Magpie Reflection 6, drawing by Anthony Marcellini

I recently published a new article on the online magazine Art Practical, concerning the coming into being of a Magpie.

The Magpie is a mischievous bird, closely related to the crow, which is very prevalent in the Gothenburg region of Sweden, where I am currently living. It is also one of the only birds that has been shown to recognize itself in a mirror. My text uses the magpie’s ability to recognize itself in the mirror as a kind fable of how a person understands themselves as an individual, existing, acting, producing and engaging in society.

If you would like to read more please click on the link “Becoming Real: A Magpie’s Recognition of Self”

Three seating arrangements, theater, round table and banquet.

During the last couple of weeks I have attended 8 solid days of theoretical and aesthetic conferences. They began on November 9th with an all-day symposium focused on artists writing titled The Art Text, in which various artists and curators presented texts trying to expand the notion of artistic research and writing could be. Then from November 10-11 I attended a two-day theory and urbanism conference titled The Commons, which examined everything from public space, to urban planning, to ecology, to the past and present revolutions in Iran, to the legacy of Marx and so on, and it featured some very big names, Harvey, Negri, Ranciere. Then finally from November 14-18 I attended a five-day series of marathon-length talks or dialogs, titled The Saloon, where several artists associated with the Goteborg Biennial spoke each day, for around three to four hours each, about their work to another artist, curator or theorist of similar or related persuasion. These talks were followed each night by intimate dinners with the artists, curators and many of the audience members that were involved.

I mention all these events not to boast on the shear number of symposia that I have sat through in the past week, in the class rooms, auditoriums and parlors of three formidable institutions; nor to remark on the avalanche of information, almost too much to retain and which left me quite mentally and physically drained; no…I mention them because they have made me reconsider how public conferences, like these, can function as pedagogical situations. Though all of these events had their problems, from the duration of some of the presentations—some too short and some too long; to the performances of some of the speakers—many whose presentations I would much rather have read than have been read to; and the content of some of the presentations—unrelated to the subject of their conference or simply redundant. But what was successful in both The Art Text conference and The Saloon (and unfortunately a bit lacking from The Commons) was how they enabled all ages and ranges of experience to learn and present together. These events were open to anyone wishing to attend and anyone wishing to present (of course not all participants were selected) and in their attempt at combining larger presentation forums with smaller more intimate gatherings, they seemed to me to offer an experience of collaborative learning, involve all the participants in the process of knowledge production across disciplines, across respective educations and ages.

Certainly there were inherent hierarchies and contests for position during these events, where the established professionals tended to hold council over the less established. And particularly during The Commons conference the overly competitive academic and sometimes combative tone of this event tended to squelch questions from those not thoroughly schooled in theoretical rhetoric and debate. But in the smaller sessions of The Art Text and in the more dialogical moments of The Saloon presentations—especially in the intimate dinners following most of the talks—this feeling of collaborative learning and teaching was most particularly felt. The best events were ones that combined a kind of close-knit learning environment in which all were required to participate by request and by the arrangement of the room—through round tables or enclosed seating arrangements, in which it was difficult to be on the periphery—with the addition of more public and formal orations presented from podiums to rooms of people, which required a more performative presentation. One needed both the formal and the informal to establish a structure for presentation while also giving space, in the smaller scenarios, to a slightly more private comfortable and open dialog to occur.

Conferences are of course pedagogic projects. They are organized to spread and challenge knowledge. We sometimes forget the pedagogic role that conferences can have when we become overawed by the notoriety of keynote speakers or the public performance of our professionalism. And of course presentations or lectures by renown individuals are an important part of these events (though I am not so sure about public displays of our professionalism), but conferences without situations for active informal conversation in which all participants are invited and given space to talk, lack something from the pedagogical experience. The Latin root of conference, conferre, means to bring together and when a conference is organized as much around the participants as the presenters then it will most clearly represent this origin, and bring all together to learn.

From SFMOMA's Open Space Blog

This is a text I wrote and posted to SFMOMA’s Open Space Blog. The text was written in response to a series of discussion that erupted in regards to an article by art historian Julian Myers, titled New Langton Arts in Crisis, on the fate of the wonderful San Francisco non-profit gallery New Langton Arts, Though the fate of Langton is a very sad and lamentable one, many in the SF arts community were given some consolation by the energetic discussions that erupted due to it’s fate. We realized that despite opinions otherwise, we do actually have a vibrant, concerned and active art world in this often criticized city.

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You say we’re on the brink of destruction and you’re right. But it’s only on the brink that people find the will to change. Only at the precipice do we evolve.

- John Cleese to Keanu Reeves, in “The Day the Earth Stood Still”,

It is very difficult for any institution to change. And there is usually a period of discord and in the worst cases, total collapse before any change is possible. This is not a novel idea, we all know this, it constantly reoccurring theme. From our climate, to Obama, to the economy, to our banks, to the auto industry, we are surrounded by the word change. You could say change is the theme of the late 2000’s and to mollify the uncertainty of it we are told change is good. But this knowledge doesn’t lessen the sting and it doesn’t make it any easier to change. In fact, the hardest thing is knowing when to change, what to change, who to change and how. What does change mean if you can’t see it until it is too late?

Having worked at the non-proft gallery, Art in General (1), in New York City, a space that was also going through similar (though perhaps not quite so grave) challenges as Langton (not to mention being married to someone who is also dealing with the closing of another important bay area non-profit arts institution), I can somewhat contemplate the difficulties of keeping a non-profit institution, not only open and running, but germane and vital in a shifting art world. It was hard enough in New York I can only imagine the difficulties of running a non-profit now and here, in the elusive and under-supported San Francisco Art World.

The most important question for me that has been asked here, and the one that requires the most change, was asked way before this blog exchange started, in Julian Myers’ Tercerunquinto article. And that million-dollar question was to ask Langton why they should survive? Which is actually a very existential question. I think Myers is basically asking Langton, if you want to live then explain why you are alive. What is your reason for being? And why should we the San Francisco Art world support that.

In Sartre’s essay “Existentialism is a Humanism” he explains that existentialism means mainly that existence precedes essence. Furthermore Sartre says, and here I paraphrase, that the most important charge of Existentialism is to make everyone aware of what they are and to understand that the full responsibility of their existence rests on them. But as he continues we learn that it doesn’t stop here. Responsibility is not simply about an individual’s singular existence but about everyone else. Or as Sartre says “And when we say that a man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men.”

If we, as Sartre suggests, have a responsibility to each other perhaps we should use the condition of Langton as a mirror for the sustainability of the entire bay area art world. If Langton is flailing, then our art world is flailing and we need a new model or models to sustain ourselves. So perhaps we should not simply be asking Langton why they should survive or in my existential translation, what is their reason for being, but we should be asking ourselves (as of course many of us have, if Julian’s blog is any indication) what do we want Langton to be and beyond that, what do we want the Bay Area art world to be and how do we get there?

This Langton situation is bittersweet. It has been horrible for the difficulties it has caused the staff, artists, and curators not to mention the audiences, who depend on Langton for support, both financial and inspirational. However I am quite excited by the dialog it has created within the arts community here. It gives me hope for the future.

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(1) At Art in General we (given direction by the then curator Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy) realized that things had shifted drastically from the 70’s and 80’s when most of the NYC non-profits began (as many of the non-profits elsewhere have also realized and changed to try and meet the shifting demand). The need for non-profits to simply grant exposure to underrepresented and emerging artists had changed. Artists in New York needed more than exposure to survive, they needed financial and administrative backing. So we reduced the numbers of shows produced each year and subsequently the numbers of artists supported, and shifted to a commissioning institution, providing artists both a production budget and a separate honorarium to create new and complex projects that otherwise might not get made. This was not an easy change to make. It was difficult for our audience, the board, the funders and the granting organizations to understand the reduction in the number shows presented each year and numbers of artists shown, even though our support could help sustain an artist’s practice and thereby the New York art world, much more than our previous model.

Composite image: left, "Socle du Monde" (1961) right, altered image of a security guard in a gallery (this is not the same security guard as the one in the text here).

The security guard tells me that there are figures hidden everywhere in the work, I just need to look closer to see them. “See this sculpture?” he says pointing to a minimalist cube, “It looks like rusted steel, but it is not. It is painted and in the paint are figures. See …there are faces everywhere. You have to look closer”, he says, “You have to analyze the details”.

It is March 4, 2009, I am in the Gagosian gallery in New York City at a retrospectives for the short lived Italian artist Piero Manzoni (1933-1963). Manzoni’s beautiful though irreverent conceptual artworks, such as cans of his own excrement and balloon sculptures activated by the artists breath, were hugely influential to a great many artists in Europe and American–this work preceded conceptual art by almost ten years–however, perhaps due to his short career (he died at the age of 29) this was the first time a retrospective of his work had been assembled.

After walking through most of the show, I find myself standing and looking at one of Manzoni’s most famous works, his “Socle du Monde” (1961) a pedestal cast in bronze with the words “Socle du Monde” written on one side and presented flipped upside-down so that the top of the pedestal is now resting on the earth or vice versa. This work belongs to a series of works that Manzoni termed “Magic Bases”, all small platforms that raise the person (or thing) standing on them into a work or art.

Because the title is written only in French, and even though I know the meaning of the piece, I cannot remember what the word ‘socle’ means, I decide to ask a knowledgeable looking security guard if he knows the definition of the French word. “Does it mean pedestal”, I ask? He answers, “yes, it means base”. And then a strange thing occurs. Coming closer the security guard tells me, almost in a whisper, that there are faces and figures hidden everywhere in Manzoni’s work. “Huh”? I pause, look at him a little quizzically and deciding to reason with him I say, “but don’t you see that the work is a pedestal flipped upside down, making the world the artwork?” He says, “yes, of course” brushing away my explanation with a wave of his hand, “but can’t you see the faces in it”. Curious, I half-heartedly agree and urged him on with an “OK” to see where this conversation is going.

With my interest peaked he begins to take me around the room and show me the faces in all the works. He says, “if you look closer and analyze the details the exhibition changes.” Pulling me by the arm he points me towards another work by Manzoni, a framed piece where long white fur has been affixed to a shiny fire engine red background, both placed inside a frame. “ What do you see?” he asks me and pauses to let me contemplate. “Now, step over here”. He continues beckoning me five feet forward and says, “look at the same work. Now what do you see. Ah ha, ah ha, right. See, I told you, do you see it now?” gesticulated wildly and pointing to the fur. “The figures are everywhere,” he says. “It is amazing. The artist is a Genius.” He gives this same explanation to two more pieces. When he asks me if I see the faces, I nod in silent agreement. When he is done, I thank him and move on.

This was one of the strangest experiences I have ever had in a gallery or a museum. No guard has ever taken me around a gallery to show me an exhibition in this way before and with so much excitement, conviction and engagement. Though I never once saw the figures or faces that that security guard had tried to show me, I did not refute his vision. When asked I would always answer him in the affirmative because somehow it did not seem appropriate to say no or to tell him that for me they did not exist. In one sense I think the security guards perception of this work was totally crazy. Despite the guard’s certitude, Piero Manzoni did not paint hidden figures and faces into the patinas of his minimalist sculptures, nor did he hide them in billows of fur or in any part of his works.

In “Restitutions: The Truth in Pointing” from his book The Truth in Painting, Jacques Derrida deconstructs an argument between Martin Heidegger and Meyer Shapiro concerning the origin of a ghost haunting a pair of shoes in a Van Gogh painting. Derrida analyzes both Heidegger’s position—who believes that the shoes are those of an unnamed peasant—and Mayer Shapiro’s—who believes that the shoes belong to the artist Van Gogh. Despite both thinkers very thorough arguments in the end Derrida resolves that neither Shapiro nor Heidegger are right, because there is really no way to know to whom the shoes belong. Everything is a presumption of truth. “nothing proves or can prove that ‘they are the shoes of the artist’”. Derrida says. “Each time you read ‘they are clearly…,’ ‘this is clearly…,’ ‘are evidently…,’ it does not signify that it is clear or evident, very much the contrary, but that it is necessary to deny the intrinsic obscurity of the thing, its essential crypt, and that it’s necessary to make us believe that it is clear, quite simply because the proof will always be lacking” (1), he says.

To close down individual interpretation, by claiming that the shoes can only be read in one way, seems to Derrida to be entirely against the purpose of the arts. Making them specific and prescribed rather than interpretive. He recounts the disenchantment he feels following these philosophers words. “One follows step by step the moves of a ‘great thinker,’ as he returns to the origin of the work of art and of truth, traversing the whole history of the West and then suddenly, at a bend in a corridor, here we are on a guided tour, as schoolchildren or tourists.” (2) The thinker has ceased to be a thinker for Derrida and is now simply dictating his own presumptions as fact, like the tour guide of the museum. There is but one answer, follow blindly the guide.

Here, I am reminded of a story told to me by a professor of mine, Joseph Tanke, about a boy who is harshly silenced and rebuked by a museum tour guide when he responds to her question what might have influenced the visual form of a certain Jasper Johns painting, that perhaps it was the floor of the museum, which looks very similar to the painting. Here the boy is as right about Johns as Heidegger and Shapiro are about Van Gogh. There is no way of knowing what Van Gogh or Johns intended and why bother anyway, why close our interpretations down. The truth of art is the boy, the museum guide, Shapiro and Heidegger all agreeing that there are multiple truths.

The shoes are hallucinogenic says Derrrida using a word which in Latin means to go astray with thought. The viewer of these shoes places his own vision upon them and makes them appear, as he wants them to appear. For the Security guard the work of Manzoni also offers hallucinations. “There are faces everywhere.” He see what he wants to see in the work. Perhaps this was his second month of policing the exhibition, and this revelation, whether premeditated or brought on by the boredom and the distress of the job, was his way of being continually interested and engaged in this work. I am finding that I can’t argue with the security guard’s assessment of Manzoni’s work and I am not sure that Manzoni would have argued either. In fact he may have been quite pleased with the guards claim.

Manzoni’s work was about playing with people’s expectations of the artist as some kind of magician and genius who can change his own breath into art or can claim the world as his work simply by building a pedestal for it. So, perhaps it is not too much of a stretch to imagine that he could make people and faces appear in his work. His art was about people after all and the world; it needed people. His “Magic Bases” possessed the potential for people to stand on them and make them active as artworks. Deflated balloons, called “Fiato d’artista” (the Artist’s Breath), could be, and at one time were, filled with Manzoni’s breath. Even old broken eggshells with a single fingerprint on them—remnants from a piece called “Consumption of dynamic art by the art-devouring public”, where Manzoni served boiled eggs signed with his thumbprint to visitors to eat—now placed inside glass cases, they still retained the potential for human interaction. Preserved and historicized in vitrines or protected from the visitors hands and feet by security guards, only ghosts of people remain. All we are left with are impressions of figures and faces. Is it untruthful, or a lie to say this about Manzoni’s work? Is this a fiction or was it the security guards way of seeing the artist’s intention through his own narrative of it. Is this is something we all do when we look at work.

In a long passage from the Politics of Aesthetics Jacques Rancier talks about the relationship between fiction and reality or perhaps it would be better to say, fiction as a form of reality. He says this,

Political Statements and literary locutions produce effects in reality. They define models of speech or action but also regimes of sensible intensity. They draft maps of the visible, trajectories between the visible and the sayable, relationships between modes of being, modes of saying and modes of doing and making. They define variations of sensible intensities, perceptions, and the abilities of bodies. They thereby take hold of unspecified groups of people, adhere to a condition, react to situations, recognize their images. They reconfigure the map of the sensible by interfering with the functionality of gestures and rhythms adapted to the natural cycles of production, reproduction and submission. Man is a political animal because he is a literary animal who lets himself be diverted from his ‘natural’ purpose by the power of words. (3)

The fiction told to me by the security guard was as much truth as it was a tale or a story. It was his political act. The guards is disrupting reality, offering an alternate perspective or a position. In a situation that has been divorced of human presence by time, money and preservation, he offers a new way to see the life that has been removed.

In one of his more poetic reflections on art, Theodor Adorno says, “What guarantees the aesthetic quality of modern art? It is the scars of damage and disruption inflicted by them on the smooth surface of the immutable. (4)” I would like to consider expanding this quote beyond simply modern works of art, to suggest that it is the function of all aesthetic acts to disrupt, or inscribe new narratives into the smooth surface of the immutable. The security guard is producing an aesthetic act when he makes the suggestion that faces can be seen anywhere. It is his way of etching the surface of this cold, sterile, boring gallery space. It is his way of disrupting and breathing life (like Manzoni’s breath) back into the exhibition.

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1. Jacques Derrida, “Restitutions”, The Truth in Painting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1987). 364
2. ibid. 293
3. Jacques Ranciere, The Politics of Aesthetics (New York: Continuum 2004). 39
4. Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1984. First published in German 1970). 34

Wayne Collins on the Karl Marx Tree, SF Express Time May 23, 1968. Click on the image above to download a PDF version.

Recently while doing some research on 1960’s radical publications, I came across this text on Kaweah and the Karl Marx Tree, by Wayne Collins, from the San Francisco Express Times, of May 23, 1968. The SF Express Times was an underground newspaper, published in SF, which lasted for about two years before changing its name to SF Good Times. It was edited by Marvin Garson and Robert Novick.

It was exciting to come across this article as a link to my other projects The Karl Marx Tree Marker, but also to learn that an interest in Kaweah has been ongoing. But perhaps what was most interesting for me is Collins lack of position, vacillating between criticism and commemoration. The article was printed in an issue mainly focused around the ongoing student protests in Paris, and was included likely to suggest that the ‘great refusal’ was far from novel; that it had a foundation, even in the pristine west? But what was amazing to realize, granted I am someone consumed by questions around the good place or no place, is that the word Utopia is never mentioned. It seems clear to me and to many others that Kaweah was most certainly a utopian society, based partially on the ideas of Utopian fiction, namely Edward Bellamy’s “Looking Backward: 2000-1887″. So then what does it mean not to use the word utopia? What did Utopia mean to these SF radicals in 1968? Was it seen as an elitist and separatist idea or a totalitarian one, as the attacks against it, by Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper and others, have suggested? This attitude is certainly suggested by Collins derision of the colonists for leaving, growing “tired of the struggle in the city” and retiring “to the countryside”. Suggesting they were more like businessmen, retiring to a life of leisure in their country home, then radicals, though we know this was certainly not the case, life in Kaweah was not easy.

Yet despite this derision, Collins still seems impressed by their endeavor, their struggles against capitalism and a bit saddened by their colonies petty downfall. Though this all sounds quite familiar, the patricide, the resentment and disillusionment combined with the championing of Labor, the disenfranchised, and self praise that was so much a part of the 60’s counter culture sentiment by the end of 68. But perhaps the new age and the new radical movement that Collins is now a part of, was not so distant as it may seem, to the struggles and the triumphs of the preceding generations.