CaNNed

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CANNED team ::

editorial >> Rory Biddulph, Iris Priestart direction & design >> Ewelina Aleksandrowicz, Andzej Wojtas, Kuba Ryniewiczadministration >> Lauren Healey, Holly Watson

CANNED is a new and visually exciting magazine that provides artists, curators, critics and the public with an informative and accessible cultural resource.

www.cannedmag.netinfo@cannedmag.net

The NewBridge Project is an artist led studio and exhibition space that engages with local, national and international artists to develop an experimental range of exhibitions and projects. It has a commitment to cooperation and collaboration between artists to initiate critical dialogue and to develop opportunities for making and exhibiting contemporary art.

www.thenewbridgeproject.com

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We didn’t start with a mission statement. What brought the group of individuals together who produced this issue of CANNED magazine was the momentum and ethos we all shared as part of The New Bridge Project in Newcastle upon Tyne. All of the individuals who took part in establishing CANNED magazine have brought on board something unique from their own interests, experience and intentions, consolidated as a whole in what we hope is a magazine that is as visually exciting as it is conceptually engaging. We regard CANNED as an opportunity to develop a synergy between art and writing and to extend the dialogues, collaboration and exchange initiated by The New Bridge Project but also as a means for furthering opportunities and disseminating art and ideas beyond a specific locale.When we embarked on producing this new publication, it was in a combined dedication to creating an all-encompassing platform for anyone, irrespective of background or professional merit, who wanted to have a voice within this discourse of contemporary art. Through CANNED, we want to actively disseminate unheard opinions, exposing the extraordinary wealth of ideas, artworks and information that exist, though are not always received, nationally and internationally. Foremost, this magazine aims to present new dialogues and initiate the exchange of ideas under the banner of contemporary arts practice. It is an indiscriminate and ethically oriented support framework that has already seen submissions from individuals across the globe, in various stages of professional development.

For this inaugural edition we are pleased to bring together a collection of articles whose scope and variety is reflective of the rich diversity of perspectives and opinions engaged in a critical dialogue with contemporary Art and cultural concerns synonymous with CANNED’s own ideals and intentions.From incidental reveries on the currency of language to critical examinations of high profile public art projects, we have found these contributions to be dynamic, informative and challenging and we hope, in reading them, you do also.

Rory Biddulph and Iris Priest

CaNNed

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An Interesting Waste of Time

The English language is arguably one of the most excellent forms of emotional extension known to mankind. Like any other written or spoken expression, meanings change, but it is always a shame for any of its noble and hardy words to be robbed of their value and dignity.

The word interesting has unfortunately suffered this humili-ation. To describe a work of art as interesting has become nothing more than a pretentious attempt to produce an impression of cultural sensitivity. It is overused as a blanket term to indicate some deeper level of intellectual and aesthet-ic connection with the work in question. In actuality it relays absolutely no genuine orthoughtful personal opinion into a conversation. Its poor eleven letters having been reduced to a base tool for trig-gering positive associations in the minds of the artistically and esoterically educated. It is a tool used to produce false meaning, and as Roland Barthes warned, wherever there is meaning there is always a system at work.

To instantly articulate your own thoughts and reactions to an artwork, especially when they are young or half-formed, is difficult. Always they will sway and change depending on the slightest of factors, often it takes time and repeated viewings to become emotionally seduced by a piece, and never does one simple sentence ever seem tosatisfy as an explanation. Despite their importance, none of these issues nullify the intuitive strength of the optic bite that we take from an artwork when we see it for the very first time. It is this instant that is exciting and chal-lenging to find new ways of articulating, but destroyed by the use of the word interesting.

It is true that the language we use ends up shaping the way that we think. Thoughts must be pushed into the pre-existing moulds of words if they are to be cast into a conversation, and sometimes they just do not fit. By extension this also applies to the schema that encompasses the words generally used to describe artworks or projects. There is no reason why these methods must be the most common when discussing these topics. Gaston Bachelard used the techniques of psychoa-nalysis to dissect the qualities of fire; Pablo Neruda, with a poem, twists the acerbic tastes of a lemon into the deepest and most primal of human hungers. These are examples of the opening up that can occur when a less conservative form is used as an alternative type of description, unconventional glitches that produce the space necessary to think and articu-late new thoughts.

Often artworks do stir in us a great drive to pursue further enquiry on the subject matter. They can guide us into other lines of thought and disrupt tightly held opinions, but our initial responses at these rifts are important too and so there is worth in expressing them properly. I propose that the slovenly drone of the word interesting be robbed of the hollow prestige that it preaches and simply re-used whenever it is necessary; give it back its proper meaning and let it do its work. If not then its ability to give solidity to pure wind will only continue, and come exhibition-opening evenings, we will all have to breathe the air of this foul verbal flatulence.

Robbie Hudson

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Altering Expressions: A Preliminary Treatise

on the New Film

The landscape of film has changed so dramatically over the past decades that one must question the language, or rather the adherence to and implications of the terminology which has so long defined it. In a general sense, the term, ‘film’, often refers to a moving picture, or, even as the technology is threatened with obsolescence or niche over-specialisation, the cellulose material used to capture—for the sake of this ar-gument—the moving image. Various modifiers can be added to narrow the scope to specific kinds of film and filmmaking (i.e. narrative film, art or experimental film, documentary film-making, etc.); however, in most cases of today’s digital image capturing, film itself is only used for projection and archival purposes. So why is there the perpetuation of the acquies-cence of this term, when its physical antecedent is moot? Rather, what exactly is film?

In short, it is a set of expectations. The connotations of film in-clude a progressive documentation of imagery, time or events by narrative or non-narrative means, a chronology, a before and after, reality or theatricality, and in many cases, film indus-try techniques such as lighting, sound design or editing. Any or all of these can be conjured by the term. When analyzing such significations, one realizes that standing alone, these are not film-specific, thus they are neither bound to the concept nor the substance. Narrative can be ascribed to still photog-raphy as in the work of Cindy Sherman. Raymond Pettibon’s drawings of a comic nature—incorporating text with figura-tive imagery - often imply the said ‘before and after’ in the associations between the words and iconography. To use a traditional industry term, they provide a third meaning via a sort of Kuleshov Effect, one where the overall product is ‘greater than the sum of its parts’, so to speak, given the influ-ence of one upon the other. Even medieval and renaissance triptychs showing such scenes as the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Christ provide, through the same progression of imagery, the chronology of events inherent in so much film.

In many schools of thought, drawing has moved beyond graphite, charcoal, pastel, etc. on paper, in the wider tradi-tion of art, having been a means to a different end, whether painting or sculpture, to a wider terminology of ‘mark-making.’ So theoretically speaking, oil on canvas, carvings in stone, the trail blazing efforts of Richard Long, the spatial interventions on existing architecture in coloured tape of Monika Grzymala, and the myriad of chemical processes that capture the seen and unseen aspects of the light spectrum onto photosensi-tive materials, all in making their respective marks, could be considered drawing. This in no way dilutes drawing as a medium, but rather expands its boundaries, even at one point, making it a legitimate expression in itself under previ-ously parochial standards of art. Where we are no longer bound to pencils, charcoal and ink in drawing, perhaps even the moving picture camera need only be one of many tools and means of creating film.

If one were to apply this degree of open-mindedness to film (currently used primarily in terms of the filmic—of or relating to film), that which fulfils the expectations of film or creates the filmic environment can, therefore, be film. It needn’t be the flat equivalent of kinetic art, but could rather encompass theatrical interventions entwining their own narratives into those inherent in a public space, still imagery in photography, drawing, print, or “sequential art” (practically storyboards in themselves) that references aforementioned before and after

situations, or even the filmic installations and soundscapes of David Lynch as seen/heard in his 2007 exhibition, The Air Is On Fire, at Foundation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris. Rather than looking backward to the oft-obsolete traditions of a medium in misnomer, it is time to expound upon its inherent expectations and embrace the wider conceptual potential of the possibilities of the New Film.

Adam Fine

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Marcel Dzama ‘Welcome to the land of the bat’, 2008Diorama: wood, glazed ceramic sculptures, metal, fabricOuter dimensions: 33 x 28 x 40 inches83.8 x 71.1 x 101.6 cm

Courtesy: David Zwirner, New York

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Raymond Pettibon : No Title (At the window) 2005 / pen, ink, gouache and acrylic on paper23 7/8 x 18 inches (60.6 x 45.7 cm)

Courtesy: Regen Projects, Los Angeles © Raymond Pettibon.

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Christo’s Last Stand?

22 of his projects have been realized; 37 have not. In 1976, he created a 24.5-mile fence in California; but was then fined $10,000. He filled Central Park with 7,503 saffron gates; yet that was after 26-years of planning. His work has been de-bated and voted on by the Bundestag; it has caused political quarrels in Paris; and his current project has already cost over $8 million, and nothing has even been erected. If Christo Ja-vacheff , 75, at all resembled Van Gogh, he would have taken his scissors to work on the other ear by now, and further. Of course, whereas the deceased Dutchman despaired at a lack of recognition, the Americanized-Bulgarian is a magnet for bickering. Because the work is so noticeable, Christo’s pro-jects have needed approval from land owners, politicians, and the local populace. His most recent endeavor, ‘Over the River’ - a plan to drape 5.9 miles of fabric panels over the Arkansas River in Colorado - has already spawned fervent local opposi-tion, including an anti-Christo group entitled, ‘Rags Over the Arkansas River (ROAR).’ His response to all the fuss? ‘Imagine how many artists would like to have the gratification of their work being discussed,’ Christo enthuses, ‘before it even physi-cally exists?’

And ‘Over the River’ is definitely being discussed. Currently it’s under review by the Federal Bureau for Land Management (BLM). The agency has already released a draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) listing possible short- and long-term conse-quences of the project on wildlife, the landscape, and the local population. In August and September of last year, they opened their examination to the public, allowing people to comment on whether they were for or against Christo’s proposal. All parties now await the final EIS statement, which has no specific date but is expected around May. That docu-ment will either choose an appropriate means for realizing the project, or it could simply deny it completely.

Christo isn’t about to twiddle his thumbs in anticipation. In his Soho studio in late Octo-ber, when I ask him whether this is now a brief lull in matters, he bellows that ‘there is never a waiting period.’ He will be in constant contact with the Bureau to respond to its ongoing questions. For now, Christo is a mitigator as well as an artist. And, just over one year on since the death of his life-time collaborator and wife, Jeanne-Claude, that can be difficult. She was the archetypal persuader; a pur-veyor of both the soft and hard ap-proach. With the former, she attended rodeos and milked cows during their 1976 project ‘Running Fence.’ And with the latter, she went to loggerheads with Mayor Jacques Chirac in the run up to the wrapping of the Pont Neuf in 1985. While Christo now works alone, if it goes ahead, ‘Over the River’ will still bear the name ‘Christo and Jeanne-Claude.’For a man whose vast works have pitted him against not only Chirac but German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the entire Bundestag, Christo is a tiny man with an unassuming aura. His combination of wiry, out-of-control hair; shirt tucked into jeans that barely reach his ankles; and generic sneakers, results in a Larry David-esque appearance. And just like his doppelgäng-er character, Christo mixes immense genius in his field with a charming sense of innocence, compounded by his broken English.

I keep badgering Christo about whether he enjoys the debate his work conjures, seeing as it gives it a dynamic and a

vibrancy that eludes other artists. While he doesn’t like the delay, he does concede that this period is crucial to the end result. ‘Our projects are dis-cussed for year and years, by millions of people sometimes, about how awful it will be, about how beautiful it will be,’ he explains. ‘That builds expectation and dynamics.’ It is telling, however, that while Christo still shows enthusiasm, during our conversation his frail hands frequently remove his thin black spectacles and rub his craggy eye sockets. As he reminds me, still referring to Jeanne-Claude as if she were beside him, ‘We’re 75 years old, and we’re not very young.’

After all these years, it would be ideal for it to all be a lot sim-pler. ‘Really, I would like to have it as easy as possible. Don’t tell me I enjoy this! I am not a masochist, I would love to have it so simple!’ he adamantly maintains. ‘It would be less expen-sive, too,’ he adds. ‘I mean, recently, the bills were $500,000 a month, to pay all the people working for us.’ But Christo still seeks a challenge because he doesn’t like to stick to what he knows. ‘We know how to do ‘Surrounded Islands;’ we know how to do ‘Running Fence;’ we would be cheating ourselves to do them again.’ For Christo, the delays are all part of his great unknown ‘expedition.’

No project of Christo’s is easy. As he says: ‘everything in the world is owned by some-body.’ ‘The Gates’ in New York was rejected once, long before Mayor Bloomberg allowed it to go ahead. Jacques Chirac almost rejected the wrapping of the ‘Pont Neuf’ at the last minute. ‘I never want to go through something like that again,’ says Christo. ‘That was the worst.’ This time, he has secured key political support. In June 2009, he gained the support of both Senators and all five Congress-man from Colorado. They all cited the projected $200 million expected to flow into the Colorado economy due to Over the River.

But for others, the only thing flowing in with Christo’s piece is severe disruption. I spoke to Dan Ainsworth, president of the opposing group ROAR. From his home in Cañon City, he sends out posters, bumper stickers and t-shirts with the slogan ‘Say No to Christo.’ ‘The people who are in favor of this don’t have to live with it,’ Ainsworth frustratingly tells me. ‘They can stop by, spend two hours viewing it, and then they’re gone. But for the people who live and work here, we have to live with the construction and de-construction of the site for two to three years.’ That lengthy construction and dismantling period will, Ainsworth argues, cause immense congestion as heavy equip-ment populates the US50 highway.

He has met Christo on numerous occasions; ‘we’re on first name terms.’ I ask what he says to Christo when they’re face to face. ‘I ask him, ‘why here?’ And he comes out with this diatribe of nonsense: about bringing culture to the area and all this stuff about his ‘artistic vision.’ Well, we don’t criticize his art or make comment. We don’t say it’s good or bad art. it’s just not the proper venue.’

Christo is certainly not going to back down or move elsewhere: he and Jeanne-Claude chose this stretch of river specifically. As he explains, all their projects begin either as ‘one, we have an idea and we try to implement it; or two, we have the site and the project is designed for the site.’ While lobbying the Bundestag between 1992 and 1994, Christo and Jeanne-Claude used the summer vacations to venture into the Ameri-can West to compile a shortlist of possible rivers. They ended up with six in all: two were in Idaho; one in Wyoming; two in Colorado; and a section of the Rio Grande in New Mexico. Why this stretch of the Arkansas? Despite claims by opponents that he will disrupt the area’s solitary, Christo argues that he chose the river because of its history of human interfer-ence: the blowing up of the banks to make way for the Union Pacific

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Kiran Moodley

Railroad and the river’s destination as a rafting hot spot.

While the debate continues, supporters like Adam Lerner, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, say that the more the issue is discussed, the better. He says that the project has created a ‘robust conversation:’ the fact that Christo can meet with opponents like Ainsworth and debate reasonably is cause for comfort. ‘Christo didn’t fully appreci-ate the genius of his projects when he started,’ Lerner tells me on the phone. ‘When he first started out, we were not a country divided in terms of red or blue states. He couldn’t have anticipated that art is now the last neutral media through which people can come together.’

Christo does understand the draw of his work and why, if it goes ahead, thousands are expected to visit Over the River. ‘Today we are bombarded with repetition, just all the same things,’ he says, his English losing its structure as his enthu-siasm grows. ‘Our work exists once in a life time. The project cannot be substituted. The project will be there 14 unforgetta-ble days. We are unique human beings, and we like to experi-ence something where we can say, ‘I saw it; it happened.’If it does happen (if approved, it is scheduled for 2014), it will be a triumph tainted only by the absence of Jeanne-Claude to enjoy the piece with Christo. ‘Every piece is like our child, our baby,’ he explains. ‘We always like to spend all two weeks of each project with the piece. I remember, we walked along Running Fence so many times; the early morning with the fog, the late afternoon.’ I ask Christo what he will do this time, and his usual chirpiness is crushed; his broken English shatters. ‘It will be very difficult. There are many things I need to over-come. There are many, many things, but when we ever have a problem, we always think what Jeanne-Claude would say. She is always missing; terribly missing.’

For now, every detail of Over the River will be poured over by the BLM. Lerner, of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, says that its chances are 50-50. What does Christo think? Without hesitating, he declares with conviction: ‘Oh, I am very confident, all the time! Of course! Look: after spending $8 mil-lion, I should be!’

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Christo and Jeanne-Claude: / the Gates / Central Park New YorkCity, 1995photo: Wolfgand Volz Copyright: Christo and Jeanne-Claude 2005

- 2005

Christo and Jeanne-Claude: / Le Point Neuf Empaquete / 1975-1985photo: Wolfgand Volz Copyright: Christo 1985

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Christo: Over the River, Project for Arkansas River, State of ColoradoCollage 2007 43,2 x 55,9 cm (17 x 22) pencil, enamel paint, wax crayon photograph by Wolfgang Volz, aerial photograph with topographic elevation, fabric sample and tape.Photo: Andre GrossmannCopyright: Christo 2007

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Emma Cummins

ART, ANTA-GONISM AND RELATIONAL AESTHETICS: A FORCED KIND OF FRIVOLITY

Karl Marx’s infamous assertion that human alienation is a sys-temic result of Capitalist society, is increasingly felt in today’s urban environments. Since the end of the second world war, our towns and cities have been rapidly transformed by the endless pursuit of globalisation. Less defined by human col-lectives and cultural difference, today’s city is a thriving centre of industry and consumerism. No longer the touchstone of a democratic society; the sensation of belonging has become novel, and even nostalgic – a sought after product in places defined by their ability to import and export people and goods. The progressive ideals of the modern metropolis - with all their utopian promise - have in many ways failed to consider the emotional life of the individual. Lost by the way side of breath-taking advancements in transport, trade and technol-ogy, he lives in a world which eschews him; A world where people are born in the clinic and die in hos-pital, where transit points and temporary abodes are proliferat-ing under luxurious or inhuman conditions...where a dense net-work of means of transport which are also inhabited spaces is developing; where the habitué of supermarkets, slot machines and credit cards communicates wordlessly, through gestures, with an abstract, unmediated commerce; a world thus surren-dered to solitary individuality, to the fleeting, the temporary and ephemeral.

Vividly described by writers such as Marc Augé (above), Baudrillard and J.G.Ballard the ‘solitary individuality’ of our networked society has scarred the foundations of the hu-man psyche. An innate desire for meaningful, communal experience – no longer supplied by mainstream society – has therefore been increasingly addressed by artists, theorists and creative practitioners. Over the last forty years, a rise in participatory art,owes much to the legacy of Roland Barthes. His now infamous text ‘The Death of the Author’ has had a deep-seated impact on literature and visual arts practices. Writing in 1968, Barthes exclaimed that ‘a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination’ and should therefore be more concerned with an awareness of the reader. As an active participant in the production of meaning, the reader (or viewer) interacts with a text which is ‘not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.’ To Barthes, ‘the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture’ and not merely the result of an isolated act of literary or artistic creation – “the epitome and culmination of capitalist ideology.’Increasingly focused on the type of relations his or her work will create, today’s artists conceive social spaces, meetings, encounters, games; all kinds of events and collaborations which take as their ‘theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space.’ The ‘open’ scheme of the participatory art work aims to ad-dress the alienating effects of Capitalist society by creating short-term micro-communities and new models of sociability. Taking the form of routinised actions – ‘dancing samba (Hélio Oiticia) or funk (Adrian Piper); drinking beer (Tom Marioni); dis-cussing philosophy (Ian Wilson) or politics (Joseph Beuys)...’ – these works minimise the distinction between the author/artist and audience by encouraging social collaboration in any number of constructed artistic contexts. Although usually ameliorative in intention it must be acknowl-edged that these interactive ‘hands-on utopias’ necessarily contain an immanent hint of despair. No matter how liberating, inspiring or enjoyable the experience of an interactive art work might be; their conception attends to a lack of significance in social relations.

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Emma CumminsAs Hal Foster suggests, ‘perhaps discursivity and sociability are in the foreground of art today because they are scarce elsewhere...’ It follows that the risk with such work is that art becomes ‘a pale, part-time substitute’ for more traditional mod-els of sociability. There is, therefore, a friction between what participatory art practices aim to do, and the reasons they exist in the first place. Rather than actively address the deep-seated problems of Capitalist society, hopes for revolutionary art have given way to compensatory micro-topias. In my opinion, this aspect exposes a friction, or antagonism, which is fundamentally present in all works of interactive art. With this in mind, the text that follows offers an introduction to what I will describe as the inherently antagonistic nature of interactive art and audience partcipation. According to Nicolas Bourriaud ‘any stance that is ‘directly’ critical of society is futile...not to say regressive’. So what hap-pens when art compensates for the futility of revolutionary, political change? What happens when the subjective power of the State is not challenged, but re-modelled into transitory sets, stage managed by artists? What does the desire for ‘an inter-human commerce’ say about life under a thriving democracy?

ALWAYS ANTAGONISTIC – PARTICIPATION AND RELATION-AL AESTHETICS

If taken seriously, art offers alternatives. New ways of engag-ing and living. Today, following Nicolas Bourriaud’s hugely in-fluential collection of essays, the term relational aesthetics can be used to describe art which sees the field of human relations as a workable, artistic medium. By fusing, subverting, and fundamentally questioning everyday social protocol, artists such as Rirkrit Tiravanija, Liam Gillick and Angela Bulloch establish art events, situations and performances which put the viewer centre stage. In contrast to its traditional associations with reflection, con-templation and detached observation – present day art often engages directly with its audience through productive, partici-patory strategies.

Finding roots in 60s Fluxus Happenings and the work of the Situationist International, relational aesthetics applies to any period of time that is lived through where audience members interact with each other in a uniquely, prescribed context. By offering opportunities to live differently in the short-term, Bourriaud explains that, ‘contemporary art is really pursuing a political project when it attempts to move into the relational space by problematizing it’.Bourriaud’s text has been subject to widespread attention and close, critical scrutiny since it was first published in French in 1998. One of the most notorious critiques, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’, put forward by the critic Claire Bishop in 2004 forms a point of departure for my argument that there is a tension inherent in participatory art practices. Bishop has two main qualms about the concepts put foward in Relational Aesthetics. Firstly, she argues that Bourriaud fails to address the details and idiosyncrasies of individual artists’ work by instead focusing on the type of work created. She says, ‘for example, what Tiravanija cooks, how and for whom, are less important to Bourriaud than the fact that he gives away the results of his cooking for free.’ In readings of works such as Untitled (Still) (1992) at 303 Gallery, New York – one of many occasions that the artist has cooked for his audience – Bishop laments an uncomplicated rhetoric of conviviality. Asserting that Bourriaud’s user-friendly utopias ‘rest too comfortably within an ideal of subjectivity as a whole and community as immanent togetherness’. ; she goes on to explain her second qualm – that Relational Aesthetics does not address the antagonism that necessarily exists in a democratic society. For Bourriaud, all relations that permit ‘dialogue’ are automati-cally assumed to be democratic and therefore good’. The following section of this text will focus specifically on Bishop’s appropriation of the word ‘antagonism’ and in turn her use of the term relational antagonism. There are many problems with Bishop’s argument which can-not fully be addressed here.

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However, by highlighting some of the specific theoretical in consistencies in her text and (like she has done in response to Relational Aesthetics) supporting my argument with the work of a specific artist; my thoughts will provide a somewhat ambiguous conflation of Bourriaud’s and Bishop’s respective texts. This process will, I hope, expose the problems of a too literal acceptance of theory, as well as offering an alternative, more productive, paradigm of the latent antagonism which underlies relational practices.As John Rajchman explains; theory is not a metadiscipline that supplies one ready-made concepts for the critical analysis or formal appraisal of what we already know and see...the proposition that theory is practice must be understood in an experimental rather than a reductive way.By nitpicking Bourriaud’s, at times ludic, explanation of works by artists like Liam Gillick and Tiravanija, Bishop has too liter-ally interpreted the premise of Relational Aesthetics. Taking her lead from Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, she explains that by nature, a democratic sphere contain cracks, conflicts and antagonisms – an tagonisms which aren’t ad-dressed by Bourriaud’s artists. Tirvavanija is a case in point, as the events he arranges often ‘produce[s] a community whose members identify with each other’ – namely through their affinity with the contemporary art world. Rather than actively tackling society’s problematic relationship with conviviality, ‘Tiravanija’s microtopia gives up on the idea of transformation in public culture and reduces its scope to the pleasures of a private group who identify with one another as gallery-goers.’ The problem with Bishop’s response is that it is ‘based on the assumption that dialogue is in and of itself democratic’ which, according to Liam Gillick constitutes a ‘superficial reading of the work’. My own reservations about Bishop’s application of the term ‘antagonism’ extend from this assumption and, subsequently propound a less rigid alternative. In my opinion, by supporting her argument with artworks such as Santiago Sierra’s 160cm Line Tattooed on Four People (2000) - works which are explicitly antagonistic, and outwardly political – Bishop fails to account for the fact that works of relational art are implicitly political, and implicitly antagonistic. This argument links back to my earlier assertion that there is ‘a friction between what participatory art practices aim to do, and the reasons they exist in the first place’. Bourriaud’s vivid descriptions of how current artistic praxis provide ‘a rich loam for social experiments..a space partly protected from the uniformity of behavioural patterns’ eschews the need for an outwardly political stance. A ‘friction’ persists in this con-text, because the very idea of ‘microtopias’ or ‘user-friendly’, ephemeral communities, admits an elemental awareness of the oppressive tendencies of Capitalism. These works of rela-tional aesthetics exist because we feel alienated from our own society. A forced frivolity ensues (however implicit) whereby utopian relational experiences provide short-term solutions to more deep-seated, structural problems.

CHAOSMOSIS - BOURRIAUD AND GUATTARI

When Bishop explains that the model of subjectivity that un-derpins the practice of artists like Santiago Sierra and Thomas Hirschhorn (and not the artists presented by Bourriaud), ‘is not the fictitious whole subject of harmonious community, but a divided subject of partial identifications’ she opens a veritable, theoretical minefield. Bishop fails to consider (or even mention) Bourriaud’s thor-ough analysis of the writings of Félix Guattari; most notably his last published work chaosmosis: an ethico-aesthetic paradigm (1992). The mere citation of this work, even regardless of the detailed interpretation that Bourriaud offers, discredits her claim that Relational Aesthetics requires a ‘unified subject’. Paraphrasing Guattari, he states ‘[t]here is nothing less natural than subjectivity... What matters is our capacity to create new arrangements and agencies within the system of collective facilities form by the ideologies and categories of thought, a creation that shows many similarities with artistic activity’. He goes in to great detail, explaining that subjectivity offers ways of deciphering (and challenging) the conception of the ‘entirety of the capitalist system’. The so-called production of subjectivity, especially to a Guattari reader like Bourriaud, distorts the traditional, naturalised distinctions provided by the state. This cerebral process indicates a more nuanced form of political participation; a way of thinking and living ‘with differ-ence’.

NOT ABOVE OR BELOW, BUT WITHIN

Bishop’s argument is supported by the introduction of two artists - Santiago Sierra and Thomas Hirschorn – whose work is explicitly ‘antagonistic’ in approach. She explains that because ‘the relations produced by their performances and installations are marked by sensations of unease and discom-fort rather than belonging, their work acknowledges the impossibility of a ‘micro-topia’ and instead sustains a tension among viewers, participants and context.’ Whilst the scope of this essay restricts me from providing a more thorough description of these artists’ work, it’s important to mention that, according to Bishop, both artists ‘reassert the autonomy of art from life’ by creating or exposing tensions amongst people from different socio-economic backgrounds. Hirschhorn is well known for making ad hoc monuments to famous philosophers such as Giles Deleuze and Georges Bataille. Often deliberately situated in contexts not normally associated with contemporary art – like an impoverished suburban community, miles from the official site of Documenta XI in Kassel – Hirschhorn’s work is described as exposing ‘the kernel of impossible resolution on which antagonism de-pends...’ Similarly, according to Bishop, Sierra epitomises the con-cept of relational antagonism by providing a ‘tougher, more disruptive approach to ‘relations’. Now an infamous member of the international contemporary art scene, Sierra is known for making extreme, socio-political artworks; the titles of which are disconcertingly self-explanatory - 160cm Line Tattooed on Four People (2000), A Person Paid for 360 Continuous Working Hours (2000), and Ten People Paid to Masturbate (2000).

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It goes without saying that my own interpretation of the con-cept of relational antagonism owes much to both Bishop and Bourriaud. After much contemplation, I have found Bishop’s text to be much more productive when considered as an extension of Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics. Bishop’s mud-dled re-modelling of Bourriaud’s largely optimistic collection of texts exposes more than just her own personal misgivings. As I have explained, the problem with participatory art practices is that they are inherently antagonistic. To attempt to embrace their effects in a way which reworks the subjects defined by ‘the work of specialized corporate bodies’, they must be perceived as a workable part of the everyday order. Otherwise put, we must try to appreciate their possibilities for change from within. The ethical and aesthetical modes of everyday, communal exchange are not, as Micheal Hirsch explains ‘means to some political ends. These modes are changes in the meaning of the relations of singular beings to one another, and to things, and not changes in the existing state of things and social relations themselves’. When Bishop locates Hirschhorn and Sierra’s work in the con-text of ‘autonomous’ art practices – defined by their separa-tion from empirical reality; she revokes the idea of immanence which is absolutely central to Relational Aesthetics. Inspired by philosophers such as Guattari and Deleuze, Bourriaud under-stands that meaning comes from the middle. For art to function productively in an increasingly globalised world, fraught with the effects of systemic alienation; it must not withdraw from the world it considers. As Guattari explains, ‘the future of contem-porary subjectivity is not to live indefinitely under the regime of self-withdrawal, of mass-mediatic infantilization, of ignorance of difference and alterity...It’s modes of subjectivization will get our of their homogentic ‘entrapment’ only if creative objectives appear within their reach’. Not above, or below but within, art’s central positioning, granted by Bourriaud, allows for a wilful, ontological transformation – something Bishop’s overcooked analysis entirely neglects.

YOU’RE SO NOT WORTH IT

Whilst risking an oversimplified conflation of conflicting theoretical positions; I feel that Bourriaud’s hopeful portrayal of the possibilities of a self-made subjectivity, would survive Bishop’s critical scrutiny if applied to more openly ‘antagonis-tic’, or ‘disruptive’ artworks. Whilst I have argued that all works that could be considered in the realm of relational aesthetics are in inherently antagonistic, as they exist to compensate for the effects of social alienation; my research has led me to a piece which in some ways addresses the latent antagonism I speak of. With this proposition in mind; I will conclude this investigation of the difficult nexus between art and human rela-tions, by way of an example. For last year’s Wunderbar Festival in Newcastle upon Tyne Kate Stobbart invited people round for dinner. Conceived in the context of the exhibition Tours of People’s Homes, curated by Joshua Sofaer, You’re So Not Worth It was performed on four separate occasions during the festival. Originally unaware of the artist’s intentions, a motley collection of individuals be-came imbricated in a series of dialogic performances, where their hopes, insecurities and psychological limits were playfully tested. After the usual good-humoured introductions, visitors sat down to eat at a table prepared with customised crockery. As each meal was consumed, a thin line of text, emerging around or underneath the food, revealed statements such as ‘I’m really glad you could come’, ‘Hopefully you won’t be staying long’, ‘It’s great to see you’ or ‘What the hell?’. Allocated by the art-ist, Stobbart’s puckish use of text destabilised the otherwise convivial group dynamic. Although the text had been digitally printed in advance, there were hundreds of statements to chose from; a collection of compliments, insults and flirtata-tions which were tactically dished out.

What are we supposed to say? What do we want to say? What do we say? And why? By mixing in authentic statements about herself such as, ‘I just want to be loved’ or ‘I wish I had breasts like yours’ an ethical and aesthetical ambiguity left both artist and audience emotionally vulnerable. By reading the reactions of individual people, the statements became increasingly contrived and personal – ‘I like men with lots of hair’ to a bald stranger, or ‘I like your quiet manner’ to a particularly shy guest. Unlike Bourriaud’s artists according to Bishop, Stobbart doesn’t presume that ‘all relations that permit ‘dialogue’ are automatically assumed to be democratic and therefore good’. She exposes the internal and external friction between what we should and shouldn’t say; what we think and what we really think. Conflating the convivial with the antagonistic, Stobbart (who didn’t eat with her guests) plays with notions of social and conversational conformity. By extension, You’re So Not Worth It forms an interesting tapestry of the arguments presented by Bishop and Bourriaud’s texts. Embroiled in the field of human relations, the work offers ‘a rich loam for social experiments...a space partly protected from the uniformity of behavioural pat-terns.’ It ‘prompts us to envisage the relations between space and time in a different way’ and it problematises ‘democratic’ social relations by exposing and disrupting them. Stobbart exposes the surface tension of life in a democratic society. During my own experience of You’re So Not Worth It, her guests were restrained and polite. Her increasingly per-sonal accusations were not verbally contended, yet a sense of visceral anxiety ensued. This paradoxical sensation was somewhat productive; it exposed both our desire for genuine human interaction and our propensity for social or ‘political correctness’. Testing the limits of what constitutes a meaning-ful, communicative experience, Stobbart treated her guests to sumptuous food, wine and deserts, whilst being deliberately aloof and unsociable. Inveigled by the warmth of a family home, we squirmed in the confusingly, antagonistic atmos-phere, yet maintained an appearance of genial conviviality - a ‘veneer of consensus’ as described by Erving Goffman. In ‘Introduction to the presentation of the self in everday life’, Goffman explains, ‘I do not mean...the kind of consensus that arises when each individual present candidly expresses what he really feels and honestly agrees with the expressed feelings of the others present. This kind of harmony is an optimistic ideal and in any case not necessary for the smooth working of society. Rather, each participant is expected to suppress his immediate heart-felt feelings, conveying a view of the situation which he feels the others will be able to find at least temporarily acceptable’. Goffman is refering to the presentation of self in general, however, when read in relation to participatory art practices, I feel this comment goes some way to resolving the seem-ingly irresolvable tensions between Bishop’s ‘antagonism’ and Bourriaud’s desire for ‘conviviality’. These concepts are more malleable, less exclusive than their authors would like to admit. If we believe in producing our own conglomerate subjectivi-ties, as theorised by Bourriaud and Guattari; art can provide a platform for testing the limits of available distinctions. Whether ameliorative or antagonistic in intention, a relational artwork is never complete – it ruptures the fabric of convention, and blurs the lines of art, conformity, and social acceptability. As Guattari explains, art can move in one of two ways;It can move in a direction parallel to uniformitization, or play the role of an operator in the bifurcation of subjectivity...This is the dilemma every artist has to confront: ‘to go with the flow’, as advocated , for example by the Transavantgarde and the apostles of postmodernism, or to work for the renewal of aesthetic practices relayed by other innovative segments of the Socius, at the risk of encountering incomprehension and of being isolated by the majority of people.

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Transforming abandoned and vacant architecture is a preoc-cupation for many contemporary art festivals and biennials, yet there is often a consistent jar between the buildings them-selves as sites of interest through the exclusive access an ex-hibition allows and the new commissions installed inside them. Two Liverpool based, French artists were invited to produce new work in response to a decommissioned airport terminal at Cork International Airport as part of Terminal Convention, an exhibition and symposium that took place in the disused space in March 2011.

Both the artists’ projects were embedded in the particularities of the old terminal building and were held together with ambi-tion and a fatalistic approach to risk taking with in their pro-cess. While Pradeau focused on the structure of the building Guyot’s work, Be Amish (2011) responded to the community of Cork, whose memories and experiences of the airport were intrinsic to its ongoing value as a site of interest and intrigue despite being closed for 5 years. The work reflects the many economic changes and challenges the region has undergone recently. Guyot reinvented what had been the bar in the airport departure lounge, a space that still retained an airport bar ambience despite being stripped of it’s furniture and features. She transformed the site into a DIY brewery, where she created her own beer, Be Amish. With a strong smell of hops and a sense mischievous drive the work brings into question notions of authenticity and belonging. The goal of the project was to reproduce the original Beamish Stout that had been brewed in Cork for over 200 years until March 2009 when the Beamish and Crawford Brewery was sold to Heineken, who moved production and left 120 unem-ployed. Guyot’s interest in the sale stems from the linguistic intrigue of an old Beamish slogan, ‘Beamish Be Irish’. She sought to question the nature of belonging and how the peo-ple of Cork identified with their city. The title of the new beer became Be Amish, a neat pun on the cultural ownership and identity of the beer and on one of the central Amish beliefs, ‘do not be conformed to this world.’ In order to recreate the original Beamish, Guyot tapped into the expertise of former workers, creating a loose network of informers who provided her with the formula and ingredients to brew the perfect Beamish. The pro-ject acted as a poetic gesture of re-appropriation, returning the original beer to those who had produced it for so many years. In contrast Frédéric Pradeau’s contribution to the disused terminal was rooted in the physical architecture of the building. Under Pressure (2011) was a quasi-scientific intervention in the environment of the terminal, bold in appearance but subtle in effect. With a strong industrial aesthetic Pradeau trans-formed the exterior of the building with umbilical like ducts that produced a steady stream of cold air from outside the building into the departure lounge. His goal was to raise the air pres-sure in the main terminal building to a perceptible level. Thechange in pressure would be noticeable only when moving

from one contained space to another through the terminal’s doors. The industrial scale of the intervention stood out, yet it yielded virtual imperceptible differences within the terminal space. It acted as a rigorous and idiosyncratic engagement with our understanding and reliance on the knowledge of air pressure that enables human flight.

Both works admirably sync with the building, demonstrating the nuance required to produce coherent work for a site with such particularities as the disused terminal. It is a building fraught with differing meanings and associations, histories and memories. In its redundancy, it stands as a monument for the economic progress of the region, but as a decommissioned space, a space stripped of its symbolic levels of control, it is hollow. Pradeau and Guyot have neatly shown the latent poten-tial of this kind of artistic site specific commissioning to bring new understandings of our relationships with ‘non-places’ and the people that inhabit them that we encounter on a daily a basis.

Peter Merrington

FrEdEric Pradeau & Diane Guyot at Terminal Convention

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TCMHM_Timelapse ExternalMike Hannon Media

Be AmishDiane Guyot

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Be AmishDiane Guyot

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Frederic Pradeau Mike Hannon Media

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A conversation with Andrea Dojmi

by Gabriella Arrigoni

We have a war. We have a catastrophe. We have accelera-tion. We have rebellion. We have recession, an energy crisis and over-population. A silent collective breathing all over the planet seem to suggest we now have the perfect setting for an escatological play on human civilisation. In Ely, the last film by Italian artist Andrea Dojmi, all this has probably already happened. Humanity, though, is still un-able to judge its role in the universe.

Ely, is the end of the space era. What exactly happened during the last mission ever is unclear, but it seems that something irretrievable is affecting Earth. Thinking about the most recent events all over the world somebody would perhaps perceive an apocalyptic feeling. Is the idea of the ‘end’, in Ely, associated with some kind of judgment, a rev-elation about our destiny? What does the word ‘salvation’ suggest to you? Where does your fascination for science-fiction and space adventures come from? Does it work as a metaphor, or are there other values more important than that?

The “end” in ELY is presented through the consciousness of Alan, probably the last astronaut back to the planet earth. I would talk more about the “feeling of the end” rather than its “idea”. Just back back from a long space mission, Alan has re-turned to a deserted world and finds himself lost, alone, finally at home, but isolated, actually a million miles away from home. Both the earth and the space program have been abandoned, it is the end of an era. Something big happened and the planet looks like in those sci-fi movies from my childhood-days, where I could not see cosmic darkness and blue skies, but only arid lands, radioactive light and humans adapted, mutated, walk-ing along in long lines, slowly. A natural catastrophe? A nu-clear crash? Now we can only see a young man in his orange suit and hear the words blowing his mind. With ELY I wanted to remember earth as I would remember it just now if something apocalyptic occurred, a few images from a far life, a family-day-trip to the astronomical observatory in L.A., a woman talking with no voice, a mother, a son, the video messages sent to the space-lab, far voices of kids playing and birds singing, a day full of sunlight. Since Alan is back and alive, it will not be the end of all, but the beginning of a new era. ELY talks about the first new moments, just like after a long trip we can feel tired, peaceful, lost and alone, so Alan is sitting on his bed, now without ranks, badges, space missions and crowds waiting for. The next step could talk about the beginning of this new era, but right now it is still not time for salvation.

What about the word “salvation”? Salvation from humans abusing technology? Or from a futuristic society that has degraded into a repressive state? And what about the human being? How many people are still alive on the planet? At this time I’ll not talk about salvation, I’ve simply been writing for one year just one story, growing up with my characters, waiting for them. At this time “salvation” is what I mean for “real vision”, the truth behind the reality. At the moment I find it is enough for me.I like to think that everything started when I was a child looking at an illustration by Robert McCall. Most of science-fiction lov-ers have grown up with McCall’s artwork without even know-ing the artist. A huge space-ship in the blackness of space, millions of people could live there, maybe a whole nation. At that time I used to ask myself the reason why those people could not live on earth anymore and the only answer was an escape caused by over-population. Then I asked myself how it could be living in a giant spaceship and I imagined every-thing should be under control, customs, rules, relationships, production and distribution. At last, the feeling I had was a sort of nostalgia for the planet left, that original life and all the memories before leaving earth. I had to come back to my real life in a little while, recalled by my teacher: that illustration was the cover of one of my first notebooks at school. If we can try to see the future it is just because most of the events already happened in our human history. After all I’ve never been so interested in metaphors. I’ve always been attracted by images and events where images and events hide a hidden truth.

Education, the passages from childhood to adolescence, the social dynamics of play and learning are at the core of your poetics. What was your education like? Is there any autobiographical element in your research?

I used autobiographical elements as elements to study, a physical model to learn and understand. Since the beginning, my aim was about finding common rules from this model. The first act was about coming back in my life, taking back precious pieces, understanding their “chemical structure”; everything was in their unique “feeling”, the result of the act of seeing, the original, free, wild act of seeing. Innocence as a form of truth where “innocence” means truth. Truth seems to be caught in the deepest part of simple messages, like our vision in the first technological age. Of course there are many autobiographical elements in my stories: I used them as a starting point, they worked for me as an entry-door and once I was in, it has been like moving in a parallel space-world, where you already live in a story, a film, a life. It is true, the passages from childhood to adolescence, dynamics of learning and play moves an important role in my poetics. The main focus of my research is on tension between boys and the former educational system, youth and com-munity, organisation and functional structures, but it doesn’t concern my personal education or an autobiographical background. Most of time I believed to remember events that I actually never lived in person. It is a such scary and incredible feeling, I guess it depends by this “space apart” created by my inner mind.

Some locate the origin of compulsory education in the nineteenth century during the conflicts between European great powers, in order, basically, to create better soldiers. Education was then established as a way to produce ‘nor-mal’ individuals who accept rules and hierarchies. Besides learning how to obey (or dictate) orders though, education can be seen also as a system of potential liberation. What

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do you think about that?Yes, it is about that. Good soldiers, “normal” individuals, the education as system of potential liberation, where “liberation” could work for the most ambiguous needs.I always gave a particular attention to the inner organisa-tion of some minor “micro-societies” with their own belief and autonomous systems, attracted by the visual study of some clean perfection where everything moves in a delicate bal-ance between a good state of nature and a repressive control system. Taken a model, a structure, a system, we can see and show new models, structures and systems just erasing rules to reshape them, their spaces and meanings, finding a new hidden dimension. Changing a daily situation or a known system drives me to find an unknown experimental-fictional-dimension, the emotional result of collective experiences from the adolescences that we often simply call “time past”.

Your films look like home movies or documentaries, with fragmentary narrative and granular aesthetics. Which is your relationship with narrative? Why did you choose the format of (denied) documentary as the best one to express your ideas?

I’m a kid of 1973. I grew up watching documentaries concern-ing our world, nature, geography and technology. Documenta-ries were pretty different from the ones we have today, we were at the end of an era and at the beginning of a new tech-digital time. Granular aesthetics come from these film production, when the quality of picture and soundtrack wasn’t perfect and I always felt that in their faulty look it was the inner meaning itself. A documentary for me is the result of a direct vision of reality. A documentary set is most times a real set and I’m involved in the real life, the best “fiction” ever.Fragmentary narrative comes from all films I saw since young-er. I’ve been always attracted by what cinema could not really understand as so precious, everything so far from the narrative often gave to me the most special meaning to a film. The best way to do a movie it is about giving the images, the sounds and the words and make people build it themselves. The best way to create a personal unique experience it is in a new film-narrative, where we can feel and imagine our own movie watching a movie, where we can create completely new images and whole sequences of images in our mind, moving from someone else imaginary.

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“The distance to the sun” Film, 28’. Videostill. Directed and edited by Andrea Dojmi / music by Flushing Device Photo courtesy Andrea Dojmi © 2008

“Alan Candy Prayer” Sculpture. Resin and marble. Dimensions cm 95 x 54 x 33 (Red resin sculpture), cm 40 x 30 (marble sculpture).Photo courtesy Andrea Dojmi © 2008

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“NO PLACE LIKE HOME (2)” Video-Installation. PVC floor for bask playground, Eternit, polyurethane painting, stereo monitors, 4’ video autoloop,wirenet, lightspots, metal structure, plexiglass. Ambiental dimensions meters 10 x 10 x 8.Video direction and editing: Andrea Dojmi. Photo courtesy Andrea Dojmi © 2007

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