performers?
1
27 SEPTEMBER Katerina Athanasiou
2
3
Neo-Dada From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Rauschenberg, 1963, Retroactive II; combine painting with paint and photos.
Neo-Dada was a movement with audio, visual and literary manifestations that had similarities in method or intent with earlier Dada artwork. It sought to close the gap between art and daily life, and was a combination of playfulness, iconoclasm, and appropriation.[1] In the United States the term was popularized by Barbara Rose in the 1960s and refers primarily, although not exclusively, to work created in that and the preceding decade. There was also an international dimension to the movement, particularly in Japan and in Europe, serving as the foundation of Fluxus, Pop Art and Nouveau réalisme.[2] Neo-Dada has been exemplified by its use of modern materials, popular imagery, and absurdist contrast. It was a reaction to the personal emotionalism of Abstract Expressionism and, taking a lead from the practice of Marcel Duchamp and Kurt Schwitters, denied traditional concepts of aesthetics.[3]
Contents
1Trends
2Poems
3Artists linked with the term
4
4See also
5References
6Bibliography
Trends[edit] Interest in Dada followed in the wake of documentary publications, such as Robert Motherwell's The Dada Painters and Poets (1951)[4] and German language publications from 1957 and later, to which some former Dadaists contributed. [5] However, several of the original Dadaists denounced the label Neo-Dada, especially in its U.S. manifestations, on the grounds that the work was derivative rather than making fresh discoveries; that aesthetic pleasure was found in what were originally protests against bourgeois aesthetic concepts; and because it pandered to commercialism.[6] Many of the artists who identified with the trend subsequently moved on to other specialities or identified with different art movements and in many cases only certain aspects of their early work can be identified with it. For example, Piero Manzoni's Consacrazione dell'arte dell'uovo sodo (Artistic consecration of the hard-boiled egg, 1959), which he signed with an imprint of his thumb, or his cans of shit (1961) whose price was pegged to the value of their weight in gold, satirizing the concept of the artist's personal creation and art as commodity. [7]
A Jean Tingueley fountain in Basel
An allied approach is found in the creation of collage and assemblage, as in the junk sculptures of the American Richard Stankiewicz, whose works created from scrap have been compared with Schwitters' practice. These objects are "so treated that they become less discarded than found, objets trouvés."[8] Jean Tinguely's fantastic machines, notoriously the self-destructing Homage to New York (1960), were another approach to the subversion of the mechanical. Although such techniques as collage and assemblage may have served as inspiration, different terms were found for the objects produced, both in the U.S. and in Europe. Robert Rauschenberg labeled as "combines" such works as "Bed" (1955), which consisted of a framed quilt and pillow covered in paint and mounted on the wall. Arman labeled as "accumulations" his collections of dice and bottle tops, and as "poubelles" the contents of trash-bins encased in plastic. Daniel Spoerri created "snare pictures" (tableaux piège), of which the earliest was "Kichka's Breakfast" (1960), and in which the remains of a meal were glued to the cloth and mounted on the table-top affixed to the wall. [9]
Poems[edit] 5
In the Netherlands the poets associated with the 'magazine for texts', Barbarber (1958–71), particularly J. Bernlef and K. Schippers, extended the concept of the readymade into poetry, discovering poetic suggestiveness in such everyday items as a newspaper advert about a lost tortoise and a typewriter test sheet.[10] Another group of Dutch poets infiltrated the Belgian experimentalist magazine Gard Sivik and began to fill it with seemingly inconsequential fragments of conversation and demonstrations of verbal procedures. The writers included C.B. Vaandrager, Hans Verhagen and the artist Armando. On this approach the critic Hugo Brems has commented that "the poet's role in this kind of poetry was not to discourse on reality, but to highlight particular fragments of it which are normally perceived as non-poetic. These poets were not creators of art, but discoverers." [11] The impersonality that such artists aspired to was best expressed by Jan Schoonhoven (1914–94), the theorist of the Dutch Nul group of artists, to which Armando also belonged: "Zero is first and foremost a new conception of reality, in which the individual role of the artist is kept to a minimum. The Zero artist merely selects, isolates parts of reality (materials as well as ideas stemming from reality) and exhibits them in the most neutral way. The avoidance of personal feelings is essential to Zero."[12] This in turn links it with some aspects of Pop Art and Nouveau Réaliste practice and underlines the rejection of Expressionism. The beginnings of Concrete Poetry and text montage in the Wiener Gruppe have also been referred back to the example of Raoul Hausmann's letter poems.[13] Such techniques may also owe something to H.N. Werkman's typographical experiments in the Netherlands which had first been put on display in the Stedelijk Museum in 1945.
Artists linked with the term
Genpei Akasegawa
Joseph Beuys
Jaap Blonk
George Brecht
John Cage
John Chamberlain
Jim Dine
Jacques Halbert
Dick Higgins
Kommissar Hjuler
Jasper Johns
Allan Kaprow
Yves Klein
6
Alison Knowles
George Maciunas
Piero Manzoni
Yoko Ono
Robin Page
Nam June Paik
Robert Rauschenberg
Ushio Shinohara
Wolf Vostell
See also[edit]
Anti-art
References[edit] 1.
^ Collins, Bradford R., 1942- (2012). Pop art : the independent group to Neo pop, 1952-90. London: Phaidon. ISBN 9780714862439. OCLC 805600556.
2.
^ Chilvers, Ian and John Glaves-Smith. A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art. Oxford University Press (2009), p. 503
3. 4. 5.
^ Craft, pp.10–11 ^ Karpel, Bernard (1989). The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology. ISBN 9780674185005. Archived from the original on 2015-12-22. Retrieved 2015-12-12. ^ Brill, p.101
6.
^ Alan Young, Dada and After: Extremist Modernism and English Literature, Manchester University 1983, pp.201–3 Archived 2015-12-22 at the Wayback Machine and Brill, pp.104–5
7.
^ Glancey, Jonathan (2007-06-13). "Merde d'artiste: not exactly what it says on the tin". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
8. 9.
^ Robert Goldwater in A Dictionary of Modern Sculpture, London 1962, pp.277–8 ^ Margherita d'Ayala-Valva, "Spoerri reads Rumohr", chapter 4 in The Taste of Art: Cooking, Food, and Counterculture in Contemporary Practices, University of Arkansas 2017, p.78
7
10.
^ Bertram Mourits, The Conceptual Poetic of K. Schippers: the aesthetic implications of literary readymades, Dutch Crossing 21.1, pp.119–34
11.
^ Hugo Brems, Contemporary Poetry of the Low Countries, Flemish Netherlands Foundation, 1995, p.20
12.
^ Translation in Dutch Interior: Postwar Poetry of the Netherlands and Flanders, Columbia University 1984, pp.36–7 Archived 2015-12-22 at the Wayback Machine
13.
^ Anna Katharina Schaffner, "How the Letters Learned to Dance: on language dissection in Dadaist, Digital and Concrete Poetry", in Avant-garde/Neo-avant-garde, Amsterdam 2005, pp.149–165 Archived 201512-22 at the Wayback Machine
Bibliography[edit]
Dorothée Brill, Shock and the Senseless in Dada and Fluxus, Dartmouth College 2010
Catherine Craft, An Audience of Artists: Dada, Neo-Dada, and the Emergence of Abstract Expressionism, University of Chicago 2012
Susan Hapgood, Neo-Dada: Redefining Art, 1958–62, Universe Books and American Federation of Arts (1994)
David Hopkins, Neo-avant garde, Amsterdam, New York 2006 Cecilia Novero, Antidiets of the Avant-Garde: From Futurist Cooking to Eat Art, University of Minnesota 2010 Owen Smith, Fluxus: The History of an Attitude, San Diego State University 1998
8
Nouveau réalisme From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigationJump to search This article is about the art movement. For the school of early 20th-century epistemology, see New realism (philosophy). For the theory of international relations, see Neorealism (international relations).
The Nouveau Réalisme Manifesto, signed by all of the original members in Yves Klein's apartment, 27 October 1960
Nouveau réalisme (French: new realism) refers to an artistic movement founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany[1] and the painter Yves Klein during the first collective exposition in the Apollinaire gallery in Milan. Pierre Restany wrote the original manifesto for the group, titled the "Constitutive Declaration of New Realism," in April 1960, proclaiming, "Nouveau Réalisme —new ways of perceiving the real."[2] This joint declaration was signed on 27 October 1960, in Yves Klein's workshop, by nine people: Yves Klein, Arman, Martial Raysse, Pierre Restany, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely and the Ultra-Lettrists, Francois Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Jacques de la Villeglé; in 1961 these were joined by César, Mimmo Rotella, then Niki de Saint Phalle and Gérard Deschamps. The artist Christo showed with the group. It was dissolved in 1970.[2] Contemporary of American pop art, and often conceived as its transposition in France, new realism was, along with Fluxus and other groups, one of the numerous tendencies of the avant-garde in the 1960s. The group initially chose Nice, on the French Riviera, as its home base since Klein and Arman both originated there; new realism is thus often retrospectively considered by historians to be an early representative of the École de Nice movement.[3]
9
Contents
1History
2Ideas and techniques
3The new realists in architecture
4The new realists
5References
6Bibliography
7External links
History[edit]
Travailleurs Communistes by Raymond Hains
The term new realism was first used in May 1960 by Pierre Restany, to describe the works of Omiros, Arman, François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely and Jacques Villeglé as they exhibited their work in Milan. He had discussed this term before with Yves Klein (who died prematurely in 1962), who preferred the expression "today's realism" (réalisme d'aujourd'hui) and criticized the term "New". After the first "Manifesto of New Realism", a second manifesto, titled "40° above Dada" (40° au-dessus de Dada) was written between 17 May and 10 June 1961. César, Mimmo Rotella, Niki de Saint-Phalle (then practicing "shooting paintings") Omiros with his "free space" and Gérard Deschamps then joined the movement, followed by Christo in 1963. Klein, however, started to distance himself from the group around 1961, disliking Restany's insistence on a Dadaist heritage. The first exposition of the nouveaux réalistes took place in November 1960 at the Paris "Festival d'avant-garde". This exposition was followed by others: in May 1961 at the Gallery J. in Paris; Premier Festival du Nouveau Réalisme in Nice from July til September 1961 at the Muratore Gallery and the Abbaye de Roseland; International Exhibition of the New Realists, a survey of contemporary American pop art and the Nouveau Réalisme movement at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York at the end of 1962; and at the Biennale of San Marino in 1963 (which would be the last collective show by the group). The movement had difficulty maintaining a cohesive program after the death of Yves Klein in June, 1962 and when Omiros abandoned it and decided to go in his own path experimenting with perspective and space.
Ideas and techniques[edit] The members of the nouveaux réalistes group tended to see the world as an image from which they could take parts and incorporate them into their works—as they sought to bring life
10
and art closer together. They declared that they had come together on the basis of a new and real awareness of their "collective singularity", meaning that they were together in spite of, or perhaps because of, their differences. But for all the diversity of their plastic language, they perceived a common basis for their work; this being a method of direct appropriation of reality, equivalent, in the terms used by Pierre Restany, to a "poetic recycling of urban, industrial and advertising reality".[4] Artists of Nouveau Réalisme sought out to strip art of previously thought standards that art had to mean something, they could take any object beyond its preconceived notions and present it as itself, and thought it could still be considered art. Many of them also sought to break down the glamorization of artists producing their craft in private, and due to this, often art pieces were produced in public. [5] Thus the nouveaux réalistes advocated a return to "reality" in opposition to the lyricism of abstract painting. They also wanted to avoid what they saw as the traps of figurative art, which was seen as either petty-bourgeois or as Stalinist socialist realism. Hence the Nouveau Réalistes used exterior objects to give an account of the reality of their time. They were the inventor of the décollage technique (the opposite of collages), in particular through the use of lacerated posters—a technique mastered by François Dufrene, Jacques Villeglé, Mimmo Rotella and Raymond Hains. Often these artists worked collaboratively and it was their intention to present their artworks in the city of Paris anonymously. Nouveau réalistes made extensive use of collage and assemblage, using real objects incorporated directly into the work and acknowledging a debt to the readymades of Marcel Duchamp. But the New Realism movement has often been compared to the pop art movement in New York for their use and critique of mass-produced commercial objects (Villeglé's ripped cinema posters, Arman's collections of detritus and trash), although Nouveau Réalisme maintained closer ties with Dada than with pop art.
The new realists in architecture[edit] "The new realists" is also a term applied to a group of Australian architects determined to create a "New Realism" in architecture, based on the understanding of past developments in the discipline of architecture and modern day explorations of new technologies in the fields of design and building technology.
The new realists[edit]
Arman, Foto: Lothar Wolleh
11
Villeglé, Foto: Lothar Wolleh
Niki de Saint Phalle, Foto:Lothar Wolleh
Jean Tinguely, Foto Lothar Wolleh
References[edit] 1.
^ Karl Ruhrberg, Ingo F. Walther, Art of the 20th Century, Taschen, 2000, p. 518. ISBN 3-8228-5907-9
2.
^ Jump up to:a b Kerstin Stremmel, Realism, Taschen, 2004, p. 13. ISBN 3-8228-2942-0 [Nouveau Réalisme nouvelles approches perceptives du réel]
3.
^ Rosemary M. O'Neill, Art and Visual Culture on the French Riviera, 1956–1971: The Ecole de Nice, Ashgate, 2012, p. 93.
4.
^ 60/90. Trente ans de Nouveau Réalisme, La Différence, 1990, p. 76
5.
^ "Nouveau Réalisme Movement Overview". The Art Story. Retrieved 21 March 2019.
Bibliography[edit] 12
Jürgen Becker, Wolf Vostell, Happenings, Fluxus, Pop Art, Nouveau Réalisme. Eine Dokumentation. Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1965.
Nouveau Réalisme. Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg, 2005. ISBN 3-938821-08-6.
Ulrich Krempel, Nouveau Réalisme. Revolution des Alltäglichen. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2007, ISBN 978-3-7757-2058-8.
Jill Carrick, Nouveau Réalisme, 1960s France, and the Neo-avant-garde: Topographies of Chance and Return, Ashgate Press, 2010. [1]
New Realisms, 1957–1962: Object Strategies Between Readymade and Spectacle, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2010.
Pierre Restany, Manifeste des Nouveaux Réalistes, Editions Dilecta, Paris, 2007.
Poesie der Großstadt. Die Affichisten. Bernard Blistène, Fritz Emslander, Esther Schlicht, Didier Semin, Dominique Stella. Snoeck, Köln 2014, ISBN 978-3-9523990-8-8
External links[edit]
"New Realism", article from the Centre Pompidou
New Realism website, listing each of the artists show
Western art movements show
Avant-garde movements
Lothar Wolleh From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lothar Wolleh
13
Self-portrait in front of the St. Peter's Basilica, 1964
Born
January 30, 1930 Germany
Died
September 28, 1979 (aged 49)
Nationality
German
Occupation
Photographer
Known for
Commercial photographer
Lothar Wolleh (January 20, 1930 – September 28, 1979) was a well-known German photographer. Until the end of the sixties, Lothar Wolleh worked as a commercial photographer. He took portraits of international contemporary painters, sculptors and performance artists. Altogether, he photographed about 109 artists, including known personalities such as Georg Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Dieter Roth, Jean Tinguely, René Magritte, Günther Uecker, Gerhard Richter, Edward Kienholz, Otto Piene, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Christo.[1]
Contents
1Life
2Work
3Selected exhibitions
4Public collections
5Gallery
6Publications
14
7Notes
8References
9External links
Life[edit]
Cover : Lothar Wolleh, Das Konzil, II Vatikanisches Konzil (The Council, Vatican II Ecumenical Council), Stuttgart 1965
Cover of Art Scene Düsseldorf. Lothar Wolleh, Stuttgart 1972
Lothar Wolleh was the first of four sons of the single worker Else Martha Wolleh born in BerlinWedding. He spent the war years in Berlin. The bombing of the Allies, especially the death of the uncle's family as well as his participation "in the last squad" in the final battle for Berlin in April and May 1945 have left deep psychological traces throughout his life. In the years from 1946 to 1947 he studied "concrete painting" [2] in the elementary school class at the Hochschule für angewandte Kunst in Berlin-Weißensee.[3] From December 1947 to October 1949, he lived in “Boys Town” in Bad Vilbel, a camp run by the US Army for uprooted young Germans, based on the approach of Father Edward J. Flanagan. A few months after his return to Berlin in July 1950, he was arrested by the Soviet occupying forces and sentenced by a special court "OSO" (remote judgement from Moscow) to 15 years in a forced labor camp for alleged espionage and diversion under Articles 58.6 and 58.9 of the USSR. Until 1956 Wolleh was in the GULAG labor camp Vorkutlag in the USSR, where he did forced labor in a coal mine. Wolleh was able to return to Berlin in 1956, due to Konrad Adenauer's successful negotiations on the return of German prisoners of war. [4] The torture after the arrest and the hard detention and working conditions in coal mining left behind physical damage and post-traumatic disorders. At the same time, the GULAG labor camp Vorkutlag established his first contact with photography and a mythical worship of light. After his return from prison, from 1956 to 1957 Wolleh obtained an education in the LetteVerein, a continuation school for photography, design and fashion in Berlin.[5][6] He took part in a regular monthly recovery program of the World Council of Churches for war-disabled youth. This program made it possible for him to visit the Swedish island of Gotland in 1958, which
15
was a motivation for his lifelong strong affinity towards Sweden, its culture, landscape and people.[7] From 1962 until his death he lived and worked in Düsseldorf as a freelance photographer. Initially, he worked primarily in advertising and later turned to his artistic work. In 1964 he married his wife Karin. His son Oliver was born in 1965, his daughter Anouchka in 1966. In 1979 Lothar Wolleh died after an asthma attack in London, after he had portrayed Henry Moore. His grave is on Gotland.
Work[edit] As a freelancer for the advertising agency TEAM, which also included Helmut Newton, Wolleh became one of the most famous and expensive fashion, advertising and portrait photographers in the Federal Republic of Germany. His clients included well-known companies such as the Deutsche Bundesbahn, Tchibo or Volkswagen. In 1965 he portrayed Chancellor Ludwig Erhard for the campaign for the general election. In the years 1962 to 1965 Wolleh photographed the Second Vatican Council in Rome. With the help of Father Emil Schmitz SJ, Wolleh's first photo book Das Konzil, II Vatikanisches Konzil published in 1965 by the publisher Belser. In 1975 he photographed the Jubilee celebration, and published the photographic folios Apostolorum Limina (1975). This work, with its blurring, represents a radical evolution of Wolleh´s color photography, as suggested by the first book Das Konzil, II Vatikanisches Konzil. In 1969, Wolleh traveled for several months through the Soviet Union. The photographs taken on this journey found their way into the 1970 illustrated book USSR - The Soviet State and its People, which he published together with Heinrich Böll and Valentin Katajew with Belser publisher. In the late 1960s, at the request of his friend the German painter Günther Uecker, Wolleh began to systematically portray more than one hundred international well known painters, sculptors, and Actionists.[8][9] From the 1970s Wolleh hardly worked as a commercial photographer and devoted himself almost exclusively to his series of artist portraits, in which he first photographed the well-known artists of the Düsseldorf scene, including Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter. Soon, however, his project expanded beyond the borders of the Rhineland to the whole of Europe, focusing on the Zero (art) group or the Nouveau Réalisme with its members like Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely. Out of this project several comprehensive photobook-projects evolved:
1970- UdSSR (USSR)
1972- Art Scene Düsseldorf [10]
1972- Apostolorum Limina
1973- Das Unterwasserbuch (The Underwater Book, together with Joseph Beuys)
Several book and art portfolio projects remained unfinished, so a volume to Lucio Fontana, Jan Schoonhoven, The illustrated book "Men of Management", in which company founders and managers of the leading German companies were portrayed not to be released because of feared attacks by the Red Army faction. Further projects were the underwater book, which Beuys and Wolleh had planned together and created the 51 format-filling pictures for the book. The photographs were taken during the construction of the Beuys exhibition at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1971.[11]
16
Between 1977 and 1979 there were several stays in Poland. in the Wolleh until his death at the unfinished photo volumes The black Madonna of Czestochowa and Wawel Castle worked. During this time, numerous portraits of the Polish avant-garde emerged.[1] Wolleh's photograph of René Magritte and his wife is said to have inspired Paul Simon to compose the ballad "Rene And Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War". In his work, Lothar Wolleh pursued idiosyncratic creative principles that give his portraits an unmistakable signature. His works are precisely designed and staged through a clear, often strictly symmetrical image structure. The portrayed persons are usually placed as a whole figure on the vertical central axis in the upper half of the picture. Often the camera is on the ground or near the ground, so that it occupies almost the entire lower half of the picture, receives a base function and a clear horizon line divides the image area. Another characteristic is the black and white photography, in the context of a basically square format. [12] In total, Lothar Wolleh portrayed 109 artists.[13] In 2007, the comprehensive retrospective Lothar Wolleh – Eine Wiederentdeckung: Fotografien 1959 bis 1979 (Lothar Wolleh - A Rediscovery: Photographs 1959 to 1979) was shown in Germany at Kunsthalle Bremen, Stadtmuseum Hofheim, Kunstmuseum Ahlen and the Deutschherrenhaus Koblenz.[14]
Selected exhibitions[edit]
1962: Otto Steinert und Schüler. Fotografische Ausstellung, Gruppenausstellung in der Göppinger Galerie, Frankfurt/Main
1964: Farbige Fotografie. Bilder aus dem Vatikan, Einzelausstellung: Schatzkammer des Essener Münsters. Die Ausstellung wurde vom Essener Bischof Hengsbach (am 21. März 1964) eröffnet
1965: Zyklus von Farbfotos zum römischen Konzil, Einzelausstellung in der Galerie Valentin, Stuttgart
1980: Lothar Wolleh: Künstlerbildnisse. Kunstobjekte, Photographien, Einzelausstellung der Künstlerporträts in der Städtischen Kunsthalle Düsseldorf
1986: Lothar Wolleh - Das Foto als Kunststück" Einzelausstellung der Lippischen Gesellschaft für Kunst e.V. im Detmolder Schloß
1995: "Lothar Wolleh 1930-1979: Künstlerbildnisse - Kunstobjekte, Photographien“ Kunstmuseum Ahlen
2005–2007: Lothar Wolleh. Eine Wiederentdeckung: Fotografien 1959 bis 1979, Einzelausstellung: Kunsthalle Bremen, Ludwig Museum Koblenz, Kunst-Museum Ahlen, Stadtmuseum Hofheim am Taunus
2006: Joseph Beuys in Aktion. Heilkräfte der Kunst – Gruppenausstellung: museum kunst palast, Düsseldorf
17
2008: Fotos schreiben Kunstgeschichte – Gruppenausstellung: museum kunst palast, Düsseldorf
2008: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, Unsterblich! Das Foto des Künstlers
2008: Lothar Wolleh: Künstlerportraits Galerie f5,6, München
2009: „Lothar Wolleh: Portraits d'artistes“ Goethe-Institut Paris
2012: "Lothar Wolleh: Joseph Beuys im Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Januar 1971", Ausstellung im Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin 2012: “Das Kozil - Fotografien von Lothar Wolleh, Berlin” Bonifatiushaus Fulda
2013: “Lothar Wolleh (1930 - 1979) Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil im Bild Fotografien” Franz Hitze Haus, Münster
2014: Lothar Wolleh Künstlerportraits der sechziger und siebziger Jahre, Kunstmuseum Magdeburg
2015: Lothar Wolleh – Die ZERO–Künstler, Galerie Pavlov’s Dog, Berlin
2015: Lothar Wolleh - Vaticanum II, Galerie f5,6, München
2017: Lothar Wolleh - Portraits international bekannter Künstler, Galerie Ruth Leuchter, Düsseldorf
Public collections[edit]
Kunsthalle Bremen
Kunst-Museum Ahlen
Museum Folkwang, Essen
Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf
Tate Gallery / National Gallery of Scotland
Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Łódź
Gallery[edit] 18
René Magritte
Man Ray
Henry Moore
Lucio Fontana
Gerhard Richter
19
Georg Baselitz
Otto Piene
Herbert Zangs
Armand Pierre Fernandez
Jean Tinguely
20
Konrad Klapheck
Blinky Palermo
Niki de Saint Phalle
Joseph Beuys
Edward Kienholz
21
Second Vatican Council
Second Vatican Council
Second Vatican Council
Second Vatican Council
Paul VI
22
Second Vatican Council
Second Vatican Council
Publications[edit]
1965: The Council: The Second Vatican Council; Chr. Belser Verlag
1970: UdSSR. Der Sowjetstaat und seine Menschen. (USSR: The Soviet State and its people); Chr. Belser Verlag
1971: Günther Uecker / Lothar Wolleh: Nagelbuch; Verlag Galerie Der Spiegel, Köln
1972: Lothar Wolleh: Art Scene Düsseldorf 1; Chr. Belser Verlag
1973: Das Unterwasserbuch (The Underwater Book, together with Joseph Beuys.)
1975: Lothar Wolleh: Apostolorum Limina; Arcade Verlag, Arcade Verlag
1978: Günther Uecker: Ludwig van Beethovens Leonore. Idee einer Oper; Besser Verlag
1981: Lothar Wolleh (Photo), Günther Uecker, Guido de Werd (Text): Bühnenskulpturen für Lohengrin, Städtisches Museum Haus Koekkoek, Kleve
Notes[edit] 1.
^ Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen Düsseldorf (ed.), 1980, p. 8.
2.
^ Herzogenrath (ed.), 2005
3.
^ Herzogenrath (ed.), 2005
4.
^ Herzogenrath (ed.), 2005
23
5.
^ Herzogenrath (ed.), 2005
6.
^ Kittelmann(ed.), 2012
7.
^ Herzogenrath (ed.), 2005
8.
^ Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen Düsseldorf (ed.), 1980, p. 15.
9.
^ Welti, 1980, p. 38.
10.
^ Patricia G. Berman, Art Scene Düsseldorf: The Performative Print, in: Reinhold Heller, Anja Chávez, Two and One, Printmaking in Germany 1945-1990, Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass., 2003
11.
^ Kittelmann(ed.), 2012
12.
^ Kittelmann(ed.), 2012
13.
^ Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen Düsseldorf (ed.), 1980.
14.
^ Herzogenrath (ed.), 2005
2.
References[edit]
Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen Düsseldorf (ed.) (1980). Lothar Wolleh: Künstlerbildnisse – Kunstobjekte. Photographien. Germany: Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen Düsseldorf.
Welti, Alfred (1980). Das Foto als Kunststück. Hamburg: in: Art – Das Kunstmagazin, no. 8 Gruner & Jahr. pp. 38–45.
Herzogenrath, Wulf (2005). Lothar Wolleh – Eine Wiederentdeckung: Fotografien 1959 bis 1979. Bremen: Hauschild. ISBN 3-89757-304-0.
Lowis, Kristina (2008). Unsterblich! Das Foto des Künstlers. Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. ISBN 978-3-88609-656-5.
Kittelmann, Udo (2012). Lothar Wolleh – Lothar Wolleh. Joseph Beuys im Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Januar 1971. Köln: Buchhandlung Walther König. ISBN 978-3-86335263-9.
External links[edit] Media related to Lothar Wolleh at Wikimedia Commons
Website of Lothar Wolleh
24
Lothar Wolleh - Galerie f 5,6
Related Artists
Robert Rauschenberg Summary Biography Artworks
John Cage
Summary Biography Artworks
25
 Merce Cunningham
26
Summary Biography Artworks
27
Jasper Johns born 1930 | Tate
tate.org.uk
Jasper Johns. Map. 1961 | MoMA moma.org
Jasper Johns review – why can't he just keep things simple? | Art and design | The Guardian theguardian.com
Jasper Johns | 0 Through 9 | Whitney Museum of American Art whitney.org
Jasper Johns: 10 works to know | Blog | Royal Academy of Arts royalacademy.org.uk
0-9, 1960 by Jasper Johns | Jasper johns paintings, Jasper johns, Jasper jones ar.pinterest.com
Why Jasper Johns Is an Icon of 20th-Century Painting - Artsy artsy.net
The Art of the Map - Jasper Johns | Art | Agenda | Phaidon
28
phaidon.com
Colorful Alphabet" painted by Jasper Johns in 1959. The painting technique used in this piece is called the encau… | Jasper johns paintings, Jasper johns, Text art pinterest.com
Jasper Johns, American Legend - The New York Times nytimes.com
Jasper Johns - 529 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy artsy.net · Διαθέσιμο
Jasper Johns at the Royal Academy | Apollo Magazine apollo-magazine.com
Reinventing Jasper Johns
29
artbasel.com
30
BRUCE NAUMAN ï‚·
31
ARTWORK
Bruce NaumanMAPPING
THE STUDIO II with color shift, flip, flop, & flip/flop (Fat Chance John Cage) 2001
E S S AY
Bruce Nauman: Raw Materials Find out more about the artist's career and his work for the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall
16–25? Join Tate Collective for £5 tickets Find out more
32

ART TERM
Time-based media Refers to art that is dependent on technology and has a durational dimension TAT E M O D E R N P R I VAT E V I E W
33
The Wardens Today - blogger
The Wardens Today: GERHARD RICHTER : CAGE (1) - (6)
34
About the work Provenance
Robert Rauschenberg Foundation New York Image rights © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
Robert Rauschenberg
35
American, 1925–2008 Robert Rauschenberg’s enthusiasm for popular culture and, with his contemporary Jasper Johns, his rejection of the angst and seriousness of the Abstract Expressionists led him to search for a new way of painting. A prolific innovator of techniques and mediums, he used unconventional art materials ranging from dirt and house paint to umbrellas and car tires. In the early 1950s, Rauschenberg was already gaining a reputation as the art world’s enfant terrible with works such as Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953), for which he requested a drawing (as well as permission) from Willem de Kooning, and proceeded to rub away the image until only ghostly marks remained on the paper. By 1954, Rauschenberg completed his first three-dimensional collage paintings—he called them Combines—in which he incorporated discarded materials and mundane objects to explore the intersection of art and life. “I think a picture is more like the real world when it’s made out of the real world,” he said. In 1964 he became the first American to win the International Grand Prize in Painting at the Venice Biennale. The 1/4 Mile or Two Furlong Piece (1981–98), a cumulative artwork, embodies his spirit of eclecticism, comprising a retrospective overview of his many discrete periods, including painting, fabric collage, sculptural components made from cardboard and scrap metal, as well as a variety of image transfer and printing methods. Show artist insights
Robert Rauschenberg Follow Clay Painting (for John Cage and Merce Cunningham), 1992 Unfired clay on wood panel
Στερεότυπο Από τη Βικιπαίδεια, την ελεύθερη εγκυκλοπαίδεια
Μετάβαση στην πλοήγησηΠήδηση στην αναζήτηση Στην κοινωνική ψυχολογία, το στερεότυπο είναι η υπεργενικευμένη πεποίθηση σχετικά με μια κατηγορία ανθρώπων.[1] Είναι η προσδοκία ότι ο άνθρωπος που ανήκει σε μια ιδιαίτερη ομάδα έχει όλα τα χαρακτηριστικά της ομάδας στην οποία ανήκει. Παραδείγματα στερεότυπων πεποιθήσεων είναι ότι «οι πολιτικοί είναι διεφθαρμένοι», «οι γυναίκες είναι συναισθηματικές», «οι μεσογειακοί λαοί είναι θερμόαιμοι», «οι αλλοδαποί είναι εγκληματίες», «οι Γερμανοί είναι οργανωτικοί» κτλ.[2] Ο τύπος της προσδοκίας μπορεί να ποικίλει: μπορεί να είναι για παράδειγμα μια προσδοκία σχετικά με τη προσωπικότητα, τις προτιμήσεις ή τις ικανότητες ενός ανθρώπου. Τα στερεότυπα είναι γενικευμένα, επειδή το άτομο υποθέτει ότι το στερεότυπο που πιστεύει για μια κατηγορία ανθρώπων ισχύει για κάθε μεμονωμένο άτομο σε μια συγκεκριμένη κατηγορία ατόμων.[3] Ενώ τέτοιες γενικεύσεις μπορεί να φανούν χρήσιμες όταν γίνονται γρήγορες αποφάσεις, αυτές οι γενικεύσεις μπορεί να είναι εσφαλμένες όταν εφαρμόζονται για συγκεκριμένα πρόσωπα.[4] Τα στερεότυπα οδηγούν στη κοινωνική κατηγοριοποίηση, η οποία είναι ένας από τους λόγους ανάπτυξης συμπεριφορών προκατάληψης. Τέλος, η ανάπτυξη συμπεριφορών προκατάληψης μπορεί να γίνει για διάφορους λόγους. Σύγχρονος χορός: Ιστορία, εκπαίδευση, σύνθεση και χορογραφία
36
Ενότητα 10: Happening - Performance – Επιτέλεση – Site specific Γαλάνη Μαρία (Μάρω) PhD Παιδαγωγικό Τμήμα Δημοτικής Εκπαίδευσης 1 Σκοπός της ενότητας Αποσαφήνιση των όρων happening - site specific performance – επιτέλεση και εισαγωγή στις επιτελεστικές πρακτικές και τεχνικές ανάπτυξης για παρεμβατικές δράσεις στο δημόσιο χώρο. Άσκηση πεδίου: Μέθοδος έργου επιτέλεσης εν προόδω. 2 Περιεχόμενα ενότητας - HAPPENING - SITE SPECIFIC - PERFORMANCE – ΕΠΙΤΕΛΕΣΗ 3 Η προσέγγιση του θέματος αποτελεί σύγγραμμα in progress και προκύπτει από την μελέτη, σπουδή και εμπειρία της διδάσκουσας Οι φωτογραφίες που συμπεριλαμβάνονται σε αυτή την ενότητα αφορούν σε επιτελέσεις και παρεμβατικές δράσεις στο δημόσιο χώρο, της διδάσκουσας Δρ. Μάρως Γαλάνη – χορογράφου και προέρχονται από το προσωπικό της αρχείο. Happening – Performance -Site specific Επιτέλεση 4 HAPPENING Με τον όρo happening ο Allan Kaprow στις αρχές της δεκαετίας του 1960 περιγράφει μια νέα, τότε, μορφή τέχνης που αποτελεί έναν πρόδρομο της τέχνης της performance. Το χάπενινγκ επιτρέπει στον καλλιτέχνη να πειραματιστεί με την κίνηση του σώματος, να χρησιμοποιήσει αντί μουσικής ηχογραφημένους ήχους, να συμπεριλάβει στη δράση του γραπτά κείμενα ή να χρησιμοποιήσει προφορικό λόγο να ενεργοποιήσει τις αισθήσεις της γεύσης , αφής και μυρωδιάς. 5 SITE-SPECIFIC • Είναι ένα πρόγραμμα θεατρικής ή χορευτικής ή χοροθεατρικής παράστασης που σχεδιάστηκε, με αρχική έμπνευση έναν τόπο, για να εκτελεσθεί στον μοναδικό, ειδικά προσαρμοσμένο αυτόν τόπο. Μπορεί να είναι αυλή ξενοδοχείου, διάδρομοι κτιρίου, δημόσιες τουαλέτες, δημόσια πλυντήρια, εγκαταλειμμένο
37
κτίριο, κολυμβητήριο, πισίνα, έλος, σταθμός, δάσος. • Ένα πρόσφατο ενδιαφέρον παράδειγμα site-specific παράστασης του This is not a theatre company’s POOL PLAY που πραγματοποιήθηκε το 2014 στην Νέα Υόρκη σε μια πραγματική πισίνα. Το κοινό κάθισε στην άκρη τη πισίνας και έβαλε τα πόδια στο νερό για να παρακολουθήσει την παράσταση η οποία περιλάμβανε επιπλέον και συγχρονισμένη κολύμβηση και διαλογισμό για τη ρύπανση. • Μερικές φορές οι θεατές χρειάζεται να περπατούν και να μετακινούνται σε διάφορες φάσεις κατά τη διάρκεια της παράστασης και τότε ομιλούμε για promenade theatre (θέατρο περιπάτου). 6 PERFORMANCE | ΕΠΙΤΕΛΕΣΗ • Performance (Επιτέλεση) είναι ένα καλλιτεχνικό συμβάν το οποίο πράττει ένας καλλιτέχνης performer ή ομάδα καλλιτεχνών παρουσία θεατών σε χώρους δημόσιους (σταθμό του μετρό, στο δρόμο, ή στο σπίτι κάποιου) όχι κατ’ ανάγκη συμβατικά συνδεδεμένους με την Τέχνη (θέατρο, αίθουσα συναυλιών, gallery κλπ). Μερικές φορές μεταξύ καλλιτεχνών και κοινού η διαχωριστική γραμμή δεν έχει σαφώς προσδιοριστεί και επιτρέπεται ή και επιδιώκεται αλληλεπίδραση μεταξύ θεατών και ερμηνευτών . 7 Η Performance μπορεί να έχει σενάριο ή να στερείται (unscripted), να είναι αυθόρμητη και αφημένη στην τυχαιότητα ή να είναι προσεκτικά σχεδιασμένη, συνήθως αφήνει ένα μέρος ημιτελές για να φωτιστεί στη διάρκεια της performance. 8 Συνδέεται με το μεταμοντέρνο, αμφισβητεί τις ορθόδοξες μορφές Τέχνης. Διερευνά μέσω της αυθεντικής εμπειρίας (για τον performer και το κοινό) ένα γεγονός που δεν θα μπορούσε να επαναληφθεί, αναδεικνύοντας το εφήμερο στη Τέχνη, με προθέσεις καταγγελτικές για τα δυτικά πολιτιστικά πρότυπα της Τέχνης .
38
ΑΣΚΗΣΗ ΠΕΔΙΟΥ ΜΕΘΟΔΟΣ ΕΡΓΟΥ ΕΠΙΤΕΛΕΣΗΣ ΕΝ ΠΡΟΟΔΩ Συνάπτοντας το χώρο με το θέμα, το πρόσωπο του δημιουργού και τις προσωπικές του αναμνήσεις.
ΦΑΣΕΙΣ ΑΝΑΠΤΥΞΗΣ ΜΕΘΟΔΟΥ ΕΡΓΟΥ ΕΠΙΤΕΛΕΣΗΣ ΕΝ ΠΡΟΟΔΩ 1. Σημείο εκκίνησης 2. Άσκηση πεδίου α. Επιτόπια παρατήρηση - χαρτογράφηση του χώρου β. Άσκηση ιστορική - νοσταλγική |δεν υπάρχουν τόποι ακλόνητοι κι αναλλοίωτοι | 3. Άσκηση σε ένα έργο που αναμένεται α. Συλλογή υλικού - εξερεύνηση παραμέτρων β. Χαρτογράφηση του ερεθίσματος γ. Ορισμός της performance εκ της θεματικής της δ. Αναλυτικά η προοπτική του θέματος – πρακτικές ασκήσεις 4. Οργάνωση του χρόνου
ΒΙΒΛΙΟΓΡΑΦΙΑ της ενότητας • SITE-SPECIFIC • Edited by Anna Birch, Joanne Tompkins, (2012) Performing Site Specific Theatre. Politics, Place, Practice, Palgrave Macmillan • Nick Kaye, (2000) Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation, Routledge • Mike Pearson, (2010) Site-Specific Performance, Palgrave Macmillan • PERFORMANCE • Αυγητίδου Α., ΒαμβακΊδου Ι., (2013) Performance now V.1: επιτελεστικές πρακτικές στην τέχνη και δράσεις in situ. Εκδ Ιων, Αθήνα • Kristine Stiles, (2008) Marina Abramovic, Phaidon Press Ltd • Marvin Carlson, (2003) Performance a critical introduction, Routledge • Πέρεκ Ζ., Χορείες χώρων εκδ. Υψιλον βιβλία, Αθήνα • Rose Lee Goldberg, (2011) Performance Art from Futurism to the Present, Thames & Hudson • Schechner R., (2011) Θεωρία της επιτέλεσης, εκδ. Τελέθριο
ΤΟ ΕΙΚΑΣΤΙΚΟ ΕΙΔΟΣ ΤΗΣ PERFORMANCE – ΣΥΝΟΠΤΙΚΗ ΕΙΣΑΓΩΓΗ Απόό Ηρακλήό ς Κακαβαό νής στό ΜΑΪΪ 24, 2017Εικαστικέό ς Τέό χνές
39
Γραό φέι ό Κώστας Ευαγγελάτος // Ζωγραό φός, Λόγότέό χνής, Θέωρήτικόό ς τής τέό χνής. Μέ βαό σή τή θέωρήτικήό και πρακτικήό σχέό σή τής Ζωήό ς μέ τήν Τέό χνή και τό αισθήτικόό αιότήμα
για ταύό τισήό τόύς, ή έικαστικήό παραό στασή-performance έιόναι μια νέό α έικαστικήό μόρφήό πόύ έπιτύγχαό νέι τήν ταύό τισή αύτήό . Τό αισθήτικόό απότέό λέσμα έιόναι βέό βαια «στιγμιαιόό» αφόύό
ύπαό ρχέι όό σό διαρκέιό ή έικαστικήό παραό στασή. Μόό νό ή φωτόγραφικήό μήχανήό , ή βιντέόκαό μέρα και ή κινήματόγραφιόα διόνόύν τήν δύνατόό τήτα για καταγραφήό τής δραό σής και για διαό σωσή των έικαστικωόν έικόό νων τής performance, ένωό ή αισθήτικήό σύγκιόνήσή πόύ πρόξένέιό απόμέό νέι δύνήτικήό στή μνήό μή των σύμμέτέχόό ντων . Performance, λόιπόό ν έιόναι μια παραό στασή μέ σύγκέκριμέό νό, ήό αφήρήμέό νό θέό μα, πόύ καό θέ έκφραστικήό τής δραό σή σύντέλέιόται μέό σω τής πρόέό κτασής των έικαστικωόν έκφραστικωόν
μέό σων στό χωόρό. Η πόλλαπλόό τήτα των μέό σων έό κφρασής πόύ μπόρόύό ν να χρήσιμόπόιήθόύό ν καταό τή διαδικασιόα-τέλέτόύργιόα τής performance διόνέι στόν καλλιτέό χνή τή δύνατόό τήτα να πόλλαπλασιαό σέι τις αισθήτικέό ς και ψύχικέό ς σύγκινήό σέις, απέό ναντι στις μέταπλαό σέις τόύ αντικέιμένικόύό κόό σμόύ. Η όό λή διαδικασιόα βασιόζέται στις θέωριόές για τήν ιδέατήό αλλαό και πρακτικήό ταύό τισή τόύ έό ργόύ τέό χνής και ζωήό ς. Στήν έύρύό τέρή έό ννόια τής performance «παραό στασής» ανήό κόύν και αό λλές σύναφέιός μόρφέό ς τέό χνής, όό πως ή body art και τό happening. Body art, σωματικήό τέό χνή – τέό χνή για τό σωόμα ήό μέ τό σωόμα. Ειόναι ή πέριόπτωσή, πόύ τό
ιόδιό τό σωόμα τόύ καλλιτέό χνή ήό καό πόιόύ μόντέό λόύ γιόνέται τό έό ργό τέό χνής, πόύ έκτιόθέται στό κόινόό , όό πως και τα “αό ψύχα” έό ργα τόύ παρέλθόό ντός. Τό ανθρωόπινό σωόμα έιόναι ό καλύό τέρής πόιόό τήτας καμβαό ς για τό πινέό λό ένόό ς ζωγραό φόύ, πόύ σχέδιαό ζέι, χαραό ζέι, χρωματιόζέι παό νω τόύ τις ιδέό ές τόύ, ακόλόύθωόντας πόλλέό ς φόρέό ς τήν ανατόμιόα και τις αισθήτικέό ς λύό σέις, πόύ τόύ πρόσφέό ρέι τέλικαό τό ιόδιό τό σωόμα. Τό σωόμα πόύ σαν σινιαό λό ζωντανήό ς ύό παρξής γιόνέται όό ργανό απέλέύθέό ρωσής απόό καό θέ έιόδόύς κόινωνικόπόλιτικαό ταμπόύό . Επιόσής τό happeningσύμβαό ν, έό να γέγόνόό ς τύχαιόό ήό πρόμέλέτήμέό νό, πόύ ό αύτόσχέδιασμόό ς και τό απρόσδόό κήτό χαρακτήριό ζόύν τήν έκτέό λέσήό τόύ μέ τή σύμμέτόχήό και των θέατωόν. Επιόσής πόλλέό ς απόό τις ακραιόές και βιόαιές δραό σέις πόύ πρόέό κύψαν έιόχαν αφέτήριόα τόύς τήν όργισμέό νή ιδέόλόγικήό σύό γκρόύσή των καλλιτέχνωόν μέ τόν αντικέιμένικόό κόό σμό. Όπως και τό κιόνήμα τής Arte Povera, πόύ έπιχέιόρήσέ να απόσύνθέό σέι τα όό ρια τόύ καλλιτέχνικόύό έό ργόύ, έύτέλιό ζόντας τήν ύλικήό τόύ ύπόό στασή μέ τή χρήό σή και αξιόπόιόήσή των φθήνωόν ύλικωόν, αλλαό και τήν ταχέιόα αναό πτύξή τής έννόιόλόγικήό ς τέό χνής, πόύ μέ τό διανόήτικόό πρόό ταγμα τής έπιδιόωξέ να
ανατρέό ψέι τήν έπικρατόύό σα έό ννόια “έό ργό τέό χνής” και ή performance μέ αμέσόό τήτα και δύναμισμόό σύντέό λέσέ στήν κύριαρχιόα αντισύμβατικωόν δέδόμέό νων. Αύταό τα σύμβαό ντα-δραό σέις
40
και στή σήμέρινήό έπόχήό διαδραό σέις-interactions, διαφέό ρόύν βέό βαια απόό τή θέατρικήό πραό ξή, τις μέθόό δόύς έρμήνέιόας και τόύς στόό χόύς τής.
BODY ART, ΤΟ ΣΩΜΑ-ΚΑΜΒΑΣ
Στήν έξέλικτικήό πόρέιόα τόύ ανθρωόπόύ και των τέχνωόν ή σύό νδέσή ζωήό ς–έό ργόύ τέό χνής έιόναι παό ντότέ παρόύό σα, και ιστόρικόκόινωνικαό τό φαινόό μένό τής performance μπόρέιό να αναχθέιό στις πρωότές ανθρωόπινές κόινωνιόές. Όπως ή Τέό χνή γένικόό τέρα, έό χέι αό μέσή σύγγέό νέια μέ τις μαγικέό ς-θρήσκέύτικέό ς τέλέτόύργιόές. Η έμφαό νισή τόύ “διακόσμήμέό νόύ” μέ σύό μβόλα
έξόρκισμόύό και γόνιμόό τήτας ατόό μόύ δέν γιόνέται έν τή μόνωόσέι, αλλαό ένωόπιόν και μέ τή σύό μπραξή τής όμαό δας στις πρωτόό γόνές κόινωνιόές. Η παραό δόσή αύτήό μέ πόικιό λές και
41
πόλλαπλέό ς παραλλαγέό ς και απόκλιόσέις έό φθασέ μέό χρι τις μέό ρές μας. Βασικαό παραδέιόγματα τα
έπιζωγραφισμέό να σωόματα και πρόό σωπα των ιθαγένωόν. Βέό βαια σέ αύτόό τό ιδιόό τύπό και αό κρως ένδιαφέό ρόν έιόδός ένόό ς όιόνέιό body art έκτόό ς απόό τα στόιχέιόα τής δόξασιόας διακριόνέται και μια ταό σή “ωραιόπόιόήσής” και καλλιτέχνικήό ς έό κφρασής τόύ έαύτόύό τόύς. Γένικαό διαπιστωόνέται όό τι στήν έξέλικτικήό πόρέιόα των τέχνωόν ή σύό νδέσή τής ζωήό ς και τόύ έό ργόύ τέό χνής έιόναι μέ διαό φόρές μέθόό δόύς παό ντότέ παρόύό σα. Απόό τα πραγματικαό μόντέό λα όι καλλιτέό χνές όδήγόύό νται σέ σύνθέό σέις κόό σμων, μύό θων και κόινωνικόπόλιτικωόν κατασταό σέων, αναό λόγα μέ τήν έπόχήό και τις ιδέό ές πόύ τή διέό πόύν. Για πρωότή φόραό όό μως ή έπιταγήό για μια «ζωντανήό τέό χνή» αναπτύό χθήκέ μαζιό μέ τήν αναρχικήό ταό σή τόύ καλλιτέό χνή για τή λήό ξή τής
σχέό σής κραό τός–έκκλήσιόα–παραγγέλιόα–έό ργ ό-διακόό σμήσή χωόρόύ και τόν πρόσανατόλισμόό τής καλλιτέχνικήό ς δραό σής σέ ανέξαό ρτήτα ύπέρρέαλιστικαό και φόύτόύριστικαό πέδιόα. Οι έικαστικόιό performers μέ τήν έύρύό τέρή έό ννόια τόύ τιότλόύ έμφανιόζόνται απ’ τις πρωότές δέκαέτιόές τόύ 20όύ αιωόνα. Οι Ρωόσόι τής avant-garde/πρωτόπόριόας, ό κόρύφαιόός πόιήτήό ς και ιδιόό τύπός πέρφόό ρμέρ Mayakovsky, όι φόύτόύριστέό ς μέ τό futurist manifesto, τό δύναμικόό αντιέξόύσιαστικόό κιόνήμα τόύ «Ντανταιϊσμόύό », μέ τις ανατρέπτικέό ς και
ριζόσπαστικέό ς ταό σέις τόύς διατύπωμέό νές και γραπταό στα μανιφέό στα τόύς, έό δωσαν τις θέωρήτικέό ς αναφόρέό ς, αλλαό και τις πρακτικέό ς έφαρμόγέό ς των νέό ων έκφραστικωόν μέό σων πόύ έό χόύν και πόλιτικέό ς απόχρωόσέις αναό λόγές των κόσμόθέωριωόν τής έπόχήό ς τόύς. Όταν ό Hugo Ball, o Hans Richter, o Tristan Tzara, o Hans Arp και αό λλόι σήμαντικόιό καλλιτέό χνές σύνέό λαβαν τήν ιδέό α για μια παραό στασή τύό πόύ «καμπαρέό », μέ τραγόύό δια, απαγγέλιόές κέιμέό νων, έκθέό σέις έό ργων και διαό φόρα νόύό μέρα, σέ δωμαό τιό πόύ νόιόκιασαν στή Ζύριόχή, ιόδρύσαν τό πρωότό Performance Center στήν ιστόριόα. Κατόό πιν ή κύκλόφόριόα τόύ φύλλαδιόόύ Cabaret Voltaire, ή διαό δόσή των «ντανταιϊστικωόν» κέιμέό νων και ή ιόδρύσή τής γκαλέριό Dada, σύνέό τέιναν στήν έξαό πλωσή τόύ κινήό ματός. Τό Dada δέν ήό ταν έό να απλόό καλλιτέχνικόό κιόνήμα, αλλαό έό να κιόνήμα γένικόό τέρής κόινωνικήό ς αναθέωόρήσής και διαμαρτύριόας. Στόό χός, βέό βαια, δέν ήό ταν μόό νό ή θέτικήό διατύό πωσή ταό σέων μέ σκόπόό τόν σκανδαλισμόό τής αστικήό ς ταό ξής, αλλαό και ή θέωρήτικήό παραδόχήό ακόό μή και τής καταστρόφήό ς σαν έιόδός δήμιόύργιόας.
42
NAM JUNE PAIK, PERFORMANCE, FLUXUS FESTIVAL
Η σχέδόό ν ταύτόό χρόνή αναό πτύξή τόύ φόύτόύριστικόύό και τόύ σόύρέαλιστικόύό κινήό ματός, μέ τήν έπιότέύξή τής πλήό ρόύς απόσύό νδέσής τόύ καλλιτέό χνή απόό τήν παραό δόσή, μέ έό ντόνή έμβέό λέια, σύνέό τέιναν στήν έμφαό νισή και απόδόχήό νέωτέριστικωόν μόρφωόν έικαστικήό ς έό κφρασής. Όμως, ή έμπέό δωσή τόύ φαινόμέό νόύ των happenings και των performance όύσιαστικαό γιόνέται μέ τήν αναό πτύξή τής Pop Art. Επιταγήό τής έιόναι ή αμέσόό τήτα τής τέό χνής. Έτσι, πόλλόιό έκφραστέό ς τής, έκτόό ς απόό τήν πρόσθήό κή πραγματικωόν αντικέιμέό νων στα έό ργα
43
τόύς, καό τι πόύ έιόχαν καό νέι πρωότόι όι «ντανταιϊστέό ς», όό πως ό Kurt Schwitters, πρόό σθέσαν στα έό ργα τόύς στόιχέιόα ζωντανήό ς παραό στασής. Πρός τό τέό λός τής δέκαέτιόας τόύ 1950 έιόναι ή χρύσήό έπόχήό των happenings. Οι καλλιτέό χνές δήμιόύργόύό ν πέριστατικαό , σύνήό θως αύτόσχέό δια, πόύ σέ ατμόό σφαιρα αμέσόό τήτας και πόλλέό ς φόρέό ς πρόκλήτικόό τήτας και αύτότιμωριόας σύνταραό ζόύν τό κόινόό . Ϊδιαιότέρα στήν Αμέρικήό τό happening έό γινέ έπιόσήμα παραδέκτόό σαν νέό ό έικαστικόό έιόδός και αό ρχισέ να διδαό σκέται ή τέχνικήό τόύ σέ πανέπιστήό μιό τής Καλιφόό ρνιας. Στόν έύρωπαιϊκόό χωόρό όό μως ή διέύό ρύνσή των μόρφωόν έικαστικήό ς δραό σής σύνέχιόζέται μέ πιό έγκέφαλικέό ς και ιδιόό τύπές παρασταό σέις.
Παραό δέιγμα όι «ανθρωπόμέτριόές» τόύ Yves Klein, πόύ χρήσιμόπόιωόντας γύμναό γύναικέιόα σωόματα βόύτήγμέό να στό χρωόμα, έό φτιαχνέ πιόνακές μέ τήν σύνόδέιόα μόύσικήό ς ένωόπιόν τόύ κόινόύό , σέ γκαλέριό και αό λλόύς χωόρόύς.
Αύτέό ς και αό λλές παρέμφέρέιός έκδήλωόσέις στόό χό τόύς έιό χαν να καταδέιόξόύν, όό τι ό καλλιτέό χνής μπόρέιό να ύπέρβέιό τα φύσιόλόγικαό τόύ όό ρια και όό τι ό καθέό νας, ακόό μή και ό ιόδιός ό κόό σμός, μπόρόύό σέ να θέωρήθέιό σαν έό ργό τέό χνής. Σέ αύτέό ς τις έύρωπαιϊκέό ς performance ύπήό ρχέ πέρισσόό τέρή θέωρήτικήό σκέό ψή και λιγόό τέρή ταό σή έπιόδέιξής και “έφφέό ”. Ήδή, όό μως, στή δέκαέτιόα τόύ 1960 τό κιόνήμα Fluxus, μέ τις αναρχικέό ς και έπαναστατικέό ς έπιτέύό ξέις, σέ διέθνέό ς έπιόπέδό, έό δωσέ μια νέό α πρόέό κτασή στό αμέρικαό νικό happening, μέ τή σύμμέτόχήό στό κιόνήμα έκπρόσωόπων όό λων των έικαστικωόν-έκφραστικωόν μόρφωόν.
Εκπρόό σωπόι τόύ όι: George Maciounas, ό όπόιόός έό γραψέ και τό μανιφέό στό fluxus, Tomas Schmit, Wolf Vo stell, Ben Vautier, Nam June Paik, Dick Higgins,Yoko Ono, και αό λλόι. Γένικαό τό fluxus, όό πως φανέρωόνέι ή λατινικήό ριόζα flux-ρόήό , μέ βαό σή τις θέωριόές τόύ Marcel Duchamp, τόύ John Cage και τή φιλόσόφιόα ζέν, έιόχέ στόό χό τή δήμιόύργιόα μιας ρόήό ς
αναό μέσα σέ διαφόρέτικέό ς μόρφέό ς έό κφρασής, όό πως τα έικαστικαό , ή μόύσικήό , ή λόγότέχνιόα, τό θέό ατρό, τό design, ή αρχιτέκτόνικήό , κ.α. έπιχέιρωόντας να καταργήθόύό ν τα στέγαναό μέταξύό των τέχνωόν, να απόδόμήθέιό ή παραδόσιακήό έό ννόια τόύ έό ργόύ τέό χνής, και να στέριωόσέι μια
όύσιαστικήό διαλέκτικήό σχέό σή μέταξύό τέό χνής και ζωήό ς, αλλαό κύό ρια τήν απαλλαγήό τόύ ατόό μόύ απόό καό θέ φύσικήό , διανόήτικήό και πόλιτικήό αναστόλήό .
44
HAPPENING- ΣΥΜΒΑΝ ΤΟΥ WOLF WOSTELL
Απόό τό 1963 πρόσχωόρήσέ στό fluxus ό Joseph Beuys (1921-1986). Η μικρήό ιδιαιότέρή αναφόραό στή σύμβόλήό τόύ στήν παραγωγήό αξέό χαστων έικαστικό-φιλόσόφικωόν σύνθέό σέων πόύ ύπήό ρξέ τέραό στια έιόναι απαραιότήτή για τήν πρόσέό γγισή τόύ φαινόμέό νόύ μέτασχήματισμόύό τής τέό χνής και τόύ ανθρωόπόύ πόύ έπέχέιόρήσέ, παό ντότέ μέ όπτικήό τόύ τό μέό λλόν. Στήν
πόικιλόό τρόπή δόμήό και λέιτόύργιόα τής ύπέρανήό σύχής έπόχήό ς μας, πρόσπαό θήσέ μέ τό έό ργό τόύ και τήν έν γέό νέι σταό σή τόύ απέό ναντι στή Ζωήό και τήν Τέό χνή να δήμιόύργήό σέι καό τι σαν “όύραό νιό τόό ξό” στήν ανθρωόπινή σκέό ψή και στό τραύό μα, ιόσως αθέραό πέύτό, τής σύό γχρόνής κόινωνιόας. Ένας απ’ τόύς πιό ένδιαφέό ρόντές και πρωτόπόό ρόύς «καλλιτέό χνές» ό Beuys , πόύ ή έύρύό τήτα τής αντιό λήψής τόύ και ή ιδιαό ζόύσα σύμπέριφόραό τόύ απόκταό ιδιαιότέρό βαό ρός σήό μέρα, πόύ τα καό θέ λόγήό ς τραύό ματα τής μέτα-καπιταλιστικήό ς όικόνόμιόας πλήό ττόύν
θαναό σιμα τήν κόινωνιόα μας. Τό πόλύέπιόπέδό έό ργό τόύ γιόνέται έν δύναό μέι αισθήτικόό ς φαό ρός στα αδιέό ξόδα τής έπόχήό ς μας.
45
Επόό μένό ήό ταν τό fluxus να πρόκαλέό σέι πόικιό λές αντιδραό σέις, πόύ κύριόως έιόχαν σαν
απότέό λέσμα τήν έπιστρόφήό μέγαό λής μέριόδας των έικαστικωόν τέχνωόν και ιδιαιότέρα τής ζωγραφικήό ς σέ πιό σύντήρήτικέό ς φόό ρμές, σαν αντιόθέσή των παραδόσιακωόν καλλιτέχνωόν στόύς έξτρέμιστέό ς τόύ κινήό ματός και να στρέό ψέι έό να μέό ρός τής σύό γχρόνής τέό χνής στή στέιόρα έμπόρικόπόιήμέό νή παραγωγήό φόρμαλιστικωόν “μέταμόντέό ρνων” απόμιμήό σέων, πόύ αό κμασαν διέθνωός στή χρήματιστήριακαό και έν μέό ρέι πόλιτιστικαό παγκόσμιόπόιήμέό νή κόινωνιόα τόύ αναπτύγμέό νόύ κόό σμόύ. Οι όπτικέό ς έικόό νές όό μως, έιότέ ζωντανέό ς, έιότέ κατασκέύασμέό νές στό χωόρό και ή σχέό σή τόύς μέ τή φωτόγραφικήό απότύό πωσή, τήν κινήματόγραφήμέό νή δραό σή και τήν βιντέόγραφικήό τέό χνή (videoart), έό χόύν πλέό όν πέριόριόσέι τή λέιτόύργιόα και τή θέό σή τόύ αναρτήμέό νόύ στόν τόιόχό ζωγραφικόύό πιόνακα και καό θέ παραδόσιακήό πρόσέό γγισή και έκδόχήό για τό έό ργό τέό χνής στόν κατόικήό σιμό ήό δήμόό σιό χωόρό ανέπιστρέπτιό …
ΣΥΓΧΡΟΝΗ ΤΕΧΝΗ EST, ANTI-PERFORMANCE, Κ.ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΑΤΟΣ
46
Τήν ιόδια πέριόπόύ έπόχήό έμφανιόζόνται όι διαμόρφωόσέις «πέριβαό λλόντός» μέ τή βόήό θέια τής μήχανικήό ς και τής τέχνόλόγιόας, όό πως ό Christo/ Valley Curtain 1970-72, και αό λλόι, πόύ έό βαλαν τήν σφραγιόδα τόύς στό χωόρό τής performance, των happenings και των πέριβαλλόό ντων.
Αναφέό ρω ένδέικτικαό τόύς: John Cage, Claes Oldendurg, Atsuko Tanaka, Wolf Vostell, Allan Kaprow, Chris Burden, Hermann Nitsch, Gilbert and George, Robert Morris, Dennis Oppenheim, Andy Warhol, Zhang Huan, Marina Abramovic κ.α. Παραό λλήλα μέ τήν έύρωπαιϊκήό αό νθισή των actions και των performance, τό happening σύνέχιόζέι να απασχόλέιό πόλλόύό ς πρωτόπόριακόύό ς καλλιτέό χνές. Πόλλέό ς φόρέό ς τέό τόιές παρασταό σέις καταλήό γόύν σέ σέξόύαλικέό ς και αύτόκαταστρόφικέό ς ακρόό τήτές και ή έό ντόνή βιόωσή μιας καταό στασής απόό τόύς performers όδήγέιό σέ πανικόό τό κόινόό πόύ τις παρακόλόύθέιό σέ πανέπιστήό μια ήό στα Performance Center. Αν και πόλλέό ς πέριπτωόσέις δέν έό γιναν έύρύό τέρα γνωστέό ς, ό πόό θός τόύ καλλιτέό χνή για τήν όύσιαστικήό ταύό τισή έό ργόύ τέό χνής και ζωήό ς έιό χέ φταό σέι στήν κόρύό φωσήό τόύ. Σήό μέρα, σέ πόό λέις τόύ Εξωτέρικόύό λέιτόύργόύό ν τα λέγόό μένα Performance Center, έιότέ όργανωμέό να σέ έιδικόύό ς χωόρόύς, έιότέ αύτόσχέό δια, όό πως θα’ λέγα όό τι έιόναι τό πρόαύό λιό τόύ Beaubourg στό Παριόσι. Στήν Αθήό να δέν έύδόκιόμήσέ καό τι αναό λόγό. Η κόινωνικόπόλιτικήό δόμήό τής χωόρας μας δέν έπιδέχόό ταν έξτρέμισμόύό ς, όύό τέ έιόχέ αναό γκή απόό πόλλέό ς καλλιτέχνικέό ς αναζήτήό σέις. Ήδή απόό τις αρχέό ς τόύ 1960 νέόέό λλήνές καλλιτέό χνές, πόύ έιόχαν σπόύδαό σέι στό έξωτέρικόό και έιό χαν διέθνέιός έικαστικέό ς πρόσλήό ψέις και έμπέιριόές διόνόύν τήν πρόσωπικήό τόύς αό πόψή, σχέτικαό μέ τήν performance, τό happening, τό Ζωντανόό Εικαστικόό Έργό (tableau vivante), αλλαό και τήν mail-art, τήν λέτριστικήό (letter) τέό χνή, τήν έννόιόλόγικήό τέό χνή (conceptual art) και τήν τέό χνή στό πέριβαό λλόν (environments).
47
ΜΟΥΣΕΙΑΚΗ ΕΚΘΕΣΗ ΓΙΑ ΤΟ ΚΙΝΗΜΑ FLUXUS
Όλές αύτέό ς όι Παρασταό σέις και τα σύναφήό σύμβαό ντα πόύ έό γιναν στόν τόό πό μας, αρκέτέό ς
φόρέό ς σύνδέδέμέό να νόήματικαό μέ τήν πρόβόλήό των τέραό στιων πρόβλήμαό των των σύό γχρόνων κόινωνιωόν και τής έπιβιόωσής τόύ ανθρωόπόύ, δέν πήό ραν πότέό τόν χαρακτήό ρα καό πόιόύ κινήό ματός, αλλαό έμφανιόστήκαν μέμόνωμέό να και αντιμέτωόπισαν αρκέτέό ς φόρέό ς τόν έμπαιγμόό τόύ απλήρόφόό ρήτόύ παραδόσιακόύό κόινόύό ιδιαιότέρα τα πρωότα χρόό νια τής έμφαό νισής τόύς στήν έγχωόρια καλλιτέχνικήό ζωήό . Παρόό λα αύταό έντύπωσιαό ζόύν τόύς έιδήό μόνές τα μόύσικαό δρωόμένα, ύπέρβατικαό έό ργα τόύ σύνθέό τή σύό γχρόνής μόύσικήό ς Γιαό ννή Χρήό στόύ, για (ήθόπόιόό ,
πιανιόστα, τραγόύδιστήό κ.α), όργανικόό σύό νόλό και μαγνήτόταινιόα, έό ργα ιδιαιότέρής έό μπνέύσής, πόύ σφραό γισαν θέτικαό τήν δέκαέτιόα τόύ 1970. Όμως στήν δέκαέτιόα τόύ 1980 όι πέριπτωόσέις performance στήν Ελλαό δα, σέ αντιόθέσή μέ τα κέό ντρα κόύλτόύό ρας τόύ έξωτέρικόύό , έιόναι έλαό χιστές. Σήμαντικήό έξαιόρέσή και παό λι όι μόύσικέό ς- ήχήτικέό ς παρασταό σέις τόύ σύνθέό τή Γιαό ννή Χρήό στόύ σέ έπαναό λήψή απόό τόύς σύνέργαό τές τόύ. Βέό βαια γιόνόνται αρκέτέό ς πρόσπαό θέιές έξόικέιό ωσής τόύ φαινόμέό νόύ των νέό ων έικαστικωόν τρόό πων και μέό σων μέ τό κόινόό απόό τα ξέό να Μόρφωτικαό Ϊνστιτόύό τα, ιδιαιότέρα τό Γαλλικόό Ϊνστιτόύό τό, τό Ϊνστιτόύό τό Γκαιότέ και τό Βρέτανικόό Σύμβόύό λιό καθωός και απόό καό πόιές γκαλέριό τής Αθήό νας και τής Θέσσαλόνιόκής. Θέτικόό έπιότέύγμα τής πέριόό δόύ ή παραδόχήό τής φωτόγραφιόας σαν σήμαντικήό ς τέό χνής και όι έκθέό σέις φωτόγραφικωόν έό ργων σέ γκαλέριό , καθωός και όι πρωότές πρόβόλέό ς τής έξέλισσόό μένής video-art.
48
Τα ζωνταναό έό ργα όό μως και γένικαό όι έικαστικέό ς παρασταό σέις ήό ταν χλιαραό απόδέκταό , στήν φτωχήό , σέ σχέό σή μέ αό λλόύς τόό πόύς, έικαστικήό παραό δόσή τής σύό γχρόνής Ελλαό δας και όι αφόρμέό ς δήμιόύργιόας τέό τόιων σύμβαό ντων καθωός και όι πιθανόό τήτές απόδόχήό ς ήό ταν μήδαμινέό ς. Η αναζωπύό ρωσή τόύ φαινόμέό νόύ των ζωντανωόν έικαστικωόν έικόό νων και δραό σέων έό γινέ δύναμικόό τέρή στή δέκαέτιόα τόύ 1990 μέ καό πόιές μέμόνωμέό νές και πέριθωριακέό ς απόό πέιρές αναρχικήό ς αντιό λήψής πόύ πρόφήό τέύσαν τα έκφραστικαό διλήό μματα των
ανέξαό ρτήτων καλλιτέχνωόν και πρόέκτέιόνέται μέό χρι τις μέό ρές μας… Όσό για τό ανέό καθέν
δήμόφιλέό ς body art, έό χέι έπιρρόήό στόν κόό σμό τής μόό δας και έξαιτιόας των έντύπωόσέων πόύ πρόξένέιό τό σύναντόύό μέ σέ έπιδέιόξέις μέ έμπόρικαό μόντέό λα, απόό underground γκαλέριό και σχόλέό ς μακιγιαό ζ και κόμμωτικήό ς μέό χρι τις…θέρινέό ς ντισκότέό κ. Όλα πλέό όν τέιόνόύν να γιόνόύν δέκταό μέό σα απόό μια «γόήτέύτικήό » διαδικασιόα έξιόσωσής και διέύό ρύνσής των όριόων και τής σύμμέτόχήό ς τόύ κόινόύό …
DOCUMEΝΤΑ 14, ΚΑΣΣΕΛ-ΑΘΗΝΑ, ΕΓΚΑΤΑΣΤΑΣΗ ΣΤΗΝ ΠΛΑΤΕΙΑ ΟΜΟΝΟΙΑΣ.
Γένικαό μέό χρι σήό μέρα έό χόύν σύμβέιό πόλλέό ς, πόικιό λές, αμφιλέγόό μένές και αδιαό φόρές αρκέτέό ς
φόρέό ς performance, σέ σύνδύασμόό μέ video-art, πόλύμέό σα και διαδραστικέό ς κατασταό σέις, πόύ όι πλέό όν αξιόσήμέιόωτές έιόναι πέρισσόό τέρό θέατρικέό ς, χόρέύτικέό ς, μόύσικέό ς έρμήνέιόές, μέ
49
χρήό σή καό πόιων στόιχέιόων έικαστικήό ς performance. Στήν πλέιόψήφιόα τόύς φανέρωόνόύν «μιμήτικόό » χαρακτήό ρα των έπιτέύό ξέων των πρωτόπόό ρων τόύ έιόδόύς…Η performance σήό μέρα ύπαό ρχέι σαν έιόδός και καθιέρωόθήκέ απόό τήν πρωτόπόριόα σαν μια ανέξαό ρτήτή, ιδιόό τύπή διαδραστικήό σύχνόό τήτα έό κφρασής. Όσόν αφόραό τό έκθέσιακόό παρόό ν αύτωόν των performance σέ πόλύδαό πανές κρατικέό ς και ιδιωτικέό ς διέθνέιός σύνδιόργανωόσέις απόό τήν OUTLOOK τόύ 2003, ένδιαό μέσές ψήφιακέό ς και πόλύσύλλέκτικέό ς Μπιέναό λέ μέό χρι και τήν πρόό σφατή DOCUMENTA 14 στήν Αθήό να, έιόναι μαό λλόν χλιαρόό , αρκέτέό ς φόρέό ς κένόό και έπιδέρμικόό , παραό τις σέξιστικέό ς πρόβόλέό ς, τις
“ακραιόές” έπισήμαό νσέις πόύ έλαό χιστόύς πλέό όν σόκαό ρόύν, τις πόλιτικέό ς σύνιστωόσές και τις πόικιό λές έύρήματικόό τήτές, αξιόό λόγές ήό αδιαό φόρές πόύ τις σύνιστόύό ν. Η μαό στιγα τής
έκφραστικήό ς παρακμήό ς των ζωντανωόν έό ργων βασιόζέται στή διόργαό νωσή και έπιμέό λέια τόύς απόό “έπιμέλήτέό ς” πόύ έκπρόσωπόύό ν έταιρέιόές και όργανισμόύό ς, όι όπόιόόι έπιδέό ξια καλλιέργόύό ν τήν αισθήτικήό σύό γχύσή, ωόστέ καό θέ ανέξαό ρτήτή και πήγαιόα πέριόπτωσή να πρόσχωρήό σέι στόύς δικόύό ς τόύς κανόό νές έπιβόλήό ς και πρόβόλήό ς ήό διαφόρέτικαό να χαθέιό, μέ απωότέρό στόό χό τό όικόνόμικόό τόύς όό φέλός. Σέ αύτόό σύμβαό λλέι και τό έό λλέιμμα ικανήό ς παιδέιόας και έρέύνήτικωόν πρακτικωόν μέθόό δων των νέό ων ιστόρικωόν τέό χνής, πόύ σχέδόό ν απλαό ανατρέό χόύν μόό νό σέ διαδικτύακαό αρχέιόα… Στή μέγαό λή και αδύσωόπήτή πέριπέό τέια τής ανακαό λύψής τόύ ύπόκέιμένικόύό καλλιτέχνικόύό “έαύτόύό ” και τής διαδικασιόας τής έικαστικήό ς έό κφρασής, ή performance μέ τή δύό ναμή τής ζωντανήό ς διαό στασής, μπόρέιό να αιματόδότέιό και να ζωόγόνέιό τα έιόδωλα τής καλλιτέχνικήό ς
πρόσωπικόό τήτας των δήμιόύργωόν, πόύ στήν αλήό θέια έκφραό ζόύν μέ αμέσόό τήτα τήν ύπαρξιακήό
αλήό θέια και τήν ανθρωόπινή δήμιόύργικόό τήτα. Βιωόνόύμέ ήό δή τόν πρόβλήματικόό 21ό αιωόνα, μέ τό ζωντανόό κλήρόδόό τήμα τόύ 20όύ, στόν όπόιόό για πρωότή φόραό ή ανατρέπτικήό ταό σή και θέωόρήσή των καλλιτέχνωόν, όδήό γήσέ σέ μια πόλύμόρφικήό , ένιόότέ ακραιόα και αό νέύ όριόων έκφραστικήό καταό θέσή. Αύτήό ή όριακήό καταό λήξή και δύνήτικήό καταό στασή πόρέιόας απέλέύθέό ρωσέ και αναμόό χλέύσέ πρόόδέύτικαό τις αισθήτικέό ς αναζήτήό σέις και μέ τή διαρκήό έό ρέύνα έό δωσέ νέό ές πρόόπτικέό ς στις έό ννόιές τόύ χωόρόύ, τής έικόό νας, τόύ χρόό νόύ, τής σύμμέτόχικήό ς καλλιτέχνικήό ς διαδικασιόας. Η χρήό σή και ή κύριαρχιόα τόύ καλλιτέό χνή έπιό των τέχνόλόγικωόν μέό σων έό κφρασής και ή ζωντανήό σύό μπραξή καλλιτέό χνή και κόινόύό σέ
διαδραστικαό πέδιόα -πέό ρα απόό τα δέδόμέό να τόύ έκλόγικέύμέό νόύ τέχνόλόγικόύό σύστήό ματόςφλέρταό ρέι και σήό μέρα μέ τήν ύπέό ρβασή των έκφραστικωόν όριόων και δύνήτικαό αναό γέι τή σκέό ψή και τήν πραό ξή στήν αρχέτύπικήό “όύσιόα” τής Τέό χνής.
50
Συνέντευξη Macklin Kowal: «Η performance μπορεί να παρέμβει στη σημερινή κρίση του δημόσιου λόγου»
Από
Δέσποινα Ζευκιλή - 05/04/2019
Στο τυπικό αθηναϊκό διαμέρισμα της Πραξιτέλους που στεγάζει εδώ και ένα χρόνο τον ανεξάρτητο καλλιεχνικό χώρο «Sub Rosa project space» μπορεί να πετύχεις έναν ιστορικό διεθνή performer που βρίσκεται στην Αθήνα, όπως τον εξαιρετικό Σκανδιναβό εννοιολογικό καλλιτέχνη Roi Vaara, αλλά και νέους καλλιτέχνες που πειραματίζονται με διαφορετικές πτυχές αυτής της «παρα-τέχνης, που προηγείται της τέχνης, δεν είναι ακόμα τέχνη ή κάτι πέρα από αυτή», όπως μας λέει ο ιδρυτής του «Sub Rosa» Macklin Kowal για την performance. Το σημείο όπου κριτική σκέψη και πράξη συναντιούνται, αν δεχθούμε ότι μπορούν να διαχωριστούν εξαρχής, και το πολιτικό ως επιτελεστικό διαπνέουν το εγχείρημα της δημιουργίας αυτού του νέου χώρου και πιθανότατα, στο μέλλον, ενός φόρουμ με έμφαση στα Βαλκάνια και τη Μέση Ανατολή. Πώς όμως ένας Καλιφορνέζος βρέθηκε να ιδρύει έναν χώρο αφιερωμένο στην performance στο ιστορικό κέντρο της Αθήνας και να κάνει το διδακτορικό του στο Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο της Θεσσαλονίκης με θέμα τον σύγχρονο ακροδεξιό εθνικισμό ως ένα λογοθετικό και επιτελεστικό φαινόμενο;
Macklin Kowal στο Sub Rosa Space. Exhibition «Moved: Works by Emeline Depas», ©Alexandra Masmanidi Πώς κατέληξες στην Αθήνα; Ποια ήταν η πορεία σου μέχρι τότε; Ήρθα στην Αθήνα για πρώτη φορά το καλοκαίρι του 2015 και επέστρεφα συχνά από τότε,
51
μέχρι που εγκαταστάθηκα εδώ το φθινόπωρο της επόμενης χρονιάς. Ένα ακαδημαϊκό συνέδριο ήταν η αιτία για εκείνη την επίσκεψη – ένα Colloquium για τη θεωρία του χορού που έγινε στον Ελληνικό Κόσμο. Ήμουν χορευτής και χορογράφος στη γενέτειρά μου, το Σαν Φρανσίσκο και είχα ολοκληρώσει πρόσφατα στο Πανεπιστήμιο της Νέας Υόρκης, ένα μεταπτυχιακό –περισσότερο θεωρητικό– στις Επιτελεστικές Σπουδές. Βρέθηκα εδώ για να συζητήσω το πρόσφατο ερευνητικό μου έργο: μια αναζήτηση στην ενσώματη ποιητική του χρέους στη χορογραφία της Ελληνίδας καλλιτέχνιδας Λενιώς Κακλέα. Συνάντησα, ωστόσο, πολλά περισσότερα απ’ όσα περίμενα: διάλογο – στον χώρο του συνεδρίου, αλλά και ευρύτερα στην Αθήνα – για την πολιτική δράση, την εξουσία, τη συγχώρεση και τη χάρη. Διαλόγους που διαμορφώνονταν απ’ το πολιτικό και πολιτιστικό τοπίο της πόλης εκείνη την εποχή. Ήταν παραμονές του δημοψηφίσματος και υπήρχε μια ξεκάθαρη, διάχυτη ενέργεια μεταξύ καλλιτεχνών, ακτιβιστών και διανοουμένων. Ένιωθες ότι κάτι γινόταν, ότι κάτι πρόκειται να συμβεί. Συνέχισα να έρχομαι στην Αθήνα μετά την πρώτη μου επίσκεψη. Ήθελα να δω πού θα οδηγούσαν εκείνοι οι διάλογοι και η ενέργεια. Δεν ήθελα να είμαι απλά θεατής στις διεργασίες αυτές, αλλά και να συμμετέχω. Γνωρίζοντας, επίσης, ότι ήθελα να ολοκληρώσω ένα διδακτορικό, σκέφτηκα να κάνω τη διατριβή μου σε ελληνικό πανεπιστήμιο. Μετά από κάποια έρευνα, είδα ότι θα ταίριαζε με ορισμένους καθηγητές του Αριστοτελείου. Έτσι, στις αρχές του 2017 γράφτηκα στο Τμήμα Πολιτικής Θεωρίας. Αυτές οι σπουδές, καθώς και η διαχείριση του Sub Rosa Space, αποτελούν τις δραστηριότητές μου εδώ.
«Le Tre Capre,» performance από τη Lucia Bricco, © Bryony Dunne Γιατί αποφάσισες να ξεκινήσεις το Sub Rosa; Το άνοιγμα του Sub Rosa ήταν περισσότερο σταδιακή διαδικασία παρά μεμονωμένη απόφαση. Προηγουμένως, είχε εδώ στούντιο ζωγραφικής μια φίλη. Όταν έφυγε απ’ την Αθήνα το φθινόπωρο του 2017, της ζήτησα πολύ αυθόρμητα να συνεχίσω εγώ τη μίσθωση του χώρου. Εκείνη τη στιγμή, δεν είχα ιδέα τι θα τον έκανα. Ήταν τόσο εντυπωσιακός – ένας χώρος στον τρίτο όροφο μιας τυπικής πολυκατοικίας του ιστορικού κέντρου, ένα ιδιαίτερο εσωτερικό με παράθυρα σε κάθε πλευρά, τα οποία αποκαλύπτουν το αστικό τοπίο στο ύψος
52
των ματιών. Ήξερα μόνο ότι έπρεπε να συνεχίσει να αφορά την καλλιτεχνική δραστηριότητα, είτε τη δική μου είτε άλλων. Χρησίμευσε για ένα διάστημα ως το προσωπικό μου στούντιο, παρόλο που ένιωθα ότι έπρεπε να έχει δημόσιο χαρακτήρα. Έπειτα, ένας συνάδελφος από το Σαν Φρανσίσκο –ζωγράφος και performance artist– επισκέφθηκε την Αθήνα τον Ιανουάριο του 2018. Αποφασίσαμε να κάνουμε στον χώρο μια έκθεσή του εκείνον τον μήνα και ήταν η αρχή για τη μετέπειτα λειτουργία του Sub Rosa Space. Αν και διοργάνωσα στους μήνες που ακολούθησαν εικαστικές εκθέσεις, διαπίστωσα ότι έπρεπε να κινηθώ πιο συνειδητά από την οπτική του επαγγελματία και θεωρητικού της performance. Αυτή, άλλωστε, είναι η δική μου εκπαίδευση και δουλειά μου. Διαπίστωσα, επίσης, ότι οι performances στην Αθήνα είναι πολύ αξιόλογες αλλά διασκορπισμένες. Γίνονταν σε διάφορα μέρη, αλλά δεν υπήρχε ένας ανεξάρτητος χώρος αποκλειστικά. Έτσι, αποφάσισα να εστιάσω προς αυτήν την κατεύθυνση – αξιοποιώντας το δικό μου υπόβαθρο και δοκιμάζοντας παράλληλα να προσφέρω κάτι που φαινόταν να λείπει απ’ την κοινότητα. Σε τι αναφέρεται η ονομασία; Το Sub Rosa είναι μια λατινική φράση που σημαίνει «Κάτω από τα ρόδα». Αναφέρεται μεταφορικά σε κάτι το διακριτικό, κάτι που συμβαίνει στα κρυφά. Υπαινίσσομαι έτσι, γενικές ιστορίες της performance και της performance art – όπου έχουν γίνει δράσεις με επικοινωνία από στόμα σε στόμα, χωρίς άδειες, με αυτοοργάνωση και συχνά σε επισφαλείς συνθήκες.
«Lavorando per l'oumo invisible, operetta in atto unico», performance από τον Matteo Rovesciato, © Alexandra Masmanidi Ένας χώρος για την performance είναι κάτι πολύ γενικό. Πού θα εστίαζες περισσότερο εάν έπρεπε να περιγράψεις τον χαρακτήρα του Sub Rosa; Πόσο αφορά τα ζητήματα γύρω από το φύλο και το queer; Το Sub Rosa είναι ένας χώρος για καλλιτέχνες που εξετάζουν την εξουσία, πολιτική και αισθητική. Για όσους τους απασχολούν οι θεματικές για την ομοιότητα, τη διακριτότητα, τη θέση του υποκειμένου σε σχέση με το κύρος και την εξουσία. Αυτό δεν σημαίνει, όμως, ότι τα
53
έργα είναι δύσκολα ή έχουν υπερβολική σοβαρότητα. Προσκαλούμε και ενθαρρύνουμε κάθε τρόπο και πνεύμα εργασίας, αρκεί να υποστηρίζεται από μια σχολαστική έρευνα, πολιτικού και αισθητικού χαρακτήρα. Είναι, επίσης, ένας χώρος που εξετάζει τη φορμαλιστική σχέση με την performance ως μέσο. Με τα έργα τους, οι προσκεκλημένοι καλλιτέχνες αναρωτιούνται διαρκώς γιατί η performance –η οποία βασίζεται στην αμεσότητα, τη δια-μαρτυρία και τη μαρτυρία– πρέπει να λειτουργεί ως η περιοχή όπου η δημιουργική διαδικασία θα είναι σκηνοθετημένη. Πολλοί από τους καλλιτέχνες έχουν χρησιμοποιήσει την performance για να ενεργοποιήσουν την πολιτική της αναπαράστασης που είναι ενδημική σε κοντινά πεδία της τέχνης – όπως τα εικαστικά και ο χορός. Η Sarah Johnson και ο Matteo Rovesciato, για παράδειγμα, παρουσίασαν ο καθένας έργα που εκθέτουν την επιθυμία του εικαστικού να επιβάλλει και να αναπαράγει τον εαυτό του στα αντικείμενα που ερμηνεύει – είτε σε still life, πορτρέτα ή τοπία. Ο Rovesciato άδειασε έναν ολόκληρο αφρό ξυρίσματος, μια δράση που διήρκησε πέντε ατελείωτα λεπτά. Στη συνέχεια απήγγειλε ένα ποιητικό δίστιχο (ίσως μια ερμηνεία για τη σημασία της μάζας του λευκού αφρού στο πάτωμα) και η performance τελείωσε. Το έργο του ανέδειξε την ενδεχόμενη βία που συνοδεύει την πράξη της επιβολής σε μια επιφάνεια, καθώς επίσης την ενδεχόμενη διαγραφή εκείνης της βίας όταν στα αντικείμενα που προκύπτουν δίνεται η χάρη της ερμηνείας. Η Johnson άνοιξε την performance με ομιλία για την ποιητική της αιχμαλωσίας που σχετίζεται με τη φωτογραφία. Έπειτα, έκοψε στη μέση με πριόνι ένα τραπέζι με still life, δέθηκε με σχοινιά και στη συνέχεια σύρθηκε μέσα σε λάδι που είχε ρίξει στο πάτωμα. Το έργο της εξέτασε τις διαδικασίες από τις οποίες οι θέσεις του δημιουργού και του αντικειμένου μπορούν να καταρρεύσουν, μπαίνοντας σε μια ρευστή κατάσταση που καθορίζεται από τον πόνο. Εντωμεταξύ, o Andrew Champlin παρουσίασε μια performance όπου χρησιμοποίησε το φορμαλιστικό λεξιλόγιο του μπαλέτου για να δημιουργήσει μια σειρά από δυναμικά, γλυπτικά ταμπλό σε όλο τον χώρο. Κατά τη διάρκεια, εξέτασε τις επιταγές του μπαλέτου για να περιορίσει την όψη της προσπάθειας ή πόνου του χορευτή. Με το έργο του αναρωτήθηκε πώς η κληρονομιά αυτή θα μπορούσε να επαναπροσδιοριστεί όταν το σώμα του χορευτή τοποθετείται το ίδιο ως έργο τέχνης, ενώ σχετίζεται με τον πόνο και μια ποιητική του μαζοχισμού. «Αντιμετωπίζουμε σήμερα μια μεγάλη παραδειγματική (αν όχι γνωσιολογική) κρίση σχετικά με τους τρόπους που μιλάμε δημόσια. Η performance οφείλει να παρεμβαίνει, να παρουσιάζει σενάρια αποδόμησης που να εκθέτουν τι διακυβεύεται με τους τρόπους που ο δημόσιος λόγος μάς κάνει να σκεφτόμαστε. Με άλλα λόγια, σάτιρα. Χρειαζόμαστε μια σατιρική performance. Χρειαζόμαστε αρκετές.» Αυτά τα παραδείγματα είναι μερικά από τα πιο εντυπωσιακά που μπορώ να σκεφτώ. Αντιπροσωπεύουν το πολιτικό και φορμαλιστικό πνεύμα που χαρακτηρίζει το χώρο. Και πράγματι, η ηθική του φεμινισμού και της queer τέχνης χαρακτηρίζει μεγάλο μέρος του έργου που παρουσιάζουμε. Ως επιμελητής, θεωρώ αυτές τις αξίες δεδομένες. Ενώ μπορούν και, όντως, αναφέρονται σε υποκειμενικές θέσεις, προτιμώ να σκέφτομαι τον φεμινισμό και το queer ως ηθική – ως τρόπο δράσης που επιμένει σε συγκεκριμένες οπτικές. Στην περίπτωση του φεμινισμού, μπορεί να είναι η δικαιοσύνη ως αποκατάσταση της ανισότητας στο πλαίσιο της πατριαρχίας. Για το queer, θα μπορούσε να αφορά μια ανάδειξη εναλλακτικών, μη κανονιστικών τρόπων δράσης και αισθητικής. Εκεί όπου θα μπορούσαν να συμπίπτουν, είναι στην επιμονή για ένα μεγαλύτερο εύρος της έκφρασης φύλου – στην τέχνη και στην
54
καθημερινότητα. Θα έλεγα ότι το Sub Rosa είναι ένας χώρος που προάγει αυτήν την ηθική, ενθαρρύνει μια queer και φεμινιστική προσέγγιση σε ευρύτερα ζητήματα πολιτικής, αισθητικής και φορμαλιστικής σημασίας.
«It's in the Upper Room», performance από τη Sarah Johnson, © Alexandra Masmanidi Ποιες είναι οι προκλήσεις της performance σήμερα; Ποιες κατευθύνσεις της βρίσκεις περισσότερο ενδιαφέρουσες; Σκέφτομαι την performance ως πράξη δια-μαρτυρίας, επιμονής. Απαιτεί έναν που φέρει τη μαρτυρία (τον performer) και έναν αυτόπτη μάρτυρα (το κοινό). Είναι μια εναλλακτική στα καντιανά μοντέλα της τέχνης. Με καντιανούς όρους, η τέχνη αφορά την κριτική για ένα ενοποιημένο αντικείμενο – μια ολοκληρωμένη, παραδοτέα φόρμα που στερείται φωνής μιας δρώσας δύναμης και κρίνεται σύμφωνα με μια μονόπλευρη δυναμική που ευνοεί το κοινό. Αντίθετα, η performance –τουλάχιστον, με τους όρους που προτείνω– θα μπορούσε να θεωρηθεί ως παρα-τέχνη: δηλαδή που προηγείται της τέχνης, δεν είναι ακόμα τέχνη ή κάτι πέρα από αυτή. Αναστέλλει τη στιγμή της αντικειμενικής ενοποίησης και παρατείνει τη στιγμή όπου το σώμα ενός performer εξακολουθεί να περιβάλλεται από την υποκειμενική δράση του λόγου, της αυτο-αποκάλυψης ή της αυτο-έκθεσης. Μικρή σημασία έχει αν εκείνο το σώμα είναι το φυσικό σώμα ενός ανθρώπου ή κάπως αλλιώς επινοημένο. Performer και κοινό, αυτός που φέρει τη μαρτυρία και ο αυτόπτης μάρτυρας, συναντιούνται και επηρεάζουν ισάξια τον τόπο της συνάντησής τους. Είναι ένα μέσο που ασχολείται με την ανταλλαγή της εξουσίας, τη δυνατότητα της διάκρισης αλλά και της συμμετοχής. Με αυτήν τη λογική, η performance προσφέρει μια εναλλακτική στην καντιανή ηγεμονία της τέχνης. Στις μέρες μας γίνονται εκκλήσεις για την απαλλαγή από αυτήν, για την αποκαθήλωσή της ώστε να ανοίξει ο δρόμος σε διευρυμένους τρόπους δημιουργίας – τρόπους που να υιοθετούν αντιαποικιακές, φεμινιστικές και queer διαδικασίες. Θα έλεγα πως η performance είχε πάντα τη δυναμική για να συμβεί κάτι τέτοιο από μια φορμαλιστική οπτική. Αυτή είναι διαχρονικά η δυναμική της. Η πρόκληση, λοιπόν, είναι να κατανοήσει τις ριζοσπαστικές δυνατότητές της και να τις αξιοποιήσει σε επίκαιρα, επείγοντα ζητήματα.
55
«Νιώθω ότι βρισκόμαστε μπροστά σε μια νέα προσέγγιση των συλλογικοτήτων στο σημερινό καλλιτεχνικό τοπίο της Αθήνας – μεταξύ Ελλήνων αλλά και ξένων. Πολλοί ταλαντούχοι άνθρωποι είναι πρόθυμοι να μοιραστούν τα μέσα τους. Η πρόκληση είναι να βρεθούν βιώσιμοι τρόποι αξιοποίησης της προθυμίας αυτής και να γίνουν με τρόπο που να ενδυναμώνουν την εμπειρία της συλλογικότητας των καλλιτεχνών και της κοινότητας.» Η σημερινή εποχή χαρακτηρίζεται από ακραία πολιτική πόλωση. Ο ιδεολογικός εξτρεμισμός διεισδύει στην κοινωνία και ακολουθείται από ρητορικές φθηνού εντυπωσιασμού, που συχνά δεν βγάζουν νόημα. Το αποτέλεσμα είναι ένα λογοθετικό αδιέξοδο. Τα επιχειρήματα είναι τόσο ασυνάρτητα ώστε δεν μπορούν να αντιμετωπιστούν με λογική και ορθότητα, και το γεγονός ότι είναι απόλυτα εξαρτημένα από ιδεολογίες, έχει ως αποτέλεσμα η κριτική τους να θεωρείται επίθεση. Η performance μπορεί να παρεμβαίνει στην κατάσταση, ιδιοποιούμενη αυτούς τους λόγους που εισχωρούν στην πολιτική σφαίρα και να τους επαναπροσδιορίζει με όρους αισθητικής. Οι performers μπορούν να χρησιμοποιήσουν τα όσα ακατανόητα, φαινομενικά απροσπέλαστα, λένε οι πολιτικοί ή άλλα δημόσια πρόσωπα. Μπορούν να αναλύσουν το περιεχόμενό τους με βάση ένα αποδεκτό σύστημα λογικής και να ορίσουν έτσι έναν συγκεκριμένο τόπο συνάντησης –έναν τόπο δια-μαρτυρίας και μαρτυρίας όπου performer και κοινό να περιβάλλονται από δρώσα δύναμη. Με άλλα λόγια, μπορούν να επαναπροσδιορίσουν τις παράλογες και δυσνόητες κουβέντες των σημερινών πολιτικών και να τις αντικαταστήσουν από ένα ρευστό σκηνικό, βασισμένο στην αμοιβαία συμμετοχή. Έτσι θα αναδειχθεί η ιδέα του να μοιράζεσαι χώρο σε μία συνομιλία, όπου κάτω από άλλες συνθήκες θα αποκλειόταν η ιδεολογική πολυμορφία. Με επαναπροσδιορισμό και υπερβολή, μπορούμε να προκαλέσουμε και να αποδυναμώσουμε. Κατά τη γνώμη μου, αντιμετωπίζουμε σήμερα μια μεγάλη παραδειγματική (αν όχι γνωσιολογική) κρίση σχετικά με τους τρόπους που μιλάμε δημόσια. Η performance οφείλει να παρεμβαίνει, να παρουσιάζει σενάρια αποδόμησης που να εκθέτουν τι διακυβεύεται με τους τρόπους που ο δημόσιος λόγος μάς κάνει να σκεφτόμαστε. Με άλλα λόγια, σάτιρα. Χρειαζόμαστε μια σατιρική performance. Χρειαζόμαστε αρκετές.
56
«Matter of Matters», Performance από τον Andrius Mulokas © Alexsandra Masmanidi Κάνεις το διδακτορικό σου στο Αριστοτέλειο. Σε τι αφορά και πώς σχετίζεται με την παρουσία σου στο Sub Rosa; Κάνω το διδακτορικό μου στο Τμήμα Πολιτικής Θεωρίας. Η διατριβή μου επικεντρώνεται στον σύγχρονο ακροδεξιό εθνικισμό ως ένα λογοθετικό και επιτελεστικό φαινόμενο. Εξετάζω, δηλαδή, τους τρόπους με τους οποίους οι τρέχουσες ρητορικές της εθνικής υπερηφάνειας, του ρατσισμού, της ξενοφοβίας και άλλες παρόμοιες λειτουργούν ως πεδία συλλογικής ταυτότητας και προκαλούν, επίσης, δράση στη σφαίρα της πολιτικής. Η προσέγγιση είναι οπωσδήποτε θεωρητική, συνδυάζοντας την παλαιότερη εργασία μου στις Επιτελεστικές Σπουδές με τη μεθοδολογία της θεωρίας του λόγου – που συνδυάζει τις μεταμαρξιστικές θεωρίες της ηγεμονίας με τη μεταδομιστική σκέψη και την ψυχαναλυτική θεωρία. Στην Ελλάδα, σχετίζεται με πανεπιστημιακούς όπως οι Γιάννης Σταυρακάκης και Αλέξανδρος Κιουπκιολής. Αναλύω συγκεκριμένα case studies από τις Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες, το Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο και την ηπειρωτική Ευρώπη και πιθανόν να καταλήξω με ένα κεφάλαιο για τους performers που σατιρίζουν τη σημερινή κατάσταση με τα έργα τους. Κατά κάποιο τρόπο, η διατριβή μου προσπαθεί να κάνει αυτό που εγώ προτείνω στους σύγχρονους performance artists: να εξετάσει τις τρέχουσες τάσεις στον πολιτικό λόγο που αφορούν ένα αισθητικό και επιτελεστικό σύστημα. Αν και η έρευνά μου υπογραμμίζει αρκετά τη θέση μου για την performance, δεν κάνω επιμέλεια σε έργα που ταυτίζονται άμεσα με τη δική μου ερμηνεία για τη διεθνή πολιτική σκηνή. Επιμελούμαι έργα που βλέπω να στέκονται σε ένα ευρύτερο συνεχές πολιτικοποιημένης και αυστηρά σχολαστικής πρακτικής και κυρίως επιθυμώ να διευρύνουν τη δική μου αντίληψη, σχετικά με τις δυνατότητες της performance του σήμερα. Μπορεί να έχει ενδιαφέρον αν επιμεληθώ, μελλοντικά, έργα που να συνδέονται άμεσα με τον τίτλο της διατριβής μου. Ίσως και να θελήσω, όμως, να το κάνω ως ανεξάρτητο event εκτός του Sub Rosa ή ως ένα μικρό φεστιβάλ στην ευρύτερη περίοδο των δραστηριοτήτων του.
57
«The Candy Piece», performance από τη Nina Alexopoulou, © Alexandra Masmanidi Ποια είναι η εμπειρία σου έως σήμερα από τη λειτουργία του Sub Rosa; Έχεις κάποιο όραμα για την μελλοντική του εξέλιξη; Η εμπειρία μου από το Sub Rosa είναι απολαυστική και συναρπαστική. Χαίρομαι ιδιαίτερα να προσφέρω μια πλατφόρμα σε καλλιτέχνες για να πειραματίζονται και πάντα με τιμούν όταν η δουλειά τους δείχνει τη δυναμική του χώρου που σε άλλη περίπτωση δεν θα είχα φανταστεί. Θυμάμαι, για παράδειγμα, την performance της Lucia Bricco. Στο έργο της, εγκατέστησε στο πάτωμα ένα ύφασμα με μοτίβο και αφιέρωσε τον περισσότερο χρόνο μπουσουλώντας από κάτω του, σαν να βρισκόταν σε μια σπηλιά. Το κοινό έμεινε καθηλωμένο να την κοιτά, παρόλο που το σώμα της ήταν καλυμμένο με το ύφασμα. Κατάφερε να δημιουργήσει μια κατάσταση, όπου μπόρεσε να έχει μια ιδιωτική εμπειρία ενώ ήταν εκτεθειμένη σε δημόσια θέα. Δεν θα σκεφτόμουν ποτέ ότι είναι δυνατόν να δημιουργήσω έναν χώρο ιδιωτικότητας, σε ένα μέρος όπως το Sub Rosa που αλλιώς μοιάζει γυμνό και εκτεθειμένο. Από τεχνικής πλευράς, είναι μεγάλη πρόκληση. Διαχειρίζομαι αποκλειστικά εγώ τον χώρο και επομένως υπάρχει ένα μόνιμος κίνδυνος εξάντλησης. Αν και έχουμε αναπτυχθεί προγραμματισμένα, αυξάνεται το ενδιαφέρον για το χώρο μας. Είμαστε τυχεροί που μας υποστηρίζουν κάποιοι εξαιρετικοί ασκούμενοι και ελπίζω ότι με κάποιες αλλαγές στη διάταξη του χώρου, θα μπορέσουμε τελικά να έχουμε το κατάλληλο προσωπικό. Από τη θέση του επιμελητή, θέλω πολύ να διευρύνω τη γκάμα με τους προσκεκλημένους καλλιτέχνες. Έως τώρα, έχω επιμεληθεί performers που γνωρίζω προσωπικά ή έχουν έρθει με συστάσεις από συνεργάτες. Θα ήθελα βασικά να διευρύνω το πεδίο, με ευαισθησία σε όποια έργα πιστεύω ότι θα κάνουν μια σημαντική και έγκαιρη παρέμβαση στην Αθήνα – ανεξάρτητα από το αν γνωρίζω ή όχι τον καλλιτέχνη προσωπικά. Επιθυμώ ιδιαίτερα να δουλέψω με όσους έχουν ως βάση τα Βαλκάνια, τη Μέση Ανατολή και τη Βόρεια Αφρική. Αυτές οι περιοχές αντιμετωπίζουν παρόμοια ζητήματα με την Ελλάδα (ειδικότερα, την υποτέλεια στις ξένες πολιτικές και την ιδιωτικοποίηση των πόρων) και έχουν από κοινού σημαδευτεί ιστορικά με τις επιπτώσεις του ιμπεριαλισμού (δηλαδή της Οθωμανικής Αυτοκρατορίας). Θα ήθελα να δημιουργήσω ένα φόρουμ όπου καλλιτέχνες από Λίβανο, Κύπρο, Σερβία, Αίγυπτο, Τυνησία και αλλού να μπορούν να έρχονται στο Sub Rosa, να παρουσιάζουν τα έργα τους και να μπαίνουν σε ουσιαστικούς διαλόγους με τους εδώ συναδέλφους τους. Θα ήθελα, επίσης, να
58
φτιάξω μια κινητή πλατφόρμα, με την οποία οι performer της Αθήνας να μπορούν να ταξιδεύουν σε εκείνες τις χώρες και να παρουσιάζουν τη δουλειά τους.
«Lavorando per l'uomo invisible, operetta in atto unico», performance από τον Matteo Rovesciato © Alexandra Masmanidi Πώς χρηματοδοτείται ο χώρος; Η εργασία μου ως μεταφραστής, για την ώρα, συντηρεί το χώρο. Επιπλέον, με αποταμιεύσεις από όπου αντλώ χρήματα περιστασιακά, για να καλυφθούν σχετικές δαπάνες. Αυτό δεν είναι ένα βιώσιμο μοντέλο. Προς το παρόν, είμαι στη διαδικασία να συστήσω το Sub Rosa ως μη κερδοσκοπική οργάνωση. Παρόλο που αυτή η ενέργεια είναι αρκετά πολύπλοκη, θα μου επιτρέπει τουλάχιστον να υποβάλλω αιτήσεις επιχορηγήσεων, στην Ελλάδα και την Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση, και να αναζητώ μεμονωμένες δωρεές. Αισθάνεσαι κομμάτι της τοπικής κοινωνίας; Πώς η κοινότητα επιδρά στην ταυτότητα και στο πρόγραμμα του χώρου; Νιώθω ότι έχω ενσωματωθεί αρκετά. Η ζωή μου είναι εδώ σε μεγάλο βαθμό και το πρόγραμμα του χώρου ανταποκρίνεται ευρύτερα, όπως το βλέπω, στις ανάγκες και τις επιθυμίες της καλλιτεχνικής κοινότητας στην πόλη. Το κοινό μας εκτιμά το γεγονός ότι προσφέρουμε μια πλατφόρμα για την performance σε ένα χαλαρό, ζεστό περιβάλλον. Όπως μου έχουν πει, αλλά και αντιλαμβάνομαι, στην αθηναϊκή σκηνή γίνονται σοβαρές δουλειές και υπάρχουν οι ευκαιρίες για απευθείας συνεργασίες με καλλιτέχνες σε συλλογικό επίπεδο. Το Sub Rosa έχει σχεδιαστεί με αυτή τη δυνατότητα. Όσον αφορά την αίσθηση της κοινότητας, νιώθω πιο κοντά με άλλους εργαζόμενους στα πολιτιστικά που αναλαμβάνουν ανεξάρτητες πρωτοβουλίες στην πόλη. Είναι επειδή συμβαδίζουν πολύ τα ενδιαφέροντα και οι προσπάθειές μας. Θέλουμε να φτιάξουμε πλατφόρμες που να αναδεικνύουν την ανεξάρτητη τέχνη στην Αθήνα και την ίδια την πόλη, ως διεθνή καλλιτεχνικό προορισμό. Νιώθω πολύ κοντά, για παράδειγμα, με το Und.Athens του Κυριάκου Σπύρου και το Platforms Project της Αρτέμιδος Ποταμιανού. Νιώθω, επίσης, κοντά με όσους συναδέλφους μου διαχειρίζονται ανεξάρτητους χώρους τέχνης στην Αθήνα.
59
«Θα ήθελα να δημιουργήσω ένα φόρουμ όπου καλλιτέχνες από Λίβανο, Κύπρο, Σερβία, Αίγυπτο, Τυνησία και αλλού να μπορούν να έρχονται στο Sub Rosa, να παρουσιάζουν τα έργα τους και να μπαίνουν σε ουσιαστικούς διαλόγους με τους εδώ συναδέλφους τους. Θα ήθελα, επίσης, να φτιάξω μια κινητή πλατφόρμα, με την οποία οι performer της Αθήνας να μπορούν να ταξιδεύουν σε εκείνες τις χώρες και να παρουσιάζουν τη δουλειά τους.» Ποια είναι η γνώμη σου για την εγχώρια τέχνη; Η τέχνη στην Αθήνα είναι πολύπλοκη. Παρόλο που έχω ζήσει για λίγο εδώ, έχω δει σίγουρα πολλές αλλαγές στα πολιτιστικά. Ως ξένος που λειτουργεί έναν ανεξάρτητο καλλιτεχνικό χώρο στην Αθήνα, ο κόσμος με ρωτά συχνά αν ήρθα εδώ λόγω της documenta. Τους απαντώ, στην προκειμένη περίπτωση, ότι όχι. Η documenta εντελώς συμπτωματικά ήταν στα πρώτα στάδια όταν εγκαταστάθηκα εδώ, και ο λόγος που ήρθα ήταν μια δυναμική, πρώτη συνάντηση με εκείνο το Συνέδριο Χορού το 2015. Σε κάθε περίπτωση, είδα τον αντίκτυπο που είχε. Μετά τη διεξαγωγή της, υπήρξε μια δραματική αύξηση των residencies ξένων καλλιτεχνών και άλλαξε, έτσι, σημαντικά η δημογραφία αυτής της κοινότητας. Ορισμένοι από αυτούς κάνουν full-time residence, ενώ άλλοι δουλεύουν παράλληλα και στο εξωτερικό. Σε συζητήσεις που είχα με τους Έλληνες, κάποιοι είναι ενθουσιασμένοι για τον κοσμοπολίτικο αέρα που έφερε αυτή η αλλαγή. Κάποιοι άλλοι, έχουν χαρακτηρίσει το φαινόμενο ως οπορτουνιστικό που εκμεταλλεύεται το χαμηλό κόστος διαβίωσης χωρίς να επενδύει ιδιαίτερα σε έργα υποδομής. Πάντως, η μαζική μετακίνηση καλλιτεχνών σε μία πόλη έχει τον κίνδυνο του υπερκορεσμού. Διαπιστώνω όμως ότι μεταξύ των ξένων καλλιτεχνών που είναι πραγματικά αφοσιωμένοι στην Αθήνα, υπάρχει μια ισχυρή τάση για αυτοοργάνωση και δημιουργία ευκαιριών για τους ίδιους και τους κοντινούς τους συναδέλφους. Κατά κάποιο τρόπο, αυτό συμβαίνει σε ένα πνεύμα ανεξάρτητων πρωτοβουλιών που, όπως μου έχουν πει, είναι χαρακτηριστικό της ελληνικής κοινωνίας. Ο κίνδυνος τέτοιων ενεργειών, σε πρακτικό επίπεδο, είναι η εξάντληση – τουλάχιστον, όταν σχεδιάζονται μακρόπνοα. Σε πολιτικό επίπεδο, είναι η ακούσια προώθηση του ατομικισμού: η επιθυμία και η αποφασιστικότητα του ατόμου σε βάρος της συλλογικής ταυτότητας και δράσης. Και όμως, νιώθω ότι βρισκόμαστε μπροστά σε μια νέα προσέγγιση των συλλογικοτήτων στο σημερινό καλλιτεχνικό τοπίο της Αθήνας – μεταξύ Ελλήνων αλλά και ξένων. Πολλοί ταλαντούχοι άνθρωποι είναι πρόθυμοι να μοιραστούν τα μέσα τους. Η πρόκληση είναι να βρεθούν βιώσιμοι τρόποι αξιοποίησης της προθυμίας αυτής και να γίνουν με τρόπο που να ενδυναμώνουν την εμπειρία της συλλογικότητας των καλλιτεχνών και της κοινότητας. Αυτή τη στιγμή είμαστε σε μια νέα φάση, χαρακτηριστική της επιθυμίας καλλιτεχνών και εργαζόμενων στα πολιτιστικά της πόλης να μοιράζονται αυτά που έχουν –υλικά, πνευματικά ή όπως αλλιώς–, να βοηθούν στη διατήρηση μιας σταθερής καλλιτεχνικής σκηνής. Είναι συναρπαστικό να τη βλέπεις και συγκινητικό να είσαι μέρος της.
60
«Le Tre Capre», performance από τη Lucia Bricco, © Bryony Dunne Μίλησέ μας για τα επόμενα event. Περιλαμβάνουν performances από τους Karin Verbruggen (19/4), Federica Peyrolo (3/5), Myriam Laplante (25/5), Ελένη Τσαμαδιά (7/6) και Alex Romania (29/6). Η Verbruggen θα παρουσιάσει performance και installation, πάνω στην προβληματική για την παρακαταθήκη του ανθρωπισμού ως εργαλείο συζήτησης για την οικολογική κρίση. Τα έργα των υπόλοιπων καλλιτεχνών ετοιμάζονται και θα έχουμε σύντομα περισσότερες πληροφορίες στην ιστοσελίδα μας και τα social media. Ποια ήταν η πιο ενδιαφέρουσα δουλειά που είδες πρόσφατα; Έμεινα άναυδος από την εμφάνιση του Georges Jacotey στο Glam Slam του 2018, μια βραδιά performance-cabaret που διοργάνωσαν οι Φιλ Ιερόπουλος και Φοίβος Δούσος. Το έργο του ήταν κατηγορηματικά απλό και όμως άριστα εκτελεσμένο. Με έντονο, στα όρια του γκροτέσκο makeup και με το σώμα του σχεδόν γυμνό, έκανε χούλα χουπ και τραγουδούσε –με εξαιρετική φωνή– το When the world was at war we kept dancing της Lana Del Rey. Όπως και στα περισσότερα κομμάτια της, το τραγούδι δίνει μια αλλόκοτη και γκλάμορους εκδοχή της αμερικανικής ποπ κουλτούρας του ’50 και του ’60. Ο Jacotey το απέδωσε, όμως, συνδυαστικά με τα υπόλοιπα στοιχεία της performance του με τρόπο που να προσφέρει μια μυθική εικόνα της Αμερικής, με την οποία ο καθένας να μπορεί να σχετίζεται. Παρουσιάζοντας το σώμα του με αποστροφή, έδειξε τη λαχτάρα ενός τέρατος να ταυτιστεί με την Αμερική. Ήταν σαν να έλεγε, «Σε βλέπω στα όνειρα μου Αμερική, κι ας μην το περίμενες. Και φταις εσύ που σε ονειρεύομαι, γιατί εσύ και η κουλτούρα σου είστε παντού». Ήταν μια ξεκάθαρη δήλωση και πολύ επιδέξια ερμηνεία.
61
«Uprising», performance από την Jazmin Taco © Bryonny Dunne Ποια είναι τα αγαπημένα σου μέρη στην Αθήνα, καλλιτεχνικά αλλά και γενικότερα; Θαυμάζω τη δουλειά της Ηλιάνας Φωκιανάκη στο State of Concept, όπου στο πρόγραμμά της η τέχνη στέκεται ως μέσο συζήτησης θεμάτων πολιτικής σημασίας και προασπίζει περιθωριοποιημένες φωνές του ευρύτερου καλλιτεχνικού κόσμου. Εκτιμώ το A-DASH και τους ιδρυτές του Eva Isleifs, Ζωή Χατζηγιαννάκη και Catriona Gallagher για τα ολοκληρωμένα residencies που προσφέρουν – προσκαλώντας καλλιτέχνες να παράγουν πρωτότυπα έργα που να παρεμβαίνουν στον χώρο του. Θαυμάζω τον Φιλ Ιερόπουλο με τις διάφορες πρωτοβουλίες του που ενθαρρύνουν νέους καλλιτέχνες, στο πλαίσιο του λόγου και της πρακτικής της queer τέχνης. Θαυμάζω την Cheapart και τους δημιουργούς της Γιώργο Γεωργακόπουλο και Δημήτρη Γεωργακόπουλο, για τον μεγάλο ενθουσιασμό τους να γνωρίζουν και να εμψυχώνουν νέα ταλέντα. Από περιοχές στην Αθήνα, η καρδιά μου ανήκει στα Αναφιώτικα. Όποτε κάνω βόλτα στην πόλη, καταλήγω εκεί πριν να το καταλάβω – σαν να με τραβάει μια ισχυρή και σαγηνευτική δύναμη. Θα βγω από το σπίτι και χωρίς να σκεφτώ πού πηγαίνω, θα βρεθώ εκεί. Γυρίζοντας στα σοκάκια τους, νιώθω να συνδέομαι με μια αντίληψη της αστικής πραγματικότητας, πολύ διαφορετική από την καθημερινή μας ρουτίνα. Βλέποντας την υπέροχη θέα των βουνών γύρω απ’ την πόλη θυμάμαι τη γενέτειρά μου την Καλιφόρνια, με τα παρόμοια τοπία της. Στα Αναφιώτικα νιώθω ότι είμαι κάπου τόσο διαφορετικά, αλλά και τόσο οικεία. Μετάφραση: Διονύσης Μοσχονάς
62
63
Cities and Cultures is an interdisciplinary humanities book series addressing the interrelations between contemporary cities and the cultures they produce. The series takes a special interest in the impact of globalization on urban space and cultural production, but remains concerned with all forms of cultural expression and transformation associated with contemporary cities. Series editor: Christoph Lindner, University of Amsterdam Advisory Board: Ackbar Abbas, University of California, Irvine Nezar AlSayyad, University of California, Berkeley Derek Gregory, University of British Colombia Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, University of New South Wales Shirley Jordan, Queen Mary, University of London Geoffrey Kantaris, University of Cambrigde Bill Marshall, University of London Ginette Verstraete, VU University Amsterdam Richard J. Williams, University of Edinburgh Visualizing the Street New Practices of Documenting, Navigating and Imagining the City Edited by Pedram Dibazar and Judith Naeff Amsterdam University Press Cover photo by Pedram Dibazar and Judith Naeff Cover design: CoÜrdesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6298 435 6 e-isbn 978 90 4853 501 9 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789462984356 nur 670 Š P. Dibazar, J.A. Naeff / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2019 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher. Contents Acknowledgements 7
64
1. Introduction: Visualizing the Street 9 Pedram Dibazar and Judith Naeff Part 1 Documenting Streets on Social Media 2. Derivative Work and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement: Three Perspectives 29 Wing-Ki Lee 3. Strange in the Suburbs: Reading Instagram Images for Reponses to Change 57 Megan Hicks 4. Droning Syria: The Aerial View and the New Aesthetics of Urban Ruination 73 László Munteán 5. The Affective Territory of Poetic Graffiti from Sidewalk to Networked Image 93 Aslı Duru Part 2 Navigating Urban Data Flows 6. Situated Installations for Urban Data Visualization: Interfacing the Archive-City 117 Nanna Verhoeff and Karin van Es 7. Cartography at Ground Level: Spectrality and Streets in Jeremy Wood’s My Ghost and Meridians 137 Simon Ferdinand 8. Street Smarts for Smart Streets 161 Rob Coley Part 3 Imagining Urban Communities 9. Chewing Gum and Graffiti: Aestheticized City Rhetoric in Post-2008 Athens 187 Ginette Verstraete and Cristina Ampatzidou 10. The Uncanny Likeness of the Street: Visioning Community Through the Lens of Social Media 207 Karen Cross 11. On or Beyond the Map? Google Maps and Street View in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas 227 Simone Kalkman Index 251 Acknowledgements This book developed from the conference Visualizing the Street, which we organized on 16-17 June 2016 at the University of Amsterdam, and from a series of guest lectures under the same theme organized that year as part of ASCA Cities Seminar. We want to thank the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis and the ASCA Cities Project for their financial and institutional support in organizing these events. In the organization of these events and the design of this book project, we are especially grateful to Christoph Linder, director of the ASCA Cities Project at the time, for encouraging us in the first place and intellectually supporting us in the process. For generously
65
accepting our invitation to come to Amsterdam and to give lectures at the seminar, we would like to thank Daniel Rubinstein, Donatella Della Ratta and Mark Westmoreland. To Gillian Rose we are immensely grateful not only for the wonderful keynote lecture she gave during the conference, but for her patience and critical engagement with the conference from the first moment to the last. We also want to thank all those who participated in these events as presenters, speakers or audience members. In putting together this book, we are grateful to the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies for their financial support and to Tijmen Klous for his exceptional editorial assistance. Above all, we would like to thank all the authors whose outstanding work is collected in this volume, for their patience in working with us, their curiosity in visualizations of the street and their intellectual generosity. 1. Introduction: Visualizing the Street Pedram Dibazar and Judith Naeff Abstract Now that we walk in urban surroundings saturated with digitally produced images and signs – with our GPS-tracked and camera-equipped smartphones in our hands – we document, navigate and imagine the urban street in new ways. This book is particularly interested in the new aesthetics and affective experiences of new practices of visualizing the street that have emerged from recent technological innovations. The introductory chapter argues for a focus on the practice of shaping both images and places, rather than on an image or a place as an end product, in studying the contemporary intersections of the visual and the spatial productively. In doing so, it seeks to complement the recent studies of visual culture that pay particular attention to new technologies for the production and dissemination of images with an urban studies perspective concerned with the social production and cultural mediation of space. The introduction highlights a number of key issues at stake in the proposed scholarly approach; issues that are dealt with in the concrete case studies explored by the following chapters in this volume. Keywords: visualization; visual studies; urban studies; practice; street; digital Today, images have attained new social functions and cultural meanings, because of the wide availability of digital image-making and image-sharing technologies. Equipped with cameras, GPS and the Internet, devices such as smartphones have transformed the way images are made, disseminated, interpreted and used. This book is concerned with the influence of such new forms and practices of visualization on the social production and cultural imaginaries of the street. It revisits the street – embracing a long scholarly tradition concerned with such elements as design, politics and everyday Dibazar, P. and J.A. Naeff, Visualizing the Street: New Practices of Documenting, Navigating and
66
Imagining the City, Amsterdam University Press, 2018 doi 10.5117/9789462984356_ch01 10 Pedram Dibazar and Judith Naeff life – and seeks to provide critical viewpoints that enrich contemporary scholarship on the street with a focus on new forms of its visualization. Of particular interest to our investigation in this book are the politics of aesthetics and affect at stake in these changing practices of visualizing the street. We argue that, in the experience of the contemporary street, the spatial and the visual converge on multiple levels. On a manifest level, images complement the spatial as they create urban façades and shape the visual appearance of the streets. The 21st century urban experience is hugely influenced by the proliferation of signs, billboards, advertisements, posters, stickers and graffiti in and around streets. These images – whether big or small, detailed or sketchy, in print or on screens – provoke emotional responses that are crucial to the expansion of dominant urban policies, such as creativity and gentrification, and the counter-hegemonic responses to them (Lindner and Meissner, 2015). On another level, digital visual materials have become embedded in the embodied experience of the contemporary street, as one walks through it equipped with smart devices. To navigate in the street these days, we rely on interactive maps that show us routes and position us in them, and we ceaselessly complement our direct experiences of the street with images and information we find online. Digital technologies’ capacity to gather data and transform codes into legible signs and images, and vice versa, is crucial in this respect. The swift ways in which we navigate multiple interfaces to read, use and modify those visualizations that render information and data flows understandable has become inextricably entangled with how we perceive our surroundings. In other words, while walking through the city with smartphones in hand, we simultaneously spatialize virtual data flows by visualizing them on physical phone screens, and visualize space by creating different forms of images – such as photographs, maps and videos – and disseminating them online through various apps. In combining the visual with the spatial, this project seeks to complement the recent studies of visual culture that pay particular attention to new technologies for the production and dissemination of images with an urban studies perspective concerned with the social production and cultural mediation of space. Contemporary scholarship on new technologies of visualization (Larsen and Sandbye, 2014; Verhoeff, 2012) suggests that, today, the practices of mapping, photographing, filming and editing are accessible to anyone who carries a phone and is connected online. This development highlights the performativity of visualization, stresses the immediacy of networks of communication, democratizes the processes of production and circulation of imagery, and destabilizes old hierarchies of Introduction: Visualizing the Street 11 aesthetics. At the same time, new technologies of image processing have
67
also contributed to the expansion of a visual culture that is produced and distributed professionally, and which is partly responsible for shaping the visual experience of the contemporary street. Although responding to different sensibilities, there are striking similarities between these various registers of the everyday visual experience of the street. The digital means of production of street imagery – never delivering a clear end product and always in circulation between material and virtual networks – and the fleeting glance with which consumers relate to that imagery, point to a distinctly performative visual language. In this introduction, we argue that, to analyse such new forms of visualizing the street, we need to move away from studying images and space separately; we need to take into account the ways in which images are produced, disseminated and consumed spatially. To do so, we propose to focus on practices that shape those images and spaces, rather than on images or places alone. It is by bringing the practice into the centre of attention that the visual and spatial intersect in a methodologically appropriate way for studying the recent developments in spatial visualization. The essays in this collection therefore build on recent developments in practice-based media studies (Couldry, 2012; Moores, 2012), visual culture studies (Rose, 2011; Favero, 2014) and sociology (Shove, Pantzar and Watson, 2012) to analyse visualization as social and cultural practice. This way of thinking allows for meanings, feelings and social relations to be made and remade constantly in everyday practice, in ways attentive to the dynamics of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic visibilities in and of the street. Connecting practices of visual documentation, navigation and imagination, we argue that new ways of making and using images heavily influences the ways we perceive, imagine, and live contemporary streets across the world. The Street As a critical concept, ‘the street’ builds upon an extensive scholarly tradition interested in notions of the public, the everyday and the bottom-up (e.g. Fyfe, 1998). A space of circulation – of goods, people and ideas – the street forms the privileged space for the theorization of a particularly urban condition for encounters between strangers (e.g. Watson, 2006). Such encounters are embodied and marked by differences and inequalities. Even though most circulation in the streets unfolds in the unnoticed rhythms of the everyday and the habitual, the possibility of mixing and confrontation grants this 12 Pedram Dibazar and Judith Naeff social space an unpredictable and uncontrolled nature. It is in this capacity that ‘the street’ is often employed in the context of public dissent. It denotes the space in which public expressions of discontent, outrage or grief unfold. Moreover, the street connotes a community characterized by diversity and tied loosely, often temporarily, by a set of common interests. These common interests often relate to urban settings and facilities or are articulated as such under Lefebvre’s notion of ‘the right to the city’ (Lefebvre, 1996). The role of visual culture in contestations over space is analysed in
68
Chapters 2, 5 and 9 in this book, focusing on cases from Hong Kong, Istanbul and Athens. Indeed, images have played a significant role in constructing imaginaries of revolt and protest (Didi-Huberman, 2016). The visual documentation of public dissent and conflict have played a crucial role in shaping common understandings of those events in the eyes and minds of the public from the mid twentieth century onwards. With the availability of handheld devices to nonprofessionals to make and share images of conflicts, recent years have witnessed a surge in the quantity and velocity of such images. This has given rise to the celebratory notion of ‘twitter revolutions’ and ‘citizen journalists’, fitting in a longer tradition of viewing technological advancements in telecommunications as a democratic promise of expanded social and political agency. In the context of the Arab spring, such images of the revolutionary street, as Mark Westmoreland argues, made ‘image-making practice both threatening and powerful’ as the streets became hyper-visible under the ever-present gaze of a multitude of witnesses (2016: 243-244). Amateur visual eye witness accounts of the political street, Westmoreland suggests, formed ‘both documentation acts of police violence and affirm[ed] the agency of mass political subjectivity’ (2016: 244). He goes on to argue that there is an interesting relation between spatiality and visuality in this case, in that, by occupying urban space, Cairenes were able to both reclaim their streets and their images (Westmoreland, 2016: 244). The Arab Spring is thus a powerful example of the way in which the practices of image-making and placemaking converge. Yet, as several chapters in this book show, the potential democratization through digital image sharing is never without complications. Wing-Ki Lee (Chapter 2) describes how the grassroots appropriation of images and spaces is in turn re-appropriated by astroturf derivative work; Simon Ferdinand (Chapter 7) points out that, no matter how creatively we appropriate data, their availability will always also make us vulnerable to forms of surveillance and control that inhibit subversive practices; and Simone Kalkman (Chapter 11) considers how local initiatives that also serve the interests of global corporate partners risk overshooting their mark. Introduction: Visualizing the Street 13 The street’s potential for disorder also means that the street is highly subjected to surveillance and control. Indeed, many of the technological innovations that form the basis of the social and cultural developments discussed in this book were initially engineered for surveillance purposes. From satellite images to drones, subjecting streets and street life to a view from above and arguably the practice of mapping itself have traditionally been entangled with the desire to manage and control the erratic and dynamic sociality at street level. In conceptualizations of the struggle over urban space, visuality, perspective and ways of looking have played an important role. Michel de Certeau’s distinction between the view from above – associated with the strategies of crowd control and urban planning – and the view from below – associated with the tactics employed in
69
the hustle and bustle of everyday life – has been of paramount importance in this respect (de Certeau, 1984). While acknowledging the entanglement of attempts to render urban space legible with desires to control it, the chapters by Simon Ferdinand (Chapter 7) on artistic renderings of GPS tracked movement, by László Munteán (Chapter 4) on drone footage of destroyed Syrian cities, by Rob Coley (Chapter 8) on fictional imaginaries of smart cities, and by Simone Kalkman (Chapter 11) on mapping the Favelas, also question all-too-easy dichotomies between the view from above and the view from below and seek to disentangle both its phenomenology and the more complex power structures involved in attempts to make visible and comprehensible the contemporary street. Thinking about the street thus inevitably requires engaging with the politics of visibility, and thinking through practices of visualization in and of the street – the focus of this book – necessitates engaging with the tensions between control and dissent that have been crucial to urban studies more broadly. From Image-making to Visualization Only two decades ago, making a visualization of an urban space – a drawing, map, computer generated rendering, photograph or video – demanded equipment, preparation, and professional know-how. Today, in most parts of the world, the production and instant circulation of images has become an inconspicuous part of our everyday routines. With our camera-equipped smartphones in our pockets, producing, editing and sharing images has become as ubiquitous as consuming them. We have unwittingly become visualizers on a daily basis. The old notion of the passive consumer, who was thought by the 20th-century cultural theorists to be subject to monopolizing 14 Pedram Dibazar and Judith Naeff regimes of mass culture, has been replaced in the 21st century by a more complex notion of an active participant, caught in a more dynamic field of interaction across multiple networks of circulation, (re)production, editing and appropriation. To refer to the visual material in such a pervasive and broad field of production and circulation, we use the word ‘visualization’. Under visualization, we imply all the different forms of digital content that go beyond the traditional manifestations of visual materials. These include, for instance, images whose visual content is marked by geotags and hashtags, or maps whose cartographic content includes interactive indications of individuals’ locations and movements. In addition to the visual material, visualization suggests a process and practice. Unlike vocabularies such as image-making or map-making that imply a more restricted outcome – an image or map – and a more specific notion of the aims and schemes of the practice, the concept of visualization embraces a breadth of forms and patterns, which we find helpful. Visualization, moreover, is better equipped with addressing data-processing techniques, where any visual material could be regarded as a particular representation of and an outcome of abstract data processing, which, even if not manifest in the visual material, is almost always implicated
70
in the technologies of their production and dissemination (Manovich, 2011). In the following, we review some of the social functions, technological formats and affective registers of the new practice of digitally visualizing spaces and localities. One of the most immediate impacts of the ubiquitous technologies of producing and circulating images has been on the ways we use images. For instance, we use visualizations to convey a message while chatting online; we send images of where we are and what we do to mark a simultaneously visual and spatial presence. In such visualizations, we often do not pay much attention to the image itself, its composition and visual signs. Rather, the image performs a particular kind of social function. Mikko Villi suggests that images sent from and received by camera phones function as ‘authentication of the sender’s presence, the “I am here now”’, and create a ‘synchronous gaze’, an ‘act of seeing together’ which the sender and receiver experience at the same time, and which is fundamental to the creation of a sense of mediated presence (2015: 8). Along the same lines, Mizuko Ito coins the term ‘intimate visual co-presence’ to denote the practice of personal camera phone use, in which ‘the focus is on co-presence and viewpoint sharing rather than communication, publication, or archiving’ (2005: 1). The function of such images is premised on the spatiality – I am here – and temporality – I am here now – of their nearly instantaneous production, circulation and Introduction: Visualizing the Street 15 consumption. They are consequently rarely looked at after the moment of sharing. Martin Lister observes this immediacy and different ways of looking that it entails in other contexts within the surfeit of images in digital cultures, where he believes a new relation to the image is produced that is predicated on a culture of not gazing at, but overlooking, the image – and sometimes even not looking at it at all (2014). These new relations to the image sometimes instigate new practices and social functions too. For instance, on photoblogging, he writes, ‘photographs matter not so much as finite products (and neither does the blog), but because they provide the occasion for taking photographs: for walking, for wandering, for being alert to opportunities, for being “in the moment”’ (Lister, 2014: 19). Likewise, Larsen and Sandbye claim that ‘increasingly, everyday amateur photography is a performative practice connected to presence, immediate communication and social networking, as opposed to the storing of memories for eternity, which is how it has hitherto been conceptualized’ (2014: xx). Thus, we could argue that the production and dissemination of images has shifted from a future-oriented documentation of reality, to be seen later as evidence of the past, to the immediacy of sharing our subjective experiences now; from an observational mode of recording to a performative mode of immersion. The shift in function of amateur photography has found particularly suitable mediations in social media platforms. The title of the first part of this book, ‘Documenting the street on social media’, deliberately evokes an internal friction, in the sense that, while all chapters in this section
71
deal with forms of recording, documentation, storage and archiving, the velocity and ephemerality of their circulation on social media also makes these terms superfluous, or at least profoundly alters their meaning. Another example of practices in which visualizations play a significant role is navigation in space. In orienting ourselves in the contemporary city, we use a variety of visualizations. We smoothly switch from maps to street-level footages, and from satellite photos to marketing images of local services, while also shifting through a variety of signs and images in the physical space, often deliberately aestheticized with figures and pictures for commercial ends. We have thus come to consume an ever-greater number and variety of images. In this book, we pay attention to the multiple ways in which visualization works and the particular form of images and visual material that we use. The dynamic process of computation and visualization, in which images are translated into codes and codes are rendered visually to make them comprehensible, form a significant concern of this volume. This two-way translation process between data and images is especially critically assessed in the second part of the volume, ‘Navigating Urban Data Flows’. 16 Pedram Dibazar and Judith Naeff These new functions of images have also come with new image formats. Significantly, the images we consume today can rarely be interpreted as one unified and definitive image with only visual content. Geotagging has added a layer of informational data to digital photography, firmly anchoring images in space. Memes often consist of text-and-image, and hashtags not only add a layer of interpretation to images, but also a mode of virtual navigation. Google Street View is composed of still photographs, but they function as maps too, and we can navigate through them in a way that aesthetically resembles video games. Gifs are moving images, yet lack the narrative quality of video. Between the capturing quality of the photograph and the dynamics of the video, the gif file has opened up a new visual genre of infinite repetition. Even still photographs, with the ubiquity of digital editing, rarely find the stasis of a clear end product, endlessly enhanced, reframed, published and appropriated across various media. The old binaries between still and moving image, as Ingrid Hölzl (2010) writes, still hold to some extent, but their relationship has become more complex. To go beyond such a binary, she suggests to consider photography and film as ‘synthetic “image states”: they both display aspects of stasis and movement’ (Hölzl, 2010: 106). It could also be said that new forms of visualization fit into a broader trend, in which cultural value is less and less based on the signifying content or stylistic form of images and more and more on the quantity and velocity with which they transmit information (e.g. Keen, 2007; Steyerl, 2009). Such an emphasis on images as data might suggest a continuous ‘waning of affect’ (Jameson, 1991: 10). But new practices of visualization create new affective ecologies, such as the ‘intimate co-presence’ discussed above (Ito, 2005: 1). New practices of visualization have transformed the ways we read
72
and understand images and have generated new emotional responses. We do not merely look at images, but most of the times do several things at the same time when seeing digital images. We see the image and read the hashtag, for instance; we look and scroll down or swipe over the screen; we see a collection of images at the same time or browse through them in quick succession; we switch perspective; we zoom in and out. Aaron Shapiro points out that ‘using Street View in practice entails a lot of this toggling back and forth between the aerial and the street-level’ (2017: 4). The fleeting, distracted glance and the quick change of attention from one system to another marks our new way of looking. It seems ceaseless and smooth in our everyday use, but involves a continuously violent disruption of the gaze. If we review the particular affect produced by innovative visualizations of the street introduced in the chapters of this book, a striking parallel Introduction: Visualizing the Street 17 emerges. In studying amateur photographs of suburban houses, Megan Hicks (Chapter 3) perceives in the peculiarly furtive rhythmicity of consuming Instagram’s inflexibly orthogonal frame the strange reappearance of the repetitive aesthetics of modernist high-rises – the architectural style that remains conspicuously absent from such images. Discussing the imagery produced around a London street market, Karen Cross (Chapter 10) describes how the strategic reuse of older styles of photography, typesetting and other forms of visualization evoke a sense of uncanniness. Rob Coley (Chapter 8) argues that speculating about the future relation between humans and technology confronts us with the fact we share our streets with ‘a weird ecology of agencies’ that we cannot visualize. Thus, tracing the strange, the uncanny and the weird throughout the three sections of this book demonstrates not only how temporal disjunctures of new practices of visualization produce affects of defamiliarization in space, but also how media and technology sometimes interfere with the meanings we construct in ways that go beyond our comprehension and control. In conclusion, visualizations in and of the street are characterized by performative gestures that entail sharing and navigation. Rather than a definite image of which the value is constituted by its visual signification, infinite processes of (re)editing and (re)appropriation produce what could be called synthetic ‘image states’ of which meaning and value continue to change across multiple performative instances of making, sharing and receiving (Hölzl 2010: 106). Our seemingly smooth but ultimately fragmentary navigation through such image states via multiple interfaces can evoke a variety of emotional responses, including enchantment and disaffection. We have gestured towards two affective registers in this respect: the intimacy of online sharing and the uncanny (re)emergence of what initially escapes our perception. Space, Bodies, Technology To understand how the street is visualized, we need to take into account not only the politics of the media through which space is visualized, but
73
also, conversely, the ways in which these visual media are spatialized. This means, first of all, that we remain attentive to the complex ways in which images travel through multiple networks. Wing-Ki Lee (Chapter 2) provides a particularly sophisticated analysis on derivative work related to Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement, as it traces the various transformations of images and their meanings in their online trajectories. Yet, images are 18 Pedram Dibazar and Judith Naeff not limited to the visual translations of data flows on our screens, they also find material expression in the urban environment. From huge billboards to dilapidated shop signs and from authorized beautif ication projects to subversive graffiti, visual culture plays an important part in how we experience the streetscape – even if other senses also play a part in the physical realm. Indeed, the photoshopped images circulating online in Lee’s analysis find their way back to the streets in the form of large prints pasted on cardboards or as stenciled murals. Simon Ferdinand (Chapter 7) and Aslı Duru (Chapter 5) point to the significance of embodied movement through the streets of London and Istanbul, respectively. The performative immediacy of claiming the right to the city through embodied presence in both case studies is given more durable form through practices of visualization. Visualization in these cases constitutes the recording of a trace of physical presence and practice in space. Nanna Verhoeff and Karin van Es (Chapter 6) point to ways of visualizing the invisible data flows that run through our urban environments, and emphasize the political stake of making these visualizations available in public space, embedded in the materiality of our everyday surroundings. Ginette Verstraete and Cristina Ampatzidou (Chapter 9) and Karen Cross (Chapter 10) explain how the right to the city is also played out in contestations over aesthetization and beautification projects, which entail different ways and forms of imagery. These chapters demonstrate the complex ways in which the visual appearance of the street in its physical manifestation is entangled with virtual visualizations of it. The affect produced by new practices of visualization, some of which have been discussed in the previous section, rely largely on new forms of embodiment that digital technologies instigate. Digital devices, interfaces and apps have become extensions of our bodies; we increasingly see, hear, calculate and communicate through them. With the use of digital technology, we gain knowledge about our bodies and environment, we track ourselves and turn into, what Deborah Lupton calls, quantified selves, with our data profiles following us everywhere (2016). In addition to quantifying the world around us, we also feel the world differently through digital devices. As Mark Shepard suggests, ‘today, the “feel” of the street is defined less and less by what we can see with the naked eye’ (2011: 21). The discourse of smart cities and sentient futures pays particular attention to the embodied forms of everyday interaction with, and through, digital techniques of data visualization. This phenomenological aspect of technological innovation is
74
central to László Muntéan’s (Chapter 4) investigation of the sublime effects of drone visibility. The body-technology relation and the issue of human Introduction: Visualizing the Street 19 perception are also at the heart of the three chapters collected in this volume under the title ‘Navigating Urban Data Flows’. A productive case study to think through the intersections between virtual imagery and urban space is the digital renderings of architectural projects. Such computer-generated 3D visualizations not only have become the dominant visual language within the discourse of professional urban design and architecture – such as professional architectural journals, city planning and real estate projects – they are also a prominent feature in urban space and the public sphere in the form of large-scale posters on walls and urban surfaces, and small scale prints and images in magazines and websites. In a series of articles on the digital visualizations of urban redevelopment projects, Gillian Rose, Monica Degen and Clare Melhuish (2016) argue that, in order to understand these images, one needs to consider the conditions of their production. One has to understand the labor that has gone into producing these seemingly easy visualizations, to consider the network and process of their making. They propose to use Actor Network Theory for the study of these images because its emphasis on networks, mobility and agency allows us to challenge the picture-perfect completion that the visual content of the images seems to suggest: What examining the labour of creating these visualizations suggests, is that they are far from being near-magical, seamless, pristine images of glossy urban futures. Instead, they are rather more like sites of debate and disagreement, which shift and change as different designs are inputted, different sorts of views desired, and different sort of audiences anticipated. And if they could be seen like that, the seamless views of urban living that they offer could also be challenged, by being seen as networked. (Rose et al., 2016: 116) They suggest that, by considering how these visualizations imply multiple, sometimes conflicting, practices, we not only understand the labor gone into their making but also are better equipped to question these images’ ‘strategic erasure of their processes of production’ critically (Rose et al., 2016: 111). Here, Actor Network Theory is complemented by close analysis of both visual content, that is, the type of social reality depicted and the choices made in terms of composition, framing, lighting and perspective, and the affective qualities, i.e. the shiny, glossy, happy atmosphere of the images. Interestingly, the authors suggest not only to study these three aspects of architectural renderings critically – how the images are produced, what they show and what emotional response they (seek to) evoke – but also to interrupt their intended 20 Pedram Dibazar and Judith Naeff affective atmosphere by locating ‘visualizations whose glamour is in some way defective, and then to share that deglamourization with various audiences’ (Rose et al., 2016: 113). In other words, Rose, Degen and Melhuish argue that
75
exclusionary visualizations of the street could be countered by circulating other visualizations, those that capture faded, torn and inconspicuous versions of these CGIs in our everyday urban reality, confronting the envisioned futures with the messy and more inclusive nature of real streets. To understand these images, Rose, Degen and Melhuis suggest that the details of the practices that have led to their visualization should be taken into consideration. This type of practice-based research, attentive to the intersections between spatial and visual regimes, is what we argue for in this book too. In line with the argument made in this introduction, the scholarly approaches of the chapters collected in this volume have at least two things in common. Firstly, they appreciate the inextricable entanglement of the (virtually) visual and the spatial. Secondly, they pay attention to practices of visualization and its related aspects of embodiment, materiality and affect. The chapters speak to each other in a variety of ways and show considerable thematic and methodological overlaps. In this introduction, we have traced some of those recurrent notions and suggested key points of convergence between chapters. To highlight our approach to visualizing the street as practice, however, we have ordered the chapters according to the following overarching themes: documentation, navigation and imagination. These themes are to help readers navigate the chapters through our conceptual approach, and they are not meant as distinct categories as most of the chapters relate to more than one of them. The following section outlines the main content of each part and each chapter. Documenting Streets on Social Media The first part of the book explores diverse examples of street images circulating on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. The images discussed in this section capture streetscapes with the aim of documenting a significant historical event, registering transient acts of defiance or archiving the status quo for the future. Despite their divergent concerns, the four chapters in this section share an interest in the politics of circulation and the affective register of visual consumption on these media platforms. Paying particular attention to the aesthetic qualities of their case studies, all four chapters critically assess the affect produced by such documenting and sharing. Introduction: Visualizing the Street 21 In Chapter 2, ‘Derivative Work and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement: Three Perspectives’, Wing-Ki Lee starts from the conspicuous absence of any visual reminder in the streets of Hong Kong of the 2014 street protests that came to be known as the Umbrella Movement. In response, the author turns to the virtual archive of hyper-mobile images on the Internet, in particular the derivative work of photoshopped, re-edited and re-appropriated images surrounding these street protests. Interestingly, Lee moves beyond a celebratory description of the peculiar subversive aesthetics of amateur image appropriation to consider its historical resonance with state-authorized visual censorship in mainland China, its immoral use by conservative and
76
patriarchal Internet users, and its re-appropriation by state actors. Thus, the chapter raises questions about all-too-easy dichotomies between oppressive and subversive visual regimes. Chapter 3, ‘Strange in the Suburbs: Reading Instagram Images for Responses to Change’, provides a reading of Instagram feeds that form visual archives of Australian suburban façades. Megan Hicks argues that, when standing alone, these images do not evoke any particular feeling. Yet, in the flick-flick-flick of the Instagram feed, the images become haunted by their deliberate exclusion of the rapid increase of high-density apartment blocks in suburban landscapes. Especially those photographers who succeed to frame the suburban decorative details in symmetrical compositions, in the orthogonal frame of the app, uncannily evoke the repetitive geometry of the very high-rises that threaten to erase the captured landscape but remain conspicuously absent within the frames. From the repressed anxieties in Australian suburbs, László Munteán takes us to the overt horror of the war-torn streets of Syria. Chapter 4, ‘Droning Syria: The Aerial View and the New Aesthetics of Urban Ruination’, critically assesses the aesthetics of Russian journalistic aerial footage captured by drones hovering over Syrian cities in war. He not only criticizes the way in which its mode of production is implicated with the Russian war effort, but also dwells on the specific phenomenology of droning and how it is geared towards continuing a long tradition of Ruinenlust, thus questioning the ethics of not only the mode of production and the aesthetic composition of the footage, but also of its mode of reception as a YouTube hit. In Chapter 5, ‘The affective territory of poetic graff iti from sidewalk to networked image’, Aslı Duru opens up the intersection between space and visual culture to include poetry. Duru investigates the #siirsokakta movement that emerged in the wake of Istanbul’s Gezi protests. ‘Siir sokakta’ means ‘poetry in the street’ and refers to the widespread practice of scribbling or spray-painting lines of poetry in public space, then Pedram Dibazar and Judith Naeff capturing the lines with a camera phone and sharing it online using a shared hashtag. The chapter considers the relations between poetic text, image and urban space from a historical perspective, and reflects on the methodology of walking ethnography. Duru argues that the peculiar geography of the #siirsokakta movement asks for an expansion of this method to include browsing ethnography, pointing out their parallels and intersections.
Body of Art by
77
Diane Fortenberry (Editor),
Rebecca Morrill (Editor),
Robert Shane (Contributor),
Monica Kjellman-Chapin (Contributor),
David Trigg (Contributor) 4.52 ∙ Rating details ∙ 31 ratings ∙ 1 review
The first book to celebrate the beautiful and provocative ways artists have represented, scrutinized and utilized the body over centuries. Body of Art is the first book to explore the various ways the human body has been both an inspiration and a medium for artists over hundreds of thousands of years. Unprecedented in its scope, it examines the many different manifestations of the body in art, from Anthony Gormley and Maya Lin sculptures to eight-armed Hindu gods and ancient Greek reliefs, from feminist graphics and Warhol's empty electric chair to the bluetinted complexion of Singer Sargent's Madame X. It is the most expansive examination of the human body in art, spanning western and non-western, ancient to contemporary, representative to abstract and conceptual. Over 400 artists are featured in chapters that explore identity, beauty, religion, absent body, sex and gender, power, body's limits, abject body and bodies & space. Works range from 11,000 BC hand stencils in Argentine caves to videos and performances by contemporary artists such as Marina Abramovic, Joan Jonas and Bruce Nauman? Its fresh, accessible and dynamic voice brings to life the thrilling diversity of both classical and contemporary art through the prism of the body. More than simply a book of representations, this is an original and thought provoking look at the human body across time, cultures and media. (less)
Atlas Obscura: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders
by Joshua Foer 4.27 avg. rating ∙ 4,414 Ratings Inspiring equal parts wonder and wanderlust, Atlas Obscura celebrates over 600 of the strangest and most curious places in the world. Here are natural wonders—the dazzling glowworm caves in New Zealand…More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
78
The Artist's Body by Tracey Warr 4.34 avg. rating ∙ 65 Ratings Tracing artists' increasing use of their bodies as subject and actual material of their artworks, this title charts the rise of new forms of expression such as Body Art, Happenings, Performance and Li…More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
The Psychology of Grief
by Richard Gross 3.50 avg. rating ∙ 6 Ratings What is happening emotionally when we grieve for a loved one? Is there a 'right' way to grieve? What effect does grief have on how we see ourselves? The Psychology of Grief is a humane and intelligent…More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
Rachel Whiteread: Transient Spaces by Craig Houser 3.88 avg. rating ∙ 8 Ratings New Lower Price! Rachel Whiteread creates spare, poetic sculptures that challenge perceptions of the commonplace. Working from everyday domestic items, she castsin rubber, concrete, plaster and poly… More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
79
Ralph Eugene Meatyard (Phaidon 55's) by Judith Keller 4.23 avg. rating ∙ 31 Ratings This volume investigating the work of a particular photographer, in this case, Ralph Eugene Meatyard comprises a 4000word essay by an expert in the field, 55 photographs presented chronologically…More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness: Reflections on the Historicity of "Stuff" by Ivan Illich 4.08 avg. rating ∙ 40 Ratings
s/t: Reflections on the Historicity of Stuff In the course of this brilliant essay the author traces the way water has been shorn of its mythic associations and reduced to an urban cleaning fluid. The …More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
Home Truths: Photography and Motherhood by Susan Bright 4.23 avg. rating ∙ 13 Ratings Published to accompany a highly anticipated traveling exhibition, Home Truths examines contemporary interpretations of one of the most enduring subjects in the history of picturemaking: the image of …More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
80
Louise Bourgeois by Frances Morris 4.49 avg. rating ∙ 57 Ratings Louise Bourgeois is among the most prominent contemporary sculptors. Strongly influenced by surrealism, abstract expressionism, and minimalism, her work focuses on the exploration of her psyche. A rec…More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
The Inner Child in Dreams
by Kathrin Asper 4.21 avg. rating ∙ 14 Ratings An understanding of the symbolism of the child in dreams can help us make contact with our own inner child —both the child we once were and the spontaneous, childlike side of our nature. Using examples…More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
Love as Always, Mum xxx by Mae West 4.17 avg. rating ∙ 1,495 Ratings
The true story of an abused childhood, of shocking brutality and life as the daughter of notorious serial killer, and master manipulator, Rose West. You're twentyone years old. Police arrive on the do…More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
81
The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious by W.M. Hunt 4.33 avg. rating ∙ 15 Ratings The Unseen Eye presents a wonderfully idiosyncratic and compelling collection of photographs assembled around a particular theme: in each image, the gaze of the subject is averted, the face obscured o…More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
Aliens: The Essential Comics Volume 1
by Mark Verheiden 3.51 avg. rating ∙ 82 Ratings These are the comics stories that kept fear alive. Since 1988, whether there was an Alien film on the horizon or not, Dark Horse Comics delivered scares that audiences demanded. From the depths of spa…More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
Embodied Avatars: Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance by Uri McMillan 4.17 avg. rating ∙ 23 Ratings How black women have personified art,expression, identity, and freedom through performance
Tracing a dynamic genealogy of performance from the nineteenth to the twentyfirst century, Uri McMillan conte…More Want to Read Shelving menu
82
Rate it:
Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939
by Georges Bataille 4.31 avg. rating ∙ 918 Ratings Since the publication of Visions of Excess in 1985, there has been an explosion of interest in the work of Georges Bataille. The French surrealist continues to be important for his groundbreaking focu…More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
Little Me: My Life from A-Z by Matt Lucas 3.92 avg. rating ∙ 788 Ratings The hilarious, heartwarming and tearjerking memoir from one of Britain's bestloved comedians and actors, Matt Lucas. Hello there. Welcome to my autobiography. Throughout this book I talk about my li…More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
Outcast by Kirkman & Azaceta Book 1 by Robert Kirkman 4.12 avg. rating ∙ 208 Ratings
83
This hardcover features the first twelve issues of the hit comic book series, along with covers and a sketchbook, in one oversized hardcover volume. Perfect for longtime readers and fans of the Cinem…More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
The Sacred Conspiracy: The Internal Papers of the Secret Society of Acéphale and Lectures to the College of Sociology
by Georges Bataille 4.33 avg. rating ∙ 43 Ratings This book collects together, for the first time in any language, a representative selection of texts by Georges Bataille, and the writers associated with him, in the years leading up to the Second Wor…More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
Alien Covenant: David’s Drawings
by Dane Hallett 4.54 avg. rating ∙ 35 Ratings Before Alien Covenant, David was stranded alone on the Engineers’ planet and—left to his own dark devices—he began to push the boundaries of creation. Delve into this exclusive collection, containing … More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
Aliens: Defiance, Vol. 2 by Brian Wood
84
3.73 avg. rating ∙ 229 Ratings
Colonial Marine Private First Class Zula Hendricks is on an AWOL mission to prove her mettle by eradicating the alien species before they can be exploited as weapons on Earth. She must battle with ali… More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
Alan Partridge: Nomad by Alan Partridge 4.13 avg. rating ∙ 3,039 Ratings In Alan Partridge: Nomad, Alan dons his boots, windcheater and scarf and embarks on an odyssey through a place he once knew it's called Britain intent on completing a journey of immense personal s…More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
Batman: White Knight
by Sean Gordon Murphy 4.31 avg. rating ∙ 4,515 Ratings He’s been called a maniac, a killer and the “Clown Prince of Crime” but “white knight”? Never. Until now… Set in a world where the Joker is cured of his insanity and homicidal tendencies, The Joker, no…More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
85
I Am C-3PO: The Inside Story by Anthony Daniels 3.85 avg. rating ∙ 1,434 Ratings "Gloriously witty, keen and spirited" J.J. Abrams, Director of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker "The odds of me ever writing a book were approximately... Oh, never mind. My golden companion worries abo…More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others
by Sara Ahmed 4.29 avg. rating ∙ 716 Ratings In this groundbreaking work, Sara Ahmed demonstrates how queer studies can put phenomenology to productive use. Focusing on the “orientation” aspect of “sexual orientation” and the “orient” in “orient…More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan by Alan Partridge 4.24 avg. rating ∙ 6,495 Ratings Book by Partridge, Alan. Journalist, presenter, broadcaster, husband, father, vigorous allrounder: Alan Partridge. Star of action blockbuster Alpha Papa; a man with a fascinating past and an amazing f…More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
86
Crash
by J.G. Ballard 3.63 avg. rating ∙ 19,339 Ratings In Ballard's hallucinatory novel, the car provides the hellish tableau in which Vaughan, a "TV scientist" turned "nightmare angel of the highways," experiments with erotic atrocities among auto crash …More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
Complete Plays by Sarah Kane 4.32 avg. rating ∙ 2,969 Ratings When Sarah Kane's first play, Blasted, was staged at the Royal Court Theatre in 1995 it was hailed both as a "masterpiece" and as a "disgusting piece of filth" (Daily Mail). That play, and the others …More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
The Unlimited Dream Company
by J.G. Ballard 3.69 avg. rating ∙ 638 Ratings When a light aircraft crashes into the Thames at Shepperton, the young pilot who struggles to the surface minutes later seems to have come back from the dead. Within hours everything in the dormitory …More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
87
A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings by Charles Dickens 4.14 avg. rating ∙ 30,554 Ratings An alternate cover for this isbn can be found here.
'Merry Christmas!...every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding' Dickens' story of solitary m…More Want to Read Shelving menu Rate it:
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy 3.83 avg. rating ∙ 48,263 Ratings ‘I’ve not always been what I am now’
In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages …More At last, the definitive book about perhaps the best cabin crew dramedy ever filmed: View From the Top starring Gwyneth Paltrow.
88
Turner, Victor
Carnival in rio: Dionysian drama in anindustrializing society Readers are reminded that copyright subsists in this extract and the work from which it was taken. Except as provided for by the terms of a rightsholder's licence or copyright law, no further copying, storage or distribution is permitted without the consent of the copyright holder. The author (or authors) of the Literary Work or Works contained within the Licensed Material is or are the author(s) and may have moral rights in the work. The Licensee shall not cause or permit the distortion, mutilation or other modification of, or other derogatory treatment of, the work which would be prejudicial to the honour or reputation of the author. Turner, Victor, (1983) "Carnival in rio: Dionysian drama in an industrializing society", Manning, Frank E., The celebration of society: perspectives on contemporary cultural performance, 103-124, Bowling Green University Popular Press Š This is a digital version of copyright material made under licence from the rightsholder, and its accuracy cannot be guaranteed. Please refer to the original published edition. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright owner(s) of this material, and anyone claiming copyright should get in touch with HERON at heroncopyright@ingenta.com. Licensed for use at Glasgow Caledonian University for the course: "MLLS403 - Mega events, spectacle and identity" during the period 25/01/2008 to 23/01/2009. Permission reference: 0879722452(103-124)73847 ISN: 0879722452 Chapter 6 Carnaval in Rio: Dionysian Drama in an Industrializing Society Victor Turner Medieval European carnival had its roots in the pagan past with affinities to the Roman Saturnalia and Lupercalia. But it found a place in the calendar of the church year and was normally performed during the four days before Lent. Folk etymology connected carnival with the medieval Latin phrase
89
“carne vale,” (flesh farewell), since it marked a period of feasting and revelry just before Lent, when meat-eating fell under interdict. Being connected with a moveable fast, carnival—notably Mardi Gras—“Fat Tuesday,” its climax, just before Ash Wednesay, became a moveable feast. Unlike such civic celebrations as Independence Day, July Fourth, Cinco de Mayo, and others, carnival is set in a cosmological calendar, severed from ordinary historical time, even the time of extraordinary secular events. Truly, carnival is the denizen of a place which is no place, and a time which is no time, even where that place is a city’s main plazas, and that time can be found on an ecclesiastical calendar. For the squares, avenues, and streets of the city become, at carnival, the reverse of their daily selves. Instead of being the sites of offices and the conduits of purposive traffic, they are sealed off from traffic, and the millions who throng them on foot, drift idly wherever they please, no longer propelled by the urges of “getting and spending” in particular places. What we are seeing is society in its subjunctive mood—to 103 104 THE CElEbRATiON of SOCiETY borrow a term from grammar—its mood of feeling, willing and desiring, its mood of fantasizing, its playful mood; not its indicative mood, where it tries to apply reason to human action and systematize the relationship between ends and means in industry and bureaucracy. The distinguished French scholar, Jean-Richard Bloch, lamented in the title of his book, written in 1920, Carnival est mort. Premiers essais pour mieux comprendre mon temps, and the Spanish ethnologist Julio Caro Baroja, approvingly echoed him in 1965, “el Carnaval ha muerto.” “Carnival is dead,” indeed! They said as much of pilgrimage when my wife and I set out to study this great mass phenomenon in 1970. We found that literally millions and millions of people were still on the pilgrimage trail of all the world’s major religions, and, indeed, that many so-called “tourists” were really closet pilgrims. Certainly, Carnaval is by no means dead in Brazil, and rumors of its decease elsewhere are greatly exaggerated. One thinks immediately of Trinidad, New Orleans, and Fastnacht in many a German town. But carnival, though a world-wide phenomenon—I am thinking of Japanese and Indian festivals such as the Gion Matsuri in Kyoto, or the Holi festival in northern India—has become in Brazil something fundamentally and richly Brazilian. I say this despite Brazilian criticism by certain
90
middle-class elements that it is vulgar, by Marxists that it diverts the energies of the workers from political activity and blurs class lines, and by those in the higher clergy who look upon it as pagan and scandalous. The way people play perhaps is more profoundly revealing of a culture than how they work, giving access to their ‘heart values.’ I use this term instead of key values for reasons that will become clear, for the heart has its values, as well as its reasons. The Varieties of Playful Experience I am going to throw in a soupcon of theory into this bouillabaisse of carnivalesque impressions, since one of my recent concerns is the constant cross-looping of social history with the numerous genres of cultural performance ranging from ritual, to theatre, the novel, folk-drama, art exhibitions, ballet, modern dance, poetry readings, to film and television. “CARNAVAl” iN Rio 105 Underpinning each type of performance are the social structures and processes of the time; underlying the social drama or ‘dramas of living,’ the Dreyfus cases and Watergates, are the rhetorics and insights of contemporary kinds of performance—popular, mainstream and avant-garde. Each feeds and draws on the other, as people try to assign meaning to their behavior, turning it into conduct. They become reflexive, at once their own subject and object. One of the modes in which they do this is play—including games and sports, as well as festivals. Play, paradoxically, has become a more serious matter with the decline of ritual and the contraction of the religious sphere in which people used to become morally reflexive, relating their lives to the values handed down in sacred traditions. The play frame, where events are scrutinized in the leisure time of the social process, has to some extent inherited the function of the ritual frame. The messages it delivers are often serious beneath the outward trappings of absurdity, fantasy, and ribaldry, as contemporary stage plays, some movies and some TV shows illustrate. Clearly, carnival is a form of play. Current theories of play formulated by anthropologists and others may give us some clues as to what carnival is about. The main pioneer in this field is Dutch medieval historian Johan Huizinga, rector of the University of Leyden in 1933, and author of the celebrated book, Homo Ludens (“Man at Play,” or “Man the Player”). Huizinga defined play as follows: Summing up the formal characteristics of play we might call it a free activity standing quite consciously outside
91
‘ordinary life’ as being ‘not serious,’ but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means (1955:13). Play, then, according to Huizinga, is a “free activity,” which nevertheless imposes order on itself, from within and 106 THE CElEbRATiON of SOCiETY according to its own rules. He grasps the connection between play and the secret and mysterious, but cannot account for the fact that play is often spectacular, even ostentatious, as in parades, processions, Rose Bowls, Superbowls, and Olympics. One might even say that the masks, disguises and other fictions of some kinds of play are devices to make visible what has been hidden, even unconscious—for example, the Demon Masks of Sri Lankan and Tibetan exorcism rituals—to let the mysteries revel in the streets, to invert the everyday order in such a way that it is the unconscious and primary processes that are visible, whereas the conscious ego is restricted to creating rules to keep their insurgence within bounds, to frame them or channel them, so to speak. Huizinga is also surely wrong when he sees play as divested of all material interest. He forgets the important role of betting and games of chance in, for example, gambling houses, casinos, race tracks and lotteries. These may have important economic effects, even though playing for money remains completely unproductive, since the sum of the winnings at best only equals the losses of other players, and the entrepreneur, the bank, is the only ultimate winner; ironically he is perhaps the only one who takes no pleasure in gambling. A later, more complex, theory of play has been developed by the French scholar, Roger Caillois. He uses some exotic terms, but defines them clearly. For example, he says that play has two axes or “poles,” which he calls paidia and ludus. Paidia, from the Greek word meaning “child,” stands for “an almost indivisible principle, common to diversion, turbulence, free improvisation, and carefree gaiety . . . uncontrolled fantasy” (1979: 13). This anarchic and capricious propensity characteristic of children is countered by ludus, from the Latin word meaning “a play, a game,” which Caillois sees as binding paidia “with arbitrary, imperative, and purposely tedious
92
conventions, [opposing it] still more by ceaselessly practising the most embarrassing chicanery upon it, in order to make it more uncertain of attaining its desired effects” (Ibid). Ludus, in fact, represents how, in the space/time of the subjunctive mood of cultural action, human beings love to set up arbitrary obstacles to be overcome as in mazes, crossword puzzles or the rules of chess, which are both a general training for coping with obstacles in the day-to-day world and also a means of “CARNAVAI” iN Rio 107 totally engrossing the player in a world of play framed and enclosed by its intricate rules. Caillois has four additional concepts for understanding play (see Table 1, below). These are agon, Greek for “contest” or “competition”; alea, a dice game, extended to chance, randomness and gambling in general; mimicry, from the Greek mimos, an imitator or actor; and ilinx, for “whirlpool,” which “consists of an attempt momentarily to destroy stability of perception and inflict a kind of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind” (p. 23). Caillois uses these categories to explain the structure of games of strength, chance or skill, and of play-acting—all these being in the world of “make-believe” (whereas ritual is in the world of “we do believe”). Each category contains games and sports that move from the pole of paidia, childhood play (in which he includes “tumult, agitation, and immoderate laughter”) to the pole of ludus (“purposive innovation”). For example, the category agon or competition describes a whole group of games “in which an equality of chances is artificially created in order that the adversaries should confront each other under ideal conditions, susceptible of giving precise and incontestable value to the winner’s triumph. . . . Rivalry (usually) hinges on a single quality (such as speed, endurance, strength, memory, skill, ingenuity, and the like) exercised, within defined limits and without outside assistance, in such a way that the winner appears to be better than the loser in a certain category of exploits” (p. 14). Agonistic games range from unregulated racing and wrestling, at the paidia end, to organized sport (boxing, billiards, baseball, fencing, chess, Olympic Games, and so on) at the ludus end. Alea or “chance” presides over “games that are based on a decision independent of the player, an outcome over which he has no control, and in which winning is the result of fate or destiny rather than triumphing over an adversary” (p. 17). For this reason, games of chance have often played an important role in ritual contexts, as indicative of the will of the gods, as in
93
the great Indian epic, the Mahabharata, where the oldest of the Pandava hero-brethren gambles away the rights of all the brothers to the throne and to their joint wife Draupadi; the brothers pay the penalty of exile for thirteen years. In our culture, alea, chance, ranges from counting out rhymes (eeny 108 THE CElEbRATiON of SOCiETY meeny miney mo), and spinning a coin, at the paidia pole, to betting and roulette, to simple or complex continuing lotteries. Mimicry or simulation involves the acceptance if not of an illusion (the very word is derived from the Latin in-lusio, “the beginning of a game”), at least of a “closed, conventional and, in certain respects, imaginary universe” (p. 19). Through mimicry one can become an imaginary character oneself, a subject who makes believe or makes others believe that he/she is someone other than him/herself. At the paidia pole, we have children playing at being parents or other adult roles, or cowboys and Indians, or spacemen and aliens. We progress through charades to various kinds of masking and costuming and disguises until at the ludus pole we are fully into theatre, masquerade, and, in the popular sphere, pageants, processions, parades, and other types of spectacle. Even the audience at great sports events, such as Superbowls, is under the spell of mimicry. The athletes who perform for them are dominated by agon, but for the audience, as Caillois writes, “A physical contagion leads them to assume the position of the contestants in order to help them, just as the bowler is known to unconsciously incline his body in the direction that he would like the bowling ball to take at the end of its course. Under these conditions, paralleling the spectacle, a competitive mimicry is born in the public, which doubles the agon of the field or track” (p. 22). This is easily observed in a crowd at a football or baseball game. Anticipating somewhat, we shall see how the two-by-four samba beat sweeps up watch the Rio Carnaval into mimicry of the sambistas, the members of the samba schools who compete with one another for the first prize in each year’s glowing Carnaval. The concept ilinx or vertigo involves all games which try to create disequilibrium or imbalance, or otherwise to alter perception or consciousness by inducing giddiness or dizziness, often by a whirling or gyrating motion. These range from such children’s games as “Ring around the rosy,” (Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!) and musical chairs to waltzing to horseriding to the intoxication of high speed on skis, waterskis, motorcycles, sports cars, to riding on roller-coasters, carousels, or other vertigo-inducing contraptions. Dancing
94
comes under the sign of ilinx, as Caillois says, “from the common but insidious giddiness of the waltz to the many mad, “CARNAVAI” iN Rio 109 tremendous, and convulsive movements of other dances” (p. 25). I would add, not least the samba! Ilinx shows that there is not only cosmos but chaos in the scheme of things. Caillois sees an evolutionary development, as civilization advances in rationality from the unholy combination of mimicry and ilinx, which characterize the games and other cultural performances of societies he calls “primitive” or “Dionysian,” which are ruled “by masks and possession”—to the rational sweetness and light of agon plus alea, represented by such “civilized” societies as the Incas, Assyrians, Chinese, and Romans. According to Caillois, these are “orderly societies with officers, careers, codes, and ready-reckoners, with fixed and hierarchical privileges, in which agon and alea, that is, merit and heredity (which is a kind of chance), seem to be the chief complementary elements of the game of living. In contrast to the primitive societies, these are ‘rational’ (p. 87). Classsification of Games Agon Alea Mimicry Ilinx (competition) (chance) (Simulation) (Vertigo) PAIDIA Racing Counting-out Children’s Children Wrestling rhymes initiations “whirling” etc. Games of Horseback Athletics illusion riding Tumult (not regulated) Heads or tails Tag, Arms Swinging Agitation Masks, disguise Waltzing Immoderate laughter Boxing, billiards Betting Volador Kite flying Fencing, checkers Roulette Traveling carnivals Solitaire Football, chess Skiing Patience Mountain climbing Crossword Contests, Simple, Theatre
95
puzzles Sports in complex, Spectacles in Tightrope walking General and continuing lotteries in general LUDUS Note: In each vertical column games are classified in such an order that the paidia element is constantly decreasing while the ludus element is ever increasing. Source: Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games (1979). 110 THE CElEbRATiON of SOCiETY Thus Caillois’ scheme sees society solely from the positivist perspective of social structure, it fails to take into account the dialectical nature, which moves from structure to antistructure and back again to transformed structure; from hierarchy to equality; from indicative mood to subjunctive mood; from unity to multiplicity; from the person to the individual; from systems of status roles to communitas, the Ithou relationship, and Buber’s “essential We” as against society regarded as “It.” Antonin Artaud understood at least this: that without a theater of mask and trance, of simulation and vertigo, the people perish—and this is as true of the most complex and large-scale society as it is of the most obscure aboriginal band. We would do well to value Caillois’ conceptual analysis of play but avoid his evolutionist argument, for it disprizes the nonelitist societies that now have perhaps most to give to the general stream of human culture—rationality having ruined many of our natural resources in the name of procuring material comfort. Great industrial nations such as Brazil and Japan have not despised their public festivals but elevated them to the scale of their secular achievements—all this without destroying the vertigo and theatricality at their liminal heart. We can learn much from their experience. Aphrodite on the Half Shell Perhaps the best way of approaching Carnaval is to consider how the Cariocas, the true inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro, describe it. Here is the first part of the lyric of a samba composed by the major sambista of the renowned Samba School, Estacao Primeira de Manguerira. Quando uma luz divinal When a light divine Iluminava a imaginacao lluminated the imagination De um escritor genial Of a writer of genius Tudo era maravilha All was miracle Tudo era seducao All was seduction Quanta alegria How much happiness
96
E fascinacao And fascination … Relembro . . . I remember Aquele mundo encantado That enchanted world “CARNAVAI” iN Rio 111 Fantasiado de doirado Clad in the golden dress of fantasy Oh! Doce ilusao Oh! Sweet illusion [remember that illusion means ‘entry into play] Sublime relicario de crianca Sublime shrine of childhood Que ainda guardo como heranca Which I still keep as a heritage No meu coracao In my heart To savor this simple lyric one has to imagine it sung by a puxador, which means, surprisingly, a “puller”. In Carnaval the word refers to a singer who rides ahead of an entire samba school on a float with a voice amplifier, pulling the school behind him, as it were. Some schools consist of many thousands of sambeiros who dance, mime, leap, gyrate, and sing choruses in his coruscating wake. He manages somehow to be at once stentorian and tender, tremendous and nostalgic, epic and romantic. His huge brazen voice is charged with saudade, an untranslatable Portuguese term, which is far more than the sum of “longing, yearning, ardent wish or desire, homesickness, affectionate greetings to absent persons, hankering for a lover or a homeland,” as various PortugueseEnglish dictionaries describe the meaning. The last few lines give the clue to a basic feature of Carnaval. It is propelled by paidia (childhood play). Freud once said that each of us is at once and successively a man, a woman and a child. The child is the player in us, and we are at times homesick for childhood’s golden land, “sublime shrine of childhood, which I still keep as my heritage.” Even the evident sexuality, the visible libido, of Carnaval has an infantine quality, like Beaudelaire’s “paradis parfume.” One could use, I suppose, such barbarous, infelicitous neologisms as “narcissistic display,” “polymorphous perversion,” and “fantasies about the primal scene,” and so on, but this would be to endow the hummingbird lightness, deftness and butterflywing color of Carnaval play with a heavy northern seriousness, a puritanical spirit of gravity—“denaturing” it, some would say. Heaven help them! The child is the epitome of antistructure, and perhaps this is why Jesus said, “Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven,” the un-kingdom beyond
97
112 THE CElEbRATiON of SOCiETY social structure. One of the favorite types of entitades, as the invisible beings who incorporate themselves with mediums in such Brazilian cults as Candomble and Umbanda are called, is the line (linha) or legion of criancas (children). A medium possessed by a child-guide takes a diminutive name, Pedrinho, Joaozinho, and the like; speaks in a childish treble; and receives little treats such as candies from the congregation. The child-image is one link between Afro-Brazilian religious rituals which involve vertigo and trance, and Carnaval which involves mimicry, costuming and the enactment of a libretto or plot (enredo). Each samba school has its own plot, currently drawn by government edict from Brazil’s patriotic past, a rule which makes it difficult but not impossible to slip in some sly digs at the generals’ political preference. All this would make of Carnaval a “primitive” performance in Caillois’ terms. But we also find within the carnivalesque frame much ludus (complicated rules and regulations), agon (competition) and alea (chance and gambling). We see that the apparent and real ‘childlike’ is impregnated with a vast irony; the vertigo is tinctured by sophistication. All Caillois’ components are sparking away furiously at once, like the plugs in a racing car or the wheels of Ezekial’s chariot. We find that everything human is being raised to a higher power, the cognitive along with the emotional and volitional. For the spontaneity and freedom of Carnaval can only reach their uninhibited height in the four great days before Lent, if there has been a full year of organizing, plotting, and planning behind the scenes and a set of rules to channel the extravagant tide of song, dance, and generalized Eros. Let us look at the growth of the samba schools in Rio and how they have been the response of an ever-young, ancient cultural genre to modernity. Carnaval has always been a many-levelled, as well as many-splendored, thing. Today there is not only the centrally organized street carnival of samba schools competing in leagues in downtown Rio and the internal carnival of the club balls on Mardi Gras itself, but there are also the locally organized processions of groups known as blocos, with their own songs and sambas, often subversive of the regime and not at all respecters of its persons. In addition, countless people dressed in their “private fantasies” stroll, flirt, get drunk and make love in streets and “CARNAVAI” iN Rio 113 114 THE CElEbRATiON of SOCiETY squares from which business, commerce, and motorized traffic
98
have been summarily banished. During Carnaval, those centers of Brazilian hierarchy— the house, office, and factory—are emptied and closed. The whole city becomes a symbol of Brazilianity, of a single multicolored family brought into the open, which is transformed into a home. Carnaval may, indeed, invade the sacred homestead itself, as masked revellers swarm through it and out again. Women, no longer under the patria potestas of fathers or the manus of husbands, as in ancient Rome, become the very soul of the samba in street and club. In a sense, the whole city worships Aphrodite on the half-shell. Here Aphrodite is a mulata, extolled in every song, and appearing in person, in the tiniest of bikinis, on many a float, and revelling with many a tamborinist in groups of two men and one woman, known as passistas. The archetypal mulata was an eighteenthcentury ‘lady,’ Chica da Silva, who became a provincial governor’s mistress, and dominated men by her lambent, even heroic, sexual prowess. Many movies and TV series have been made about her. Blacks and mulattos form the very core of Carnaval, since they provide the central organization of every samba school, while white celebrities clamor to be allowed into the desfile, (pageant), as the total procession of sambistas and sambeiros is called. The anthropologist, Roberto Da Matta, (in press), calls this kind of organization, “a comet-like structure.” The permanent head of the comet is the “Palacio do Samba”, the large building located in a mainly black favela (slum), where the organizing committee of the samba school has its offices— a bureaucratic structure matching in complexity those of government and business. It is also the site of intense rehearsals which begin almost as soon as the previous Carnaval is over. The floating “tail” of the comet consists of the “one-day trippers” who wish to form part of the parade on the Great Night and participate in its glory, together with, the upper-class Brazilian Brancos (Whites) and foreign notables. This type of grouping, which cuts across class and ethnic divisions, Da Matta regards as typical of Brazilian social organization. (The famous soccer clubs are similarly organized.) It is encouraged, Da Matta argues, by the military oligarchy ruling this hierarchical system, where, nevertheless, “CARNAVAI” iN Rio 115 uncontrollable industrial growth exerts a mounting pressure in the direction of liberalization, for aggressive, capitalistic business is hostile to red tape and rigid bureaucratic controls. It is clear that such comet-like structures regard the emergence
99
of explicitly political groups with a single class basis, that is, political parties, contending with the establishment for real power and influence. On the other hand, one might regard the samba school, with its multitudinous organizational problems and decisions made daily, as a school in governance and administration wherein countless blacks learn the skills of politics at the grass-roots level. And since a great samba school such as Manguera or Portela represents a sizeable constituency in itself, it can be expected to be wooed by local, even national politicians and administrators. There is also an intimate connection between the leadership of Rio samba schools and the operators of the illegal kind of lottery known as jogo do bicho, a numbers game involving animal symbols. At the Niteroi Carnaval across the bay from Rio, my wife and I found ourselves, with Da Matta’s help, in the mayor’s box or cabin, along with novelist Jorge Amado. We discovered that a samba school had taken for its plot the entire body of Amado’s work based on life in the state of Bahia, which always has a romantic glow for Brazilians, and dedicated its samba to him. The group in the box pointed out to me a number of “mobsters” who were deep in the numbers game, and who had contributed munificently to the expenses of the occasion and to particular samba schools. One of these took as its plot or theme “The Wheel of Fortune,” with each of its segments, floats and samba libretto proclaiming the praises of Brazilian games of chance, cards, roulette wheels, jogo do bicho, betting on the races, and so on. One mobster was on the best of terms not only with dignitaries of the local government but also with officials and leading role-players of the samba schools as they passed the booths where their performances were given marks according to traditional criteria. Here is a clear association between competition and chance, agon and alea, in the parlance of Roger Caillois! As a matter of fact, Caillois himself remarked half-approvingly that “in Brazil gambling is king. It is the land of speculation and chance” (1979: 159).1 Of course, the games/school link is 116 THE CElEbRATiON of SOCiETY “CARNAVAI” iN Rio 117 pragmatic as well as symbolic, and many cultural connections are at once instrumental and expressive, and symbols arising in a “play world” are often manipulated to serve political interests and purposes. If one could say that “antistructure” were merely vertigo
100
and mimicry, one could agree with Maria Goldwasser at the University of Rio de Janeiro when she describes “the crystallization of antistructure,” the basic idea which explained for her the functioning of the Mangueira samba school. Antistructure is represented here by Carnaval, and is defined as a transitional phase in which differences of (pre-Carnaval) status are annulled, with the aim of creating among the participants a relationship of communitas. Communitas is the domain of equality, where all are placed without distinction on an identical level of social evaluation, but the equivalance which is established among them has a ritual character. In communitas we find an inversion of the structured situations of everyday reality marked by routinization and the conferment of structural status. The status system and communitas—or structure and antistructure (which also possesses its own systematic character)—confront one another as two homologous series in opposition. The carioca Carnaval is the exemplary representation of antistructure. ‘To make a Carnaval’ is equivalent ‘to making a chaos,’ where everything is confused and no-one knows where anything is. In Carnaval, men can dress as women, adults as babies, the poor as princes and, even more, ‘what means what’ becomes an open possibility by a magical inversion of real statuses and a cancellation or readjustment of the barriers between the social classes and categories. (1975:82-3). Yet Goldwasser found that Mangueira, or “Old Manga,” the name by which the school is everywhere known, is complicatedly organized and structured. She presents a chart of the organization which resembles that of a major firm or government department. Briefly, it is divided into the directory of the school, whose function is mainly administrative, and the Carnaval commission, which operates in the artistic realm. The first is subdivided into three parts: (1) the Wing of the Composers (of the year’s main samba and other musical items 118 THE CElEbRATiON of SOCiETY which deal with the technical supplies and emoluments of the composers themselves; (2) the Wing of the Battery, divided again between artistic and administrative spheres; the bateria is the awe-inspiring, compact mass of drummers and other percussion instrumentalists who bring up the rear of a samba school; by law, only percussion instruments can be used in a school’s grand parade on the second day of Carnaval; some
101
schools are known for their bateria which earns them high marks from the judges. Then there is (3) the Committee of the Combined Wings, whose job is to integrate the numerous components of the school’s parade. Under the battery officials are the ritmistas, the drummers themselves, who are also partly organized by the composers’ officials. The puxadores and “crooners” also come under the wing of the composers. In addition to this pattern of technical control, there is a parallel hierarchy in the artistic sphere which attends to such matters as overall design, the plot or libretto and its apportionment among the various components of the parade: the synchronization of dance, song, music, and miming; the tastefulness of the whole presentation; the designing and decoration of floats, costuming and coiffeuring, and the rest. It takes a great amount of order to produce “a sweet disorder,” a great deal of structuring to create a sacred play-space and time for antistructure. If “flowing”—communitas is “shared flow”—denotes the holistic sensation when we act with total involvement, when action and awareness are one, (one ceases to flow if one becomes aware that one is doing it), then, just as a river needs a bed and banks to flow, so do people need framing and structural rules to do their kind of flowing. But here the rules crystallize out of the flow rather than being imposed on it from without. William Blake said a similar thing using the metaphor of heat: “Fire finds its own form.” This is not dead structure, but living form; Isadora Duncan, not classical ballet. The “structure” described by Goldwasser is akin to the rules of sport, and belongs to the domain of ludus, not to the politicoeconomic order. The Palace of Carnaval The competition between samba schools, indeed their very existence in their present form, is a fairly recent Carnaval “CARNAVAI” iN Rio 119 phenomenon. The first school, named Deixa Falar (“Let ‘em talk”), was formally constituted on 12 August, 1928 in Estacio, a city ward which was—and still is—a traditional stronghold of Carnaval. Until about 1952, according to de Moraes (1958), Carnaval was a rather brutal revel, the heir of the Portuguese entrudo (Shrovetide), chiefly consisting of a vulgar battle in which pails of water were thrown about indiscriminately at people in the streets and plazas. Such customs die hard, for I saw fraternity brethren doing exactly the same thing, at the University of Minnesota during the University Carnival! My wife saw Cambridge University students doing this in the 1930s on Shrove Tuesday. The wide diffusion of similar carnival customs is perhaps due first to the spread of the
102
Roman Empire which introduced such anti-structural rites as Saturnalia and Lupercalia to its distant provinces, and secondly to the spread of the Catholic Church which took with it around the world not only a common liturgy and liturgical year, but also a host of popular feasts and customs representing in some cases ‘baptised’ circum-Mediterranean pre-Christian rituals. Entrudo drenching was banned by an edict of 1853 and there succeeded a number of new forms of merrymaking. The popular inventiveness of Carnaval is limitless; a constant mutation in the type and scope of the revels abounds. Space prohibits mentioning most of them, but one should note the rancho of the early 1900s, a group of masqueraders which included a band and a chorus, specializing in the so-called marchas-rancho, which have a markedly slow cadence in choros, a sentimental musical form, and later in sambas. The ranchos opened up the carnival to young women. Their costumes became richer and more luxurious, with a profusion of silks, velvets, spangles, plumes, and sequins. Usually the ranchos’ names were rather flowery: “Flowery of the Avocado,” “Solace of the Flowers,” “Pleasurable Mignonette.” But in the twenties and thirties the tempo of life changed and the young rejected the sugariness of the rancho style, desiring a lighter and different flow of rhythm and shorter, less elaborate lyrics. The samba came into its own, and the units that played it were, first, the blocos, and soon after, the samba schools. Bloco is a genus, applying originally to any informal group of carnival participants, usually from the lower and 120 THE CElEbRATiON of SOCiETY humbler social strata.2 In the film Dona Flora and Her Two Husbands the carnivalesque first husband had a fatal heart attack while dancing in a bloco. A species of this genus is the bloco de sujos (“bloc of the dirty ones”), designating either a loosely organized band of ragamuffins, or a group of revelers that paint their faces with charcoal and rouge and dress in loud colors in artless fashion. These groups have a chaotic, disarrayed appearance, and seem to portray best the “vertigo” component of carnival play. Another species is called bloco de arrastao (“bloc of the fishing net”), for as the group moves along, the seduction of its rhythmic chanting and the dancing of its members prove irresistible to spectators, who, totally unable to resist, are “pulled in” to sing and dance. Hundreds of blocos still exist in Rio. They rejoice in such names as Vem Amor (“Do Come, Love”), Vai Quern Quer
103
(“Come Who Will”), Namorar Eu Sei (“In Loving, I Know”), Suspiro da Cobra (“Sigh of a Snake”), Canarios das Laranjeiras (“Canaries from Larenjeiras”—a ward of Rio), and Bloco do Gelo (“Ice Block”). New blocos come into being with each carnival, while older ones disappear. What usually happens is a that a large and well-organized bloco eventually establishes a samba school. Like the schools, large blocos have detailed regulations and by-laws, are governed by a board of directors, democratically elected by all the members at a general assembly, have adopted heraldic colors of their own, and appear at carnival time wearing uniform costumes which have been especially made for the occasion. Lastly, some of the better-off blocos—like the major samba schools—are the proprietors of the clubhouse where they have their headquarters and of the place where they hold their rehearsals. The samba schools are organized into three leagues, with demotion of the last two schools in the first and second leagues and promotion of two schools from the second and third to replace them. An awards committee judges them. Although their numbers fluctuate, informants suggest that there are now nine jurors. One evaluates the guild’s flag, since each “school” is officially a guild (gremio) and the line of its officials is known as the comissao de frente, usually numbering fifteen, who march at the head of the parade, often in frock coats and top hats. The second evaluates the performance of the flagbearer, the porta-bandeira, and the major-domo, or mestre“CARNAVAI” iN Rio 121 sala; usually the flag-bearer is the most beautiful woman of the school and the best dancer—always she appears in the dress of an eighteenth-century lady. At every carnival the school presents a different, beautifully embroidered flag, showing on one side the emblem of the guild and on the other some design indicating the plot which is presented in that particular pageant. Until 1967 the flag itself was awarded points, but not subsequently. The major-domo is also called baliza, literally a signpost or landmark. This is apt for he is really the pivot round which the choreography revolves. He is usually tall and slim, agile and graceful. He appears either in seventeenthcentury attire, with short cape and plumed hat—like one of Dumas’ musketeers—or in the silk and satin knee-length coat of the eighteenth century, with powdered wig in the style of Louis XV. He carries a small fan in his left hand, or a lace handkerchief, and with his right he holds his partner’s hand or her waist, as the dance may require. They dance together and then separate. She then gyrates swiftly, the silk of the flag
104
sighs as it cuts the air, while he dances round her, inventing complicated steps, kneeling, bowing as gracefully and delicately, as if he were in Versailles in the days of Louis-leBeinaime. While these blacks from the poor slums display the elegance of a vanished feudalism in their liminality, the white ‘beautiful people’ in the restricted indoor Carnaval of the Clubs revert to the almost naked barbarism of the night revels of the La Dolce Vita. Whites dress down, and blacks dress up. The third judge evaluates the school’s current plot and the lyrics of the samba, which always refer to the plot and indeed create its emotional tone. The fourth judge evaluates the appearance of the school as a whole and the choreography of the ensemble: the main components are the alas, (wings), consisting of 10 to 30 persons, often of the same sex, who are organized around a subplot, which must conform to the school’s main plot. In addition to the alas, there are the destaques or figuras de destaque, “the stand-outs” or individual items. These are persons wearing sumptuous and magnificent costumes and plumes, who strut down the avenue in solitary, solar, lunar, or rainbow splendor. Quite often, they are transvestites, with silicon implants to caricature femininity, and commonly well-known Rio socialites. Floats are also a carnival component, limited by regulation to four per 122 THE CElEbRATiON of SOCiETY school, including the float that spearheads the pageant, known as the abre-alas (literally “wings-opener or usher”). Its purpose is to proclaim the name of the school and the title of its plot for the year. An abre-alas may represent an open book, a large portal, or a baroque cartouche (like those that appear in old maps and charts). By tradition, the text used is as follows: “G.R.E.S. [an acronym for Gremio Recreativo Escola de Samba Mangueira) or pays its compliments to the people of Rio, presents [here follows the plot’s title], and requests permission to pass through.” Some of the floats are unbelievable. It is recorded that the Portela school, in 1965, exhibited a float that was an exact replica of the library of Princess Isabel in which she signed the Act of Abolition of Slavery! (Another example of black Brazilian elegance). Some floats are in rank bad taste, however, and some schools have substituted for them painted panels and screens and a series of gonfalons (standards with two or three streamers) and oriflammes (red silk banners split at one end) carried by members of the school. The fifth judge evaluates the tunefulness and musical texture of the samba and the performance of the bateria. The
105
number of bandsmen may vary greatly. The incomparable bateria of the Academicos de Cubango took the avenue by storm at the Carnaval I attended. We were all swept away on the great tide of the samba played on drums by hundreds of ritmistas. As mentioned earlier, only percussion instruments are permitted, but they include large and small drums such as cotixa, the military drum, and many others; friction drums (cuicas) which can make several sounds at once in syncopation; agogos, derived from African hunting bells; tambourines; pandeiros or timbrels; polished saucepans; and many more. The smaller instruments are played by passistas, dexterous leapers and contortionists, who often cavort, two men to one girl, in the sexiest of postures. We all fell in behind the ritmistas and passistas in a Dionysiac abandonment I have never experienced before or since. What is it like to be a sambista or sambeiro? One journalist, Sergio Bitencourt, writing in the CorreiodaManha, claims that the Carnaval is “a mission, a mandate, a supreme moment of deliverance and self-sufficienicy.” He adds: “The drops of perspiration which cover the face of the sambista have “CARNAVAI” iN Rio 123 the savor of drops of blood.” Here we have what Huizinga calls “the deep earnestness in play,” even a hint of the Via Dolorosa, the Way of the Cross. Festival, at times, is not too far from its ritual origins and can give its participants something akin to a religious experience—Ash Wednesday is not too far behind Mardi Gras. Death is implicitly present; in the movie Black Orpheus he appeared in the guise of Exu of the cemeteries, the chaos deity of the Umbanda religion. Exu sem Luz. The sixth juror evaluates the masquerades and the individual floats. Their mimicry is magnificently complex. No anthropologist has yet done an adequate study, either aesthetic or semiotic, of the costumes, masks, disguises, ritual nakedness, color symbolism, and the structural oppositions and meditations among all these, that can be found in any Rio carnival. To round off my tally of the jurors, three are placed at different locations on the parade route to assign negative votes as penalties for any delays caused by willful negligence. There is further anthropological material in the politicking that surrounds the awards committee, and the hostility, often leading to violence—even homicide and suicide—which greets their final assessment of the various schools’ performances. The jurors are drawn from the ranks of professional artists or art critics; dress designers; newspaper persons; television
106
personnel; professional ballet dancers, choreographers, musicians, and composers. But umpires and referees are seldom popular in any of the fields of play we have been talking about. When play makes serious statements about the human condition, people take its outcomes seriously. It is a Brazilian point of honor that if one is going to wear a costume, or fantasia, it must communicate one’s most private or intimate fantasy in the most artistic way possible. Repression must be lifted. One might even talk about the aestheticization of the repressed, making the very private very public in the mode of beauty. The secret of Brazilian culture perhaps lies in this, that it has created a “palace of CarnavaI,” a place of samba, out of fantasies suppressed through the rest of the year by immersion in industrial labor, by submission to an autocratic regime, by tenacious vestiges of feudal attitudes in the relations between men and women, young and old. Even more, Brazilian culture has raised a traditional ritual of 124 THE CElEbRATiON of SOCiETY reversal to the scale of a great industrial nation, in every way equivalent, in its subjunctive mood and at the unconscious and preconscious levels, to the complex modern industrial nation that is Brazil’s indicative mood and conscious reality. Carnaval is made to serve as a kind of paradigm, or model, for the whole modern and post modern world. Carnaval is no Aldous Huxleyan “orgy porgy,” for its ironical, whimsical, urbane, and genial touch dispels such a thought. Rather it is the creative anti-structure of mechanized modernity. Carnaval is the reverse of fiction or fake: it demands validity of feeling, sad or glad. It is mostly glad, and there is no mistaking the authenticity of radiant joys that pour out of faces and songs, and make the samba live up to one of its names, arrasta-pe (netter or snarer of feet). No one can feel embarrassed in the many-dimensioned world of carnival. “Shame is absent from Carnaval,” the saying goes. It is a world oblivious of original sin, as its own lyrics dare to say in a Christian country. . . Aquele mundo eneantado (“that enchanted world”). The Golden Age really does return. Naturally, there are many Brazilians who are skeptical, regarding Carnaval as “opium for the people” (though ‘speed’ would perhaps be a better metaphor). Again, at Carnaval time the roads leading from Rio are choked with the cars of the middle class, fleeing the revelries of the streets, dreading the carnivalesque reversal of their hard-won bourgeois values. What has Caillois and his theories of play to do with all this? Only that Carnaval engulfs all his categories in a
107
dynamic, many-levelled, liminal domain of multiframed antistructures and spontaneous communitas. Paidia, ludus, agon, alea, mimicry and ilinx are spun together indistinguishably in the spangled tapestry of the nocturnal parade of the Carioca samba schools. As the poet, Cassiano Ricardo, put it: A bit of Brazil in the hearts of angry men—wouldn’t it be a solution?” Notes 1 An article in the Los Angeles Times (10 May, 1981) discloses how in 1975 the wealthy Rio banquiero, Anix Abrahao David, “took over the Beija Flor samba school (holder of a record three first-place trophies), and pumped hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars into the operation.” 2 JuIie Taylor informs me that today there seems to be a resurgence of ‘spontaneous’ Carnaval, in protest against commercial celebrations, both by humbler and middle-class strata. These contemporary blocos are particularly typical of the latter, if not of both.
108
Carnival and Power: Play and Politics in a Crown Colony by Vicki Ann Cremona (review) Rebecca Prichard TDR: The Drama Review The MIT Press Volume 64, Number 2, Summer 2020 (T246) pp. 171-173 Review
View Citation Additional Information
109
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by:
Rebecca Prichard (bio) Carnival and Power: Play and Politics in a Crown Colony. By Vicki Ann Cremona. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018; 304 pp.; illustrations. $109.00 cloth, $109.00 paper, e-book available.
Vicki Ann Cremona’s Carnival and Power offers a vibrant account of the development of carnival under British rule in Malta, exploring the country’s long transition to independence through the lens of carnival performance. Cremona pursues a broad-ranging analysis of Maltese street performance and masquerade, presenting carnival as a dialectic between the spectacular enforcement of regimes of representation under colonial rule, and — conversely — as a locus of resistive renegotiation of Maltese identity. Cremona’s analysis of the function of carnival as a subaltern social text caught up in the European construction of the Other, and as an affirmation of identity and collectivity, forms a valuable contribution to the field of performance studies and postcolonial scholarship. She enriches a growing body of research (e.g., Turner 1983; Roach 1996; Riggio 2004; Irobi 2007) that attends to carnival as a site of tension between cultural resistance and social assimilation in the context of a complex colonial and postcolonial history. While much of the existing literature about carnival performance within postcolonial and decolonial contexts tends to focus on New World carnivals and the dynamics of carnival praxes in former slave colonies (e.g., Armstrong 2010), Cremona’s study explores the evolution of carnival in the liminal space of a colony situated halfway between Africa and Europe. Cremona positions Malta as a country shaped by centuries of foreign rule, at the crux of the interplay between Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, well in advance of its formal initiation as a British crown colony. As Cremona observes, some British colonists viewed Malta as part of Africa and many saw the Maltese as “white but not quite” (2), yet Cremona’s study of Maltese carnival refuses any simple opposition between colonizer and colonized. Instead she explores carnival as an expression of the shifting loci of power within colonial society, a dynamic negotiation of complicity and resistance during the fight for independence. This text complicates a Spivakian interpretation of the colonized as a necessarily counterhegemonic force, situating carnival praxes as complex negotiations of countervailing forces; a display of “power ‘from the top down’” and “power ‘from below’” (19; citing Foucault 1990). It is through these changing configurations of force relations, Cremona argues, that the co-construction of colonizer and colonized occurs. These tensions between “power ‘from the top down’” and “power ‘from below’” are most evident in Cremona’s early chapters. Her evocative descriptions of street play in chapter three are alive with experiential detail drawn from historical firsthand accounts. These accounts fill her analysis with the transformative potential of performance. Cremona analyzes the impact of carnival on all sections of colonial society, including the Maltese nobility, the bourgeoisie and their vacillating allegiances to colonial power at Carnival Balls, and she extends her analysis of the performance of identity and power relations to newspapers and magazines. Cremona goes [End Page 171] on to explore the nascent expression of national identity through social satire — as well as the appropriation and control of carnival by the British authorities — in the throes of intense political contention between the British and Maltese in the early 20th century. Her description of the colonialera wrangles among church, government, and the insurgent Malta Labour Party in the fight for independence enriches her narrative of power and performance. Careful attention to the disciplinary function of representation within, and as, manipulation of popular dissent strengthens Cremona’s dialectic of carnival as both a force of resistance and hegemony.
110
While Carnival and Power illuminates carnival performance as a powerful vector of cultural exchange and appropriation there are some areas where Cremona’s sociopolitical analyses could integrate further with her study of performance. One instance of this is her treatment of Chantal Mouffe’s theory of agonism. This theory addresses hegemonic forms of power to complicate and subvert the idea of government by rational consensus. While relevant, this theory in some ways curtails the total...
Αναζήτηση μάσκες καθημερινότητας στην τέχνη// γλυπτική installation/ μεταμορφώσεις/ totem/ σαύρα που αλλάζει το δέρμα της The artist's body has throughout history been the subject of art -- primarily through painted self-portraiture. In the post-war period, however, artists began using their bodies as the subject and the actual material of the artwork itself, through such art forms as Body art, Happenings and performance. In these international art forms the artist's body is used to represent both the state of contemporary art and the human condition in general. Selected by Tracey Warr, a curator specializing in performance, this book includes over 250 images of these often extreme, highly unconventional artworks, accompanied by documents that chart the ideas, critical reception and broader philosophical and cultural context which framed them. Texts by such art critics as Thomas McEvilley, Kristine Stiles and Lucy R Lippard are set alongside essays by philosophers and theorists who have shaped recent discourses around the body, including those by Donna Haraway and Gilles Deleuze. A Survey by Amelia Jones, one of the world's foremost authorities on the history of Body art and performance, discusses social history since the 1950s and analyses how artists have responded to contemporary events using the medium of their own bodies. Το σώμα του καλλιτέχνη υπήρξε σε όλη την ιστορία το αντικείμενο της τέχνης - κυρίως μέσω ζωγραφισμένων αυτοπροσωπογραφιών. Ωστόσο, στη μεταπολεμική περίοδο, οι καλλιτέχνες άρχισαν να χρησιμοποιούν το σώμα τους ως αντικείμενο και το πραγματικό υλικό του ίδιου του έργου τέχνης, μέσω τέχνης όπως η τέχνη του σώματος, τα συμβάντα και οι παραστάσεις. Σε αυτές τις διεθνείς μορφές τέχνης το σώμα του καλλιτέχνη χρησιμοποιείται για να αντιπροσωπεύει τόσο την κατάσταση της σύγχρονης τέχνης όσο και την ανθρώπινη κατάσταση γενικά. Επιλεγμένο από τον Tracey Warr, επιμελητή που ειδικεύεται στην παράσταση, αυτό το βιβλίο περιλαμβάνει πάνω από 250 εικόνες από αυτά τα συχνά ακραία, εξαιρετικά αντισυμβατικά έργα τέχνης, συνοδευόμενα από έγγραφα που απεικονίζουν τις ιδέες, την κριτική υποδοχή και το ευρύτερο φιλοσοφικό και πολιτιστικό πλαίσιο που τις πλαισίωσε. Κείμενα από κριτικούς τέχνης όπως οι Thomas McEvilley, Kristine Stiles και Lucy R Lippard συνοδεύονται από δοκίμια φιλοσόφων και θεωρητικών που έχουν διαμορφώσει πρόσφατους λόγους γύρω από το σώμα, συμπεριλαμβανομένων αυτών των Donna Haraway και Gilles Deleuze. Μια έρευνα της Αμέλια Τζόουνς, μιας από τις κορυφαίες αρχές του κόσμου για την ιστορία της τέχνης και της παράστασης του σώματος, συζητά την κοινωνική ιστορία από τη δεκαετία του 1950 και αναλύει τον τρόπο με τον οποίο οι καλλιτέχνες ανταποκρίθηκαν σε σύγχρονα γεγονότα χρησιμοποιώντας το μέσο του σώματός τους.
111
Ornament and Order: Graffiti, Street Art and the Parergon Από τον/την Rafael Schacter
THE ANALYSIS OF CULTURE – RAYMOND WILLIAMS CULTURE
There are three general categories in the definition of culture. There is, first, the ‘ideal’, in which culture is a state or process of human perfection, in terms of certain absolute or universal values. The analysis of culture, if such a definition is accepted, is essentially the discovery and description, in lives and works, of those values which can be seen to compose a timeless order, or to have permanent reference to the universal human condition. Then, second, there is the ‘documentary’, in which culture is the body of intellectual and imaginative work, in which, in a detailed way, human thought and experience are variously recorded. The analysis of culture, from such a definition, is the activity of criticism, by which the nature of the thought and experience, the details of the language, form and convention in which these are active, are described and valued. Such criticism can range from a process very similar to the ideal’ analysis, the discovery of ‘the best that has been thought and written in the world’, through a process which, while interested in tradition, takes as its primary emphasis the particular work being studied (its clarification and valuation being the principal end in view) to a kind of historical criticism which, after analysis of particular works, seeks to relate them to the particular traditions and societies in which they appeared. Finally, third, there is the ‘social’ definition of culture, in which culture is a description of a particular way of life, which expresses certain meanings and values not only in art and learning but also in institutions and ordinary behaviour. The analysis of culture, from such a definition, is the clarification of the meanings and values implicit and explicit in a particular way of life, a particular culture. Such analysis will include 112
the historical criticism already referred to, in which intellectual and imaginative works are analysed in relation to particular traditions and societies, but will also include analysis of elements in the way of life that to followers of the other definitions are not ‘culture’ at all: the organization of production, the structure of the family, the structure of institutions which express or govern social relationships, the characteristic forms through which members of the society communicate. Again, such analysis ranges from an ‘ideal’ emphasis, the discovery of certain absolute or universal, or at least higher and lower, meanings and values, through the ‘documentary’ emphasis, in which clarification of a particular way of life is the main end in view, to an emphasis which, from studying particular meanings and values, seeks not so much to compare these, as a way of establishing a scale, but by studying their modes of change to discover certain general ‘laws’ or ‘trends’, by which social and cultural development as a whole can be better understood. […]
The variations of meaning and reference, in the use of culture as a term, must be seen . . . not simply as a disadvantage, which prevents any kind of neat and exclusive definition, but as a genuine complexity, corresponding to real elements in experience. There is a significant reference in each of the three main kinds of definition, and, if this is so, it is the relations between them that should claim our attention. It seems to me that any adequate theory of culture must include the three areas of fact to which the definitions point, and conversely that any particular definition, within any of the categories, which would exclude reference to the others, is inadequate. Thus an ‘ideal’ definition which attempts to abstract the process it describes from its detailed embodiment and shaping by particular societies – regarding man’s ideal development as something separate from and even opposed to his ‘animal nature’ or the satisfaction of material needs – seems to me unacceptable. A ‘documentary’ definition which sees value only in the written 113
and painted records, and marks this area off from the rest of man’s life in society, is equally unacceptable. Again, a ‘social’ definition, which treats either the general process or the body of art and learning as a mere byproduct, a passive reflection of the real interests of the society, seems to me equally wrong. However difficult it may be in practice, we have to try to see the process as a whole, and to relate our particular studies, if not explicitly at least by ultimate reference, to the actual and complex organization. [. . .] If we study real relations, in any actual analysis, we reach the point where we see that we are studying a general organization in a particular example, and in this general organization there is no element that we can abstract and separate from the rest. It was certainly an error to suppose that values or artworks could be adequately studied without reference to the particular society within which they were expressed, but it is equally an error to suppose that the social explanation is determining, or that the values and works are mere byproducts. We have got into the habit, since we realized how deeply works or values could be determined by the whole situation in which they are expressed, of asking about these relationships in a standard form: ‘what is the relation of this art to this society?’ But ‘society’, in this question, is a specious whole. If the art is part of the society, there is no solid whole, outside it, to which, by the form of our question, we concede priority. The art is there, as an activity, with the production, the trading, the politics, the raising of families. To study the relations adequately we must study them actively, seeing all the activities as particular and contemporary forms of human energy. If we take any one of these activities, we can see how many of the others are reflected in it, in various ways according to the nature of the whole organization. It seems likely, also, that the very fact that we can distinguish any particular activity, as serving certain specific ends, suggests that without this activity the whole of the human organization at that place and time could not have been realized. Thus art, while clearly related to the other activities, can be seen as expressing certain elements in the organization which, within that organization’s terms, could only have been expressed in this way. It is then not a question of relating the art to the society, but of studying all the activities and their interrelations, without any concession of priority to any one of them we may choose to abstract. If we find, as often, that a particular activity came radically to change the whole organization, we can still not say that it is to this activity that all the others must be related; we can only study the varying ways in which, within the changing organization, the particular activities and their interrelations were affected. Further, since the particular activities will be serving varying and sometimes conflicting ends, the sort of change we must look for will rarely be of a simple kind: elements of persistence, 114
adjustment, unconscious assimilation, active resistance, alternative effort, will all normally be present, in particular activities and in the whole organization. The analysis of culture, in the documentary sense, is of great importance because it can yield specific evidence about the whole organization within which it was expressed. We cannot say that we know a particular form or period of society, and that we will see how its art and theory relate to it, for until we know these, we cannot really claim to know the society. This is a problem of method, and is mentioned here because a good deal of history has in fact been written on the assumption that the bases of the society, its political, economic, and ‘social’ arrangements, form the central core of facts, after which the art and theory can be adduced, for marginal illustration or ‘correlation’. There has been a neat reversal of this procedure in the histories of literature, art, science, and philosophy, when these are described as developing by their own laws, and then something called the ‘background’ (what in general history was the central core) is sketched in. Obviously it is necessary, in exposition, to select certain activities for emphasis, and it is entirely reasonable to trace particular lines of development in temporary isolation. But the history of a culture, slowly built up from such particular work, can only be written when the active relations are restored, and the activities seen in a genuine parity. Cultural history must be more than the sum of the particular histories, for it is with the relations between them, the particular forms of the whole organization, that it is especially concerned. I would then define the theory of culture as the study of relationships between elements in a whole way of life. The analysis of culture is the attempt to discover the nature of the organization which is the complex of these relationships. Analysis of particular works or institutions is, in this context, analysis of their essential kind of organization, the relationships which works or institutions embody as parts of the organization as a whole. A keyword, in such analysis, is pattern: it is with the discovery of patterns of a characteristic kind that any useful cultural analysis begins, and it is with the relationships between these patterns, which sometimes reveal unexpected identities and correspondences in hitherto separately considered activities, sometimes again reveal discontinuities of an unexpected kind, that general cultural analysis is concerned. Once the carriers of such a structure die, the nearest we can get to this vital element is in the documentary culture, from poems to buildings and dressfashions, and it is this relation that gives significance to the definition of culture in documentary terms. This in no way means that the documents are autonomous. It is simply that, as previously argued, the significance of an activity must be sought in terms of the whole organization, which is more than the sum of its separable parts. 115
What we are looking for, always, is the actual life that the whole organization is there to express. The significance of documentary culture is that, more clearly than anything else, it expresses that life to us in direct terms, when the living witnesses are silent. At the same time, if we reflect on the nature of a structure of feeling, and see how it can fail to be fully understood even by living people in close contact with it, with ample material at their disposal, including the contemporary arts, we shall not suppose that we can ever do more than make an approach, an approximation, using any channels. We need to distinguish three levels of culture, even in its most general definition. There is the lived culture of a particular time and place, only fully accessible to those living in that time and place. There is the recorded culture, of every kind, from art to the most everyday facts: the culture of a period. There is also, as the factor connecting lived culture and period cultures, the culture of the selective tradition. [. . . ] It is very important to try to understand the operation of a selective tradition. [. . . ] In a society as a whole, and in all its particular activities, the cultural tradition can be seen as a continual selection and reselection of ancestors. Particular lines will be drawn, often for as long as a century, and then suddenly with some new stage in growth these will be cancelled or weakened, and new lines drawn. In the analysis of contemporary culture, the existing state of the selective tradition is of vital importance, for it is often true that some change in this tradition – establishing new lines with the past, breaking or redrawing existing lines – is a radical kind of contemporary change. We tend to underestimate the extent to which the cultural tradition is not only a selection but also an interpretation. We see most past work through our own experience, without even making the effort to see it in something like its original terms. What analysis can do is not so much to reverse this, returning a work to its period, as to make the interpretation conscious, by showing historical alternatives; to relate the interpretation to the particular contemporary values on which it rests; and, by exploring the real patterns of the work, confront us with the real nature of the choices we are making. We shall find, in some cases, that we are keeping the work alive because it is a genuine contribution to cultural growth. We shall find, in other cases, that we are using the work in a particular way for our own reasons, and it is better to know this than to surrender to the mysticism of the ‘great valuer, Time’. To put on to Time, the abstraction, the responsibility for our own active choices is to suppress a central part of our experience. The more actively all cultural work can be related, either to the whole organization within which it was expressed, or to the contemporary organization within which it is used, the more clearly shall we see its true values. 116
Thus ‘documentary’ analysis will lead out to ‘social’ analysis, whether in a lived culture, a past period, or in the selective tradition which is itself a social organization. And the discovery of permanent contributions will lead to the same kind of general analysis, if we accept the process at this level, not as human perfection (a movement towards determined values), but as a part of man’s general evolution, to which many individuals and groups contribute. Every element that we analyse will be in this sense active: that it will be seen in certain real relations, at many different levels. In describing these relations, the real cultural process will emerge. Extracts are taken from Part 1 of Chapter Two of The Long Revolution, London, 1961. http://theoria.art-zoo.com/the-analysis-of-culture-raymond-williams/
Raymond Williams's Sociology of Culture link.springer.com › 1.pdf
https://books.google.gr/books?id=u3ScDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA204&lpg=PA204&dq= %E2%80%A2%09Wissam%27s+Human+Space+Theory&source=bl&ots=hRU9uaEtX&sig=ACfU3U1Ot3w0tAc84kzdoLGMkaCcQWHP4g&hl=el&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj nxtfI0c3pAhUDyIUKHUunAFcQ6AEwDHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q= %E2%80%A2%09Wissam's%20Human%20Space%20Theory&f=false
117
On the Wings of Hypothesis Collected Writings on Soviet Cinema By Annette Michelson Edited by Rachel Churner Foreword by Malcolm Turvey Annette Michelson's erudite and incisive readings of the revolutionary films of Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov, collected for the first time. Request Permissions
118
Endorsement Like the filmmakers with which she is engaged, Annette Michelson's intellectual project is nothing short of passionate. The analytic rigor, the discerning historical and cultural perspectives and the political resonance of these essays are confluent with Michelson's keen perception and striking associations, while the elegance of the writing also registers her intensely poetic and imaginative engagement. Noa Steimatsky author of Italian Locations and The Face on Film
Annette Michelson's erudite and incisive readings of the revolutionary films of Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov, collected for the first time. This posthumous volume gathers Annette Michelson's erudite and incisive readings of the revolutionary films of Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov, giving readers the opportunity to track her sustained investigations into their work. Michelson introduced American audiences to Soviet cinema in the early 1970s, extending the interpretive paradigm she had used for American filmmakers of the midtwentieth century—in which she emphasized phenomenological readings of their work—to films and writings by Eisenstein and Vertov. Over four decades, Michelson returned again and again to what she calls, following Eisenstein, “intellectual cinema”—the deliberate attempt to create philosophically informed analogues for consciousness. The volume includes Michelson's major essays on Eisenstein's unrealized attempts to make movies of both Marx's Capital and Joyce's Ulysses, as well as her authoritative discussion of Vertov's 1929 masterpiece The Man with a Movie Camera. Together, the texts demonstrate Michelson's pervasive influence as a writer and thinker, and her role in the establishment of cinema studies as an academic field. This collection makes these canonical texts available for a new generation of film scholars.
119
From October Books
Perpetual Inventory By Rosalind E. Krauss In essays that span three decades, one of contemporary art's most esteemed critics celebrates artists who have persevered in the service of a medium.
Review
Krauss manages to instruct without sounding professorial...These essays are exacting in clarity even at their most lyrical and theoretical. Stephan Delbos The Prague Post
The job of an art critic is to take perpetual inventory, constantly revising her ideas about the direction of contemporary art and the significance of the work she writes about. In these essays, which span three decades of assessment and reassessment, Rosalind Krauss considers what she has come to call the “postmedium condition”—the
120
abandonment by contemporary art of the modernist emphasis on the medium as the source of artistic significance. JeanFrançois Lyotard argued that the postmodern condition is characterized by the end of a “master narrative,” and Krauss sees in the post medium condition of contemporary art a similar farewell to coherence. The master narrative of contemporary art ended when conceptual art and other contemporary practices jettisoned the specific medium in order to juxtapose image and written text in the same work. For Krauss, this spells the end of serious art, and she devotes much of Perpetual Inventory to “wrest[ling] new media to the mat of specificity.” Krauss also writes about artists who are reinventing the medium, artists who persevere in the service of a nontraditional medium (“strange new apparatuses” often adopted from commercial culture), among them Ed Ruscha, Christian Marclay, William Kentridge, and James Coleman.
121
The history of art, argues Éric Michaud, begins with the romantic myth of the barbarian invasions. Viewed from the nineteenth century, the Germanicled invasions of the Roman Empire in the fifth century became the gateway to modernity, seen not as a catastrophe but as a release from a period of stagnation, renewing Roman culture with fresh, northern blood—and with new art that was antiRoman and anticlassical. Artifacts of art from then on would be considered as the natural product of “races” and “peoples” rather than the creation of individuals. The myth of the barbarian invasions achieved the fragmentation of classical eternity. This narrative, Michaud explains, inseparable from the formation of nation states and the rise of nationalism in Europe, was based on the dual premise of the homogeneity and continuity of peoples. Local and historical particularities became weapons aimed at
122
classicism's universalism. The history of art linked its objects with racial groups— denouncing or praising certain qualities as “Latin” or “Germanic.” Thus the predominance of linear elements was thought to betray a southern origin, and the “painterly” a Germanic or northern source. Even today, Michaud points out, it is said that art best embodies the genius of peoples. In the globalized contemporary art market, the ethnic provenance of works—categorized, for example, as “African American,” “Latino,” or “Native American”— creates added value. The market displays the same competition among “races” that was present at the foundation of art history as a discipline.
Summary
123
How global contemporary art reanimates the past as a resource for the present, combating modern art's legacy of Eurocentrism. If European modernism was premised on the new—on surpassing the past, often by assigning it to the “traditional” societies of the Global South—global contemporary art reanimates the past as a resource for the present. In this account of what globalization means for contemporary art, David Joselit argues that the creative use of tradition by artists from around the world serves as a means of combatting modern art's legacy of Eurocentrism. Modernism claimed to live in the future and relegated the rest of the world to the past. Global contemporary art shatters this myth by reactivating various forms of heritage—from literati ink painting in China to Aboriginal painting in Australia—in order to propose new and different futures. Joselit analyzes not only how heritage becomes contemporary through the practice of individual artists but also how a cultural infrastructure of museums, biennials, and art fairs worldwide has emerged as a means of generating economic value, attracting capital and tourist dollars. Joselit traces three distinct forms of modernism that developed outside the West, in opposition to EuroAmerican modernism: postcolonial, socialist realism, and the underground. He argues that these modern genealogies are synchronized with one another and with Western modernism to produce global contemporary art. Joselit discusses curation and what he terms “the curatorial episteme,” which, through its acts of framing or curating, can become a means of recalibrating hierarchies of knowledge—and can contribute to the dual projects of decolonization and deimperialization. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/heritage-and-debt
1.
Home
2.
Arts
3.
General
4.
The Return of the Real
124
The Return of the Real Art and Theory at the End of the Century By Hal Foster In The Return of the Real Hal Foster discusses the development of art and theory since 1960, and reorders the relation between prewar and postwar avantgardes. Opposed to the assumption that contemporary art is somehow belated, he argues that the avantgarde returns to us from the future, repositioned by innovative practice in the present. And he poses this retroactive model of art and theory against the reactionary undoing of progressive culture that is pervasive today. After the models of artastext in the 1970s and artassimulacrum in the 1980s, Foster suggests that we are now witness to a return to the real—to art and theory grounded in the materiality of actual bodies and social sites. If The Return of the Real begins with a new narrative of the historical avantgard, it concludes with an original reading of this contemporary situation—and what it portends for future practices of art and theory, culture and politics.
125
126
127
128