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