User:Grrrreat/research/review trim3
I will review a lecture/the general work of Jonathan Meese by juxtaposing it with Goodiepal's Oeuvre and lecture. They both, in a way, talk about utopias in art, Goodiepal more in an electronic music and media art related direction, Meese more in a general way.
https://vimeo.com/11152592 https://vimeo.com/7302277
"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 who has heard of the German enfant terrible Jonathan Meese (he is actually 42 years old by now) before since the words scandal or commotion are what his appearances naturally seem to imply . However there was one thing happening in the embedded video of the panel discussion which was accompanying the article that really caught my attention. Meese tells the students present that 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 the short pause forcefully sweeping all the glasses of the table with his left arm. Without real violence in his motion or posture and seemingly doing it more for the gesture than the action, he is immediately grabbed by two taller men coming from separate borders of the image. What is remarkable here is what follows: 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 reality-fanatism […] it wasn't the fault of the glass!“ So one of these students (assumably) he told to get their asses up and question systems 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's not O.K. anymore? Actually acting on these thoughts is 'Realitätsfanatismus'? 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.“
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 video done for 'Dropping Knowledge' in 2007, where he talked about the ... (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1qy5m_jonathan-meese-starts-a-revolution_creation) He seemed to have a vision, was friendly and sympathetic (which is not necessarily important, but a bonus) 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. 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. He actually spoke once at the University of Applied Sciences Salzburg at which I studied first, and just on that day I couldn't go. So there was a hint of envy in the air when my friends showed me the A4 sized drawings he made for them instead of giving autographs after the talk. But seeing his reaction to the guy 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. 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 loud manner. His envisioned paradigm also extends to the field of media art as well, encompassing pretty much anything where technology or computers are used to create art of any kind. Seemingly trying to get a world record in giving talks in 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. His lectures usually start off by telling the audience that 'Europeans don't have any sense of time, they don't understand it' which leads him to strategies to oppose the classical paradigms of notation and composition by transcending the factor time. Furthermore he brings the idea of alternative intelligences into the discussion, which he sees as the future recipients for whom art should be made nowadays. Bearing in mind the aforementioned quote by Goodiepal, he says he now tries to create art which computers won't understand, because as stated: they are the recipients of the future.
To go deeper into Goodiepal's universe would take more than a short text like this, but having watched two versions of his lecture I can say that even though his ideas might often be absurd or unreal, and his appearance and style of lecturing is no less madman-like than Jonathan Meese's he draws connections that can be followed. This creates a body of work that has clear boundaries and premises, a universe that can at least be partly decoded. A reason for this might be that he just wanted to make the schoolbooks and sell them, 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 universe.
To be finished.