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It was Althusser who, while elaborating on the structures of involvement of the public, has drawn a conclusion, which I would like to bring up in connection with PORTAL II, an exhibition recently opened in the Kunsthalle Fridericianum. It is not on the level of primary content where the ideological kernel of theatre can be found – it doesn`t really matter so much to Althusser what is uttered and done on stage – but instead in numerous unwritten agreements anchoring in the traditions of given culture. How have we agreed rather not to whistle, shout, cough, smoke or copulate while watching the play? When and by whom was it determined that it is appropriate to sit quiet until the curtains close and to applaud in the end? Why don`t we ever intervene in what happens on stage or just turn around and focus on facial expressions of a man behind us, probably at least as interesting to watch than anything else in the world? Instead of the content of the play Althusser asks us to consider all the involvements “behind the curtains”, exercised on daily basis to keep up the illusion of the stage as the ideological frame for theatre. Ideology in general, orchestrating the collective gaze of public and making each subject to recognise itself as one, is always manifesting itself not in what people claim to believe, but in rituals they fulfill in “random material encounters”. There probably are some rarely addressed changes when the issues originally addressed by depicting a theatrical scene are directly transplanted into art context. It is at the exhibition only, where one perceives, comments and evolves in the same place and time, making “art the place that produces a specific sociability”[i]. Nevertheless for Althusser the mode of ideological involvement made explicit through theatre was a core issue at stake in cultural production overall and was directly linked to his “little theoretical theatre” of becoming a subject. [ii]

As an exhibition like PORTAL II is as much a performative trap as it is a sculptural setting, the behaviour of the viewers becomes particularly interesting. Because what if, as it often is the case with contemporary art, the primary content of artworks is to be found already dealing with the structural issues? What if the artists are already busy in messing around with the conditions of involvement in exhibiting rituals producing certain types of inter-subjectivity? What if no distinction between primary and structural content can be made any more? We could still apply Althusserian notion of “interpellation” to producing subjectivities of visitors through encounters with the artworks. If the works are directly addressing inactive threads in viewers´ perception, consciously reconnecting them to the processes of subjectivisation, the exhibition is all about hailing subjects whose collective involvement is defining “a stage” for their experience and who simultaneously are made aware of themselves as viewers. Here we are, just about to enter a merry-go-round of mirroring abstractions... There is no way we could deal away with them without addressing concrete works.

 

Curator Suzanne van de Ven started with PORTAL I by defining a set of basic questions, concerning the specific institutional context, the exhibition embedded in its given historical and socio-political background and production economy. Now she is exploring how this constellation of basic force-fields for exhibition making is discreetly inscribed into the concrete exhibiting architecture and rituals. Sounds a bit abstract again, doesn´t it? If I could now speak to you in direct presence, in the entrance hall of the Fridericianum, this would probably be concrete enough. I could recall the history of Documenta and point to Weihnachtsmarkt you had to pass for arriving to the exhibition, a parallel perfectly defining Kassel as a provincial German city periodically turned into the most prominent stage for defining developments in contemporary art. I could lead you to the hall at the right hand side pulsating in the slow rhythm of Germaine Kruip`s light installation and point out the sound of footsteps of the curator echoing in the room, recorded on demand of Franz Pomassl and turned into a sound installation. Following the mode of operating revealed by these pieces, one could read into the interventions of Kristy Trinier, Guillaume Leblon and Benoît Goupy, addressing the framework of the Fridericianum in ways, which are monumental in scale, excessive in expenses and subtle in physical presence. One could notice Leblons´ subtle cloud of fog appearing and disappearing from under a gallery wall. Or feel the icy presence of Goupy´s work – the ice wall slowly growing by feeding from breathing vapours of visitors – probably even before noticing it. As both of them are working with a bit of “nature” brought into the gallery space, it is the “cultural” framing, the space, an attentive viewer becomes very conscious of. If you are not familiar with the building, you probably notice Trinier's piece only while returning to the first hall. By subtly enlarging architectural features, it points to concrete structures of the functional exhibition architecture, which normally remain invisible. I would also take you to the press conference room on the first floor where the most obvious part of “Die Schachtel des Nichts”, an unannounced performance by free radio group LIGNA took place, linking PORTAL II with Jean Baudrillard's exhibition upstairs, called “Die Abwesenheit der Welt”. It manifested itself -as an enlargement of behavioural codes during such an occasion- a.o. in orchestrated coughing of insiders, putting to the test both the curator delivering her opening speech and the audience only gradually becoming aware of a performance, which at this point was at once rude and delicate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As Suzanne van de Ven has described in an interview concerning an earlier project, Cargo Series, exhibitions are for her “means for framing and communicating works that allow the artists and the audience to experience them literally “on the spot”... a power not to be underestimated.”[iii] As an art critic cannot transfer experiences, I can instead try to pose mental images, which form the basis of the language game of relating to any art not physically present. The installation “REHEARSAL”, carried out by Germaine Kruip for PORTAL I, serves well as a mediating image, to the extent that it more or less constituted a platform for PORTAL II. Kruip lowered the existing lighting grid of the exhibition hall to such an extent that it was hard to determine if it sported the status of a minimalist object or a functional lighting unit uncannily misplaced. She amplified the sound of footsteps on the gallery's concrete floor through the installation of microphones in its underground cable ducts, altering its acoustics into that of wooden floor, and making the visitors aware of actually walking “on stage”, on an artificial double floor made to conceal the infrastructure of the exhibiting machine. By interconnecting the interior lights and the lights illuminating the building from outside in a permanent dimming and lighting in a slow, synchronous rhythm working 24/7 'REHEARSAL' created a pulsation, which formed a parallel to days and nights passing by, exceeding the shifts from working hours to closed hours. Inside and outside of the building and the totality of exhibition time were thus united, forming a mental image, which can be used for knitting together all the fragmented, subtle, just-a-bit-more-than-invisible experiences of PORTAL II. The artists working with architecture visualised different ideological regimes embodied by the historic outlook of the Fridericianum building and its interior structure, moulded according to the needs of Documentas, pretending white cube spaces and semi-permanent settings catering for temporary needs of concrete exhibitions. But in PORTAL II there is also a piece, which hides and postpones its presence. Tomo Savic´-Gecan, always working in a strictly conceptual way, is here registering the presence and absence of the viewers in the exhibition hall to make something out of this information at one of his next shows. Although his use of this data in another piece will be later documented for the catalogue of PORTAL, now we can only guess how he builds up the future connection with PORTAL. Reaching beyond the confines of her controllable territory, leaving a loose thread in the carpet probably was important for the curator, because it stresses the indeterminacy of the process, which is characteristic to exhibiting artists working in situ. She was bringing together a set of artists, either subtly stitching together the spaces, framing the public or stretching the time limits of the exhibition. By that she has made tautological rituals working for granted in the “exhibiting machine” to respond, reverberate and reveal themselves – to herself, the artists, the colleagues, the financers of the exhibition, the designers of the catalogue, the general public and in case of PORTAL I, to occasional passers by.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a formal parallel between a modernist painter reducing his means of expression to monochrome rectangular canvas on the wall of a white cube gallery and Suzanne van de Ven addressing the time-space relations and the symbolic involvement making up an exhibition. It is to a certain extent, and of course in different medium, going back to the basics, exercising self-awareness. But one cannot ride long on this parallel. It quickly becomes a limitation to understanding “what´s up” in PORTAL II and can create grave misunderstandings. As I could recently witness in Institutions2, a seminar and exhibition, which took place in Kiasma, Helsinki, many art institutions seem to be currently going through a phase of exercising self-awareness. I can but greet this general loss of naïveté these efforts are indicating. In his dialogue with the Enlightenment heritage of Modernism, “Husserl has called “naïve” all sciences that don`t question their own presuppositions, thus making possible a certain kind of nihilism produced in their names.”[iv] Many institutions are becoming quite obsessed by their own modes of operating, turning them into their primary content, reminding of what art has been doing during 20^th century. Nevertheless it now seems that this current institutional process of overcoming naïveté does often speak in terms of abstract good will combined with self-celebratory spirit (similar to the rhetoric of modernist painting at its hay-time). The spectacle of emancipation is materialising either in lengthy speeches carried out in normative parlance of political correctness or in bits and pieces of user-friendly sociability reified into second rate artworks. It seems that here we have a new layer of sophisticated nihilism already exercising the rhetoric of self-awareness. Even if PORTAL might seem introverted at the first glance, spinning around the problematics of making exhibitions, it has clearly distanced itself from lengthy pseudo-critical curatorial mission statements and cheap talk typical to current trend in institutional criticism. Concerning the latter, there is not much one could add to Guy Debord; “By means of the spectacle the ruling order discourses endlessly upon itself in an uninterrupted monologue of self-praise.”[v]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While Suzanne van de Ven analyses the structures of the medium she is working with, the exhibition, she is looking for the ways she can stretch the borders from within, turning exhibitions into tools for expanding what is considered “reasonable” in institutions. Now working for an “isolated gallery space, representing a closed universe, that for many – but not for the last instance economical – reasons has to stick to rather rigid programming”[vi], she is using frictions created by exhibiting in situ contemporary works in an institution “tailored” for packaged shows. Getting to the basics at an initial production phase, she is in the last instance uniting the works in a way that each piece participating becomes stronger individually on its own terms. We could try to return to our initial dialogue with Althusser – most of the works involved deal with the point of doubt just before subjectivisation, when you are just about to recognise the works´ calling. Here the most valuable thread of experience in Minimal Art, the viewers´ presence on “stage” and direct participation in making the work, is reactivated, not through the collective gaze of the beholders defining the stage, as is the case in theatre, but in bodily presence or absence of a subject. Nineties naïve aiming to user-friendliness and simulated sociability, often uncritically associated with “relational aesthetics”, is here contrasted with an image of an empty space. Bringing along the whole set of historical references, emptiness contains possibility for pure physicality of pain-in-presence overcoming the logic of subjectivisation. As a culmination of his 15 minutes performance at PORTAL I Franz Pomassl concentrated all the energies made available by amplifiers into an explosive dot in a line of thoughts and activities uniting PORTAL I and PORTAL II. In his set, the steps – which you can still hear in the Fridericianum – were turned into a test of visitors´ physical tolerance. It is the temporal nature of involvement, which makes the excessive in art bearable, giving a momentary form to denial of sociability.

 

Hanno Soans

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