|
|
| Don’t build me a monument – someone may deconstruct it Pēteris Bankovskis, Art Critic Liane Lang. Mesmeric Monument 02.06.–30.06.2010. Gallery Supernova | |
| I popped into Liane Lang’s exhibition Mesmeric Monument at the gallery Supernova. The exhibition booklet is only available in English, so obviously it isn’t important to translate the title of the exhibition into Latvian. Born in 1978, in Munich, Liane Lang studied at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, Goldsmiths College in London and at the Royal Academy. She positions herself as a British artist. She works in fields which are one way or another connected with sculpture. For instance, her profile on the website of the Saatchi Gallery features stills from her animated film made of sculptural images. The content and the title of the video correspond to the absolute new classic theme of feminist discourse, that is, ‘Masturbation’. But this is not the only discourse of interest to the young lady – she is said to be interested in sculpture, forms, narrative fiction, still life composition, etc. | |
 Liane Lang. Mesmeric Monument. 2010. Courtesy of artist and the gallery Supernova | |
| In Riga Liane Lang had engaged with, as she herself might think, a deconstruction of the post-communist understanding of ideological space. It’s a nice description of an activity, isn’t it? I read in a Latvian news page that this expert of art has resided in Riga, rather than lived, arrived for a visit, stayed as a guest, or otherwise. If she has resided here, then she must be a resident. An agent of the deconstruction movement. Somewhat half undercover. At the Supernova exhibition there was a rather high little table with four video projectors and a couple of loudspeakers placed on top of it. White projection screens had been placed opposite the video projectors on each side of the table, creating a cage of sorts. On each of the four screens a different video was projected. One of the videos had recorded activities at the Salaspils Concentration Camp Memorial, another showed the goingson inside a building constructed in Stalinist style, something like the high-rise of the Academy of Science or the VEF House of Culture. The third video was filmed at the Soviet Victory Monument in Pārdaugava, and the fourth video featured the Monument to the 1905 Revolution, the Freedom Monument, as well as the Latvian Riflemen Statue next to Museum of the Occupation of Latvia. In the Salaspils video, at times, clumsily dressed persons – by the looks of them female dancers, perhaps of an amateur theatre – were weaving around the colossal figures of the monument. The choreography reminded me most of all of the pretentious messing about by eightgraders. In the Stalin-era interior also there were a few women ‘symbolically’ doing something. On the other hand, sitting by the Monument to the 1905 Revolution there was a woman, with her back to the viewer, completely nude. The viewer could also watch people laying flowers at the Freedom Monument and the Victory Monument, but even here from time to time some woman, who must have been immersed in some kind of big narrative, would sneak up with pointlessly creeping or otherwise restless movements. This farce had a deep thought behind it: we, who were born and raised in totalitarian oppression, naturally must be reactionary yahoos who are not able to accept the values of liberal democracy. That’s why here we were offered a lesson that totalitarian ideology is bad, it oppresses people and makes them into puppets. That is why it is necessary to jumble up all the monuments into one pile and dance around them, and through bodily movement – this the oldest of arts – show the unity and struggle of Marxist contrasts. In addition Lang also teaches us that the big monuments are a dangerous testimony to important historic events, that if these monuments were to be taken seriously, God forbid, then in the future it could lead to a return of fascism and revanchism. It is possible that I am exaggerating here. Maybe this young woman, having caught sight of the monuments of Riga and its suburbs, was truly enraptured by the sculptural space and dimensions. But I doubt it. She belongs to the generation which unquestionably believes that contemporary art constantly ‘researches’ things, as if art were some kind of science. Besides, such research takes place not for the sake of research, no, while researching something the artist finds, presents and deconstructs the representative symbols of ideologies. And in this way the artist releases the post-human person from the last remnants of humanness. /Translator into English: Vita Limanoviča/ | |
| go back | |
