The thing is: I’m very excited about performance moving forward. And I love how it invades all sorts of territories. I do it, watch it, write about it. It’s my cup of tea. That is precisely why I don’t want to leave it with an “interesting experiment” tag. Experiments have their consequences, results, and it seems crucial not to stop at the freshman enthusiasm for everything about everything that is anything new. What I like most about the experiment I will criticize below is that it dared to go far, to talk to people, to uncover hidden layers in unexpected places. And yet, it troubled me.

In Gerardo Naumann’s “Factory” performance during the Warsaw edition of the inspiring Ciudades Paralelas festival – we are taken on a guided tour of a functioning factory (in Warsaw it was an enormous steel factory). However, this is not your average tour. Here, we get the possibility of witnessing private stories of workers, to hear who they are, both within the company context and outside of it. The tour is at times poetic, at times simply human and direct. Every presentation mixes the description of a person’s job with more personal matters. Our first guide is the factory’s technical director, then we go all the way down the (wage) hierarchy to the gardiner, who also has his stories, telling us of his love for 60’s music (Deep Purple et al.) and even making us listen to some of it. A truly human experience in an unexpected context.
So what is it that makes me uncomfortable about it?
It is an unwilling, yet uncritical, PR event for a huge, powerful and hardly uncontroversial business.

The project seems to follow closely the teachings of French philosopher Jacques Rancière – for several years now he has been advocating a change of paradigm in the way we look at others. Teaching something, or learning, should mean, above all, realizing how the way other people see the world is just as valid as ours – it is a structure that is already a “complete” structure, they are also “teachers” and we – students. To put it in other words – everyone is competent. It might just be a question of acquiring the possibility to further develop this competence.

Rancière gives this example: workers in a factory can also be seen as art aficcionados, as they have their (art, or aesthetic) specialities, their passions, their expertise. Tapping into this is, according to Rancière, a crucial step towards going beyond the simplistic emancipatory claim of passing on the “correct” sensibility.
The “Factory” project follows Rancière’s ideas closely. And yet, all the while achieving an arguably closer relation with the subjects/performers, and while making us feel a bond with many of them, while amazing us with the aesthetic aspects of a factory, its dynamics and dramaturgy, it fails in an important aspect: it underestimates the power of the structure it works in.

“Just” showing the lives of the workers is never just showing their lives. It necessarily functions within the context. And this context, here, wins. The tour/performance becomes a scarily effective way of implementing propaganda. We are still given stories about how magnificent it is to work here, how everyone is happy, safe, friendly, how everyone who worked in the factory during communist times participated in strikes, and how the only mentioned case of someone getting fired… got immediately offered another job. And because a skillful theater director does it, we hardly feel manipulated. On the contrary, the “genuine” feeling prevails. We leave happy that things are as they are. We love the stories, the people, the parallel city, the way it works, the world it works in. It is difficult to imagine a better publicity.
But wait – could all this be true? Maybe it is a good company? Maybe it is happy and safe and the best of possible industry worlds? Well, it’s enough to make a quick news check – there was a fire in the factory just a few months ago, and just recently the company just layed off many of their executive personnel (apparently they were transferred to another company for “effectivity reasons” and were subsequently fired). I dig a little deeper. ArcelorMittal – that is the name of the company, is owned by the 6th richest person in the world (with a personal wealth of $38.1 billion – link). The company made 10 billion dollars profit last year alone. On the other hand, since the company started taking over Polish factories, it diminished its staff by some 3000 workers in Poland (ca. 25%).

This type of criticism could be contested. Should this matter? Should the work of art take this into account?
Can it? How?
Can we play with the system, within the system? Can we work our works so as not to become victims of the same propaganda we would usually receive – or worse, not just victims, but advocates?
Or can we ignore this and consider that not all works of art need to be political, or not necessarily in that sense, that it can also be about the people who work there, that they too have the right to be important subjects, and not just the megarich owner of their company?
But if we just move in and focus on them, while remaining on the factory ground, if we call it a Parallel City (Ciudades Paralelas means Parallel Cities), aren’t we playing the status quo game? Aren’t we the perfect PR people, giving the company – and the world which it co-creates – our seal of approval, a “positivist” acceptance? (A disturbing trait of the performance is that the workers/performers come and go – without too much of an introduction, and with no goodbye whatsoever, so while we are kept entertained, they have nearly no chance of receiving our recognition, or of establishing a human contact beyond the script. The beginning and the end is clear – it is the Ciudade Parallela, the company, not the people). Doesn’t the critical art, so cherished by Rancière, become uncritical because of the very same (human) aproach he proposes?

So how are we to make – and look at – art in all those parallel cities that are more and more often taken over, or at least manipulated by, the powers that be, be they economic, or more directly political?
The fight here is indeed a fight over the sharing of the sensible – how do we value what we see? How can we reevaluate it? What sort of sharing is this? What do we want out of this situation? How can we, as artists, but also as viewers (viewers are artists, but artists are viewers too, to many people’s surprize), find a common ground without becoming the agent of some powerful megastructure? Should we worry about it?
Banning the word “Facebook” on TV might seem like a silly idea, but I know some theater companies who do not use any brands in their shows. And for them, it’s not about having the power to change the world. It’s about enjoying the possibility.

—-

Curiously enough, I was told that when Naumann made an analogous performance in Buenos Aires, the factory was a small and badly run one, and some commentators thought he was too rough on it, making it look very bad. One possible answer is: this format simply gives you the possibility to take a peek inside – and whatever you find there has been there already. But another possible explanation is: it may not be enough to implement a “personal guided tour” formula if we want to move beyond the small industry into the big guys’ terrain, where they know how to charm us, seduce us, and make it appear like it’s all immaculate. Then, it seems, it would need to be a whole new ball game.

—

I have a vague recollection of reading about a performance by the great Brazilian visual artist and performer Hélio Oiticica (I couldn’t find the reference now). I believe it took place in the 70’s. Oiticica walked around the public space, pointing at different objects. The spectators which followed him understood (were told?) that through the gesture, the objects acquired the status of works of art.
Oiticica’s enchantment with the world seems clear. This is what the world is like, he seems to be saying. Look at this piece of art! I couldn’t have done this better. The only thing I can do is to point it to you.
What would happen if Oiticica did the same thing in the factory? Would the objects he pointed at stop becoming art? Certainly not. The factory would gain the status of an aesthetic object – it would become the same marvel as any of the trees, benches, stones, clouds. Look at this piece of art! I couldn’t have done this better.
Could we not?

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)

Remember Zimoun?

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

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.

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.

Yet again, Maurizio Cattelan achieved his admitted goal: he is on the covers of magazines.
The finger, called L.O.V.E.*, has been erected in front of the Milan stock exchange for the duration of the Fashion Week happening in the city.
Everyone is happy: Cattelan gets his attention, the public is proud of such a daring representative, the city gets its Fashion Week (kind of) publicized, and the brokers… well, the brokers have a good laugh and continue their business as usual.
That is not to say the work is not good. It is poignant. The finger that is sticking is the only one remaining on the hand. The others seem to have been severed. So is this hand telling the bankers to go fuck themselves, or is that the only thing it can say? Or maybe it’s that when you have next to nothing, the middle finger is the one to resist longest.
Oh, but of course, it’s made of marble and put on a pedestal.

But that, really, is not the work at work here. The work is to have been able to put it in front of the Stock Exchange. To have shown them the finger and have them accept it. This is what makes a real contemporary trickster – not the sculpture, but the context.
“We want to be confirmed as the capital of contemporary art”, the city’s administrators officially stated, “and we have to not only mediate but also accept what we do not like”.
Which is a hilarious comment, and only confirms Cattelan’s intelligence. One wonders how he did it. Maybe what he said was, let’s cut the crap, it is a criticism, but it will attract more tourists than you can ever imagine, and will not hurt you in any way whatsoever, because no one is going to take their money out of the stocks after seeing my work. On the contrary, the tourists will leave their money in Milan.
But the controversy remains. “It is unacceptable that the City sticks its finger up to the Stock Exchange” – said the councillor for Town Planning Carlo Masseroli in a fervent discussion.
Masseroli says: “the administration cannot be culturally subordinate to a self-styled artist like Cattelan who wants to use Milan to earn money”.
Oh, that’s right, Cattelan made money off this! I wonder who payed him.
So the question is, who is Cattelan showing the finger to?
I’m not sure, but the pictures suggest that the finger is in front of the stock exchange. And is not pointing towards it, but from it.

Which could end this text. But will not. Because even if Cattelan laughs in our face, even if he plays a trick on all of us, he still plays out the crucial role of catalyzer – he materializes the tensions that are already there. He makes us go “Hey! Wait a minute!” He sticks the finger where it hurts.

*The title was originally supposed to be “Omnia munda mundis” (“To the pure ones everything is pure”).