86 | 2004

MARTIN PRINZHORN

Kaucyila Brooke: Borderlines

The artist Kaucyila Brooke deploys the medium of photography in many different ways in her work. Formally, the spectrum ranges from loud, high-contrast collages to calm pictures of a Californian landscape destroyed by fire or black-and-white close-ups of body parts. Her work is not easily classifiable in terms of content either: the “Tit for Twat” montages, loaded with text and meaning, contrast with a whole series of works that represent omissions or empty spaces and which thus deal with questions that must be reconstructed beyond the image, and thus evoke a kind of perception that we do not usually associate with the medium. The artistic method is not linked to a certain subject, and the result is a mix of techniques and contents such as sexuality, body, space, display, political art, concept art, panel picture, collage or documentation that allows the artist to use a very flexible, dynamic language. Particularly in times when stereotypical thinking is re-emerging, and with it the distinction between thematic-conceptual strategies and strategies that refer almost exclusively to formal, aesthetic criteria, we can see the diversity in Brooke’s work as a clear statement against the creation of such borderlines. In her work we always see an antireductionist attitude that would seem to cater for the desire to be able to support contradictory views at all levels and, above all, not to have to decide on one view as the point of departure.

Text feature in Camera Austria International 86/2004, pp. 7–16.

ANNE BERTRAND

Melik Ohanian: Intermediate Images (It's Here that We Live)

Nicolas Bourriaud has recently published a long article on the artist, in which he states, rightly, that his oeuvre can be “seen in terms of the individual’s response to a group, a contemporary rejoinder to those remote stories, like the second tremor that redoubles the initial seism but that is quite distinct, and on a smaller scale. [The works] are shock waves. The individuals or groups that populate Ohanian’s work are defined by the rejoinders that they make to their own history. For Ohanian, Being exists only through the presence of an Other, who endows it with form and vitality.” It’s very rare for the “Selected Recordings” to be inhabited. Some of them include a figure or figures, but so far only one (“SR 028”) has confronted us with the massive presence of the head and chest of a man with an unreadable expression. Is he drowsy, wounded, or simply absorbed in his thoughts? He looks paradoxically absent.
Jean-Christophe Royoux distinguishes “two types of propositions” in Ohanian’s work: “a tougher approach, more closely in touch with social reality and a more meditative, more contemplative approach that lingers on alternative, uninhabited worlds, galactic spaces, spaces that provide a measure for all things and which allow the world?s elemental multiplicity to exist in simultaneity – the earth, the sea, the planets, the sky.” In a certain way, each is counter-shot of the other. And yet it could be suggested that what links them is sometimes more complex; that certain landscapes also express something of the order of the political, for example certain urban territories that are abandoned, or occupied only intermittently, ephemerally. The artist “made the choice of not narrating”; so be it. But in this series – at least for the moment – he has also chosen not to give any image of his encounters; and to hide, or protect, those who live in the worlds whose images he gives. In other words, the economy of the “Selected Recordings” is very specific. As Melik Ohanian’s reply to a universe he has ranged over, these mute images call for a response from those who look at them. And they ask to be taken for what they are – intermediaries thanks to which, if we care to, we can state: “It’s here that we live.”

Text feature in Camera Austria International 86/2004, pp. 17–28.

MATTHIAS HERRMANN

A conversation with Monica Bonvicini / Sam Durant

Matthias Hermann: You both use very elaborate titles in your work. At a certain period it’s been totally uncool to use any title at all, everything was untitled. I have the feeling that a title can make yourself much more vulnerable.

Sam Durant: (laughs) Yeah.

Monica Bonvicini: Every time you show something you are vulnerable, because there is so much of yourself in what you’re doing. It’s difficult to make a clear cut between the work and the person behind it. Years ago I liked to have pathetic titles that I understood with a lot of irony, but people didn’t get that, which is completely fine. Once I had a title in German that for me was a complete joke, it included the word “truth” but people were asking me seriously about this truth while I think you cannot use any word like “truth” or “love” without irony. You make yourself vulnerable as an artist, but at the same time you make people vulnerable by questioning what they understand.

Matthias Hermann: Why did you choose the word Angst as the starting point for the video piece? Is it the German Angst or the English angst?

Monica Bonvicini: In American English angst is such an institutionalised word, of course it has a different, but close meaning to fear. It is also so related to the German language, to Heidegger and Wittgenstein, to this kind of German thinking? The video is about creating art, creating or building work.

Sam Durant: In America angst is really a kind of cliché, it has these associations to existential crisis. A lot of these American association refer directly to Vienna, Freud and so forth, so what better word to use than a cliché that refers to all these things that are totally wrong interpretations of the word. It’s almost a slang word, it’s got its own meaning, but when you start to pick it apart, and really analyse, it is very interesting. And again, there is an aspect of irony, but I would not say an ironic understanding for the viewer is necessary. I think it’s funny, I think the video is really funny.

Matthias Hermann: You destroy Angst and then you build up fear?

Sam Durant: Right. Out of the rubble of Angst.

Text feature in Camera Austria International 86/2004, pp. 29–39.

KAUCYILA BROOKE

Chicken in the Ruff, Hotel Closets, Nevada Brothel

I thought that I would never take another camping trip with someone that I know as well as I know you. I am single again and do not look forward to vacations with a girlfriend. I work and take business trips, and this is OK for a while but now I am ready for a road trip. My friends are urban and not interested in sleeping on the ground. I finally convinced one friend to go camping with me and in the end she says, “I like to hike and be outside, I just don’t understand why we can’t sleep in a motel and take a shower in the morning?”
You and I haven’t seen each other for years. You are mending a broken heart. So we decide to have an adventure through California, Nevada and Utah. What amazes me is that after twenty years it is so easy to be next to each other in the car and on the same air mattress in my small two-person tent. For miles along the California/Nevada border we stare at the gray brown unbroken vistas marked only by road signs and telephone lines. We have been catching up on the last twenty years of our lives for five days and now we are silent.

Text feature in Camera Austria International 86/2004, pp. 48–52.