Tomorrow is Today, Reenactment of a conversation between Christodoulos Panayiotou and Jean Verdeil at Wysing Arts Center, Cambridge, 1/11/09, 5pm

"Tomorrow is Today" is a work by Christodoulos Panayiotou that has involved an intense conversation with the artist and his former tutor Jean Verdeil - the French academic and theatrical anthropologist.

Working with the founder and Artistic Director of Cambridge's Shams Theatre, Jonathan Young, the conversation will be brought to life in a live performance recital by actors Dominic Fitch and Jeremy Killick. The performance will take place in the Wysing Theatre - a specially improvised space - on Sunday 1 November at 5pm

The performance is free, however spaces are limited and should be reserved through info@wysingartscentre.org

www.wysingartscentre.org

Visiting the amazing Woodland Cemetery (Skogskyrkogården, Stockholm) and bringing flowers to Greta Garbo

Wikipedia

An interview of Elli Papa on utopia, the past, the present and the future (RIP Elli Papa)

<<Μακάρι να είχαν εκτελέσει και μένα μαζί με τον Νίκο>>
Της ΟΛΓΑΣ ΜΠΑΚΟΜΑΡΟΥ

Λευκά λαμπερά μαλλιά, μάτια σαν μικροί κρατήρες φωτός, κυρίαρχα σε ένα
πρόσωπο γαλήνης -αυτή είναι η πρώτη εικόνα που μου δίνει η Ελλη Παππά,
πηγαίνοντας να τη συναντήσω στο σπίτι της, στου Ζωγράφου, για τη
συνέντευξη που ακολουθεί. Με υποδέχεται ντυμένη απλά και κομψά - μια
χρυσή καρφίτσα στη βάση του λαιμού είναι το μοναδικό της στολίδι,
<<σημείο>>, σκέφτομαι, μιας χαμένης στις μέρες μας αρχοντιάς.

Σχεδόν μεσημέρι, ο ήλιος πέφτει απ' τις τζαμόπορτες στο διαμέρισμα,
5ος όροφος, ανοιχτός, όλο ταράτσες πολυκατοικιών, ο ορίζοντας. Μέσα,
βιβλία, πολλά βιβλία, δυο κυκλάμινα σε γλάστρες μπροστά στο σβηστό
τζάκι, το σκυλί της, η Βιόλα, να στριφογυρίζει, φωτογραφίες και
πίνακες -ανάμεσά τους, το γνωστό σκίτσο του Μπελογιάννη από τον Πικάσο
και το χειρόγραφό του που το συνόδευσε, σε άλλο κάδρο- ακίνητα.

Εχουν μόλις κυκλοφορήσει σε ανατύπωση, μέσα σε χάρτινη κασετίνα, τα
δέκα βιβλία μινιατούρες, παραμύθια που έγραψε ή διασκεύασε, ζωγράφισε
και βιβλιοδέτησε η ίδια, και τα 'στελνε στον μικρό γιο της -καρπό τής
σχέσης της με τον Νίκο Μπελογιάννη- όταν ήταν στη φυλακή και κείνος
μεγάλωνε στα χέρια της αδελφής της Διδώς Σωτηρίου. Την κοιτάζω, κάπου
μισόν αιώνα από τότε, το μικρό σώμα μέσα στη μεγάλη πολυθρόνα -ποιος
ξένος μπορεί να μετρήσει το βάρος εκείνου του συμβόλου, εκείνου του
μύθου πάνω της.

- Ησασταν στην ίδια φυλακή, της Καλλιθέας, όταν τον εκτέλεσαν. Πώς να
σας ρωτήσω τι αισθανόσασταν μέσα στην καρδιά αυτής της τραγωδίας;

Έλλη Παπα <<Δεν μπορείς να απαντήσεις, όσα χρόνια και αν περάσουν. Πώς να τα πεις
αυτά και πώς να τα νιώσουν οι άλλοι; Να είσαι εκεί και να τον πάρουν
απ' τα χέρια σου. Στη φυλακή, τον αποχαιρέτησα... Εμένα μου έδωσαν
χάρη, δηλαδή ισόβια, ως μητέρα που ήμουν, και δεν με εκτέλεσαν. Γιατί
κι εγώ είχα καταδικαστεί σε θάνατο>>.

- Πώς είναι να περιμένεις από ώρα σε ώρα έναν τέτοιο θάνατο;

<<Οταν είσαι εκεί, το ξέρεις, το έχεις αποδεχτεί, ότι κάποια στιγμή
μπορεί να συμβεί αυτό, να χτυπήσει η πόρτα και να σε πάρουν -πολλές
γυναίκες σκοτώθηκαν έτσι. Δεν μπορείς να κάνεις τίποτε άλλο* αν
κάνεις, θα προδώσεις... Το τραγικό για μένα είναι ότι δεν πήγα μαζί με
τον Νίκο. Διότι αυτό ήθελα. Να πεθάνω, να φύγω μαζί του>>.

- Παρ' ότι είχατε το παιδί;
<<Ναι. Το παιδί θα ζούσε, ίσως και καλύτερα χωρίς εμένα, και όταν
μεγάλωνε, θα καταλάβαινε... Οι γυναίκες στη φυλακή το αγαπούσαν απ'
την αρχή -όταν με σήκωσαν απ' του Αβέρωφ και με πήγαν στο μπουντρούμι
της Καλλιθέας για εκτέλεση, αυτές το έκρυψαν για μέρες όπου μπορούσαν:
από θάλαμο σε θάλαμο, κάτω από τα ράντζα των κρατουμένων, αρρώστησε
σοβαρά από το πήγαιν'-έλα, 6 μηνών παιδάκι ήταν, και το γιάτρεψαν.
Γιατί αυτοί, οι ασφαλίτες, με το πρόσχημα ότι θα το φέρουν σε μένα,
ζητούσουν να το πάρουν...>>

- Για ποιον λόγο;

<<Για άγνωστους λόγους. Τέλος πάντων, σώθηκε τότε κι όταν επέστρεψα
στις φυλακές Αβέρωφ, το ξαναβρήκα. Μείναμε μαζί ώσπου έγινε 3 χρόνων
-αυτό ήταν το όριο παραμονής παιδιών σε φυλακές- και πέρασε καλά,
γιατί όλοι τον αγαπούσαν και τον φρόντιζαν εκεί μέσα, και οι συγγενείς
απ' έξω ερχόντουσαν να τον δουν... Ο χωρισμός ήταν πολύ σκληρός και
για τους δυο μας* εμένα με έκανε κομμάτια. Ηταν φρίκη να βλέπεις το
παιδί σου μία φορά τον μήνα, για πολλά χρόνια. Ετσι έφτιαξα αυτά τα
βιβλιαράκια και μετά μια άλλη σειρά, με έργα του Αριστοφάνη... Ωσπου
αποφυλακίστηκα το '63, με το που βγήκε ο Παπανδρέου. Και ο Νίκος,
τελειώνοντας το Δημοτικό, έμπαινε στην εφηβεία...>>

- Και από τότε κύλησε η ζωή;

<<Ναι, αλλά δεν κύλησε έτσι δα. Γιατί είχαμε και τη χούντα το '67, και
πάλι χωρίσαμε με τον Νίκο... Πήγα εξορία. Στα Γιούρα. Οπου αρρώστησα
πολύ άσχημα και τότε οι Σοβιετικοί κατάφεραν να με πάρουν από κει, να
με φέρουν στην Αθήνα και τελικά να με ελευθερώσουν, χωρίς η ίδια να
γνωρίζω τίποτα. Με σκοπό να με πάρουν μαζί τους στη Σοβετική Ενωση,
για να ενισχύσουν τον αντιδικτατορικό αγώνα, στην ουσία για να με
αξιοποιήσουν υπέρ του καθεστώτος, προβάλλοντας την εικόνα του
κομμουνιστή που μένει πιστός στις ιδέες του. Είχαν κάνει μεγάλη
προετοιμασία, άρχισαν να στρώνουν το κόκκινο χαλί για να με δεχτούν,
αλλά δεν πήγα. Αρνήθηκα.

- Γιατί;

<<Γιατί είχε γίνει εν τω μεταξύ η εισβολή στην Τσεχοσλοβακία, προς την
οποία ήμουν αντίθετη. Ομως, ήταν πολύ βαρύ για κείνους αυτό που τους
έκανα. Και από τότε οι σχέσεις μας διαρρήχθηκαν. Δηλαδή με αγνόησαν,
και δικαίως. Πήγε στη θέση μου ο Ρίτσος για τον ίδιο σκοπό... Εγώ
έμεινα εδώ, προσπάθησα να σταθώ στα ποδια μου, ο Ευάγγελος
Τερζόπουλος, που ήμασταν μαζί στον 'Ριζοσπάστη', μου έδωσε δουλειά στη
'Γυναίκα'. Χωρίς να υπογράφω απ' την αρχή, γιατί ήταν χούντα ακόμα*
μου έλεγε για τις πιέσεις που δεχόταν, θα είχε πρόβλημα>>.

- Η πτώση του υπαρκτού σοσιαλισμού σας έκανε να σκεφτείτε ποτέ αν όλο
αυτό που έγινε, ο αγώνας και οι θυσίες τόσων ανθρώπων, άξιζε τον κόπο;

<<Αξιζε τον κόπο, αλλά καταρρακώθηκε από κάθε άποψη. Οταν το 1989
κατέρρευσε το σύμπαν, αποδείχτηκε ότι ήταν όλο εις μάτην. Οτι όλο αυτό
που λεγόταν Σοβιετική Ενωση γεννήθηκε για να πεθάνει>>.
- Ηταν αναμενόμενο για σας;

<<Εγώ και όσοι ήξερα δεν το είχαμε μετρήσει έτσι. Παρ' ότι από την
εποχή που ήμουν στη φυλακή, προ χούντας, έφταναν ώς εμάς από την
Σοβιετική Ενωση κάποιες πληροφορίες, σαν βαρίδια. Οπως π.χ. η
συνωμοσία κάποιων μεγαλογιατρών να φάνε διάφορα κομματικά στελέχη, που
τους έστειλαν στη Σιβηρία. Ηταν φοβερό* γιατί να γίνονται τέτοια
πράγματα εκεί, αναρωτιόμουν, είχα ταραχτεί τόσο, που φώναζα στον ύπνο
μου 'Σοβιετική Ενωση'! Τόσο δεμένη ήμουν μ' αυτό το κίνημα, τόσο
φοβόμουν, είχα το προαίσθημα ότι κάτι κακό θα συμβεί>>.

-Επαληθεύτηκε το προαίσθημά σας...

<<Ναι, από τότε όλα τα πράγματα άρχισαν να πηγαίνουν ανάποδα. Ωσπου
ήρθε ο Γκορμπατσόφ, που τον είδαμε σαν κάτι καινούργιο, ότι θα
μπορούσε να σώσει τον σοσιαλισμό. Αλλά μας την έδωσε την κατραπακιά,
αντί σωτηρίας είδαμε την οριστική κατάπτωσή του. Γιατί το σύστημα
κατέρρεε και ο Γκορμπατσόφ δεν μπορούσε ούτε καν να διαχειριστεί αυτή
την κατάρρευση>>.

- Τι το οδήγησε στην κατάρρευση αυτή;

<<Ηταν σάπιο απ' την αρχή αυτό που έστησαν και άκρως αντίθετο προς τις
ιδέες που ευαγγελιζόταν, οι οποίες βέβαια δεν έφταιγαν>>.

- Από την εποχή του Λένιν ξεκινάτε;

<<Να μην πούμε από τον Λένιν, αλλά από τον Στάλιν και πέρα άρχισε να
σαπίζει, βλέπαμε αυτή την πτώση. Ωσπου ήρθε, και ήταν τραγικό -η
Σοβιετική Ενωση εξαφανίστηκε, οι χώρες που τη συνιστούσαν είναι ξέφτια
πια... Από την ώρα που ένας Γιέλτσιν πήρε την εξουσία στη Ρωσία,
φάνηκε ότι το πράγμα δεν είχε πλέον ελπίδα. Διότι ήταν σάπιος και
αυτός, εξέφρασε όλη την παρακμή. Και είδατε πού καταλήξαμε: στον
Πούτιν>>.

- Το λέτε απαξιωτικά... Τι εκφράζει ο Πούτιν για σας;

- Τις μεγάλες μαφίες του πετρελαίου και του φυσικού αερίου. Ο,τι
εκφράζουν και αυτοί που έχουν φύγει από τη Ρωσία, ο Αμπράμοβιτς, ο
Χοντορκόφσκι κ.λπ. Αλλωστε, αυτές οι μαφίες, όλοι αυτοί, ξεπήδησαν
μέσα από την Κα Γκε Μπε, ουσιαστικά. Και ο Πούτιν ανάμεσά τους. Και
βλέπουμε σήμερα τις συνέπειες αυτής της κατάρρευσης να τις υφίσταται
όλος ο κόσμος. Και θα τις υφίσταται>>.

- Ποιες είναι συγκεκριμένα αυτές οι συνέπειες;

<<Οτι έχει τώρα τον Μπους και τους υπόλοιπους, που έχουν πέσει πάνω στη
γη να τη φάνε. Και κυνηγάνε τα πάντα, με πολέμους, με καταπάτηση των
ελευθεριών και των ανθρώπινων δικαιωμάτων, προκειμένου να το πετύχουν.
Με μοναδικό στόχο το χρήμα. Αυτό, το χρήμα, κυριεύει τον κόσμο τώρα,
αυτό διαφεντεύει τα πάντα. Αυτό είναι η εξουσία, όλες οι εξουσίες, το
μόνο πράγμα που έχει αξία* τίποτε άλλο>>.

- Δεν υπάρχουν διαφορές μεταξύ Πούτιν και Μπους;

<<Τι διαφορές; Απλώς, ο Μπους είναι ο χειρότερος εκφραστής αυτού του
γεγονότος, αυτού του εξαμβλώματος που έχει καταντήσει ο κόσμος...
Είναι φοβερό, μια επανάσταση, όπου είχαν επικεντρωθεί οι ελπίδες όλων,
να μεταλλαχθεί στο αντίθετό της. Και επιπλέον, να βιώνουμε όλη αυτή
την ξεδιαντροπιά, αυτό το έγκλημα της απώλειας των καλύτερων από τα
υλικά με τα οποία μπορεί να είναι φτιαγμένος ένας άνθρωπος>>.

- Επομένως, μπορεί να πει κανείς ότι τελικά οι ωραίες ιδέες δεν είναι
δυνατόν να βρουν εφαρμοργή στην κοινωνία των ανθρώπων;

<<Μπορεί να το πει>>.

- Αρα, ρίχνουμε αυλαία;

<<Οχι οριστική. Οι ιδέες για τις οποιες μιλούμε, τώρα δεν βρίσκουν
εφαρμογή. Ξανασυζητιούνται μετά από έναν αιώνα>>.

- Να έρθουμε λίγο και στα δικά μας, και να σας ρωτήσω πώς θα φτιάχνατε
το πορτρέτο του σύγχρονου Ελληνα.

<<Είμαι λίγο απ' έξω, όμως έτσι ίσως να βλέπω τα πράγματα πιο καθαρά.
Νομίζω, λοιπόν, ότι στον τόπο μας οι άνθρωποι ζουν πια χωρίς να ξέρουν
πού πάνε. Ποιο είναι το δικό τους συμφέρον, ποιος είναι ο εχθρός τους,
ποιος είναι ο σύντροφός τους, ποιος είναι ο φονιάς τους. Το μόνο που
τους ενδιαφέρει -και σ' αυτό συμβάλλει και η παιδεία, που είναι
ανύπαρκτη- είναι να ζήσουν σήμερα, τώρα>>.

- Να ζήσουν, με ποιον τρόπο;

<<Με ό,τι τους πλασάρουν τα περιοδικά λάιφ στάιλ και η τηλεόραση λάιφ
στάιλ. Που είναι ό,τι έρχεται απ' έξω, αλλά στο πιο κιτς>>.

- Υπάρχει κάτι όπου μπορούμε να προσβλέπουμε;

- Εγώ το μόνο, όπου προσβλέπω, όπου μπορώ να δω μια ελπίδα -τολμώ να
το πω- είναι η νέα γενιά. 'Βιάζεσαι', μου λένε μερικοί, αλλά το
πιστεύω, ακούγοντας τα ίδια τα νέα παιδιά που έρχονται εδώ, χωρίς να
τα ξέρω, για να μιλήσουν μαζί μου. Και διαπιστώνω ότι αρνούνται αυτόν
τον κόσμο, δεν τον θέλουν. Αυτό είναι το μόνο που με γαληνεύει στην
Ελλάδα σήμερα>>.

- Και η ελληνική Αριστερά; Πώς την επηρέασε αυτή η πτώση του υπαρκτού
σοσιαλισμού;

<<Ακόμα και η Ανανεωτική Αριστερά βρέθηκε να έχει χάσει πολλά από τα
πρότυπά της. Γιατί δεν είχε ποτέ, μεταπολιτευτικά, το θάρρος να
ξεκόψει απ' όλα αυτά και να εμφανίσει δικό της πρότυπο. Οσο για το
ΚΚΕ, έμεινε αναπολώντας περασμένα μεγαλεία>>.

- Για να καταλήξει πού η Αριστερά σήμερα;

<<Για την ώρα, δεν μοιάζει να καταλήγει πουθενά>>.

-Μερικοί υποστηρίζουν ότι δεν υπάρχει καν.

<<Εχει μια βάση αυτό. Είμαστε σε μια φάση επαναπροσδιορισμού των όρων
Αριστερά, αριστερός>>.

- Την πολιτική μας σκηνή, πώς τη βλέπετε συνολικά;

<<Σαν να είμαι στη θάλασσα και έχει τσούχτρες. Αυτό το γλοιώδες πράγμα
που σε τσιμπάει ξαφνικά και δεν ξέρεις από πού σου 'ρχεται>>.

- Τι θα λέγατε για τις δύο... κορυφαίες τσούχτρες του δικομματικού παιχνιδιού;

<<Είναι πολύ λίγοι και οι δύο για τις σημερινές ανάγκες του τόπου. Αλλά
δεν θέλω να μιλήσω για πρόσωπα. Θα σας πω μόνο ότι βλέπω μια
διολίσθηση προς το αντικοινωνικό κράτος τύπου Θάτσερ, όπου ο πολίτης
αντιμετωπίζεται ως όχληση προς τα μεγάλα συμφέροντα. Και η νομοθεσία
μεριμνά μόνο γι' αυτά>>.

- Για σας, θεωρούν ότι η σύνδεσή σας με τον Μπελογιάννη κυρίως, πέρα
από την δική σας μετέπειτα διαδρομή, σας προσδίδει το στοιχείο ενός
<<μύθου>> στον χώρο της Αριστεράς. Εχετε αυτή την αίσθηση;

<<Ποτέ δεν είχα τέτοια αίσθηση. Και όταν μου αποδίδουν άλλοι αυτόν το
χαρακτηρισμό, δεν ξέρω τι να τον κάνω>>.

- Λοιπόν, ποια θα λέγατε ότι είστε;

<<Δεν έχω καθήσει να το σκεφτώ ποτέ. Δεν είχα φανταστεί ότι θα είχα ν'
αντιμετωπίσω, κάποια στιγμή, τέτοια ερώτηση. Φοβάμαι και που την
ακούω>>.

- Ισως, κοιτάζοντας πίσω στη ζωή σας, πρόσωπο μιας τραγωδίας;

<<Δεν μπορώ να απαντήσω σ' αυτό. Το μόνο που ξέρω για τον εαυτό μου
είναι ότι είμαι μαχήτρια. Οπου και αν γυρίσω πίσω στη ζωή μου, δεν
βλέπω παρά τον άνθρωπο που μάχεται>>.

- Τι ήταν ο Μπελογιάννης στη ζωή σας;

<<Το άπαν>>.

- Αναρωτιέμαι αν, πενήντα τόσα χρόνια μετά, τον σκέφτεστε στην
καθημερινότητά σας...

<<Είναι πάντα κοντά μου. Τον αισθάνομαι. Τον ρωτάω για ό,τι κάνω. Και
εκείνος βρίσκει τον τρόπο να μου απαντήσει>>.

- Και αν μετράτε την οδύνη που σάς άφησε με ό,τι ωραίο σάς έδωσε αυτός
ο έρωτας.

<<Η οδύνη δεν μετράει. Είναι άλλο. Αισθάνομαι ως ευλογία τη συνάντηση
μαζί του. Ο πόνος τού πρόωρου χαμού του δεν είναι μόνο για μένα. Είναι
και για όσα θα μπορούσε να δώσει σ' αυτόν τον έρμο τόπο. Και δεν
πρόλαβε. Δεν τον άφησαν>>.


ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΤΥΠΙΑ - 16/12/2006

Christodoulos Panayiotou presentation at IASPIS

Monday 26 October 2009
14.00 – 15.00 (artist studio - second floor)

IASPIS,
Maria Skolgata 83,
2nd floor,
SE-118 53 Stockholm,
Sweden
phone: +46 (0)8 50 65 50 00,
fax: +46 (0)8 50 65 50 90,
info@iaspis.com

Iaspis is a Swedish exchange program whose main purpose is to facilitate creative dialogues between visual artists in Sweden and the international contemporary art scene. Iaspis encompasses an international studio program in Sweden, a support structure for exhibitions and residencies abroad for Swedish based artists, as well as program of seminars, exhibitions and publications. Iaspis is the international program of the Visual Arts Fund, a branch of the Arts Grants Committee.

Current International Artists:

STOCKHOLM

Annette Krauss, Utrecht
01 July 2009 - 31 October 2009

Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere , New York
01 August 2009 - 31 December 2009

Christodoulos Panayiotou, Berlin / Limassol
01 August 2009 - 31 December 2009

Anri Sala, Paris
01 August 2009 - 31 October 2009

GÖTEBORG

Ulrika Byttner, Paris
01 October 2009 - 31 October 2009

UMEÅ

Ha Nguyen Thu, Hanoi

Swedish Artists

STOCKHOLM

Bjerneld Lina, Stockholm
01 October 2009 - 31 March 2010

Katarina Bonnevier & Meike Schalk, Stockholm
01 October 2009 - 31 March 2010

Jesper Nordahl, Stockholm
01 October 2009 - 31 March 2010

Carl Palm, Stockholm
01 October 2009 - 31 March 2010

Vladimir Horowitz performs Traumerei by Schumann as an encore in his 1986 concert in Moscow

Brunch at Juan's house, Rotterdam

Lena Mogucheva singing in the Big Children's Choir of USSR, "The dog was gone"

Like Sergey Paramonov, Lena Mogucheva died young, at the age of 29, victim of a strange illness.

"Aber etwas fehlt" a conversation between Nancy Spero, Leon Golub, Molly Nesbit and Hans Ulrich Obrist about Utopia and Southern California

(RIP Nancy Spero, August 24, 1926 – October 18, 2009)

Hans Ulrich Obrist: The Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin wrote “We” in 1920 – 1921, which was first published in English in 1924 an influenced Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s “Brave New Word”. These are all dystopias.

Nancy Spero: Utopia, like heaven, is kind of boring in a way. In certain Scandinavian societies, it’s not exactly utopia, but it has been a bit more egalitarian, and people have not suffered. But in terms of people’s happiness or this sense of well-being, there is still a realization that there’s something missing. I personally think it’s due to human nature. The only way we’re going to have utopia is if people live forever and stay in good health. But that would probably turn out to be a terrible dystopia – the ruination of everything. Think what it would mean if everyone lived for ever, no matter who they are – the good, the bad, and the indifferent. I think that, in a certain way, the world would stop. Even with aging populations now, the world is kind of stopping. In Asia it’s still young, but Europe is growing older.

Leon Golub: One of the difficulties is that if we’re going to solve all this, it means solving psychological problems as well. But if all of the causes, all of the sources, all of the irritations, all of the fucked-up situations we’re always under – if you eliminate those, then what Nancy says is correct: life would be pretty boring. Everybody would have an optimum sex life, an optimum economic life, an optimum eating life. Everybody would be like everybody else.

Molly Nesbit: It sounds a bit like Southern California, doesn’t it?

Nancy Spero: Exactly Southern California doesn’t have the rip that New York does. How could I produce my art in California?

Hans Ulrich Obrist: That’s why it’s so interesting you say something is missing

Molly Nesbit: That’s right. The idea of utopia could be summed up in this one sentence by Brecht, that something’s missing. ( “Aber etwas fehlt”, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogonny)

Nancy Spero: I suppose there are certain people who are self-satisfied. I can’t understand it; it can’t be human. There’s always something that comes along, and there’s always something missing. How could it be otherwise? Even in people who have achieved great success, you see there’s still something missing. Perhaps it’s this hunger you speak about in artists, but I also think it’s in everyone, and it’s insatiable.

(Extracts from the book Nancy Spero, Hans Ulrich Obrsist - The Conversation Series, 2008)

Sergey Paramonov singing in the Big Children's Choir of USSR the "Song of the crocodile Gena"

Sergei Paramonov was a soloist with Russia's "Big Children's Choir" from 1972 to 1975. He was born 25 Jun 1961 (Moscow, USSR) and died 15 May 1998 (Moscow, Russia) at the age of 37.
"The talented child never adapted after his voice changed. [...] that trauma lead to chronic alcohol dependency and early death."

Actor Max Mackintosh who represented me in the Poetry Marathon, interviewed after reading "To bring back the world to the world"

[ACT II – The Title: (21/4/2009)

“To bring the world to the world” is the first slogan created by the Lumiere brothers to promote their new entertainment achievement.
“To bring back the world to the world”, is a negative paraphrase of this first slogan as it presupposes the removal of the world from the world, by the same brothers, 100 years ago.]

See more here (Serpentine website)
and here (Pablo's Center for Aesthetic Revolution)

Poetry Marathon, Serpentine Gallery, Saturday and Sunday, 17–18 October 2009

The Serpentine Gallery Poetry Marathon is an ambitious two-day poetry event taking place in London during Frieze Art Fair week and featuring unique performances from leading poets, writers, artists, philosophers, scholars and musicians.

An international group of major figures will be brought together to perform in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2009, designed by architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of the acclaimed Japanese practice SANAA. The event will include performances of new work, collaborations, discussions and experiments.

Programme

Saturday 17 October
12.30 – 9.00 pm

Julia Peyton-Jones
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Tracey Emin
Agnès Varda
Sean Landers
Holly Pester
Tacita Dean
Eleanor Bron
Enrique Juncosa/Boulevard Magenta
Michael Glover/The Bow Wow Shop
August Kleinzahler
Tom McCarthy & Henry Blofeld
John Giorno
Mladen Stilinović
Tim Griffin
Édouard Glissant*
Jimmie Durham
James Fenton
Nick Laird
Christodoulos Panayiotou
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
Maria Mirabal
Kenneth Goldsmith
Dominic Eichler
Barry Schwabsky & Sean Bonney
Eileen Myles
Olivier Garbay & Cerith Wyn Evans
Richard Hell
Keren Cytter & Andrew Kerton
Kenneth G. Bostock, Cibelle &
Pablo León de la Barra
Don Paterson
Charlie Dark
Joan Jonas*
Nancy Spero*
Sara MacKillop

Sunday 18 October
12:00 – 8:00 pm

Julia Peyton-Jones
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Karl Holmqvist
Olivia Plender
Etel Adnan*
Eugen Gomringer*
Susan Hiller & Sue Hubbard
Michael Horovitz
Caroline Bergvall
Gerhard Rühm & Monika Lichtenfeld
Franz West* read by Gerhard Rühm
Liliane Lijn
Alasdair Gray
Jacques Roubaud
Stuart Brisley
Gilbert & George
David Robilliard read by The Robilliards (Leo Burley & Rosemary Turner)
Daljit Nagra
Nathan Cash Davidson
Jonas Mekas* & Edward Eke
Vito Acconci
Geoffrey Hill
Brian Eno & Karl Hyde
Jeremy Reed/Itchy Ear/The Ginger Light
Saul Williams
Philippe Parreno*
Karl Holmqvist
Grace Jones* & Mark van Eyck

All contributions will be approximately 15 minutes long

*Remote participant

There is a long and vivid history of exchange between artists and poets. Guillaume Apollinaire made a literary connection to Cubism with his great work of ‘visual poetry’ Calligrammes: Poems of War and Peace 1913-1916. In the same period, Hugo Ball wrote the Dada Manifesto (1916), a movement in which the poet, essayist and performance artist Tristan Tzara was also closely involved. A decade later, in 1924, André Breton, the proponent of ‘automatic writing’, published La Révolution surréaliste (The Surrealist Revolution).

In the 1950s, Abstract Expressionism was an art movement with strong creative connections with writing and poetry of the time, from the work of poets Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery to artist Robert Motherwell’s influential essays on the New York School. Later, in the 1960s, the international artistic network Fluxus formed innumerable close links between visual art and the written word.

The Poetry Marathon is the fourth in the series of Marathons staged in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion each year. The Marathon series was conceived by Serpentine Gallery Co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist in 2006. The first in the series, the Interview Marathon in 2006, involved interviews with leading figures in contemporary culture over 24 hours, conducted by Obrist and architect Rem Koolhaas. This was followed by the Experiment Marathon, conceived by Obrist and artist Olafur Eliasson in 2007, which included 50 experiments by speakers across both arts and science, and the Manifesto Marathon in 2008.

The Serpentine Gallery Poetry Marathon is curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects. It is held in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2009, designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA. The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion Commission was conceived by Julia Peyton-Jones, Serpentine Gallery Director and Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programmes in 2000.

Tickets
£25/£20 (two day)
£15/£10 (one day)

Available from the Gallery Lobby Desk or
Ticketweb: 08444 77 1000
www.ticketweb.co.uk

The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2009 is an open-air structure, so please dress accordingly. The ticket guarantees you access to the Marathon site and seating is not allocated. Tickets are non-refundable.

Djurgården

Yannis Papadakis talk on 1st October, Day of the Independence of Cyprus - Presented on 5-10-2009 at English School, Nicosia

I would like to thank the English School for inviting me to give this talk.

It is not easy to speak today, because in all honesty, I am not a big fan of commemorations. I remember how bored I was when I was at school having to listen to such talks. And here I am now giving one to you! So first of all I have to beg your forgiveness.

Perhaps my difficulty with commemorations has to do with this specific commemoration. My first encounter with October 1st was a rather confusing experience. I also think that in Cyprus we have been unlucky with commemorations. I will come to this later.

Let me begin by how I remember my first encounter with the 1st of October.

It was 1 October 1990 and I was ready to begin my research for my PhD in Cyprus. Since October was the month that university began at the UK where I was enrolled for my PhD, I thought this would be a good time to start. I was in the house I had rented in Nicosia, full of hope. At this time of day, the streets would be busy, so I hoped to be able to meet people living in that area and talk to them about their relations with Turkish Cypriots. I stepped outside. All quiet. No was one around. I turned round, went back in, and closed the door behind me. I collapsed on a chair. So much for the triumphant beginning of my research. I turned on the radio. It was a national holiday, the anniversary of the independence of Cyprus in 1960. How could I possibly not have known this?

On reflection, I felt sure that when I was growing up in Cyprus, the anniversary did not exist. I left Cyprus when I was nineteen to study abroad. Now coming back, aged twenty-six, there it was on the TV, celebrated in all its glory with flags, parades, music and crowds. In my absence an anniversary had been born. The odd thing was that Cyprus actually began its independence on 16 August 1960. But today was 1 October! So we were triumphantly celebrating our anniversary on the wrong date. Outside, the main roads were full of flags – not just our state flag, the flag of the Republic of Cyprus. The flag of another state, Greece, was hanging next to ours. Another national anthem was playing, the Greek one. Ours was nowhere to be heard. Come to think of it, that was because we didn’t even have one. And this was supposed to be the anniversary of the independence of Cyprus. So, we forgot the anniversary of our birth for many years, and then about 30 years later we remembered it. Why?

These, as you understand, made me curious about commemorations. When I looked a bit deeper into the topic I realised how problematic commemorations are. Let me just give two examples, one from Greece and one from Turkey. Ataturk came to claim that the 19th of May was his birthday. As no records were kept at the time of his birth, it was not possible to know. The choice of his birthday was made late in his life by Ataturk himself because May 19th (1919) was the day when Ataturk and his forces landed in Samsun (Mango 2000: 26). This date is commemorated in Turkey as the beginning of the War of Independence. This choice made his life appear as a higher act of destiny. His own birth was the birth of the Father of the Turks, for this is what Ataturk means. He would become for many Turks their only Creator due to his secularising reforms aiming to eradicate the worship of God. But Ataturk would create a cult of worship around himself as the one and only true Father and Creator.

Did the ‘Greek Revolution against the Turks’, as it is habitually called, start on the 25th of March? No, this date was chosen later (Koulouri 1995), to make it coincide with the religious day when the Holy Mother miraculously conceived Christ while, of course, remaining Virgin Mary. Anyhow, the point is that by putting the two days together it was as if the beginning of the new state coincided with the beginning of God on earth.

Greek Cypriots, from what I read, tried to do a one-up on the Greeks. If the Greek day of Independence combined two meanings, they would go for three. According to a Greek Cypriot historian, Stavros Panteli (Panteli 1985: 271), Makarios wanted the struggle of EOKA to start on 25th of March 1955 – the beginning of the Greek War of Independence, the beginning of God on earth, and the beginning of the Struggle for Union with Greece, all in a single day. How cooler could it be! Sadly, due to unforeseen events, it had to start a week later. A stroke of bad luck then, made this commemoration coincide, out of all days, with April 1st, a date famous worldwide for rather less glorious reasons.

How come then the Day of the Independence of Cyprus was moved from 16th August to October 1st? The point of the change was precisely this, what we are doing, here, now, at this moment. The day was moved to a day within the school-calendar so that like it or not there would be a captive audience, namely yourselves, forced to listen to someone like me, pontificate on the meaning of this day. But this is a role I would not like to undertake. I do not want to impose a meaning on this day. I do not want to tell you why this day is important. I think that this day, especially this particular commemoration, reveals many of the problems related to commemorations which I would like to invite you to reflect upon.

Commemorations are sad days for me. I find them sad due to the violence, in fact, several kinds of violence, that they entail. One type of violence is violence towards history. Why should we ask you to celebrate this day, a day which for both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots spelled defeat of a kind – the defeat of enosis and taksim? It is only retrospectively in 1979 that one community chose to remember this day, after decades of trying to forget it, while for the other community this date is no commemoration and thus of no importance. This brings me to the second type of violence towards history, what I would like to call the violence of imposed forgetting. Any commemoration is not so much a call to remember as a call to forget. To forget all other days which are deemed unimportant. To forget in other words all other historical events which are destined for the rubbish bin of history. This is the problem with memory, and that is why remembering is always political. Memory is by definition selective as it is impossible to remember all, and what is chosen to be remembered is inevitably chosen for political reasons. Memory may in fact reveal more about the future than the past. It is the Greek Cypriot desire for a future reunited independent Cyprus, that has made Greek Cypriots retrospectively decide to commemorate the independence of Cyprus, when it emerged then as a unitary state. It is highly doubtful if at the time, there was any sense of glorious rejoicing about the granting of independence to Cyprus. Its symbol, the republic’s flag that is now venerated was then scorned by Greek Cypriots who much preferred the flag of Greece. This is what prompted ex-President Clerides to allegedly remark that: ‘Our flag in Cyprus could be the best in the world because no-one is prepared to die for it’.

Commemorations often entail violence against the dead by distorting the meaning of their struggles. Let me quote a Greek Cypriot politician who spoke after last Thursday’s grand parade: ‘Many people gave their lives so that we would live in an independent state (Polloi anthropoi edosan ti zoi tous gia na zisoume se ena anexartito kratos)’. This is a distortion of the aim of EOKA which was union with Greece, not independence. Nowadays one often hears of the struggle of EOKA being referred to as the struggle for the independence of Cyprus (agonas gia tin anexartisia tis Kyprou). Distorting the reason someone died is, I feel, an act of disrespect.

Which brings me to the parades. I have to confess I do not like parades. I hope this does not constitute a major crime, though in Cyprus you never know. I did not like parades even before I learned that it was the dictator of Greece, Metaxas, who instituted the tradition of the military parade there, which Greek Cypriots later followed.

I disliked them for other reasons when I was a bit younger than you. Let me start with my memories of the student parade, before I tell you of my memories of the military parades. If I remember well, the student parades had boys in front, girls at the back. At the time, this did not bother me. I thought it was simply natural. Something else bothered me. I was not a particularly well built boy, and in the parade it was always the well-built, tall, good-looking boys that had to be in the front. The shorties, the fatsoes, the weaklings, myself, you know, the… how shall I put this? … the bodily-challenged, all of us were clearly a problem to our teachers. That we were clearly a problem was something our teachers made no effort to hide from us. The solution, I remember, was to hide us somewhere towards the back and in the middle of the group. Do anything to make us disappear. Clearly, we were something shameful to be hidden. But there was some consolation. We were not the worse. Some were left out altogether. I remember how much we all used to laugh at the poor boys and girls who found it difficult to synchronise. I remember how they were paraded again and again in front of us, each one alone, sweating, swinging wood-like arms and legs from the tension and the stress of being publicly humiliated, before they were dismissed altogether. It strikes me now how close all this was to certain notorious ideologies based on the worship of the healthy, athletic and coordinated body. The European Court of Human Rights recognises the violence entailed by the obligatory participation of students and teachers in parades and has condemned this in various countries, including Greece.

But when it came to the actual day of the parade, I found myself secretly envying the ones who would not parade. They had the day off, whereas we had to gather early, all spick and span, shoes, hair and teeth all brushed and shiny, and then wait endlessly for our turn to come. Which brings me to the major reason for the change of date from 16th August to 1st October: the fear that no-one would bother with it given that it was smack in the middle of the holiday period when the capital is totally empty. Imagine the military parade taking place on 16th August among empty streets in Nicosia! The obvious advantage with that date would be that they would not need to close off any street; they would be empty in anyway. I think we should demand that the anniversary of our birth as a state be moved back to its true, authentic, historic date. We could argue that it disrespectful and historically inaccurate to commemorate this most important day on the wrong date. How will students ever get to respect history and historical facts, if we cheat on the anniversary of our own independence?

I find it sad, actually not so much sad, I find it fearful and get a shiver when I watch a military parade. What I do find sad is for any state to mark its most important historical day with a military parade. Is this the best it can do? Are guns what these people are most proud of? Do they have no other things to show for themselves? I think it will not come as much of a surprise to you that I am not that fond of military parades either, with their blatant worship of guns. In parades, the nation appears synchronized, equal, united, strong, and of course male, all walking in the same direction, with the same rhythm towards the same future. Man and machine blend, with man having become the ultimate killing machine. We know of course that these are only meant for defence, but here in Cyprus we also know all too well that when you look at the guns of the others on the other side, they don’t appear so innocently defensive. We are still in a state of war, some will say; in Cyprus there is no peace, only a cease-fire. This is the usual but-Cyprus-is-a-special-case argument, so we are allowed to engage in certain unpleasant practices. Even so, the question still is: are guns the way to solve this?

During the inevitable public broadcast of the parade, the commentators on television and radio constantly remind us what the parade demonstrates. If we are to believe them, the parade demonstrates the high level of readiness of our army and the high fighting spirit of our soldiers. As if they are just brought to parade one day out of the blue, and they were not practicing for this for weeks on end; as if they were there out of their own free will.

Another kind of violence lies in the serious atmosphere that surrounds these days. There is something almost holy in the seriousness with which these days are treated. The famous sociologist Durkheim described ritual as society worshipping itself, through the worship of its totem. In our case, we don’t even need the totem, we are perfectly happy to directly worship ourselves. But this has to be done with serious religious-like reverence and any attempt to perhaps also laugh a bit at ourselves seems like an act of sacrilege.

What are we to make then of this day? A day with meaning on one side, without meaning on the other. A day whose interpretation has changed in both sides. As Attalides (1979: 50-51), a Greek Cypriot sociologist, suggests, independence was received as a defeat by Greek Cypriots but as a victory for Turkish Cypriots (even if this was not their primary aim). Yet, it is Greek Cypriots who commemorate and celebrate it after having ignored it for decades, while it is Turkish Cypriots who totally ignore it. All these considerations, I think, provide us with ample ground for reflection both on commemorations and on historical interpretation.

The same religious-like reverence I previously described often accompanies the teaching of history. History is presented as a holy truth whose questioning is an act of sacrilege. I hope that I have shown already that in history there can be different perspectives related to the meaning of the same historical date, and that people may later even change their own minds about them. We endlessly debate in Cyprus on whose history is correct, ours or theirs, the left’s or the right’s, and what we miss in all this, is the most obvious. That history is and can only be an open and continuing debate. An open and continuing debate among informed perspectives, I should add. Does this mean then that anything goes? No. I repeat, that it is a dialogue among informed perspectives and what the rules of history as an academic discipline try to determine is what will count as informed. I take it that the role of history educators should be to provide you with the tools to reach such informed perspectives, not to tell you what to believe. I often feel that the problem in Cyprus is the outright dismissal of all other perspectives apart from one’s own. In other words, the lack of true dialogue among various perspectives.

It is getting time for me to close this talk, and before doing this I would like to apologise once more. At certain places during my talk, I have used a ‘we’ that is also problematic. Some of you may have realised what I mean.

Let me end with this thought. Cyprus has been compared to a child that no-one wanted. Its birth was contingent, in the sense that no-one had actually planned for an independent Cyprus to emerge, and clearly the two involved communities were not aiming for this. So, I would like to close by reminding us all that our lives are the greatest contingency. We have nothing to do with being alive. We did not will our birth. Our very existence has not been an act of our will. Does this mean we should not embrace our lives? Does this mean we can not find meaning in our life? The question is who will determine this meaning. Yourselves, or your parents and the older generations? The same applies to Cyprus, its history and to this historical date.

References
Attalides, Michael. 1979. Cyprus: Nationalism and International Politics. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Koulouri, Christina. 1995 Μύθοι και Σύμβολα μιας Εθνικής Επετείου (Myths and Symbols of a National Anniversary). Komotini: Publications of the Dimokritio University of Thrace. (or see http://alex.eled.duth.gr/Htmlfiles/omilies/omilia1.htm)
Mango, Andrew. 2000. Ataturk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey. Overlook Press: New York.
Panteli, Stavros. 1985. Νέα Ιστορία της Κύπρου (New History of Cyprus). Athens: Floros.

The change of the guard at Rigillis Street, Athens

With Andonis at Pnyx

Athens, Paleo Faliro

MORALITY: ACT I & ACT II - Tonight at Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art - Rotterdam, Netherlands

Guysgocrazy, 2007, double channel video installation with sound and framed photo

Morality
October 10, 2009 - July 31, 2010

Morality starts with two opening exhibitions, the first intervention on Witte de With's façade by AES+F and the launch of the Morality web platform.

Act I: Beautiful from Every Point of View
Exhibition
10 October 2009 – 10 January 2010
Featured artists: Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Isa Genzken, Marko Lulić, Kris Martin, Josephine Meckseper, Sarah Morris, Ron Terada, Tobias Zielony, Artur Żmijewski

Curated by Juan A. Gaitan and Nicolaus Schafhausen.

Act II: From Love to Legal
Exhibition
10 October 2009 – 7 February 2010
Featured artists: Joachim Koester, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Isabelle Pauwels, Mark Raidpere, Tobias Rehberger, Nedko Solakov, Danh Vo, Peter Wächtler, Katarina Zdjelar.

Curated by Juan A. Gaitan and Nicolaus Schafhausen.

Opening: Friday 9 October 2009, 6-9 p.m.
The Triumph of Death and King Midas, performances by Spartacus Chetwynd, between 7-9 p.m.

Between You and I: The Feast of Trimalchio by AES+F
Intervention on Witte de With's façade
10 October 2009 – 17 January 2010

Curated by SKOR and Witte de With.

Full program and more details available on our website http://www.wdw.nl

Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, is pleased to present Morality.

From the Fall of 2009 until the Summer of 2010, Morality will be the leitmotif for an assemblage of connected projects that have been divided into several acts. The program comprises five interrelated group exhibitions featuring over fifty international artists, a symposium, a film cycle, a performance program, a web platform and a book. Parallel to this, Witte de With and SKOR (Foundation Art and Public Space) will commission four interventions on Witte de With's façade under the title Between You and I.

Morality is a provocative theme that aims to open a dialogue vis-à-vis the world that is now determined by the experiences of war, displacement, political and economic crises, the rise of religious fanaticism, sectarianism, and the radicalization of seemingly old doctrines and ideologies. Morality is also a broad subject that affects everybody in many different ways. From the bathroom to the parliament, there is a total field of social engagement in which morality functions without boundaries, between a set of abstract, intangible and general ideas. Morality is neither a base nor a superstructure, but a smooth network of influences that supersedes the law, governing both regulated and unregulated social spaces, and affecting daily life in subtle, seductive, unexpected ways. Yet, there is not a unique or purely affirmative sense that one can give to this notion. A number of moral attitudes – often at odds with one another – inform the positions that we, as political subjects, assume in relation to the events that take place in our world.

Seemingly simple, but also disturbingly difficult to grasp, Morality is an ideal leitmotif for a project that seeks to explore critical points of fragmentation in everyday life. By isolating this concept, we seek therefore to withdraw it from any of the social, cultural, sectarian, religious or historical specificities within which an array of categorical imperatives are deployed in its name. Rather than presenting statements that can be perceived as being right or wrong, good or evil, the project Morality will create a space for showing a wide range of attitudes that problematize a total conception of morality, focusing on the less tangible forces and attitudes that shape common thinking and behavior.

Contact:
Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art
Witte de Withstraat 50
3012 BR Rotterdam, The Netherlands
T +31(0)104110144 – info@wdw.nl - http://www.wdw.nl

INSIDERS - Tonight at CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain and Arc en Rêve Centre d'Architecture - Bordeaux, France

Wonder Land, 2008, 80 color slides, realized with the collaboration of the Municipal Archives of the City of Limassol, Cyprus

October 10 2009 - 1 February 2010

as part of
EVENTO, the artistic & urban rendez-vous of Bordeaux

From 9 October 2009 to 7 February 2010 at the Entrepôt

there will be an exhibition at the Entrepôt in Bordeaux co-organized by arc en rêve centre d’architecture and the CAPC contemporary art museum, as part of the Bordeaux urban arts biennale Evento.

Since the first investigations carried out in 1804 by the Académie Celtique, whose job it was to collect the traditions, customs and languages, followed by the introduction of the termfolklore by William Thoms in 1846, the notion of folklore has always constituted an alternative to central power, and has always been associated with the definition of local identities. It is the setting for a symbolic confrontation: popular knowledge versus the knowledge of an elite eager to preserve the notion of universalism. For this reason the exhibition deliberately reflects a change in civilization where the rules of the old division between “dominant culture” and “counter- cultures” has evolved: working as a network within a global system, current folklore-related practices in the field of art proceed by appropriation and transformation, delocalization and relocalization, intermingling and recycling.

Insiders are members of a small group of people who share knowledge that is protected by precise codes of transmission. Unlike the expert, whose position is more remote, insiders have in their hands the raw materials of the cultural context to which they belong and which they can legitimately observe or represent. The circulation and transformation of these forms of knowledge are part and parcel of what this exhibition sets out to present.

In order to understand these approaches, the overall method of the Insiders project is based on the principle of on-the-spot investigation, after the manner of the early folklorists who worked in their own particular areas using techniques of observation and inventory. To bring this method of investigation up to date, a number of “observer/participants” (artists, curators, collectors, collectives and so on) in various parts of the world have been asked to share their experiences.

We have chosen to address each of the selected projects from the point of view of their methods, approaches and expertise, providing an inventory of the types of action they involve: amplification (augmenting, adding on, etc), bricolage (do-it-yourself, dismantling and reassembly, transforming, adapting, developing, etc), celebrating (commemorating, parading, initiation, etc), exchange (borrowing, swapping, recycling, repurposing, etc), collecting (accumulating, piling up, archiving, etc), playing (competing, participating, challenging, etc), revising (reconstituting, replaying, imitating, copying, reconnecting, etc), transmission (sharing immaterial knowledge, cultural codes, codes of identity, etc). All these actions are linked by a common theme – that of “collection” – which has key importance in the framework of Insiders. This theme – which subsumes notions of selecting, bringing together, highlighting and preserving items within a whole – forms a common thread in folkloric, artistic, anthropological and museographic processes. All the propositions selected for the exhibition involve the idea of collecting objects, information, singular events and minor stories, whose modes of transmission might include raw archives, documentary films, themed museum displays, storytelling and performance.

As these modes of expression are so very diverse, the exhibition avoids a synthetic approach, attempting more disparate form somewhere between order and chaos, akin to a choral recitative.


Charlotte Laubard, Yann Chateigné Tytelman, Émilie Renard curators for the CAPC
Christophe Kihm, scientific adviser

With: 2012 Architecten / Cornelia Lauf • 4 Taxis • Kim Adams • Cory Arcangel • Vladimir Arkhipov • Bertille Bak • Ball & Nogues Studio • Leah Beeferman • Patrick Bouchain • Alexander Brodsky • Patrice Caillet • Jean-Marc Chapoulie + Denis Savary • Raimond Chaves / Inti Guerrero • Cybermohalla / Cédric Vincent • Calin Dan • Burning Man Festival • Stefan Canham + Rufi na Wu • Crimsons Architectural Historians + Felix Rottenberg • BuröN Detours • Jeremy Deller • Daniel Dewar & Grégory Gicquel + Mick Peter + Aiden & Agnes Fynch • Stephane Doesinger • Jimmie Durham • Thierry Ehrmann • El Ultimo Grito • EqA • Ruth Ewan • Fashion Architecture Taste • Peter Fattinger + Design-Build • Cao Fei • Peter Fischli & David Weiss • Pierre Fisher et Justin Meekel • Freistilmuseum / Tiphanie Blanc • Terunobu Fujimori • Anna Galtarossa & Daniel Gonzalez • Dionisio Gonzalez • Gramazio & Kohler • Richard Greaves • Peter Haimerl • Helen & Hard • Anna Heringer & Eike Roswag • HildunK • V. T. Houteff / Jim Shaw • Interbreeding Field • Pierre Joseph • Alan Kane • Igloo Media Patrimoniu • Mike Kelley • le Vilain • Laurent Legall • Jacques Loeuille • Abu Bakarr Mansaray • Joseph Marzolla • Asier Mendizabal • Mathieu Mercier • MMW • Christodoulos Panayiotou • Gaël Peltier • Nikolay Polissky • Marjetica Potrc • Raumlabor • Pedro G. Romero / Archivo F.X. • Adelfo Scaranello • anonymes / Janet Lee Scott • Dubravka Sekulic & Ivan Kucina • SPEEDISM • Sitesize • Brad Templeton • Suzanne Treister • Oscar Tuazon • Marcel Türkowsky • Viljoen & Bohn • Kaïn Vockler + Archis Interventions • Mario Ybarra Jr. • Raphael Zarka • Andrea Zittel

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Jacques Ranciére interview with Yan Ciret

Y.C: In your new book, Le partage du sensible, you radically undermine the concepts of modernity and the avant-garde. In what way is this structure which was conceived in the 19C by Baudelaire and taken up by everyone from Walter Benjamin to the Situationsits and Tel Quel invalid?

J.R: I am not interested in some battle of the ancients and moderns. My target is the notion of modernity which is used as an explanatory category by both the supporters and the detractors of contemporary art. This introduces a problematic relation between the course of History and the development of art. First of all, it tendentiously reduces artistic transformations to one or two exemplary ruptures––for example, pictorial abstraction and the readymade, which are particular forms of a paradigm that is in fact much more general than that. It then makes these artificial breaks appear to embody the accomplishment of some political task or historial destiny. To me this way of reasoning implies a general onology in which there is some great master signifier capable of governing each age. This concept has ended up drowning art in a pathetic melodrama that mixes the Kantian sublime with the Murder of the Father, the taboo on representation with the technology of mechanical reproduction and the death of the gods with the extermination of the Jews in Europe. I wanted to get away from all this pathos and examine the specific functioning of art rather than the metaphysical moving spirit of the age.

Y.C: How do you explain that this modernist pathos coincided with such an intense burst of energy, and that the 20th century looks set to be remembered as one of the golden ages for the arts, with a starburst of creativity epitomized by people such as Joyce, Stravinsky, De Kooning, Picasso and Eisentstein?

J.R:It wasn’t the pathos of modernism that opened up these infinite possibilities for art but the destruction of the categories and hierarchies of art’s representational system. I have tried to contextualize tjos aggiornamento as the effect of a new regime of art, understood here as the set of relations between seeing, maing and saying. It was this transformation that made the works you describe possible and which allows for new, untried combinations as a result of the opening of frontiers between the different arts or between artistic forms and the forms of life, between pure art and applied art, art and non-art, narration and description or symbol, etc. We must be careful not to try to shoehorn these new forms of artistic visibility into some grand global signifier like modernity.

Y.C: Yes, modernism has always been based on rupture, the cult of the new and of progress wither political or aesthetic. The primal scene of this modernism was the parricde and regicide of the French Revolution. Don’t you think that in the current melancholy of the avant-gardes we are seeing a loss of contact with that scene?

J.R: I don’t think that the transformations of art should be conceived solely in terms of that founding regicide/parricide. Ever since Romanticism, aesthetic novelty has always gone hand in hand with the reinterpretation of the old. Ruptures have always been reprises, reinscriptions, and also a way of bringing into art things that lay outside it: anthropological objects, popular images, natural phenomena, etc. The new is not detached from history. We need to move away fom the idea of the end of history. For two centuries now art has been seeing a constant questioning of the frontiers between what is new and what is old and rearranging images, adding elements from non-artistic categories and recycling clichés.

Y.C: So you don’t believe in a “theory of exception” (1) which posites that a radically innovative and singular piece of art can displace the artistic field, open up an unforeseen breach?

J.R: No, change is the result of a thousand creeping encroachments. Art history is always retrospective reconstitution centering on big, major ruptures. As if Kandinsky or Malevich, or even a single painting, had been revolutions in the history of humanity. In the case of Kandinsky, the colored signs on the canvas are taken not tondicate any known thing out there in the world. But this de-identification had already been practiced at the end of the 19th century by the theoreticians of Symbolism who read figurative paintings––Gauguin’s, for example ––as abstract combinations of forms and signs. So these “events” need to be reassessed within a broader context, rather than being concentrated in a few major breakthroughs. Half the people who write about modern art seem to think that Duchamp’s Large Glass cut human history in two. But the large glass need to be seen in the context of a whole series of transformations in the ideas and practice of art, and in the relations between pure and applied art and non-art. It is wrong to squeeze a whole aesthetic paradigm into a few great figures, endowing with a metaphysical pathos as the agents of destiny.

Y.C: The antithesis of the “theory of exceptions” is to be found in your book Aux bords du politique in the form of a “community of equals.” This reminds me of the “literary communism” discussed by Jean-Luc Nancy. But how would such a community pan out in terms of the aesthetic system?

J.R: If there is a community of equals in art, this does not mean the constitution of collective subjects corresponding to real groups. In politics, the subjects of such a community of equals are, in the first instance, the actual forms of utterance and manifestation. It’s the same in art. If there is equality, then this is embodied in a kind of anonymity of art. It is bound up with the way works of art are inscribed in a world of equality. By that I mean a world where the frontier between art and non-art is never fixed but is instead constantly being retraced. Just as we redraw the lines of differentiation and separation between politics and what I call the police, so art will commit multiple transgressions with regard to the modes of the aestheticization of life, but also to the fundamentalist criteria of the separation of genres. But these are modest transgressions that will not lay claim to “great exception” status. In art a community of equalis would be a community of acts that create these slight differences, a line of demarcation that would have no institutional criteria of recognition.

Y.C: I think that today there are two dominant artistic figures. One, which you identify in a text for the journal Trafic. “Fiction de mémoire, à propos d’un film de Chris Marker,” is the figure of the Tomb, of mourning. Here we find the last texts written by Serge Daney and Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinema. You call it the “poem of the poem.”This is a kind of funereal recapitulation of what has never been. On the other side, young artists who are grieving for that primal scene of rupture which I mentioned earlier, and who go through the motions of self-sacrifice, exhibit themselves as mrtyrs, with a wasting-away of the body. So are these the two major figures of art: the Tomb and the innocent victim?

J.R: These two figures are the same. At bottom, both are about the identification of art processes with signs written on the body. I would distinguish that from the primal scene of sacrifice. What I have always sought to do, with politics as with art, is to put such scenes to one side. It’s like at the end of Oedipus at Colonus, for democracy to be possible, we have to forget the whereabouts of of the sacrificial body. The two figures to identify are two figures of history. The “poem of the poem” goes back to Goethe’s Wihelm Meister, which Fridrich Schlegel read as a summation of all poetic figures. Chris Marker;s Le tombeau d’Alexandre and Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinema are precisely that, forms of the reinscription or reordering of signs. The autobiographical art of the body is another kind of reading of history, through the transformation or use of a body. In both cases we have a way of presenting history that is given corporeal form, either by the literal display of the artist’s body, or by the constitution of a corpus of signs. But these are not necessarily figures of sacrifice or mouning. The artist’s work is identified with a process of history and memory. This has been a feature of art over the last two centuries. It begins with the Balzacian novel, in which a story unfolds from signs read on a body or on a wall, and continues through the Symbolist period and Surrealism, whichmanufactures the unconscious with bits of catalogue, then heads on onwards through Pop Art and so on. In Godard we have two things: a poetics of recombined images and floating signs, and then this funereal, very fin de siécle tone make up of bits of Heidegger, Debord and Baudrillard. It is not the pathos that makes the poetics of Marker’s Le tombeau d’Alexandre is a nostalgic film about the USSR, but it is not a film about the end of art.

Y.C: This reminds me of Daney’s invocation of mourning as an antidote to the general positive thinking of the age. Don’t you think that it is in taking mouning all the way that we can avoid a return to reaction and regression. Note that Godard’s next film is called The Origin of the 21st Century.

J.R: For me, the work of memory and the work of mourning are not the same thing. I think we are neither in a state of total mourning or dereliction, not in the emergence of the new, in the messianic form characterstic of Benjamin’s thought. The new is created through small differences, through the appearance of new points of view, of novel combinations of objects and images. Of course, we are the heirs to a period when grandiose political or metapolitical ideas led to untold catastrophe and horror. Okay. But I don’t think that this political destiny should be confused with the general destiny of modernity, which would also embrace the figures of art. These figures come and go. What call the crisis of art stems from the fact that new systems are challenging a concept of modernity that clings to Malevich’s white square on a white ground. Artists are taking the arts outside their “specific” medium, mixing the resources and processes of art with forms from life. This makes the situation difficult to read, but then aren’t aesthetics and politics permanently in this state of indiscernibility?

Y.C: Doesn’t this indiscernibility lead to what you have called the “glory of the ordinary,” a form of banality or anonymity that is very prominent in current art. Inscription takes place on bodie that are anonymous, almost without identity. This is art made with objects that were already there, with no particular qualities. Aren’t we seeing a new prominence of the ordinary?

J.R: Yes, this is constitutive of what I call the aesthetic regime of art, which came into being the the rejection of grand subjects. Already, with Romanticism there was a rediscovery of genre painting, of still life (Chardin). There is a poetry of the banal that connects with the glory of appearance in Hegel and the poetry of emptiness in Flaubert. This has stayed with us ever since, in Impressionism and in the mixing of circus, fairground and pantomime elements at the turn of the 20th century. Dadaism and Surrealism both have their strategies of banality. This invasion of the banal can be used in the manner of Flaubert, Kurt Schwitters or Andy Warhol. Today people lament the loss of distinctions. But it was only in the classical world of representation that artistic practices were separated, this being n terms of technique and according to the criteria of imitation. Under the current system of art, the separation occurs on the level of ways of being. What we call art is no longer defined on the basis of specific practices, but through the modality of the objects produced. A displacement has occurred, a different framing, a displacement of social practice twards the field of art. This, much more than the actual use of videos, installations and screens, is wha the modernists cannot stand. The reason being that it subverts the underhand equation make by moderism between the autonomy of art and the skill of the artist.

Y.C: Don’t you think that artists are becoming mere operators within the current aesthetic system, while to a great extent new technologies are taking over the artistic subjectivization aspect?

J.R: Yes, the act that art is importing all these technologies means that sometimes the artist is no more than an operator. But this is no contemporary catastrophe. Rather, it stems from what has been a key component of art for two centuries now: art is defined as the equivalence between a form born of itself and the product of a calculation, the identification between a conscious process and an unconscious process. This was formulated by Schelling and Hegel at the beginning of the 19th century. Then it was taken up by the mechanical arts, photography and cinema. The great film manifestos of the 1920s argue for the idenfication of the eye of the camera and the eye of the filmmaker. The same thing is happening now with the new technologies.

Y.C: Above all, these recording techniques are contemporaneous with an art of testament. We are presented with acts of witness devoid of fictional inscription in history. Whether these bodies are Bosnian, Chchen, Rwandan or whatever, the art that exhibits them offers nothing more than a pure and simple folklore of misery, making them a mere sociology of themselves.

J.R: Clearly there are two opposing approaches. One creates fictional bodies that present signs constituting a fiction which marks their inscription in history, and then there is the pproach for which each category of interpretation of the world has its witnesses. The art of witness that you mention presupposes that are there are witnesses to all the suffering. This is a real reversal. The witness is supposed to be there already to testify to an idea or category that is in itself no more than a document. This art is close to the banal management of information. Paradoxically, this tendency is supported by the ost-Auschwitz discourse on the witness which says that ofter the camps there can longer be any art, only witnesses. Now witnesses can either say what we already know they are going to say: I am the witness, or they can write, paint and film and find a form of fiction. The writing of Robert Antelme’s L’Espéce humain [a personal account of the Nazi camps–Trans.] has nothing to do with the aesthetic of the unrepresentable and a lot to do with Madame Bovary. A witness is either a simple illustration required by the moment or a person who speaks, acts and produces art.

Y.C: At the same time as this art of record, we are seeing a return to the idea of utopia, but in the form of all-out integration of the social and the institution. Do you not think that this is an inverted utopia, the contrary aspect of the revolution being realized in an unlimited fusion of art, work, community, humanitarianism and the market, in which the means of production are absorbed by consumerism, ending up with the end of history-as-promised-land?

J.R: This affirmation of the autonomy of art at the same time as its identification with a way of life is a structural contradiction of the aesthetic regime of art. This identification can take many different forms, form a futuristic, revolutionary mode to that of critical intervention, the work of memory or commercial aestheticizing, etc. We need to get away from the pathos of utopia, of the end or banalization of utopia.

Translation, C. Penward. (source)

(1) The title of a book by Phillipe Sollers on this question.

Philip with Bruno

The sun setting over the Berliner Ensemble

In a residential neighborhood in Mitte, at the corner of Am Köllnischen and Rungesstrasse, live those two cute bears