Territories of Tidalectics by mush.room

TERRITORIES OF TIDALECTICS

Oceanic Production as Collection | TBA21 Augarten and Academy

I. THE STEAM ROOM

“Art isn’t just a text writes off. It’s a real gesture from the heart. I think people who buy art and thinking of making an investment is probably the most foolish thing I’ve ever heard… I selected to work with contemporary artists because I can directly interact with them. I have (a) personal relationship with many of them, and that came from my own desire to have a collection that is totally unique.” ————— Francesca von Habsburg

Collection

Francesca

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Francesca in Carsten Höller’s High Psycho Tank. Courtesy of NOWNESS.

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Francesca

An early eighteenth-century German Schrank with a traditional display of corals. Courtesy of Naturkundenmuseum Berlin.

Collection - HS.Art

Francesca

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Founder As a collector and the director of Light generators,Office upgrading the switchThyssen-Bornemisza Art Contempoboards, adding anF insulation screen enrary (TBA21), Francesca appeared in closure and reconfiguration of the ofNOWNESS short documentation. In the fice. Other refitting works were done by video, Francesca floats motionlessly in Derecktor Florida in 2012. TBA21 claims Carsten Höller’s High Psycho Tank during it as a “research vessel”, to what degree the artist’s exhibition LEBEN at FrancesDardanella is a research vessel? Darca’s own foundation’s Augarten exhibidanella is a 36.9m (121ft) long exploration space. In the following scene, she tion-type yacht built by Vitters Shipyard brushed her teeth with a dream-inducing in 1998. It was designed by Vripack Natoothpaste Insensatus Vol. 1 Fig. 1, beval Architects, Dardanella is a sister ship fore moving on to Höller’s Elevator Bed of Zeepaard, and was advertised as “The that slowly raised to 3.5 meters, pro-Collection best -seagoing HS.Art vessel for a world tour.” pelled by a hydraulic rotating platform. In fact, Dardanella had done many tours. Close by was the Bullfinch Scale house Founded in 2002 in Vienna, Austria, two pairs of bullfinches, whose whistle TBA21 started as an art foundation. Its is recorded into the soundtrack of the founder - Francesca von Habsburg, is the Artists in exhibition. This immersive experience fourth generation of the Thyssen family sets up the theme for Francesca’s fasciin art collecting. Though coming from a nation with water, and the steamy, improdigious family, she nevertheless devimersive experience she approaches art. ates from the typical manneristic, aristoTBA21 Augarten The steamy atmosphere did not just cratic royal counterparts, often caught up Exhibitions come from the shower water of Carsten hanging out with punk artists and underHöller’s High Psycho Tank. It also apground social scenes during her young peared in the steam room of the founage. After went back joining her famidation’s renowned Dardanella, an expely’s art collecting work and her marriage dition vessel that Francesca acquired for with the grandson of Austria’s last reignthe purpose of foundation’s expeditions. ing emperor - Karl Habsburg-Lothringen, The refitting work also included adding a Francesca, in her later middle age nowaJacuzzi on the sun deck and the change days, distinguishes herself started as an of the owner’s shower to a steam room. avant-garde art collector. Even the start This could be trace back to Dardanella’s of the foundation itself was due to Franshort visit to Pendennis shipyard in 2009 cesca’s willing to acquire Canadian artand 2010, a world-class and award-winist Janet Cardiff’s work. (In knowing that ning Custom Build and Refit superyacht Cardiff refused to sell artwork to an indiyard in Falmouth, UK, and enjoyed savidual, Von Habsburg phoned her lawyer lon-like services on its interior and structo set up a foundation for acquiring the ture. This included various engineering work. So the TBA 21 came into being.) projects including fitting new Northern

Collection - HS.Art

Artists in Collection

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Janet Cardiff

TBA21 Foundation

Diagram of The Founding Process of TBA21 Foundation in Relation to Janet Cardiff

The incoming exhibition from June 2 to November 19 this year (2017) at the TBA21 Augarten is titled: Tidalectics. As was read on TBA21 website: “Tidalectics is an oceanic worldview, a different way of engaging with the oceans and the world we inhabit. Unbound by land-based modes of thinking and living, the exhibition is reflective of the rhythmic fluidity of water and the incessant swelling and receding of the tides.” This will be the first exhibition of TBA21-Academy, the so-called “exploratory soul” of TBA21, with its cruising program the Current. Since 2015, in addressing cultural, political and biological issues of the oceans, Francesca decided to initiate an “agent of change”, in dealing with issues of climate change and Anthropocene at large. The Current is a program that looks at the ocean. By defining oneself as the “agent of change”, TBA21 hence set up its own role as an activistic position, in initiating provocations and to put forward actions. Thus born the TBA21 Academy as a sub-institution that advocates actions for the ocean. The Academy claims as a separate body from the TBA21 Augarten exhibition site in Vienna. However, just as its main body, TBA21 Academy asserts its uniqueness: “TBA21-Academy seeks to reinvent the culture of exploration in the 21st century, while inciting new knowledge, communicative strategies, and dynamic solutions for environmental challenges facing the world we inhabit.” The masterminds of TBA21 Academy 8

are in the same office as with the rest of the institution, but the soul is Dardanella. The vessel that carries the members of the office, artists, and curators for field explorations. As said the director of the Academy, “The field is wide.” The “field” that he refers to is literally the ocean. Participants join in an immersive experience, or diving-themed expeditions.

II. 21ST-CENTURY ACADEMY

Collection - HS.Art

TBA21 Augarten New Exhibition

Dardanella

The outdoor activity of the Academy takes the form of expeditions in support of art and ocean science, and the vessel sailed to different places: Fort Kochi in Kerala, India, Cocos Island in Costa Rica, Fiji Island, Swan Island, etc. The voice from the sea that Dardanella brought back is also unique. The Academy helped developed the Alligator Head Marine Lab (AHML) in Jamaica, followed by the establishment of the Alligator Head Foundation (AHF). This reminds us of the Experiments in Art and Technology group (E.A.T.) that blended in art and technology in America since the 60s, where artists and engineers collaborated on projects for social change.

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Diagram of the Production Process of Dardanella.

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TBA 21 avows to distinct itself from and is asked to produce new work in conventional modernist museums. Unconjunction with the existing art pieces like the grand and affective late capitalof the artist in the collection, together ist museum described by Krauss, where into the new exhibition. Each exhibition space itself becomes the object of affecis a chance for commissioning that feeds tive attention, the main exhibition space back into the collection, and the TBA21 of TBA21 Augarten is barely spacious. collection storage at H.S. Art had turns TBA21 Augarten is also quite casual cominto a growing body. even the primary Office pared to the typical high art institutions, form of the collections - the Cabinet of F where staffs are uptight in posh uniforms, Curiosities - resembles a form of a grid, with guards in their ironed black suits as an even shelved domestic cabinet that and white shirts. As you are free to walk holds the dearest objects in collector’s around, take photos and flip through the mind, and allows any arrangement of the catalogs, Francesca’s voice “people who collected objects. Like Rosalind Krauss’ buy art and thinking of making an investment grid, the grid of the Cabinet of Curiosiis probably the most foolish thing I’ve ever ties speaks (event though primitively) the heard ” might start to sound as genuine language of infinity, as the apparent parCollection - HS.Art as the modest exhibition space itself. Unadox and contradiction of the seemingly like TBA21 the more public Augarten exhibition neutral object. As the cabinet is small and Augarten site on the outskirts of the city, TBA21 confined, the 21st-century museum coloffice locates in the city center, occupies lections are much larger in scale, and the the second floor of Otto Wagner’s 1899 collection sites are often invisible. The inApartment Block No. 38. What makes visible collection garage of TBA21 let us TBA21 stand out more is the “Commisto imagine the factory-like garage space, sion, Production, and Exhibition” motto where art works are arranged in order, that grounded the institution’s perpetuatwaiting for the day its corresponding artLopud ing theme. Artists are often acquaintancist to be commissioned, so they canIsland final- (renov es of Francesca herself, and Francesca ly be shown in the tiny Augarten gallery collects the work of these artists that she space. However, the sea of artworks colknows well. The more art works from the lides. At the end, the grid is just a metaartists she collects, the bigger the collecphor. I could certainly not be able to visit tion becomes, as with her artistic network. the collection garage itself, and the sea Once the incoming exhibition is conof art objects are just my wishful dream firmed, the artist within Francesca’s artas a student from architecture school. ist network is officially “commissioned”,

Diagram of The Founding Process of TBA21 Foundation in Relation to Janet Cardiff.

III. THE BOAT AND THE SEA

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Collection - HS.Art

Dardanella Leaves Pendennis Shipyard in 2009.

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Francesca

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Dardanella (Right) Inside Pendennis Shipyard in 2009.

The on board members of Academy’s moving expedition vessel Dardanella include the Academy crew itself- Francesca, Academy director Markus Reymann, curator Stefanie Hessler and one assistant director and one executive assistant. Dardanlla allows an occupation of twelve people, including seven crew members, and functions both as modes of transportation and a platform for its Academy members and guests. Featured in a welcome video from the Academy, Dardanella is said equipped with various onboard audio and video recording devices. Along with staple microphones and cameras, it is equipped with one of the kind ambient sonic-hydrophone to capture 3D recordings. In order to playback these recordings, Dardanella is also equipped with an audio system custom-made for

up and always to keep the Dardanella in tiptop shape.” Besides quantifying the recording equipments in comparison with the crew members, the naming and description of certain crew members as “these girls” and the “Mexican engineer” disclose an uncomfortable tone for Dardanella. The cruising program - the Current was officially founded during the COP 21 conference in Paris in 2015. It is organized in three-year cycles, each cycle led by three invited curators who guide one expedition annually. Each fellow participates in a 10 - 14-day expedition on board. One also wonders wether Dardanella is overloaded when five artists/ curators are accompanied with seven crew members, while Francesca, director Markus Reymann and often one more curator appear in all the

the vessel. Diving equipment for up to 12 divers. Tanks with onboard dive compressor, or using air or enriched air nitrox. Dardanella also allows three tenders on deck to allow different mission all take place at once. The crew for Dardanella not only operate and maintain the vessel but also take care of the Academy team, including an officer/ dive instructor, a multi-lingual interior staff, a medical officer, and an onboard cinematographer. The video goes on, “One integral part of the crew is the onboard chef and interior staff, who’re responsible for making sure the vessel is provisioned properly, … These girls are always ready to make your stay on board comfortable and keep you fed and energetic for the next adventure … Our Mexican engineer is always standing by to handle any mechanical issues that may come

Current’s group photos. Equipped with people and devices, the Academy seeks to “redefine the culture of exploration and discovery in the 21st century” and to “create art outside of existing institution, and focuses on knowledge production rather than art production.” However, the Academy is avidly participating in “art making”. The saturated neon blue and yellow photographs of underwater ocean lives filled Academy Expeditions’s webpage. Tagging and cheering over Instagram photos of members of the diving team looking, interacting and touching sea creatures. Electronic equipment, such as the 360 degrees underwater camera, the recording machines, the on board inflatable boat, a skiff, a mini-submarine and many other cameras.

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Diagram of Diving as Art Production for Dardanella.

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Sea CreaturesDiagram of Constellation of Science Equipment Sea for Creatures Aesthetic Production for Dardanella

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Sea Creatures Constellation of Science Equipments on Dardanella 16

SEA MAGIN - Ocean Pearl 2 Submarine

Hydrophone

Inflatable Boat

Skiff with Nitrox Tanks

CATLIN SEAVIEW 360 degrees underwater camera

Bearded Seals

Walrus

Humpback Whale

Blue Whale

Narwhal

Killer Whale

Beluga Whale

Whale Shark

Grey Seal

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Leopard Shark

Hammerhead Shark

Californian Sea Lions

Hawksbill Turtle

Mentra Ray

Fiji Shark

Part of the Animals that Dardanella Encountered During Diving

The exhausting narrations from Dardanella’s welcome video, The claim to “create art outside of existing institution” suggests the oceanic as sites of production, however incorporating the global ocean into part of the institution and its production processes. In 20

assisting diving and image (and sound) making, the constellation of the mechanical tools participate into the process of making “art”, or the highly aestheticized images that TBA21 had used as its official identity. Perhaps, the aim

to “focus on knowledge production rather than art production” describes precisely that. From Dardanella to Augarten, TBA21’s production and transmission of art works follow two tracks - commissioning artists at home and from Dar-

danalla on the sea. Being two isomorphic entities, Dardanella and TBA21 Augarten operate on the same logic. Though asserting its uniqueness and as called the “agent of change”, Dardanella is not as distinct from the TBA21 Augarten itself in terms of operation. 21

Collection - HS.Art

IV. THE CAPITAL OF ANTI-CAPITAL

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The current exhibition at TBA21 Augarten - OKEANOS - features Allan Sekula. Devoted his art life documenting sites around the world under labor conditions, the artist reconnected the once considered as isolated sites of extraction, invisible labor into interconnected capitalist spaces. Showing Allan Sekula’s work at TBA21 seems perfectly intentional. Self-identified as a non-market-driven, anti-capitalist art foundation, TBA21’s put Allan Sekula’s work on show sent out a message that emphasizes its anti-institutional objectives. As I visited the exhibition in early March and captivated by Sekula’s photographs of oceans and seaports, I was also stroke by the humbleness of the show itself. With Francesca’s royal background, wealthy heritage, and her connections whose social status rival to hers, the remoteness, simplicity and minor scale of the show is just incomprehensible. Interestingly, during my visit, one TBA21 staff compared the institution as a boat, and members on the boat follow the 22

TBA21 Augarten

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New Exhibition

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determination of the captain. On the other hand, the boat is also subjected to weather conditions of the ocean and the command of the captain, and the institution lives in a constant instability and uncertainty. The “captain” and the “crew”, overlapped with Sakula’s seaports, fishes, and ships, seem to thread through and connect the stories altogether. Let me use Sakula’s words on captain Nemo from the Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in his book work Fish Story: “Nemo’s wealth, despite his patronage of revolutionary movements, remains liable to the charge of barrenness. His project is blocked on the one side by aristocratic nostalgia and on the other by an abstract and futuristic motto of perpetual flux: mobilis in mobili. The Galician writer Ferrín has grasped the irony of Nemo’s scavenging in the waters off Vigo. Wealth always leaves Vigo, whether in the form of fish, granite, or sheer emigrant labor power.

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Sea Creatures

Aesthetic Art Production of Sea Creatures Feeds Back into TBA21 Collection

Nemo, no exception to this rule, is for Ferrín quite sim- fearless attitude for ocean explorations, is also the ply a “nihilist,” another external, destructive demiurge.” philanthropist Francesca’s royal patronage and voyage to the sea. It was in Jamaica where she learned Like Sekula’s description on captain Nemo and his swimming and SCUBA dive as a child and started submarine, the slogan-like language of TBA21 — to “care about marine life”. “It just became more “agent of change” echoes the the “futuristic mot- and more personal to me.” As Francesca replied to of flux” of Nemo’s oceanic projects; The “pa- during an interview. The “aristocratic nostalgia” is tronage of revolutionary movements” of Nemo’s Francesca’s childish infatuations about the ocean.

Though it might be too early to generalize the “nihilist” and “destructive demiurge” claim as Sekula wrote through Ferrin, Sakula’s account of captain Nemo and the submarine nevertheless nicely characterized what TBA21 was about. Unlike the anti-capitalistic organization as it claimed to be, art production becomes its shield for personal and institutional urge to mobilize, deify, and satisfy. If we follow the late capitalist museum of Krauss, as architecture itself becomes the object, and the architectural remodeling for minimalist art display, we might ask, what is the cultural logic of late capitalistic art institutions? On the one hand, the non-capitalist claim bypasses the visibility of invisible private capital. While TBA21 claims its anti-capital-

Sea Creatures

Creatures ist identity, it is Sea hard to ignore the financial and aristocratic backup that saves any worries for lacking if financial means. Opened in 2000, Augarten Contemporary exhibition site has a renewable lease with Belvedere for four years. Given the small space of the Augarten site, its “landlord” — Belvedere is one of the most prominent museums that ties to Austrian royal family. Before its current name, Augarten Contemporary was the Atelier Augarten and was first designed to be the artist studio and accommodation complex for Austrian sculptor Gustinus Ambrosi. The complex is a joined program compound with different functions: workshop and studio, private home, and a museum for the artist himself. Ambrosi died in 1975, and his studio became TBA21 Augarten ex-

hibition space locates. It is also hard to ignore Francesca’s prominent family history that made TBA21’s “collection, commission, and exhibition” possible. As the daughter of industrialist and art collector Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, Francesca kept family “business” and worked as a collection manager at her father’s art collection in her early years. She then married to the grandson of Austria’s last reigning emperor Karl Habsburg-Lothringen. On the other hand, Dardanella is inherently a yacht, and the cabinet of curiosities is only open to selected guests. As Dardanella traveled to the larger “field”, its productions travel back to the collection, joining existing collections. TBA21 Collection is quietly growing out of view, and capital is expected to return.

Counterintuitively, this investment seems failed to meet the goal. The mega-collector herself had treated to move her collection out of Vienna to her birth country Switzerland, when her self-described “legendary collection” has not received enough attention. This failed attempt at gathering desired attention and public body is Francesca’s failed project for gaining social capital. The ocean becomes the new site of aesthetic extraction and art production. Distinct from common art institutions, TBA21 shifted away from fixed spaces. The site of exhibition became less permanent (TBA21 Augarten site was in renting agreement with Belvedere), and the spaces of production are expanded to the oceanic space.

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TBA21 Crew Watching Florescent Turtle Footage in the Gathering Space on Dardanella

Deck Floor - Public Gathering Area of Dardanella

Francescaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bedroom on Dardanella

The Same Bedroom in Dardanellaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Sister Vessel

Bedroom for Two Dardanella Staff

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Collection - HS.Art

Artists in Collection

TBA21 Augarten Exhibitions

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TBA21-The Current “champions the notion of the journey as its goal”, through “an annual immersive experience, or expedition.” The voyage itself became the product that ends in itself, as non-participants could in no way experience the expeditions, and the information released from the trips are limited to itineraries and descriptions of these trips. The impact of the trips is only measurable by the emotional effect on the audience, who are only a curious few, who are expected to be affected and in turn to initiate actions to save the ocean. Drifting outside of conventional commercial and market site of art production, TBA21 thus safeguarded the oceanic site of art production, but what exactly has been produced and returned? As stimulatingly private as The Current’s diving trips, TBA21’s artistic interventions on Lopud island speak the same enclosure, such as Your Black Horizon, TBA21-commissioned pavilion. The pa-

vilion was commissioned and shown at San Lazzaro degli Armeni, Venice for 51st Bienniale before relocated to Lopud island, Croatia. The sheer remoteness of the pavilion casts doubt on its conceptual aim for social engagement. Even Minister of Culture was upset about Francesca’s detour rather than setting venues in Zagreb, Croatia’s capital city. In this sense the pavilion became - as likened by Andrea Phillips - a theater, “designed to structure a type of social engagement that welcomes and avows capital development and its necessity for the instantiation of occasional public discourse in newly privatized space.” large investment of private capital is what enabled the exclusive spatial condition of the pavilion. As said capital has shifted the role of artists and viewers. He criticized that capital has made art an “experimental phantom”, a situation that neither artists nor architects can fully participate.

Diagram of Typical Commission, Production, and Exhibition Process at TBA21

V. THE LOVE FOR ART

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Diagram of Two Tracks of Art Production for TBA21 that Both Feed Into Its Collection

Collection - HS.Art TBA21 Augarten

Dardanella

Lopud Island (renovating)

“Art isn’t just a text write off. It’s a real gesture from the heart”, Francesca narrates, as she drifted calmly in Carsten Höller’s sensory deprivation tank in NOWNESS. She slowly arose in Carsten Höller’s electric-controlled Elevator Bed, which thrilled her with an otherworldly, out-of-body art adventure. This unfamiliar, “out-of-body” experience, is as personal and exclusive as Peter Sloterdijk’s description on the “Comfort Corridor”, which he explains — “Anyone who says ‘globalization’, then, is 32

speaking of a dynamized and comfort-animated artificial continent in the ocean of poverty, even if the dominant affirmative rhetoric likes to pretend that the world system is all-inclusive by its nature. The opposite is true, for conclusive ecological and systemic reasons. Exclusivity is inherent in the crystal palace project as such.” As Sloterdijk blaming globalization as the pretentious culprit for exclusion, he also ruled out the marine world from the capitalist Comfort Corridor, for the limited surface

area that the boats and ferries occupy. Indeed, Dardanella is small. It’s interior decor and monetary value is in no way compatible to many superyachts, such as Queen Mary 2 in Peter’s example. TBA 21 Augarten site is also tiny in contrast to other 21st-century art museums, the foundation does not occupy an ideal location in the city, the art is nice, and art programs keeps changing. The backup of TBA21 is nevertheless huge. Except for its long-term sponsor: Vienna Insurance Group, its exhibitions, and programs were sponsored by many other national financial and political bodies, such as the Embassy of Iceland, the British Council, Belvedere, Air France, etc. Habsburg family’s assets and legacy also cannot be left out of account. Peter did not expect this.

The anonymous owner at the refitting shipyards, with low-key profile on webpages of TBA21 and the ocean research labs, the art collector Francesca nevertheless posted for a Russian magazine at her own home, with her “art-strewn living room open to the sapphire colored water of Port Antonio”. As she “cares about the ocean animals”, as like she “cares about” the two pairs of bullfinches in Carsten Höller’s cages. When the recorded whistle of the birds turned into melodic soundings and the beautiful images of ocean creatures turned into stimulating pictures, the new site of art production emerged — be the capitalistic expansion of the ocean, however reversed this old claim into new forms: as art cruising and activistic advocation. The high-sounding ocean-protecting claim and scientific research are the new type of branding for capitalist production, and TBA21 operates through the fascination of the ocean as an immersive and experiential art production, as a luxury, exotic, and touristic format under the guise of knowledge production. Like other conventional museums, the mastermind of TBA21 is in the office. The mastermind of the office is Francesca. Just like Krauss’s grid connects to matter and spirit, the centrifugal and the centripetal, the avant-garde TBA21 collection is inclusive and exclusive, totalizing and sporadic. Operating on the same logic, Dardanella and the Augarten exhibition space both feed back into an infinitely growing, invisible collection, where Francesca enjoys the immersive experience that art gives her, as like the immersive experience that ocean gives her, and 33

Map of The Sites Dardanella Visited 34