CRITICAL ANALYSES

"The case can't be held up indefinitely without at least some plausible grounds being provided. So as a matter of form a certain activity must be shown from time to time, various measures have to be taken, the accused is questioned, evidence is collected, and so on. For the case must be kept going all the time, although only in the small circle to which it has been artificially restricted."

From The Trial by Franz Kafka, 1925

Julie BECKER (1972 - 2016)

Julie Becker show “I must create a Master Piece to pay the Rent” at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, June – August 2018.

This modest exhibition, size-wise, took the visitor on a complex and unsettling narrative journey through a mix of film set and realism to view a precarious existence, (either that of the artist or a fictitious alter ego) that appeared both static yet insecure and transitional. The main work “Researchers, Residents, A Place to Rest” 1993-96 was an architectural structure, partially divided into a series of zones, entered via a real estate office’s waiting room, where the only living creatures (in this room and the entire show) were goldfish imprisoned in their tank, forever seeking a way out.

The waiting room, itself a transitional place, seemed to breed anxiety and unease and to hurry the visitor on. But only to find distance and alienation replacing claustrophobia in the form of models of the rooms just visited that asked us to consider our own lives whilst having no control over them. Homes appear as soulless, repetitive boxes – someone else’s commodity to be traded. The stage-set rooms seem to achieve a fleeting stability to counter the social and economic fragility and upheaval in her own life.

Left and right.

Views of Julie Becker's "Researchers, Residents, A Place to Rest" 1993-96.

Shown at the ICA 2018

There are, however, ambiguous signs of other fictional characters inhabiting some spaces. A bare narrow room with two large but empty refrigerator boxes, symbols of temporary occupancy or a child’s improvised play area, contrasted with a cluttered, feverish zone full of stimulus and presence but strangely vacant. The Disneyesque young girl, in her video Transformation and Seduction 1993/2000 wandered repeatedly through the same forest glade – like the earlier goldfish - chasing something that will never be found.

Joseph KOSUTH’s One and Three Chairs (1965) and Herman MELVILLE’s Moby Dick (1851)

My interest in the significance of ordinary things led me to investigate the meaning of Joseph Kosuth’s 1965 work One and Three Chairs through Charles Peirce’s theories of language and semiotics. This piece shows three states of one ordinary, manufactured wooden folding chair – the chair itself Peirce’s object), a framed photo of the same chair (Peirce’s representamen) and a photostat copy of a dictionary definition of the word “chair” (the interpretant).

Kosuth was interested in how, as a rejection of minimalism, art could be about the ideas represented by objects rather than the form of objects. Following Duchamp, he was asking what should art now be and critiquing the way art institutions historically accepted only certain types of work as art.

Joseph Kosuth One and Three Chairs 1965

What especially interests me is that by using such an unremarkable object as an ordinary folding chair, which would not be considered to possess any formal beauty, we must engage with the work intellectually for the actual artwork – the “concepts” – to emerge. This seminal example of the new conceptual art therefore requires the participation of the viewer, thus paving the way for the early performance and participatory artists such as Jonas and Abramovic.

A century before Kosuth, however, and half a century before Peirce, Herman Melville explored the same territory as them through literature. Melville’s symbolic white whale can be seen as a harbinger of Kosuth’s chair. Moby Dick as Peirce’s “object”, the “representamen” being the presentation of the whale as an object on which to project the psyche of Ahab, particularly his fears, desires, hatreds and life-purpose, and the digressive scientific description and analyses being the “interpretant”.

Cover of Herman Melville's book Moby Dick

First published 1851

Nicolas BOURRIAUD “Relational Aesthetics” 2002

Bourriaud traces recent (in 2002) artistic developments that rely on audience participation and interaction to complete them and give them life. He analyses the fragmenting of approaches to art since the decline of modernism through artists such as Rirkrit Tiravanija, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Sophie Calle whose work consists in social interactions and encounters with communications or situations.

I am attracted to this experimental trend in contemporary art because it sees art as no longer the “precursory phenomena” of a controlled, inevitable and idealistic evolution or a rational teleology. Rather it uses Louis Althusser’s ideas of a “materialism of encounter” whereby the world has no pre-existing origin or end which might give it a purpose. There are only bonds linking individuals (performer to viewer or viewer to viewer) together in social forms and relationships that exist only in a certain time frame and then are gone.

Previously intended to prepare and announce a future world, today art is modeling many possible universes. The role of artworks can be to form ways of living and models of action. This is an art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions. Its social context becomes a crucial part of the artwork.

Art for Bourriaud is “a state of encounter”. So Gabriel Orozco placing an orange on the stalls of a deserted Brazilian market (Crazy Tourist 1991) is using tiny, unnoticed gestures as interventions in the larger urban picture. This turns the artwork into an interstice, or forum/space where ideas and experiences can meet and overlap unmediated by commercial involvement.

Scene from Orson Welles' film of Kafka's

Photographic still by Roger Corbeau from Orson Welles' 1962 film of Kafka's The Trial.

Franz KAFKA (1883 - 1924) "The Trial" 1925

The development of my work has led me to re-read and re-consider Kafka's book for several reasons.

Firstly, he presents an ostensibly ordinary world where simultaneously a parallel, grotesque and absurd distortion of that society co-exists, the two intermeshing yet remaining strangely separate. The borders between them are apparently blurred and shifting, as they appear both real and surreal; Freudian, dreamlike and everyday at the same time.

The mysterious "arrest" and ongoing "trial" of Joseph K. are presented as everyday, bureaucratic procedures and burdens which simply have to be borne without any hope of resolution. The accused are simply assumed to be guilty, though we never know what of, and must look into infinity with no hope of redemption or release.

Portraying mundane and all too familiar aspects of the human condition (sexual and social) allows us to identify with the central character, Joseph K, whilst at the same time showing the unsettling, threatening yet opaque machinations of huge, all-pervasive global organisations. This is analogous to modern feelings of claustrophobia and powerlessness in the face of overbearing, untouchable globalised corporations.

The characters are forever at the mercy of convoluted, obscure, self-serving processes that appear innocuous but which ensnare and devour the lives of those accused over long periods of time though we never learn the nature of any crimes for which they may have been arrested. At once farcical and sinister the book anticipates extreme political developments in the next half century and into the present day.

Robert Verrill. Shuffling video 2019. Duration 20 secs

One of a series exploring, as a child would, the myriad possibilities for propelling oneself across a floor in a box by my own human power and effort. Some of these modes of transport would appear in my final degree show work, Drop Box.

Bruce MCLEAN (1944 - ) Body Sculpture from 1960's to 1970's

McLean was an important figure in the development of performance art in Britain in the late 1960's and early 1970's in parallel with the likes of Nauman, Baldessari and McCarthy in the USA. His work at this time was a reaction to the dominance of the modernist sculpture of Henry Moore in particular. Rejecting Moore's reliance on plinth-based figures he rapidly arrived at a point where his medium for expression was condensed to his own body, as with Nauman in the USA. He largely did away with the use of props at one stage in order to explore the relationship of the body to the space around it, both static and moving.

Such "action sculpture" was intended to eliminate immobility and permanence in favour of the active component of time and 3D form. McLean was interested in the gesture and the action - the thing being there one minute and not the next. He wanted his audience to be included in his work. Nevertheless he was also interested in the power of the photographic image, essential for documenting and distributing images of live performances that were sparsely attended.

McLean was concerned to bring humour back into art as a very effective way to engage an audience's attention and the only way to see life and the nearest thing to truth. He soon moved into group and collaborative performance with his pose band "Nice Style" which began to satirise and critique the rising consumerist, fashion and advertising culture of the 70's. The direct inspiration for "pose" as an artistic medium sprang from his observations of absurd aspects of social and cultural behaviour in the art world.

He mocked the commercialisation and commodification of art in work such as "King for a Day" - a spoof retrospective at Tate in 1972. Though drawing on many cultural references (Bauhaus, Dada, Hollywood melodrama, Theatre of the Absurd, Alfred Jarry and Yvonne Rainer) Nice Style differed by its use of metaphor and hyperbole.

Bruce McLean High Up On A Baroque Palazz

Bruce McLean as part of the collaborative group "Nice Style".

High Up On a Baroque Palazzo. 1974.

McLean, in the 1970's, focused his irreverent eye on the attitudes, games and conventions of the art world, on the importance of appearance and gesture as indicators of social status and on the way in which we use domestic possessions to establish or reinforce our image of ourselves.

He similarly exposed the structure and workings of bureaucracy and committees (as did Kafka in The Trial).

Influential Artists and Individual Works include:

Bas Jan Ader - Fall works from 1970's

Vito Acconci - Following Piece 1967

Francis Alys - London: 7 Walks. 2004 to 2009

Sophie Calle - Suite Venitienne 1979

Richard Long - A Line Made by Walking 1967

Helio Oiticica - Tropicalia: Penetrable PN2 Purity is a Myth 1966-7 at Tate Modern

Charlotte Posenenske - Series D Square Tubes 1967 - 2010 at Hayward Gallery as part of Space Shifters.

Bruce Nauman - Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Round the Perimeter of a Square Film 1968

Fred Sandback - Untitled 1989 at Hayward Gallery as part of Space Shifters. He has made an entire exhibition out of coloured wool and pins.

Richard Wilson - 20:50 1987 at Hayward Gallery as part of Space Shifters

Andrea Hamilton - The Squash Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain. Free performance of dancers as animal/vegetables over prepared obstacles

Josiah McElheny - Interactions of the Abstract Body at Hayward Galleries as part of Space Shifters

Julie Becker - Researchers, Residents, A Place to Rest 1993-1996 at ICA

John Baldessari - I am Making Art Film

Martin Creed - Songs 2019 works in "Toast": exhibition at Hauser and Wirth

Bruce McLean - early "action sculptures" and Pose Band work High Up On A Baroque Palazzo

Michael Landy - Breakdown 2001

Exhibitions and Concerts visited and why important

Yuko Mohri - "Voluta" show at Camden Arts Centre. Transformation of subtle, unseen, barely audible energy into surprising, unlikely yet interconnected actions and reactions.
Whitstable Biennale - "Swimming Home" 2018. Wide range of film, video, sound and performance showcasing the variety of possible ways of working.
Lee Bul - at Hayward Gallery. Early absurdist experimental public performance videos were a revelation.
Mika Rottenberg - at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art. Extraordinarily visceral creations distorting everyday existence into something comic but very sinister.
Joan Jonas - Retrospective at Tate Modern of her huge and varied body of work intriguing for the interconnectedness of the various media she used.
Tacita Dean - Still Life, Portrait and Landscape exhibitions at NG, NPG and RA questioned our assumptions about what each genre can be.
William Kentridge - Pageant Performance "The Head and the Load" in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. On a huge scale with enormous ambition.
Julie Becker - "I must create a Master Piece to pay the Rent" show at ICA. Very powerful use of minimal means to transmit alienation, fantasy and a critique of capitalism.
Turner Prize 2018 nominees Charlotte Prodger, Forensic Architecture and Naeem Mohaiemen.
Richard Woods and Michael Iveson - "Build it Up" show at ASC Gallery. How to make the spaces around exhibits, in a small gallery, engage the visitor's attention and affect their behaviour.
Karlheinz Stockhausen's Donnerstag aus Licht performed at Royal Festival Hall. The complex interactions of orchestra, singers, choirs and actors, as well as props and light effects was a revolutionary approach to opera and transferable to my performance ideas. Also the use of traditional theatre spaces (internal and external) in inventive ways was revelatory.
Taryn Simon's An Occupation of Loss performed in Islington, London. As with Stockhausen, the use of harsh, minimalist architectural spaces showed how they could become performers themselves, crucial to the ideas being investigated.
Christian Boltanski - in Ephemeres show at Marian Goodman Gallery. Distilling complex ideas into simple, poetic forms.
Martin Creed - "Toast" show at Hauser and Wirth - the performance works Songs provided insights into aspects of performing
Bruce McLean - exhibition at Bernard Jacobson gallery - contained photos of his Pose Band piece High Up On A Baroque Palazzo 1974

Talks, Lectures and Symposia attended

Sarah Sze - in conversation at Starr Cinema, Tate Modern. Her ideas of movement and the capturing of time in sculpture. Careful to use only mass-produced items so as to avoid personal associations that might interfere with the objective.
International Day of Light Symposium - at Chelsea College of Art. Fascinating insights into many aspects of Art from areas such as science that it is easy to not think about.
Bruce McLean- Interviewed in Elephant magazine 2017
Tacita Dean - in conversation at Henry Moore Foundation. Examining the differing roles of collecting in the genesis of artworks.
Joan Jonas - discussion, recollection, recitals, performance and collaboration in the Tate Tanks. Multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional approach to art and life. There should be no barriers between disciplines and outcomes.
Two mini-symposia on Drawing - at Trinity Buoy Wharf. Insights into the nature, purpose and journeys that drawings make. Both as ends in themselves and means to greater ends.
Tour of Erno Goldfinger's house - House and art collection gave insights into modernism as a style and way of life.
Rosalind Davis - In talking about her career she gave good advice about art residencies such as Florence Trust.
Christian Marclay - Talking about the genesis and intentions behind The Clock.

Supporting Reading

Herman Melville Moby Dick 1851. Obsession and perception. How we all see what we want to see and when we want to see.
Virginia Woolf Mrs Dalloway 1925. The importance, fluidity and unreliability of memory and how it flows simultaneously in all directions.
Franz Kafka The Trial 1925. The condition of humans in an increasingly bureaucratic, mechanised and brutalised world.
Tacita Dean Selected Writings 2018. Fascinating insights into the ideas, motivations and working practices of artists she has worked with. A companion read to her recent trilogy of London exhibitions.
Jeanette Winterson Sexing the Cherry 1989 - How ideas, stories and characters span time and space and merge reality and fantasy.
Marcel Proust Swann's Way Part I 1913 - How we are totally a product of our own histories and class.
Dasselbe Anders - "The same but different" about Charlotte Posenenske 2011 - The brief but intriguing output of this minimalist who saw no difference in the modern age between art and life but considered that this meant art could not contribute to tackling urgent social problems.
Damian Sutton and David Martin-Jones - Deleuze Reframed. 2008
K. Malcolm Richards - Derrida Reframed. 2008
Italo Calvino Invisible Cities 1972
Lorand Hegyi and Okyang Chae-Duporge 2005- Lee Ufan :an insightful exhibition catalogue covering much of his career.
Hayward Gallery catalogue of Bruce Nauman retrospective exhibition of 1998.
Bas Jan Ader: Please don't leave me.
Michel Foucault This is not a pipe and The Order of Things (1966)
Alfred Jarry Jill Fell 2010
"The World as Object" Roland Barthes: Selected Writings 1982 Introduction by Susan Sontag
Roland Barthes Jonathan Culler 1983
Bruce Nauman Hayward Gallery 1998
Bruce McLean Nena Dimitrijevic, Whitechapel 1981
Francis Alys: 7 Walks Artangel 2004/5
Bertrand Russell In Praise of Idleness. Broadcast essay/lecture from collection of the same name. 1930's.