Florian Germann
migros museum für gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Switzerland
Only a privileged few people witnessed Florian Germann take a seat on the brass plate of his rudimentary vehicle, mounted on a 20-metre-long rail running through the migros museum’s gallery, dressed in the uniform of the Boy Scouts of America with his rear-end exposed after some trouser customization. He started the vehicle’s engine, the plate travelled along the rail, and must have deposited artist and machine on the ground at the far end, as the machine was not equipped with a brake. En route, as the oxidized surface of the machine’s seat demonstrates, he deposited sweat and urine, which can be seen with the vehicle mounted on a nearby wall where it continues to leak fluids, thankfully now just motor oil.
The performance and its remnants are not individually titled, but they are elements of ‘The Poltergeist Experiment Group (PEG), Applied Spirituality and Physical Spirit Manifestation’ (2011) a sprawling body of work developed for this, Germann’s first institutional show. It is the artist’s fourth major gathering of work, after ‘Ballungscenter aller Energien I&II’, (2007–8), ‘Werewolf of Vienna’ (2009) and ‘Saint Helena – Riches from the Depths of the Mountains’ in 2010. These titles alone do not do justice to the breadth of ideas that Germann brought together in each development to make unlikely alliances, and with them to write revisionary history.
In the migros exhibition he has used all of the space available as a laboratory for the creation of hybrid concoctions of filmic ghosts, the aforementioned Boy Scouts, church organs, resins, glue, blueprints, masks and small-town institutions. The key is the idea of the poltergeist, particularly as represented in film. An auditory collage of expositional dialogue from Hollywood productions offers visitors a guiding text, explaining the defining features of a poltergeist. Parapsychology links the ‘phenomenon’ to youthful excess energy, particularly male, which ties in nicely with Germann’s ongoing interest in energy and its transformative potential, not to mention his own boundless (if no longer teenage) enthusiasm that seems to bring about his sculptures.
Germann’s machines and sculptures connect unrelated objects with straight-faced earnestness, so the absurd conceptual links thus forged seem matter-of-fact. In previous works, the alchemy of metals has been a significant element, implying as it does natural resources, memes and monetary values. Here, ectoplasm, the manifestation of ghostly energy, is an additional facilitator, with hardened resin acting as an ersatz material. Germann’s assemblies and connections enjoy a flexibility not available within established structures. Collectively, they form a powerful means of malleable, open-ended storytelling. Several ideas emerge from this particular group: a portrait of America, not of its reality, but the myths of American life as presented by Hollywood cinema, where everyone can be a frontiersman and which prizes a petrified fictional idea of the historic. A place, a bit like Edward Said wrote of the Orient, which shows little resistance to the ideas projected upon it; a place with neither the personal nor the physical limitations of the real world. And then there is the portrait of the artist himself, a ringmaster who enjoys the myth-making of Joseph Beuys or the pissing bravado of Andy Warhol but who also, given his hands-on involvement in the fabrication of his works, creates follies and failures and embraces them all. His seat-less trousers, now hanging by the entrance, could as easily be the chaps of a fearless cowboy as the reluctant pilot’s garment of convenience. The artist is not heroic but human, identifying as closely with the scared youth as with the trailblazers of the avant-garde.
Aoife Rosenmeyer
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