Μια ερώτηση

Χαίρεται και πάλι..

βέβαια, πιος χαίρεται δεν ξέρω μιας και μονο εγώ γράφω σε αυτό το ρημάδι ιστολόγιο - αλλά αυτό δεν πειράζει καθώς ο έτερος συνδιαχιεριστής έχει ρευστοποιηθεί..Θα ήθελα να απευθύνω μια ερώτηση προς τους φιλόσοφους ή φιλοσοφίζοντες της παρέας: επεσαν στα χέρια μου σε ηλεκτρονική μορφή [ebook] οι παραδόσεις του Αντόρνο για την ΚΚΛ του Καντ [αγγλική έκδοση του 2001] και διαβάζοντας τα πρώτα δυο κεφάλαια το βιβλίο μου φάνηκε συναρπαστικό για κάποιον σαν και εμέ που ούτε φιλόσοφος είναι ούτε θέλει να γίνει. Η ερώτηση λοιπόν προς τους ειδικούς: θα το συστήνατε ως εισαγωγικό κείμενο για την ΚΚΛ? Ευχαριστώ πολύ...

Them - Zmijewski [Documenta 12]

“Though we often ostensibly apply actual labels to fictive things, we
can hardly apply fictive labels; for a label used exists.”
-Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art




‘I’m starting’ says an old lady in her modest but excited voice. Nobody
anticipates the beginning of a battle. She draws a black line, then
another, and more.

Four different teams illustrate their four diverse views in simple
drawings. A catholic church, a word ‘’ in Hebrew framed in the
contour of , Chrobry’s Sword, and the word ‘Freedom’ (in Polish)
again framed in the contour of .

Each team’s members come from a different ideological background. As
groups supposed to appear representative of the ideology they become
stereotypical in themselves. Moreover – they use stereotypes to express
their beliefs.

Their illustrations serve as emblems, also in a literal meaning, as
they are printed on t-shirts that each group will wear. During the
second meeting, dressed in their new outfits they become easily
identifiable. Simple rules are set – there are no rules.

Teams begin to correct each other’s expressions, removing or adding
elements until the message is in compliance with their own views. They
each represent some type of an extreme, not one being a so-called
typical Pole. However, it is the very use of stereotypes in which lays
the strength of Them.

Their actions are a battle of representations, a war of images, symbols
and gestures, which gain their intensity from being simple, direct and
most importantly – not always adequate. The extremity escalates as the
exchange of fire takes place.

None of the participants are artists; it is only for the sake of the
video that they agreed to use visuals. The conflict is spectacular,
almost thrilling as the actions develop.

If one ever asks the question whether art can be harmful, this video
provides a particularly interesting answer. Only the elderly catholic
ladies notice that the tumult is not leading the discussion anywhere.
They decide to leave the room. The remaining three groups consisting of
much younger people seem too excited to notice that their actions are
destructive. The reason for that is as simple as it is peculiar. They
have to invent ways of expression that are new to them and that will
prove what they consider to be the strength of their argument.

There is no single attempt to explain any belief or the reason behind
it. Nobody tries to reach an agreement. Nonetheless, members of each
group seem to be satisfied with their doings. Perhaps it is because
they are stubborn. But it may also be due to the fact, that they are
engaged in a creative process, the most fulfilling act any human can
undertake. The godly act of creating easily becomes opium for the
brain.


απο http://whitehotmagazine.com/whitehot_articles.cfm?id=719

Για τον δημιουργο του βιντεο Them [Documenta]

Artur Zmijewski – Selected Works

18 May 2007 - 24 June 2007 “The reason was, that there is absolutely no reason at all, that one should be interested in these (...) women, and there is definitely less of a reason to make a film about them.”
Artur Zmijewski

Artur Zmijewski (born 1966 in Warsaw) is counted as one of Poland’s most renowned contemporary artists. In 2005, the photo and video artist represented the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and is one of the artists that have been named to participate prior to this year’s Documenta 12 announcement. The Video-Forum of the NBK honors his work with a comprehensive solo exhibition in Berlin.

Artur Zmijewski references with his works to suppressed (displaced) individuals and societal trauma. He pokes his finger into the open wounds to incite political discussions. Upon the first glance, Zmijewski´s images appear merely documentary, however the analytical staging of the artist becomes clearly recognizable through the selection of images during the editing process. Zmijewski does not shy away from putting the generally accepted rules of “Political Correctness” into question, yet his camera lingers on those very places in the art production which often become an oversight because of a conscious intent of avoidance or of mere carelessness. So far Zmijewski’s work about mentally and physically handicapped people has called wide public attention.

For the Berlin exhibition “Selected Works” Zmijewski produced ten films with the theme work. The Berlin works “Ursula”, “Patricia”, and “Dieter”, developed in co-production between the artist and the Video-Forum and (like the Sicilian produced works with “Aldo”, “Giuseppe“, and “Salvatore” as well as "Yolanda" from Juarez, Mexico) will be exhibited for the first time in public. In addition to these debut works, the Polish produced videos “Danuta”, “Dorata”, and “Halina” will also be shown. Adjacent to the ten video pieces dealing with the theme Work, a “study room” with older work of Artur Zmijewski will also be exhibited.

For every film, the artist follows a person 24 hours long, whereupon he cuts 15 to 18 minutes out of the selected material. It was not only filmed in the work place but also in their private everyday life, the way to work, in the supermarket, sleeping. The scenes do not follow any linear proceedings, instead images from their professional life are interchanged back-to-back with takes of them shopping or in the kitchen.

With the “Selected Works” the artist is neither concerned about socio-political agitation nor about the mediacy of objective truths nor scientific findings. He attempts to give the recipient, the traditional elitist middle class art observer, another perspective of the workers, instead of what they would commonly believe that they have no desire or pursuit of an interesting job and are unable to conduct an interesting conversation. However, Zmijewski claims it to be “worthwhile to be interested in this grey cold material, that fills the societal cosmos and snidely is labeled as “mainstream”. They are the mainstream and therefore in a “class of their own”.

[απο http://www.kontakt.erstebankgroup.net/events/2007-05_Neuer+Berliner+Kunstverein_Artur+Zmijewski/en]

Documenta 12 [II]

Μεχρι σήμερα η έκθεση έχει δεχθεί γυρω στους 360000 επισκέπτες !


Απο τους NY Times και τον συντροφο HOLLAND COTTER:

[...]

The format of the Biennale as a profusion of national pavilions is set; Münster is medium-specific. Documenta has no such restrictions. It’s a contemporary show, but it can encompass all sorts of material. This year’s edition includes 16th-century Islamic calligraphy, Central Asian embroidery and a stuffed giraffe.

It can also take any shape a curator wants to give it. Traditionally the show has been the brainchild of a single person. There are two this time: Roger M. Buergel and Ruth Noack, a husband-and-wife team, who issued the kind of airy-weighty preview teasers that left you ready to hate what was to come. (European “serious” often reads as pretentious to an American ear. It’s a cultural thing.)

In any case, the show sustains its reputation for being an idiosyncratic, concept-driven affair. You go to glamorous, sun-splashed Venice to party, gaze and graze; you come to gray, pleasureless Kassel to think.

Documenta 12 asks us to do a lot of thinking: about mortality, about the obsolescence of modernity, about how to live an ethical life through art. But it advances its questions quietly, and a bit too quietly: the resulting low visual impact is a major flaw. The show is every bit as socially engaged as its video-heavy 2002 predecessor, but packages its politics in a different way, in unmonumental objects and installations by undersung, not to say unknown, artists.

Many art-world insiders didn’t have a clue in advance who had been picked for the show. And after the list was announced, they basically still didn’t know, so unfamiliar were many of the names. Apart from Gerhard Richter, with a small 1977 portrait; Agnes Martin, with one painting; and the California-based John McCracken, there are relatively few Euro-American A-list figures in sight.
[...]

As if to make the point that that culture will eventually be our culture too, Mr. Ai intends to take 1,001 Chinese visitors to Kassel before the show closes on Sept. 23. Antique Qing dynasty chairs (which Mr. Ai collects) are spread throughout the Aue-Pavilion, the largest of Documenta’s five exhibition sites, awaiting their arrival.

As for the pavilion itself, designed by the Paris architectural firm Lacaton & Vassal, it’s a catastrophe, and one of the main reasons the whole business comes across as visually thin and disjointed. Press materials call the chain of boxy containers the Crystal Palace. But with its undivided space, brown concrete floors and cheesy blackout curtains, it resembles a run-on storage shed, and nothing looks good in it

[...]


The curators’ self-described intention was to bust up the modernist “white cube” gallery model. I’m all for such sabotage, if an art-friendly alternative can be found. The pavilion is not one. It’s a deadening, trivializing space that turns the show’s distinguishing qualities — it is portentous but subdued — into a disadvantage.

[...]

For the film, titled “Them” and installed at the Kulturzentrum Schlachthof, a youth center some distance from downtown Kassel, Mr. Zmijewski asked four groups of Polish citizens, from conservative Roman Catholics to radical Marxists, to meet and debate their political convictions in the form of a communally executed paint-and-paper mural.

The exchanges started light: an older woman paints a church; a younger one cuts through the paper to open its doors. Nice touch, everyone agrees. But pretty soon the painting, cutting and collaging grow vehement, with repeated defacings and erasings matched by verbal confrontations until, at the end, the mural is trashed. The result is an acting out of Joseph Beuys’s famous statement that “everyone is an artist” and an example of political art that further divides rather than unites people, leaving them more mutually hostile than ever.
[...]

hat’s the dynamic of Documenta 12 as a whole. Does it work? In the end, no. The first time through, its combination of new names and forms generates an excitement of discovery. It’s so great not to see everyone you’ve seen everywhere else. On a return visit the surprise has diminished, and the installation starts to look too porous; the curatorial ideas too obvious, pedantic and confining; the work too small, private, underdone, done-before.

I felt no desire to make a third visit (though I did), particularly to the deeply depressing Crystal Palace. And yet I came away with something that lasted: an impression that I’d never seen an exhibition quite like this before, a big, important show that offered so clear an alternative to bigness, that redefined importance in so dramatic a way. That may not be nearly enough for so prestigious an event, but if you think about it, it’s a lot.