Camera Austria International
120 | 2012
- KIRSTY BELL
Monika Sosnowska: Life through the Eye of Architecture - MONIKA SOSNOWSKA
- RAIMAR STANGE
John Smith: Urban Images with and against Sound - JOHN SMITH
- PAUL INGENDAAY
Hans Haacke: “The more human world of my dreams” The Conceptual Art of Hans Haacke Outlives the Remnants of the Spanish Real-Estate Boom: On the Installation “Castles in the sky”, 2012 - HANS HAACKE
- T. J. DEMOS
Renzo Martens in conversation with T. J. Demos: Institutional Critique Ultimately Is Beneficial to Only Some Areas of the World - RENZO MARTENS
- JAN VERWOERT
Image as Witness 4/4 Picture Makers vs Body Snatchers
Preface
Recent years have seen a sustained privatisation of public space, a fact that has once again advanced to the focus of public perception, for instance through the Occupy Movement. This has inspired us to introduce to you, in the current issue of Camera Austria International, four positions—by artists taking disparate approaches and paths in their artwork—which explore forms of urban building politics and the effects on city residents.The films of British artist John Smith, for instance, frequently revolve around architecture and built-up environments. Although they do not directly address current issues of gentrification, these films (some of which were already shot in the 1970s) deal with questions of (dictated) change pertaining both to urban space and to specific formations within society, and consequently often to questions of memory and loss. The functions of building and the needs and interests of the individuals using this space are frequently counterposed, thus making the urban space appear dysfunctional.The photographic working archive of Monika Sosnowska serves the artist as an “extra memory” for her sculptural endeavours—her work that is “steeped in Poland’s psycho-architectural legacy ”. The photographer shows the effects of the new internationalism and the economic liberalisation found in Warsaw after the dissolution of the People’s Republic of Poland: “Throughout Sosnowska’s archive, a triangular contingency is apparent, between the man-made, nature and people. They work on each other like physical forces, creating and constantly modifying the lived environment” (Kirsty Bell). On the occasion of his large retrospective at Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, the German conceptual artist Hans Haacke created a work by the name of “Castles in the sky” (2012) thematising the Spanish real-estate catastrophe. In the outskirts of Madrid, he found an agglomeration of half-constructed buildings—landscapes of ruins that belong to everyday visual life in Spain and represent an expression of the burst real-estate bubble that has brought an entire country to the brink of ruin. “Hans Haacke’s installation takes on exemplary significance in this context, for his multimedia penetration of Ensanche de Vallecas exposes the attributes typical of the voracious urbanism of the Spanish boom.” (Paul Ingendaay).“If we feel art should fully embrace the terms and conditions of its own existence, it may be good to inquire where art has a bigger impact on social reality. Is it at the sites where critical artistic interventions take place or at the sites of art’s public reception, in the galleries, museums, and at biennials where these pieces are subsequently shown, discussed, and sold?” Seizing upon this question, the Institute for Human Activities (IHA), initiated by the Belgian artist Renzo Martens, founded a five-year gentrification programme located 800 kilometres up the Congo River from Kinshasa. T.J. Demos was on site and carried on a conversation with Martens about his provocative project. In the process of shaping the programme it became clear that “this system will constitute the mandate of the art and the value of its criticality”, for “institutional critique ultimately is beneficial to only some areas of the world”, as Renzo Martens has noted.This edition of Camera Austria International concludes Jan Verwoert’s four-part column “Image as Witness”, where he exposes “visions of the future” that promise happiness in display windows of real-estate agencies, among other places, as forms of snatching the soul since they feign normality within society. His column therefore congenially compliments the four monographic artistic contributions touching on the themes of dreams, debt crisis, and contemporary depression.
Maren Lübbke-Tidow
Reinhard Braun
December 2012
Entries
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Monika Sosnowska: Life through the Eye of Architecture
Shortly after returning to Poland, Sosnowska began taking walks in the city. She would go out, equipped with her camera, searching for the incidental and photographing what she saw. Unlike the typical flaneur immersed in the inner city crowd, Sosnowska’s searches took her to the city’s outskirts, and her pictures show barely any people at all. But nevertheless, Walter Benjamin’s description of the flaneur’s activity can still be borrowed to describe her approach: “The flaneur, as is well known, makes ‘studies.’” Benjamin goes on to quote Larousse: “His eyes open, his ear ready, searching for something entirely different from what the crowd gathers to see.”¹
Sosnowska’s pictures likewise capture something entirely different from the taste of the crowd. They do not picture the spectacular, centrally placed or obvious, but rather the overlooked. They reveal the subtle details that show an individual’s (perhaps even, by extension, a society’s) attempt to make things work regardless of limitations or lack of resources. Seen together, the pictures present a sympathetic portrait that describes a symbiosis of natural and manmade environments. Even when documenting an inventory of structural afflictions, Sosnowska’s images are characterised by an affectionate, forgiving attitude towards the troubled architectures and their unwitting materials.
Sosnowska’s sculptural work is steeped in Poland’s psycho-architectural legacy. With the nationalisation of the building industry during the communist era came the standardised, industrialised construction of identical housing blocks. Economic efficiency and expediency took precedent over such considerations as comfort or living standards, and architecture as a creative practice slipped to the lowest rung of the ladder. Nevertheless, its results had a substantial effect on the national psyche. Sosnowska’s photographic images propose a productive reciprocity, however, not just the negative effects that such mass housing solutions may have. Her acute perception alights on details that reveal a pragmatic inspiration to be gleaned from entropy’s effects.1 Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 453.
Text feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, pp. 9–20.
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MONIKA SOSNOWSKA
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, S. / pp. 9–20.
Monika Sosnowska, 2000 – fortlaufend / ongoing, Fotografien existieren nur in digitaler Form / photographs only exist in a digital version. -
MONIKA SOSNOWSKA
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, S. / pp. 9–20.
Monika Sosnowska, 2000 – fortlaufend / ongoing, Fotografien existieren nur in digitaler Form / photographs only exist in a digital version. -
MONIKA SOSNOWSKA
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, S. / pp. 9–20.
Doppelseite / spread: Monika Sosnowska, S. / pp. 12–13. -
MONIKA SOSNOWSKA
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, S. / pp. 9–20.
Doppelseite / spread: Monika Sosnowska, S. / pp. 13–14. -
MONIKA SOSNOWSKA
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, S. / pp. 9–20.
Monika Sosnowska, 2000 – fortlaufend / ongoing, Fotografien existieren nur in digitaler Form / photographs only exist in a digital version.
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John Smith: Urban Images with and against Sound
In “The Girl Chewing Gum” the “unreliable narrator”1 expertly succeeds in adeptly interweaving filmic fiction and documentary fact; ultimately, the image material is nothing more than lapidary everyday prosaic pictures of London in mid-1970s. Although “The Girl Chewing Gum” reports on everyday urban life in the Thames metropolis with this photographic material, this is nevertheless not the primary theme of John Smith’s early work. The artist was evidently still processing the conceptual-formal stringency of structuralist film through his humorous narrative approach—and offering reflexion on our perception of cinematic material in the ambivalent realm of artistically staged illusion and “realistic” portrayal.
In the film “The Man Phoning Mum” (2011), a remake of “The Girl Chewing Gum”, however, the change in urban situation decidedly comes to the fore. Here John Smith shot the long take from “The Girl Chewing Gum” once again thirty-five years later. In “The Man Phoning Mum” this shot is superimposed over the original one. This makes visible significant changes in the cityscape: the aforementioned street clock has been removed, the cinema had been replaced by new buildings, the passers-by are talking on their mobile phones, and so on.¹ John Smith, Solo Show, ed. Gemma Lloyd and Gareth Bell-Jones (London: Royal College of Art Galleries, 2010), p. 3.
Text feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, pp. 21–32.
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JOHN SMITH
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, S. / pp. 21–32.
John Smith, Still aus / from: The Man Phoning Mum, 2011. HD video, colour, sound, 12’. -
JOHN SMITH
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, S. / pp. 21–32.
Doppelseite / spread: John Smith, S. / pp. 22–23. -
JOHN SMITH
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, S. / pp. 21–32.
John Smith, Stills aus / from: Blight, 1994–96. 16 mm übertragen in / transferred to SD video, colour, sound, 14’. -
JOHN SMITH
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, S. / pp. 21–32.
John Smith, Stills aus / from: Blight, 1994–96. 16 mm übertragen in / transferred to SD video, colour, sound, 14’. -
JOHN SMITH
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, S. / pp. 21–32.
Doppelseite / spread: John Smith, S. / pp. 28–29.
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Hans Haacke: “The more human world of my dreams” The Conceptual Art of Hans Haacke Outlives the Remnants of the Spanish Real-Estate Boom: On the Installation “Castles in the sky”, 2012
Lots were allocated but never built on. Mesh-wire fencing bordered the carrées that some bureaucratic mind full of plans must have devised before the visions of the building contractor dissipated. Lines have been drawn on the asphalt, and even benches are there. But the houses are missing. Hardly anyone can be found meandering through this desert of construction, except perhaps someone walking their dog. Thousands of identical, orbed lanterns illuminate the scene.
The desolation of this investment ruin, the dimensions of which can hardly be imagined in northern Europe, could easily occasion a critical sociological article. Yet Haacke set out to decipher the language of the stones, the concrete, and the moulded public space. And he was rewarded with a minor epiphany. What the artist saw bathed the Spanish crisis in a surreal light. Spouting up in places where the building process had been interrupted, and the concrete mixers ceased production, are fresh street signs: Pop Art Street, Conceptual Art Street, Object Art Street, and so forth. Someone had a good idea, formulated an aspiration, and drafted a utopia. Ensanche de Vallecas was thus targeted to be a monument to humane living. Dreams of galleries and affordable studios, of workshops of kids, abounded. Signs of touching naivety on the part of the community? Malicious stings by a cynical building sector? We are left to puzzle over possible correlations between the words evoking future dreams of creativity and the bleak reality of this construction disaster.
These issues touch the heart of Haacke’s installation. Its title, “Castles in the sky”, not only seizes on an apt expression for pipe dreams and exaggerated hopes; it also subtly alludes to the most important figure of Spanish culture history, Don Quixote de la Mancha. The way the sad figure idealises knights truly was a castle in the sky. Instead of facing reality, Don Quijote dwells in a parallel world of castles, giants, noble ladies, and heroic feats of chivalry. Nonetheless: while the most notorious dreamer of Spanish literature is likeable, with his fanciful ideas having a contagious effect on those surrounding him, the escapist, profit-seeking manoeuvres of the unfettered building sector, in turn, have propelled an entire country to the brink of ruin.Text feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, pp. 33–44.
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HANS HAACKE
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, S. / pp. 33-44.
Hans Haacke, Luftschlösser, 2012. © Hans Haacke / VG Bild-Kunst. -
HANS HAACKE
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, S. / pp. 33–44.
Doppelseite / spread: Hans Haacke, S. / pp. 34–35. -
HANS HAACKE
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, S. / pp. 33-44.
Hans Haacke, Luftschlösser, 2012. © Hans Haacke / VG Bild-Kunst. -
HANS HAACKE
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, S. / pp. 33–44.
Doppelseite / spread: Hans Haacke, S. / pp. 36–37. -
HANS HAACKE
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, S. / pp. 33-44.
Hans Haacke, Luftschlösser, 2012. © Hans Haacke / VG Bild-Kunst. -
HANS HAACKE
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, S. / pp. 33-44.
Hans Haacke, Luftschlösser, 2012. © Hans Haacke / VG Bild-Kunst.
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Renzo Martens in conversation with T. J. Demos: Institutional Critique Ultimately Is Beneficial to Only Some Areas of the World
RM: The Institute for Human Activities aims to build an art centre, a museum, a residency programme, and a school to provide master classes. We will offer training for plantation workers in art practice. And the participants will be drawn from all kinds of people, such as those who live in the forest, who maybe don’t see themselves as artists, but who have all kinds of powerful creative skills. And there will be artists from Kinshasa and from other African cities that we will invite. We will also include people from the West. In the end, hopefully, we can help these plantation workers, who now, truth be told, already work for us indirectly in a very old-fashioned type of economy, via physical labour paid per day or per hour. They don’t make much money. We will try and help them enter into the new immaterial and affective economy.
TJD: So the institute will act as a kind of education centre and later a site of exhibition for the emerging artists. If so, how will the sales happen? As we know this was a limitation exposed in your film Episode III: Enjoy Poverty (2009), in which the Congolese photographers you “trained” couldn’t ultimately get press passes or sell their photographs to international media organisations.
RM: Yeah, yeah. The sales will happen under the umbrella of this institute. Not that the profits will go to the institute, they will go to the artists. But the project will comprise something like a branding scheme, because one won’t just exhibit or buy this or that particular drawing, but will invest in this bigger endeavour, this larger social sculpture and artistic experiment. This system will constitute the mandate of the art and the value of its criticality.Text feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, pp. 45–52.
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RENZO MARTENS
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, S. / pp. 45–52.
Presentation of Botalatala, Institute for Human Activities, Boteka, DRC, 2012. -
RENZO MARTENS
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, S. / pp. 45–52.
Renzo Martens talks about the Gentrification Program (with image of Tate Modern, London on screen), Institute for Human Activities, Boteka, DRC, 2012. -
RENZO MARTENS
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, S. / pp. 45–52.
Welcome of managing director of Feronia Plantations et Huileries du Congo, Nicolas Matesu, Institute for Human Activities, Boteka, DRC, 2012.
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Image as Witness 4/4 Picture Makers vs Body Snatchers
Are you happy now?
I really couldn’t say.
Why?
Because I have no idea how to show happiness.
How come?
Because it seems to me that pictures of happiness are deceptive. They show you something unreal. Something that will never come to pass. Even when they capture memories of already fulfilled dreams. For especially these pictures are telling you: this was the moment of your happiness. With an emphasis on “was” since it is now in the past. Forget about it. The moment won’t return. It just makes you sad. Get it out of your head.
And pictures of the future? Ones that show how you envision your life’s happiness? One prime example of visions of the future are the photos found in the displays windows of real-estate agencies. Dreaming this dream of living happily in your own home the way it is meant to be dreamt means learning how to deal with display windows. This is an art in and of itself.Text feature in Camera Austria International 120/2012, pp. 67–68.
Forum
Presented by the editors:
EMANUEL MATHIAS
DRAGANA JURIŠIC
BEN KREWINKEL
IEVA BALTADUONYTE
SALVI DANÉS
DIONYSIS KOURIS
Exhibitions
How Much Fascism?
BAK, Utrecht
Extra City, Antwerp
STEFAAN VERVOORT
Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life
ICP, New York
TACO HIDDE BAKKER
Truth is concrete: steirischer herbst
Various venues, Graz
JAKUB MAJMUREK
Der Alchimist. Heinz Hajek-Halke: Lichtgrafisches Spätwerk
Akademie der Künste, Berlin
ESTELLE BLASCHKE
Counter-Production
Generali Foundation, Wien
CHRISTIAN HÖLLER
Newtopia – The State of Human Rights
Various venues, Mechelen
BRITTA PETERS
Jo Ractliffe: As Terras do Fim do Mundo
Fotohof, Salzburg
SABINE WINKLER
Liverpool Biennial 2012
Various venues, Liverpool
FATOS ÜSTEK
Time, Place, and the Camera: Photographs at Work
The Kosova Art Gallery, Priština
SUZANA MILEVSKA
Everything Was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s
Barbican Art Gallery, London
PAOLO MAGAGNOLI
Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art
Brooklyn Art Museum, New York
GERHARD FROMMEL
Markéta Othová / Ed Atkins
Bonner Kunstverein
VANESSA JOAN MÜLLER
Körper als Protest
Albertina, Wien
REBEKKA REUTER
Geschlossene Gesellschaft. Künstlerische Fotografie in der DDR 1949 – 1989
Berlinische Galerie
CAROLIN FÖRSTER
Kairo. Offene Stadt. Neue Bilder einer andauernden Revolution
Museum für Photographie Braunschweig
Festivalzentrum des Europäischen Monats der Fotografie am Pariser Platz, Berlin
Museum Folkwang, Essen
FLORIAN MALZACHER
Dokumentarische Methoden in der Kunst
Symposium der dfi und der KHM, Köln
ELISABETH NEUDÖRFL
Michael Strasser: Solitaire
Serdica
DIRCK MÖLLMANN
Books
Luis Jacob: Album
Art Metropole, Toronto / Walther König, Köln a.o.
JAN WENZEL
Wolfgang Tillmans: Neue Welt
Taschen, Cologne, 2012
MARTIN HERBERT
Steve Edwards: Martha Rosler: The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems
Afterall Books, One Work Series, London, 2012
JORGE RIBALTA
Paul Sietsema: interviews on films and works
Sternberg Press, Berlin/New York, 2012
NAOKO KALTSCHMIDT
Heinz Cibulka: Im Takt von Hell und Dunkel
Verlag der Bibliothek der Provinz, Weitra, 2012
GISELA STEINLECHNER
Imprint
Dank / Acknowledgments:
Jens Asthoff, Rachel Baum, Taco Hidde Bakker, bobsairport, Anja Casser, Sebastian Cichocki, Phil Collins, Helmut Draxler, Yilmaz Dziewior, Katja Eydel, Kata Fohl, Lenja Gathmann, G.R.A.M. (Martin Behr, Günther Holler-Schuster), Peter Hein, Urte Helduser, Martin Herbert, Anke Hoffmann, Felix Hoffmann, Ruth Horak, Nataša Ilić, Birte Kaufmann, Valérie Leray, Ulrike Matzer, Anna Meyer, Gislind Nabakowski, Stefan Panhans, Britta Peters, Mario Pfeifer, Krzysztof Pijarksi, Karin Rebbert, Katia Reich, Kathrin Rhomberg, Julian Röder, Julia Gwendolyn Schneider, Karol Sienkiewicz, Raimar Stange, Timm Starl, Margarete Szeless, Thomas D. Trummer, Raimar Stange, Jens Ullrich, Jan Verwoert, Jan Wenzel, Leifur Orrason Wilberg, Michael Wetzel, Christine Würmell
Copyright © 2012
Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Nachdruck nur mit vorheriger Genehmigung des Verlags. / All rights reserved. No parts of this magazine may be reproduced without publisher’s permission.
Für übermittelte Manuskripte und Originalvorlagen wird keine Haftung übernommen. / Camera Austria International does not assume any responsibility for submitted texts and original materials.
ISBN 978-3-900508-92-0
ISSN 1015 1915
GTIN 4 19 23106 1600 5 00120