A Weekend Digest

This graphic popped up unaccompanied on my FB news feed this morning. For lot's of information look here and here and stay tuned.

You can find an amusing "obituary" for facts here. It doesn't hurt that the essay works by mocking Florida Congressman Allen West. And even if it is a sad day, it is difficult to feel badly for those left behind: "Facts is survived by two brothers, Rumor and Innuendo, and a sister, Emphatic Assertion."

There is an appreciative essay on Allan Sekula's new work here at The Guardian.

Really smart and relentlessly decent are, in my experience, a rare combination in a single person. At Crooked Timber, this post contains a link to a series of very touching and insightful comments offered at an Oxford memorial service for the late G.A. Cohen who seems to have been among the rare.

There is a new book out with the self explanatory title Photographs Not Taken: A Collection of Photographers' Essays. You can find a review here at The Guardian. Many of the contributions are by photographers whose work I very much admire. And, speaking of smart and decent, you can find an excerpt from Nina Berman's contribution here at The New Yorker.

Thoughts on Political Space

There is a typically provocative piece by Rebecca Solnit here at TomDispatch.com. As she tends to do, Solnit ranges widely, drawing parallels and inferences that may not immediately seem apparent, but that actually coalesce into a persuasive pattern. All in the service of peddling of what she calls 'hope in the dark.' And there is a video here at Al Jazeera about the role of images and new social media in fomenting and sustaining the 'Arab Spring.' The various amateurs interviewed for the video bring to mind the phrase a democracy of images that became the title for the post-9/11 exhibition in lower Manhattan. The phrase travels well.

To their credit, the reporters who constructed the video strive to impress on viewers that the revolution was made by real bodies - courageous and vulnerable - in the streets and not just by images. Indeed, both Solnit and the Al Jazeera video reminds me of what Allan Sekula wrote in the preface to his series of photographs "Waiting for Teargas: White Globe to Black" where he wrote of the WTO protests in Seattle - "something very simple is missed by descriptions of this as a movement founded in cyberspace: the human body asserts itself in the streets against the abstraction of global capital." Solnit forms her essay as a letter to the young vendor Mohammed Bouazizi whose self-immolation ignited the Tunisian revolution and much else by extension. And the videographers have their subjects - the individuals who filmed crucial episodes in the protests in Tunisia and Egypt - acknowledge the heroes in the streets, risking life and limb against the security forces. Yes, images and social media are new tools, but what they depict and disseminate are real agents taking real actions in dangerous situations. So while Sekula's phrasing is oddly passive - "the human body asserts itself" - I think he is on to something about the power of actual embodied protesters asserting themselves and being caught in the act.

This is the basic message I find lacking in this otherwise interesting recent piece by Michael Kimmelman in The New York Times. He is right, of course, about the power of place and especially about the importance of public space to politics. I can hardly dispute that sort of claim given what I've written here in the past. But I think Kimmelman neglects the conflict and contestation involved in how political agents must occupy and act out their freedom in public. The Al Jazeera video depicts just that process.

L.A. Billboards

This is a post I have thought of doing for a while. Over the past six or so months the MAK Center for Art & Architecture (Los Angeles) has sponsored an exhibition called How Many Billboards? I don't really know anything about the Center; they basically commissioned twenty plus artists to create billboards that were dispersed around Los Angeles. the curators explain: "The philosophical proposition of the exhibition is simple: art should occupy a visible position in the cacophony of mediated images in the city, and it should do so without merely adding to the visual noise. How Many Billboards? Art In Stead proposes that art periodically displace advertisement in the urban environment." I think it is important to displace commercial uses for aesthetic and political ones in public spaces and so find this project appealing.

The Center now has photos* of the whole lot on line, accompanied by sometimes useful, sometimes not-so-useful (because thoroughly written in 'art speak') curatorial blurbs. Here are my three favorites in no particular order:

This first one is by Kerry Tribe, with whom I am unfamiliar. The curators write: "Tribe's billboard reflects the artist's interest in the problems associated with perception. Her abstraction of a darkening sky takes advantage of the proclivity to look up at billboards. Blending the site of the message with its airy backdrop, Tribe's image engages in a formal push and pull with perspective. Tribe's billboard transforms a space that typically directs one's attention outward (aiming the thoughts and desires of viewers toward a specific product) into a space of mental suspension, a hazy zone to lose one's thoughts within. . . . Tribe's billboard gives the viewer a mental break from the onslaught of visual imagery to simply ponder what the image might be, and what purpose it may serve."

Maybe so. To me it seems more like some sort of rip in the fabric of the sunny southern California skies, revealing the roiling troubles (social?, political?, economic?, environmental?) they disguise. Not clear sky hidden by clouds, but the reverse.

Since my tastes sometimes run to agit-prop, I also like this one by Allan Sekula. Indeed, I have posted on Sekula and the ways he has used this particular image here before. Once again, here are the curators: "Sekula deploys an image previously exhibited at Documenta 12. A welder at a construction site holding a lit acetylene torch and crouching over his work takes a moment to look directly at the viewer. The words "The rich destroy the planet" are superimposed in Spanish over the photograph. The lettering, which looks as if it were cut letter by letter from old magazines, is slightly disjunctive in scale but chromatically balanced and ultimately aesthetically appealing. The message, however, is blunt and accusatory, and it functions succinctly for both English and Spanish speakers, since these words appear similar in both languages."

Yeah, yeah. The rich are destroying the planet. And, by the way, they are working hard to shift blame onto the poor.

Finally (and hardly least) this one is by Ken Gonzales Day. And here are the curators, doing their best to obfuscate: "Ken Gonzales-Day . . . investigates, among other things, the role of photography in its relationship to the discourse of race and the dire consequences of racism Gonzales-Day's billboard project brings these histories into the present, reflecting upon how residues of oppression linger in varying forms, despite the many changes that society continues to undergo. His subjects, Bust of a Young Man (bronze with silver inlay eyes, by the Italian artist Antico) and Bust of a Man (black stone-pietra da paragone, Florence 1758, by the Englishman Francis Harwood), are owned by the J. Paul Getty Museum. Gonzales-Day photographed them as part of his Profile Series during a residency as a Getty Research Institute Scholar. The historical sculptures refer to the artistic styles and philosophies of the Renaissance and the Neoclassical period, both of which in their turn revived the achievements of Greek and Roman culture. The imaged sculptures serve as a reminder that despite the manifold social advancements we have witnessed, it is still with the vocabulary of the past that we speak today. The figures in profile also allude to the dawn of photography and the earliest technologies used to mechanically reproduce human likeness. In the third image, a Photoshop composite of the figures facing each other ignites an erotic charge as they stare into one another's eyes. As photographs of sculptures engaged in a virtual erotic dynamic, these profiles are thrice removed from their human referents, a fact which is emphasized by the brilliant highlights that bounce off the material-objects' surfaces."

As I have noted here a couple of times before, Gonzales Day produces very provocative, insightful, creative work. If I had not read the other two blurbs, I'd say this is one of the especially not-so-useful instances of art speak. Here we get lots of high-falutin' words (presented in irritatingly passive voice) to remind us that, despite our advanced technological accomplishments and embellishments, our racist past has not faded away; it still pervades our lives.
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* Please note: I've lifted all three of these images from the MAK Center web page; Photographs © Gerard Smulevich.

On the Ethics of Representation III: "Women Are Heroes"

Yes, indeed, they are. And the large concept here is an interesting one. This is a follow up on the immediately prior post. With suggestions from a couple very helpful comments I discovered that the photo from The Guardian is showing part of a project by a young French photographer JR (he uses this pseudonym because his projects are sometimes "unauthorized") which he calls Women Are Heroes, at least part of which is being carried out in conjunction with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières. See this story and interview at lensculture.

I am interested in ways of photographers use their images, in particular the ways they display and circulate them (e.g., [0], [1], [2], [3]). And this project resonates in an interesting way with Alfredo Jaar's The Eyes of Gutete Emerita which was one component of his Rwanda Projects through which he sought to convey the trauma of the genocide and express solidarity with its victims.

I have discussed Jaar's work elsewhere numerous times ~ [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] ~ and will not do so again here. But he relies on this image and displays or withholds it in a variety of mostly personal, indeed intimate ways none of which have the communal aspect toward which JR apparently is striving. I return to that in a moment. First consider JR's focus on the eyes of his subjects.

The first of these three images (all from JR's website and © the artist) depicts part of the project in Providencia (Rio de Janeiro) that sparked my curiosity on the first place. The next two are from earlier installations in Liberia and Sierra Leone, respectively. Each pair of eyes is a detail from the portrait of a particular woman. I think this (apparently increasing, if you watch the video trailer on the Women are Heroes web site) preoccupation is quite powerful. And the scale at which he is working amplifies the impact considerably. Whereas Jaar often worked in miniature (piles of individual slides) or brief flashes (in light boxes), JR is working in what is a characteristically expansive mode.

In the African countries JR has been working with women in "post conflict" contexts, in Brazil he is working with women who've lost loved ones in the drug wars. His stated aim is to provoke questions and to prompt viewers to interpret the images for themselves. The obvious question here is ~ to what end? (For example, Amos Oz thinks that Israelis and Palestinians "understand" one another just fine and simply need to work out an agreement in what is essentially a real estate dispute.*) Questions arise, too, about his relationship to his subjects. For instance, in "post conflict" situations where societies remain unsettled, are his subjects placing themselves at risk by participating? And questions arise too about the extent to which communities are involved in the implementation of the projects. Are these installations planned and underwritten by local organizations and artists or by NGOs? (The anonymous commenter on my last post prompted these questions. in light of JR's professed aim to take his Women are Heroes project on to several sites in South and Southeast Asia. )

I do not know enough about JR or his projects to offer answers to those questions. So, for now at least, it seems like time to suspend judgment.
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*For a look at one of JR's earlier projects in Israel/Palestine see FACE 2 FACE.

Allan Sekula

"Dead Letter Office (Shipyard Welder, Ensenada)" 1996-1997
© Allan Sekula

"Los Ricos Destruyen el Planeta"(2007) © Allan Sekula

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Addendum (31 December): A comment from Beth Wilson (posted below) sent me in search of the image she mentions. Here it is:

"Alle Menschen werden Schwester,"
Allan Sekula at Documenta 12 (2007)

You can find photos of the rest of Sekula's installations at Documenta 12 here. Thanks Beth!

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Further addendum (5 January 08): I came across this interview with Sekula from BOMB magazine (Summer 05) today so thought I'd add a link.

Photographic Locations: Allan Sekula

"I hoped to describe the attitudes of people waiting, unarmed, sometimes deliberately naked in the winter chill, for the gas and the rubber bullets and the concussion grenades. There were moments of civic solemnity, of urban anxiety, and of carnival.

Again, something very simple is missed by descriptions of this as a movement founded in cyberspace: the human body asserts itself in the city streets against the abstraction of global capital."

From "Waiting for Tear Gas, 1999-2000." © Allan Sekula

In 5 Days That Shook the World: Seattle & Beyond (Verso, 2000) Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair report enthusiastically on the anti-WTO demonstrations that took place in Seattle in the fall of 1999. Their text is accompanied by 30 photographs by Allan Sekula under the title "Waiting for Tear Gas [white globe to black]." The photograph shown here, which may well be the most poignant of the series, and the text quoted above, are from Sekula's section of the book which he describes as "anti-photojournalism" because it is preoccupied less with capturing a "defining image" than with conveying "the lulls, the waiting and the margins of events." I will set aside the possibility that, despite his efforts, Sekula might well have made a defining image. I also will set aside the vexing question of whether Sekula's photo-essay constitutes "art." I am more interested here in the trajectory of the photograph and how that trajectory reflects and effects the way it is used.

I was reminded of this image because I am re-reading Julian Stallabrass's terrific art INCORPORATED (Oxford UP, 2004)* for my undergraduate class this term. Stallabrass adopts a no-nonsense neo-Marxist approach, portraying the putative "freedom" of contemporary art as largely illusory and suggesting that that illusion distorts the multiple ways the art world functions to support advanced capitalism. I don't buy a lot of what Stallbrass peddles, but the book is both very smart and an exemplar of this sort of analysis. Among the places where I find Stallabrass especially flat-footed is in his assessment of Alfredo Jaar as tacitly lending support to "neoliberal values." And the reason that the Sekula image struck me is that Stallabrass presents it (pages 195-201), by way of contrast, as art that resists the pull of capitalism and its servants among art world elites. Sekula's "Waiting for Tear Gas," acording to Stallabrass, exemplifies"the political use of art" which helps expose the "contradictions" in "the logic of capital" precisely to the extent that, in it, "corporate sponsorship and museum curatorship do not define what is seen."

It seemed to me on first reading that this sort of blunt contrast illuminated the shortcomings of Stallabrass's theoretical commitments. I plan to push my students on this point. So, I went to the web, searching for a copy of the image that I could show in class. Ironically (and conveniently for my argument) I discovered that Sekula's image apparently has migrated from a small text published by a lefty press to the permanent collection of the Swiss Fotomuseum Winterthur. Perhaps it has lodged itself in other prestigious locations as well, thereby falling sway to the vicissitudes of "corporate sponsorship and museum curatorship." How and why might this migration compromise the political uses to which Sekula's work can be put?
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* OUP has repackaged this book as Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction (2006).