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| Name Versus Country Māra Traumane On the third day of the Venice Biennale I was telling an Armenian colleague about my new idea, influenced by the Italian pavilion, of the "thieving artist": a creator casually freezing into artistic stills the discoveries and works generated in other fields and by other people and, in serving up these remixes, gradually drifting in the direction of the international art establishment. He shares in return his theory about "speculation upon speculation": the artist pragmatically and casually playing with themes from science and critical theory. It is Rosa Martínez herself who unwittingly reveals in the Biennale catalogue the wider context behind the lukewarm exhibitions curated by her and María de Corral: "The major part of the game passes in this constant struggle, confronting and adapting to political, economic and administrative constraints, because an exhibition is also a 'product', launched into the market-place to compete with other similar products." Submitting to the laws of the "cultural sphere of production", the exhibitions have been devised as a compromise between art, the market (to a considerable degree) and standards of liberalism, at the expense of any challenge, any major statement or poetics. Post factum, we see in the Biennale catalogue the "ideal" version of the exhibitions, which appears clearer and more refined than what is actually shown in the exhibition rooms. | |
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Against the bland background of the curated exhibitions, the national pavilions have become the central attraction of the Biennale. Significant is not only the celebration at this Biennale of the stars of contemporary art - Ed Ruscha, Gilbert & George and Jonas Mekas, along with Annette Messager and Carsten Höller - but also the contribution of Eastern Europe, which has not been pampered by the art market and dilutes the lavish forms of art presented by well-known Western masters, adding idealism, firm conceptualism and new names. If the Biennale is for the "godfathers" a platform for showing their works - a step towards the embrace of collectors and museums - then the marginal figures from Europe's provinces mostly see the discursive space of the Biennale as a locus for discussion and creativity. Carefully considered national exhibitions can serve as a counterbalance to the politically correct potpourri of the "New Ten" exhibitions that rolled across Europe against the background of EU enlargement in 2004.
Some words about this context, which also envelops the Baltic exhibitions. The joint work by Romanian curator Marius Babias and artist Daniel Knorr - the Romanian pavilion and the catalogue/collection of papers entitled "European Influenza" - interrupts the Biennale carnival with a sophisticated analytical project. Knorr's pavilion, in the last row of the Giardini, is bright and empty. The flaking black and white plaster and the strings of cables testify to exhibitions of previous years, and the only area of colour is to be found behind the back door, left discreetly ajar ... where an ordinary Venice street is "happening". An instant at the threshold between the abode of art and sunny reality. A metaphoric back door. On leaving, you can pick up one of the white Bible-sized books. A gem of book design and a giant in terms of content, this is a collection of 29 critical papers on the definition of Europe, on the new Europe, on the perception of freedom in its society and its art scene, on the Balkan borders and their clichéd images, on Berlin and on European enlargement as an accepted mark of Western supremacy. This chain, consisting of an artistic vacuum and a political message, incites reflection on the political show and its hidden workings, and for once addresses the exhibition-goer as a socially-oriented viewer, rather than simply as a pleasure-seeking object of manipulation. Also in the last row of the gardens is the Polish exhibition: the film "Repetition", by Artur Žmijewski, undermining the norms of screen ethics. As always, Žmijewski's camera is a vampire: insensitive and hungry, it documents the first replication of Prof. Zimbardo's 1971 psychological experiment. In its time, the experiment was seen as too dangerous to be implemented a second time over. However, "If it happened only once, it's as if it never happened," is the author's comment on this return to the game of cruelty. In the film, teams of men - prisoners and guards - play out a reality game involving mutual psychological (even physiological) contempt, a harsh version of the scientific "big brother" show. In this intriguing prison thriller, as in other works by Žmijewski, "ethics and morals are suspended, because they don't lead to knowledge". In the light of this postulate, his films constitute a humane study of human nature and how it is unleashed in an isolation of mental and physical suffering, incapacity and bewilderment. The works of Žmijewski present thematically similar, but realistic formal contrasts with Bill Viola's attractively pathetic gallery pictures. The portrait of reality by Žmijewski (a fellow student of Katarzyna Kozyra and Pawel Althamer) is sometimes ironic, sometimes unbearable, but it forces one to regard the discord of reality without the tinted glasses of religion or formal perfection. There's no guarantee of a happy ending, and the only definitely humane category is one person's (the artist's) curiosity about others. Also located nearby is the exhibition by young artists from Montenegro, with the outstanding work "Joy of Life" by Jelena Tomaševič, consisting of coloured drawings/appliqué on a concrete wall: series of drawings transferred from a wall in suburban Belgrade. In black-framed, and flat, white comic-book scenes, fragile human figures are halted melancholically in the modern-day moods of the instant, the accident, loneliness and seclusion. Universal urban spleen and frozen situations, found by the dozen in photo language and cinema, have been transferred in these graffiti scenes on concrete walls. Lithuania: A case where the artist is better known than the country In the 21st century, the names of countries are not associated with artists. This connection is an exotic peculiarity of the Biennale, one that has this year been played out to the full by Lithuania. Thus, the brilliant showing of films by Jonas Mekas (1922) in the Lithuanian exhibition is comparable with the always precise, fascinating paintings by that lion of post-war art and father of conceptualism, Ed Ruscha, shown in the US pavilion. Especially because the exhibition by the Californian Ruscha, idolised by museums and collectors, was a predictable event, whereas the "midwife" of New York avant-garde cinema and poet Jonas Mekas is unlikely to ever be given a place in the pompous US pavilion, while his works and biography are exhibited with piety in his homeland, Lithuania. Both artists are offbeat figures and legends of US art, with a broad sphere of influence and a wide circle of fans. Books may be read and written about Jonas Mekas, but the best thing is to see his film diaries, his documentations of life in New York, which cover his everyday life, his travels and his circle of friends, with humour, amazing joy and light melancholy, ever since 1949, when the film-obsessed war refugees, the brothers Jonas and Adolfas Mekas, arrived in New York. In those days, Mekas was making films for himself, with a Bolex camera, reviewing the material he had shot about once a year and coming to perceive that his activities were developing into a diary. His first film intended for viewing, "Diaries, Notes, Sketches" or "Walden" was edited only in 1967. The film presents scenes from Mekas' early years in NY, his friends, his creative life at the "Filmmakers Cooperative and Cinemateque", a trip to see Stan Brakhage... Filmmaking is the underground of Mekas' life, while the duty of serving as "midwife" to avant-garde cinema was the centre of this life: in the 1950s he held regular showings of experimental film in New York, wrote the "Movie Journal" column on independent cinema in "Village Voice" and established a journal-platform devoted to cinema, entitled "Film Culture". In the 1960s, together with his associates, he created a distribution centre for avant-garde film, the Filmmakers Cooperative (the prototype for many associations of this kind throughout the world) and organised showings of independent film, ending up in prison for screening the "pornographic" classic by Jack Smith - the film "Flaming Creatures". In 1970, together with directors Jerome Hill, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage and others, he created "Anthology Film Archives" - an archive and a centre of research, restoration and creativity in the field of independent film. Nowadays, "Anthology" continues to function as an independent centre with no state support, dedicated to film as a form of art. The archive brings together in a democratic manner the films of avant-garde and amateur directors, as well as researching and classifying reels of film found on the streets or in rubbish, or else donated. "We're a museum of film, and the task of a museum of film is to collect films and preserve them, without advancing priorities... Because we don't know what will be important in twenty, thirty or forty years time. Important for the archive is every frame that's been shot," says Jonas Mekas, director of Anthology. This phrase has parallels in the film essays by Mekas himself, under poetic titles. These are created at a considerable time distance from when they were shot, and many were edited only in the 1990s, for example "Zefiro Torna or scenes from the life of George Maciunas", "Happy Birthday to John" (a party with Lennon, Ono and friends), "Song of Avignon", etc. Although the film sequences and warm-hearted titles of Mekas' films appear so spontaneous, they are in fact the result of scrupulous "only the essential" selection of shots. "Because what I film is very precisely determined, chosen by my memory and intuition... I control absolutely every frame of my film." . As regards the exhibition in the Lithuanian pavilion, Mekas himself took part in arranging it, and the multi-screen installations repeat approaches used in Mekas' New York exhibitions. In my view, the pavilion provides a good view of the range of his fanatical activities and talented creative work during more than half a century. Screened in one of the rooms is a video interview with the author, where Mekas' biographical story alternates with footage from his film archive. The curators have shown Mekas not only as a filmmaker, but also as a historical figure: an immigrant, a person who asserts that his conscious life began in New York, as a stranger in this city, hiding behind the film camera, as the director of "Anthology" and as an immensely charming storyteller. The choice of films also involves a light touch of populism, since we have the films of John Lennon's birthday and Warhol's life story. This mix makes one remember that the space of West European art has been traversed by the Romanains Tzara and Ionescu, the Hungarian Brancusi, the Lithuanians Maciunas and Mekas, and that the recently built borders between the old and the new, now being demolished with such pomp, are more imaginary than real. (Interestingly, until 1949, the diary was also Eugen Ionesco's only form of writing.) It's hard to leave the Mekas exhibition; you want to live in it. There is good news: the organisers promise that in the spring of 2006 Mekas' Venice exhibition "Celebration of the small and personal in the time of bigness" will be shown at the Vilnius Contemporary Art Centre. Estonia: A lifelong disaster Almost like Mekas' exhibition, the exhibition "Isolator" by the young Estonian artist Mark Raidpere (1975) is a retrospective of autobiographical notes - a multimedial story, excellently curated by Hanno Soans, encompassing works created over several years. Before the Biennale, when the Estonians announced that Raidpere's works would centre on his family, not being able to visualise these, I drew parallels in my mind with Richard Billingham from Britain. Similarities may be perceived in the dangerous subject matter, since Billingham's early work, a photo documentary of the twilight of his parents' family, is still seen as representing the high point of his career. Raidpere's isolator, laid out in a space planned as a flat, turned out to be capable of generalising and abstracting family scenes. A nuclear, statically mainstream family is revealed as a small universe, manifesting the universal laws of affiliation, kinship, loneliness and impasse. The contemporary family has no need of extensive kin ties (like the Forsyths or Buddenbrooks) in order to provide major drama. There's a triangle of strangers: Mum, Dad and himself - the naked boy with cigarette burns on his hands. "Isolator" has been created as a psychological, neurotic trip among family characters in the space of a flat, beginning with the psychoanalytical and archetypical, the loving goddess of submission - the mother. Programmatic is the photo portrait of his mother, with the signature "Raidpere", because the pale human figure and the name are almost like a toy train, where there's not the slightest reason for a link between the two carriages, unless they're intended for some common task on the same track. This is followed by the search for himself by the "child", the artist aged 23 to 30, with the help of the medium of photography, one that is unsuitable for this task and determined by the instant: exhibitionistic portraits of his wounded body and rows of pictures of documents. Then we move on to video monologues of the mentally erratic father. The culmination of the exhibition is the closing video "10 men". Suddenly, the exhibition's claustrophobic, intimate message about lack of understanding about oneself and one's family is transferred to 10 men, whose faces are portraited and deformed by the camera's monocular eye, showing them one after another in slow motion. We read in the catalogue that these strange men are prisoners. So it may be, but the artist or curator has flung the idiosyncrasies of the Raidpere family into a new, hysterical orbit of issues connected with "masculinity", augmented, in a truly Freudian vein, by the innocently, naïvely stupid (I beg your pardon) "alien" figure and role of the mother. The political aspect of the exhibition - the introduction by Hanno Soans in the catalogue, a manifesto against expressions of homophobia in Estonian society - may only recently have seemed to be addressing a localised and exaggerated phenomenon, but the blight of discrimination and "normalisation" in Latvian politics, one of the dangerous extremes of which was exposed in the pronouncements on "Riga Pride", shows how deeply rooted it is in the double standards of the new democracies. Of course, Mark Raidpere's work represents a continuation of expressive, self-dissecting Estonian art, often operating with Poststructuralist theory and the concepts of Lacan: the relativism of disease, the limits of insanity and norms, also characteristic, for example, of the work by Marko Laimre, and, as Hanno Soans points out, in a more universal context, also of Ene-Liis Semper. In contrast to representativism, the autistic "Isolator" exhibits the artist's perception of the world, wrecked by his own emotions, so the exhibition is not just about "a boy with problems". Rather, a helmet is placed on the viewer's head that permits a hysterical view of the outside world, awakening the Raidpere as victim of life in every viewer. Latvia: Darker than dark The location of F5's "Dark Bulb" is a successful one: in the room below the Raidpere saga and not far from Slovenia, which has Vadim Fishkin's similarly speculative sci-fi exhibition "Another speedy day". In it, the "technological poet" Fishkin makes reference to the anniversary of Einstein and the Theory of Relativity by constructing a very illustrative model of a day lasting only 12 minutes: with a lamp-lit dawn and dusk and an electronic timer. In both Fishkin's exhibition and the Latvian one, the projection of scientific or pseudo-scientific revelations into the sphere of art seems incomplete: the readily perceptible and more or less believable "total" concept "eats up" the work of art, turning it into a technical illustration. Possibly, scientific determinism is to blame here: the artists present the "loaned" theme as absolute truth, without alternatives, and when reading the work, the viewer, too, must follow the laws of this mysterious theme that it foists on them. The approach taken in "Dark Bulb" - a space of physical experience - stays in one's memory in terms of fragmented instants: shadowy proceedings viewed in flat screens. These may be pasted with relish into one's general stock of memories from the Biennale, but the core of the work's message remains unknown to us, and, it seems, to the authors too. Perhaps the "being at the Biennale" syndrome has overwhelmed the work's independence. The mysticism of F5 impresses me more than Fishkin's graphic scheme of his thinking, but the technically excellently prepared and arranged Latvian pavilion is missing laconism and clarity. This effort at perplexing the viewer has remained halfway between a clear resolution or its opposite - an abiding conscious trauma. It should be admitted, though, that F5's decision to create an exhibition based on a single work is complicated enough, because, while a retrospective or a group of works serves to create a "picture" per se, achieving an effect by means of a single work at a personal exhibition is a challenge for great masters (even the veteran Žmijewski's "Repetition" is augmented with a voluminous reflection of the artist's work presented in the catalogue). For instance, it seems a shame to me that the exhibition does not make any reference to the potential of "darkness" in the field of popular kitsch. The frequent repetition of the word "dark" in the catalogue recalled to my mind the black figures of the new Goths of Old Riga, and likewise children's rhymes such as "In a black, black town is a black, black street, with a black, black house..." Perhaps these cultural residues contain a coded warning of future catastrophe. Certainly, the "Dark Bulb" theme might also have been extended in this direction on the basis of a psychological and cultural-historical game, folklore and anthropology being favourite topics in current art. Thus, for example, the Estonian catalogue is augmented with a disc with an irresistible remix of Raidpere singing Marlene Dietrich's song "Where have all the flowers gone?" In conclusion, it must be admitted that a "marginal" position in the international art scene may turn out to be an advantageous starting point at the Biennale, permitting the creation of an autonomous emotional and ideational space, without having to reckon with the canons of demand and without feeling the pressure of money and political correctness of the big exhibitions. I doubt whether the significance of autonomous strategies in art is appreciated by the organising states, but many of the artists and curators mentioned in this article offer in their exhibitions an independent, powerful alternative to the passive "Yes-generation" phenomenon in Eastern European and world art. One may draw inspiration for a perpetuum mobile of independent activity from our New York neighbour, Jonas Mekas. | |
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