Monday, November 07, 2005
Those tabletop board games are not just for the socially deficient or fantasy absorbed anymore. The group m7red (http://www.m7red.com.ar, I suggest google to translate) have been creating their own board games that simulate real-time political scenarios like disaster relief planning and global politcal networking. In Flood! (inundación!) a conglomerate from 8 to 80 people create scenarios and positions that are role played throughout a certain amount of time. At the end, each participant makes a report of what happened. The goal is to create a dialogue between the contemporary problems of urbanism and natural catastrophe. These “simulations” are like think tanks that challenge current political methods of state sponsored relief efforts that are for anyone to join (not just architects and urban/postcolonial theorist). Artforum has a great article on Flood! and m7red in their latest issue (November 2005). I agree with the point that natural disasters will always be political when corporations are faster and better at relief effort than the government. One of the most important and radical components that m7red implements are the maps. New conceptions of how maps visually display information is needed for a technologically advanced world way past topographical.
Sue De Beer focus is on the challenges in high school. The illogic of some of the bodies in her work that are violent/absurd or even theatrical create that adolescent social fear. As she has stated describing her own work:
“One of my favorite passages ever written was in Proust's "the Captive" (which I don't have with me, so I apologize, I must paraphrase). Proust writes about kissing his girlfriend, about whom he has a constant jealous fear of infidelity - he is sure she is unfaithful to him and tells him lies. As he kisses her, he writes this beautiful passage about how limited we are in truly knowing another human being. His tongue can penetrate his girlfriends mouth, enter her body, but even there is a wall - the roof of the mouth, the back of the throat, which prevents him from truly becoming one with her, truly knowing her.”
Proust is describing a heterosexual situation, but I think this work in particular by Sue De Beer questions every possible relation including friendships and family relations. Regardless of closeness to another person (sexually, emotionally or both), there will always be an existential contradiction in truly knowing that person. A same sex relationship (again regardless of type) may hold more truth of knowing each other, just because of the simple knowledge of the various functions of each other’s bodies. Other works by De Beer also exemplify this tension. In Making Out With Myself, De Beer is doing the physical impossible with a "mirror" twin. Narcissism does not really come to mind here, because of the same absurdity found in her violent dipiction of teenagers. It is just another imaginative but blunt reminder of limitations Some of her portriats of teenagers might not have the same bluntness or theatrics as her other work, but they certainly demonstrate naïveté of the "other."
“One of my favorite passages ever written was in Proust's "the Captive" (which I don't have with me, so I apologize, I must paraphrase). Proust writes about kissing his girlfriend, about whom he has a constant jealous fear of infidelity - he is sure she is unfaithful to him and tells him lies. As he kisses her, he writes this beautiful passage about how limited we are in truly knowing another human being. His tongue can penetrate his girlfriends mouth, enter her body, but even there is a wall - the roof of the mouth, the back of the throat, which prevents him from truly becoming one with her, truly knowing her.”
Proust is describing a heterosexual situation, but I think this work in particular by Sue De Beer questions every possible relation including friendships and family relations. Regardless of closeness to another person (sexually, emotionally or both), there will always be an existential contradiction in truly knowing that person. A same sex relationship (again regardless of type) may hold more truth of knowing each other, just because of the simple knowledge of the various functions of each other’s bodies. Other works by De Beer also exemplify this tension. In Making Out With Myself, De Beer is doing the physical impossible with a "mirror" twin. Narcissism does not really come to mind here, because of the same absurdity found in her violent dipiction of teenagers. It is just another imaginative but blunt reminder of limitations Some of her portriats of teenagers might not have the same bluntness or theatrics as her other work, but they certainly demonstrate naïveté of the "other."
Talking about Sturtevant’s work is often ethically unsettling. Not from the conceptual point of copying another artist’s work, but because the lack of authenticity questions the very root of the works reality. Is a copy, regardless of how perfect, really the same as the original? But in spite of these interesting contemporary questions, the play of politics will always way heavy on the credibility of the work.
Sturtevant’s earlier work was often copies of the famous contemporary male artists of that day. Big names like Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, or Joseph Beuy are just a few of her “subjects.” Total copies are not new, so it isn’t just appropriation art from the height of the postmodern era. Nor does Sturtevant claim herself to be a pop artist imitating mass culture. If authentic identity were being messed with here, then her use of male artists would question the power of capitalism in the male identity.Sturtevant takes it even farther in her later work by copying not just male artists but contemporary female artists. Since presenting a copy of someone’s work could be a ethical challenge to most museums and no doubt America is a commercially saturated world, it isn’t difficult to understand the harsh reaction by some even closely knitted in the art community. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I think her work is not solidly based in identity or politics. For example, her copy of Gonzalez-Torres’ Go-Go Dance is hardly anything thing more than a production of the specifics Gonzalez-Torres puts into his conceptual installations/performance works. I don’t think this really hurts Gonzalez-Torres’ work. It seems to still promote the same ideas, regardless of who is appropriating it.
Sturtevant’s earlier work was often copies of the famous contemporary male artists of that day. Big names like Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, or Joseph Beuy are just a few of her “subjects.” Total copies are not new, so it isn’t just appropriation art from the height of the postmodern era. Nor does Sturtevant claim herself to be a pop artist imitating mass culture. If authentic identity were being messed with here, then her use of male artists would question the power of capitalism in the male identity.Sturtevant takes it even farther in her later work by copying not just male artists but contemporary female artists. Since presenting a copy of someone’s work could be a ethical challenge to most museums and no doubt America is a commercially saturated world, it isn’t difficult to understand the harsh reaction by some even closely knitted in the art community. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I think her work is not solidly based in identity or politics. For example, her copy of Gonzalez-Torres’ Go-Go Dance is hardly anything thing more than a production of the specifics Gonzalez-Torres puts into his conceptual installations/performance works. I don’t think this really hurts Gonzalez-Torres’ work. It seems to still promote the same ideas, regardless of who is appropriating it.
