Sydney Biennale 2008
by Anna Briers
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Susan Philipsz The Internationale, 1999 (sound piece) Image by Mary Romanov |
This initial point is articulated by the work of Dan and Lia Perjovschi whose pictorial lexicon executed in chalk on the gallery walls, defaces and critiques the institutions and vernacular of modernism with its singular narrative, as well as the superfluosness and apathy of commodity culture.
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Detail view of Dan Perjosvchi's chalk and marker drawing in the 16th Biennale of Sydney 2008 on the façade of the Art Gallery of New South Wales Courtesy the artist and Lombard-Freid Projects, New York Photograph: Jenni Carter |
In this work, the writing on the wall portrays an image of a Molotov cocktail that references the Paris riots of May '1968' juxtaposed next to a bottle of Coke Zero that reads '2008.' Che Guevara's iconic pop cultural incarnation is commoditized on a T-shirt that dissipates into aboriginal swirls, 'Free speech' is articulated within a bubble of barbed wire with precipitous spokes, and the underside of an awing on the neoclassical pediment reads 'I am not exotic, I am exhausted.' Other images inscribed on the neoclassical facade with its grandious entrance and formidable columns include stick-figure businessmen conveyed as puppets on government strings, as well as the working man crushed dead under the weight of his own mortgage. While disembodied arms flex the mighty muscles of modernism, postmodernism is construed within the same paradigm, as part of the same body politic.
Social critique is alive and well within the walls of the 2008 iteration of the Sydney Biennale but what, I wonder, is going on outside? To the best of my knowledge some alternative events were staged external to the Biennale by a group called Squat Space. Such grassroots efforts evidence an alternative vision of Revolutionary possibilities by there very nature, functioning in a collective manner outside of the institutional structure. Had interventions such as this not occurred I would be concerned about dangerously low levels of political awareness within the Sydney public, when it comes to being rated on the socio-political Richter scale.
To reference a quote graffitied on a wall in Milan, 'you can't expect cities walls to be clean if its conscience isn't.' In this particular case however, the writing on the Gallery of New South Wales has been rubber stamped and institutionally approved. Does this sort of dissent function as a pulse taking exercise in that society is so socially evolved that protest is institutionalized or is political art, when exhibited inside an institution; 'politically neutralized and lobotomized' in the words of Robert Smithson.
After the duration of the Biennale the artists work will be erased from the gallery walls. Does this level of impermanence and dematerialization equate to the liberation of the political idea from the enslavement of commodity culture or is it's erasure equivalent to the Australian version of Graffiti guard - keeping the cities streets (and galleries) clean of all evidence of social dissent? A temporary exhibition as opposed to the permanent collection, whose stability we can indelibly rely on to maintain colonialist agenda's for future generations, unless Gordon Bennett gets there first. Which begs the question, can we even begin to truly represent 'revolution' within an exhibition context?
When staging a mega exhibition like this is there a curatorial responsibility to be revolutionary in the curatorial approach? Are these artworks even revolutionary or merely revolution as nostalgia? Or is it perfectly acceptable for it to simply be, merely an exhibition of revolution. As passive and objectified as the independent publications of the Black Panther movement in the 1960s by Emory Douglas, paralyzed within their glass vitrines. Do these objects have agency and educational power or are they now simply frozen in time capsules, like relics of a forgotten age, now emitting a kind of revolutionary nostalgia.
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Mark Boulos
All That is Solid Melts into Air, 2008 video installation, 2 screens, HDV with back-projection, colour, sound, 30 mins Funded by Arts Council England, London, with the support of Film London Artists Moving Image Network Photograph: Jenni Carter |
The conceptual or thematic structure of the Sydney Biennale; Revolution - Forms That Turn; can be interpreted in numerous ways. Reflecting two main themes, the notion of revolution is explored within the context of social change, as 'The impulse to revolt,' (Christov-Bakargiev 2) and as such 'the agency embedded in forms that express our desire for change' (Christov-Bakargiev 2). This notion is most successfully executed amongst the dilapidated buildings and industrial detris of the former penitentiary on Cockatoo Island. Works such as Mark Boulos's All That is Solid Melts into Air 2008, reflects the racial tensions generated by Shell Oil's environmental crimes in Nigeria while Jeremy Deller's The Battle of Orgreave 2002, provides a reenactment of the Miners strike in 1984. In addition numerous time based pieces evidence social revolution through assemblage documentary such as Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica's Videograms of a Revolution, 1992, on the Romanian Revolution and Peter Watkins La Commune (Paris 1871) 2000.
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Maurizio Cattelan Novecento, 1997 Taxidermy horse, metal frame, leather slings, rope Collection Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Turin; Gift Amici Sostenitori del Castello di Rivoli Installation view at the 16th Biennale of Sydney 2008 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney Photograph: Ben Symons |
Within the Sydney Biennale of 2008, social revolution is represented in both utopian and dystopian ways, evident in Maurizio Cattelan's suspended taxidermied horse, Novecento 1997, representative of the metaphorical corpse of the revolutionary impulse at the end of the 20th Century. James Angus's capsized automobile also alludes to the loss of a gravitational centre pervading a sense of volatility and unbalance.
The latter part of the title articulated by 'Forms That Turn', is more literal, demonstrative of the formal concerns of the autonomous art object, 'revolving, rotating, mirroring, repeating, reversing' (Christov-Bakargiev). Formal rotations are explored by works such as Attila Csörgö's Slanting Water, 1995, that captures the centrifugal forces caused by literally spinning a table top with two glasses, evocative of surface tension and political instability. This notion however is epitomized by Piero Manzoni's Socle du Monde (base of the world) 1961, at Artspace that casts the globe as one enormous revolving readymade, positioned on a giant iron plinth.
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Piero Manzoni Socle du Monde (base of the world), 1961 Image courtesy of Sydney Biennale |
Concurrently, many works synthesize both thematic concerns such as Nalini Malani's Remembering Mad Meg, 2007, that references Buddhist prayer wheels whose rotations express a desire for social change, and William Kentridge's Drawings of What Will Come (Has Already Come) 2007. Society too is a form of sorts, the revolution of which results in social change.
Also evident within this thematic construct is the intercise between, the exploration of change, flux, as well as the ephemeral and impermanent, such as David Medalla's foam sculptures Cloud Canyons 1967, or Rosemary Laing's photographic renditions of spiraling weather vortex's in Weather 12# 2006.
In this exhibition, the representation of artistic revolutions within the art historical cannon takes a back seat, as it would take up an inconceivable amount of further Gallery space as well as the presence of all the art historical movements, including figureheads from Impressionism and Expressionism, to Cubism, Surrealism, and Pop art ... to explore this particular strand of development.
The curatorial concerns previously outlined, play out in dialectic between historically revolutionary works juxtaposed next to contemporary practice. Seminal feminist works like Valie Export's Touch Cinema 1968, and Carolee Schneemann's Meat Joy, 1964, challenge and contextualize the cinematic gaze of the male spectator audience and patriarchy, while Situationist's works such as Giuseppe Pinot Gallizio's Senza titolo o Rotolo di pittura industriale, 1958, resist and parody the commodification of the art object along with Piero Manzoni's Merda d'artista (Artists Shit) 1961.
At the MCA, Debord's decisive theoretical text 'Society of the spectacle', warns of the 'circulation of images becoming privileged over the accumulation of material commodities, where life is no longer something to be lived but a spectacle to be watched from a distance.' (Macey 84) This notion is succinctly put by Dan and Lia Perjovschi who express the ultimate simulacrum - 'I'm live on channel life.' Debord asserts that the constant circulation of images that mediate interpersonal relationships, have reached a pinnacle and as such, everything including revolt or radical social dissent, is potentially absorbed by the spectacle.
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Installation view of Sam Durant's works Ask us What We Want, 200 Years of White Lies and End White Supremacy in the 16th Biennale of Sydney 2008 on the façade of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney Courtesy the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles This project was made possible with generous support of Blum & Poe, Los Angeles and with assistance from the Farrell Family Foundation Photograph: Ben Symons |
This text reads as an interesting counterpoint to Sam Durant's neon billboards 200 Years of White Lies and End White Supremacy 2008 that uplift and appropriate slogans from the Civil Rights movement in America and apply them to the struggle of the Aborigines. Installed on the facade of the MCA (as well as Artspace), this kind of juxtaposition raises interesting questions when located within the carnivalesque atmosphere of the Rocks, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev it seems, is well aware of the difficulties of trying to represent 'Revolution' within this context of rampant commodity culture.
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Yoko Ono Telephone Piece Courtesy and copyright the artist Photograph: Jenni Carter |
In another work at the Gallery of New South Wales Yoko Ono, who rings intermittently, called and asked about the weather. The fact that Australia is an antipodean colony and the weather in England is a national sport, doesn't hold much currency for me and when I questioned on her opinion of the theme Revolution within an institution she diplomatically replied: 'that's an interesting question.'
In comparison to the intentions of her previous works, that included happenings and performances that were rooted in political commentary and the dematerialization of the art object, Yoko emerges as the artistic equivalent of an aging Rock Star (she is now in her seventies). This seemed the antithesis to her historical works that were frequently signed 'By John, Yoko and everybody else,' (Hendricks 112) in a way that dismantled the hierarchical modernist notions of artist as genius, rejecting the notion of the artist as being endowed with a superior creative ability that transcends that of the mere mortal. While the noise caused by the ringing telephone creates a sense of intervention or interruption, Yoko's telephone is essentially contextualized within the constraints of the white cube that operates under the mythology of neutrality. As the arch nemesis of the interaction between art and life, the white cube stands for everything The Fluxus Group were pitted against, framing the work within the a high art context of standardized western modes of representation.
If we are judging books by their covers, as opposed to using mirrors to reveal, as is necessary when reading the reversed revolutionary text of Dora Garcia's Fahrenheit 445, the tone of this exhibition is set through the utilization of the Sex Pistols design aesthetic, exemplified by the free Biennale guide, street banners and signage. Appropriated from the cover of 'Never Mind the Bollix Here's the Sex Pistols,' the disintegrating neon pink stencil font on a vibrant yellow ground, refers to music industry giants EMI's economic control alternative counter culture.
This aesthetic decision demonstrates that strategies that worked in the seventies do not necessarily hold the same currency within a contemporary context, particularly when they are appropriated by the very powers that the previous intention was opposed to. And while no one can own or purport to make concrete the particular meanings of certain colour combinations, it remains an interesting reflection on the overall theme of the Biennale. If the intention of the designer was to reflect 'the spirit of the Sex Pistols,' in the sense that the Sex Pistols here are asserted as revolutionary this decision is not free from being problematic as while a seminal punk band within their historical context, the bands were essentially a marketing ploy for Malcolm Mclaren and Vivienne Westwood's Sex shop. Given this, the band were seriously lacking in the revolutionary rigor and social politics of their contemporaries, such as Anarcho-Punk bands Conflict and Crass. To this day, the Sex Pistols remain a symbol of tacky commercialization and exploitation of alternative counterculture and the spirit of protest, the ultimate sell out, hardly an appropriate alignment for a Biennale themed around revolutions.
Fundamentally, the Sydney Biennale is an exhibition that references and taps into the history and function of its very structure. That of the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in 1851 that was founded on the premise of Colonialist nation building as well as a proclamation of cultural, economic and industrial superiority over the rest of the world.
As seen here, art made and exhibited within the constraints of an institutional structure tends to reaffirm that structure, even if it is posed as critique. Whether that be within the constraints of the traditional white cube, or the Botanical Gardens, imbued with imported Colonialist ideologies and agendas within its perfectly manicured landscape. Institution also is a state of mind, a learnt perception or knowledge matrix that colours everything, this very criticism to some degree, is informed by institutionalized knowledge.
While no one is expecting the hordes of art tourists to drop their free Biennale guides and grab the nearest AK47, this exhibition could certainly have been more participatory as Revolution can not be something that is viewed or observed passively; it must be collective and the product of the masses, for the masses. Revolution - Forms That Turn therefore, is an exhibition about revolution in art as opposed to a revolutionary exhibition. Moreover, Revolution relies on the total destruction of the existing system and creation of something new, as a reactive force followed by a proactive one, not built on the backs of pre-existing monuments to the origins of the state or the capitalist age, as seems to be the case here. The ultimate irony however, is that this 'revolution' is funded by the Australian government, not to mention the plethora of corporate benefactors that no doubt have fingers in pies. While I understand the necessity for large amounts of fundraising to launch such mega exhibitions I have one thing to say in response: When the revolution happens, and it will, the revolution will not be institutionalized.
Artlink vol 28 no 1.Biennale of Sydney 2008: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev
Hendricks, Jon. Fluxus Codex, Harry N Abrams, New York: 1988.
2008 Biennale of Sydney Guide.
2008 Sydney Biennale Catalogue. Revolutions- Forms That Turn.