|
|
| Bitemarks of Reality in the Flesh of Art Krista Burāne, Artist | |
| This article has three introductions. To be read in chronological order. The first is found on my stomach and also on yours. It is the belly button. The proof, sign and document of the fact that life bites, that a scar is the first gift to anyone who resolves to live. The second is contained in a thin green notebook in which my father, whilst staying in Poland for a month back in 1974, described the approximately sixty films and theatre performances he had seen. Something like an art work chronicle written by a man affected by USSR censorship who suddenly sees a different reality and now is trying to document it in written form. The third is all that was experienced in Latvian and Finnish con temporary art this year: the exhibitions of Survival Kit 4 and Reality Bites at the Kiasma, theatre festivals Homo Alibi Recycled and Baltic Circle, an exhibition performance titled Atmiņu istabas (‘Memory of Things’) by the creative union Nomadi, Katrīna Neiburga’s solo ex hibition Lietu atmiņa (‘Material Memory’), a performance by Jānis Balodis and Valters Sīlis, Nacionālais attīstības plāns (‘National De velopment Plan’). | |
 Ints Burāns‘ diary Fragment. 1974 Photo from the private archive of Krista Burāne | |
| So this is an article about bite scars left by reality which, having more or less healed, form the flesh of contemporary art. To avoid any errors of comprehension, please follow “Instructions for reading this article". Instructions for reading this article(1) 1. Close your eyes and imagine all the possible documents you have come across in your life. Count them. You did it? If you opened your eyes after a minute or two, I would guess you had listed your passport, birth certificate, marriage or divorce papers, public transport tickets, invoices, a statement from your family doctor and similar trivia. You definitely have not record ed all the animals you’ve fed at the zoo, all the objects that must not be touched in museums, and all the heavenly bodies that you can see in NASA photos of the Univers. Yet since the mid20th century, thanks to information researcher Suzanne Briet, the understanding of the concept of “documentation”1 has shifted from a written text as proof and endorsement to the context of analysis2. She was the first to ask, and immediately come up with the answer: “Is a star a document? Is a pebble rolled by a torrent a document? Is a living animal a document? No. But the photographs and the catalogues of stars, the stones in a museum of mineralogy, and the animals that are catalogued and shown in a zoo, are documents.”3 2. Take a clean sheet of paper and a pencil. Make a numbered list of three of your favourite conceptual art works connected in some way to documents or documentation. Take photographs or film how you are trying to remember those works, how you are looking for their titles in art history books or on the internet, how your pencil breaks, and other important things. Sign and take a photo of the list and, together with the visual presentation of how it was made, upload it onto your favourite social network with the title: “The document of my favourite documents and the documenting of its creation”.4 Click here to view my list: http://ikdiena.nomadi.lv/2012/12/ manu-milako-dokumentu-dokuments-nr-1/. For those who are conscientiously following these instructions, it is definitely no secret that documentality and documents became an object of attention in art theory in the 1960s, along with the devel opment of conceptualism, the Fluxus movement and performance art. This was a time when two types of relations between art and documentation were marked out: 1) the use of documents and documentation as an artistic strategy; 2) the documentation of art works as the only possibility for them to exist in time, because art forms become nonmaterial and, therefore, documentation is needed as proof and basis for their further existence. In order to provide documentary proof of the above, I will refer to Tony Godfrey, who writes that documentation is one of the forms of conceptual art alongside ready-mades, language and intervention.(5) The documentation of conceptual art works (concepts or actions) in the form of photographs, records, charts and all other ways often becomes the only form and proof of these works. Both “since no form is intrinsically superior to another, the artist may use any form, from an expression of words (written or spoken) to physical reality equally”(6), and because “(..) if the artist carries through his idea and makes it into visible form, then all the steps in the process are of importance. (...) All intervening steps – scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed works, models, studies, thoughts, conversations – are of inter est. Those that show the thought process of the artist are sometimes more interesting than the final product.”(7) 3. Now put the magazine down, strip naked and stand in front of a mirror. Ask a close friend to trace your body’s contours onto the mirror. Examine yourself and mark on the mirror the parts that are artificial in your body (teeth, hair colour, solarium tan and other improvements; maybe you’ve been lucky and have an artificial heart or leg). Let your friend film this process. Turn towards the camera and loudly give the answer to the question – are you real or artificial, are you an original or a copy? And what is that drawing on the mirror – a document or an artwork? If you have returned to reading the instructions feeling some what confused, then I’ll explain that within the framework of concep tual art, the strategy of documentation posed a question about the essence and possibility of art, but at present the relations between art and documentation address the issue of life under the condition of biopolitics, when questions are asked about the essence and pos sibility of life itself in the context of the relationship between the original and the copy. Due to the development of science and technologies, life is los ing its uniqueness and originality, it becomes replaceable and can be constructed; it can be simulated – now it is possible not only to transplant other people’s organs, but also to create genetically the copies of living organisms. We live at a time when life has become artificial in its essence, and the question becomes pertinent of what makes life life, what imbues life with continuity and existence in his tory, what makes it real. The philosopher and art critic Boris Groys writes in his Documenta 11 catalogue essay titled ‘Art in the age of biopolitics: From artwork to art documentation’ that it is the documentation which inscribes the existence of an object in history and gives the object life as such. Life, in his opinion, is not something that the living being has “initself” – rather,itistheinscriptionofacertainbeingintoalife context, an instant of life and a living space.(8) That is exactly what you just did together with your friend when you created your portrait on the mirror. In art, too, documentation becomes the only result of the art process perceived as a life form, namely, as continuity and existence in history which, as Walter Benajmin put it, has its own aura. Social philosopher Maurizio Ferraris would also agree with Groys, emphasising in his theory of documentality(9) that social ex istence in our era is based on the act of inscription which serves to create historical memory and identity between two living beings. And artworks are such documents or inscriptions. Thus it could be argued that the relationship of documentality and contemporary art should be analysed in least in three aspects (within the limits of this article): 1) documentation of dematerialised art works (the video of how your portrait was being done in the mirror); 2) documentation as an artistic strategy (your list of artworks and the documentation of listing); 3) a work of art as a document which forms social existence (the instructions for reading this article that shaped or possibly cre ated documents recording the relationship between me and you). 5. But now take it easy as you read excerpts from documents, and the diary dedicated to art in which I tried to record my memories of adventures while roaming the fields of art in Latvia and elsewhere. Note that this is a diary of remembering, with a very personal logic. On 19.12.2012 at 2.53 a.m. (The Artist – a chronicler of social time and space) I remember the performance by Jānis Balodis and Valters Sīlis, Nacionālās attīstības plāns (‘National Development Plan’), at the Dirty Deal Teatro in early December. The twentyfiveyearold play wright is holding in his hand a semiconfidential document entitled ‘National Development Plan of Latvia for 2013–2020’ which is to shape the future lives of all of us in such a way as to make us happy. The document determines a time and space where GDP growth is the only official indicator of happiness. Jānis dares to question this, and builds an emotionally powerful story, based on economic and political research, connecting step by step the life of each individual viewer with the consequences of events dictated by capitalist phi losophy: if Latvia wants to become as rich as Sweden, we have to reckon with having to screw everybody who is weaker than we are. The performance is a kind of surgery in the region of the heart, rais ing the relations between art and document to national scale. It also makes me remember a small, humble, rolledup rag rug propped up, as if by chance, against the wall in the Kiasma exhibition hall, which if rolled out would fit in nicely in the front porch of a country cottage. Finnish artist Mikko Kuorinki had made it from strips of European Union flags. Closely interwoven with one another in doormat form, they ask: what is this union that we live in, and at what point are we or are we not rags. On 19.12.2012 at 2.53 a.m. (The Artist – a chronicler of social time and space) I remember watching on the white walls of Kiasma a video piece by Finnish artist Karri Kuopala, The Black Book of Helsinki. Five television screens showed graffiti artists clad in blackandwhite sheep masks telling us about the Helsinki City Council antigraffiti cam paign ‘Zero Tolerance’, the result of which artists had become in a number of ways the victims or witnesses of violence by the authori ties: reality bites had left them with actual scars on living flesh. These are documentary stories and events which Karri Kuopala used to ask questions about people’s freedom of expression under conditions of democracy and to write a black chronicle of his time. Darker and lighter, during the theatre festival Baltic Circle they are also being written by four artists of the stage – Janne Saarak kala (Finland), Elin Petersdottir (Iceland), Ivo Briedis (Latvia) and Nina Larissa Basset (Denmark) who have joined together this time to present a performance titled Leftovers from the War10. Their stage is the National Museum of Finland, starting from the cellar and fin ishing with the dark and cold tower. The museum’s vast exposition provided real (in all meanings) props for the performance, helping each of the actors involved to tell the history of his or her family. The audience follows all the characters of the performance, who slowly reveal document after document, offering a testimony of themselves not only at the present moment but over several centuries – as far back as their family records allow them to remember. The show, during which the museum as a storehouse for a whole spectrum of documents interacts with the performances of the art ists’ family chronicles, revives each viewer’s experience in all pos sible sensual ways, allowing the public not only to go on a trip in time but also to taste, feel and draw it into one’s nostrils, not to mention hearing and seeing. See, this is an example of how a document fulfils not only the function of storing memories, but also that of their revi talisation! It is important for the performance to keep a secret which is destined to be guessed only by those who see the show four times, by following the long claw marks left by reality on the back of the authors’ history. On 21.12.2012 at 1.04 a.m. (The Artist – an archivist of personal time and space) The use of a museum as a document storehouse makes me remember two other art events experienced in Riga – an interdis ciplinary art project titled Memory Rooms, by the creative union Nomadi, at the Kaņepe Culture Centre in February, and the perfor mance 4EST at the Homo Alibi Recycled theatre festival. In the former, Mārtiņš Eihe, Māris Ruskulis, Edgars Rubenis and I, Krista Burāne, created the first museum / memory room in Latvia dedicated to ac tor Leons Leščinskis, who had worked there as a guide, telling visi tors the story of his life and the history of the previous fifty years of Latvia. Central to the composition of the Memory Room project was the question about truth, which was addressed by dismantling bor ders between the artistic forms used (exhibition and performance) and contents (the truth of documentality and the truth of fiction). Meanwhile the 4EST team, Reinis Suhanovs, Jānis Znotiņš, Rūdolfs Bekičs and Jēkabs Nīmanis did not create a museum of memories, but of their longings. This work, showcasing the waste and leftovers of history that had been collected for months and partly recycled into resonant musical instruments, documented their dreams about the liberation of a masculine soul from linear social time and norms, in order to return to a cyclic – as in nature – and maybe thereby freer existence. Katrīna Neiburga, in turn, with her exhibition ‘Memory of Things’, in feminine manner, through noncompulsory, fleeting and vague documentations of the quotidian lives of the women in her family, claimed that it is impossible to break loose from time and all that is left of life are the archives of its moments in the memory. The scars of reality in these Latvian works resemble not so much dog bites, as constantly rubbed raw and festering heels. On 21.12.2012 at 2.02 a.m. (The Artist – an archivist of social time and space) It must be under the influence of the romantic archivists of personal time that I now wish to remember works of a different nature, scarred by the bites of reality as a watchdog. The Finnish artist Otto Karvonen in his installation Alien Palace Birdhouse Collection has “collected” detention centres for refugees in Europe, taking photographs of them and, inspired by their ar chitecture, crafts birdcages with bars, barbed wire fences and prison facades. Artūrs Punte’s documental work Bankas sveiciens dzimšanas dienā (‘Birthday Greetings from the Bank’) tells of how we consign ourselves to golden cages. He exhibits a screenshot from his computer with birthday greetings from Swedbank along side an impressive figure of debt on his account. Kurdish artist Dzamil Kamanger, meanwhile, in his works All Fake Passports Are Always Handicraft and Visas delicately puts forward a question on the freedom to travel. He has produced exquisite embroideries of travel documents. Each of his pearlstrewn visas resembles a small flying carpet, and reminds us that in many places across the world the freedom of movement is but a fairytale or a dream. On 21.12.2012 at 2.44 a.m. I remember that in Paragraph 5 of the reading instructions we were told to take it easy while reading these diary fragments. But already now it is getting clear that they are turning into a list that could be made longer and longer, and longer – by adding artists, works and attempts to document all that. But is it possible to relax while reading a list? More likely to fall asleep. So read the last para graph of the instructions for reading the article. 6. Finish reading the article, close the magazine and go to bed. When you wake up, do not try to remember your dreams. Be happy that you have had some time for which no documentation exists. Translation into English: Sarmīte Lietuviete 1 The concept of “document” originated from the Latin word documenta, which in turn derives from docere - to teach, set an example, instruct. 2 Hacklin, Saara. Lesson, testimony, specimen: the many incarnations of the document in contemporary art. In: Reality Bites: Document in Contemporary Art: Kiasma Collections: [Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, 2.11.2012–10.3.2013]. Helsinki, 2012, p. 16. 3 Briet, Suzanne. What is Documentation? Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecow Press, 2006, p. 10. 4 If you really are carrying out this particular instruction, please send the link to my e-mail krista@nomadi.lv.! Who knows, maybe a Latvian museum-in-the-making will include this document of ours in its collection, and we will have created four-fold documentation. Imagine if somebody were to take a photo of it and wrote about it - that would make us the authors of the Document of Documents. 5 Godfrey, Tony. Conceptual Art. London: Phaidon, 1998, p. 7. 6 Levits, Sols. Paragrāfi par konceptuālo mākslu. Teikumi par konceptuālo mākslu. Rīga: kim?, 2010, p. 11. 7 Ibid, p. 7. 8 Groys, Boris. Art in the age of biopolitics: From artwork to art documentation. In: Documenta 11, Platform 5: Exhibition Catalogue. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2002, p. 114. 9 The theory of documentality is a theory which regards documents as the basis for social reality. 10 Read more about the performance and listen to the stories at: http://leftoversfromthewar.com. | |
| go back | |
