Transmission James Pyeman

Comic, newspapers, pop songs and underground culture of the seventies are the background of this artist. He drags his pencil in the industrial society, Mad magazines ( group of cartoons aware of American culture, Vietnam war, English music, David Bowie, T. Rex, blurring artefacts, psychedelic Genesis, Rock surrealism, mixes it with a complexical adaptation of cartoons (godfather, vampire) and finally articulate his drawing representation.

From a photographic evocative of block of flat, images of British culture, Punk culture, design aesthetic and look, bands energy, he tries to give a new meaning.  Pulling things from the past, a consistency of how photography is made daily,  he engages himself, creates from these various sources ( work directly taken from comics, sources material taken from internet, combination of images, connecting each other), transcribing in a new language and producing something different (a process of translation).

Texts. Quoting. A style which is more an illustration of a text than a pure writing. It’s simply an illusion of text.  Pencil drawing, an artistic research without knowing anything about it, articulating from comics, pop culture, cartoons, seems emotionless, expressless. His technique (so simple and poor) is conditioned by a sticky memory to things. The primary sources are quite biographical (childhood, the seventies), a huge influence. Sometimes the narrative cartoons, the references are separated to their context.

I don’t wax enthusiastic before his drawings, the narrative of Dracula images or Pinocchio illustration but the whole work responds to the sense the artist wanted to give, a coherence, a distinct and personal style.

B

Transmission Lindsay Seers

Lindsay Seers agrees to speak about her artistic experiment but refuses to be recorded. She prefers to improvise, without notes, on stage. She communicates her own interrogations to which she tries to bring answers.

Much theory on photography (Barthes, Bergson on intuition, idea of connectivity). A constant worry of the method, much concerned about the structure (engrossing narratives). Explains how she constructs images, the choices she makes. How does photography change our concept of time, of culture, change of friendship, change our consciousness. Photography reports to death, to loss but also to having found joy, pleasure (images of the body distorted by the paper (experiment of distortion, ridiculous parody). Dramatizing (a photo as a past written by a vampire etc…)

Wishing to tell something, the past as a diagram:  ” Her memory was so perfected that she couldn’t see a difference between her inner world and the “real” world. As a consequence of this she lacked the ability to speak. When she at the age of seven for the first time saw a photograph of herself something happened and she gained the ability to speak but lost her eidetic memory. To  compessate her loss of  memory , Lindsay Seers started to capture images obsessively.”

The act of photography which is invisible haunts her. (objectivation of subject), it’s a historical account of her work. Series of self-portrait. The feeling the photo is falling in the mouth, parody.  (Embodied photograph process). Rather sexual all that. She plays about it, obviously. It is a play of hide-and-seek. I suspect she takes pleasure of performing while refusing to be recorded.

Another approach, a statue. What does it tell? Past, loss, absence, theatricality are part of her inventive approach of memoir (photo as a past written by a vampire).  A statue, a memory loss ? a place where something was, image produces history, looks historical narrative (Queen Christina of Sweden).

A physical need to always show off (series of portrait). Relation of the photo with her eye: In-out, narrative of inside and outside, from the outside inside) photo reports to another. (narrative performance)

A shift in her making process. Change of medium (camera, filmmaking). Setting up scenario.  Projected and moving images. She projects life out of her, refusing to being locked (narrative image of herself as a projecter). Really concerned with the method, She keeps on theorizing: photo is in the body, in the conscious, physical subject-object point of view. Being a camera, looking back her story teller in a performative way, thinking of metaphysics of trees, images of anthropomorphic film photographically deformed. Who speaks, who photographs, it doesn’t matter if I destroy history, distort objects, dolls,  if you get lost, an image has nothing to do with the truth.

It’s merely a process of looking and recording. (Recording?) Ritualisation, theatricality. I am a camera, I am a material, I am a projector, light comes out of my body . I am here, I am there, I perform, I take pleasure, I show you my mouth, my teeth, my anatomy, I can record images and distort them but I refuse to be recorded, to be filmed. Paradoxical

B

Taconis Stolk Hosted by Col McCormack

Taco, as Taconis was referred to is Netherlands based.  And I see his work emerging from a European context; a conversation that I am aware of, but not familiar with.  In short, it is foreign.  But well crafted.  The talk was divided up into three sections and Taco had an advanced knowledge of Powerpoint; of structuring presentations in general.  He gave a good, in fact, excellent talk.  So, the talk was about work that is not preference, is that important?  Do I expect everything to address me all the time? No.  And so I am pleased about Taco’s exciting and dynamic take on string theory.  I am genuinely pleased I know about an artist how is creating an artificial flavour that does not relate to other flavours.  I am now able to slip into conversation that I do know of someone who’s practice intersects with science and geography in quite interesting ways.  I need not mention the heaviness of my eyelids during the talk, whatsoever.

Transmission Objective Voice Amanda Beech 25th November 2009

It was with a sense of pleasure and aliveness I sat through Amanda’s talk. I sat and thought and enjoyed her assured, controlled delivery. I enjoyed her loud, bright video with thumping soundtrack. So, should I blame myself, or Amanda or the art or the theory that I was not able to follow the logic? Do I expect to? Or should I rejoice in the diversity and challenge that art presents? I was happy, just, don’t ask me to recount Amanda’s position.

Transmission: Andre Stitt. Threads.

A voice from Northern Ireland. A journey to Belfast. A particular tone, soft and violent, troubling. André Stitt speaks about his creative activity, his native Ireland with passion. It is a family table blackened by unbearable events. They are personal, particular, strong memories.

He writes, paints, draws and produces music. An artist.

The child of the street that he was tells his experiments, his trauma, without losing his breath, all that crossed his life of young man now grown to full stature. What he lived in Belfast, he carries it everywhere, in London, in New York, in the world. When he stages his own life he raises questions, questions itself, questions our capacity to grasp events, analyse and try to understand them. The present faces the past. The artist is still entangled in delusion.

Interpretations of Trauma. One feels unease, out of his zone of control, sometimes taken of nausea but also of empathy when looking at certain images: Saintfield, a market of Belfast, vegetables, odours of urines, drinking, pubs. Personal records: Auntie Alice and Uncle Ted.

He says himself saved by his studies at Art school of Belfast, the influence of Beuys. The voice becomes softer when He begins to talk about amnesia. He cannot remember what occurred between 1983 and 1992, he cannot put words on them. Gone. There is no representation of the Trauma. It consists of association and evocation rather than representation. Investigating another level through Trauma, domestic violence, alcohol, drugs. The images ravel, without noise, they are violent, disturbing, disrupting.

When he tells his performances as an artist in Sheffield or elsewhere, his voice sticks to images of debauchery, the music is puzzling. But amnesia is there. Some images on the newspapers are strange for him, unknown. He discovers them. Performance Art drives him in very dark hole, like a think possessed. The body setting in abyss, it is like a diving in the still open wounds of the communal memories, the demon within. debauchery, uncontrolled drinking, sprinkling food. Opposition to modern consumerism. Exorcism, demon drink ghost, recovery.

Contemporary experiments of conflict. His work is much to do with what to be transformed and not the conflict itself. His art reflects to others personal experiments. Disorder in North Ireland made him what He is now. Telling his stories, his city, he memorialises the time he lived in Belfast (Catholic Culture, Public humiliation, conflict transformation). Archives.

The change is change, it is not accommodation.

A parallel in the suffering, the political struggle: the image of two black athletes raising the fist in Mexico City in 1968. Political conscience (Political Awakening).

Present tense.  He speaks of Dilemma as a guiding delusion of our time.

Life, Art, life as a natural consciousness. Every action as a performance of consciousness (Family and communal Trauma). Performing as a healing process. He projects and looks at them with delusion by investigating another level through Trauma, domestic violence, alcohol, drugs, political conflicts. He stages himself, He questions himself, his voice fades into deep softness. He says he has stopped drinking, He feels alleviated by putting his own experiments and seeing what and where the substance is, what the material of art is and trying to set a critical distance about his own emotions. Art as a work of attention of details. Today he has cured this deep suffering in alcohol used as a fuel, drugs and familial violence. Trauma. He has stopped drinking. But Belfast is in him forever. He measures the present in the past.

Now that the phantoms of the past disappear little by little, it is the time of contemplation, of silence. The time of recovery, of beauty and human celebration eventhough making Art has never shown him what is mean.

One cannot leave Stitt’s clinical experiments undisturbed. There is a palpable emotion in the room, a deep silence but much respect for his sincerity, honesty and his recovery. Minutes after his reading, I wanted to advance towards this man who faces his own demons with courage, to shake his hand and tell him my empathy, embrace him with my heart. I did not dare. I am still looking at this child on his street in Belfast, and his voice is stuck to me as a gentleness of ages. I look at him as a member of my family recovered after a long voyage in the abyss.

I saw you in the street when I was born.

B.

Taco Stolk

Transmission

I am struggling to find a gap between theories, imagination and artwork. I can’t find, I can’t follow him in his impressive program. Plank time, numbers, elements of science leave me undisturbed. Words uttered like in a seminar for lost scientists make a loose connection in my wandering mind. I can’t get through these elements.

I wait the moment something will happen and take me beyond his explanation. Circles, red colour, geometric figures surround a map of New-York. I hardly listen to the explanation he gives. Plank time, Database, numbers. Einstein. The scientist’s words cover the artist’s imagination. How could we reinvent a system in harmony with the universe itself? New theory? Just words? No, Plank time!

Then come sounds on octaves, music theory, tic tac… Plank time, Plank length. Quantum frequencies in molecules. I loose track.

Images of South Holland, circles in which one can hear different sounds. Everything is related to Plank time and Plank length. Sound, sound approaching a harbour. I missed the first part of his presentation. My mind walks back and forth, to and fro. I quit, disconnected. I break loose…

Transmission 3rd February 2010 Col McCormack presents Taco Stolk

(b) Taco Stolk presented the main concepts of his meta-modernist work. He gave a multi-media display of sound and image. The technological capabilities of the showroom struggled at times with some of the subtleties of Stolk’s productions. While the ideas were interesting and clearly presented the audience seemed awe-struck by scientific facts and impressive technology and failed to ask critical or challenging questions. There could have been a really exciting discussion at the end, instead we got a human beat-box, a question about which font he’d used in his presentation and one slightly challenging question about poetry that wasn’t taken very far.

Kelly Large, Transmission Review Objective Voice

Throughout Kelly Large’s talk I had a sense of a highly intelligent, articulate, brave practitioner, able to challenge her collaborators, use stealth and cunning in her in engagements with institutions with a compulsion to put herself into the very situations that scare her most.  In short, Large’s work is ballsy and confident, even though I sense she has not hit her stride yet.

So, my question is, why the terminal self-deprecation?

A winced my way through Large’s chatty talk.  In spite of herself she came across as immensely likeable, but, she made me want to de-brief her in the pub and tell her not to put herself down in this context, audiences have a temptation to believe what they hear.  Of course, I am not suggesting that all I wish to sit through is male bravado and smarmy showing off each week, but Large’s talk made me wonder if is a female compulsion to talk themselves down in this type of arena.  Is it that Large is a woman that she feels unable to say, ‘I have a PhD and years of practice behind me, damn it!, I know what I am doing and I know who I am and  I’m ok’.  Instead, I heard her tell me she was nervous, she hates residencies and she does not like people.  She then started to list her skills, almost as though she had been challenged as a phoney; which she sees are administrative, social, analytical and critical.  The way she described the process of working through residencies she is offered made it sound as though she was a gun for hire, never able to choose a direction.  Oh Kelly!  Can I hire you to be a confident artist?

Closing Crossing, Transmission

Kate Davies Transmission

Closing Crossing

A bridge, a voice. An invisible body. Total silence. Total darkness. Here, tiny spots of light, water from a river flowing under a bridge: Sheffield.

Water as a passage of time, the time of separation. As a fixed place in a space, a bridge crossed by different cars, vehicles, buses. A nowhereness animated by memories of two separate beings. The water flowing under the bridge carries a text full of emotion. Words uttered slowly by a feminine voice. On her tongue, a flavour of love lost, of kisses exchanged. The smell of bodies entwined. The author of this text is an artist, Kate Davis.

Plunged into the darkness under the bridge, a body of perdition, carried by a voice, is awaiting a presence, the presence of an invisible yet unnamed beloved, a burst into his reality ravaged by pain. He does not manifest himself. “It’s raining and the river rises” this phrase chanted the text until the end. Dreams intersect in the absence, the reality is filled with ghosts, voices, gestures, elk unfulfilled, scents of enlaced bodies, kisses exchanged.

Tears reach the river, the river rises, emotion wins, the night is darker. Nothing can stop that voice, not even brushed memories. Nothing has come to end sleepless night under the bridge. Nothing can stop her melancholy. If the body is a city, the bridge is its spine, the river is a mixed blood of lovers through which memories are vivified by words.

Closing crossing. A sunrise. The narrator’s body is a red spot blend into the dawning day. Her white voice is masked by the noise of cars passing over the bridge. Between two runs, her figure is draped in a red cardigan. She walks. The voice of shadows is hit of clarity but no presence of the missed one on the bridge. She walks like Jensen’s Gradiva. Without destination. She stops, appears and disappears. What did she expect? No promise can justify her coming and going. Expectation is the only justification, the ceaseless flow of coming and going without reason. Walking aimlessly, with words of love, forgetfulness and lack sole sacrament.

Walk, live, fall, get up when fatigue wins. She is still living under the appearance of vacuum in a rubble of memories, words of missing, kisses exchanged, clasped hands. “ I’m here to catch your eyes. I am here to catch your glaze”. No glimpse, no glaze, no promises. The gift of peaceful words is not the promise possible of elsewhere. The hands of the invisible lover have long left her body, caresses have vanished in a glowing oblivion. Walking is the only resource for the one who claims to have lost everything. Crossing the bridge to the other side of life, where all could be reborn, love renewed. The bridge is a memory, a gap between two possibilities, in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately for her, the bridge is still a place where nothing happens.

Walking, falling, walking : is the only way of the vacuum. “ Closing, crossing, closing the gap crossing.” The words continue to flow in a steady stream. Hope stumbles against a wall with red bricks ; red as the melancholy of days without events, without caresses, without the taste of lover’s kiss on her abandoned lips. Red as the color of her coat, as the blood of a sealed pact. The bridge connects two definite points of a city but the lovers are still separated. Illusion of possible meeting on the bridge is brought by a hopeful voice. The truth is : absence prevails, the reality is punctuated by a lack, a  vacuum filled with memories and distressful gestures of the past. Under the bridge, considered as a body junction between past and the present runs the water. The water carries her illusion where it belongs: in the nothingness.

What else happens when you lost everything? Your voice, your words, a body of solitude, your treasurehouse. Is talking the only issue, as said Novalis ? Maybe. Walking, falling. …Speaking is trying to get the balance. Talking, caressing the running present, kissing the memories of the past, brushing the same gestures of tenderness and deep love. Closing crossing.

It rains and the river rises.

The voice falls silent.

Bona

Roderick Buchanan

Transmission

Robert Buchanan presents his personal work, almost intimate, full of affects. He directs his research towards a family lexical field, on his roots, his community, his rooting in time.

There is a share of true emotion on the evocation of all these family memories. The displacement from Scotland to Ireland. The starvation which struck Ireland. Ceaseless fights carried out to survive, facing the worst moments of History. An empathy animates me by listening to his singing accent, the bearing of “R”, a kind of shared, rare confidence.

Moments of happiness, of joy and sadness also, expressed by a band of local musicians, traditional, with their bagpipe, separated from another band by a wall of incomprehension, the wall of division, beliefs of another age. Loyal supporters versus the Republicans. The artist didn’t find any difficulty working with both.

Who to build a bridge between the communities? Perhaps the artist, in all his brittleness but in his courage, his clearness, his honesty, through his works…

Exhibited elsewhere in Europe, this project caused an adhesion, particularly in France. Now, I understand why. Looking at the video, the empathy is real, sensitive, palpable. Images does not leave indifferent. The historical evocation of Thomas Muir Help Desk supplements the rich table. I pay respect and consideration to the man, the artist, I will remember a long time Buchanan and his humanity, his accent…

Tim Mitchells- Penny McCarthy

As singular as this exercise can appear, let us greet the rather close and creative relation that these two friends establish during this hour of communication. Two distinct voices mix during a length and close friend exchanges e-mails. A Sheffield based artist and Penny McCarthy. The subjects seem little of interest; they are varied. They change according to the mood of each one, according to the contents of e-mail, displacement in space and time. . Fragments of friendship are displayed. Words of sympathy, deep closeness, are disclosed in a public conversation.

What lesson can we draw? An useless display of what could remain in the private sphere ?  There, a live-Art, a matter to be reflected. Any textual support leads to reflect, to think, to react. It is obvious.

Fragments of friendship are displayed. One can doubt the effectiveness or the need for such an exercise: a simple reading of e-mails. Is this art? How to get through? Since the question must be posed. I do not know where to locate truly this “live”performance. Yes, it is well a performance. It destabilizes, undoubtedly, anyway.

What kind of message they intend to share? The words around Borges produce little effect on me, they disconcert. The great writer is used as alibi with a manifest vacuity. The evocation of journeys by train, the displacement in space and time have a certain interest, New-York, the Mediterranean, the colours. However, it always brings back to the private sphere.

This kind of performance has as a principle, I suppose, to move away the spectator, to take him trapped as an hostage, while hoping to cause a later reaction. The reaction, with my direction, was rather mitigated, I noticed very little enthusiasm in the audience as well. Chatterings, distorts cough, sending of texts.

The exchange of kindness between the two friends obviously left cold.  One could say that there is a share of true emotion in this reading. Is it shared with the audience? Did they succeed in moving away the spectators while causing a kind of reaction, of rejection? I wonder well. They wanted to make a performance. It is successful. Does this enforced communication have any interest?  The question remains open.

Each one undoubtedly would find matter to be reflected. It is undoubtedly the goal of art, to cause, to cause reaction, good or bad. Let us not be sulky our pleasure. Let me greet the performance. As long as the conversation maintains protagonists in a certain distance, the emotion could be easily felt, imagined. When they speak closer to each other, in a public performance, the magic dulls. As for the true interest of this kind of exercise, it is another history…

David Bate/ Michelle Atherton, Transmission

Transmission

18 November 2009

NOT THE OTHER.

David Bate. Host: Michelle Atherton.

I come in this transmission to learn more about the notion of difference, the title is attractive. David Bate is the name of the photographer, his lecture is on friendship, the notion of the OTHER. On the screen, an image of Gustave Courbet’s painting “Bonjour Monsieur Courbet.” The original is displayed in Montpellier’s Museum.

Michelle Atherton introduces the photographer as her best friend, then follow words ok kindness, generosity and… of true friendship.

Then the photographer starts by giving some explanations on what friends are, what friendship is, why one chooses to be with another. A friend is another. Being friend is sharing points of view, physical sensations of being together, recognizing sameness and difference. I can not help but agree with the presentation, because all my present work is based on otherness, relationship, friendship, questioning the Otherness…

He then extracts highlights of works which seem relevant, talks about some narrative background of 19th and 20th century : communism and fascism.

According to him, Fascism is linked to nostalgia, to returning to the past, to the purity of the past, the purity of the race. It is an idea of purification while communism is getting rid of the past, going forward.

Through his European Letters, a series of photos, he tries to explain the idea of “the Other” in what he calls a post-communism world. By exploring the strangeness, by manipulating the images with the computer, they become broke. What is familiar to us may become strange. Exploring the way to work, it’s experimental, the images become strange. (e.g how European families use and move in caravan)

It’s a subjective moment of otherness, the notion of known and unknown. Picture, motto and title, (images and text) altogether illustrate what he intend to do, he demonstrates how national identity and an attempt of homogeneity are not far from Xenophobia in different countries of Europe. Inclusion/ exclusion.

The second part of his lecture is called The Politics of Friendship. Through a video in Barcelona we see how narrative becomes important to the work. Seriality and sequentiality of photos explore the way human beings  and animal live together, the closeness between dogs (animals) and human beings.

He then talks about his experience in Estonia, while teaching photography. Students could speak English but they were a mile from a true understanding of the subject. Narrative/ problem of comprehension/ language…

In Zone 1, in reference to Andrei Tarkowski’s film, the Stalker (1979) he points out an allegory of what was happening in USSR. Aliens are contaminating the inhabitants of the Zone. Nobody knows what is really going on. The zone is a space where your unconscious desire will be fulfilled. Berlin was a zone where your desire would be a desire for capitalism, for the inhabitants of USSR.

In Zone 2 we see sixteen photos of the Zone (Tallin) in Estonia. The work is a dialogue between cultures, a kind of realism. Fragments become narrative. Realism and documentary : a fragmentary experience. The city has changed, it becomes strange, different, but it is still a city of soviet inheritance. A recipe of disaster things are not recognizable, everything is constantly changing. His work offers a picture of strangeness. Night-clubs and bars are like in the western world. It’s a kind of lost innocence…

The last work is an approach of what is similar within the western world. It’s a series of recent photos in Australians’ life titled Australia (09). The comfort of their apartments is like ours, the objects of the daily life, fridges, cups of tea, gardens, buildings, universities etc… Talking of friendship, If we think only in terms of likeness, sameness and togetherness we discard what makes us different each other, we are weakned. If we explore the boundaries between the sameness and the difference, we question our ability of living together.

The issue of is not in the recognition of the sameness, but in the division, a kind of split between public and private, their boundaries, nature and city, how we engage our implication. How we think urban space, nature, the cellular life and the possibility of thinking about globalization.

I have no doubt that together, considering our differences, we can rebuild a world different from this one, with a real sense of friendship, of otherness and togetherness, accepting the notion of strangeness as a whole, because in some way we are strangers to ourselves (Julia Kristeva). We will be working with our dreams, questioning our ability of finding solutions to our problems together…

All for Amanda, transmission.

Amanda Beech– Jaspar Joseph Lester

Transmission 25 november 2009

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. How strange yet familiar these three words sound to me.

Language, language of force and the force of language. Jaspar introduces his friend in a few words of such clarity, quoting Giorgio Agamben on friendship, I forgot to ask him the reference of the book.

A few words about what friendship should be. For sure, friendship is unstable but without it, impossible to live. Who can disagree? What is friendship for, what the purpose is? It requires pragmatism while the question of criticism is important. Pragmatism is Amanda’s work. The presentation of Amanda’s work hits me strongly by the choice of words, their impact: materialistic, political, radical, persuasive, charismatic. What happens when we refuse to be persuaded by our friend’s words? Friendship goes on despite that.

I wonder if they feel like I do. It seems Amanda and Jaspar work together in various projects (on curatorial and writing project). They explore different areas of research but they seem fascinated each other by their artworks.

Then comes Amanda Beech, elegant, revealing the risky program around her work full of intensity, of pragmatism and conviction. Democracy, Violence, Art. Force of language. The artist appears to be strictly radical. She explores different focus in a strong narrative, moving around the subjects, insists on the relation between democracy and violence. There is somewhat an idealism in this concept but Amanda stands adamant, questioning, going on her exploration of language, modulating her voice with force and conviction, in various tones. Could I follow her in this way of thinking? Whatever the reason, I keep listening, observing, waiting the issue of such strategy.

In series of images ( Studio of Joseph Torak, Image of Olympe, Kiefer Sutherland in a T.V series called Season Six) she tries to demonstrate how the art produced by Nazi could not be called Art because it doesn’t rely on the universal, highest principles of LIBERTE, EGALITE, FRATERNITE. What is the political impact of such a production? According to her, Art world was a free space for thinking in Nazi. The ideal of Democracy is liberty, freedom. In some way, the Nazi world polarity produces regimes of meaning, it doesn’t guarantee plurality.

The example of Leviathan (Hobbes) based on the principles of Power, force, government seems relevant. It makes sense. “We would kill ourselves without a government, the regulating power of a King. We need EGALITE, we need to be saved by the King.” Freedom is a scheme. FRATERNITE is in being together, sharing this ideal. A necessity. Liberty never exists without a government, we need an administration. What benefices the individual benefices the group.

But what happens when these highest principles of LIBERTE, EGALITE, FRATERNITE, are ignored by a group of people in charge of a government, an administration? Season Six is a true illustration of the force of the bad. Artist role is to criticize and to accept to be critical, well. I find myself a bit disturbed, unease by the texts and the video. I manage to do not be disturbed any longer. Suddenly the narrative becomes too talkative, emphasizing, overwhelming.  A feeling of toomuchness. Is it intentional? Difficult to take the time of true analysis, reflection, calm thinking. Amanda seems radical in her critics of our society. Defensive critics. Shall I ask her to be more critical on her own work as well, without changing her radical position?

She is re-thinking the structure upon which the neo-liberal society relies upon, questioning its rhetoric, its basis. For example how Hobbes principles are applicable in our modern society? It requires permanent, political, marxist critics. Amanda Beech uses a performative, radical language.  Right!  But on the basis of the principles she stresses, she must accept to be criticized. I think she does. Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite for all. It is a concept, based on an ideal. It’s an idealistic process, a purpose, a target. What is conceivable, thinkable and valuable in the western world, why is it constantly denied elsewhere?

Let ‘s keep up, working on revealing or recognizing the “force of bad” like in Saison Six, knowing Art is a process of difference and constant change. I could say being and struggling together is necessary, despite our differences, it’s ” the degree zero of administration power.”

Is the project of a delphic world achievable ?

“THREE VOICES”

A.F [...] Yeah, it endears her to you in different ways, the first thing that you notice is that she is a very pretty woman, then you pick up on her colourless, drab, shapeless clothes; an unfashionable grey tweed wrap-around skirt, a stiff, thick, grey, long armed top. Although the clothes appear warm and the child is well wrapped the room is strongly lit by low, grey, cold winter light. She is alone with the child. Her partner could be away at work. Or she could be a single parent. Alone to face the bailiffs, find some way out of the situation. The room is bare except for a small hi-fi and speaker system on the shelf behind.

B.S So you like it. But the title of the exhibition. I want to know how you think that the work, this particular piece of work relates to that. Or even if it does.

A.F I think the curator has been very canny and has included it as it seduces the viewer with this dark aesthetic. And as there this empathy thing too. Current affairs, everybody has concerns at the moment, money problems, worries, sleepless nights. The exhibition title is a question, not a statement. Can art save us? The answer to that I suspect is a definite no. But it can buck us up, can be cathartic, can let us know that we are all… most of us, have similar problems. Can help us to feel human in a seemingly increasingly cold and harsh world. That Hunter and others like him continue to record scenes of everyday life, and that it is art. Gives it a higher level of importance than if you had just come across it in a newspaper, as journalism. It works on different levels. On the one hand you feel emotional for her, you want to be able to help this woman and her child in some way. In another sense, if you are honest, totally honest about it all. You are buoyed by the work. You have a very private part of you that is always ‘saying’ something like “it could have been worse, it could have been me!”. And that is how, then it asks questions about the self. The same self that you can never really know, and then you swing back to a negative frame of mind. You look at yourself from the outside and perhaps you don’t really like what you see. Next you have a stage when the defences come down again and you blame it on society or the system. “It’s always somebody elses fault, isn’t it?”. As with a lot of good work recently its very busy and you are all over the place, emotionally. As with a lot of this type of work there’s a narrative, but as Bacon would have said this comes across through a long diatribe through the brain, it’s not work that comes across directly onto the ‘nervous system’. – But it does do that in the end. And thats why when you go along to the show, and you stand in the corner, and you’re not viewing the piece. But you are watching the people viewing the piece. Well that is why they are there for a very long time, they are immersed in this whole gamut of emotions. There is a ‘gaze within the work’. It is much more than a brilliantly realised photograph loaded with ambiguous meanings and a clever title or a classical reenactment even. The viewer sometimes finishes the work – and this could be seen as great work – quite complex, powerful great work – simply because it narrows those options down. And well, you’ve only just got to look back at how it’s been received. The reviews. First photograph to be accepted by the National Portrait Gallery. Contemporary art for everybody too, not merely the élite few or the specially trained. That’s a big deal in itself today. It’s why whenever, if you’ll take the care to notice – see the exhibition advertised, its Hunters piece that they will have used. Every time. Guarantee it. Visual hook in the marketing – to draw the general public in.

B.S Yes Hunters want is that you do engage with his work, humanize his subjects. He invests his work with a genuine knowledge and understanding thats acquired through actually having lived in these conditions. Some of these people were actually his friends and neighbours. Still are. I did some research on him a couple of years back when I had to do a thing about him. It’s a lot to do with post Thatcher Britain and real life. New underclass, the media’s representations of them and the perception of it all by middle England as all.. well all quite dark really. Why don’t they just get a job all on drugs – more crime isn’t it. We do have a tendency to exaggerate don’t we. Panic. Perhaps with more insight they.. I think he felt quite angry really, in the 90′s when he was doing that series, and wanted to show it, his community in a different light. It’s his most famous piece, the ‘Possession Order’ and the most stunning. But theres plenty more good stuff. She won a reprieve by the way. Did you know that? Yeah. Kind of spoilt it for me when I found that out. Ruined my whole weekend too. Had to re-write half of the bloody review.

A.F You evil old bastard, thats bad. And after everything you’ve just said! She’s a real person – and there’s the infant too.. I have a friend who was in Manchester when the IRA thing went off. She said the same thing – spoilt her whole weekend because she couldn’t get her slides developed – but she was only joking…

B.S Can art save us? Hunter talks about communities and challenging perceptions and I can see that sort of theme around a lot. Jeremy Dellers’ ‘Orgreave’, Charlesworth  he’s no mug is he, wrote a strong piece about that too, about the politic outside of the historical re-enactment. Politics as art therapy I think. Communities destroyed by Thatcherism in the 80′s again.. Amanda Beech was up again last week too – some lecture for the University – solidarity, social glue and art that can make communities happen. Goes back to Ruskin too, doesn’t it. It was a Ruskin show really. The idea of what he thought art might be able to do. Enlightenment and communities working together – need for change – all common themes today – become fashionable again. Relation between politics and aesthetics through Ranciere and Zizek et al. Reminds me of Beeches talk again, sceptical of weak and uncritical art, considering ways in wich power is experienced through images. ‘Oh art is doing some good over there!’ I remember her saying. Maybe there really is something to think about here. The desires people have for ‘art’ in terms of what it might be able to do?

M.B The affect of the title interests me. I am wondering how – it’s much too late, the piece is much too old now, too well-known - and we shall never know – but I do wonder, how successfully received it might have been had it been shown as ‘untitled’ for all of this time. Still quite successful probably. There are tens of thousands, hundreds possibly who could have made the Vermeer link happen. And the historical re-stagement thing of course. the classical reconstruction, the lighting and everything…  Bit of research on the artists background and so on. Talented student, squatter, new-age traveller, political, whatever. But as I say it’s too late for that now, as it happens I’m all for that. A good strong title. Functional text allowing a way in to something more than the purely visual… I’m sorry just thinking aloud.

A.F Its an interesting question though Mike and I think that you are right, the art-work could stand-alone in the abscence of its ‘now’ title. And I’m thinking of Theodore Lipps’ old theory, the empathy thing, wish people do seem to be reading again. How we seem to have acquired through time, or have the innate – who can really say for sure – ability to relate an emotional or reactive response to affective qualities in ‘another’ through an empathetic muscular response. Or in this case maybe its better to ‘say’ the situation of the other. Same difference for these purposes. Deleuze frames it as more of an immediate response pre.. or outside of ones.. cognitive understanding or comprehension, on a more base level? Almost a sixth sense like an animal response. Gone back to bacon again haven’t I.. or Deleuzes’ three conceptual projections of a sensation thing..

B.S Mike you’re the old romantic amongst us, the art historian. For all of this talk, meaning about the ‘Possession Order’ in particular, and what can we really ‘say’ about it that it doesn’t do itself. If you take anything home with you tonight. What would that be?

M.B Oh. Just that I could believe in it.

End

Anon.

Juan Cruz, Transmission.

Sharon Kivland presents Juan Cruz

A voice experience, an inner experience. The voice as a medium of text.

To translate is obviously a complex mechanism. How to place his own voice in the voice of an author. What difficulties and what pleasure does one feel in learning.

Translating. Learning in creative purpose. Juan Cruz explores this theme in a kind of filmed mise en scene. He staged his body, carried by his voice and translates a text in an empty room.

One can wonder about this  kind of exhibitionism. Visitors are startled, they ignore the translation in live. Sometimes his voice is white, he cannot go forward, he stops. He combines his voice with the voice of the author by mixing his own words, deliberately betrayed. It is a re-creation but also, inevitably, a betrayal.

These are short texts, a chapter or two. Chosen at random as he says. There is a kind of humility in the reception of a text of others, but also a kind of assertiveness.

Staging is taking a risk. Don Quixotte is not a protagonist, he becomes a partner whom he reappropriates the voice, the text, the spirit. The creative intensity is Juan’s because He can play its full. The original is forgotten for a while.

Other images unfold in a sort of halo inconsistent. A sound of violin, an image of his daughter, a voice behind the image. Juan learning how to build a wall. Both translating, building a wall or learning to play violin are an investment, an exploration.

I remain fixed on the investment of the voice and its own in the language of another. It is a challenge. Juan Cruz no doubt takes pleasure in this praxis.

A text carried by the voice of a character becomes another text. It changes. He who speaks becomes the owner, to enforce. Expose himself as he does and translate in live is a risk. He betrays on behalf of creation.

Images: Don Quixotte by Picasso and Dali