Imogen O’Rorke, Flipping the Script

Imogen O’Rorke, Flipping the Script: Mute Magazine, 2008.

Imogen O'Rorke is an artist, writer and new media consultant living in east London. She regularly writes for Mute Magazine and guardian.co.uk on a broad range of topics such as branding, video games and art exhibitions.

O'Rorke suggests that the artists’ attempt to provide a direct, unfiltered experience through re-enactment “in order to understand recent history”[1], but this attempt to steer away from the Media’s strategies of providing information, which have resulted in the desensitisation of the subject, seems to be an ill-considered statement because the experience of recent history that is provided through the work, is extremely filtered. The viewer is aware that the performance is a re-enactment and the re-enactment itself takes place within the walls of a gallery; these two elements alone contradict the initial concept of an unfiltered presentation.

I think Walter Benjamin’s concept of reproduction become relevant when talking about ’providing a direct, unfiltered experience.’ Walter Benjamin argues, “the singular, auratic object is forever haunted by it’s past history and functions, which enshroud it like a veil and render it resistant to use in the present. Reproduction strips away this veil; it removes the object from its ‘Embeddedness’ in tradition”.[2] The notion of striping away a veil of ‘Embeddedness’ caused by reproduction, or in the case of “9 Scripts from a Nation at War”, caused by re-enactment, is responsible for the inability to provide a ‘direct, unfiltered experience’. To achieve what the exhibition attempts to provide, the element of ‘Embeddedness’ or a literally real experience of an artwork, or event, is necessary.

O’Rorke identifies ‘non-didactic’ presentation strategies employed in the exhibition, intended to create a conversation amongst the audience rather than preaching to the audience. “These experiential techniques generate a healthy climate of debate”[3]. The techniques mentioned are strategies of re-enactment and role-play, but other strategies employed by the exhibition are omitted here, such as listening booths, which presented the viewer with a small T.V and headphones that play “a documentation of a five hour public reading of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals”.[4] This mode of presentation acts in a very didactic way; video is a medium that cannot be argued with, a prerecorded video acts as a passive communicational device and consequently is didactic.

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[1] “Flipping the Script” Imogen O’Rorke on Andrea Geyer’s “9 Scripts from a Nation At War”. Published by Mute Magazine. pp. 4

[2] “Reproduction/Repetition: Walter Benjamin/Carl Einstein”. Charles W. Haxthausen. pp. 6

[3] “Flipping the Script” Imogen O’Rorke on Andrea Geyer’s “9 Scripts from a Nation At War”. Published by Mute Magazine. pp. 2

[4] “Flipping the Script” Imogen O’Rorke on Andrea Geyer’s “9 Scripts from a Nation At War”. Published by Mute Magazine. pp. 3

Gerald Matt, “Amal Kenawy”

Gerald Matt, “Amal Kenawy”, Gerland Matt ed., Interviews 2, Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008, pp. 134-1441

Gerald Matt was born in 1956; he studied Law, Business Management and Art History. He’s had a long career as a curator and has been the General Director of the ‘Kunsthalle Wien’ in Vienna since 1996.

Artist Amal Kenawy was born in 1974. She studied Film and Fashion Design at the Academy of Fine Arts at the Cinema Institute in Cairo (1997-1999) and received a BA in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Helwan University in Egypt, 1999.

Amal Kenawy states that her work “deals with the influence of society on humans, on how society affects their understanding of certain events and feelings.”[1] She talks about her work in terms of perception, making it obvious that she is aware of the notion that her audience can’t separate themselves from their own cultural history and experiences, which in tern affects the way that an individual perceives her work. She incorporated these ideas into her work by being consciously aware that her artistic investigations are subjective and shaped by her cultural views; “my exploration of the subjects of birth, marriage, and death is influenced by my society’s/culture’s views on them”.[2]

In psychology this is described as Recognition and Identification, “To interpret what you see, you need to compare the input to stored information. If the input matches something you’ve stored in memory, the information can be applied to the present case. If the object is recognised, it seems familiar; if it is identified, you know additional facts about it.”[3]

Kenawy aims to express ideas such as “how experiences or surroundings affect an individual or how, conversely, an individual reflects his surroundings.”[4] The work “You Will Be Killed”, which is the central focus in this reading, is highly reliant on her own personal interpretation of a particular place, in this case, a hospital. She states, “The work deals with instances of violence.” “The work is about violence in general”.[5] Her interpretation of a hospital, which informs the work, is very subjective. My personal interpretation of a hospital is one of nurturing and healing, not of violence. There are contradictory ideas behind this work, one that’s reliant on the audiences interpretation based on the their cultural background, and the other is dependant on the artists interpretation of a place.

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[1] Gerald Matt, “Amal Kenawy”, Gerland Matt ed., Interviews 2, Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008, pp. 135

[2] Gerald Matt, “Amal Kenawy”, Gerland Matt ed., Interviews 2, Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008, pp. 135

[3] Kosslyn S.M, & Rosenberg R.S. Psychology in Context, 3^rd edition, Chapter 4. From Psychology, An introduction text for the University of Auckland, 2008, pp. 151

[4] Gerald Matt, “Amal Kenawy”, Gerland Matt ed., Interviews 2, Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008, pp. 139

[5] Gerald Matt, “Amal Kenawy”, Gerland Matt ed., Interviews 2, Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008, pp. 136

Catherine David and Irit Rogoff - “In Conversation”

Catherine David and Irit Rogoff, “In Conversation”, in Claire Doherty ed., From Studio to Situation, London: Black Dog Publishing, 2004, pp.82-89

Catherine David has worked since 2002 as director of the Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. She’s also worked as a curator at the National Museum of Modern Art, Paris. Her exhibitions since the nineties have examined art-practice in relation to contemporary socio-political issues.

Irit Rogoff is a theorist and curator who writes on the critical, the political, and contemporary arts practices. Rogoff is a professor at Goldsmiths College, London University, in the department of Visual Cultures, which she founded in 2002.

There’s a notion of cultural specificity that runs through the text, the idea that knowledge of a culture’s history and customs is necessary to understand an artwork from that culture, or that the artwork needs to be viewed in its place of creation to successfully communicate the intensions driving the work.

An individual’s understanding of a representation will differ depending on the individual’s cultural understanding of that being represented. Irit Rogoff states that some elements of cultural experience or “rapport” effect an individual’s perception and interpretation of an artwork, “In rapport we have all kinds of conceits, we have all kinds of illusions. We have a notion of understanding. We have a notion of insight. There is a kind of empathy that is fore-grounded, there’s a notion of investigation.”[1]

Reuben Paterson‘s 2004 exhibition ‘Open for Interpretation’, deals with an understanding of interpretation. Paterson is influenced by “visual, lived and philosophical traditions of his Maori ancestors”, “‘Open to Interpretation’ is a conduit to ask where do such foundations of knowing come from?”[2] His work explores an understanding of Maori culture through the use of appropriated traditional Maori design, translated through the medium of glitter, which “suggest the assured defiance of Maori culture in the face of loss. But they also emit an air of melancholy”.[3]

Although it may be necessary to understand the cultural context of an artwork before completely understanding the intended concept projected by the work, I believe the interpretation of an artwork is always in the eye of the viewer, as argued in Roland Barthes’s ‘Death of the Author’. Thus the interpretation of an artwork’s concept is a result of any individual’s personal interpretation, culturally aware or not.

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[1] Catherine David and Irit Rogoff. “In Conversation”, in Claire Doherty

ed., From Studio to Situation, London: Black Dog Publishing, 2004, pp.86

[2] http://www.reubenpaterson.com/press/R_PATERSON_Narcissus_Press.pdf pp.1 accessed 06/05/2010

[3] http://the-artists.org/artist/paterson-reuben accessed 06/05/2010

Cuauhtemoc Medina - “Contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses”

Cuauhtemoc Medina, “contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses”, e-flux journal, #2, 01/2010, accessed from http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/103.

Cuauhtémoc Medina is an art critic, curator, and historian who lives and works in Mexico City. He holds a PhD in Art History and Theory from the University of Essex, UK. Medina is a researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas at the National University of Mexico.

Medina asks, ‘What is contemporary art?’ and suggests a coining of contemporary art as an art movement such as Modernism, which will eventually end. He states that there are specific characteristics to an artwork which makes it contemporary, for example, one of those characteristics is that the work must “demand a double reception”[1], a reception from the general public as well as a “sophisticated theoretical recuperation”.[2]

In ‘Under the Sign of Labour’, Sabeth Buchmann attempts to define Conceptual Art by stating “Conceptual art was successful in establishing the idea that instead of being measurable only in terms of the fact of material production, the form of art’s symbolic value should be equally open to calibration using scales of social productivity.” And “art as a form of communication.”[3] Here Buchmann is suggesting that Conceptual Art is defined by the symbolic communication or the concept driving the work, rather than being an object focused art form. Although, similar to Cuauhtémoc Medina’s attempt to define Contemporary Art as a movement, the defining terms are arguable and ambiguous.

Medina’s notion that the term ‘Contemporary Art’ will eventually define a genre seems understandable when regarding the earlier movement of Modernism, which referred to modern art at the time. But I think Contemporary Art will always refer to the art world at present. Medina’s statement that contemporary art must “demand a double reception”[4], a reception from the general public as well as a “sophisticated theoretical recuperation”[5], seems to contradict ‘Contemporary Art’ as a movement, the constantly changing nature of culture, which contemporary art responds to, ‘the general culture and sophisticated culture’, will enforce an ever changing definition of contemporary art and as a result, the term ‘Contemporary Art’ will continue to refer to art created in the present time.

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[1] Cuauhtemoc Medina, “contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses”, e-flux journal, #2, 01/2010, accessed from http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/103, 17/2/2010. Page 2.

[2] Cuauhtemoc Medina, “contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses”, e-flux journal, #2, 01/2010, accessed from http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/103, 17/2/2010. Page 2.

[3] Sabeth Buchmann “Under the Sign of Labor”. Page 179

[4] Cuauhtemoc Medina, “contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses”, e-flux journal, #2, 01/2010, accessed from http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/103, 17/2/2010. Page 2.

[5] Cuauhtemoc Medina, “contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses”, e-flux journal, #2, 01/2010, accessed from http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/103, 17/2/2010. Page 2.

Craig Garrett on Thomas Hirschhorn

Craig Garrett, “Thomas Hirschhorn: Philosophical Battery”. Flash Art no. 238, 2004: pg. 90-93

Written by Craig Garrett, the managing editor of Flash Art Magazine and art critic.

Thomas Hirschhorn is a Swiss artist known for his artworks that consist of constructing extremely saturated installations using common materials that he uses to offer a specific message, in and outside of galleries. He received the Marcel Duchamp prize in 2000/2001 and the Joseph Beuys prize in 2004.

Thomas Hirschhorn works within a territory where philosophy informs his artistic practice, his work is based on the notion that philosophy is art and that his work is the affirmation of philosophy as art, and not as an educative device. “I share with Marcus Steinweg (philosopher) the idea that philosophy is art.”[1] Hirschhorn accumulates and appropriates a mass amount of material that he feels acts as affirmation of philosophy as art, effectively communicating his adoration of philosophy as art.

James Turrell’s practice relates to Hirschhorn’s incorporation of philosophy, Turrell’s work “Third Breath” 2005 draws an influence from philosophy and cultural understandings of light. Light is projected from the sky into a darkened room, the phenomena of the outside world becomes the subject of Turrell’s work, making the viewer aware of the connection between the sky and the earth, the way which light moves, the subject of Turrell’s work is the Philosophy of light. “Light as the radiant power of the mind and the fluid of illumination. Romanticism idealised light as a metaphor for the infinite and for visionary power”[2]

Hirschhorn states that he wants to work as a fan in order to speak through his work. I understand his perspective as a practicing artist that is a fan of philosophy with an ambition to communicate and share this through his work. However I don’t see the need to act as a fan to be able to initiate a conversation of philosophy between the work and the audience members. I think that Hirschhorn’s work successfully acts as a means of initiating a conversation between the audience members without necessarily communicate his stance as a fan, rather than an artist dealing with philosophic issues. The work doesn’t just act as a representation of the artist’s adoration for philosophy alone.

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[1] Craig Garrett, “Thomas Hirschhorn: Philosophical Battery”. Flash Art no. 238, 2004: pg. 92

[2] James Turrell. Geometry of Light. Herausgegeben von. Essay by Ursula Sinnreich Page 21