Corroding global corporate power

SWAMP: Fire sale
MIC Toi Rerehiko
3 July - 22 August 2009

Like Les Liens Invisibles, the Yes Men and Cildo Meireles, SWAMP (Studies of work Atmospheres And Mass Production) is an artist collective - a couple of electronic/cybernetic boffins committed to undermining the global power of high profile corporations like Coca Cola, McDonald’s, Starbucks and Wal-Mart. They (Matt Kenyon and Doug Easterly) make a wide range of disruptive projects, but the efficacy and ultimate impact of what they do in terms of practical consequences, probably doesn't amount to much. However palpable disruption doesn’t seem to be the point - rather it is the spreading of subversive ideas, a rallying protest against corporate greed.

Some of the projects are deliberately half baked: Matt Kenyon sneaking around Wal-Mart with a wire going through a hole in his cheek to power a cam hidden in his mouth with which he tries to scan the bar code of every product in the store; a machine with a needle strapped to an American soldier’s arm that stabs them each time another U.S. casualty occurs. The work is really about political rhetoric and symbolic action rather than practical intervention. It is knowingly farcical – satirising consumerism or the military.

In fact it is the feather-brained silliness of some of these projects that gives them their appeal, the fact that SWAMP have these nutty ideas that they can built their machines around, and then construct a political argument to justify their existence. They obviously love making these electronic gizmos, irrespective of their real impact in the profit-making global world of corporate capitalism. They are gestures.

Some of them are also very funny (though like film-maker Mike Moore, SWAMP cheat when it suits to gain the advantage) - like the robot that greedily sucks up puddles of Coca Cola which it then stupidly sprays on itself so that the ‘corrosive’ properties incapacitate it. Or a rubber plant purchased from a hardware franchise that is automatically watered (or neglected) according to the firm’s fortunes on the stock market, and which they have guaranteed to replace if it dies.

SWAMP’s show takes up the whole of the MIC Toi Rerehiko space, and is a sparse hang. A couple of the exhibits (Puddle and P.O.P. Portraits) weren’t functioning properly when I visited, and the foldout catalogue information is a little skimpy (though the interview is excellent), but these artists have a superb website containing lots of ‘promotional’ videos. Some of what they do has lost currency with Obama’s election, but is still intriguing. Like the yellow letter-writing paper with rows of micro-dotted data on the Iraqi civilian death toll in its lines, that was sent in correspondence with Bush and the U.S. Congress.

The advantage of the exhibition is that SWAMP’s gadgetry is there to be examined closely if you wish. You can explore their website first to whet your appetite, zero in their repertoire of delicately engineered cybernetic devices and various electronically encoded receipt or note papers, pick out your favourites and if intrigued further, call in on the show for a closer inspection. An unusual exhibition.

Two exhibitions

Martijn Hendriks: Let’s call the whole thing off.
Edwards + Johann: Fishing in a Bathtub; Tormenting Luxury
MIC Toi Rerehiko
2 May - 20 June 2009

The two shows here in two separate galleries, are of uneven quality. One is worth visiting. The other, don’t bother.

Martijn Hendriks, a Dutch artist, has an extremely interesting ongoing project with his digitally removing every avian trace from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 masterpiece The Birds. Without the fluttering hordes visibly seen attacking Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor and others, the swirling sky now defeathered, the action becomes deliciously strange. We pay close attention to the actors and read new meanings to their anxious glances and gestures. And, as there is a large group of art lovers under thirty entirely unaware of Hitchcock’s achievements, Hendriks’ labours might surprise them.

His other project at MIC seems tongue in cheek. If not it is heavy-handed and pompous. He has used part of the 1957 Henry Fonda classic Twelve Angry Men, about jurors in a murder trial where a Puerto Rican is the accused, a film which examines personal prejudice. The climax of the drama is when one of the jurors unleashes a torrent of anti-Puerto Rican invective and the others get up from the table and move away with their backs to him. As the newly enlightened individuals declare their belief that the accused might not be guilty they acquire from Hendriks sparkling foreheads and twinkling upper arms, and radiate a newly found holiness.

Twelve Glowing Men is a bit of a one-liner. It doesn’t have the layered resonances of The Birds Without the Birds. Yet Edwards and Johann’s video work Fishing in a Bathtub: Tormenting Luxury in the front room has nothing going for it at all - though it is nicely installed. It is simply bad theatre with all those elements that make you cringe: like ludicrous (unironic) costumes that seem derived from Andrew Drummond or the Wizard of Oz; silly pantomimelike whispering and hammy facial expressions; painful filmic clichés like drawn-out slow or backwards motion. It is indulgent foolery that MIC Toi Rerehiko should not be supporting. Just junk.

You think I’m a vindictive shit? After you’ve seen Tippi Hedren check out this work for yourself and tell me I’m out of line. Show me why any adult would take it seriously. I dare you.

Admirable Russian idiocy

Gluklya & Tsaplya (Factory of Found Clothing): The Greatest Idiot in New Zealand
Snowwhite (Unitec): 9 March - 20 March 2009
MIC Toi Rerehiko 7 March - 18 April 2009

Marcus Williams, the lecturer and curator at Unitec has done Auckland a real service in bringing out these two Russian women to introduce us to their Neo-Marxist and feminist interventionist practice. The last time we had Russian artist visitors was when Greg Burke brought Brodsky and Utkin to Wellington's City Gallery in 1992. So now, with this their utopian project that encourages peace and harmony, Gluklya and Tsaplya function in a littoral way, with one foot just barely touching the art community (like a tag-wrestler’s corner) and the other more firmly in the much larger ‘life world’ (the ring). It is so ambitious.

I’m also impressed by the thoroughness of this Unitec - MIC collaboration and how the two exhibitions both need to be seen for the whole project to be understood. (The Snowwhite show has far too short a duration.)

Now personally, and here is a point of contention, unlike these utopian, vehemently political artists, I don’t believe art has to be compassionate or ‘on the side of the weak.’ I’m not saying it shouldn’t, only that moral behaviour and good art don’t always march to the beat of the same drum. I accept that wonderful artists can be morally dubious. They don’t have to be noble. They can even be despicable – and so be deserving of derisive comment for their actions as people. However I see personal behaviour and private beliefs as separate from quality in art. Some artists – like Lena Riefenstahl, have done amazing work that had evil consequences. Great thinkers like Heidegger and de Man wrote dreadful things at certain periods of their lives, yet their contributions to the history of philosophical debate live on. When Gluklya and Tsaplya say ‘Compassion is an understanding of the weakness of others’, and we apply it to artists, that is exactly right.

Okay, the shows. Each has two parts. One focuses on The Idiot project in Auckland; the other on contextual material that sheds light on the modus operandi of the Factory of Found Clothing. In Snowwhite that is a display of modified women’s clothing made in Russia and not for sale, and in MIC it’s a selection of terrific, surprisingly entertaining videos.(The ones with the marching sailors and posing businessmen holding white dresses show just how persuasive these artists can be.)

The Auckland project is centred on finding somebody comparable with Dostoevsky’s Prince Myshkin, somebody who is totally forgiving, selflessly compassionate, and magnanimously generous to all. (Sounds impossible doesn't it?) All five nominated individuals who made up a short list from which one was to be chosen, are highly esteemed because of their openhearted community service, but are not necessarily innocent of the ways of the world like Myshkin.

So which one of the five was voted to be the ultimate, the ‘greatest’ Idiot? A community worker, Ivy Smith, won for her care of multi-cultural youth in New Lynn, and so she has a 'minishow' in MIC where she discusses her work, personal background, and what motivates her. The organisation she is linked to will receive the proceeds from sales of garments donated by the four other finalists, and proceeds from other sales from the Utopian Shop at Snowwhite. These articles of clothing have been modified by the artists and their helpers with stitched symbolic emblems, printed fabric photographs and personal motifs like tattoos. Her own modified garments will also be gifted to her.

There is something quite fascinating about these Russian intellectuals committed to building a better world by incorporating methods that sometimes suggest white magic and very ancient ritual. The Russian garments on display at Snowwhite are intriguing - even hilarious - with sewn on ambiguous references to sex and motherhood (such as nipples/teats or phalluses/rusks), or working groups in factories and families (with photographs or stitched on newspaper clippings).

Yet for me, it is not the social value or moral worthiness of the endeavour that makes it good art (such questions about it as ‘art’ are irrelevant to its pragmatics anyway) but the clever organisation of its interlocking components on different sites, the humour and energy of the clothes and video, and the depth of the knowledge and passion behind the project. We have so little involvement with Russian art anyway (if that is what it is?) so it is a great chance to see what the Unitec residency can do. Explore both venues if you can.

Fringe but mainstream

Manga Mad – Tokyo Otaku
Produced and directed by Ray Castle
Transfigured Nights
Produced and directed by David Blyth
Premiered at MIC Toi Rerehiko
Galatos screening Thursday 26 February

Both these unusual films are remarkably entertaining and informative. One deals chiefly with Japanese urban culture and the role of the adult comic industry, and other related activities to do with fantasy, like amine, masks or dressing up. The other is about webcam entertainment: rubber - bondage – drag - asphyxiation enthusiasts (normally lumped together as ‘fetishists’). Blyth has selected about eight such ‘performers’ who talk about their (locally) private but (globally) public practices with eloquent candour.

Castle’s film is the more academic of the two, with Japanese intellectuals and /or sales persons analysing their stiflingly conformist culture and its gender roles with penetrating insights. The bright poppy colour and rapid editing however make it optically demanding. The pace and dazzling light seldom let up.

His subject-mater varies sufficiently to hold your interest: from teenage girls absorbed in comics about homosexual boys falling in love, the ubiquitous syndrome of unrelenting ‘cuteness’, the cathartic benefits of violent and explicit imagery, to otaku – the obsessive fixations many male collectors have on certain female characters. It keeps surprising. The movie does get a little visually repetitive near the end - it is a pinch long - but new ideas keep surfacing to engage with.

Blyth’s production, though also a documentary, is extremely sensual. More overtly 'artistic'. Wonderful blurred textures of moving rubber heads and patterned black torsos dominate. References to Boiffard and Bacon abound and the music dramatically varies for each of the articulate, masked speakers. The streaks and smudges make the grotesque no longer ugly or fearful, but surprisingly gorgeous. Each shot is beautifully composed, the camera positioned at inventive angles to capture the moving masked visage with optimum drama.

While with Castle’s film you feel the narrative content or subject dominates over his filming technique, with Blyth it is the opposite. He is a sort of abstractionist, an exquisite formalist who knows how to use the digital medium as if it were smeary oily paint. A natural image maker and crisp editor, every shot he makes is rivetting. Transfigured Nights is an utterly absorbing creation. The word I would use is ‘masterpiece.’

Viva la commonality

Assume Nothing: Celebrating Gender Diversity
Photography and films by Rebecca Swan and Kirsty MacDonald
MIC Toi Rerehiko
24 January - 19 February 2009

Like with last month’s Article 27 exhibition the chief sponsor of this show is the Human Rights Commission, but unlike that presentation this display is educational and documentary in focus – rather than about innovative art per se. Though immensely informative and moving, especially in the eloquence of its interviewees, it is not about experimental projects or radical intervention, but mainstream consolidation – a positive reflection of how times have changed for this country’s transsexual and cross-dressing communities for the better. Georgina Beyer’s prominence and parliamentary contribution is proof of that.

The static and moving gallery images and associated publication here are certainly very elegant, yet Assume Nothing lacks the raw intensity of say the pioneering work thirty–five years ago by Taranaki artist Fiona Clark. The public hysteria that then greeted her intensely raw images of transsexuals (and their written texts) in the touring Active Eye exhibition resulted in the police confiscating her photographs. Those works though were confrontational and calculatedly provocative. This show has none of that. The personalities, though assertive, are immensely charming, designed to win ‘conservative’ viewers over. The project is constructed to remove fear of the unknown, as well as provide a sensibly dignified discussion of topics often kept hidden. Its frankness celebrates difference whilst in a sense, physiological and psychological distinctions are also dissolved. These individuals may be unusual, but what citizens of Aotearoa have in common is also clearly demonstrated.

The exhibition provides a great opportunity for viewers to think about the way some of those interviewed can present themselves as male or female, changing not only their attire when so inclined, but also their body shape and facial ornamentation. Such actions challenge the mental baggage carried by many of those whom transsexuals and cross-dressers regularly encounter – the preconceived assumptions they might have about ‘male’ or ‘female’ behaviour patterns and core identities.

All this links up to the fascinating ideas of a ‘queer theorist’ like Judith Butler, whose discussions raise questions about the nature of role playing and self perception in identity, and their seemingly arbitrary links to the physiological. A show like this tells us not only how little we know about the range of gender types that exist (with their varieties of accompanying desire) but also how little we understand the causes of reactive hostility that can be so damaging. An excellent exhibition.

The above mixed media image is ‘Ola, Aitu, Mauli, the inner person’ (2008) by Rebecca Swan and Shigeyuki Kihara.

Bits of silver crystalline crayfish

James Charlton: dForm
MIC Toi Rerehiko
22 November – 20 December 2008

This work by James Charlton seems to straddle the practices of artists as diverse as Simon Ingram and Daniel Crooks, exploring programming procedures that have unpredictable results and transmuting digital treatments of ephemeral images to make three-dimensional objects.

He presents three interrelated exhibitions:

The first gallery, at the top of the stairs, with dForm, features three machines with turntables, on which are vertical cylinders of soft clay. Machines individually awaken and spasmodically start to modify their clay forms, starting to spin when sensors detect movement. As the day’s visitors negotiate the space their collective trajectories affect the prodding and goosing of the damp, earthy columns.

Theoretically the three dForm ‘artworks’ created each day are unique though I suspect only James Charlton would be able to tell them apart. Strangely they are ignominiously dumped in a pile on the floor, and occasionally broken. (In the catalogue Charlton is so process obsessed he dismisses the clay results as ‘crudely created lumps’ and seems unwilling to accept the performance residue as ‘art’ – in great contrast to the equivalent forms displayed in 16: sec.)

Around the corner from dForm (deform, 3Dform?) is plus. Here collective movements generate through web cams on the ceiling a composite image on the screen and an evolving soundtrack. The marks on the large screen change direction and the cumulative formation of shapes alter, as people enter and leave the room.

So far Charlton’s process-based show is distant, dry and icy – though perhaps that depends on your tastes. For me, it is specialist boffin material that is not wildly exciting, yet the last room is a surprise. It succeeds in taking his ideas somewhere else.

The use of accumulated movement in plus Charlton has developed further in 16: sec with sixteen looped videos made by filming rubbish being blown about on the street. Using a stereo-lithography machine he has converted the digital camera files so that they cumulatively can be rendered into 3D form (he says ‘as a computer controlled tube of toothpaste that builds up a form layer after layer’) using plaster that is then electroplated in iridescent silver.

Singly the sixteen sculptures are quite extraordinary in their own right – as bizarre crystalline growths that are like spiny crayfish parts - independent of the amazing process that lead to their creation from digital filming. Yet I can’t help but wish Charlton had put either each sculpture with its original generating film, or else placed them on a pile on the floor, as in dForm, so they become a tighter spatial entity, an alarming, highly evocative, Sci-fi construction. The installation is very good, but it could have been stunning.

16: sec is remarkable nonetheless. It is very unusual. Don’t miss it.

(Many thanks to the artist for the above images.)

Whether the weather....

atmos: weather as media
Curated by Janine Randerson
MIC Toi Rerehiko
17 October – 15 November 2008

The eight artists in this exhibition incorporate the phenomenon of weather into their practices, looking at the Greek word ‘atmos’ for ‘breath’ or ‘vapour’ and extending it beyond storms to include cinematic mists, or background noise.

They provide a mixed bag to dip into. Because it is sited in Auckland, the show is likely to be compared with similar themes explored there by other artists like Philip Dadson (Flutter, Breath of Wind) or Billy Apple (Severe Tropical Storm Irma 9301). While this topic certainly is a current theme, as global patterns continue to alarmingly change, in comparison it comes across as a bit dull, and slightly sterile. The ideas tend to be too layered, over worked and unnecessarily complicated, and the technology often really isn’t that exciting.

Randerson’s own work, though, holds together well. It consists of ten circular films projected onto the floor, and includes satellite imagery of changing cloud formations over the earth, and shots of ‘tornado chasers’ from You Tube pursuing twisters. Despite the dodginess of curating herself into this project, it is the one with the most immediate impact – placed in the middle of the main room. The show would have been a real fizzer without it.

Lisa Benson’s project is a lot simpler, and superior because of that - involving light coming in the window near the end of the curtain, and transforming assorted rectangles of photographic paper on the wall. I’m not quite convinced of its relevance, as its presence relies on the limited assumption that light conditions are tightly correlated with weather patterns. How does one compare meteorological conditions by looking at paper on the wall? Wet weather, with more light reflected from cloud cover, might have greater impact than direct sunlight. It is hard to reach conclusions, unless one has documentation from previous years.

The two lightboxes of Hoon Li, like Randerson’s project, are the crowd-pleasers of the exhibition, showing horizontal transparencies of hybrid cloudscapes, viewed from above out of a plane window. They are like Jae Hoon Lee meets C. K. Reynolds, but referring to Korean and Japanese scroll painting, their elongations incorporating a sense of speed.

The dullest work is that of the French artist Jérôme Knebusch, with almost a year’s clippings of daily weather forecasts taken from Le Monde, clamped together on a plinth, and translations written in vertical lines descending the walls and positioned in chronological order. It is hard to form meteorological conclusions from only the data of a year, and seems, along with Cameron Robbins’ project, to be technically at odds with this venue.

Andrea’s Polli‘s Antarctic sound recordings of scientists, machines, and treated data are treated to make aural art – though Randerson in her essay, surprisingly uses the word ‘musical’. To me, there is no hook. The content is uninteresting, as are the sonic sensations. Devoid of lyricism or transmuting structure, they don’t hold the listener’s attention.

Douglas Bagnall’s Cloud Shape Classifier is a well known, online interactive project, presented first in Enjoy and then RAMP. It is really about aesthetics and art itself as a social creation, rather than weather. As a satire on how we seek out the beautiful in visual phenomena, and how patterns form, it is a clever idea, though one wonders how many people will actually engage with it.

Tom Corby and Gavin Bally’s Cyclone.Soc. is the social masquerading as weather, using assorted streamed media to form words in projected lines. These make up swirling fingerprints, topographies (or cyclones) on the wall, a deliberate information overload from varied sources, one that is difficult to read. Technically amazing, the dense layering seems excessive as metaphor.

The wind drawing of Cameron Robbins is interesting because of the questions that are not raised, but which other artists elsewhere, like Simon Ingram, similarly using technologies of the ‘non-self’, do. Robbins images are delicately ornate and look like etchings. (Similar to Graham Bennett in Christchurch). Though ‘drawn’ by a wind directed machine, they are highly aesthetic, being carefully devised by the artist as circular documents bearing beautiful marks. They tell you very little about the weather but a lot about Robbins and his visual taste.

The fold-out catalogue for the show is excellent. It seems to have been done by the UNITEC design department, its eight essays and introduction short, pithy and lucid. For a free hand-out that can be picked up at the gallery, the whole thing is beautifully put together.