David Bate, Transmission Review Stream of Consciousness

I don’t remember him, he’s not how I thought he looked, he’s got a different haircut.   A  slide of two dogs running together, smiling and grimacing at each other – love or competition in their eyes?  Michelle is speaking still.  She’s talking about a philosophy of friendship.  I know Matt is here because I can see his voice recorder on the table.  The cloth has fold creases, the table looks nice.  Michelle is saying that friends share similarities but have differences, we recognise the self in the other.  She says she wouldn’t want to go to the pub with herself because she knows what she’d be getting.  Does it make me narcissistic to say I think I would like to go to the pub with myself (I wonder how I move, I wonder what my body language looks like, my tics).  She’s handing over.  David has titled the talk ‘Not the Other’.  It is him, I recognise him as he moves, as he speaks.  He used to have a bob with a fringe, it was very androgynous.  I like bobs.  He’s talking about fascism and communism, about their essential differences in their relationship to history.  Fascism predicated itself on re-routing the past to take in purity.  Fascism returns to the past.  Communism must abolish the past, to rid itself of the aristocracy and the class system so that everyone can get on.  I like it.  He makes a link with art – Modernism must cut itself off from the past, and I miss the point, is he saying Post-Modernism returns to the past.  I am a Post-Modernism.  I am thinking about that.  He is showing work from 1992 called ‘European Letters’, it was a timely work, exploring relationships with our near neighbours, I like its use of text and image.  It reminds me of Victor Burgin.  I did not know that the Euro was initially called the Ecu.  He wanted to visualise the subjective moment of otherness.  He quotes Donald Rumsfeld “the known unknown”.  He speaks in phrases that make sense to me, I understand him.  It was early digital work, he was scanning in 8 x 10s.  There are lots of photos, we are seeing lots of slides.  I am looking at images and enjoying his voice.  He is in control, imperceptibly.  He has a generosity and lucidity.  He is a teacher, by name and by nature.  He is showing us his version of Holbein’s ‘The Ambassadors’, the painting with the anemorphic skull.  A photo, early Photoshop, moving out of the orthadox photographic space.  He is saying that work on computers was becoming increasingly Baroque, I don’t know what he means.  He is saying that is never endless, there is no obvious point to stop.  In a darkroom, I plan my work around the amount of paper I can afford to nail a print.  He is saying he returned to video, he called it ‘The Politics of Friendship’, the title of a Derrida book.  He says he never fully grasped the book, I find his honesty endearing.  The video is made of still photographs he shot on 35 mm film, the sequence is shot, and silent, its of dogs in Barcelona sniffing wee.  He is saying he went from surreality to sequentiality.  He quotes Allan Sekula’s phrase “they tyranny of surreality”, I want to tell him about my relationship to Allan.  How I resolved it in the end.  His voice is serious with softness, there is a friendliness.    He was asked to set up a photo department in Tallin, he found dialogues difficult because of the hangover of the Soviet Union.  Tarkovsky’s The Stalker was filmed there, he used the text of the film as a common language, a shared experience to shape discussion, to form photographs that have an entrance point, in reaction to the film.  I like what he is saying, I understand his strategy.  We see a clip from Stalker, last time I saw a clip from Stalker was the last Transmission he spoke at.  The photos were fragments, he shot on 35 mm on fast film, he likes grain.  Presented in diptychs.  An alienated viewpoint.  Someone said to him, “Dave, your work’s great, shame you are not Estonian”.  Its interesting, identity politics tells us that we speak of our own identity, we speak of our own difference.  Is it linked with a cultural colonialism (Modernism?) to want to represent the other?  Is David a closet Modernist?  I don’t think I want to say that, that’s not helpful.  His work is very generous, he’s talking about wanting to connect with the other.  I think Allan Sekula would really like his work.  He mentions that he was a student of Victor Burgin.  I guessed it, I guessed it!  Oh, the founding fathers of theoretically engaged, text including, contemporary photography!  I love them dearly, but I am trying to move away from trying to please them.  I have to make my own way, I have to let go my impulse to re-make to re-cycle inherited strategies.  But I understand what David is saying, go on.  A paper he gave in Ireland on Globalisation (more Allan!)  led to a residency in Australia, he had to name a theme, he named Globalisation.  He shows us photographs that weren’t working, another act of generosity, perhaps self confidence.  He made triptychs with text in the centre panel, he brought the critical context into the frame of the work.  Outside it are nature/culture binaries.  The human exploitation of nature.  The relationship between text and image is really working.  In one the central panel is blank.  David is talking about his resistance to identity politics, its not just about collecting/recognising.  “Thank you for listening”.  The questions, he’s talking about self as a convenient fiction, we don’t know ourselves.  We see ourselves in the mirror not photos, a strange alienation of seeing yourself.  Photography allows space for reverie (compared to film which suppresses our creativity).  I want to ask a question, I wonder about his work based in Tallin, it seems like his relationship with his students is an element of work, how does that get transmitted?  As opposed to the critical context being within the work he made in Australia.  I ask the question!  He talks about the ‘anxiety panel’ by the door – the didactic text.  He’s talking about his anxiety at not having a signature style.  I’m in the bar and I wish I could talk to him, in a way that is not sycophantic, but I think his work has a coherency and weight that I really enjoy.  I speak to him, sum up my studies; I don’t do a good job.  I can’t quite articulate myself in a way that demonstrates the connections between our thinking.  I blurt out the anecdote he tells last time, I remind him of his slide carousel he left on the train.

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…

Transmission 18th Nov Michelle Atherton presents David Bate

(a) Bonjour Monsier Corbet, 1854. I admire the way the travellers beard points up toward his addressor. It has been painted at just the right angle. Looking around, see whos arriving. EC, this moment isjust right social but loose. There is no need for me to catch anyones eye just to prove I know someone. Expectant gazes, Ive saved you a seat. Its quite empty in the auditrioum when we start. Announcing the chapbooks, yummy! (A paid bar, lots of fun, look forward to see ing you there… remember these for next week when I make my announcement for Pleasurewood thrills!)

At least I meet MA (What is today’s theme? I mean in relation to our crits today and my reading last night. Would it be possible to filter this talk and only find what I want or will I need to hunt?)

Civic friendship

(MA has a young voice, it has authority though, no hesitancy, no apologies)

Dominant, economic individualistic model. social glue. (crude thinking, vulgar, constellatory)

As she talks her guest is sat looking around, checking things- notes- a sensation of existence. A friend=an Other self. (Pain in someone else’s body) a recognition of the self. (At my left is D, her hand is moving the pen as if she were writing but it is nowhere near the page). Surrealism and photography. 2 large jugs of water that might fall. Not the other (extracts of the work relevant to the theme).

2 Narratives of the 20th C. Fascism-communism. the past. Historical. (Not quite an accurate view) Oblitorating the past- relationship to art and aesthetic debates. Modernism cut off the past.

(Im uncomforably being cramped in by my neighbour on the right.) appearance familiarity…the EUHysteria about losing national identity. Not oppositional but descriptive (!) The known unknown-Rumsfeld. Text and Image Scanning an image and waiting is like being in the darkroom.The latent image becomes manifest. Emblem theory. Pictur-motto-title. Tripartite structure. Strangers, strangerstooursellves. Strangees. the work should be strange, should have otherness. Im not sure if his are working, a little heavy handed? Iillustrative. His exploration of this technology is lost in tme for us. Anamorphicprojection.

The baroque-to go on manipulating endlessly… Dogs sniff around, the politics of friendshipis explored, the graffitti on the wall does a similar thing. Someone has left their mark, others may countersign. these things are meant forthe gallery, here they are given a cinematic screening. Cultural differences, not just language, misunderstanding double-speak-saying nothing is saying everything. Tarkovsky a way in .we all get Stalker- the Zone. Nobody knows how this space works. Images became a narrative matrix. fragmentary, dialogue. Culture writing over culture in redevelopment, regeneration. Transformation of the city. Authority, authenticity, ethnicity. It makes the meaning of the work, who you are. (Berger, ways of seeing) (photograms- what is the phenomena of photography?)

A standard talk, words and pictures. The pictures bookend the text. Is his work too literal, roots, rooted…yes. signify, allegorical. It has a corporate look. Global ,starbucks. The soft greens, surely its deliberate? Twice he says descriptive without condemming. So it lacks critical content?An argument for otherness- does this mean everything is ok? By standard do I mean bland? Im drifting now. Thankyou for listening.

I enjoy his presence more than last weeks speaker because I see a process ofthinking-talkingas opposed to reading.His eyes dart up and about searching for the words. He used the expression ‘not my cup of tea’. I applaud him for that.

Movies filtering the world as if they (it) were real. He knocks zizec (Ballard said it differently). Was it prohibited to read Marx during the soviet era?How strange! How ‘other ‘ is the work? It looks pretty familiar to me (Ballard said otherwise). He uses familiar imagery. a student of Burgin. the text/image. Anxiety panel,it explains the work to you on your way in and out of the gallery. JJL Globalisation, rejected ideas. investing in ideas.Less familiar criteria for selecting work-Friendship?

How can you make this work about globalisation without criticising your host? You want to maintain the status quo, make friends. In friendship we can criticise, it is a part of the friendship. Otherwise we treat people as objects. If you make art work out of this without the friction, then the work is bland and pointless.