Syndicate: IRWIN 1 for Oliver Fromer

["Miran Mohar" <miran@mordor.kud-fp.si>]

This is a response from Borut Vogelnik, a member of the Irwin group,
to the letter of Jan Aman (curator of the Interpol exhibition) in
response to the Letter of support concerning Alexander Brener's action
in Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (signed by Eda Cufer, Goran
Djordjevic, Irwin - Dusan Mandic, Miran Mohar, Andrej Savski, Roman
Uranjek, Borut Vogelnik. 

In E-mail IRWIN2 is enclosed also an interview with Jan Aman and
Viktor Misiano concerning Interpol show in Stockolm in February 1996.
Interview was a part of Irwin project for the same show.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------


EXCHANGE VALUE AND THE ACT OF DESTROYING ARTIFACTS

Jan Aman, the organizer and one of the curators of the Interpol
project, which took place in Stockholm more than a year ago, expresses
surprise that Irwin and Eda Cufer are surprised about the position and
content of "An Open Letter to the Art World." For those not familiar
 with this letter, it was sent by Aman and a group of artists and
critics immediately after the events of the project exhibition
opening. Our opinion, though collective, is really a personal one, and
one of the possible interpretations on the Stockholm event. Why is Jan
Aman surprised? Is it possible that he doesn't understand that "An
Open Letter.." is also just another personal interpretation -- this
one sent to all important offices of contemporary art community?
Actually he gives evidence of having understood that, simply by
defining his comment as his own version. But why, then, is he so
provoked by facing another version, or shall we say vision of events?
When the "Open Letter..." he signed is characterized by us as
something "primitive and nonchalant" (though perhaps "opportunistic"
would be a better definition), he replied that "An Open letter.." was
a "sign of action, as well as that of Alexander Brener". He himself
obviously accepted a definition that "An open letter" can be as
primitive to some interpretations as Brener's act was primitive to the
position and interpretation he defends. "An Open Letter..." makes it
very clear that Brener's act was regarded as primitive and
unacceptable form of art in a "democracy" to those who signed it. But
can we say that the whole conflict was only a clash of two types of
primitivism? It's very peculiar that in his comment on our assertion
that Wanda Go's work destroyed the established rules of the project
(by being, as even the authors of the Open Letter confirmed, " ...the
main and central installation of the exhibition..."), Aman answered
with the rhetorical question "What if there were no rules?"

We are faced with a very complex situation here. There are numbers of
versions of the event in Stockholm which can be equally truthful. But
as a matter of fact, I don't agree that there were no rules. And if
rules existed, it follows that it's possible to find out who actually
broke them. To do that we first have to check some facts:

At the beginning of our collaboration (which encompassed the Stockholm
meeting of 1994 and Moscow meeting of 1995) we all agreed that the
exhibition was supposed to grow out of dialogue and interaction -- an
interactive relationship of one artifact toward the other. Another
rule was also supposed to ensure equal conditions of work for all
participants of the project. Finally, and perhaps most importantly:
It's also true that, as early as in Moscow in 1995, we accepted the
rule that any artists is allowed to make a physical intervention into
the work of another artists -- and that it is for the potentially
"violated" artist (or his colleagues) to prevent, or allow, a certain
possibly destructive action. Discussion about this question was
stimulated by Anatoly Osmalowsky, Mauricio Catalan and Alexander
Brener who at that time were collaborating on a joint project within
the Interpol framework. I don't remember the exact details of the
concept they presented of their project, but I do remember that
Osmalowsky had the idea of himself playing the role of giving orders
for physical intervention into the presented artifacts, that Brener
was supposed to execute his orders, and Catalan was supposed to
protect the artifacts from Brener. We all had trouble accepting the
logic of this project at the time, but finally we accepted the
specific relevance and specific possible symbolic language it could
have, as well as its relevance within the direction of the whole
project as proposed. Osmalowsky for some reason didn't participate in
the end, Catalan proposed a new project, and Brener actually did
exactly what we spoke about -- and agreed to -- a year ago. Something
that we agreed would be possible and permitted. In other words (and
this bears repeating, given the context of this letter): We
constructed our project incorporating the possibility that individual
work within it could potentially be destroyed or modified by somebody
else. 

As for Aman's opinion that Irwin and all the Russian artists knew in
advance what Brener was planning to do, we can only ask him and the
public to believe our word that we didn't know anything about Brener's
plans. We  talked the night before the opening about the possibility
that Brener was preparing a surprise; Vadim Fishkin and Juri Leiderman
were present during the discussion. It was quite logical, if you knew
his previous work, to predict that Brener would do something
unexpected, though nobody knew exactly what that might be, the evening
before it happened. Aman stated that regardless of the various
discussions before the opening, nobody questioned the concrete concept
of the exhibition. This is not true. The night before the opening
there was a dinner as a part of the Gutev project, in which Alexander
Brener commented that the concept of the exhibition from his point of
view was a compromise and failure.

On the other hand, the role of Oleg Kulik (the "Dangerous Dog") in
this scandal is even more symptomatic of the rules question. He was
invited to participate at the last moment, therefore he didn't
participate in previous discussions. He was invited directly by Jan
Aman and Victor Misiano -- an action which already broke the first
rule of the project, a rule which stated that Jan Aman and Victor
Misiano, the two curators of the project, were to chose a group of
artists from Moscow and Stockholm; those artists were than asked to
invite other artists from international community to collaborate on
their project (and on the project as a whole) through regular three
year meetings. Irwin were invited by Vadim Fishkin, and our two
projects were conceptually interconnected. Only Kulik was invited by
the organizers to present an old project, the concept of which was to
perform as a dog. Before Stockholm, Kulik had already caused some
scandals with this performance, by attacking the audience and ending
up in the custody of the Swiss police. It's clear, therefore, that
Aman -- who obviously was well aware of these events -- accepted the
very real possibility that Kulik would repeat the whole menu he had
ordered. Including biting -- something a dangerous dog does, and by
definition. In fact Kulik was on a chain during the opening, and there
was a written warning that he was a dangerous dog. The audience
obviously didn't take the warning seriously: they saw a man and not a
dog. Less understandable was the behavior of a curator already well
aware of that dog's history of behavior. Aman's "surprise" that Kulik,
an artist who had decided to be a dog, would also behave as a dog,
gives rise to the possibility that he simply didn't take Kulik's art
seriously. Could it be that he invited him for some other reason than
art? Kulik's action becomes an ontological subject matter exactly
because the artists' seriousness about his own role was
underestimated. How to otherwise explain Aman's reaction, of kicking
him during the opening -- an action one takes towards a disobedient
dog? By kicking Kulik in his dog/human head, Aman legitimized Kulik as
the former. Later somebody even called the police to discipline Kulik.

Aman is right when he said that there is no reason for us to be
surprised by Wanda Go's work. It is true that there were no rules
about exactly how the exhibition was supposed to look, but there was a
rule allowing mutual interference -- the ability to physically
intervene -- into the artifacts comprising part of "Interpol."
Moreover, there was also an agreement that the organizer would provide
equal conditions for the realization of these artifacts. It was
understandable and accepted that the budget was not big; we were all
ready to adapt our needs to the existing financial resources. The
sizes of each individual project were to have been defined well before
the project opening; the organizers would then have to calculate
equitable space, etc. The fact is that all the Swedish projects,
together with Wanda Go's, were finished even before we arrived in
Stockholm. Some of them were very expensive, dealing with high
technology or high-tech design solutions. It is completely
understandable that Swedish artists worked at home and were therefore
more involved in the fund-raising process; these artists were able to
work in their studios using ordinary means of production. What is not
so understandable is that only two projects out of seven on the so
called "Eastern side" were even completed. For example:

a) The project of Juri Leiderman was only partly realized --
specifically the part he managed to finish in Moscow.

b) Dimitri Gutev stated that the garbage and detritus left on the
table after dinner the night before the opening was the substance of
his project (the purpose of the dinner was a discussion about the
Interpol project and our conceptual relationships to it and each
other). Gutev therefore asked that this material be left on the table
as his artifact, but the organizers nevertheless cleaned the table.
Let's take the charitable view that that the organizer did so because
of some local law on hygiene; even given that circumstance somebody
should have explained that to Gutev, who on the day of the opening
discovered that part of his artifact ended up in the garbage.
Meanwhile the other part of his artifact - the video film of the
dinner - mysteriously disappeared. As the organizers explained,
somebody had "lost it." Gutev's entire contribution to Interpol ended
up "in the garbage. " 

c) Regardless of all promises that the organizer would provide
international telephone lines for Vadim Fishkin's project, no lines
were available on the day of opening. Fishkin's project also remained
100% unrealized.

d) Due to some complication with his visa Anatoli Osmalowsky didn't
manage to come to Stockholm, so he sent instructions for his project
by fax. 

e) Four months before the opening we sent detailed plans to the
organizers, who promised to built our mobile vehicle -- a key
component of our artifact -- with the assistance of a group of
students. A few days before the opening there was still no vehicle
anywhere in sight, and we were forced to use a vehicle of incorrect
dimensions, adapted by ourselves just days before the opening. As a
result we had no time to work on the video which was to be the most
important part of Irwin's contribution to the project. (We were also
only partly present at Gutev's dinner for the same reason, and thus
our collaboration with others in Interpol was compromised.) And since
we were also working in collaboration with Vadim Fishkin, his
inability to do his project effected and damaged ours as well.

And this is not all. A few days before the opening we discovered that
FargFabriken, the organization sponsoring Interpol, had organized
another opening on the same evening as Interpol -- and in a room of
the Interpol exhibition space! Startled Interpol participants found in
this room an exhibition of Russian socialist industrial design.
Despite lack of money and time to finish the Interpol project (which
they were ostensibly supporting), FargFabriken found enough of both to
make gleaming display cases for these artifacts. What's more, there
were no sign separating this exhibition from the main body of Interpol
-- visitors would have been hard-pressed to know that they were not
part of the same project. In fact, as Interpol was based on the
Stockholm-Moscow relationship, and as the achievements of science,
technology and design plays such a large role in the mythology of
modern art, it was quite hard to get rid of the feeling that these two
exhibitions didn't open on the same day by accident. Could it be that
they were part of the same exhibition in the minds of the organizers? 


A few questions have to be posed: 

1. How are we to understand that all the projects of the artists from
the so called "Eastern group" -- people who, because they were guests
in Stockholm, clearly required the assistance of the organizers --
weren't realized? Wouldn't it be accurate to say that, as was
discussed in detail well in advance, the organizers were also
responsible for the realization of these projects?

3. Is it not possible to say that if these projects were not properly
realized, then they were not complete -- and therefore were damaged? 

4. Is it not possible to say that if the organizers didn't realize the
project according to previously held agreement, that these same
organizers damaged or even destroyed those projects/artifacts?

The only two finished projects by the so called "Eastern group" were
those by Brener and Kulik -- and both of them were stigmatized as
unacceptable. Why? Obviously not because the organizers were ignorant
of the work of Kulik and Brener. I would suggest that it was because
the type of art performed that evening broke certain preconceptions
and expectations of the organizers. The video interviews Aman and
Misiano gave for Irwin's project say a lot about their different
"expectation horizons" -- something connected mostly to different
visions of interaction with the so-called international art community.
(See appendix of the transcribed parts of the interview) Other
questions which can be posed after reflecting on the Interpol scandal
in the context of the international exchange of value include:

1. How to understand the exchange value of the symbolic function of
artifacts in the art distribution system.

2. How to treat the act of destroying artifacts.

Both of the above are also the main questions connected to Brener's
latest act -- in which he spray-painted a green dollar sign over a
Malevich painting in the Stedelijk Museum. I will say something more
about my view on the above two questions in the second part of the
letter, but first let's finish this first part with a comment on some
accusations, specifically that Brener's act as "fascistic" and that
Brener himself is a fascist. The day after Brener's act in Stockholm,
Oliver Zahn, editor of Purple Prose magazine and one of the initiators
of  " An Open Letter...", changed this stigmatization into a question
in the press conference, posed directly to Alexander Brener: 

"Are you a Fascist? "

Well, I would like to add my answer on this question by posing
another question: 

Is the curator who physically attack an artist whom he invited to the
exhibition while the artists is performing a fascist? Or not? 

With his act, the curator didn't attacked only Oleg Kulik the person
but also Oleg Kulik the artifact. For me a more logical explanation
than fascism would be that he simply lost his nerve. The unbearable
ease with which somebody can be accused of  fascism can be explained
by another example, this one drawn from the political and historical
present. During the recent war in ex-Yugoslavia, Serbia was accused of
being a fascist country because of its genocide of the Bosnian
Muslims. Genocide, apparently, is impossible in democratic societies.
In the symposium titled "Living with Genocide", which I participated
in Ljubljana, some political theorists disagreed with this conviction,
as well as with the definition of Serbia as a Fascist state. They
stated that Serbia acted within all standards of "direct democracy".
In fact they argued -- using many examples -- that genocide was more
the rule than the exception in the historical establishment of
existing democratic states. How is it that we could forget that
genocide is not purely a fascist project? Democratic genocide exists,
and obviously it is a historically legitimized way to get and maintain
power. The accusation of being a fascist is often used as a
stigmatization of, exclusion of and action against the Other -- one
which functions as an admirably effective way to maintain cohesion
within one's own group, society or civilization.  

II

Let's leave aside the fact that it is quite questionable how it is,
exactly, that the Stedeljik Museum found itself in possession of
Kazimir Malevich collection of Suprematist paintings. Let's not
discuss here the fact that Kazimir Malevich's art works have more in
common with Orthodox icons than his western interpreters are generally
ready to admit (in Orthodox -- and by extension Russian -- tradition
icons are objects which contain the possibility of their own death;
their physical destruction, however, has its own set of regulations.
Only evil icons, for example, can be destroyed without these rituals).
Let's rather focus on some other facts regarding Alexander Brener's
latest destruction of an artifact. Alexander Brener sprayed a dollar
sign on a Malevich work titled "Suprematism" which was not his
personal property. By his own interpretation he did that as a protest
against the alienation of art and artifacts, which increasingly speak
only the language of money. After his act he called the guards, and
confessed his act of damaging another's property. For that he was
accused and legally prosecuted. But nevertheless it can be surmised
that informed public opinion held that his act was an irreparable
desecration of an artifact which constitutes part of the spiritual
inheritance of humankind. (Irreparable because the restoration
allegedly couldn't remove tiny green drops which penetrated deeply
into the painting, and which will forever be visible through a
microscope.) It's interesting to note the widely held opinion that
money distorts and perverts art. There are many artist and art lovers
who will agree that the basic qualities of art are a proclaimed
humanistic direction and purity of statement. As a protest against
what could be called "money civilization", Alexander Brener's act
becomes partly understandable to those who hold this kind of
perception. But at the same time, this is followed by a certain
discomfort at taking this interpretation so seriously. The fact is
that for quite a time now, the exchange value of art fits readily not
only into the very logic of production of art but also into the
systems of evaluation and distribution . In the name of pure art (to
take only two more recent examples), Mark Kostabi and Jeff Koons were
both widely criticized. Windows of a gallery where Kostabi exhibited
were broken; some people stated, after a Jeff Koons show, that the
exhibition was excellent but that artifacts were lousy. Similar
statement can be found in the writing of George Dicke: "...as a work
of art Duchamp's ready-mades may not be worth much, but as examples of
art they are very valuable for art theory... A work of art in the
classificatory sense is (1) an artifact (2) a set of the aspects which
has had conferred upon it the status of candidate for appreciation by
some person or persons acting on behalf of a certain social
institution(the art world)." Daniel Buren: "The museum/gallery
instantly promotes to 'Art' status whatever it exhibits with
conviction, i. e. habit." Artists and art lovers on the one hand
defend the humanistic qualities of art and on the other are forced to
accept the exchange values which organize the topology of art. At the
same time, they are against acts of destroying artifacts in the name
of what they ostensibly believe: that art works are the spiritual
heritage of all humankind. By this the logic of the contemporary art
system is accepted by a wide consensus, which inevitably gives
authority to those who select what will and will not receive this
status -- i.e., the status of worthy object. The existing art system
-- not only the logic of art distribution practiced by it, but art's
various developmental paths (i.e., styles, phases, "-isms") -- are
chosen and supported in advance as the direction to be taken by art in
the future. It is based on a method of selection defined by Immanuel
Kant in the Critique of Judgment: "The present investigation of taste,
as a faculty of aesthetic judgment, is not being undertaken with a
view to the formation or culture of taste, which will pursue its
course in the future, as in the past, without the help of such
inquiries." Therefore even though the described selection process is
based on the decisions of qualified experts, it is also based on
personal judgment -- not on absolute measures established exterior to
the art world frame. As for art, Marcel Duchamp stated: ".. the word
'art', etymologically speaking, means to make, simply to make. Now,
what is making? Making something is choosing a tube of blue, a tube of
red, putting some of it on the palette, and always choosing the
quality of blue, the quality of red, and always choosing the place to
put it on the canvas, it's always choosing. So in order to chose, you
can use tubes of paint, you can use brushes, but you can also use a
ready-made thing, made either mechanically or by the hand of another
man, even, if you want, and appropriate it, since it's you who have
chosen it. Choice is the main thing." But what does the art system do
with all the art works that are not chosen, not selected to become a
part of its corpus? It simply destroys it. Thomas McEvelly described
this social force of selection by stating: "The essence of the
modernist ideology that underlay the half-millennium in question was
that it had to be exclusionistic. In order to justify the outward
expansion of European superiority. This was effected in the early
period, that is the Renaissance and Baroque, by essentially
theological ideas, such as the supposed imperative to baptize the
heathen for their own good, no matter how much control you had to
exert over them to do so, no matter how much violence you had to do to
their cultures, their resources, and their bodies." If Brener is
accused by saying that the green paint remaining deep in the fabric of
Malevich's painting after his act (and the restoration of the
painting) renders the audience unable to see the exact work Malevich
painted, it is also true that there are an infinity of paintings which
can not, and will not, be seen by those same spectators. And it is
also true that the whole potential opus, the directions, the "isms"
which could have developed under different circumstances will never be
developed. Walter Benjamin stated that any document of civilization is
at the same time a document if barbarism. It appears that exchange
value and the destruction of art are two sides of the same "coin." If
we accept that the artifact is finished when the artist physically
stops working on it, than we must also accept that the art system
destroys artifacts simply by excluding them, and that this is an
inherent logic of any system. The other possibility is that we decide
that the artifact is not finished in it's physical form, but that the
art system creatively finalizes every artifact through the process of
choice.

Therefore:

1. The art system is not a neutral entity but in fact is an active
partner in creation. It is a creative force.

2. The supposition that people will not be able to see the Malevich
original any more after Brener's act is not relevant, because the
physical work of Malevich was still in a process of creation long
after it left Kazimir Malevich's hands.

Brener's sin, crime, or whatever anybody wants to call it, is not that
he desecrated a painting but that he entered a territory of creation
under the domain of a reigning institution of the existing art system.
His action enlightens a certain paradox. Brener's act didn't negate
the market exchange value of Malevich's painting, but the opposite. It
is exactly because of the mechanisms of the exchange that his action
can be perceived as art.


Borut Vogelnik                             Ljubljana, March 20, 1997


continue...