press release
Intervention unites artists from
a variety of ethnic backgrounds who are making works which depict
their responses to the 'War on Terrorism'. In so doing, participating
artists explore the psychological, historical and political
implications of the current world crisis from the personal perspective
of each participating artist.
The exhibition specifically examines issues of economic imperialism
and the philosophical contradictions implicit in dictating the
terms of peace. Emphasis is placed upon presenting a variety
of world perspectives, with a view to fostering inter-racial
mutual understanding for this complex dilemma.
artist's interview
KK: Kathy Kenny
BB: Bernadette Buckley (John Hansard Gallery)
Interview conducted, August 2003
BB: Can we start by telling
me why you called the exhibition Intervention ?
KK: Well this is a bit of a nod towards Guy
Debord and the Situationists who coined the phrase. As you know,
they were a group of artists in the 50s and 60s in France who
staged interventions or situations, which were basically trying
to question the value of consumer society. So that seemed somewhat
relevant to this situation. Basically they were interested in
inviting people to interact in society by visiting an art gallery,
participate in student protests or strikes or even, to a certain
extent, sabotage. They had a sort of anti-capitalist agenda.
BB: Yes the psycho-geographical
agenda is interesting…they made a connection between territory
and continuity of thought didn’t they?…I mean with
their idea that if people moved away from their usual routes,
they would perhaps also start to wake up to the dominance of
the spectacle?
KK: Well exactly... So there was a bit of
a reference to that, but also, obviously ‘intervention’
is a word that’s being used a lot in political practice
at the moment… to describe English foreign policy for
example. So it seemed like a good word to combine art and politics.
BB: It’s one of those
words that is very heavily drawn on isn’t it. I’m
very interested in the fact that so many people acknowledge
a great debt to the Situationists...that so many texts on Situationism
have been brought out in the last decade or so since Iwona Blazwick’s
ICA Situationist Scrapbook was published. Back then, the ICA
Documents were virtually the only English language text fully
dedicated to Situationism. But now there is a ‘tradition’
of political artwork that can be drawn on, and ironically enough
in this case, that tradition is one based on a kind of terrorist
tactic of intervention/interference.
KK: Yes this whole anti-capitalist movement
is interesting in that light also…
BB: Do you think that the
word ‘intervention’ has become over-used at all
of late?
KK: Right… you do see it popping up
almost everywhere, but, well obviously, it strikes a chord…or
many of them.
BB: But it sometimes seems
that so many people are concerned with interrupting ‘grand
narratives’ or ‘intervening’ in them –
in the art world in particular – that I sometimes wonder
if it isn’t intervention itself that needs to be intervened
upon?
KK: And yes I do very much see this show as
an intervention on an intervention.
BB: Right so that’s
how the title came about…what about the political impetus
for the exhibition?
KK: It stems from the fact that Vanda Playford
and myself happened to be in New York for Sept 11th and we witnessed
first hand the way the American media propaganda machinery came
into play almost immediately. And it definitely seemed to have
this agenda already in place…that seemed very one-sided
and ethnocentric and seemed not to be reflecting in any way
the pluralities which existed in America but also in the world
itself. I felt that there needed to be more voices heard from
different perspectives and that maybe artists, being somewhat
independent of the establishment, could be in an ideal position
to have a more independent voice on the situation.
BB: And so that’s what’s
driving this show is it…the need to produce an independent
comment on this massive event?
KK: Well yes the way that debates were presented
in the media – it’s not so bad in England –
but in America certainly, it just seemed so propagandist…
kind of like an immediate call to war, using all of the old
tricks of creating patriotism and national fervour as devices
to create political structure.
BB: Yes and it’s interesting
that, in answering the question about ‘the role of the
artist in times of war or crisis’, many artists stressed
the same need to separate from media coverage, to resist patriotism,
to act as arbiters of the media, to perhaps, keep art as a place
that, if not exactly independent might in some way be ‘autonomous’
from media coverage and perspectives?
KK: Yes which is maybe a bit idealistic in
a sense, because when you look at an awful lot of art –
certainly in the last decade of two – it has become part
of this whole marketing machinery itself. Art is very much a
commodity…as much a part of consumer society as anything
else. I do feel though that in galleries such as the Hansard
there is still the possibility of raising these issues.
BB: Yes it’s one of
the continuing debates of recent decades isn’t it? To
what extent can the artist operate independently? To what extent
is the artist always already implicated in the commercial and
art historical systems which have set up the scene within which
the artist ‘makes’ their work? I’m thinking
in particular here of Hal Foster’s idea of the ‘critique’,
in which the artist is said to be ‘critiquing the institution
from the inside’…perhaps this preoccupation reflects
the unease, which artists feel about their relative loss of
autonomy? However you seem, on the one hand to sound a note
of caution about this notion of autonomy, and on the other hand,
to think that artists might still be able to have some kind
of independent position?
KK: Yes and obviously throughout history,
artists have taken on many different roles and its probably
only in the past 200 years maybe that they have achieved this
independence from the state or from the church, or from the
aristocracy or whoever was funding them. One of the first paintings
that was looking at war in particular, that is, from the perspective
of not glorifying war but revealing the tragedy or the perspective
of the victim rather than the victor, is Goya’s painting
which very much was taken from the point of view of the civilians
who were being slaughtered by Napoleon’s army…
BB: Of course that then prompts
the question – I’m sorry to raise it, but it does
beg to be asked – of what did you thought of the Chapman
Brothers re-working of The Disasters of War?
KK: I would say that Duchamp beat them to
it when he drew a moustache on the Mona Lisa in 1919. A lot
of the work of the Dadaists and Duchamp reflected the nihilism
seen in Europe following WW1. When Duchamp drew this moustache
on the Mona Lisa it was in part a sort of cynical expression
of destruction but on the other hand, I think perhaps he was
trying to illustrate what western society was doing to its own
heritage and the loss of the Renaissance ideal of a humanitarian
society. The Mona Lisa epitomised those Renaissance ideals,
and by drawing a moustache on it, he was in a sense, expressing
that defeat.
BB: It was the art of intervention
also wasn’t it – it shows the difference between
commenting on tradition and actively trying to disrupt it…
KK: Yes and in a very cruel way.
BB: And this raises another
question too doesn’t it – that of the tradition
that has existed, at least since early Modernism, of the artist
having to produce a response to great cultural events? In this
country alone, we only have to think of Wilfred Owen, or Paul
Nash, or the producers of Blast, to suppose that there might
be a tradition of artists responding to war. Even the Futurists
– though they celebrate an aesthetic of war – seem
to be operating within this tradition. Do you see the Intervention
artists as also operating within that tradition, perhaps even
as endorsing it?
KK: Well all of the artists that you’ve
mentioned had a very particular take on how they wanted to respond
to war – all of them very different. Owen’s statement
for example was that he felt the role of the poet was to warn.
That was perhaps because he’d experienced at first hand
the whole horror of war in the trenches…
BB: Yes and didn’t
Owen also say something about the poem being a kind of prayer
in times of war?…Which is completely the opposite conclusion
to that which Adorno draws when he says that there can be no
poetry ‘after Auschwitz’. I’m not trying to
suggest that artists make a particular kind of response, but
I’m asking whether there may be a convention by which
artists are obligated, or set up to have to respond to war?
And on the other hand, isn’t it interesting how disturbed
we are by the artist’s response to war when they give
it to us? What are we to make of UN officials’ attempt
to conceal a tapestry reproduction of Picasso’s Guernica
behind a blue drape, when Colin Powell was presenting his case
for the US going to war in Iraq?
KK: Yes, that was an amazing Orwellian act
of erasure.
BB: And ironically, it became
more powerful by being covered up.
KK: But it’s quite worrying about the
state of ‘freedom of speech’ in the world at this
time. For example there was an artist from Iran who I wanted
to participate in this exhibition, but she said she was too
frightened to speak about this and I think that that is a very
sad indictment of our time. Silence can be a very dangerous
thing.
BB: And interestingly, Sunil
Gupta – whose work appeared in the last Hansard exhibition
– described an experience that was quite analogous to
this, though the circumstances of the silence were very different.
Gupta had wanted to make a documentary work about someone in
India who was also gay, who was around the same age as Gupta,
and had been to the same school. But when Gupta went to film
him, the man was simply too scared to publicly admit to being
gay and withdrew from the film. This was in sharp contrast with
Gupta’s use of himself in his work – he laid himself
completely bare, both literally and metaphorically. Also, in
the exhibition preceding Gupta’s, Breda Beban laid herself
similarly open – revealing her past, her history, her
thoughts and anxieties, by exhibiting a film pastiche of herself
in conversation with a psychotherapist. And similarly, when
I asked the Intervention artists if they would like their responses
to the question about the role of the artist in times of war
to be published anonymously, they declined. In a way this kind
of speaking seems to me to be about something more than ‘freedom
of expression’, though it is that too – but about
the desire to disclose. And this need to disclose seems very
prevalent in western societies and wholly at odds with the traditions
of say, veiling and screening in Muslim cultures.
KK: But many theorists have spoken about the
difficulties of locating culture in postmodern society. Homi
Bhabha and Stuart Hall for example, have discussed that, with
trans-national migration and international communications, there
has been a blurring of the boundaries between different nations.
It’s not easy to define ethnicity and I wouldn’t
be prepared to say that in an Islamic country, certain absolutes
apply any more than in a western country. I was recently in
Vancouver where they are in the process of passing a new law
giving homosexuals equal rights to marry. But even in Vancouver
which is known for being liberal and forward thinking, there
was a protest by a group of a few thousand Christians apposing
the law, and in the middle of their protest they burst out singing
the Canadian National Anthem which I thought was such a perfect
illustration of how patriotism can be used to justify prejudice.
BB: I was very struck by
Oreet’s Ashery’s response to the question of the
role of the artist in times of war. She describes reading an
email from a group of Palestinian artists calling for a ban
on all Israeli artists. An Israeli artist herself, her first
response was nevertheless to agree that Israeli artists were
not doing enough, that no-one was doing enough, that perhaps
she should be boycotted. But in the end, she came to the conclusion
that expecting or perhaps even coercing people into an expression
of their political opinions was just as problematic as attempting
to silence them. However she at the same time says that she
never felt that she herself had any choice but to refer to her
background and experience of a particular socio-political conflicts.
KK: Yes, hopefully what I’m trying to
do with this exhibition is all about tolerance basically, for
other people’s opinions. But also within that, I’m
trying to say that just because a person comes from a particular
ethnic or religious or cultural background, doesn’t necessarily
mean that they reflect those values or that ethnicity. For example,
look at the difference between Oreet’s piece and Bo Myers’
piece. They both come from a Jewish background and yet they’ve
got very different takes on the Jewish situation. Perhaps again,
this goes back to the notion of trans-migration, because Oreet
was born in Israel and now lives in England, whereas Bo Myers
was born in Canada and has lived in Israel. Maybe that’s
informed their very different positions.
BB: In her comment, Vanda
Playford quoted Negri and Hardt’s book Empire. She referred
in particular to the author’s concept of empire as that
which has no territorial centre of power, which does not rely
on boundaries or barriers, or which is ‘deterritorialising’.
I wonder however if this “global realm” really is
that ‘decentred’, or if, in a way, some of these
boundaries and territories, which are supposed to be blurring,
are becoming even more marked. Or is it the case that, as we
become less and less interested in national boundaries, and
more and more interested in having a particular kind of lifestyle,
that meanwhile those centres of power are becoming even more
deeply inscribed. That in a way, the discourse about deterritorialisation
might itself easily be appropriated by a right-wing lobby, and
used to further promote the values of an increasingly centralised
or consolidated western imperialism.
KK: Well depressing though it is, there’s
probably an element of truth in that. Certainly, I find that
even trying to locate artists with different perspectives, it
was quite difficult to do, because the world has become so,
culturally globalised. Even Rashad Salim, the Iraqi artist who
is in the exhibition has ended up making a piece which, you
know could have come from Goldsmiths. I guess, realistically,
the best way for any artist to earn a living is to adopt the
language of the Western globalised art market. That’s
bound to influence what kind of art gets made. Hundreds of years
ago it was the Pope who funded art and architecture, and as
a result art was predominantly religious; today we have Saatchi!
BB: Gordon Cheung hinted
that some artists are ‘contextualised’ to respond
to war. Do you see yourself as being at all implicated in that?
KK: Contextualising the artwork within a framework
of my own do you mean? Well as soon as you make a statement
about anything, it narrows the limits. Basically I wanted to
open up some kind of platform or format for people to speak
with hopefully, with their own voices and I tried to leave the
agenda as broad as possible.
BB: Tell me about how you
found these artists, why you selected them in particular.
KK: One starting point was that I wanted to
try to find artists who came from backgrounds which represented
the three main religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islamic
faith – not that they would necessarily be religious themselves,
but maybe that they would have experience with those religions
in their upbringing. And also to find artists from as many different
countries as possible. Because as I said, the American press
was very unilateral and logocentric and seemed to always be
presenting only one side of the story. Obviously I was limited
by time and resources, but hopefully there is quite a broad
spectrum within the show.
BB: I have to ask you of
course, why Gustav Metzger pulled out.
KK: Perhaps this reflects his own experiences
with the atrocities of war. He thought that some of the works
in the show, Shez’s and Oreet’s, could provoke too
much anger. He warned us to be careful…and in this political
climate, you are cutting a fine line. I can’t agree with
that kind of censorship – it’s important not to
go down that route. That’s exactly what I’m trying
to avoid.
BB: And then the other artists…Was
Vanda the first to come on board?
KK: Yes, because we were there whilst events
were unfolding, and we had this video camera and our response
was to make a video.
BB: And so, did you have
a clear idea of what you were doing when you were making that
video?
KK: It was a response to what we felt was
propaganda that immediately came to play in the American media
and also we wanted to show a little bit, the polarities that
do in fact exist within America itself which were being ignored
by the press. The difference between the white middle-class
suburbs, and the predominantly non-white deprived inner city,
for example. Somehow the press just didn’t reflect the
polarities within the country. We were interested in revealing
the patriotic fervour and accompanying feelings of vengeance,
which the American media managed to generate almost immediately
after the trade centre collapsed, and how the media assigned
blame in a seemingly arbitrary and divisive manner.
BB: Baudrillard wrote an
essay in response to the events of Sept 11th, called ‘The
Spirit of Terrorism’ in which he rejected what he said
was the ‘standard reading’ according to which the
WTC explosions were the intrusion of the Real which shattered
our illusory Sphere. He says that what happened in fact was
the inverse of that – on September the 11th, he says,
a ‘fantasmatic screen apparition’ entered our reality
and that image shattered our reality. That even the ‘terrorists’
didn’t do it primarily to provoke real material damage,
but for the spectacular effect of it. Which in a sense is on
a par with what you are saying here, that what we saw on our
TV screens and in the press was a propagandist construction.
He also said something else that was interesting too –
he said that we were transfixed by the sight of the plane hitting
the WTC towers and that we got an uncanny satisfaction from
it. ‘They did it’ he said, but ‘we wished
it’. We wanted it to happen because this global superpower
was too powerful, and a power that has become too hegemonic
is unacceptable to the western moral conscience. That we have
an allergy to any definitive order or power and that that allergy
is ‘universal’. The west he says, has become suicidal
and declared war on itself.
KK: Yes there is the conspiracy theory also,
that America staged the whole event. If you looked at the way
the media presented it on American television, it was edited
together like a pop video within minutes of the event happening.
And you know there definitely was an entertainment side to it,
rather than any kind of critical analysis or debate or discussion
as to why this might have happened or perhaps why people were
inspired to do that act. For me, that’s at the heart of
the reason as to why it did happen – because of America’s
disregard for other countries. But I dislike Baudrillard’s
use of the words ‘we’ and ‘they’ because
again that implies an absolute division in the world between
us and them and that’s just too simplistic. And if we
look at the history of this country Bush calls ‘the Axis
of Evil’, which has also formerly been known as the ‘Cradle
of Civilisation’ it is apparent that many of the developments
and social structures Western countries are based on were actually
invented by the ancient civilisation of Mesopotamia dating back
6000 years ago. Algebra, Astronomy, Writing, a numerical system
upon which we base are clocks and calendars, the Wheel, Irrigation,
and ironically, Banking, to name a few! With the invention of
writing came the first poetry ever recorded, the story of Gilgamesh
upon which the tale of Noah’s arch was based. The legal
code, which our legal system is founded on, was outlined in
Babylonian in 1700 BC., by King Hammurabi; a system which established
some of the fundamental concepts that Western society is supposedly
founded on, such as the notion that social justice should be
guaranteed for all in order to achieve a harmonious and peaceful
society. So really, I think this myth of a binary opposition
between West and East completely ignores the complexities, which
have existed for centuries. And what we did, bombing those ancient
archaeological sites, was an act of destruction against our
shared intellectual heritage.
BB: Baudrillard does qualify
his remark and say he’s not talking about an opposition
between Islam and America but something that is more symbolic
than that. He says that the attack on the WTO symbolised the
attack of a whole system, not just an attack on a particular
country.
KK: I think the media hype probably does goes
back to the need to create an excuse for this American agenda
which was allegedly drawn up even before Bush got into power.
A number of conservatives came together and created a document
called The New American Century, that expounded their expansionist
agenda. It does seem to all fit, a bit too conveniently into
that agenda, but we just don’t know what to believe. Basically,
I think there is this desperate scramble for the world’s
resources which is a result of greed, and excess. I feel that
if we were more modest in our habits of consumption perhaps
there wouldn’t be such a desperate need to dominate and
control the world’s resources. Consumer society does create
this false need to consume. We’re destroying our planet
and ourselves…And then there was Stockhausen’s statement
that the terrorists act was "the greatest work of art ever"
which is obviously an insensitive thing to say, but I can understand
why he said it. I would say that actually it was a collaborative
event because whilst it was apparently enacted by members of
eastern countries, it was very much viewed through the eyes
of the western media.
BB: Baudrillard also remarks on how the collapse
of the Twin Towers had so much more impact than the attack on
the Pentagon. One would have thought that the attack on the
Pentagon as symbol of democracy would make for a more potent
symbol, but in fact it was largely ignored alongside the attack
on the towers as a symbol of world trade.
KK: Ultimately it was about the instability
of what was thought to be so stable – the symbol of capitalism.
I found it interesting looking at the footage that Runa Islam
is going to use…that in fact those towers took less than
a minute to collapse…which you know, is incredible…it
seems to defy reality doesn’t it? And it shows that the
notion that stability exists in the world is an illusion.
BB: Yes Jean Baudrillard’s essay on
the ‘spirit of terrorism’ draws attention to this
too…to the way that the ‘terrorists’ exploited
the “real time” of images. According to Baudrillard,
the image is there first and the ‘frisson’ of the
real is only added on later. He goes on to say, interestingly,
that the terrorism of the event is refuelled by the terrorism
of news and information. And this seems to returns us again
to the question of a complicity between ‘terrorists’
and American life or culture. It was everyday American life
that allowed the ‘terrorists’ to go on sleeping
and studying, unnoticed, in their American suburbs, until they
decided to activate themselves like time bombs.
KK: Yes and of course, using America’s
own planes to do it.
BB: How important were these questions to
you when you were shooting the video? I mean, were they at the
forefront of your mind, leading you to point the camera away
from Ground Zero, or did the video crystallise these issues
for you later?
KK: Well it certainly crystallised these things…as
you know, I’m from Canada, which exists very much in the
shadow of this superpower…a part-observer that tries to
retain its independence in the face of a domineering neighbour.
It is interesting that there is a free trade agreement between
Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, but it would seem to be more ‘free’
for some than it is for others. For example, America still manages
to charge Canadians a 14% tariff on their wheat exports, so
I wonder, in what way is that free?
BB: Well this does again return us to the
question we were discussing earlier of boundaries and the notion
that boundaries are somehow blurring or disappearing.
KK: Yes it would seem that it is for the power
and the money to determine where these boundaries lie.
BB: So you place your work in the context
of your own historical, geographical, political background…Is
this how you see the other artists’ work too?
KK: I just felt that there was a lack of historical
or critical analysis in the press and this made it very important
to look at history and try to perhaps learn why we’ve
got into this situation. For example, Jaimini Patel’s
piece is very much looking at previous colonial expansionist
events and power and at how this has benefited and enriched
a select few while enslaving millions of other people. It’s
fascinating that even the MOMA Glasgow was built on colonial
power. Her work reveals how a few people in Britain became extremely
wealthy on the backs of millions of exploited and enslaved people.
Jaimini has written a fascinating description of the history
of slavery and how it relates to her work which will be available
at the gallery for people to read.
Also I think that Julie Henry and Giles Perry’s piece
is interesting in that it manages to use humour to respond to
this horrible situation …in effect, to parody. I think
humour is a very effective coping mechanism in times of duress.
But also, there is a serious side to their work which is about
the nature of surveillance and the notion that even a seemingly
innocent object, like a stone, could be spying on us.
BB: Yes that is interesting…particularly
in light of the short-term ban that the BBC introduced (in this
country at least) in the immediate aftermath of September 11th
, on comedians using the event as material for humour.
KK: Yes and this response might be compared
to that of the Dadaists – as opposed to that of Wilfred
Owen’s who had a direct involvement in the war. The Dadaists
went off to Zurich and danced and played and wrote poetry. They
had an anti-art response.
BB: Quite a few of the works for the show
are completely new, aren’t they … How much did you
know about what Gordon Cheung would do before you asked him
to participate?
KK: I knew Gordon was already making some
pieces using the Financial Times and I had seen the way he was
depicting the fragility of the western economy which had the
illusion of being so self assured. When I went to visit his
studio I was immediately drawn to the piece that is in the show
and it was only after I had chosen it that he told me he had
made it in direct response to 9/11. Ron den Daas’ painting
makes for an interesting comparison with Gordon’s. It
can be read on different levels – it’s a little
bit of a reference to social realism and to the American ‘hero’
but its not an American, it’s a Canadian life guard, and
the Canadians are well know for their ‘peace-keeping’
troops. For me it’s also a type of Paradise Lost setting
with signs of an impending fall. It’s looking at the notion
that the western empire can appear normal and safe and he’s
playing with that notion. Who’s guarding who? What sort
of values are we trying to protect here and who decides these.
Also I think that there is an element of suspense in the painting
– an element of impending danger that perhaps within this
idyllic scene, we are all just waiting for something to awful
to happen?
BB: Or perhaps even wishing that something
would happen?
KK: Perhaps not wishing but creating our own
destruction.
BB: And then you also asked Ron Arad to participate…not
an obvious choice for an exhibition about the ‘war on
terrorism’, I would have thought. Ron is best known for
his furniture design isn’t he?
KK: It was really just because I’d seen
an image of the work that is in the exhibition and it seemed
to reflect another element of the equation because although
I know Nietzsche said that ‘God is dead’, it seems
to me that he is more and more with us in all his forms. As
well as patriotism, Bush quite often evokes the notion of God
to support his arguments, as another kind of political device
that encourages people to believe in this war. I’m not
sure which God he thinks he’s referring to, and I wonder
how the approximately 6 million Muslims living in America feel
when he says that?
BB: Tell me about why you selected Shez Dawood
for the exhibition.
KK: I think Shez is pointing up the difficulties
in aligning people according to racial polarities. The work
is built up on a number of different levels…it points
to this kind of global consumerism which is taking place all
over the Islamic world as well. Allah can be turned into a novelty
gift.
BB: And Runa Islam?
KK: Runa’s piece, in evoking the absence
of the event, is posing the question ‘if this had not
happened, would we still have ended up with this situation of
war anyway?’ Was the event being used as a convenient
excuse to validate the war? Had it not happened, would they
have found another one? But I also think she’s trying
to illustrate the role that the media play in these events.
We don’t know any more what is true and what isn’t.
Events are packaged in such a way that they become entertainment
rather than anything of a serious nature.
BB: And what about Eva’s work because
perhaps some people might think this a surprising inclusion
to make in an exhibition about the ‘war against terrorism.’
KK: Well I think it speaks again, of the way
the media simplifies issues into these black and white extremities.
You know, should we join Europe or not? Yes or no, tick here…
it seems so naïve.
BB: Yes and I thought that the piece made
an interesting comment on the limitations of ‘democracy’
– as a system which appears to offer choice and to give
us the chance to have a say in the political decisions that
are made. But then, what appears to epitomise the operations
of democracy turns out to be a transaction, a payment which
is extracted from us, without giving us any active influence
at all. We’re sold the illusion of democracy.
KK: Which I feel is definitely the case, in
terms of politics in general…that even though allegedly
the politicians are running the country, I feel its probably
more the case, that big business is in charge and making the
major decisions about the world.
BB: Tell me about the other contributors…there
is an interesting conflict of opinion from the Jewish artists
in the show.
KK: Well I did try to get a balance. I felt
that it was quite important in view of Oreet’s quite critical
look at Israel, to also present the other side of the problematic…the
fact that Jewish people have faced a lot of prejudice throughout
history.
BB: And what then about your involvement with
foreign investment?
KK: I thought that the very name of the group
foreign investment was relevant to the show…the
need to conquer the markets. I've worked with them on their
website (http://www.foreign-investments.com) and have a clear
idea of where they are coming from, but generally speaking their
work is very much to do with cultures of consumption - in particular
now they focus on what they call the "new world order".
They take a humorous stance upon the notion that a group of
people could establish the order in the world for all of us.
Obviously, their new HQ is in Baghdad.
BB: Have they told you anything about the
piece they are intending to make for the Intervention exhibition
at the John Hansard Gallery?
KK: It is a choreography they have written
especially for this exhibition that includes approximately 24
men in business suits. At one point onions were going to be
involved, but now it has progressed into a play that involves
explosive material, which is, in this case the power of the
mind, mutely performed. The audience will experience the power
of what is in our heads, performed silently by 24 men who have
kindly agreed to support, and participate in this piece.
BB: Another question that I’m interested
in – for obvious reasons perhaps as I’m Irish –
was why there are no Irish artists in the show. Given the history
of terrorist activity in this country and in Ireland, surely
some mention of this should feature in an exhibition about any
‘war against terrorism’?
KK: Ideally I would have liked to include
an artist from every country in the world, but I’m afraid
resources were a bit more limited than that. But yes, in my
opinion, Ireland is, again another expression of English colonialism.
I’m not an authority of world politics but perhaps the
Catholic/Protestant issue is again an excuse for some other
issue? Anyway, I think that it is only by trying to look at
as many different perspectives as possible that we can hope
to achieve some kind of understanding of the complexities of
this situation. Kristeva suggests that the temporality of culture
has led to a loss of identity, but I feel that with that loss
there is also a gain. I think that for myself, having lived
both in Canada and England, has broadened my outlook and acceptance
of other points of view.
artists' comments
To accompany the Intervention exhibition
at the John Hansard Gallery, participating artists were asked
to respond to the question :
What, in your opinion, is the function of the artist
in times of war and/or crisis?
Oreet Ashery
Boycott Israeli artists - stream of consciousness
Last year my email box was inundated with various emails from
individuals and groups about the political situation in Israel
and the occupied territories. Reading those emails I was faced
daily and hourly with my own conflict. Split loyalties. Politically…
I have been despising the Occupation for as long as I can remember,
through actions and dreams, and left the country as soon as
I became an adult. Emotionally… I am a daughter to a seven-generation
family of indigenous Jews, deeply rooted in this contentious
landscape. The other side of the family forms part of the Eastern
European Jewish Metanarrative. I am deeply connected to the
country and I am acutely ashamed, disturbed and in mourning.
One of those emails was from a group of Palestinian artists.
They were asking for a boycott of all Israeli artists. The group
explained that Israeli artists are complacent and are not dealing
with the political situation in Israel and the occupied territories
directly or radically enough, or not at all, in their artwork.
I have been haunted by this email ever since. First thing that
came to my head was: ‘shit, I am done for! End of my career’.
I was also perturbed because my work had been censored on a
number of occasions in England and Israel for being too offensive.
I felt that for some people the work is not radical enough,
for others it is too radical, yet both are wanting to silence
me. Second thought was how desperate and powerless the group
must feel to suggest that. Than I thought - they are absolutely
right! Israeli artists should be boycotted, hit them where it
hurts! That will make them respond… myself included…
we are not doing enough… nobody is doing enough anywhere.
How can Israeli artists feel so comfortable as to make work
that has nothing to do with the war? At the same time artists,
musicians, writers, academics are the last vestige of ‘old’
left- wing politics in Israel, why to ban them? Maybe ban only
Israeli artists who make non-political work? What makes work
radical or political anyway? And what if the art is not political
but the artist is an activist? Why should Israeli artists have
more responsibility than others? It is like expecting women
to make work about feminism or black artists to make work about
race… we surly passed that stage of identity politics…
yet… To live in Israel and make a-political work... is
too sickening…and so it went round and round in my head.
It had made me think about the responsibility that Israeli and
non-Israeli artists might feel towards the production of specific
political works in time of global conflict. The notion of censoring
individual artists might seem a misguided suggestion to some
but I feel that often the most radical, offensive or senseless
suggestions are worth contemplating, especially considering
the history of radical movements. What I mean is that the reinforcement
of the boycott of Israeli artists is logistically neither here
nor there, it is the suggestion itself and the contemplation
it offers that I find valuable.
I understand what the group are saying. Relatively to Palestinian
artists, Israeli artists have far better mental, social and
material conditions under which to produce work. They are not
subject to daily humiliations and utter powerlessness. The conditions
Palestinians live under penetrate every fibre of their creative
lives, sometimes art and life do meet and there is no choice.
Arguably Palestinians artists could make work which does not
deal with those issues, and I’m sure some do, but to what
extend can they make and show work at all? I am completely aware
that there are many Palestinians artists making good work, and
that privileges do vary, but I am also aware that still, undeniably,
with the risk of making sweep generalisation, ‘survival’
has much greater implications on their cultural productions.
Israeli artists have a choice, they don’t have to reflect
in any way on the political situation next door and a lot of
them don’t. A lot of Israelis explain that the situation
is so unbearably stressful and constant that the last thing
they need is to deal with it in their art. There is also always
the issue of the global art market. During the high days of
1980s-90s YBA Political art was not very strategic. In the new
millennium its seems that, yet again, political art is undergoing
some kind of a renaissance. Since September the 11th it appears
that more artists feel the need to make work with Political
references, or to contextualise their work in this way. I am
wondering if maybe the fact that the destruction took place
at the heart of the ‘art capital’ of the west that
makes western artists feel it has a greater bearing on their
practice?
For me the group was saying; do something, show us that you
really care, but can artists chose?
I don’t think, Palestinians, Israeli, South African,
Irish, English, Iraqi, or American artists have to make Political
work, I think art has many agencies and powers of mobilisation
beyond direct representation or referencing.
I don’t think artists can completely control what art
to make, I think art controls us to an extent, within a process
of constant negotiation between intentionalities and manifestations,
and this is precisely the magic of it. I never felt I had a
choice but to refer to my background and related socio/political
conflicts, I would love to imagine making work about something
else, but it still renders impossible. I don’t think it
is a sense of duty or responsibility, I think it is simply a
passion of mine. I don’t feel that artists have a political
role or responsibility different to anyone else; I do think
people have some responsibility to be politically alert; through
actions, through thoughts, conversations, dreams, or through
art.
Gordon Cheung
There are many functions of an artist in war-time whether that
means being
a protestor to a patriotic propogandist. Of course there is
also apathy,
distance and indiffernce depending on the nature and duration
of the war.
One function of artists who choose or are contextualised to
respond to war
is to open up discussion and thought about it. One aspect of
which can be
to keep thoughts free from the blindness of patriotism so that
we can ask
whether fire can be fought with (super) fire and actually focus
on what
fuels it rather than simplifying everything into axis of Good
and Evil or
whether you are with us or them.
Shez Dawood
This is a difficult question for an artist, as I think customarily,
we are comfortably used to making abstract responses to abstract
questions. However I also feel that this is the particular strength
and integrity of the artist in times of war or crisis - because
our way of thinking is the exact opposite of emotional (although
it might be emotive), short-term responses, and instead looks
toward some underlying framework, whether it be aesthetic, conceptual,
or structural. I include politics and culture loosely within
the term ‘structural’.
As such, the function of the artist is to reveal the truth,
or a truth in no uncertain terms. Paul Klee said: “art
does not repeat the real, but makes real”, and although
this statement seems rather vague, I think one might apply it
to that obvious model of an artistic response to war, i.e. Picasso’s
Guernica. Guernica holds such a position, but not because the
literal reality of the bombing of the small Spanish town of
Guernica consisted of cubist men and women mutating into cubist
horses. Rather, it is the deep sense of moral and human failure
and tragedy it evokes. It reveals to us the deeper operation
of war on the psyche, and of war as a violence not just perpetrated
on one isolated township, but on the whole human race.
The function of the artist then becomes to put things together
in such a way that it reveals something of the deeper truth
anent war or crisis, as a reflection of the times. In this day
and age, we no longer have the clear totalitarian structures
of the 20th Century, or perhaps lack the distance to unravel
them as such. We are left with a lot of grey areas, wherein
we are not even sure if we are at war or not, or with whom.
The information age has, instead of explaining the world and
making it more transparent, made it that much more obscure.
We do not know who the real enemy is, and consequently everyone
and everything is suspect, from the workings of the culture
industry, to the man with a beard and the multinational coffee
bar on the corner. So it becomes harder to make a single bold
statement that encapsulates the totality of the prevailing chaos.
Yet as artists we must try to reveal something of what is going
on – our particular understanding and creative alchemy
are needed now more than ever – and particularly when
they might seem most redundant or superfluous. Intervention
at this point becomes a key concept: have we been witness in
recent times to a series of fatal interventions? From the horrific
‘event’ of September 11th, to the equally horrific
human tragedy in Iraq; or do these events merely mask a lack
of intervention in terms of education, fair trade and human
rights on a global scale?
Where does this leave the artist? Far from holding up our hands
in despair or cynicism, we have to try to pierce the fog –
to get to the truths behind the current situation, its roots
and root causes – for ours is the territory both of the
imagination and the image. My piece, small offering though it
is, attempts to look at the problems of the relative perceptions
of Islam and the West, where both have distorted themselves
to conform to the expectations and gaze of the other. Very much
in the way a child, if constantly told they are stupid or bad,
starts to believe it and act accordingly. In this way, our very
beliefs become the weapons of our ignorance, as they become
implacable in the face of the ‘other’. And by pretending
that the problem is outside, we overlook our own ignorance and
violence in the process. What of the millions of black American
Muslims, living within the borders of the United States? And
how does African-American Islam relate to the history of oppression
of African-Americans?
I was interested in how the current black-and-white division
between the West and Islam, might affect this internal diaspora,
and histories of failed integration and black radicalism. What
with the retro-fashionability of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation
of Islam, and the appropriation of the image of Malcolm X by
Hip Hop acts such as Boogie Down Productions and Public Enemy
in the 80s. I was interested also in how black American culture
itself has shifted from the radical, politicised culture that
endured until the end of the 1980s, that then got overtaken
by Western capitalism and the culture of ‘Bling’.
And finally I was interested, in how the process of black culture
was finally assimilated into the mainstream – of the music
industry, at any rate. After all, the ghettos still exist, and
creating ghettos externally does little to take away from this.
Ron den Daas
In response to the question, "what is the function of
the artist in the times of war and/or crisis/' I would simply
say, to make art or not. . . What is the function of an artist
at any time? What defines war and/or crisis? In a world where
peace and war and/or crisis clash and collide, when does one
consider it to be a time of war and/or crisis? The contradictions
are illusive - as are the answers. . .
Julie Henry & Giles Perry
Julie Henry
My practice is evolutionary, I engage with a subject, begin
working on what I believe will be a response and then seeing
where the process will take me. I never finish something so
much as present a snapshot of the journey I am taking.
The process of reacting to the events of 11th September and
those that followed was one of rapid political engagement. Forming
questions that sometimes weren't answered. These are some of
the questions, some of the other questions currently being asked
of the government are a handy public bout of scapegoating, that
will eventually tell us what we all suspected was true in the
first place, but didn't want to believe as it would only confirm
our worst fears.
What reprimands did we devise for the flying schools that trained
the Al Qaeda suicide pilots?
Did we bomb flying schools in the hope of hitting a few of
the right people?
The discrimination with which we carry out the war against
terrorism, when one persons terrorist is another persons freedom
fighter, seems to focus on targets where Halliburton can later
make a real killing, rather than any genuine attempt to capture
those who are happy to be identified as the main protagonists.
The Osama seeker is another type of response. Refinements have
yet to be made to the working prototype. The deployment might
be equally as random as the bombing of caves. But the only chance
of "collateral damage" is a freak accident if the
chute releases and the falling pseudo rock clouts somebody on
the head
What are we going to do if we do identify Osama or Saddam for
that matter?
We could lock them up and parade them from time to time as
examples of what happens when you mess with the Judeo-Christian,
Capitalist Mojo. Or we could execute them. Either way they would
provide a greater point of focus for like minded people than
they currently do skulking in the background. If you die for
a cause you believe in and it turns out you were right and we
were wrong, that makes us precisely one person stupider anyway.
I'm not prepared to take that risk, this all seems dumb enough
already.
Smartbomb vs. smartrock: who's smarter?
Giles Perry
The responsibilities of the artist in times of crisis are those
shared by every member of society: to make the world¹s
troubles your own, to show solidarity with the oppressed, to
question the actions of those who govern us and hold them to
account, to help the victims of war, to resist the effects of
propaganda and misinformation, to be a good democrat, to march
against an unjust war, to fight for our freedoms when they are
really threatened. But not necessarily as an artist. Ultimately
the function of the artist remains to produce art.
So what then of art¹s function? Any difficulty in seeing
art¹s value only becomes more profound in such times. We
recognise in this feeling how war diminishes our humanity. Then
I think about art¹s potential, to be simultaneously productive
and critical to create meaning and to undo it. When this is
realised, art becomes a site from which we can resist alienation
and challenge the ideologies that invest in conflict. It¹s
an heroic vision of art, and at times I struggle to remain committed
to it.
foreign investment
This question I feel cannot be answered satisfactorily. Art
is always already war and/or a crisis - if, by war we mean the
continuous conflict between possible worlds. This is what Heraclitus
observed and admired as a normal condition of flow, everywhere,
at every level. On the other hand we can answer the question
by stepping out from the role of 'being' an artist. We could
make the assumption that artists probably dislike war. As responsible
citizens they would probably protest against it. But to step
away from being an artist is to avoid the question. Duchamp
was unequivocal about the role of the artist....we are 'pariahs',
he said. As a pariah, one's opinion does not matter.
If, as Heidegger suggested, the origin of the work of art is
'art itself' we should remind ourselves that the making of art
takes place in the unforeseen moment of the present. In a sense
the work of art should always take shape in advance of its raison
d'etre. That is one reason why there is no union of artists
sanctioned to give a definitive policy statement on how artists
should react to war. This raises the question as to whether
artists should try to be 'professional'. As professionals they
would have a clear policy about how to react in many different
political conditions. Without policy, professionals are in a
situation of dangerous uncertainty in which their situated judgements
are all they have to guide them through times of violence and
chaos.
Runa Islam
Dear Bernadette
I got you message for a statement about the question of the
function of the artist in times of crisis and war. To be honest
I'm not sure. I maybe have an idealised image of the artist
working as if there is always a crisis. But I imagine particular
crisis and wars effect us in different ways and the responses
becomes unique to these situations. Without talking about political
positions, I'd consider the function of the artist as arbitrators
of mass media.
Bo Myers
What follows is my own way of responding to the question:
>What, in your opinion, is the function of the artist in
times of war and /or crisis?
—————————
“I hope I’ve said enough with ‘[sic]’,
at least for now. It’s a text based installation, after
all. I think it best to turn to others here, to discover what
they have to say in response to the question at hand. Call it
my documentary impulse, call it exhaustion, call it dodging,
call it what you will. What follows is a short list, yes, another
list; a selection of thoughts that echo and reflect or challenge
my own, made by friends, colleagues, and peers, all practicing
artists, all Canadian.”
Bo Myers
“I will not generalize about the function of "the
artist" as it is not my place to prescribe a role for anyone
but myself. And whether I should be labeled an artist I leave
to others to judge.
We are always at war and in perpetual crisis. Through action
and inaction we are on the attack, overtly with weapons or covertly
through diversion of attention and resources. We are attacking
the world's poor, other species, Gaia. Daily. Relentlessly.
Through my work I try to identify, describe and analyze under-recognized
societal problems and offer some thoughts on how they might
begin to be rectified, with the ultimate goal of helping to
foster justice and reduce suffering.“
Mark Achbar
“To reflect on the strategies of ignorance, terror and
numbing tribalisms … A work of patterning, formally and
in content, of the associative - of that which is not said because
of its intimate and emotional embrace of root contradiction
- foreign to the glide of commercial and ideological speak.”
Oliver Hockenhull
“I think the role of the artist is always the same whether
in time of war or peace. Even when nations are not squabbling
over oil or some other thing … there is always some sort
of injustice manifesting just down the street. Western art has
evolved into just pure aesthetics, especially within the WHITE
box of the gallery; and this WHITE box has taken the "community"
out of art. The visual arts have handed over the duty of speaking
for the people on to media - but then media lies most of the
time. So I think its time to take that power back and reunite
art with community.”
Caroline Mangosing
“To dare.
To articulate a common truth in a way that is felt before it
is heard; to express a sentiment which penetrates whoever is
exposed to the art before it can be blocked by preset opinions
or prejudices; to say something undeniable.
To tell the truth - and, hopefully, to inspire others to do
the same.”
Sara Kendell
“Human beans need to figure out how to function…
period, in order to avoid crisis in the first place. If we don’t
approve of an act of war, terrorism, genocide, or personal violation
once it has happened, then we really have to ask our selves
why we allowed it happen in the first place? Why are we not
communicating, listening, sharing, healing, encouraging and
actively supporting each other in our thoughts, words, art,
transactions, or interactions; in effect, doing everything in
our power to not have to function in crisis? I believe the role
of the artist is to be highly perceptive, and reflective of,
as well as accountable to, the purpose, goals and impact of
her art and her way of being and moving in the world. The artist
must have foresight, and must not be afraid to be guided by
compassion, even at the risk of compromising her image, career
or status. Life is worth it.”
Amey Kazymerchyk
“To subvert official rhetoric and dogma, to make use
of its lies and contradictions, to hoist it by its own petard.
To break wind at pomposity, moral certainty and official seriousness.
To stimulate laughter.”
Marcus Youssef
“Nothing is as it seems. And it is the calling of some
artists to offer a sense of, an inkling towards, a best guess
at, what lies beneath a war, a crisis, a tragedy, a heartache.
“
Jacqueline Verkley
“If the question is what is the function of the artist
following the impact of events on Sept. 11, 2001, then the corollary
is that the function perhaps now differs from the period prior
to 911. However, there have been excruciating occasions throughout
history, any given number in the previous century as well, when
artists have screamed ever louder and their collective oeuvres
have reflected the torment that they see and hear. The event
of 911 is not the first tragedy. Ask the survivors of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki - which is largest in their minds? What about Auschwitz?
The city of Dresden? The famine in Ethiopia? Volcanic eruptions
decimating highly populated regions in China? The citizens of
Burma? Or Guernica? What about Rwanda? The list goes on, as
does human suffering.”
Carole Itter
"Artists remind humans of their humanity, as opposed
to politics which reminds people of their functions. Artists
should bring to the surface the emotion, the uncertainty, and
the consequences behind all acts of violence in which they are
compelled to participate."
Wayde Compton
Jaimini Patel
I don’t believe that it can be said that there has ever
been a time devoid of war or crisis. Somewhere in the world
war is played out whether we are aware of it or not. Once it
enters our consciousness it is a question of what it means to
us and how it affects us. The role of the artist eludes definition
it is never static but for me it is to hold up a mirror to society
and ask us to look at ourselves.
Vanda Playford & Kathy Kenny
Vanda Playford
In the late 1960's Jean Luc Goddard curated a number of short
films which were politically opposed to the Vietnam War. The
response from different film makers was extremely varied. One
memorable documentary showed footage of a Vietnamese Mime troupe
visiting remote villages in Vietnam. The local people were isolated
and under constant threat of bombardment. In one of the villages
they gathered in a small amphitheatre to watch the troupe. Wearing
rather grotesque "spitting image" style face masks
the mime artists parodied and belittled the sinister nature
of powerful western leaders such as Nixon and Kissinger. At
first the people seemed bemused but soon became animated and
united in their support and applause for the artists. One was
left to imagine that this must have been a hugely encouraging
and motivating event in solidifying the collective will and
belief of the villagers against the foreign power. And as such
an enabling factor in their willingness to fight against invasion.
It is unlikely that such an event could take place today. The
world has become saturated with still images and films and the
technology to distribute them even to the most remote areas.
The power to suspend belief through the mimetic quality of a
face mask depicting an American president has been eroded. Art
as activism and an ideological tool expressed through simple
black and white messages such as those delivered by the mime
troupe can no longer succeed. Our understanding of where war
comes from and for whom we are being asked to fight is complex
.The concept of one known enemy is no longer plausible within
a new social order of globalisation and the decline in sovereignty
of the nation state. In their book Empire, Antonio Negri and
Michael Hart view Empire as a new form of global sovereignty.
In explaining this they point out that “Empire establishes
no territorial centre of power and does not rely on fixed boundaries
or barriers. It is a decentred and deterritoralising apparatus
of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm".
Further in recognising its regulatory impact on social order
and human nature they note that “the practice of Empire
is continually bathed in blood, the concept of Empire is always
dedicated to peace".
Today war and the blood bath are never very far away and it
seems to be closing in. War is no longer a crisis or a difference
but is a constant. War exists as a continuation of something
else by other means. Of business, of technology, of the arms
trade and the oil trade. War is not necessarily about defending
or expanding borders but about the means of extending and controlling
power and wealth through international business and the use
of technology. Our lives are so intertwined with these technologies,
that it is hard to know where or how we are implicated in war.
Unlike a bomb, art is not an instrument. It is of its own making
and lies outside the everyday world of technology and the business
of technology. Art creates its own place in the world. It entails
a relation between thinking and making whose products lies outside
the relations of technology and power. It is resistant to and
doesn't follow the logic of production of the world. In this
sense it can be said to be autonomous. Its resistance to the
everyday already places it outside relations of power and the
war economy.
Artists may or may not seek a role that goes beyond this position.
However some artists explicitly exploit their autonomy in order
to critique a system that is increasingly geared towards reliance
on war to regenerate its own economy. Tactics of stealth and
infiltration employed by for example artist groups such as foreign
investment purposefully reveal how the everyday is linked
inextricably with the war machine and thereby poses a threat
to the everyday. More explicitly politically invested work,
such as that by artist and photographer Peter Kennard, points
very directly to these relations as does work by the painter
Gordon Cheung.
However the question of the autonomy of the artist is not as
simple as this. Regardless of whether their work is overtly
critical of the dominant ideology, artists nevertheless sell
their work in the commercial art world and are to that extent
complicit with its economic strictures. A problem which artists
living in say Britain or the USA face, is one of being implicated
in oppressive political regimes. How can the artist establish
autonomy from the system that sustains them? Can there be resistance?
In the film showing documentary footage from Vietnam, it was
the Vietnamese who were voicing their own oppression. The footage
became a force for resistance and change when it was shown to
western audiences in the context of the anti-Vietnamese war
movement. To document or to make art that observes from a truly
autonomous or oppositional standpoint is a step towards re-defining
the perceived reality of our world. The role of the artist/observer
can potentially be very valuable in making new juxtapositions
which expose an underlying ideology.
In British society the dominant media is loosing its credibility.
Audiences understand that the ways in which wars are represented
in the media and especially on TV are integral to the practices
of the wars themselves. Wars are fought with an understanding
of how the images will look on TV and the impact that this will
have on the psyche of the millions of people watching. Audiences
are therefore potentially looking for more reliable sources
of "truth". Is a turn towards artistic practices a
credible re-alignment? Does art offer anything other than a
pacifist intervention or a cry of despair? Art, in its autonomy,
is able to expose the shortfalls of the media and its connection
to the propaganda behind wars. Artistic practices tend to offer
individual versions of truth or individual ways of looking at
the world. These individual voices at their most powerful can
resonate with many and to that effect have the capacity to offer
peoples imaginations other possibilities.
Ultimately it is probably impossible to gauge with any certainty
the effect upon war of art practice. Its mode of operation upon
the psyche is not open to scientific measurement and neither
is it repeatable. However its subtlety, its resistance to the
technological relations of war and the heterogeneity of its
institutions make it a well-placed tool for subversion and resistance.
Kathy Kenny
I tend to agree with Jean Cocteau when he said 'an artist cannot
speak any more about his art than a plant about horticulture'!
However, having said that, on an elemental level, I think art
is always a response to the eternal crisis we all face simply
in being alive. As expressed by the Persian poet and mathematician
Omar Khayyam, 900 years ago,
"The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes---or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two---is gone."
Rashad Salem
Dear Bernadette
This correspondence is beyond our deadline’s sixtieth
minute, I apologize for the inconvenience though there is a
certain situationist irony in its resonance with our Global
state playing “Chicken”. That’s not to place
the blame on the world situation but to wonder at ones very
little selves’ part in this state of affairs!
We sure seem to be at the last minutes transformation. A last
minute intervention to turn the steering wheel at failures edge.
last minute aspirations as the arts, dreams and hopes of all
the generations of artists and thinkers contemporary to the
previous cycles of war and conflict are shrouded in the latest
arrogance departing from basic and hard learned laws, conventions
and the covenants of humanity, nature and God. We as artists,
I think have a particular role in righting the table that has
been overturned; not just frame the wreckage with our art. I
know this is a departure from the traditional myth of modern
art as a breaker of rules and boundaries. Though the means and
information and its processing that gives today’s leaders
of change their power to manipulate our future is the very height
of modernity it is a betrayal of this modernity as a viable
revolution. The Future as promised by the language of gross
hypocrisy combusting our air with poison today is an anachronism,
the sum of all our past failures.
So what role does Art play, and can art intervene at this junction?
Or is art to be relegated to the expression of tragedy , documentation
and the camouflage of entertainment as others burn at the pyre
maintaining our delusions? We tend to think of art as an expression
of modernity. I think we can consider any tradition as having
been at some time “modern” in the sense of being
newly found, discovered, invented or introduced and/or synthesized;
therefor a “tradition” can be said to be: “a
modernity that has survived into the present”. I say this
as in time of war and conflict we find the junction of possibilities
from denial of manifest truth and the success of traditions
to the creation of new universal traditions with the possibilities
of modernity. So can we override the chronic cynicism of our
sophistication and imagine without having to forget where we
all come from and get to where we may be?
I believe it is possible for us to redesign a Global culture
that would employ the full spectrum of humanity with a very
decent standard of living affording a huge breadth of individuality,
expression and personal development. Something that would cushion
the dismantling of the military industrial complex and the Global
consuming market as the only economic model of necessity towards
maintaining the status quo of privileged life. I think we can
imagine and create a world civilization of great freedom and
peace in a sustainable state of well being, economically and
spiritually with others sharing the Planet and with the Earth
we are bound to and the complexity of nature and life that we
are indebted to. I believe that the inspiration lies in Global
indigenous cultures and that with the sensibility of respect
for self, space and all other we can synthesize a new constructive
technology based on the exploitation of all our best science
and skills.
Quotation of an Inuit of Pond Island from ‘The Other
Side of Eden’ by Hugh Brody: ‘In this way, they
talked about the kind of fear that Qallunaat had inspired in
them. “Ah yes, we were so scared of white people. They
seemed to us to be dangerous. They intimidated us. They came
up here and did all kinds of things they were not supposed to
do, things that were against their own rules. They did not care
about our culture. They wrote down lies and sent them south,
to their bosses in the south. We Inuit were scared of them.
We knew that they wrote lies, but we didn’t dare say anything.”’
The following are a selection of from “Ruminations in
a Spinozan vein” they form part of the work that I shall
be presenting> “Polling Booth and Ballot Box”
and are completely open to critical interaction or intervention.
The aim is to find a sort of cultural manifesto with a clarity
of content that can confront the propaganda onslaught of today’s
“fog of war”.
Note; please do as you see fit with this. It may or may not
be part of what you wish to include in print.
That the fundamental principles of Egalitarian Democracy is
the norm of any traditional Indigenous community you may care
to name and that this is a natural and necessary mode for the
processing of information that any community needs in order
to have a future.
That, the term primitive and barbaric is subject to the behavior
of a culture with regard to its image of its self and teachings
and not to that cultures position in relation to time, power
or expressed perceptions of the “Other”.
That, any specific nature based culture sustains and expresses
itself with technologies, information systems and educated knowledge
and that these in relative terms are advanced through tradition
and discovery based on curiosity, respect and the need to survive
in a state of well being.
That Human skills and abilities range across such a broad range
of possibilities that no one people can be seen to be without
general and specific skills at an equal level given equal opportunity
to any other, if not the same then different from any other.
That the sense of self worth common to all peoples when due
to pride or vanity reaches the state of a sense of superiority,
it is a delusion and that when this state in extreme reigns
the action of any people, the result is invariably one of crime,
barbarity and self betrayal.
That, there remains much achieved by cultures and civilizations
of the past and of the contemporary Global diversity that remains
unique and unmatched by any one politically dominant culture
and civilization at any time.
That the exchange dynamics and inter-inspirational illuminations
of much new art and culture today is as it was yesterday.
That, the real wealth of mankind is best stewarded with love,
respect and understanding rather then exploitation, hate and
transgression.
That, all mankind are equal in having the faculty of imagination
and that technology and its application is the product of imagination,
knowledge, experience and memory.
That, the Apex of civil policy and cultured imagination is
to act upon consequence and not for the immediate gain or power
of a technology.
That, Urban serving technology is more likely then a rural
or ecologically specific culture to be wasteful. And that wastefulness
is not an attribute of nature.
That, sustainable technology and patterns of consumption are
the cultural and historical norm and that the wastefulness of
extreme technologies the historical and epochal aberration.
Eva Weinmayr
Dear Bernadette,
thank you for your e-mail inviting me to contribute with a direct
comment to the publication. I'm going to send you a poem by
the Austrian writer Ernst Jandl. He wrote the piece during the
war in Vietnam in the 60's and is using words of both, the English
and German languages. Some writers have tried to translate his
poems but I think it works without translation.
All the best, Eva
the flag
a fleck
on the flag
let's putzen
a riss
in the flag
let's nähen
where's the nadel
now
that's getan
let's throw it
werfen
into a dreck
that's
a zweck
Ernst Jandl
( from Ernst Jandl, poetische werke,
edited by Klaus Siblewski, © 1997 at Luchterhand Literaturverlag
Munich, a division of publishing group Bertelsmann GmbH)
Above are the artists’ original unedited responses, an
abridged version of which is available also in the newspaper
catalogue accompanying
