Paesaggio (Octopus issue)

Paesaggio alice aycock q daniel gustav cramer tacita dean q haris epaminonda hreinn friðfinnsson q douglas gordon kiluanji kia henda q mark lewis marko mäetamm q naeem mohaiemen oscar muñoz q roee rosen nedko solakov

edited by

Blauer Hase

Introduction

Tortoise: …furthermore, until 670 years ago it was unusual to climb mountains without a practical aim.

Achilles: I did not hesitate to sweat and undergo such effort to bring my body slightly closer to the sky. Nonetheless, I wonder what will remain of this once we have descended.

T: Nothing else than an image. A place is its memory.

A: In my studio, among the slides, I keep a copy of Augustine’s Confessions. There’s a passage from that book that I remember by heart: “People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.”

T: Such spaces, such dimensions, as the highest point of a mountain, the deepest abyss of an ocean or the blue of the sky that, the more you rise, the more it vanishes and darkens—are they just images? I would never want to turn and, with a drunkard’s terror, miss even myself.

A: In this moment, astroseismologists are measuring the sounds coming from the past of celestial bodies. When you observe the stars in the sky, you are moving in space and in time. We assemble in constellations objects far away between themselves: the presumption of our vision is to name the universe.

T: We are almost there, yet I cannot catch sight of the summit.

It seems plunged in a cloud.

A: Indeed. Who knows, perhaps once on the top, there might be nothing to be seen.

T: In later life, Monet made a confession to a good friend, to whom he told that he would have liked to be born blind, and then recuperate his sight later, unexpectedly. In this way, he could paint shapes without the influence of past gazes, of the idea of things that settled in his brain. Deep down, he longed for the possibility to open his eyes again for the very first time.

We are pleased to welcome the reader into this Paesaggio.

Blauer Hase

paesaggio

Douglas Gordon ..................................................................... 5 Hreinn Friðfinnsson ............................................................... 6 Daniel Gustav Cramer ....................................................... 7, 46 Haris Epaminonda ................................................................. 8 Kiluanji Kia Henda .............................................................. 12 Naeem Mohaiemen ............................................................... 15 Roee Rosen ......................................................................... 19 Nedko Solakov .................................................................... 23 Marko Mäetamm ................................................................ 26 Alice Aycock ........................................................................ 29 Mark Lewis ......................................................................... 35 Oscar Muñoz ....................................................................... 45 Tacita Dean ......................................................................... 47

Close the windows.

Open the door.

Bring him in.

Put on the kettle.

Wait until the water is boiling.

Now wake him up.

Remember to tape his eyes.

Bring her into the room.

Remember to tape her mouth.

No screaming.

Let me know how it goes...

5

6

I am blinking, keeping my eyes open, with effort, as hard as I can, not evading for a moment, struggling to stand up to it. My eyes water. I am lying on a haystack, on a field, near a barn, a few trees, a small stream. I am staring straight up, blinking, standing up to the glistening light, motionless. I am lying on an island of hay, above me blue nothingness, sky, framed by pale, dried hay - in its centre, high above, the sun. Only a few dried stalks are in my sight. My head rests on the damp straw. Somewhere a dog is barking. From afar, a train or truck is rolling through the countryside. I am lying on the hay, stretched out. Next to me is Matthias, we climbed up here together.

Both of us lie still, blinking straight up with watery eyes. Summer holidays are ahead, the last days spent together before going on vacations. To the coast, to the mountains. With each breath the sharp smell of decomposing hay penetrates me. It hangs in my clothes, irritates my nostrils. I am sweating. Up here on the hay stack Matthias had an idea: staring into the sun, uninterrupted, all afternoon. We blink, tolerate its brightness, not exchanging a word. The sun heats up my body, burns in my eyes. I might doze off soon, surrounded by hay and blue. I wonder if the heat of the sun beams might inflame the dried grass on which we are lying here, if we would be able to jump off the stack in time. It itches all over. A swarm of tiny crawling insects seems to have settled in the shade of my body. My eyes burn, but are still open, two slices, tears collect in the eyelashes in front of my pupils. I picture us, stretched out on the hay stack, one next to the other, with blinking eyes, four tiny balls whose slots point upwards, focussed on a single, glistening point. The sun beams and our gazes overlap, forming a continuous connection, a line. A voice shouts from the nearby barn. Next to me, Matthias holds his breath for a moment - and releases the air. I am blinking, listening, immovable, facing upwards, my eyes are open.

Unterfeldhaus, Germany, June 17, 1983

7

.I. cloud passing a cloud the one that is passing passing clouds gone

.II. a line what is spare it straight line heading down stop

.III. two doors open close I see stairs Stairs Up Up Up

.IV. Where are we?

.V. tree trees tree

.VI. reserve space space for blue blue is the sky sky is blue grey, red, pink blue is the sky sky the sky

.VII. a desk made of wood material of wood where the sunlight falls smell of wood the sun falls on my desk the sun here and we?

.VIII. night falls

.IX. I: I see windows, many J: Many? How many?

I: Can’t say, but many J: tall?

I: yes, tall J: are you outside?

I: yes, I’m walking towards the house and I see windows, many J: is it late?

I: yes, late, it is night J: alone?

I: yes, I am alone J: where are you?

I: I’m here, beside you J: you walk alone?

I: alone I walk, to the house, the house with many windows J: do you go inside?

I: yes, I’m almost there. I see the door, there is a number. I knock the door, I look through the window. It is dark.

J: do you go inside?

I: I ring the bell, the bell is ringing. Nobody answers.

J: nobody?

I: The night is dark, I see little, but many windows, maybe hundred?

J: Where are you?

I: I am here, right here J: what about the house?

I: I am now walking besides the lake, behind the house.

J: can you see the windows of the house?

I: It’s dark J: can you see anybody?

I: there is nobody, nobody is there J: what is the time?

I: It is late J: what can you see now?

I: I see the house, and many windows J: are you near?

I: yes, I can see the windows, and they are many J: can you see the door?

I: I see the door, and I knock. Knocking the door, nobody answers J: do you want to ring again?

I: yes, I try. I think there is nobody inside J: what do you see now?

I: I see a figure. It is you, this figure. Standing there. Alone. At the lake.

J: do you see me?

I: I see you, and a figure J: a figure?

I: I see a figure, a shadow, a person. You wave, and greed me from distance, it is you this figure J: Where am I now?

I: You are at the lake. I wave from afar, far across the lake J: are you walking to the house, the house with many windows?

I: yes, the house with many windows, tall and dark.

J: night is falling, and its dark I: where are you now?

J: I’m beside the house, right beside you I: do you see me?

J: I see the door I: is there a number?

J: I see the number, at the door. You are standing there.

I: what else do you see?

J: I see not much, it is dark, the door is closed I: can you see me?

J: I cannot see you, it is dark I: dark it is, and I cannot see much J: it think I can spot a person I: it is me, this person, isn’t it?

J: I cannot say, it is dark I: do you see me now?

J: I think you are right beside me I: are we still at the house?

J: you mean the house with many windows?

I: yes J: I can see a figure, walking near the lake I: can you spot who it is?

J: no, it is dark, the night is falling, and its getting dark I: I can’t see much J: I think it is you, this figure I: you mean the figure walking by the lake?

I: yes. Do you see me?

J: I see the house, behind the lake, from a distance I: I must leave.

J: Do you know where you are heading?

J: I cannot say, I follow a path I: it is dark, can you see me?

J: I am near I: Near here, right beside you I: we must leave, it is getting dark J: are you still here?

I: I am here, yes, can you see me?

J: I see a figure. It is dark, we must leave. .X. house door door door opens

During my childhood in the mid-’80s, I spent various weekends with my family at Praia de Santiago, north of Luanda. The beach had been inundated with abandoned fishing boats slowly running aground on the sand and had come to be known as the “Ship Graveyard”. What we didn’t realise on those sunny days on the beach was that Santiago not only represented a post-industrial landscape but the end of the ruling political ideology of the post-independence period.

One day, my father told me that the boats had belonged to a state fishing cooperative created by the Angolan government in partnership with the former Soviet Union.

The partnership consisted of the Soviets providing the boats and technical training for Angolan fishermen in exchange for half of the catch. Once the management contract with the Soviets ended, the fishing cooperative went bust within a few months because of a lack of organisation by the Angolans. The bankruptcy of the cooperative was just one of the many partnerships that fell apart during the period in which Angola declared itself a communist state.

Among the dozens of boats stuck in the sand at Praia de Santiago, which can still be seen there today like inert bodies consumed by the saltpeter, the image of the “Karl Marx, Luanda” stands like a monument to the crumbling of the state apparatus.

Tropical Marxism: A Sketch for a Possible Film Like the Berlin Wall, this boat became the perfect metaphor for the aborted dream of a communist Angola.

In my case, more than an experimental ideology that was never truly implemented, communism was the dream of my father, a fierce and unwavering communist who was active in the struggle against colonialism and in political life during the first decades of independent Angola. The rust corroding the ships today is like the years of war which ate away part of his life and the political system which he still defends to this day.

The rust is like the dust which today covers the long untouched books by Marx, Engels and Lenin and the Soviet “Sputnik” magazines on the shelves of the national libraries. The boats are slowly falling apart in the sea.

The huge machines built for fishing are today forming real corals, where the fish lay their eggs for the shoals of the future. Communism was one of the pretexts used by the different aggressors as part of a geostrategy during the Cold War, which as a result fed one of the longest and cruellest wars in Africa. Most of the population never understood what communism meant and capitalism even less; many died without really knowing what they were fighting for. And for the youngsters swimming at Praia de Santiago today, in times of peace, Marx is just the name of a ship run aground in the Tropics.

13

The man in the purple turban Thanadar ata hai! (to lover) Will I give you that thrashing?

A crimson dhoti A ceremonial loincloth Presented by Benares Brahmins

15

Fat Bengali clerk Very much a Hindu Despite his earnest efforts

A man should lie To protect A lady in distress

16

Scornful Hindu Lynx-eyed Japanese Nervous Mohammedan

It’s just India, I guess So big and teeming And strange

17

The text fragments are from the 1937 novel Bengal Fire.

Chock a block with colonial identity overload. Ladies, Germs, Boys, Ghouls.

Thrill to the fear and adrenalin. The “Mahometans.” The “Hindoos.” The “Japs.”

Brown and Yellow perils, all bleeding together into a kedgeree.

Kedgeree is made from cooked flaked fish, boiled rice, hard-boiled eggs, curry powder, and butter. It is believed to have been brought back to England by British colonials who had enjoyed it in India in the form of the rice-and-lentil dish Khichri. It became a breakfast dish in Victorian England, as part of a fashion for Anglo-Indian cuisine.

There is a rival theory that it was originally a Scottish dish, which traveled to India and then came back as an “Indian dish.” However, the years don’t match up. In The Scottish Kitchen, Christopher Trotter traces the dish to 1790.

But Ibn Batuta is recorded as describing a dish called Kishri around 1340, and there is a recipe for it in Ain-i-Akbari, dating from 1590.

Lawrence Bloch was a 1930s author who specialized in thrillers set in steamy colonial India. Besides Bengal Fire, his other novels, all out of print, include Wives to Burn and Bombay Mail.

A well thumbed, carefully repaired, original paperback edition of Bengal Fire was sitting in a used book market in Lima, Peru. After months of grappling with Spanish basic books, I was desperate for something, anything, in English.

Later, that evening, when it became clear that the book was unreadable (in Bengali we say “okhaddyo,” or inedible), I started jotting down fragments on separate pieces of paper.

Not quite oulipo. But with scissors, book, and glue, you can write a piece of doggerel for a Lima evening.

Today, looking at the book again after ten years, I noticed that the spine is repaired with paper from elsewhere. The text on the spine now reads: Champagne “La Fourie” And on the next line: Cognac Reservado

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22

“I want to go back home!”, said the big frog.

I am really scared of flying. I hate it. I used to fly a lot, always taking pills, shaking like a coward up there in the bumpy skies. Therefore, for the past two years, whenever my presence as an artist at a certain exhibition is (really) needed, I drive there with my wife from Sofia, our home city. So far, this has worked okay within Europe (and England, if I leave the car in French territory and go under the Channel).

It’s a bit harder though to reach China by car. That is why I began this journey by train, traveling fourteen days from Sofia to Shanghai (including two nights in a hotel in Moscow and one in Beijing). Again, as usual, I started the journey together with my wife, but on the seventh day, somewhere in Russia, she had to get off the TransSiberian train and fly urgently back to Sofia (due to very sad matters).

What else? Of course—Joji, the big frog, who is the main hero of this fourteenchapter story (and my main excuse/reason for taking part in this exhibition, while still not flying to Shanghai). Years ago, she was produced in China; then, along with some of her numerous sisters and brothers, shipped (East) to The United States.

The frog appeared in a children’s toy shop in New York, where I bought it and used it as a minor character in another story; then she was sent (East) to me in Bulgaria, where she remained in my Sofia studio for awhile.

Here she is—back in China, after the exhausting, eastward train trip, which makes her one of the very few big frogs in China who has actually circled the world.

“I want to go home!” the big frog said to me some time ago in Sofia. Strangely enough, when we arrived here, in Shanghai (both of us intuitively agreed that she was manufactured many years ago somewhere in this area), she gently whispered in my right ear, “I want to go back home, to Sofia!” And it made my day.

P.S. Please, excuse the tons of wrong, misleading, and mispronounced information that I have given in the fourteen narrated videos made while passing through Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, Mongolia and China (including the fact that I keep calling Joji a frog when she is actually a toad). But I do confirm that the overall atmosphere recorded in these videos is reliably truthful and it may be used as a reference.

20.10.2010

23

E E

c 26 C

c 27 C

D c 28 C

29

30

31

32

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34

- 35 -

- 36 -

- 37 -

1

So many important paradigmatic shifts seems to be occurring simultaneously at the moment: film to digital media; print to screen reading; television to digital streaming and downloading; and content-wise, the steady erosion, for better or worse, of the idea of exceptionality and its replacement with stories of everyday ordinariness and banality (reality programming and the cult of celebrity for instance).

- 38 -

- 39 -

2 It’s worth recalling, I think, that ‘the mirror’ becomes an important motif in early modern painting (Jan Van Eyck and others), as a way of depicting off centered and often hidden or impossible to see (via simple classical perspectival composition) people and scenes.

- 40 -

- 41 -

3

The relationship of photgraphy and painting is critically well mapped. But if we consider for a second that one of the extraordinary achievements and ambitions of painting was to learn how to depict time and movement without either moving or taking up time, then painting can hardly be considered to be the theory of the frozen image.

- 42 -

4

I was recently approached to shoot a television commercial that was to feature potential bank customers walking down the city street literally watching and interacting with their financial futures digitally projected onto the surfaces of buildings all around them.

- 43 -

- 44 -

Tocuyo: [too]: brightness, light, sunlight, day, sun

A river?

[quy]: small animals, many and ugly animals

A square overexposed to the sun

[yo]: flying

Norma plays not to step on the expansions of the floor

Maruja always looks at my dar

The expansions of the square tiles

My first photograph hidden between the floral skirt

One of the few camera days

Gerardo looks absorbed the lawn, his work was done.

(How come this instant survive?)

I was told that I used to live here.

Dressing in white and apart from the group, Hugo goes up

I do not remember

,nac I sa drah sa ,troffe htiw ,nepo seye ym gnipeek ,gniknilb ma I seye yM .ti ot pu dnats ot gnilggurts ,tnemom a rof gnidave ton ,seert wef a ,nrab a raen ,dlefi a no ,kcatsyah a no gniyl ma I .retaw eht ot pu gnidnats ,gniknilb ,pu thgiarts gnirats ma I .maerts llams a em evoba ,yah fo dnalsi na no gniyl ma I .sselnoitom ,thgil gninetsilg hgih ,ertnec sti ni - yah deird ,elap yb demarf ,yks ,ssengnihton eulb stser daeh yM .thgis ym ni era sklats deird wef a ylnO .nus eht ,evoba niart a ,rafa morF .gnikrab si god a erehwemoS .warts pmad eht no ,yah eht no gniyl ma I .edisyrtnuoc eht hguorht gnillor si kcurt ro .rehtegot ereh pu debmilc ew ,saihttaM si em ot txeN .tuo dehcterts remmuS .seye yretaw htiw pu thgiarts gniknilb ,llits eil su fo htoB no gniog erofeb rehtegot tneps syad tsal eht ,daeha era syadiloh prahs eht htaerb hcae htiW .sniatnuom eht ot ,tsaoc eht oT .snoitacav ,sehtolc ym ni sgnah tI .em setartenep yah gnisopmoced fo llems saihttaM kcats yah eht no ereh pU .gnitaews ma I .slirtson ym setatirri eW .noonretfa lla ,detpurretninu ,nus eht otni gnirats :aedi na dah staeh nus ehT .drow a gnignahcxe ton ,ssenthgirb sti etarelot ,knilb yb dednuorrus ,noos ffo ezod thgim I .seye ym ni snrub ,ydob ym pu emaflni thgim smaeb nus eht fo taeh eht fi rednow I .eulb dna yah ot elba eb dluow ew fi ,ereh gniyl era ew hcihw no ssarg deird eht gnilwarc ynit fo mraws A .revo lla sehcti tI .emit ni kcats eht ffo pmuj ,nrub seye yM .ydob ym fo edahs eht ni delttes evah ot smees stcesni fo tnorf ni sehsaleye eht ni tcelloc sraet ,secils owt ,nepo llits era tub eht ot txen eno ,kcats yah eht no tuo dehcterts ,su erutcip I .slipup ym ,sdrawpu tniop stols esohw sllab ynit ruof ,seye gniknilb htiw ,rehto sezag ruo dna smaeb nus ehT .tniop gninetsilg ,elgnis a no dessucof morf stuohs eciov A .enil a ,noitcennoc suounitnoc a gnimrof ,palrevo tnemom a rof htaerb sih sdloh saihttaM ,em ot txeN .nrab ybraen eht gnicaf ,elbavommi ,gninetsil ,gniknilb ma I .ria eht sesaeler dna .nepo era seye ym ,sdrawpu

3891 ,71 enuJ ,ynamreG ,suahdlefretnU

64

The Green Ray When the sun sets into a clear crisp horizon, and when there is no land in front of you for a few hundred miles, and no distant moisture that could become, at the final moment, a back lit cloud that obscures the opportunity, you stand a very good chance of seeing the green ray.

The last ray of the dying sun to refract and bend beneath the horizon is the green ray, which is just slower than the red or the yellow ray. Sailors see them more than the rest of us, and they have come to signify for some the harbinger of great change or fortune in their lives. For years I have sought out the green ray, peering at horizons for that last fractional second of greenness, not knowing or daring to imagine how extravagant a green splash it might be, but never have I seen it.

And then in the summer of last year, as I set off to a small, near inaccessible village on the west coast of Madagascar to see the total eclipse of the sun, I was as much lured there by a fleeting remark on an eclipse watcher’s website saying that those of us who made it as far as Morombe might also stand a chance of seeing the green ray. I learnt the night before I left, that Eric Rohmer had faked his, and that his cameraman had waited for two months in the Canary Islands for every setting sun before giving up and going home. His post-produced extravaganza was no gauge by which to measure the green ray.

I had a quest to try to see, if not film, something that I could not imagine.

The point about my film of the green ray is that it did so nearly elude me too.

As I took vigil, evening after evening, on that Morombe beach looking out across the Mozambique Channel and timing the total disappearance of the sun in a single roll of film, I believed, but was never sure, I saw it. The evening I filmed the green ray, I was not alone. On the beach beside me were two others with a video camera pointed at the sun, infected by my enthusiasm for this elusive phenomenon. They didn’t see it that night, and their video documentation was watched as evidence to prove that I hadn’t seen it either. But when my film fragment was later processed in England, there, unmistakably, defying solid representation on a single frame of celluloid, but existent in the fleeting movement of film frames, was the green ray, having proved itself too elusive for the pixellation of the digital world. So looking for the green ray became about the act of looking itself, about faith and belief in what you see.

This film is a document; it has become about the very fabric, material and manufacture of film itself.

47

Credits: One sided (p. 5) © Douglas Gordon, 2013.

Untitled (p. 6) © Hreinn Friðfinnsson, 2013.

Unterfeldhaus, Germany, June 17, 1983 (p. 7, 46) © Daniel Gustav Cramer, 2011.

I-X (p. 8) © Haris Epaminonda, 2013.

Tropical Marxism: A Sketch for a Possible Film (p. 12) © Kiluanji Kia Henda, 2013.

Bengal Fire (p. 15) © Naeem Mohaiemen, 2013.

Two Fragments from Sweet Sweat (p. 19) The pornographic novel Sweet Sweat (1931) that survived only in fragmentary form, is the only extant text by the Jewish-Belgian Surrealist painter Justine Frank (1900-1943). The novel’s translation to English, along with a biography of the artist and an essay on her work, was published as Roee Rosen, Justine Frank, Sweet Sweat (Berlin, Sternberg Press, 2009). Translated from French by Joanna Führer-Ha’sfari. © Justine Frank, 1931.

I Want Back Home (said the big frog) (p. 23) From “I Want Back Home (said the big frog)”, 2010, mixed media installation. Courtesy Galleria Continua San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin.

Text edited by Christy Lange. © Nedko Solakov, 2010.

A story of a man who is living in the woods (p. 26) © Marko Mäetamm, 2012.

Introduction to a short untitled work of fiction in five chapters (p. 29) Image at page 32: Cities on the Starry Night: The Eaters of the Night (A Continuing Series), 1993.

White ink drawing and silkscreen print on black paper, 45 ½ × 31 1/8 inches. Collection of Peggy T. Hall, New York.

Image at page 33: Wars on the Starry Night: The Eaters of the Night (A Continuing Series), 1993.

White ink drawing and silkscreen print on black paper, 45 ½ × 31 1/8 inches. Private Collection, New York. © Alice Aycock, 2013.

An invention without a future (p. 35) © Mark Lewis, 2013.

Tocuyo (p. 45) © Oscar Muñoz, 2013.

The Green Ray (p. 47) © Tacita Dean, 2001.

Paesaggio is a publication series that began in May 2010. Each issue presents a collection of artist works that respond to a request for textual contributions of landscapes that avoid the use of images.

Blauer Hase whishes to thank: Cornelia Lauf, Vittorio Cavallini and Enrico Vezzi for their inspiration and support, as well as all the artists who have accepted to contribute to this issue of Paesaggio.

Editing: Blauer Hase Proofreading: Lindsay Benedict Paesaggio’s graphic blueprint was conceived in 2010 by Giulia Marzin Blauer Hase is: Mario Ciaramitaro - Riccardo Giacconi - Giulia Marzin - Daniele Zoico © 2013 Blauer Hase for his edition

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Paesaggio a project by Blauer Hase www.blauerhase.com