or not, its distortion) in order to present an understandable picture of the world “out there.” My invitation to the reader to consider art and journalism as two sides of a unique activity generates the main question: is it possible to work with aesthetics, allowing the viewer’s interpretation, and still be informative, precise, and relevant?
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If truth telling is shifting from the news to art, how can we negotiate the confinement of art within the boundaries of institutions, biennials, and a few public projects?
Art and Journalism To summarize, it is a matter of diversifying what has now become uniform. We could envision an activity of producing and distributing information in which fixed positions are undermined: journalism approached as an art form, art considered as a journalistic method. Below are a few aspects of this interaction, either from the point of view of the audience or the producer, less to provide directions to follow than to create a chance to discuss them. Formats
The artist-as-journalist is able to research possibilities in many fields and circumstances; resourcefulness is one of the skills of art people. The first thing that pops to mind is to invite artists to produce investigative works not exclusively for the artistic scene but for different communication channels: television, the Internet, radio, and magazines. It would be crucial to initiate a relation with media channels (from local TV networks to national newspapers and radio projects) and propose works realized according to an aesthetic approach— not “about” art but through art—and use these possibilities. Artists have been dealing with media channels,
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one way or another, since the nineteen-sixties “Warholian” times (art as media industry or vice versa). From Gerry Schum and his Television Gallery to Ian Breakwell using television and radio programs to reach a broader audience, up to the present with crossmedia ventures like GNN (Guerrilla News Network). This latter case is a news channel on television and the web whose aim is to build programs about sociopolitical topics (the War on Terror, the environment, intelligence, and so forth) driven by a musical narrative. The idea behind it is that producers can either snub the populist approach to information, and give way to manipulation of facts and representations, or embrace the very realm of advertising, music videos, and pop formats in trying to build a meaningful commentary. The bottom line in all of this is that an artist who wants to effectively work with an audience, rather than for one, might be better off pursuing collaboration with other platforms (so to speak), such as journalism, rather than expecting this or that media opportunity. Bringing in expertise, time (something the media environment cannot afford), and attention (another element lacking, because of time pressure), demanding funding and distribution structure in exchange. It has been done in the past and can be done now—even at the cost of subjugating to the rules of media production. It is nevertheless worth the attempt, since reciprocal
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influences are not foreseeable and will depend upon a significant reception by the audience.
opportunity that must be kept alive in artistic practice, eventually to expand into traditional journalism and other media formats.
clude the production crew or the mechanism of editing into the scene, that is, within the frame of the visible, and to make it transparent. This technique is well known in the world Alienation, Playfulness, of art; just think of the work of Omer Transparency Fast: in his video works,he addresses Unlike the work of the artist, who the viewer through a complex and focuses on representation but is rel- multilayered narrative, but makes atively free of the time-bound issue, the untruthfulness of the mechathe work of the journalist is one of nisms of narration the very point of estimation, an act of creation with his work. This approach, though, is one eye on the consumer and the normally avoided in both “journalisother on the deadline. Journalism tic art,” which tends to overlook it, has to allow a range of readings of and media journalism, where crew what it produces, and possibly refo- and setups remain hidden. cus the constant shift of attention 3. Transparency: Current media and engage more “vertically.” A few programs try to provide that feeling elements could be employed to keep of “being in the place and moment,” at bay the pretension of neutrality which is supposed to help the appreand objectivity—in particular, alien- ciation of truth (i.e., the arrangement ation, playfulness, and transparency. of the news studio as a pressroom). However, these strategies rarely 1. Alienation: Bertolt Brecht and make the reasons clear why a team, Helene Weigel, for their theater in or reporter, has chosen that location the nineteen-twenties, wanted the and that subject, and not other audience to assume an attitude of sources and interview partners, and critical distance and aimed at dis- what the specific interests behind turbing their connection to the play those choices are. In short, it would and breaking with viewers’ expecta- be useful to know the principles betions. Such an approach, if applied hind any investigation. to media production, does not completely reveal the authors’ agendas Withdrawal Representation activities like jour(as everything is part of a staging act) but can displace expectations. nalism and art are always developed Moments of alienation allow the sub- and sustained within a preject of the investigation to be framed vailing cultural system. Thus, any at least in a different way than its claim of truthful perspective cannot exist; it can only be presented as such. picturesque image. 2. Playfulness: To play with repre- The withdrawal concept is a measure sentation means, for instance, to in- to counter this claim based on two
Time
As mentioned, television, radio, and press production cannot afford to take a long-term view. Artists and art institutions, instead, can produce works over a span of months rather than minutes and can adapt their agenda (because they have time) to pursue unpredictable leads. A longer and “vertical” investigation, also in historical terms—rather than a “horizontal” one from theme to theme— allows one to connect with many other related issues and provides the chance to make more works, distribute widely, and possibly generate economic returns from different commissioners. This form of production of information is an option for both documenting and fabricating, since it depends not on the author or the subject but on the receiver. If we, as the public, accept the opportunity to “develop” this or that topic in time as part of our own story, we activate a sort of witness process, and we become audience(s). It is a matter of adding knowledge, linking what we already know with what we do not know, and putting the new in sequence with the other knowledge. Two aspects are equally important here: for the author, not to be forced to adapt to the speed of the news industry; for the spectator, not to be required to accept (or refuse) the information on the spot. It is an
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approaches: to show an image that does not reveal its content but refers to something else outside the picture; and to not show an image at all. Withholding visual evidence, or information in general, is seen as a lack of professionalism in journalistic criteria; but what is lack in one field can be wealth in another. It is very important to open up the possibility of seeing something different in what is told, not claiming to tell, “what it is all about,” but rather proposing a selection of reading possibilities. The 2003 video Schwarz auf Weiss (Black on White) by the art collective Klub Zwei (Simone Bader and Jo Schmeiser), for instance, presents a succession of images of the Shoah that are withdrawn and substituted by a text referring to those images and a voice-over. This kind of narrative removes the pictures that are being spoken about, instigating in the spectator’s mind a reflection about what distinguishes an image as a historical document. Jalal Toufic is another interesting author regarding withdrawal: in his book Forthcoming (Atelos, 2000), he cites (or perhaps invents) a photographer who was sent to Bosnia to document the destruction of the war and returned “with thousands of largely blurred and haphazardly framed photographs of intact buildings with no shrapnel, with not even broken glass.” In seeing those pictures, one could perceive the war in Bosnia, precisely through the intactness of the streetscapes portrayed in the images.
Private Investigations
Regardless of the truthfulness ofwhat is reported (omitting? forgetting? inventing?) what counts is the activity of perennial reworking, researching, and reading of things by the audience; it requires us to suspend our notion of the “experienced” as something fixed and immutable. Withdrawal is treatment of the reality in a fictitious way, not fabricating or documenting, but rather reading the facts as though they were an artwork. This goes hand-in-hand with both the disappearance of art as a distinct (autonomous) and coded (with specific media and tools) practice, and with its contamination by other disciplines like journalism or science. It challenges our idea of representation as an artistic effort and of engagement as a political one.
members of a given society (either in terms of conformity or antagonism), now this is no longer the case. Today, cultural dynamics play an increasingly important role, and criteria for economic achievement and wellbeing are no longer sufficient for a proper comprehension of phenomena like, to name one of the most cited issues, the so-called clash of civilizations. It seems we have to rethink society from the bottom up, and readdress many of our referents in cultural, even aesthetic, terms. Not surprisingly, multinationals and corporations put huge effort into reinvesting their profits in cultural and artistic projects in order to create a “culture” that can travel beyond national schemes and monetary value. Aesthetic practices first developed a journalistic “trait” to expand art’s grasp on life, since the tools at its disposal, like the search for the sublime in the traditional aesthetic approach of painting and sculpture, were no longer relevant. The last few generations of artists feel they cannot leave research on, and commitment to, social and political meaning outside their practice. They therefore engage with structures of production and distribution outside the specific constraints of art. This trait could shape the future view of the world, via a readaptation in artistic terms of journalism and the news industry. But rather than abandon the aesthetic approach in search of journalistic neutrality, the real challenge is to “contaminate” one with the other, making
Instruction and Intuition Aesthetics is about what our senses experience; in this sense, it is important to query not the way art and journalism supposedly transform the world, but the way they can transform the meaning of the world. Artistic investigation becomes a tool to question both the selection of the material delivered to us and the specific reasons for why these things are selected. Cultural production in general, and art in particular, is increasingly at the forefront of how we understand the world we live in. If in the nineteen-fifties or sixties the economic mechanisms were the main referent for our experience as
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it impossible to distinguish the two approaches, and thereby “alerting” the viewer about the mechanisms at play in representation and reporting. Only time can tell if this will be established as the essential feature for our understanding of the world. I see aesthetic journalism as an instrument for rendering sharper and more persistent our curiosity (essential for approaching something we do not understand) and for making the contours of reality more visible. In fact, to think about something in a “secure” way by means of structured information (like professional journalism) is to reduce the unknown to the expected and, therefore, to take away the possibility of learning. In order to be able to learn something, we first have to unlearn what we take for granted. Alfredo Cramerotti is a writer, curator, editor, and artist interested in the relationship between reality and its representation.
Image courtesy of the author.
Alfredo Cramerotti
Colophon
Private Investigations Paths of Critical Knowledge Production in Contemporary Art Edited by Andrei Siclodi Contributions by Alfredo Cramerotti, Judith Fischer, Geoffrey Garrison (with Laura Horelli), Alison Gerber, Ana Hoffner, Brigitta Kuster, Ralo Mayer, Andrei Siclodi, Alexander Vaindorf (with Nina Möntmann).
Alfredo Cramerotti is a writer, curator, editor, and artist interested in the relationship between reality and its representation. Judith Fischer is a writer, lecturer, and artist who works in the fields and context of literature, philosophy, (horror/haunted house) film, theory, and visual art. Geoffrey Garrison is interested in how fictions shape our understanding of the world. Based on a belief in the inadequacy of representation, his works focus on dead ends, erasures, free associations, and lacunae in fictional and historical narratives.
English translation and copy editing: Geoffrey Garrison Alison Gerber is an artist interested in work and public life.
Photographs: unless otherwise stated, the contributors Graphic Design: Penthouse Perfection, Vienna Printing: agensketterl Druckerei GmbH, A-3001 Mauerbach Print run: 750
Ana Hoffner is a performance artist dealing with queer and migration/ (post) colonial politics. Brigitta Kuster is an artist, video/film maker, and author. Her work focuses on topics such as migration, transnationality, (post) colonialism, and gendered differences.
The book is published in the series: BÜCHS‘N’BOOKS – Art and Knowledge Production in Context, Volume 3 Edited by Andrei Siclodi c/o Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen, Weiherburggasse 13/12, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria Tel: +43 512 278627, Fax: +43 512 278627/11 E-Mail: office@buchsenhausen.at, www.buchsenhausen.at
Ralo Mayer is an artist whose performative investigations into postFordist science fiction, the history of space travel, and multidimensional geometries generally lead to translation monsters oscillating between installation, film, and text.
Copyright © 2011: Authors and photographers, Büchs‘n’Books, Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen/Tiroler Künstlerschaft
Alexander Vaindorf is an artist born in the former USSR and based in Stockholm.
ISBN 978-3-9502583-1-8
Produced with the support of:
Andrei Siclodi is a curator, author, and cultural worker based in Innsbruck. He is founding director of the International Fellowship Program for Art and Theory at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen, and editor of the publication series Büchs‘n’Books – Art and Knowledge Production in Context.
For some time now, one aspect of contemporary art has been en vogue in theoretical discussions: art as a field of, and medium for, the production of specific knowledge. Especially in relation to the discipline that the academic establishment calls “artistic research,” the persistent need for a stable basis for artistic knowledge production has been continually emphasized—above all in academia; knowledge production in art, so the mantra goes, must go hand in hand with a socially critical (self-)reflexive approach toward art and its producers. In the globalized knowledge-based society of the twenty-first century, we are told, art must position itself quickly in order to assert its own social relevance and insure itself in the long run. With such arguments, the academic standardization of artistic criticality is aided and “tenured” by national educational policy. Yet can this top-down criticality, standardized through academic curricula, have any real impact outside a self-referential framework? Despite all its good intentions, does this not rather serve to entrench existing hegemonies and (distribution) economies of knowledge? And what alternative strategies might be used to counter an increasingly dominant discourse on the theory and practice of “artistic research?” This book is not primarily intended as a formulation of a theory in opposition to the hegemonic idea of “artistic research.” Instead, the practitioners— who because of their respective practices are hastily shelved as “artistic researchers”—are given the opportunity to speak up for themselves. An integral commonality among the artists and cultural producers presented here is that their investigatives practices are able to resist this categorization. These are private investigations, artistic practices that attempt to infiltrate hegemonic discourses of knowledge that are currently emerging in the art context itself, while simultaneously proposing individual paths for acquiring and processing knowledge. Private Investigations includes contributions by Alfredo Cramerotti, Judith Fischer, Geoffrey Garrison, Alison Gerber, Ana Hoffner, Brigitta Kuster, Ralo Mayer, Andrei Siclodi, and Alexander Vaindorf.
ISBN 978-3-9502583-1-8