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Ursula Biemann, Suely Rolnik and Brian Holmes (chaired by Ivo Mesquita) discuss the previous talks.
Ursula Biemanns talk is accompanied by a presentation of her own video work, Black Sea Files. The video shown helps to clarify the notion of micro politics of the image, the subject of Maurizio Lazzaratos talk. Ursula worked with Angela Melitopoulos on projects dealing with the idea of transcultural geography. Melitopoulos is an author who Ursula points out as an example of someone who creates micro-political mechanisms through artistic practice. Both work with the notion of border systems by capturing often unapparent fluxes of people, sensations, cultural experiences and lifestyles as they follow the routes of valued commodities.
In the work presented a series of videos using text, press cuttings, archive research and captured footage, resulting in 10 archives she creates a fragmented human geography around the issue of oil, displaying not only the conflict between oil, territory and power, but also the flux of economic resources, images and capital
Ursula seeks to reveal the geography of the flux of oil that is hardly dealt with by the media. A good example are the contracts of the Caspian Sea, where a transnational company extracts oil to bring it to the rest of Europe through a long pipeline that crosses three countries: from the Azerbaijan reserves near Baku port, across Georgia and finally reaching the Mediterranean coast in Turkey.
However, Ursulas work is not linear, for it seeks to show the macro-political dimension of the large contracts signed behind the doors of public and private offices. It emphasizes the cases of micro-political clashes both with the population living on this route and with any others who may suffer from the projects side effects.
Through showing the materiality of an energy resource flux as well as its geographical and political effects on the life of human beings something that is difficult to register the artist intends to contradict the magical appearance of immigrants who come to the European Union (EU) who spark fear in the EU governments and who face strong restrictive measures. Routes were opened for the transport of oil and other goods, as a result of a European policy of expansion towards Asia after the end of communism. These routes started to be used for human traffic, including the traffic of women for prostitution. At some point, the video shows two Russian prostitutes and their pimps who are trying to get into the EU. One of them tells the camera that she used to work in a textile factory in Moscow. The question of femininity consists of the fragments of her geographical construction.
In Archive 2, we see Ursula reflecting about her procedures of collecting and selecting images and trying to make sense of the events she was being faced with during her wanderings. The sequence shows her working methods oscillating between artistic practice and secret intelligence agent, almost like a scientist or a spy, since the access to information on the pipeline (including its layout) was restricted to her. Ursula also felt the need to avoid turning human situations into spectacle.
In her talk, Ursula acknowledges the role of the artist in this situation by selecting the images as well as reflecting upon the circulation and reception of the work by different audiences. On the other hand, she states that this kind of video research, while dealing with human right principles and borrowing an investigative methodology from the social sciences, does not fit into the parameters of art history. Her video works infiltrate the most supportive channels, be they academic or activist. Art museums are not the most suitable places to show or to promote this kind of work, but it is worth thinking about what role they can play in such an instance.
Suely Rolnik observed a common concern in the talks of Lazzarato and Grasskamp: that of the relationship between art and geo-politics, approached by both from a Euro-centric perspective. Their thoughts develop in different directions, however: while Grasskamp questions the history of the museum, Lazzarato looks at the policies of contemporary art museums. The latter does so from a micro-political angle, that is, the production of subjective and objective realities where the sensorial dynamic of one is focused on its relationship with the other. Thus the politics of subjectivation and of creation itself are defined.
Medical research conducted with blind people has shown that they can avoid bumping into objects in a room despite being unable to see them. The mind can apprehend the invisible, the living presence of what constitutes the environment independently from shapes it is the blind gaze, or subjective gaze.
This and other studies about the sensorial have evinced the existence of two different powers of the sensory organs in capturing the world that relate to different layers of the cerebral cortex:
1) Perception, through which we perceive the world as form, associated with the cartography of representation where the sense of the other is previously defined. This objectifying power is called macro sensorial.
2) Sensation, through which the world is perceived like a field of living forces that affect us. The world penetrates the body and makes us part of its texture subjectivity fuses into the context. The whole body has the ability of receiving the world, a blind power called micro sensorial.
The living presence, which is always perceived by the body, vibrates like a foreign body, generating discomfort and tension, for it contradicts the world of representation that we normally inhabit. Depending on the degree of the practically inevitable discomfort and tension caused by the corporal perception of the other, and depending on the degree of openness to the other, different politics of the production of subjectivity and objectivity will emerge. The types of macro politics are defined by different politics of capturing the presence of the other, and are polarised into two fields:
1) Macro and micro-sensorial tension trigger creation, where we exteriorise the strangeness factor caused by the perception of the other and reintegrate it into a subjectivation process, transforming ourselves and the environment into another becoming.
2) The above process is denied because the strangeness is intolerable. The sensorial activity is then macro sensorial, and the other appears objectified, even if the image that is formed is politically correct. By denying the existence of the other we reduce him/her to a representation. Euro-centrism, with its politics of macro-sensorial subjectivation, keeps the other away by neutralising its living forces. This is also how creative forces are blocked.
This is an important digression in regards to the remarks made about the previous talks. Grasskamp talked about the museum as having originated from the European courts Cabinets of Curiosities. Suely draws on this and demonstrates the neutralisation of the colonised living forces by transforming their objects which seemed strange and provoked a questioning of the European lifestyle into mere forms to be macro-sensorially perceived. The later distribution of those different objects into several fields related to science and leaving pure art to specific museums, reiterates these macro-sensorial politics. The art museum has become an agent of cultural globalisation by taking art-historical objects to all corners of the world at the same time as it erases the context of tensions that made their creation possible in the first place. Disconnected from the problems that generated them, artworks circulate like anaemic forms.
Lazzarato departed from contemporary Europe, focusing not on the museum, but on the conflict between a universal European Union and a Europe of singularities, where art can be an event, since it springs up from conflicts and tensions caused by the presence of the other. Here there is a questioning of the dynamics of those populations, a blind gaze, with a micro-sensorial approach. Lazzarato is interested in a vulnerability towards the other, in a shared experience that requires political and aesthetic availability in order to incorporate the clashes and tensions of the encounter. The resulting work is an Event, which destabilises hierarchies and mediates representations. The very medium of film or video bears living images, thus breaking with the spectacular identification, the Euro-centric mirror.
So how do we talk about art history? Grasskamp asked whether art museums today are not replicating the Cabinets of Curiosities. Lazzarato opposes a cartography bearing on the exteriority of the museum to this tendency of neutralising objects into anaemic forms.
What to do with the museums then? Should we destroy them, as suggested in the 1960s, at the height of the war against institutions? This would only mean that we were keeping the same logic for or against without breaking with it. What would be really important is to investigate the reification that separates objects from the process that originated them. The basic questions concerning the vitality of museums and the affirmation of micro politics situated within the tension of the encounter with the other as the trigger of creation itself, can be summarised as follows:
- How can one take into account the memory of art in such a way that restores its vitality and creates a dialogue with the contemporary?
- How can the museum be a producer of events?
The title of Brian Holmess paper is Beyond the Global 1000' referring to Grasskamps remarks on art as being a restricted and refined aspect of globalisation and that (quoting Tom Wolfe) there are probably one hundred artists circulating around the world.
Holmes did not present himself among the 100 international artists, but among the 1000 people who use the museum as a place for experimenting with alternatives, or as a political laboratory, and who now feel more welcome in an institutional framework in spite of the difficulties they have with transnational museums.
He points out that the previous talks have brought up two distinct groups of ideas: Grasskamp challenged the universal idea of art perpetuated by twentieth-century museological practices, which associated the concept of exoticism of the first museums with the codes of contemporary art. Lazzarato indicated the possibility of the museum as a supporter of a kind of art which is committed to the exterior of the institutional framework, mainly by sponsoring or facilitating cooperative production processes. As an example, he mentioned Angelas project, in which it becomes clear that experimental practices can transform universals.
There are some difficulties, however, and Holmes makes a few ironic associations in order to describe them. Firstly, the contemporary-art model has become a commodity as a consequence of the tourism industry. There is a fierce competition between cities worldwide to attract cultural tourists and to become welcoming places that are equipped with the suitable infrastructure to attract the new super creative class. There is a competition for human capital, which plays a decisive role in their becoming hot economic - and semiotic - spots. After all, the bourgeoisie have always dreamt of enjoying the aristocratic idleness.
Therefore, even experimental museums and institutions and the games of the thousand globals often rely on the sponsorship of the elites who get into the competition between cities. The success of a city is measured by how creative it is. But some things cannot be kept hidden for too long. One soon realises that there is no vertical mobility in the elites game, but that the hierarchies are maintained.
At the beginning of the new millennium this global tourism is under siege. According to Richard Florida, in this creative class war the tourists themselves are under attack.
Even if this is the case, what Holmes calls the process of urbanisation of blindness continues with the construction of luxury tourist complexes in deprived areas. These are not hidden areas, though the tourists cannot see them.
Many artists have been seeking support outside the neo-liberal subjectivity of the elite and the sponsors. The activists carry out actions in partnership with migrant populations.
Holmes foresees a return of ideological confrontations and that the neo-liberals will not allocate funding for the emerging transversal art. After all, they just want to have fun again.
Difficulties will increase. Those who choose to experiment and to move away from universal truths must be critical and think about how artistic notions are transformed, especially concerning the relationship between art and life and the issue of participation and representation.
The logic of institutional collections must be thought through from within what gets into the museum? The museological framework has hardly evolved since the time of the transnational museums programme, and a critique coming from other fields of knowledge can contribute towards taste-building, one of the museums functions. The social sciences can provide social theories which can bring important elements into the formation of a collection. The art field itself can include theories and social experiences into its development.
Debate:
Audience:
- The interest in the link between theory and Utopia echoes the twentieth-century avant-garde. Are we going to witness the institutionalisation of that? Theres a risk of transforming art into cultural marketing, a segmented thing with specific projects for each worker, etc.
- Is it the museums role to deal with social problems? Arent there other institutions for that?
- Why do only contemporary-art museums, and not other kinds of museums, seem to deal with social issues?
- How do you get an audience (apart from the elite) to engage with the art museum? Who is art made for?
- In Brians talk there is a dichotomy between image and conflict. Museums are part of the tourism industry and people are used to that.
- Aesthetics is often less important when it comes to social issues, the artwork can be bad. What are the aesthetic criteria? What other criteria are there to evaluate an artwork?
- What are the techniques for interpreting art?
Brian Holmes:
- The idea of the connection between Utopia and social theory is no longer avant-garde, because the avant-garde has become mass market maybe its post avant-garde. I am not against the institutionalisation of art. We are approaching a violent period that will require a lot of work from the institutions.
- Art museums must get involved in social issues, in terms of art and the specificity of artistic practice.
- To evaluate an artwork taking into account other elements but its aesthetics is to perform a great transformation in the evaluation process itself. Social theory does not answer all the questions. Actually, we should feel that it is something good. Two people can be affected differently by the same thing, making it hard to define what it takes to claim that an artwork is good this may be one of the museums functions.
- In order to interpret art, it would be necessary to discuss politics in art and for art. Financial capital suppresses peoples diversity, making the creative class homogeneous. It would be necessary to employ museums resources and to do something with them according to diverse interests and not only those of the elites.
Ursula Biemann:
- Artists have been taking the streets in order to deal with social issues. However, museums are the ones taking more interest in these issues, so theyre not denying the conflict.
- In relation to the audience, the videos are shown in contexts where debate and conflict are supposed to take place.
- Self-organisation has grown. Museums have lost the power to attract people and interests. Therefore, the institutions have invited groups from the outside and from different fields.
Audience
- In Suelys opinion can art become the bridge between the dichotomy of image-conflict?
Suely Rolnik:
- It is necessary to re-conquer the dimension of the relationship with the other that Ursula mentioned. It is not about producing the image one has of the other; one must become fragile before the other. Becoming fragile, or vulnerable to the other, and not mediated by the image one has of the other, is how we look for the living one. It is not about filling up the space with images, as even if they are correct they suffocate the others existence, or their life.
Martin Grossmann:
- The artist as a producer is increasingly also a mediator; he/she must negotiate with the museum, with the context, etc. In this situation the museum starts to operate like an interface that allows a horizontal relationship between the many agents of the art system. But this can be dangerous; the artist loses a certain aura that the audience expects him/her to have. The public normally goes to the museum for leisure, to see different things, but what they find is very similar to the reality presented by the daily media and reality itself. Is the museum losing its singularity?
Suely Rolnik:
The process of subjectification takes place in the museum. This process escapes macro sensoriality, and leads to the production of the other in oneself, what was previously hidden starts to implode with the avant-garde. The affective openness (in the sense of being affected) to the other forces creation, and this has started with the rupture of counter-culture. This movement brought crisis to the 1960s, and institutional answers have not yet been found, especially by the agents responsible for this rupture. It was capitalism, though, which invented and maintained the call for an instrumentalised creative force by the capital. Fifty per cent of a companys budget goes to publicity preparing the ground for a new commodity. Creativity now invests on producing interesting lifestyles for capital. The dynamic workforce is the creative one. The artist submits him/herself to a glamour surplus value, to the logo, to branding. Art has been instrumentalised; publicity makes the promise of an earthly paradise, happiness and personal success. The presence of the other is neutralised. How to open up the institution to networks with the other instead of becoming instrumentalised by the market? The museum must invest in political questions, but also in artistic and museological ones. How can we resist instrumentalisation? How can the museum support these questions?
Audience
- Museums are transversal, theyre not homogeneous, and they are not always instruments of capital. Some museums have been discussing that internally. The critique does not always come from outside.
- The Cabinets of Curiosities collections were often seen by people outside the royal courts and they entered their imagination or have become part of their visual vocabulary.
- There seems to be a general view here of a single idea of museum.
Brian Holmes:
- I talked about the transnational museum, such as the Guggenheim. I agree that there are many realities conflicts between transnational museums and others, national conflicts and even socio-cultural conflicts.
(By Beatriz Scigliano Carneiro)
Translation from Portuguese: hì-fen translation solutions
Proofreading: Beulah Davies
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