Survey

THINGS WORTH REMEMBERING 2012















REMEMBERANCE

Octavio Zaya is a writer, curator and editor based in New York since 1978. He is director of ATLANTICA journal (Centro Atlántico Arte Moderno, CAAM), and curator-at-large at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC), Spain. What follows are his Things Worth Remembering for 2012:



WHAT REMAINS...


Despite the broad dissatisfaction spreading everywhere through the drought-ridden fields of our so-called democracy, and even though we are weighed down by the ever more pervasive evidence of cultural leveling - from the globally standardized economic influence on art trends and priorities to the terrifyingly uniform opinions we find in contemporary culture - we have managed to pull out a few exemplary works and remarkable events in the past year that have brought us much hope within this ever-spreading sea of disquiet, and helped pull contemporary art from the brink of irrelevance.



La Triennale 2012: 'Intense Proximity'






This monumentally ambitious triennial had as its organizing premise the assumption that distances are collapsing between the near and the far, the visible and the invisible, or, more precisely, between the colonizer and the colonized. Such was the basic framework in which "Intense Proximity" unfolded: in Enwezor’s words, "The degree of nearness in which cultural, social, and historical identities and experiences share and coexist within the same space, while exposing the fault lines of cultural antagonism." While the exhibition was grounded in the production of contemporary artists, one of its central and more engaging curatorial efforts was devoted to the critical legacy of French ethnography in the first half of the 20th century. Reflecting upon such legendary figures as Marcel Mauss, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Leiris, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Marcel Griaule, this colossal event featured more than one hundred contributors across a range of disciplines and interests, including artists, filmmakers, photographers, writers and even institutions. As a whole, "Intense Proximity" was nothing less than a curatorial speculation on the relationships and exchanges between ethnographic poetics and modern and contemporary art; a challenging reflection on enriching cultural and political transferences and implantations beyond difference.


Details: April 20 to August 26 at multiple venues, Paris. Curated by Okwui Enwezor with Mélanie Bouteloup, Abdellah Karroum, Emilie Renard and Claire Staebler. Image Credit: Rirkrit Tiravanija - Fear Eats the Soul (2012), installation view, La Triennale, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2012, Photo André Morin, courtesy the artist and La Triennale, Paris.



Michael Haneke, Amour






We have seen too many films, and have read too many stories, about failed love, but I believe this is my first about a love lived out until its last days. I'm not going to tell you the whole story. But I think you should know that, for me, there was no other film that came close to this one in 2012, perhaps in many years. Amour is a simple film with great depth of emotions. Unusually for Haneke, what inspired the story was autobiographical: the suicide of his aunt. The narrative centers on Anne and Georges, a couple in their early 80s, who are retired music teachers with a daughter living abroad. When Anne suffers a stroke that paralyses her on one side of her body, we watch her husband tending to her as she faces the final stages of the ensuing dementia. Haneke portrays the suffering as unflinchingly as possible, so as to make sure he achieves and projects true compassion.



Chantal Akerman, Almayer's Folly






Almayer's Folly is a loose adaptation of Joseph Conrad's overlooked debut novel of the same name. It plays with numerous ideas, from colonialism to racism to identity, through the attentive eye for which Akerman is well known - although this time we are facing a somewhat heavier than usual story. From beginning to end, Akerman holds our attention, even though the work is rather elliptical and intricate. Nevertheless, Akerman's great new work is not so much about the complex melodrama of its somber story's forbidden love as it is about being caught in a suffocating mental environment. Even when we can't access or understand what the characters are going through, this tension created between knowing and opacity allows Akerman to get us closer to Almayer's madness, and the place where, we suspect, the unconscious works.



'Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974'






It seemed provocative to propose an exhibition of art that operates within the actual landscape, but the MoCA show managed to expand our understanding of Land Art as it has been conventionally considered to date. Beyond the exclusively American territory represented by the iconic works of Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson and Walter de Maria, this major survey showed Land Art to be a more heterogeneous and experimental set of practices, articulated and proliferated around ideas of nature and land, and a more international development, with relevant works in Japan, South America and Europe. De Maria and Heizer were not even included in the exhibition, supposedly because some of their major works were produced after 1974. The curators went so far as to entertain the stimulating notion that Land Art was a museum and gallery-based phenomenon, offering us several examples for this assertion, while assembling a remarkable exhibition that approached the subject with an expansive and internationally inclusive vision.


Details: May 27 to September 3 at the Geffen Contemporary at MoCA, Los Angeles; October 11 to January 20, 2013, at Haus der Kunst, Munich; curated by Philipp Kaiser and Miwon Kwon. Image Credit: Installation view at Haus der Kunst, photo Maximillian Geuter.



Pierre Huyghe, Untitled, at documenta 13, Kassel






...The discovery of a marijuana plant, a couple of emaciated dogs silently striding up beside you, a human being who was at once indifferent and vigilant . . .There seemed to be no certain point at which this world/compost began and ended. Pierre Huyghe's environmental creation was a discovery trip, and an ongoing hallucination not so different from a Tarkovsky film. Penetrating outwards, it took hold of you, rendering you helpless. . .Huyghe created the entire site (with bushes, a beehive, a mountain of ants, Beuys' fallen oak tree, etc) within the environment of the Karlsaue Park, one of the main areas - and perhaps my favorite - at a dispersed and mostly disjointed documenta 13. Huyghe's site was rather big, with many layers of meanings and readings that unfolded while experiencing the place, and through your own engagement with the "live entities and inanimate things, made and not made" (subtitle of the work).


Image Credit: Photo ART iT.



Lara Almarcegui, 'Madrid Subterráneo'





Almarcegui has been working within the borders between urban regeneration and decay, and devising exhibition projects that render visible what escapes our attention and even our awareness. Since the mid-1990s, she has been researching and studying the transitional spaces where the urban and the natural orders meet: the processes of urban planning and transformation of the peripheral wastelands of the cities brought on by economic, social or political interests and changes. At the same time, she has been analyzing urban and architectural landmarks and features that we hardly notice or upon which we rarely, if ever, focus our consideration. Operating as an archeologist of the present, conducting field research, Almarcegui documents her investigations by way of guides, maps and brochures, in an effort to concentrate on marginal elements or areas within the complexity of our urban reality, revealing the connections that inform us about the relationship between our past and our future. Likewise, in deconstructing buildings and other landmarks and constructions, Almarcegui unravels our understanding of inhabiting, by showing the inarticulate, bare materials of which the buildings are, or uncovering the products of recycling that they use and that they themselves, in turn, end up being, to get us closer to the inherently entropic nature of civilization. Ultimately, these works connect the outdoors with the indoors, and the inside with its awareness of itself, in a dialectical process of knowledge. In Madrid, Almarcegui included a publication that revealed what lies beneath the ground of the city, usually unknown to all except urban planners and architects: the historic and archeological layers of Madrid, its transportation networks and its energy grids, its water pipes and its communication lines. . .


Details: June 28 to October 28 at Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo (CA2M), Madrid, curated by Manuel Segade. Image Credit: Courtesy Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo.



Lars von Trier, Melancholia






Even though I should admit that most of my friends felt this was just a clunky, tiresome film, at every turn, I begged to differ. Even if you could not find passion in this apocalyptic scenario, you cannot deny the arresting, dramatic, and provocative imagination of the film. And this for me is already an achievement amid the formula-induced and numbing boredom we must suffer every time we have to endure a commercial film. Whether it is pretentious or "faux" is irrelevant. How many works of contemporary art would escape that judgment? Perhaps it surrendered to romanticism, which, for von Trier himself, is the lowest of cinematic common denominators; yet, ultimately, this is a great work of a depressed man, grappling with a savage despair within, who might believe that "Life on Earth is evil." Perhaps you might roll your eyes at the implausibility of the physics and of the film script, but none of that will take away from me the magic of this absorbing and hypnotic film.


Aïm Deüelle Lüski, 'Residual Images. Documentary Photography in Dark Times'






Since the 1970s, Aïm Deüelle Lüski has invented a wide range of different cameras, each one specially designed to document a given phenomenon or event at a specific moment in time: "I work more like a painter than a classical photographer," says this masterful Israeli photographer. He has built over 30 different cameras, because, for him, documenting reality is not a mechanical process, and each and every situation calls for a different approach. These cameras have helped him answer the questions he raises every time he is about to take a photo: What is the best tool for a specific situation? What is it that he should use to convey to the viewer the certainty that he was really there, with all his senses, invested in a reality that is as elusive and incommensurable as is Israeli life today? For me, this exhibition was one of the unexpected jewels of the year.


Details: October 25 to January 13, 2013, at La Virreina-Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona, curated by Ariella Azoulay. Image Credit: Double staircase wooden camera, courtesy La Virreina-Centre de la Imatge.



Kader Attia, Repair from Occident to Extra-Occidental Cultures, at documenta 13, Kassel






Assuming the roles of a historian, an archaeologist, an ethnographer and an anthropologist, Kader Attia set up a collection of objects, utensils, sculptures, documents and films to show us how societies and cultures survive, rebuild, and transform themselves while engaging, responding and relating to one another and, in the process, learning from each other.
On the one hand, we encounter the devastating onslaughts of colonization and the imperial war machinery, its appropriation of natives' experiences and cultures, and the ways the latter repair themselves from this catastrophic encounter. Facing this display, on the other hand, we examine the terrible effects of Europe's Great War and the modern advances of "restorative" medicine and plastic surgery. The result is not only a simple constellation of different contexts but also the comparative display of two fundamentally different instances of human existence. Through these juxtapositions and encounters of disjoint and parallel realities, Attia built a narrative of relations and connections to expose the complexities of our influences and our exchanges, our copying and our appropriation of ways and means for change, reparation and survival. Attia developed an ambitious work that served to create the possibility of "face-to-face encounters between Western and Outer Western worlds, at emblematic times, cruel or glorious, of their history." Beyond these juxtapositions, the work sought to present a reading of existences through universalities, instead of what Attia understands as the stereotypical "bipolar confrontation between West and Outer Western worlds."


Image Credit: Photo ART iT.



'Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life'






Even for those of us already familiar with established figures such as David Goldblatt, Guy Tillim, Santu Mofokeng and Roger Ballen; South African photojournalists, including Peter Magubane, George Hallett, Ernest Cole and Gideon Mendel; and others who participated in the legendary Drum magazine; this immense, historical and breath-taking exhibition goes well beyond any previous presentation of South African photography to focus its attention and its exceptional research on the legacy of the Apartheid system and the history of oppression and resistance in South Africa, documenting the atrocities and absurdities of life in the Apartheid era, and how that system penetrated even the most mundane aspects of South Africa's economic, social and political existence. Through some 500 pictures, films, magazines and related ephemera, this monumental exhibition documents how photographic output exploded after the institution of Apartheid in 1948, especially in the contested spaces of South Africa's cities, and how quickly South African photography was transformed from an ethnographic practice to an engaged and activist one. At times heroic, at times overwhelming, this engrossing exhibition expounds a complex understanding of photography and the aesthetic power of the documentary form, while celebrating the remarkable achievements of South African photographers. The exhibition also includes the works of outsider artists, such as Hans Haacke and Adrian Piper, whose contributions helped expose the evils of Apartheid and support the international struggle against it.


Details: September 14 to January 6, 2013, at the International Center of Photography (ICP), New York, curated by Okwui Enwezor and Rory Bester. Image Credit: Alf Khumalo - South Africa goes on trial. Police outside the court. The whole world was watching when the three major sabotage trials started in Pretoria, Cape Town and Maritzburg. Outside the palace of Justice during the Rivonia Trial (1963), courtesy of Baileys African History Archive, © Baileys African History Archive.

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Things Worth Remembering 2012

Yuka Uematsu is a Curator at the National Museum of Modern Art, Osaka, and was Commissioner of Tabaimo's exhibition in the Japan Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011. What follows are her Things Worth Remembering for 2012:



The Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of March 11, 2011, is still not yet in the past, with "that day" continuing in the present progressive through the lives of those who were displaced from their homes, the relentless aftershocks and the nuclear crisis, among other concerns. Even if we cannot escape the threat of nature, is it possible that the judgment of the people handed down in year-end elections can add a full stop to these problems?




Installation view of "Warhol: Headlines" at Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/Main, 2012.


Anri Sala


Some 15 years since a full stop was placed upon the conflict in Bosnia Herzegovina, Anri Sala completed 1395 Days without Red, which takes the conflict in Sarajevo as its backdrop. This work was the centerpiece of the video installation that Sala installed across the axis of the Centre Pompidou's Galerie Sud exhibition space. No matter where one stood in the gallery, it was impossible to take in the full details of the images projected across the installation's five screens, each of which was positioned at a slightly different angle from the others. As the screens switched on and off, viewers constantly moved from right to left and then back to right again, like the children led by the Pied Piper of Hamelin. For his exhibition in 2011 at London's Serpentine Gallery, Sala had a saxophone player performing improvised sessions in the gallery, which served to link viewers, space and videos. This time, in place of the flute and the sax were the sounds from the 27-channel speaker installation attached to the ceiling and the images projected on the screens.
Interwoven into a lengthwise axis alongside the 43-odd minute long 1395 Days without Red were three other videos, Answer Me, Le Clash and Tlatelolco Clash, with music box sounds and the percussion of kinetic drum sculptures blending together in the space. Where the idea of "reading between the lines" applies to literature, in this case one had to "see the intervals" between each work. In 1395 Days without Red, a woman gathers her breath and then dashes through the streets of Sarajevo, uncertain whether she will be marked by snipers. Wearing a red coat, she has managed to survive the 1395 days of conflict without being targeted. Running through streets that appear safe, she finds a moment of relief in the shadows of buildings. The sight of her gasping for air after having dodged a sniper's bullet powerfully conveys what it means to be alive. The next moment, in the work Answer Me, we see the remains of the Cold War-era listening station on top of the Teufelsberg in Berlin, used by the Americans to intercept transmissions from the former Eastern Bloc; here, accompanied by the sounds of a drum, a man and a woman break up. In switching from one to the next across works variously filmed in Sarajevo, Berlin, Bordeaux and Mexico City, the historical, cultural and social contexts of each city are impressed upon the viewers, such that between each screen there is no space for forgetting. Adding to this the sight of the people coming and going on the streets of Paris visible beyond the windows of the exhibition space, the viewers could not help but follow the sounds and images into a reflection on history and memory, and their own positions. It is exciting to think about what Sala will do as the French representative at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, where in a unique arrangment he will be working with the German pavilion.


Details: May 3 to August 6 at Centre Pompidou, Paris.




Andreas Gursky


As a museum curator, I am always thinking about how to match works from the permanent collection with curated exhibitions, and how to display together works by artists who lived at different times and worked with differing methods. It was from this perspective that the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art's exhibition of Alberto Giacometti and Andreas Gursky was of deep interest to me.
It is well known that the Louisiana Museum is in possession of some of Giacometti's finest works. While Gursky's works were on view in a solo exhibition in a separate gallery, a corner of the collection gallery was set aside for a display of Giacometti bronzes alongside Gursky's large-format photographs, and this pairing of artists using completely different expressive methods was unexpectedly breathtaking.
As Isaku Yanaihara has written, "If Giacometti is not working for the people of his own age, neither is he doing so for that of coming generations. He makes sculptures that incite the ecstasy of the dead."* Giacometti's dimly glowing bronze sculptures command somewhere in their viewers a moment of silence, and lead to reflection about life and death. Displayed in the same space were works from Gursky's new "Bangkok" series focusing on the Chao Praya River, which is both the lifeline of Thailand and the face of Bangkok.
At first glance these photographs evoke Abstract Expressionist paintings, but carefully viewed up close, they give a glimpse - in the way that the oily run-off of Bangkok's social life changes color with the light, and in the trash floating in the river - into one extreme of the people's lives. As though in correspondence to Giacometti, time and history flow into and congeal in the surface of the river captured by Gursky's camera. Installed overlooking the snow-blanketed garden of the museum, the works by these two artists brought about a moment of beatitude.


Details: January 13 to May 13 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk.



Andy Warhol: 'Headlines'


The Warhol Foundation stirred up controversy after its announcement that it would be selling more than 20,000 works by Andy Warhol through the auction house Christie's, with the first such sale being held in November.
As many Warhol exhibitions as have already been organized, I would nevertheless like to commend as an excellent exhibition analyzing Warhol from a new perspective the Museum für Moderne Kunst's "Warhol: Headlines," which incorporated extensive research into the influence on Warhol's paintings and art of materials he cut out from magazines and newspapers, as well as archived photos and other documents.


Details: February 11 to May 13 at Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/Main.


*From Yanaihara's Giacometti to tomo ni (1969, Chikuma Shobo)

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Things Worth Remembering 2012

Chiaki Soma is the Program Director of the annual performing arts festival Festival/Tokyo. What follows are her things worth remembering for 2012:



The year since the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami has been one in which the distance between oneself and the disaster area or between oneself and Fukushima has flickered in and out of view across different gradations. As well, in the wake of resistance movements such as the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, it has been impossible to ignore smoldering international situations ranging from the intractable Syrian civil war and Israeli attacks on Gaza to the tense border disputes in East Asia. Moreover, escalating rightward shifts in politics not only in Japan but also across the world are creating rifts in communities and between generations. Under such conditions, what kind of antennae are artists extending to the world, and toward what signals; and what kind of questions are they asking about what they observe, and by what approaches are they responding to those questions?
As the organizer of the annual performing arts festival Festival/Tokyo (F/T), my stance toward such questions is embodied in the festival theme and in the work selections, so it goes without saying that for me the most important "Things Worth Remembering" of 2012 are the works that were presented at F/T. Nevertheless, here I will address below two works other than those from F/T.



Jérôme Bel & Theater Hora - Disabled Theater






The latest work by the French choreographer Jérôme Bel. Eleven performers, ages 18 to 51, all of whom are affected by Down Syndrome and members of the Swiss-based dramatic ensemble Theater Hora. Constituting what might be called a "professional disabled theater group," these highly experienced actors were performing at Bel's invitation. At stage left was a narrator who facilitated the performance by reading a series of instructions beginning with the phrase, "Jérôme Bel asked the actors to…" The performers would then initiate an action, one by one, in accordance with the absolute directives of the director, Jérôme Bel. "Enter the stage one by one and greet the audience"; "Facing the audience, introduce yourself"; "Explain about your disability"; "Do a dance"; one by one, each of the performers earnestly carried out these instructions.
That's the gist of the work, although the top-down directives were imploded by the individual charms of the disabled performers and their improvisations - of which it was impossible to tell whether they were intentional or not. At first it was impossible to feel anything more than repulsion for what seemed to be the all too common structure of the production as a kind of "freak-show display of pitiful disabled performers being manipulated by the director," but this was exactly the trap that Bel had set for the audience: as the performance continued, the power that each performer had as an "actor" to break through a given framework - as evidenced in the individuality and energy that exuded from their words and actions - emerged with tremendous potency. Even if this were something that could only be done by "disabled" people, the performance was successful in drawing out the inherent capabilities of the disabled performers to joyfully suspend that impassable distance between the majority in the audience who are considered "healthy" and the minority on stage who are categorized "disabled."
Many of the works that are now performed in theatres and at festivals in Europe feature minority figures such as immigrants, the disabled, children, the elderly and gays, while the audiences are primarily white, educated and elite. This structure has become surprisingly standard. While the minorities narrate their own marginality, the majority, steeped in some kind of pervading guilt, find catharsis. Ultimately, in such collusion between stage and audience, the distance between the two is only reinforced, with no actual effect on reality. A thrilling production, Jérôme Bel's Disabled Theater burst through this sense of false empathy.

Details: May 2012, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels. Image Credit: Photo Michael Bause, courtesy Jérôme Bel.



Lina Saneh & Rabih Mroué: 33 rounds and a few seconds






The latest work by Lina Saneh and Rabih Mroué, who are among the most respected artists not only in their native Lebanon but also across the Arab world. At the opening of this year's documenta 13, they presented the lecture-performance The Pixelated Revolution, incorporating footage of the Syrian civil war taken from YouTube. To the extent that this reflects their enthusiastic reception in the context of contemporary art, it also builds upon the fact that they have cultivated rich dramatic experience as playwrights and theatre directors, in addition to being excellent actors.
However in this new performance work there was not one performer on stage. Although not immediately evident from the title, 33 Rounds and a few seconds, this was a "social media network performance" about the mysterious suicide of a fictional activist/revolutionary/artist. On stage was a recreation of what appeared to be the study of the dead protagonist, with a computer still logged-in to a Facebook account that continued to receive updates in realtime, and a mobile phone that continued to receive SMS messages from friends unaware of his death, and an answering machine intermittently recording confessional messages from a woman. In other words, even if the protagonist is dead, the communication media he used in life continue to represent him. Projected onto a screen, the Facebook account fills up with messages from people offering their regrets, and eventually becomes the place where debate emerges about his mysterious death, with both rightists and leftists and people from all kinds of religions and races or artistic predilections commenting freely and responding to each other in turn. The discussion proliferates, peters out and then is abandoned. And then we are once again confronted with the silently articulate and profound absence of the suicide victim.
This work teases out an alternate reality of the still unsettled Arab world since the "Arab Spring," which many attribute to the prevalence of social media. Without any actual person appearing on stage, this work, which speaks only through media and is supported by an ingenious dramaturgy, is perhaps the most definitive critique yet of the world after the Arab Spring.


Details: July 2012, Festival d'Avignon 2012.



Although the above two works were the most memorable for me outside of those produced for F/T 12, there were several other encounters that I had over the course of the year. In Japan the most impressive were chelfitsch's Genzaichi ("Current Location," at Kanagawa Arts Theatre KAAT: Concept and Direction by Toshiki Okada) and Faifai's Anton, Neko, Kuri ("Anton, the Cat, Kuri," at nitehi works: Concept and Direction by Chiharu Shinoda). Presented as a fiction in which the artist, directly processing the changes he has felt over the year since the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, transforms our unease and emotional instability regarding the loss of control over varying aspects of daily life into words that have an almost unnatural sense of distance from this situation, the former sparked a kind of chemical reaction with the anxieties I myself held at the time, and deeply moved me. As for Faifai's Anton, Neko, Kuri, even as one was mesmerized by the excessively energetic and unique performances of the individual performers, this production was most exciting in the way that it found depth from a process of infinite differentiation of meaningless moments of everyday life.
Also held this year, the Dance Triennale Tokyo featured a nicely balanced presentation of unprecedentedly ambitious works. Amid a strong sense that the quality and number of the international dance performances at theatres has been declining over the years, Dance Triennale Tokyo has solidified its importance as an opportunity to see in Japan top level works, such as Alain Platel's Out of Context - For Pina and Yasmeen Godder's Love Fire, which simultaneously projected to viewers both the joy and the unresolved questions of dance itself. I sincerely hope that, notwithstanding the expected closure of the Aoyama Round Theatre (barring a reversal of the decision to close the theatre), this event can continue going forward.

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Things Worth Remembering 2012

I. International Exhibitions
II. Solo Exhibitions
III. Archives
IV. Performance

I. INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS

In 2012 there were numerous large-format international exhibitions organized across the world, from La Triennale in Paris to the 7th Berlin Biennial, the 11th Havana Biennale, Manifesta 9, documenta 13, to the 30th Bienal de São Paulo. In the Asia-Pacific region major events included the 18th Biennale of Sydney, the 9th Gwangju Biennale, the 6th Busan Biennale, the 8th Taipei Biennale, and the 9th Shanghai Biennale, while in Kiev a new international exhibition was inaugurated, Arsenal 2012, and in Japan we had the 5th Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale.


documenta 13






Among all the international exhibitions held this year, none attracted as much attention from visitors and media as documenta 13, held in Kassel, Germany. An estimated 860,000 people visited the exhibition over the course of its 100 days - a significant increase upon the previous edition's figures.
Installed as this edition's artistic director, Carolyn Christov-Barkargiev produced an exhibition oriented to the past, taking into account documenta's origins in post-war Kassel and its political and social commitment. This extended even to bringing participating artists to visit the remains of the Breitnau concentration camp at Guxhagen outside of Kassel, in order to impress upon them that Kassel still bears memories of its World War II past, and that the city's regeneration and reactivation from this burden is an essential part of documenta's context.
This deeply considered approach tied together the exhibition in an understated way, rather than as a forced theme. Even so, there were both successful and unsuccessful works using the past, memory and trauma as materials. Particularly problematic was Christov-Bakargiev's extension of the exhibition in Kassel to include events in Kabul (as well as in Banff, Canada, and in Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt). Inspired as it was by Christov-Bakargiev's close relationship with the Italian Arte Povera artist Alighiero Boetti, and the importance of Aghanistan to the latter's career, the production of events in Kabul and a special display of works by Afghani artists in Kassel did not convincingly alter the standard dynamics between the West and the other, art and society that apply to international exhibitions. Francis Alys's video Reel - Unreel, which was previewed at documenta and screened in Kabul, was a wonderful work, although the artist's small painting installed at a former bakery did not convey the same sense of physical necessity that one expects of him, while, even though Mario Garcia Torres's slideshow about Boetti's Hotel One in Kabul expressed an abiding admiration for Boetti, and was brilliantly executed, it did not definitively bring about a new understanding of the artist. In other words, where the relationship between Boetti and Afghanistan could have provided the basis for imagining a new relationship between Afghanistan and art, and helped close the gap between the exhibition visitors and Afghanistan, without providing an underlying possibility for participation and engagement, this gesture bordered upon producing an irresponsible perspective on the situation, one that might only reinforce the distance between the West and its imaginary others, art and political society. It is impossible to say what percent of visitors to Kassel also made it to the annex of documenta 13 held in Kabul, or to have any comment on the works that were displayed there other than to note the fact that they were indeed displayed. One can only hope that this activity in Kabul produced something that surpassed the relations between Afghanistan and art already generated by Boetti, and which could not have been appreciated in Kassel.
Similarly, in using the Untere Karlstrasse site of a planned mosque that was blocked by local protesters, Walid Raad's installation Scratching on Things I Could Disavow: A History of Art in the Arab World (2010-12), which presented a critique through both fact and fiction of the current expansion of contemporary art in the Arab world, and was produced with the support of several European cultural foundations, also touched upon the structures linking Europe and the Arab world. In that sense, for those artists who have been educated in the West and perhaps continue to live in the West and have grown accustomed to Western conventions of thinking, it was perhaps inevitable that they should make works responding to those expectations, as was also evident in Kader Attia's installation The Repair from Occident to Extra-Occidental Cultures.
On the other hand, corresponding to the ethos of the documenta exhibition, William Kentridge's The Refusal of Time attracted so many visitors that one had to line up for it first thing in the morning or else expect to spend time waiting in line. Similarly, although it was only presented during the documenta opening, Jérôme Bel's Disabled Theater was a profoundly stirring work. The lone artist from Japan, Shinro Ohtake created a new mixed-media installation, Mon-Cheri: A Self-Portrait as a Scrapped Shed, for the Karlsaue Park, where artists were asked to work with pre-fab vacation home structures. Even though the conditions of working with such standard and cheap materials did not initially seem promising, Ohtake and the other artists made numerous adjustments to the pre-fab structures to transform them into their own works. Also in the park were some of documenta's most talked about works, such as Pedro Reyes' Sanatorium, Sam Durant's Scaffold and Pierre Hyughe's Untitled. But Ryan Gander's contribution to the Karlsaue Park, Escape Hatch to Culturefield, with music evoking Emir Kusturica's Underground emanating from an escape hatch planted in the earth, was utterly disappointing.
With this 13th edition one began to see the limitations of the documenta project, which has to date been the embodiment of contemporary art's European conscience and ethics. It's as though the multi-cultural perspective brought to documenta 11 by Okwui Enwezor 10 years ago has returned part and parcel with this edition. That is to say, the exhibition is necessarily based upon a political correctness based upon a Eurocentric perspective designed to satisfy the European intellect.
On the other hand, in effectively creating an exhibition rooted in the local context, Christov-Bakargiev should be commended for avoiding the trap of cultural tourism. At the least she was successful in impressing upon the artists - by strengthening their physical experiences of the location through the visits to Breitnau - a bodily aspect of Kassel itself, while circumventing the lightweight attempts to link works and local context that so often appear at international exhibitions. In any case, compared to when documenta was inaugurated in 1955, we now live at a time when the potential for mobility and the circulation of information are exponentially greater than ever before, and yet, recognizing as with politics and economics that the current condition of contemporary art is inescapably centered upon Europe and the US, it is exactly in such an era that one can most appreciate the contradictions of attempting to make an "international" exhibition of contemporary art. Still, there is a gravitas to documenta that outweighs the more festival-style international exhibitions, and for the foreseeable future it is sure that once every five years, people will continue turning up at Kassel to see it.


Details: June 9 to September 9 at multiple venues in Kassel, Alexandria, Bamiyan, Banff, Cairo and Kabul. Image Credit: Shinto Ohtake - Mon-Cheri: A Self-Portrait as a Scrapped Shed (2012), installation view at the Karlsaue Park in Kassel, documenta 13. Photo ART iT.



Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale 2012






From its inception in 2000, the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale has pioneered a new approach to large-scale art festivals that integrates displays and special projects by artists with the collaboration of local communities and the use of ad-hoc infrastructure, with the goal of revitalizing rural areas affected by depopulation and aging. Over time, the Triennale has contributed numerous permanent works of art to the Echigo-Tsumari region, and fostered numerous interpersonal connections between artists, locals, volunteers who work as staff or guides and visitors from across the world.
This year's fifth edition of the Triennale continued to build on that existing model, starting with the inauguration of a new institution, the Echigo-Tsumari Satoyama Museum of Contemporary Art, Kinare, which hosted the first presentation in Japan of Christian Boltanski's massive installation No Man's Land, comprising scores of items of used clothing repeatedly picked up and dropped by a mechanized crane.
But if there was any reason to visit Echigo-Tsumari this year, it was certainly the opportunity to step inside the mind of one of Japan's most influential critics and curators, Yusuke Nakahara, who died in 2011. In the gymnasium of a former school building high up a mountainside, the artist Tadashi Kawamata created an immersive library structure, evoking the shape of a head, to house Nakahara's personal library. Perusing the catalogues and monographs of artists and movements ranging from Eva Hesse to Kazimir Malevich and Italian Futurism provided insight not only into the concerns of a unique thinker, but also into a bygone era of cultural flows and critical positions.


Details: July 29 to September 17, 2012, multiple venues in the Echigo-Tsumari region of Niigata. Image credit: Tadashi Kawamata - Nakahara Yusuke Cosmology (2012), installation view at the International Art Network Center (CIAN), Echigo-Tsumari. Photo ART iT.



9th Gwangju Biennale






After Massimiliano Gioni's masterful organization of the 8th Gwangju Biennale, "10,000 Lives," in 2010, this year's edition of the Biennale, "Roundtable," directed by a team of six curators, had an undeniable sense of incoherence. Conceived as a democratic roundtable favoring a loose structure over direct results, the resulting exhibition was plagued by that very same sense of looseness, leaving only a vaguest sense of actual collaboration.
Even appreciating the fact that each curator was in charge with her own thematic section, the most damaging aspect of the Biennale for viewers was that in terms of the installation and curatorial approaches, there was no ultimate consensus. Even though all the members of the curatorial team agreed to the idea of leaving the Biennale Hall as it was from the previous year's Gwangju Design Biennale, it seems there was still some internal discord, with some curators apparently requesting for adjustments to the space. Whatever the veracity of these rumors, the structure of exhibition space was decidedly chaotic. With the double structure of Hall 2, it was too bright to for some video works, and too dark for others, leading to grumblings among participating artists assigned to the space. Having minimal significance to viewers, the distinction in the work description texts of which curator had selected which artists came across only as a gesture to satisfy the curators' egos, without offering any deeper understanding of the different sections of the exhibition.
Where there was no consensus in the curation, this also made it difficult to understand the exhibition's position on contemporary art. From a documentary on Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra to a slideshow of photographs taken by the Russian philosopher and French expatriate and diplomat Alexandre Kojève, Alexandre Kojève as a Photographer, presented by Boris Groys, the overall contextualization of the Biennale had no firm basis, instead incorporating each curator's individual judgment, and one can only assume that perhaps there was no discussion at all on the important issue of what the comprehensive perspective of the exhibition should be.


Details: September 7 to November 11 at multiple venues in Gwangju. Image Credit: Rasheed Araeen - The Reading Room Gwangju (2012). Photo ART iT.




6th Busan Biennale






Entitled "Garden of Learning," this year's Busan Biennale was organized by Roger Buergel, the artistic director of documenta 12 in 2007. Disheartened by the phenomenon of curators parachuting into international exhibitions without developing any connection to their local contexts, Buergel developed his exhibition over the course of an extended stay in Busan, and through the organization of councils of Busan residents to discuss ways to deepen the Biennale's connection to its host city. More than a theme, "Garden of Learning" became a method for producing the exhibition, admirably breaking new ground in the conventions of international exhibition making to date.
On the other hand, the exhibition in itself was lacking in visual appeal. Even where works such as Tadasu Takamine's Japan Syndrome in Yamaguchi Version (2012), Mathias Poledna's A Village by the Sea (2011) and Andres Serrano's 70 in 7 (1993) were impressive, neither were these new commissions for the Biennale, while, despite the intents of the artists and underscoring the difficulties of commissioning programs, works produced in Korea inevitably felt a bit too similar - a problem also encountered at documenta 13.
In other words, there was the sense of discrepancy between curatorial intent and practice. In this regard the presentation at the press conference by a high-school-aged member of the local councils addressing the Biennale was most surprising. If such experimentation is sustainable, perhaps there could be a new way for Biennale's to relate to their local constituents other than through urban regeneration grounded upon cultural tourism. In that sense even though this year's Biennale was a small and somewhat underwhelming exhibition, it still produced a new possibility for the future. While it was not a definitive success, and somewhat confused for viewers the exhibition concept and structure, the invitation to nine young Korean curators to organize their own small exhibitions as part of the overall Biennale, in a section titled "Out of Garden," also embraced the long-term perspective of supporting the next generation of curatorial practice.


Details: September 22 to November 24 at multiple venues in Busan. Image Credit: Tadasu Takamine - apan Syndrome in Yamaguchi (2012). Photo ART iT.

II. SOLO EXHIBITIONS



Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos






A large-scale survey for the German artist Rosemarie Trockel. As suggested by the title, Trockel went so far as to extend her hand to curation, in collaboration with Lynne Cooke, in order to better reflect her worldview through the works of other artists who have influenced her, as well as objects and ephemera. Yet so effectively was this carried out that it often was impossible to tell what was by Trockel and what not. From zoological studies of flamingos to crab specimens and an old Russian animation about insects, the presentation of materials from the natural sciences alongside works by Trockel underscored the artist's eccentric and yet uniquely enthusiastic interests, perspective and humor.
In one room there were Trockel's knit paintings next to knit sculptures by the American artist Judith Scott, who was affected by Down Syndrome and deaf-mute. Scott wrapped everyday objects into cocoon-like works. With these knit sculptures next to Trockel's minimalist knit paintings, the significance of knitting as an artistic method and of thread as a material came into sharp relief. Although they were not on display, Trockel's early knit paintings addressed almost masculine themes, in consideration of which one can see the multiple possibilities of a method that is generally considered to be feminine craft.
Where at first glance Trockel's works traversing numerous materials and methods might appear fetishistic, in being displayed with the works and objects that influenced them, they not only reflect a unique worldview, but also can be intuitively grasped as reflecting an openness to identification with diverse artists and viewers. Even if Trockel's worldview is not easily understood, it inspires free thinking. Another room with the artist's self-produced publications consolidated this world of order and consistency (a cosmos) into a single form. Following last year's retrospective of Alighiero Boetti, this is also notable as the last of a series of wonderful exhibitions that have been organized by Lynne Cooke at the Reina Sofia, from which she is departing.


Details: May 23 to September 24 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, touring to the New Museum, New York and Serpentine Gallery, London. Image Credit: Installation view. Photo ART iT.



Yang Fudong: Quote Out of Context






The inaugural exhibition of the Shanghai branch of the Shenzhen-based institution, with video installations on one side of the entrance and photographs on the other. The photographs presented almost all of Yang's works to date in chronological order, with portrait works in the center of the installation particularly worthy of attention. Shot at the Shanghai Park Hotel (Guoji Fandian), these photographs captured the indescribable malaise of women lounging about the nostalgic, tiled hotel pool, which dates to the 1920s. Suggesting moments clipped out from a film, these works were however not film stills from existing works, and were made as photographs, with the idea of stopped time.
The video installation was spectacular. Almost devoid of narrative, the installation is an experimental exploration of abstract film, with white objects resembling furniture and columns arranged on a large stage, upon which was projected by more than 30 projectors footage from Yang's previous video works. Needless to say, it was extremely difficult to follow the action in the footage projected upon the objects, with viewers continuously moving around the installation as they attempted to piece together the different fragments. But were the viewers looking at the videos, or at the objects? This installation is fascinating in Yang's attempt to break down the importance of narrative in his work to date, and promises exciting developments in the future.


Details: September 30 to January 3, 2013, at OCT Contemporary Art Terminal Shanghai. Image Credit: Installation view. Photo ART iT.



Jeremy Deller: Joy in People






A solo exhibition by Jeremy Deller, who has been selected to represent England at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. With installations including a recreation of "Open Bedroom" (1988-93), which Deller made in his student days by opening up his room in the home he shared with his parents, and My Failures (2004- ), with documentation of all the artist's unrealized projects from 2004 to 2012, this exhibition was memorable in its careful delineation of Deller's evolving practice to date.
As is apparent in his best known work, The Battle of Orgreave (An Injury to One is an Injury to All (2001), the video for which Deller collaborated with locals, including actual participants of the event, to recreate the violent clashes between police and protestors during a miners' strike in the titular town in 1984, Deller's works open up new perspectives on past events and incorporate mechanisms of communication between different people. In encouraging participation, Deller's works revive accounts of the past and take shape through oral recountings, which give them a stronger power than typical "participatory projects." Not only exhibiting a critical position toward debate, these works also use history to establish a positive outlook on understanding humanity itself. Far from cynical or opportunistic, his referencing of popular culture also addresses the possibilities that can emerge from within communities. The documentary Our Hobby is Depeche Mode (2006, made with Nick Abraham) follows Depeche Mode fan communities from across the world through interviews and footage that convey the symbolic meaning behind everything from costume play with family members to breaking the law in order to listen to the band in countries where listening to Western music is illegal. This positive interest in people is of course expressed in the exhibition title, "Joy in People."


Details: June 1 to August 19 at WIELS, Brussels. Image Credit: Installation view of "Joy in People" WIELS, Brussels. Photo ART iT.

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Things Worth Remembering 2012

III. ARCHIVES



Since the year 2000 there has been a notable increase in attempts both in Japan and beyond to review the art of the 1960s and '70s and to uncover the works of neglected artists. As social problems caused by economic imbalances have also become an increasingly important them in art, exhibitions in Europe dealing with the period around 1968 when art and social issues were indivisible, as well as with political resistance movements like the German Red Army Faction, have particularly stood out - in concert with the emergence of young artists making works based on or incorporating historical materials. In Japan what has been remarkable in this regard is that the tendency has been for young researchers to approach such material from an objective, historical perspective, as opposed to older peers recording the activities of their contemporaries. Contrasting with the rise of spectacular, large-scale exhibitions, one reason for this trend may simply be that archival exhibitions based on research into institutional collections, which can be produced on a tight budget, are a practical solution for museums suffering under budget cuts. While it is entirely laudable that such exhibitions are now a regular part of the art landscape, one also hopes that they can be used effectively along with continued exhibitions of contemporary artists.




Installation view of "Experimental Ground 1950s," part of "Art Will Thrill You! The Essence of Modern Japanese Art" at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 2012. Photo ART iT.


Chambres d'Amis: Collection Presentation


An exhibition that will remain in the history of contemporary art, "Chambres d'Amis" was organized in 1986 by Jan Hoet, who invited artists to produce and exhibit installation works outside of the museum at private homes across the city.
After the exhibition's conclusion some of the works were acquired by SMAK, where they were recently displayed in an exhibition of the same name as part of the citywide project "Track." However, putting into relief the difficulties of working with archives, even with Daniel Buren's recreation of the apartment in which he exhibited, the display in the museum radically departed from the original plan, raising questions about how to document events that occurred outside of institutions, and how to preserve works that depart from established formats of conceptual art.


Details: March 16 to November 4 at SMAK, Ghent.



A Year from Monday. 365 Days Cage


Beginning September 5, 2011, on what would have been John Cage's 99th birthday, and continuing for an entire year, this energetic project commemorating Cage's centennial provided a multi-faceted introduction to his works through concerts, exhibitions, performances and other events incorporating not only Cage's music and art works but also those of the artists who influenced him, as well as his friends and peers and his students. Although not directly related, this also extended to works strongly influenced by Cage, such as Tacita Dean's Merce Cunningham performs STILLNESS (in three movements) to John Cage's composition 4'33" with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007 (six performances; six films) (2007).


Details: September 5, 2011, to September 5 at Akademie der Künste, Berlin.



The Deconstruction of the "I": An Experiment by Kashihara Etsutomu


This was both a solo exhibition and yet not a solo exhibition, an archive and also an actual exhibition. The underlying idea of Etsutomu Kashihara's work has been to question what is art, and one can see through him that the interesting part about his brand of conceptual art lies in the artistic character that emerges, against his will, from the artist's attempt to deny his artistic character. In contrast to the participants of the museum's concurrent large-scale survey of young artists, "Real Japaneseque," who despite all the variety of materials they used were ultimately concerned only with a kind of self-exhibition, "The Deconstruction of the 'I'" left a strong impression in the way that Kashihara distanced himself from the urge to self-expression, working almost exclusively with paper and in a small space, even as he exercised detailed control over the display and catalogue. Along with the display of in the collection gallery of works by Yoshihisa Kitatsuji, Katsuro Yoshida and Jiro Takamatsu, this was an exciting opportunity to see one aspect of what artists in the 1970s were thinking about.


Details: July 7 to September 30 at the National Museum of Art, Osaka.



Experimental Ground 1950s


Organized as part of MOMAT's 60th anniversary festivities ("Art Will Thrill You! The Essence of Modern Japanese Art"), "Experimental Ground 1950s" was a deeply thought-provoking and carefully constructed depiction of not only the art but also the society and culture of Japan in the 1950s. Compared with the Museum of Modern Art Saitama's concurrent exhibition, "Japan in the 1970s: 1968-82," organized by curators who had lived through and wanted to recreate the atmosphere of the period they were addressing, this exhibition was organized by curators working from archival materials to produce an overview of the 1950s grounded in historical methodology, with the result that they were able to build a wholly new perspective on the era. Starting with Ken Domon's photographs of Hiroshima, the display began with the social realism that marked the start of the 1950s, and then, as suggested by the title, went on to consider new artistic forms of expression that developed as the decade progressed. In particular, the arrangement of displays of magazines and ephemera from the period alongside short films like Toshio Matsumoto's Long White Line of Record (1960) provided a strong sense of the inter-disciplinary experimentation taking place at the time. In this sense it is unfortunate that there was minimal English text prepared for the exhibition, which would have opened this impressive research up to international visitors, which is surely what one would expect of one of Japan's national art museums.


Details: October 16 to January 14, 2013, at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

IV. PERFORMANCE


From the launch of the performance art biennale Performa in New York in 2004 to the production of the art on stage event Il Postino in 2007 and 2008 Yokohama Triennale, performance works have been receiving an increasingly high profile in the context of contemporary art. This year was no different. With Tino Sehgal creating projects for documenta 13 and the Tate Turbine Hall, and Jérôme Bel collaborating with the dramatic ensemble Theatre Hora to create the performance Disabled Theater, while for Festival/Tokyo Jean Michel Bruyère converted the entire Nishi-Sugamo Arts Factory into a concentration camp, the convergences between visual arts and theatre were memorable.



The Tanks at Tate Modern, London






Unveiled on July 18, the Tanks is Tate Modern's dedicated space for performance art, hosting not only installations and screenings but also performances by contemporary dancers such as Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker and Yvonne Rainer. The inaugural event featured Lis Rhode's Light Music (1975) and Suzanne Lacy's Crystal Quilt (1985-87), both from the Tate collection, as well as a newly commissioned site-specific installation by Sung Hwan Kim. The Tanks (the name deriving from the oil tanks used during the building's days as a power station) is ideal for presenting works for which sound is essential or which incorporate numerous media, and yet completely distinct from typical theatre spaces, adapting to the necessities of each new presentation. After the successful conclusion of its first season in October, the Tanks suggests a response to the long-standing questions about how to collect, preserve and exhibit performance art and films.


Image Credit: (Left) The Tanks at Tate Modern, Photo Tate Photography; (Right) Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's Fase: Four movements to the Music of Steve Reich at Tate Modern, 2012, Photo Hugo Glendinning, © Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker.



14 Evenings






This summer, while its collection galleries were undergoing renovations, MOMAT opened its rotating galleries for a special program of 14 events organized across 14 days. Focusing on forms of performance, these events included both new works and restagings of existing works selected from across the fields of art, theatre and music.
Regarding performance in the space of the museum, curator Kenjin Miwa was concerned primarily with two points. The first was the idea that in using performance to link art and its related fields, it might be possible to elucidate the commonalities between these fields, while also reflecting upon each field's defining characteristics. On the other hand, Miwa was also interested in the concept of the "score" in performance. While performance is distinguished by its ephemerality, materials such as scripts, musical notation, dance notation, notes and instructions are what preserve it in memory. Miwa had all the participants prepare scores in advance, which were compiled in a pamphlet for distribution. In so directly linking the score with its obverse, documentation, Miwa provided an alternate perspective for considering the ephemerality of performance. Considering the score as a documentation of a performance that has not yet been carried out, and documentation as a kind of retroactive score for a performance that has already happened, this initiative suggests one approach to dealing with performance works in museum collections.
Whatever misgivings one might have about whether this experimental program actually realized its goal of interdisciplinary dialogue, it is certainly worth continuing in some fashion.


Details: August 26 to September 8 at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. Image Credit: Satoshi Hashimoto (14 Evenings, 7th Nov 2012, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo). Photo Hideto Maezawa.



Festival/Tokyo 12






The programming of Festival/Tokyo only gets stronger with each year. Following last year's theme, "What can we say?", this year's edition was titled "Beyond Words." Why and how do people conform or respond to the self-restrictions that have been spreading in society since the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami? The program forcefully confronted audience members with the reality that they are both participants and observers, and yet never agents.
Aside from Jean Michel Bruyère/LFK's Le Préau d'un Seul, the successive staging of three plays by Elfriede Jelinek was powerful. Even with the difficulty of reading subtitles, director Jossi Wieler extracted a provocative and moving performance from the actors in Jelinek's Rechnitz (Der Würgeengel) (2008). Although it required one's full attention to keep up with the subtitles, this staging was presented in counterpoint to the documentary Wall of Silence (1994), by Eduard Erne and Margareta Heinrich, which investigates the massacre of Jews in the village of Rechnitz, and provided the inspiration for Jelinek's play. With the dialogue relentlessly unfolding on stage in the former, even the roles that the actors were playing became ambiguous, as did the "us" of the viewers being scrutinized from the stage.
There was also the reimaginging by Port B's Akira Takayama of the two plays Kein Licht (2011) and Kein Licht II (2012), both of which were written by Jelinek after March 11. The "us" addressed in these works is unambiguously we Japanese people. We are being addressed as both those who are implicated and yet also as those who are not. In the former, the repeated calling out of the different forms of "us" brings into relief the multiplicity and ambivalence of the word itself. In the latter, viewers were asked to wear a radio device, from which they received instructions for walking around the Shinbashi area, combining the sounds of the words with one's own experience of searching. Each location on this tour featured something like an installation, or rather a stage setting, in front of which viewers would tune their radios to the right frequency and then listen to the voices that emerged. Who is the "us" being addressed by the radio? One feels a distance from those voices, and yet, walking through the unfamiliar streets of Shinbashi, walking among the people who live there, one feels an intractable distance from those lives as well, so that ultimately one begins to depend on the "us" emanating from the radio.
Not only with the three plays by Jelinek, but with many of the other works at F/T12 as well, the audience was almost physically forced to question how we understand the existence of the "I." Even as fiction, these works carry with them the same problems born by contemporary society and history, and while they confront the expectations of the audience, they also ask the viewers to coolly recognize that they are not the actors. It's a blessing even to be able to see such productions, even as they elicit a complex feeling of both relief and yet a sense of responsibility at the realization they prompt that in contemporary society there is nothing so dangerous as to be merely an observer.


Details: October 27 to November 25 at multiple venues in Tokyo. Image Credit: Rechnitz (Der Würgeengel), script by Elfriede Jelinek, directed by Jossi Wieler. © Jun Ishikawa.

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Things Worth Remembering 2012

2011 will be entered into the annals as a year of historic convulsions. In terms of citizens and governments, society and art, media and spectacle, throughout the year numerous themes came and went, and then after disappearing, reemerged once more. Certainly in Japan, the events of the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster have been - in all senses of the word - shocking, and strongly color how the year will be remembered here.

Exhibited in January-March at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Simon Starling's Project for a Masquerade (Hiroshima) (2010-11) proved to be prophetic. Inspired by the British sculptor Henry Moore and the double-lives of his works Atom Piece and Nuclear Energy - the one intended as a symbol of peace, the other as a commemoration of nuclear development - the project recounted Cold War-era atomic energy machinations through the framework of Noh theatre. In its investigation of double identities and intrigue, and its delirious concatenation of images and reflections and images of images, Starling's work takes on yet another layer of meaning following Fukushima and the emergence of details about the power structures behind the disaster.

Similarly, amid concerns about how art can respond to March 11, the photographer Lieko Shiga both gives new significance to the meaning of art and also shows how inarticulate and inadequate the discourse of art can be in terms of how we relate to artifacts. In the wake of the tsunami, Shiga has been painstakingly washing photographs salvaged from the rubble of the rural community of Kitakama in northern Japan. As opposed to rhetoric, her actions are a sustained and immediate physical response to the almost irreconcilable issues about the meaning of those photographs.

In their thoughtfulness and patience, these two artists, Starling and Shiga, suggest a model for dealing with crisis. As part of our year-end special issue, we recognize them with in-depth features, accompanied by our survey of Things Worth Remembering and insight into the year just passed and the year ahead from two special contributors, Roger M Buergel and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, respectively, in Retrospect/Forecast 2011/2012.

- The Editors





THINGS WORTH REMEMBERING 2011










ARTISTS 2011










RETROSPECT/FORECAST 2011/2012

Things Worth Remembering 2011

Over the past 12 months, we at ART iT have gone from considering art as text with Danh Vo and Miranda July, and art as education with Wong Hoy Cheong and Toyo Ito, to thinking about approaches to locality with Kimsooja and Martha Rosler and identity with Cheyney Thompson and Mickalene Thomas, and from questioning the power of revolutions with Monica Bonvicini and Miwa Yanagi to identifying the constructions behind the practices of Anri Sala and Tadashi Kawamata, not to mention previewing the Venice Biennale, where many of these issues intersected at once. Amid the momentous events that have occurred this year, it is our sincere hope that these interviews, and the exchanges we have had with artists and thinkers who have generously shared their time and reflections, will provide something to build upon, both in the near future and in posterity, which is why we put so much effort into arranging and editing them. It is in that spirit - something to build upon - that we present our Things Worth Remembering for 2011.




'Camping and Tramping Through the Colonial Archive: The Museum in Malaya'





At a time when biennales, survey exhibitions, galleries, art fairs and even university degree shows have increasingly come to resemble each other, exhibition practice has reached a critical point. How can one articulate an idea through the arrangement of objects, information and experiences in space? And how can these materials be given a voice that expresses something beyond the fact of their existence?
While the curators of major institutional projects must confront the pressures of a production culture that demands efficiency and pragmatism, this concise investigation into the history and development of museological practice in Malaya, organized by Ahmad Mashadi at the National University of Singapore Museum, is a powerful statement of the potential of the "small" exhibition.
If his theme begins from a classic post-colonial academic position, Mashadi has transported stale critique to completely unexpected, and riveting, levels of physical and intellectual encounter. Interspersing anthropological, zoological and botanical specimens with cultural artifacts and monitors and projections of historical documentary footage as well as works by the artist and shaman healer Mohammad Din Mohammad, he has brought a diverse range of sources into a shared, contemporaneous space. Most effective is the arrangement of the glass cases containing the specimens along a slightly skewed central axis and in clusters within separate alcoves, such that viewed from certain angles the concatenation of glass surfaces distorts and refracts the space of the gallery itself, or reflects the flickering, faded images of forest aborigines at work or ceremonial galas with dancing royalty from the documentary footage, most of which was shot on 16mm film.
Here, revealed in Mashadi's sensitivity to the constantly shifting visual relations among things is a canny sympathy with both the subject of inspection - the position of the native, of the land, of the object - and with the one doing the inspecting - the anthropologist, the contemporary, the gallery visitor. Wrapping around a freestanding partition extending along one side of the gallery is a continuous wall text stitched together from various historical documents, such as official correspondence advocating the establishment of a natural history museum in Malaya or reports commenting on the success of the colony's participation in international exhibitions of Commonwealth territories. Engrossed by the text, which is arranged according to a complex reference system corresponding to additional sources, one literally stumbles through the development of the rationale behind the packaging and circulation of cultural knowledge, looking up to be shocked by an overhanging whale skeleton, or narrowly avoiding a low-lying vitrine with the parched skin of an elephant's head. Indeed, it was hard to read this willful delirium, conceived as a two-year, long-term display, as anything but a commentary on the aspirations of the concurrent Singapore Biennale, and other similar projects.

Details: January 13, 2011, to December 2, 2012, NUS Museum, Singapore. Image credit: Installation view at NUS Museum, photo ART iT.




'A Fateful Journey: Africa in the Works of El Anatsui'





Originating at the Hayama branch of the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama, this retrospective of the Ghana-born artist El Anatsui revitalized the majestic white cube space of the venue. Tracing his creative arc, the exhibition provided a rich structure through which to appreciate Anatsui's career as a sculptor: it was revelatory to see the early woodcarvings with pieces of aluminum attached to them which anticipate his use of salvaged materials and his signature metalwork tapestries made of bottle caps, foil and copper wire. At first glance, Wastepaper Basket (2004-10) appears to be made of discarded newsprint, but in fact it is made from the original newspaper printing plates, showing how through skillful manipulation familiar materials can be given unexpected properties. Aside from a large gallery with numerous tapestry works, a second gallery deeper into the museum was the showstopper. Utilizing the natural light of this room, the work Gli (Wall) (2009) was installed such that the transparency of the weaving and the fabric-like drapeline of the aluminum were displayed to full effect.
While Anatsui's works have appeared in numerous international survey exhibitions, this was a rare chance to appreciate the special qualities of the tapestries together in one group. What became evident from this presentation was that the way these works change depending on whether they are viewed up close or from afar, inviting viewers to determine their own diverse approaches, develops from a rigorous investigation into the potential of sculpture.
Yet the exhibition also harbored some problematic issues. Because it was organized in collaboration with the National Museum of Ethnology, it included not only Anatsui's works, but also representations of culture in the artist's native Ghana and his current home of Nigeria, introduced after the exhibition proper as contextual material. Certainly the display showed how Anatsui's works are grounded in African culture and the developments of the era of his youth during the wave of African independence movements, but whether this attempt to read Africa through Anatsui, and Anatsui through Africa, was absolutely necessary, or simply patronizing, is highly debatable.
The National Museum of Ethnology's Yukiya Kawakuchi addresses this concern in his text in the exhibition catalogue, sincerely outlining his reasoning for why it is necessary to provide cultural context. But certainly if the situation were reversed, and an international institution attempted to read Japan, or rather Asia, through the work of a single Japanese artist, it would be a difficult premise to support. These are issues that become increasingly relevant, and yet increasingly complex, amid the increasingly global circulation of art.

Details: Originated February 5 to March 27 at the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama; toured April 23 to May 22 at Tsuruoka Art Forum, and July 2 to August 28 at the Museum of Modern Art, Saitama. Image credit: Installation view at Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama, photo ART iT.




Taryn Simon, 'A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters


Taryn Simon is known for series such as 2007's "An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar" and 2003's "The Innocents," produced after intensive research and deploying the interactions between documentary photography, captions and text to bring to light the political and social issues that lie behind the creation of images.
Exhibited at Tate Modern, this latest project was realized over the course of four years, during which time the artist traveled the world to visit a total of 18 "bloodlines," recording the members of these families and their related stories. Each of the 18 multi-panel works takes the form of a main panel or group of panels with portraits of the members of each bloodline; a secondary panel with text information and captions listing the names, birthdates and occupations of everyone depicted; and a third panel with photos of objects, places, documents and figures related to the bloodline's story. Each bloodline thus forms a chapter in a story that is gradually revealed through the interplay of text and image, and each chapter is structured in highly systematic fashion. For example, the bloodline photographs are all shot against neutral backgrounds, evoking identity portraits, and the members of each bloodline are all ranked in order from oldest to youngest.
The first chapter, which also gives the project its name, takes place in Uttar Pradesh in India, and follows a family in which four of its members have been officially declared dead. Another chapter investigates the progeny of the governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland, with many of them requesting that their names and images be withheld, replaced with blank backgrounds. Simon also visits among others a Druze family in Lebanon, who believe in reincarnation, with the same portraits appearing in multiple points along the lineage; and she a family in Brazil that is engaged in a deadly feud with another family, their mutual resolution of grievances through blood a tacit condemnation of the absence of law enforcement and appeal for justice.
Through each of the 18 chapters, the territorial disputes, power struggles and historical, religious, cultural and science-related issues of different points across the globe are thrown into sharp relief. The project is accompanied by an 867-page, large-format catalogue, which no doubt expands upon the full details of each bloodline and the story as a whole. However, in presenting this project in the space of an exhibition, Simon confronted viewers with the fact that the issues addressed in each chapter are universal even as they take unique form in specific localities. It is a powerful statement by the artist.

Details: May 25, 2011, to January 2, 2012, at Tate Modern.




Edward Kienholz, Five Car Stud 1969-1972, Revisited





Organized by LACMA, this exhibition was the first in 38 years - as well as the first ever in the United States - for Edward Kienholz's seminal large-scale installation Five Car Stud, produced over three years from 1969 to 1972.
The work in fact is deeply connected to both LACMA and Japan. It was originally intended for an exhibition of Los Angeles artists at London's Hayward Gallery organized in 1971 by Maurice Tuchman, the curator who had overseen Kienholz's 1966 retrospective at LACMA. However, proving too expensive to ship, it was not included in the show. It finally made its debut in 1972 in Harald Szeemann's Documenta 5, and toured Germany, before being acquired in 1974 by the Japanese company Dainichi Can, an affiliate of Dai Nippon Ink and Chemicals (now DIC), on the advice of sculptor Yoshikuni Iida. From that time on it remained in storage in Japan, although it was transferred to the collection of the DIC Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art when it opened in 1990.
This would amount to little more than fascinating art historical arcana if the work did not address such a deeply endemic American issue. At LACMA the work was installed in a spacious, darkened room coated in sand, with the headlights of a ring of four cars and a fifth pickup truck illuminating the figures of several white men assaulting a single black man. Upon entering the room, viewers tread gingerly upon the sand, gradually discerning the figures upon approaching the site of the lynching. With the darkness of the room and the proximity of the viewing experience, the violence of the scenario comes across with imposing physical force.
Although the work does not cite any specific incident, it is significant that Kienholz used his friends and family in creating the molds for the figures, tacitly locating the terror and depravity he conjured within the very fabric of our most intimate selves and communities. Far from illustrating an episode of the past, in the context of the present Five Car Stud elicits reflection on the deep-rooted issues that still pervade social hierarchies.

Details: September 4, 2011, to January 15, 2012, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Image credit: Installation view at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Photo Tom Vinetz, © Kienholz, Collection Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art.




Alighiero Boetti, 'Game Plan'





Curated by Lynne Cooke, this large-scale retrospective of Alighiero Boetti successfully avoided the formula of chronological organization and biographical narrative (a modernist conceit with surprising resilience, as displayed in Tate Modern's current Gerhard Richter retrospective). Cooke placed and grouped each work in such a considered way that viewers could imagine what Boetti was thinking as he made them. With no wall texts, and descriptions gathered together in specific points, her installation privileged the experience of Boetti's works in space.
Here one could see where Boetti's interests lay at each phase in his career, from his start as a member of Arte Povera to his gradual distancing of himself from that movement, and his use of techniques such as classification, arrangement, archiving and word play. In particular, a room with assembled works from the distinctive "Mappa" (1971-94) series of embroidered world maps, executed with different color schemes and at different scales and production dates, revealed how over the years Boetti achieved a contemporaneous documentation of drastically changing geopolitics.
In light of current social upheavals, and with art increasingly equated with political action, one wonders how Boetti would respond were he still alive. With a practice rooted in drawing and making, and producing multiple series at a time, Boetti was no activist; he always lived as an artist, somewhat removed from politics. Having produced works in Asia at a time when the West was the center of contemporary art, and having commissioned works from craftsmen at a time when the hand of the artist was still a mark of authenticity, Boetti was distinguished by his unique sense of autonomy through collaboration, and it is this spirit of communal independence that is worth emulating even now.
Without directly commenting on politics and society, this exhibition's presentation of works that anticipated the contemporary art of today (what was then the future) reconsiders what an artist is or can be. At the same time, it is a potent reminder of the ability of a curator to bring an artist's works to life.

Details: October 5, 2011, to February 5, 2012, at the Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Image credit: Installation view at Reina Sofía, photo ART iT.

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Things Worth Remembering 2011

Erimi Fujihara is an art critic, writer and translator based in Tokyo. What follows are her Things Worth Remembering of 2011:




Asked about my Things Worth Remembering of 2011, above all else there is the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. In this island nation at the far edge of the Far East, the reality that modern thinking has exploded past criticality constantly repeats itself. The days of groping in agony continue even now. Persistently concerned about what to say, or whether there is even anything that can be said, I have decided in recalling my experiences to proceed first from those Things Worth Remembering that occurred in the wake of the catastrophe.




Naoya Hatakeyama, 'Natural Stories'





A photographer who has researched the almost stifling relations between nature and humanity through an unflinching gaze, Naoya Hatakeyama was forced to confront the horrific sight of his hometown, Rikuzentakata [destroyed by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami]. What Hatakeyama captured in his early series "Limeworks" were the traces of how humanity relates to nature through a process of intrusion, destruction and exploitation. However, with this catastrophe, what Hatakayema had to confront was the unrelenting fact that nature, in its existence as such, never yields to man. Given this reality, just what photographer could even worry about the coherence of his expressive concept? In fact, it should be said that Hatakeyama's concept has been consistent throughout.
Among the works on display at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, what was most profound was Twenty-four Blasts 2011, which seems to have been produced prior to the earthquake. A video made by linking together frame-by-frame still images of explosions, the work was projected across an entire wall. Because they were not filmed in video, each image impressed itself onto the retinas with each successive moment. While looking at the work, images of the tsunami that had spewed forth from the media arose in my head. Both are phenomena that command a force so excessive it can rip apart the balanced state of material normalcy (on the one hand you have the man-made energy of the dynamite explosion, and on the other the destructive natural energy - at least for humanity - of the shifting tectonic plates).
Whatever Hatakeyama's original intents, it could be said that this is an example of how viewers' sensitivities can be altered by the experience of catastrophe. Hatakeyama has said that the blast technicians deeply understand the "nature" of rocks. Even now the natural world challenges us with the impassive force of that "nature." Displayed across from the photographs of Rikuzentakata, images of pastoral landscapes from along the nearby Kesengawa river, taken prior to the earthquake, led me to reconsider what had supported our modest routines to that point. I join my hands in remembrance of the many who lost their lives.
　
Details: October 1 to December 4, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. Image credit: Installation view of Twenty-four Blasts 2011 (2011), photo ART iT.



Shunji Iwai, Friends after 3.11





First aired October 1 on Sky PerfecTV, this documentary by the filmmaker and Sendai native Shunji Iwai centers around the director himself, along with his navigator, the actress Miyuki Matsuda, as they interview public figures including researchers, critics and filmmakers who had spoken out about nuclear energy issues even before 3.11, as well as celebrities who began to comment on such issues in the wake of the catastrophe. These include (producer and musician) Takeshi Kobayashi; (actor and anti-nuclear activist) Taro Yamamoto; (free journalist and critic) Takashi Uesugi; (scriptwriter) Eriko Kitagawa; (nuclear engineer) Hiroaki Koide; (teenage idol and entertainer) Cocoro Fujinami; (free journalist and writer) Yasumi Iwakami; (material resources engineer) Kunihiko Takeda; (technical designer) Masashi Goto; (former baseball player) Tetsuya Iida; (anti-nuclear writer) Yu Tanaka; (filmmaker and actress) Hitomi Kamanaka; (president of Johnan Shinkin Bank) Tsuyoshi Yoshiwara; and (founder of the suicide prevention NPO Lifelink) Yasuyuki Shimizu. However, in the film there is not a single explanation about the director himself or the backgrounds of the interview subjects. It communicates all angles of the catastrophe in a detached way.
Ultimately, is it actually possible the figures who appear in the film could be everybody's "real friends"? Even harboring such doubts, it is worth praising Iwai's form here, the director doggedly tracking down those people to obtain their commentary (they are simple interviews, yet it is for this reason that the manner of speech and narrative viewpoints of "those people" inevitably includes a reflection of their dignity). As one who was moved by the harshly critical anti-nuclear message Cocoro Fujinami posted to her blog just days after the catastrophe, I must simply note that I felt uneasy with the image of the young model, wearing a sailor suit and standing in the disaster zone, that concludes the film (maybe she wears sailor suits everyday, but I felt that in this case it was a performance of the cult of adolescent pathos that defines Iwai's movies).

Details: Premiered October 1, 12-2am, Sky PerfecTV; rebroadcast November 12, 7:30-9:30pm; Four-hour version scheduled for broadcast on CS Asahi Newstar from December 30.



Toshi Fujiwara, No Man's Zone





In making this documentary, Fujiwara entered the 20-kilometer-radius no-entry zone around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor just before it went into effect, and continued interviewing people living in the affected areas even after it was enforced. With narration in English by the Canadian actress Arsinée Khanjian, the film depicts the Fukushima landscape in early spring; the local victims of the tsunami who now reside in temporary shelters; those in the farming industry who, without ever benefitting from the reactor, were forced to move after the evacuation order; and masterless stray cattle and dogs. Despite its detached portrayal, through its exquisite camerawork by Takanobu Kato and score by Barre Phillips, the film communicates connotations that go beyond the words of its narration and interview subjects, a tacit message hidden within the restrained tone of its production.
It's just that. . .doesn't Fujiwara go a bit too far in portraying the beauty of the nature around Fukushima and the people who lived there? The film falls into the trap of discourse that connects agricultural society to Japan's primal landscape, the theories of Japanese exceptionalism (Japanese ethnology and Japanese nationality) that were fabricated following the Meiji Revolution. To what extent did the director extend his zone of interest to the dark sources of history? (On this point I wrote him directly, but I don't dare to relate the details of that exchange here. For the record, despite our common surname the director is no relation of mine). Perhaps due to his overly aggressive character, Fujiwara has no few enemies in Japan, but nevertheless this is one film that "the Japanese people" should see.

Details: Premiered November 25, Tokyo FilmEx international film festival; international premiere at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival.



Taro Igarashi, Hisaichi o arukinagara kangaeta koto
(Thoughts from walking the disaster zone)





Taro Igarashi is a professor in the Graduate School of Engineering at Tohoku University, which was severely damaged in the earthquake. Alongside photographs of that damage as well as those that he took over several months of tirelessly walking other disaster areas, this book collects texts by Igarashi that were published across various media channels. Writing from the position of architecture history and architectural critique, Igarashi exactingly deliberates issues like the problems affecting the different disaster areas and the possible approaches to administrating reconstruction.
In particular, the third chapter on Iwate prefecture's Taro area, "Memory," is fascinating. At Taro, even the triple shield of a double surge barrier more than 10 meters above sea level and an additional barrier on the inland side was unable to bear up under the tsunami. Igarashi writes: "One is reminded of Hajime Isayama's popular manga series Shingeki no kyojin (Attack on Titan, 2009- ) [in which humans are barricaded in giant walled cities due to attacks by gigantic, man-eating humanoids called Titans]…At first I read it as an allegory of Japan and the Self-Defense Forces during the Cold War, but after the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami occurred my understanding of the manga was completely changed." Protected from the attacks of the Titans by a triple barrier, and enjoying 100 years of tranquil living, humanity faces a threat to its continued existence after the appearance of an even more gigantic Titan, which crosses the barrier.
The limits of civil engineering lie somewhere between fiction and reality. Igarashi's photographs of the remains of the destroyed surge barriers along the seashore and the countless seagulls flying in the area depict a landscape that evokes the end-time of a world produced by the limits of modern technology. On March 11, I was attending the Tokyo press conference for this year's Yokohama Triennale at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Yurakucho. The tremors started just before the press conference was set to begin. Attendees were restricted from exiting the building for almost two hours; the three TV monitors installed above the reception continuously relayed new images from the disaster area. Birds fluttering in the air above the coast struck by the tsunami. Never before have I felt so envious of those glorious avians, free from the bounds of gravity. This memory vividly haunts me.

Details: Misuzu Shobo, Tokyo, 2011. Image credit: Misuzu Shobo.



Miwa Yanagi Theatre Project 1924: Tokyo-Berlin & Battleship



Battleship

Japan's representative at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, Miwa Yanagi has now turned to theatre in her planned drama trilogy 1924. Focusing on the historic Tsukiji Shogekijo theatre and the activities of the artist group MAVO, this ambitious work investigates the trajectory of the reception in Japan of modernism in the form of avant-garde theatre and art brought from Europe.
Entitled Tokyo-Berlin, the first part departed from the Moholy-Nagy exhibition held July-September at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, where a room in the museum's collection galleries was turned into a theatre venue. Led by a group of uniformed "usherettes," the performance began with a guided tour of the Moholy-Nagy exhibition and continued with a sideshow-type prologue making fun of Duchamp's In Advance of the Broken Arm (in the museum collection), done just outside the theatre room.
The plot of the play proper starts with a visit by the artist Tomoyoshi Murayama to the dramaturg Yoshi Hijikata as he is preparing to establish the Tsukiji Shogekijyo theatre. Turning on the fictional setup that Hijikata had been entrusted with a letter from Moholy-Nagy commissioning a new work by Murayama, the plot depicts Murayama as he strives to fulfill his dream of a new art. Based on the presumption that Moholy-Nagy actually did order artistic commissions, there is also a scene in which Murayama instructs the placement of colors in a work over the telephone. The person on the other end of the line is. . .the painter Ryusei Kishida (naturally this is also fictional - a scenario resulting in large laughs from the audience).
The Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami struck when Yanagi was drafting the scenario for the second part of the project, Battleship, causing her to momentarily pause from her work. The Tsukiji Shogekijo was opened in 1924 the year after the devastating Great Kanto Earthquake. The key players behind the process of creating a new art space in this ruined city were Yoshi Hijikata, known as "The Red Count" [in reference to his aristocratic title], and Kaoru Osanai, who participated in the establishment of the theatre. Yanagi's play recreates the stage design for Reinhardt Gehring's Battleship - the Tsukiji Shogekijo's inaugural production - and shows how Hijikata's plans to transform society through avant-garde theatre wildly fluctuated amid the parallel development in art of the avant-garde and proletarian movements, and the growing suppression of the proletarian movement by the nation, hinting at the eventual breakup of the theatre and Hijikata's fate.
In Tokyo-Berlin Moholy-Nagy's letter for Murayama is read aloud in German, and in Battleship there is a scene in which the avant-garde theatre producer Vsevolod Meyerhold addresses the tormented Hijikata in Russian. These may be imaginary dialogues between Berlin and Tokyo and Moscow and Tokyo, but they bring into relief the boundless distance between Europe and Japan / Ideals and Reality / Aspiration and Despair. In Battleship, the curtains close on the figure of Hijikata projecting from a paper cutting a silhouette of Tatlin's Monument for the Third International, angled on its side. Bearing in mind Hijikata's life after the events depicted in the play, the significance of this apparition of the unrealized idealistic structure of the Russian Revolution is complex. Indeed, it remains to be seen whether European modernism ever actually arrived in Japan.
Yanagi's 1924 project will conclude with a third part to be held in 2012 concurrent to the Tomoyoshi Murayama exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama, and the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto. This will complete the cycle linking the Moholy-Nagy exhibition, the Tsukiji Shogekijyo and Murayama. It's hard to say how Yanagi's project is received in theatre circles, but how this transition from the field of contemporary art to theatre will affect Yanagi's practice going forward is among the developments that is worth scrutinizing in this last segment.

Details: Tokyo-Berlin, July 29-31, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; Battleship, November 3-6, Kanagawa Arts Theatre, Yokohama. Image credit: Production still from Battleship (2011), courtesy Miwa Yanagi.



Ahmed Basiony: '30 Days of Running in the Space'






The Venice Biennale offers the excitement and thrill of encountering new artists. As happens every time, at this year's 54th edition I rushed about from work to work, all the while reflecting on the different approaches they employed and the themes they addressed. At such international exhibitions there are usually works with strong political messages, but this time I felt it was a particularly remarkable tendency.
However, upon stepping into the Egypt Pavilion, all those platitudes about "politics in art" were completely blown away. Ahmed Basiony. This was the first time I had ever come across him (he used digital media to produce interactive and sound art installations). Projected across a long wall, there was video documentation of a performance by the artist from 2010 interspersed with footage of the crowds gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square during the demonstrations of 2011. As suggested by its title, Thirty Days of Running in the Space, the performance involved the artist running for one hour each day for 30 days inside a transparent plastic cube. During the performance the artist wore a plastic suit covered with sensors that recorded perspiration and footspeed, with the data converted into images that were projected on the walls of the cube. The footage of people standing up to topple the Mubarak regime was filmed by Basiony himself, and had remained as unedited files on his computer. Participating in the demonstrations from January 25 and recording the events in Tahrir Square, Basiony was shot and killed on January 28.
On a wall at the entrance of the Egypt Pavilion was presented the artist's final entry to his Facebook account: "If they want war, we want peace, and I will practice proper restraint until the end, to regain my nation's dignity." During the Biennale preview period, each pavilion's organizers usually hire staff to man the entrances of the exhibits and distribute press kits, catalogues and documents regarding the exhibiting artists, actively seeking publicity. But at the Egypt Pavilion it was different. There was nothing. When I asked for a press release, the man there silently reached beneath the table for a stack of paper filled only with text. He did not smile at all.　
It seems possible to question whether an exhibition of only documentary footage can really be considered an art exhibition. However, what was clearly evident is that the Egypt Pavilion is irreconcilable with the political works of art that circulate as commodities in the art market. After leaving the exhibit my mind went momentarily blank. What I remember is that thoughts related to the phrase "Revolution and Art" spun wildly in my head. However this phrase is neither a vestige of the Russian Revolution, nor can it be so easily tied into new terms like "SNSrevolution and Art."

Details: June 4 to November 27, Egypt Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale. Image credit: Installation view, photo ART iT.



'A Fateful Journey: Africa in the Works of El Anatsui'





I first saw El Anatsui's works in the director's exhibition at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. Wondering from afar what this large, glittering and shining structure could be, I was surprised once I approached and stood before it. It was a gigantic, metalwork tapestry woven together from innumerable bottle caps and foil seals. Concurrently, another work was on display covering the façade of the Palazzo Fortuny, allowing me to encounter Anatsui's work for the first time twice. Thus, I was excited when I heard that the artist would be holding a major solo exhibition in Japan.
Because Anatui's works respond to the differing dimensions of the different exhibition spaces, I at first planned on seeing the exhibition at all its venues. It is a lasting regret that I was only able to make it to see the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Hayama. There, the wood carvings with their minimal structural sense, and the gigantic sack-like works made with newspaper printing plates, and the metalworks made with pull-top rings and bottle caps were displayed alongside the traditional kente cloth textiles and totems from Anatsui's native Ghana, as well as toys made of salvaged tin, providing a thorough introduction to the context of the artist's production.
However, it also seems that Anatsui, who received a colonial British education and studied European art history through to modernism, is strongly opposed to being categorized as an African folk artist. He states, "Because my interest in traditional forms developed quite late, I have never conceived my works as textile, and always think of them as sculpture." Even if such a statement comes across as a denigration of craft, Anatsui's problem is hardly foreign to Japanese artists working today. The European canon is relentless. Even as works and artists freely circulate and critical frameworks multiply across the world, the works of Japanese artists overwhelmingly seem to be discussed in terms of simple constructs like "Zen," or "Shinto," or "otaku." Anatsui is another artist who exists in the space between Western and Non-Western. In this context, another of Anatsui's statements leaves a strong impression: "Bottled liquors were brought to Africa from Europe; I am sending them back to Europe as artworks."

Details: Originated February 5 to March 27 at the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama; toured April 23 to May 22 at Tsuruoka Art Forum, and July 2 to August 28 at the Museum of Modern Art, Saitama. Image credit: Installation view at Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama, photo ART iT.

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Things Worth Remembering 2011

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is the artistic director of the upcoming Documenta 13. In addition to preparing the exhibition, in the past year she has overseen the production of the publication series "100 Notes - 100 Thoughts"; a calendar for 2011-12 dedicated to dog-human and cat-human relationships in the art world; and a multimedia online platform sharing the research and ideas going into the exhibition's making.

ART iT asked Christov-Bakargiev to share her reflections on 2011 and her horizons for 2012.






Top left: Tacita Dean - FILM (2011), installation view at Tate Modern, London. Photo Lucy Dawkins, courtesy the artist, Frith Street Gallery, London, and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris. Top right: David Hall - TV Interruptions (7 TV Pieces): Interruption piece (1971), from the exhibition "Are You Ready for TV?" at MACBA. Courtesy the artist and LUX, London. Bottom: Ahmed Basiony - Installation view of "Thirty Days of Running in the Space," Egypt Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale, 2011. Photo ART iT.


ART iT: As you prepare for the upcoming Documenta 13, we'd like to ask for your reflections on the events of 2011, and your horizons for 2012. What are your impressions of the past year?

CCB: I'm neither a visionary nor a prophet, so I don't know what 2012 will bring. Historically speaking, 2011 certainly was an incredible year. I have never liked to use the word crisis: etymologically, the Greek krisis - from which also derives criticism and critique - means to separate in order to judge, which I find to be overly dramatized. But I think almost anybody would agree that crisis is an appropriate word to describe this year, not only in relation to the escalation of the preceding years' so-called financial crisis, but also with regard to the incredible revolutions and terrible disasters that occurred, and are still unfolding, from the Arab Spring and the London protests to the Occupy movement and the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis in Japan.
In terms of art, we could say the year starts in Cairo on January 25 with the uprising in Tahrir Square that led to Hosni Mubarak's resignation in February. The artist Ahmed Basiony, who posthumously represented Egypt at the 54th Venice Biennale (Egypt Pavilion: "Thirty Days of Running in the Space," June 4 to November 27), had been in the square as an active participant, videotaping the protests and uploading the videos to the Internet. He was shot and killed there on January 28. This is not to say that Basiony was necessarily a great artist, but that the year starts with a body of an artist, on the street, dead, means something to me in terms of the relationships between art and the world, and art and history.
It makes me think of Judith Butler, whose most recent books and texts have been about crisis contexts and contexts of war and devastation. Particularly in her book, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (2009), Butler speaks of the precariousness of the subject in our times. What Butler addresses is the fact that the body itself is precarious, and that people die, and that unless one can understand the precariousness of an individual life, one can neither mourn nor give value to it. This investigation is connected in her thoughts to the question of the embodied, and the act of putting one's body in a position that is simultaneously vulnerable and yet engaged.


ART iT: Aside from Ahmed Basiony's representation of Egypt at Venice, do you feel that the historic events of 2011 have been reflected in how we've talked about art, or in specific events, exhibitions and initiatives of the past year?

CCB: There are many art worlds, not just one. There is the market-oriented art world of prestige and legitimation and social standing, which also has to do with investment, and then, to name just one alternative, there's the art world of activists, who in fact form a new kind of underground.
Many people use the word "art" because it's a very striated, open, ambi-significant word. You can attach it to many things. I feel that the kind of young people who in the 1960s and '70s would have ended up in politics are now turning to art, which is interesting because art is a sphere in which one doesn't consider failure the same way as in other fields.
In art, failure can be a great achievement, as with a drawing by William Kentridge, which fails, gets erased, and is remade over and over, until it leads to a beautiful artwork made of thousands of failures. Given this complexity, I think many people have moved into art seeking a space both of activity in and engagement with the world, as well as, strangely enough, a space of retreat from the world.






Top: Installation view of the group show "Untitled (Passport)" in the 12th Istanbul Biennial, 2011. Photo ART iT. Bottom left: Marta Minujín - Marta Minujín and Rubén Santantonín in La Menesunda (1965). Courtesy MALBA. Bottom right: Pino Pascali - Installation view of "Pino Pascali's final works 1967-1968" at Camden Arts Centre, London. Photo Andy Keate, © Camden Arts Centre.


ART iT: Were there any exhibitions in 2011 that made an impression on you, or that have informed your organization of Documenta?

CCB: There were some great exhibitions in 2011, although I hesitate to rank this year's periodic international exhibitions among the best.
I must disclose that I am on its board, but I think the Istanbul Biennial ("Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial)," September 17 to November 13), curated by Adriano Pedrosa and Jens Hoffmann, was an interesting experiment that swung toward the directions of research, archive and retreat. It presented an understated, beautiful aggregation of objects through questions of scale and of curatorial intelligence. Also important was the reconnection Pedrosa and Hoffmann made with the idea of the politics of form.
Another radical show was the exhibition "Are You Ready for TV" at Museu d'Art Contemporani in Barcelona (November 5, 2010, to April 25, 2011), organized by Chus Martinez just before she left MACBA to join Documenta as Head of Department. With its extraordinary, gesamtkunstwerk-like installation, the exhibition was an activated archive concerning the participation in TV of philosophers, intellectuals and other figures who generally do not appear in the mainstream.
There were also excellent and important historical solo exhibitions, like the retrospective of the feminist artist Marta Minujín at Museo de Arte Latinoamericano in Buenos Aires ("Obras 1959-1989," November 26, 2010, to February 14, 2011); the exhibition of the often overlooked Arte Povera artist Pino Pascali at the Camden Arts Centre in London ("...a multitude of soap bubbles which explode from time to time...: Pino Pascali's final works, 1967-1968," March 4 to May 1); and the retrospective of Alighiero Boetti at Reina Sofía in Madrid ("game plan," October 5, 2011, to February 5, 2012), organized collaboratively with Tate Modern in London and MoMA in New York.
Among other solo exhibitions, there was Akram Zaatari at the Moderna Galerija Ljubljana ("This Day," March 1 to April 10), and the Otolith Group, whose "Thoughtform" toured from MACBA (February 4 to May 29) to MAXXI in Rome (October 6, 2011, to February 5, 2012), where I saw it. One of the year's most significant pieces is Tacita Dean's FILM, made for the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall (October 11, 2011, to March 11, 2012). It is a requiem to the history of cinema at a time when companies are stopping production of materials necessary for making, projecting and reproducing film on film.
To mention an American artist, Fred Sandback is one of the most minimalist and retreated artists today; his sculptural installation made of yarn, at the Whitechapel Gallery in London (May 25 to August 14), was the right decision given our times of crisis, because certainly you can't say it's over-produced work. And to speak of younger artists, Goshka Macuga has emerged through exhibitions at the Whitechapel in 2009-10, at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis ("It Broke From Within," April 14 to August 14) and at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw ("Untitled," December 3, 2011, to February 19, 2012) as a key figure. I think the curatorial turn is one of the authoritarian turns of recent years; an artist like Goshka who's working in a curatorial mode or with that methodology is reclaiming that space from those who have more to do with the management of global flows of information than with participating in and confronting the eternal struggle: how does one position oneself vis-à-vis the world, and what is the role of the creator and intellectual within society?




Goshka Macuga - Installation view of "Goshka Macuga: It Broke From Within" at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2011. Photo Gene Pittman, courtesy Walker Art Center.


ART iT: What do you think the role of the artist will be in the coming year, and do you think anything will change about how we relate to and discuss art?

CCB: Everything will change - not just one thing, not just a little bit. Everything will change, but not in 2012. It's not like an advertisement for the end of the world. It takes 30, 40 or 50 years for a paradigmatic shift to happen, which is when everything starts to be interpreted through the same lens. Right now we haven't made that full shift, but there are signs of its approach in very different areas.
Everything will surely change in the ways we consider the relationship between art and the world, and how we define art. For example, I never use the term "contemporary art," because I identify it specifically with the 1950s and '60s, when it first came into use as a substitute for the term "modern art." The term is almost 70 years old, and it defines a specific period of art history, and I think we are no longer in that period. Yet the practices of and the works made by the people we call artists are even more important and crucial today than in the past, because they represent the space of the imagination, which is both the very space that cognitive capitalism is attempting to control, and the only space that can resist that control. As the philosopher Christoph Menke wrote in his contribution to Documenta's publication series, "100 Notes - 100 Thoughts," we need to make leaps of imagination to rebuild democracy based on the fact that we all share imagination.


Documenta 13 is scheduled to run from June 9 to September 16, 2012.

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Things Worth Remembering 2011