ART&RESEARCH

RS: But I suppose that goes back to an idea, is that actual or metaphoric or poetic? As Chad sort of mentioned. Maybe with that work with the distances one, it’s, there’s something about that in, I suppose in a metaphoric way, indicates this sort of individual voice in close proximity with this, you know, trans-national corporation. You have this certain way you describe it, you discuss it, there’s the evidence of this individual, you know, making this alteration and having a dialogue, in a sense, with this beast sort of thing, there’s something about that that’s quite interesting, which kind of comes out of the form of it somehow, and the ridiculous sort of exactitude you sort of placed on it, you know. Plus the sort of predictable illustration that most of the distances are like three times less than they really are sort of thing, but, again, just to sort of keep chasing that question of what’s the thing that’s… making somebody think differently, or, I don’t know, what’s the value somehow, or how can we identify that more? I mean, I sense maybe Oliver - I’m sorry I didn’t see it this morning, so I’m only looking at this one – but what’s kind of interesting in looking at the bits that I saw was that it’s almost like you take this sort of classic sort of left strategy of, you know, exposing through the various means, what’s really going on, let’s say, but to do that now, it’s almost become completely out of, you know, vogue, nobody seems to be interested in that anymore, artists and sort of cultural workers, let’s say. It’s almost a strategy from the past, but when you kind of employ it now, in these situations, it really kind of refocuses how there’s not been a really radical change in those relations over thirty years, since let’s say, the late 60s – it’s still really the same, you know? In terms of what mediated channels of information are kinda ‘telling us’, you know, against what’s actually happened, you know, as you kind of illustrate with the film.

CR: Justin, you know, the question was about effectiveness of political art.

Justin Carter:

It’s something that I was actually gonna talk about if I had had more time, and made a few notes on, but I think it does come down to the way in which you kind of, how you measure it. Kind of in the same way that Ross was talking about, but also, you know, the measuring could be done in the short term or the long term, as well. I mean, the idea of, coming back to Oliver’s work, the idea that, in a way, he wasn’t perhaps set up in order to put the kind of counter argument down in a short term way, the work was more produced in a long term manner, and maybe in that sense, has more of a long term effect. And, in a way, at what point do you measure it? You know, I mean, I always ask myself the question when I’m making something, are the means gonna justify the ends? Is the use of paint or plastic or wood gonna, you know, am I gonna counterbalance that in what the work says or what the work might do? So I think part of the question, or part of the answer, for me is, being an artist, you don’t, or perhaps you shouldn’t know what the outcome is gonna be. You don’t exactly know what work you’re gonna make and what effect it’s gonna have. I think, perhaps, there are ways and strategies that you can develop which are maybe more simple or more understood from the point of the idea to the inception of the work. You know what’s gonna happen and you know what the outcome might be, but I think it’s not particularly the way I work. There’s an element of surprise and uncertainty.

CR: Dominic, in a sense I think you responded to Klaus.

(Laughing.)

DH: Well just maybe to talk about that particular work, the Distance Correction that someone mentioned, like, the intention of it was not to make a direct statement and it was to be received as something quite confusing. I didn’t want it to be easily defined as this is a defacement of an existing billboard, and I didn’t want it to be seen as like advertising or art. So I felt it operated best being that indefinable position, and therefore, the viewer would go away without being able to categorise it and maybe think about it a bit more and sort of just, if that was the question? (Laughing.)

KN: I think that’s very interesting – so, in a sense, you could see it as sort of doubly defiant? It defies conventional categories of art making somehow, and it also tells the individual who is lucky enough to meet it, that they too can be defiant in a sense, and they too own some things which most people just leave alone. So you can take possession somehow. In that way, that very subtle work is surprisingly liberating, and maybe some of Oliver’s revelations are perhaps cementing cynicism. Yes, power corrupts, but what next? Maybe yours is subtly dealing with the kind of a double strategy of defiance. I’m struck by that work, needless to say.

Oliver Ressler:

I think I can only revise the question of effectiveness in relation to specific projects, sorry, I’m not able to answer it in general. You mentioned the Venezuela works – I think this is a situation because the Venezuelan people who appear in the videos are already so politicised, which is completely incomparable to any other country in the world. In Venezuela you can almost ask anyone, for example something about the constitution or a certain laws or political programs and the people will start to talk in a reflective way about it which is completely unimaginable in other states. So there is already an existing discourse on a high level, and when I as an European artist travel there, then I am not in the position to deliver them something or try to provoke them in a way, but I think it makes more sense to listen to people and record the amazing changes. It is important to make these experiences available in different formats, so that other people can maybe learn from it. The effectiveness, maybe can be seen then on how it is functioning to make this special knowledge available.

But I have different strategies with other projects – one project I did not present in the morning was a project about a detention centre in Vienna – it’s a collaborative project with Martin Krenn which already goes back to 1997 and brings into focus something such as detention centres for asylum seekers in Austria which are actually located in the inner city of Vienna, but nevertheless almost invisible from the public gaze. They are hidden behind nice, newly renovated facades of historical houses. But behind these facades there are prisons for people who are only there because they tried to migrate to the European Union, and at this time, 1997, I tried to intervene in a way that this issue becomes visible, that it comes in media from certain perspectives, which are usually not being discussed in the media. In this case, there are really two levels of foreigners – the tourists on the one hand, and the asylum seekers and migrants who have no rights on the other hand. And this system of exclusion can be described as a kind of state racism. Through the term of state racism, or institutional racism, we tried to bring in another aspect into this discussion, which is usually “only” focusing on human rights violation. In order to bring it back to a visibility we installed a kind of cube in front of the Viennese State Opera, where it was visible for two months, addressing the issue of state racism on the top of an image from the façade of the detention centre. So in this case effectiveness was to bring certain aspects into public discourse. But if you were to do the same work next year or so, it would not make a lot of sense to do the same thing again, because the political discourse about this issue also changed. So I would be forced to find a complete new artistic strategy to deal with this situation and issue. Effectiveness depends on the context of the sphere of society in which you try to intervene. There is an Austrian group, I don’t know if it is known here in Great Britain, which is called Wochenklausur, and they have a very precise definition of effectiveness. I do not really agree with it, but if the argument comes to effectiveness in Austria, it is almost impossible to avoid discussing Wochenklausur. For those people who don’t know Wochenklausur, they did and do different interventions, one of them was, for example, to create a kind of hotel for prostitutes in Zurich in Switzerland. So the effectiveness in this case was to reach an aim they precisely defined from the very beginning of the project on, which consisted in creating a space for seven or eight women. That’s good for the women of course, but it’s maybe also a very limited approach and only intervenes in a micro-cosmos, without radically questioning the political system, which creates problems (for these women for example). Also effectiveness lies in creating a structure which should actually be provided by the state, but what it is lacking to provide. I think it does not make sense that art fills the gaps neoliberal capitalisms creates, for me it makes more sense to criticize or work on projects which may contribute to political awareness and change.

CR: I mean, it sounds, from all four responses, that you know, there’s an intent to adjust certain things within the actual environment that the artists decided to work within, and that, sorry that’s as far as I can go. There might be some, you know, moderation of the viewer’s opinion, you know, from viewing the experience, but that’s not really measurable – so how would we ever know the effectiveness? But, you know, presumably the artists then are working with this optimistic outlook which is that one of these will have an impact, but we just don’t know and perhaps that’s how creative people live anyway – you know, that we can’t really measure effectiveness. And anyway, what would you use to measure it? I mean, I don’t know what tool you would use.

Monika Vykoukal:

I think it’s kind of, I mean, I think I agree, maybe coming from a different perspective from Oliver, with the sort of wariness of the term ‘effectiveness’ because working for an arts organisation you think of all those forms to send to the government to say how many one-armed, black, pregnant people have used the facilities. And to me, it always seems like it’s totally disrespectful to everyone involved in those sorts of exchanges, and so by extension, the idea of the political the work would have, if you made an artwork and the idea of effectiveness was that the masses shall rise, or whatever, it shows, I mean the relationship then is kind of propaganda in a sense that if you use it as this form of manipulation, almost, maybe? So it’s kind of, you have this view of the world and then you make it real, but then everyone will say “Yes, that’s what we want”, but I guest the idea is more just out of, and one that I mention is coming out of the desire to make this work whatever, and videos saying this is what’s happening, I think it’s not right, or playing around with it or whatever happens in that creative process, and then the outcome is more open, so the effectiveness is sort of nebulous really.

CR: Although, maybe you could argue that, in that sense, perhaps if you refer to Chad, I mean maybe there’s a sense in which by proposing this unrealistically optimistic utopian situation, you know, it gives some idea of the distance between where one is at the moment and where the situation is and in that space is a sort of interesting moment for reflection about those relative distances, so I think there’s, it’s hard to sort of pin down. Tanya…

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