06/09/18 10:11The emotional and its political infrastructures - Reviews - Metropolis M

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31.05.2018 | REVIEW — Jack Segbars

The emotional and itspolitical infrastructures

First Person Plural: Empathy, Intimacy, Irony, andAnger, currently on show at BAK, departs fromthe frame of the emotional as the primalconstitutive material from which societal andpolitical forms arise. Rather than theideological or philosophical, it is affect, or theworking of emotion, that takes the lead in therealization of political forms. This particularexhibition is inspired by Sara Ahmed, a British-Australian academic, who argues thatemotions stand at the root of cultural

practices through which bodies and ideologiesare shaped. Ahmed works, among others,within affect theory, a school of thought thathas become of interest in many academicfields such as gender studies, psychology,critical theory and art. As emotions are closelyconnected to perception, materials andbodies, they inscribe experiences into socialand collective memories. These memoriesorganize in turn the sense of community afterwhich effects of in- or exclusion follow.

As both inscribing the passing of time throughthe experiential in the societal, and thesocietal re-inscribing emotions on subjects

VanEyck: Photography Masterclass

Otobong Nkanga, Backstage, 2015–2018,detail, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst,Utrecht, 2018. Photo: Tom Janssen

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societal re-inscribing emotions on subjectsand communities, it becomes a natural andeloquent tool to consider and to engage withas artistic and aesthetic practice. Affect refersto the materiality and the experiential ofsubjective experience, as well as to theformation of the bigger scales of ideologicalforms and their developments. It may presentitself as a necessary and welcome next step tothe limitations that theoretical and analyticalinduced criticality brings, as can be found inartistic practices that follow institutionalcritique’s form of analysis and expression. Apersistent problem with institutional critique’sapproach is that it cannot leave theconditional frame of artistic production, as itformulates itself through what it agitatesagainst. The formal assessment and mappingof the configuration of positions and powerrelations in the production of our conditionstoday may indicate how we got here, and areimbricated in our constellation, but it doesn’tnecessarily mean to say how we are herewithin them, and how to possibly besomewhere else next. It is precisely theinscription of the affective on the societalforms that Matteo Lucchetti, curator of theexhibition, expresses and operationalizes

throughout First Person Plural.

Leftovers (2017) by Otobong Nkanga, one ofthe works on show, is a woven tapestry inwhich mineral excavation sites areschematically depicted and threaded togetherby two chords. It resembles a necklace orbracelet and starkly contrasts with theimagery of exploitation through theexcavations as individual adornments in it,represent. On the one hand, Leftovers fits theknown critical narrative of colonialism, as amode of capitalist exploitative production.Through unconsidered treatment ofexcavation sites, areas of habitation arescarred, emptied out and depleted, leaving theoriginal inhabitants without resources ormeans to sustain themselves, furthermore itdepletes nature and ecology as such. On theother hand, it refers to the material and tactileorigins of inconsiderate exploitation as such,to the seductive nature of materials.

Utrechtse schilderJan Mulder inCentraal Museum

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Otobong Nkanga, We CouldBe Allies, 2017–2018,installation BAK, basis vooractuele kunst, Utrecht, 2018.Photo: Peter Cox

OtobongNkanga, Backstage, 2015–2018; Otobong Nkanga, TheLeftovers, 2017; BAK, basisvoor actuele kunst, Utrecht,2018. Photo: Tom Janssen

Throughout her work, Nkanga develops thenotions of glimmer’ and ‘shine’ as the surfacequalities of the materials around us, thatattract and fascinate, and orchestrate socialrelations. The way we subsequently deal withthe fascinations and attractions thatmanipulate us, creates our ethical position asrelated bodies. On metal plates, that in formcorrespond with the depiction of theexcavations in the tapestry as layeredconcentric shapes, Nkanga presents examplesof these mined materials as objects ofattraction. One of these materials is mica,which she knows from the naturalsurroundings of her childhood as a material toplay with, but which is also seen as veryvaluable as it is often used in industrialapplications such as electronics and thermalinsulator, as well as in cosmetics, as theingredient that produces shine. The play with

work by 23recent graduates of 8 art academies

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opposites in the formal elements is combinedwith a personal narrative, as well as with acritique of a grander, global scale, Nkangathus connects a bodily and subjective historyvia the material as the depository of globalevents and relations., These are in turnconveyed via art, as vehicle for this narration.The equation of criticality as a matter ofabstraction and cognition gets redirectedthrough the tactile processing of our bodies.

Besides this more conventional form ofpresentation, Otobong Nkanga is alsoconnected to BAK in another way with herproject Carved to flow whose objective is theproduction of a soap called O8 Black Stone.The project started in the context ofdocumenta 14 and is partitioned in threestages, set in three different locations andaddresses the idea of production ascommunal work. The last phase is developedwithin the BAK-fellowship program, in whichOtobong Nkanga participates. This in-houseresearch-program provides artists thepossibility and time to develop new work,which can lead to different conclusions: to bepresented as exhibition or within differentcontexts. In terms of production the programthus extends the production for BAK and doesnot only include exhibitions, but expands itsmode of producing as well.

The first phase, The Laboratory, took place inAthens where the soap was produced as acommunal workshop-activity. The secondstage, The Warehouse & Distribution, tookplace in Kassel where the soap was presentedas a sculptural installation. And the last phase,The Germination, will take place in Nigeria, inthe form of a foundation that is to be fundedthrough the sales of the soap. This foundation

will be dedicated to the development of localproducts. As such Nkanga uses the context ofcontemporary art, in which productioninevitably becomes an issue ofcommodification to escape out of, or at leastpoint towards, these confines. The last phaseis aimed towards a synthesis of art and life,and wants to leave the limitations ofcontemporary art as the prevalent and, still,dominant form of art production preciselythrough the use of its infrastructure. Thisdivision of stages eerily resembles thedevelopment in art history up to conceptualart, namely art as issue of distribution and of

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Sarah Vanhee, The Makingof Justice, 2017,installation BAK, basis vooractuele kunst, Utrecht, 2018.Photo: Peter Cox

information, to which Nkanga proposes a logicconsequence: the exit of contemporary art.Her approach widens the scope in which art isoperational and delocalizes it, decolonizes itfrom its own logic of production.

This in-house research-program providesartists the possibility and time to develop newwork, which can lead to different conclusions:to be presented as exhibition or withindifferent contexts. In terms of production theprogram thus extends the production for BAKas it not only includes exhibitions, but expandsits mode of producing.

Sven Augustijnen’s work SummerThoughts(2012-ongoing) consists of a series ofletters installed on the wall together with avideo and some books. The letters are part ofan ongoing conversation between Augustijnenand Marta Kuzma, curator of dOCUMENTA13,It started in 2012 when the Belgian artmagazine A Prior asked Augustijnen to reflect

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magazine A Prior asked Augustijnen to reflecton dOCUMENTA13. The exchange wastriggered by Augustijnen’s fascination for thetapestries by Hannah Ryggen (1894-1970)shown in that particular documenta, whichwas curated by Kuzma. These handwoventapestries, drawn in a direct and personalstyle, depict politically significant scenes ofRyggen’s time (mostly from the periodbetween 1930 and 1940) and addresses therise of fascism and the ensuing war in Europe.The exchange between Augustijnen andKuzma, of which we only get to readAugustijnen’s perspective, deals with the

persistent and renewed presence of fascism inEurope and beyond. In detailed fashionAugustijnen describes fascism as an ongoingphenomenon, via descriptions of World War IIcriminals that managed to escape to safehavens like Franco’s Spain or South-America,and who have been taken up in the regulareconomies and administrations of post-warEurope, the US and Russia. The historicfascism that actually never ended, isconnected to the recent past, and the present.Augustijnen retraces this ongoing legacy vianodal encounters where historical and art-historical events topologically meet hispersonal accounts as researcher. He does sothrough feverish associations andmeticulously annotations in a style thatbecomes wedged. The geographical mappingof fascism in Europe is matched with theoccasions of presentations of Ryggen’stapestries in European places. Cultural andpolitical production merge, and the body fromwhich these arise are actually the samecommunal body.

The letters are accompanied by a 1983 video-recording of La Clave, a Spanish television-show, in which the convicted Belgian Nazi-collaborator Léon Degrelle can be seen.Degrelle was able to remain a free man inSpain. Next to the video is some additionaldocumentation among which the publication‘Hanna Ryggen’ by Kuzma, part of thediscursive 100 Notes-100 Thoughts she wrotefor the documenta series.

The work emphasises memory andrecollection as never-ending activities. Therecognition that Degrelle continued a normallife, through the insular semi-seclusion ofSpain in regard to Europe, separating andobfuscating histories into different territories,

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Sven Augustijnen, SummerThoughts, 2012–...,installation BAK, basis vooractuele kunst, Utrecht, 2018.Photo: Peter Cox

is attested by the video-registration -a livedocument to this painful fact. Thesimultaneous closeness and farness ofDegrelle, as fellow Belgian, is perceptible andtangible for Augustijnen. The endlessness ofthe work, which warns for the perpetual riseand current closeness of fascism, and theequally unending recognition of it, is hard andfunctions only as an affective work. Theabsence of work in a regular sense, -there isneither imagery of the documenta nor of thetapestries- stresses the importance ofreflection as a generative and affective work.

The work of Doug Ashford in this show,functions in a similar fashion, binding theintimate space of the personal to the largerrealm of the communal and its politics. SixMoments in 1967 and Some of its Bodies (2010-2011) is a series of six paintings in whichphotos from newspapers or magazines,depicting significant moments in the civil

rights and anti-war movements in 1967 andfeaturing people that embodied thesemoments in protests, are framed by geometricand abstract shapes. It is a moment in timethat is of importance to Ashford personally. Hehas vivid memories of one of thesedemonstrations, the October ’67 Washingtondemonstrations, as his mother took him there.The use of abstract visualizations speaks ofthe possibility of abstraction as a communallanguage. At the same time abstraction is alsothe material of financial and cognitivecapitalism and its technological politicalmediation which counters these ambitions

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and pressurizes subjective space. The tactilenature of the paintings, visibly handmade androughish, amplifies the paradox of thesubjective and the general, the concrete andthe abstract, between which our society andthe subjects in it, alternate.

In Nocturnes (2017) another series by Ashford,of, again, six paintings, photographs of suchhistorically significant moments, are manuallytorn out of magazines, printed and juxta-posed with painted images of starconstellations in the sky, that were visible atthe precise moment in time of these events.Ashford connects the specificity of events to ageneral and collective perceptibility, to conveythat these moments in history have beeninscribed onto subjects, affecting the subjectsas global narrative and enforcing senses ofpolitical belonging.

The grammar of these paintings refers toabstraction, tactility and figuration ascombined art historical components, that arecondensed into seemingly conventionalpainterly objects. But considering DougAshford’s personal history as a member ofGroup Material, a group operational between1989 and 1996, these are not simply objects ondisplay in a white cube context. GroupMaterial deployed a wide range of materials inits installations and presentations, includingprofane and mass-cultural objects, existinghistorical objects, and media and fine art,which were non-hierarchically presented anddemocratically chosen. Group Material’sstrategy and ambition was to consider themediation of art via its installation and itscontext, as both public enterprise and politicalactivism, thereby resisting art’scommodification in its conventional mediated(market) settings. The history of Ashford’sartistic position, re-inscribes his works ascarriers of the legacy of the link betweenactivism, life and art. The subjective andpersonal nature of these objects which recordthe affective inscription of the social onto theartist enhances art’s role as an affectivemediator of the social.

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Doug Ashford, Six Momentsin 1967 and Some of itsBodies, 2010–2011, BAK,basis voor actuele kunst,Utrecht, 2018. Photo: TomJanssen

Doug Ashford, Bunker2, 2017, installation BAK,basis voor actuele kunst,Utrecht, 2018. Foto: PeterCox

It are these kinds of qualities present in thework of most artists and projects representedin First Person Plural, that relate art productionto its bigger span and scope, as an issue thatconcerns life as a concrete given beyond art’scontext. This can also be observed in SarahVanhee’s work The Making of Justice (2017),that documents the process of an intensivetwo-year collaboration with inmates of aBelgian prison, convicted for the crime ofmurder, with whom she produces a filmthrough a conjoint developed, fictionalnarrative of crime and guilt. The Making ofJustice does not only address the societalissue of justice as politico-ethical question ofretribution or of healing , it is rather abouthow we can or cannot identify with, or beaffected by another subject. After watchingthe blurred faces of those who havecommitted heinous crimes, and with whomwe have become intimately acquainted, in this

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Doug Ashford, Nocturne.New York City, UnitedStates, March 28 1989, 2017,installation BAK, basis vooractuele kunst, Utrecht, 2018.Photo: Peter Cox

encounter we are left with the question: arewe a different we after we’ve come in affectivecontact with them, and have they changedafter testifying to us? The question remainsopen, becomes a matter of identification andthus shifts towards a potential of empathicrecognition.

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Doug Ashford, Nocturne.Oslo, Norway, July 22 2011,2017, installation BAK, basisvoor actuele kunst, Utrecht,2018. Photo: Peter Cox

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The institutional and curatorial format of BAKopens up to a similar ambition by embeddingits artistic ambition in a structure that ishospitable and explorational. Artistic researchhas become a household name and stands therisk of becoming an empty moniker if notfollowed through in consequence, and when itis treated -in institutional handling- as the nextcommodifiable style or school. Another pitfallthat presents itself, is the affluent use oftheory that may envelop and overbear theexperiential. In First Person Plural these risksare avoided. The different approaches to theproblem of art’s imbrication and limitationsproduced within its own structure, indicate adirection out of it. It is through BAK that otheraspects of artistic concern, which can befound in most if not all presented artists,becomes tangible, and presented as anintegral and essential part of artistic practise.

Artists and institute jointly seek a form ofresistance to the threat of commodificationwhich comes from multiple directions.

All images courtesy BAK Utrecht

First Person Plural: Empathy, Intimacy, Irony, and Anger withSepake Angiama, Doug Ashford, Sven Augustijnen, TalaMadani, Liz Magic Laser, Eva Mattes, Franco Mattes, OtobongNkanga, Sarah Vanhee, until 22.07.2018, BAK, Utrecht

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