Interventionist Artists - Essay Example

Interventionist Artists Introduction Even as interventionist art has been in existence since the early periods of the avant-garde, incarnations among contemporary artists have demonstrated dynamic results. With particular emphasis on modern incarnations of culture jamming in the work of Krystof Wodickzko and the Adbusters publication, this essay critically examines the work of a series of contemporary interventionists artists, and contextually situates their work within the the historical and neo-avant-garde. The essay also contextualizes the interventionist work within the history of the avant-garde. Context of Interventionist Art Both Krystof Wodiczko and the Adbusters Media Foundation are descendents of the revolutionary Situationist International, often referencing them in regards to his work. The Situationists incorporated Marxist ideology and combined the sense of political ideology and art. It originated in the late 1950s as a critique of capitalism. With regard to its social and artistic avant-garde structure, it harkens back to what Poggioli sees in The Theory of the Avant-Garde (1962) as the beginning of the avant-garde. Poggioli identifies the artistic origins in 1870s France as, “…the connections between the political left and the literary left were sufficiently clearly defined and important to a generation that experienced “l’annee terrible.” 1 This group of poems by Victor Hugo fused contemporary French political concerns regarding the Franco-Prussian War with literary avant-gardism. Indeed, many writers have identified the early connections between artistic and intellectual movements and the desire to institute progressive social reforms. In the early 19th century Henri de Saint-Simon suggested that to change modern society it would be only necessary to organize intellectuals and artists and join then with engineers and inventors. Saint-Simon valued artists very highly because they were capable not only of foreseeing the future but also of showing others what the future ideal state would be like. Political Relevance In Burger’s Theory of the Avant-Garde (1974) he identifies two divergent strands of avant-garde art. Burger sees the critical juncture between the historical avant-garde and the neo-avant-garde the Second World War. He believes that art before the war still carried with it the revolutionary charge that early 19th century artists had imbued it with, while the post-war avant-garde suffered from the failure of this movement. Avant-Garde/Neo-Avant-Garde (1999) critiques Burger’s disregard for the Neo-Avant-Garde as futile, by referencing the Situationist International’s Marxist political activism. The book believes that Burger disregard this later day activism for its failure to completely revolutionize the political spectrum along the lines Saint-Simon had envisioned in the 19th century. It concludes that it is too reductionist of a standard to take in regards to the movement and that, “Burger neglects the fact that resistance, a revolt or a revolution, is not necessarily meaningless, when there is little or no chance of success or victory.” 2 In this sense, it is upholding these interventionists artists works as relevant to the political discourse being carried on around the world and elevating their artistic legitimacy beyond that which Burger believes has been co-opted by contemporary materialism. Krystof Wodiczko Krzysztof Wodiczko’s work is situated at the end of a long line of these avant-garde attempts to disrupt the patterns of daily existence. While his work remains mysterious and malleable to the point that characterizing it through a definitive methodology is impossible, significant themes of Marxist expression carried through a myriad of artistic lenses are identifiable. Observable throughout all of Wodiczko’s works are elements of the historic avant-garde, coupled with the socially-engaged leanings of Brecht, and elements of neo-avant-garde post-modernism. The transitory nature of Wodiczko’s work acknowledges the failure of the neo-avant-garde to enact world shattering revolutionary change. The large-majority of Wodiczko’s oeuvre consists of projections of political statements onto government or real estate buildings; while this clearly exhibits a number of strands of past-art, its transitory nature also stands for the inability of the artist to effect change on the monumental scale that idealized the pre-war avant-garde. In this regard, Burger is correct in deriding the neo-avant-garde for falling short of pre-war ideals, but goes too far in labeling the project a complete failure. The ephemerality of Wodiczko’s projections metaphorically represent the re-imagined goals of the avant-garde away from complete societal revolution to enacting social change in small, but poignant ways. The connection of Wodiczko’s work to Situationist art practices is very strong. While both share a political slant heavily reliant on Marxist ideology, they have also adopted the perspective of semiotics in critiquing and disrupting mainstream means of signification. In Homeless Projection: A Proposal for the City of New York (1986) Wodiczko fuses historical avant-garde standards with the detournement destructuring strategies of the Situationist International. In this work Wodiczko proposes to project images of homeless people onto the state-sponsored statues in New York City’s Union Park. In these projections we see a statue of George Washington with a wheelchair and a can of window cleaner projected onto him; another statue of Abraham Lincoln is projected onto with a crutch; the Marquis de Lafayette is seen with a cast on his leg and a sick person’s head band; finally, the Charity statue was superimposed with a low-rent building. While Wodiczko has constructed over seventy projections onto monuments across the world, Homeless Projection: A Proposal for the City of New York is unique in its structural form that molds to the person-based statues, where other work is generally projected onto buildings of relevant architecture. It seems this technique is heavily influenced by the Situationist International’s use of detournement effects in attempting to disrupt mainstream signification. The process of détournement involves the capturing of mass cultural images and co-opting them in a new presentation in order to subvert the authority of the sign and the significations it sets in order.3 In the instance of the statues in Union Park, Wodiczko is clearly detourning them for political means. In Critical Vehicles: Writings, Projects, and Interviews (1986) when discussing the Situationist urban project he writes: The basic practice of the theory of unitary urbanism will be the transcription of the whole theoretical lie of urbanism, detourned [diverted, appropriated] for the purpose of de-alienation4 The exact ramifications of meaning in Wodiczko’s work are left to be determined. Indeed, his exact intentions remain ambiguous. When discussing his concern specifically with the homeless a consistent theme seems to be Walter Benjamin’s theory where the victors determine how history is written. Wodiczko adopts this theory and applies it to the cultural assumption regarding the homeless, what he deems the “culture of the victors”. Benjamin talks about the need to speak for these people, as their authentic history has been ignored. It seems that in part this is the intention of Wodiczko in appropriating the homeless in his art. (Finkelpearl 2000)5 When attempting to contextualize works such as Homeless Projection: A Proposal for the City of New York, it’s necessary to analyze the critical responses to Wodiczko’s thematically similar work. In the Homeless Vehicle Project (1988), Wodiczko constructed a functional vehicle that could be used as part shelter, part tin-can holder, and part shopping cart. The video Krzysztof Wodiczko: Projections6 demonstrates in great detail the elaborate process of construction Wodiczko went through and how he conducted a series of interviews with homeless people on the best way to structure the vehicle. Upon completion of the vehicle Wodiczko is derided in the media by a leading homeless supporter claiming that the project is actually condescending and if Wodiczko truly wanted to help the homeless there are better ways to achieve it. Wodiczko’s response to these criticisms is that the work actually functions to draw attention to the absurdity of the problem and not to offer a function alternative to homeless existence. That the fact these vehicles even can exist should be an alarm that there is a major problem with the social formulations of society. In light of this, when considering Homeless Projection: A Proposal for the City of New York one must also consider the absurdity and humor in placing a wheelchair on George Washington or crutches on Abraham Lincoln. While Wodiczko is overtly stating that this is to bring attention to the homeless problem, one must question the snide authority he assumes when altering the images of America’s forefathers. It’s easy to read a critique into the fundamental structure of an America that would allow capitalism and materialism to run rampant while the poor suffer for lack of shelter. One can see a similarity here between Wodiczko and the playful Modernist absurdity of Marcel Duchamp. There is a theme in Wodiczko that seems to mirror the readymades of Duchamp, particularly the famous R. Mutt Urinal, as both works revel in duping mass culture, and the art establishment. This is clearly evident in Wodiczko’s explanation for the Homeless Vehicle project, as this duping of people extends even to the homeless that he interviews into buying into his sincerity in creating the vehicle. In other works, such as the Memorial Arch in Brooklyn, New York where in 1985 Wodiczko was able to convince an event organizer for “Heart of the Nation” that he would was merely going to exhibit hands on a building. 7 The event organizer mistook his intentions and approved the project. When the festival finally occurred and Wodiczko unleashed his projection it showed two rockets with corresponding American and Russian signs chain-linked together, clearly a comment on the Cold War arms race. In his elaborate and skilled construction of the vehicle one can see similarities to the well-labored creativity that went into Duchamp’s mysterious Étant donnés (Given: 1 The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas) or the gigantic The Large Glass. Both artists also make a point of self-reflexively commenting on the art establishment as well. In Duchamp, we see this with the status his readymades achieve when placed in the museum context, whereas the temporalities of Wodiczko’s projections fuse notions of performance art with political commentary to step-aside the traditional bounds of the museum. In one projection, The Astor Building/New Museum (1984)8, Wodiczko blatantly criticizes the museum by projecting a lock and chain around the real estate building on the floors above it, drawing attention to the foundational relationship of necessity between the art world and the capitalist mode of production. Adbusters Media Foundation Another contemporary incarnation of the interventionist spirit can be detected in the Adbusters Media Foundation. Founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in Vancouver, Canada. Adbusters Media Foundation represents an art collective of activists; however, it's most renowned for its namesake Adbusters magazine that features interventionist art, and self-described 'subvertisements' designed to advance the magazine's political agenda. While both Adbusters Media Foundation and Krystof Wodiczko are direct decedents of the 1960s Situationist International. where Wodiczko oftentimes shrouds his work in levels of mystery and ambiguity, Adbuster's has openly issued manifesto's detailing their purpose in artistic production. In a book titled Culture Jam Kalle Lasn outlines the Adbuster's political-ethos. Lasn argues that what underlines her political activism is an understanding of 'America' as a modern corporate entity. That is to say that where past incarnations of life in America allowed for more direct ways of living, “A free, authentic life is no longer possible in America today.” (Lasn xiii)9 Lasn argues that consumer capitalism, as embedded in the all consuming nature of mass advertising, has perverted contemporary social practices in an effort to sell products. As the primary means by which corporations have co-opted society are advertisements, the Adbuster's movement has set about intervening in these corporate advertisements by altering elements of their marketing, including logos, and slogans, in more socially conscious ways. While the Situationists referred to this effect as detournement, Adbusters activists have referred this process as 'culture jamming' and the specific advertisements themselves as subvertisements. With these subvertisements, Adbusters has targeted a number of specific groups and products. One group of subvertisements targeted Absolut Vodka ads. One such ad featured in Fig. 1, kept the Vodka bottle originally pictured, but changed the lettering to say, 'Absolute A.A.' – an obvious reference to alcoholic's anonymous. Other subvertisments targeting Absolut Vodka altered the image of the original ad as well as the lettering. One of these illustrates an advertisement that states 'Absolute End' and includes a copy of an Absolut Vodka bottled outlined in detective chalk; a similar one shows a body bag with a dead man's feet and states, “Absolute Ice”. Subvertisements have focused on a variety of products outside of Vodka. One notable series of ad's specifically set-out detourning McDonald's advertisements. In one Adbusters features a picture of Ronald McDonald with a piece of tape covering his mouth that has the word 'grease' written on it. Fig. 2 illustrates a McDonald's subvertisment called MacAttack that shows an operating room with a man on his death bed, and a machine with his life-signs prominently featured. Under the advertisement the words Big Mac Attack are written; an ironic reference to the popular McDonald's marketing campaign that encouraged customers to have a MacAttack out of hunger and genuine desire for a McDonald's Big Mac. In reviewing the subvertisements it's clear that Adbusters intentions are not always aligned with one specific political perspective. Indeed, Lasn states that, “Our people range from born-again Lefties to Green entrepreneurs to fundamentalist Christians who don't like what television is doing to their kids.” (Lasn xii)10. When examining the themes of these subvertisment intervention advertisements one notes that there isn't an overarching political message. Outside of sporadic ad's that targeted the Bush administration – one features Bush and the members of his cabinet with large 'X's' across their faces and text that states, 'Happier New Year' (referring to Bush leaving office) -- the majority of subvertisments specifically target what the magazine deems as irresponsible products. While this can be argued to have a leftist slant, it's evident that how consumer watch-dogs with both liberal and conservative agendas could find much to support in the Adbusters publication. While Adbusters is most renowned for their subvertisements, the Media Foundation has undertaken a number of campaigns, incorporating a variety of artistic processes. In the Blackspot campaign Adbusters constructed their own shoe, made with hemp, vegan leather, and constructed in fair-trade or unionized factories. The campaign is an effort to demonstrate to corporations that it is possible to be financially successful, while remaining socially conscious and true to ethical standards. Another Adbusters campaign titled Buy Nothing Day was designed to encourage readers to go a day without purchasing anything. The One Flag campaign encouraged readers to design a flag to promote global citizenship. Conclusion While Krystof Wodizcko and the Adbusters Media Foundation artists have greatly different backgrounds, their artistic lineages are both direct descendents from the Situationist movement. Even as some deride this movement as overly intellectual, it's clear that its elements of detournement have, at the least, had an indelible influence on artists, living on in a multitude of contemporary culture jamming impulses. References Bürger, Peter. Theory of the Avant-garde, Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1984 Finkelpearl, Tom. Dialogues in Public Art. Boston: MIT Press, 2000. Ford, Simon. The Situationist International: An Introduction. Black Dog, 2004. Lasn, Kalle (1999) Culture Jam. Eagle Brook. Lajer-Burcharth, Ewa, “Understanding Wodiczko,” in Counter-Monuments: Krzysztof Wodiczko National Film Board of Canada (1990) Krzysztof Wodiczko: Projections. The Roland Collection. Nato, Thompson. The Interventionists: User’s Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. Boston, MIT Press. 2006. Poggioli, Renato. The Theory of the Avant-garde. Cambridge, MA, Harvard Univ. Press, 1968, Scheunemann, Dietrich. Avant-Garde/Neo-Avant-Garde. Editions Rodopi BV, 2005. Wodiczko, Krzysztof. Critical Vehicles: Writings, Projects, Interviews, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1999 Appendix Fig. 1 Absolut Subvertisement Fig. 2 MacAttack Subvertisment Read More