price list* 1
£ 1000·00
26 £ 44·00
51 £ 39·00
76 £ 44·00
2
£ 213·00
27 £ 51·00
52 £ 28·00
77 £ 132·00
3
£ 205·00
28 £ 52·00
53 £ 34·00
78 £ 31·00
4
£ 116·00
29 £ 44·00
54 £ 31·00
79 £ 27·00
5
£ 125·00
30 £ 220·00
55 £ 55·00
80 £ 200·00
6
£ 97·00
31 £ 31·00
56 £ 31·00
81 £ 24·00
7
£ 99·00
32 £ 37·00
57 £ 32·00
82 £ 29·00
8
£ 106·00
33 £ 51·00
58 £ 39·00
83 £ 28·00
9
£ 92·00
34 £ 34·00
59 £ 34·00
84 £ 29·00
10 £ 110·00
35 £ 44·00
60 £ 212·00
85 £ 37·00
11 £ 58·00
36 £ 39·00
61 £ 47·00
86 £ 41·00
12 £ 49·00
37 £ 27·00
62 £ 38·00
87 £ 33·00
13 £ 213·00
38 £ 38·00
63 £ 37·00
88 £ 66·00
14 £ 47·00
39 £ 39·00
64 £ 34·00
89 £ 37·00
15 £ 48·00
40 £ 205·00
65 £ 39·00
90 £ 31·00
16 £ 42·00
41 £ 37·00
66 £ 87·00
91 £ 31·00
17 £ 37·00
42 £ 42·00
67 £ 41·00
92 £ 28·00
18 £ 41·00
43 £ 39·00
68 £ 194·00
93 £ 33·00
19 £ 34·00
44 £ 44·00
69 £ 55·00
94 £ 41·00
20 £ 46·00
45 £ 45·00
70 £ 71·00
95 £ 27·00
21 £ 41·00
46 £ 46·00
71 £ 37·00
96 £ 41·00
22 £ 219·00
47 £ 38·00
72 £ 38·00
97 £ 32·00
23 £ 39·00
48 £ 48·00
73 £ 37·00
98 £ 44·00
24 £ 57·00
49 £ 49·00
74 £ 38·00
99 £ 89·00
25 £ 61·00
50 £ 211·00
75 £ 51·00
100 £ 321·00
* prices valid for 2006
LIMITED EDITION [N. of 100] signed:
dated:
A 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
B 1000 213 205 116 125 97 99 106 92 110 58 49 213 47 48 42 37 41 34 46 41 219 39 57 61 44 51 52 44 220 31 37 51 34 44 39 27 38 39 205 37 42 39 44 45 46 38 48 49 211
C 24 27 27 27 28 28 28 29 29 31 31 31 31 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 34 34 34 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 38 38 38 38 38 39 39 39 39 39 39 39 41 41 41 41 41 41
A 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100
B 39 28 34 31 55 31 32 39 34 212 42 38 37 34 39 87 41 194 55 71 37 38 37 38 51 44 132 31 27 200 24 29 28 29 37 41 33 66 37 31 31 28 33 41 27 41 32 44 89 321
C 42 42 42 44 44 44 44 44 44 45 46 46 47 48 48 49 49 51 51 51 52 55 55 57 58 61 66 71 87 89 92 97 99 106 110 116 125 132 194 200 205 205 211 212 213 213 219 220 321 1000
Costs: printing of book: DVDs: extras: total:
£ 1311 £ 200 £ 330 £ 1841
column A = book number column B = prices for each book number column C = prices from lowest to highest assuming that books are sold and assuming that the lowest priced ones are sold first so that they are sold in ascending order. then if 10 books are sold, revenue will be £278 making a loss of £1563 if 20 books are sold, revenue will be £597 making a loss of £1244 if 30 books are sold, revenue will be £955 making a loss of £886 if 40 books are sold, revenue will be £1337 making a loss of £504 if 50 books are sold, revenue will be £1742 making a loss of £99 if 53 books are sold, revenue will be £1864 making a profit of £23 if 60 books are sold, revenue will be £2181 making a profit of £340 if 70 books are sold, revenue will be £2673 making a profit of £832 if 80 books are sold, revenue will be £3364 making a profit of £1523 if 90 books are sold, revenue will be £4743 making a profit of £2902 if all books are sold, revenue will be £7600 making a profit of £5759
Daniel Devlin invites you to the book launch of:
“Between A BUCKET OF WATER and A CUP OF COFFEE” on Wednesday 20 September 5.30 - 6.00 PM in the Old Library at Chelsea College of Art & Design Atterbury Street, Millbank, London SW1P 4JU [nearest tube station: Pimlico, follow signs to Tate Britain]
The book will be on sale at the SUSAK PRESS stand at the Chelsea MA Fine Art Show 2006 e-mail: speeches by PAULdaniel@susakpress.com HARRISON and DAVID LLOYD
First published 2006 by susak press Kuca 600, Selo, Otok Susak, 51561, Hrvatska www.susakpress.com book n. 5 ISBN: 978-1-905659-04-3 limited edition of 100 © daniel devlin 2006 www.danieldevlin.co.uk
[Just begin, daniel Devlin!] text © jen Thatcher 2006 [Susak Conversations, events in and around and between] text © jo melvin 2006 [Susak Conversations reflections. Notes on the idea of situation] text © jo melvin 2006 [On Wheelbarrows and the shadowy realm of inference] text © jo melvin 2006 [Susak recollections] text © eddie Farrell 2006 [Between a Bucket of Water and a Cup of Coffee] text © marcus verhagen 2005 [The Importance of Failure] text © jo melvin 2005 [Whatever Happened to Phill Mitchell] text © john hughes 2006 translation © susak press 2006 The photographs of Susak Expo have been taken by the participants of Susak Expo 2006
Printed in Exeter by SRP All plights deserved
note from the editor: Take it and/or leave it. Take what you want and/or leave what you don’t. DON’T COMPLAIN!
BETWEEN A BUCKET OF WATER AND A CUP OF COFFEE
12
NEGATIVE
14 Just Begin, Daniel Devlin, by Jennifer Viviani
24 SUSAK EXPO 28 30 40 44 48 52 54 68 70 73 100 111 134
April trip Secret Garden Orange Karijolas part l Booklet Susak Conversations, events in and around and between, by Jo Melvin Drawing, by Ron Haselden Frieze ad Deskuors Susacki July trip Susak Conversations reflections, notes on the idea of situation, by Jo Melvin Orange Karijolas part ll On wheelbarrows and the shadowy realm of inference, by Jo Melvin Recollections, by Eddie Farrell
140 LATE MODERN 144 145 150 154 156 159 162 164
Between a Bucket of Water and a Cup of Coffee, by Hugues Le Roux Conversation Amsterdam Fall Tate Splash The Importance of Failure, by Jo Melvin Splash at Dawn Window Tate Infiltrating Tate Modern
178 OTHER STUFF 178 179 180 182 184 186 190 191 192 194 196 197 198
Colony rooms Dan Devlin Show Beckett thing Whatever happened to Phil Mitchell Charming Country Turkish coffee machine Jazz thing Sea-water machine Confession Coffee book Salon posters Susak Press F-art T-shirts
10
11
NEGA 12
ATIVE
Just Begin, Daniel Devlin! by Jennifer Viviani
‘One must not spend time doubting, one must just begin’ is the opening slogan for one of Daniel Devlin’s films, and yet Devlin never really begins any art. In fact, Devlin habitually avoids making any art, preferring rather to languish in the Ur stages of the art process. He frets not about what artwork he will make but rather indulges himself in neurotic self-analysis about what art itself is. In the video Conversation, Devlin and his Doppelganger (the artist plays both characters) sit around drinking coffee, one of the Devlins boring the other with rhetorical questions regarding the definition of ‘art’. Devlin 1 ponders one such definition he has read as ‘culturally significant meaning skilfully encoded in affecting sensuous medium’, a phrase he muses over until he drives Devlin 2 so crazy that he throws a glass of water over him. With a background soundtrack of canned audience laughter, booing and hissing, the philosophical questioning here is reduced to the slapstick humour of an American sitcom. Devlin is not really interested in finding answers; if he were, then he would have to get on and make some art, not lazy conversation. Devlin is a self-confessed cynic. His videos are full of references to belief, and more specifically his inability to believe in himself as an artist or really to believe in art. He suggests that if he might only pretend to act like an artist, he might successfully pull off the illusion of being, or at least feeling, like an artist. In Window Tate, for example, Devlin Photoshops his name over the entrance to Tate Modern, replacing for a brief moment the existing exhibition banner for Frida Kahlo. He has also created a bogus magazine advert publicising the upcoming Recent Paintings exhibition of Herzog Dellafiore, a fake artist created once again by Devlin. In both cases, he neatly sidesteps the responsibility of making his own work, in the first instance allowing his name on the exhibition banner to stand in for any real exhibition, in the second passing off a badly disguised Bruce McLean painting as his, or rather his pseudonym’s, own. Each time, Devlin conceives of a seductive and plausible decoy to deflect the attention of the audience away from the gaping absence of his own work.
14
15
Devlin is, then, an expert in making meta-artworks: objects and statements that explain art or function as its accessories or souvenirs, but can never be taken for the artwork themselves. He has even created his own wikipedia entry with links to his publishing company Susak Press and Susak Expo, an annual ‘art event’ on the Croatian island of Susak initiated by Devlin last year, and which, despite the grandiose internet statement (since erased) favourably comparing the latter to the prestigious Venice Biennale, will probably not have a second outing. Adding to the smokescreen of misinformation, Devlin also claims to be part of a group called the Young Chelsea Artists (note that this neologism doesn’t receive wikipedia legitimisation). Like the Emperor’s New Clothes, Devlin attempts to expose the gullibility of art aficionados when in fact the humiliation should be his – for having nothing to show but empty promises and an aptitude for self-aggrandisement. In another attempt not to make any art, and in fact sadistically to stop others from doing so, Devlin asked the artists he’d invited over for Susak Expo to paint all the wheelbarrows on the island. Taking advantage of the goodwill of the artists in his charge, he also demanded the gratitude of the locals: he made them pose for photographs alongside the new garish orange wheelbarrows that they had never asked to have decorated. Devlin has reversed the wellmeaning (if often misguided) intentions of Relational Aesthetics: he constructs scenarios that cynically mimic the utopian model of reciprocal inter-human relations, all the while rendering the model completely meaningless with useless gestures and the exploitation of others for personal gain. Fortunately for Devlin, he has just enough charisma, just enough hint of vulnerability, to fool his audience into believing in the sincerity of his soul-searching, the real agony behind his tormented artist act. In the first scene of Dokumentary, we find Devlin sitting in a darkened room, face obscured in the shadows. With muffled voice, Devlin makes a pathetic plea of victimhood like the reformed criminal in a crime investigation series: ‘I never intended to cause any harm to anybody… It was never my intention to mislead anyone.’ In a society that raises the bar ever higher for personal achievement and ambition, failure becomes an acceptable, even desirable outcome to hopes and dreams, and Devlin’s work relies on our ability to empathise with his constant failures. Yet when, like Devlin,
16
17
18
one tries very little to achieve anything, failure becomes a reassuringly inevitability, an effortless alternative to the stressful expectations that result from accomplishing goals. When Francis Fukuyama declared the end of history in 1989, he also exposed the inherent limitations of postmodern art, an art doomed to recycle itself. All that had been hailed as achievements of postmodern thought – an end to the tyranny of originality, an end to fascist ideology – was revealed to have an unpleasant corollary: an end to the possibility of change. In the 21st century, then, it’s no longer feasible to appropriate postmodern strategies wholesale without appearing to support the status quo, a position increasingly untenable in a new century blighted by violence and intolerance. Devlin’s practice, however, relies on pilfering and recycling art from the past. He re-enacts past artworks – Bas Jan Ader’s Fall, for example, in which the artists cycles straight into a canal – in the manner of the worst pop music cover version: as a vulgar marketing ploy. He usurps the romantic, tragic status of Jan Ader in order to win the compassion and respect of which he is so undeserving. Devlin appropriates the nihilism of late postmodernism. Like many art students, he wants to be as cool as Martin Kippenberger: liberally helping himself to other artists’ work, taking control of his means of distribution and communication. Yet while Kippenberger’s anarchic production of his own catalogues, invitation cards and posters showed up, by comparison, the conservativeness of art design, Devlin’s imprint, Susak Press, is a tightly controlled propaganda machine that attempts to close off any critical dialogue about his work. Like the inflated wikipedia entry written by himself, Susak Press’s publications contain mostly essays about the artist commissioned by the artist – lofty words and flattering references that seek to fill out the bare bones of Devlin’s emaciated practice.
19
20
21
THEFT
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
crawling to the Secret Garden (Susak, April ’06)
31
Secret Garden (Susak, April ’06)
32
33
injuries (Susak, April ’06)
34
35
from top left, clockwise: Brian with hat; Rodrigo; Bian and Daniel (Susak, April ’06)
36
from top left, clockwise: Tomaz and Julius; Katarina; Antea and Nikola; Jess (Susak, April ’06)
37
38
39
lists in the Klub (Susak, May ’06)
40
poster (Susak, May ’06)
41
Osman’s Karijola: before and after (Susak, May ’06)
42
Totka inspecting her Karijola (Susak, May ’06)
43
Jo and Daniel
44
working on the Susak booklet (London, May ’06)
45
46
SUSAK
expo 2006
Extended Platforms: no plans, just a time and place
SUSAK
expo 2006
De{kuor{ Susa~ki, ~e je na{ilo ovde, vani i nasred.
47
Susak Conversations,
events in and around and between by Jo Melvin
Susak Expo 2006 begins as an idea to extend platforms by exchanges of contexts and languages through dialogues between people and locations. It’s an idea on the move, an idea in translation. And this text too, translated, will emerge with differences, to become another text. Translation can slip between languages to structure networks of thought. It enables simultaneous experiences to interact. It is vulnerable and open to incompletion as well as failure and misunderstanding. The project may fail or it may succeed, its outcome and even the idea of its completion is uncertain. And because of this openness it is vulnerable, this is its character. One thing about the idea of art is that it isn’t a single idea. And unless it has already entered the culture as history it’s not something already known beforehand. Even its history is not fixed, as we can engage in new dialogues through extended communication interchanges when we encounter the work. This encounter is a metaphorical site as well as a literal one, where there is the possibility for an exchange of feelings across different situations and circumstances. In other words the feelings and experiences of the viewer, the reader, or we could say simply the one who does the encountering, are brought into a relation with the existing historical work that enables a reconfiguring to take place. The work’s lineage is brought into the present now through its participation in a transfer of meaning and context negotiated by individual subjectivities. And in its own way this text submits too similarly through its translation, as an ideological model for Susak Expo. ‘THOUGHTS UNSAID, THEN FORGOTTEN.’ In 1973 these words were painted on the wall of an exhibition space in Nova Scotia School of Art and design, Halifax, Canada following the instructions sent by the artist Bas Jan Ader1. A bunch of flowers should be placed beside the words. The flowers would not be replaced. They should not be extravagant, but simple common flowers, not roses. Crucially this work was conceived as a time-based event with clearly identifiable stages following precise instructions. The words were to be painted in capitals with
48
light grey/blue paint on a white wall, after a few days the words should be painted over to obliterate their trace and restore the wall to its former colour. The flowers should remain for the duration of the show in the same position, beside the place where the words had been. It lasted a week, the length of his show in the college gallery. It is significant that he referred to the installation of this piece, in other words its enactment, as a performance. Some thoughts remain unrealised, never spoken or acted upon. Some, like Bas Jan Ader’s, become a monument to an ideal of the unspoken, forgotten and unimportant thought. The inspirational flash for a moment or less may have been marvellous but it failed to yield an active event. A line of thought carries many layers of meaning: if Bas Jan had not sent those instructions we would not have known his unsaid thoughts. The connection between us, and our response to the idea wouldn’t be made. Our unsaid thoughts now have the possibility of sharing a sense of communal understanding. A conversation in a bar yields an unspeakable word. It is a word to be known but not uttered. To be known for reference is a yardstick of sorts, it helps to indicate how far you can go in your defining, of things and of experience. And what remains indefinable without a boundary to fence it, is this then unsayable? It reminds me of how the poet Coleridge pins down this complex and contradictory feeling as ‘a sight to dream of, not to tell.’ We have words to identify our purposes and we try to say what we mean. Our conversations go around and between two or more people, and with the promise of a closer meaning to close the gap between what we intend and its communication, we keep going. Our intention drives the conversation. We look for understanding in our companion’s gestures, and in their expressions, and we may wonder – do they smile or frown in agreement or disagreement, in confusion or boredom? We rely on these signs when we are face to face, to see how our discussion is going, and make modifications to how we say what we are saying dependent on these reactions, always holding onto the idea of conversation as an exchange within an arena. The arena is complex because it’s a space defined on one level by the subject, the unspeakable word, and it’s first defining space and on another level the parameters of intention. The arena is not fixed. Although, as with my friend, it may begin in a bar, the conversation is not limited to this particular site. It continues in our thinking and when we repeat it to others. The story moves into different places, into cities and towns and villages and homes. It is told again and again in new locations by different people. Every time the story changes a little, it becomes a different story, someone else’s interests give it new meanings, and although it’s repeated it is never the same, never as it was before.
49
I’d like to return to the idea of conversation as a site for thought and action. The event of conversation begins with a thought and it can remain an idea or become activated and documented. Documented thought is an event. It becomes enacted through its traces of notation and the event’s actions are recorded through their documentation simultaneously by being witnessed. I tell this story to illustrate how we may think about art. The word ‘art’ is loaded with conditions of what we expect from it. Historically and culturally the way the story about art is told is different because contexts have different values, but I intend to offer some ways of thinking like tracks or paths that can crisscross one another – but not just one single track, that would be like saying the story always remains the same. There are questions arising from the stage of translation for this text firstly into Croatian and then Susakian that pragmatically sustain the fluid exchange of the idea’s unfolding story in its repetitions and reconfigurations. Consequently I come back to rework and re-form the negotiated space of the text’s becoming, where my aim is to achieve a transparency in the process of materiality by actualising the event of the encounter. The stage is an important word here in its dual meaning as the stage in the process to mark time, a series of occasions, and the stage as the platform for the event’s location where there follows a kind of performance through the acting out of ideas and situations. This stage is the Susak Club. The players are Daniel, Katarina, Lada, Alenka, Boris, Totka and various others. I remain absent as a player in this context to become an interlocutor of its performance and to witness the textural re-enactment through the exploring questions of meaning and the transference of meaning’s context into a new time/ space situation, the club. Firstly I want to state that all writing is a conversation even if it remains hidden, because it becomes located in a situation. The situation here is not hidden, it is this text, and this text’s intention as well as its function is to locate the dialogues in and around Susak Expo, as well as the idea of Susak Expo. It is also a conversation that in its repetition in the act of translation yields an unspeakable word, a word that identifies more feelings, complexities, as lines of enquiry in thinking than can be uttered singularly. In Susakian there is no one word for art. The idea of what art is then needs to be performed, to be acted out through approximations of sense and meaning. Actions and extemporisations are thrown into a melting pot of social situations, in consequence leading to different projects, their outcomes and relativities through an idea of what the poet, the maker, the thinker do to reconfigure what we think we know – and this form of knowing, as an openended process, is determined here by a set of relational substitutions in circumstance and experience.
50
The absence in Susakian of this word “art” is a gift. It creates a specific gap made by the lack of one word’s containment for an impossible precision. Improvisation takes over in the event of this dialogue and the conversation driven still by its intention can through its players perform a series of acts to create the word’s sense specificity. This is neither an easy task nor glib one and it allows for a relational exchange of experience through the conversation, the story’s re-telling. In this process it becomes transformed. Ideas do not exist in a vacuum and the possibility here of art is that it enables a cultural exchange of meaning and through the value of interpersonal exchange it celebrates the value of subjective experience. I use the word “gift” to emphasise the nature of art’s promise, free to offer a shift in the extension of feeling by a different designation of feelings independent and separate from the notion of market value. Finding a suitable phenomenal form for an idea is often fraught with difficulties; the thought in second thoughts may be ‘unsaid’ and then, to cite Bas Jan Ader’s subtle paradox, ‘forgotten’. There is no simpler or more gentle way of marking an event than with a bunch of flowers. We give flowers on many occasions, as celebrations in commemoration or commiseration. The flowers in his piece were left after the words disappeared. They withered but marked the place. Conversations around and between textual exactitude don’t remain fixed as concrete entities, they become performed and enacted to locate meanings through events as synonyms in action. Ideas don’t survive in a vacuum and intellectual enquiry thrives on its exchanges and transformations. What we mean by intention is important because an intent is a gift of sorts, it offers something distinctly identifiable as one’s own yet is not idiosyncratic; it’s an intent to locate feelings and thoughts for others to engage with and then, the door is open. Exchange is a nexus of interstices where thresholds of difference in the house of languages, where every window on a word, every doorway to meaning is a different sedimentation of perceived experience. From the ancient story of the tower of Babel we have the ideal of a transparency in meaning’s flux of contexts. Its repetition in our conversations brings together different horizons of experienced moments. The desire for communication transparency is one ideal and its intentionality motivates our perpetual improvisations in communication.
1 Wade Saunders ‘In Dreams begin responsibilities’ Art in America February 2004. This article includes facsimile prints of Ader’s instructions sent to Charlotte Townsend, the director of the gallery at NSCAD. I am indebted to his discussion of the work.
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
What happens when you put in place a structure that has all the potentiality for art to be made but at the same time has no expectations and leaves all outcomes open? Fourty artists will be transported to the remote island of Susak, where they will have the opportunity to make art that responds to actual and social geographies. Those involved will consider site, situation and the people they are with. Examined through the looking glass, Susak will become a platform enabling all the different elements to combine, thus contextualising the whole event into a composition, while actually providing an unusual place to make real art. As much as it is a place, Susak Expo is a concept that aims to discover the social imagination and provide an escape from margins of the studio and city.
entitled Extended Platforms: no plans, just a time and place.
It is, however, a circumstance, a situation and an event
Susak Expo 2006 is not an exhibition.
62
Graham Hayward (UK) David Smith (UK)
Luka Stojni} (HR) Doug Lewis (CAN) Natasa Ljubeti} (HR) Janice Harding (IRL) Craig Andrews (UK) Julius Welby (UK) Katarina Dragoslavi} (HR) Yeong Sik Kim (KOR)
Lada Sega (EU)
Brian Dawn Chalkley (UK)
Bruce McLean (UK)
Sandro \uki} (HR)
Aya Fukami (JAP)
Eddie Farrell (UK)
Sanja Vuk (HR)
Caroline McCambridge (IRL)
Danijel Vi{ak (HR)
Herzog Dellafiore (FRA)
Sara Gates (USA)
Linda Lencovic (CAN)
Perica Brandi} (HR)
Jo Melvin (UK)
Ron Haselden (UK)
Gabi Miks (AU)
Sea-Hyun Lee (KOR)
Christine Booker (UK)
Susak Expo 2006 • www.susakexpo.com • expo@susak.co.uk
[Susak Expo will take place from 3 July, culminating with the final show from 8 to 10 July]
Michael Wedgwood (UK)
Paul Carr (UK)
Rodrigo Oliveira (POR)
Jessica Wiesner (UK)
J.B. Klimack (CAN)
Herman Hematek (HR)
Tomaz Kramberger (GER)
Wendy Repass (USA)
Janko Mati} (HR)
Will Mackrell (UK)
Michael Kutschbach (AUS)
Daniel Devlin (EU)
63
64
i omoguciti odmak od margina umjetnicke prakse i identiteta grada.
Expo je mjesto jednako koliko i koncept ciji cilj je otkriti drustvenu mastu
istovremeno nudi neobicno mjesto za stvaranje zbiljske umjetnosti. Susak
omogucuje povezivanje svih razlicitih elemenata u kontekst kompozicije, a
kojima se nalaze. Promatran kroz povecalo, Susak postaje platforma koja
i drustveno oblicje otoka, uzimajuci u obzir mjesto, okolnost i ljude s
samotni otok Susak gdje ce imati priliku umjetnicki reagirati na aktualno
sve ishode otvorenim? Trideset i dva umjetnika bit ce otpremljeni na
stvaranje umjetnosti, ali u isto vrijeme nema nikakvih ocekivanja i ostavlja
Sto se dogada kada se postavi struktura koja ima sav potencijal za
nazvan, Prosirene platforme: odsustvo plana samo vrijeme i mjesto.
Stovise Susak Expo je okolnost, dogadaj odnosno prilika,
Susak Expo 2006 nije izlozba.
65
66
67
De{kuor{ Susa~ki,
~e je na{ilo ovde, vani i nasred. Susak Expo 2006, po~el ~init jideju kruoz de{kuor{ z judima i somim mjestom da razdili od nas i stvore starinu zajik i veze. Tuo je jideja za jerase i jideja po na{u. Po na{u je sve koj novo kako bi se stvorile na{e misli, kako i ovuof ta{tamenat i ovuof projekt, tako se more sve ovo razumit i nerazumit, ol uspit ol neuspit. Pak je najglavnije da ova stvor z jideju ni jedina njihova jideja, nego uvik kako se more {irit kroz novi de{kuor{. „Misli kje se ne su }akulale, Posle su se zobile“ Ove besede su bile letratone na zidu na jednoj galeriji, uputil jih je jedan umjetnik Bas Jan Ader, kako bi klol garoufuoli pored ovih besedi. Rekal je da ovi garoufuoli ne smu bit sila rakamani, da vala su obi~ni, da bi barzo uvenuli pored ovoga ta{tamjenta. Nike misli ostaju zoblene, a nike misli se nanke ni ne re~u. Tako ustane spomen nezoblenih jideji. Kada god nam pride ~udna jiskra, ali ju pustimo da nam se ostvari. A kad nam ovuof umjetnik Bas Jan Ader poslol vuov urdin mi nikad ne bi znali negove nedi{kurene besede. Bilo bi tje{ko stvorit ovu vezu nad nas i ove jideje. Jedan de{kuors na klubu stvoril je besedu ko se nikad nebi }akulala. Poznivat de{tini pomore nam pokozat koliko lorgo moremo prit kozat svoje stvore i starinu. A kad ~ekot ne moremo ol nije}emo odredit tuo nam ne ustane na besedi. Ovo me poteĂŚe namisli na onoga ki je pisol pjesme, Koleri|a koj je to zapisol koj viziju ku sanamo al ju ne govorimo. Mi jimamo na{e besede kje odredimo i kje govorimo ono ~e o~emo. Mi tjendimo i de{kurimo. Ji{}emo da nas se kapi zonimi zo kimi }akulamo, mi pratimo kako se ~udu, kako se grunde po naj zoda se pokupimo.
68
Latimo se na te besede da vidimo kako na{ de{kuor{ i po potribi kanbijiva na{u jideju. Arene se ne kanbijiva. De{kuor{ more po~at na klubu va kegot u{tariji, al se iste{o {iri po drugim mjestu s drugim judima. Svaki de{kuor{ se malo kanbijiva pa se po~ne }akulat ~egot novo. Kigot otvori novu jideju i ako se }akulo svejeno, nikad nesu besede svejene. Tornajmo se na jideju de{kuor{a od mjesta i misal za kogot delo, kad duro de{kuor{ uvik nam ostane misal da tako ostane jideja i da ju se zapi{e. Ovuof ta{tamenat je vi{e klajen i razmi{len na umjetni~ki na~in. Ono ~e mislimo nuditi su niki novi puti, misli ki se uvik moru skuntrovat s drugim judima. –o Melvin, Pomaji} 2006
69
70
71
72
Susak Conversations reflections Notes on the idea of situation by Jo Melvin
I am writing after the event of Susak Expo, re-tracing threads of apprehension. This discussion is framed by reflections on the simultaneity of apprehension and comprehension. I cast backwards what was then a forward motion. My task, now, in this text and then, on the island Susak for the intense, short period at the beginning of July is to attempt to perform the act of thinking through a form of dialogue that is a conversation. The conversation may shift in direction but it has the singular intention to reach a possible transparency of intent. I hope the text serves to perform an exchange, like a mirror of recognition for those artists who were present, but that it also extends the act of exchange with those who weren’t there. Between what I say and what I want to say falls the shadow – between what I write and what I hope to write, falls another. Driven on though by the lack of exactitude, my lack becomes the determinant that drives the repetition of my attempt to communicate that indistinct in betweenness that is pertaining to the idea and the event of Susak Expo 06. The shadowy realm of inference and speculation is an aspect of the in between and it is located between those participating artists, between the artists and the residents, between the countries we come from and the island of Susak. It is in the space of recollection. If not now, when? Before the event of Susak I wrote a short text where I explored the idea of specificity and situation, how location and context become transformed through the fluid motion of telling and re-telling a story and where translation becomes metaphorical…There are different points and situations, a multi-layered temporal linearity to weave these threads by re-casting thought processes in relation to, and alongside, the specific sets of events. It’s with this aspect that I will start. When does the expo as the idea, begin? Is it with Daniel Devlin as he speculates on a possible event? Or is it as it becomes specific through each participant’s individual journey to the island? This subjective engagement is realised through the anticipatory journey, then to share the individual trajectories of these journeys, literally and metaphorically is where something other than conscious subjectivity comes into the arena. This is the space between us where dialogue and exchange begins
73
74
and potentially it’s a risky business. It may evolve or not, by leading to a realisation which in turn may fail. But without the risk it can’t fail and it’s not worth doing. The way exchange transaction is defined as the outcome’s success or failure is edgy, and anxiety prevents risk. The threads of prospective trajectories crisscross in various ways. Some fuse to generate new intentions. Some are like the forester’s tracks that go nowhere … or they lead to somewhere indistinct. Some intentions maintain a singular, independent volition and remain inviolate. Other threads become too entangled and caught up in a confused state they become disengaged and worse, disillusioned. This disillusionment is the direct result of thwarted purpose of intention, and it leads back to the question or, more accurately the problem inherent in the proposition of Susak Expo as a concept without a plan. Here on this island a large group of artists, assembled by a shared and idealised vision of Susak Expo as still possible but unrealisable, found the ideas for its conclusion – that is its realisation, as a show problematic and contradictory. Accusations reflect a personal sense of loss, and they mask a mourning of what was thought to be possible. The difficulty of bringing into the open an arena, the island location, as a dual space, an actual place and a metaphorically possible one, for the experientially understood encounter and its documentation is the essence of contradiction. It centres on the dilemma of how to pin down the realisation without fixity. The story is told and in its differences it becomes like the game of Chinese whispers and takes on new character. These stories are part of the open agenda arising from the project’s intended beginning, and in a way they necessarily become central to its idea; they could not have been predicted or intended before the event. And the question after the event remains caught between an idea of success and its subjectivities, as somehow specific and the idea of failure that doesn’t fulfil the nominal specificity. One interpretation is of the event’s success and another is of its failure. Stories are told differently, felt differently and understood differently. But to reflect after the event is to recast the thought processes that led towards it whilst holding on to the fact that its not just an abstract philosophical problem concerned with aesthetic relations as an open procedural unfolding, but one directly faced with ethical relations, the inescapable realisation as put by John Donne: ‘No Man is an island.’ To address this notion necessitates acceptance of responsibility at a deeper level than usually assumed by the term responsibility, I am not referring to organisational logistics, but responsibility for one’s intended project and its instigation. This is to take on the work’s ambition. Ambition becomes authenticated in the act of responsibility. Between the ideal and its realisation the shadow of doubt emerges, between what is said and what can’t be said there remains a space of impossibility, and paradoxically it alludes to the ideal as still possible. One must not spend time doubting, one must just begin. It is exemplified by the fact that the Susakian language has no word for art, and the idea of art becomes a wordless extemporisation that can be demonstrated in a series of actions, performed, located and in other words it leads to new situations.
75
76
One element I drew on in the conversation-talks and the short text is the way stories are used to demonstrate ideas and understanding specific to situations but not limited by them. The situation itself is one that reoccurs in different locations and at different times. The story’s dualism is the means to articulate through phenomenal form the indistinct idea that’s perhaps forgotten as well as the indefinable gap between: first the idea, then the intention, and last its realisation. Into each fall doubt, anxiety and uncertainty. The story’s dualism locates situations to provide spaces for inter textual dialogues where Plato’s cave becomes Kierkegaard’s banquet by conjuring with mirrors and spectres. The story is told differently but the shadows of us reflect back from the texts as I attempt to recreate the cave’s transformation into the banquet scene in Stages in Life’s Way and then to relocate the action to the upper room of house 600. Plato’s cave as a device to frame thinking about perception and a subsequent loss of clarity is embedded in meta-structures of understanding the world of feeling and inference. Kierkegaard’s banquet also takes place in an out of town location, like the cave it is remote, but it differs in the grand surroundings of a country mansion. The character’s delivery of after-dinner speeches plays on inference and intention and on the subject of love – love as the force for living, the reason to live. My act of interlocution was to expose and demonstrate the risky substance as the energy of the situation by appropriating and remaking elements (from Kierkegaard, Plato, Diogenes) to find a form to locate the ideal and actual in the act of becoming realised in the present moment as a procedural event. It is a microcosm of Susak’s event as an arena and it’s not limited to a mirrored reflection of intention. Re-writing history as event by reliving it takes the subject beyond the present … and it’s a re-integration that goes beyond the perceptual limits previously encountered. It is an aesthetic enactment … and there’s a loss, unredeemed and unredeemable as the last talk did not take place. This sets up a new relation with what became retrospectively the last talk, the talk that did not conclude, the talk in other words before conclusion. This talk was not intended as the last, rather as the penultimate, the fourth in a series of five, before my departure that was also before the end. ‘Waiting for the end boys waiting for the end…’* What’s become of them boys, waiting for the end … the conversations shift, repeat, redefine, extend.
* William Empson ‘Just a Smack at Auden’
77
78
79
from top left, clockwise: Julius, Craig and Paul; Sea-Hyun; Janko and Janice; Graham and Eddie (Susak, July ’06)
80
from top left, clockwise: Will; Brian; Lada; Linda (Susak, July ’06)
81
Expo opening (Susak, July ’06)
82
83
Janko cleaning beach (Susak, July ’06)
84
85
86
87
template at Osman’s (Susak, July ’06)
88
from top left, clockwise: Graham, Paul, Eddie and Wedgy (Susak, July ’06)
89
top: Caroline, Jody and Brian – bottom: Julius’s melting ice balls (Susak, July ’06)
90
Aya (Susak, July ’06)
91
from top, clockwise: Bojana; man tits; David (Susak, July ’06)
92
from top, clockwise: Sea-Hyun grilling fish; Brian; Doug (Susak, July ’06)
93
Paul selling beer (Susak, July ’06)
94
dancing at night (Susak, July ’06)
95
Tomaz and Rodrigo’s plane piece (Susak, July ’06)
96
Tomaz and Rodrigo’s light switch (Susak, July ’06)
97
from top left, clockwise: Craig and David; HTV cameraman; Janice; Kim watching local TV man (Susak, July ’06)
98
from top left, clockwise: Janko; Eddie; Daniel; Wendy (Susak, July ’06)
99
COLLECTING (Susak, July ’06)
100
101
SCRUBBING, SANDING AND PAINTING (Susak, July ’06)
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
On wheelbarrows
and the shadowy realm of inference by Jo Melvin
In Susak wheelbarrows are highly significant functional objects. They are commonplace, as there are no private vehicles on the island. Some are customised and everything from builders’ materials to shopping is carried in them. Wheelbarrows are a familiar sight once you’ve spent any time on Susak. When Daniel Devlin told me he was thinking of painting the barrows orange as an art piece my reaction to the idea was that its enactment would simply and directly address critical considerations on issues of intention, ownership and originality in contemporary practice. I will outline these and point to different ways of addressing them. The painted barrow presents an incremental shift in perception for the viewer and through the fact that it is different, art as a way of thinking enters the cultural arena. It recalls a work by Daniel Buren in 1970, the stripe posters, that were placed in all the Paris metro stations, in the situation where you would expect to find an advert. Viewers may not have known the theoretical context the project addressed but they would or could have noticed the work, if regular metro travellers they would have noticed the poster’s re-occurrence in all the stations they visited. They may have speculated or they may have wondered. In either case a shift in thinking through looking would take place and the reflection on this sets in motion trains of thought that without the encounter with the poster(s) would not have happened. The idea of painting wheelbarrows is pragmatic, and it has a direct visual effect on the environment. The barrows are generally grubby in appearance, some quite battered with erosion holes. Daniel outlined the scheme of his idea, to paint Susak’s wheelbarrows a uniform orange. They would be properly prepared in a workmanlike way, sanded down, then the application of undercoat before two final coats. A notice inviting owners to sign up their barrows for the work was placed in the central bar, thirty were consigned. It was free. This caused general astonishment even disbelief as well as a certain amount of humour at the absurd notion of a group of artists working freely on a laborious task. This fact marks one of the important considerations, the distinction from exchange value as commerce and
111
112
introduces exchange as trust and gift. The gift exchange is from the artist and trust exchange is from the owner. The introduction of humour in the absurdity of the situation is another important factor. I imagined the Susak resident noticing a pleasant difference, or the holidaymaker struck by the unusual number of orange barrows wonders at the reasons and thinks it a local custom. The encounter causes a subtle rupture of thought processes. The owner is pleased, a good as new object, better as it’s not drab looking but bright. It’s at this point where the art idea enters the project. It is through two distinct threads, one is nuance of meaning in the shift of perception, the other by bringing together different exchanges between people, of objects and of context. It operates pragmatically as an actual event and philosophically as the event of understanding. And it’s also like the telling of a joke where a whole range of interlinked references come to the fore without being directly stated. There’s another story to tell here. The above is a theoretical position. In the conversations I referred to the idea of an impossible transparency by outlining how what I want to say is never tied to what I do say and that the gap between what I say and what I intend to say drives me to continue in hopeful expectation. It is also tinged with despair. But despair is not the subject, there is no time here in this outline of thoughts for dwelling on the despairing aspect, it is instead on the modification of what is said, each attempt begins again the aim for transparency between thought and its articulation, between the idea and its intended realisation. I wanted to be part of the wheelbarrow painting team. It’s convivial to engage in labour, sharing common concerns, it’s quite a luxury away from my normal routine of work in a different situation entirely. I would not have the same relationship with wheelbarrow painting here in Stoke Newington, but in Susak my so called ‘normal’ time based relations were temporarily unhinged. There was what I called a skewering of time. Others felt it too and it was not simply tiredness although this was definitely a factor. Our time awareness had no anchor, a day for instance, felt like a week, as the markers of familiarity weren’t there. This was simultaneously exhilarating and un-nerving. And for me it was precipitated by the collective energy of a group of people working. I don’t mean simply those on working together on the barrows, but the whole group endeavour with disparate but shared enterprise in participation. But who, unless they’ve done the job before, would have thought the barrow to be such a complex object to paint?
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
I present this account and recollection of my experience as a participant of the Susak Expo 2006. The text is really a script and helped inform me of how it might read. The criticism, in the main is directed at the project’s failures and as a group member, I do not exclude myself from this. Furthermore, I feel that it would be rude and ungrateful to write this account without crediting Daniel Devlin: his efforts in getting everyone there, making sure they had accomodation and good food during their stay on the island. The texts quoted are ... a piece of ... from Bruce McLean. Descuors Susacki and the social contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau – the book I struggled to read on the island. Eddie Farrell (August 2006)
It’s a train drunk flight boat No expectations Theres a chase: a drunken taxi too fast too fucking fast Then a wait a delayed ferry wait more beer smoke smoke beer Ferryon Ferryoff another taxi drunk in the back too loud too loud A Madangry driver too fast too too too fucking fast I dont want to die on these dark roads being forced to listen to very loud rock shit cds Theres a bar theres booze then an hour and another then drunk drank swim swumming Then sleeping on the pavement and crawling on a ferry Then sleeping on the open seas an irritating cold breeze up the back of the shirt 7.30am and we are there Fuck its hot A tiny square toast breakfast – I could eat another four Up steep stepped slopes steep steep Then this and that then sleep A shower then a walk then a shower Down the hill and up then a shower Down for coffee cigarettes then a shower At the hour of six thirty an address……a talk! Am I back in the schoolroom is it time for another shower No Ideas circulate the dripping heat air conditioning concepts take off up and down the steps head inside the chapel bell pissing on mosquitoes sprinting past the nuns Water in your lungs thoughts between your toes Kkkkkierkegaard and Freud sanding and scraping and painting wheelbarrows Like a hand car wash they wait in line then leave branded orange- Tate a tet or easy jet Grub- up in a garden one misplaced Croatian painter too much wine threes a crowd Four and five in the morning then Done Dwo Dee Dour Dive Dix - the bells back on Shower Steps Osmans Coffee and a toast nodding off nose in a book Born as I was the citizen of a free state and a member of its sovereign sovereign sover…nod nod Born as I was………………Borrrrrrrrr The shops open : fags twentyfive largo the odd bit of fruit no newspapers (there are no newspapers) and waterwater water she gave me water Fuck its hot Off up a hill in the midday sun to find north shit this is hot shit this is hot shit hot this is not An isolated gable end window ledge shadow is all that stops drowning in your own sweat This is north no that is north which is north ask the cat with worms im too dizzy staggering through beautiful wild grassland dangerous white patches invade the vision a billion butterflies flip and wibble in hedgerow heaven I am crying blinding tears of salt sweat The end is near my friend the end is near a cemetery bleaches into view
135
The path splits : one is home shower then a shower a sleep and a shower and read nod nod The other a short trip for a dip in the sea cooling and caring and kindness itself…the sea The sea the sea walk walk through vineyards the sea the sea walk walk around vineyards The sea the sea walk walk walk walk oh fuck its hot walk walk look snake tracks walk walk clouds of dust walk walk walk stop : look way way down that dangerous descend…...the sea The sea is pure and bluer than the bluest blue your beautiful blue eyes have ever seen but the sea has rocks of angry razor teeth to slash your skin The sea will not let you in Its either ascend the descend again or round the coast… the village must be round the next ridge Walk stagger balance totter trip stagger balance totter trip stagger balance totter trip over rocks The facter 400 sun block applied earlier in the day is sprouting holes Red nose red cheeks red neck and blistered hands stroke sun stroked skin The last of the plastic bottles harbour stagnant tepid frog spit Fuck its hot its really hot The village is not round the first corner the second third fourth or fifth Slowly but with increasing density a welcoming party of blistered bodies herald civilisation A ruddy hairy arse from Austria winks a sphincter of support in crispy bacon A burnt umber family barbecue tits fannys cocks and arsesnude jersey style But a stagger balance totter trip over body beach is the village and a coke and another with ice then for a sleep and a shower but first those fucking steps Diogones is on the 6.30 menu tonight served on a bed of healthy discussion Is this a group dynamic beginning to form is the magic of the island beginning to work Perhaps the shit shack gallery in hoxton and guildframe signatorie of cork street are behind us But wait some words SHOW GALLERY PRESS PUBLIC OPENING DEADLINE UHH! Flicking mental pages of Extended platforms: no plans, just a time and place What about all the new tracks and paths to share and explore that can crisscross one another This is single track railroading and certainly no escape from margins of the studio and city The dinner goes down in more worried lumpful forms The mosquitoes are making themselves more visible by handing out more lumps And theres a sense of enemy guns rumbling just over the horizon The absence in Susakian of this word “art” is a gift It was becoming increasingly clear not all here would agree with this statement For my piece im going to .im going to make a piece that will…. my piece……your piece…
136
His piece and her piece A piece a peace a piece of shit Off the island tomorrow Mali losinj is only forty minutes from Susak on the anti clockwise route of the Jadrolinea Sitting up on deck air is plentiful like a lost friend returning it tickles cheeks and eyebrows Most of the people on board seem like old friends by now they all live and work in Susak We have all spotted each other countless times on the island in the past three days Nose in book i am determined to read a passage before dozing off Born as I was the citizen of a free state and a member of its sovereign body, the very right to vote imposes on me the duty to instruct myself in public affairs Harbour side is buzzing when we tie up cafes and bars are baited with canopys of shadow Hooked immediately I sit and order coffee and a croissant The drink opens my eyes The pastry opens up on first bite and spurts sickly yellow custard its all too sweet I order an espresso and plan the next five hours of shore-leave : things to get then read In a hardware store I hear Croatian morph into broad Nu Joysy Einglish It beats Americans shouting Jambon goddamit Jambon! At Parisian waiters I fancy I spot a sausage roll in a bakers window ah ha no more custard and chocolate shite I point grunt look vague and somehow order it its warm chocolate and nut mush I discover later A large blonde lady newsagent with a swollen chin and a scrunched up paper tissue pressed to it charges a trillion kunas or something for a collection of Croatias daily newspapers This extortion is temporarily undetected: too relieved am I at having communicated my order Sitting quayside at a bar- cum- bookies I prepare to read at a small round table loaded with espresso water cigarettes ashtray notebook glasses-case matches & lighter Fuck its hot How many times can you read the same line over and over again and then wake up Under a bad government this equality is only an appearance and an illusion, it serves only…… How many times can you read the same line over and over again and then wake up A pattern is established: I read from top of the page nod off wake up start again from the top nod off wake up promise myself to get to the end of the page start again nod off wake up the land is heating up this bastard sun is finding elaborate ways to come and get me what was once a cool dark shadow of shade has been eaten away into a pallid flickering strip the harbour feels like its on the end of a pizza paddle thats
gradually being shoved into the oven How many times can you read the same line over and over again and then wake up…………. Back on the boat the reviving breeze is welcomed like wafts from a seconds towel on a boxer my camera card is full of Susak shadows flicking through the familiar dark images I realise how fond of the shapes I am they come with the sun and leave with it everyday They snuggle against doorways and windows and lie under tractors and barrows They prop against gables and hang over alleyways all this while providing shelter for man and beast This generous and essential service leads me to reappraise some old saying about being Kept in the dark THIS SUNLIGHT BRINGS DARKNESS SEEKING SHELTER IN SHADOW THAT ALLOWS ILLUMINATION DODGING BETWEEN ZONES OF SANITY ALL AROUND - CONSUMPTION NAKED BURNT INSANE MOPPING UP ALL RESISTANCE THIS HEAT WILL NOT ALLOW ME TO THINK At Susak harbour theres an unruly pile of paper : a ream of 500 A4 sheets stuck together end to end On being constructed it has been notated and scrolled upon it contains its own history An attempt to lay it length wise on the road ended in it catching the breeze and flying off Perhaps tomorrow will be calmer and better for laying it out but then something strange Its getting dark the atmosphere is suddenly dead not a puff of air perhaps the moment is now In no time at all the line is laid out from the harbour to Osmans a new pathway is opened up Children balance along its length tractors and wheelbarrows crisscross and dogs bark at it As quickly as it appeared it is rolled up again seconds later the rain comes Sitting under cover beer in hand soft smiles recognise the sharing of a very special moment Saint Jo Melvins last talk tonight her presentations have offered us a crucial focus and context They have been open and questioning without trying to conclude in order to leave a tidy package This flies in the face of other pressures that appear to be demanding results that will give Croatian TV a story and the locals a typecast role of smirking and scratching their heads..Artists! someone said if we fall into that trap we will be letting ourselves and the locals down I think that is the case Fuck its hot The rain had stopped its beach barbecue night tonight and not the arse tits fanny kind Downing the beer I struggle out of the chair and begin the
lengthy trek to the beach Im going to be late and I don’t want to miss the last presentation I pick up a painful pace The beach was deserted the rain must have changed the plans im exhausted I feel like shit Jo never did do her presentation The last group of people had just arrived from the UK when I finally got back up those steps They must have been trying to weigh up what the hell they had walked into A beach party a monster truck fest or the Royal academies summer show I ate little drank nothing it was time to use the most expensive newspapers in Croatia with the help of friends a template was made of the room were our discussions had taken place (I had brought another template to Croatia from the Torriano meeting room in Kentish Town This was unfurled later in the week at Osmans and then at the harbour it remains on Susak) I had thought it would be interesting to move this new template around the island the beach a vineyard on the steps up a slope at the harbour on a boat there we could continue to meet visible and audible thirty two artist in conversation and action Naked without sunblock or an all over tan to hide behind – a piece a peace a posing pouch piece I got drunk that night talked until daylight BUMBUMUMBUM BUMBUMBUMBUM Oh my head my red wine head Shower Steps Osmans Coffee and a toast and another coffee and another Fuck its hot This afternoon we will attempt to draw with an old wheelbarrow thats not the drink talking It was agreed last night admittedly through a drunken haze We will knock a hole in the old barrow we found and fill it with a sand/soil- water/pigment mix As the third hangover coffee is ordered disturbing edits of last night conversations filter through cv portfolio correct documentation name size and medium contact details artist statement cv I was shocked at such blatant conformism in ones so young on this experiment island! You say Susak [expo] will become a platform enabling all the different elements to combine I say Fine why not also invite the Pope /a murderer / a military general and a prostitute Not just lame artists pawing over limp sketchbooks and their deadly dull pieces [ myself included] An irritating situation was developing aggressively boxing some people in [myself included] it lay somewhere between the openness feeding the opportunity for something very special to happen And a variety of pressing obligations dragging everyone towards a very dull and formalised exhibition
137
Now if anyone tries to claim that that was the chance polemic set up to determine Susak Expo I would tell them that they were being a little ingenuous with me and perhaps worse with them self A lot of shrewd and intelligent people had come to Susak in good faith [id like to include myself in this ] I came to learn and share ideas with others and in doing so perhaps learn a bit more about myself I did not come to be just another piece in some undirected stage-managed romp I am serious about this Very Serious BUMBUMBUMBUM BUMBUMBUMBUM Fuck its hot Im off to find a healthy dark fat shadow to read under Under a bad government, this equality is only an appearance and an illusion, it serves only to keep the poor in their wretchedness and sustain the rich in their usurpation. In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing ; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much. The wheelbarrow drawing was a technical disaster but in every other way very funny It was filmed : the flopping speeding tyre is reminiscent of the chariot scene in Ben-Hur We meet as usual at 6.30pm in the upper room with a newspaper template on the floor and without Jo Whos piece is this is it staying I attempt an explanation but where do you start? We dont seem to have even clarified a context for us all to be in the same room together Whats more is this a room to meet in or is it a gallery as some are now calling it And what is more the newspapers taped together on the fucking floor are not a fucking piece A rather limp attempt is made at filling in the new arrivals with the expos progress This is then countered by a set of rules and regulations of military issue Advising us all on how we must engage with the press as professional soldiers Theres unrest in the ranks It is agreed that our energies may be better spent speaking to each other first Who knows maybe then we could produce something a bit more challenging Both for ourselves and the islanders The air is cleared a little a fresh start We shall assemble here at dawn [well 10am] Someone points out that a troopship of DJs are heading towards the island this evening To entertain us An open air SusakFest : drugs and sex and double decks in a vineyard In that case tomorrow mornings 10am gathering is perhaps a touch optimistic Not at all Not at all The citizens of the new republic of Susak will gladly crawl out of their pits for an early morning chat With that we part some assemble to dance themselves dizzy others go to bed [ myself included]
138
Six oclock reveille is struck on the chapel bell all around you sense the sound of artists going to bed A glorious morning sky idealistically beams but is that the dull murmur of cannons in the distance Outside I pass a miserable looking nun her I told you so glance is directed straight at me what On the steps the fattest wormless black cat is sitting with a wriggling gecko clamped in its mouth Apart from these three the place is deserted I must deviate a little here for ive just realised my recollections have somehow missed a day The morning I have just been talking about is the Saturday of the Expo event weekend that was the day that the Croatian press arrived and in my view any chance of development ended The day my chronological recounting has missed contained one event I feel I must document: The re and de construction of the template that had covered the upper floor were we all met In some disturbingly frenzied territorial dispute I chose not to witness until the deed was done The original whole was hacked up into a pathetically sad little island that lay to the right of the stairs It would seem that unimpaired space was required to view THE PIECES OF ART This act of segregation although nothing to me in material terms spoke volumes about the serious lack of dialogue between those participating as to what the expo was or could be had we really all just come here to hang our shabby little art trinkets in a cynical cv building exercise and was it also being claimed that the situation were some had come with those intentions and some had not was an intriguing polemic that would make the expo a unique event Bollocks count me out Fuck its hot There is no gainsaying that Adam was the king of the world, as was Robinson Crusoe on his island, precisely because he was the sole inhabitant ; and the great advantage of such an empire was that the monarch, secure upon his throne, had no occasion to fear rebellions, war or conspirators. Seven people turned up that morning I was late after hobbling back up those fucking steps For some it was the last straw: the only thing left for them was to abstain by defiantly spending their last day on the beach enjoying themselves A few of us waffled on as a number of latecomers tripped up the stairs By 10 .45am it was all over The new republic of Susak had collapsed on its first morning …………Artists! The rest is a mishmash of unconnected events Some good some not so good There were times when I began to quake at the feeling of being in some kind of duran duran or jamiroquai beach party video
But then the unforgettable experience of a group of us going for a midnight swim under a clear starry sky in the warm sea was out of this world Maybe its me perhaps I just cannot mix work and pleasure but I have to say hand on heart I fucking hate summer beach holidays Body fascism and burning skin make death a more attractive option to me The third floor suicide plunge of a watermelon onto the pavement below was an intense moment However my spirits sank at the slide show that was constructed and shown in the upper room nothing against the images but I did feel it rang hollow and had an air of the arts council when they desperately cobble together evidence to secure another years funding for some dodgy community arts event that they have not taken seriously at source The thing was we had nothing to lose or prove and that was the beauty of expo with that came a truly exiting challenge a challenge I have to say we did not measure up to and no slide show will convince me otherwise The informal discussion that a small group of us had around some work and ideas that had come from being on Susak was the closest it got for me as to what the Expo was it did not take much effort to organise but to see what fellow exposees were thinking making and finding-out seemed to be a more fruitful and generous activity than the precious polishing and window dressing going on in preparation for the arrival of the Croatian press and tv On the penultimate morning I borrowed a spade went down to beach and using the shape of the reconfigured template dug an island while the tide was out a folly to the artists farty little need for attention perhaps The wheelbarrow parade looked great and due to Daniels close relationship with the island and the locals should have possibly been the Susak Expo itself had that have been the case it would be less confusing for everyone taking part to know before they agreed to participate that they would be expected to do no more than paint some ones wheelbarrow and the rest of the time would be there own to swim shag sunbath sketch drink draw wank walk talk think or read but then that would have been Daniels show
boarding the catamaran for Rijeka I snapped a photo of what was left of the island I had cut into the beach the morning before It was very satisfying to see nature doing what it does best to mans solitary monuments The newspaper template [ whos shape and dimensions were determined by ignorance indifference and territorial greed] was packed away in my case and sits on top of the plan chest in the room were Im typing this now HAVE I COME TO THIS ISLAND TO CREATE AN ISLAND ON AN ISLAND ON AN ISLAND SEPERATED AND ISOLATED LAND – A LITTLE LAND FLOATING AND UNCONNECTED I CAME TO THIS ISLAND AND LEFT WITH AN ISLAND in my bag
On Jo Melvins last evening someone had commented that it would be a sad state of affairs If we could not sustain a group dialogue without Jo being there to hold our hands After all she had begun the dialogue and together we had started to developed the conversation It was sad! that the moment she left the will was not there to explore and enact on an evolving conversation A Schools Out atmosphere set in allowing everyone to do exactly what they would do at home Only this time with a lot more sun and sand and toilets that did not flush Susak did offer a huge potential for us all to step outside the narrow margins of the studio and city And that’s what makes the pedestrian response that resulted hugely disappointing for me At sunrise as I made my last trip down to Osmans before
139
141
First published 2006 by susak press 11a Buchan Road, London SE15 3HQ www.susak.co.uk book n. 2 ISBN-10: 1-905659-00-8 ISBN-13: 978-1-905659-00-5 ďŹ rst edition Š daniel devlin 2006 www.danieldevlin.co.uk Designed in Nunhead by Daniel Devlin daniel@f-art.com www.f-art.com Printed in Plymouth by Latimer Trend & Company Ltd All tights reserved
DANIEL DEVLIN sus
ak p
ress
Between a Bucket of Water and a Cup of Coffee by Hugues Le Roux Two men sit at a table, sipping coffee and talking fitfully about art. The man on the right is thoughtful and anxious, wondering aloud what art is and whether he can legitimately call himself an artist. The man on the left, a more sceptical and irreverent character who has, apparently, little interest in either of those questions, tries at first to reassure his companion but soon loses patience and finally throws a glass of water in his face. The man on the right is Daniel Devlin. The man on the left is also Daniel Devlin. And in this video, Conversation, we see three of the hallmarks of Devlin’s work. One is coffee, which serves as a sign of conviviality and sensuous pleasure—of the kinds of gratification that, unlike the more rarefied pleasures of contemporary art, can always be counted on. Another is the splashing; in Devlin’s work, the glass or bucket of water is like Chekhov’s proverbial pistol: if it is introduced in the first act, someone, often the artist, is bound to get a soaking in the third. Finally, this video, like so many of Devlin’s pieces, features the artist himself, who acts as both agent provocateur and fall guy in an art work that queries its own merits. 144
Conversation 2005
145
146
Let me describe Gatanje, another video by Devlin. Again,
cof
two figures are seated at a table, drinking coffee. One of
the
them is the Devlin himself, who is conversing in Serbo-
ost
Croat with a middle-aged woman. It soon becomes clear
on
that the woman is a fortune-teller who will shortly try
wh
to read the artist’s future in his coffee dregs. When she
qu
asks him what he wants to know, he says he is wondering
of
whether he will be successful as an artist—or should he just
bo
give up? After a little gentle banter to the accompaniment
int
of cawing seagulls in the background, the two finish their
som
ain,
coffee and the woman examines the patterns formed by
of
the dregs at the bottom of the artist’s cup. First she sees an
bo-
ostrich, later a dinosaur; and as she disserts encouragingly
ear
on his future, it slowly dawns on the viewer that Devlin,
try
while expressing doubt about his prospects as an artist, has
he
quietly staged in the video something akin to the creation
ng
of a drawing or painting. After all, images appear in the
ust
bottom of the cup and the fortune-teller, who expertly
ent
interprets those images, looking for hidden truths, is in
eir
some (hilarious, outrageous) sense a stand-in for the critic. 147
So
no
trig As
bra
art
the
sha
exi
wo
nev
ow
wit
148
So a work of art, or at least a set of images, emerges here, not through the artist’s talent or enterprise, but randomly, triggered by his anxiety. As he appears in his own work, Devlin is always both a brazen self-publicist and a reluctant, doubting, apologetic artist. And his works are at once sober pieces that adopt the protocols of the documentary or the home video and shaggy-dog stories that occasionally lapse into a kind of existential farce. Devlin is a post-modern naïf, always working to recapture the lost dignity of the art object but never quite knowing where to look for it. His canvas is his own vocation and he turns it into a tragic-comic narrative with an uncertain ending.
149
planning the fall (Amsterdam, July ’05)
150
151
Fall 2005
152
153
Tate Splash 2005
154
155
The Importance of Failure by Jo Melvin There’s something about the creative act, the endeavour of making work, work we call art, that is predicated on the possibility of failure. It is the possibility of failure, and ensuing vulnerability, that are key components in Devlin’s practice. In these films he sets up a series of challenges to tackle the paradoxical moment that defines a decision. He draws direct attention to the thin cusp between an either/or possibility and we could identify it as a split second of stasis. For a work to be worthwhile, whether it’s conceptual or actual, to be worth doing there’s the risk that it may not work out as planned, the plan itself proves unfeasible, or other unpredictable elements thwart an expected outcome. Maybe when Daniel Devlin was planning his re-enactment of Bas Jan Ader’s Fall at the Serpentine, as when we see him riding his bike along the path beside the lake past some passers-by he does the unexpected and continues his ride by steering the bike straight into the lake, for a split second of decision-making he did not know what would happen. 156
At the to ca dis av rid
our on nd n’s ges on. an plit her the self art
ent see ast ues ra hat
At the moment of confrontation, or rather just before it, is there a way out and for how long is the option available to turn back and say it doesn’t work, I can’t do this, I can’t follow this act through, and to accept instead the disappointment of failure. The instinctive reaction of avoidance is subverted by an act that is both comical and ridiculous. 157
There is a more complex participation in the possibility of failure in this work, the recreation of Ader’s Fall in Amsterdam, and in the conversation of art and its objects. There is a deliberate recognition of the age-old paradox between an ideal and its expression. At each moment of a possible high point or the exhilaration of heightened sensibility, at that moment the inevitability of failure kicks in. Here the comic but salutary dousing, either immersion, falling in, or simply having a bucket of water chucked in your face. The passers-by at the Serpentine may not even have remarked on the event other than to recount it as humorous. A man rides his bicycle in the lake-splash. In the busy bustle of everyday metropolitan life where the individual struggles to assert radical autonomy, Auden’s poem about Icarus’s fall identifies the stark vulnerability of an event that begins with hope and ends in despair. Auden’s account takes us to the core of the moment of simultaneity when there are both possible and impossible events taking place, a boy flies in the sky, the terrestrial being becomes aerial. He says that though the bystanders may have heard the splash and ‘the forsaken cry’, for them ‘it was not an important failure’. 158
ity in ts. ox of ed cks on, in
ve as In he n’s ity air. of ble rial ers for Splash at Dawn 2005
159
Drazen
There is a lightness of touch in Devlin’s work. We encounter it in the use of conversation for instance in Drazen where Devlin and a friend sit at a café drinking coffee and discussing the nature of coffee and the performance of its making. His friend speaks of a coffee maker whose reputation draws people to seek him out to taste the magical combination of flavours and to experience its philosophy, by implication becoming something of a quest. He speaks with a persuasive authority lightly subverted when we discover he himself has never tried it, only heard about it and been drawn by the allure. 160
In sim see ide rea dre
ter ere nd of ose he its st. ed ard
In another work the dialogue continues. This time it’s a simultaneous duality of internal thought processes, we see two Devlins side by side drinking coffee, defining an idea of art’s ideality, its absurdity and in frustration the reaction, dousing with water, another splash and the dream dissolves.
161
In W W In w aa wi of th th of ban bann gen gent who who entr entr seat seat purp purp in hh in the a the chan chan retu retu ram ramp
Window Tate 2005
162
In Window Tate we see the artist sitting in a room with a window behind him. Our view through the window is of the slope down into Tate Modern with the Frida Kahlo banners hanging above the entrance. And again the gentle play on artistic projection sets us following Devlin, whose ďŹ gure we see through the window approaching the entrance. We watch while the action takes place behind his seated ďŹ gure: he remains sitting, and behind him he walks purposefully down the ramp to the entrance as if recessed in his own mind, the thought seen simultaneously with the action. Then as with a blink, the name on the banner changes for a second or less to Daniel Devlin before returning to Kahlo as he himself turns to walk back up the ramp, back to and through the window.
163
164
Infiltrating Tate Modern [11 february 2006] 600 copies of Late Modern dumped in the Tate Modern
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
Colony Rooms 2005
178
The Dan Devlin Show A hughes and devlin production © 2006 A weekly 15 minute show Conducted by Dan Devlin and with a different guest each week Dan will share turkish coffee and thoughts with the guest Opening credits show cyclist falling into canal in Amsterdam Then camera zooms in or lights go on Dan cracks a couple of bad jokes and the introduces guest [Dawn, Christopher Coope, Gorilla (Liz), John Hughes, Janko, Wendy, Andy, Herzog Dellafiore, (The real) Daniel Devlin (actor and socialite), John Cussins, Pours coffee before showing various clips of guest’s work and commenting with guest. Dan Devlin should have a catch phrase, I would also like him to ask guest if what they have shown is Art or not. And also is this show art? The rest of the show is alternating comments, jokes and video clips which can be made independently (for example video works that we like (Christopher’s videos) or video clips like Julius’s Hoover piece) But also we will have a series of clips made by recurring characters which are created specially for the show: The Failed Comedian; played by Dan Devlin The ‘I wish man’ : played by Pete The Station Assistant: played by John Hughes The Sometimes Lady: played by Liz Murray. The Art Terrorist: played by Dan Devlin The Swearing Man: played by Phil Herzog Dellafiore: played by perhaps Christopher Coope (not sure) The Ventriloquest: played by Simon and John Hughes Dawn: played by Dawn The Gorrilla: played by Liz Murray The Crap Poet: played by John Hughes Mr.Melancholy: Sitting on a bus looking sad. Busker (Wendy)
Plan for Dan Devlin Show with John Hughes, 2006
179
Beckett thing with John Hughes for Beckett show at Chelsea Space, 2006
180
181
182
What ever happened to Phil Mitchell? The downfall of a personal hero. [Written by John Hughes, performed by Daniel Devlin, 2006]
Phil Mitchell was my hero. He was like the older brother I never had. No one I knew was quite like him. I became obsessed with his looks, attitude, and ultimately failed life decisions. I spent whole days trying to be more like him. From his leather jacket to his love for Kathy, for the way he whispered, to how his cheeks glowed red in anger; it was all I thought about. I would look at my Dad and wish he were more like Phil Mitchell. But my Dad didn’t drink Stella and he didn’t play snooker until two in the morning. Phil Mitchell was everything my Dad wasn’t; yet everything I wanted to be. [extract]
183
Charming Country David Smith
Coming from a Shropshire farming background, Smith investigates his relationship with the countryside and landscape. Concerned that ‘country folk’ are becoming as redundant as the �knackered� machinery often found scattered over their farms, his work manifests itself
through
both
an
historical
and
contemporary context. Smith exhibits fortynine photographs of farmers, the custodians of the farming landscape. Each represents a family and a landscape with an uncertain future, given that 200,000 farms have gone out of business since 1947, averaging 11 farmers disappearing every day (Farm,- The Independent Voice of Farmers 2002). Big changes are in store for our landscape. Smith’s painting depicts farmers and huntsmen uncharacteristically loitering on a fringe of woodland. As an artist who is a product of both painting and rural backgrounds Smith’s relationship with painting has always been driven by the performance of making work and mixing media as part of an investigation into formal qualities. His study of landscape began with an interest in man-made markings and the genuine formation and style inherent in the English countryside.
Wagdas
9 – 26 March
Preview Night 8th March, 6-9 pm Unit 3. 210 Cambridge Heath Rd London. E2 9LS +44(0) 20 898 19 470 info@wagdas.co.uk www.wagdas.co.uk Open Thursday - Sunday 12.00 - 18.00
184
185
1 light off
2
lights on boiling water in
3
gas on
4
7
8
bring to boil
9
coffee rises 1
10
lift
11
let coffee settle
12 coffee rises 2
16
lift
17
let coffee settle
18 boiling water
22
stir
down other ready 23 pour 24 machine hole, to waste for next coffee
stir
13
lift
14
19
let coffee rest
coffee down clean pot 20 pour 21 to hole to fill cup pour water
let coffee settle
15 coffee rises 3
sugar in
5
bring to boil
6
coffee in
fill up with
TURKISH COFFEE PREPARED YUGOSLAVIAN STYLE [KUHANA]: 24 INSTRUCTIONS FOR CEIF MASIN
1 light off
2
coffee in
3
gas on
4
7
8
let coffee settle
9
coffee rises 2
10
lift
11 let coffee settle
fill up with
16
let coffee rest
coffee down clean pot 17 pour 18 to hole to fill cup pour water
lift
13
lift
14
let coffee settle
15 boiling water
19
stir
20
pour down other hole, to waste
21
water in
5
bring to boil
6
coffee rises 1
12
coffee rises 3
machine ready for next coffee
TURKISH COFFEE PREPARED BOSNIAN STYLE [PECENA]: 21 INSTRUCTIONS FOR CEIF MASIN
plans for making an automated Turkish Coffee vending machine (Bosnian style)
186
187
explaining the machine to Blue (Elephant & Castle, 2005)
188
trying to convince Rex Garrod (Robot Wars) to build the machine (Norfolk, 2005)
189
����
����
����
Susak events Kuca br. 600 Susak, Croatia mob. 07910 22 88 10 e-mail: events@susak.co.uk
MA at Chelsea College of Art and Design Milbank, London
Request No: 1 Date:24/07/06
Request for the use of the space formally known as Susak Office for the duration of one hour plus set up and clearing up time on the 20th of September 2006. The plan is to invite 5 jazz musicians to play one hour of jazz from 7 to 8pm inside the space and to have speakers on the outside of the space playing AC/DC
Tony Maroney: Jim Bunker: John Peacock: Wendy Repass:
percussions double bass guitar vocals and guitar
I hope that this request meets with your approval, please do not hesitate to call or e-mail.
Yours sincerely,
Daniel Devlin
proposal for event
190
Sea-water machine
191
192
I never intended to cause any harm to anybody When I started pretending to be an artist I never thought I’d pull it off I thought Just go for it Just have a laugh I wanted to enter an art institution and observe artists at work [if this is the right way to describe what they do] and then try to immitate them I knew that if I went through the same motions, made the same actions, and said the same things I could at least – for a bit – pretend to be an artist to feel like I was an artist I can’t say that I passed as an artist but I think that I did it well enough for some people to have some doubt and maybe maybe some people will turn around and say: “This guy is an artist!” I’ve been pretending for so long now, That I’m not sure what I am All I want to say is that I never ... it was never my intention to mislead anybody it was only supposed to be just a bit of fun
Confessions [ART TERRORRIST], 2006 (anon.)
193
Coffee book (July ’04 –
194
)
195
IS IT ART?
SALON: PERFORMANCE UNION BAR: WED 8 FEBRUARY Salon posters
196
1
JOHN HUGHES
FOURTEEN STORIES JOHN HUGHES
FOURTEEN STORIES susak press
book n. 1: ISBN 978-1-905659-01-2
book n. 2: ISBN 978-1-905659-00-5
SUSAK
expo 2006
Prosirene platforme: odsustvo plana, samo vrijeme i mjesto book n. 3: ISBN 978-1-905659-02-9
book n. 4: ISBN 978-1-905659-03-6
Susak press
197
recent paintings
HERZOG Dellafiore
Herzog Dellafiore “HERZOG SAYS: FUCK YOU ALL! YOU STINKING FUCKING CAPPUCCINO DRINKING BASTARDS AND YOU SCENTED FASHIONABLE COWS WHO MAKE THINGS YOU CALL ART”, 2006 [Fantastic exhibition of mixed media paintings, installations and performances] (herzog@susakpress.com)