User:Darija Medic/The south collection
The South Collection
Darija Medic
3rd Thematic project Suck, direct, release Held by Theo Deutinger
2010. Networked media,
Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam,
The Netherlands
The South Collection is an attempt to understand the process of institutionalizing an object of material culture into an artifact (or how is a work articulated to be considered as art). Specifically, how does a contemporary public sculpture become to exist, through creating a public artwork, by appropriating soon to be torn down buildings as public sculptures. The project consists of 1) a museum/gallery entrance setup, with the official South Collection website, catalog and souvenir stand, with postcards and cups, and 2) an audio guide, mostly meant to be used in situ, on location of the actual buildings, while walking the district and observing them.
The institutional facade of the project is using the identity of CBK (center for visual arts, the organization in charge of public art in Rotterdam) as, on one hand a fictious identity correction for the CBK, and, on the other, giving the project its official character. The project detournes the website of CBK and their logo, keeping a life-like identity, and as a reflection on who are the players picking cards in public space.
Are public sculptures ornaments of the city, a commodity, connected to a democratic understanding, giving public the freedom of visual speech, or are sculptures meant for the public to see?
The catalogue of The South Collection says:
“What does the term public in public art stand for? Does it stand for the
people, is it art for all, art for the many, or is being situated in something
that is called public space enough of a guarantee of a model different
from a classical institutional, especially when the classical model brings
out strategies of intervention and appropriation as its own. Situated in
Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where the conversation between liberal
conditions and strict regimes is well maintained, this large collection
of sculptures deals with the everyday person, bringing up questions of
home, boundary spaces, closure, immigration, human rights, temporality,
questions of spaces and communication.”
Using the form of the museum, the project is battling a typical understanding of public space as being an open, participatory space for debate. Institutionalizing freedom (avant-garde, public actions, street art) lessens the sole possibility of actual freedom of speech, exactly because it becomes accepted and appropriated. Susan Buck-Morss talks about “authors in a position to speak to the masses that do not speak for the masses”. So if we surrender our idea of public art coming from the public, and accept broader interests concerning public space, who are the actual public artists? The South Collection leaves its authors anonymous, but the artifact itself draws possible conclusions. In a large scale canvas of the city, public artists become nothing more than appropriate tools fitting into planned city landscapes.
In social sciences the leading opinions observe the public space as participatory. James Young uses the term counter monuments to invoke a contemporary view on contemporary monuments, less monumental, more abstract, and therefore interactive (engaging). The analogy enforces a new principle, even fashion of producing these engaging forms of public art, which as its most mainstream form (official monuments), hold a very definite, yet undefined position. This places less official sculptures in an even broader sea of definition, but with strict parameters-the content must be left open for interpretation.
Positioning public art goes down a two sided alley, it is a highly supported and subsidized activity that is conditioned by financial surplus and political agenda.
Rosalyn Deutsche writes:
“Given the nature of contemporary urban transformations and of the new public sites they develop for art, this message is perilous for democracy. For redevelopment programs are profoundly authoritarian, technocratic mechanisms, transforming cities to facilitate capital accumulation and state control. Within this process, the presence of “the aesthetic”- whether embodied in artworks, architectural style, urban design, or museums-helps give redevelopment democratic legitimacy since, like “the public”, “art” often connotes universality, openness, inclusion. “Public art” combining the two terms, comes doubly burdened as a figure of universal accessibility”.
Even without reflecting on art, the public in public space opens many questions. As do connotations of the term museum.
On one hand, this ambivalence arrives from the crisis of museums, in their classical structure, and on the other, the musealization of cities as a whole (Venice, as a typical example). As museums are adapting their program and accessibility, so are cities becoming more visiting sites, mapping their attractions for visitors to easily navigate through. Using Rotterdam as a testing ground for a situationist experiment is particularly interesting for its non historical tendencies (it doesn’t attract visitors out of historical attractions as classical museum cities). Since the bombing of the city centre, the city has become an architectural constantly (re)building future oriented playground.
Because of this reason, buildings are the subject observed as a group of sculptures, and specifically buildings that underline their own temporary nature. The group of buildings in Oranjeboomstraat used for this project have, as many others to be torn down in Rotterdam, doors and windows covered in metal plates, and red and yellow sprayed x-es, as a sign of their non inhabitability. By not fulfilling their purpose anymore, these buildings stop being homes-houses, and become objects in space, although objects inside a very defined context. Practically they become sculptures. Dramatic and visually appealing, this strategy of closing down buildings is in itself a large-scale urban intervention.
If the buildings are observed as sculptures what are their sculptural characteristics? The visual and conceptual analysis of the sculptures is given in the audio guide, through a mash-up of different sources interpreting different subjects, giving viewpoints of artists as authors, art theory, various standpoints on public space in Rotterdam, and factual information on the buildings from the cadastre of Rotterdam. The hijacked content accounts to the arbitrary nature of giving (artistic) value, in the first place. The South Collection audio guide stems from a museum guide tradition, offering the visitor a museum like experience on location of the sculptures, by playing the audio files while walking along the crossed out numbers of houses in Oranjeboomstraat, one can actually get an authentic impression of how these buildings could be observed as artworks. From Richard Serra to Gordon Matta-Clark, from relational aesthetics to cadastre information, the visitor can look at the reference list to make sense of the literally multivocal sources. Even when listening to the same voice, there could be different sources combined in one, for this purpose, as in the case of Richard Serra, actually talking in different occasions about different sculptures. A User’s Guide to Détournement says: “Restricting oneself to a personal arrangement of words is mere convention. The mutual interference of two worlds of feeling, or the juxtaposition of two independent expressions, supersedes the original elements and produces a synthetic organization of greater efficacy. Anything can be used.” For the purpose of the museum experience, audio tours were organized in a few ocasions, starting from Oranjeboomstraat 135 until number 85 and continuing across the parking to Rosestraat, where the tour ends.
By reenacting the process of giving value to an object, using prototypical tools to create a scenario, the structure of the project tries to demystify through mystifying, to underline elements creating an image by creating it.
The South Collection postcards exist as regular exhibition accompanying material, filling the backside with information for the viewer on where to find the artworks and how to get there. The postcards were spread out around the city, in gallery spaces, information spots and fast food shelves around Rotterdam, pointing the viewer to the exhibition, whereas if he were to reach the location, he would arrive to the building block in Oranjeboomstraat without any further information. Possibly, with the only information given, a visitor would be convinced of the artwork on location.
The South Collection cups function as souvenirs, extracting a visual element of the sculptures, the red x, as the main marker of the artwork, mimicking the same principle applied to art related products. An addition to the museum setup is an announcement pointing to lists of text left for people to take with them and interpret if they want, by recording their voice and sending the files to an e-mail address, to be incorporated in the audio guide in the future, showing the open, participative structure of the South Collection .
Incompiuto Siciliano is an Italian project that deals with public space using a similar approach concerning interventions and development projects already existing, where their intervention is symbolic and through an absurd and ironic interpretation of a given situation. Their position is politically targeted, holding an explicitly activist/artistic viewpoint. Incompiuto Siciliano maps unfinished architectural projects in Italy, “2.UNFINISHED PROJECTS ARE THE RUINS OF MODERNITY, MONUMENTS BORN OF LAISSEZ-FAIRE CREATIVE ENTHUSIASM. In the years when positive economic sentiment and growth unexpectedly gave Italians financial peace of mind, imagination and exuberance were the driving forces behind a reconfiguration of the land. Landmarks in their own way, Incomplete public works radiated out from Sicily to the rest of the peninsula, creating an Unfinished Italy. 3.INCOMPIUTO SICILIANO DEVELOPED INTO AN INCISIVE, RADICALLY DIFFERENT ADDITION TO THE LANDSCAPE. THE PROCESS BY WHICH UNFINISHED PUBLIC WORKS COME INTO BEING CELEBRATES CONTEMPORARY MAN’S CONQUEST OF THE LANDSCAPE. This conquest was determined, vital and unapologetic. The unfinished did not harbour a rational, detached attitude, but its exact opposite. Only a passionate and deep relationship with one’s own land can generate such a varied and magnetic phenomenon.”
Where the Incompiuto Siciliano relies on a politically hectic and non transparent urban development system, The South Collection relies on the stable Dutch principle of urban planning, where the first deals with unfinished architecture- ruin as monument, the second deals with a former functional architecture as an art piece. The first lives as a ruin, it is more stable, and likely to continue existing, the second lives as an intervention on an existing object, in a less permanent state. Both belong to a liminal zone-states in between. In both cases the artist behind these large sculptures is not the artist in a classical sense, neither was probably considered as such in the first place. More explicit than in classical artistic production, we see the work comes predominantly out of a set of social, geographical and economic conditions bringing out the site specific character of these buildings. And in both cases, the subject of the work is material culture. Another related approach is that of Andrea Fraser, especially in her famous work Museum Highlights from 1989, where she leads a group of visitors (the viewer) on a tour of the Philadelphia Museum of art, under the pseudonym of Jane Castleton. Sometimes absurdly dramatic, giving equal attention to a doorknob in a toilet and a classic landscape painting from the 17th century, Jan Castleton over pronounces words and through exaggeration, we see the process of institutional critique unfolding. By entering the role she criticizes, and enacting it, she reveals the underlying elements of the everyday existence of that setup. Museum Highlights directly talks about the institution from the inside, whereas The South Collection takes the institution outside into ambivalent public space. If Museum Highlights would be an institutional critique, than the South Collection can be seen more as a critique on simplistic approaches to art in public space, and the art system. However, it is not so much a critique as an investigation on how value is created looking through appropriation (of buildings, institutional principles, concepts). The similarities in how the work is constructed between Fraser and the project can mostly be found in the audio-guide tour segment of the South Collection.
Future for The South Collection: A new series of audio tours will be conducted in September 2010. In cooperation with De Player, Rotterdam Video documentation in the form of a video guide will accompany the project The South Collection will follow changes happening on the buildings, as one of the strongest features of the sculptures being constant change.
References:
Andrea Fraser, Museum Highlights, 1989. Incompiuto siciliano http://www.alterazionivideo.com/new_sito_av/projects/incompiuto.php James Young The monument and the counter monument Susan Buck-Morrs, The Dialectics of seeing: Walter Benjamin and the arcades project, 1989, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts (London, England) Guy Debbord, Gil J. Wolman, A User’s Guide to Détournement, 1956. Rosalyn Deutsche, art and public space: Questions of Democracy, Social text, (1992), Duke University Press Moma audio collections: Richard Serra, Shahzia Sikander De Player audio material from a professional meeting on public space in Rotterdam’ www.deplayer.nl