Showing posts with label Tino Sehgal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tino Sehgal. Show all posts
Thursday, January 10
Sunday, December 23
An email to an esteemed person about the Tino Sehgal exhibit at Marian Goodman
I went to see "This Situation", the Tino Sehgal exhibit at Marian Goodman, twice this past week. I intend on spending more time with it when I get back into town. I went over there on my lunch break so I could only stay for about 30 minutes each time. This was long enough to get a sense of the formal structure of the piece but I would like to stay longer. They did turn to me once and ask "and what do you think" so I very briefly got involved in the talk. It's quite a shock when you first see them confront somone in this way. They are not mean but most people do not like being put on the spot. Twice I saw people weakly say "I don't know" (which initiated their "reset"). My heart went out to these gallery visitors. I know how they felt: performance anxiety is the term. Perhaps they needed some intellectual Viagra before entering the gallery? But it also highlights the way serious public discussions tend to be BOTH about the perfomance of speakers AND the ideas conveyed by their speaking (form and content). But I would still be interested in getting more involved in the conversation. This is in part because of the quotes. Sehgal's position on economics and politics totally fascinates me. I find his perspective, though somewhat unclear, refreshing. But, that said, if I am totally honest, one of the other reasons I wish to participate in this conversation (Sehgal's piece) is because I harbor a desire to perform in public. Am I turning into an exhibitionist?
The group, the form of it, makes me think of the chorus in a Greek tragedy. But the way they talk in unison, those Brechtian moments when the artifice of it all is foregrounded, also makes me think of Devo. It also makes me think of Superman's home planet Krypton for some strange reason... I'm not sure I can explain why (since I've never been all that much into that sort of stuff). Sehgal could have easily gussied up the whole thing visually by putting the performers in costumes. But I think he made the right move by not doing this. It would have flattened out the meaning of the piece a great deal. It has far more depth the way that it is, with the performers in their own clothes (which we might also describe as costumes). It obscures the audience when you first enter the gallery. I wonder if audience members ever join this strange chorus and become one of the performers? But it also folds back on what I was saying in the above paragraph: it calls attention to the fact that we are all often performing when we are in public -- and especially when we are involved in a public discussion. Think of a classroom for example... Are we ever not performing? Perhaps when we are either asleep or completely smashed on alcohol or drugs... And if this is the chorus then where is the protagonist of this drama? This chorus sometimes spoke of an absent "speaker"...
Didn't Art & Language (or one of the artists involved with them) do some work that revolved around discussions (in the early 70s)? This work which I do not recall very well may have been also entirely dematerialized. I can't help but think part of why I do not know of it better is because it was not well documented. But as I have heard Sehgal say: art as a discipline is about the relationship between people and objects. The fact that this earlier work is not well remembered may having something to do with this too.
The premise behind Sehgal's entire artistic project (so far), not adding any more things (material objects) to the world, also totally fascinates me. I saw Sehgal speak at the Guggenheim a couple of years back (as a part of his Hugo Boss Prize nomination). It was definitely not a New York art scene event. There was hardly anyone there! And there seemed to be none of the usual VIPs. This surprised me. But anyway, I will tell you one thing about that talk and then end this long email. Sehgal was a very mild mannered fellow. He seemed very learned, a person who does his homework. The only time he began to lose his cool was when he started talking about the standard anti-capitalist position of avant-garde artists in the 20th century. He said they were deeply misguided.
The group, the form of it, makes me think of the chorus in a Greek tragedy. But the way they talk in unison, those Brechtian moments when the artifice of it all is foregrounded, also makes me think of Devo. It also makes me think of Superman's home planet Krypton for some strange reason... I'm not sure I can explain why (since I've never been all that much into that sort of stuff). Sehgal could have easily gussied up the whole thing visually by putting the performers in costumes. But I think he made the right move by not doing this. It would have flattened out the meaning of the piece a great deal. It has far more depth the way that it is, with the performers in their own clothes (which we might also describe as costumes). It obscures the audience when you first enter the gallery. I wonder if audience members ever join this strange chorus and become one of the performers? But it also folds back on what I was saying in the above paragraph: it calls attention to the fact that we are all often performing when we are in public -- and especially when we are involved in a public discussion. Think of a classroom for example... Are we ever not performing? Perhaps when we are either asleep or completely smashed on alcohol or drugs... And if this is the chorus then where is the protagonist of this drama? This chorus sometimes spoke of an absent "speaker"...
Didn't Art & Language (or one of the artists involved with them) do some work that revolved around discussions (in the early 70s)? This work which I do not recall very well may have been also entirely dematerialized. I can't help but think part of why I do not know of it better is because it was not well documented. But as I have heard Sehgal say: art as a discipline is about the relationship between people and objects. The fact that this earlier work is not well remembered may having something to do with this too.
The premise behind Sehgal's entire artistic project (so far), not adding any more things (material objects) to the world, also totally fascinates me. I saw Sehgal speak at the Guggenheim a couple of years back (as a part of his Hugo Boss Prize nomination). It was definitely not a New York art scene event. There was hardly anyone there! And there seemed to be none of the usual VIPs. This surprised me. But anyway, I will tell you one thing about that talk and then end this long email. Sehgal was a very mild mannered fellow. He seemed very learned, a person who does his homework. The only time he began to lose his cool was when he started talking about the standard anti-capitalist position of avant-garde artists in the 20th century. He said they were deeply misguided.
Wednesday, November 15
Tacita Dean wins Hugo Boss Prize
The English artist Tacita Dean has won the Guggenheim’s Hugo Boss Prize. Global Warming Your Cold Heart was, of course, rooting for Tino Sehgal.
From Bloomberg News: Tacita Dean, an English artist best known for her contemplative films, won this year’s Hugo Boss Prize, a $50,000 award from the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the museum said. Dean’s recent motion pictures include this year’s Kodak, which shows an Eastman Kodak Co. factory in Germany producing its final run of 16-millimeter film, said Joan Young, associate curator of contemporary art at the Guggenheim.
“It’s a witness to, and an example of, an increasingly obsolete medium,” Young said. Earlier works included drawings on chalkboards and alabaster and a film portraying a sunset as seen through the windows of a revolving restaurant, Young said.
The Hugo Boss Prize, sponsored by Hugo Boss AG, the Metzingen, Germany-based clothing maker, is among the large single-artist prizes that have sprung up as government arts funding has declined, Young said in a telephone interview today. It is one of the few without restrictions on the artist’s age, gender, race, nationality, or medium, she said. Prior winners of the biennial award included American Matthew Barney, Scot Douglas Gordon, Slovenian Marjetica Potrc, French Pierre Huyghe, and Thai Rirkrit Tiravanija, the Guggenheim said in a statement.
Thursday, July 6
Tino Sehgal versus a world full of objects
At his talk at the Guggenheim Museum last night, the artist Tino Sehgal did not say much that was all that different from the interview and article last year in Artforum, but he did clarify his position and give it more depth. The major point I got from his talk was that his art takes place on the macro level of institution and medium more than on the micro level of an individual work. He referred to this as his “set up” at one point and said that the subject of any particular piece was secondary to it.
The event was a conversation between Sehgal and one of the senior Guggenheim curators. She began by asking him how he decided to abandon the object, which was rather interesting because he said he never dealt with the object. He explained that before entering the field of visual art (he referred to it this way several times—as visual art) he had been involved in political activism. I would like to know more about this because he referred to it as lobbying legislations. Anyway, he said his art project evolved from this work and that he decided to enter the field of visual art because it was—and I thought this was an astute formulation—about the relationship between people and things. Sehgal said again that he was not interested in adding more things to the world and that he was interested in figuring out an alternative form of production and exchange. So his art project is in part a social experiment (he did not use this language), and he said that he turned to the social institutions of art deliberately because its character and structure lent itself to this sort of experiment. Institutional critique, of course, came to mind, but Sehgal’s aims and assumptions seem radically different. And he did not mention institutional critique at all. No one during the Q&A session did either. (The questions were quite shallow).
Sehgal made a few provocative remarks, but his manner was mild and thoughtful. He looked like an art nerd. One of these remarks addressed the market. He argued that if we do anything at all specialized we have to participate in the market—whether we like it or not. The only way avoid the market is to do everything yourself: farm your own food, make your own clothes, and so on. He also argued that the material wealth of Western societies in fact empowers individuals. This is because material surplus gives many choices and decisions over to individual consumers. They can choose between this material product or that one, and producers compete for these choices. In contrast to this, societies that are not producing a surplus give choice over to the producers: the producer chooses to make this or that product, and the consumer is stuck with the producers’ choices. His most caustic remark, though—and he apologized for possibly being reductive—was about the antimarket attitude of many twentieth-century avant-garde artists. He said he thought they were misguided and naïve.
I left the event wanting to ask him a bunch of questions and with a thirst to know more about him. I chickened out and did not ask the question I really, really wanted to ask him, which was this: “What political label would you apply to your self?” I also wanted to ask him if he would comment on the Benjamin Buchloh review of the 51st Venice Bienale in Artforum. Earlier Sehgal had argued (in criticism of documenta 11) that all art is political, whether the artist is aware of their politics or not. I hope Sehgal wins the Hugo Boss Prize in December, so he finally exhibits in New York, but somehow I doubt he will.
The audience turnout was odd. There were about thirty people there. The auditorium was less than half full. And it looked like mostly students. I thought maybe I’d run into some of the newer New York critics and curators, but I was wrong. I looked around for them. There were really no professorial types there either, although they are sometimes hard to spot.
The event was a conversation between Sehgal and one of the senior Guggenheim curators. She began by asking him how he decided to abandon the object, which was rather interesting because he said he never dealt with the object. He explained that before entering the field of visual art (he referred to it this way several times—as visual art) he had been involved in political activism. I would like to know more about this because he referred to it as lobbying legislations. Anyway, he said his art project evolved from this work and that he decided to enter the field of visual art because it was—and I thought this was an astute formulation—about the relationship between people and things. Sehgal said again that he was not interested in adding more things to the world and that he was interested in figuring out an alternative form of production and exchange. So his art project is in part a social experiment (he did not use this language), and he said that he turned to the social institutions of art deliberately because its character and structure lent itself to this sort of experiment. Institutional critique, of course, came to mind, but Sehgal’s aims and assumptions seem radically different. And he did not mention institutional critique at all. No one during the Q&A session did either. (The questions were quite shallow).
Sehgal made a few provocative remarks, but his manner was mild and thoughtful. He looked like an art nerd. One of these remarks addressed the market. He argued that if we do anything at all specialized we have to participate in the market—whether we like it or not. The only way avoid the market is to do everything yourself: farm your own food, make your own clothes, and so on. He also argued that the material wealth of Western societies in fact empowers individuals. This is because material surplus gives many choices and decisions over to individual consumers. They can choose between this material product or that one, and producers compete for these choices. In contrast to this, societies that are not producing a surplus give choice over to the producers: the producer chooses to make this or that product, and the consumer is stuck with the producers’ choices. His most caustic remark, though—and he apologized for possibly being reductive—was about the antimarket attitude of many twentieth-century avant-garde artists. He said he thought they were misguided and naïve.
I left the event wanting to ask him a bunch of questions and with a thirst to know more about him. I chickened out and did not ask the question I really, really wanted to ask him, which was this: “What political label would you apply to your self?” I also wanted to ask him if he would comment on the Benjamin Buchloh review of the 51st Venice Bienale in Artforum. Earlier Sehgal had argued (in criticism of documenta 11) that all art is political, whether the artist is aware of their politics or not. I hope Sehgal wins the Hugo Boss Prize in December, so he finally exhibits in New York, but somehow I doubt he will.
The audience turnout was odd. There were about thirty people there. The auditorium was less than half full. And it looked like mostly students. I thought maybe I’d run into some of the newer New York critics and curators, but I was wrong. I looked around for them. There were really no professorial types there either, although they are sometimes hard to spot.
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