m jüngsten kuratorischen Diskurs wird die Konstellation als Schlüsselkonzept einer neuen Wissensbildung betrachtet. In der Ausstellung Perpetually Transient im Kunst Raum Riehen hat Heidi Brunnschweiler verschiedene, in sich ambivalent strukturierte Werke von Anahita Razmi, Basim Magdy, Florian Graf und Bernd Behr zusammengeführt. Im Einführungsessay zeigt die Kuratorin anhand dieses Beispiels auf, wie die Konstellation neue Strukturen der Wissensbildung bereitstellen kann, wenn sie als generatives Prinzip Differenz und Antagonismus in sich aufzunehmen vermag. Elena Zanichelli beleuchtet Ambivalenz als Spiel der Rekombination in Anahita Razmis Werken, die polyvalente Bedeutung schaffen und kulturelle Zuschreibungen hinterfragen. Andrei Pop untersucht Basim Magdys Arbeiten als Formen der politischen Allegorie. Diese erzeugen nicht primär eine Unbestimmtheit der Bedeutung, sondern zeigen die Schwierigkeit auf, einer Welt Sinn zu verleihen, zu der es nur bruchstückhaft Zugang gibt. Toni Hildebrandt untersucht Strukturen der Ambivalenz in Florian Grafs Zeichnungsbüchern, dies einerseits in Hinblick auf das Verfahren eines ‹disegno ambiguo› wie auch andererseits in Bezugnahme auf die Vieldeutigkeit der zeichnerischen Entwürfe im Sinne eines ‹objet ambigu›. Kathrin Peters zeichnet das Verhältnis von Aufzeichnung, Abformung, Relikt und Entwurf in Bernd Behrs Arbeiten nach und zeigt, dass diese eine Mediengeschichte entwerfen, die von Ambivalenzen durchzogen ist.
ithin the most recent curatorial discourse the constellation is seen as a key concept of a new knowledge formation. In the exhibition Perpetually Transient at the Kunst Raum Riehen, Heidi Brunnschweiler brought together diverse, in themselves ambivalently structured works by Anahita Razmi, Basim Magdy, Florian Graf and Bernd Behr. In her introductory essay she uses this example to suggest that the constellation only can provide a new structure of knowledge formation if it is – as a generative principle – able to incorporate difference and antagonism. Elena Zanichelli sheds light on ambivalence as a game of recombination in Anahita Razmi’s works, which creates polyvalent meaning and calls cultural attributions into question. Andrei Pop examines Basim Magdy’s works as forms of political allegory. These do not primarily generate an indeterminacy of meaning; instead, they reveal the difficulty of giving sense to a world to which only fragmentary access is available. Toni Hildebrandt examines structures of ambivalence in Florian Graf’s drawing books – on the one hand, with regard to the technique of a ‘disegno ambiguo’ and, on the other, with reference to the ambiguity of the sketches in the sense of an ‘objet ambigu’. Kathrin Peters traces the relationship between recording, imprint, cast and sketch in Bernd Behr’s works and shows that these outline a history of media that is filled with ambivalences.
Heidi Brunnschweiler (Hg. / ed.)
Perpetually Transient Neue Blicke auf Ambivalenz durch die konstellative Anordnung der Arbeiten von Anahita Razmi, Basim Magdy, Florian Graf, Bernd Behr Ambivalence Revisited in a Constellational Assembly of Works by Anahita Razmi, Basim Magdy, Florian Graf, Bernd Behr
Schwabe Verlag Basel
Inhaltsverzeichnis / Contents
Heidi Brunnschweiler 10 Perpetually Transient: Ambivalence Revisited in a Constellational Assembly of Works by Anahita Razmi, Basim Magdy, Florian Graf, Bernd Behr 28 Perpetually Transient. Neue Blicke auf Ambivalenz durch die konstellative Anordnung der Arbeiten von Anahita Razmi, Basim Magdy, Florian Graf, Bernd Behr* Elena Zanichelli 48 Watch(ing) them all fall down. Anahita Razmis Bildmontagen oder zur künstlerischen Aktualität semantischer Ambivalenz(en) 58 Watch(ing) them all fall down: Anahita Razmi’s Montages; 0r Semantic Ambivalence in Contemporary Art(s) * Andrei Pop 72 Pickled Futures: On Basim Magdy’s Apocalyptic Allegories 82 Eingelegte Zukunft. Zu Basim Magdys apokalyptischen Allegorien* Toni Hildebrandt 98 Florian Grafs Bücher. Zwischen ‹disegno ambiguo› und ‹objet ambigu› 108 Florian Graf’s Books: Between ‘disegno ambiguo’ and ‘objet ambigu’ * Kathrin Peters 122 Nähte, Fugen, Schichten. Zu Bernd Behrs Archäologie 130 Seams, Joints and Layers: On Bernd Behr’s Archaeology *
142 Kunstschaffende Artists 144 Autoren Authors
* Übersetzung, translation
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1 | 2 Florian Graf, Columnity, 2014, installation, 6 columns, cast in concrete, each 32 × 32 × 250 cm, installation view Perpetually Transient, Kunst Raum Riehen, 2014, photo Barbara Kern
3 Florian Graf, display case with a selection of drawing books, installation view Perpetually Transient, Kunst Raum Riehen, 2014, photo Daniel Ryser
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4 Bernd Behr (to the left) Akeley in the Elephant Skull, 2014, 35 mm film, 6’ 9’’, colour, stereo optical sound, dimensions variable; (to the right) Machinima 1–4, 2014, series of 4 silver gelatin contact prints, each 25.4 × 20.3 cm, installation view Perpetually Transient, Kunst Raum Riehen, 2014, photo Daniel Ryser
5 Bernd Behr, Topographic Obscenities, 2008, silver gelatin prints, diptych, each 152 × 122 cm framed, unique copies, installation view Perpetually Transient, Kunst Raum Riehen, 2014, photo Daniel Ryser
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6 | 7 Basim Magdy, Every Subtle Gesture, 2012 – ongoing, colour prints on Fuji Crystal Archive paper and Letterpress silver text, detail, each 52 × 45 cm, courtesy .artSümer, Istanbul
8 Basim Magdy, A 240 Second Analysis of Failure and Hopefulness (With Coke, Vinegar and Other Tear Gas Remedies), 2012, 160 color slides and 2 synchronized Kodak slide carousel projectors, 240’, courtesy Hunt Kastner, Prague, .artSümer, Istanbul, and Gypsum Gallery, Cairo
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9 |10 Anahita Razmi, A Tale of Tehrangeles, 2013, installation, 2 HD projections, 1 video monitor, book object, installation view Perpetually Transient, Kunst Raum Riehen, 2014, photo Daniel Ryser
11 Anahita Razmi, Domino Dancing, 2014, HD video, 6h 34’ 26’’, installation view Perpetually Transient, Kunst Raum Riehen, 2014, (courtesy Anahita Razmi, supported by Karin Abt-Straubinger Stiftung, Tehran organisation in collaboration with Elaheh Moonesi), photo Daniel Ryser
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Heidi Brunnschweiler
Perpetually Transient: Ambivalence reÂvisited in a constellational Assembly of Works by Anahita Razmi, Basim Magdy, Florian Graf, Bernd Behr
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“The 20th century was full of utopias; it has left us a large bequest of ambivalence.” 1 n her conversation with Irit Rogoff, Beatrice von Bismarck delineated curating as a “constellational activity” combining “artworks, sites, contexts, people or ideas that haven’t been connected before” in the exhibition format.2 Curating as a set of operations can feed into “the curatorial”, which Bismarck understands as the larger frame within which the exhibition develops its argument.3 Regarding the curatorial Irit Rogoff goes a step further and attempts to understand it as “(new) epistemic structure.” By allowing hitherto separated fields of knowledge to enter into unprecedented relations and transcend their position as singular knowledge, the curatorial aspires, in her view, to generate a new configuration of knowledge, which she calls “the event of knowledge.” 4 Although the curatorial can take on various short-term tangible forms, for her, it is an ongoing intellectual process rather than a final product.5 The field of art, as Rogoff argues, plays a key role in this new formation of knowledge because producing, curating, collecting or reviewing art has been opened up to inconclusive processes and can no longer be captured by “various economies or teleologies.” 6 For her, the curatorial thus offers the possibility of thinking through art how we might know from a different perspective.7 Following these considerations I argue that the constellation has become a key concept in recent curatorial discourse because it holds the promise of a new structure for knowledge production and thus offers a device to evaluate the very process of curating in light of Rogoff’s claim. How then, can we shed more light onto the accomplishments of the constellation as one of, or indeed the prevalent curatorial mode of operation? In the exhibition Perpetually Transient, I set out to find out more about the power and characteristics of the constellation as a key structural device of the curatorial by relating it to articulations of ambivalence.8 Curating as a constellational activity is thus deployed 1 Kenneth Weisbrode, On Ambivalence. The Problems and Pleasures of Having it Both Ways, Cambridge MA, London: MIT Press, 2012, 56. 2 “Curating / Curatorial – Interview between Irit Rogoff & Beatrice von Bismarck”, in Beatrice von Bismarck et al. (eds.), Cultures of the Curatorial, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012, 21–37, 24. 3 Ibid., 31. 4 Ibid., 23. Following Alain Badiou’s notion of the event, Rogoff conceptualizes the “event of knowledge” as knowledge that goes beyond what has been accumulated and makes a substantial or even historic impact. The curatorial for her is the “ability to think everything that goes into the event of knowledge in relation to one another.” 5 Ibid., 27. 6 Irit Rogoff, “The Expanded Field”, in Jean-Paul Martinon (ed.), The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating, London et. al.: Bloombury Academic, 2013, 41–48, 42–43. 7 Ibid., 32. 8 www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ambivalence?show=0&t=1402650084 (last accessed 06 June 2014): Ambivalence = simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings (as attraction and repulsion) toward an object, person, or action.
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to connect a selection of artworks by various contemporary artists structured in themselves in modes of ambivalence. Works from different contexts by Anahita Razmi, Basim Magdy, Florian Graf and Bernd Behr were therefore presented within this framework. Ambivalence is understood here as defined by Zygmunt Bauman in his seminal 1991 book Modernity and Ambivalence, as the exposure “to a situation with no decidable solution.” 9 In Bauman’s view, ambivalence results from being subjected to multiple, contradictory perspectives or meanings.10 He argues that modernity has suppressed contingency as the basic condition of human activities and ignored ambivalence in order to establish its particularity as universally binding truth.11 As a result Western modern civilization, its principles and constitutional values “took the right to dominate the rest of the world and forced the others to do away with difference and assimilated their alterity.” 12 Postmodernity for Bauman is the recognition that human undertakings are genuinely contingent as no universal reason, law of history or any suprahuman force can be applied as was believed in modernism; postmodernity thus has adapted to the mentality of “tolerance of dissent” and difference.13 Verena Krieger has therefore spoken of ambiguity,14 including polyvalence, indeterminacy and ambivalence in Bauman’s sense, as the epistemological structure attributed to postmodernity.15 Seen from a structural point of view, as I will argue, the constellation, as a form in non-hierarchical juxtaposition, and articulations of ambivalence provide two different modes of assembling which lead to different forms of knowledge production. By arranging articulations of ambivalence within a constellational mode, the exhibition Perpetually Transient provides a framework not only for considering characteristics of the constellation with regard to (new) knowledge formation but also for revisiting ambivalence as the epistemological concept of the last few decades.16 By thinking through art and the constellation, it will become clear that the strength of ambivalence lies in reflection and the opening up of unprecedented thinking. As it structurally breaks things open, ambivalence belongs, as it were, to
9 Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, Ithaca, Cornell, NY: University Press, 1991, 244. 10 Ibid., 244. 11 Ibid., 233. 12 Ibid., 232. 13 Ibid., 256. Bauman uses the term “postmodernity” for the period in which the awareness of contingency and ambivalence is dominant in understanding the world. 14 Verena Krieger, “‘at war with the obvious’ – Kulturen der Ambiguität, historische, psychologische und ästhetische Dimensionen des Mehrdeutigen”, in Verena Krieger, Rachel Mader (eds.), Ambiguität in der Kunst: Typen und Funktionen eines ästhetischen Paradigmas, Cologne et al.: Böhlau, 2010, 13–49, 15. 15 Ibid., 40. “Offenheit, Vieldeutigkeit, die prinzipiellen Unkodierbarkeit jeden Zeichens und Zeichenkomplexes war fortan bekanntlich nicht nur das ästhetische Prinzip der Postmoderne, sondern auch die erkenntnistheoretische Prämisse des Poststrukturalismus.” 16 Bauman, 1991, 233.
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the “mode of critique.” 17 By combining articulations of ambivalence in a constellational mode we can see that the power of the constellation lies in its generative quality as it seeks the interrelation of elements of difference. To deal with these questions, as a first step, it is important to understand the characteristics attributed to the constellation, which not considered in detail either by von Bismarck or Rogoff. Second, the relevant discourses and theoretical concepts around ambivalence are discussed, so that its modifications and its historical backdrop become comprehensible. In the third part, I will take a closer look at the artworks selected for Perpetually Transient and the constellational relation they form in order to ask what they contribute to the questions at stake.
Curating as constellational activity In her study devoted to the term, Andrea Albrecht has shown that the constellation is a metaphor for “organizing knowledge” in a dynamic and constantly changing relational way as opposed to a static, hierarchical, systematic or teleological ordering. 18 Drawing upon the astronomical connotation of a movement of stars in three-dimensional space, establishing constantly new relations with each other and with the observer looking at them, the constellation provides a model for assembling elements from a certain distance and a specific perspective, which allows the onlooker to make unprecedented connections.19 With regard to our overall question of how curating can be considered a new mode of knowledge production, three characteristics are to be highlighted. First, the aspect of the constellation as an ensemble of heterogeneous elements, which are perceived, interpreted or understood in relation to each other, is important.20 This means that knowledge production is based on heterogeneous elements interrelated by a specific point of view. Second, it is most important to recognize that the constellation is an open, partially accidental assembly, dependent on a particular view.21 Therefore a specific perspective from which knowledge is produced is a constitutive factor. Third, it is necessary to point out that the constellation allows a constantly changing arrangement of elements so that they can become part of multiple con 17 Bruno Latour, “An Attempt at a ‘Compositionist Manifesto’”, in New Literary History 41 (2010), 471–490, 475. 18 Andrea Albrecht, “Konstellationen”, in Scientia Poetica 14 (2010), 104–149, 143–144. 19 Ibid., 146. Due to these structural qualities, the constellation was already intensely discussed as a new epistemological model in social science at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. The social scientists Max Weber and Karl Mannheim and the cultural scientist Albert Weber centred their thinking around the constellation and developed it as a way of organizing knowledge in their fields and between disciplines. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid.
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stellations.22 Knowledge production in the constellational approach is therefore possible, but relative, i.e. time-, place- and perspective-bound in its status. Last, an element of chance is characteristic for the constellation.23 This means that the assembly of elements and the relations drawn between them allow for unprecedented coincidence.
Ambivalence: significance and context Let us now turn to the discussions around ambivalence, its significance today and its theoretical background in order to prepare the ground for the discussion of Perpetually Transient, the choice of artworks, their analyses and arrangement. The historian Kenneth Weisbrode has recently called our time “the era of ambivalence” and claimed that the endless differentiation resulting from accepting the contingency that Bauman and others so emphatically called for has been implemented too excessively. Hence for him, one of the urgent questions of today is what should be done with the ambivalence inherited by postmodernity. In politics and statecraft the value of ambivalence, of being trapped in the articulation of contradictory or incompatible views, long cherished in political theory, has to be overcome.24 Ambivalence on the level of society, he argues, is the willingness to take into account the multiplicity of arguments that are available or in dispute.25 This has, as he observes, unleashed great anxiety and produced paralszing effects.26 The consequences of ambivalence as the unmediated embrace of differences around the world are for him most negatively visible in matters of war and peace, because mixed signals bring about crises and then war or prolong those wars that have already begun.27 “Today, we experience a state of ambivalence, of living in both peace and war. As the two have become so interpenetrated as to have become existentially interdependent.” 28 Besides, globalization has merged, as he argues, with universalism so that “it can be said to possess something resembling a global consciousness.” 29 This is the recognition that there “is only one planet, on which we all coexist.” 30 This awareness of shared concerns, is according to Weisbrode, central to the condition of 22 Ibid., 147. 23 Ibid., 148. 24 Weisbrode, 2012, 56. Tom Holert, “Resonanzen, Streifen, Scherenschnitte: Formen und Funktionen von Ambiguität seit 1960”, in Krieger, Mader (eds.), 2010, 241–259, 243. Holert discusses in this context: Ernest Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso, 1985. 25 Weisbrode, 2012, 49–50. 26 Ibid., 52. 27 Ibid., 61. 28 Ibid., 67. 29 Ibid., 58. 30 Ibid.
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ambivalence and its positive effects.31 Globalization intertwines the local and global, thus “making us ambivalent about the power of the latter in conditioning the certainties of the former.” 32 In consequence, mediating structures such as the “multilateral” and interconnectedness have emerged in international organizations or legal regimes, replacing the polarized and segmented approach to ambivalence.33 Therefore, Weisbrode argues, ambivalence today has to be accepted at a micro level, but needs to be overcome at a macro level in order to conquer paralysed and dissipated situations.34 In recognition of these problematic effects, Helmut Draxler has recently distinguished between a “bad” and a “good” form of ambivalence. 35 For him the defining issue of ambivalence today is its political dimension: of how we can make (even aesthetic) decisions while being “perpetually entangled in manifold ambivalences.” 36 Therefore he suggests that radical forms of ambivalence considering the world to be exclusively differential (Bauman) are to be challenged because they disregard the possibility of unambiguousness as the result of a wilful act as conceptualized by a philosophy of consciousness.37 Although Draxler accepts Ludwig Wittgenstein’s position that reality or being can only be accessed through language and its arbitrary relation to that which is signified,38 he rejects ambivalence as an absolute principle: “There may be no escape from ambivalence by virtue of the one decision, but there is also no escape from decision-making altogether.” 39 In order to tackle this problem he has come up with the concept of “structural ambivalence” as a position between unambiguity and ambiguity: 40 “Structural ambivalence is concerned precisely with the interrelation of unambiguity and ambiguity, praxis and interpretation, of metaphorical multiplicity and literal unambiguity, of volitional decision and non-volitional doing.” 41 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., 59. 33 Ibid. “The arrival of globalization to the ‘new’ areas gave rise to chauvinism in the form of nationalism, subnationalism, regionalism or some other variation.” Weisbrode sees this as “a reaction to the ambivalence of globalization, the desire to enjoy its benefits without paying its costs.” Ibid., 60. 34 Ibid., 49. 35 Helmut Draxler, “Taking Part in the Other, Politics and Structural Ambivalence”, in Texte zur Kunst 23, 90 (June 2013), 70–87. 36 Ibid., 72. 37 Ibid., 82. “For even the automatism of differential being that Merleau-Ponty set against the volitional act of the decision as framed by a philosophy of consciousness [...] remains dependent on decisions and designations or language games that they entail.” 38 Ibid., 79. 39 Ibid., 82. 40 Ibid., 74. “From this perspective, ambivalence would not be identical to the ambiguous but constitutively related to those logical as well as concrete psycho-historical forms in which unambiguity and ambiguity relate to each other und unfold into the dimension of thinking, feeling and volition.” 41 Ibid., 82.
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Coinciding with these considerations, the art critic Tom Holert observes the dominance of ambiguity in art too.42 For him, today ambiguity not only characterizes the artwork but also the role that art plays in society.43 Through network-based, interactive or collaborative practices, as he argues, ambivalence has entered a new sphere of productivity.44 By rendering once-fixed categories such as production vs. reception ambivalent, these technological means allow the accomplishment of a democratized participative production of art as envisioned by the historical Avant-Garde. Based on Theodor W. Adorno’s observation that the mindset of fascist leaders was characterized by “intolerance of ambiguity,” 45 the features of contradiction, ambivalence and openness in the sense of a differentiation became important characteristics of artworks and their communication in the 1960s. The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg for example theorized ambiguity as an ontological quality of the contemporary artworks,46 whereas Werner Hofmann, one of the most influential art historians of the time, considered it as part of the reception process.47 Contradiction and openness were for him inevitable for the configuration of one’s subjectivity and for the formation of political bodies. These values, he argued, could be acquired by contemplating (contemporary) works of art.48 Through aesthetic communication the recipient would experience polyvalence as a liberating and productive force and thus develop a critical awareness of the constructability, changeability and multiplicity of meaning. Furthermore, with the concept of the “Open Work,” Umberto Eco49 defined ambiguity and polyvalence as intended structural features of contemporary artworks.50 By comparing works from various genres, with divergent content or of different material, he concluded that artists of his time intended to give form to the polyvalence and ambiguity of reality as described earlier in the century in the
42 Holert, 2010, 241–259. Holert uses in his text, written in German, “Ambiguität” (ambiguity) as well as “Mehrdeutigkeit” (multiple meanings). His use of the word thus includes “ambivalence” in the sense of “multiple meanings” as defined by Bauman. 43 Ibid., 240. Tim Griffin’s editorial remarks in Artforum International, March 2009, 47, provided the background for Holert’s considerations on ambiguity. 44 Ibid., 241–242. 45 Theodor W. Adorno used the English phrase “tolerance of ambiguity” in the original German text too. See Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetische Theorie, ed. by Gretel Adorno, Rolf Tiedemann, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1970, 360. 46 Hans Blumenberg, “Die essentielle Vieldeutigkeit des ästhetischen Gegenstandes” (1966), in ibid., Ästhetische und metaphorologische Schriften, selection and afterword by Anselm Haverkamp, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2001, 112–119. 47 Werner Hofmann, “Für eine Kunst der politischen Konsequenz”, in Merkur, 22, 4 (1968), 289–304. 48 For him abstract paintings of the 1950s and 1960s allowed the beholder to practise ambiguity. 49 Umberto Eco, Das offene Kunstwerk, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2012 [Opera aperta, 1962]. “Structure” and “form” designate for Eco the relations between different components of an artwork, be they physical, syntactic, semantic or emotional. Ibid., 14. 50 Krieger, 2010, 38, points out that Umberto Eco’s concept was innovative at the time for having conceptualized ambiguity in aesthetic production.
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theory of relativity and quantum physics.51 The artist would hand over, as he formulated, a huge amount of information to the audience 52 in order to provide multiple, but not random significations to deal with.53 A ‘bad’ form of ambiguity on the other hand devotes itself to contingency and chaos. In the late 1980s, concepts of ambivalence in space and cultural theories again attracted great interest in relation to the onset of strong movements of migration worldwide. In his analysis of the postcolonial condition, the British-Indian cultural theorist Homi Bhabha came to the conclusion that the hegemonic influence of Western history and discourse remained dominant. With the conceptualization of Third Space, he set out to “imagine a new epistemic structure” 54 of relating to the world which would enable subsequent cultural knowledge production to go beyond the model of binary representation of Western modernity. In his eyes, it was “the historical hybridity of the postcolonial world” that must become “the paradigmatic place of departure” for the new language of theory he aspired to formulate, “because hybridity enables the inclusion of what had been repressed by modernity.” 55 Third Space, though unrepresentable in itself, constituted for Bhabha the “discursive conditions of enunciation” that ensured that “meaning and symbols of culture have no predetermined unity or fixity.” 56 Accordingly, meaning and reference are subjugated to an ambivalent process, so that cultural knowledge is customarily revealed as constructed, as “an open and expanding code.” 57 Culture and identity, among other “symbol-forming” practices could thus be conceptualized as “articulation of difference,” not of “essence.” 58 The recognition of the Third Space marked by “tension and ambivalences” is in Bhabha’s view the “enigmatic place from which theory speaks” 59 and forms the prerequisite for a new, all-inclusive intercultural world citizenship of today.60 Fulya Erdemci made the problem of how we might find a form of common ground out of a heterogeneous assembly of multiple publics the conceptual core of the 13th Istanbul Biennial 2013. The figure of the barbarian, the person who does n0t speak the Greek language and is therefore excluded from citizens' rights in the Greek polis, allowed her to consider how significantly different, clashing worlds 51 Ibid., 9. Eco compared, for example, Informel paintings to Brecht’s plays. He already distinguished between a productive and an unproductive form of dealing with ambiguity. For him, artworks are on the productive side because they give form to the ambiguity as a fundamental structure of the world. 52 Ibid., 159. 53 Ibib., 180. 54 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London, New York: Routledge, 1994, 33. 55 Ibid., 31. 56 Ibid., 55. 57 Ibid., 53. 58 Ibid., 210. 59 Ibid., 33. 60 Ibid., 56.
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could come together, could coexist and could even act together, thus rejecting the established antagonistic politics.61
Constellation of artworks dealing with ambivalence From the outlined discussion we can conclude that ambivalence and its seman tically broader relative ambiguity became so central for aesthetic, political and postcolonial thinking in postmodernity because this mode of arranging knowledge and relating to the world provided the structural conditions to overcome a thinking in clear-cut, fixed categories (Bauman, Bhabha, Eco) and the belief in teleological societal and historical development (Bauman). Through ambiguity, fixed identities and claims of universal truth or pure origins could make the transition to multiplicity and difference or enter a space of contradiction. The central achievement of models of ambivalence is thus to question and deconstruct totalitarian thinking and hegemonic aspirations, attributed to modernism and its historical events, notably fascism and colonialism. As we have seen, postmodernism extended ambiguity into almost every field, thereby making it absolute. Today, we recognize the consequences of such a unilateral, exaggerated emphasis on the different, the manifold and the contradictory. Turning to the exhibition Perpetually Transient, let us find out in what ways the artworks and their constellational assembly contribute to these issues with ambivalence today. Curating having been defined as a constellational activity, the process of selecting and arranging artworks in the exhibition Perpetually Transient has been influenced by the location, its physical and contextual characteristics, and by personal preferences as well as by coincidence and inherent necessities, and it is therefore place-, time- and perspective-bound. The title Perpetually Transient refers to this notion of curating as the handling of constantly changing constellations between elements, forces and factors over time and in various formats. The exhibition constitutes, so to speak, one moment in time, in which the constellation solidifies into a fixed spatial arrangement interacting further with the visitors and their perspectives in a dynamic, sometimes unprecedented ways. However important coincidence may be for curating, the choice of artworks was nevertheless a conscious decision. In order to test Draxler’s suggestion that ambivalence today is most productive when approached on a meta-level, for Perpetually Transient I selected artworks that use ambivalence as an intended structural device on the level of their production. Florian Graf’s drawings are the purposeful exception to this rule, as they deal with ambivalence on a more general level as theorized 61 Fulya Erdemci, “Mom, am I barbarian”, in Guide to the 13th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul: Rehber, 2013, 22–33. The need for reconceptualizing the notion of the public became clear to Erdemci after the Gezi Park events in Istanbul in the Spring of 2013.
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by Hans Blumenberg. In order to examine the effects of ambivalence in specific situations, artworks were brought together from different contexts. In distinction to Umberto Eco, I am not solely interested in structural variation, but primarily in its distinct effects.
Florian Graf (b. 1980, lives and works in Basel): Trained as an architect, he was commissioned to produce a sculptural intervention for Perpetually Transient. When approaching the venue of the exhibition within the listed Berower estate, one first encountered Graf’s Columnity (2014) (ill. 1/2), a site-specific work in the courtyard, the space between the Kunst Raum and the Fondation Beyeler. Consisting of six concrete casts made of the existing columns on site, the work served as a gesture to invite the visitor to the exhibition. The changed site reminded one of the Greek temple of the Muses, the Mouseion, as the prototype of Western art institutions, as well as of a construction site or a ruin. By placing the columns in different positions (two lay on the ground, two stood vertically and two were tilted against the wall), it was unclear for the viewer whether something was being constructed or dismantled. Ambivalence as a structural device thus addressed two contexts. By occupying the place between the two institutions, the intervention acted as a destabilizer of clearly distinguishable territorial boundaries and established it as an in-between zone for exchange and conversation. While alluding ambivalently to the Mouseion and to the ruin, Graf’s intervention raised further the question whether the ideal museum, as a place of contemplation of art and intellectual exchange, was being re-erected or torn down. Through this staging of an unstable, ambiguous environment the artist asked us to think about new institutional models for our time. In both configurations, Graf’s intervention unsettled the perception of the visitor and caused an experience of uneasiness, feelings attributed by Zygmunt Bauman to ambivalence when exposed to a situation without fixed solutions. One could either leave or let one’s thoughts and creativity to be activated. One can thus argue that Graf worked with ambivalence in the sense that it initiated awareness and imagination in order to question and think beyond the limitations of the site. In the interior, the tension between thought and complexity was reflected on another level in Graf’s Drawing Books (2008–2014) (ill. 3), which were displayed on the first floor. In the border area between an artist’s book, diary and sketchbook, they mostly contain drawings that span the ambivalent space between thought and materialization. As they reflect ambivalence as an ontological characteristic of the artwork, they make claims internal to art discourse.
Anahita Razmi (b. 1981, lives and works in Berlin): As a video and performance artist, she often works with issues related to identity politics. In her new video Domino Dancing (2014) (ill. 11), installed in the transitory passage of the entrance, one could observe a group of young people dancing in a rather narrow living room, recorded by a static camera. Although the number of the dancers dwindled steadily, which visitors noticed as they passed by several times, the event seemed never-
Heidi Brunnschweiler. Perpetually Transient
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ending. The dancers positioned themselves mostly in profile or with their back to the camera, possibly as a result of its close-up focus. While the young men moved around slightly ineptly, their female counterparts danced with greater diversity. Especially a young woman with a flowery skirt attracted attention with her energetic and varied movement. At first sight, the group seemed to be having a great time meeting up to dance to pop music all night. On closer inspection, one noticed that some of the party guests were moving around rather lethargically, struggling with every step. There were further signs, such as the too brightly lit room and the people packed together claustrophobically, calling into question the nature of what should be fun. The impression of watching a forced, incessant event was underlined by the music accompanying the video – a track of only 36 seconds. This short monotone refrain of the Pet Shop Boys’ techno pop song Domino Dancing repeated itself like an endless litany reminiscent of Dan Graham’s Rock My Religion video piece from 1983–84, which draws a parallel between punk rock and Shaker religious rituals. Razmi’s piece showed an illegal dance marathon in Tehran in which she filmed her friends. Dance parties are an expression of self-determination and freedom. Although forbidden by the state they are an important feature of Iranian youth culture. In Domino Dancing it was the repetitiveness of the sound alongside the obsessive choreography which created ambivalent signals so that the scene could not be decoded easily. Reminiscent of Phil Collins’ They Shoot Horses (2004), the artist explored the dance party as a contradictory embodiment of individual freedom in a politically charged environment. As the repetitive body movements to the same refrain could be associated with religious rituals, the piece counteracts the disco dance as the epitome of individual freedom. Nonetheless the idea of freedom remains, in particular in the person of the young woman in the flower dress. Even after several hours, she continued to dance with great creative energy as if following her own internal melodies. In this way she insisted on self-determination and independence. She is also the one who won the marathon in the end. In the video installation Tale of Tehrangeles (2013) (ill. 9/10), Razmi juxtaposed and intertwined everyday scenes from Tehran and Los Angeles filmed in nuanced shades of grey. Each of the videos were projected onto a rectangular board positioned on the floor at a slightly opposed angle, so that one had the impression of walking into the streets of one of the cities while entering the room. Contrasting in size and colour, an old cubic TV was placed in the foreground, showing a video of the artist performing as a newscaster before a green backdrop. An artist’s book on a plinth with a collection of headlines from both cities was the third element. The artist montaged scenes from the two cities consecutively on each screen, so that the visitor felt strongly ambivalent as to where to locate the events. As the two cities share the same light, topography and climate as well as problems of air pollution and traffic jams, not even the environment or the technical standard of living give a clear indication. In addition Razmi incorporated clearly allocatable views: the images from a tram interior with only women sitting on the front benches were
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