Re: Open Call - 7th Berlin Biennale / THAT'S HOW WEIRD IT'S GONNA BE (IV)

My first reaction was to hum the George Harrison tune, trying to figure out just how the rime goes: inverted, diverted, perverted, controlled, no – wait – they labelled and sold you. Here we go.

My second thought on Biennale curator Artur Żmijewski's call to please send in art and a statement of „... your political inclination (e.g. rightist, leftist, liberal, nationalist, anarchist, feminist, masculinist ...) ...“ was a sudden reminiscence of earlier Facebook days, when you could still state your political views by ticking the box, labelling yourself on a scale of very liberal to very conservative. The middle-ground being moderate, which to me always sounded very much like the apathetic option, or Żmijewski's alternative to giving that statement, namely being „... not interested in politics at all“. At least Facebook had the other option, too. Today, you can scribble in whatever you please, and explain – as far as the word limit may allow you – just what kind of an apathetic liberal you are, of the American or German breed - - -

To sum up, the Open Call left me thinking something along the lines of Is that a trick question? And, Let's hope it's a trick question!

As Żmijewski goes on to elaborate in his curator's statement, he deems such a process of self-labelling necessary however, because there seems to the an „invisible rule“ within contemporary art by which artists are kindly asked to produce „'political'“ art, however, from an „unindentified political position“, which – as he states, justly – simply doesn't exist. I have never heard of such a rule, nor did I ever expect an artist to live by it (neither from an art critic's, nor a spectator's standpoint) – on the contrary. But then again I am not an artist in any professional, bread-and-butter sense; I never had to answer to a gallery owner or a curator, I don't even have to answer to my editor, yet – only to the voices in my head - -
Me: „What's with all the pretentious self-indulgence?“
Me: „Hm?“

Żmijewski's goal, as he points out, is to get the artists to break that very rule and lay bare „the invisible/ hidden structure“, the „obscene background of [their] art“, their politics. And, he wants them to remember that, after all, „[p]olitics are not, as politicians would like to convince us, fights for power or dirty games. They are the language of our collective needs which people share.“ The cynic in me (or is it the realist?) wants to shriek: Aren't we beyond irony?
Żmijewski: „...the curatorial choice will [not] be based on preferred political identity [as stated by the artist] [...] [but] on intuition and ambiguity. But this time intuition and ambiguity will be a little deformed by this over-obvious political element. So, we will see what happens.“
The Cynic again: Don't we know what will happen? I read it in the newspaper on Thursday: Post-Tucson: Sarah Palin refrains from calling Obama Hitler until Monday morning. Aren't we already living in the aftermath of the deformation of „intuition and ambiguity“, read reality, by the „over-obvious political element“, read ideology, in which the vocabulary of the „language of our collective needs“ has shrunken to nothing but statements of political inclinations, even been replaced by them? It is a game of politicians calling each other names, and as Żmijewski suggests, the artist should join in, starting with himself. To make that work, i.e. to give that „little deformation“ an outcome that cuts through it all and is mind-mangling (and I want nothing less), Żmijewski will have to sign up for a serious case of short-leash / tight-rope / whiplash curating – nothing else but strangling the artists/labels/artworks until they suffocate or snap. Oh, the possibilities!

But step aside, you Cynic, and come in, Idealist, for Żmijewski is pointing to Hannah Arendt as the reference point for his call to „describe what we do as artists also in pure (sic!) political terms“. To quote Arendt: The event illuminates its own past, but cannot be deduced from it. There is no such thing as causality, only contingency. Hence, the event, the Biennale itself, the performance of all that art hanging on all those walls in 2012 will render all good intentions and inclinations, as stated, labelled or mumbled („Hm? Other?“), futile anyway. Oh, the possibilities!

- - -

THAT'S HOW WEIRD IT'S GONNA BE (IV/last installment), 2011
exhibition flyer















THAT'S HOW WEIRD IT WAS (III), 2011
still from THROUGH THE BENT BACKED TULIPS / tiananmen square 2010 06 22 (2010)













THAT'S HOW WEIRD IT WAS (II), 2010
still from THE AGE OF THE UNDERSTATEMENT (song by The Last Shadow Puppets, video by Romain Gavras, 2008)

















THAT'S HOW WEIRD IT WAS (I), 2010

Re: Scenes from a play [no title, WIP], including ramblings + Re: Joana Craveiro, CQN # 3.

I got myself a book for Christmas full of AWKWARD FAMILY PHOTOS. I skimmed through it over the Holidays like a sociologist on the prowl – or a screenplay writer eagerly looking for characters and fictionalisations, in both cases equally fascinated by what others make of the term 'family'; how they choose to project themselves as a family, both inwards to its core members and outwards towards an audience beyond the front door. Although a lot of the pictures were taken by professional photographers within the space of a studio, these projections are filled with slip-ups – misplaced gestures and looks; they seem to come apart, open up space for speculation, theory, therapy where there should be the calm unit of the nuclear family after all. The AWKWARD lies in the fact that no, this is not the SIMPSONS' annual Christmas family portrait in which Bart makes it abundantly clear, year after year, what is just going on behind that front door. No, on the contrary: everybody was told to behave and they did, and still, that's what they got.
There are very few pictures of my core family, my parents, my brother and myself – come to think of it, there might be not one family portrait. We never went to let it be taken by a photographer and – as my father used to take all our pictures– he is missing in all of them. There are however pictures of my broader family, a potpourri of myself with different pairings of relatives. Page after page of them going yellow in photo albums, twenty years weighing down on them. A handful from the past ten years, scattered around somewhere, in drawers, on harddrives.

„I will let go of the memory of Germany twenty years ago, all of Germany...“
(Joana Craveiro, 10PM: FINDING ANOTHER WAY OUT, CINE QUA NON # 3 [summer/fall '10])

Thumbing through these albums, I don't feel less like a sociologist or a story-teller, maybe even more so – scrutinizing myself. I don't recognise her, I don't remember her, I don't know why she's having that look upon her face. It is as if more than one life has come and went by in between her and me, all discarded and replaced at one point; I do remember odd ends, memory stroboscope, flashes of something or the other, celluloid snippets piling up underneath the editing table.

„All autobiographical work as I practice it is a fiction. Because I edit, [...] , omit, unsay. Autobiography doesn't hurt me. Rather it saves me, ...“
(Joana Craveiro, OPEN LETTER ABOUT ALL THIS, ibid)

Of course I know her and of course I know the story; I made it up. Of course I know why I am sitting at that table next to my grandmother. It is my grandfather's 70th birthday, 1989. He is sitting at the head of the table, flanked by an equal number of relatives on both sides. Closest to the camera, there is my grandmother next to myself on the left hand side, my mother next to my brother on the right. I am 4 years old, my brother is five. My father decided to document the moment. I smile, a bit cautiously; my brother is leaning forward towards the table, a flash of enthusiasm. Both my grandmother and my mother smile at him, albeit as well cautiously. It is a behaved smile that mirrors their hands, which rest shyly in their laps; they sit up straight as not screen myself and my brother from the camera. The scene is very symmetrical, dignified (as the occasion calls for), Last Supper-ish even (as there is food spread out on the table), calm, yet cheerful-ish - -
No, it is AWKWARD. In the foreground, on the center stage, at the other head of the table facing my grandfather, there it is on display, prominently on a plate, holding my father's place so-to-speak. A chicken leg. A chicken leg, the meat nibbled off. It is mocking us in its bony factuality. And we tried so hard and yet you might just put the picture in the book and call it: In commemoration of grandpa's 70th birthday and that chicken leg, what a yummy one - - - - -
And above my grandfather's head is all that space, all that wall paper and those hands in the sand, just barely touching, a reprint of Walter Womacka's AM STRAND ('On the beach', 1962). Two people, a man, a woman, fingertips, everything that goes on between them, is it careless not to look at one another- -, lovers, // thick as thieves //. It is not a photo op, it's not a couple, it is not honeymoon at the beach. It is not AWKWARD, its perspective is screwed, the ocean is behind them, and what are they looking at- -, it is an idea of that, of what - -.

„I would like to make a toast to the fact that we enact each other constantly...“
(Joana Craveiro, BEING PORTUGUESE, ibid)

The reprint has been hanging over my grandparents' brown nubbly couch me and my brother used to sleep on whenever we visited them as small children for years. I looked at it for the first time then and saw hands. I inherited it after my grandfather's death and looked at it for the first time. I took it from my parents when I moved out and looked at it for the first time. It had been standing on my wooden floor for years before I looked at it. And saw them. I found out that it was the most re-printed painting in former East Germany and so I finally looked at it and saw hands. I made that story up so many times, I cannot remember when it was true.

„I will definitely [...] give up the past, the songs I have been listening to for the past twenty years, the books I have been quoting from for the past twenty years [...], stop recording [...] the same [...] Velvet Underground song.“
(Joana Craveiro, 10PM: FINDING ANOTHER WAY OUT, ibid)

I re-enacted it in acrylics and filed it under biographical exorcism as if it had always been there, painted myself as her on a concrete rooftop in NY, Brian Kinney by her side and everything is flat and they are faceless and there is just her hand on the concrete. I looked at it yesterday and I didn't recognise them anymore - - And I wrote scenes for a play that I didn't give a title for I only toyed with the idea of it, of them, two paper dolls, one fictional/living, the other dead/dead, Andy Warhol, as dead as you can be, being a paper doll and all - - and in my head I still have a movie about two people, one sitting, one lying on the concrete, and it is so still, and there is all that static and crackling from a bad-quality CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION YouTube-rip played at a torturously slow speed in the background, and you'd only know that you're watching a movie after all by the sun's flickering reflection in the glitter around their eyes. It is Jack Smith in a James Benning movie - -

„It is me. But I wear a wig. Two wigs. And in the end I make an assay.“
(Joana Craveiro, OPEN LETTER ABOUT ALL THIS, ibid)

Or an essay or ramblings or a cut-up

ODD ENDS/ STROBOSCOPE/ HANDS

(the fictional/dead, the fictional/living and everybody in between)

2011.