My relationship with this particular bit of writing (from a Foucault lecture given in 1967) is an intimate one. In the last week, I’ve gone back and forth from reading this bit of Foucault to watching Michael Haneke’s “Caché” at least a dozen times, each time feeling the two are linked. Its going to be a bit of a stretch to relate these two together, but I’ll do my damnedest. The connection is something that I always come back to: both works discuss the relationships where private and public spill into each other.

In “Caché” the racial tensions that remain inherent in post-colonial French society demonstrate this “non-site” of neither public nor private. Over all, the film suggests it is one thing to support and favor a multicultural social fabric, but it is another thing to actually bring the otherness of an immigrant family into one’s own home. In the film, an unknown person sends to a wealthy Parisian family video footage observations of their home. In this regard, the film touches on the first heterotopia described by Foucalt: the mirror. He writes, “The mirror functions as a heterotopia in this respect: it makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there.”

Foucault hints at other such sites that enmesh themselves into our lives such as heterotopias of crisis and deviation. He describes these sites as places where, “those in which individuals whose behavior is deviant in relation to the required mean or norm are placed.” To return to Haneke’s “Caché,” as the film progresses, the main character Georges (Daniel Auteuil) pursues the sender of the videos into such a place. In this instance, it one of the many large late-modernist housing projects surrounding the city. Inside, immigrants, the poor, and others considered to be “others” are conveniently vertically stacked, isolated, and concealed.

Now to draw back to me and my work. (After all, I am the reason for the season… its true! My birthday is Sunday, May 01… also known as International Workers of the World day.) Foucault’s third principle of the heterotopia is perhaps most pressing on my mind this morning. Put simply, “The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible.” This is the thread that I’ve been yearning to examine and express with photography. In past work, I’ve failed to express this incompatibility that can occur within places of “non-site” even though it has been staring me in the face since the completion of my MFA exhibition. I’m going to expand more on this in subsequent posts on photos already gathering dust and also those that are still latent.

- R. Fairley

via: Minimal

White Flower, 1960. Oil on canvas, 71 7/8 x 72 inches (182.6 x 182.9 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Anonymous gift 63.1653. © 2007 Agnes Martin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

As the slide into full-blown winter solidifies, the concepts of failure and reduction have taken over my thoughts. When one thinks of improvement, of being a “better person”, the tendency is to look at what we lack and emphasize what we can acquire. I feel like I have been caught in this quagmire of acquisition for way too long (perhaps roughly 27 years).

Reduction.
Simplification.
These are my new goals.
By all intensive logic, I want less.
I want to fail.

What does it mean to fail? According to Agnes Martin, failure is a state which exists only when one has exhausted all means and possible courses of action. Failure is a terminal condition–an end of possibilities.

Can one consider it a victory to stop doing something? To cease to acquire? To cease to care? Is that really failure? Or is the act of losing all choice, movement, and flexibility that elusive  apex of liberation I have been searing for?

Just a bit more Agnes and then I am going to call it a night, crawl into bed, and be blissfully unconscious.

“To progress in life you must give up the things you do not like. Give up doing the things that you do not like to do. You must find the things that you do like. The things that are acceptable to your mind.”

I really cannot think of anything I would like more.

My response at the dinner table last night was knee-jerk worthy. I immediately said no: it is not ethically responsible to advance your career/finances by working with a repressive government. By accepting funding from a regime that imports one-step-above slave labor to build an entire city (UAE) or through showing work in a country that still beheads people (Saudi Arabia) I feel an artist is legitimizing those behaviors.

A long time ago, in a magical land called the 1980s, there was a somewhat similar controversy over the Sun City resort in South Africa. A number of artists refused to play at the exclusive resort because of it’s strict enforcement of apartheid. I’d like to think that the attention brought about by these protests was significant enough that it reached a greater audience and started the push toward equality in SA.

My friends last night, introduced another dimension to this argument that further grays the ethical boundaries. Is greater good done by protesting, on the outside of a society… or is there a greater sense of change caused by traveling to a repressive place and exhibiting part of your culture? Does playing by the rules, not being openly protestant or politically subversive (even if you deeply disagree or object to a situation) and showing your work with the blessing of an authoritarian regime give hope that other’s views may one day also be publicly presentable?

I apologize if this post is a bit of a ramble… as I mentioned above, I am in an ethical gray-zone…

Justin Lentz

During the avalanche of work yesterday, my friend in Los Angeles – Justin Lentz, sent me this great photograph from a photo shoot he was conducting. I’m excited to see the actual photographs that will emerge from his working process… but this iPhone image has me captivated right now. This little juicy tidbit reminds me of a recent blog post about photography as a lifestyle vs. photography as a strict, project based discipline. Personally, I love it when artists using photography are able to blend it into their practices as a human being… not simply running through the parameters of a project outline. (I will photograph X in X style until someone pays attention to how great thousands of images of X are)

It is only Wednesday and I feel completely drained. This week has been an energy vampire of unrivaled proportions. (Speaking of vampires, I find this article about fried blood on the menu in Chad really disturbing).

*****

On a separate note: I am finally going to break down and check out the “Quick and the Dead” exhibition at the Walker Art Center this weekend. Perhaps then, I will finally be able to see which ideas in conceptual art are officially DEAD and which ones the Walker has decided are ALIVE. Remember – ideas are just objects.

From Artist Fiona Gardner and writer Amy Zimmer

My point exactly: there are places where shared assets like public transit are considered valuable (even a source of pride). Such is the case in New York with the Miss Subways Pageant. LINK.
(Via Infrastructurist)

end of public domain

I decided to spend this Easter Sunday hunting around and photographing the abandoned structures that make up Ft. Snelling Park. Located 15 minutes south of MPLS, along the stretch of highways 55 and 62 that lead to the airport, I’ve always been curious about this place. As luck would have it, today Curtis, Lindsay, Amber and I finally had a chance to troll around.

I was a little worried as we wandered about. The area is a mish-mash of public parkland space, and its inverse square: highly restricted airport and military base.  In the back of my mind I kept remembering the story of  my friend David, who was approached by heavily armed military security for setting up a 4X5 camera and photographing the undersides of over-flying planes here.

razorwire and boulder

As I walked to the end of the park and approached the ominous looking airport fence, I was preparing myself for someone to point a gun at me and ask for my CF card. Such seems to be the attitude toward anyone who takes photographs in the public/private hinterlands of post-W America. I keep spinning around one question: What if the powers that be are actually able to stop everyone from photographing things which are not their friends and family?

I have a hard time imagining a world where everyone has been stripped of the (psychologically) externalizing practice of documenting something, someplace. What would the world be like if we were never able to expect a type of documentary truth in our lives that has to come from something like photography? I’m left thinking of Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451… a world where the physical record of an idea in book form is illegal… everyone is caught up in their own perceptions as truth.

debris

A few more photos are posted at my FLICKR page.

Issues surrounding representation have played a key role in the development of postmodern art. Prior to the theoretical challenges to representation launched by Jean Baudrillard, representation could be thought of as means of depicting or portraying of a subject, which relied upon the connection between the rendition and the original. Baudrillard asserted that there is little evidence to suggest that reality, the domain of the original object of depiction, ever existed. This brought about a crisis of representation because traditional modes of understanding the relationship of object and depiction could no longer be considered valid. As a response to this, the means of producing an image became integral to the understanding of the image – the medium became the message in contrast to the traditional notion of the object of depiction embodying the meaning. The paintings of Gerhard Richter are emblematic of the new mode of representation and artists employing photography in art demonstrate the resituating of representation.

The crisis of representation that now seems so apparent after the writing of Baudrillard was also the result of a convergence of historical conditions both inside and outside of art. As a result, art’s capacity to depict the world was effected. This period of crisis, and or the 1970’s and 1980s in particular, was marked by the widespread acceptance of mass-communication and mass-images by the majority of western industrialized society, especially television and the products of an expanding consumer culture. Baudrillard brought attention to the mass mediated image and claimed that it had greater importance beyond the act of depiction or illustration. As mentioned above, the accepted model of representation now began to show symptoms of crisis, which included the idea that the means of producing the image could take a place of significance next to the subject or object once represented in reality. In essence, how the image was encountered became as important as the subject matter. Because representation was now severed from the object it signified, it became possible to locate, research, and critique the social and political agendas of art, images, and art makers.

FIG 1: I Shop Therefore I Am, Barbara Krueger

This new agenda of images emerged out of historical conditions during the 1970s and 1980s, which led to a greater focus on the political aspects of art, and thus further contributed to the issues surrounding representation. For example, representation in art was first challenged by the emergence of artists and theorists drawing from the questions asked by feminism. Their critique acted in two ways: it asked, “who deserved to be represented by or have a voice in art?” and also, “what political agenda does representation in art serve?” Barbara Kruger, through her series of images utilizing the forms of advertising (Fig 1), demonstrated that art could serve a new, directed social and political agenda. Her work made problematic the act of representation because she depicted through established, persuasive imagery a new schema of depiction – something not possible without the breakdown of representation. In essence, she utilized an understood method of representation to critique its aims and consequences.
The significant fissures that appeared in the model of representation allowed Hal Foster to argue in his essay, “Subversive Signs” that the most provocative art was beyond media specificity and that artists engaged in such practices were all using public space and social representation as both a target and a weapon. (Foster 1037) Kruger further enhanced this idea by using multiple media (photo + text) and then re-locating her work beyond the gallery to public kiosks, billboards, and mass transit—evidence that an agenda-injected art’s ability to depict reality could be blurred with mass-mediated advertising—and therefore, turn attention to the relationship of the audience to the subject matter.

FIG 2: Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, Hans Haake

In a similar manner, artists turned to photography as a means of documentation outside of the content of abstract, purely conceptual art and instead focused attention on the political and social climates connected to the image. Work that shifted away from the purely conceptual aspects of art, such as time and space began to directly engage historical and political dimensions. Hans Haacke tested the viewer’s ability to see his images as works of aesthetic or abstract conceptual art and further challenged the methods of depiction, which could be grasped by the art model. This is illustrated in his piece, “Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real Time System as of May 1, 1971.” (Fig 2) In this piece, representation’s function was challenged by the connection of the artwork to the political situation underpinning Haacke’s conceptual investigation of the power structures of those who were wealthy and powerful in the world of art. He pushed to indicate the lack of congruency between the art world and the base from which it draws its wealth and privilege. This was also an indicator that with the expansion of what is suitable subject matter for representation came the expansion of both the self critical and socially critical aspects of art.

The result of works such as Kruger and Haacke’s, according to Foster was a change in the roles of the artist and viewer. Because the static definition of representation had given way to a post-Baudrillard idea of free-floating signs, an artist could be described as simply a manipulator of signs—or as intervening in the construction of meaning. As a result, the viewer was forced out of the passive position of allowing material to flow over them and was required to actively read the content of the work. The implementation of this expanded model of representation was not fully illustrated, ironically, until artists such as Gerhard Richter returned to the historically established means of art production (painting).

FIG 3: Stag, Gerhard Richter

The paintings of Gerhard Richter are emblematic of the crisis of representation in terms of both the practice of creating the images as well their situation in the context of art history. Symptoms of a crisis in representation are directly present in the paintings Richter created from photographs. Taken from both personal sources, such as family photographs and snapshots, as well as from the mass-mediated reality of printed images from newspapers, Richter demonstrated with these paintings a new sense of distance in terms of representation–this “distance” manifested through the idea that the paintings are derived from photographs and therefore are representations of representations. Donald Kuspit wrote about the way that Richter’s images questioned the absolute nature of both abstract (conceptual) and natural (symbolic) representation. (Kuspit 139)

In contrast to paintings, which represent the natural, emotive, and lasting qualities of human experiences, photographs act as an indicator and document of a specific historical event or condition. Part of Richter’s return to paintings indicates that art images have lost their inherent ability to function as representations and he argues that perfection of execution has led to diminished representational power—paintings can no longer function in a manner they once could. (Buchloh 1149) The apparatus of photography has diffused the power of representation once held by the medium of painting in works such as Stag. (Fig 3) This image is impossible without the confluence of the qualities of the photographic apparatus (depth of field—blurring) and the values of painting (simplification, tonal values, physical format).

FIG 4: Uncle Rudi, Gerhard Richter

With Uncle Rudi, (Fig 4) Richter employs the look and feel of a black and white photograph while incorporating the obvious marks and blurs available only to painting. Photography, in general changed the viewer’s relationship to images and this painting of the artist’s uncle in the uniform of the Nazi state serves as evidence of this observation. Uncle Rudi indicates another issue – Richter does not make a distinction between the personal, historical, and social representational functions of the photographic image. As a result, viewers are not able to locate the source of the representation without entering into a network of associations that link the social, personal, and historical data in a broadened context of cause and effect.

The Baader-Meinhoff paintings, for example, also contain and exploit these qualities. (Figs 5,6) On one hand, they ask the question of what content is being depicted? Is it the conscious illustration of Richter’s return to painting events of historical significance and therefore referencing history painting as a genre? Or is this the depiction of the conceptual aspects of collective social consciousness?

In an interview, Benjamin Buchloh described Richter’s paintings as having “an anti-artistic quality that denies the autobiographical, the creative and the original.” (Buchloh 1147) These qualities identify Richter’s paintings, such as those from the Baader-Meinhoff series, with the cold reproductive practices of postmodern photographers and not with the historical veneration of painting. These paintings demonstrate a core paradoxical quality of the crisis of representation—the exploration of the personal representation of a greater historical content, and the review of the historical qualities and consequences of painting as a medium. Donald Kuspit observed that with the return to an emphasis on painting indicates the depth of the crisis of representation. For example, by employing photography, these paintings show that the subject matter of the painting has disappeared into an abstract concept and can only be recovered as a fiction derived from the abstraction of the subject. (Kuspit Page 143) This fully opens up the critique of the medium of painting’s representative functions because we have seen the evolution and deconstruction of painting to its ends and returning to painting can only carry with it critical insight into the consequences of its expression.

FIG 5: Funeral, Gerhard Richter

FIG 6: Confrontation 3, Gerhard Richter

These issues surrounding Richter’s work especially indicate that the stable model of representation that functioned at the core of art prior to postmodernism fell into a state of crisis. The theoretical challenges of Baudrillard presented a first blow to the static explanation of representation and allowed for the re-evaluation of the relationship of the sign to the signifier. Because of the suggestion that reality no longer existed, other aspects of representation came to the forefront of understanding how and what art depicts. This included such ideas as the medium becoming the message, which, in turn allowed for the close examination of the agenda of images and image-makers. The works of art mentioned above, by Kruger, Haacke, and Richter embody the multiple facets in which the crisis of representation has become apparent.

Works Cited
Buchloh, Benjamin. “Gerhard Richter from ‘Interview with Benjamin Buchloh.” Art in Theory 1900-200. An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood. Malden: Blackwell, 2003. 1147.

Foster, Hal. “Subversive Signs.” Art in Theory 1900-200. An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood. Malden: Blackwell, 2003. 1037.

Kuspit, Donald. “Flak from the Radicals: The American Case Against German Painting.” Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation. Ed. Brian Wallis.
New York: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984. 139, 143