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After Fishing

blaha — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:25:02 +0000

“Last will and Testament” by Mariusz Hermanowicz (with Zygmunt Hermanowicz) was an instant crush for me.

After his father’s death, Mariusz Hermanowicz discovers, among the things the father left, boxes filled with fishing lures of his father’s own design. Some of the lures are finished, many seem more like prototypes, projects. There are also drawings, parts, materials. A universe of lures.
The father, you see, loved fishing. But he was never satisfied with the lures he had. He kept saying how he would make some of his own, which would allow him to catch many more fish. And kept picking things up from the ground, saying they would be perfect for the lure. “But I had never heard that he ever started doing anything from the things he found”.
So what are these objects? Have they ever been used? Were they supposed to be used?
“Did he ever try to catch fish with them? Would any fish get caught on them?”

I am in love with this project.
Need I say more?
Would you like me to rationalize love?
(Of course, if you are reading any of this, it is because, like readers of poetry, you believe words go far beyond any silly logos-stories.)

Here are my quasireasons, then:
Violence turns into passion turns into art.
The ideal sublimation.
The utopic idea that someone can move from aggression to beauty.

The uncertain heritage. The ambiguity of what remains.

I guess, it is also the ambiguity of what is already there, of what we do, of our own motivations.

The bait transforms into the fish.

The challenge of seducing the fish becomes the fish’s seduction.
The man identifies with the fish to the extent that these little pieces of metal, plastic and wood become a representation of fish, or more, like African masks, they are now a reality of their own, with their peculiar morphology and purposeful abstraction.

Yet there is nothing pragmatic about this purpose. There is madness in this reason.

It is a mad inner dialogue with a fish that will never be caught. The fish that blissfuly remains the being-to-correspond. Transforming these carefuly selected pieces of material into the lure that caught me.

The House

blaha — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 02:28:00 +0000

This house which is almost gone. Which still has the lines and weight of a house, yet it could very well be called landscape. This house which is a set of floors engraved with memories that no one you know could ever read. Things, as people, come and go, yet we believe them to be different, we invest what is left of our faith in this space or that. It’s what you think as you move the objects around, pretty damn self-conscious, pretty certain that this armchair in this place is pure iconoclasm.

You’d rather it were a farm. You would prefer it to be pragmatic, and you would strive for it to be pure function, eliminating any sentiment, oiling the squeaking doors so the sound doesn’t leave traces, cleaning the floor so there are no signatures. No time travels.

Then you picture this farm, and somehow it’s not so proper, the weather is muddy, or maybe that’s the way it always looks, there are traces everywhere, things have a rhythm they will never ever retain, things have a rhythm they will never ever give up. It is your wildest dream, and this land is full of you, it does not allow you to leave. You seem to have been here long before you’ve ever pictured this place.

You move back, trying not to stare, so as not to keep any of this. Then you see the roof, its perfectly symmetrical form (it is not symmetric, but that is how you see it), its blissful abstraction. The way this alien form remains here. Now, yes, you can leave. You exit the picture, you go back to the house where the armchair is elsewhere, you walk out through the garden, and you take your hard-earned sight to another nest.

Nicholas McLeod, The Farm (2010)

How It Works

blaha — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 21:50:21 +0000

You do things.
You try it, this way, that way. You stray, you flop and then you flip again, and something, some things come out of it.

You do them and please, please, you think, do not ask me what I’m doing, what my political take on this, for the moment now I just have a political in-take, the out is not political to my best knowledge. Fortunately, your knowledge is not best. You see, you do things.
And although most of them, you can honestly say, you know little about, the matter speaks for you. (Which, of course, does not mean you do not try to talk with it, for it, explain it, relate it and convey it, extrapolate it, and prove where it, the matter, stands).
Some of the works you work, frankly, are worthy of the highest criticism. They are, yes it has been said before, the flops. Or worse, they have the wrong ideas, wrong media, wrong impressions and plenty-wrong outcomes.

Yet within these plenty-wrong outcomes, things are born. And these things might just make connections, little roots holding on to little pieces of earth. Not that roots hold on to any particular piece, but this metaphor just decided to go its own way, and we at New Art listen to metaphors, so yes, there might be no palpable piece of anything that the roots hold to, yet the work (by now it is work) is starting to appear as if it were actually something, about something, into something, for something. It gains weight.

And then, at some ungiven points, not necessarily at the end or at any sort of finale, the Holy-Flip happens. It could be a form, it could be filled with air or helium, it could be pretty far away from you, but still yours, still stemming from this surprizing head. You might say “things came into place”, but you have no clue what you are saying, you don’t have the perspective, you just enjoy it, the fact that now it seems clear, there is a connection, things are being said which you knew you wanted to say or wanted someone to say, some other head maybe.
And you know what? When it works, it’s so simple.

* * *

All the works above are by Marina Decaro. The first and last image are from a work called “4 ojos” (“4 Eyes”), 2007.

Disclaimer: Marina De Caro was not consulted before writing the above text, and it is not meant to portray the development of her career. The above text is fiction and any resemblance to real art life stories, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
(via)

Allan Kaprow on installation and performance

blaha — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 20:42:45 +0000

Now, I think those two words, installation and performance, mark accurately the shift in attitude toward a rejection or sense of abandonment of an experimental, modernist, position which had prevailed up to about, lets be generous, up to about 1968-1969, and began gradually becoming less and less energized. So, I think what you’re getting there is the flavor of modernist exhaustion and incidently a return to earlier prototypes, or models, of what constitutes art. And it’s no accident that the majority of most performance nowadays, there’s not much installation anymore, by the way, the majority of those performances tend to be of an entertainment, show biz, song and dance, in which the focus is on the individual as skilled presenter of something that tends to have a kind of self-aggrandizing, or at least self-focusing, purpose. It is artist as performer, much like somebody is an entertainer in a nightclub. And they’re interesting. Some of them are very good. I think Laurie Anderson is very good. She’s got all the skills that are needed in theater, which is what this is. Many others who jump on the bandwagon, coming from the visual arts, have no theatrical skills, and know zilch about the timing, about the voic about positioning, about transitions, about juxtapositions, those moment by moment occurrences in theater that would make it work. But it’s another animal, whether good or bad, from what we were doing, and I think, in general, even the good ones are a conservatizing movement.

- Allan Kaprow, 1988 (full interview is here)

Melting ears (on Cory Arcangel’s two works)

blaha — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 12:50:36 +0000

The one I liked was this:

while the one that goes further is this:

Both are fragments of works by Cory Arcangel.
The difference between them is significant. The first one is a joke – it is a repetition, a trick played on the idea of reproduction or universality.
The other one too. But the other one moves towards something else. It provides us with the doubt as to what it should be like. I don’t know Schoenberg’s op. 11, 3. I might have heard it, but I’m not sure how it sounds. Yet it certainly doesn’t sound like these cats. Or does it? What is it about Schoenberg that makes him sound like Schoenberg? And why do we need him to sound like Schoenberg? (Why do we call artists people who interpret in the most faithful way? And no, this is not a rhetorical question. What is it about repetition that still makes it move us aesthetically? And no, any form of the answer “the difference within the repetition” will not satisfy me as long as I keep putting the same piece on my mp3 player and enjoy it beause it is the same, and still appreciate its freshness, not its “difference”.) The thing, here, is not just about the cats, it isn’t the old elephant-making-oil-paintings trick. It is rather about other possibilities of listening, of paying attention, of defining what you hear. Can we hear the Schoenberg in the original cat videos? Can we hear Bach in the original music versions? The Bach composition, in that sense, says too much – it states a clear correspondence between the original YouTube videos and Bach’s work. The second says less: it says “it is out there, but it’s hard to say where exactly, and why exactly we would stop there”. (And does it while being damn funny). And that’s when our ears melt and reconsolidate, they become other ears, and other, and other. We are forced to listen to what might be there, and not what we think is there.
So why do I like the first video more? Maybe because I still enjoy what is there a lot.
Or because I’m not a fan of Schoeberg.

Five sentences concerning ghosts

blaha — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:44:32 +0000

Both pictures by Ujin Lee, from the Dust series.

There is never enough time or effort or vision to make sure things are fixed.

We must suppose they are (or were) somewhere here, in the vicinity of the place we are (or were) standing, in the present continuous, within the limits of what we are ready to appreciate.

I can hardly imagine a memory that has no stills.

The trick is in admiring the thing the trick tricks you into believing, while knowing the trick.

Ghosts : the need for accompanied presence.

(via)

Alevtina Kakhidze – Revolutionary Obedience

blaha — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 21:57:37 +0000

“Art must concern itself with the real, but it throws any notion of the real into question. It always turns the real into a facade, a representation, and a construction. But it also raises questions about the motives of that construction.” – Mike Kelley

Here is how it went:
Ukrainian artist Alevtina Kakhidze has been working on value and power for a while. In one of her charming projects (The Most Commercial Project), for instance, she drew objects that she liked, most of them she couldn’t afford, and gave the drawings the same value that the objects had. So, a drawing of a Louis Vuitton handbag had the same value as the object itself. And when she brought her goods into her marriage, the lawyers confirmed that her estate was worth much more than her entrepreneur husband’s.
In one of her projects, back in 2008, Alevtina drew the earth seen from the sky. No, this needs more precision: the earth seen from an airplane which is not her own private airplane.
Once she made the drawing, Alevtina Kakhidze wrote to some of the richest people in Ukraine – Rinat Akhmetov and Viktor Pinchuk (who has his own adventure in the art world now) – and asked them to make a drawing for her of how the earth looks from a private plane. It was a nice portfolio she sent them, very professional and smooth. She tried encouraging them, telling them it wasn’t about drawing well. If anyone can draw, so can you!
This (and the obvious silence afterwards) made for a nice work. A clean statement about what we see and the position we see it from.

But two years later, unexpectedly, an answer arrives. Akhmetov decided to make his huge foundation to support artists’ projects. And Alevtina’s project was thought perfect for a beginning. Unfortunately, Mr. Achmetov is too busy/shy/untalented to make a drawing, but he will be happy to rent a private plane for Ms. Kakhidze, so she can make her project herself.
And make it she did.
The project, called “I’m Late For A Plane That Cannot Be Missed”, started with Alevtina going by collective transport from her house in the suburbs to the airport. She hitch-hiked a little, took a suburban mini-bus, a suburban train, and (as expected) arrived late at the small private airport near Kiev. There was already a TV crew traveling with her by then, asking everyone on the way who they were and if they knew Alevtina. At the airport, there were several more crews, and over a dozen news photographers. After all, this was an important day for art and culture in Ukraine: the richest man around decided to support real artists, and started by allowing this innocent-looking girl to realize her dream.

And off she went. Onboard, she took only a few reporters. (There was even a struggle for the seat.)

The anxious journalists were mad when, upon returning, Alevtina declared only one thing: she will tell the whole story and answer all the questions tomorrow during her lecture performance. That made no news story at all! Disappointed and frustrated, they could do nothing but wait.

However, the next day arrived quite quickly. And here they were, the journalists, and tens of artists gathered at the conference in one of the most prestigious places in Ukraine (a part of the Saint Sophia Cathedral complex). Waiting mainly to learn how to get money for their projects. And, also, to hear what Alevtina has to say. And to see the drawings.
Alevtina starts describing how she prepared for the trip, how she got clothes specially designed for the occasion, she talks about the cost of the plane rental (10 000 euros). And then she declares:

I felt so calm on the way to the airport and in the sky but now I have to account for this tranquility. What have we done on the plane? We were there. There is no result. I have nothing to show for what actually happened there.

The journalists were confused. This is surely a scandal? No drawing!
But also – no demolition! No shocking performance! No reaction! Nothing! Alevtina did strictly nothing – she did not change the game, she did not make the plane fly somewhere else, she did not paint it red, she made no drawing. She took the flight.
Did I say she didn’t change the game?
Of course she did.
Her non-action was performative. It created a new reality. It brought about a challenge to the system, keeping up the power struggle between the art and the money. Who is the boss here? And why?
Certainly, they want us to do what we want. But if we do what we want our way, we are the ones defining what they want. And for a fraction, it becomes our game. And this fraction, for me, is the work.

In one of her works, Alevtina writes (or quotes, the origin is unsure): “And do you remember, I found 10 roubles, and ran home to show mom. Not the 10 roubles, but how lucky I am.”
It is not the thing we find. It is about how lucky we are.
And how we subvert this luck.

PS. The struggle continues: in the description of the event on the Foundation’s site, the actual request for Akhmetov to draw the earth is not mentioned, making it all seem slightly more like making “Dreams come true in art”. What dreams, exactly?

Take a break

blaha — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 21:15:19 +0000

Remember Zimoun?

Zimoun : 186 prepared dc-motors, cardboard boxes 60×60x60cm, 2010. from ZIMOUN VIDEO ARCHIVE on Vimeo.

Reverse

blaha — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 22:48:52 +0000

At the BWA City Gallery in Bydgoszcz (which has the most poignant introduction of any art gallery I’ve seen so far: “WHAT”), the Polygonum exhibition which opens on October 14th to showcase the Polish region’s visual talents has some tasty discoveries.

“Movemental” by Tomasz Dobiszewski does look a little like a furniture catalogue. And yet there is something wrong with this catalogue. It does not clarify, it does not simplify, but multiplies, undoes the tight order of things. It lets the picture breathe, opens it up, as if it was obvious: the reverse is necessary, the negative, the outline – everything our gaze seems to take for granted. Dobiszewski adds nothing, he just cuts out and moves,allowing the rhythms to become juicier through the absurd joy of things fitting like in a reverse puzzle. Do things become undone, this way, or are they put more clearly into their necessity? After all, this is the space for the space this is.

Another tasty moment requires distance.
Evidently, it’s not about the painting. But the painting seems an important introduction (and the floor, and the floor). This creature, to the right (unfortunately I didn’t write down the name or author), stands as its own double. It should not be approached (really, definitely, in cases like this I understand why beauty needs distance). As any mirage, it is only what it seems, a reflection, a game of angles, a line and a line and a line. It rings a bell, and another, and I wonder, is there a way of keeping it there, of not getting closer, of remaining within the illusion that there is something beyond, just a little more plenty.

Reverse

blaha — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 22:48:52 +0000