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"Proposal (Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown) for Toronto" by Vincent Honoré, Spring 2010, pp. 68-80 |
(2)
“Very soon he will vanish
completely in the wings
of his own
wordless
stanza.
[ ]
but
his
stanza
is not
completely
empty
[ * ]”3
Nina Beier. In 2008, the Danish artist Nina Beier was commissioned to create a performance work for the Zoo Art Fair in London. All Together Now required the participation of all of the fair’s interns. They were asked to whistle (or hum) the Internationale (the international socialist anthem) while performing tedious tasks during the fair’s installation, public opening and deinstallation. As Beier explains, “I asked the interns to whistle when it felt natural, when they were in their own thoughts, preparing things. I explained that they should do it with authority, like something they would do while working at home, and only in a public space if they felt very comfortable. They could do it together or alone, but it had to be privately instigated and it was important that it not be performed as entertainment for anyone. It could take place even behind closed doors if they were working in the office or a storage room, or it could be quietly done in a private moment.”4 The performance infiltrated the entire fair, with these often overlooked workers enacting a modest, somewhat desperate and often invisible, but still penetrating, haunting and radical gesture. It must be stressed that the performance was directed not only to collectors, curators and artists (i.e. art “professionals”) and the general public, but also to the gallerists, the fair’s managerial hierarchy and the interns themselves: they were asked to perform even behind the scenes and during deinstallation. The interns’ seemingly innocuous yet contagious act infiltrated both the fair’s soundscape and its visitors’ mental space—some found themselves recalling the lyrics or even humming the song on the way home. The act itself (solitary, unnoticed worker whistling on his/her own) pointed to both the specific political movement it referenced and to work songs in general, slave songs in particular.
The performance succeeded in raising multiple and complex issues using minimal means: notions of space and time, the inseparable relationship between observer and observed, relativity and the multi-layered nature of reality, both physical and conceptual. The work proved how deeply certain signs and roles are implicated in the social world, and drew attention to the behavioural processes linking thinking and doing. It addressed the varying degrees of freedom humans experience in the private and social worlds, recalling phenomenological studies about the body as a performative instrument in the world. The artist engaged in an exploration of human labour as a material condition that can potentially produce meaning. The simple gesture of whistling or humming brought to mind codes of visual and social representation that communicate in multiple modes simultaneously, and in this case had more impact than an image or a linear narrative might have. In this work, active bodies are a conscience emerging into the world, encouraging a reformulation of the intersubjective conditions that govern the social environment. In the context of a commission for an art fair, All Together Now was an original gesture that made plain the transitory value attached to actions and objects. It also represented an alternative performance structure, as much for the performers as for the audience, opening a moving grid of questions/ answers, actions/reactions... The action, which only existed in a social context (the art fair), persisted in a lived space (memory). While activated by individual volition (interns were free to whistle where-and whenever they wished), the group action generated a considerable force. One of the unique social dimensions of this performance involves the issue of co-presence, the subject-to-subject exchange of information. Through her understanding of the situation and careful formal choice, Beier succeeded in making the performance simultaneously social, sensible and historical. This intersubjectivity is the basis of the deeply philosophical and political nature of this “invisible” work.
« Page 1 First page Page 3 »- Micah Lexier was commissioned to design this piece for Canadian Art. His presence resembles that of the author as described by Flaubert: “present everywhere, and visible nowhere.” Lexier’s work has much to do with retreat, and resonates absolutely with the issues raised in this essay.
- Only a few are mentioned here. Others whose practices infuse this essay are Trisha Donnelly, Jiri Kovanda, Dora Garcia and Philippe Parreno.
- Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves.
- When no source is indicated, all quotes come from the author’s conversations with the subject.
- J. G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition.
- Bruce Nauman, “Notes and Projects” in Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art.
- “A conversation: between Seth Siegelaub and Hans Ulrich Obrist,” published in TRANS> #6, 1999.
- John Cage, quoted by Christopher Shultis in “Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the Intentionality of Nonintention,” Musical Quarterly, 1995.
- The seer Tiresias, to whom Zeus granted the gift of soothsaying, was blinded by Hera because, as some say, he disclosed the gods’ secrets to mortal men. Others say Athena blinded the young Tiresias by covering his eyes with her hands when he surprised her naked.
- Vito Acconci, Language to Cover a Page.
- Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: the time-image.
- Giorgio Agamben, “Repetition and Stoppage—Debord in the Field of Cinema,” in In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni—The Situationist International.
- The title is an indirect reference to Marcel Duchamp, an ongoing point of reference for Huws.
- The notion of Idea in Mallarmé and his conception of language prefigures conceptual art.
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