User:Grrrreat/research/review trim3

"Eklat um Jonathan Meese" (Scandal about Jonathan Meese) was what the website of the German newspaper 'Der Spiegel' titled a few weeks ago. Exactly four days before the Documenta 13 was about to start, Jonathan Meese was invited for a discussion at Kassel University. The only surprising thing about all of this this was that they chose a subline - "Die Documenta? Dünnpfiff!" (The Documenta! Diarrhea!") - one would rather expect of Germany's best known tabloid 'Bild' instead of 'Spiegel'. Everything else shouldn't be new to somebody knows a little bit about the most famous enfant terrible of the German art world (he is actually 42 years old by now). The words scandal or commotion are what his appearances naturally seem to imply, no exceptions made. However there was one thing happening in the embedded video of the panel discussion of roughly eight minutes in length that really caught my attention. Meese tells the students present they are the 'hemmorhoids on the state's ass' and talks about how being a student and studying art in institutions can lead to nothing, and they should rather subordinate themselves to art as a cause itself and be humble and respectful about it. Towards the end, in the midst of Meese's usual loud, fanatic and rather entertaining ramblings about 'The dictatorship of art' and his contempt for institutions of any kind, garnished with the usual amount of vulgarities, there is a person from the audience walking up to the stage. All you can see in the video is a young man from the back, standing in front of Meese for a few seconds and after a short pause forcefully sweeping all the glasses of the table. Without real violence in his motion or posture and obviously doing it more for the gesture than the action, he is immediately grabbed by two taller men coming from separate borders of the stage. The thing that really changed my perception of Jonathan Meese was what followed:

Jonathan Meese is bewildered only for a second or so, but then he replies in his always agitated preaching voice again: "Das ist Realitätsfanatismus [...] das Glas kann doch nichts dafür!" (This is a fanatism for realism […] it wasn't the fault of the glass!“)

So one of these (assumed) students he told to get their asses up and question systems like Documenta (actually the reason for his invitation to the discussion) and institutions actually does what he says and confronts him, Meese, who is one of the best selling German artists and flown in to speak at every arts university left and right. And he doesn't even do it violently, he only causes a bit of a ruckus, just like Meese does with his rhetoric and his use of Nazi-symbolism. But as soon as something breaks it is not okay anymore? Actually acting out this rhetoric and ideology is 'Realitätsfanatismus', fanatism?

So is Meese only about the facade that his rhetoric creates and not about the content of his speeches? Unfortunately this is something that can probably only decided by individual subjective opinion, as Meese's oeuvre is constructed in such diffuse and chaotic ways that if seen from a distance it can only be regarded as something that was never made to be fully understood. And maybe his work has different values than a directly revolutionary one whose rethoric and symbols it uses. But maybe it doesn't even matter because not fully understanding it is a great part of its actual appeal. Or how Goodiepal puts it in one of his lectures: „We generally like things we don't understand.“ And Meese's character, which has to be regarded as an artwork as a whole since his appearances and interviews are way too stylized, always in character and a necessary part of the whole Meese-myth he is creating, is definitely hard to understand in a logical way.

That said I was still disappointed and felt deceived only because of this little reaction to the incident during the discussion. Please do not get me wrong here, when I first encountered the works of Jonathan Meese in 2008 I wasn't very impressed by his paintings and sculptures alone. But after watching several videos and talks by him and reading the book "Ernteschach dem Dämon", a publication by Robert Eikmeyer in which the editor discusses "[...]Masochismus, Hermetik, Weinschläuche und Fetische, Lenin, Kinder und natürlich Karl Marx und die Revolution." ([...]masochism, hermetics, wineskins and fetish, Lenin, children and obviously Karl Marx and the revolution.) in two conversations with Slavoj Zizek and Jonathan Meese, I was sold. I loved the auto-associative and seemingly filterless way of thinking he displayed in the promotional video done for 'Dropping Knowledge' in 2007, where he talked about "geometry, adventure, revolution and something called ‘Copyleft.’".

He seemed to have a vision, and his way of talking and provoking everybody by delving deep into the taboo rhetoric of German history and employing it to spread the idea of 'the dictatorship of art' seemed very unique. He also seemd friendly and sympathetic, which should be something to usually be seen detached from an artist's work. But with somebody who's character and appearances are part of the their oeuvre itself it seems impossible to do that. So for a few years I was a fan of Meese's work. And as fans do, I did not question the phenomenon as a whole but looked forward to exhibitions in which he took part or speeches he gave.

But seeing his reaction to the person walking up to him on stage seemed to have broken some kind of spell. I couldn't say what it was and why exactly this event did it, but Meese and his work suddenly didn't seem interesting to me anymore. It definitely wasn't his eccentric and madman-like affectation because this I still quite enjoyed in other artists.

The aforementioned Goodiepal or Gæoudjiparl van den Dobbelsteen (Parl Kristian Björn Vester) for example is somebody whose artistic persona is very similar to Jonathan Meese's. What Meese tries to do in the general field of art, Goodiepal does in the field of electronic music (or modern computer music) and media art. And like Meese he seemingly pursues it with his whole life, manifests it in his looks, his persona, his speeches and rethoric and ultimately also in his actual work. For example in his Mort aux Vaches manifesto and schoolbooks he tries to introduce a new paradigm for composing, notating and playing electronic music. And he doesn't do it silently or in a subtle way, but in a very expressive and sometimes even loud manner when he declares things like the 'Five steps in a Gentleman's War on the stupidity of modern computer music and media based art' (2008-2011).

His envisioned paradigms also extend to the field of media art as well, encompassing pretty much anything in which technology or computers are used to create art. Seemingly applying for a world record in giving talks at as many different universities as possible, he has a very educational approach which goes as far as printing schoolbooks from the contents of his lectures, including actual exercises for the reader. His lectures usually start out by telling the audience that Europeans don't have any sense of time, that they just don't understand it. This leads him to strategies to oppose the classical paradigms of notation and composition by transcending the factor of time. Furthermore he brings the idea of alternative intelligences into the discussion, which he sees as future recipients for whom we should try to make art nowadays. Bearing in mind the aforementioned quote by Goodiepal, he says he himself creates art which computers won't understand, because they are the recipients of the future.

To go deeper into Goodiepal's (or respectively Meese's) universe would take more than a short text like this, but having watched two different versions of his lecture I can say that even though his ideas might often be extremely absurdist and his appearance and style of lecturing is no less madman-like than Jonathan Meese's he draws connections that can actually be followed (not without some effort though) and don't obfuscate themselves in a universe of self-referential symbolism. This creates a body of work that has clear boundaries and premises, a universe that can at least be partly decoded. One reason for this might be that he just wanted to make the schoolbooks and records people would buy, but another reason could also be that his theories were actually made for other people to work with, an assumption that could hardly arise in context with Meese's self-centered and best-selling universe.

So in the end I still don't really know what it actually was that put me off in Meese's reaction, but I do know that there is art I enjoy more and art I enjoy less. To the art I enjoy more I would count things that open spaces, realms and ideas to be built upon. Things that are inclusive rather than exclusive. Things that use rethoric and thought to create utopias rather than using utopias to obfuscate thought and justify the choice of rethoric. Things that come from defined and understandable concepts which are then extended in all different complex and often weird directions rather than elaborate and complex structures which are built to hide the fact that if you tear them away there may be nothing to be found in its core.

Notes: A nice example for such an elaborate and wide-spread body of work coming from a simpe concept are the works of Philip Beesley. While the works aesthetics and symbolism are quite complex and often obfuscating, listening to a lecture of Mr. Beesley clarifies these structures and shows the intriguing architectonic concept of reaching out, of being inclusive and dendritic it is all derived from.

Bibliography:

Spiegel Talk with Jonathan Meese (in German) http://www.spiegel.de/video/eklat-um-jonathan-meese-in-kassel-video-1200950.html

Ernteschach dem Dämon, Robert Eikmeyer, Zürich 2007

Jonathan Meese for Dropping Knowledge http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1qy5m_jonathan-meese-starts-a-revolution_creation

Goodiepal on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodiepal GOODIEPAL (Lecture ~1h )https://vimeo.com/11152592

Official Mort Aux Vaches Ekstra Extra Walkthrough (Audio) http://i3hypermedia.com/audio/Alku69_MAVEE_Walkthrough.mp3

RADICAL COMPUTER MUSIC AND FANTASTISK MEDIEMANIPULATION (Textbook), Marriage Records, Portland.

Article on Goodiepal in The Wire http://www.thewire.co.uk/themire/2010/05/wanted-goodiepal