1. art and entertainment
2. shows and events
3. exhibition

1
COOL HAND LEO
Leo Steinberg was a legend in art history, criticism, and twentieth-century
thought, known for his focus on the dynamic range of meaning in art that comes
not only through historical analysis but also through consideration of artistic
choice and the subjective experience of the viewer. The MFA Art Criticism and
Writing Program at the School of Visual Arts, through the friendship and deep
respect of our chairman David Levi Strauss, houses Steinberg’s personal library in
our own. The collection spans eight languages and thousands of subjects, as well
as the two stones pictured on the cover of this issue of Zephyr.
One day at the beach, Steinberg found two or three of them and was taken by
their look and smooth feel. He took them home—he even drew on one. After
that, he continued picking up such stones whenever he was at the beach. He also
found them useful as paperweights and, for the very flat ones, dividers in piles
of papers. He then discovered another usage: the stones seemed to always remain
cool. If his hands got too warm, he would hold a stone between them to cool them
down.
The two stones on our cover currently serve as paperweights in our library, and
are used to cool our hands and spur our thoughts. They are featured on the cover
as a quintessential connection between all current, former, and future students,
professors, and visitors, as a lasting reminder to pick out the best, and keep
looking.
—Elizabeth Sultzer
Opposite Page: Leo Steinberg, 1974. Photo by Mark Feldstein.
Cover Photography: Amelia Rina.
TRANSMISSION
DISPATCH
p. 8
IDEATIONS
p. 26
PORTFOLIO
p. 46
REVIEWS
p. 66
6
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
A zephyr is defined as a light or westerly wind. The term is derived from
Zephyrus, one of the ancient Greek Anemoi: the wind gods. Zephyrus, the
god of the west wind, was a classically Grecian gadabout: he married Iris,
goddess of the rainbow, then abducted and married the nymph Chloris,
goddess of flowers, and later killed his lover Hyacinth by blowing a discus
off course and striking him in the head. In his myriad loves and crimes,
Zephyrus reflects the itinerant heart of all writers, who continually waft
from subject to subject, in search of a temporary shelter for their words
and ideas.
With this spirit—and many others—in mind, the students of SVA’s Art
Criticism and Writing Program chose to frame this year’s issue of Zephyr
with the theme Transmission. Whether a writer’s personal velocity is breakneck or dawdling, whether they are homebodies or nomads, there is a force
that compels them onward. The psychic transmission of thoughts and ideas,
along with the physical transmission of a printed publication, are mirrored.
Equal, if not more important, to the idea of Transmission is the character
of the program itself. Within a relatively small number of students, we have
writers from all over the United States, as well as Brazil, Turkey, and Nigeria.
Each comes to Zephyr with their own unique language, story, and point of
view. To celebrate this, we start the magazine with a section called Dispatch.
Here, we provide an account of artistic endeavors and happenings around
the world. These are accompanied by critical and experimental reviews and
essays based out of the writers’ found home of New York City.
Zephyrus is seen as a messenger of spring, associated with light spring
and early summer breezes. That seems an apropos metaphor for the newly
emerging voices found in this publication. Today, if you are an art writer
starting out—versus an art world professional, which is a different animal—
you truly have to feel compelled to write about art. It takes a gentle but
persistently focused force to propel one to continue on this path; there are
very few bread crumbs to guide or reward. But that’s the life of an art writer,
right now, in 2014. And here, we present a few thoughts they had along the
way.
—Aimee Walleston
SÃO PAULO
DAKAR
DISPATCH
PORTUGAL
BOSTON
International correspondence on art and politics.
SPAIN
ISTANBUL
NEWCASTLE
LOS ANGELES
PIRAN
10
DISPATCH FROM SÃO PAULO
Tatiane Schilaro
Strikes, protests, angry graffiti on walls, the
usual pollution and grayness, plus the caustic
traffic, and a certain ideological distrust: I
arrived in São Paulo with a bitter taste in my
mouth, within the wave of political confusion,
the expectations for the World Cup and the
upcoming presidential elections. On the TV,
advertising and broadcasting companies “play
dead” to this gloomy universe of the streets:
news and TV shows have all been decorated in
yellow and green, as if appealing to the hearts
of Brazilians to forget the problems and cheer
up. For many, the fear was that uncontrollable
crowds would not root for the Brazilian soccer
team and instead would take the streets to
protest like what happened last year, in June.
Some of those expected crowds have, but as
soon as the Cup started, for now, it looks like
the heart of Brazilians belongs to soccer, or at
least while the team is still winning.
Within the art world, the expectations are
related to the São Paulo Biennial, which
opens in September and will coincide with
the presidential campaign. The main theme of
this Biennial is a non-theme, this edition’s title
has a gap that can be filled in with different
verbs: How to…things that don’t exist. How to
struggle, to learn, to deal with things that don’t
exist? The realm of the unseen, the symbolic,
Above & Opposite pages: Anonymous, Grafitti in a Sao Paolo park. Image courtesy of the author.
molds the curatorial project—a creative but
during the 20 years of military dictatorship to
also a difficult task to ask of the nonspecialized
the big protests of June 2013. The photographs
local public that visits the Biennial. The
are placed flush against each other, which
expectation is that a smart architectural
establishes conceptual and physical tensions
study of Oscar Niemeyer’s Pavilion will help
between them; contradictory figures such
the curators to escape the traditional design
as Lula and Fernando Henrique Cardoso—
of “museums” that so displeased Brazilian
opposing former presidents—are shown
critics
in
the
30th
together. The show opens
edition. The promise of
with two photographs
For
now,
it
looks
like
the
this
multidisciplinary
of 9/11—of the smoke
curatorial team is to be
heart of Brazilians belongs coming from the World
risky, but still not many
Trade Center—taken by a
to soccer, or at least while
Brazilian artists have been
Brazilian, Alcir Navarro
the team is still winning.
chosen to integrate the
da Silva: perhaps it
exhibition: perhaps there
serves as a reminder to
is a discrepancy between
Brazilians that power, and
what the curators are looking for and what the
acts of power, happen to be (and should be)
Brazilian artists are producing. Still, it seems
provisory—it doesn’t matter the home.
that this Biennial will not neglect the political
effervescence of the moment.
At Vermelho and at MAM the spirit of the
protests was alive. Vermelho exhibited
Cinthia Marcelle’s new video, which depicts
an anarchic group, similar to the Black Blocs,
who have spread across the country after
last year’s protests. This group’s actions are
usually polemical, for their use of violence
and depredation to protest, even though
they claim to do it in response to police and
government repression. Characters wearing
masks are seen in Marcelle’s video throwing
bombs and overturning what we assume is a
vehicle, which is kept hidden from the camera:
they kick it and set it on fire, while their howls
of victory echo in the night. In Brazil, Black
Blocs are a novelty, but since the 1980s groups
like theirs have been part of an international
anarchist drive. In Brazilian cities they first
acted to protect peaceful activists who were
hurt by the police. In one of the latest protests,
they vandalized Mercedes-Benz’s cars—for
P.S. Then it happened, the Brazilian team
them, a symbol of the capitalist luxury.
lost badly the semifinal of the Cup. The next
day, Brazilian flags had been removed from
the cars, and neighborhoods went silent. The
At MAM the show “Poder Provisório
frenetic exploitation of the media, parties
(Provisory Power)” surveyed the permanent
in bars, and barbecues at homes gave place
photography collection of the museum
to a disconcerted grief. Soccer, in this sense
and brought to the public historic political
like politics; that too, a provisory power.
moments of the country: from artists’ protests
11
12
DISPATCH FROM DAKAR
Writer Renée Mboya is currently traveling
on a five-month road trip, which began in
Lagos, Nigeria and will end in Sarajevo,
Bosnia. The trip is being undertaken by eight
artists, including Mboya, with the purpose
of questioning the trans-African movement
and migration through photography, video,
literature, and public art. In Dakar, she talked
with Emmanuel Iduma, another artist on this
journey, about her identity as a Kenyan.
—As told to Emmanuel Iduma
try to hold yourself from it. I’ve been reading
a lot of reflections on Lagos in the 1920s,
where Lagosians are described as a loud and
flamboyant people. This catches me totally
off guard! I had assumed this stereotypical
Lagosian identity was a symptom of a very
contemporary position in cultural expression.
Identity is what it is. A “unified” Africa can
only be exactly what it looks like right now.
Unfortunately sometimes that is ugly and
very offensive, but it’s only by claiming these
identities that we can make them more, or
less, representative.
I think the notion of “Kenyanness,” at this
critical point in the continent’s history, is
something that has become so dilute as to
I left Kenya in a mad emotional rush, anxious
be disputable in its definability, if that’s a
to shake off what Kenya had recently become
word (it really isn’t). “Kenyan” has never
(or had always been): jagged and splintered.
been the way I defined myself. And I think
But in unpacking, I’m finding that bits and
I can say the same for many
pieces of Kenya have traveled
Kenyans of my generation. I I am only Kenyan now with me. I’m forced to find
am from Nairobi, so I am a
space for these fragments
that
I’m
not
there.
Nairobian, so to speak. But
in an identity I constructed
this very localized form of
in order to resist these
identification is, in itself, a very “Kenyan”
markers, which can be so restrictive. I think
approach to identity. The nervousness of
the truth of identity is to learn to exist even
the post independence generation—the
when you are constantly being told what you
feeling that the country they had become a
are, being “named.” It’s like Camus said, of the
part of what might not be such a permanent
myth of Sisyphus: “The answer, underlying
thing—has worn off. So we have the luxury
and appearing through the paradoxes which
of taking Kenya for granted and therefore
cover it, is this: even if one does not believe
excluding it from our articulated identities. I
in God, suicide is not legitimate.” I don’t have
am only Kenyan now that I’m not there, and
to believe in Kenya for it to define me, it just
I am traveling through spaces where it is too
does. It always will.
abstract to say I am from Nairobi.
Having said that, as my work examines more
and more specific physical identifiers—tribal
markings, hair, the sounds of a people—I am
starting to notice in myself a very specific
“Kenyan” quality. In other people I notice an
“un-Kenyanness” that frankly is surprising
to me. I didn’t expect the construction of a
unified continental identity to breach so
easily. To be honest, I’m starting to think
more and more of identity as something for
which assertion is redundant. It will be what
it will be, no matter how near or how far you
Photo of Renée Mboya courtesy of Dr. Wambui Mwangi.
DISPATCH FROM PORTUGAL
Anthony Nikolchev
Since 2009, my cousin Anthony has lived, worked, and traveled extensively in Europe, performing
theater pieces examining issues of identity, history, geography, and the body. His work is driven
by a desire to explore the history of our grandparents and parents, who left Communist Bulgaria
in search of political asylum. For this issue of Zephyr, I asked him to send me a series of postcards
about his travels and his experiences as a skitnik—the Bulgarian term for “wanderer.”
—Amelia Rina
13
14
DISPATCH FROM BOSTON
Maggie Cavallo is a curator and educator based in Boston, and is the Curator of Education at
Montserrat College of Art Galleries & Visiting Artist Program. Her recent projects include “A New
Cosmic Mix: now in 5D!” at the Charles Hayden Planetarium, “Communion V” at The Bathaus,
“SEVEN:” a performative drawing project at Montserrat Gallery, and “SPACE CASE: Zillaboston
Online Residency.” Tom Maio is a performance artist and curator based in Boston, whose recent
projects include “Wait Here” at Mobius Gallery, as well as hosting various events at his own venue,
The Beach in Jamaica Plain. Here they talk about the contemporary art scene in Boston.
—Elizabeth Sultzer
TM: Because they are not fueled by a
commercial art market, Boston-area artists are
more likely to experiment with their work and
invest in forming collaborative relationships.
MC: Artists who understand learning, research
and teaching as an important part of artistic
practice are in good company in Boston.
TM: Boston-area art schools are unique, and
their students passionate.
MC: The number of colleges and universities
in Boston means access to an infinite number
of cultural resources and scholars from
various fields. Exhibition opportunities in
academic settings encourage experimental
and ephemeral works.
TM: And Boston has a strong underground/
DIY scene.
MC: Boston is for individuals who want to
actively redefine what it means to be an artist
in the world.
TM: Boston artists work together.
MC: Some of our best artists leave us for New
York City.
TM: Boston artists sometimes leave, but they
always come back to visit.
MC: Artists are conflicted when they move
away from Boston.
Maggie Cavallo: I moved to Boston after
graduating from SUNY Purchase because all
my friends were moving to NYC and I wanted
to go against the grain.
Tom Maio: I moved to Boston because I saw
so many exciting things happening there while
I was a student at Montserrat College of Art,
and I wanted to be a part of it. I moved here
because the young artist scene was strong and
smart, inspiring and active.
MC: I also moved to Boston because I watched
Good Will Hunting.
TM: Boston is a safe space to start something
new.
MC: Boston is a city for artists who want to
build structures and infrastructures that don’t
exist yet. Who want to work hard and be a
part of something.
TM: Boston is not New York, LA, Chicago,
Seattle, Houston, San Francisco, Oakland or
Austin.
MC: Boston is always being compared to New
York City.
TM: Boston could be better.
TM: It’s expensive to live in Boston, but it’s
cheaper than New York.
MC: Boston isn’t easy for artists who want
traditional success in the art world. Exhibition
opportunities in commercial galleries are
limited, and the art market is weak.
MC: When you look up in Boston, you see
mostly sky.
TM: Boston’s performance art community is
potent.
MC: Boston has a rich history of experiential
art, people working in performance,
experimental media, social practice, electronic
and live sound.
TM: Boston is home to the actual Grandmother
of Performance Art, Marilyn Arsem.
MC: So much has changed in Boston over the
last seven years, a lot of the work we’ve done
is showing through.
TM: Boston needs more writers.
MC: More writers who want to reinvent what
it means to write about art and why.
TM: Boston has Jamaica Plain.
MC: And Hyde Park: Boston is so much bigger
than people give it credit for.
TM: Boston has Liz Munsel curating
performance art at the Museum of Fine Arts.
MC: Boston is home of Yassy Goldie!
TM: Boston has people who are willing to
mentor young artists and help them grow.
MC: One of the best parts of my experience in
Boston has been having mentors and being a
mentor. Actively.
TM: Boston is a good place for young artists
to start their career.
MC: Traditionally, it has been difficult for
Boston to retain these emerging artists
TM: Young artists in Boston need more of a
reason to stay, and those reasons should be
apparent and publicized.
MC: There is still work to do.
Opposite Page: Tom Maio.
15
DISPATCH FROM SPAIN
Anthony Nikolchev
18
19
DISPATCH FROM ISTANBUL
Deniz Ova has been appointed as the Director for the 2nd edition of Istanbul Design Biennial.
I met Ova in 2012, when I was an intern at Istanbul’s Foundation for Culture and Arts, a nonprofit that focuses on art event planning in Turkey. At the time, Ova was thenwas the Director of
International Projects Department, where her responsibilities included developing and coordinating
the Turkish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Here, she talks about her new directorship.
—Damla Koksalan
Damla Koksalan: The title of the Biennial,
“The Future Is Not What It Used To Be,” is
very enticing. Can you share your thought
process in how the title came about and what
it signifies for you?
increased social impact. However, I would not
go so far as to see design as a solution for all
sociopolitical issues. But when empowered by
the support of every other all-encompassing
system, network, and resource that leads to
infinite sharing among human beings, we
may hope to see some more equality in the
resource distribution among social structures
through design.
Deniz Ova: The theme of the 2nd edition
of Istanbul Design Biennial was set by the
appointed curator, Zoe Ryan. Throughout
the process, her motives revolved around the
inquiry of “what is the future now?” under the
DK: One major theme that this year’s Biennial
overarching title “The Future Is Not What It
highlights is the concept of “manifestos.”
Used To Be.” The Biennial invites designers
Zoe Ryan has remarked several times on the
to rethink this manifesto, harnessing this
importance of rethinking what manifestos can
powerful
and
fertile
do and what they can be.
genre as a platform to
Can I ask you for your
What is a Biennial, and own description of how
reconsider where we have
come from, where we are,
how can we destroy the you envision a manifesto
and where we are going.
to be?
pre-determined patterns in
order to build new ones?
We have asked ourselves
every day, what is a
Biennial, and how can we
destroy the pre-determined patterns in order
to build new ones? Trying to take a glimpse of
a future, and while in doing so, maybe being
able to foster change has been the motivation
of our Biennial.
DK: How would you position the role of design
in today’s world? Especially in terms of social
structures, how much does design affect them
and come into play in our contemporary lives?
DO: Today, design is beyond being perceived
solely as functional and/or aesthetic. It
is not only innovative, environmental,
and sustainable, but it is also collective,
distributive, emotional, and social. This
change in the perception of design has allowed
DO: As our curator has
remarked,
manifestos
have
function
as
statements of purposes. They stimulate
dialogue without limitations and pursue
inquiry as a radical process. I think this is still
valid and important today, but at the same time
manifestos have changed into a more organic
form than before. As the Biennial team, we see
the manifesto as a catalyst for critical thinking
in design and architecture. Our manifesto
generates new content and provokes new
outcomes, as we keep reinventing the future.
DK: Istanbul is seen as a melting pot for many
reasons—arts, cultures, and communities are
just several examples to name. But regarding
specifically the Design Biennial, why is
Istanbul significant as a location?
DO: Istanbul, a city undergoing rapid
transformation, is a hub for alternative
thinking about design and its relationship
to daily life. It is therefore an ideal place for
a Biennial that will bring together a diverse
cross-section of design ideas about the
emerging conditions of our world. Using the
city as a dynamic space for projects, talks,
workshops, publications, and actions (as well
as generating online initiatives), the Biennial
will present an international range of projects
that open up new attitudes and sensibilities,
foregrounding under explored or overlooked
aspects of societies, whilst prompting an
investigation about our designed, constructed,
and digitized age.
DK: One of the things about this Biennial
that was a pleasant surprise for me was the
fact that it will be free of charge. How was this
decision made, and can you elaborate on what
is wished to be achieved by it?
DO: Starting with the Istanbul Biennial in
2013, we decided to have free admission. By
opening the doors to not just those who are
interested but also to those who are not, we
present the opportunity for everyone to get
the chance to form an opinion.
Above: No 41, Workout Computer, 2012, ©BLESS.
Image Courtesy of IKSV.
20
DISPATCH FROM LOS ANGELES
Artist Lydia Glenn-Murray speaks about her
new project space, Chin’s Push.
—As told to Kaitlyn A. Kramer.
guava trees, a really great trailer that I recently
brought in, and a garage that’ll soon be set up
to be a proper studio space.
Setting up a private home and a public art
space simultaneously has been a curious,
resourceful process. I found this space
in Highland Park with my family—it’s an
amazing location and the setup is so strange
and great. There’s a commercial building
facing York Boulevard that I fixed up so it
looks like a superclean white wall gallery,
though it still has some beautiful quirks and
character. Then there’s a bizarro house behind
with crazy turquoise wall-to-wall carpeting,
curtains with embroidered ducks, and marble
contact paper all over the place. Behind that
is a huge backyard with tangerine, lemon, and
We have been calling it Chin’s Push—I’ve been
hesitant to even give it a name, but this one
seems to have stuck with people. The name is
taken from the previous tenants, the Chins,
whose name appears above the doorbell’s
inviting “push” sign. I’m not sure what Chin’s
Push is exactly. I usually call it a project space,
because that feels broad enough to encompass
all of the things that are going on. This is not to
say that I am unclear about what my intentions
for the space are, but more to indicate that
flexibility, openness, and experimentation
are such an important part of it. Some people
call it a gallery, and I don’t correct them, but
I really am interested in a more dynamic and
varied type of programming. The term, artistrun space, puts the focus on the assumed
perspective of the “leadership”, meanwhile, a
gallery is simply a gallery and an alternative
space is decidedly not a gallery. For me, the
term project space is more about the potential
of what can happen there. I don’t particularly
protest against any of the other labels, but
something like “project space” is the most
comfortable for me.
as live/work spaces in exchange for labor.
Oh, and there is an ongoing treasure hunt for
joints around the house, which is responding
to an epic poem/fictional narrative written by
Jack Levinson about the people who lived in
the house before.
For the entire month of May, I hosted ten classes
through the Trade School. Each class responds
to the idea that everyone has something to
offer, and so anyone can be a teacher—and
the classes were produced via a barter system.
In the fall of 2013, while we were still under
One night, Lila De Magalhaes taught a class
construction, my friend and artist David
on cooking with lemon: we made sweet and
Whitaker facilitated a ten-week class in the
savory variations of lemon preserves, read a
backyard called “Your
Japanese short story about
Art Is Yours,” which acted
For me, the ter m project a lemon that changed a
somewhat like an artist
man’s life, and then ate a
space
is
more
about
the
support group. Through
huge lemony feast while
discussion, collaboration,
potential of what can
we watched this amazing
meditation, writing, and
Eastern European fairy
happen there.
so forth, participants
tale called “The Singing
would identify and grapple
Ringing Tree.” Currently
with questions central to our individual
on view is an exhibition curated by artist Jesse
practices. The space opened in a more public
Stecklow titled Passive Collect, which is a
way in mid-November with a two-person
group show organized around contemporary
exhibition cocurated by Phil Davis and
notions of data collection. Coming up, Chin’s
myself. Artist Kelly Akashi installed “Hit Me
Push will host more art shows, screenings, a
Lightning” in the front commercial space.
narrative driving tour of the neighborhood,
The space was locked during the opening,
social organizing and non-profit world
so that the hanging sculpture—which was
navigation workshops, an expansion of the
lit with candles—was viewable through the
residency program, dance performances, a
large front window. A video projected on
Pokémon tournament, a women’s only pool
the interior wall could only be seen through
party, and much more.
another, smaller window on the side of the
space. Artist Christian Cummings drew all
over the walls and installed sculptures in
the house—which has a rather crazy interior
aesthetic—in his work Anti-Urges & Stargate.
A four-day-long holiday shop came next, in
December, involving around 80 artists. In the
spring, Keith J. Varadi curated a group show,
“Mondays et al.,” with work by Samara Golden,
David Roesing, Ian James, Lucy Ives, Spencer
Longo, Eugene Kotlyarenko, and Edward
Marshall Schenk. We staged a poetry reading
called Capulet’s Orchard, which reinterpreted
the balcony scene in “Romeo and Juliet.” In a
sort of seedling residency program, artists have
Above: Installation by Christian Cummings.
been using the trailer, yard, house, and garage
Photos courtesy of Lydia Glenn-Murray.
21
DISPATCH FROM NEWCASTLE
Anthony Nikolchev
24
25
DISPATCH FROM PIRAN
Aimee Walleston
And who might you be, Piran? A seaside town
in Slovenia, spitting distance from Northern
Italy. A sundried baby Venice, with old
buildings that stack and fit together like an
endless Jenga tower. Cobblestone streets,
walls scrawled over with verses of anger: wellwritten graffiti that talks about the cops and
the 99%. It’s also the first town in Slovenia to
have a black mayor. Church bells chime every
fifteen minutes, marking the time. Outside,
right now, it feels happy. Inside, eternally,
something different, I think; scorpions
tiptapping along in lazy sunshine. Piran is a
beach town, a communist town, a political
town, a junkie town. That’s what I am told.
And what might we do in Piran? First a skinny
dip, tasting the super-saline Adriatic for the
first time. So that’s out of the way. No hiding.
my friends in New York. Tine: a fierce pianist
with shy, glittered eyes. Lisa is the metronome
on top of his piano. Luka on the telephone,
his deep, masculine voice a surprise: he is so
easy to love. Michele on the telephone—he is
going to work on a farm now. And…not too
much more—I will leave them to their own
intimacy, and the intimacy of our time.
And what was made? Dinner and poetry, art
on the walls and the table. Jaša is carving up
artist Ulay’s pleasant little Piran beach house
with his own language. Is he allowed? Yes!
It’s our group’s graffiti, channeled through
Jaša’s aristocratic hand, derived from a song
he just made with Tine, made for our time
here. It’s about faith and love, different to
the permanent words of resistance we find
outside. A complementary politics.
And now who are we? The only “art scene” in
And what happened next? I see Tine’s eyes
Piran, that’s for sure. And we are temporary,
brighten when I offer to help Lisa write
a porta-pack of artists and poets here only
something so she can stay at the beach with us.
for a holiday. Jaša: the king, here, an alpha, a
“It’ll take me ten seconds to fix it!” I brag big,
Leo. Correction: an über Leo. Rosa: dark red
an ultra-American. Collectivism bubbles up in
lipstick blooming bright
these people in a way that
red roses all over her
feels like groundswell.
It’s
about
faith
and
love,
white pillows. Long loose
Many of them were kids
stems. Her sentences
when Yugoslavia fell, and
different to the permanent
trail off with “tra la
you feel a longing for a
words of resistance we find different, older way to
la...” which sounds like
a canter. She is summer
relate. “When I grew up,
outside. A complementary
in Piran, and when she
we just had a car, it didn’t
politics.
talks to the fishermen I
matter what kind,” says
see her here as a young
Jaša. I look at Slovenian
girl let loose, the kind of young girl whose
graffiti online, and one piece makes me smile.
independence comes more as a relief than a
It reads, in girlish curlicues, “Capitalism You
concern. A familiar brand of life’s luggage.
Are Driving Me Crazy.” I’m still learning these
Junzi: sparking intelligence, fascinated by the
people, this country, and what it means to
bodies of others, beautiful and free in his own.
be Slovenian, to have been born here before
His daughter is named after Djuna Barnes.
everything split apart. But there is a universal
Meta: baby Bacall. Kinetic sculptress, elegant
feeling, and this is now, and that I understand.
and wild. Lisa: Belgian choreographer, her
I feel I am with a secretless society, for this
little body constantly trotting in place, hips
week at least. I feel socialism, a need, rising
keeping time. It’s true, she says, Slovenians
up like a strong tide, and I wonder what I’m
are sunshine. I laugh because that’s what I tell
going to do with that when I am back home
alone in New York. I want to live in a place
where people stop wondering what I want
from them, and I stop wondering what people
want from me.
And what happened after? Jaša’s critical
lightning brain is back on, and he talks about
selfies and Instagram feeds: “An unbreakable
happiness.” A fraud, a sham. His understanding
is in the moment, now, instant, and maybe just
that one or two seconds after. Junzi walks me
around the town, and tells me that this town
has a lot of trouble because it’s a seaside town,
and most of the drugs come into this country
through its ports. Junk washes up on the
beach. Junzi explains, and he is patient, and
he is so smart, but when he talks a lot about
things being “Balkan” I’m not sure if I really
understand what he means. The psychology
of that term doesn’t exist yet in my brain. My
pictures are turning out all blurry.
And how did it end? It didn’t. I am still with
them, even though I am back in New York.
Jaša—brother, friend—will come here soon;
he is hungry, he is fire. He must cook and eat
Capitalist-crazy New York.
And what is remembered? My favorite moment
in Piran: the second evening, a small scorpion
visited us, as Junzi reads and I wash the dishes.
Fear and curiosity, I’ve never seen one before.
He is captured in an upturned wine glass with
a postcard slid underneath. He is brought
somewhere where he can’t hurt anyone, where
he can live. We are all here in Piran for a
reason.
Above: Site-specific installation by Jaša.
COLOR WALK
IDEATIONS
Poetry, recollections, and essays.
MEETING MALICK
ALMOST LIKE
A DANCE BUT
HORRIBLE
A STEADY ACT
LET ME TELL YOU
A STORY
JOHN JEA
COLOR WALK POEM TWO POINT OH
Or I’m On My Game, Live For The Green
Another exercise that is very effective is walking
on colors. Pick out all the reds on a street, focusing
only on red objects–brick, lights, sweaters, signs.
Shift to green, blue, orange, yellow. Notice how the
colors begin to stand out more sharply of their own
accord. I was walking on yellow when I saw a yellow
amphibious jeep near the corner of 94th Street and
Central Park West. It was called the Thing. This
reminded me of the Thing I knew in Mexico. He
was nearly seven feet tall and had played the Thing
in a horror movie of the same name, and everybody
called him the Thing, though his name was James
Arness. I hadn’t thought about the Thing in twenty
years, and would not have thought about him except
walking on yellow at that particular moment.
—William S. Burroughs
Flat saturation hangs above our collective head, really, meanwhile
cursing metal radiates around and under us, like hands, like what is flesh tone,
as we pass block after block.
Riding’s like walking, right?
Screeching metal, wheels on rail, and we actually have to listen
to our own construction.
I’m not from here. But here and there pink circles pink, loving and spawning.
96 comes into view, a dirty eggshell tiled into dripping rust, concrete.
Our clothes, echoing up towards the above, real land,
seem too poignant too alone too colorful down here too, surrounded by handflat alloy and
frigid cylinders. My orange seat is a commodity that can’t rhyme that’s okay but
I’m reluctant to lose.
She said play your own game and don’t look backward. But isn’t
it middle-out, really? All grays fade, like they told us.
…But the opposite of that.
Earlier we had driven the island together, killing it.
I laughed at your jokes and you thought about mine.
Here, alone, we let off stale slate steam, concurrent with invisible electric rays, stopping them up.
Yellow anxiety muttering, gasping for breath and thought, thinking about the next thing. Thinging.
Oh no. So sorry. So what.
What hell.
My feet, heavy from your stare, anchor themselves to the starlight underneath,
Weighing my options, my heaven and my idiocy. I can feel your buzz like
the crisp cerulean drench of ocean waves. Faraway and pounding.
I spill something else, red.
Aluminum chases steel under plastic, which is much too bright.
Great.
A long stretch matched a fervor unknown, wondering out loud what kind
of people we are. Dancing and asking for money from a city
not made for you. Shudder.
Romantically thinking of river civilizations and tall trees and how we aggregate toward water because
that’s what we are. Autonomous beings
languorously agitating at 2:40 on a Monday, discussing the rain and the right way
to maintain and to catch our [another word for blue] breath, out windows and air ducts.
He’s like a poodle you said, brown and curly haired, from somewhere else and here.
The car is the kind of white you said, you see when you close your eyes, impinged
by your dirty layered ocular reality, a mouthful. All while dangling brown.
The vertical is something we must have imagined you see because everything else works in the
horizontal.
Or so I gleam from trains, one after the other, before the next.
Green rises up like a de-fense, an assertion of other other-ness.
Questions mark, I lie.
Color spits on the ground in my face, robins eggs and pink panthers.
How do I make you talk like them? Bee cum eng.
How do I make myself comfortable? Incorporation.
And we dip down again, desperate, singed, plodding, and.
­—Elizabeth Sultzer
30
MEETING MALICK
Emmanuel Iduma
“Photography is like hunting,” Malick Sidibé
says.
I remember that Henri Cartier-Bresson had
lived in Côte d’Ivoire for a while in his youth
hunting game. When he was in his eighties, he
said, “The only thing about photography that
interests me is the aim, the taking aim.”
When I visit Sidibé he is sitting outside of a
house, part of a cluster of brownish buildings.
He is wearing a fitted white jalabiya. His
eyesight is failing; instead of reaching to shake
his hand, I gently grasp his hands in my own
in order to greet him. A woman and a young
man surround him, as though readying him
for the public eye. The woman brings a towel
and spreads it across his lap; the young man
brings sunglasses. I am overwhelmed—I feel
as though his entire oeuvre is compressed into
a moment in time. This is homage, all of it.
Before we talk we are shown a room with
his negatives, old equipment, and stacks of
photo albums. Things are in bad shape, worn
by time, pungent with dustiness. Some of the
dust will leave with us. There’s a bed in the
room. Perhaps he lies here when exhausted,
to remember photographs without looking at
them, to be inundated with images from the
past that remain present.
We sit and he talks. Igo Diarra of Medina
Gallery, our host and guide, translates the
conversation from French. Sidibé tells us he
started drawing in 1945, using charcoal. He
drew because he wanted to imitate natural
things. I think: drawing and photography
share a kinship; when we draw we imitate
the forms and figures of life—the same with
taking a photograph.
Because he has never used a digital camera
he’s likely to conceive photography as an act
of deliberateness. He tells us he learnt what he
knew about photography by observing closely.
It is while he talks about hunting that he talks
about observation. Observation is alertness,
remaining present, studying things, finding
precision, finding balance.
Now that he is losing his eyesight he cannot
continue working. Later he talks about the
true image—no one can change the true image,
least of whom the colonialists. I suppose that
not even impaired eyesight can take away his
ability to continue perceiving images. Every
nerve in his body seems to respond to light
and movement. Time has slowed him down,
but he is still here.
Above: Malick Sidibé, Tom Saater.
Opposite Page: Malick Sidibé studio view.
He asks the young man to bring to us a
photograph from 1963. It is his favorite
photograph and known around the world as
one of his iconic images: a young man and
woman dancing during a Christmas party. (It
had to be about dancing, I think, remembering
something about dance being the fulcrum of
desire). Photography is a charismatic medium;
sometimes it takes decades for a photograph
to fully unravel itself. I wonder what he
thought when he made that photograph—
unlike other famous photographs of his, the
pose here is unrehearsed. It strikes me that
the pose is similar to that of Amiri Baraka
dancing with Maya Angelou in Harlem, in the
1991 photograph by Chester Higgins Jr.
cameras but it just seemed overwhelming.
He jokes that these days you don’t need your
eyes to make photographs, just shoot. Loud
laughter is shared.
The other time we laugh is when he talks
about being in Mauritania. It had been
difficult to put his subjects in good positions
People come to him
because men didn’t want
from around the world,
him to touch their wives.
Every nerve in his body
he says. He’s responding
A photographer is like a
to a question about his
doctor, he tells us: if you
seems to respond to light
children. The question had
don’t touch you do nothing.
and movement.
been lost in translation,
He adds something about
apparently. Yet the image
composing. He had been a
fits perfectly: a man whose way of seeing
composer of images, favoring the studio over
has stirred the hearts of thousands, whose
the street. The contours of his subjects’ bodies
fatherhood is indisputable.
form poses like line being added to line, as in
a drawing.
He’s asked a question about photography’s
movement to digital, the democratization
Someone asks if he has any questions for us.
of the photo-making process. “It’s okay
No. Any advice? None, he says, but it is good
sometimes,” he says. Everyone has a right
to travel, you understand many things. The
to have their image taken, but people can
first time he went to South Africa, he felt like
also transform the image into something
it was his house. Chaka Zulu inspires him.
else. He seems ambivalent about this. He’s
still fascinated, I guess, with the old ways of
“I am very happy,” he says at the end.
working. He tried to catch up with digital
31
32
33
ALMOST LIKE A DANCE BUT HORRIBLE
Amelia Rina
Evan Calder Williams’ film, Violent X, is a
sinister poem in four dimensions, like an
eschatological dream. Escaping the typical
motion picture projection of compressed
sound and image, the screening at Brooklyn’s
Issue Project Room in April 2014 included a
live narration by California-based Williams,
and performance of the film’s score by Tokyobased experimental composer Taku Unami.
The démodé basso continuo punctuated by
synth beats ooze and pop like slowly boiling
magma, waiting to incinerate all that comes
into contact with it. (These are the tinderbox
days.) To create Violent X, Williams culled
and sequenced still images from low-budget
Italian action movies made between 1973 and
1978, constructing a cop horror narrative of
espionage, identity theft, and corruption.
Opacity
In the beginning, all we see is dark. Williams’
disembodied voice hangs heavy in the air:
These are the tinderbox days. Everyday they
get packed tighter, loaded, crammed. Each day,
another day is tossed on the crusted heap. And
when there’s not space, no matter, it does not
stop. Hot, white lights coruscate through slits
in green gates guarded by rusty chain link. The
sharply cut shots continue slowly, erratically,
as Williams builds the narrative of discontent.
The situation was intolerable, everyone
agreed...These were bad years for glass and
good for those who make it...The days just sort
of passed. The mercurial fingers of a gasoline
spill inch across the floor to maximize their
destructive reach. A woman turns her head
slowly to look at the camera. A scenic car
chase. And there, the days go underground.
And we are underground. A figure leaps
into a column of light emitting from a low
opening; he descends into a basement that is
also somehow the underbelly of a car. A hand
offers a casually flaming wand of rolled paper
to the languid puddle of accelerant. The flame
splashes outward and spreads over the face
of the woman. The situation was intolerable,
everyone agreed.
Williams amplifies his appropriation of the
70s footage by superimposing shots with
differing degrees of opacity. We variably see
the ghost of a city or an interior floating over
cars in the street; a shipping yard obfuscating
the face of our protagonist as he receives some
troublesome news in his office—He wasn’t
forgetful. He actually had caught a beautiful
trout this weekend and he hadn’t been to Milan
in four years—or, a vertically cropped shot of
our gasoline fire, having now spread to swallow
other nearby cars, sits firmly atop a room in
which two men wear dubious
janitorial disguises and one
takes a worrying phone call.
You couldn’t see the moon for
days, the air was so thick. It is at that point the
protagonist, the inspector, begins to realize
that there are other men masquerading as him
all over the country. As Williams collages a
multi dimensional echo of our inspector’s
predicament, we see him superimposed on
himself in multiplying states of contradiction.
The unreliability of identity becomes a dismal
norm as Williams flagrantly paints a bleak
picture of the world we live in.
Our inspector is an uncontroversial man: Not
the long arm of the law but its phantom limb…
He had his doubts about horses and didn’t
care about glass, but these other men were
perverse, leaving the dead and those who
wished they were dead in their wake. Those
who lived, leaned in the window of his car and
hissed “bastard, bastard, bastard.” Naturally,
our inspector felt confused when sustaining
such hostility that he couldn’t rightly explain.
You sick fuck you bastard. These men had
stolen his face and his hands,
proliferating his existence.
And boy had they been busy.
Identities layer as images
layer and double and triple entendres layer
into a metaphor so thick we can no longer see
its original referent. Meaningful glances and
unmoored, esoteric statements heavy with
significance ostracize the viewer, (The horses
ran around and around like no one had told
Williams is a fire.
Above and Opposite page: Violent X film stills. Images courtesy of the artist.
34
35
them they died.) but like a clueless kid not in on
the joke, we fumble to make connections and
feign understanding. Williams, the shadow
puppeteer, casts two-dimensional characters
from which we must exhume the punch line.
But these aren’t your bedtime hand shadows.
No, these melt and clash in a distraught
assemblage of our unfortunate inspector; us,
the audience; and the muddled schizophrenic
world in which we now exist together.
red because our eyes are filled with blood or
because we’re wearing red glasses, or so Sartre
might say.) It is through this new language,
one simultaneously romanticizing the past
and nostalgizing the future, a rupture occurs.
His face—his lost face—was the mask that
chaos wore. So Williams’ visual and linguistic
speech oxygenates the fire. Everything vomited
forth.
Beginning
Fire
X: the universal variable. Violent change. (I’ll
You know what they say—where there’s smoke …
fucking kill you all I swear.) We must make a
Of the Marquis de Sade, Roland Barthes wrote:
change to avoid the paralytic of censorship, the
“the real instrument of censorship is not the
catatonic endoxa. But for our poor inspector,
police, it is the endoxa…social censorship is
his revolt was futile: Fine, he thought. We’ll
not found where speech is hindered, but where
make an army, a hoarde, we’ll march across the
it is constrained. The ultimate subversion
land—proud and free…and his thought did not
(contra-censorship) does not necessarily
finish as the blood and plasma turned suddenly
consist in saying what shocks public opinion,
to steam and left the confines of his skull to
morality, the law, the police, but in inventing
finally join the night. A cautionary tale, Violent
a paradoxical (pure of any
X discloses the potential
doxa) discourse; invention
danger of credulous apathy.
(We see red because our But creation rises from our
is a revolutionary act: it
cannot be accomplished
eyes are filled with blood inspector’s demise: a call
other than in setting up
to arms, a ripping open
or
because
we’re
wearing
a new language.” Nature
of eyes. The smoke carried
does this unassumingly
red glasses, or so Sartre its message far. We must
with fire. Nature destroys
create a new language of
might say.)
itself then triumphantly
roaring, barbaric yawps.
rises from the ashes:
We must be untranslatable.
perennial rebirth. Some
Every utterance must be a
kind of sublime and inestimable freedom.
cry of exultation, because only the free have
Humans, in their arrogance, attempt to stifle
the luxury of silence, and how few of us are
this process through the unrelenting pursuit
truly free? Far off, but not that far, the horses
of control. Instead of allowing for complete
howled.
extirpation and the subsequent rejuvenation,
we attempt to impede the process resulting
in a volatile state: in a sealed room outside of
which a fire blazes, the flames will hungrily
lick the walls until they melt away, then in one
enormous inhalation, the room’s oxygen and
all its contents will be consumed. Almost like
a dance but horrible.
Williams is a fire: appropriation and editing
obliterate the intention of the original films,
and out of the smoldering embers something
strange and unrecognizable is borne. (We see
Opposite page: Violent X film stills.
Images courtesy of the artist.
36
A STEADY ACT
Damla Koksalan
A man stands in the midst of
tear-inducing pepper spray,
crashing sounds, shouting
marchers, jets of water and
sparks of fire. He is still and
steady. Apathetic toward the
chaos around him, his eyes
are focused on a large poster
of Ataturk, the founder of the
Republic of Turkey. Protestors
hung this image when conflicts
escalated with the anti-riot
police. It does not take long
for others to notice him; his
silence is louder than anything
else. Soon hundreds join him to
stand side-by-side in solidarity,
while the confused police cease
their aggression for the first
time since the protests caught
the headlines in the beginning
of June 2013. “Duran Adam”
or the “standing-man,” as my
fellow Turkish people referred
to him, was a performance artist
who decided to combine his art
with his stance in the riots. The
outcome was momentous.
Taxim Square, on the European side of
Istanbul—a city peculiar for bridging two
continents—is a historical home for protests
in Turkey. Consequently, it was where the
Gezi Protests erupted and where Erdem
Gunduz—the “standing-man”—intentionally
walked into the eye of
the storm. Among the
chaos, the spot he found
to stand in was oddly
empty. He dropped his
backpack to his feet and
began his performance: His inaction turned
into action as his passive performance
saturated the atmosphere of the protests. He
stood completely still, hands stuffed into his
pockets, wrinkled button-down shirt half
tucked into pants, and earphones dangling
down his neck. He was a neutral body: with
everyone else playing the part of a rioter, he
stood out for his motionlessness.
The first few hours of his performance
involved curious passers-by approaching
him and even mockingly posing next to him
to take pictures, as if he
were a newly installed
sculpture. However, not
much time passed before
people realized that this
was a demonstration. The
“standing-man” never talked or moved, and
he never verbally or physically invited anyone
to join him. Nonetheless, people started
gathering around him, finding a spot in the
square to start their own “stand.” In time, even
Art is an ambassador
of information.
with the minimum amount of live broadcast,
the performance spread throughout the
country, with people from almost every city
going outside and joining the performative
act.
Art is an ambassador of information, which
is why it is an important tool for protest. In
the case of the “standing-man,” the medium
was not obviously read as art by the public.
Even when people realized that he was doing
something extraordinary by standing still
for many hours, it was still perceived as a
peaceful demonstration rather than an artistic
expression. When many people joined him,
they became a part of an art performance—
but they may have done so unwittingly. It
wasn’t until when Gunduz ended
his performance and told the media
about his artistic intentions that it
became clear that he was an artist.
When Theodor Adorno remarked
that “Every work of art is an
uncommitted crime” in his 1951 text
Minima Moralia, I believe he meant
that through its expressive nature,
artwork challenges the sociopolitical
status quo. They have a political
aspect—directly or indirectly—either
applied by the artist consciously or
implemented through the artist’s
unconscious social collective. Thus,
art evokes a critical perspective
toward the problems in the world.
I watched “standing men and women”
on my television from overseas,
my breath heavy with excitement,
anticipating what will happen next
in a “steady” act. In a time where
images and visual representation are
increasingly fluctuating and unstable,
watching stillness for eight hours
was like bumping into an old friend
in an unexpected part of the world:
both nostalgic and exciting. It made
me realize that stillness is not only
powerful in opposition to chaos, but
also valuable for its promise that
something thrilling will follow the act.
After eight hours, Erdem Gunduz ended his
performance, walking away from the space as
calm as he had first arrived. A few young people
tried to prolong it, but most participants were
respectful to the artist’s wishes, and left the
spaces they had occupied. And by doing so,
they ensured that this was not only a protest
but also a unique performance that they had
voluntarily become a part of, resulting in a
nationwide participatory artwork.
37
38
39
LET ME TELL YOU A STORY
Remembering the 2014 Whitney Biennial
Tatiane Schilaro
The placement of artworks in a gallery tells us
stories: curators “write” with artworks, but do
they know the effect of their “writing”? They
do not—they cannot—track down the amount
and the kind of narratives that germinate
within visitors’ minds, after their encounter
with a show—those stories are countless. With
writers it’s not that different, nor with artists,
but in the case of curators, they are usually
rearranging pre-written “texts,” and there is
that critical point between what the artwork
says, and what the curator wants to make it
say. The “story” of this last Whitney Biennial
is now gone, its pages have been dissolved and
it has become a memory of those curators’
writings. Far away, now in Brazil, I try to
forget what I saw of the Biennial to remember
one of its narratives, once again.
What I recall of the 4th floor of the Biennial,
which was curated by Michelle Grabner, is
an intimacy that reached me in different
intensities: within the relationship between
artists and their art object, between curator
and artwork, and within the organization
of the exhibition space, that pointed to
a domestic realm. This trio—the home,
intimacy, and crafts—transformed me into
a detective, sniffing for clues, and as I went
deeper into many of the works on that floor,
this triad kept emerging, allied to a fourth and
fifth element: interior and graphic designs.
When we got out of the elevator, Gaylen
Gerber’s Backdrop (2014) welcomed us. A
stretched canvas painted gray, it looked and
acted like a wall, upon which Gerber hung
other artists’ paintings (Trevor Shimizu’s,
David Hammon’s and Sherrie Levine’s works
were rotated during the course of the show).
Past Backdrop, Sheila Hicks’ Pillar of Inquiry/
Supple Column, (2013–14) came to our eyes,
pouring from the ceiling like a motionless
waterfall made of colorful fibers. Sterling
Above: Installation view Whitney Biennial 2014
(March 7–May 25, 2014).
Whitney Museum of American Art, N.Y.
Photograph courtesy Sheldan C. Collins
40
41
Ruby’s works of the series Basin Theology
advertisements depicting luxury apartments.
(2013–14) are three oversized ceramics that
But these were also drawings fighting against
replicated an aesthetics of primitive vessels:
and working within the cuts that limit them;
they look completely transported from
challenging their own exquisite nature. In
Paleolithic times. Only their magnified size
Theme Time - Tears (Head on hand) (2014),
and vivid colors suggested otherwise. They
the round cut takes away something of the
are too perfect, too polished—establishing
drawing—almost the entire human face—to
a conflict between rawness and technology.
add so much to it, it as if the artist is saying:
Alma Allen’s sculptures, all Untitled (2013),
Put there what you will.
touched the limits of a pseudo-minimalism
made of walnut and marble. In 187 Bottoms
These works speculated on how it would be to
Up (2013), Joel Otterson used colorful goblets
become interior design, and thus also, how to
to create chandeliers that
cross the bridge between
are irresistibly seductive:
art and design, handmade
If
I
were
a
mother
I
would
a decorative extravaganza.
and
technology,
the
Together
with
Ricky
studio
and
the
home.
paint something like that,
Swallow’s bronzes that
They desired an intimacy
place
it
on
a
wall,
observe
appeared
rather
like
with the domestic realm,
it every day, and then the
fragile paper sculptures,
but, within the curatorial
these pieces not only
arrangement
of
the
painting would transform
redefined form, but also
show, they ended up
me into a children’s
challenged the limits of
infecting the sacredness
decoration. When I say
of the white cube: they
storyteller forever.
decoration I do not mean
seductively
polluted
that those pieces should
it. In a sense, while
be seen as ornamental, but that they play with
minimalism was born from this relationship
the idea of decorative assemblage.
with the gallery space, within the current
condition of contemporary art, these works
Among these works, one of my favorites was
have, hopefully, exhausted the white cube—
Karl Haendel’s wall of pencil drawings, which
they know it too well. So now they could
brought us close to a domain that is both
allude to particular spaces that are articulated
dialoguing with and defying the borders of
through the domestic—not anymore only the
the domestic. The drawings are cut, and the
institutional, the commercial or the public.
frames follow the cuts, becoming not simple
adornment, but structuring the works. They
This intimacy exploded when female painters
seemed to be imprisoning the figures depicted,
“contaminated” their pieces with a slight
similar impulse: design and handmade work.
but also giving them new context. That is
usually what frames do, but in Haendel’s case
Laura Owens’ Untitled (2014) depicted a boy
and a dog holding on to a rope in an immense
they were also treated as if they were part of
the drawings, coming out of the wall. The
canvas: an illustration that seemed to be taken
from a second-hand children’s book, or an
pencil work, so delicate and realistic, is the
outdated advertisement one would find in a
outcome of a meticulous process of choosing
kids’ magazine. The painting has two other
subjects, photographing them and projecting
slides on a wall, which are finally drawn,
components: smaller canvases that were placed
inside the larger piece. If I were a mother I
maintaining their appearance of photographs.
would paint something like that, place it on
The artist’s arrangement in the gallery
connected drawings and frames through
a wall, observe it every day, and then the
painting would transform me into a children’s
yellow painted lines on a gray wall. The
storyteller forever. Amy Sillman made us want
final effect reminded me of interior design
to feed from color with her painting Mother
(2013–14) and in collaboration with Pam
Lins, created Fells (2013–14), in which they
transformed the back of a painting into a shelf
with ceramics. In 41/14 (2014) and Untitled
(2014) Jacqueline Humphries overcame the
canvases as if they were black texture on
paper, while Dona Nelson’s perforated both
sides of the painting Okie Dokie (2008), as if
stating, “I want it all.” And “NO!,” protested
Molly Zuckerman-Hartung in Notley (2013),
painting the giant word on a ragged canvas.
Those “words,” those works, are now
disconnected, far from each other and from the
museum in which I saw them. The narrative
that together they built is gone, but the
memories of that story still ring in my mind:
those works made me feel at home, a home
which is the artist’s and my own; works that
are quasi-expertly crafted, but that are also
odd: too familiar, and often too aesthetically
perfect. When I look back on them, they
escape all those previous definitions; they
plunge into the ornamental, the cliché, which
made me fall in love with them then; and
today, as I remember them all over again.
Above: Karl Haendel, Theme Time - Tears(Head on hand), 2014
Image courtesy of Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects;
Photo credit: Robert Wedemeyer
42
JOHN JEA: A FUGITIVE HISTORY
Emmanuel Iduma
“In Pursuit of Freedom,” which opened in
January 2014, is a long-term exhibition created
in partnership with the Brooklyn Historical
Society. It focuses on the Brooklyn participants
of the anti-slavery movement. Being Nigerian,
I am a part of the history that is charted in
this exhibition—all the personalities and
narratives presented for view were covered
with vestiges of my ancestry.
I spent days combing through the archival
material found on the project’s website, and
eventually found an object that demanded a
visceral response: the cover of a rare book.
Titled The Life, History, and Unparalleled
Sufferings of John Jea, the African Preacher.
Compiled and Written by Himself, the book,
published in 1811, is an autobiography of
John Jea, whose unparalleled sufferings as
a slave are recorded within. I am interested,
foremost, in putting forward this book cover as
a work of art, and I invoke the conviction that
this book cover is not merely an illustration,
but also a discrete object requiring further
phenomenological contemplation.
works of art; by the book’s fugitiveness, how it
merely exists as a rare manuscript; its stained
and delicate pages. The book was published
in keeping with the printing technology of
the day, and the image I am drawn to could
be the result of an improvisational impulse,
not an artistic one. Yet, it remains exigent to
account for an experience in seeing, and to
open up spaces to create such account. At the
time of its publishing, in 1811, despite the fact
that a decade earlier Earl Stanhope invented
the first iron press known as Stanhope Press,
most of the labor involved in book production
was carried out manually. The cover of this
book was perceivably created by hand—the
surviving copy bears pencil and ink marks,
and the black ink used to color the head of the
figure spreads out on the worn page.
The book was recovered in 1983, and it
was around this time that it was received
at Columbia University’s Rare Book and
Manuscript Library—the library had become
a distinct division from the university’s other
libraries only a decade earlier. The physical
condition of the surviving copy, however,
My fascination with this book cover reflects
suggests that it was one of the first copies
how it was composed, made of parts that
published in 1811, making it hard to guess
saunter towards a whole. Jea’s silhouetted head
who had owned it. Jea was among the first
is shown in profile, strangely appealing; the
African Americans to write a book about his
blatant binaries presented in his memoir jump
experiences as a slave, which must have piqued
into view within it. The affectless, charcoalthe interest of the publisher (“Williams,
black illustration is printed on an approximately
Printer and Book-binder, 143 Queen Street,
five-by-eight-inch cover. Composed in Gothic
Portsea”) and even today it constitutes an
letters, the title competes
important
document
for attention with the
in
America’s
attempt
to
As these hidden parts of the
image—between
text
reconcile itself with the
image become apparent to
and illustration, little
rupture that is slavery.
negative space is left
In 2001, the University
me, I understand that this
for contemplation. My
of North Carolina led
illustration
of
Jea
attracts
imagination will have
the production of an
(and imposes) its language.
to conjure meanings for
electronic edition of the
the silhouetted head of
book, making it free on
John Jea, in a Victorianthe Internet. I had read
styled coat that doesn’t seem to reach his
excerpts from the book on a website that
waist, with traces of presumably silver cords
documented the American South, and then
dangling from the coat.
sought it out in Columbia’s library. Access to
the book was fairly easy, strengthening my
I am held by a nostalgic interest in the history
resolve to discover how the book was archived
of book covers and how they function as
and yet visible.
43
44
Born in Old Calabar, a coastal town in
southern Nigeria in 1773 and a major slave
route, Jea was less than three when he was
kidnapped. His entire family was “stolen,
and conveyed to North America.” He’d been
purchased by Oliver and Angelika Triebuen,
who treated him in a manner, as he writes,
“almost too shocking to relate,” necessarily
because of his unalterable blackness. Which
gives me pause, reflecting on the image that
marks the book. What, in contrast, would
the silhouette of a white man look like? Or,
how is whiteness reducible to a silhouette? I’d
imagine an illustrator wouldn’t represent the
trace of a white man the same way as that of a
black man—for every form of representation
aims to approximate the real, or in CartierBresson’s ontology, the “whole.”
He was only thirty-eight when his book was
published, a comparatively young age for the
publication of today’s memoir. His itinerant
work as a preacher, taking him to three
continents, provided sufficient material for a
recounting of his life and history, as he might
have thought. His memoir records a life in
full: unparalleled sufferings and deliverances
in Boston, New Orleans, South America, the
Netherlands, France, Germany, Ireland, and
England. His constraints might have been
reduced into one simple imperative: to give
voice to his life, the voice taken from him
before he could speak. It is hardly surprising
nothing is said of his death in most records of
his life. Most records point to his book, part of
a small collection in world literature of slave
and captivity narratives—and I’d like to think
these records converge in the book cover.
I ask myself, what is this illustration doing
that a photograph couldn’t have? Of course,
at the time of its publication photography
hadn’t been invented, but my interest in this
distinction might help illustrate an important
element in the nature of this image. I prefer
that it’s a drawing for the same reason Henri
Cartier-Bresson did. At age eighty-six, CartierBresson told John Berger that he’d given up
photography in favor of drawing. “Given
up” didn’t suggest that he no longer took
photographs, but that making drawings came
closer to his understanding of the obligations
he had to his work. His reason, when asked
about a decisive moment, was: “I prefer to
talk about drawing. Drawing is a form of
meditation. In a drawing you add line to line,
bit to bit, but you’re never quite sure what the
whole is going to be. A drawing is an always
unfinished journey towards a whole.” In the
absence of a photograph, which might have
provided “a whole,” the illustration Jea opens
up the possibility to meditate on his form, or
more importantly, a form that outdistances
the personality Jea could have transmitted in
a photograph.
As these hidden parts of the image become
apparent to me, I understand that this
illustration of Jea attracts (and imposes) its
language. By his unmistakability as a black
man, the imagistic language is one spoken
tongue-in-cheek—it is, in fact, a world of many
opposites. In keeping with the content of the
book, the image reinforces Jea’s sufferings as
well as his deliverances, and his hope in God’s
salvation is placed beside his despair over
man’s unspeakable wickedness. And more,
the image is consistent with the Pauline tone
Jea adopts in his writing. He had been clearly
influenced by St. Paul’s writing style in the New
Testament, accepting his injunction to “endure
hardship as a good soldier of Christ.” In the
image, Jea’s steadfastness is unquestionable.
Perhaps he had posed for the illustrator
(quite likely), or the illustration is based on
the general features of African Americans at
the time (a more interesting possibility). His
firm and erect pose is indissoluble. This pose
confirms Jea’s book, and necessarily this image
of him, as the emblematic witness of his life.
This is why I think this image foreshadows
and explodes into Jea’s memoir. A struggle
for dominance between the two mediums is
unnecessary, as one implicates the other.
Opposite and previous pages:
The Life, History, and Unparalleled Sufferings of John Jea,
the African Preacher. Compiled and Written by Himself
interior pages. Image courtesy of the author.
45
PORTFOLIO
Works curated to the theme of Transmission.
this piece was presented to no audience at the school of the museum of fine arts on 2/11/13. i whispered my thoughts on
time to a rock placed on a table in the center of the room. below you will find a transcription of the audio recording.
‘i don’t know what time is. i try to think about it but, it feels incomprehensible. like trying to explain a line that i don’t know
where it ends.
i think about you and where you’ve been and how old you are and i can’t understand it. what you’ve seen in the time you’ve
been here compared to the time that i have.
i don’t know how to explain it, only that i’m afraid that whatever i have isn’t enough, and when i look at you i feel insecure
about how long i have left to be here. you’re a solid object. when someone breaks you all that happens is you split into other
pieces of you. you don’t stop existing, you just grow more fragmented. i stop existing and still get fragmented to the point
where i’ll disappear.
i try to think about you being born. what shaped you or where you came from. i don’t even know how i would find this out. i
can’t ask you. i can’t look at you and know immediately where you came from or what you’ve seen. you come from something
that will endure. i came from something that is equally as ephemeral as i am.
when i laid down with you the other day in the cold i tried to think about not existing. i tried to think about what it would
be like to be you in the same spot for thousands of years until an outside force acted on me, moved me, on my side, or down
the hill. i couldn’t imagine what that felt like. and i wondered if you ever lay in your field or buried in the dirt on the hillside, or at the beach, and think about what it’s like to not exist.
i think about what its like to not exist more than i think about what it means to be here. i think about the moon and the
color and how i only have so many moons left. i only have so many walks in the woods left. i only have so many springs left.
i only have so many summers left. i only have so many winters left. i only have so many days left. and even though they
stretch out before me like the same kind of line that i can’t find the end of. someday i’ll find the end.
i try to imagine what it will be like to die. i close my eyes and i try not to breathe but something always makes me.
i feel so jealous that i don’t have more time. that every time i leave my house to walk in the woods. i think about how all of
this will be here long after i’m gone. i think the thing that is the most difficult is thinking about all the things that i’ll miss.
theres always a terminus. always an end for us but there was a terminus for you too, but you waited there until i picked you
up and brought you here. it isn’t fair. i wish i could just wait here.
when i picked you up yesterday i looked at everything that i found you with. you were at the edge of a park near my home. i
wondered who put you there or where else you’d been.
i guess what i don’t understand about time is why i have to be so afraid of it. and i guess why i’m trying to explain it to you
is that your experience of time is infinite compared to mine. what has happened in your life in the span of time that i’ve been
alive too? what have you seen? what will you continue to see?
i wonder if you ever feel crippled by the idea of being split into a thousand tiny pieces- a million tiny pieces. do you ever fear
being made into sand? is that what the end looks like for you? a beach, where there are tiny pebbles of what you once were?
do you ever feel sad when the sun goes down like i do because you are afraid of not waking up in the morning? because i
worry about that. i worry that there are so many beautiful things that i will never see because i don’t have time to see them.
and i worry that...
i worry that every day doesn’t mean anything and all i’m ever going to do is feel like i’m floating. and i can’t ever look at
anything the same way again because i just think about how someday i wont exist.
what does it feel like when you’re covered with snow? do you wait for spring? do even know what spring is? i bought daffodils
yesterday to make myself feel better but it didn’t work. i bought them they were cut from the stem and they’re going to wilt in
my house and they’re going to die too. they are already dying and i’m going to have to throw them away.
sometimes i worry that this is funny or... i don’t know. maybe it’s not
important to worry about time. maybe. but i can’t help it. i can’t help but worry about it every day.
i know you probably don’t understand time now. or maybe you’ve always understood time and i’m the one who will
never understand time.’
54
shot #1
a woman on the beach appears. her body is partially buried in a shallow ditch, hips hung low in
the cold damp sand, to give her a more “even” look to please the camera and your eye. the body
appears limp, but in its stagnancy lays its very restlessness. she is blinded by sand, after all. the
mounds of sand suppress the tossing and turning of an immeasurable being—the grains resting on
her eyelids dictate the motions of the 117 pounds of her body. she is not a tragic woman despite
her blindness, her stillness. under the sun she burns; her skin slowly revealing its vulnerability, its
ugly pinkness painted, undesired, upon her pale field of freckles.
her body is alive, harboring the pulse of an animal quietly dreading the hum of disruption; her
neck releases this physiological wisdom—the slight fluctuations in the valley between her neck
and chest betray the fact that her body is not at rest but diligently at work to keep her blindness
and breath alive.
shot #1 / take 2
how quickly our eyes narrow in on the only sign of life; the only hint of freedom restricted in the
shell of a certain wildness. trained to look within the limits for something boundless, even the
ocean has its cut-off. borders are inevitable; the pleased eye is one that follows every system.
shot #7
the hand is still. tying the body to experience, the hand is at rest. mediating experience between
the body and mind however, and suddenly the still hand wants to touch, it wants to cajole.
there is an eruption in stillness, an awakening in solitude. the film bleeds onto the page. here in
words we learn more of something we didn’t actually see on the screen, submerged in sound and
darkness, but something we now project in the mind. these symbols on this paper are flat but they
breathe measure into an unclouded image of a hand gripping blue fog. the body is corpse-like but
it is impatient.
shot #4
the body is moving. we are now literally restless. the blue cloth emerges, to merge with twin
mirrors. the woman stands before a force of unknown power, a source of blue awe and sustenance,
but she does not care. the body is bored by wisdom—the ocean can wait.
shot #?
the body is moved to a place void of the ocean, where the senses are suddenly overwhelmed,
taller—everything is vast and amplified in the blue waiting room. the walls are shrouded in
bargain fabrics from the downtown garment district and the body falls victim to this staged thrill.
fiction topples the ocean so we can release ourselves.
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61
Yasemin Oncu,
Amon L’isa, 2012.
Collage Installation.
Yasemin Oncu,
Amon L’isa, 2012.
Collage Installation.
Christine Haroutounian,
The Ocean Can Wait,
or Bleeding Shot List, 2014.
Text.
Eva O’Leary
& Harry Griffin,
InfiltrateCon, 2014.
Archival pigment print.
Leah Ceriello,
Explaining Time
To A Rock, 2013.
Performance and text.
Eva O’Leary,
Untitled, from the series
Happy Valley, 2013.
Archival pigment print.
Harry Griffin,
Curve Action, 2013.
Archival pigment print.
Meghan Wicks,
Smalls #202 Gold
Into Straw, 2010.
Mixed media.
Eva O’Leary,
Untitled, from the series
Happy Valley, 2013.
Archival pigment print.
Christine Haroutounian,
In Wake Of, 2014.
Flim Still.
Anthony Discenza,
The Visage, 2012.
Inkjet on found paper.
Alex Cruse,
Inverted Poincaré map
of lead, 2014.
Mixed media collage
REVIEWS
MARIA LASSNIG
LYGIA CLARK
HALIL ALTINDERE
ERIC OGLANDER
68
MARIA LASSNIG AT MOMA PS1
Elizabeth Sultzer
throughout her 70-year career. Curator Peter
statement, “Art begins with brain science and
Eleey set up a relatively straightforward
also with the science of feelings. Art grows
chronology, starting at her academic
from burst soap bubbles, from shriveled
beginnings in the Nazi-controlled Vienna
hearts, from the spying cerebellum…You
Academy for Applied Arts. She subsequently
become aware of your body through pressure,
got kicked out for expressionist, “degenerate”
through tension…in other words awareness is
leanings.
Here you
expressed in sensations.”
begin to see her concept
In these paintings, for
How does one see oneself ?
of body awareness, a
the viewer, to see is
Or
rather,
how
does
one
feel
technique she developed
to feel and to feel is to
wherein she would only
empathize with Lassnig’s
oneself seeing oneself ?
paint the parts of herself
struggle of being a
that she could feel, in her
sentient body in space,
mind and body, while standing in front of her
having both physicality and consciousness.
canvas. This resulted in partial views, singular
ears, dropped jaws, and exaggerated noses
Color always poses a risk, and Lassnig knew
found throughout the exhibition. As you view
it. That is why she threw herself into it,
her work, understood here in decadal phases,
figuratively and literally, such as in her “Line
her practice of body awareness translates into
Pictures” series from the 1960’s. She would
a visceral understanding of figuring out, as in
paint a repetition of primary-colored outlines
outing the figure, figuring the figure, turning
of her body while kneeling or lying on sevenit inside out and back again.
foot long canvases. Here Lassnig’s presence is
Selbstportat expressiv (1945) is the token
beginning of this awareness, a skillfully
drafted self-portrait of her torso and head,
in which she is nude except for pearls
draped across her neck. Instead of the
nudity, the first thing you notice is the
multiplicity of color on her skin, as if her
nerve endings were fireworks exploding in
a beige sky. The brushwork is such that I
know the touch of her face, her underlying
bone structure, the ski-jump cartilage of
her nose, from simply standing there and
looking, almost 70 years later.
I want to eat them. In this way I am cannibal.
Maria Lassnig’s titular retrospective at MoMA
PS1, her first major museum show in the
United States, included works so lush, the
paint felt like icing on the cake—if the whole
cake were made of icing. The entryway was
a confrontation of this and other desires.
Her iconic self-portrait You, Or Me? (2005)
shows Lassnig, her birthday suit outlined in
a cyan wash, holding a gun to her head and
another straight out toward the viewer. The
paint is, by turn, delicately soaked into the
surrounding white canvas and accumulated
into the thick pink folds of her body. Most of
the works explicitly depicted the artist herself,
in a sweeping range of styles Lassnig explored
Being a body in physical space looking
at representations of Lassnig’s body in its
internal space, it is helpful to consider the
meaning of feeling. It is entwined to her
awareness, in all its variance of experience,
endurance, sensation, and discernment.
Lassnig pushed her process to the edge,
wall text in the exhibition included her
Right: Maria Lassnig, Sciencia, 1998.
Opposite Page: Maria Lassnig, Selbstporträt unter
Plastik, 1972. Collection de Bruin-Heijn.
© Peter Cox.
69
70
71
a ghost, known only by its literal trace. The
works are reminiscent of cathedral stainedglass windows, physically tall with translucent,
overlapping hues. There is an aesthetic recall
of prehistoric handprints in French caves,
dragging color around her entire body as an
extension of blowing pigment through fingers.
The intention feels similar as well; I was here.
In Transparentes Selbstporträt (1987) Lassnig
painted herself with a screen over her eyes,
face flattened by the weight of it. Rhythmic
horizontals of supernatural color form the
screen, her face and body, and the slightly
darker background in shades of magenta
and turquoise. Her nose rises up like a
mountain; her nostrils dark caves leading to
her brain. These later pieces complicate her
use of color from previous decades, and add
a phenomenological questioning of how we
see each other and ourselves. In Fröhlicher
Marsmench (Happy Martian) (1998), the
head of the figure is obscured, encased in a
metal frame with dangerous spikes and screws
jutting out—you can only see wide, terrified
eyes and an open mouth, mid-grunt. The
accompanying wall text frames Lassnig’s use
of fantasy coupled with anxiety, concluding
with, “After watching the movie Alien (1979),
Lassnig remarked that ‘only a woman and a
cat survive the apocalypse.’ ”
The exhibition circled back to You, Or Me?
This work, a touchstone for the entire show,
is especially poignant, given that Lassnig
passed away at the age of 94 during this
retrospective. Was she declaring her mortality
in this piece—a self-portrait at the age of
85—or is it simply a continuation of her body
awareness, an acknowledgement of how a
body feels in life and paint? How does one see
oneself ? Or rather, how does one feel oneself
seeing oneself ? Lassnig had twoself, threeself,
fourself, and more.
Above: Installation view of Maria Lassnig at MoMA PS1, 2014.
© 2014 MoMA PS1; Photo Matthew Septimus.
72
LYGIA CLARK AT MOMA
Tatiane Schilaro
This summer, twenty-six years after her
death, Brazilian artist Lygia Clark (1920–
1988) had her first major retrospective in
the United States. Curated by MoMA’s Luis
Pérez-Oramas, and Connie Butler from the
Hammer Museum, the show, which opened at
MoMA, tracks Clark’s oeuvre from studentmade pieces to the last works she made before
her death. It was organized chronologically,
and emphasized Clark’s participatory works,
which the artist called Bichos (the Portuguese
term for critters).
relational objects to stimulate her patients’
sense awareness. Toward the end of her career,
Clark coined another term, phantasmagoria of
the body, which was also a way of intertwining
art and psychotherapy. It’s a practice that deals
with the notion of a life within an art object,
something that scholars usually dismiss. It
was through the discovery of her concept of
the “phantasm” that Clark was able to surpass
a mere anticipation of sensorial knowledge to
enter the realm of actual fulfillment of that
knowledge—a concept that differs from the
contemporary notion of performance, and
moves into the unconscious.
The exhibition is important not just for
Clark’s legacy, but also because it allowed
a door to open for other Latin American
She applied these propositions to a group of
artists’ international recognition. But it was
students, whom she would call a collective
not without lapses. The last phase of Clark’s
body. The unconscious was exercised through
practice, the moment when she radically broke
the senses, focusing on the collective body’s
with the Modernist tradition, was reduced, in
reactions to the experience of the physical
this exhibition, to the tiniest and least-engaging
space, their interaction with objects, or
gallery. It’s true that Clark’s
through their collective
propositions—and what she
creations. In the proposition
termed relational objects
The threads are expelled Live Structures (1969–70)
(everyday
objects
that
the group built an elastic
from their lips wet,
the artist employed in an
net; to assemble it, they
soaked with slobber.
attempt used to stimulate
had to consider the space it
the senses)—are ephemeral
occupies as it grows, while
and difficult to display, but
also becoming entangled
here, one felt that the curators missed a chance
within it, thus having to deal with their role
to educate an audience on this important
in sustaining the collective object. For Clark,
body of work. A visitor who didn’t know
these utilitarian experiences were a way of
Clark’s later work would, perhaps, walk away
stimulating their unconscious.
with the feeling that she was a great painter
who also created interesting participatory
In Anthropophagic Slobber (1973) the
sculptural works. Because of their minimized
ritualistic aspect of the proposition is crystal
placement, her last works—which are also
clear: a person lies on the floor, arms against
the least understood within art history—were
her body. She doesn’t wear much. She rests,
robbed of their ability to move viewers.
her eyes are closed. A group of people
approach, they come, they kneel. They form a
In the 1970s, Clark moved to Paris to teach a
circle around the lying person and put colored
class at the Sorbonne. Suffering with a crisis of
threads inside their mouths—the threads are
depression, she decided to “abandon art.” She
expelled from their lips wet, soaked with
developed her own psychoanalytic methods,
slobber. Saliva is stimulation. These people
which she termed the structuring of the self.
are then like spiders, depositing the webs
During individual sessions, she used her
on the person’s body. The spider can see the
prone body—but only her “phantasm” can see
the spider. It is within this kind of exercise
that the object, a simple thread, becomes,
for Clark, a powerful tool for the marriage
between body and unconscious knowledge
through art. When the person allows herself to
become part of this embracing
web, the slobber accepts her,
she accepts herself. At MoMA,
Anthropophagic Slobber was
performed during the opening
of the show, but the importance
of this piece was somewhat lost
in its simple re-enactment.
Clark diminished herself as an artist in order
to free her spectator from passiveness––the
stakes were that high for her. In the end, I felt
that a tiny room at MoMA was not enough to
offer an encounter with Clark’s most precious
discovery: us.
Arguably, Phantasmagoria was
anticipated in earlier phases
of her work, exemplified by
a piece titled Walking (1963).
Composed of the action of Clark
cutting a Mobius strip made
of paper with a scissors, and
only stopping when the strip is
too thin to be cut, the gesture
offers an active involvement
with the spectator, while also
emphasizing the importance
of the impermanent form. Her
Sensorial Masks—that can be
tried on in the show—followed
the discovery she made with
Walking, but were focused on
touch, olfaction, and sound.
Once worn, they temporarily
dislocate the spectator from
the outside, facilitating one’s
encounter with his inside
through the contact with little
bags with aromatic plants, or
little nets in place of the masks’
eyes. These masks are “helpers
of the senses,” they stimulate
responses in our bodies which
we usually take for granted.
These works are all strands of the same web,
and it’s important to follow Clark’s path, which
started in Modernism but ended in a radical
direction: that of the other’s body and mind.
The desire to reach the other was such that
Above: Lygia Clark (Brazilian, 1920–1988). Clark’s
proposition Estruturas vivas (Live structures), 1969, in use,
probably in Paris in the early 1970s. The object is made out
of knotted rubber bands. Courtesy Associação Cultural
“O Mundo de Lygia Clark,” Rio de Janeiro.
73
74
HALIL ALTINDERE AT MOMA PS1
Damla Koksalan
Anger can be heard before entering the room.
A gallery on the second floor of MoMA PS1 is
exhibiting a one-screen video that illuminates
the entire room. I sit down on the cold
floor across the shifting images, keeping my
distance from the screen—timid to get any
closer to the angry faces I see in the video.
Three young men run through a pedestrian
bridge made of bricks; a romantically historic
view contrasted by their harsh words.
A Turkish rap song with a catchy melody
reveals the young performers’ frustration with
the government-inflicted gentrification of
their neighborhood, Sulukule. The area is part
of a historic district of Istanbul, and is mostly
occupied by Romani communities. The harsh
lyrics are piercing, the cinematography jumps
between close-ups and panoramic shots. I
realize I have been unconsciously keeping
with the rhythm. Simultaneous to my foot
tapping, a police officer onscreen explodes
into flames. The fire surrounding his body is
shown in slow motion while he runs for his
life. He collapses soon after.
I walked into the gallery in the middle of
the video, but it captured me from the first
moment. The work successfully transmits the
ideology behind it—that of impotent rage in
the face of cultural erasure—regardless of the
point at which you enter its world. “We pissed
on the foundation of the newly built blocks,”
reads the subtitles as a young man raps with
two of his comrades at his side. They are
leaning towards the camera, closing in on us,
as I, an outsider to their problems, direct my
sympathy toward them. Their heads turn to
the ground with sadness as they continue to
rap, “Sulukule now belongs to bourgeoisie.”
The music video comes to an end when the
rappers are shot repeatedly in the torso by the
police. They keep on singing as blood slowly
bubbles and pours from their wounds. After
the end credits, I did not move from where I sat
down. With several other viewers, I watched
the nine-minute video from start to end
numerous times. A realization occurred when
I heard a young man in the video, who had
handcuffed himself to a construction vehicle,
rap the words, “You say you understand the
worries so give me an answer.” I left the
exhibition room with a question on my mind:
can this artwork actually incite action from
The artist, Halil Altindere, documents and
gives the locals of the Romani community
a voice through his dark work, Wonderland
(2013), a music video for a rap song by the
hip-hop group Tahribad-i Isyan (Rebellion
to Destruction). A prominent figure in the
contemporary Turkish art scene since the
mid-1990s, Altindere’s work focuses on
contemporary issues of belonging, belief and
alienation.
Right: Installation view. Image
courtesy of the author.
Opposite page: Halil Altindere.
Wonderland. 2013. HD video:
color/sound. Courtesy the artist
and Pilot Galeri, Istanbul.
its passive viewers? Because surely, the work
desires something more than simply the tap
of one’s foot.
Altindere’s work focuses
on contemporary issues
of belonging, belief, and
alienation.
75
76
77
WINDOW SHOPPING THROUGH
THE LOOKING GLASS
Amelia Rina
The most valuable quality of vernacular
photography is its innocence. In the case
of classified advertisement websites like
craigslist.com, the candid documentation
of people in the United States through the
objects they no longer want or cannot afford
to keep provides an unself-conscious view
into our notions of value, both material and
aesthetic. While Brooklyn-based artist Eric
Oglander’s blog project, craigslistmirrors.
com, is certainly only a small sampling of these
gestures, through the collection of images he
provides us with an ever-growing stream of
views into the curious lives of strangers.
The process behind craigslistmirrors.com is
simple: Oglander searches craigslist.com for
mirrors for sale, then posts them to his site
and Instagram profile. The resulting of images
illustrate the potential bounty of materials
for contemporary vernacular photography
collecting in the Internet age, though with a
puckish levity sometimes verging on satire.
For decades, artists and nonartists amassed
collections of photographs taken without
artistic intentions. Today more people than
ever have cameras, resulting in exponentially
more nonart photographs: on Instagram
alone, over 40 million images are uploaded
daily. To the devoted photography collector,
the explosion of digital media can be viewed
as a veritable treasure trove waiting to be
explored.
Though they were taken for the explicitly
practical purpose of documenting an object for
sale, many of the images on craigslistmirrors.
com expose countless astonishing creative
decisions that rival those of the most
sophisticated photographers. An image of
a two-way mirror held on either side by
disembodied hands produces a disorienting
trompe l’oeil effect. In another, an exit sign
reflects in a mirror leaning against a stuccoed
wall, alluding to a way out yet providing no
real escape. One image shows a husky dog,
seemingly trapped inside a mirror-faced
clock, whose legs add extra appendages to the
frozen minute and hour hands. Photographed
outside leaning against a desk on a driveway,
a mirror on the border between gravel and
grass contrasts the rigidity of intersecting
geometries and variously lush or manicured
suburban landscapes; and the blog keeps
rolling with over six hundred posts since
Oglander started the project in November,
2013.
In addition to revealing the
odd congruities created by
these unintentional artists,
the images provide an
experience of voyeurism.
While some individuals
make efforts to protect
their privacy using methods
such as selective blurring,
because mirrors inherently
reveal that which is in front
of them, many of the images
include inadvertent selfportraits of the sellers, and
evidence of their personal
intimacy. The low resolution of the images,
environments. In one, an elderly woman
making it impossible to see clearly any small
wearing a shirt that reads “I’ve Been Naughty”
details, draws a formal
stands in front of the mirror
parallel to the small-format
with her arms spread to
size of photographs in
the sides—presumably to
The bizarre banality
family albums and evokes
give some sort of reference
is
perfectly
suited
for
the impulse to push one’s
to the scale—while the
photographer’s reflection
the hypnotic time-suck face up to the computer
screen trying to figure out
creates the illusion that
that is the Internet.
exactly what information
she is taking the picture
the seventy-two dots per
from inside the mirror,
inch hold. As such, the
looking out at the viewer.
experience of scrolling craigslistmirrors.com
Some of the more seductively intrusive images
is one of tantalization and awe. The bizarre
are the wide shots that include a view of the
banality is perfectly suited for the hypnotic
room surrounding the mirror. Filled with
time-suck that is the Internet, and with
miscellanea both comic and sinister, one
hundreds of unpublished Craigslist mirrors,
image reveals the seller’s rather extensive
Oglander says he has no intention of stopping
collection of swords, and daggers hanging on
anytime soon.
the wall above the mirror with no apparent
organization. Below, a duo of baseball hats
A book of Craigslistmirrors.com images will be
perch on the mirror’s frame, and a bright blue
published this fall by TBW Books, Oakland.
fedora tops a tub of Folgers coffee.
Despite having the knowledge that the ads will
be publicly viewable by complete strangers,
the photographs maintain an unexpected
Above and opposite page:
Eric Oglander, Craigslistmirrors.com, 2014
BEACH READS
WALTER BENJAMIN Surrealism and Other Essays
SUSAN SONTAG Against Interpretation
C.G. JUNG The Red Book
FRANCIS CAPE We Sit Together
IAN P. COULIANO Eros and Magic in the Renaissance
LUCY LIPPARD Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966–1972
WAYNE KOESTENBAUM Amy Sillman: Works on Paper
JILL JOHNSTON Marmalade Me
CHRIS KRAUS Where Art Belongs
EDMUND HUSSERL The Phenomenology Of Internal Time Consciousness
MARCEL MAUSS A General Theory Of Magic
HANS BELTING Likeness And Presence
CLARICE LISPECTOR The Hour Of The Star
ROLAND BARTHES Camera Lucida
NOVALIS Philosophical Writings
ANNE CARSON Glass, Irony, and God
VILÉM FLUSSER Toward A Philosophy Of Photography
DAVID LEVI STRAUSS Words Not Spent Today Buy Smaller Images Tomorrow
ERIC HAVELOCK Preface To Plato
JAMES AGEE Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
H.D. Notes On Thought And Vision
YVES-ALAIN BOIS Painting As Model
LASZLO KRASZNAHORKAI The Bill
CHARLES OLSON Maximus
PETER LAMBORN WILSON The Vexed Iconostasis
FRANCOIS JULLIEN The Great Image Has No Form
BORIS GROYS Art Power
HANNAH ARENDT The Human Condition
GIORGIO AGAMBEN Stanzas
PAUL VIRILIO The Vision Machine
JOHN CAGE Silence
S. GIEDION The Eternal Present: The Beginning Of Art
ROBERT GRAVES The Greek Myths
JOHN BERGER Ways of Seeing
PAULO FREIRE Pedagogy Of Hope
GIORDANO BRUNO On The Composition Of Images, Signs And Ideas
GEORGES BATAILLE Encyclopaedia Acephalica
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE Theory of Colours
ZEPHYR ISSUE # 3
EDITOR Aimee Walleston
DESIGNER Amelia Rina
ASSISTANT EDITOR Elizabeth Sultzer
FACT CHECKER Tatiane Schilaro
WRITERS Emmanuel Iduma, Damla Koksalan,
Amelia Rina, Tatiane Schilaro, Elizabeth Sultzer
ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTORS Maggie Cavallo,
Kaitlyn A. Kramer, Lydia Glenn-Murray, Renée
Mboya, Tom Maio, Anthony Nikolchev, Deniz Ova
LUMINARY David Levi Strauss
INTERNAL LOGIC Annette Wehrhahn
CICERONI Molly Kleinman, Ben Davis,
Asha Schechter
SPIRIT GUIDE Leo Steinberg