Last week I returned from Poland where a heteronym I invented was included in Krakow Photomonth. I prefer, though, to keep mum about what exactly I came up with as to do otherwise would run counter to the spirit of the thing. Titled ‘Alias’, and curated by artists Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, it was one of the oddest, most enigmatic and imaginative shows I’ve seen. (I wouldn’t normally trumpet something I was, however minimally, involved in, but this one is worth it.) As the curators declared: ‘None of the artists in this exhibition exist. All of the works are copies.’ (I do love an original show about copies.) Let me explain.
‘Alias’ is, according to Broomberg and Chanarin, ‘an incomplete survey of invented artists’ – incomplete as the potential and solace of assuming an alter ego is infinite; artists and writers will never, I imagine, tire of disguise and subterfuge as a liberating proposition. Reversing the usual power-structure of most exhibitions – artist is invited by curator to do their thing, they do it, writer responds etc. – Broomberg and Chanarin kick-started their project by firstly asking writers to create a heteronym, i.e., an imaginary character with a history (which is where it differs from a pseudonym which is simply a false name). It’s a concept dreamed up by the Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic and translator Fernando Pessoa, who invented around 70 in his lifetime. But it would seem that Pessoa’s motivations were less to do with escape than the opposite: he was in thrall to the idea that a false identity can, paradoxically, be a conduit for truthful expression and a way of expressing the complexities of day-to-day existence without the burden of everyday responsibilities – after all, can anyone ever be absolutely truthful when they have jobs, lovers, friends and colleagues to negotiate? (Remember the chaos Jim Carrey’s character gets into in Liar Liar when he is forced to tell the truth for a day?) ‘To live,’ wrote Pessoa in his posthumously published The Book of Disquiet (1982), ‘is to be someone else.’ Oscar Wilde’s famous dictum is also apt here: ‘Man’, he wrote, ‘is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.’
(In collaboration with Broomberg and Chanarin, responding to a challenge from Setareh Shahbazi)
Back to ‘Alias’. Once the invited writer accepted the brief and came up with a heteronym, it was then given to an artist/photographer who, in turn, was required to assume its character and to respond to it with a piece of photographic-based work which was then displayed in one of 23 venues around Krakow – museums, small rooms in apartment blocks, church crypts and galleries. Searching them out amongst the crumbling beauty of Krakow’s 18th-century buildings was half of the fun.
Lee Cluderay, That Afternoon (1929)
Dora Fobert, from the archive of Adela K. (c.1942)
Although the names of writers and artists who agreed to participate were cited in the catalogue, who wrote which heteronym, who paired with whom, and who created the works on show remained anonymous. Thus, as you can imagine, there was much speculation about authorship amongst viewers to each venue, which revealed one of the strengths of the show: the way it highlighted image-making and ideas over personality. I must say that on a purely personal level I did enjoy not being myself for a while, as did other participants. It was kind of soothing (as was the rather popular apple vodka).
Claude Cahun, installation view, Maia Holtermann Entwistle (2011)
In the main venue, the Bunkier Sztuki, Broomberg and Chanarin curated a show of historical and contemporary works by 55 artists and collectives who employ heteronyms, such as Marcel Duchamp/Rrose Sélavy, Walid Raad/The Atlas Group, Salvador Dalí (who was, he declared, a reincarnation of his dead brother of the same name); The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland, Lucy Shwob/Claude Cahun, and Simon Fujiwara as his father. Non-artists were also included such as French serial child-impersonator (yes, it is a category) Frédéric Bourdin, who posed as missing schoolboy Nicholas Barclay. Obviously, the reasons why each of these people chose to assume another identity varies wildly but often it was to do with survival; repressive regimes do not, obviously, encourage transparency and heteronyms allow artists and writers the freedom to explore issues of politics, sexuality, race and gender without the burden of being thrown in prison (an approach that has particular resonance in Krakow, the closest city to Auschwitz and one that has, over the last century, became all-too-familiar with varying degrees of totalitarianism).
Video still of the performance My Life as a Dove
Less life-threatening situations have also historically encouraged the assumption of an alter ego: artists have chosen anonymity or collective action as a form of resistance to the cult of the individual. Conversely, some artists have chosen to operate with heteronyms in order to explore ideas that might run counter to their usually held beliefs while others have chosen to forgo their identity as a form of protest – or of course, simply to side-step the complications of selfhood because it can be a lot of fun.
The Burial of Patrick Ireland, Wake, Irish Museum of Modern Art (2008)
The main exhibition of ‘Alias’ was unique in its approach to display: only one original work was included – a picture by Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland, which was turned to the wall to reveal an inscription: ‘To my singular wife from her plural husband’. Every other work was represented by a photograph of its installation, a method that both emphasized the role of photography in documenting art and side-stepped the liabilities and costs involved in transporting invaluable works of art from around the world to Poland. The result is a show that operates on so many levels – from detective fiction to visual pleasure to a rigorous questioning of the intertwining of individuality, aesthetics and ethics – that it was impossible not to follow Pessoa’s declaration: ‘Wise is he who enjoys the show offered by the world.’
Anonymous, courtesy The Lascaux Folders, original images courtesy of Belfast Exposed
The curated programme of the 57th edition of the Oberhausen Short Film Festival seemed caught between two weirdly anomalous points of reference: on the one hand, the scientific and historical (‘Shooting Animals: A Brief History of Animal Film’) and, on the other, an eyebrow-raising profile on William E. Jones. As well as the numerous competition selections – international, national, regional – and the screenings of a host of invited experimental and art film distribution companies, visitors to Oberhausen were faced with the impossible dilemma of choosing which programmes to watch from the four-daily screenings over four screens, a talks programme and related collateral events. A quirk of scheduling meant that I saw none of the winning films in the various categories which was dominated by artists: Neïl Beloufa collecting two awards for Sans Titre (2010), Laure Provost for The Artist (2010), Roee Rosen with TSE (OUT) (2010), Tessa Knapp (_99 Beautiful_, 2010) and Phil Collins for marxism today (prologue) (2010) – read a review in our current issue of the BFI’s presentation of the latter film here.
Phil Collins marxism today (prologue), 2010
I arrived on the Friday evening, the second night of the six-day festival, just in time to see the first presentation by William E. Jones – this year’s selected artist who presented a showcase of his work as well as three curated programmes of titles that have influenced his filmmaking career. Jones is a filmmaker, artist, teacher, curator (read about the films that have most influenced him here) as well as a writer (his book on influential LA filmmaker Fred Halsted, Halsted Plays Himself, is due to be published later this year). He also has a close affiliation with the gay porn industry in his adopted home of LA, having worked as a editor (using the pseudonym Hudson Wilcox) for a number of years, editing gay porn compilations.
Jones made The Fall of Communism As Seen in Gay Pornography (1998), which comprises footage from gay porn films from the former Soviet Union, using the footage from films he rented from a local video shop. Unusually for porn films, the young men paid to have sex stare defiantly at the camera. Careful editing follows the lingering camera to the boys’ faces, the director’s finger rubbing the lips of one of the performers. Similar Tearoom (1962/2007) – which consists of police footage shot in a public toilet through a two-way mirror as part of a 1962 crackdown on public sex in Ohio – Jones’ interest in pornography stems from the political and economic power relations at play more so than the sex acts themselves that are inferred and out of shot. As he said during the Q&A that punctuated the first screening: ‘I’m interested in the bits of porno that most people fast-forward through.’
William E. Jones, The Fall of Communism As Seen in Gay Pornography, 1998
For the opening presentation Jones also invited along his friend Margie Schnibbe, an artist and art director of straight porn films (going under the pseudonym Vena Virago). She showed a 20-minute clip of a hardcore scene which she had art-directed, wall pieces and visuals framing the actors in a bare set that she told the audience also functions as a gallery. Schnibbe also showed footage of herself interviewing a man who had gatecrashed a house party she was at, found a dark room and started masturbating (_Tweak_, 2002). The creepiness of the scene is punctured by the audio sped up to chipmunk-esque frequency and speed – the weird guy also seemed to have stage fright.
William E. Jones, More British Sounds, 2006
Jones also showed two brilliant feats of editing, Film Montages (For Peter Roehr) and More British Sounds (both 2006), which use images from the late-‘80s porn film The British are Coming with some snarling audio from Jean-Luc Godard’s 1969 film See You at Mao. ‘Workers have come to expect too much,’ the clipped accent intones as a tough-looking lad is fondled by a man dressed in the regimental uniform of a horseguard from the British military, forced to lick his boots before turning on his superior.
William Jones, Film Montages (For Peter Roehr), 2006
The next day’s screening by Jones focused on seminal experimental films that had influenced him, such as fascinating documentary footage of Curt McDowell seducing men in his LA apartment (_Loads_, 1980) and Fred Halsted’s beautifully shot, horrifically violent L.A. Plays Itself (1972). At 55 minutes long (Jones himself edited the film to be as close to the original as possible) it was a pretty harrowing but worthwhile experience.
Oliver Laric, Versions, 2010
Elsewhere I focused my attention on the programmes presented by distribution companies The Netherlands Media Archive, Lightcone from France and Austria’s sixpackfilm. A mixture of formats, styles, references and quality, perhaps the most successful programme was that of The Netherlands Media Art Institute, which included Oliver Laric’s Versions (2010). Using footage from a myriad of sources, the film explores the mutability of images, interpretation and the build up and dispersion of meaning – a scene from The Jungle Book plays next to Winnie the Pooh, the movements the same.
Mastering Bambi (2010) by Persijn Broersen and Margit Lukásc also used a Disney classic as source material, examining the curiously wild and foreboding depictions of nature in the eponymous film. Removing the loveable characters to leave dark, panning shots recognisable from the film and overlaying with an ominous soundtrack reconstructed from themes of the original score, like with the simplicity of Versions, the result was curiously compelling. (It reminded of London-based filmmaker James Richards’ reworked shot of Bambi’s father, looped over and over so that the falling snow becomes the focus in his Untitled [Cinema Programme], 2006.)
Nathaniel Dorsky, Aubade, 2010
French distributor Lightcone’s selection of short films showed more interest in structural concerns with the materiality of film and the filmmaking process. I found much of it a little self-indulgent and derivative, but it was good to see veteran LA filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky’s poetic ode to the Kodachrome film stock and his first venture in shooting in colour negative (_Aubade_, 2010).
Daniel Zimmerman, Stick Climbing, 2010
One of the most memorable films I saw was also one of the last. Stick Climbing (2010) by Daniel Zimmerman takes the eye-view perspective of a walk through a quaint Austrian village, nestled in a verdant valley and surrounded by towering mountains. A picture postcard scene – children performing Alpine folk dances in traditional costume, people going about their daily chores – ends abruptly as the walker veers off through the forest to to the foot of a huge cliff face marked with the strangely sculptural intervention of two tracks of thin strips of wood nailed into the rock. Following the path of this twisting ladder up the cliff (seemingly without any guide ropes or safety equipment), the exertions of the climber are clear, his breathing heavy, his movements more and more laboured. He looks down and your stomach does backflips. Eventually he reaches the summit and surveys the tranquil scene of the village below – weirdly impossible, pointless and impressive feat.
I recently went to Gwangju following an invitation to be one of the six female Asian artistic directors of next year’s Gwangju Biennale. As I left Beijing for Korea, I was mindful of the disappearance last month of Ai Weiwei, who is the co-artistic director for 2011 Gwangju Design Biennale (which opens on 2 September). There hasn’t yet been any news about Ai’s condition or contact with his family – it’s as if he has fallen into an unfathomable black hole. At this stage, no one seems to know what is the best thing to do.
Though geographically, my trip was extended due to a transfer from Seoul Airport to Gimpo Airport, where domestic flights from Seoul to Gwangju operate frequently. At Gimpo I met up with Mami Kataoka, Chief Curator of Mori Art Museum and a fellow artistic director for the 2012 Gwangju Biennale. Kataoka had flown in from Tokyo, a city still working through the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear accident. In China, people have been gripped by the fear of nuclear radiation blown in by wind. Despite the countries’ proximity, it has been difficult for us to measure the real effect of this unprecedented disaster on the daily lives of the Japanese. ‘How do people cope with the situation?’ I asked Kataoka. Her answer was surprisingly calm: ‘We try to get on with life as much as possible. We are kind of used to it and we still go to work, try to eat outside, and buy in supermarkets so that the economy of the area can maintain a certain level. We are used to earthquakes so we would be having a coffee in the office and the quake happens and we would say, “there it goes again…“’
Her answer struck me deeply, as, in China, the media’s coverage of the disaster-struck area has been ubiquitously one-dimensional; much of the focus has been on the damage caused and the potential harm on us, rather than on the surviving and the everyday. Speaking to Kataoka I felt immediately closer to Japan and more relaxed about being in Korea, even though friends had warned me about the higher risks of nuclear radiation exposure there.
In Gwangju we met up with Nancy Adajania (an independent critic and curator from Mumbai), Wassan Al-Khudhairi (chief curator and acting director of Mathaf, Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha), Kim Sunjung (a Seoul-based independent curator and professor at the Korea National University of Arts), to be presented to the Biennale’s board of directors for approval of our appointments to be the co-artistic directors of the 2012 Gwangju Biennale. We began our three-day site visit at the Gwangju Museum of Art, which is adjacent to the Biennale building in Jungwoi Park. The museum’s programme is a mixture of exhibitions of traditional, modern or contemporary art and craft, as well as local and international projects, arts and cultural events. When we were there, an exhibition of works concerned with the relationship of human beings with the nature by local artists entitled ‘Dream of Butterfly’ was on view. There was also an intriguing documentary exhibition on Choi Seung-hee, a legendary Korean modern dancer that was born in Seoul, went to North Korea as a member of the Workers’ Party of Korea after the second world war but was purged by the party, and disappeared from public view in 1967. She died in 1969.
We also visited one of the downtown venues of the Gwangju Museum of Art, the Sangrok Gallery (above), the building of which was initially established in 1982 as the official residence of a local governor. Overlooking a beautiful forest, this site was launched as a branch gallery of the Gwangju Museum of Art to provide the people in the city with better access to cultural events. There was another nature-inspired exhibition of local Gwangju artists on display. As we continued our trip, we were to discover the dedication of the city to providing local Gwangju artists with possibilities of work and exhibition is remarkably consistent.
While most of the Biennale’s history is recorded in writing, the Daein traditional market in Gwangju is like a living record of the Bokdukbang Project, which was part of the 7th edition of the Biennale. Curated by Sung-Hyen Park, the project invited artists to set up workshops and initiate events throughout the market. Afterwards, the workshops remained and more artists have since rented small spaces inside the market, among vendors of seafood, vegetable, meat, spices and snacks. Subsidized by the local government, the artist studios are cheap and well managed. They are relatively small, cute and pleasant, funky storefronts blended well with the neatly organized market. We learned that the market was on the edge of closing yet the project brought energy and renewed business interest to the area. Soon after, a local magazine also moved into create their basis there (above). The market has also gradually recovered its liveliness and continued to exist.
We stopped at a shop in front of which an old woman was pealing chestnuts. She pointed at a picture of her with Okwui Enwezor hung in front of her shop. Along the way, we also saw colourful seafood stands that had been painted by artists, as well as a tea vendor whose cart had been painted. We were shown around in the market by Seungki Cho, director of Mite-Ugro, a non-profit organization established by local young artists and curators. Occupying a few places including a basement level exhibition space, a rooftop, a street-level office, Mite-Ugro is more like a community centre for artists working in the market and visiting for residencies at their guesthouse. There, we met a group of young artists (from Thailand, Taiwan, Japan as well as other cities in Korea) who were participating in the Asian Young Artist Festival that was on in Gwangju throughout April. Mite-Ugro was showing a range of interactive installations and sculptural works by five artists working locally. On the roof-top of Mite-Ugro, a number of artists was testing a sound-piece based on recording from the market and would be showing in an event at the Gwangju Kunsthalle over the weekend.
Opened during the last Gwangju Biennale in 2010, the Gwangju Kunsthalle (above) is made up of 29 dark grey and orange cargo containers that provide an airy space. It operates as a platform for interactive and performance-based events, including lectures, music, night markets and new-media projects. It’s located in the middle of the site for the Asian Culture Complex that is currently under construction in downtown Gwangju, a key site of the 1980 civil uprising, and is scheduled to open in 2014. Standing on top of the Kunsthalle, the now derelict provincial office building from the 1980 was still in sight, reminding a turning point in the recent history of Korea. When completed, the ambitious compound will be showcasing many aspects of Asian culture, including music, performance and art. The Gwangju Kunsthalle will also terminate its container-based existence and move into a new venue then.
Hopping onto a 45-minute plane ride to Seoul felt as convenient as a taxi ride. Once there, the visits consisted largely of museums, art centres and commercial galleries, and we were exposed to another scene and dynamic that felt more institutionalized and less street-level than that in Gwangju. Our first stop was the state-of-the-art Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art (above), a complex of three connected building annexes, designed by Mario Botta, Jean Nouvel and Rem Koolhaas. In Museum 1 was a perfect example of traditional Korean art and antiquity, including many national treasures which worked well with the contemporary architecture. In Museum 2, Korean modern art was displayed next to some of the most recognizable international art stars, the usual suspects such as Yves Klein, Jeff Koons, Damient Hirst and so on – an attempt at re-examining the relationship of Korean modern and contemporary art to practices elsewhere in the world, an issue that many curators and institutions have consciously addressed and considered in recent exhibition and research projects. Museum 3 housed an exhibition entitled ‘Korean Rhapsody: A Montage of History and Memory’, a very interesting survey of Korean art in the past 100 years that questions and reconsiders the narrative of Korean Modern history and cultural identity. A commendable effort of the museum to raise more attention of modern Korean art history through a socially and politically engaged narrative, the exhibition was however suffering from uneven qualities and works included more for their political and historical relevance than artistic excellence.
Much of the discussion following the visit revealed a certain desire for self-definition in Korean art, both in the Asian and global contexts. The recent market boom of Chinese art had also inflicted a certain anxiety among the Korean art community to reassert its presence and participation in the international art world. Through this exchange, my Asian colleagues also realized how little we actually knew about each other – much less than what we have learned about our Western counterparts. In an attempt to find out about our own relevance in the world, it’s also equally necessary to learn more about our immediate neighbours and our interrelationships. This issue is probably what makes the choice of six Asian curators for the next Gwangju Biennale timely and necessary.
Phil Collins marxism today (prologue), 2010
William E. Jones, The Fall of Communism As Seen in Gay Pornography, 1998
William E. Jones, More British Sounds, 2006
William Jones, Film Montages (For Peter Roehr), 2006
Oliver Laric, Versions, 2010
Nathaniel Dorsky, Aubade, 2010
Daniel Zimmerman, Stick Climbing, 2010
