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TAGGED: ►An Appalling Essay +++ NO Show Museum +++ Outlaw Bible of American Art +++ Ghost Dance +++ Dockworker Monument +++ Human Rights +++ From Pain to Paint
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ALAN KAUFMAN: Nonetheless rings true | New York on Sep 20 | Tobias Stone: History tells us what may happen next with Brexit & Trump. It seems we’re entering another of those stupid seasons humans impose on themselves at fairly regular intervals. I am sketching out here opinions based on information, they may prove right, or may prove wrong, and they’re intended just to challenge and be part of a wider dialogue.
La Peste di Firenze
My background is archaeology, so also history and anthropology. It leads me to look at big historical patterns. My theory is that most peoples’ perspective of history is limited to the experience communicated by their parents and grandparents, so 50–100 years. To go beyond that you have to read, study, and learn to untangle the propaganda that is inevitable in all telling of history. In a nutshell, at university I would fail a paper if I didn’t compare at least two, if not three opposing views on a topic. Taking one telling of events as gospel doesn’t wash in the comparative analytical method of research that forms the core of British academia. (I can’t speak for other systems, but they’re definitely not all alike in this way).
So zooming out, we humans have a habit of going into phases of mass destruction, generally self imposed to some extent or another. This handy list shows all the wars over time. Wars are actually the norm for humans, but every now and then something big comes along. I am interested in the Black Death, which devastated Europe. The opening of Boccaccio’s Decameron describes Florence in the grips of the Plague. It is as beyond imagination as the Somme, Hiroshima, or the Holocaust. I mean, you quite literally can’t put yourself there and imagine what it was like. For those in the midst of the Plague it must have felt like the end of the world.
But a defining feature of humans is their resilience. To us now it seems obvious that we survived the Plague, but to people at the time it must have seemed incredible that their society continued afterwards. Indeed, many takes on the effects of the Black Death are that it had a positive impact in the long term. Well summed up here: “By targeting frail people of all ages, and killing them by the hundreds of thousands within an extremely short period of time, the Black Death might have represented a strong force of natural selection and removed the weakest individuals on a very broad scale within Europe,“ …In addition, the Black Death significantly changed the social structure of some European regions. Tragic depopulation created the shortage of working people. This shortage caused wages to rise. Products prices fell too. Consequently, standards of living increased. For instance, people started to consume more food of higher quality.”
But for the people living through it, as with the World Wars, Soviet Famines, Holocaust, it must have felt inconceivable that humans could rise up from it. The collapse of the Roman Empire, Black Death, Spanish Inquisition, Thirty Years War, War of the Roses, English Civil War… it’s a long list. Events of massive destruction from which humanity recovered and move on, often in better shape.
At a local level in time people think things are fine, then things rapidly spiral out of control until they become unstoppable, and we wreak massive destruction on ourselves. For the people living in the midst of this it is hard to see happening and hard to understand. To historians later it all makes sense and we see clearly how one thing led to another. During the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme I was struck that it was a direct outcome of the assassination of an Austrian Arch Duke in Bosnia. I very much doubt anyone at the time thought the killing of a European royal would lead to the death of 17 million people.
My point is that this is a cycle. It happens again and again, but as most people only have a 50–100 year historical perspective they don’t see that it’s happening again. As the events that led to the First World War unfolded, there were a few brilliant minds who started to warn that something big was wrong, that the web of treaties across Europe could lead to a war, but they were dismissed as hysterical, mad, or fools, as is always the way, and as people who worry about Putin, Brexit, and Trump are dismissed now.
Then after the War to end all Wars, we went and had another one. Again, for a historian it was quite predictable. Lead people to feel they have lost control of their country and destiny, people look for scapegoats, a charismatic leader captures the popular mood, and singles out that scapegoat. He talks in rhetoric that has no detail, and drums up anger and hatred. Soon the masses start to move as one, without any logic driving their actions, and the whole becomes unstoppable.
That was Hitler, but it was also Mussolini, Stalin, Putin, Mugabe, and so many more. Mugabe is a very good case in point. He whipped up national anger and hatred towards the land owning white minority (who happened to know how to run farms), and seized their land to redistribute to the people, in a great populist move which in the end unravelled the economy and farming industry and left the people in possession of land, but starving. See also the famines created by the Soviet Union, and the one caused by the Chinese Communists last century in which 20–40 million people died. It seems inconceivable that people could create a situation in which tens of millions of people die without reason, but we do it again and again.
But at the time people don’t realise they’re embarking on a route that will lead to a destruction period. They think they’re right, they’re cheered on by jeering angry mobs, their critics are mocked. This cycle, the one we saw for example from the Treaty of Versaille, to the rise of Hitler, to the Second World War, appears to be happening again. But as with before, most people cannot see it because:
1. They are only looking at the present, not the past or future
2. They are only looking immediately around them, not at how events connect globally.
3. Most people don’t read, think, challenge, or hear opposing views.Trump is doing this in America. Those of us with some oversight from history can see it happening. Read this brilliant, long essay in the New York magazine to understand how Plato described all this, and it is happening just as he predicted. Trump says he will Make America Great Again, when in fact America is currently great, according to pretty well any statistics. He is using passion, anger, and rhetoric in the same way all his predecessors did?—?a charismatic narcissist who feeds on the crowd to become ever stronger, creating a cult around himself. You can blame society, politicians, the media, for America getting to the point that it’s ready for Trump, but the bigger historical picture is that history generally plays out the same way each time someone like him becomes the boss.
On a wider stage, zoom out some more, Russia is a dictatorship with a charismatic leader using fear and passion to establish a cult around himself. Turkey is now there too. Hungary, Poland, Slovakia are heading that way, and across Europe more Trumps and Putins are waiting in the wings, in fact funded by Putin, waiting for the popular tide to turn their way.
We should be asking ourselves what our Archduke Ferdinand moment will be. How will an apparently small event trigger another period of massive destruction. We see Brexit, Trump, Putin in isolation. The world does not work that way?—?all things are connected and affecting each other. I have pro-Brexit friends who say ‘oh, you’re going to blame that on Brexit too??’ But they don’t realise that actually, yes, historians will trace neat lines from apparently unrelated events back to major political and social shifts like Brexit.
Brexit ?—?a group of angry people winning a fight?—?easily inspires other groups of angry people to start a similar fight, empowered with the idea that they may win. That alone can trigger chain reactions. A nuclear explosion is not caused by one atom splitting, but by the impact of the first atom that splits causing multiple other atoms near it to split, and they in turn causing multiple atoms to split. The exponential increase in atoms splitting, and their combined energy is the bomb. That is how World War One started and, ironically how World War Two ended.
An example of how Brexit could lead to a nuclear war could be this:
Brexit in the UK causes Italy or France to have a similar referendum. Le Pen wins an election in France. Europe now has a fractured EU. The EU, for all its many awful faults, has prevented a war in Europe for longer than ever before. The EU is also a major force in suppressing Putin’s military ambitions. European sanctions on Russia really hit the economy, and helped temper Russia’s attacks on Ukraine (there is a reason bad guys always want a weaker European Union). Trump wins in the US. Trump becomes isolationist, which weakens NATO. He has already said he would not automatically honour NATO commitments in the face of a Russian attack on the Baltics.
With a fractured EU, and weakened NATO, Putin, facing an ongoing economic and social crisis in Russia, needs another foreign distraction around which to rally his people. He funds far right anti-EU activists in Latvia, who then create a reason for an uprising of the Russian Latvians in the East of the country (the EU border with Russia). Russia sends ‘peace keeping forces’ and ‘aid lorries’ into Latvia, as it did in Georgia, and in Ukraine. He annexes Eastern Latvia as he did Eastern Ukraine (Crimea has the same population as Latvia, by the way).
A divided Europe, with the leaders of France, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and others now pro-Russia, anti-EU, and funded by Putin, overrule calls for sanctions or a military response. NATO is slow to respond: Trump does not want America to be involved, and a large part of Europe is indifferent or blocking any action. Russia, seeing no real resistance to their actions, move further into Latvia, and then into Eastern Estonia and Lithuania. The Baltic States declare war on Russia and start to retaliate, as they have now been invaded so have no choice. Half of Europe sides with them, a few countries remain neutral, and a few side with Russia. Where does Turkey stand on this? How does ISIS respond to a new war in Europe? Who uses a nuclear weapon first?
This is just one Arch Duke Ferdinand scenario. The number of possible scenarios are infinite due to the massive complexity of the many moving parts. And of course many of them lead to nothing happening. But based on history we are due another period of destruction, and based on history all the indicators are that we are entering one.
It will come in ways we can’t see coming, and will spin out of control so fast people won’t be able to stop it. Historians will look back and make sense of it all and wonder how we could all have been so naïve. How could I sit in a nice café in London, writing this, without wanting to run away. How could people read it and make sarcastic and dismissive comments about how pro-Remain people should stop whining, and how we shouldn’t blame everything on Brexit. Others will read this and sneer at me for saying America is in great shape, that Trump is a possible future Hitler (and yes, Godwin’s Law. But my comparison is to another narcissistic, charismatic leader fanning flames of hatred until things spiral out of control). It’s easy to jump to conclusions that oppose pessimistic predictions based on the weight of history and learning. Trump won against the other Republicans in debates by countering their claims by calling them names and dismissing them. It’s an easy route but the wrong one.
Ignoring and mocking the experts , as people are doing around Brexit and Trump’s campaign, is no different to ignoring a doctor who tells you to stop smoking, and then finding later you’ve developed incurable cancer. A little thing leads to an unstoppable destruction that could have been prevented if you’d listened and thought a bit. But people smoke, and people die from it. That is the way of the human.
So I feel it’s all inevitable. I don’t know what it will be, but we are entering a bad phase. It will be unpleasant for those living through it, maybe even will unravel into being hellish and beyond imagination. Humans will come out the other side, recover, and move on. The human race will be fine, changed, maybe better. But for those at the sharp end?—?for the thousands of Turkish teachers who just got fired, for the Turkish journalists and lawyers in prison, for the Russian dissidents in gulags, for people lying wounded in French hospitals after terrorist attacks, for those yet to fall, this will be their Somme.
What can we do? Well, again, looking back, probably not much. The liberal intellectuals are always in the minority. See Clay Shirky’s Twitter Storm on this point. The people who see that open societies, being nice to other people, not being racist, not fighting wars, is a better way to live, they generally end up losing these fights. They don’t fight dirty. They are terrible at appealing to the populace. They are less violent, so end up in prisons, camps, and graves. We need to beware not to become divided (see: Labour party), we need to avoid getting lost in arguing through facts and logic, and counter the populist messages of passion and anger with our own similar messages. We need to understand and use social media. We need to harness a different fear. Fear of another World War nearly stopped World War 2, but didn’t. We need to avoid our own echo chambers. Trump and Putin supporters don’t read the Guardian, so writing there is just reassuring our friends. We need to find a way to bridge from our closed groups to other closed groups, try to cross the ever widening social divides.
(Perhaps I’m just writing this so I can be remembered by history as one of the people who saw it coming.)
► https://medium.com/@theonlytoby/history-tells-us-what-will-happen-next-with-brexit-trump-a3fefd154714#.8ymgmwthr
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Andreas Heusser: NO SHOW NORTH AMERICAN TOUR | Zurich on Aug 13 | Following the success of last year‘s European tour with around 30 exhibitions in 20 countries and a closing show at the 56. Biennale di Venezia, the NO SHOW MUSEUM is now on tour across America, including exhibitions in art venues and galleries, in public spaces and in remote areas. The mobile museum has been shipped from Europe to America with the mission to spread NOTHING in the New World: The 80-day exhibition tour will lead from New York to Canada, then to the West Coast of the U.S., and finally down to Mexico.
NORTH AMERICAN TOUR 2016
August 17 through October 30, 2016
"A breathtaking journey to the most remote regions of thinking"
(Annabelle Nr. 06/15)
The NO SHOW MUSEUM is the world’s first museum devoted to nothing and its various manifestations throughout the history of art. Its collection includes works and documents from over 120 renowned in- ternational artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, among them, Marina Abramovic, Joseph Beuys, Daniel Buren, Maurizio Cattelan, Marcel Duchamp, Hans Haacke, Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Gianni Motti, Robert Rauschenberg, Man Ray, Robert Ryman, Richard Serra, Santiago Sierra, Andy Warhol and Remy Zaugg.
The NO SHOW MUSEUM has a mobile presentation space in a converted postal car. It currently hosts the new special exhibition entitled NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE, comprised of a selection of impossible artworks by 22 international artists
SCHEDULE:
8-17 New York – Fresh Window Gallery / in coorporation with the Consulate General of Switzerland in New York
8-22 Montreal – Public Space Exhibition – TBA
8-25 Ottawa – EBA Gallery / in cooperation with PDA Projects + LPM Projects
9-1 Toronto – Scrap Metal Gallery
9-7 Detroit – Spread Art Gallery
9-15 Chicago – T.B.A.
9-24 St. Louis – Fort Gondo Gallery
9-30 Denver – Ice Cube Gallery
10-6 Santa Fe – TBA
10-13 Las Vegas – TBA
10-20 San Francisco – TBA
10-30 Los Angeles – Monte Vista Projects GalleryPARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
Robert Barry (USA) + Vincent Bezuidenhout (South Africa) + Stefan Brüggemann (Mexico) + Lai Chih-Sheng (Taiwan + Simon Gush (South Africa) + Stewart Home (England + Piotr Jaros (Poland) + Raphaël Julliard (Switzerland) + Roxy Kawitzky (South Africa) + San Keller (Switzerland) + Donna Kukama (South Africa) + Stano Masar (Slowakia) + Tom Menzi (Switzerland) + Boris Mitic (Serbia) + Ghislain Mollet-Viéville (France) + Anthea Moys (South Africa) + Peter Nadin (USA) + Roland Roos (Switzerland) + Karin Sander (Germany) + Tza Va (Bulgaria + James Webb (South Africa) + Ed Young (South Africa)>VISIT THE MUSEUM ►http://www.noshowmuseum.com
►www.facebook.com/noshowmuseum
© 2016 Andreas Heusser | Das Institut | 8004 Zurich/Switzerland
►more
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Clayton Patterson: NO!art IS MENTIONED HERE | New York on May 16 :
Made at New York Public Library: Outlaw American Art: 1945-2016 | Wednesday, June 22, 2016, 6 p.m. | Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Celeste Auditorium | Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street | New York, NY, 10018 | (917) 275-6975 | Alan Kaufman is an author-in-residence in the Frederick Lewis Allen Room and author of the groundbreaking "Outlaw" anthologies. The fourth and latest in the series is The Outlaw Bible of American Art, a 700-page revolutionary art world alternative canon of marginalized or famed autodidactic paint-slinging loners who followed their own outrageous, sometimes catastrophic visions to the heights of fame or the depths of neglect. Documenting movements from the Post-war to the present, this anthological barbaric yawp contains manifestos, essays, interviews, and biographies, plus hundreds of full color and black-and-white images and rare photos from some of the most cutting edge American artists, photographers, sculptors, and art writers.
Kaufman will present highlights and rare images from this underground history, profiling such artists and moments as Boris Lurie and the NO!art movement, Forrest Bess, Ana Mendieta, Ed Clark, Sue Coe, Joe Coleman, Clayton Patterson, The Guerrilla Art Action Group, David Wojnarowitz, and Jose 'Cochise' Quiles.Kaufman is a critically acclaimed novelist, memoirist and poet. In addition to the ►"Outlaw" anthologies ► The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, ► The Outlaw Bible of American Literature (co-edited with Barney Rosset), ► The Outlaw Bible of American Essays and The New Generation, his books include the novel ► Matches, the memoirs ► Jew boy and ► Drunken Angel. His most recent book of poetry is Straight Jacket Elegies. Kaufman is the former dean of The Free University of San Francisco and has been a lecturer at The Academy of Art University in San Francisco. His essays on culture and politics have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Partisan Review, and other publications.
Source: ► http://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2016/06/22/outlaw-american-art-1945-2016
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Kenneth Laing Herdy: GHOST DANCE | Toronto on Feb 20 | i was told by somebody to send this piece i did for the missing women and deaths in canada
About Kenneth Laing Herdy: With an extensive focus on Photography, the Toronto born artist has developed and produced several large bodies of self-directed work. Kenneth Laing Herdy's interest in history, science and our "path" have led him to a critical inquiry of the concepts and issues associated with the "self" in our post-modern society (ALANTIC c.1991).
He has also explored the abuse of the environment by the military industrial complex (ASSEMBLY LINEc.1999). In 2002, he spent 8 months in Japan traveling through the country with a 4x5 camera photographing the immense industrial giants that compete with nature (MOTHRA c.2002).
During the fall of 2003, he walked 827 km from the English Channel to the Swiss border following the trench lines from the First World War. During the walk, he documented the scars made in the landscape, and produced a collection of large format works that question the ideologies that led to such conflicts.
He is working on an ongoing project titled "The Extinction Series" following the capture and demise of various animal species. His visual influences include Classical and Flemish painting, military technology, and urban environments.
http://www.evanscontemporary.com/#!kenneth-laing-herdy/c1tku
https://www.facebook.com/kennethlaingherdy/
►https://vimeo.com/155403610
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Jens Galschiot: DOCKWORKER MONUMENT | Odense/Danmark on Feb 18 :
The union LO Aarhus has entered into a cooperation with Jens Galschiot regarding a dockworker monument at the harbor of Aarhus. The sculpture illustrates typical work situations at Aarhus Harbor, and it consists of 7 persons in copper–bronze and stainless steel. Salling Foundation has donated 405.000 euro for the sculpture. The sculpture should be launched in late August 2017, when Aarhus is the European Culture City.
►http://www.galschiot.com/dockworkermonumentinwax/
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Roberto Ronca: CALL FOR ARTISTS | Rovereto/Italy on Feb 16 | HUMAN RIGHTS? On 10th December 1948 , the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed: for the first time in the history of humanity, a document concerning all the people of the world was drawn up. Everyone of us, only due to the fact that he was born, enjoys the rights endorsed by the Declaration. Everyone of us, regardless of the place where he was born and where he lives, enjoys these rights. Everyone of us has civil, political, social, economical and cultural rights. Everyone of us is equal to the others.
Is it always so?
In HUMAN RIGHTS? artists speak about human rights. The title, simple and direct, without roundabout expressions, expresses the main idea which must go with everybody’s life. In this event, uncomfortable, complex and denunciation subjects are dealt with, in order to sting the conscience of all those who, enjoying their own rights, don’t think about all people whose rights are violated every day.
The logic of HUMAN RIGHTS? is based on the fundamental concept of art as a universal expressive form, understandable by everybody regardless of his language and culture, regardless of his gender, of the subject and of the languages used.
Languages vary depending on the artists’ experience and mastery, and they create new relationships with the audience, who approaches art feeling immediately involved and directly concerned. Discomfort images, violated rights images, images about everyday stories which should not exist, but even images which are able to deal with a delicate and difficult subject with wisdom and, why not, irony.
The exhibition will highlight different ways to see the matter, since the event is open to artists from all over the world. It becomes so particularly interesting to discover in which way the perception of the concept of “respect of the rights” is experienced and expressed. The event aims to shake consciences: it deeply wants to avoid common places brought by word abuse: to speak about human rights has become so common that the words “human rights violation” are deprived of all meaning and by now they touch us only at a distance when we hear them, without getting them into our heads.
The most immediate way to retrieve that conscience, essential to be really part of a system which respects everybody’s rights, is to see with one’s eyes all that artists have to say. Images insert themselves in one’s memory in such an immediate and strong way that all those who visit it will leave it more conscious and emotionally involved. To speak about human rights, according to artists, means to “pull out” many ideas which can’t find the space fit for the purpose in other events.
HUMAN RIGHTS wants to be a strong signal to all the artists and to all those who will visit it.
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Werner Dornik: FROM PAIN TO PAINT | Bad Ischl on Jan 16 | We cordially invite you to the inauguration of the exhibition "from PAIN to PAINT" at the Dakshina Chitra Museum Chennai, INDIA
If you are close by, it would be great if you could join us and if you can't, please forward the invitation to your friends and contacts... thanks for your kind help....
We hope to see you and wishing you pure LOVE and the peace of service...
Warm regards
werner & dagmar
