Die Antwood’s  (the answer) music video “Enter The Ninja” is the newest South African sensation to hit the “interweb”.   Comprised of angry white guy lead man Ninja (born Waddy Jones), über blonde vixen Yo-Landi Vi$$er and DJ  Vuilgeboost (aka HI-TEK JUNIOR who occasionally subs for DJ HI-TEK), the group has adopted colored (racially mixed) hip-hop and transformed it into their own “zef” (redneck) music.  This has led to all sorts of discussions concerning the appropriation – or misappropriation – of culture, and the inevitable question, Who owns South African culture?

In other words, What color owns South African culture? Or, for that matter, what color (race) owns what culture?  Can the slave story be told by a white narrator?  Can the Aboriginal story be told by a black narrator?

While history dictates that it cannot, at least not without prejudice, misconception, and omission, South Africa is, if not a melting-pot, a cultural stew.  If anything, the close proximity of cultures cannot help but spill into one another.  Add globalization and multi/trans-culturalism to this mix and “original” or “copyright” become difficult concepts to navigate.

Perhaps K’naan answers the question of who owns what best.  In the video “young artists for Haiti”, K’naan says “what started as my song became their song”.  “Enter The Ninja” is bold, different, a strange intermingling of performance, contemporary commentary, graffiti art, comedy, and anger.

So perhaps the question, Who owns South African culture is moot.  In fact, it could be argued that South Africa’s history of apartheid, post-apartheid, inter-racial, cross-cultural, mish-mash of everything and everyone dictates that the question be moot.  After all, how can you appropriate something that has surrounded you for so many generations?  If anything, Die Antwood pushes the boundaries of race/color and ownership of culture beyond the narrow confines that culture should belong to any one group in particular.  “Enter the Ninja” (Ninja=Japanese) proves this just by the fact that it has become an international sensation – maybe Die Antwood’s international audience doesn’t get every reference, but something is reaching them at some level and forming some form of connection.

Anthony Koutras' "Pylon", 2010, Courtesy: Stephen Bulger Gallery

Q.: What is wrong with a “passive encounter with the everyday”?  After all, can we not assume that sometimes a garbage can is just a garbage can?
A.: I don’t feel that there’s anything necessarily wrong with a passive encounter with the everyday.  I find that people become familiar with things and that creates our personal definition of everyday objects.  That’s why travel to other cities and countries are of interest to a lot of people.  Traveling to other places exposes you to an unfamiliarity of the everyday.  Your usual recognition is thrown for a loop.  It’s this recognition that’s interesting to me, and what I’m exploring through this new work.
As an artist I try to look past the recognition that creates our perception of the everyday.  I find myself really looking at my surroundings and curating my own surrounding elements.  As I walk through the public space I constantly find fleeting compositions and objects that are visually interesting to me.  In choosing a garbage can to photograph it has to hold certain characteristics that are personally interesting.

Q.: Does an object have to be disconnected from its original context in order to be viewed differently?
A.: No, I suppose objects can be viewed differently without their being disconnected from the original context.  I suppose it would require the viewer to take it upon him or herself to consciously think about viewing it differently, while the original form, location and function of the object remains in front of them as they do so.

Anthony Koutras' "Cardboard Box", 2010, Courtesy: Stephen Bulger Gallery

Q.: Removed from its context, can’t the meaning of anything be altered?  Why not simply take the pylon and place it in an art gallery?  Why use photography?
A.: It’s true, and Duchamp addressed this issue with his readymades.  I think I continue to use photography because I’m drawn to photography’s inherent ability as a medium to record exact depictions of what the lens of the camera captures.  I’ve found through working with photography over the years, I began to look at the medium itself and the qualities it holds.  Essentially it’s an encapsulation of space, scaled and flattened into a two-dimensional depiction. The question I ask myself is, “what can I do with those qualities?” Through that investigation, over the last 8 years I developed an interest in creating art with an association to the public space. My work expanded into a somewhat interdisciplinary practice, incorporating aspects of photography, sculpture and installation, and was predominantly sourced from the public arena.
In my current series Explication, I take the approach of using photography to speak to the medium of photography itself.  I’m assigning the work the task of opening a dialogue about the mediation of the photographic image.  I incorporate elements of my practice from the public through the use of streetscape objects as a vehicle to speak to this topic.

Q.: What attracts you to certain objects?  For example, why this garbage can instead of that fence?
A.: I found that in this current body of work, the original streetscape object tended to be freestanding and somewhat close to a human scale, mainly because the objects were designed to be functional.  I began to see a physical correlation between the objects and us, each object holding it’s own unique individual character traits much like a personality.  The Hot Dog Garbage was one example of an object that I felt was funny, unique, and somewhat reflected our society through remnants and traces left on the object.

Q.: There is a sculptural element in the way the objects are presented.  All of a sudden, the everyday becomes akin to installation and sculpture and, as such, becomes “art”.  Does this not risk that the object, viewed as art, will lose all of its “reference of origin”?  In other words, garbage can as commodity (it could be argued this is what it becomes the moment it enters the gallery) is no longer a garbage can.  It is art.  Therefore all reference to its history is moot.
A.: Oh, for sure there’s a sculptural element. The large-scale photographs are actually photographs of an 8-inch tall folded photographic composite I made.  The print is refolded, curled and glued back into a sculptural depiction of the object.  The original objects on the street are directed through a series of forward moving embodiments, away from the actual source object.  It’s completely true; the work is an art object that’s shown in a gallery.  It’s absolutely severed from the source. It’s a hollow representation of the perceived object, an example of an object stripped of the original function.  The photographs in the gallery have lost the direct reference of the origin and I would like the loss of origin and the pure recognition of that object to create a playful duality and tension in the photographs presented.
I don’t actually feel that the process I put the objects through renders the history of the object moot.  The history is still there and we tend to want to know where it was located and possibly a story as to how I came upon it.  It simply comes down to it becoming a more complicated history than first assumed.  I’m interested in the history seen through the veil of multiple translations of visual information.

Anthony Koutras' "Hot Dog Garbage", 2010, Courtesy: Stephen Bulger Gallery

Q.: How do you, as an artist, maintain the object’s “history”?  What role, if any, does the “history” of the object play?
A.: To me the history is important, but specifically in relationship to the history of the photograph used as an archive tool. The selection of the object within the photographic frame is inherently tied to a preservation and archive of something: a moment in time or an object in danger of disappearing. I feel images have been adopted to act as a surrogate for memory and retain details that would otherwise be forgotten or altered. By way of photography, we attempt to hold on to the passing moments. By photographing these commonplace objects—a memorializing action—I give them importance. The geometric form of each object becomes a sponge, taking in a multitude of written communication, weather, damage and decay: each object indexing time.

Q.: How would you describe Canadian Contemporary art?
A.: I think Canadian Contemporary art is full of amazing artists and Canadian work is being shown in more places than ever before.  I feel Canadian Contemporary art is where it is today because of the talent and creativity of so many, combined with the development of support systems to foster individual artists and collectives. Those who worked so hard early on to establish artist run centres, commercial galleries, publication opportunities, and grant systems are all owed a huge thank you.  They helped create a setting to ensure Canadian Contemporary art keeps moving forward in a the positive way it has been in recent years.

Vahap Avsar's "Supreme", 2008

SUPREME

BROTHERHOOD

Vahap Avsar's "Brotherhood", 2009

Vahap Avsar's "Brotherhood", 2009

Play/war, evil/good, right/wrong are the perfect set of dichotomies which seems to be a good base for any type of artwork for telling the human drama or conflict. This formula works well even for entertainment and it is often meticulously woven into the storyline of artwork, but that is not how I arrived at this work.

I wanted to show what happens when you are watching your own kids and trying to capture it for the family album and something goes wrong.  The two boys get increasingly frustrated with the game, try to combat the opponent, and end up being entwined in a real and viscous battle where our sets of dichotomies demonstrated when  a couple hundred still images shot for the album put together.

Soldiers swearing of the oath is the title of a series of paintings I am working on since the beginning of the year. These paintings are based on my experience in a training camp of a military in a far away country where every man, unless physically or mentally ill, must serve for 15 months in order to live freely after the age of 20.  The paintings depict the swearing of the oath ceremony where thousands of men caught in the moment of distraught and panic as they fail to walk and run and chant in unison because they are all different even though they seemed to be trained soldiers.

Vahap Avsar's "SEARGEANT" (part of a triptych), 2010

This is something I got from Jeffrey Spalding who is one of Canada’s leading artists, educators and art museum professionals.  As usual, his observations and insightful and informative.  Thank you Jeffrey.

David Bolduc's "Pilgrim", 2010 Oil on canvas (Courtesy: Christopher Cutts Gallery, Toronto)

David Bolduc (1945-2010) was our leading maker of poetic, lyrical colour abstract paintings and the inheritor of the mantle of modernism within the legacy of Jack Bush and Gershon Iskowitz. Bolduc, well-read and widely traveled, accumulated the lessons learned from a lifetime spent exploring the pleasures of the rich visual history of civilization. His works paid homage to his admiration for an inclusive array of places and traditions. His peripatetic wanderings took him to Paris, Spain, North Africa, Mexico, Turkey and the Middle East, China as well as clear across Canada. His art draws upon and celebrates our vibrant collective world artistic heritage: Persian miniatures, Oriental rugs African art, Asian calligraphy and the splendours of the inventive progressive art of the modern age.

David Bolduc's "Spring Stream", 2010 Oil on canvas (Courtesy: Christopher Cutts Gallery)

He came to attention in the early seventies through his exhibitions at the prestigious Carmen Lamanna Gallery, Toronto. These works were taut, refined all-over monochrome compositions operating within the tradition of reductive, geometric abstraction utilizing homogenous treatments or a single mark-gesture repeated consistently across the entire surface. They were shown in the company of a band of minimalist-inclined painters: Brice Marden, David Diao, Les Levine and Paterson Ewen. By mid 1970s, he and fellow Lamanna exhibition mate, Ewen were breaking free of this mould. Both had spent time studying at the school of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and their new work sprang forth with vivid colour and accentuated linear mark-making. Their works shown in the 1975 exhibition The Canadian Canvas signaled the dawning of a new art. While Ewen gravitated towards New Image figuration and landscape, Bolduc evolved a unique signature approach to central imagery abstraction.

Bolduc’s art re-asserted a strong figure-ground relationship of a hovering main motif articulated in bold impasto colours squeezed and drawn directly from the tube atop a stained background. Bolduc extended the modernist dialogue championed by Jack Bush, Robert Motherwell and Jules Olitski triumphantly showcased first by the David Mirvish Gallery and subsequently Klonaridis Gallery.  In so doing, Bolduc became the locus of the evolution of a tendency strongly associated with a generation of Toronto painters referred to variously under the rubric: exotic or eccentric modernism. Marcus Garvey, (collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario), is reflective of a career-long obsession with colour, pattern and collage references. For all its modernity, its compositional form harkens to antiquarian appearances gleaned from time spent among libraries of rare, hand-stamped leather book covers and decorated bookplates. His sensitivity to this history prepared him to be the contributor of exquisite illustrations to a number of hand-made books and accompaniments to finely-crafted literary publications.

David Bolduc's "Paris Room Terra Neuva", 2010 Oil on canvas (Courtesy: Christopher Cutts Gallery)

Bolduc openly embraced the joyous fauvistic colour of Matisse, Derain and Dufy. Like his kindred spirit, David Hockney, he relished the primacy and graphic play of free-hand drawing and acknowledged the benefits to be derived from constant daily work upon advancing his art: Nulla Dies Sine Linea. For four decades Bolduc nuanced every opportunity to evolve his characteristic style and formats. The temperament and tone of the works differed widely from stately, restrained and under-spoken neutrals to riotous exuberant gregarious colour symphonies sporting metallic and iridescent pigments. Quietly, behind the scenes, Bolduc, synonymous with abstraction, had begun again to sketch from nature: floral motifs, still-life, trees and stars. He and painter Alex Cameron commenced annual sketching trips across the country, notably recurring visits to the rocky coastlines and forests of Newfoundland. Organically, Bolduc’s studio canvases embraced this admixture; his invented spaces would be refreshed by direct observation of revered places. David Milne, John Meredith, Paterson Ewen and John Clark come into play, so too the watercolours of Greg Curnoe. In an act of re-unification with glories of art’s past, Bolduc created a number of moving, transcendent nocturnes redolent of Van Gogh’s Starry Night.(with Lawren Harris’s late abstractions not too far from sight).

In the seventies and eighties Bolduc was celebrated as a bright star in the constellation of Canadian art. He was a heralded exhibitor in Andrew Hudson’s 14 Canadians that introduced progressive Canadian Art at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington. He held annual solo exhibitions dating from the early seventies; his works are in the collections of public collections from coast to coast. Of late, many have turned their gaze away from the visual pleasures of formalism. Recently, Bolduc completed and mounted a final show for Christopher Cutts Gallery, Toronto. Confident mastery of his craft combines with a humble acceptance of his personal place within art’s cosmos; the final show is a triumph of the personality as well as of the hand.

- Jeffrey Spalding

Museums are preparing to place works by Bolduc on display in tribute among them:

Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Appleton Museum of Art (Florida), Musee D’art de Jolliette, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Canadian Centre for Contemporary Art, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kelowna Art Gallery

Nikhil Chopra, Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing XI. Part of Production Site: the Artist's Studio Inside- Out, (Courtesy: MCA, Chicago) February 9, 2010. (Photographer, Nathan Keay)

Nikhil Chopra, Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing XI. Part of Production Site: the Artist's Studio Inside- Out, (Courtesy: MCA, Chicago). February 9, 2010. Photographer, Nathan Keay

If Duchamp’s now infamous Fountain says anything, it is this:  Sometimes art can be as plebeian as taking a ready-made and calling it art.  Fast forward to the last fifty years and the ready-made metamorphoses into Piero Manzoni’s Merda d’artista, Andy Warhol’s Soup Cans, Sarah Lucas’s Au Naturel, and Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, to list just some of the more illustrious of the ready-mades.

In demoting art to the status of everyday commodity, the ready-made has democratized art.  It has provided the comforting illusion that anyone can make art and that anything can be art.  Following this train of thought, it could be argued that the visual ready-made has paved the road for the verbal/emotional ready-made personified in talk-show hosts like Oprah Winfrey and Jerry Springer who have turned the “tell-all” into a billion dollar industry.  Got dirty laundry to air?  Man, have we got a spot for you!

Enter the tell-all’s spin-offs – reality t.v. and bare-it-all art.  Suddenly, stars we once thought untouchable are living their rather pathetic everyday lives in the screens of our t.v. sets.  Suddenly, the answer to the question – How many people has Tracey Emin slept with? – can be answered by simply looking at some of her art.  Curious about Adam Lambert’s liberation?  Check out his risqué  For Your Entertainment.

Like it or not, we live in the golden age of information-overkill.  It is the strange Catch-22 syndrome of art mimics life mimics art mimics life…  So no surprise that the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, should choose to exhibit Production Site: The Artist’s Studio Inside-Out.  After all, if we can be privy to the homes of the stars, why not the studios of our artists?

Nikhil Chopra, Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing XI. (Courtesy: MCA, Chicago) (Photographer, Nathan Keay)

Nikhil Chopra, Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing XI. (Courtesy: MCA, Chicago) February 9, 2010. (Photographer, Nathan Keay)

Watching the artist is not new.  Many artists have “lived” in museums, but in most of these exhibitions the artist, themselves, have been the subject, not the art studio.  As the title “Inside-Out” suggests, the exhibition is, in a way, an odd reversal of the artistic process – we see the studio as the place where creation begins and not the place where creation is a finished commodity.  Moreover, we see the studio as a source of creative and intellectual inspiration.

Most importantly, however, the exhibition allows us an intimate glimpse into something that is neither about shock value nor attention-seeking exploits.  In many ways, the exhibition is like watching  someone cook or garden.  There is no great secret in this, no great revelation.  Quite simply, it is what it is – an unassuming source of inspiration from which we can all derive meaning.

Louko, courtesy Karine Giboulo

The Conference of Donor Countries took place at The United Nations last week and plans continue to be put forth on how to rebuild a country.  Following the devastating earthquake, CheckoutART did an interview with Leah Gordon and dedicated the article to the memory of Haitian artist Louko.  Imagine my surprise (i.e. what a small world) when Montreal-based artist Karine Giboulo (on CheckoutART as well) e-mailed me to tell me she had met Louko while on a trip to Haiti.  Karine was kind enough to send me two pictures of the artist.

Louko, courtesy Karine Giboulo

Where is everybody? And what’s the point in finding them?

Tommi Brem, photo credit Manuel Wagner

When you start collecting contemporary art and happen to do so without being an art professional of some sort before, it can be very difficult to meet people. Not gallery owners, because it is their job to get to know you, in a way. Also not artists, curators, consultants, historians, and the many disciples usually trailing the art circus. All of them are open to meet people, it is almost as if that were part of their job description.

What’s more difficult is to meet other collectors. It does sound absurd, doesn’t it? However, collecting art might be the one hobby you can spend years practicing without ever getting to know too many other people who share the same passion. Music, sports, even literature … in most other fields the “fans” tend to meet like-minded people. A social network for collectors seems to be a rare novelty.

Independent Collectors was born out of this seeming lack of a dedicated, international community for collectors of contemporary art. The idea was to provide collectors not only with a secure arena that excludes promotion by galleries and artists, but also with a set of online tools to manage private collections, to share them with people (if the collector wishes) and to meet like-minded people from all over the world. Despite the preoccupation that collectors actually didn’t want to talk to each other, many welcomed the initiative. Today, over 2,800 members from over 80 countries have joined the initiative.

It’s not only the young collectors, as one might suspect, but all those who wish to exchange insights and who are interested in a more transparent, more dynamic and also more social form of collecting. It’s also not only those buying young artists, as the works uploaded by the members show: Unique works by Kippenberger, Richter and Prince, just to drop a few names, that’s serious stuff, even by the Forbes ranking standards.

Fiona Banner's "Book 1/1", 2009

I personally started collecting in June 2008, when the platform was launched. Basically because I had an interest in art before and because I work for Independent Collectors. I experienced both the difficulty of making contact with collectors in real life and the benefits of a community for these people. At fairs and in galleries I meet the “officials”, and online I get in contact with collectors who like similar things  from all five continents. I don’t have to go to Basel to be inspired. Ten minutes online might give me more great suggestions than I can deal with in a month. And of course, visiting a fair is now also a chance to meet all those “virtual peers”.

Troels Carlsen's "Entirely Imaginable #2"

What’s great about it, from my perspective as a very young collector, is that I have access to  many people who are more than willing to tell me why they love an artist or a certain work, not why I should like it. They don’t recite awards and prestigious names, they share their excitement, not caring whether I agree or not. That’s one reason why I think it’s important and worthwhile to connect with other collectors.

- – -

Tommi Brem (33) is working for Independent Collectors. He sees himself as “young collector” interested mostly in conceptual contemporary art. His growing collection includes works and editions by Karin Sander, Fiona Banner, Kris Martin, Frank Kozik and Troels Carlsen. You can follow his experiences as a collector in his blog “Collecting under public surveillance” (http://blog.independent-collectors.com).

The beginning of transitstation

The idea transitstation, exhibition as event, started with the observation of images alongside the tracks while moving on a train between places and destinations in foreign towns. The fleeting landscapes, cities and homes became the ephemeral and could only be imagined as a foreign every day life. I envisioned an exhibition concept, which is dominated by a multiplicity of images and small event places like huts, wagons, constructed walkways, temporary platforms in different heights, all mounted together within the confines of the Gallery Space. A world within a world within a world.

Chin Ni Hung, London/Taiwan Film Projection - Performance Art based video

The visual impact of different activities, foods, curiosities and superficial challenges for the visitor’s eyes: an overload of impressions and nothing that could stand still.

Gina Landor, Bosnia/USA Theatre - "To Be or Not" (created specifically for Transitstation.

The Gallery space at the time was visualized with different temporary structures. Artists could temporarily occupy places to counter-act with the idea of Live Art and Performance Art. The core question, which preceded the idea of transitstation apart from observing the passing of distant cities, was a very subjective question: what is Performance Art? Knowing that many people are still relating this art practice to Theatre, Live Art, Performing Arts and Entertainment strategies. My understanding and intention with Performance Art is however very different. I felt the challenge to allow this question to be positioned within an exhibition concept. Like in a mirror maze, the viewer and artist alike were imagined to share experiences and time in a dynamic situation, to search ways through different places and actions, walking up and down, passing through doors, climbing ladders, standing on platforms. …

Pauline Plizga, Manufactura, Paris/Poland Fashion Designer- Live catwalk and Film Projection for transitstation 2010: -Nest Fashion Performance

The artist and the work on tour traveling, nomadic and transient as he carries the pack like part of the caravan, is confronted with a restlessness that hides an inward longing for what is known and familiar. The meaning of “home” is indeterminate and temporary. People working and living whilst traveling are in a binary position in regards to the idea of “home”. They are traveling and establishing an alien temporary position: a structure for the moment. “When the caravan passes, the dog barks” and when transitstation stops with its vivid images of either comforting or distressing moments, life just goes on and time passes regardless of the dog’s eternal complaints.

Apart from the initial images of “staging” an exhibition, it became more important to experiment and research the idea of transience and to engage with the notion of “the nomadic artist”: Artists on the road, Artists transporting their work, Artists searching for destinations and places, Artists making their work in foreign countries, Artists facing their identities, Artists meeting different witnesses, Artists meeting Artists, Artists in solitude because their home is not their home. The artist’s orientation is the discovery of new landmarks.

There is an image between stations en route; a train is moving between locations and different cultures whilst moving through the landscapes. Every now and then it stops at a station: a transitstation.

The work transitstation and the exhibition concept developed in the process of production on a transient route involving organization, coordination, and operation.

Kabakov, “the Palace of Projects“ (1995-1998)

“In principle, such a Palace can … be disassembled and assembled in any other place, similar to a traveling circus.“

Kabakov’s work consisted of 65 staged, themed and constructed projects, known, created and invented by the author.

(reference:http://www.artangel.org.uk/projects/1998/the_palace_of_projects/introduction_to_the_palace_of_projects/page_3

Charlotte Merino and Chanh Hang, France/Vietnam, still from "Farine"

Over the years, since 2003, it seems that the process of moving is governed by networking with new artists, regional artists’ organizations, host-city partners, host spaces, accommodation of traveling artists and the organization of funding for each transitstation event. The procedures embrace the methods of synchronized encounters, networking, and most of all an idealism for a systematic sensitivity to meet with interested audiences and people from everyday and professional lives.

transitstation stop Copenhagen 2010 has a total of 72 participating artists performing and exhibiting 57 individual works and actions during a 24-hour weekend. 22 regional Scandinavian and Danish artists are greeting and hosting 50 visiting artists. Artists are coming together to present their artwork within the weekend of April 17-19, 2010. The work of transitstation is seen as  “Gesamtkunstwerk”. It begins to shape itself only in the duration of the entire weekend with non-stop action in art in action as a total exhibition event.

Samantha Sweeting, London/France 'La Nourrice (come drink from me my darling)' performance live. London 2009. (photo by Richard Andersen) Performance Art

The process of nomadic moves between host cities, their partners and foreign spaces and foreign languages require several visits and negotiations. Three production teams conquer communication difficulties in a slow process until they are able to speak a language, which seems foreign to society but familiar to art communities.

The invention of transitstation is dealing with the kind of mastery of chains of situations. Numerous situations occur during the transitstation weekend which defy the rules and boundaries of assumed categories within the contemporary art practise. If the viewer attempts to capture a definition or a category of genre or conventional differentiation, the moment of experiencing Live Action in the process is lost.

Where is the art amidst a space that changes according to perception and interaction?  Even presence, endurance and “the act of witnessing” cannot give the viewer a chance to capture a total image of transitstation as “Gesamtkunstwerk”.  It accepts to stay an ideal.

Artist next to artist next to artist next to viewer next to viewer next to object next to object next to viewer next to artist.

The gravitation code of artistic genre within continuous, overlapping actions has been redefined and apparently the centre of assumed genre is off balance. The project is everywhere, the places are everywhere and the “author” is visiting strange locations and times with his personal, foreign “bundle”. Though the structures are clear and the margins are defined on the outskirts of the transitstation space, which is suggested by the scaffolding sculpture, the space with continuous Actions remains in the constant state of change.

A world within a world within a world defines itself through live experiences, viewers and artists alike: the transformation of ideas, objects and spaces, which are re-directing the expectation level for completeness. A free ticket is offered into the permissiveness for curiosity and surprise. Artists and viewers alike are amenable to possibilities of de-categorization between performing art and fine art, between classical music and experimental sounds, fashion and painted clothes between film and theatre, between projection and speech. The experience itself offers change.

Nanna Lysholt-Hansen DK Performance Art - "Black Breath"- with Sound and Projection

During the transitstation weekend the idea of freedom and the expansion of social or personal opportunity in a mixed inter-disciplinary and inter-active context opens the door to a live experience. The audience-viewer-artist relationship neglects the untouchable distance between work and artist, and creates a platform of immediacy and intimacy in an unpredictable situation.

The viewer’s position is one of discovery.

Follow transitstation train to the next stop Copenhagen 2010 at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts on 17 April and 18 April, 12 – 12 pm both days.

… excerpt from the Brothers’ Grimm:

“I will give you three days, time,” said he, “if by that time you find out my name, then shall you keep your child.”

On the third day the messenger came back again, and said, “I have not been able to find a single new name, but as I came to a high mountain at the end of the forest, there I saw a little house, and before the house a fire was burning, and round about the fire quite a ridiculous little man was jumping, he hopped upon one leg, and shouted –

‘To-day I bake, to-morrow brew,

the next I’ll have the young queen’s child.

Ha, glad am I that no one knew

that Rumpelstiltskin I am styled.’”

Imagine Rumpelstiltskin, after all the people have left: he is dancing alone in the circles around the fire, talking to himself with ironic smiles: hihihi, no one knows how to call the art!

Abramovic's "Imponderabilia", MoMA, 2010, photo credit: Scott Rudd

The MoMA has never shied away from presenting artists who challenge the viewer.  Their latest exhibit, featuring performance Yugoslavian-born artist, Marina Abramovic, is no exception.  Abramovic challenges the viewer from the onset.  Want to see the exhibit?  Sure, but you’ll have to squeeze through two nude performers first.

This isn’t about sensationalism.  The exhibition is too intimate and too personal and the artist is too present to allow any room for sensationalism.  On the surface, the exhibition is about discomfort and fear and the gamut of insecurities that fill the spaces between these two experiences.  At the crux, the exhibition is about the viewer’s (and the performers’) confrontation of these very real, very universal human experiences.

Abramovic's "Imponderabilia", MoMA, 2010, photo credit: Scott Rudd

The nude performers stand only inches apart.  What is immediately apparent is that contact may be unavoidable.  At the very least, there is the necessary uncomfortable proximity of one’s body brushing dangerously close with the nude body of a stranger.  Suddenly, it is no longer only the nude performers who appear vulnerable, it is the viewer as well.

Aptly entitled, “The Artist is Present”, the word “present” metamorphoses into a myriad of interpretations.  The show takes place in the very real present; the artist is present (one might even say omnipresent); the source from which stem some of our fears is presented for us to confront…

Abramovic_Performance4

For much of the work, the setting is as intimate as our own personal insecurities.  In “Performance“, one small table sits in the middle of the MoMA’s Marron Atrium.  Two chairs face each other across the table.  One can imagine sitting down to dinner with a close friend at such a table, only this isn’t about dinner and it isn’t about close friendship.  It’s about knowledge and acute self-awareness.

On one chair sits Abramovic.  The other invites the viewer to sit.  And therein begins an unsettling exchange which has nothing to do with words.  Abramovic stares right at you and you, are free to stare right back.  The experience is like having your very being penetrated by a stranger.  Suddenly, intimacy can appear frightening, perhaps even claustrophobic.

When does the staring end?  When the viewer decides to get up.

Abramovic’s art encroaches on all aspects of our fears and insecurities so that, by the end of the exhibition, we are as stripped of our clothes as the performers who greeted us at the exhibition’s entrance.

Abramovic's "Nude with Skeleton", MoMA, 2010, photo credit: Scott Rudd