Report from Kassel: Got back Saturday, after an ultimately successful and fulfilling trip, but with entirely too much driving. Friday afternoon, the Documenta technical office installed a new monitor in the Ashkin piece, calibrated the timing of the three monitors, and started it up again–all under the watchful eyes of Okwui Enwezor, Carlos Basualdo, and myself. (It turns out the Ashkin was the only piece in the entire show not visible on Thursday, so it would’ve been a priority for them even if I hadn’t turned up.) Okwui was effusive and smooth in his apologies, and they were both stoked about the piece, which they’d first seen at Andrea Rosen Gallery in Jan. 2000. [click on “artists” and “michael ashkin” to see stills and installation photos.] People seemed to respond well to the piece, at least during the 90 minutes or so that I watched it. The video consists of shots (with fixed camera & ambient sound) of an overgrown, abandoned proving ground at Sandy Hook, NJ, which progress on three large monitors. These multiple views create a very spatial experience, an understanding of this otherwise unreadable (or at least unusual) landscape. Basically, it rocked.
While waiting for the afternoon installation of the monitor, I was able to watch most of most of the Igloolik documentaries (that’s not a typo). It was both a revelation and a relief; these shows were clearly prelude to Atanarjuat, both in story and technical terms. It takes at least a little pressure off to know that it didn’t just spring fully formed from Zacharias Kunuk’s head and win Best First Feature Award at Cannes.
Category: documenta, et al
KASSEL – A mammoth contemporary
KASSEL – A mammoth contemporary art exhibition. First things first: Documenta 11 is at least an order of magnitude better than last year’s Venice Bienale, and not just because it’s not so freakin’ hot. While pursuing some gratuitous VIP ego-stroking (I’d just come from Basel, what do you expect?), I wandered into the Documenta Lounge, where I met Okwui Enwezor, curator-for-life and the suavest guy in town. [As of today, the catalog’s not on Amazon, but these “Documenta” books are.]
Even though there is at least as great a percentage of video-based art, it is far more engaging, engrossing, and better presented than the depressing gauntlet of the Arsenale. Presentation seems to vary and complement the work, with some stadium-style seating platforms (for Isaac Julien, Steve McQueen, and one more I don’t remember); futon-like benches for Craigie Horsfield’s 4-wall meditation, and more standard black box theater/rooms for others. Who suffered? Shirin Neshat’s film–shown on two opposing walls like her breakthrough piece at Venice in 1997– is beautiful and back on track, but the room is cramped and clogged with lost-looking people. Igloolik, Zacharias Kunuk’s production company (as well as the name of the Inuit town where he is based), is showing 13 documentaries on 13 wall-mounted monitors in the loong central hallway of the main venue; there’s a bench all along the wall, but it seems shortchanged. (Although I’m hard-pressed to think of a better way to show 13 Inuit documentaries in an art gallery… Compared to Atanarjuat, they’re like a full season of The Real World: Igloolik.
There are installations with video, too, but for some reason I found them almost universally lacking. They included Chantal Akerman’s multi-channel “real-time” piece on immigration, the INS and the Arizona border, which was like wandering around a darkened Circuit City and seemed full of an outmoded French smugness. (If she’s critiquing France’s own immigration problems through a self-righteous ‘exploration’ of US/Mexico, doesn’t seem too guilt-ridden to me.) Joan Jonas…I forget, but I just couldn’t watch any of it. And a net-based piece by tsunamii.net, which included a synthetic voice intended to read the webpages on the monitor was, instead, reading the error page from Internet Explorer.
So why am I really dwelling on the challenges and vagaries of video-based art? Because I hauled my sorry butt to Kassel to see one work, a three-channel video installation by an artist whose work has been very important to me (and who has been a friend) for a long time, Michael Ashkin. I happen to have bought this work, Michael’s first video piece, more than two years ago. I was extremely excited when he told me he was included in Documenta, and both honored and excited when he said he would include this video piece as well. Since the piece requires a large room, three flatscreen monitors on large pedestals, and a central bench, we’ve never installed it (although we play the DVD’s from it one at a time on our TV). Earlier in the week at Basel, many people (most of whom didn’t know I had the work) spoke very highly of Michael’s pieces here, and the installation itself is wonderful. EXCEPT FOR THAT ONE MISSING MONITOR AND THE “OUT OF ORDER” SIGN ON THE WALL.
Fortunately, I’d just sat through an amazing work (A Season Outside by Amar Kanwar, an Indian documentary filmmaker) which dwelt beautifully on Gandhi’s and the Dalai Lama’s teachings of non-violence. [I have to write about Kanwar later. His work made a real impression on me.] I found the head of technical services and calmly talked to him about the missing (broken, actually) monitor. Of course, fixing it was already a concern for him, and by the afternoon, he said the replacement would be installed tomorrow morning. The piece would be back in action Friday morning, noon at the latest. So, I am staying an extra day to see it. Thus, the vagaries of video-based art are transformed from institutional inconvenience to personal crisis.
BASEL – A mammoth contemporary
BASEL – A mammoth contemporary art fair. A pleasant scattering of familiar faces and new (and old) work by favorite artists. And tons of work by artists I don’t really care for. A surprise DJ/friend from NYC turning up at a gallery dinner/party. Drivng down the tram-only lanes of the road, thereby frightening my euro passengers nearly to death. A great crew from the uber-art magazine, Frieze. Getting magazines –not just flyers–under the windshield wipers of my car. Favorite cover story from Art Investor magazine: “Die Big Spenders.” (note: the magazine’s in German. I imagine the German “Die” jokes wear pretty thin pretty quickly if you spend any time here.)
While on vacation, we took
While on vacation, we took a weekend trip to Venice to see the Biennale, a sprawling exhibition of contemporary art. With some exceptions, the art was a tremendous disappointment. Chicken & egg, I don’t know, but most of the work either strained to stand out and provide some immediate, breakout, experience right then and there; or else it required time, consideration, and contemplation which the festival format inexorably discourages. In this oppressively large exhibition, the apparent subtlety and understatement of two installations appealed to us greatly: Robert Gober’s installation in the American Pavilion and a cafe project/installation credited to the artists Olafur Eliasson, Tobias Rehberger and Rikrit Tiravanija. Understatement is problematic, though, and in ways that concern me as I try to make a documentary that is, itself, unpretentious yet affecting and lasting. Also, these works made me even more aware of how important/complicating are the expectations/experience a viewer brings with him. Let me explain a bit:
In each room of the Jefferson-esque pavilion, Gober carefully places a few objects or assemblages that appear to be found or flotsam, but which turn out to be meticulously hand-crafted re-creations: styrofoam blocks, plywood, an empty liquor bottle. In the corner of each room, there was a white, plastic-looking chair. Were they part of the piece? Gober’s certainly done chairs before. [see an image] [read an essay] We debated, looked for evidence of the chairs’ handmade-ness (which we found), but decided they weren’t. (Clue: they weren’t lit like the other objects. Sure enough, they were for the guards.)
After walking ALL over the two main exhibition venues in Venice’s August heat, we took refuge in the “Refreshing Cafe,” which was credited to the three artists above. The cafe was a series of tables, some white lacquer columns/stools, and a counter/bar under an overturned swimming pool-like form propped up by pistons. It was a rare and welcome retreat from the heat and from the overwrought video art of the show. It wasn’t really clear what the contribution of the artists was, but an improvised cafe with a few mod-looking furniture pieces certainly seemed in keeping with the other works of these artists. Just last night, though, I ran into one of the three and complimented him on having made one of the few pieces we liked in the whole show. Turns out that not only did the three of them not really do anything with the piece, what they did do had been completely altered by the exhibition authorities, calling the existence of the “work” into question.