CoCAin No. 1 by Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej

No. 1

MARTA HERFORD MUSEUM / Centre of Art and Landscape on the Isle of Vassivière / Istanbul Museum

quarterly • November 2012 • edition 500 copies • ISNN 2299-6893

TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface Paweł Łubowski NEW SPACES OF ART…………………...........................................…..………...……………………..3 Resident Mateusz Maria Bieczyński MARTA HERFORD MUSEUM……….............................................…………..………………………4 Mateusz Maria Bieczyński BILBAO EFFECT? Interview with Roland Nachtigäller, director of Marta Herford Museum..............8 Comments Jerzy Olek SKIRMISHES WITH THE VISIBLE.........................................................................................14 Kamila Kłudkiewicz SPACE OR ART, WHAT SHOULD FASCINATE IN A MUSEUM On an aesthetic experience in modern museum space...........................................24 Interpretations Anna Markowska ARCHITECTURAL MAQUETTES AND MODELS BETWEEN VISIONS AND DIY.......30 Interviews Mateusz Maria Bieczyński “TO MS. MARTA HERFORD” Interview with Friederike Fast, curator of Marta Herford Museum......................34 Mateusz Maria Bieczyński FREE SPACE OF REDEFINITION Interview with Michael Kröger, curator of Marta Herford Museum......................38 Dobrila Denegri CORPOREAL NATURE OF NANO SPACE Interview with Victoria Vesna …........................................………………………........…...…42 Territories of art Agnieszka Maria Wasieczko TOWER OF CONTEMPORARY ART....................................................................................52 Sebastian Dudzik VIRTUAL SPACES OF (FOR) ART.........................................................................................56 Anna Borzeskowska A SPECIAL-EFFECTS MACHINE...........................................................................................59 Recommendations Matylda Taszycka ÎLE DE VASSIVIÈRE ART IN A MAKE-BELIEVE LAND……….……..........……….………...…62 Genco Gülan I AM AN ISTANBUL MUSEUM……………..........................................……...…….………………66 Controversies Servet Kocyigit AROUND THE WORLD WITH FLIP-FLOPS…….................................................……………70 Art archive Miško Šuvaković INTRODUCTION TO TkH MYTHOLOGY/IDEOLOGY & THEORY/POLITICS THROUGH INSCRIPTIONS, TRACES AND ARCHAEOLOGY OF ART…………………………..............................…………….74

NEW SPACES OF ART Paweł Łubowski

Dear Readers! We are proud to present a new periodical dedicated to art and exhibition spaces. Space in art can be defined in a number of ways. Every epoch, generation or even author understands and uses it differently – it is these dissimilarities that we wish to present through our magazine CoCA in... Art cannot exist without space. It is an inseparable element. Hence the significance of where one can encounter art. Previously, these were sacred spaces, presently these are galleries and museums. The explorations of Avant-garde verified the space of art in its various forms. They broadened it beyond the institutions and, as a result, redefined it – the entire world became art. Even though we are currently experiencing new potential for transgressing space, due to the technological progress of the information revolution, it is still possible to observe the phenomenon of creating institutions. Centres and museums of contemporary art are popping up in great numbers. At present, the trend is becoming so widespread that it is certainly going to influence art itself, but it also requires us to ask ourselves a number of questions. Are they needed if everything is art? Perhaps it is these institutions which will constrain our perception and the manner of our expression? The institution has always been the enemy of freedom. Will someone think of burning them down? Will these be places subordinated only to global stylistics? To what extent will they be able to develop their own, local program resulting from their geographical and historical context? All in all, we can already see the tendency for contemporary art to be musealized and institutionalized, which results from treating the new spaces as museums in the old sense – as elitist temples of art. On the other hand, centres

and museums of contemporary art, thanks to their professional and technical infrastructure, can aid young, talented artists. Nonetheless, without any criteria, how can we find an answer for the question – who is a young, and more significantly, a talented artist? Perhaps it is too early to be concerned with all of this, since there is always a way to avoid inconveniences – art will find a back-door, which it has proved capable of doing throughout history. There would be no impressionism and Avant-garde without the official saloons, where only “legitimate” art was accepted. Rebellion against numbness and the establishment can be something stimulating. History is repeating itself. There are many problems to be presented. Therefore, we decided to create a forum of information exchange between centres and museums of contemporary art. Each issue of our magazine will host a chosen institution – a centre or a museum of contemporary art which will become the leitmotiv. We will show its specifics, spaces, the place of its origin as well as the people who have given it its artistic shape. Hence the title with the preposition “in” followed by ellipsis. However, we do not want to limit ourselves to just presenting institutions. We shall devote a lot of space to the problems in contemporary art with its social and historical contexts. We will also pay attention to educational aspects as well as to promoting young artists. We look forward to fruitful cooperation. Enjoy the read!

MARTA HERFORD MUSEUM Mateusz Maria Bieczyński

Who is the mysterious Marta Herford? The answer may be surprising: Marta Herford is a museum of contemporary art. How is it that a cultural institution has a woman’s name? Today, the answer to this question, as the facility director, Roland Nachtigäller, states, has partly become a legend. This was possible because, despite being a relatively young museum, Marta Herford has quite a rich history. In this history the name of the institution is not the only element distinguishing it from other exhibition houses. Certainly there is also the location, architecture and the people who work in the museum. The image of Marta Herford was determined by Frank Gehry’s courageous architectural design. Determining the museum’s identity – a little against the local context of Herford, which has only seventy thousand inhabitants – was initiated by its first director, Jan Hoet, and cemented by the current manager, Roland Nachtigäller, who is developing the concept of a dynamic exhibition facility on the ideological capital accumulated by his predecessor. In order to properly understand the complicated relationships which form the context of Marta Herford Museum’s activities, one should start by telling the story about it from the very beginning. History According to the original concept, the Herford museum was to combine art and industry. The institution was to be an exhibition space for local manufacturers of furniture design. This marriage has been veiled in the unusual name of the institution. For “M.ART.A” stands for the furniture industry (“M”),

Frank Gehry, Marta Herford Museum. Courtesy of Marta Herford © Thomas Mayer

art (“ART”) and architecture (“A”). This concept has proven to be impossible to implement. However, it evolved quickly and was eventually transformed into a museum of contemporary art. The main role in this transformation process was played by Jan Hoet, the first director of the facility. Selecting a Belgian curator for the managerial position of the new facility was the result of a reputation which he won in Germany as the curator of Documenta IX in Kassel. The history of Marta Herford Museum is a few years longer than the history of the building where it is located today. It started back in 2001, when its first director was appointed. The first exhibition in its temporary premises, Elsbach Haus, took place in 2002 and caused a scandal. Scandal The fourth exhibition organized by Jan Hoet was an exhibition of a Norwegian artist, Bjarne Melgaard (b. 1967), and its opening was scheduled for 4 July 2002. Even before the start of the exhibition, prosecutors entered the exhibition, initiating proceedings under Section 131 of the Penal Code, which prohibits “the distribution, public display or otherwise spreading of messages of a content glorifying violence in a manner derogatory to human dignity”. The Norwegian designer is, next to the German Jonathan Meese, one of the leading representatives

of the Slacker and Trash Art mainstream. They cultivate the cult of violence and use references to death metal music, satanic and masochist themes as well as those of auto-castration. With his work, Melgaard asks the question: how is it possible that in the Western welfare societies there are still subcultures openly fascinated by violence and suffering? This subject, however, proved to be too much of a challenge for the local community. Melgaard intended, among other things, to illustrate satanic practices by exhibiting a live goat dressed in a skin-tight latex outfit. Ultimately, it did not come to fruition. The catalogue accompanying the exhibition in Germany was entered onto the list of publications which are a threat to children and young people. The exhibition, however, set the plight for the new institution, which over the years had to contend with the negative attitude of the local community. The clearest example of this opposition were events associated with the opening of its new headquarters. It was opened to the public on 7 May 2005. On that day, a group of more than 150 residents of Herford gathered under the building with the slogan “genug ist genug” as a form of protest directed against the whole project. The criticism was the result of an unplanned increase in costs, as the total investment amounted to more than 30 million euros.

Architecture The massive seat of Marta Herford Museum was built of brick and steel like an organic sculptural form. The museum’s body was shaped asymmetrically, somehow contrary to classical geometric divisions. Optically, the building seems to manifest itself as an additive form. It consists of irregular blocks. What is also surprising is the resignation from windows facing the street. Only the entrance area was glazed. This has the form of an elongated, narrow corridor, which opens to the interior of the museum (reception with a bookshop). The entrance area is connected via a narrow, dark corridor to a restaurant, which for a change is lit by huge windows opening onto a wonderful terrace on the river. The whole creates a very picturesque place. The lighting of the exhibition space has been designed through the roof. These skylights from a bird’s eye view resemble cut stacks. The central place of the museum is the 22-metrehigh exhibition hall, figuratively called the cathedral. It was located next to five more galleries of varying heights. Their internal divisions are subject to plastic forming, as they were made of plasterboard, and have interesting wavy shapes. The complete surface of the Herford museum exhibition space is 2,500 square metres. In the immediate vicinity of the museum, there are many elements complementary to the visual designation of the institution. First, the large number of works of art displayed in the public space should be mentioned. The most characteristic of them is a metal ball by Luciano Fabro. This was placed on a platform ending the Goebenstrasse street line and covered with a fragment of the Rainer Maria Rilke poem entitled “Ball”. The installation shows the moment just before rolling into a hopper located between lanes. Exhibition As Roland Nachtigäller states: “Exhibitions are like cuttings through time. They pose questions about the present, they are questions of fleeting moment (glimpses of an eye), with the future in the viewfinder. When we look at the activities of the museum on the timeline, then the works of art and their ideas, presentations, and their attitudes, themes and artists are subject to the process of continual change. The present becomes to the same degree the history, a reminder of what was, and the prospect of what is to come. Each time is closely related to its past and future, it manifests itself in a storm of events between collective deliberation and subjective vision.”1 The first exhibition presented was My Private 1 R. Nachtigäller, Antennen in der Zukunft, [in:] Die ersten 10 Jahre Marta und die Freunde, Herford 2011, p. 10.

Heroes, lasting from 7 May to 21 August 2005. The exhibition was dedicated to the heroic stances known in the history of mankind. The exhibited artists included Warhol, Kippenberger, Wolls and Beuys. This presentation set a high level for what was later shown. It posed anew the question concerning the place of heroic attitudes in the modern world, as well as the role of the artist as a hero today. According to its basic thesis, the pantheon of heroes of the twentieth century includes not only charismatic leaders and activists, but also the so-called anti-heroes – anonymous perpetrators of cultural events, including the perpetrators of negative actions. These heroes live – just like art itself – on the madcap praise of their viewers and followers. Here, Jan Hoet proposed to the viewer works of art shown as modelled on traditional Wunderkammer in a layered form. Since that time, there have already been more than sixty exhibits, all of them characterized by an original idea and curatorial concept, contributing to the image of Marta Herford Museum as a dynamic and creative institution. Modern Museum In an interview given shortly after he left Marta Herford Museum, its director, Jan Hoet, said with conviction that he saw his role as the director and curator of the new institution in terms of the presented art itself, and he saw himself as a person exceeding a limit and struggling singlehandedly with clichés.2 His actions did not always meet with complete acceptance from the residents of the city and the administrative structures or the politicians themselves, however, the reactions of resistance were included in the concept described by the Belgian. Jan Hoet left the post of director with the sense of a job well done. As he stated in the previously quoted interview: “I worked here for seven years. Life changes customarily in seven-year intervals, and these have now been closed. Now I can calmly pass the museum into the hands of a younger director, who will not have to fight the forces that turn against him. Everything is prepared. He receives, to say the least, a good legacy.”3 It appears that in this statement several important points are accented. First, overcoming local resistance to subversive content transposed by the works of art presented in the museum. Proof of this may be, at the very least, the active work of a society friendly to the Herford museum (MARTa Freunde und Fördernde e.V.). The society belongs to the Federal Union of Associations See: http://www.art-magazin.de/szene/12277.html Ibidem.

2 3

Supporting German Museums of Representational Art (Bundesverband der Fördervereine Deutscher Museen für bildende Kunst). One of its main activities is the acquisition of works for the museum collection as well as the financial resources to purchase them. As the first director of the facility, Jan Hoet, put it: “In the collection of Marta, like a breathing skin of the museum body, responsive to the environment, there are works depicting social contradictions, their pains, but also extensively interacting powers of imagination. The collection is, in fact, a kind of social tension meter, so that the community can recognize under what influence it is, what it lives and works on – and also what the possible fields of action are.”4 Secondly, thanks to the consistency in the implementation of the concept of institutions aimed at creating discussion of difficult social issues, and to open the newest phenomena in contemporary art, the employees were able to win a wide range of political autonomy. The initial opposition of politicians, who often did not understand the aim of presenting so-called critical art and refused to recognize the artistic character of actions under that name, has been overcome. Convincing the representatives of public administrative bodies that they are not competent in matters relating to art was thus an important achievement. And thirdly, as a result of winning independence from viewers and politicians, the museum won autonomy related to planning exhibitions. This degree of freedom has been fully exploited in J. Hoet, Sammlung Marta Herford. [in:] Die ersten 10 Jahre Marta und die Freunde, Herford 2011, p. 9.

practice. This is particularly evident in the original concept of combining an exhibition consisting of works of ancient and modern art together within one exhibition. Conclusion: Dispelling stereotypes The history of Marta Herford Museum, which has been briefly presented here, shows the great significance of overthrowing stereotypes in its practical work. Both the subversive and scandalous art projects of Jan Hoet, as well as a non-conventional approach to the exhibition brought about by a team of people that make up the institution today, can be seen as paving new ways. The Herford exhibition institution, operating for less than 10 years, is considered to be one of the most famous museums of contemporary art in Germany. It’s certainly a big success for such a beginner. This status also seems to be confirmed by the trust, which Marta has won, of collectors and exhibition institutions specializing in ancient art. The case of Marta Herford Museum seems to be evidence, therefore, of not only the possibility of setting up and running a modern exhibition institution dealing with the latest art in a small village devoid of tradition of this type of activity and lacking a savvy audience, but also of the possibility of efficient management and creation of its exhibition offer, which makes the effort of getting to Herford, which is located away from the major transport routes, worthwhile. The fixed number of at least 70 thousand visitors every year is a proof of the success of the program realized in this museum.

Olav Christopher Jenssen, “The Protagonist”, Installationsansicht, Galleri Riis Oslo, 2010. Photo: V. Kleven. Courtesy of Galleri Riis, Oslo/Stockholm © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

BILBAO EFFECT? Interview with Roland Nachtigäller, director of Marta Herford Museum Mateusz Maria Bieczyński

Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: Let’s start in a slightly unorthodox way: do you like your job at Marta Herford Museum? Roland Nachtigäller: (Laughter) Such a museum as this can only be managed if one loves it and is deeply convinced in their heart that this is something substantial which has extremely high potential. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: Since when have you directed Marta Herford Museum? Roland Nachtigäller: I started working as a director at the end of 2008. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: Jan Hoet was the founding director of the museum. A person, who was instrumental in the establishment of this institution. But you knew him much earlier, when you cooperated with the organization of Documenta IX in Kassel. How important was that cooperation to you? Roland Nachtigäller: For Documenta, a new team is appointed each time. In the case of Documenta IX in 1992, I was responsible for all publications. The catalogue, the short guide and all other publications that were prepared for the occasion and published, were coordinated by me and finally realized, and so I worked with Jan Hoet very closely. Often the two of us worked together till late at night on so-called positioning, which is how individual printing products should be developed. Thus, our acquaintance was very close and intense. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: Thus, your appointment as Marta Herford Museum director after Jan Hoet left the post was no accident. Roland Nachtigäller: No. Such decisions are never accidental. Over the years we were constantly in touch and we met quite often on various occasions. Before I took the post in Herford I was the director of Städtische Galerie Nordhorn, and it seems to me that I myself would have never come up with the idea to apply for this job. I was asked by Jan Hoet if he could put me forward as his successor. So it happened, and I was appointed director by way of a standard recruitment procedure as a person recommended by Hoet. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: Jan Hoet was the father of this institution but, at the same time, its greatest controversy. His concept of the museum was based on provocation. What do you think about it? Roland Nachtigäller: This concept is still continued under my direction. This seems to be a natural

consequence of art itself and the manner in which it interacts. It is not about using provocation as a means in itself, nor about constantly striving to achieve the highest possible degree of social consensus in art, but it is that art in itself, on the one hand, is based on the freedom of articulation of transposed content and, on the other, it always touches the wound, problematizing difficult subjects. The latter is often and willingly overlooked, thus it is only seen as provocative or uncomfortable. But it is the task of art to constantly ask questions; and very often questions that appear to be quite unwelcome or that would preferably be alleviated. This is where I see the great potential of art, that it’s not such as “everyone” expects, that it’s not only for decoration, but it constantly tries to open a perspective for the future, by the fact that it will refer critically to the present. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: So, you see yourself more as a continuator of the original concept of the Herford Museum? Roland Nachtigäller: I think it is important for such a museum like this, which does not have a very long history. Confrontation has been one of the basic principles from the very beginning of my activity in Marta. Also, you can’t completely redefine the museum in such a short time, as you can’t change the logo, the program, the staff and how it presents itself outside. No, quite the contrary. Here, we build on what was previously, on the specific models that have been created. It also has to do with my conviction as to the correctness of the assumptions of this concept. Together with other members of the team we subjected the confrontation method to significant differentiation and gave it vigour in the form of specific forms of its realization. However, the museum itself, which is only 7 years old, needs its own traditions, and a part of this tradition is also continuing the original founding thought. I also hope that in the future this institution will continue to follow this way, so that a clear course of action would become our trademark. I can only hope that, thanks to this, Marta Herford shall be seen as a place where unusual art is presented in a very clear way. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: At the beginning, however, the inhabitants of Herford themselves were also against the museum. Has anything changed in this regard? Roland Nachtigäller: I think that this change is a process that requires a lot of time. Leading such a museum as this – which was founded in such a small town as Herford, which in addition had no

Roland Nachtigäller. Courtesy of Marta Herford Museum

previous tradition of an “exhibition house” and where both politicians and citizens had no idea what a museum of contemporary art was and how it operated, as well as what its tasks were – is indeed a great challenge. Many asked at the beginning: “Do we even need it? Are we concerned at all?” This is, however, a part of quite a natural process. I am deeply convinced that Marta Herford has been important for this town in view of the number of visitors (tourists), the way it is perceived, as well as for its economy. It has to be remembered that we live off the money from sponsors, from funds, which are granted outright here. Therefore, to gain recognition for activities that are not always understood locally is very tedious work, and it has to be performed in small steps. In practice, this means that with constantly new exhibitions, a variety of talks and debates, as well as all the work in Marta Herford, we want to indicate that the doors of our institution are wide open. That’s why I’ll never try to declare that it is my wish that all the people of Herford would come to Marta, but I insist forcefully that Marta is open for everyone – this is our main task. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: The name of the museum seems to be unique. Initially, it was

explained by the selection of letters “M for furniture or museum, ART for art and A for architecture or ambiente.” Has this original context been preserved?

Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: Let’s, then, propose a new term: “Marta Herford Effect”! Roland Nachtigäller: Very willingly.

Roland Nachtigäller: In this question many smaller questions are hidden. The first is how a name for a contemporary art museum is established. This is obviously a matter of marketing, and marketing alone is sometimes relatively simple and concise with its ideas. For two years now, however, we have decided not to explain the name of the museum anymore. This means that the fact that some random letters go together is not of interest to us. It is also a very trivial issue. It seems to me that the way this name sounds is much more exciting and entertaining, and we have clearly recognized the name of a woman. This opens different realms of thought than when one declares that, in this name, there are letters associated with some meaningful structures. The second question is the role of the name for the whole concept of our institution. If, by the combination of letters cited in the question, we understand that the museum has been from the beginning focused on contemporary art, that it is particularly interested in its crossing with or touching upon design or architecture, then it determines what actually works and also what makes this institution unique. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: What do you think of a term shaped by the press, which is the “Bilbao effect”, in the context of Marta Herford? Roland Nachtigäller: This term was mostly quoted only in a negative context, and for this reason I can’t think of it positively. I also think that such a concept does not exist. When we look more closely at Bilbao itself, then we will find that different stories took place there. That whole concept also had its drawbacks and other aspects ... What is generally referred to by the “Bilbao effect” is associated with a national context and architecture, and from that source it is transferred to the other fields of meaning. This means, therefore, something that is desirable but actually does not work. In the context of Marta Herford it is, therefore, certainly true that the institution established here, with its ambitious architecture, ambitious program, with the world-renowned founding director, with the environment which approached him warily; that the centre was established here which triggered a lot of energy, both in a positive and in a negative sense. This type of effect makes me able to say with certainty: there are many people here who have the vision and energy to propel it into action. That, I think, is something really great.

Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: In the context of the museum’s beginning, the name of Wolfgang Clement is very often mentioned, the then Prime Minister of the state government of North Rhine Westphalia. Could you describe the extent of his participation in this project? Roland Nachtigäller: First, I did not participate directly in these events, so I cannot clearly report from today’s perspective. Secondly, well, more or less equally problematic is that around the whole process of forming this institution many legends arose in the meantime, so many revealed truths that one gets the impression that it would be better if they remained legends, because they just give you the nicest tale. When I, for myself, filter out what really remains a fact, then what is certain is that in the Council of North Rhine-Westphalia there was a readiness to participate in any investments in this far east region. Such a signal was indeed given for the region by Wolfgang Clement, in the sense that “if you shall have anything big, let us know.” One can also, I think, quite objectively say today that it was time to register in Düsseldorf a slightly different project than the one which Marta Herford lives today. It is an already certain assessment that in the original form, a marriage of presenting art and industry products, that the museum could never function. I think it was a very wise move to rethink the formula of the institution and eventually, already with political support, radicalise it in the direction of contemporary art and its vigour. This meant that the shape of the way Marta functions needs continual re-framing. Presenting interesting exhibitions was a chance to start something that will have a real continuity in a location that hadn’t been marked on the map of artistic life. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: To accomplish this task, a creative team of curators was appointed. How many people have an impact on the diversity of the institution? Roland Nachtigäller: Basically, when it comes to the program, then among the people who are ultimately responsible for the formulation of the institution, next to me, I can name three curators: Franziska Brückmann, Friederike Fast, Michael Kröger. However, in recent years we have developed a structure of teamwork, which has proved to be effective, in which we are constantly talking to

Frank Gehry, Marta Herford Museum. Courtesy of Marta Herford ÂŠ Thomas Mayer

each other and shape the plan for further action. At least twice a year, sometimes more often, we hold “enclosed talks”, during which we plan what we will do in our institution over the next two to three years and in what direction we want to go. This line corresponds to future projects of exhibitions, which have a greater swing. As regards three or four years in advance, the participants include someone from the departments of Public Relations and Education, because they have a very broad view of what is happening at the museum in various sectors. Teamwork is therefore a guiding principle. This is the strength of our program. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: Does this mean that no exhibition was ever taken from another institution? Roland Nachtigäller: In this area I am a strong opponent of the rules, because I think that you should respond flexibly. However, I can also definitely say that we have some basic practices and when we develop a program for Marta Herford, the first question that we set ourselves is, “why is this project scheduled to take place particularly in Marta?” If I can answer this question by saying: “Because you will not be able to see this exhibition in this way anywhere else”, then this is a very strong argument. The second argument is for me the certainty that this project is so unique that it will maintain the current exhibition level of our institution.

So, when we decide to take some exhibition, the novelty is also an important criterion. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: And who is responsible for building the collection? Roland Nachtigäller: Basically, I’m responsible, but you cannot explicitly assign this task, because we have a disastrous situation in this respect. We don’t have the money to buy something, which means that we are dependent on external support in this regard. Most helpful to us on this field is our “friendship society” (Freundeskreis), which regularly collects money and buys works for the museum. We also have a number of cases of long-term loans from private collectors, who also sometimes present something to Marta. Sometimes we also give guidance and we report what it is this time that we would like. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: On the currently presented exhibition “Atelier und Küche” it is possible to observe a specific strategy of its structure, which consists of compiling the works of ancient art with the latest works. From this I conclude that there is cooperation with other exhibition institutions. Does it mean that Marta Herford, a new institution, has already earned the trust of other institutions, which are willing to lend it valuable works belonging to their own collections?

Entrance to the exhibition “Atelier und Küche”. Photo © Hans Schröder / MARTa Herford

Roland Nachtigäller: Unconditionally. The current exhibition “Atelier und Küche” is something special here. For the first time ever we have borrowed so many highly esteemed works of ancient art. Obviously, this is closely related to a more general concept, because we wouldn’t be able to obtain these loans quite spontaneously for purely formal reasons. This was, however, also the moment when we experienced that we are seen as a serious institution. I’ve never seen so much willingness of other museums to lend valuable works. In the case of this project, we worked closely with the director of the Hamburg Kunsthalle, who discussed and developed the whole project of the exhibition together with us. Hence, also in the coming years we will continue the project of turning in the direction of the history of art. This, as one can see, has brought great results, for it showed that, thanks to that, a still young museum presents itself to the outside as a creative and trustworthy entity. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: I must admit, however, that the very concept of combining old and new art is not common. Roland Nachtigäller: No. I see this as a unique contribution of our institution. For me it was always important to make it clear that, just as well as reflection on the present, the future always has something to do with the past; that we have to constantly make sure as to the past and whether we can see where we want to hurry along. This took effect for Marta Herford, the more so because often in the exhibitions of contemporary art we largely turn to the past. This is typical for the way we think here. This is, naturally, a form of provocation and an assumption that there is no historical chronology. Thus, following the exhibition iconographically, you need to learn this way of looking. First, you need to be able to understand what we as curators do not always notice, that to the viewer it is a challenge that next to the painting from the seventeenth century there is one from the twentieth century. But it is also important, I think, to do so with history, to activate it all the time and say, “This is our present, with which we need to work, looking as well in the past.” This view, however, must constantly be directed anew to past events with the question: “Is this way of understanding the past correct, or should we change our views?”

itself. How is it, however, from a purely pragmatic point of view – is this architecture competition for the works of art? Roland Nachtigäller: Generally, no. When I came here, I had enormous respect for this space, for it wasn’t clear to me how to capture this architecture when planning an exhibition. However, in practice, I have experienced that Gehry’s building is a wonderful exhibition space. With all that has so far been presented here under my leadership, we did not ever have to work “against architecture”. On the contrary, it is always a support. The walls build a great setting for the works. Also the proportions are properly constructed, so one never has that kind of impression that works are lost in it or fly away upwards. Especially in the current exhibition, we constructed more additional architecture than ever before. It was, however, a very conscious decision to make Gehry’s structure unclear enough to provoke the viewer to the question: “In which room am I right now?” The next exhibition, in turn, will restore its original appearance, and this is probably the most beautiful aspect that this architecture allows constant transformation. It is also a constant challenge to me, to present this museum to all who visit over and over again, to make them aware of how many different faces it has. There is still a long time to go until we reach the end of possible interplay with the architecture without having to “rape” it. It also allows the image of the entire institution to be shaped without “betraying” its original idea – it’s a great opportunity for the future. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: Therefore, I look forward with curiosity to learning what interesting things that future may bring. Thank you for an interesting conversation. Roland Nachtigäller: I also thank you very much.

Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: A very important role for the exhibition is also played by its architectural setting. The architecture of the museum must be disciplined. There has already been a lot written about the fact that Gehry’s design is a brand in

SKIRMISHES WITH THE VISIBLE Jerzy Olek

One could think that the radically artificial operationality of artistic procedure kills art, that it gives birth to cold-calculated creations, the products of cyber-machines. However, in some cases it is a successful, perfectly enhancing vision, which takes rationalized operations as its basis. In the late modernism of the 60s and 70s of the 20th century, scientific interest in the principle of seeing increased. A large group of artists cultivated the analytical tradition, supported by phenomenological reflection. Generally, this was about freeing oneself of the strict rules of illustrative illusionism and the free search for pure forms emanating metaphysical aura. The artists of that era, but also many younger ones, were not concerned about the image itself, but the magic of pictoriality separated from its material support. The texture of the painting was no longer important. A mental image created in the viewer’s perception was what counted. The phenomenal nature of the image started to dominate and replace its physicality or even invalidate it. In op-art and similar kinds of realizations, vision fulfilled itself in a dynamic encounter with the visible, in actively seeing it, while changing the direction of looking, registering the unstable quasi-presence of an image or its object. One could see something that appeared in front of the object, fulfilling itself not on it, but according to it, not in a material but physical form. The image and the object were supplanted by a purely optical analogon, a selfcreating imaginary being, for whom an objectified work is just a causative impulse. Thereby the presence of things withdraws, making space for its “absence”. The appearance replaces the “being”, timidly simulating its existence. Something which is really absent, becomes present as a result of optical collineation. The artificially created aesthetic reality turns out to be more important than perceptual reality of the physical world. The aim of constituting a material object or a painting by an artist is the creation of phenomenal pictoriality. Immaterial visuality is experienced by a viewer by abstracting the concrete, which is the work created by the artist. Now is the time for analysing the existing, and creating new, visual constructions, examining optical structures of perception, working out ways of seeing, and questioning the objectivity of perceptions. These are fundamental issues, necessary to realize the nature of mechanisms operating the most important sense. Such investigations inevitably raise questions about the neutrality of the direct reflection of the perceived objects, hence the reliability of seeing and objectivity of the way we perceive the world. The situation becomes complicated when the perception does not concern objects existing in reality, independently of consciousness, but

Roman Villa Farnesina, Palazzo Massimo. Photo: J. Olek

optical phenomena present only in the viewer’s imagination, which, nonetheless, can be visually confirmed. Of course, the nature of each perception depends on the earlier experiences of the perceiving person, and thus the available knowledge. However, if the seen does not refer to already familiar objects and phenomena, the image will be perceived only on the level of aesthetics. A man who is in a formally diversified interior, which is not an ordinary cube, in an interior in which Felice Varini painted one of his geometrical figures, can be completely disoriented with the situation, because – typically for this artist – parts of these figures recreated in different places in varied scale do not constitute a whole until he finds the cardinal point for viewing. It is only then that one can notice a precisely marked line, a regular square or a perfectly drawn circle. Then one can see in black and white (also red, blue and yellow) the completeness and coherence of the form, fragments of which, having strange shapes, were located on the walls and their corners, on pillars, floor, ceiling and doors. Illogical fragmentation of the painting at a certain point made a coherent picture in space. A surprising simplification of the referential structure took place: the 3-dimensional painted installation turned out to be a perfectly flat picture, a picture-illusion, which could be found on none of the surfaces. An unusual thing happened: the outstretched fields of colour

sublimated into one form displayed for the viewer’s eyes on a non-existent surface. The reality of the painting was successfully accomplished thanks to the synthesizing look. Johannes Meinhard wrote about the creation of pictorial illusion wall paintings by Varini and the creative process: “Real configuration of planes and their layering suddenly take an illusive appearance of the pictorial surface situated at the right angle to the spectator’s look. It is unified in terms of colour, the external and internal forms of which tending to be geometrically simple (most often rectangles and circles). From any other perspective of viewing […] the spectator can only see meaningless distortions and fragments of the painting. The pictorial form dissolves into unconnected pictures on walls, lines underlining the edges of walls and incomprehensible drawings on pillars, partitions, etc. These geometrical forms, constituting the whole, are marked by projections, sometimes laser projections. Varini draws the outlines of the figures with a pencil on walls and other surfaces; thus the hand, marking shapes unified in terms of colour, often performs a technical task. When the figures are projected on the pillars, arched walls, spiral staircases etc., straight lines make complicated, precisely defined conical curves. However, Varini is not really interested in non-Euclidean geometries. These curves are interesting most of all because, in

Torii in Fushimi Inari temple in Kyoto. Photo: J. Olek

terms of optical categories, thanks to the radical distortions, they divert from a simple geometrical shape seen from the chosen point of view.”1 The reception of Varini’s painted interventions into space takes place according to the principle of reconciliation of opposites. The viewer needs to make a formidable optical synthesis. On the one hand, s/he has to deal with numerous antitheses, which are illogical demarcations of fields of colour in the space they divide. Walking in a room appropriated by the artist, the viewer comes across them in varying arrangements of forms. On the other hand, s/he has to deal with a thesis, i.e. an abstract geometrical surface, which, even though constructed of parts located in different fragments of the room – turns out to be a flat figure, unambiguous in its perfection. The mind needs to reconcile the opposites between this outstanding pictorial position and the infinite number of positions disorienting the gaze. This is the optical game taking place between the right point and incidental points of view, the confrontation of seeing the whole picture and its mutually incongruous parts, the interconnected understanding of the meaning of one-not-one surface and incomprehension of the principles ruling the location of its individual constituents: the disposition of many markings on the media of choice in real space. In the case of illusionist baroque murals, finding oneself in the midst of the painted scene in visual terms is rather easy. While contemplating illusory, painterly “rapture”, a participant in the static representation is in no danger of losing themselves amidst the incomprehensible senses of one form or another. They can, however, without dithering, merge with it simply by looking at it and believing that the perspective which connects authentic architectural elements with their geometrically cohesive representations is sucking them deep into the picture. The feeling of elevation is experienced not only by those who look up at the vaults in Saint Ignatius Church and the Church of the Gesù in Rome, produced by the great masters Andrea Pozzo and Giovanni Battista Gaulli. One only needs to look into a mirror placed at a 45-degree angle in the Church of the Gesù as it enables the mural to come closer, providing a background for the person observing themselves and the barrel vault. The painting, which can thus be minutely scrutinized, seems to be within arm’s reach. The whole scene is perfectly evocative; the spatial illusion being perfectly created by outstanding quadratura painters who were both mathematicians and artists. Every detail of this 1 J. Meinhard, Die Wirklichkeit der ästhetischen Illusion. Felice Varinis “Blickfallen”, Lugano 1999.

illusionist mural appears completely credible, even the silhouettes of people that go beyond the border of the vault. The Renaissance Villa Farnesina conveys very different impressions. In Baldassare Peruzzi’s Perspectives’ Hall, one feels like entering its walls. Or like passing through them to find oneself on a terrace where one can enjoy a magnificent view of genuine structures or go into the garden. Not a real garden, admittedly, but one that looks very much alive. The hall seems like it is open to the space outside, yet in fact it is separated from it by the walls. There is another Farnesina, 15 centuries older, with sleeping rooms painted in different colours and mosaics on the floor that complement the murals and deceive the eye by pretending to be three-dimensional. Excellently painted decorations by Fabullus were used in Neron’s Domus Aurea. Through false gaps in the walls, one can catch a glimpse of other rooms; some with open doors and windows, others with loggias and balconies, and nothing there is real. Painted rooms disregard the rules of perspective. Their main objective is to create an illusion of depth. Illusionist painting has a long history, from Pompeian representations mimicking reality to increasingly better and richer ones in consecutive eras – via unreal interiors depicted on painted walls in Renaissance villas and palaces, baroque quadratura in churches, still life paintings popular in bourgeois houses in the Netherlands, Italy and Spain, the American revival of trompe l’oeil, showing similar scenes at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, hyperrealism in the United States, and European photorealism in the 1970s, to extremely formalized, abstract spatial compositions realized mostly in France in the last few decades. Examples of still life conveying the impression of genuinely three-dimensional objects were immensely popular not only in the 17th century. They mostly depict small items, such as letters, glasses, feathers, combs or painting utensils stuck to a wooden board and shoved behind belts stretched on it. Beautifully represented, instantly recognizable, familiar and necessary. But this is a closed chapter. After several centuries of imitating, the trompe l’oeil artists have turned to abstraction. This might be the result of the abundance of collected objects and a response to the need of removing unnecessary items from the field of view. What is seeing? Possessing what is seen from a distance. But not only this. It is also insatiability repudiating the sole necessity of what is perceived and thus transgressing what the eyes relate so that the perceived structure can be even better constructed.

Frescoes in Baldassare Peruzzi’s “Perspectives’ Hall”, Villa Farnesina, Rome. Photo: J. Olek

Felice Varini, installations â&#x20AC;&#x201C; spatial painting. Photo: J. Olek

Painters employ various methods, or tricks. Richard Estes, a hyperrealist painter, uses double perspective, which was visible in the sketch but camouflaged in the painting, so that it did not run away from the viewer but merged in them. For instance, the paintings Union Square

Looking Northeast or Spirit from the 1990s contain aÂ represented scene as well as its reflection, revealing a reality created by brush as it is and reversed. These two worlds, a direct representation and a mirror reflection seem to complement each other, constituting a whole within the frame,

Felice Varini, installations – spatial painting. Photo: J. Olek

yet in fact they negate one another causing mutual alienation. The dynamic world of the 20th century is defined by Estes through manipulation of traditional systems of perspective and applying numerous vanishing points. He visually formulates his opinion on the density of overlapping and permeating

impressions received by the contemporary eye. The views, which he tends to create by multiplying reflections, lead the eye – in spite of many optical traps – inside, to the sphere of vanishing. But the mind soon realizes that the applied perspective is formally complex, graphically diminished and

transparent. Central Savings, a 1975 painting, is a perfect example. It shows a corner café with windows meeting at a 90-degree angle. Looking through both windows, one can see buildings that become smaller and smaller. Seemingly transparent window panes reflect the window of the Central Savings Bank on the opposite site of the street. In the café, mirror-like surfaces of an interior column and the wall at the back reflect red tops of tables, the reflection of the café in the bank window as well as the reflection of the street running along the bank. Despite the complex dialogue between reflections, the eye is capable of delving into the crater of the central section, which brings to mind abruptly shortened systems of one-point perspective, where various components of the picture become stabilized and find their spatial expression on a surface. Is this sort of work creating a constructivist vision of reality, shocking with its masterly illusionism, or is it exposing this illusionism? Is it encouraging us to tear away the veil of delusion and to question what we see, what is hidden behind it or, quite the opposite, is it glorifying the appearance for its artificial probability? There is no simple answer to these questions. The border between authenticity and mystification is liquid. We know that painting is a matter of convention, but photography is equally unreliable. The documentary credibility of photography is doubtful, and so is the referential value of the representation it provides. Everything relies on faith and determination, but these are hardly authoritative. Vision can be total, delusion absolute. To see means to perceive existence with one’s senses, to delude oneself, to dream of assimilating the essence. Perception is a dialogue with the visible, fantasizing – a struggle with the invisible. Both become embroiled in a multitude of silent meanings. Thus they avoid explicitness, successfully defending themselves against transparency of the emitted senses. Paintings are objectless, all paintings – not only the abstract ones. Viewing them is projecting a ready-made model or something previously assimilated upon their surfaces; it is a process of interpreting available existence. Visually pure paintings, paintings with no references, can only be seen with the eye because the mind will always burden them with pieces of memory. Only something that bears no resemblance to an object, and whose independence is existential, can be an autonomic picture of unblemished identity. There is no other mode, there are merely dependences. To immerse oneself in the visible is to enter a hall of intensive vividness, to accept the supremacy of vision, to multiply visual impressions in order to condense the reception of form, structure and colour. All this

can be experienced in the Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto, in the endlessly long, labyrinthine hallways constituted by thousands of torii. It is incredible. There is nothing to distract attention, nothing to keep the eyes away from more and more vanishing points of the orange tunnels. There is nothing there except them, or the passage they determine. One sees rows of torii in perspective, the rhythm of columns and beams, and the pulsating, rounded colour on the right, on the left and above. One is in the midst of the visible, absorbed up to the virtual horizon. All self-similar structures, regular panelling or evenly laid mosaics, inspire specific feelings, facilitating meditation on the one hand, and producing shimmering vision and illusions of spatial order different from the authentic one. Mosaic surfaces may seem to fall in or to rise, to bend or to bulge. Structures levitate evenly. It might be that this phenomenon is the product of a successful union of the spirituality of art and the divinity of mathematics as old Jewish and Arabic wise men understood it. The examples are countless, starting with the simplest – hundreds of cubes put together, neither concave nor convex, constituting an ancient form of the Necker cube. Many variants of them, in different scales, can be seen in Pompeii, in the churches of Rome, Florence and Venice. They are a method of provoking an erroneous line of thinking caused by misinterpretation of an image, its colours, values, contrasts and shadows. Disruptions and distortions are the product of perception which supports seeing but also causes confusion. In the case of the Necker cube the brain is helpless, it cannot decide which impression is right and the figure seems to be turning one way or the other. This endless alteration of appearance – the shape is seen from the left and from above or from the right and from beneath – is the result of the fact that two different interpretations are recognized as correct in the brain. The oldest mosaics, decoration in the form of an ornament or an image with a very long tradition, were created five thousand years ago. They were found in Uruk, the biblical Erech, in the courtyard and the hall of columns of a temple. Popular in Greece and Rome, also known in Early Christian, Byzantine and Islamic art, they have survived in floors, domes, apses and vaults. One of the techniques is called azulejo. Mosaic compositions are created of thin, glazed ceramic tiles, mostly square ones. They often cover entire walls and floors in churches, monasteries, palaces, gardens and apartments. The scenes they depict are historical or mythological, but one can also find abstract compositions and geometrical plaiting.

Superb ceramic mosaics decorate the walls of mosques and Mauritian palaces; they can be admired in Catholic chapels and churches in the form of stained glass windows. Geometrical forms dominate as they facilitate meditation. And they are what Yannig Hedel is particularly interested in. He attempts to present the formal continuity of different eras in visual terms. A set of panels he created is titled “Suites cordouanes”. Each includes elements-quotations from Arabic art alongside Andalusian azulejos; from Judeo-Christian art alongside stained glass windows and belfries; and finally from contemporary art alongside details of modernist architecture from the 1930s. Constructed of components of different provenience, his sequential montages form cohesive wholes as they have been carefully selected and combined. They are like sentences made of separate words. The method applied by Hedel exposes the power of compiling photographic quotes. Each displays another fragment of a surface or a space and yet they look inseparable. Architectural motifs in different scales, seen from different perspectives, are united as an image of one object existing in a mysterious, many-layered space. The reception of the Necker cube and many similar phenomena may be regarded as a type of visual anagram. Instead of shifting the letters in a word, when we get “meat” out of “team”, concavity and convexity are shifted. The simultaneousness of seeing something in two different ways is also experienced in the process of perception of a surface and a space, and – strictly speaking – the illusion of a surface and the illusion of a space. Such experiences contain the lighting up of aspects, to use Wittgenstein’s words. This occurs when truth and probability clash, when the concept of images as an objective recording of what is seen and the rejection of suspicions that imagined worlds do exist are confronted. The mind has to constantly deal with the dilemma whether schemes encoded in the consciousness and established conventions transform an illusion into a false reality, whether the appearance of something is a proof of what it really is like.

SPACE OR ART WHAT SHOULD FASCINATE IN A MUSEUM On an aesthetic experience in modern museum space Kamila Kłudkiewicz

Museums used to, and in principle still should, serve the purpose of presenting works of art. However, because they are architectural objects themselves, in which space is arranged in a specific manner, two, often clashing, aesthetic factors have been distinguished within them – the aesthetics of exhibited works of art and the aesthetics of exhibition spaces. This distinction can be seen in various ways. The issue of how that dichotomy works in modern museums could be one of them. What is more fascinating in a museum – the displayed item or its surroundings? In the second half of the the 20th century, in museums all over the world a trend appeared that can be briefly summed up in one sentence: the museum space started to aspire to be a work of art itself. Previously the main goal of an exhibition was to help expose the main qualities of the exhibited works. Claes Oldenburg stated that “museums should be simple and majestic, separated from everything else.”1 In this way he expressed, perhaps unwittingly, his hidden longing for the “museum – temple of arts” 1 M. Pabich, O kształtowaniu muzeum sztuki. Przestrzeń piękniejsza od przedmiotu, Katowice 2007, p. 229.

MAXXI, National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome. Photo: M. Skorwider

Centre of Contemporary Art in Toruń, fragment of the facade. Photo: W. Olech

from the beginning of the 19th century. It seemed simple for an artist’s life to be immortalized when his work, having been placed in a museum pantheon, had attained glory and the possibility to be contemplated by visitors. One hundred years later, however, a wish to see works of art just for their pure and sterile quality was included in the idea of the “White Cube”, which implied elimination of any context from museum space. The aforementioned forms of how exhibitions worked gave way to a different approach in the second half of the 20th century, and the relation between the displayed item and museum space became more ambiguous. The following cases based on that statement can be differentiated: a situation when space strips displayed items of their paramount importance in the aesthetic experience; a situation when the displayed item and space can both lose their aesthetic value; a situation when both elements complement each other. The first distinctive form of museum space usurping the main aesthetic role in a museum is the case when museum space becomes more important than the displayed works of art. This happens most of all when architecture decides how the collection is exhibited and the relation between space and the work of art is not equal. Kirk Varnedoe, director

of MoMA, once emphatically said: “I feel sorry for buildings in which architecture dominates the paintings. Many newly created museums have been arranged like Musée d’Orsay, in a theatrical way. Only corners were left for paintings.”2 The theatricality of arrangement mentioned above was originated in Musée d’Orsay and it constitutes one of the forms of domination of space over exhibit. Another twentieth-century trend became much more popular and desired: founding museums in which the building itself is a true work of art and the collection is pushed into the background. In such a situation, the attractiveness of architecture and arranged space takes first place in the aesthetic experience of a viewer. It’s an impression that appears outside as well as inside the museum. The buildings of Guggenheim Foundation museums became examples of the dominant role of space, starting from Frank Lloyd Wright’s New York Guggenheim Museum. Its internal space had been subordinated to architectural designs, making that spiral, streamlined building a recognizable symbol of the foundation, but first of all a work of modern architecture. The spiral effect dominates the interior, absorbing the attention of the viewer and determining his path. It’s so recognizable that 2 A. Kiciński, Muzea – instrumenty ekspozycji czy świątynie?, [in:] “Muzealnictwo”, 2001, no. 43, p. 71.

photos from inside the museum significantly show a lack of proper exhibits – works of art. Paintings hung on the walls are just a background. Space is most important. The interior of an unrealized museum designed by Frank Gehry for the Guggenheim Foundation was supposed to function similarly. The second case uses references to commercial spaces by museum institutions. Is aesthetic experience possible in such a situation? Maybe the result of using that kind of practice is the unattractiveness of impression? Let’s leave these questions without unambiguous answers. It is still unknown how that museum romance with commerce will end up and who will benefit from it – museum or consumer? The discussed situation takes place when the museum exhibition discreetly draws from the experiences of shopping centres. Museum space becomes similar to a shop window – spotlight brings painting out of the shadow, just like an elegant dress catches the eye in an exclusive boutique. The entrance to museum halls is preceded by advertisements with magnified fragments of famous paintings in the same way advertisements of specific products fight for our attention among hundreds of others. The Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej in Łódź, thanks to its new building, condemned itself to a similar, perhaps victorious, fight. The proximity of the “Manufaktura” shopping centre, a kingdom of consumerism in Łódź, may affect the exhibition policy of the museum (although it doesn’t have to). The influence of the Museum of Modern Art building in Warsaw is planned in a somewhat similar way. According to the winning project by Christian Kerez, exhibition space on the ground floor will be visible from the street. Art, like products in a shop window, will be visible for passers-by. Moreover, in the inside of the building, that project

proposes elements of the third, most desired, though rarely achieved, discussed case. It is a “noble interplay” of space surrounding a work of art and the aesthetic experiences provided by that work. An enormous “hall of grand projects” on the upper floor of the museum aspires to achieve that. Huge and high space will indeed allow for various arrangements. The question is how they will blend with the hall covered with a ceiling resembling a barrel vault, which draws associations with a temple. Together with lighting shown on projects it may lead to the domination of aesthetics of space over displayed works of art. An example of perfect interplay of the discussed aesthetics was the retrospective exhibition of Louis Kahn, held in the Pompidou Centre in 1992, which went down in the history of reflections on exposition. The author of the exhibition, Arata Isozaki, arranged the space on the basis of a plan of Kahn’s unrealized project – Mikveh Israel synagogue. Louis Kahn’s works – plans, drawings, models, photos and videos – were shown within it. Arrangement of the exhibition, which in this case supplemented the presented works, was of course easier in a place like the Pompidou Centre, where the Great Gallery is an open space with glass walls and without any pillars, divisions or partition walls. Jean Tinguely Museum in Basel, designed by Mario Botta, can also be considered as an attempt to arrange the interplay of museum space and works of art. The briefly described relations between aesthetics existing within a museum clearly show how strongly museum space began to affect the viewer in the second half of the 20th Century, often aspiring for a leading role in a museum spectacle. It became a fact and the indicated trends show that nothing will change in that matter in the near future.

Massimo Bartolini, “Heart in a hand”, installations, 2011. Centre of Contemporary Art in Toruń. Photo: W. Olech

Interior of MACRO, Museo dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Arte Contemporanea Roma, Rome. Photo: M. Skorwider

Mies van der Rohe, Berlin Neuenational Galerie, Berlin. Photo: M. Skorwider

ARCHITECTURAL MAQUETTES AND MODELS BETWEEN VISIONS AND DIY Anna Markowska

Mr Wiggin, an architect from “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”, presented a maquette of his project to the potential sponsors because, thanks to a scaleddown model, it was easier for him to mention the advantages of the building while influencing the client’s imagination. The sponsors who are supposed to invest in a residential block are informed – while looking at the model – that in a soundproof corridor a conveyor with rotating knives at the end and special spouts for blood have been built. Asked if he is proposing to slaughter the tenants, the architect answered in a surprised way: “Does that not fit in with your plans?” and added that his design is a true marvel in which there is no blood on the walls and flesh doesn’t fly out of the windows. Wiggin is a hopeless dreamer chasing the most fantastic ideas. The second architect, Leavey, showed a model of a 28-story residential block with 280 apartments. Leavey described the advantages of reinforced concrete and the absence of inflammable materials, but his words were contradicted by the model falling apart in his hands and a sudden fire. He calmly concluded that the structure would have to be slightly refined. The investors had a different opinion which they expressed in the following words: “If we make sure the tenants are of light build and if the weather’s on our side, we don’t need to put the costs up.” Leavey could safely be the Polish Liwiński: a super macho man from the period of the People’s Republic of Poland who could build a house, construct a tractor and have a moment of hesitation only when it came to sex toys, because he was afraid of a local priest. The two architects from “Monty Python” represent two different approaches to building architectural models. The first of them wants to put into practice the most crazy, visionary ideas, and follow his dreams. The second is a type of handyman (bricoleur) creating his ideas on the basis of what he has at his fingertips. Of course, it doesn’t mean he can’t dream. However, generally it is hard to dream away chasing fantasies and have your feet on the ground at the same time. By making models of cities, buildings, settlements or battles, the viewer is placed in the comfortable position of someone who is able to acquire full knowledge and power – because of the scale and proportions of 1:100 or of 1:200, everything is seen from above, from a position of a controller or an overseer. Let’s take a closer look at visionaries who did not spare the opportunity to joke about ideal access and a perfect overview of the world. Because in what position does the fact of watching hell from above

Thomas Schütte, part of an exhibition in Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, May 2010. Photo: A. Markowska’s archive

place us? Lucifer’s himself? Wonderful abattoir – the masterpiece of Wiggin – isn’t the most hideous model in the world. The apocalyptic “Fucking Hell” by the brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman is. You won’t find so much blood, violence and so many corpses anywhere else, even though Wiggin tried really hard. Unfortunately, he hadn’t met such amateurs of his works as Charles Saatchi or François Pinault, and (above all) his vision was not that bold!

To make a model of hell is somewhat like racing with the artistic visions of Dante Alighieri and homicidal plans of Adolf Hitler at the same time. The Chapmans’ sardonic wit made Hitler perform in the role of an artist quietly painting a picture among horrors of war carried out by 30,000 Nazi figurines and their victims. All scenes take place in nine rectangular showcases made of glass; as if the evil of the world could be closed in a museum exhibition.

Black humour and obsession with the dark side of humanity in the Chapmans’ works combines with a challenge thrown down to the unimaginable, and thus unrepresentable. The Chapmans show the stitches of their ideas: boys playing war, seen pictures... As if they repeated after DidiHuberman that even though we can use only what’s conventional, we have to reach to the pictures “no matter what”, we have to give a shape to the unimaginable. The Silesian festival Art Cameralis recently prepared a phenomenal exhibition of the Chapmans’ works. Anyone who hadn’t previously seen “Fucking Hell” in London’s White Cube or in Venice at Pinault’s could see their other works in a brilliant exhibition “W królestwie bezrozumności” (In a kingdom of mindlessness) held in the Rondo Sztuki gallery in Katowice. The visions of Anna and Patrick Poirier are based on the Utopian ideas of Ledoux and Boullée. They make up archaeological sites and non-existent civilizations, raise relief maps and 3D models of an undiscovered past that has not yet existed, as if the past was only a construct of our beliefs. Likewise, Charles Simmonds reminds us of archaeological fiction and purposeful distance to

scientific disputes. Science silently turns into art, concept, aesthetic image... Unknown transforms into that what we know from recent experiences and comparisons. In the past a model couldn’t be a work of art – moving it to that category shows how artists argue with all-knowing scientists. Thomas Schütte, on the other hand, is a person that’s hard to link with visionaries as well as handymen. Boldness and scale of production connect him with the first ones while lack of full satisfaction links him with the others. His models are like words with lost meanings – empty and alien, like spectres. On the side of bricoleurs there are definitely more Poles. It shouldn’t be a surprise, not so long ago DIY skills were essential for living. Men were building sheds on allotment gardens; Adam Słodowy and his DIY lessons on TV are still a classic today. Monika Sosnowska most probably knows that world only from stories, but in her art she seems to hold its warmth and its nightmares. We watch that with a tear in the eye and sometimes with fear – when we enter inside the models of buildings, labyrinths, modernistic blocks and clever, although nonfunctional, structures. There is no control over space in Sosnowska’s works – the models are often so

Szymon Kobylarz, “Super-unit”, 2007. Photo: A. Markowska’s archive

big that they become a trap, and we become the hostages of imposed concept. It is a valuable lesson! Janek Simon seemingly refers to a different tradition – his unsuccessful, crooked model of a summer house doesn’t concern fallen concepts of modernism but their peripheries where one could find works of art that didn’t aspire to greatness, and which were an antidote to “great plans” of architects and town-planners. In 2006 Monika Sosnowska showed in MoMA “Makieta dziury” (Maquette for The Hole) made in the ceiling. It was just the rubble left after making the hole. That, in turn, makes us aware of the fact that we are making maquettes for “worthy” and “respectable” objects, as if we couldn’t learn with time what remains of the auras of those qualities... Szymon Kobylarz watched at Katowice’s “Super Unit” with anger, symbolically setting it on fire, just like it was vandalized in reality by its tenants (recently it has been spectacularly revitalized, maybe because of the influence of the artist?). The models were supposed to be an ideal world but then the artist’s black humour entered. The devastated “Super-unit” is not a model in a perfect time, or outside of time, but a model put in the context of real people, real times, places and local frustrations. Another marvel of architecture of those times – “Falowiec” Wavy block in Gdańsk – was transformed by Julita Wójcik to a model made with a crochet needle. “Falowiec” gained a cosiness and intimacy of space impossible to realize in reality. It also became a comment to numerous terrible modifications typical for concrete blocks, like adding ugly decorations or painting the building with trashy colours just to make them more familiar. And that familiar means without any basic sense of beauty. Kama Sokolnicka doesn’t use “improper” materials either, and instead of great narrations she introduces micro-narrations to her quasi-models, for example of a family. Maciek Kurak had a completely different idea for a maquette of the block at 20b Puszczyka Street. The model was placed next to the original and was only slightly smaller than the real block. The scale didn’t allow viewers to take a look from an ideal perspective full of superiority. Even though slightly smaller, the model still dominated and was impossible to conceptualize. It became a clumsy object, a problem that no one knows how to solve. And that, I think, is a good summary: maquettes made by artists sometimes painfully remind us how old dreams are becoming a reality. And dreams, as everything, are sometimes scary, stupid, or even embarrassing. The ideal world of models thrown into the real world perfectly depicts the horror of our dreams.

The Chapman brothers, part of an exhibition “In the Realm of the Senseless” in Rondo Sztuki Gallery, Katowice, January 2011. Photo: A. Markowska’s archive

“TO MS. MARTA HERFORD” Interview with Friederike Fast, curator of Marta Herford Museum Mateusz Maria Bieczyński

Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: You started your work in Marta Herford Museum under the previous director Jan Hoet. Can you tell us something about the origins of this institution? Friederike Fast: The very beginnings are not familiar to me, since I was not working here at that time. I joined the team after a period of major controversy. Talking about it would be a kind of historical reconstruction. I can, nevertheless, say something about the creation of the museum from an external perspective. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: So, what was the most important causative factor that led to its erection? Friederike Fast: It seems to me that it was people’s faith and determination that such an idea had a chance of success, and a coincidence that people from the world of politics and the arts could think in the same direction. Everyone wanted to create a place for art in the future, and it worked. Not every town such as Herford can be proud of having such an institution. This is a completely different effect than any other museum in any other town, or even big city. Such a museum does not seem quite natural for a small town. The inaugural exhibition showed that with full force – it turned out that the political views on its existence were still different. For me personally, it was an amazing experience,

Frank Gehry, Marta Herford Museum. Courtesy of Marta Herford © Thomas Mayer

Exhibition “Atelier und Küche”. Photo © Hans Schröder / MARTa Herford

because I was born in Bielefeld, just a 15-minute drive away. I grew up there, and my story associated with art also began there. Hence, it was something very exciting for me that here, in Herford, such an institution was established. It was a great moment for this region, which has changed a lot. And I am very happy that I personally could be part of it. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: It’s a very interesting aspect. How would you rate the impact of this institution? How important was it specifically for the region? Friederike Fast: This museum has become a landmark of the town for sure. It has made it known outside the region. It has made the town special, distinguishing it among others. At the same time it allowed the companies, which were already known elsewhere to be associated with this region. It was certainly also of significant importance for the residents of the town, who have gained the opportunity to have contact with large cultural events without the need to go elsewhere. The museum’s name was also not without significance for this process. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: Exactly! Everyone will definitely wonder what it actually means? Friederike Fast: Marta is a common first name of a woman. The very idea of giving it to the museum is not entirely clear. Certainly, there is “art” in it. (Laughter)

Hence, it is the right place to deal with art precisely. It is this hidden reference to art that I treasure most in the name of the museum. A special attachment to this name evolved with time. We still receive many letters addressed “to Ms. Marta Herford”. In this sense, “Marta” has become a kind of brand – a recognizable mark of the institution and the institution itself. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: The name is certainly not the only reason for the specific reputation of your institution? Friederike Fast: Definitely not, apart from the exhibitions that we organize and the content related aspects of our activity, the very distinctive and unique architecture plays a vital role. It also has a great impact on the visitors and their number. Experiencing this architecture itself and in conjunction with the presented works, for which it is a setting, is something special, and we receive confirmation of that directly in the evaluation of the public. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: So, after a time of scandals and social objection, has harmony been achieved? Friederike Fast: I think that the initial disputes over the institution were inextricably linked to the initial phase of working of an institution that itself seemed controversial to many. People who were convinced

of the advisability of establishing this institution were really few, and it is they who, thanks to the efforts undertaken, have led to the realization of this vision. I think that today both – the creation of the institution itself, as well as a broad opposition to its erection – would not be possible. All this resulted from coincidences and from circumstances of the moment. This museum has provided great opportunities to change the social consciousness which has never been in so many other places. The museum is a good tool to do so. For this reason, among others, the first director could afford to push the idea of a controversial institution. I think that it is thanks to such a colourful history, among other things, that Marta has become a well-formed and well-developed institution today. In this way, it is still perceived from the outside as a place setting new viewing perspectives of contemporary art. I am so committed to this project that it is hard for me to recall the time when I started working here. But from today’s perspective it seems to me that the museum can function efficiently, be recognized and occupy an important place on the cultural map without having a registered office in a political or geographical centre. It may allow local resorts to participate in international exchange. That’s why I think it’s Marta’s time. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: So, to you Marta appears as a kind of holistic work, “Gesamtkunstwerk”, in which art meets architecture? Friederike Fast: Of course, we can’t talk about the museum in these categories in the direct sense, primarily because the architecture and what is presented inside does not come from the same creator. However, indirectly, we can do so. Artists invited by us to cooperate take up a direct dialogue with the architecture. They creatively interact with it. For there is no opportunity to completely ignore the architectural context. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: The architecture is therefore a link... Friederike Fast: Of course, it is. Art evolves, it changes constantly. Today we very often present installations that require more space than traditional artwork in a classic format, such as paintings or graphics. The architectural setting designed by Gehry provides that space. Besides, some of the works that we present here were created specifically for this space, so often seem impossible to move to another location. They are a kind of site-specific museum art, though of course only in the formal sense. For this genre would also require interaction

with the historical context of the presentation, and here I mean only the place, as such, in terms of architecture. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: Is it so, then, that a modern museum with its interesting architectural setting is changing the traditional relation between the work of art and the place of its presentation? Is it changing the role of an institution dealing with art? Friederike Fast: We should rather ask a different question. We should ask if we have ever in history dealt with walls, which only presented works of art? I think exhibition space has always been a challenge in itself. It has always been a condition of the reception of what’s inside. Even the cabinets, that is, the first museum spaces, interacted with the objects stored in them. There were also many critical texts written about the very idea of the “white cube”. From today’s perspective it is not seen as a completely neutral space. This is not a concept without meaning. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: You have touched upon an interesting problem. When we see the work of contemporary architects designing contemporary art museums, we have the impression that they implement their theoretical concepts that do not necessarily correspond to the practice of the institution itself. How does this problem appear from the perspective of an employee of Marta Herford Museum? Friederike Fast: The architecture of museums sometimes seems to be a sort of provocation. In museology today, there is discussion on the costs of such a project – that’s in the first place. In general, little is said about the functionality of already created buildings and spaces. At first glance, it may seem that everything is not always in its place, but it’s only because it’s unconventional architecture. The so-called “practicality” is certainly also the subject of architects’ thought. From the point of view of someone working in the museum, however, the case never appears so complex. The space in which one is to work is treated more as a challenge. One has to learn it. One has to learn to deal with it. Thus, with each new project I gain new experiences for the future as to how to proceed with this architecture and how to make better decisions and choices. This is not a fight with the architecture, but rather working with it. The integration of the exhibition with the museum space is, therefore, a natural process. On the one hand, the exhibition has to blend in with the architecture, but if we see it objectively, each museum has “a problem of space” – it is too small, too large, etc. It is always

shaped in some way we have to face, and it is never neutral. Also in this sense, the architectural context of our museum is not an issue directed against art. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: Marta Herford Museum is, therefore, an institution focused on confrontation and dialogue. How does this assumption work in practice? Friederike Fast: The concepts of dialogue and confrontation can be understood at different levels. At the institutional level, they rely on cooperation and exchange with other institutions. Some exhibitions, therefore, come into being as a result of cooperation with other exhibition houses. Most exhibitions, however, come into existence as a result of an institutional dialogue between employees. These exhibitions are trying to interact with the environment by creating harmony between architecture and the works presented. At this level, we are also trying to encourage the local community to be active in the fields of art. A project carried out in the town in collaboration with Dennis Oppenheim may be an example of this. The artist created a work of sculpture on one of the central crossroads. It was the first edition of the five-stage program of building five town gates for Herford. It was our contribution to the discussion on the presence of contemporary art in public spaces. The idea proved to be very good. It was seen as a kind of local festival, which was attended by many residents of our town. Thus, it seems to me that the museum is not only a public activity in the classical sense, realizing only exhibition purposes, but also a place for contemplation and the exchange of ideas, discussions on various topics, a place where the viewer can find a place for their own personal reflection. And again an important role in this process is played by architecture.

separated due to their function of art contemplation and maintenance. From here you can probably speak about the relation between the exterior and interior in negative terms, but today’s question about the museum and the social function of art is not limited only to that issue. For there arises the need to ensure the viewer a place for personal and quiet contemplation of art, hence the separation is not a fault. The Marta Plaza, the forum and our entrance hall acts as the open space, where meetings and discussions with art are also organized. It is the architecture that invites the viewer to the interior. It is this space that carries out representational and promotional functions. It is a trademark. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: So, Marta does not need a mascot? Friederike Fast: Definitely not. It is the mascot itself. (Laughs) Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: Thank you very much. Friederike Fast: You’re welcome.

Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: Here the question arises, how is the space formed, are the presentation spaces accessible directly from the street or closed and fenced off? This arrangement may be crucial for the model implemented by the institution. Friederike Fast: Of course, from this point of view Marta Herford Museum can be seen as closed – for it has no windows facing the street. But we need to take into account the diversity of space owned by us. The spaces on the first floor are very different from those on the ground floor. The spaces on the ground floor, which also have a large size, are not homogeneous. The main exhibition spaces had to be

FREE SPACE OF REDEFINITION Interview with Michael Kröger, curator of Marta Herford Museum Mateusz Maria Bieczyński

Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: How long have you been a curator at Marta Herford Museum? Michael Kröger: Over 10 years. Since 2002. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: At that time, just at the beginning, Jan Hoet was the director here. This museum under his leadership had a somewhat different character. It was not without the interest of the legal court. Michael Kröger: That’s true. In the beginning, there was an exhibition of a Norwegian artist, Bjarne Melgaard. There was a charge of “pornography and suicide in art” connected with it. It was a difficult event for the region. People in Herford are a tendentiously conservative society, and it was too much for them. It was more than a challenge. Before this museum was established, however, there was no tradition of contemporary art exhibition in the town at all. Classic modernism was the latest that was known, and everything that had anything to do with the real image of contemporary art was not understood. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: There was no preparation, therefore, no savvy audience ... Michael Kröger: No, there was not, in any event. The exhibition of Melgaard was, therefore, a quite clear – and even quite consciously planned by Jan Hoet – shock therapy. This was, naturally, of great interest to the media, which constantly had something to write about here, but for the society, which still did not know anything about contemporary art, it was a very difficult event. In the meantime, however, all that has changed. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: In retrospection, however, those events appear to be a difficult time and from the point of view of the museum employees it meant working under constant pressure. Michael Kröger: Sure enough, constantly there were situations where the idea of the institution had to be explained and defended, and at one point it was no longer about art as such, but the legitimacy of the museum’s existence. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: But are those times gone? Michael Kröger: Yes, reality has changed in the meantime very clearly. Such an exhibition as Bjarne Melgaard’s, with its brutal format reaching under the skin, was never showed again later.

Courtesy of Marta Herford © Hans Schröder

Michael Kröger: The marriage of art and industry was initially only on paper, but it never really came to fruition. The few attempts that we have conducted here to work together with regional manufacturers, including those of furniture, could be much more better and more innovative. There were no institutionalized forms of cooperation ever. With one exception: the cooperation with RecyclingBörse! Herford is such an example of a mutual win-win situation. The combination of small but intelligent design exhibitions of Marta and the innovative ecological design projects of RecyclingBörse! demonstrates a successful way in the next future. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: In what direction, therefore, is the institution heading under the leadership of current director Roland Nachtigäller?

Jan Hoet. Courtesy of Marta Herford Museum

Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: Jan Hoet wanted to build an institution based on confrontation, without avoiding violent discourse. Today’s Marta, however, is heading in a different direction. Michael Kröger: The situation that took place ten years ago was new to this place, for it was about causing a shock. It was part of the concept of Jan Hoet to awaken people. He used shock as a medium – a way to deal with art. Part of it was difficult, it was also a bit brutal, but sometimes you can get people to think only when you shake them. As Joseph Beuys used to say: “you have to hit his head on the table.” And then one will be sober. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: To paraphrase Nietzsche: ‘‘If one philosophises with a hammer ...’’ Michael Kröger: Yes, it is a quite brutal form of conversation. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: Was Jan Hoet the direct cause of controversy in the museum? Michael Kröger: Yes, everything was customized here. Hoet himself was, obviously, aware of that. He saw himself as a significant, quite well-known curator and partly a missionary and a therapist but also at the same time the spirit of the experiment. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: Lets talk about the idea of combining art and industry. Which experiences did Marta make?

Michael Kröger: Now the focus is on the exhibition program itself. We work out a question about new aspects, problems, new ways of questioning the art, which we can discover in the reality of artistic life but which, in fact, is not presented by other exhibition houses. So, we are very, very open and very curious about what is going on, and we constantly aim at indicating those contexts of contemporary art that have not yet been the subject of interest. For example, next year we are planning a major exhibition on visions in art. This is a problem scrolling through the entire history of art, which, however, hasn’t been developed in the current practice of museum studies. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: So, you could say that you have a quite effectively working exhibition workshop here ... Michael Kröger: For each exhibition we give ourselves time to prepare everything well and discuss. Thus, we are oriented towards processes, that is, we look at the history of exhibition, and we search for loopholes in the narrative art history, which we then try to fill. This interest was also reflected in the concept of combining old and new art. When a topic is developed, and it shows that within a coherent concept there is still a place to present older works, and time allows that – as we need to be aware that works for exhibition from other museums should be ordered a year in advance – then we take such efforts. One could say, in a sense, that it has become our speciality – we have combined old art and new art regularly for about 4-5 years. The idea behind such a combination is that they form a single, cohesive narrative whole. This combination,

in which contemporary art gains its reflection in the older art, is an action which has made a name for Marta Herford Museum. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: When you look back, what do you think is particularly important from what has already been done? Michael Kröger: In the days of Jan Hoet I worked on large thematic exhibitions that we curated together. One of them was the exhibition “Marta schweigt Die Kunst der Stille von Duchamp bis heute”, which dealt with the problem of silence and peace in contemporary art. Another exhibition was a project dedicated to the art of the architect Richard Neutra, or the exhibitions “Asche und Gold” in this year. They were widely publicized major exhibition projects, which required a huge amount of work because of their extent, but their implementation was really satisfying. The project on “Vision”, which we’ve been working on for over a year, also belongs to the exciting tasks. What is particularly exciting is the long time that I’m given for the content related preparation, which makes this project unique and allows a comprehensive explanation of all aspects related to the exhibition and to fit it to our architectural setting. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: Is the setting helpful in devising an exhibition? To what extent does it determine the curatorial choices?

Michael Kröger: This is a very good question, because Gehry’s architecture which we are experiencing here, goes out to meet the human way of perceiving, as it has something biomorphic in itself. The experience of space gives a sense of familiarity in different rooms, as they are opened, but at the same time they provide a clear orientation. This results in a really unique combination. It has very little in common with the classically understood “white cube”, and it also makes it necessary to consider the way of dealing with architecture anew with each show. The central part of the museum, called the cathedral is built in such a way that it becomes necessary to build additional internal architecture for the exhibition, because otherwise you can get lost in the “infinite” extent of this room. However, the greatest victory of this architecture is in the fact that it offers a space that can be redefined. Each exhibition is therefore a challenge posed to the possibilities of spatial presentation. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: Is the curator ... the creator, then? Michael Kröger: Yes ... yes ... he or she has to give a spatial logic to an exhibition. He or she is involved in the exhibition, which must have a specific form. Mateusz Maria Bieczyński: Thank you very much. Michael Kröger: Thank you.

Frank Gehry, Marta Herford Museum. Courtesy of Marta Herford © Thomas Mayer

CORPOREAL NATURE OF NANO SPACE Interview with Victoria Vesna Dobrila Denegri

Dobrila Denegri: You have been involved for quite some time in projects that connect science, technology and art, and that have a strong experimental and interactive character. Before we start speaking about “NANO”, a show you had at LACMA in 2003, I would like to ask you about previous projects; in what way did they lead to what you are doing now? Victoria Vesna: My work has always been focused on exploring ways our bodies extend out socially and through technology. “Bodies INCorporated” (1996) was anticipating how we incorporate ourselves in this huge machine network, the Internet. I questioned how we project ourselves in this space, construct our bodies that are essentially made of information. I started to think that the representation of the avatar as a human (or an animal, or even plant) is an outdated idea, just as cyberspace architectures based on our bodily designed buildings are. So my focus shifted on thinking how one would represent bodies of information and I started to deconstruct the incorporated body into a no-body, that was based on time and connections to other bodies (minds). I moved into thinking of how communities are created on the Internet and wondered how one would connect people who have no time to be online. Just like so many people I knew, I had less and less time and questioned how come the machines that promised to save us time actually made us more busy than ever. The constructed time we live in is not working very well for us. We have moved away too far from any biological/analogue measurements of change to nanoseconds, and we are overwhelmed with information, processed much faster than we have ever been built to absorb. As our bodies are reduced to large data-sets, we are entering into an entirely different age and need to start rebelling against the industrial/product(ive) time. The project entitled “n 0 time” dealt with the amount of time that none of us have. With this project I wanted to explore the notion of time and how we perceive it in our physical space and how in “virtual” space. I discovered that there is a huge difference. To emphasise this aspect I decided to develop the work for the screen, to make it as sort of a screen saver that runs on an idle computer, constantly contributing the computer’s amount of wasted time to our central “n 0 time” database. Screen-saving participants could contribute their own “n 0 time” to either their very own “n 0 time bodies”, or those of other people. This was called “n 0 time-sharing”. One could measure how long they have been away from his or her computer by watching how much denser the “n 0 time body”

Victoria Vesna, “Zero@Wavefunction”, 2011. Photo: Centre of Contemporary Art in Toruń

has grown. At the end, the “n 0 time body” implodes. Here I am mentioning “n 0 time body”, but in this work it didn’t have any resemblance with the shape of the human body at all. I wanted to propose shedding the idea of the “body” in cyberspace and starting over by building a tetrahedron. I find this shape fascinating for a number of reasons, from which I could just briefly name a few. First, one would be that the tetrahedron is the first case of insideness and outsideness in one. Second, it is unique in being its own dual, and third, it has the greatest resistance to an applied load. It is the only system that cannot “dimple”, reacting to an external force, it must either remain unchanged or turn completely “inside out”. In the work these tetrahedral “n 0 time bodies” were formed of lines and words, of intervals and memes as elements which defined their morphology and dynamics of their movement. Memes are like contagious ideas that replicate like a virus, passed on from mind to mind. They function the same way genes and viruses do, propagating through communication networks and face-to-face contact between people. The root of the word is “memetics”, a field of study which postulates that the meme is the basic unit of cultural evolution and examples of memes include melodies, icons, fashion statements or phrases, etc.

Dobrila Denegri: Can this work also be seen installed in the physical space? Can computer and net art be at the same time site-specific? Victoria Vesna:With “n 0 time”, I realised that it is extremely difficult to transpose a work created for the screen and for the Net in the physical space. Our perception of time in physical space is totally different from that in Internet space. Regarding sitespecificity, I consider most of my work site specific. “Data Mining Bodies” (1997) is work very strongly related to the place where it has been exhibited, which is a coal mine in Dortmund, Germany. I’d like to underline that physical space is really important to me. It is a vehicle for the “virtual” just as our body is for the “soul”. I cannot start work on an installation before I am in the space, feeling its specific quality. As far as the installation in the coal mine goes, it was created for a group show for which I was commissioned to do a piece that was connected to the Net. I first did some research about the site itself, then started thinking of the mine and data metaphorically. Zeche Zollern II/IV is a coal mine that ceased operations in the late 1950s and that had been recently converted into a museum dedicated to technology. In World War II, it was one of the largest Nazi shelters. The exhibition was a sort of celebration of the move from the Industrial Age to the Information Age and the artists were the

signifiers of this transition. I had a problem with this concept. There is no clean shift from one age to another and I did not want to participate in this idea. So I decided to challenge it by connecting it to the uneasy idea of data-mining bodies. “Data-mining” is a term used in computer science, traditionally defined as “information retrieval.” Many metaphors that refer to the physical act of mining, such as “drilling” or “digging,” are commonly used when discussing the activity of accessing information. What is striking, if not disturbing, when researching the practice of “data-mining” information (whether it be medical, statistical or business), is the “inhumanity”, the disassociation from the people who actually carry or contribute this information. Additionally, this was the year that the DNA was decoded and our biological genetic bodies were now data. With this in mind, my aim was to create a sitespecific piece that commented on the abstraction of information by looking at the notion of mining data in connection to the metaphorical representations of the human body, and the false notion that there had been a clear-cut shift from the Industrial to the Information Age. I felt that the site of the now defunct coal mine was ideal for delivering a message of warning about the dangerous aspects of mining bodies of people for data. Or, worse, reducing people to abstracted data. For this work I worked with a programmer from Holland who based a lot of his work on Buckminster Fuller’s philosophy of geometric space. We created tetrahedral, tensegrity bodies, with geometrical shapes that one could “mine through”. That meant that one could pull out information from them and get to know more about the space itself. Considering the fact that this coal mine was previously a Nazi shelter, it is not that you got happy news digging through this information. Dobrila Denegri: After “Data Mining Bodies” you carried out a work using cell phones and exploring interpersonal communicational patterns. What triggered this work? Victoria Vesna: This work was called “Cellular Trans Actions” and could be described as a sort of collective performance that focused on issues dealing with real time, physical space interruptions, and the performative aspects of everyday life. Instead of being asked to turn off their mobile phones, persons were asked to turn them on, exchange numbers and talk with each other in the same space, be it a conference room or exhibition space. Now, what I discovered and found quite interesting is that if a bigger group of people talk simultaneously on cell phones in the same room, apart from creating a quite chaotic situation,

they cause a breakdown in the phone network. Another interesting thing that emerged from the work I did with cell phones, satellites and phone networks concerns the very shape of the network, which resembles the structure of beehives. It has this hexagonal structure and our cities are actually split by this invisible hexagonal network. Dobrila Denegri: Hexagonal structures, beehives, tetrahedrons and tensegrity… all this leads us towards Buckminster Fuller. His work and ideas are interwoven in many ways with the kind of work you are doing. How did you become acquainted with his legacy? Victoria Vesna: Well, it was really through a fortunate meeting with his daughter, Allegra Snyder Fuller, who I met after one panel discussion and who introduced me to the amazing archive that he left. I became an artist in residence and was privileged to see his unpublished work, writings, library, and the “Chronofiles”. He was a man obsessed with “cataloguing himself” and this was interesting for me on its own merit. Dobrila Denegri: Buckminster Fuller is still a very inspiring figure, both for his work and for his really visionary and unorthodox ideas. There is one quote that could be easily associated to the kind of work that you are doing, and it goes: “The more advanced science gets, the closer it is to art; the more advanced art gets, the closer it is to science.” What is it about Fuller that you find particularly inspiring and important for your own work? Victoria Vesna: Here I’d like to answer by quoting Buckminster Fuller’s thought that I recognize as absolute truth and a guiding path for my work: “The great aesthetics which will inaugurate the 21st century will be the utterly invisible quality of intellectual integrity. The integrity of the individual dealing with scientific discoveries, the integrity of the individual dealing with conceptual realisation of comprehensive inter-relatedness of all events. The integrity of the individual dealing with only experimentally obtained information regarding invisible phenomena and, finally, integrity of all those who formulate visibly within their respective minds and invisibly with the only mathematically dimensionable, advanced technology on behalf of their fellow man and woman”. So, you see, I love this stuff! When I was conducting research in his archives, I looked to all those unrealised projects, and I thought they were wild, crazy ideas! And really, why do we have to accept that our homes and houses have to be just squares and rectangles? Why not like our ancient

Victoria Vesna, “Nanomandala”, 2004. Photo: V. Vesna’s archive

teepee and domes? We somehow totally lost the circle and became disconnected from nature and from geometry, too. Dobrila Denegri: Most of all he liked to define himself as an “Anticipatory Design Scientist” and isn’t it curious that it is truly so; now he has even become connected to nano science? Victoria Vesna: Oh, yes, it is such a wonderful story that he in a way bonds us with this new dimension we are entering in. For nano science, Buckminsterfullerene was a crucial discovery just two years after Richard Buckminster Fuller died. Till 1985 we knew only about two molecules of carbon: graphite and diamond, when the scientists Sir Harry Kroto, Rick Smalley, Bob Cur and their team discovered a third one, winning a Nobel prize for that. In the time when they were carrying out research, instruments were not so strong to enable them to decode the structure of a molecule, so one of them remembered the structure of the great Dome constructed by Buckminster Fuller for the American Pavilion for Expo ‘67 in Montreal. It was certainly one of the most beautiful geodesic domes Buckminster Fuller ever constructed, and it had a hexagonal structure based on incredibly precise geometrical and mathematical calculations. Indeed, the structure played such an important role in the discovery of the third molecule of carbon, that it carries his name. I find this a really important story that links culture and science and shows how much artists anticipate the future. This molecule became really important for research linked to nano science and can be considered a symbol of nanotechnology today. The particularity of “Bucky Ball”, as it is called, is in its “cage” shape that allows manipulation, it allows the scientist to insert atoms of other elements into it, and this gives amazing potential for the creation of new materials and applications. A hundred years ago, when electricity was discovered, nobody could have imagined the kind of world we are living in today, and now we are in the same position, just at the beginning of a new period that we can’t imagine, we really can’t have a clue how the world will look in a hundred years. It is going to be equally outrageous and different from the way our predecessors were imagining the world we are living in. And this molecule called “Buckminsterfullerene” became a symbol of that. Dobrila Denegri: So through works like “n0 Time”, “Data mining Bodies”, “Cellular Trans Actions” and references to Buckminster Fuller we have come closer to the issue of nano science and your more recent work. So, how did it all start, what triggered your interest in nano technology?

Victoria Vesna: In 2001 I met Jim Gimzewski who had just arrived at UCLA from IBM in Zurich. I organized a panel discussion called “From Networks to Nanosystems”: about the relationship between art and nano science, I was excited about this idea but very few persons showed up, because nano is so much beyond visual, that almost automatically the question “why would we make this relationship between nano science and art at all?” would come up. But, I have to say that, in retrospect, the few people there were critical and got the immense paradigmic shift that was happening due to this new science. If you try to observe relationships between art and biotechnology, there is no problem, but nano? I insisted on having scientists in this panel, because to have just artists’ talking about art and nanoscience would not have worked. Jim showed immediate interest in taking part. I was amazed to see that his research was what I was reading about and he even had some of the same slides in his presentation – but from a completely different angle. He was working with Bucky Balls but never heard of Buckminster Fuller, so we immediately started with a very interesting exchange of ideas that turned into a prolific collaboration that continues seven years later. Dobrila Denegri: Nano, as the dimension beyond the visual realm, in connection to art, what kind of paradigm shift is it announcing? Victoria Vesna: First of all, let me try to describe the proportions of nano scale which is really beyond the visual realm, or rather, beyond optical microscopy. The word “nano” comes from the Greek word for dwarf. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, approximately 80,000 times thinner than a human hair. In this scale an atom is like a golf ball, a human finger like the Eiffel Tower. In order to manipulate matter this small, nanoscientists, chemists like Gimzewski but also others, use a scanning tunnelling microscope, or STM, that in fact he and his team built. It can’t actually see the nanoparticles. Instead, it feels them, and moves them around with an atomic size probe. So the first thing that is important is that you are feeling the molecular surface before you are able to visualise it. This is a big difference in the way we are getting information. It represents a really important shift from seeing to feeling. Most of our culture, and certainly our art culture, is about seeing. We are used to making judgements about someone’s look, clothes, cars and other commodities based on seeing, so now, to think that feeling could be the first step seems to me as a big leap. The second shift that nano brings is that it introduces the principle of “bottom-up” which is

exactly the principle of how nature works. It is the opposite procedure to the one we are using in our technological development, that is “top-down”. We started with big computers, and tried to make them smaller and smaller until we reached ridiculously small, and then we reached the limit. But if we go “bottom-up”, we can’t reach the point where we are forced to stop. On the contrary, “top-down” as the dominating principle of materialistic thinking, or of our political or social systems is not functioning so well any more. We can testify that everything concerning our political or administrative systems is falling apart and getting decentralised. What functions, on the other hand, are smaller groups that are coming together and linking up in the network. So “bottom-up” is another important paradigm shift. Dobrila Denegri: When you try to see, or actually to feel these small particles, what do you actually realise? Victoria Vesna: We have to have in mind that we are made of atoms and molecules, that all around us is also made of atoms and molecules, even the most solid matter. And when you go so deep into the structure of the matter you realise that there is nothing solid, at least not in the way we are used to thinking, there are just electron waves. What you realise is that there is actually empty space. This is so poetic, so Buddhistic! Scientists rarely perceive this poetry, but for me, as an artist, it is amazing to work with this unknown territory. Nanoscience is only at the beginning, so there is so much still to be discovered. But one thing is sure, nano will revolutionise our future. Dobrila Denegri: Your role, as the artist, is in a way to “translate” in visual forms what scientists are

working on, since they still seem to lack verbal or visual instruments to explain it properly? Victoria Vesna: It is amazing that scientists are using the lexicon of science fiction films to describe some of their research. What I realised is that we still have vocabulary from the Industrial Age applied to the totally new age that is unfolding in front of us, and for which we have to find new definitions. This new period is totally dematerialised, but this whole idea about empty space is still too foreign to us. Dobrila Denegri: This leads us to the “NANO” show that was held for the first time in LACMA – Los Angeles County Museum. With this show you tried to use tools of art to “visualise” some scientific concepts. What was the approach of the institution towards this collaborative project between you and the nano scientist Jim Gimzewski? How did you approach its realisation? Victoria Vesna: I should mention that this large exhibition that includes seven installations in a custom architectural space is installed until 2011 at the Singapore Science Museum, and most recently was exhibited at the FAAP museum in São Paulo, Brazil, with astonishing success. This is a relatively conservative museum and they had a record number of visitors – 164,000 during the 50 days that it was on show. The installations can be shown separately and they certainly have been travelling the world, all over Europe, Korea, China, India… But it all started 5 years ago when we were given a unique opportunity by LACMA to be “experimental space” or a laboratory. This was due to a programming vacuum that happened when the proposed renovation by Rem Koolhaas fell through – I really don’t think they would have ever taken

Victoria Vesna, “Fluid bodies”, 2004. Photo: V. Vesna’s archive

Victoria Vesna, “Zero@Wavefunction”, 2011. Photo: W. Kuberski

this kind of risk in a “business as usual” museum that plans so much in advance. So, it was probably meant to be and we put together a fantastic team from the media arts, sciences and even humanities. We worked with the architectural office of Johnston Marklee and Katherine Hayles, who published a book about the subject and contributed text to the exhibition. At the beginning it was not easy, we didn’t start to work in a team, but soon we understood that the only way to make this exhibition properly was to sit at the same table and work out things together. I really believe in collaboration and a sort of “collective” intelligence. The exhibition, as the outcome of this process was like a collective/ collaborative piece, as well as a hybrid of media arts, sculpture, architecture and science. But, at first, we would explain how we imagined installations and the architects would go in their studio and design the spaces. I felt quite uncomfortable with the idea of “filling” predisposed spaces with installations, projections and sounds, and envisioned a more organic installation. The architects were inspired by this as well and came up with a brilliant plan to construct the show on the basis of Buckminster

Fuller’s “Dymaxion Map”. It is probably the most precise world map ever made, because it is not just a transposition of the sphere to the bidimensional rectangle which causes the distortions of continents. “Dymaxion Map” has been realised empirically and it deconstructs the sphere of the globe in the series of triangles, leaving proportions and shapes of the continents untouched. For Buckminster Fuller, it was exactly the creation of this map, mathematical calculations and geometrical notions, that opened the path towards realisation of geodesic domes. The idea was fascinating for me, because we were supposed to construct a show about nano, about such a small scale, using a map of our globe as the base. It was a good way to challenge people’s perception of scale. We really can’t imagine a molecular world, not even scientists can; but also, we can’t imagine how big our planet is in relation to us. Both are such abstractions. But they didn’t just take the “Dymaxion Map” as it is, they broke it up, so it would correspond to the position of installations. Dobrila Denegri: Talking about nanoscience, nanotechnology, one starts to think automatically

about the technology you have been using for the show. How complex was this exhibition from the technological point of view? Victoria Vesna: During the realisation of inner architecture of the exhibition we decided to hide all the technology, to place it behind the walls that we were constructing. Just because the exhibition was dealing with nano, with the notion of advanced science and technology, and in fact, since we are living in a more and more technocratic society, it seemed important to create a space, as light as possible, from the technological point of view. So we made it in a way that, when the space was empty, it would be totally silent and still. Nothing would happen until a person stepped in. At that point the space would start to get animated; images and sounds would start to appear, and the observer would be immersed into the world of interactive projections that would change with their behaviour. The presence of an audience, or even of a single person would “light up” the show, would cause the change of the space, and then would be able to continue to transform the shapes of the projections, just by movement of the body, or shadow, or by the voice. It was very important to shift the perception of the space of the public. For example, one could manipulate the shape of the Bucky Balls by his or her shadow; and it is a very interesting and strange feeling, to do something over there, to change a shape of the projected molecule with the silhouette of your body and with very slow motions. On the other hand, in spite of the fact that the show was about science and new technology, we used a lot of very “low-tech” devices, but producing effects that were very engaging. Even if they were done in a very simple way, kaleidoscopes were very effective, for example. This orientation toward some “low-tech” solutions was motivated also by practical reasons, such as duration of the show or interactivity. The exhibition was on for ten months, open six days a week, which is a really long period for a contemporary art show. The size of the public was huge, a few hundred thousand visitors, coming from really very different cultural backgrounds, professions or of different ages. Concerning interactivity, it is amazing what kind of aggressiveness and violence people show when they think they should interact with the exhibited pieces, so we had to repair and substitute parts of installations many times. Of course, for this reason, less technologically complicated solutions worked better. Dobrila Denegri: This work, where members of the public were manipulating the projected shape of a molecule with their own shadow, was

at the entrance of the museum. It was the first contact with this nano world. What molecule did you use and in what kind of interaction did you engage the audience? Victoria Vesna: Since the show was in Los Angeles we thought that the molecule of carbon dioxide would be more appropriate. We wanted to visualise, as precisely as possible, the procedure of manipulation of the molecule that scientists are executing in their laboratories. What we discovered is that if they push molecules with force, nothing happens. The same rule was applied for interaction with projected molecules, Bucky Balls: if you wanted to play with their shape, to change them, you had to move very slowly, like in some kind of slow-motion dance. It means that if you go very, very slowly you can create a lot of change. I think it is a big thing to shift the idea of interaction in the sense that a slow movement makes things actually happen. No more fast and instant gratifications; no more violent gestures. It is interaction that you do not expect, or you are not used to. Visitors had to “learn” how to interact because we really didn’t want to explain or teach anything. Dobrila Denegri: Was the exhibition in permanent change during the time of its duration? Victoria Vesna: Yes, some parts we would redesign, change, transform. It was like a constant work in progress. For instance, the floor projections were redesigned a few times. They really were causing a strange effect, almost altering the sense of orientation and gravity. Dobrila Denegri: This floor projection was part of the central installation. How did it function as a whole? Victoria Vesna:The installation was called “Inner Cell” and functioned as an analogy with nano space. We used pervasive computing techniques (camera tracking, floor robots, multiple projections and focused sound) to create an immersive environment that was supposed to elicit “chemistry” between the human visitors, exhibition robots and molecular representations. Inside the cell, besides the large-scale projection of Bucky Balls that were programmed, as I already mentioned, to respond to the touch of the visitor’s shadow, there was the large floor projection that would move under the feet of the visitors provoking a feeling of constant motion of “gravity waves” that would also set off sound effects. The main sound feature of the inner cell was a strong, rumbling bass, which was synchronized with the motion projection of the hexagonal grid

onto the floor. The visitor’s movement in the cell space would influence the sound, as well as the visual grid projection on the floor. The interactive Bucky Balls projected onto the cell’s walls would emit a chiming sound that complements the bass frequency. Also within the cell, the robotic, moveable balls would produce a high-pitch sound that was distinct from, but complementary to, the other sounds in the inner cell. Dobrila Denegri: You have been guiding us through zones of emptiness and fluidity by talking about nano, about scale beyond visible realm, about electric waves, primacy of feeling instead of seeing. What about hearing? Could you tell us more about sound, about audio effects that played an equally important role as the visual part of the exhibition? Victoria Vesna: We used, for the first time, some of the new research of Jim Gimzewski and his team to create the “sound” of the show. Jim and his group used the instruments for measurement of molecular surface on the living cells, and so they detected the movement of them, which is really imperceptible, but still possible to trace since every cell is moving on a different frequency. This research has been published in Nature and has great implications. It proves that you can hear if a cell is dead or alive or distinguish different sounds belonging to the different types of the cells. So we took some of these sounds and amplified them, using them as a sort of “ambient” sound. Dobrila Denegri: In this show you linked up futuristic scientific vision with Eastern spirituality. How did this come about? Victoria Vesna: “Nanomandala” was about the “bottom up” principle that is present in the process of creating mandala. This installation showed how Eastern and Western cultures use these bottom-up building practices with very different perceptions and purposes. This installation incorporated a mandala, a cosmic diagram and ritualistic symbol of the universe, used in Hinduism and Buddhism, which can be translated from Sanskrit as “whole”, “circle” or “zero”. The creation of mandala starts with one grain of sand and then expands to a very complex universe. For this work we collaborated with a group of Tibetan monks who designed a sand mandala, which we filmed. The centre of the mandala was created in the lab, under the scanning tunnelling microscope and an optical microscope, which we used to film the inner structure of the grain of sand and particles that were forming the centre of it. We made something like three hundred thousand

frames of mandala, which we edited in the computer generated film that we projected on the sand. We filmed the inner structure of one grain of sand, visualizing what is considered the deepest point the human eye can reach through this sophisticated technology, realizing that there is no matter, just waves of energy. Dobrila Denegri: You also created an installation called “Quantum Tunnel”. How is it possible to translate laws of physics into the physical experience? Victoria Vesna: Quantum mechanics is one of the least understood phenomena in science, for it centres around shifting the laws of action and reaction. Matter and waves share characteristics, and the universe as we know is understood as an evolution of atoms after the Big Bang. The quantum universe drives a paradigm shift in technology and particularly in computer technology. Indeed, the process of quantum tunnelling is already replacing the laws of microelectronics currently essential to the operation of Intel processors in PCs. Within the exhibition space we built a “tunnel” that connected two identical spaces in which images of the audience were projected and distorted. The visitor could sweep a finger over a specified surface, leaving a genetic trace. While doing so, the visitor’s image would be captured and presented in conglomeration with the face of another visitor. The recognizable faces were juxtaposed and became distorted. When another visitor would pass through the tunnel, the facial images were again disturbed and altered, fractured into particles and waves. This was really a very interesting installation and it triggered lots of questions. People tried to understand what is going on in between these two spaces, but it is impossible if you are thinking in a linear way. In the realm of quantum networks it is just not possible to apply rational, linear logics, because as soon as you say “this is it”, it is not any more, it has moved. But, it was not complete in Los Angeles because they would not let us create a mirror ceiling due to the possibility of earthquakes and legal issues. So the ceiling reflected on the floor instead of giving you a feeling of infinite space. In Singapore we had the opposite problem – they would not let us put the mirror floor down because they were concerned about people looking under girls’ skirts! In Brazil – there was no concern about ceiling or floor and we finally got the full infinite space 5 years later. But – the sound was feedingback and causing a lot of problems – we did not factor in that sound bounces off the physical mirrors which is a fascinating phenomena but had to be resolved. This was finally solved when the piece was installed at the MedienKunstLabor at the Kunsthaus

in Graz in 2008. Winfried Ritsch, a sound artist and professor helped to solve this problem and the piece was finally complete. Dobrila Denegri: Fracturing everything into particles and waves seems a recurrent idea in different installations. Also in the “Fluid Bodies”, and later elaborations of this work, we can experience the same thing. Victoria Vesna: In “Fluid Bodies” particle clouds would form a mirror image of a person walking and would memorize the action as the person’s image scattered away. Later, his or her image would reappear making the same motion, only to be scattered away again by movement. Words would appear and dissolve into particles too. This installation was dealing with the idea that, on a nanoscale, one particle has an influence on the energy fields around it. I am interested in having people feel and see themselves as energy fields that we really are a materialized form of. I created another piece with the fluid bodies concept called “Mood Swings” that takes this a step further and shifts colour and sound radically to make you experience how quickly your body changes with your mind. Dobrila Denegri: There are more and more voices talking about “Third culture”. How do you see this initiative to bridge the gap between humanities and natural sciences? Victoria Vesna: In the late 50s, C.P. Snow came up with this idea that there are two cultures, science and humanities, and that there is a barrier between them. Till the eighteenth century there was no separation between science and art, but somehow, because of its faster development, science became less accessible for the general public and this gap started to appear. Scientists had to prove their thesis, they had to work with facts and that took away all poetics. And humanists started to question what is fact, what is real and the gap went deeper. On a personal level I discovered that, for me as an artist, there is no problem in collaborating with scientists; but the problem for both artists and scientists is to have dialogue with humanists. I don’t have anything against humanists, but we have different approaches and working processes. Humanists need a distance, a space for reflection, while artists and scientists have a practice of work that can be in correspondence. We are at the moment of human history in which we are all using the same tool – a computer. So actually now you see that science lab and artist studio are not so different after all. So my practice proves that there

is not necessarily a gap between art and science, but there are some between these disciplines and those of human sciences, since they don’t accept the change that we are going through so easily. But we are actually in the process of such a profound change that it is necessary to open the new space to step in. If we don’t, things will be more and more destructive, as we can also perceive through the current global political, social and economical tensions. Dobrila Denegri: Towards which perspectives is your work leading now? Is there a core subject that you aim to develop further? Victoria Vesna: Ten years ago, I experienced for the first time the impact of the audience on my work by creating a piece that invited them in. The interaction helped shape the ideas and further develop and enrich my work and this changed the direction of my creative process. I see work now as a long distance runner, who evolves with time and is in dialogue with the audience. For instance, the latest version of the “Quantum Tunnel” that I mentioned above, compelled the audience to lie down and experience their bodies as weightless and infinite. After so much work to get it working right, to see a response that was unplanned but much more beautiful was like a gift to me. I now see an entirely new dimension to the piece that will be considered the next time it is installed somewhere on this planet. Each cultural environment brings in a different response and adds a quality to the work and allows me to take it to another level. Finally, I would like to mention the latest work that Gimzewski and I collaborated on, the “Blue Morph” that really is evolving as a surprise. It is as if the artist and scientist are there to manifest what wants to come into existence and we serve that with our experience. This work combines the experience and musings on the impact of future science with my earlier work that is performative and networked. This piece generated a whole new ritualistic dimension that connects to the radical shifts we are experiencing globally – it is looking at how nature metamorphoses and puts us directly in that vibration. The true hybrid of art and science is magic and I am committed to manifesting that and helping usher in the new century that will be radically different from the Industrial Age that is still holding its grip on us.

TOWER OF CONTEMPORARY ART Agnieszka Maria Wasieczko

Is it possible to find a new destiny for a gloomy architectural relict of the Nazi regime? A massive anti-aircraft tower dominating Vienna’s Arenbergpark has been adapted to serve as a modern centre of contemporary art, Contemporary Art Tower (CAT). By integrating the functionless, alienated structure into the urban and social life of Vienna, the creators of the project have redefined it within the context of contemporary architecture and art.

Erected in Vienna during the Second World War, 1942-43, for the purposes of the German air defense artillery, the slightly archaic, imposing mass with no windows, one of six towers, overlooks the cityscape stretching around Arenbergpark in the third district of Vienna as an architectural reminder of the Nazi “total war”. Similar structures were demolished in Berlin, but this huge, monolithic one has remained intact because of the thickness of its external walls. The main objective of the CAT project (Contemporary Art Tower), launched in 1995, was to transform a former military building with negative historical connotations into a modern and vibrant centre of contemporary art and new media which would satisfy the demanding requirements set nowadays for sites of artistic production. The project could be carried out after the second and ninth floors of the anti-aircraft tower had been customized to accommodate the collection of contemporary art of the nearby Museum of Applied Arts (Museum für Angewandte Kunst; MAK). The architectural project of CAT was first presented at the Vitra Design Museum in Berlin (JanuaryFebruary 2002) and the exhibition of the MAK contemporary art collection was opened in the refurbished tower on 26 June 2002. Conceived by Peter Noever, designer and chief curator of the CAT programme, and two architects, Seppa Müller and Michael Embacher, the adaptation enabled the solid construction of reinforced concrete and the huge space within the tower to be immediately used as a perfect place for dialogue between artists and viewers. “The space which serves no function at the moment must be open to the public and integrated with city and social life in Vienna – says Peter Noever – The project, which aims to include various ways of reaching different forms of art, will provide studios, workshops, “kitchen” and other informal “joints” for digital and analogue media.”1 The ten-floor building is also going to house a lecture theatre, exhibition rooms, information desks and meeting places, a restaurant, a café and a bar on the roof. On the western side (facing 1 All citations come from press releases of the Museum für Angewandte Kunst (MAK).

CAT – Contemporary Art Tower, Gefechtsturm, Arenbergpark, Vienna. Photo: G. Zugmann / MAK. Courtesy of MAK Vienna

James Turrell, view of the exhibition “The other horizon” in the museum hall at MAK – Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst in Vienna. Photo: K. Stögmüller / MAK. Courtesy of MAK Vienna

Barmherzigengasse), a utility tower is to be built according to Noever, “whose delicate, semitransparent construction will be intentionally contrasted with the brutal and menacing ‘bulk’ of the main tower”. Peter Noever believes that direct contact between the viewers and artworks produced in the place will facilitate “a better understanding of contemporary art”. This is why artists who create site-specific works with respect to local background are most often invited. Both the production and display of works of art are public. CAT is meant to offer space for direct dialogue between artists and visitors. This exchange will help develop a “laboratory” where new approaches to contemporary art will crystallize. The main objective of the project is not to purchase existing works of art but to produce new ones and, consequently, the founders of CAT plan to add new pieces to the unique Viennese collection in the next 10-15 years. So far, the Collection of the TwentyFirst-Century Art boasts works by such artists as Franz West, Friedrich Kiesler, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Chris Burden, Eva Schlegel and Erwin Wurm. Artistic interventions that constitute part of the architectural structure of CAT have been created by Jenny Holzer and James Turrell. The New York artist Jenny Holzer, whose work “Electronic Signs” secured her a high position in the world of contemporary art, has developed a special concept within the framework of the CAT project, thus taking the next step in her search for new media. In the bunker she envisaged a projection screen for the display of permanent ideas on the one hand, and everyday, ephemeral news on the other. Holzer’s intervention was based on a mixture of her own “aphorisms” and real pieces of information, i.e. contemporary stock exchange quotations. The artist also used various fragments of texts and photographs for her large-format projections on the anti-aircraft tower. On its top, a searchlight was mounted that “penetrated” the surroundings. Gas streams (xenon) flowing down from higher levels of the construction affected her photographs and words. These “light texts” not only carried specific content and information, they also provided outside lighting attracting people’s attention to the events organized by CAT. The artist also used text projection with laser light onto various surfaces in the direct neighbourhood of the tower. She was thus close to Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International (1919-20). The American artist James Turrell who often uses light to single out architectural objects constructed an illusory horizon entitled “Skyspace” on the

four platforms of the main tower. In this way the viewers’ field of perception is widened. They can sense the light space stretching between the sky and the earth as a materialized field filled with colour and roam in this unfathomed space. Also, by using blue light, Turrell produced an installation for the window-like holes in the external wall of the tower which “responds” in this way to urban space. Connecting the Landstraße and Hauptstraße streets with the entrance to CAT, he filled the eastern hall of the anti-aircraft bunker with blue light. Since the very beginning, the CAT project has also been supported by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, famous for their interventions in public space that involve the “packing” of buildings in different cities. For the MAK collection, Christo made a conceptual project of a postage stamp, reflecting the manner of packing anti-aircraft towers adapted to serve as an art centre. But the project has recently been suspended. Having collected a substantial number of signatures, residents of the third district in Vienna have stopped the process of taking over new plots of land which was the main assumption of the CAT project. Although the municipal authorities have promised to create a special zone for MAK as a prerequisite to the adaptation of the tower, a local referendum on extending it and continuation of the CAT programme will be held. Supporters are getting up a petition for the continuation of the project.

James Turrell, outline of the external light installation on MAK façade – Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst in Vienna (light test 11.03.1999). Photo: H. Fidler / MAK. Courtesy of MAK Vienna

VIRTUAL SPACES OF (FOR) ART Sebastian Dudzik

On October 6, 2011, Adobe Museum of Digital Media (http://www.adobemuseum.com/) was officially opened. According to a press release it was supposed to be the “first interactive museum” of digital art working in a virtual reality. The purpose of a good commercial is to highlight the uniqueness of a product, so a slightly bombastic and exaggerated statement shouldn’t be a surprise. While browsing through over fifty million websites that use the word “art” as a keyword, one can find many virtual creations claiming to be Internet galleries or museums. Of course, a major part of them have very little in common with an institution set in a virtual world which collects and presents art. However, there are some that meet those criteria. The Museum of Computer Art (http://moca.virtual. museum) founded in 1993 is an example of one. It was originally meant to work only in virtual space and did not open a real gallery in Brooklyn, New York, until 2008. The fact it was the very first of such virtual institutions is worth pointing out. MOCA from its beginning was not only a portal showing so-called “computer art” but also a legal entity set in the New York State’s local government and education structures. As a non profit organization it had (and still has) a clearly specified mission of gathering information, popularizing art and educating society. Therefore, AMDM certainly wasn’t the first. So what makes it worth attention? There are a few reasons, among which two are revolutionary in the history of modern museums and galleries. For the first time, two major companies, Adobe – a world leader in the software market – and Goodby Silverstein, became involved on a grand scale in the project of founding a virtual artistic institution. We have a situation in which big capital behind a corporation starts to support new ways of presenting art. The fact that Adobe can use its own technologies and industry experience in the creation of a new institution has, in this case, a colossal meaning. In this way museums enter an entirely new stage right in front of our eyes. The second important reason is the museum’s operating strategy selected by Adobe and the structure of exhibition “space”. A company with a lot of money could afford to develop an innovative project whose authors were the architect Filippo Innocenti and designer Piero Frescobaldi. Their goal was to create a virtual building not only functioning on the level of exhibition space but also characterized by a recognizable, characteristic architectural shape with a universal meaning. Selecting Innocenti for the position of chief designer wasn’t a coincidence. That architect, educated

Eva & Franco Mattes, “I can’t find myself either”, 23 January 2010. Photo: S. Dudzik’s archive

AMDM’s building in urban space. Photo: S. Dudzik’s archive

in Florence and London, has gained international fame by working with celebrities of design like Zaha Hadid; for a few years now he has also been an academic teacher in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Florence. However, these experiences weren’t treated as the most important ones. In the year 2000 he founded Spin+ with Maurizio Meossi. This is an open research group established to revolutionize understanding of architectural space and, along with it, to somewhat redefine architecture as a creative field. Its main area of scientific exploration became testing architecture in the virtual environment. That strategy not only allowed technical and structural problems to be solved, but also presented the opportunity to create potential social and spatial situations impossible to test in the real world. That group is ranked among the Italian avant-garde of contemporary architectural thought.

implied a gentle “transfer” of the viewer-participant from the reality of the physical world to a virtual one. The whole project should work like puzzles creating new, artificial (because existing only in a virtual world) landscape of art. The freedom of combining data (objects, information) was supposed to be a characteristic quality through which a viewer would become, at the same time, a curator of virtual exhibitions. So, that ideal museum was meant to be a collection built thanks to users’ profiles, a “global landscape” of their interests, preferences and artistic activity. That innovative project broke traditionally set rules of how museums work. The vision of a new way of building a collection and creative activity of a viewer drew directly from the experiences and observations of virtual communities forming in the Web. Upward movement was considered back then as the most creative, so symbolic transfer of the power to the viewer shouldn’t come as a surprise.

In the context of the creation of AMDM, one of the most important projects of the Spin+ group was Virtual Museum (http://www.spinplus.co.uk/ projects.html) from 2001. Its goal was primarily to determine the requirements set for designers by the functioning of a virtual institution and then to create its ideological and structural foundations. The joint project of Innocenti, Meossi and Cesare Griffa envisaged the creation of a global environment for museum exhibitions connected with the free circulation of information about art. Their strategy

The institution built by Adobe significantly differs in its ideological assumptions from the one realized in 2001. However, both projects are connected by understanding of the problems faced by the modern viewer accustomed and tied to realities existing in the physical world. Therefore, Innocenti’s project of AMDM’s virtual building gently introduces the viewer to a virtual world by creating illusory structures triggering associations with reality. That completely artificial structure works great in cyberspace but is not very functional in physical

realities. The slim silhouette of the building, clearly referring to organic forms (flowers of Greater Plantain), is an architect’s salute to physical reality. It can be interpreted as a kind of monument figuratively joining two worlds: nature and technology. Its universal, inter-cultural character, perfectly conveyed by a short, suggestive animation “CitySpace”, showing the building blended into the architecture of Paris, Venice or Los Angeles. The space inside the building so far plays the role of impressive scenery that allows viewers to cross to the order of cybernetic reality with its specific strategies and “interactive” character. Perhaps in the future, the space designed by Innocenti will be used more effectively, after all, the museum is only two years old. The project of AMDM’s virtual building should start a discussion on the “space of art” in the virtual world. As a prestigious and well advertised venture it has the potential to create a museum “fashion”. However, a question has to be asked if the strategy chosen by the corporation is the best and how it relates to other projects. For a comparison I’ll present two completely different examples of art functioning in virtual space. The first one is Collabyrinth (http://artcontext. com/act/02/collabyrinth/), a project of Andy Deck, one of the precursors of net-ART. The structure of an applet designed in 2003 has the character of a hybrid joining a simple toolbox of a graphics program with an animated window based on a 3D computer game. The artist wanted to create an environment which any user can not only visit but also creatively change. The labyrinth of corridors and rooms has been covered with square modules acting as boards for virtual painting. The walls, ceiling and floor covered with them resemble a big city’s underground decorated with graffiti. The variegated richness of that world at first strikes with chaos, but upon entering the viewer quickly starts to notice single compositions, groups of them, accidental and intended correlations between them. In every moment he can “click” on a module and correct it, he can also add his own work. The applet which resembles an innocent game is, in fact, a unique gallery space. Everyone can enter it, everyone can co-create its visual message. Its hybrid character makes it a gallery in constant movement, infinitely evolving. Its dual ideological nature is also interesting. On the one hand, it is based on a collective work combining the input of many users into one. On the other hand, thanks to the possibility to interfere and separate areas of work, it exposes the individualism of people. That paradox is a characteristic quality of modern

civilization. In its general assumptions, Collabirynth is ideologically close to the project of Innocenti, Meossi and Griffa. One can say that it creatively develops the primary idea by giving the viewer total control. Simplified graphic space to some extent is a symbolic figure of our reality dressed in schemes. The artistic duo of Eva and Franco Mattes, aka 0100101110101101.org, uses the creative possibilities of building space for art in a completely different way. They don’t build a new space in a virtual world. Instead, they try to capture for their art the environments created by others. In realizations from a series “Synthetic performances” (http:// www.0100101110101101.org/home/performances/) they used the virtual spaces of Second Life for their Internet actions. Because of their chronology and subjects, actions performed since 2007 can be divided into two groups. Older performances, made in 2007 and 2008, were inspired directly by the actions of such legendary artists as: Chris Burden, Joseph Beuys, Gilbert & George or Marina Abramović. Using their avatars, the artists “copied” in virtual reality the events from the physical world; they re-enacted roles performed years ago by others. Transfer to a cybernetic reality inevitably changed the meaning of gestures. That and direct access of the audience emphasized changes in the mentality of the whole society that occurred during almost one generation. That extraordinary lesson of the history of modern art became a specific field for cultural and anthropological research. Later actions of the duo, such as “I can’t find myself either” from 23 January 2010, are original interventions in the public, virtual space of Second Life. However, their main ideological assumptions do not change. They are still a kind of test of social behaviour in a world liberated to a great extent from a corset of morality. Therefore, the capture of already created space is in Eva and Franco’s activity only a way of starting a kind of interaction with other users of the virtual world, a way of forcing them to react to a new situation. * * * It’s hard to tell what strategies of “space for art” will be like in the virtual world of the future. One thing is certain: even this partial and short review clearly shows that the new media are able to create completely new and so far unknown situations. They offer us not only a new kind of art but also new strategies of its presentation and performance. Barely tamed digital art is already building its own institutions suited to its purposes and responding to the mentality of the contemporary, information society.

A SPECIAL-EFFECTS MACHINE Anna Borzeskowska

While the Palace of Culture and Science1 in Warsaw is considered an ideal background for Gotham City in the next series of Batman, the approach to architecture in the world is radically different. So unorthodox is it nowadays that buildings are being constructed of water (Digital Water Pavilion) or even mist (“Blur Building”)… The latter project – “Blur Building” – has been designed by the architectural studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R). There seems to be no limit to the imagination of these architects. Just take a look at their website (www.dsrny.com) to see. The interdisciplinary design studio based in New York City was founded three decades ago. Since then, the architects have designed spaces for artistic purposes (including the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the Museum of Image and Sound on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro), commercial buildings (Two-Way Hotel in Tokyo), landscape transformation projects (High Line in New York, Taekwondo Park in South Korea), and urban residences (Mixed-Use Towers or Nolita Townhouse). They have also been active in the field of performance art (Jet Lag, Who’s Your DADA?) and created such odd objects as a dress made of meat or a table with an orbiting ashtray. 1 PKiN – Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw. A skyscraper designed by Soviet architect Lew Rudniew and raised in 1955 at the behest of Stalin as a gift of Soviet nation for Poles. Architecturally it’s an unsuccessful mix of art déco, socialist realism and Polish historicism.

DS+R is headed by Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio and Charles Renfro. Diller was born in Poland but she emigrated with her parents when she was five. Today, she works as an architecture lecturer at Princeton University. Scofidio is Professor Emeritus at Cooper Union. He was born in New York and graduated from Columbia University. They are married and founded the studio together. Renfro joined them in 1997 and has been a partner since 2004. He also studied at Columbia University where he works as a lecturer. The “Blur Building” was constructed for Swiss EXPO in 2002. It consisted of a platform the size of a football pitch supported by four delicate pillars, situated over the surface of Lake Neuchâtel. There were 35 thousand microscopic nozzles installed in it which ejected water into the air. Drops of water pumped from the lake were released from a head under high pressure and broken into particles small enough to hang in the air. Surrounding the construction, they looked like mist. Water was used as a building material because – according to the authors of the project – the idea was to create architecture from the atmosphere, with no walls, no roof and no purpose. The result was a pavilion lacking form, depth, scale, mass and dimensions! Exhibition space was brought into being that offered nothing to see and nothing to do. The only thing EXPO visitors could do was to walk around the platform, losing themselves in the fog by the sound

of humming nozzles. Interestingly, the platform was a temporary structure. It was pulled down after several years and now it is only to be found in drawings and photographs (as well as on chocolate boxes as the grateful Swiss decided to immortalize the pavilion in this fashion). Currently, the studio is producing designs for a contemporary art museum in Los Angeles and an extension for the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington. The Broad in Los Angeles is supposed to serve two functions: as exhibition space and as a storeroom for the foundation. The building is going to have a surface of 11,000 sq m; it has been commissioned by the billionaire Eli Broad to host a collection of art which he has been assembling for fifty years. According to the design, it will consist of two overlapping cuboids. The lower will be used as a garage, the upper as exhibition space and storage for works of art, an archive and offices. The front of the building will be covered with an irregular, concrete net with meshes of different sizes and roughly rhomboidal shape. Described as a veil by its designers, an open-work construction will cover the entire form and constitute the load-bearing structure for the roof. The veil will regulate the access of daylight to the interior. On one side, a hollow accommodating a grated window will be inserted. The main entrance to the museum will be in the elevated corner of the building. It is already known that artworks will not be hung on the walls;

instead, they will be placed in special glass cases protecting them from destruction and theft. Bubble is a project developed for the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, to be ready in 2012. It involves the creation of a vast inflated space limited by a thin, transparent membrane filling the inner cylindrical courtyard that appears to be flowing out from under the building. The membrane will be twined by cables giving it shape and providing distance from the inner walls of the courtyard, while others will keep it in place. Also, a gigantic pipe filled with water will surround the interior stabilizing it at the same time. Bubble will serve as a conference room and additional exhibition space. The visualization of the project shows an image of a huge balloon forced into a building and trying to find space to expand. The construction is going to be installed twice a year (May and October) and its cost will amount to approx. 5 million dollars. It might be said that as much as the “Blur Building” was a building of water, Bubble is an attempt to create an architectural structure out of air. DS+R’s designs seek to challenge established patterns. Each project is meant to question all certainties and ridicule expectations. Also, and this is what I believe is typical of their actions, they open architecture and its users to nature. For example, the roof of the Hypar Pavilion at the Lincoln Center in New York has been transformed into a public lawn

with an area of 650 sq m. Another famous project is the New York High Line: a promenade which has replaced the former route of a freight train. Now you can walk and rest from the hustle and bustle of the city there. Last but not least, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, where the digital media gallery has been located in the part of the building that protrudes out over the sea. The only window in the room gives a view of water and nothing but water. To sum up, here is what Elizabeth Diller said during a 2007 conference, a perfect description of the projects carried out by DS+R: “Aside from keeping the rain out and producing some usable space, architecture is nothing but a special-effects machine that delights and disturbs the senses.” A few years ago there was a mention in the press that Diller and Scofidio had come to Bytom to see the area of the former Rozbark coal mine. It might be that one day we will witness one of their projects taking place in Poland. In 2011 the works by DS+R were displayed at an exhibition prepared by Dobrila Denegri at the Centre of Contemporary Art “Znaki Czasu” in Toruń.

ILE DE VASSIVIÈRE ART IN A MAKE-BELIEVE LAND Matylda Taszycka

First, I took a train from Paris to Limoges, then spent an hour in a car travelling up and down along the winding local roads. All this to see a most unique place, though still largely unknown: the International Centre of Art and Landscape on the Isle of Vassivière. When I’d received the invitation to visit the exhibition of a young French artist Etienne Chambaud, it’d been the first time I’d heard about the place. There was a lighthouse in the picture and the name sparked off pleasant associations: salty air, rocks, waves… Wait a moment, I thought to myself, Limoges is right in the middle of the country! The Isle of Vassivière is a unique art centre in every respect. The island suddenly comes into view from behind tree-covered hills as we descend one of them with astonishing speed in a car driven by one of the employees. Here we are at last! I step out of the car delighted and still shaking after the breakneck ride. Seven hundred metres above sea level, the International Centre of Art and Landscape is situated in the middle of an artificial lake with an area of more than one thousand hectares that came into existence when a dam was built as part of a regional electric scheme. It is a testimony to the successful combination of practical investments with cultural politics, and the erection of a hydroelectric power plant may facilitate the creation of… art. This could never happen in our country because of, on the one hand, scarce resources and, on the other, no creative ideas on the part of local authorities. In Poland, it is sport that has been receiving special attention recently, as we all know. The beauty of this spot excites my imagination especially as this wonderful and impressive landscape has been made in its entirety by m a n : a hill that pretends to be an island, a bridge that pretends to have been there for ages, a park that imitates a forest, an art gallery that wants us to believe that it is a lighthouse… The beauty and unique character of the centre are a consequence of a paradox: landscape created to look l i k e it was a natural park is in reality totally artificial. A make-believe island. This is, to some extent, what contemporary urban architects do when attempting to create a particular microclimate in a big city, this time transplanted into a brand new, virgin territory. Vassivière is a work of art as it is. It was created from scratch by Aldo Rossi and Xavier Fabre for whom the island was like a plinth and every building put up on it like a monumental s c u l p t u r e. It is the first project the architects have carried out not located in densely built-up big cities. The idea seems surprisingly appropriate by its relation to the extraordinary character of the place, and matches the landscape of the island as regards proportions, form and colour. All the same, it throws a wink at the viewer

The building of the International Center of Art and Landscape at Vassivière Island designed by Aldo Rossi and Xavier Fabre. Photo: F. Doury. Courtesy of CIAP Ile de Vassivière

– everything, including the wood and the lake, has been made by man. The buildings are geometrized and simple just as though the architects wanted to emphasize using every detail that everything here is made up. They bear no relation to the traditional architecture of the region which I could observe on my way here. Inevitably, the sense of separateness is sharpened. Architectural shapes have a conspicuously sculptural nature. The lighthouse looms into view out of a cone, the longitudinal cuboid that is the gallery is covered by a roof that resembles an inverted hull of a ship. The two buildings are detached. The first is vertical, the other horizontal; the forms correspond to one another but are not interdependent. They have been made of grey concrete, metal and glass in their simplest, industrial form. Apparently, the architects have forbidden the cleaning of the outer walls hoping that they would become completely covered by moss in time. Inside the buildings, various types of exhibition space have been furnished, from typically cuboid ones, from a gallery that looks like an early Christian church (because of its wooden roof), to the more than thirty-metre-high interior of the circular lighthouse. Rossi and Fabre prepared most extraordinary scenery for artists who have been creating and exhibiting their works here for the last twenty years. Many artistic interventions naturally take place outdoors. In front of the buildings there is a spacious grass-covered clearing surrounded by a forest hiding a permanent collection of sculptures (bringing to

mind the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko near Radom), but also multimedia works such as, for instance, a sound project by the Italian artist Nico Vascellari. Both the creator and the viewer can feel at ease here. Far from the overcrowded museums of Paris, they are free to choose the path they want to take and the order of sculptures they want to admire. Apart from two employees, there are no people here. Works can be viewed in the traditional fashion, close up or from a distance, if you are prepared to climb up the dizzying winding metal stairs to the top of the lighthouse. From there, a most spectacular view can be enjoyed. Some works can be seen in their entirety only from the top, such as the monumental drawing of a unicorn titled “La Licorne Eiffel” (324 m long, hence the title), white gravel on trampled grass. The piece was created by avant-garde artist and architect Yona Friedman and photographer Jean-Baptiste Decavèle for their joint exhibition in 2009. The work does not belong to the permanent collection so the drawing will disappear one day. Nature is going to win. Although situated far from big cities, the International Centre of Art and Landscape on the Isle of Vassivière perseveres in implementing its ambitious programme indicated by the name of the institution, aimed at collaborating with artists from both France and abroad. I was dazzled by the list of names which included, for instance, Andy Goldsworthy, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Claude Lévêque, who represented France at the Venice Biennial in 2009. The forest that covers the island – which serves as a traditional sculpture park here – hides an impressive collection of special

forms where we can find pieces by the above mentioned artists as well as by Kris Martin, Ilia and Emilia Kabakov, Olivier Mosset, Hans Walter Müller and some fifty others. With her energy and personal charm, the curator Chiara Parisi from Rome attracts artists from all over the world. The author of the latest project is a young French artist, Etienne Chambaud. Winner of the prestigious award of the Fondation d’entreprise Ricard in 2009, he has participated in numerous exhibitions in many countries, including France, Germany, United States, China and Israel. The exhibition hosted by the Centre of Art and Landscape on the Isle of Vassivière is perversely called “Contre-Histoire de la Séparation”. It is the artist’s vision of the history of the institution of museum that begins with the French Revolution and finishes when the Pompidou Centre is opened in 1977. At first, the association between these two events seems unclear. Can such different and distant fragments

of French history have anything in common? In the days of terror (1792-1793), France witnessed the emergence not only of public museums but also of the guillotine. 1977 saw the opening of a postmodern art centre and the last beheading. The circumstances are not coincidental if we think of the fact that a great number of current museum collections were plundered from their owners whose heads were severed – producing a peculiar gruesome portrait. The guillotine was, after all, the democratic execution (all condemned were killed in the same fashion regardless of their social background) and a state museum puts goods on public view. The artist developed the concept of Musée Décapité (beheaded museum) suggesting an original and rather amusing interpretation of the relationship between culture and politics over nearly two centuries. According to the artist, the museum e x h i b i t s as well as e x c l u d e s . By captivating a certain vision of history within its walls, it rejects other ones; by isolating works of

Jean-Baptiste Decavèle & Yona Friedman, “Extraordinary journey (a journey on a unicorn in space), 2009. “Eiffel Unicorn” in National Centre of Plastic Arts. Photo courtesy of CIAP Ile de Vassivière

art, it separates them from the real world in which they were created and makes them dependent on accompanying text; by telling their story, it gives rise to misunderstanding. Modern thought, the artist claims, has been based on the principle of s e p a ra t i o n . Both, the guillotine and the museum are like the self-driven, auto-erotic Machines Célibataires created by Marcel Duchamp in his famous work “The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even” (“The Large Glass”) or the ones described by Kafka in “In the Penal Colony”. Their stories are antagonistic but, at the same time, perfectly parallel. Like two glass plates in Duchamp’s work. The desire of each of the Machines Célibataires is directed at themselves and it mechanically brings death rather than creation. After all, the guillotine was nicknamed the widow. The focal point of the exhibition “Contre-Histoire de la Séparation” is a video with the same title. Sound and image are mutually exclusive in this work. When the narrator tells the story of the museum and the guillotine, hands on the screen move props as if they were trying to keep pace with it. To my surprise, the film is screened in a bookshop. This unexpected, considering this is the most important part of the exhibition, place suggests that Etienne Chambaud gives a conceptual background to his works. Compared to the small cluttered bookshop, the next room strikes the viewer with its emptiness. In the middle a white plinth has been placed, and there are only illegible inscriptions carved in marble hanging on white walls. Nothing more. This arrangement brings to mind the 2009 exhibition “Vides. Une rétrospective” (“Voids. A retrospective”) in the Pompidou Centre. It was the first retrospective ever dedicated to expositions at which… empty walls were displayed. For this occasion, nine rooms in the museum related to nine different events were emptied. Etienne Chambaud’s piece titled “La Visite au Musée” is a reference to artistic practices of this kind. The installation has hardly anything to do with the traditional museum. Its main feature is the a b s e n c e of paintings (David’s “The Death of Marat”, Géricault’s “The Raft of the Medusa”, etc.) and the famous ancient Nike of Samothrace which belongs to the Louvre collection. What is left are fragments of titles and suggested dimensions. In a sense, this is the n e g a t i v e of an e x h i b i t i o n. Text has replaced works of art. Many years earlier, similar works were presented by such artists as, for instance, Yves Klein, Robert Barry or the Art & Language group. Etienne Chambaud intended to show the phenomenon of e x c l u s i o n typical of an exposition in a museum. There, text and image may exist side by side but they are always independent from one another.

Although critical of contemporary institutions, the exhibition of the young artist has several optimistic points. One of them is the work with an ambivalent title “Modèle pour l’Hospitalité i.e. l’Exclusion” (“Model for Hospitality, or Exclusion”). It is a very complex installation inside the lighthouse which, at the same time, goes beyond it. In the middle of the exhibition room which is tens of metres high, a special shape immersed in semi-darkness is visible, looking like Calder’s mobile pieces from a distance. It was fixed by surprising implementation of opposing forces that keep the exquisite structure motionless: on the one hand, there is gravitation, on the other, a steel rope pulling the whole thing up. Chambaud put it through a broken window pane at the top of the lighthouse and fixed it with a concrete load in the clearing. As if he had anchored it. The mobile sculpture was immobilized by the island itself, anchored in the surroundings that brought it to life. The artist created an unexpected, physical but also metaphorical, relationship between the work of art and the place of its creation. It constitutes a certain counterpoint for the work “La Visite au Musée”. Rather than excluding, “Modèle pour l’Hospitalité i.e. l’Exclusion” unites. The remaining part of the exhibition also employs the motif of pervading work and its surrounding. Between the work of art and the space around it, more and more interdependences appear. The up/down opposition maintains the balance of sculptures entitled simply “Pierres” (“Stones”), and the relation inside/outside is visible in “X”, a neon light showing a little window at the far end of the room. The white neon light shows what the exhibition tends to exclude and what is evoked in this way by Etienne Chambaud. “ContreHistoire de la Séparation” is a successful artistic comment on the role of the International Centre of Art and Landscape on the Isle of Vassivière – an open and creative place where a man-made landscape and works of art are part of the same complex and changing reality.

I AM AN ISTANBUL MUSEUM Genco Gülan*

As if straining for a new world record, there are 20 different private art museum projects taking place in Istanbul at the moment. Every month a new art space opens its doors to the public, though governmental support is still limited. Large private companies used to provide sponsorship, but now they prefer to have their own museums. It is almost like a dream come true, but for many, this change is just like make-up, lacking a social standing. After becoming the European Capital of Culture in 2010, the announcements of the art events are all around us on billboards, but there are not many people at the shows. Still, as French curator Anne Roquigny says: “today, Istanbul is the place to be”. Istanbul has waited almost a hundred years for a modern museum. It was Mustafa Kemal who established the first painting and sculpture museum in Turkey at the beginning of the last century. He defined culture as the foundation stone of the new Republic and made reforms accordingly. But after him, things got complicated. For many years governments crippled culture by minimizing its budget and increasing the bureaucratic barriers. Certain cultural institutions were even banned (like People’s Houses) just to attack Kemalist ideology. As a matter of fact, the Ottomans had a tradition of museums. As art historian Wendy Meryem Shaw wrote in her book “Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire”, they had always been interested in collecting and presenting

Istanbul Modern. Photo: G. Gülan’s archive

Istanbul Çagdaş Sanat Mûzesi. Photo: G. Gülan’s archive

artefacts, although their methods did not exactly fit modern standards. Still, Turks were always part of the game. The last caliph, Abdülmecit Efendi, was not only a painter but also a strong supporter of the arts. It was Osman Hamdi Bey, a painter as well, who started the first modernist museum and the academy in the late 19th century. It was not the turn of the Millennium that triggered the burst of new museums, but some other factors. For example, I had argued to the BBC in an interview that 9/11 might have started a counter – Renaissance. With the rise of anti-immigration attitudes and discrimination policies, many scholars, students, investors and artists, including myself, had to return back to “the east”. The rise of neo-Americanism evaporated the notion of “western liberalism”. Though Turkey is experiencing a wave of censorship as well, young society has become too complex to control – by any kind of power. We are still more free here than the deserted “land of freedom”. Why? It’s complicated. For example, the global flow of neoliberalism shifted the balance of the private and public sectors. The state became smaller, the general distribution of wealth became imbalanced and the gap between classes enlarged, resulting in the emergence of a new type of aristocracy. This new “super-class” (as Paulo Coelho says) wannabees needed museums to legitimize themselves to the global elite.

So, after the late 1980s we had our first experiences of the flow of shopping malls. And now that there is one in every neighbourhood, It’s time for museums. Even Frank Gehry designed one, but It’s on the waiting list. Here are the names of some of the new museums: Istanbul Modern, Pera Museum, Proje 4L: Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art, Garanti Platform, Santralistanbul, iS.CaM and Arter. Some of them do call themselves museums, some don’t. Some have a permanent collection of some sort, but not all of them. They are mostly linked to a bank or a holding company. The bureaucratic elites, once in charge of the festivals, have now started to collect big money. Young rebels have started to dance with the big fish. Turkey is one of the top 20 economies in the world, but this wealth is not directly reflected in culture. For example, there are only 4 artists, including Burhan Doğançay, in the list of the top 500 most expensive artists. Furthermore, there is only 1 university (not an academy) in the top 500 list. As I wrote before, the problem is more complicated than it looks. This is because Turkey has a prime minister (he aims to become the president as well) who uses the term “artist” to curse people. Still, it is these artists who make Istanbul a capital of culture. The museums in Istanbul are either too old or too new. The old ones are really old, many buildings are 1000, 1500 years old, like Hagia Sophia, they are run

Interior of Santralistanbul. Photo: G. GĂźlanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s archive

by the state and their administration is quite oldschool. The others are new, very new; too new to be called museums. They act either as a “kunsthalle” or as self-centred private collections. Dinner parties may become more important than installing the art works. Major problems emerge around longevity, such as: reliability, creativity, sustainability, continuity and predictability. Among these, two main problems stand out most: reliability and longevity. New museums in Istanbul are on and off. For example, both Borusan and Aksanat had spaces in Beyoglu that were closed and reopened years later without almost any explanation to the public. iS.CaM used to have an alternative space and a residency program but it had to close down its physical space and continue only with the Web Biennial project. Another museum, Proje 4L, moved from Levent to Maslak recently. There is nothing odd with a museum moving. But, and it’s a big but, the location 4 Levent is in the title “4L” and now it remains quite odd. Again, Istanbul Modern is nested in a public building, the city port. It may or may not move into a new location, no-one knows when and how. Another problem concerns the collections. For example, Santralistanbul claims to be a museum

but operates like a grand gallery, without a major collection, like many others. A bigger problem exists when there is an eclectic collection. Modernist abstracts with contemporary figuration or local kitsch with international Dada are presented – and marketed – together, but they do not always go hand in hand. The collections in the museums lack a certain taste and are mostly composed of paintings that have been purchased to decorate houses. The patrons feel at home in the new museums, hence the quality and the quantity remain unquestionably almost sacred. One can not expect museums to have a tradition of democracy when they are too young or too old to have a tradition of any kind. In fact, the polarization of Turkish society is increasing and art museums here are the new fortresses for an approaching cultural war. This inevitable clash is not going to be a civil war, but it is going to be Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations”. Still I believe that we need such a strong earthquake to create new art in our global “unreal-estate” market. *Genco Gülan is an artist teaching at the Museum Studies Master program of the Mimar Sinan Academy, Istanbul TR.

Proje 4L / Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art. Genco Gülan’s “The eyes of Mickey that looks to the Left” installation at glass facade. Photo: G. Gülan’s archive

AROUND THE WORLD IN FLIP-FLOPS Servet Kocyigit

Growing up in the Turkey of the 1980s wasn’t so much about bad haircuts or shoulder pads. After the army’s intervention for democracy (the third time), the atmosphere in Turkey was rather bleak. We went to school, secretly read some of the banned books, listened to some of the banned music, and we thought freedom must be something like that. We wanted freedom but we didn’t really understand its definition. It took me quite a long time to understand through art what freedom really is. During that time, while everything was repressed and everybody was in a rather dark mood, there was something going on in Turkey that was rather interesting and hilarious, and that was the humour. Humour in the form of cartoons published in weekly comics. After a long tradition of writers and comics like Nasrettin Hoca and Aziz Nesin, a young generation of Turkish cartoonists reinvented the power of humour and how humour can be used to open up some areas in society to allow people to take a breath and fight back. Theseyoung cartoonists adroitly captured what was going on in contemporary society, more so than any other art form. They taught us to laugh at the situation instead of to cry, it was an altogether different approach to life.

Servet Koçyiğit, “Eskici”, “Motherland” photo series, 2005. Photo: S. Koçyiğit’s archive

Servet Koçyiğit, “Doc”, photo, 2008. Photo: S. Koçyiğit’s archive

It gave a lot of hope to my generation and we learned a lot from them. Maybe that is why humour became one of the trademarks of contemporary Turkish art today, and why it is also so important in my work. Cinema, poetry and literature have always been very strong in Turkey. However, contemporary art was very weak, the art schools were terrible and there was almost no space to exhibit in. There were no art institutions or museums. There were only a few artists making interesting work. The only serious institution was the Istanbul Biennale and even it wasn’t as strong or as popular as it is today. So when I decided to study art, I thought I should leave Turkey and find somewhere where I could learn and practice art without limitations. I thus moved to The Netherlands.

My photography series of “Motherland” (2007) consists of 6 photographs. The images primarily deal with the symbolism embedded in military clothing. The largest photograph in the series “Motherland” 180x270 cm, shows five soldiers, all from different countries, holding a belly dancer horizontally. She is a very feminine, half-naked woman surrounded by soldiers with their hands all over her. This photo can be interpreted in multiple ways. Firstly there is a classical gender conflict – the specific positioning of women in different societies. Secondly, it displays a contrast between power and fragility. Thirdly, as the title suggests, it is the army protecting and/or controlling a country at the same time. The soldiers are wearing the uniforms of different countries so this image

Servet Koçyiğit, “Power Share”, photo, 2007. Photo: S. Koçyiğit’s archive

does not belong to any specific place, however, the belly dancer suggests the Middle East and Asia. Another work from the series is “Power Share”, with two identically dressed soldiers, who share a single hat that is balanced on their shoulders. Perhaps the most literal work from the series is “Down Under”, which shows a blurred image of a soldier sitting on a chair, and on the sole of his shoe are all his medals. The focus is only on the medals, while the rest of the soldier is totally blurred. This represents how the life of a soldier is concentrated and focused on the symbolism of rank. The most subtle image from the series is “1man7army”, which reminds me of some of the books I read a long time ago from Jerzy Kozinski. In this photo we can see a soldier dressed using parts of seven different uniforms belonging to seven different countries. The idea was to create a universal uniform. The idea of a universal army itself is quite ridiculous to start with; clearly the army is there to protect borders and consequently national identity. I worked with an expert who specialized in military uniforms for this photo series. Having a job title like this is already strange enough for me, but when I began to learn a little more about the complex symbolism used in military clothing, research process became even more fascinating. The dress codes reached an almost abstract level, and it wasn’t only military but also civilian clothing that had its own coded language. After my studies of art, and working in Europe for more than 10 years, I started to look back to Turkey again. I always thought that going back would be a step backwards, but as is the case in art and life nothing is that linear, a backward step could be a forward one. I felt excited that the first time I rented an apartment in Istanbul and started working in Turkey. Istanbul is an inspirational, visually rich city with layers of culture. Turkey had also developed a lot, it wasn’t only that you could see the financial development but almost everywhere in life something was happening. A very silent revolution had taken place there. Nothing much changed in the system but people were simply fed up with the system and they had started changing their life styles. This change was also reflected in contemporary art as well. There was a big buzz: the Istanbul Biennale was gaining international recognition. New institutions, museums and galleries were opening. The art scene was still small and limited in Istanbul, but it was very fresh. Everything was very new, the city had found its own voice. In Istanbul, I spent almost every day outside on the streets, observing the social life and making works in the lively streets of this amazing city. One of the works I made there was “Eskici” (2005). This photograph shows a

man carrying a lighted chandelier in a street cart. The background is one of the old, desolate, colourful streets in Istanbul. A working man from the streets is pushing a chandelier in a cart, a symbol mostly related to the bourgeoisie. To own a chandelier was one of the important symbols popular in the 1950s amongst rich people. As in most large cities around the world, in Istanbul the gap between rich and poor is very visible. A working man carries the weight of the rich and lights the streets in the daytime. After my first working period in Istanbul, I started to go to Turkey regularly to produce work, not only to Istanbul but to specific places in Turkey. One of these trips was to a small town called Hasankeyf, in the south eastern part of Turkey on the banks of the Tigris river. Unfortunately, this place will be flooded in the near future. Turkey is developing a dam project to meet its energy needs, one of the many sacrifices Turkey is going to have to make due to its fast development. It is very ironic that the water from the Tigris which had brought Hasankeyf a rich history and civilization is going to be the same water that will take it away. I wanted to produce some works related to water and the local people. “Doc” (2008) is one of the works from that series. It shows two men standing in the water, with a rocky landscape on the background. One man is fully dressed as a doctor with his white coat on, checking the other man, his patient, with his stethoscope. This familiar scene is from a doctor’s practice which has been totally dislocated and brought in to the Tigris. Water is used in different cultures for healing and cleansing, it also has religious connotations, there are ceremonies made in water or with water. This photograph approaches these rituals a bit sarcastically and brings the scientific approach to healing. Perhaps what we can call a Darwinist work. Servet Kocyigit (b. 1971 Kaman, Turkey) is a visual artist, currently living and working in between Amsterdam and Istanbul. He studied at Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam. He has exhibited his works around the world in different museums, institutes, festivals and galleries. Among others: 27th São Paulo Biennale (2006), 9th Istanbul Biennale (2005), APPLE Contemporary Art Center Amsterdam (2001), TANAS, Berlin (2009), Israel Museum Jerusalem (2006), ARTER Space For Art Istanbul (2010), Givon Art Gallery Tel Aviv (2008), OUTLET Independent Art Space Istanbul (2010), Plais Des Beaux Art, Lille (2009), and Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Germany (2000).

INTRODUCTION TO TkH MYTHOLOGY/IDEOLOGY & THEORY/ POLITICS THROUGH INSCRIPTIONS, TRACES AND ARCHAEOLOGY OF ART Miško Šuvaković

Diachronic and synchronic contexts for TkH TkH (the Walking Theory) was launched on 3 October 2000 in Belgrade, a few days before the fall of Slobodan Milošević’s dictatorship, in an atmosphere of political, social and cultural upheaval. TkH came into being as an attempt to overcome and open up, in a supposedly emancipating manner, all those theoretical, artistic and indeed existential borders faced at the time by its founders. TkH appeared on the stage in the “theory-phobic” atmosphere of the disoriented, chaotic and entropic Belgrade at the end of the 1990s, in a joint effort to set up and perform a hard theoretical platform for work and action in the realms of culture, art and theory. TkH was founded by the theatre student and cultural theorist Ana Vujanović, the student of theatre/radio directing Bojan Djordjev, the student of painting Siniša Ilić, 3 students of musicology, Jelena Novak, Ksenija Stevanović and Bojana Cvejić, and the professor of aesthetics and art theory Miško Šuvaković, in cooperation with the theatrologist and director of the Centre for New Theatre and Dance (CENPI), Jovan Ćirilov. The dynamic phenomenon of TkH took and went through different institutional and para-institutional formations, from workshops in CENPI, through an art group, a cartel and the informal theoretical-artistic school (PATS: Performing Arts Theory School), to the TkH – Centre for Performing Arts Theory and

TkH, “DreamOpera”, Ideas Campus, Tartini’s Theatre, Piran (Sl), 2002

TkH, “Psychosis and Death of the Author: Algorythm YU-03/04.13”, TkH Center and University of Arts, Belgrade, BITEF 38

Practice. The initial workshops were carried out as a post-pedagogical model of work based on research in those theoretical and artistic fields (performance art, performing arts, experimental music, and post-dramatic theatre) which at the time were not integrated into the official curricula either of the state universities or private artistic schools. The focus was also on the changes in the status of “the student” who ceased to be merely a passive listener and receiver of knowledge, and became an active agency in a concrete world of art. Later on, TkH acted for a couple of months as an art group, namely, from the preparations for the first theoretical performance Walking Theory for the Fifth Floor stage of the National Theatre in Belgrade in February 2001, to performing it again at the Akcija Frakcija festival in Zagreb, in November 2001. The group represented the strong cooperation of a number of contributors to realize collective artistictheoretical projects. The idea of the cartel was to run TkH as a kind of turnover company, whereas the actions of the cartel were seen as ones of the production, exchange and consumption of artistic and theoretical concepts. The term “cartel” was borrowed from the vocabulary of Marx’s “Capital”, as well as from the history of Lacanian theoretical

psychoanalysis. PATS was a “small” interdisciplinary school aimed at involving graduate and postgraduate students from artistic schools in contemporary artistic and theoretical currents through creative, critical and post-disciplinary work. Ultimately, TkH– Centre was established as an NGO, an organization for producing and recreating or, more precisely, presenting, interpreting and advocating new, nontypical, problematic, anarchistic or deconstructive productions in the contemporary theory and practice of performing arts. The organization is a body or an institution entering into the system of social struggles for influence, power, hegemony, centring or displacing, in other words, for a transfiguration of the system of performing arts through theoretical statements, intentional conflict and the unexpected potentiality of materialist-oriented poststructuralism, cultural studies, techno-theory and critical biopolitics. TkH-Centre based its research on the idea of dynamically entangled projects carried out by different “teams” of artists, researchers and theoreticians. Therefore, the identity of TkHCentre is not a Gestalt-identity of a group of several authors: it is a moving map of crossing and indexing the problems of contemporary performing arts and theories through concrete projects.

TkH, “Teorija koja hoda (Walking Theory)”, National Theatre, Belgrade, 2001

TkH conducted and presented their research in those five years through different theoretical-artistic practices, from the TkH Journal for Performing Arts Theory (8 issues, no. 9 forthcoming) to theoretical performances (some 18 productions). Most of the TkH associates in that period followed a long institutional road, from being students of arts and theory/science of arts to acquiring their MA and MSc degrees or indeed PhDs. In that sense, TkH was set up as an open performance of mapping and restructuring of alternative, official and hegemonic spaces for art, theory and culture. Numerous participants in the TkH projects – apart from its founders – made contributions in the period from 2000 to 2005: composer Jasna Veličković, psychologist Tanja Marković, musicologist Ivana Stamatović, costume designer Maja Mirković, painter Katarina Zdjelar, student of directing Vlatko Ilić, student of painting Mirko Lazović, dramaturge Marija Karaklajić, theatre director Ljubiša Matić, student of dramaturgy Maja Pelević, student of directing Marta Popivoda... as well as contributors to the magazine from Belgrade, the local region and the world: Nevena Daković, Milena Dragićević Šešic, Jelena Janković, Aleksandra Jovićević, Tatjana Marković, Sanja Milutinović-Bojanić, Novica Milić, Vesna

Perić, Eda Cufer, Mladen Dolar, Marina Gržinić, Emil Hrvatin, Lev Kreft, Bojana Kunst, Aldo Milohnić, Igor Stromajer, Nikolina Bujas Pristaš, Nadežda Čačinović, Goran Sergej Pristaš, Nikolay Iordanov, Asen Terziev, Jérôme Bel, Marvin Carlson, Helene Cixous, Jacques Derrida, Michael Joyce, Hans-Thies Lehmann, Jill Sigman, Marten Spanberg, Xavier Le Roy, Helen Varley Jameson, and Kurt Vanhoutte, etc. Strategies and tactics of theoretical performances: Madness + Organization = MASTERPIECE Positioning of the performers’ work in TkH was grounded on and developed through a set of criticaltheoretical premises: 1. art and theory are interactively connected, material performing, hybrid and interventional practices in quite specific socio-cultural contexts (our context being the transitional South-East of Europe); 2. performance art is not set as a new discipline or a new extended medium for disinterested artistic creations, but a conflicting, problematic practice of performing in pluralistic, unstable, often promiscuous relationships between artistic and theoretical practices; 3. art and theory are not rationalistic, positivistic

or instrumental displays of possibilities for acting, but a dramatic slippage whereby the author physically faces the obstacles and potentialities, consistencies and fictionalities of the artistic and theoretical action/life; 4. theoretical performance of TkH is set up as a playground for rigorous questioning of displays, in a Deleuzian sense, of events of the becoming of theory through physical intersubjective and intermedia performance on stage, or potential display, in an Agambenian sense, of events of artistic practice as a material practice in its necessary relationship with theory. One of the guiding equations for TkH is “Madness + Organization = MASTERPIECE”. This formula meant that contributing TkH authors started from the essential situation, in a materialistic sense, of the subject in the realm of signifier agglomerations and their slippage out of the bourgeois (ab)normality or determination. The relationship madness-sense is not set as a binary opposition, but as a transgressive constitution of madness through sense and sense through madness. In other words, the intention was to show that the hegemony of sense had been established in relation to the otherness of madness (science, theory) and that the hegemony of madness was established in relation to the otherness of sense (art). On the other hand, against the assumed

“irrationality of the artist”, “obsessiveness of the creator”, “obscenity of the artistic act” or “power of theatre follies” (Jan Fabre) certain tactics were proposed, emblematic for art at the turn of the 20th century. And those were critical conceptual and theoretical analyses of the signifying realm of slippage (of madness: individual, collective, micro – and macro – social, traditional, liberal, post-modern, media-bound, interpellating, matrix situation within the hegemony and confines of sense) and, furthermore, a precise organizational practice of designing a theoretical performance as a stage or beyond-the-stage event. A TkH artist-performer is an analyst who physically and theoretically demonstrates the borders and potentialities of his/her universe, through the practice of designing (high-tech) and producing (performing) the events which are symptoms of the subjects, of the culture, of the society… that is, of the world. For these practices, “madness” and “organization” are not poetic opposites, but grids of intersection of the impossible reality to which the TkH contributors are submerged by the transitional processes of postsocialism in their daily experience. Theory and performing are events of multiplicity, in the sense in which Alain Badiou had postulated that the most important philosophical problem of the actuality is multiplicity and the becoming of

TkH, “Pleasure in Deconstruction”, Urban Fest, Zagreb, 2003

TkH, “Hyperreal Alegory”, SKC, Belgrade, 2001

multiplicity (of race, gender, class and leisure). Performing multiplicity of potentiality and the appearance of identity are among the essential fields of research of the TkH performers. These are confirmed, along with TkH’s own performances, by the historical performing-theoretical practices (John Cage, Joseph Beuys, Richard Schechner, Herbert Blau, Robert Wilson and Yvonne Rainer), as well as by some current European practices of new conceptual performance (Emil Hrvatin and Mårten Spånberg) and dance (Jérôme Bel and Xavier Le Roy). The theoretical performances of TkH and its associates are, in phenomenalist terms, set as verbal, behavioural, fragmentary and polygenre media events. Verbal performing is aimed at presenting consistent or inconsistent and fragmentary narratives which have a problematic theoretical plot (“Walking Theory”, Belgrade, 2001; “TkH Inversion”, Novi Sad, 2001; “Frida Kahlo: una pierna y tres corazones”, Belgrade, Rijeka, 2002-2003). Behavioural performances are aimed at theoretization of behaviour or transfiguration of stage-sensual or non/stage-perceptual situations in the process of conceptualization of the theoretical figure inscribed in place of the expected artistic figure (exhibition/happening “Hyperreal Allegory: Studio of Theoreticians in the Age of Post-Socialism”, Belgrade, 2001; “Performing Gender”, Belgrade, 2002). Fragmentariness is a distinctive feature of all TkH performances, because it is performed as a political instrument of the display of defying or queer relations between signifiers’ practices of theory and art. Fragmentariness has taken over from, e.g., the thesis that there is no meta-language (Lacan, Lyotard) and that every meta-language is at the same time a first order not-all(pas tout)narrative language of display of fissures in its own identity (Barthes, Acker and Cixous). It also leads towards understanding that meaning does not derive from the story of the theoretical narrative, but from the manner in which the theoretical narrative is performed behaviourally or through specific media, with all due resistances from the context of the performance. Fragmentariness is here a weapon of the signifying practice. The poly-genre character of the TkH performance derives from the set up of the performance as an “instrumental signifiers’ field” or “performer’s map” through which traditional performing genres can be passed through, filtered, deconstructed or regulated, e.g. opera (“DreamOpera”, Piran, 2001), dramatic theatre (“Psychosis and Death of the Author: Algorithm – YU03/04.13”, Belgrade, 2004) and radio drama (“Why Marquis de Sade Never Met Kathy Acker?”, Belgrade, 2003). TkH projects were performed in different media, from physicallyverbal or physically-behavioural performing on

stage, through inter-media links between different arts (verbal speech [in all performances] playing music [Jasna Velićković] as a physical act, painting on stage [Siniša Ilić] in place of the performance of a ballet ensemble, etc.) to the use of technology in different media: radio, TV and digital film (“Gazes for RB”, 2004), CD-Rom, LAN, Internet (“Psychosis and Death of the Author…”). Thus, what was demonstrated was the media nomadism of TkH productions, but also an important statement that the “medium” is an instrument of ideology. By choosing different forms of media presentations, a thesis was postulated that every medium presents complex problems of ideological identifications and transfigurations in the synchrony and diachrony of an artistic, cultural and social space. Nonetheless, the theoretical performances of TkH are not realizations of the art work itself in a new and fancy manner, including physical/verbal/ behavioural/media design of theory as a potential or accomplished spectacle (“DreamOpera”; “The Dracula Project”, Vienna, Lyon, 2002-2003; “Jouissance in Deconstruction of Post-Socialist Mythologies”, Belgrade, Zagreb, 2002-2003) in terms of presenting a non-conflicting sample for the enjoyment of the new liberal or knowledgeable bourgeois “class” in the era of transition. On the contrary, what was performed were the problematic and often cynical confrontations with the fact that the “new” and “fancy” in the spectacular exit from the “theory lab” into the “art scene” are political intervenionist acts. Those acts aim at opening up an era in which one indeed lives by defying the terrors of traditionalism and conservatism which lead to confinement and rejection of our simultaneously crucial, joyful and painful, HERE-and-NOWness.

translated by Irena Sentevska

CoCA In… Review of Contemporary Art Centres and Museums quarterly PUBLISHER: Centre of Contemporary Art “Znaki Czasu” in Toruń ul. Wały gen. Sikorskiego 13, 87-100 Toruń, Poland Editorial office address: ul. Wały gen. Sikorskiego 13, 87-100 Toruń, Poland tel.: 692 393 567, 795 141 678 e-mail: info@csw.torun.pl Editorial board: Malina Barcikowska, Mateusz Bieczyński (Issue Editor), Natalia Cieślak, Dobrila Denegri, Jacek Kasprzycki, Anna Kompanowska, Paweł Łubowski (Editorin-Chief), Sławomir Marzec, Marta Smolińska, Krzysztof Stanisławski, Jerzy Olek, Aleksandra Mosiołek Graphic design: Max Skorwider (Art Director), Paweł Łubowski, Wojciech Kuberski Collaborators: Christine Coquillat (Paris), Magdalena Durda, Daria Kołacka (Basel), Roman Kubicki, Zuzanna Mannke (Essen), Anna Markowska, Olga Sienko (London), Tadeusz Sawa-Borysławski, Grzegorz Sztabiński, Miško Šuvaković (Belgrade) Translations: Monika Ujma, Maciej Pokornowski Proofreading: Ian Corkill, Paweł Falkowski, Katarzyna Radomska Editorial board reserves the right to shorten articles and correspondence, and to give them titles. Unsolicited materials will not be returned. Editorial board is not responsible for content of advertisements. Advertisements and promotion: Natalia Drzewoszewska e-mail: natalia.drzewoszewska@csw.torun.pl Subscription: e-mail: ksiegarnia@csw.torun.pl Printed by: ARTiS Poligrafia s.c., ul. Granitowa 7/9, 87-100 Toruń ISSN 2299-6893