Fia Backstrom Interviewed by Ana Cardoso

On Leadership

Ana: You were just in London working on a project called The Golden Voice...

Fia: It has a larger title, Studies in Leadership, which is a longer project that I’ve been working on since a couple of months. And this sub-section was called Studies in Leadership – The Golden Voice. It was at ICA in London, in the format of a residency, but the residency was open to the audience and lasted for seven days. I was in the space everyday, which I had turned into something in between a TV studio and a say… an oratory…

Ana: Conference room?

Fia: Something like that… a place where you can deliver speeches in front of an audience. I invited guests, as in any regular talk show or TV show. The guests were various experts on public delivery. There was a voice coach, a specialist in terrorist economy for the sake of content, and then a voice actor that I worked with for one day… then I screened films. The different components of the environment were included at different times; such as the furniture, where we could sit around and talk, and a lectern to give speeches from. Everything was made from cardboard – it was all disposable and recyclable, it was a sketch format. There were banners, big banners, propaganda size with scanned pages from books on professional speech delivery and public speaking advice. They functioned as a background stream of information.

Ana: Also connected to politics…

Fia: Absolutely, to politics and to corporations. I selected a few speeches – then worked with the image and the sound of these speeches, to distort them in various ways. The speeches ranged between Barrack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Steve Jobs. Then there were more historical ones, the ones we connect to public speech, such as Malcom X and Bobby Kennedy.

Ana: So you destroyed those speeches, separating the image from the voice and the text… And how did that work out, what’s the result like?

Fia: What I did was, I went backwards from the finalized speech lifting out words and sentences, as layers of language on top of the image, the image of the delivered speech was torn, the gestures and postures were isolated. I used Aftereffects in the wrong way to break apart the face and the body of the speaker, as well as the sound…

Ana: So in a way it’s just destroyed somehow…

Fia: Broken apart into fragments out of this full, saturated image that exists…

Ana: To make a perfect project imperfect… And who talked about terrorism?

Fia: Loretta Napoleoni came and spoke departing from her book called “Rogue Economics” on the new kind of leadership, which emerged after the Berlin Wall fell, with leaders such as Bóris Iéltsin. How they managed to convince their citizens, while manipulating their public persona in contrast to what they actually delivered.

Ana: She spoke about techniques?

Fia: Not really, she is more theoretically involved in how the economy developed through these years, and the changes in the way the world functions since 89/91 up to now. She spoke about how Iéltsin, for example, destroyed the former Soviet Union by working with image and the media.

Ana: Right, about the image and how to deliver a message through these contemporary channels…

Fia: She is Italian in fact, so we spoke a lot about Mussolini and his populist delivery. She compared him to Obama, and the way he manages to get the crowd going. It worked really well in the environment, because one of the dissolved speeches was Obama’s inauguration speech. It became funny, screened it was totally twisted and we used examples from it.

Ana: That must have been interesting because Obama just won, and he’s there, and it’s consensual – everybody wants to believe in him and gets really inspired by his speeches. So it must have been very interesting to see the result of deconstructing Obama, right now, at early stages…

Fia: It was interesting. The voice coach, who works with politicians and corporate leaders engaged in the environment in another way. We worked with the visitors in the workshop towards skills for professional political leadership – there were seven or eight participants. I had the speeches printed out, we worked from them, one was Ronald Reagan, another was Margaret Thatcher, and so forth… and then the voice coach worked with every word pronounced and the hand gestures and so on…

Ana: Nice… You know, I was invited to apply to some cultural program British Council was promoting. They were selecting cultural leaders and one of their main concerns was “what’s your leadership style?” They interviewed me on by phone, I was in New York, and I said “I’m a soft leader”!

Fia: The “soft leader” is very interesting, someone like Steve Jobs, who makes it seem as if we’re in a hippy commune. Or as Zizek pointed out in the documentary on him; the seventies child rearing of the you-can-do-whatever-you-want disciplinarian might be the most oppressive type of leadership in its indirect internalization of expectations. Facing the dictatorial type, the structure of power is laid bare, which makes it easier to rebel against.

Ana: Right. But they want cultural leaders! And what kind of leader that can be – it’s a very good question.

Fia: I agree. I think your answering the “soft leader” is a very contemporary one. It’s funny you said that automatically, it’s so embedded in our culture, but no one thinks a bit about the formation of this position.

Ana: I totally answered automatically! (laughs)

And how did this project start? What brought you to this project?

Fia: I’ve worked a lot on ideas on contemporary co-existence. After focusing on forms of communality I understood - it’s kind of obvious - that every group needs a leader, and that dynamically the group will form according to leadership style. Political and corporate leaders are appointed, but as an artist entering a project, you are the self-ascribed leader. The role of the artist is really an autocratic position, or at least you are expected to be. One can say almost whatever… “No, this wall should be green, and it will hardly be questioned!” (laughs)

Ana: And you wrote about collaboration… usually collaboration is seen in a very positive way, and can be, but you wrote about it also from the other side of it.

Fia: I was trying to de-romanticize what this word can mean, and to see undercurrents of ideas more specifically – what kind of relationship are we having here really? – so many exchanges goes under the guise of collaboration when actually other more crucial relations are taking place.

Ana: Actually, like with the “soft leader”, because it can be as Zizek said – when you are trying not to be something it can be more oppressive. And going back to the leadership project, what else was going on at ICA?

Fia: The main umbrella show was called Talk Show. It was a really fantastic and a fluid kind of situation or show. There were regular pieces by artists like Falke Pisano, Pierre Bismuth and Seth Price, like a regular show. At the same time there was a continuous flow of performances, lectures, concerts and people rehearsing for the evening concerts inside the exhibition space. There were two other artists or artist groups, Melanie Gilligan and Castillo Corrales, who had been given the space as a residency before me. There were constantly different things going on.

One of the interesting things about this format of the residency is that I came with an un-finished piece to work, but in front of an audience. I had set some parameters to what I wanted to do, but the final form of the work – that’s what I’m going to work with now, once I get back – it can be a film, a record, a transcript, another spoken word of some kind… so it’s a really good warp to openness of structure and purpose.

Ana: Yes, it’s very interesting. That happens a lot though… well, but you were in a residency!

Fia: It was a morphing format – nobody knew how to handle it.

Ana: And Fia, what about your leadership style? How do you see yourself as a leader?

Fia: Well, for the first iteration of Studies in Leadership, which was in St.Louis with Anthony Huberman I made an experiment.

Ana: So it started there, kind of…

Fia: Yes, it was called Studies in Leadership: A Family Affair. I made the decision to be a “soft leader” artist, somebody who works in a contemporary delegated flat structure. At the same time I was interested in the backside of this contemporaneity, the failed artist, without a vision – the same idea flipped. I knew that we were going to make a show, I knew that we were going to use things that you make a show with – for example wall paint, projectors, some kind of construction materials, that’s it. The staff and the installers, came everyday to ask me: “So what are you going to do?” and I reflexively replied: “I don’t know, what do you think?” (laughs)

Ana: You had to do something…

Fia: Mmm, I could suggest: “Maybe we should paint the walls?” and they said “Ok, what color?” I said “I don’t know…” and they: “Well we have red here…” “Ok, let’s take red…!” “Ah we have green too” “Ok”. Then they started to paint swatches, until finally one of them said: “I really like this orange, this it the one I would paint the walls with!” so I jumped on that: “Ok, let’s do that then!” I never took one decision but the first one. (laughs) It was a way to explore and play with what my position could be.

Ana: And how different was it at ICA?

Fia: At ICA my role was more towards a TV host like Oprah, with autocratic tendencies, so of course I had the final word if needed…

Ana: And Will Holder, the curator, was he just curating?

Fia: ‘Just’ curating this time – I tried to get him involved somehow, like the supreme leader, but he had decided to stand outside the whole structure.

Ana: As an omnipresent leader…

Fia: Yeah, hum hum…

Lisbon, June 2009

http://www.ica.org.uk/Fia%20Backstr%26ouml%3Bm+19565.twl

MONOLOG # 4 (the strip / stripe issue)

LAUNCHED AT EXHIBITION PROJECT

MAY 22, 6-8PM

during Jeff Perkins, Joao Simões & Stefan Tcherepnin performance

211 Elizabeth Street, New York, NY 10013

www.exhibition211.net

strip / stripe

installation views



http://www.bookdust.com/happenings/ehf050809/content/R1_0A_large.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/monolog-editions/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sixteen-miles/sets/72157617886445362/

STRIP/STRIPE

a project by TEST

May 8-22, 2009

Emily Harvey Foundation

537 Broadway

New York, NY 10012

www.emilyharveyfoundation.org

Opening Reception -

May 8, 6-9 pm

Ann Craven

Amy Granat & Emily Sundblad

Ana Cardoso

Fia Backstrom

Jutta Koether

Alison Fox

Olivier Mosset

Richard Aldrich

Charles Curtis

Raha Raissnia

Dexter Sinister

Jeff Perkins

Joao Simoes

Stefan Tcherepnin

Robert The

Matt Keegan

Drew Heitzler

Peter Halley

Geoff Hendricks

Jacob Kassay

Amir Mogharabi

Yehuda Safran

Heather Guertin

International Pastimes

Odili Odita

Chuck Nanney

David Medalla

Alexandre Estrela

Michael Portnoy

Guido Van der Werve

Bianca Beck

Josh Brand

Chris Riddle

Isabel Halley

Joana Avillez

Marc Kokopeli

Ian Cooper 

Opening reception with performances by Amy Granat,

Michael Portnoy, Amir Mogharabi, Stefan Tcherepnin, Richard Aldrich, ...

and films selected by Amy Granat (dates to be announced)

and stripe works from the Fluxus Emily Harvey Collection!

invitation card by Dexter Sinister

striped text by Fia Backstrom

http://www.artforum.com/inprint/issue=200903&id=22107

artforum march 2009
TOP TEN

by
Stefan Tcherepnin
A writer and performer of acoustic and electronic music, Stefan Tcherepnin is a 2008–2009 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Music Composition. He has recently performed at the Kitchen and the Knitting Factory in New York and at the Rose Art Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts.

1
LE CYCLOP (THE CYCLOPS)
My first visit to France took me to Fontainebleau, where I studied composition at the American Conservatory. About an hour away, deep within the forest, was Le Cyclop, a monstrous mirrored sculpture conceived in 1969 by Jean Tinguely and executed in collaboration with Niki de Saint Phalle and at least a dozen other artists. The structure, with its accumulations of gears and levers, seems to possess a metallic circulatory system. A heavy metal ball rolls throughout the skull’s various inner chambers, activating mechanical processes along the way that cause its frame to rock and sway. While exploring the interior of this colossal cranium, one is surrounded by the unsettling sound of steel scraping steel, accompanied by the oversize marble’s warbling roar.

2
ALEKSANDR NIKOLAYEVICH SCRIABIN
When I was a kid and thought classical music was boring, my father introduced me to the music of Scriabin. This turn-of-the-century Russian composer’s innovative approach to dissonance and harmony, culminating in the creation of a “mystic” chord, emanated from his compliance with idiosyncratic, self-imposed principles. Many of his works contain “secret harmonies” that do not appear in the written scores.

3
MARYANNE AMACHER, TEO!
Amacher’s fascination with aural phenomena and human hearing has led to extensive research into the ways our ears (and brains) produce tones, pushing the limits of technology all the while. In 2005, she created a forty-eight-channel sound installation—at Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes—using cave recordings she made beneath the two-thousand-year-old Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán. The massive scale of the resulting work, TEO!, prevents it from being reduced to a conventional recorded format; on the second volume of her Sound Characters (Tzadik) recordings, however, the composer offers a special stereo mix of TEO!, resulting in a composition that seems to reveal the inner “voices” of the pyramid’s walls.

4
TEST (LISBON)
Last year, Portuguese artists João Simoes and Ana Cardoso staked out this former factory space in Lisbon and began inviting artists to work there. Amy Granat and Emily Sundblad soon shot Factory, one of their “Lisbon Films,” on location, while composer Henry Flynt gave his first public performance in decades. This past summer, artist Rich Aldrich and I had the chance to create and present the latest stage of our ongoing music/noise collaboration with free rein to use the (borrowed) custom equipment and to explore the superb acoustic properties of TEST’s cavernous spaces.

5
ANS SYNTHESIZER
Built in 1937, this one-of-a-kind synthesizer—named in homage to Scriabin (his initials are A. N. S.), who had conceived of music for a “color organ” some three decades earlier—was created in an attempt to “translate” images into sounds. Compositions for the machine require an artist/composer to etch lines, shapes, letters, etc., onto a square piece of glass coated with a tarry substance; this object is placed onto a hand-crank-operated track and scrolled over a photo-optic network that “reads” it. Light passing through the etched portions activates electronics, which select pure tones from a microtonal cluster. I encountered the ANS a few years ago in Moscow’s Theremin Center, where the synthesizer then resided. (It has since been relocated to the city’s Glinka Museum of Musical Culture.) The unintentional beauty of this instrument lies in its wonderful obsolescence.

6
THE CALLIOPE
I especially admire Fats Waller’s expressive calliope interpretation of the tune “Lenox Avenue Blues,” which can be heard playing in the distance throughout David Lynch’s film Eraserhead. Somehow, the weird sonority of the steam-powered pipe organ—generally associated with novelty spectacles such as carnivals and circuses—is at once charming and grotesque, soothing and unsettling. Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey made some significant recordings using an electronically simulated calliope. The strangely whimsical yet transfixing nature of his playing makes me suspect that he used his music as a vehicle to gain direct access to people’s minds.

7
NORA SCHULTZ, “AS IF SCALES” (REENA SPAULINGS FINE ART, NEW YORK)
“I’ve been here fifteen minutes and still see no art!” Upon hearing this enthusiastic statement from a bystander at Schultz’s opening, I realized the artist had succeeded, if only for a moment, in making work that exists only as “thought energy.” Over the course of the exhibition, pipes, ropes, and boat-docking supplies were rearranged and replaced. For a later performance in the gallery, Schultz, assisted by a few volunteers, revealed these materials’ unexpected functionality, transforming, for instance, a wooden bench into an amplified seesaw printing press. The resulting “prints” of crushed charcoal on sheets of cheap plywood were eventually assembled by the performers into a three-dimensional replica of the bench. In the end, what had materialized was not only “art” but also a new notion of what we should be looking for.

8
JEFFREY PERKINS’S LIGHT SHOW
When I met Perkins this past fall, at the Emily Harvey Foundation in New York, he had just given a performative presentation of snapshots from an early 1970s encounter with John Ford and John Wayne. Only later did I learn about his legendary light performances with customized strobing slide projectors. There is no way to save the projections’ analog sequences; thus, to witness one of these performances is to be in sync with Perkins’s own process of discovery.

9
MANOREXIA (THE STONE, NEW YORK)
One of my first LPs was Wiseblood’s 1985 hot-rod death chant, Motorslug (Wax Trax!). I eventually found out that the mastermind behind this recording was J. G. Thirlwell, better known for his projects under the name Foetus. Last September, I caught his chamber-music project, Manorexia, at John Zorn’s venue, the Stone. The program—consisting of eight pieces scored for two violins, viola, cello, percussion, piano, and (the composer’s) laptop—exhibited Thirlwell’s rare musical sensitivity, fluency in extended instrumental techniques, and keen ear for orchestration.

10
AN ANTHOLOGY OF CHANCE OPERATIONS
This 1963 book, published by poet Jackson Mac Low and composer La Monte Young, made a significant contribution to the evolution of music composition, though it is often overlooked or entirely disregarded. Its entirely performable contents include word-based and graphic scores by Young, John Cage, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Terry Riley, and Christian Wolff, along with Henry Flynt’s essay “Concept Art” and Dick Higgins’s exercise in reading mirror-image texts. In a way, this anthology achieves in book form what Tinguely’s Cyclop does with materials in space—so many intensities and ideas sewn together and acted on in different ways.

a Light Show by Jeff Perkins

with music by Taketo Shimada

...

LISBON FILMS
by Emily Sundblad & Amy Granat

produced during Test's Pre-Opening (Feb 2008)

some questions for a series of interviews


What is history?

How does the brain think?

What is activated in face of difference?

Is the perpetual inadequacy of images poignant?

Is matter meaningful in the ready-made lineage?

What does a surveillance camera capture in fact?

So, the discussion as well as the practice are always political and social participation?

What is autonomy and collaboration?

How do improvisation and repetition work in the daily practice of making works of art?

What is the concept of new in today’s art panorama?

...

Interviewing Anthony Huberman

Information is the enemy

Anthony, you had the privilege of being invited to operate in a peripheral space (the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis) and of working from within a displaced point of view – as Brian Sholis mentions in Artforum (May 08 issue) – addressing an idea of adjacent information. Through several forms of collaboration, constant juxtaposition and flow, what are you producing in the Museum?

I am thrilled to have been given the opportunity to lead the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis's exhibition program. More than anything else, the goal of the new curatorial program will be to identify and support the most relevant and promising artists working today, internationally, nationally and locally. More specifically, the program will embrace experimentation and will consistently encourage artists to take risks and try out new ideas. Like you said, the program is built around a system of pairs, of two things alongside each other — two artists and two types of exhibitions existing side by side.

And juxtaposition stages a rapid information platform of complex relations?

Yes, there are two kinds of pairs that take place at any given time at the Contemporary. In the main galleries are 3-month-long “museum” exhibitions. These shows involve major commissions, new work, survey shows, significant publications, etc. Although exceptions will surely surface, they will generally feature two artists: either a single collaborative show (John Armleder and Olivier Mosset), or two separate monographic shows (Lutz Bacher and Aïda Ruilova), or a curatorial proposition pairing two artists together (Gedi Sibony and Bruce Nauman). Concurrently with the main galleries show is a second kind of exhibition, forming another pair: The Front Room. In this small white cube space, we will present short exhibitions, 1, 2, 3 weeks long, or perhaps just a few days, depending on the project. It is not a project-space hidden in a secluded corner of the museum but a prominent ‘front room’ that greets the visitor as they enter the building. Exhibitions by young artists, special screening events, performances, or other interventions will occur in the space, creating a curatorial and artistic space in the museum that remains nimble, reactive, improvisational, and never sits still — something that is important for an institution committed to contemporary culture. This past spring, there have been shows with artists such as Ei Arakawa, Oscar Tuazon, Alex Hubbard, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Max Schumann, Vlatka Horvat, Eva Weinmayr, and others! In addition to these short exhibitions with artists, the Front Room is also a site for carte blanche projects with other organizations. These include spaces with compelling programs: artist-run spaces, kunsthalles and also experimental record shops, bookstores, etc. Invited to the Front Room with a carte blanche, these spaces are free to occupy the gallery how they wish, with a specific intervention, a representation of their program, or something else altogether. I am interested in how these might go in and out of the recognizable form of an ‘exhibition’ and perhaps in and out of art, even. I am confident that this multitude of voices arriving to St. Louis will be an inspiration to our audience and will reveal the rich diversity of contemporary art. And with The Front Room changing so often, the juxtaposition with the exhibition in the main galleries is continuously renewed, re-adjusted, never sitting still.

Also, you like to explore a contemporary state of not knowing and not understanding. This is a central motif in your experimental talks. How far can it go?

I wouldn’t say that this idea is part of my experimental talks…this idea is central to how I think about art, about exhibition-making, and about pedagogy. For me, the best art, exhibitions, and museum experiences are the ones that spark our curiosity, but that we still don’t understand. This makes us active and engaged viewers and thinkers, turning the ideas around in our heads long after we leave the museum. Trying to figure something out is a process of intense speculation, an inspiring and even exhilarating experience. The liberating moment is to realize that art is not a code that needs cracking but that it’s something that rubs up against our own subjectivities, prompting us to imagine new opinions, re-adjust old assumptions, and change the way we make sense of things. In a way, art helps make us understand less about the world and inspires us to stay curious, stay speculative, and stay on our toes.

And a talk is a dialectical form of education, where information interchanges with gaps in knowledge… Or maybe education is a big misunderstanding?

I like the idea that education is a misunderstanding! But I’m not sure I would say that…it’s more that I don’t think “education” needs to consider “understanding” as its goal. An educated viewer is a viewer who can look at a picture and articulate a substantiated opinion about that picture. An educated viewer of art is a viewer who is always learning, not one who has learned, understood, and then stopped. Going back to my exhibition program, I hope that the short shows in The Front Room, by providing different juxtapositions with the main galleries, encourage viewers to continuously learn and re-learn the artworks. In that sense, an educated viewer is a viewer who never understands, and who, instead, enjoys the thrill of the learning process happening again and again. No amount of “education” is going to explain the Mona Lisa, but an educated viewer will find in it an endless source of imagination, speculation, and curiosity.

Your text Naïve Set Theory reveals an information scheme, a function of curiosity applied to contemporary art communication. Between too much and too little information the artist rules?

This text starts with the idea that in contemporary art information is the enemy. It then goes on to discuss this relationship between information and curiosity – the latter thrives when there is only a moderate amount of the former – and then specifically maps out a variety of ways in which contemporary artists try to stop, puncture, or compromise the flow of information and subvert the identification process. By creating situations of too much information, too little information, dispersed information, or private information, artists make it difficult for us to identify their practice and pin them down.

You say you prefer “the things you don’t like that you don’t like”. These are the propellers - poignant issues one needs to overcome and discuss – issues that offer resistance? How does that work exactly?

It’s not really about resistance…a word I remain suspicious of. Things I don’t like that I don’t like are things I don’t understand but want to understand… It means that I am bothered by the fact that something bothers me. I experience an artwork that makes me uncomfortable, but something about it urges me to locate the comfort in it. I’m not satisfied by the fact that I find it uncomfortable, so I keep thinking about it, assessing it, assessing my own subjectivity, trying to understand it (and myself) differently. These are the works that are propellers, as you say.

Would you like to talk about the experience of working as a curator for the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, a forming moment in the realm of a relational site?

I joined the Palais de Tokyo as a curator on the occasion of the appointment of a new Director, Marc-Olivier Wahler. I was drawn to the Palais by him and his curatorial vision, and he and I were interested in building a new identity for the exhibition program of this very popular art center. Conceived as a multi-year program rather than as isolated projects, the exhibitions formed a cohesive whole, succeeded each other in a precise rhythm, and took the Palais de Tokyo somewhere new.

“The Steins”, irregularly scheduled – “Short exhibitions in a small room, sometimes”, collaboratively organized with Larissa Harris in the basement of Miguel Abreu gallery (in the lower east side), expresses an idea of imminence.

The Steins is an art space Larissa Harris and I started in New York’s Lower East Side that is almost always closed. But yes, sometimes it’s open. The name comes from a James Lee Byars quote, where he says that his favorite people in the 20th century are Stein, Einstein, and Wittgenstein. It’s related to what I’ve been discussing already…it’s a space for our favorite things, things that we’re fascinated by but don’t quite fully understand. So far, since last December, we’ve done shows with Robert Filliou, Terry Riley, Bruno Munari, Remy Charlip, and the philosopher William James. These are exhibitions we can’t organize at the larger museums we work for, because we’re unable to explain them. But we’re very curious about these artists and we want to share that curiosity with our friends and anyone who might be interested, so we show them at The Steins. The exhibitions are short, small and occasional, because The Steins is a place for a generous and convivial experience of art, and not for knowledge-production or information. We serve wine in real wine glasses.

(translated to portuguese in artecapital.net)

In August 2007, Anthony Huberman was appointed chief curator of the Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis, Missouri. Former curator at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, P.S.1 and Sculpture Center in New York, Anthony has several parallel projects: The Steins (with Larissa Harris); collaborations with Dexter Sinister and Dot Dot Dot (Stuart Bailey’s publication that recently published his text Naïve Set Theory, a shorter version of the previously published text I X Information, in Afterall, issue 15, 2007) and other artists.

STEFAN TCHEREPNIN + RICHARD ALDRICH / SOUND PERFORMANCE @ TEST : 10 pm 06 July 2008

MONOLOG DREAMS OF BECOMING DIALECTICAL  

MONOLOG Publishes Writers, Performers, Musicians, Filmmakers, Philosophers, Artists, Poets, Curators. Linked to TEST (contemporary art center, Lisbon \ Opening Summer 2008)

Some perspectives on the presentation of TEST project and the launching of Monolog #0:

http://missdove.blogspot.com/2008/03/test-pre-opening-29-february-08.html
http://alexandrepomar.typepad.com/alexandre_pomar/2008/02/para-alcntara.html#more

http://aeiou.expresso.pt/gen.pl?p=stories&op=view&fokey=ex.stories/252704

Presentation of Test, Feb 29th 2008, Lisbon

with screenings (Amy Granat and Emily Sundblad; Tell Me by Guy de Cointet), sound performances (Jutta Koether, the Flynts, Granat/Sundblad), a talk by Henry Flynt (about On So Called Emotion and Spirituality in Art, to be published by Monolog), and the launching of Monolog #0

PHOTOGRAPHIC CREDITS: FRANCISCO HUGUENIN UHLFELDER, ADRIANA FREIRE, HELENA CARDOSO

MONOLOG #0

INDEX

STUART BAILEY

MATHIEU COPELAND
JUTTA KOETHER
DEXTER SINISTER
ANA CARDOSO
MAI ABU ELDAHB
HENRY FLYNT
JOAO SIMOES
ARFUS GREENWOOD
MIGUEL WANDSCHNEIDER
AMY GRANAT
EMILY SUNDBLAD
ALEXANDRE ESTRELA
THE FLYNTS
OPORTO




EDITED by/at TEST

download pdf (10 mb)

monolog #0, edited and launched Feb 29th 2008, during TEST's presentation, Lisbon

the zero issue is the result of the first meeting toward a definition of TEST and it's projects. it was edited in real time on a xerox machine with the guest participants involved. the final product is a collection of different notes, ideas and collaborative projects for the future of TEST 

supported by Xerox

TEST, 1st meeting (toward a definition of TEST and its projects), Feb 28th & 29th 2008, Lisbon

performance by Jutta Koether and Kim Gordon at Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York, April 2007 (as part of Dead Already)

According to de Cointet, Tell Me is a performance about abstraction and language, and how they are perceived by the mind and the senses. Striking visual elements of form and color make up the set, and the three characters use, discuss, and experience their surroundings in unexpected ways. The relationship between what is seen and heard question perceptions of reality. (in http://www.airdeparis.com/)

poster for TELL ME by Guy de Cointet (Jeff Perkins collection)

TEST---on-art (contemporary art center)
LX Factory, Alcântara, Lisboa

Private Work Meeting with Invitees: Feb 28th & 29th, 2008
Press Presentation: Feb 29th, 7 - 8 pm

Public Presentation: Feb 29th, 9 pm - 1 am

The initial structure of Test will be defined by invited artists and curators during a two day private work meeting. This event is a starting point for a network that aims to relate the public, the bureaucratic and the artistic spheres.

The project will be presented to the press, sponsors, institutions and curators, on February 29th, from 7 pm to 8 pm, with a press conference and the launching of Monolog #0 (Test's first meeting output).

Later that evening it will open to the public, from 9 pm until 1 am. This opening contemplates a program of film screenings (collaborations between Amy Granat and Emily Sundblad \ original filming of Tell Me, by Guy de Cointet); a talk by Henry Flynt on his text "On So-Called Emotion and Spirituality in Art", to be published by Monolog - TEST's editorial project; and sound performances by The Flynts (ELizabeth and Henry Flynt), Jutta Koether and "Emotional Music" by Sundblad and Granat.

http://www.test---on-art.org/

Where the first meeting will take place. 

.

MONOLOG Publishes

Writers, Performers, Musicians, Filmmakers, Philosophers, Artists, Poets, Curators


Edited by TEST (contemporary art center in Lisbon, Portugal \ Opening Summer 2008)

http://www.test---on-art.org/

...

The Beginning:

Monolog #0

[Documenting the First Meeting]

Taking place in Test's future space - LX Factory, Alcântara, Lisbon - on February the 28th + 29th 2008, the first meeting will bring together invited artists, curators and sponsors, to share ideas, plan, and take part in the very beginning of this new forthcoming art platform - Test.

By the end of the day, on the 29th, the meeting will open to the press, and later on to the public with a series of conferences and live performances. 

Selected screenings and artworks will also be displayed. This program will be announced soon.

The purpose of Monolog #0 is to document the meeting, as a zero moment for Test's structuration.

The list of participants in the first meeting:

Amy Granat (Artist \ Cinema Zero, New York)
Emily Sundblad (Artist \ Reena Spaulings, New York)
Mai Abu ElDahab (Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp)
Jutta Koether (Artist, Cologne and New York)
Henry Flynt (Artist, New York)
Ana Cardoso (Artist, New York \ Lisbon. Test's editor)
Mathieu Copeland (Independent curator, London)
Stuart Bailey and David Reinfurt (Dexter Sinister, New York)
Joao Simoes (Artist, New York \ Lisbon. Test's director)
Arfus Greenwood (Novelist \ Arts administrator, New York)

Alexandre Estrela (Artist \ Oporto, Lisbon)

...

About the Invitees:

Amy Granat lives and works in New York. She is an artist and co-founder of Cinema Zero. Working primarily with sound, photography and film, her work has been exhibited widely in the US and Europe, including Dublin Project Arts Center, Dublin, Ireland (2007); Le Confort Modern, Poitiers, France (2007); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2007); Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York (2007); Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati (2006/7); and PS1, New York (2006). Her work will be included in the upcoming 2008 Whitney Biennial and in solo projects including Beijing, China; and Frankfurt, Germany. She has curated an exhibition entitled ‘Catawampus’ with Matt Keegan for Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, 2007, that will travel to Midway Contemporary Art, MN, in 2008. This February she will organize two nights of screenings as Cinema Zero for The Kitchen, New York. 


http://www.cinemazero.com/
'CINEMA ZERO WAS FOUNDED DECEMBER 2004,BROOKLYN NEW YORK by artists from different mediums coming together to foster cross - collabrations...Cinema Zero's first event was Dec 21 2004 FOUNDING MEMBERS: AMY GRANAT, FELICIA BALLOS, RICHARD ALDRICH, GABRIELLE GIATTINO, FABIENNE STEPHAN'
http://www.palaisdetokyo.com/fo3/low/programme/index.php?page=../media_clip/show_clip.php&id_doc=1941

Emily Sundblad lives and works in New York. She is an artist, performer and gallerist. She is a co-founder of Reena Spaulings Fine Art and co-creator of the fictional artist Reena Spaulings. She has collaborated on music and film with playwright Richard Maxwell and she is involved in several collaborative projects including Grand Openings with Jay Sanders, Ei Arakawa, Jutta Koether and others. Her work has been included in numerous group shows including: ‘The Perfect Man Show’, curated by Rita Ackermann, White Columns, New York; ‘How to Cook a Wolf’, Kunsthalle, Zurich; ‘Beneath the Underdog’, Gagosian Gallery, New York (all 2007); and The Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum, New York (2006.) Recent Performances include Montevideo with Rita Ackermann and Askar Brickmann, Karlsruhe, Germany (2007); Tvillingarna at Mandrake, Los Angeles; Pasaguero, Mexico City; and ‘I Love Nobody’, at The Vizcaya, Miami, FL (2007.)
http://www.reenaspaulings.com/
http://www.bernadettecorporation.com/

For more info about Granat & Sundblad collaborative films go to http://whitecolumns.org/view.html?type=exhibitions&id=354

Mai Abu ElDahab is an independent curator based in Cairo, Egypt. After receiving a degree in political science and philosophy in 1997, she held different positions in the arts and culture field, namely as Program Associate for Media, Arts and Culture at the Ford Foundation's Middle East and North Africa Office, and as Curatorial Assistant at the Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art. In 2002, she pursued further study at the Curatorial Training Programme, Stichting De Appel, Amsterdam, where she was co-curator of “Short Cut” at the Stichting Kunst en Openbare Ruimte (SKOR) and “Haunted by Detail”, a project at Stichting De Appel and the Amsterdam Filmmuseum. In 2003 she realized two independent projects in Egypt, “Wasla”, a two-week residency program for twenty international artists, and “Going Places”, a project of art commissions for Cairo's public buses. She also undertook various project based-assignments for the Young Arab Theatre Fund (Belgium), Triangle Arts Trust (UK), and Visiting Arts (UK). In 2004 she was co-curator for the exhibition “Mediterraneans” at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MACRO), Rome. Since fall 2005, she was co-curator of the Manifesta 6 to take place in Nicosia, which was recently cancelled for various logistical and political reasons. Currently director of Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp.

http://www.objectif-exhibitions.org/

Jutta Koether was born in 1958 in Cologne, Germany, and lives in New York.
Art in Review; Jutta Koether; By ROBERTA SMITH; Published: April 15, 2005
'The notion of seriously unserious painting has existed at least since Francis Picabia painted pulp-fiction nudes in the 1930's. It is part of the legacy of Martin Kippenberger, whose work is highly visible at the moment, but it also underlies the deliberately ersatz, curiously visionary work of Jutta Koether, a German musician, artist, critic and admirer of Kippenberger who has lived in New York since the early 90's.'
http://www.palaisdetokyo.com/fo3/low/programme/index.php?page=../media_clip/show_clip.php&id_doc=2087
http://www.kunsthalle-bern.ch/en/agenda/exhibition.php?exhibition=9
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B07E6DD113EF936A25757C0A9639C8B63

Henry Flynt is a philosopher, musician, anti-art activist and exhibited artist. Flynt’s work devolves from “cognitive nihilism,” first announced in the 1960 and 1961 drafts of Philosophy Proper. He refined these dispensations in the “Is there language?” trap, published as “Primary Study” in 1964. In 1961, Flynt coined the term concept art. Concept art’s first appearance in a book was in An Anthology, release date 1963. In 1962, Flynt began to campaign for an anti-art position. He demonstrated against cultural institutions in New York in 1963 with Tony Conrad and Jack Smith, and against Stockhausen twice in 1964. He wanted art to be superseded by “veramusement” and “brend,” neologisms meaning approximately pure recreation.
http://www.henryflynt.org/
http://www.ubu.com/sound/flynt.html

http://www.henryflynt.org/overviews/artwork_images/42.jpg

Mathieu Copeland, Born in France, 1977, is a curator living and working in London. A graduate from Goldsmiths College - London in 2003, Copeland curated the Anna Sanders Films (a touring film programme with Charles de Meaux, Dominique Gonzalez- Foerster, Pierre Huyghe, Philippe Parreno, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul); and published & curated Perfect Magazine. His recent projects include Phill Niblock (London); Exhibition’s Ruins (SAFN museum Reykjavik); Soundtrack for An Exhibition (Musée d‘Art Contemporain Lyon), Expat-Art Centre (ICA london). Invited curator for the Lyon Biennale for Contemporary Art and recent projects at the Swiss Institute New York and Kunsthalle St Gallen, Swiss.
http://www.mathieucopeland.net/

Dexter Sinister is the compound name of David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey.
David graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1993, Yale University in 1999, and formed O-R-G, a design studio in New York City. Stuart graduated from the University of Reading in 1994, the Werkplaats Typografie in 2000, and co-founded the arts journal Dot Dot Dot the same year. David currently teaches at Columbia University and Rhode Island School of Design. Stuart is currently involved in diverse projects at Parsons School of Design (NYC) and Pasadena Art Center (LA).

http://www.dextersinister.org/
http://www.dextersinister.org/library.html?id=125

Arfus Greenwood is a writer and exhibition producer in New York City. Previously, a staff curator at PS1 Museum, other productions include exhibitions and projects for Avenue B Gallery, Momenta Art, ARC/Paris, Richard Foreman’s Ontological Theatre, and Mabou Mines.

He is currently producing a publication, Chubby: the low tableau (artists on privacy) for Thing.Review.

http://post.thing.net/node/206

Alexandre Estrela, artist, lives and works Lisbon.
Estrela is a conceptual artist that works mainly with video. In his work Estrela follows a serendiptic research, that he describes as "lucky coincidence". Parallel to his work, Estrela has curated a number of exhibitions. He has directed the video festival, Hi8
(1998-2001) and published, with Scott Harrison, the drawing compilation, Manual (2003). Currently, he directs and programs Oporto in Lisbon. His work has been shown in several museums and galleries: Stargate, Museu do Chiado – MNAC, Radiação solar e forças cósmicas, Galeria Graça Brandão; Shooting for a second I ZDB and Squatters, Witte de With. Recently, Estrela's work has been included the following exhibitions: Ficção e Realidade: Ida e Volta, Centro de Arte Moderna in Lisbon (curated by Christine Van Assche); À propôs des lieux d'origine, MUDAM, Luxemburgo and Stream, White Box, New York.

http://www.alexandreestrela.com

http://www.oportolisboa.blogspot.com

Library

...

Printed Projects \ Coming Out Soon:

The Architect and the Housewife

By Frances Stark

(New Edition)

Co-edited by Test, Dexter Sinister and Culturgest, Lisbon, 2008

Monolog #1
Henry Flynt, On So-Called Emotion and Spirituality in Art

Introduction: The inquiry into emotion and spirituality

The most important facet of an art work consists in the so-called emotional and spiritual animation of the perceiver by the work. On the other hand, in most cases an art work is not solely a conduit of emotion to the perceiver, like an emotional vaccination. Representational visual art has a material subject, or at least a chimerical subject. Belles-lettres and theater in all their forms are discursive and/or narrative. They may wield religious or philosophical notions even if those are not their primary agenda. Much music is not absolute. We have song, occasional music, music theater, program music, etc.
Only in the case of absolute music do we have an art which communicates or expresses with no representation, no imagery. The arts which can in effect vaccinate the perceiver with emotion are Islamic tracery, abstract painting, abstract cinema, and absolute music. Even so, these arts also have sensuous pattern. That pattern may intrigue in its own way. In our coarse vocabulary, the word for such pleasure in form is beauty. The beauty issuing from artifice complements and merges with the induction of reflective emotion (as we call it) by the art work.
The only real precedent for this essay is Chapters VI and VII of the Natyashastra of Bharata-Muni, written two thousand years ago in India. Those chapters have what amounts to a psychology of emotion, along with a handbook of the role of emotion in drama and acting. Let us repeat the epigram: “There is no natya without rasa.” Relative to the European tradition, the Natyashastra is extraordinary in dwelling frankly on the humanness of art.
Let me explain in passing that when I use the word ‘esthetics’, I mean the philosophy of beauty. To ask what people gain from the presence of flowers is an esthetic question. Esthetics is not especially about the human practice called art. That leaves me with the phrase ‘art theory’ for an inquiry into art.

The colloquial vocabulary evidently finds the word ‘spirituality’ indispensable. But the usual treatments of spirituality merely expound antique religions under a different pretext. Or, a modern treatment may abstract a “training” of soul-realization from several religions which teach the ascent of the soul through heavens. That is not even to mention such “training” as purportedly makes the acolyte telepathic. What all this does is to leave spirituality at the level of sectarianism and pseudo-science.
We do not like the word ‘spirituality’: it is cloying. But we resort to the word to signify that there is a corner of life or experience toward which secular rationalism is phobic, yet which surfaces in any case, and does not depend on authoritarianism, sectarianism, or pseudo-science. Only when this corner of life becomes a topic will the word live up to its potential, gaining a definition without pseudo-scientific or abusive presuppositions. The public has not yet accepted any such initiative as this, which is why I feel that I am starting from zero when I address spirituality.

read more...

Monolog #2
Paulo Jose Miranda, 1998

Paulo José Miranda is a Portuguese writer and poet. He has a Graduate degree in philosophy from University of Lisbon. He has published three poetry books, four novels and one theater play.
His first poetry book won the Teixeira de Pascoaes Prize in 1997 and his second novel won the first José Saramago Prize in 1999.

Monolog #3

Jutta Koether 

'Jutta Koether's restless energy translates into a prolific body of work that is at once affirmative and nihilistic. Although she writes and performs, frequently in collaboration with fellow artists and musicians, she is foremost a painter. Rather than hanging her paintings according to the conventions of the "white cube," however, Koether contextualizes her paintings within an "expanded field" by affecting a number of physical interventions in the space. In recent exhibitions these have included placing a silver exercise ball at the installation's center; painting the walls silver; putting shiny mylar-strip curtains at the gallery's entrance; and adding strobe lights. These strategies for obstructing and instructing the viewing experience demonstrate Koether's relentless interrogation of the conditions in which painting is produced and viewed.' (in the Whitney Biennial Day for Night Catalogue 2006)

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