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 Tube in Venice Laima Kreivyte, Art Historian | |
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I heard how a flute kept tooting, but no way could I catch who was listening: me, or not me; because there was nothing to catch hold of to find oneself; so one could find oneself being this or that to experience one's being... It ranged around, changing its (at times sparkling) no-shape, no-reality... Alfonsas Andriuškevičius, for Žilvinas Kempinas (Translated by Eugenijus Ališanka and Kerry Shawn Keys) This text opens with a poem dedicated to Žilvinas Kempinas who will present a large-scale installation, Tube, at the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale. The poem is by Alfonsas Andriuškevičius - a prominent Lithuanian art critic and writer, who laid the foundations for contemporary art criticism at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. Andriuškevičius has been following the artistic career of Kempinas since his painting studies at the Academy and included the young artist in his book "72 Lithuanian Artists on Art"1. The rhythmic and graphic structure of a stanza corresponds to the visual structure of Tube. Instead of a chronological survey, Andriuškevičius suggests tracing a few important features of Kempinas' works by following a poem. "Poetry makes nothing happen: it survives." (W.H.Auden)2. The most adequate interpretation of this dialogue would be a blank page with transparent images gradually fading away. | |
 Žilvinas Kempinas. Photo from the Žilvinas Kempinas' private archive | |
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I heard how a flute kept tooting... The key word of the first line is a flute. A hollow instrument - like a tube. It reminds me of an early installation-performance by Kempinas, Painting from Nature (1994), at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius. The hall was full of hollow "trees" made from 35 mm celluloid film. Kempinas was drawing spiral structures of the "trees" on paper, using a fan engine and brush. Mechanical yet unique reproductions of emptiness deprived painting and "nature" of any content. Filmed frames had lost sequence and became building materials for "secondary nature". This artificial landscape was portrayed in multiple ink circles. Some of Kempinas' later works also contain physical and conceptual emptiness: Columns (2006), Big O (2008) and Tube (2008). No content, no mediation - just direct experience. "Tube does not represent, mimic, symbolize nor narrate; it is rather a sensual instrument for experiencing a new sense of space and one's body in a moment of time. The flow of visitors and the flickering reflections of light complete this otherwise radically hollow composition". (Žilvinas Kempinas) but no way could I catch who was listening: me, or not me; Ambivalence, randomness, disorientation - these words are often used to describe the experience of walking through Tube. Who is walking, who is seeing: me, or not me? Tube addresses the physical and optical experiences of the viewer and invokes the feeling of being inside and outside simultaneously. Rosalind Krauss refers to the theory of grammatology or that of the parergon, "the idea of an interior set apart from, or uncontaminated by, an exterior was a chimera, a metaphysical fiction"3. In that respect we can think of Tube as a magnificent visualization of Derrida's theories. because there was nothing to catch hold of to find oneself; so one could find oneself being this or that to experience one's being... Tube is made from videotape - yet there is nothing to see, nothing to touch. The form is transparent, and the video data is invisible. Videotape is not simply a sculptural material, but a means of performance. Kempinas makes it dance in the air. A pair of flying magnetic tapes between two fans (Double O, 2008) dramatically fight each other - twisting and biting until one is ripped by the other. In the 1990's Kempinas was also making innovative stage designs, which were famous for abstract interiors with black and white stripes. Now he is making open spaces where lines move, fly and disappear. | |
 Žilvinas Kempinas. Tube. Installation. Videotape, plywood, steel. Dimensions variable. 2008. Photo from the Žilvinas Kempinas' private archive | |
| It ranged around, changing its (at times sparkling) no-shape, no-reality... No image can convey the gradual accumulation of the senses one encounters when passing through the translucent tunnel of parallel lines. The installation and the body of the spectator are intimately intertwined. Tube reveals seeing as a process experienced by the means of the body. According to the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, our ability to see is part of our ability to move: "A human body is present when, between the seer and the visible, between touching and the touched, between one eye and the other, between hand and hand a kind of crossover occurs, when the spark of the sensing/sensible is lit, when the fire starts to burn which will not cease until some accident befalls the body, undoing what no accident would have sufficed to do"4. Tube resonates with the environment of the floating city. The installation is in harmony with the basic elements of Venice: stone and water. It reflects the perfect order of architecture and formless substance around it. Tube, first made at Atelier Calder in Sache, France is now at the Scuola Grande della Misericordia - a magnificent Renaissance building designed by Jacopo Sansovino. At the moment of its realization this was one of the biggest buildings in Venice. The hall on the first floor (21 x 49 m) is second in size only to the main hall of the Doge's Palace. In the second half of the 15th century brotherhoods were competing in the building of new palaces5. The ambition of Sansovino to overshadow other buildings was not fully realized - due to financial difficulties only the rough brick shell was finished. This roughness, together with the classical shapes of the façade, forms a favorable context for Tube. Its basic element - the circle - refers to the circle in the façade of the Misericordia and on the ground in front of it. The interior space of the Scuola is structured by a sequence of columns6 - the same rhythm repeated in the wall articulation and in the black-and-white installation from videotapes. But instead of reflecting the Renaissance perspective and rationality of the Scuola Grande della Misericordia, Kempinas creates a space where vision and movement make inscriptions on the body. Tube transforms perspective to perception. Magnetic tape is no longer a vehicle of information, but a linear passage of time and space. Tube (like a flute) is an "incurable metaphor"7, longing for eternal life and rejecting it for the sake of unexpectedness. Tube in Venice is a unique way to cross yet another canal, without a boat or a bridge. 1 Andriuškevičius, A. 72 lietuvių dailininkai - apie dailę, Vilnius, Vilniaus dailės akademijos leidykla, 1998, p. 139-144 2 Auden, W.H. ‘In memory of W.B. Yeats' in Another Time, New York, Random House, 1940 3 Krauss, R. A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition, London, Thames and Hudson, 1999, p.32 4 Merleau-Ponty, M. ‘Eye and Mind' in The Primacy of Perception, Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1964 5 Alessandro Caravia in his Criticism of the Scuole Grandi (1541) writes about the Scuola Grande della Misericordia: Rather than ‘Mercy' its title should be ‘The Scuola Administered Mercilessly Of the Sweet Virgin of the Green Valley. These men have caused ruin, it's easy to see, Merely to satisfy whims on condition Of giving San Rocco some stiff competition. Chambers, D.S., Chambers, D., Pullan B., Fletcher, J. Venice - A Documentary History, 1450-1630, University of Toronto Press, 2001, p. 215 6 Huse, N., Wolters, W., Jephcott, E. The Art of Renaissance Venice- Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, 1460-1590, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1993, p. 113 7 Brodskij, J. ‘Fondamenta degli Incurabili' in Poetas ir proza, Vilnius, Baltos lankos, p. 381 /Translator into English: Daiga Veikmane/ | |
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