through europe - art

A Donor Presented by A Saint

Rebecca Lamarre — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 10:58:18 +0000

Here is A Donor Presented by A Saint, attributed to the Flemish painter Dieric Bouts, a painting I have been using as a focal point to play with different material relationships between artworks and texts, to see what this can and cannot tell us about the people who produce them. As an artist and performer my primary interest is in people, and this puts me at the exact point of tension where it is unclear where a person begins and an object ends.

I first noticed the painting because of the hovering hand. Why is it there? Who does it belong to? I read the painting’s information card and learned that it was cropped from a larger alter-piece, dismantled during the Calvinist Reformation in Belgium. Typical of church paintings at the time the tableau would have been an allegorical lesson from the Bible. The faces of the characters would have been painted by monks in the church’s employ, using faces from members of the community for reference - it was not uncommon to see, for example, the face of the local baker masquerading as one of the three wise-men visiting the baby Jesus. The more money a patron donated to the church, the more likely their face would be used to depict a more desirable character, like St. Peter guarding the gates to heaven.

How does it feel to have someone’s hand resting on your shoulder in that way? How would it feel to see your face painted on the church wall in such intimate proximity to your landlord? Before I read to you I want to try an experiment. Please form a pair with the person sitting in front or behind you. The person in the back should put their hand on the shoulder of the person sitting in front. Please rest your hand on their shoulder and leave it there while I play you a song.

Profusely

Robert Prouse — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 10:37:24 +0000

The integration of an athletic discipline into daily life in the Soviet Union is no undocumented phenomenon, it is acknowledged rather as a fundamental facet of its outward facing image. The body of the worker was symbolised in the athlete as the pinnacle of production, a subject perfected in use value. No less was this true of fascism, epitomised by Leni Riefenstahl's formally groundbreaking documentary of the 1936 Olympics, Olympia. The establishing of a link with the classical Olympian, a tacit recollection of a classical conception of the body prior to a Cartesian body-mind split. The body, of the athlete, of the Aryan, as historically determined, as perfectly suited to its goal. Olympia found its post-war place in the history of film but does it present the body as object of history and object of perfection or an aesthetically somatic concern? Let's not forget that Riefenstahl was a dancer, but we'll return to this later.

A Modest Proposal (after Jonathan Swift)

Nathan Witt — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 11:42:51 +0000

Vandalised mansion in Aley, used as an IDF outpost during the 1982 Lebanon War.

This text started as a result of a workshop in June 2013 called On the Politics of Silence and Speaking by the Danish artist Sidsel Nelund and philosopher Nikita Dhawan at 98 Weeks, Beirut, part of Ashkal Alwan’s Homeworks 6. I have tried to incorporate Sidsel and Nikita’s ideas to my own disparate ideas and footnotes about conceptual art that are not necessarily about identity and representation and to tie in ideas from Jacqueline Rose’s The Last Resistance into some of my own ideas about Palestine, Israel and Lebanon - and finally two despondent scenes from Richard Linklater films.

I would like to discuss the legal ambiguity of other but it is such a large subject and it needs serious legal qualifications. Examining The Special Trial for Lebanon in The Hague, to the cases of Assange and Snowden and also the Protected Characteristics Act in relation to the case of JK Rowling’s moniker Robert Galbraith being leaked; they are all of great importance and hopefully to be addressed at a later date.

Zakira/Memory

Nathan Witt — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 16:18:57 +0000

This text comes at the time of great worry for the neighbouring countries of Syria as the violence threatens to spill over further and that there is a consensus to let Syria sort its problems out itself without foreign intervention. It is important to consider the fact that this following text exists as a result of illegal activity in neighbouring Israel that has continued since the second world war to present day and that any military intervention against Syria only serves Israel’s interests, either as a diversion for the continual expansion and even advancement further into the West Bank, or for any additional advancement that borders Syria, either for water or land, or for testing out military capabilities. I find it genuinely hard to see if Israel has any concern for its civilian population given its behaviour in international and regional affairs over the last 65 years and the State’s refusal to desist in both the advancement of settlements or further attacks and incursions into the West Bank, Gaza, Southern Lebanon, Jordan River or Golan Heights. An allied attack by the US, France - or Israel - on Syria is going to be catastrophic for the region’s stability. Watching Britain’s offering of televised democracy to pull out of military intervention was a tormenting relief that was almost surreal in both the immediacy of the decision and that the government was actually listening to the public.

Abandoning Nationality and Superstition

Nathan Witt — Mon, 06 May 2013 15:56:40 +0000

If you take a city such as Salonika or Smyrna, you will find there five or six communities each of which has its own memories and which have almost nothing in common. Yet the essence of a nation is that all individuals have many things in common; and also that they have forgotten many things. No French citizen knows whether he is a Burgundian, an Alan, a Taifale, or a Visigoth, yet every French citizen has to have forgotten the massacre of Saint Bartholomew,’ or the massacres that took place in the Midi in the thirteenth century. There are not ten families in France that can supply proof of their Frankish origin, and any such proof would anyway be essentially flawed, as a consequence of countless unknown alliances, which are liable to disrupt any genealogical system.(1)
Ernest Renan, lecture given at the Sorbonne, 1882.

This is an idea inspired by a comment about Cairo’s City of the Dead as a place where the spiritual goal is to celebrate the absence of judgment, which is to be left for God(2) and in many other people’s case in God’s absence. The City of the Dead reveals more than a vernacularized classification of death or the cultural appreciation of idol worship - regardless of being urban or rural. It is also a place of mutual habitation between the living and the dead where people live, cleaning the family house: the Leichenhauser. That habitation is mirrored, anchored, by the collective memories of people and amnesia, trauma and other emotions. This text is nothing but an attempt to try and encourage an aspiration and joy towards an abandonment of judgementalism in social spaces without discussing participation or religion. The migrancy of people from the countryside to a necropolis might not be borne out of a desire to participate but socio-political pragmatism, or human despair- and motives that are also prone to migrate and change.

Financial Obelisks: on the return of the monumental

Federico Campagna — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 12:04:45 +0000

A new age of monument-making is on its way. In this short article I will try to explain the geo-political, social and symbolic reasons for the (coming) renaissance of monuments as a means for political domination.

Preface: Eiffel Towers

When the first design of the Eiffel Tower was produced in 1884, France had just emerged from one of its bleakest periods. After the defeat against Germany in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and the wave of civil revolts that originated from the Paris Commune of 1871, the French Nation needed to prove itself again as a believable power in the eyes of the world. The times were fluid and dangerous, and the European balance of forces was being reassessed. France had to show itself as a reliable, stable, united political and economic entity – and the 1889 Exposition Universelle provided a perfect opportunity for such a display of solidity and power.

In October 2008, when the Mayor of London Boris Johnson and Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell agreed that ‘something extra’ was needed to celebrate the Olympics, the country had just begun to sink into the whirlpool of economic recession. When Anish Kapoor’s ArcelorMittal Orbit project was selected on 31st March 2010, the country had just admitted to the world to have entered its first double-dip recession since 1975, when Britain had to beg the IMF for rescue funding. The international credibility of the old Kingdom and of its Capital City-State was in peril, and immediate measures were required to show that stability, as well as power, was still part of the character of mighty Albion. What better way of achieving this, than investing on a monumental, non-functional artefact, such as Kapoor’s reinterpretation of the Eiffel Tower?

King Yunan and the Sage Duban

Rebecca Lamarre — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 16:23:09 +0000

The Tale of the Wazir and the Sage Duban

Once upon a time, a King called Yunan reigned over a city in Persia. He was a powerful and wealthy ruler, who had armies and guards and allies of all nations of men; but his body was afflicted with a leprosy which philosophers and men of science failed to heal. He drank potions and he swallowed powders, but naught did him good and no physician was able to procure him a cure.

At last there came to his city a mighty healer of men, the sage Duban. This man was a reader of books, Greek, Persian, Roman, Arabian, and Syrian; he was skilled in astronomy and the wisdom of the ancients; conversant with the virtues of every plant, grass and herb, as well as philosophy and the whole range of medical science.

Now this physician had heard of the King's malady and all the bodily sufferings with which Allah had smitten him and how all the doctors and wise men had failed to heal him. Upon this he sat up through the night in deep thought and, when the dawn broke he donned his handsomest dress and betook himself to King Yunan, kissing the ground before him. He called down blessings on the King, saying:

Perché gli artisti? MACAO è la risposta

Franco Berardi Bifo — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:45:42 +0000

“perché i poeti nel tempo della povertà?” chiede Holderlin nel suo poema “Pane e vino”.

E commentando questo verso, Heidegger dice: “Forse siamo nel momento in cui il mondo va verso la sua mezzanotte”.

In nome del vuoto

Il 5 maggio un gruppo di artisti, architetti, insegnanti e studenti e lavoratori precari della scuola e della comunicazione hanno occupato un edificio chiamato Torre Galfa e l’hanno rinominato Macao. L’edificio è un grattacielo di trentacinque piani, abbandonato da quindici anni.

Dieci giorni dopo l’occupazione, mentre il corpo gigantesco del precariato cognitivo milanese cominciava a stiracchiare le sue membra e a sintonizzarsi con la torre, sono entrati in azione gli esecutori del piano di sterminio finanziario. Il proprietario, noto alle cronache giudiziarie come corrotto e corruttore, ha deciso che quel posto è suo e deve rimanere com’è: vuoto. Tutto deve essere vuoto nella città, perché il capitalismo finanziario ha bisogno di distruggere ogni segno di vita. Le risorse materiali e intellettuali vengono progressivamente inghiottite, annullate, perché i predatori possano espandere la loro insensata ricchezza.

Per la prima volta, occupando la Torre, il movimento è uscito dalla sfera dell’underground e si è proiettato verso l’alto. Non è un movimento di talpe, ma di sperimentatori. Le talpe ora debbono venire fuori, debbono occupare ogni spazio, e contenderlo all’organizzazione di morte che si chiama Banca Centrale Europea.

A Model Power

Robert Prouse — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:45:33 +0000

At the end of the decade which saw Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's Prime Minister and one of Europe's richest men, hospitalized by a well aimed plaster statuette of the Milanese Duomo it may be relevant to ask; what power can a model have?

Proposal for a Landscape Architecture in Advance of the Disintegration of Human Civilization

Robert Prouse — Tue, 01 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

"30/40 years ago we were still debating about what the future would be; Communist, Fascist, Capitalist, whatever...Today nobody even debates these issues, we all silently accept global capitalism is here to stay. On the other hand we are obsessed with cosmic catastrophes; the whole of life on earth disintegrating because of some virus, because of an asteroid hitting the earth and so on...
So the paradox is that it is much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism"