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PAVILIONex-artphoto | contemporary art magazine


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an era has ended. artphoto is history. thehistory of a new publication.


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Subodh Gupta 88

Aaron Young 98

Common Culture 106

Dan Perjovschi 114

Doug Aitken 122Ciprian Homorodean 130

Jeff Koons 138

Kutlug Ataman 146

Maurizio Cattelan 156

Nathalie Latham 164

Philip-Lorca Di Corcia 172

Tracey Emin 180

[1]

Cover: MAURIZIO CATTELAN, Mini-me,1999 (detail).

Resin, rubber, fabric, hair, painth, 35 cm.

Courtesy: Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.

PAVILION #8

02Column by Rzvan Ionzero_privacy

08Slavoj Zizek, Sabine Reul and Thomas DeichmThe one measure of true love is:you can insult the other

18Catherine David, Kris Rutten(the)museum & (new) media28Jean BaudrillardDivine Europe

[contents ]

www.pavilionmagazine.org

32Rainer GanahlWhen Attitudes Become - Curating46Boris GroysThe City in the Age of Touristic Reproduction56Marc GreylingInventing Queer Place

Editors: Rzvan Ion & Eugen Rdescu

Advisory Board: Marina Grzinic, Zsolt Petranyi,

Zoran Eric, Dan Perjovschi, Lia Perjovschi, Dana Altman.

Contributors:

Hans Ulrich Obrist, Lev Manovich, Boris Groys, Jerome

Sans, Tetsuo Kogawa, Marina Grzinic, Mark Durden, Dana Altman,

Lizzy Le Quesne, Rebecca Cannon, Feng Mengbo, Sabine

Rusterholz, Stephen Hilger, Glen Helfand, Eduardo Kac, John Goto,

Geoffrey Batchen, Zsolt Petranyi, Karen Irvine, Vladimir Bulat, Kris

Rutten, Rainer Ganahl, Raqs Media, Berin Gonolu, Marlena

Doktorczyk-Donohue.

Project Director: Alexandra Hagiu-Manda

Communications Manager: Mircea Dobre

Design: artphoto studio

Published by Artphoto Asc.

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without prior written permission from the editor. The view expressed in the

magazine are not necessarily those of the publishers.

72Raqs MediaDreams and Diguises, As Usual190New Publications


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2] [3]

(from emails to cameras in the streets,from credit cards to DNAanalysis). We arein a transition from the state of privacy (aswas understood in Greek antic town wherethe public and private space where clearlyseparated) to a state of transparencywhere nothing is really private. The wallsbecome more and more transparent.

We can talk about a dystopia, an accountwhose intent is the opposite of utopia.Whereas a utopia is an imaginary perfectplace, a dystopia is a literary depiction ofan undesirable, avoidable but feasiblefuture state of society. This dystopic para-digm is indeed very illuminating. It servesthe purpose of alerting us of significantsocial trends.

David Lyon, who uses the wordPanopticon, a Greek-based neologism thatmeans "all-seeing place", as a powerfulmetaphor for understanding electronic sur-veillance, says: "A prison-like society,where invisible observers track our digitalfootprints". All is about vision and trans-parency, but vision and transparency oper-ating one-way only... in the service ofpower. Do we feel powerful when wewatch someone on a web camera withoutthat person being aware of that?

In 1785, the British philosopher JeremyBentham [1748-1832], founder of the doc-trine of Utilitarianism, began working on a

plan for a model prison called the panopti-con. The signature feature of this designwas that each one of the individual jail cellscould be seen from a central observationtower which, however, remained visuallyinscrutable to the prisoners. Since theycould thus never know for sure whetherthey were being watched, but had toassume that they were, the fact of actualobservation was replaced by the possibili-ty of being watched. As a rationalist,

Bentham assumed that this would lead thedelinquents to refrain from misbehavingsince in order to avoid punishment, theywould effectively internalize the discipnary gaze. Indeed, Bentham consideredthe panoptic arrangement, whereby poweroperates by means of the spatial designitself, as a real contribution to the educa-tion of man, in the spirit of theEnlightenment.

While long the subject of theoretical andpolitical debate, the panopticon was reintroduced into contemporary philosophicadiscussion in 1975 by the French philoso-pher Michel Foucault who insisted on itexemplary role as a model for the con-struction of power in what he called a disciplinary society. Ever since, the controlled space of the panopticon hasbecome synonymous with the cultures andpractices of surveillance that have so pro-foundly marked the modern world. Whewe hesitate to race through a red light atan intersection where we see a black box,not knowing whether it contains a workincamera but having to suppose that itmight, we are acting today according to thevery same panoptic logic.

From more traditional imaging and trackintechnologies to the largely invisible but infnitely more powerful practices of what ireferred to as dataveillance -- that todayconstitutes the extensive arsenal of social

control. However, taking its cue from thcentral role in the genealogy of surveillance played by an architectural model, thefocus will be on the complex relationshipbetween design and power, between rep-resentation and subjectivity, betweenarchives and oppression. If a drawingcould become the model for an entiresocial regime of power in the 18th centuryto what extent does that regime change [iat all] along with shifts in dominant repre

For me the camera and the digital mediafunction is a kind of self-reversing/reflexingapparatus. I anonymously put the appara-tus indoors or outdoors, just like a webcam or a surveillance camera. In thehyper-simulated situation where every-thing could be reproduced and one can besatisfied with every artifice, I intentionally'simulate' the images such as web cams orsurveillance cameras, unconsciously cre-ated.

Our society has become more surveil-lance-oriented. One will have more cam-eras and sensors on the street and in thehouse. Again, the point is not the practicalaim of social control. Of course such adevice is repressive. But the fact is that theway of our perception has been changingbefore the spreading of such a technicalsystem. This change rather introduced sur-veillance technology. So the surveillancecamera is now providing us with a stan-dard model of our image perception. Myimages foresaw such a future where wehave to perceive our world by such a stan-dard.

Dataveillance, as I prefer to allude to sur-veillance, is in a new era starting withEchelon, the most advanced system,which can survey any data transmissions

by R a zvan Ion

zero_privacy

Rzvan Ion is a media artist and theoretician. Editor ofhe PAVILION. He published recently his artist bookvisual_witness .He was a visiting lecturer at variousuniversities and art centers like University of CaliforniaBerkeley, Headlans Center for the Arts San Franciscoand Art Academy Timisoara. As artist he exhibitedaround the world including latest Going Public -curated by Claudia Zanfi, identity_factories curatedby Eugen Radescu and Distance curated by ZsoltPetranyi. Creator of the art group Critical Factor (a con-cept group which change the members at every proj-ect). One of the initiators of Tart (art magazines net-work). He is also the co-director of Bucharest Biennale(with Eugen R a descu). www.razvanion.com


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imagine we are and play the role of our-self?

What does this finally got to do with art? Itis not true that art is a private thing becom-ing public? Inspired from our phantasm,imagination and private thoughts? This Ibelieve is the connection between surveil-lance and the art. Art could be a very goodmedium for exposing ourselves withoutfear of consequences. Art is the mean toshow us in public. In a way is our means ofsurveillance on the society and revealsociety to itself from a subjective point ofview. And here is the difference betweencctv, echelon etc. surveillance and art sur-veillance. We are not objective. But is tech-nical surveillance objective? Cannot bemodified?

T his text is a updated text from a lecture held at University of California, Berkeley, 2004

Bibliography

David Lyon, Surveillance as Social SortingPrivacy, Risk and Digital DiscriminationRoutledge, 2002

Thomas Y. Levin, Ursula Frohne, PeterWeibel, ctrl [space] Rhetorics of Surveillancfrom Bentham to Big Brother, The MIT PreCambridge, 2002

Christian Parenti, The Soft Cage, BasicBooks, New York, 2003

http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/

sentational practices? What happens, inother words, when we reconceived thepanopticon in terms of new infrared, ther-mal or satellite imaging practices? Indeed,what are the sociological and political con-sequences of a surveillant culture basedncreasingly on entirely non-phenomenalogics of data gathering and aggregation?

Is there a history of surveillance and, if so,how have contemporary practices of, andattitudes toward, surveillance changed?

Television is a new form of surveillance.Reality shows where the viewer is undersurveillance through determination andbreaks the line between the private andpublic life. It is another type of exhibition-sm in the same area with the web cam-

eras.

Recording our own experiences is a formof surveillance as well. Could be a form ofself-analysis through the perspective of theviewer. It could also be a form to attract thepublic: the exhibited one is nobody in realife, and by exposing himself, he/she

becomes a desired multimedia product.On the other hand, it could be I am alonewithout a camera.

This tendency reached its peak in the pop-ular TV shows ironically called Big Brother.Now there is already a tell-telling termestablished for it: reality soap, a kind ofsoap opera counterpart to the amateur

porn. The show goes further than TheTruman Show. Truman is still believing hes living in a real community. In contrast to

Big Brother the subjects/actors act theirroles in an artificially secluded space, sofiction becomes indistinguishable fromreality. Also the spectator is under surveil-ance. They are involved in the show fromime to time to co-determine what will hap-

pen next. The distinction between real lifeand acted life is thus deconstructed: in a

way, the two coincide, since people acttheir real life itself, i.e., they literally playthemselves in their screen-roles (here, theBenthamian paradox of self-icon is finallyrealized: the actors look like themselves).

Internet has been recently flooded by the -cam web sites which realize the logic ofPeter Weirs Truman Show. In these sites,we are able continuously to follow someevent or place: the life of a person inhis/her apartment, the view on a street,etc. Does this trend not display the sameurgent need for phantasmatic OthersGaze serving as the guarantee of the subject being: I exist insofar as I am looked allthe time? (Similar with the phenomenon,noted by Claude Lefort, of the TV setwhich is always turned on, even on no oneeffectively watches it it serves as theminimum guarantee of the existence of asocial link.) What we obtain here is thetragi-comic reversal of the Bentham-Orwellian notion of the panopticon-societyin which we are (potentially) observedalways and have no place to hide from theomnipresent gaze of the Power: today,anxiety seems to arise from the prospectof NOT being exposed to the Others gazeall time, so that the subject needs the ca,eras gaze as a kind of ontological guaran-tee of his/her being.

Virtual sex is on trend now intermediatedby the web cameras. The common notion

of masturbation is that of the sexual inter-course with an imagined partner: I do it tomyself, while I imagine doing it with anoth-er. What if real sex is nothing but mastur-bation with a real partner?

What if Big Brother shows in fact a univer-sal structure? What if is a reproduction of areal universe in a mineralized form just togive us a clue which we ignore conscious-ly? What if in the real life we are not we


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[9]8]

virtual sex without sex.

Virtual reality to me is the climax of thisprocess: you now get reality withoutreality...or a totally regulated reality. Butthere is another side to this. Throughoutthe entire twentieth century, I see acounter-tendency, for which my goodphilosopher friend Alain Badiou invent-ed a nice name: 'La passion du rel',the passion of the real. That is to say,precisely because the universe in whichwe live is somehow a universe of deadconventions and artificiality, the onlyauthentic real experience must be someextremely violent, shattering experi-ence. And this we experience as asense that now we are back in real life.

Do you think that is what we are seeingnow?

Slavoj Zizek: I think this may be whatdefined the twentieth century, whichreally began with the First World War.We all remember the war reports byErnst Jnger, in which he praises thiseye-to-eye combat experience as theauthentic one. Or at the level of sex, thearchetypal film of the twentieth centurywould be Nagisa Oshima's Ai NoCorrida (In The Realm Of The Senses),where the idea again is that youbecome truly radical, and go to the endin a sexual encounter, when you practi-cally torture each other to death. Theremust be extreme violence for thatencounter to be authentic.

Another emblematic figure in this senseto me is the so-called 'cutter'- a wide-spread pathological phenomenon in theUSA. There are two million of them,

mostly women, but also men, who cuthemselves with razors. Why? It hasnothing to do with masochism or suicide. It's simply that they don't feel reaas persons and the idea is: it's onlythrough this pain and when you feewarm blood that you feel reconnectedagain. So I think that this tension is thebackground against which one shouldappreciate the effect of the act.

Does that relate to your observationsabout the demise of subjectivity in ThTicklish Subject? You say the problem iwhat you call 'foreclosure'- that the reaor the articulation of the subject is foreclosed by the way society has evolvedin recent years.

Slavoj Zizek: The starting point of mbook on the subject is that almost allphilosophical orientations today, even ithey strongly oppose each other, agreeon some kind of basic anti-subjectivisstance. For example, Jrgen Habermasand Jacques Derrida would both agreethat the Cartesian subject had to bedeconstructed, or, in the case ofHabermas, embedded in a larger inter-subjective dialectics. CognitivistsHegelians - everybody is in agreementhere.I am tempted to say that we must returnto the subject - though not a purelyrational Cartesian one. My idea is thatthe subject is inherently political, in thsense that 'subject', to me, denotes apiece of freedom - where you are nolonger rooted in some firm substance,you are in an open situation. Today wecan no longer simply apply old rulesWe are engaged in paradoxes, whichoffer no immediate way out. In thi

Has 11 September thrown new light onyour diagnosis of what is happening tothe world?

Slavoj Zizek: One of the endlesslyrepeated phrases we heard in recentweeks is that nothing will be the sameafter 11 September. I wonder if therereally is such a substantial change.Certainly, there is change at the level ofperception or publicity, but I don't thinkwe can yet speak of some fundamentalbreak. Existing attitudes and fears wereconfirmed, and what the media weretelling us about terrorism has now reallyhappened.

In my work, I place strong emphasis onwhat is usually referred to as the virtual-isation or digitalisation of our environ-ment. We know that 60 percent of thepeople on this Earth have not evenmade a phone call in their life. But still,30 percent of us live in a digitalised uni-verse that is artificially constructed,manipulated and no longer some natu-ral or traditional one. At all levels of ourlife we seem to live more and more withthe thing deprived of i ts substance. Youget beer without alcohol, meat withoutfat, coffee without caffeine...and even

Slavoj Zizek is a Slovenian-born political philosopherand cultural critic. Zizek is a professor at the EuropeanGraduate School and a senior researcher at theInstitute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana,Slovenia. He is a visiting professor at Columbia,Princeton, New School for Social Research, NewYork, and the University of Michigan. In 1990 he wasa candidate of LDS for president of the Republic ofSlovenia. More recently, he caused a stir in the worldof social theory by writing the text of a catalogue forAbercrombie & Fitch. He is widely regarded as a fieryand colorful lecturer who does not shy away fromcontroversial remarks. He lives and works in Ljubljana.

Sabine Reul is sub-editor and Thomas Deichmann ischief editor of Novo magazine. They live and work inFrankfurt

The one measure of true love is: you can insultthe other

A talk with Slavoj Zizek by Sabine Reul and Thomas Deichmann


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At a certain moment there seemed tobe a very pertinent discourse on muse-ums and new media. We now live in atime that Geert Lovink refers to asafter the party is over. After the boom-ing of new media, there was thedot.com crash which in first instancewas an economic fact but which alsohad large cultural implications. Thenew media have become ubiquitousand are becoming more common inour everyday lives But the discus-sion on the museum and new mediaseems to have lessened a bit in

impact.I would like to know how you see thischange. Do you also think there hasbeen a change on thinking about newmedia and museums starting from the90s when it was really hot and revolu-tionary to now when it is more commonto have this new media around us. Isthere a change in approach of NewMedia in museums?

CD: From my point of view, I neverreally shared this very ingenious visionof new media necessarily associatedwith more-better-best, whatever...I think that media is being used forwhat it is, they have a number of qual-ities but they have no transcendence. Ithink that the traditional missions of themuseum cannot be really fulfilled bynew media. Another question would beAre the museums today really fulfillingtheir mission? I see there is a big con-fusion and people are calling theirmuseums whatever. I also see it isquite often that one is identifying amuseum as an exhibition gallery,

which is very far from the museumconcept. So to my experience with themuseum for instance a very big his-torical museum - is less and less real-ly able to display the collection propely and offer to the audience a meaningful parcours. I dont see that manymuseums are doing what they shoulddo with regards to presentation andtransmission, especially when theyhave a traditional historical collectionThe mission of doing it properly oftis privileging an event or lets sawhat I call a tourist visit. You get a b

historical collection which is supposeto be less seen than Re-seen regular-ly, and Re-discussed and Re-thoughtabout. These are for me more impor-tant questions than really the pseudocompetition between Museum andNew Media which I never really undestood very well why it exists.This said, I think that the kind of senstive and intellectual experience witnew media is very different from thone you were supposed to have withthe museum, so again I dont see anycompetition. At times I see a verynave and sometimes very ridiculoustendency to overestimate new mediaIt is not an essence so it depends whatyou are doing with it.

KR: So starting from this. Indeed newmedia is a tool, but maybe not for better or for worse Nowadays culturworkers and academics are talkingabout e-culture referring to the fact thathese new media are part of our every-day lives, part of our everyday culturaproductions and that the borders

(the)museum & (new) media

Kris Rutten [KR] : I would like to startwith telling you a bit about the projecton (the) Museum and (new) Media thatI have been working on for constant.

Catherine David [CD]: Ok

KR: Museum and new media are twoterms that are open for discussion. Istarted a weblog a few months ago tohave a closer look at this discussion.My starting point is that at the end ofthe 90s there was a big debate on therelationship between the Museum andNew Media. On the one hand therewere utopian visions which said thatthe museum would not be the sameand that it would change totally. On theother hand there where more conser-vative voices which said: let the muse-um be the museum, and the web bethe web. According to this perspectivethey wouldnt be able to meet eachother.

Catherine Davis is a well known curator. From 1981 till1990 she was Curator for the Museum of Modern ArtsCentre Georges Pompidou in Paris. From 1990 on sheworked at the national gallery Jeu de Paume in Parisand curated a number of international shows. Shewas headcurator for Documenta X in 1997 andworked at the Witte de With centre for contemporaryarts in Rotterdam. Currently she is working (amongstother things) on the Contemporary ArabRepresentations project.

Kris Rutten studied Comparative Sciences of Cultureand Development Studies. During his education hewas a trainee for the Digitaal Platform IAK/IBK(http://www.digitaalplatform.be) where he didresearch on themes such as Patents, Communities,Gender and Network Literacy. Afterwards he collabo-rated in concrete projects for the non-profit organiza-ion Constant (http://www.constantvzw.com) and the

Digitaal Platform IAK/IBK. For both organizations hedoes editing work on a regular basis. Recently hestarted working as junior faculty member at GhentUniversity (http://www.ugent.be), more specific forhe Department of Education within a team which

focuses on culture, education and media.

A dialogue with Catherine David by Kris Rutten


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endum is the "no" that hides itself behindthe official "no," the "no" that is beyondpolitical reason. It is this particular "no"that marks a resistance. And there mustbe something quite dangerous about itthat can explain why all the energies andpowers mobilized for the defense of the"yes" have to rally against it. Such a panicconjuration is really the sign that there's adead body inside the closet.

The "no" is of course an automatic andimmediate reaction to the ultimatum thathas been the rallying call of this referen-dum from the moment it was announced.

It is a reaction to the coalition of good con-science, to divine Europe, to a Europe thataims toward universality and toward anundefeatable obviousness. It is a reactionto the categorical imperative of the "yes,"a "yes" whose supporters never stoppedto think for an instant whether it could betaken as a challenge and thus beopposed. We are not dealing with a "no" toEurope, but with a "no" to the "yes" and toits insurmountable obviousness.

Nobody can stand the arrogance of a vic-tory that has already been guaranteed, nomatter what the reasons for this guaranteeare (reasons which, in the case of Europe,are nothing but virtual anyway). The gamehas already been played, and what issought after is only a consensual agree-ment on the result. Yes to the "yes": a ter-rible mystification is covered by this banalformulation. The "yes" itself is no longerreally a "yes" to Europe, to Chirac, or evento the liberal order. It is a "yes" to the"yes," a "yes" to consensual ordering. This"yes" is no longer an answer but the verysubstance of the question.

What we are made to experience is thus atrue test of "europositivity." This uncondi-

tional "yes" spontaneously generates anequally unconditional "no," as a reaction opride, but also as an autoimmuneresponse. As far as I am concerned, Iwould say that the real surprise is thatthere has not been a more violent andmassive reaction in favor of the "no" anagainst this "yes-trification."[1]

This reaction or reflex does not even needto possess a political consciousness: it ismerely an automatic backlash against thecoalition of all those who are on the side ouniversality (while the rest have been sentback to History's dark times [2]). Bu

where the forces of the "yes" and of theGood went wrong is on the matter of theperverse effects of what they postulated tobe the superiority of the Good. They didnot recognize there a sort of unconsciouslucidity that always tells us to never givreason to those who already claim to mas-ter it.[3] Already with the Maastricht treaand on April 22 the politically correforces -- from the right and the left -- madit a point to ignore this silent dissidence.

The deep "no" is not at all the result of a"work of negativity" or of some criticthought. It is a response that takes theform of a simple challenge against a hege-monic principle from above according twhich the will of the people is merely to btreated as an indifferent parameter, or per-haps as an obstacle that can be over-come. For such a Europe conceived as asimulation but which nonetheless must beprotected at all cost in reality (and towhich, in this fashion, everyone musadapt), for this virtual Europe, for this carbon copy of world power, it is obvious thapeople are nothing more than a maneu-verable mass [4] that, whether they like ior not, must be made to adhere to theoverall project so that the project itself can

It's a done deal, no matter what. Even ifthe "no" wins, they will make us vote overand over again until the "yes" can finallyprevail, as they did in Denmark andIreland (so, we might as well vote "yes"right away...).

But this gives us the freedom to interro-gate the surge of the "no" that took placeback in April and to ask about the reasonsfor this silent but tenacious dissension.For this was an event in itself. The returnof the "yes" later was only the mark of aninexorable normalization. Only the "no"remains a mystery. This "no" is certainly

not the one pronounced by its official sup-porters, since their political arguments areas inconsistent as those advanced by thesupporters of the "yes" vote. In any case,a politically inspired "no" would neverhave been able to set the opinion polls onfire, and it is precisely this political "no"that slowly seems to be receding underthe pressure of the return of the "yes."The most interesting thing, the onlyenthralling thing in this trompe l'oeil refer-

Divine Europe

by Jean Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard is an internationally acclaimed theo-rist whose writings trace the rise and fall of symbollicexchange in the contemporary century. In addition toa wide range of highly influential books fromSeduction to Symbollic Exchange and Death,Baudrillard's most recent publications include: TheVital Illusion, The Spirit of Terrorism, The SingularObjects of Architecture, Passwords, The Conspiracyof Art: Manifestos, Texts, Interviews (September2005) and The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact(November 2005). He is a member of the editorialboard of CTheory.


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conceptual art was the first 747 artform to facture transportation andmobility into material decision-making.Marshal McLuhan's the-medium-is-the-message conversion soon domi-nates all conversations that defined art:language and concept related worksemerged and artists started to commu-nicate. Thought it was Karl Marx whofirst discussed machines and tools asextensions of human organs and thehuman body, McLuhan reworked it fora happily communicating and massconsuming "global village" in which

everybody potentially conversed witheverybody with no specific regards torelations of production and class.

A new area of national, racial and sex-ual liberations and emancipations tookoff. The birth control pill, live TV-field-broadcasting, portable and affordablevideo cameras, early computers andconsumer electronics rendering theworld fun and promiscuous before theoil crisis, aids and terrorism doomedthe arena. The Munich 1972 Olympicterror attack coincided with the begin-ning of live TV field-journalism broad-casting with mobile cameras outsideTV-studios. Artists and intellectualsalso celebrated this new world. They

entered the field with propositions andinternational exhibitions independent ofmuseums and galleries.Ausstellungsmacher - exhibition mak-ers - became welcome and necessaryto sort out existing disorders and cre-ate new ones. Harld Szeemann calledhis office "Bro fr geistige Gastarbeit"- Office for intellectual guest work -recycling the German term Gastarbeit

usually reserved only for the then newphenomenon of unskilled migranindustrial workers in Western EuropeGastarbeiter were and have been(even after generations) perceived asforeign with only modest help for intgration. Capital, work, services andproducts traveled and exchanged andart as always tried to keep up with thpace. Today, curators too are moreoften then not free agents not directlyassociated with an institutionSzeemann himself has been defininghis role as a free agent even though

there have been lose but steady institu-tional associations. The same is truewith many other well known contemporary curators who might be employeby a museum or a Kunsthalle but areperceived as independent and ready tobe hired for any show anywhere in thworld if the context is attractive - i.reputation and remuneration).

Today, the internationalized system oart has become so complex andsophisticated that any role can betaken on by any player anywhere in thegame. We more and more see nowalso artists collecting, curating, writinand dealing as well as collectors, writers and curators making art and reflect

ing about artistic production in the rolof writers and art historians. Interestinenough, even Harald Szeemann, andnot only Hans-Ulrich Obrist couldnresist taking on the role of artists: Hshowed in the Tirana Biennial 2003where he had some silk-screens made.Another example of mixing roles is thtext which was commissioned by VictoMisiano, a trained art historian wh

As a child, an impressive day waswhen we drove to the airport Zurich.Nobody was dropped off or picked up.We couldn't even imagine flying sincewe didn't know anybody living beyond30 minutes driving. We went to seethe first jumbo jet, the Boing 747,which left the factory in 1969 and wasflying first for PanAm in 1970. On thatoccasion, we went on to visit a newlybuilt shopping center outside Zurichnext to the high way, another noveltyin the early 1970s. Our family neverentered a museum, nor any bookshopor library.

"When attitudes become form" wasan exhibition that wouldn't have beenpossible without the jet revolution.Harald Szeemann was working forKunsthalle Berne and had traveledthe USA where he got to see contem-porary American art. This new art wasalready made by artists who had start-ed to travel by airplane and weremobile. This mobility changed notonly society but also art. I believe that

Rainer Ganahl is an Austrian postconceptualist artistwhose subject is language, learning systems, mediaand politics. His work has been widely exhibited,ncluding the Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria; The

Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York;he Gesellschaft fr Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen,

Germany; and the 48th Venice Biennale. He is thesubject and author of several published catalogues,among them, Reading Karl Marx (London: BookWorks, 2001), Ortssprache-Local Language(Kunsthaus Bregenz, 1998), and Rainer Ganahl:Educational Complex (Vienna: Generali Foundation,1997 and Bucharest Biennale 2, 2006.He curatedseveral projects including "EducationalComplex," an exhibition at the Generali Foundation inVienna.

When attitudes become - curating

by Rainer GanahlThe 747 was born out of the explosion of thepopularity of air travel in the 1960s. The enor-mous popularity of the Boeing 707 had revolu-ionized long distance travel in the world, and

had began the concept of the "global village"made possible by jet revolution. The first editionof the jet, the 747-100, rolled out of the newEverett facility on 2 September 1969.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747)In 1969 Playboy magazine printed an interview

with Marshal McLuhan in entitled "ACandid

Conversation with the High Priest of Popcultnd Metaphysician of Media," pp. 53-74, in TheEssential McLuhan, Eric McLuhan and FrankZingrone (ed.), (New York: Basic Books, 1995)When attitudes become form, March - April

1969 1969, Suisse, Berne, Kunsthalle, curator:Harald SZEEMANN.


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Chinese decent but they most likelycome from rather wealthy families.Structural economic divisions on theconsuming end of highbrow culture independent of whether artworksaddress popular audiences or speakwith the vernacular of popular culture are even more determining. The trendto even facture cultural production aswell as consumption into the demarca-tion line of class divisions is increasingand can be observed everywhere, fromadvertising to real estate planning,from educational investments to on line

dating. Curators should be very muchaware of what they are doing in regardto the accelerating discrepancies with-in the disappearing middle classes.

PS3: It goes without saying that I amdeeply indebted to and appreciative ofeverybody who has worked with me inwhatever role. I feel very sorry that thistext does not allow me to name everysingle person. My text would havebeen 20 more pages long. But I dowant to mention two people here inNew York who have been and are stilltremendously supportive and generouswith me: Devon Dikeou, artist, writer,curator, collector and editor of zing-magazine and Manfred Baumgartner

who is offering me a third one personexhibition in New York where the killingcost structure is so high that an exhibi-tion with an artist of my commercialtrack record doesn't look justifiable -another curatorial choice against thegrain.

PS4: I did not elaborate on the disputesthat still are driggering on thought peo-

ple keep promsing to return works andto pay - the reality until this date hasbeen different and still frustrating. But Ido offer links with most of the commu-nications where I clearlyl layout the dis-pute that is for everybody nothing but aheadache. I therefore ask anybody tolook at these web pages in case some-body is interested in details. I ommittedthese details because it is not the topicof this text.

Rainer Ganahl, Basic Arabic (Study Sheet), 12/03/03 New York, (work on paper, 9 x 12 inches).Courtesy of the artist.


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this city, be it the Tibetan city of Lhasa,the celestial city of Jerusalem orShambala in India. Traditionally citiesisolated themselves from the rest of theworld in order to make their own wayinto the future. So, a genuine city is notonly utopian, it is also anti-tourist: it dis-sociates itself from space and movesthrough time.

The struggle with nature, of course, didnot cease inside the city either. At thebeginning of his Discourse on Method,Descartes already observed that since

historically evolved cities were notentirely immune to the irrationality ofthe natural order they would in factneed to be completely demolished if anew, rational and consummate citywere to be erected on the vacated site.Later on, Le Corbusier called for thedemolition of all historical cities -including Paris - to make way for newrational cities destined to be built intheir place. Hence the utopian dreamof the total rationality, transparency andcontrollability of an urban environmentunleashed a historical dynamism thatis manifested in the perpetual transfor-mation of all realms of urban life: thequest for utopia forces the city into apermanent process of surpassing and

destroying itself - which is why the cityhas become the natural venue for rev-olutions, upheavals, constant newbeginnings, fleeting fashion and inces-santly changing lifestyles. Built as ahaven of security the city soon becamethe stage for criminality, instability,destruction, anarchy and terrorism.Accordingly the city presents itself as ablend of utopia and dystopia, whereby

modernity undoubtedly cherish andapplaud its dystopian rather than itsutopian aspects - urban decadence,danger and haunting eeriness. Thiscity of eternal temporariness has frequently been depicted in literature andstaged in the cinema: this is the city wknow, for instance, from Blade Runneor Terminator (1 and 2), where permission is constantly being given foeverything to be blown up or razed tthe ground, simply because people aretirelessly engaged in the endeavour toclear a space for what is expected to

happen next, for future developmentsAnd over and over again the arrival othe future is impeded and delayedbecause the remains of the city's previously built fabric can never be fullremoved, making it forever impossiblto complete the current preparationphase. If indeed anything of any permanence exists in our cities, it is ultmately only in such constant preparations for the creation of something thapromises to last a long time, it is in thperpetual postponement of a final solution, the never-ending adjustments, theeternal repairs and the constantlypiecemeal adaptation to new con-straints.

2.In modern times, however, this utopiaimpulse, the quest for an ideal city, hasgrown progressively weaker and gradually been supplanted by the fascina-tion of tourism. Today, when we ceaseto be satisfied with the life that ioffered to us in our own cities, we nlonger strive to change, revolutionizor rebuild this city; instead, we simp

1.Cities originally came about as projectsfor the future: People moved from thecountry into the city in order to escapethe ancient forces of nature and tobuild a new future that they couldshape and control themselves. Theentire course of human history until thepresent has been defined by thismovement from the country into thecity - a dynamic to which history in factowes its direction. Although life in thecountry has repeatedly been stylizedas the golden era of harmony and 'nat-ural' contentment, such embellishedmemories of a life spent in nature havenever restrained people from continu-ing on their originally chosen historical

path. In this respect, the city per sepossesses an intrinsically utopiandimension by virtue of being situatedoutside the natural order. The city islocated in the ou-topos. City walls oncedelineated the place where a city wasbuilt, clearly designating its utopian -ou-topian character. Indeed, the moreutopian a city was signalled to be, theharder it was made to reach and enter

Boris Groys is well known philosopher and professorof Philosophy and Aesthetics at the Hochschule furGestaltung in Karsruhe, Germany. His books include:Uber das Neue (About the New, 1992), Die ErfindungRusslands (The Invention of Russia, 1995, with IlyaKabakov), Die Kunst der Installation (The Art of theInstallation, 1996), Logik der Sammlung (The Logic ofCollecting, 1997) and Unter Verdacht, EinePhenomenologie der Medien (On Suspicion, APhenomenology of the Media, 2000). Lives and worksn Cologne and Karlsruhe.

The City in the Age of Touristic Reproduction

by Boris Groys


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swollen around the equator, besideswhich the elevations of its surface areextremely uneven. From a purelystereometric point of view, the profile ofthe earth's crust reveals to us the mosthaphazard confusion of elevations anddepressions with all manner of incalcu-able contours. Hence, where the sur-

face of the moon with its disarray ofheights and depths is concerned, weare equally unable to state whether it isbeautiful, etc." At the time this was writ-ten mankind was technologically stillfar removed from the possibility of

space travel. Here, altogether in thespirit of an avant-garde utopia or a sci-fi movie, the agent of global aestheticcontemplation is nonetheless depictedas an alien that has just arrived in arocket from outer space and then,observing from a comfortable distance,forms an aesthetic judgement of ourgalaxy's appearance. Of course, thisalien is imputed to have distinctly clas-sical tastes, which is why it fails to con-sider our planet and its immediate sur-roundings as especially beautiful. Butregardless of the alien's final aestheticjudgement, one thing is clear: this is afirst manifestation of the gaze of theconsummate urban dweller who, con-stantly in motion in the ou-topos of

black cosmic space, peers down at thetopography of our world from a touris-tic, aesthetic distance.

Translated from German by Nastasa Medve

Emgreen & Dragset, Short Cut, 2003.Courtesy of Galleria Massimo De Carlo and Fondazione Trussardi.

Photo copyright Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.


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the history, or histories, of urban les-bians and gay men through an under-standing of the significance of queerplace. The particular framework I amexploring involves establishing historiesof any queer collectivity, lesbian, gay,bisexual or transgender, within socialspace in relation to defining or appropri-ating particular place as queer places.First, this particular framework necessi-tates exploring and establishing anunderstanding of queer historiography,and second, exploring the nature andmeaning of place within social spaceand the urban environment and how thehistory of queer place(s) contributes toqueer history.

I have not attempted to present a fullsurvey of existing queer historiographybut to suggest one particular framework,that of place within social space, andsome important considerations forapproaching the writing of the history ofqueer minority/ies. I have identifiedsome research work that has beendone, and selected particular studies,but it is by no means a consolidated listor a selection of the best. In addition, Ihave restricted historiographical consid-eration to this century although there is awell established historiography of homo-sexuality for the classical period: Egypt,

Greece, Roman times; for mediaeval,renaissance and early modern periodsin Europe; and for Asian antiquity, earlymodern and contemporary periods.

A more salient reason for restricting con-sideration to this century is because ofthe inextricable link between the pursuitof same-sex sexual activity and queeridentity/ies. As one of the foremost gay

historians, Jeffrey Weeks, puts it: "wehave to distinguish between homosexu-al behaviour, which is universal, and ahomosexual identity, which is historicalspecific - and a comparatively recentphenomenon."(1)

It is the politics of being queer and thhistory of queer expression that I sug-gest is the most important opening to thecharting and understanding of the history queer place(s) within the queer sociaspace of the city. The history of homoeroticism is becoming increasingly wedocumented. There is more to the histo-ry of homosexuality in any one place oculture, Australia or elsewhere, than theclaim by Craig Johnston and RobertJohnston in the 1988 anti-bicenteniavolume of dissenting history, Staininthe Wattle, that homosexual history inAustralia is mostly of same-sex sexualactivity.(2) I am not denying the impotance of uncovering historical traces ohomoerotic activity,(3) and a lot of timand effort has been devoted to this pur-suit. Queer history is however, morethan stories in the past of having sexand being caught. An important aspecof queer history is the body of (hi)storieof conscious and deliberate appropria-tion of public space by queers and defi-ance of the law to create and 'own'

queer public places.THE RESEARCHERS OF QUEER HISTORY

Many academics have recognised therecent proliferation of queer historicamaterial in the form of the products odedicated research and archaeology.Diaries, journal entries, letters, cour

Most cities have certain quarters andprecincts that are in some ways exoticand distinguishable in a characteristicand tangible way, from each other andfrom the blandness of suburbia - china-town in the postcolonial new world cities,'coolie' parts of Asian and African cities,or the queer districts: Oxford Street inSydney, Church Street in Toronto,Christopher Street in New York, CastroStreet in San Francisco, the Hillbrow inJohannesburg, Rue Sainte-Cathrine inMontral. These places are part of aqueer geography and are knownthroughout the international networks ofqueers as queer places. They evenhave mythological significance: they arerepresented in queer literature and evenspecific bars, like Stonewall, have a his-toric mythological presence chez gais.Journeys are made to visit and experi-ence them.This essay explores a way to approach

Marc Greyling is an australian sociologist and profes-sor.

Inventing Queer Place

by Marc Greyling


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29 Padgug, Robert, "Sexual matters:rethinking sexuality in history", Duberman,Martin Bauml; Vicinus, Martha; Chauncey,George, Hidden from history: reclaiming thegay and lesbian past, New American Library,New York,1989, p55

30 Adam, Barry D., "Structural foundationsof the gay world", Comparative studies insociety and history, 27,4(1985):658-671,p660

31 Fitzgerald, Shirley, Rising Damp: Sydney1870-90, Oxford University Press,Melbourne, 1987, p171

32 Halperin, David, "Becoming homosexual:Michel Foucault on the future of gay culture",Conference: Michel Foucault and gay cultur-al politics, Australian Centre for Lesbian andGay Research, Sydney, 5 November 1994

33 Adams, 1985, p662

34 Adams, 1985, p65935 D'Emilio, 1992, p7

36 Wotherspoon, Garry, City of the plain:history of a gay subculture, Hale andIremonger, Sydney, 1991. For the history ofhe emergence of San Francisco's gay com-

munity, see the excellent scholarship ofJohn D'Emilio, especially "Gay politics, gaycommunity: San Francisco's experience",Socialist Review, 55(1981):77-104, reprint-ed in D'Emilio, John, Making Trouble:essays on gay history, politics and the uni-versity, Routledge, New York and London,1992.

37 Warren, Carol A.B., Identity and commu-nity in the gay world, John Wiley & Sons,New York, 1974, p18.

38 Weeks, 1985, p192

39 Castells, Manuel, The city and the grass-roots: a cross cultural theory of urban socialmovements, Edward Arnold, London, 1983,p139

40 Harvey, David, Consciousness and theurban experience, Basil Blackwell, Oxford,1985, p18

41 French, Robert, Camping by a billabong:gay and lesbian stories from Australian his-tory, Blackwattle Press, 1993, p59-60

42 Weeks, 1985, p192

43 D'Emilio, John, "Gay politics, gay com-

munity: San Francisco's experience",Socialist Review, 55(1981):77-104, reprint-ed in D'Emilio, John, Making Trouble:essays on gay history, politics and the uni-versity, Routledge, New York and London,1992, p74-95

44 Chamberland, Line, "Rembembering les-bian bars: Montral, 1955-1975", Journal ofHomosexuality, 25,1/2(1993):231-269

45 Wotherspoon, Garry, City of the plain:history of a gay subculture, Hale andIremonger, Sydney, 1991

46 Ferber et al, Beasts of suburbia: reinter-preting cultures in Australian Suburbs,Melbourne University Press,1994, page xiv

47 Ferber et al, page xiii

48 Chamberland, p243

49 Wotherspoon, p154

50 Seebohm, Kym, "The nature and mean-ing of the Sydney Mardi Gras in a landscapeof inscribed social relations", Aldrich,Robert, Gay perspectives II: more essays inAustralian gay culture, Australian Centre forGay and Lesbian Research, 1994, p193-222 Carlos Aires, from the series "Happily Ever After (The Enchanted Woods II)", 2004,Courtesy of the artist.


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In a painting titled Le Barbare (TheBarbarian) (1928), Ren Magritteshowed what seemed to be the shad-ow of a masked man in a hat. Theshadow is seen against a brick wall,and it is unclear whether it is appearingor fading away. Magritte, always partic-ular about the eccentric rhetoric of hispractice of representation, was carefulenough to have a photograph of him-self (in a hat) taken next to this image.His face, quizzical, makes us wonderas if he is keeping secrets from us.

There are two particularly interestingthings about this image: the first that itshould be called Le Barbare, and thesecond, that it is not in fact the first oreven the last appearance of a hat, or aman in a hat, in the work of Magritte.Men in hats, and hats, crowd the

images made by Magritte. They refuseto go away. (1)

What does a man in a hat have to dowith impostors and waiting rooms?Perhaps, like the narrator in the firstnovel of the Fantmas series of fantas-tic crime novels, we could say,Nothing ... and Everything.

Perhaps one of the secrets thatMagritte keeps in this image para-phrasing the title of another of hispaintings could be that just as the

image of a pipe is not a pipe, so too,the image that suggests a suave,urbane man in a hat is actually ofsomeone else.

The shadowy visage in a hat in LeBarbare belongs to the figure ofFantmas (2), the archetypal and per-haps primal urban delinquent, the lordof terror, the master of disguises whoappears and disappears, takes onmany personae, and refuses ever to beidentified. In The Impostor in theWaiting Room and this text we seek tocontinue the dialogue that Magrittebegan with the shadow of Fantmas,and to investigate what it means toconduct a dalliance with the imperative

of identification.The imperative of identification, and itscounterpoint, the dream of disguise,are impulses we find as central to thestory of our times as a threatenedassassin, or a murderous corpse, or amissing person who leaves no trace,are to an obstinately intractable pulpfiction pot boiler.

In LAssassin Menac (TheThreatened Assassin), another of hispaintings from the same period,Magritte shows Fantmas attentivelylistening to a gramophone beside thecorpse of his female victim, unawarthat two detectives in bowler-hats arehovering outside the door with a neand cudgel, even as similarly attiredvoyeurs peer through the window. Itakes a while to figure out that that aof them murderer, corpse, police andspectators are the same person. The

question as to which one is the realFantmas refuses, like a recalcitrantcadaver, to lie low. Magrittes fascination with a tableau in Louis Feuilladethird Fantmas film Le Mort qui Tu(The Murderous Corpse) is evident ithe composition of this picture.

This dialogue with the figure oFantmas that Magritte initiated was thread that ran through much of hiswork. In one of his occasional fragments of writing, titled A TheatricEvent, Magritte outlines the followinarresting scenario: Fantmas the quar-ry, and Juve, the detective in pursuitmesh into each other as disguises,reveries, pursuit, the loss of identity

and the impossibility of capture (excepthrough self-disclosure) are woventogether.

Juve has been on the trail ofFantmas for quite some time. Hecrawls along the broken cobblestonesof a mysterious passage. To guide himself he gropes along the walls with hifingers. Suddenly, a whiff of hot air hi

FantmasWhat did you say?I said: Fantmas.And what does that mean?Nothing EverythingBut what is it?No one And yet, yes, it is someone!And what does this someone do?Spread Terror!!Opening lines of Fantmas, the first novel in the

Fantmas series by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel

Allain, popular in early twentieth century Paris)

Dreams and Disguises, As Usual.

by Raqs Media

Raqs is a collective of media practitioners that works innew media & digital art practice, documentary filmmak-ng, photography, media theory & research, writing, criti-

cism and curation. Raqs Media Collective is the co-initia-or of Sarai: The New Media Initiative, (www.sarai.net) a

programme of interdisciplinary research and practice onmedia, city space and urban culture at the Centre for theStudy of Developing Societies, Delhi. Members of the col-ective are resident at the Sarai Media Lab, Delhi, wherehey work on projects interpreting the city and urban

experience; make cross-media works; collaborate on thedevelopment of software; design and conduct work-shops; administer discussion lists; edit publications;write, research and co-ordinate several research projectsand public activities of Sarai. They are co-editors of theSarai Reader series. They live and work in Delhi.


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Kumar of Bhowal, Partha Chatterjee,Princeton University Press, 2002

(6) Subarnarekha, direction RitwikGhatak, produced by J.J. FilmsCorporation, 1965. For more aboutSubarnarekha, see http://www.upper-

stall.com/films/subarnarekha.html(7) William Dalrymple in White

Mughals looks at the phenomenon ofcultural and physical miscegenation ineighteenth century India. See WhiteMughals: Love and Betrayal inEighteenth Century India, WilliamDalrymple, Harper Collins, 2003(8) To read the full text of The Lion and

the Unicorn: Socialism and the EnglishGenius, see -http://www.george-orwell.org/

(9) For an exhaustive history of theBowler Hat, see The Man in a BowlerHat: His History and Iconography, byFred Miller Robinson, University of NorthCarolina Press, 1993For an interesting online profile of the

Bowler Hat, and a very arresting imageof a crowd of bowler hat-wearing men,see http://www.villagehatshop.com/prod-uct1687.html(10) For guidelines on the specificationsfor correct composition, lighting, expo-sure and printing of photographs of USPassport and Visa applications see thewebsite of the US State Department

Passport and Visa Photography Guidehttp://travel.state.gov/visa/pptphotos/index.html(11) Quoted in The Passport: A History

of Man's Best Travelled Document,Martin Lloyd, Stroud, Sutton, 2003.(12) Look Miserable to Help the War onTerrorism, Philip Johnston, HomeAffairs Editor, The Telegraph, London,06/08/2004

Raqs Media Collective,The Impostor in the Waiting Room,image of the installation at Bose Pacia Gallery, New York

Courtesy of the artists.


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tence and circulation. The commodityremains a mysterious thing.An object in an art market is a specificinstance of the generalized presence of com-modities in day-to-day life under capitalism.Notwithstanding this, rarely, if ever, do artobjects call attention to their relationship withthis universe of commodities within whichthey are embedded, within which they func-tion and within which they are transacted asthe high-value merchandise of meaning andaffect. What permits the production of artobjects in capitalism are the instruments ofthe generalized abstraction of exchange(money) that enable the docketing andindexing of the value of a particular art

object, making it acquire a candidacy for aparticular kind of commodity status asagainst all other commodities.Ultimately, the decision to acquire or invest inthe production of an art object is a momen-tary deferral of the decision to acquire orinvest in another commodity say a car.After all, the capital that could have beeninvested in a car, or real estate, or stocks isbeing used to acquire or support the produc-tion of a fragment of art. Behind this decisionis a calculation that can at some level bringto the labour and productive capacity thatgoes into the making of a car (or any othercommodity) into a relationship of equiva-lence with the labour and productive capaci-ty that goes into the making of an art object say a faux car made in a metal mould as apiece of sculpture.This calculus, which abstracts two instances

of labour, creativity, ingenuity, and productivecapacity on to the same plane where onetransaction can seamlessly substitute for theother, is made possible by the instrumentthat mediates the acquisition and productionof all commodities in capitalism an under-standing of the infinite substitutability of anycommodity for any other, based on a recog-nition of the universal and ubiquitous pres-ence of human labour. We arrive at thisimmanent universal by a process of subtrac-

tion that leaches out all the specificities oany commodity until we reach the bedrock olabour that makes its production possible inthe first instance.If then we leave out of consideration thuse-value of commodities, they have onlyone common property left, that of being products of labourLet us now consider theresidue of each of these products; it consistsof the same unsubstantial reality in each, amere congelation of homogeneous humanlabour, of labour-power expended withouregard to the mode of its expenditure. All thathese things now tell us is, that humanlabour-power has been expended in theirproduction, that human labour is embodied in

them.If we consider the congealed abstraction ofhuman labour power, which Marx refers to athe same unsubstantial reality as being theresidue that is present in all commoditiesonce they are seen, not as discrete objectsbut in their generality, then we enter into anengagement with the bare fact of the humanexperience of labouring in its most immanenas well as its most universal sense. Residue,then, can be seen as referring to memoriesand narratives of work, of the coming-intobeing of the figure of the working person, aof the movement of people as a conse-quence of and the search for work.In a market where the car and the faux carare both up for sale, the decisions of buyersand sellers, rest on an understanding thatultimately what brings the car and the cartransformed into an art object onto the same

level playing field is the labour power thgoes into their making, albeit in different coditions and circumstances.How does one represent this calculus? Howdoes one imagine, or image, that which is bydefinition insubstantially residual? One posibility lies in presenting an inventory oobject-images, or image-objects that is alsoat the same time an oblique reference to apotential cartography that links the objects toeach other and to their dual status as two dif-

- A baggage trolley laden with a carton con-aining televisions pushed by a pair ofrousers just off an airplane from the Gulf.

- The luggage carrier of a black and yellowairport taxi festooned with the bulge of syn-hetic fibre blankets made in Taiwan, boughtn Dubai, brought to Delhi, taken to Bareilly.

- Economy class arrivals on pollution-orangenights or fog-grey mornings at the IndiraGandhi International Airport in New Delhi.- Goods and people walk through customs.Duties are paid, evaded, elided. Goods andpeople step out on to the clear light of capi-al. Goods and people, incised into the pres-

ent, standing out in momentary relief againsthe blur of the terminal.

- The wheels of the baggage trolley lock in areluctant, clumsy manoeuvre to defer move-ment, unsuccessfully. With a little extra pres-sure from shoulder to wrist, the trousersteers his steel chariot, alchemically trans-formed into gold by the containment of hisdesires in the bundle it carries.- Goods and people move.Goods, and people, move in all sorts of waysin todays world. In cartons and containerships, strapped into bucket seats, secure inthe cargo hold, stockpiled in the carriage of agoods train, straddling motor scooters, tiedup in bundles, arrayed in rows, ensconced inthe back seats of rotund automobiles, taggedby invoices, insurance cover notes, way bills,and instructions for packing, unpacking,ladling, cartage and storage.The circuits formed by the movement ofcommodities objects and services bought

and sold in the marketplace and the labourpower that produces them are both ubiqui-tous and imperceptible. They are transactedinto our lives, and appear as the keys withwhich we unlock and understand prevailingnotions of utility, desire and privilege. Yet forall our handling of commodities in the courseof any given day, the process of their imma-nence remains obscure to us, as do thetransformations, exchanges and social rela-tionships that underlie their production, exis-

Raqs is a collective of media practitioners that worksn new media & digital art practice, documentary film-

making, photography, media theory & research, writ-ng, criticism and curation. Raqs Media Collective ishe co-initiator of Sarai: The New Media Initiative,

(www.sarai.net) a programme of interdisciplinaryresearch and practice on media, city space and urbanculture at the Centre for the Study of DevelopingSocieties, Delhi. Members of the collective are resi-dent at the Sarai Media Lab, Delhi, where they workon projects interpreting the city and urban experi-ence; make cross-media works; collaborate on thedevelopment of software; design and conduct work-shops; administer discussion lists; edit publications;write, research and co-ordinate several research proj-ects and public activities of Sarai. They are co-editorsof the Sarai Reader ser ies. They live and work in Delhi.

Subodh Gupta| The Shape of Things to Go

A commodity is a mysterious thing, simplybecause in it the social character of mens labourappears to them as an objective character stampedupon the product of that labour; because the relationof the producers to the sum total of their own labouris presented to them as a social relation existing notbetween themselves, but between the products oftheir labour.

Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Part 1, Chapter 1, Section 4: The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof

by Raqs Media


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92] [93]

Subodh Gupta

Everything is Inside, 2004.Taxi and cast bronze1.6m x 1.5m x 2.8mCourtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

Doot, 2004.Life size ambassador car cast in aluminium.

Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.


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Menus and the stainless steelCounter piece in the show at ManchestersCornerhouse Gallery, deliberately sought toforeground the specific conditions determiningthe experience of culture in a consumer socie-ty. Our objective was to highlight the conven-tional nature by which culture is consumed,and introduce, through the conflation of oppos-ing cultural conventions; that of the chip shopand the gallery - a kind of queasy unease in thereading of the work.This approach has continued with Bouncers,and other work such as Local Comic, MobileDisco and Adornos Disco. This work contin-ues our interest in minimalism, in particular itsprivileging of the site specific and relationalproperties of the work. For us, minimalisms

concern with the management of theformal/social boundary between inside andoutside had an immediate correspondence inthe function of the nightclub bouncer. Usinghired workers, whose job it is to manage thedoor, was a deliberate move to address thisissue and explore the articulation of power inthe control of social space.Bouncers were used because they are used topolice the interface between the public and theprivate /commercial sphere of leisure. They arehired muscle, simultaneously serving theinterests of capital and representing a form ofbrutalized, commodified labour. The similarityof the bouncers physical appearance and theirability to engender an acute self-conscious-ness in the viewer presented us with anotheropportunity to re-engage with minimalism. Thecollision of looking orchestrated between thevisitors to the gallery and the bouncers starewas central to the piece. The professional stareof the bouncers, unflinching in some of themen, but more ambiguous and complex in oth-ers, and the active way they engage with thegallery visitors look, prevents their categoriza-tion as statuesque. Surprisingly, the hard-manfront they presented was clearly flawed withanxiety, vulnerability and even sadness, mixinguncomfortably with their macho bravado.Putting this power under duress, re-contextual-ising it in a form and location that stripped awayany normative justification for its display, sanc-tioned new relations of engagement. The raw

experience of looking back at the bouncers,fore- grounded the instability in the bouncersstatus, fluctuating between bought power andalienated labour. The experience was embar-rassing, unsettling and at times, cruel.We deliberately set out to inflate the intimidatory nature of the encounter with the bouncers byarranging them into a hierarchical, serried for-mation.The direction we gave the bouncers was sim-ple: we asked that they occupy the triangulargrid pattern marked on the gallery floor, and fothe three biggest men to take up the cornerpositions, this they did. We are unsure whetherthe final arrangement represented any estab-lished hierarchy amongst the men.Once in position the bouncers were told to

adopt the stance and look they had beentrained to deploy on a conventional job. Theywere asked to visually track the camera as itpassed them by and during the live perform-ance, to resist any expressive interaction withthe audience. This expressive neutrality inten-sified the intimidatory atmosphere surroundingthe encounter with the audience, but the knowl-edge that this occasion was taking place withinthe safe environment of an art gallery, onesanctioned by the knowledge that the bouncerswere unlikely to respond in an adverse mannerto close looking, obviously created the opportunity for the audience to react in other ways.The knowledge that the bouncers had beenhired, and that they had a contractual obliga-tion to perform what had been asked of them,turned their simmering physical power into aform of mute compliance; they had taken onthe passivity of a commodity.

Common Culture are David Campbell andMark Durden.

This text is edited from a response to issues raised by Terry Atkinson, following their exhibition, Spectacular Vernacular, in Leamington Spa Art Gallery, England, January 2005.Bouncers, in the form of a series of large-scale portraits and DVD screening, forms part of their solo show at Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on- Sea, England, October/ November 2005.

Bouncersis the first occasion where CommonCulture have used live performance as part ofheir presentational strategy for a show. This

fact in itself provoked a great deal of anxiety onour behalf. In part, this was to do with opera-ional concerns regarding the reliability of the

bouncers, we were not sure whether theywould turn up or even if they would agree to dowhat we had planned. We had not met any ofhe hired workersuntil they literally walked intohe gallery; all of the negotiation had been con-

ducted over the telephone with their gaffer.This aspect of the work, dealing with the rela-ions of production and the ease with whichabour could be bought and tasked, was an eye

opener. Not that it should have been any greatsurprise; we deliberately set out to produce apiece that highlighted the fact that labour-power is itself a commodity and is treated nodifferently by the market from any other form ofcommodity, but the absolute compliance of thebouncers was unnerving, especially in light ofheir physical potential for disruption.

The work continues our interest in commodityculture and the way in which it organises expe-rience. Ever since the Menuwork, our practicehas sought to reposition particular moments ofcultural transaction: alighting upon situations orobjects which, when located in one regime ofconsumption possess a designation marked bysocial/cultural specificity, but when redeployed

within another arena of operation, have thepossibility to unsettle or test established condi-ions of reception.

Minimalism, and its use, has been a long-standing interest in our work.By this we are referring to the way we under-stand minimalism to be concerned, in part, withhe site-specificity of the artwork in respect tots physical and institutional context and the

suggestion that this provided the conditions forheightened self-awareness. The Menu workborrowed the minimalist carcass in order to

inflect it with another set of reception condi-tions, specifically those pertaining to the con-sumption of Britishness through the metaphorof fast food. At a time when the YBAs self con-scious fascination with vernacular preoccupa-tions were being assiduously promoted by theBritish art establishment, the Menus sought tokindle a degree of friction in the protocols gov-erning cultural consumption. It was also anattempt to register a growing interest in the waythat minimalist form had been embraced bycorporate capitalism, to the extent that it nowappears to operate as part of its presentationalface. With its cool colour schemes, geometricform and sleek surfaces the minimalist aesthet-ic had become capitals decor of choice, anaesthetic frontfor power and commerce. Uponsuch an aesthetic of surface, we wanted tosmear the trace of excess. The Menus, withtheir minimalist form and systematic installa-tion, were offered up as forms across whosesurface the trace of a common transaction tookplace. The soiling of surfaces, whether throughthe use of gaudy light effects or the registrationof specific rituals of mass consumption, exem-plified in the use of the fast food menu format,was an attempt to sully the perceived purity ofits minimalist form.At the core of the Menu work is a concern tocreate friction between theconventions governing the reception of differ-

ent cultural experiences, and by different, weare assigning a class identity to the categorisa-tion of different forms of cultural activity theconsumption of fast food and the consumptionof art. Our interest is not motivated by any cel-ebratory zeal to champion consumer culture, ifanything it was infected by the kind of cynicismassociated with Adornos take on commer-cialsed culture (well maybe not quite!).Some of our interest was formal, we were, andstill are, interested in therelation of surfaces to structure. Both the

Common Culture| Bouncers


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Large Coloured Menus 1, 1999, Counter Culture. Cornerhouse Gallery, Manchester.Courtesy: the artists.

Large Coloured Menus 2, 2002. Shopping - A Century of Art and Consumer CultureThe Tate Gallery Liverpool. Courtesy: the artists.

Common Culture


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Dan Perjovschi| Repertoire

My drawings looks spontaneous but arenot.

For each project I draw 2-3 notebooks. Ineach notebook I do150 drawings. Out of150 I select 30 to be transferred onto thewall. From the 60 new drawings 5 will enterthe repertoire. The repertoire drawings arethe drawings who always fit. The universalstuff. Everybody will understand them, likethem, relay on them.

I re-draw them for new circumstances.Redrawing new drawings. Some time theyconstitute the majority (if the situation is notchallenging enough, I do not have timeenough or I am imply too lazy). Other timesthey create the structure for new images tobe taken in. The repertoire drawings are mystabile factor.

The rest will go away as the stories whogenerate them goes away. Some of thedrawings I did are incomprehensible now tome. I forgot the plot, I forgot the names. Idont know whats all about.

A new show will generate 20% of the nextshow. And so on. Permanent black marker,white chalk, delicate pencil, floors, walls,ceilings, windows, newspapers... I keepmoving drawings from one wall to another,from one context to another. Same imagesdifferent audience. A new wall drawing to bemade here, another to be repainted there.Lyon on, Paris gone. Good by Lisbon, wel-come Santiago de Chile.

The repertoire is vague and virtual. Freshdrawings enters, old drawings fade away. Asort of vocabulary of the memory.

If I can remember I can talk.


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Dan Perjovschi


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[123]122]

Doug Aitkens installation works explorehuman perception in a technocratic, accelerat-ed environment, a world in which everybody iseither constantly on the move or engaging inmediatised shifts of space. These works,described as pure communication by theartist, attempt to create new narrative struc-ures that are outside the realm of linear narra-ion. His video installations captivate viewerswith technically perfectly images and soundshat affect their movements and have themhrown back on their own perception by refus-ng them protagonists to easily identify with.

For example, he takes almost static natureshots, where the action is focussed on tinydetails or camera movements, and contrastshem with the accelerated image effects typi-

cal of our media and information society. Thisstrategy opens up a space for viewers tobecome the protagonist of an inner journey ofperception that helps them to experience amoment of immediacy.n Europe, Aitkens work became known to a

wider audience in 1999 with his electric earth,which earned him the International Award athe Venice Biennale. Alone young man watch-

es TV and wanders about the urban wasteand, recording the movements and sounds of

neon adverts, vehicles, security cameras and

vending machines, until his body explodes inan ecstatic dance his only way of arriving ata momentary experience of redemption in aworld permanently flooded with stimuli inwhich he seems to lose himself. In diamondsea (1997), Aitken transports us into the wildsof the Namibian desert, where he goes lookingfor traces of human life in the sealed-off areaaround two diamond mines. He finds therobotic movements of prospecting machines,deserted monuments and ruined remnants ofhe machinery of human civilisation. In these

restless minds (1998), provincial salesmen areseen speaking in public about their sellingtechniques. As they perform their mono-logues, they talk faster and faster, to the pointwhere their words become an incomprehensi-ble, absurd singsong.The new installation, the moment (2005), fea-tures eleven monitors suspended from theceiling, showing a number of people in placesof transition, such as hotel rooms or airport ter-minals. Camera movements and each individ-uals movements of the eleven scenes areabsolutely identical, forming a pattern thatlinks the people together while emphasisingtheir individual traits. As time goes on, thescenes are cyclically repeated but with subtlechanges, uniting the people depicted in animaginary landscape of movement. The worksimulates a new kind of acceleration, one thatenables us to move everyplace and no-placeat once.The second work, lighttrain (2005), exploresthe effect of a transition from a sunlit to an arti-ficially illuminated world. The camera followspurely peoples shadows: they only existthrough light. The result is a magical story ofghostly, weightless, almost extraterrestrialcreatures that seem oddly detached from theirsurroundings. Afigure moves from an unpopu-

lated landscape to a crowded metropolis, pro-viding the viewer with insights into his restless,searching mind in scenes sketching out a vari-ety of emotionally charged encounters andexperiences. The change in the light affectsthe quality of his shadow. As time goes on, it isthe light that becomes the true protagonist, asit fades towards evening and makes the shad-ow disappear and the cycle of the workstarts again.

Text by Galerie Eva Presenhuber.

Doug Aitken| Sell yourself for nothing

Skyliner, 2004. Sonic mobile sound installation / sculpture. Ed. 1/4 (Floor version) 3004 x 554 x 554 cm.Courtesy: Galerie Eva Presenhuber.


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Ciprian Homorodean is an artist looking for hisvoice. Having formal training as a sculptor, herecently moved towards new media, and hisnewest projects are mostly v ideo installations.He approaches a variety of subjects, but theone theme linking all the facets of his artworks the way he attempts to deal with the subject

of mediation and perception, and the quest fordentity by incorporating personal past. In

other words, his works deal with the two facetsof reality, with the alternative possibility ofescapism and its versions, and in one way oranother, everything touches upon the samesubject.

I Am Luke Skywalker reflects on the topic ofdentification with a familiar hero as a way of

evasion from a world whose realities are toobleak to leave any place for the individual. It isa discourse on personal dreams by means ofdentification with a fictional character, who

has become more than a role model: he is asymbol of the attempt to materialize the mostntimate dreams. Luke does not exist, but the

reality created by means of his influence ismore real than ever, repeating itself in an eter-nal time bubble. The veracity of dreams andhe factual, referential world are referred to

also in S.C. geo.cos-lm. S.R.L. Job of thedream, a project about a double reality, abouthe desired alternative versions of life.

What Homorodean tells us by means of hisprojects is that there are always two sides tohe same story, not necessarily what one

might consider as the pros and the cons. Only

an analysis of both can lead though to animpartial conclusion, and it is up to each of usto make our own decisions. That analysis hasto be based on facts, not, if possible, on ideol-ogy or on the mediated version of events,which is the one readily available. One has tolearn how to read between the lines, and prob-ably the most important thing that needs to beunderstood is that mediated information is, inspite of its pretension of authenticity, alreadyfiltered by subjectivity. History, be it past orcontemporary, is gasped more and morethrough the filter of subjective experience,since most events are perceived by mediation,whether we like it or not. Wars, which he refersto in his installations Happy 3 friends andWar, are relived vicariously and interpretedas graphs by millions of people worldwide bymeans of the broadcast image and alreadyexist beyond geography and time, and we pre-fer to ignore the troubling aspects and focuson the ideology. The grimy details are left forthose in the field. Homorodeans short movieGolden Grenade Awards covers the aspectof mediation in the ironical key, a feature ubiq-uitous in his works. A fake award ceremonytakes place, and the best terrorists (equals,the most deadly) are awarded prizes. Again,most of us perceive the terrorist acts by frag-mentary TV images, and few have contact withthe reality, and the claim for any act of massdestruction are again transmitted by live feed.

Artists are becoming more and more involvedin contemporary issues, from technology toglobalization, genetic modification and politics,attempting to raise awareness about question-able aspects of reality. Debating the questionof mediation as an epitome of the world sur-rounding us is a topic which has been largelydealt with in contemporary art but, asHomorodean proves, there is always room formore exploration, especially since new devel-opments take place every day.

Ciprian Homorodean| I Am Luke Skywalker

S.C. geo.cos-lm. S.R.L. Job of the dream, 2005, 2 channels, video installation, color, sound, 24:10 min.Courtesy of the artist.

Dana Altman is theoretician, writer si curator. Workedn research and teaching, studying linguistics and text

history in Exter College, Oxford, UK and has a doctor-ate in linguistics. Since 1997 is assistant director ofWestwood Gallery in New York. She writes contem-porary art criticism and fiction. She is member ofPAVILION board. Lives and work in New York.

by Dana Altman


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Art Magazine Ads (Artforum), 1988-89.Courtesy Astrup Fearnley Collection.

Jeff Koons

New Hoover Convertibles, New Shelton Wet/Drys 5-Gallon Doubledecker,1981-1Courtesy Astrup Fearnley Collection.


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[147]146]

struct that is very pliable to begin withand is becoming even more open-endedin an era of accelerating socioeconomicchange. Atamans work concerns itselfwith revealing, and at times celebrating,the myths that people weave around theirpublic personas. This drive for changeand transformation is often strikingly con-trasted against certain formative factorsfrom ones personal history or culturalbackground. Atamans four-screen DVDprojection Women Who Wear Wigs(1999) can be viewed as a fascinatingmeditation on identity politics. Here, fourTurkish women who wear wigs for differ-ent reasons have been interviewed, eachrecounting why they do so. Althougheach woman expresses a different ration-ale for wearing a wig, the prop allowsevery one of them to fabricate a publiccharade in order to obscure a privatetruth. A wig becomes the perfect symbolof the division between private self andpublic image.One television journalist undergoingtreatment for breast cancer talks abouthow the disease has attacked the mostfeminine aspects of her outward appear-ance: her breasts and her long blond hair.Having lost her hair through chemothera-py, she wears a long blond wig in front ofthe news camera to regain this sense offeminine beauty. In the same vein, atranssexual who refers to herself as afeminist recounts her stories of impris-onment, rape and physical abuse by thepolice. She buys a wig after one stint in jail, when the police give her a buzz cut inorder to make her look more like a man.Wearing a blond wig gives her the addedbenefit of boosting her clientele,because, as she states, many of herTurkish johns are attracted to blonds. Incontrast, a fundamentalist Muslimwoman (whose identity is hidden by ablackened screen) talks about her effortsto wear the headscarf in public in aneffort to specifically hide her femininityfrom the eyes of men. She self-pityinglyexplains how she and the other female

fundamentalist students at the universityare met with disapproval by the secularcodes of their schools administrationwhich doesnt permit the wearing oheadscarves on campus. But when thefundamentalist students attempt to enterclass by hiding their hair under brunettewigs, they are still asked by their professors to leave. The fourth woman sharesfascinating tales about her youth as a leftwing militant who went into hiding undeground. She explains that she had toobscure her true identity when going outin public with a wig and a flight attendants uniform, in order to evade government agents. Women Who Wear Wigsnot only highlights certain conflictinrules of social conduct that coexist inTurkey, a country struggling to reconcileboth Eastern and Western values, butalso shows how ones public image canbe crafted into an act of political resistance in whichever cultural context. Andalthough certain details in these narra-tives may seem a little improbable, suchas the leftists account of being unnoticedon the streets in her wig and her stew-ardesss uniform, their sordid details anddramatic plotlines make for great enter-tainment.Sometimes a persons myth-ladenaccounts may transgress a description ofones own identity to question broaderissues of historical accuracy. In Atamanshands, the camera can cast a brutal light,as little white lies may surface over a per-sons narration, and stories may changesignificantly in their retelling. The artiseems to purposefully call attention tothese variations in order to unearth cer-tain exaggerations in the narratives.Such is the case in the piece 1+1=1(2002), which shows a two channel pro- jection of a Turkish Cypriot womarecounting memories of growing up in thdivided territory of Cyprus, contestedland that has been claimed by bothGreece and Turkey. The double screen issymbolic of the divided state of the country, in which Turkish Cypriot citizen

Video artist Kutlug Atamans career hashit international acclaim in the past fiveyears. His most recent accolades andachievements include being nominatedas a Turner Prize finalist in 2004, winningthe Carnegie Prize with his installation forthe Carnegie International in 2004, andbeing the subject of an impressive one-person survey at the Museum ofContemporary Art in Sydney, whichopened in the summer of 2005. AlthoughI saw my first Ataman video installationon the biennial circuit, I became a fanafter seeing Never My Soul (2001), a por-trait of an obscure entertainer, which wasbeing projected in a quiet viewing room ofthe Katherine Clark Gallery in SanFrancisco. The documentary profiles aTurkish transsexual named Ceyhan whorecounts, and at times enacts, her grittyife in front of Atamans camera for a total

running time of three hours. I was so cap-tivated by Ceyhans narratives, whichalternated between brutal honesty, andcoy, campy fiction, that I found my wayback to the gallerys viewing room everyday on my lunch break until Id seen thepiece in its entirety.Ceyhan had seduced me with her incred-

ible charm and wit, as she had seducedher toothless, junkie Swiss boyfriend,and the other marginal characters in herorbit that Ataman had the good fortune tocapture in his lens. The stories and melo-dramas that Ceyhan spun in this soapopera of her life, succeeded in deliveringthe juicy blend of real events with theself-conscious posturing that comes withhaving a captive audience. In fact,Atamans primary skill as a filmmaker anddirector may be his ability to weavetogether the paradoxes of fact and fiction,private and public persona, in the con-struction of his subjects identities onscreen. In Never My Soul, he shows clipsof Ceyhan hamming it up in front of a mir-ror, as if rehearsing for an upcomingsocial appearance, as she dabs on makeup, changes costume, and does her hair.These more public displays andrehearsals are drastically contrasted withscenes that show moments of intensesolitary suffering, as she lies in a hospitalplugged into a dialysis machine, or soaksin a bathtub while recounting a history offamily abuse and pain.With his blurring of reality and tall tale,and a conscious integration of the two,Atamans work touches upon a broadrange of contemporary social issues andelemental human concerns. First andforemost, his work seeks to examine thefabrication of individual identity, a con-

Kutlug Ataman|Speculative Identities: The Video Portraits

by Berin Golonu

Berin Golonu is assistant visual arts curator of YerbaBuena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. She is work-ng and living in San Francisco.


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Documents