Real vague

LIVE PERFORMANCE | VIDEO SCREENING | PUBLICATION

What is going through an artist’s mind when they decide to engage with social and polit­ical issues in their work? By ini­ti­ating a dia­logue around dif­ferent approaches to social and polit­ical engage­ment in art, Real Vague seeks to address this ques­tion, par­tic­u­larly where the social or polit­ical may seem “hidden” or “indi­rect”. In addi­tion to film screen­ings, the event will include a per­for­mance, a lec­ture and the launch of a pub­li­ca­tion. Featuring inter­views with the par­tic­i­pating artists, the pub­li­ca­tion will give an insight into the artists’ own thoughts about their social and polit­ical engage­ment. The event will con­clude with a dis­cus­sion, when artist Mark Aerial Waller will be avail­able for ques­tions.

The five par­tic­i­pating artists are Mark Aerial Waller, Bodil Furu/Beate Petersen, Halil Altindere and Gabriel Lester. A diverse mix of artists from dif­ferent parts of Europe, they all convey many layers of meaning in their work and dif­ferent inter­pre­ta­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties. But they may seem to have in common an under­lying social and polit­ical engage­ment. Rather than telling “grand nar­ra­tives”, the artists here seek to find alter­na­tive and sub­jec­tive ways of story telling
– con­veying sit­u­a­tions seen with indi­vidual eyes. Could the search for alter­na­tive ways of sto­ry­telling be described as a wish to resist the glob­alised and stream­lined life? Or are there com­pletely dif­ferent rea­sons behind both the social and polit­ical engage­ment in itself – as well as the engage­ment’s “hidden” nature? Could it be that the social and polit­ical engage­ment’s “indi­rect” nature indi­cates that the engage­ment does not play a cen­tral part of the moti­va­tion behind the works?

Mark Aerial Waller’s works often create a notion that some­thing ter­rible is about to happen. This is also the case for Waller’s new per­for­mance The Mantle, which, in the form of a fashion show, pre­sents models wearing MA1 Bomber jackets, and models demon­strating life vests. But is it Waller’s inten­tion to create a ‘doomsday’ atmo­sphere? At first glance it may seem so, but the per­for­mance also con­tains a play­ful­ness, and a focus on how con­fusing and ambiva­lent sym­bols of war and dis­aster can appear. The MA1 Bomber jacket func­tions both as hero-symbol, but it is also being equated with skin­head and queer cul­ture. The life vest ritual is both a sin­cere reminder of the dan­gers of drowning, but it is also some­thing most of us – those without fear of flying – have observed light heart­edly and with aesteti­cized eyes. Waller plays with our per­cep­tions of safety, and indif­fer­ence, cre­ating nuanced and com­plex impres­sions from the area between empti­ness and engage­ment, super­fi­ciality and deep seri­ous­ness.

With a frag­mented but everyday approach to sto­ry­telling, Gabriel Lester’s work com­bines dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments with more con­cep­tual and the­o­ret­ical mat­ters. The video The Cola Yoghurt Project (2004) reveals a multi-faceted humour that addresses ques­tions con­cerning the EU and its new member states in a com­pli­cated but clear way. In most of Lester’s works, frag­men­ta­tion is an impor­tant ele­ment. Fragmentation is used both as a method of weaving sev­eral sto­ries together, and a way of opening up the viewer’s own imag­i­na­tion. Lester’s works form com­plex and aes­thet­i­cally seduc­tive sit­u­a­tions, but at the same time they also seem to con­tain a “rest” of engage­ment.

In 2004 Norwegian artists Bodil Furu and Beate Petersen made the video Kabul Ping Pong. They both nor­mally work as indi­vidual artists, but in Kabul Ping Pong their prac­tices meet in an exper­i­mental and rad­ical approach to video pro­duc­tion. Furu/Petersen’s video Kabul Ping Pong (2004) focuses on a specific polit­ical and social con­flict. The video con­sists of three per­sonal sto­ries from a country haunted by con­flict. One child, one news­paper editor and one min­ister all convey thoughts around this country’s sit­u­a­tion, and future, after more than twenty years of con­flict. The video gives a rare insight into the sit­u­a­tion in Afghanistan, and shows in an ambiva­lent way how dif­fi­cult it is to under­stand such a con­flict seen with “western” eyes: Does the video have a phi­lan­thropic pur­pose, or does it seek to convey more gen­eral thoughts around cul­ture and iden­tity?

Halil Altindere’s works often use indi­rect way of showing polit­ical engage­ment. His video videos and instal­la­tions address the Kurdish ques­tion in subtle and elu­sive ways, almost as if there is some­thing he does not want to tell us. The video Walk (1999-2002) shows a man walking along one of Istanbul’s most busy and colourful streets, Istiklal Caddesi. He is pulling a piece of string attached to a Marlboro cigarette packet after him. The Marlboro packet is folded so that it is meant to resemble a dog. What does Altindere want to convey in this video? At first glance it seems like the video could be an ironic com­ment on com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion and glob­al­i­sa­tion. But the video also hints at an under­lying unpleas­ant­ness. The Marlboro packet, here in the form of a “re­pressed” and “worth­less” dog, give asso­ci­a­tions to the “Marl­boro Man” – both a hero and an outlaw at odds with the author­i­ties. In a Turkish con­text, and in the con­text of Altindere’s work as a whole, could this video be asso­ci­ated with the sit­u­a­tion of the Kurdish people in Turkey?

It is not the inten­tion of this pro­ject to attempt to “un­der­stand” the com­plex rela­tion between art and social/polit­ical engage­ment in art. And it is not the inten­tion to “in­ter­ro­gate” artists about their social and polit­ical engage­ment. But it would nev­er­the­less be inter­esting to hear their thoughts about this aspect of their work. In these artists’ works, do the social and polit­ical ele­ments play a cen­tral part? Here, for example I am thinking of Rancière’s com­ment that "art cannot merely occupy the space left open by the weak­ening of polit­ical con­flict. It has to reshape it, at the risk of testing the limits of its own pol­i­tics". Perhaps this is what these artists are trying – to imple­ment such tests?

PROGRAMME

• 4:00pm - Mark Aerial Waller performs The Mantle
• 4:30pm - Pause
• 4:45pm - Screening of Gabriel Lester’s The Cola Yoghurt Project (2004)
• 5:05pm - Screening of Hail Altindere’s video Walk (1999-2002)
• 5:10pm - Screening of Bodil Furu/Beate Petersen’s Kabul Ping Pong (2004)
• 6:00pm - Break
• 6:10pm - Discussion
• 6:30pm - End

This event is sup­ported by: