Interior of Shinko Pier venue (architects Nishizawa Ryue).
The third installament of the Yokohama Triennale, currently showing, is titled Time Crevasse. Under the Directorship of Tsutomu Mizusawa and five curators the exhibition purports to emphasize 'performative work involving the body rather than a conventional display of artwork in an ordinary gallery setting, thereby bringing out a sense of time more vividly' (from the short guide Directors introduction). There is certainly plenty of work that deals with performance, dance in one form or another, sound and other 'live' mediums. The Triennale seems to weaken this bold mission in two principal areas however.
The first is on the architectural/ installation front where, particularly in the main warehouse space of the Shinko Pier, the exhibition seems to take on a strange ordered quality that squeezes many works into well behaved displays. The architects chose to build half finished walls throughout the space, creating cubes within the architectural box, blocking out natural sunlight from the windows and creating exposed rear passages and corridors. The unfinished walls retained their industrial maker brands, as well as the supporting white structures. It reminded me of the 2005 Triennale, which also chose to go with a half finished look - a question of cost? Or an attempt at exhibition design? Either way, the effect was one of demarcated, rational planning where individual works kept to themselves with almost no spillage to neighbors. Were the architects suggesting that the exposed rear corridors and passageways were metaphors for crevasses? I hope not. This design and curatorial decision did not assist artists like Jonathan Meese, Mike Kelley, Falke Pisano, Shilpa Gupta or Michelangelo Pistoletto, whose installations would have benefitted from a greater sense of connection to the space itself and other works...Pistoletto's smashed mirrors did not reflect much back except the viewer, Meese's detritus was neatly cornered, Pisano's fabric and bamboo tents remained without wind, Kelley's occult ode to candle rituals and Nazism remained isolated and Gupta's large photographic canvases which depicted dozens of boys and girls in lines looked sadly locked up. This very cubic exhibition design also seemed to diminish any sense of curatorial linkage or connectivity, as the experience became one of traversing separate spaces through the unfinished inter-zones. The possibility of losing one's balance and falling into a time crevasse in such a space was unlikely. Disorientation or dissolution seemed most definitely NOT to be on the installation agenda - in favor of a strange sense that approximated walking through a large aristocratic family home or castle - spaces designed for very specific revelations of authority, control and elaborations of meaning. It was also paradoxical that the more intense, transgressive works were compartmentalized in enclosed spaces with warning signs outside them for children etc. This was the case for Herman Nitsch, Paul McCarthy and Mathew Barney in the NYK Waterfront Warehouse.
Jonathan Meese.
Falke Pisano
Interior of Shinko Pier venue
The second area concerned the question of presenting performative work through the various mediums of documentary film, video, sound and related reproduction technologies. I left the exhibition feeling that it had effectively explored the limits of presenting performance work, but without adding any significant new approaches or modes to the ongoing discussion. Time after time, I found myself standing before a monitor, a screen, a bank of speakers and realizing how in-personal the experience was, how removed from bodily sensation it was. The crucial point lay in the very passive engagement style that much of the works initiated. Documentary or archival style work that included reading materials, study environments or library-like spaces for learning were almost absent. For all the talk of performativity and the body, I was surprised how much work relied on electrical technologies of play-back. Certainly this suggests a sense of peering back into, or down into time runnels, but I was reminded how dominating the experience of television is. The curators could have, for instance, pondered painting, drawing or certain forms of object making as time-inscribing processes which present quite different play-back experiences to those of reproduction technologies. The standard documentary films of performance and happenings, such as were shown in the excellent Art of Body, Art of Action archive of films in the Red Brick Warehouse, seemed to resonate strongly, perhaps because they were largely silent and historical and thus also auratic - full of history, time's passage and hence also archival. Tino Sehgal's work at the Sankeien gardens was though, very personal and ongoing, consisting of two dancers in a perpetual kissing embrace, rolling around on the tatami floors of an ancient house while birds flew outside, tourists strolled through and the sunlight slowly moved. This piece is performed throughout the entirety of the Triennale, an amazing and bold decision. Could not many more works taken a similar route? The dancer Tanaka Min similarly dances near his tin hut outside the NYK venue, but irregularly and without notice. Once again I heard echoes of the 2005 Triennale, which attempted to follow a similar ongoing mode as a circus, with workshops, cafes, games etc daily. The issue of presenting performance works and time based works is a complex one, but surely one which curators should engage with creatively in exhibitions of this scale and ambition? Added to the fact that this Triennale included no wall captions or contextual texts even in the guidebook (which consisted only of previous work information), the visitors experience is potentially a highly challenging one. Although the works were largely by well known, respected artists it seemed simply unkind to expect audiences to 'experience' them with no option of learning more about their social, historical or referential contexts. Notwithstanding the ever present risk of curatorial over-pedagogy, this Triennale should have at least offered some elegant, brief labeling on site or in the guidebook.
Fujiko Nakaya
The more engaging works included those sited in the Sankeien garden which clearly communicated with their specific sites and moods. The NYK Warehouse was also sharply focused and powerful, with all of the warning sign works and its large damp warehouse spaces. Paul McCarthy's video installation was a tempest of whirling Demon-Disneyland that altered the mind. Rodney Graham's early performance piece showing him lobbing potatoes at a gong benefitted from its siting in the barren concrete and slightly damp smelling spaces of the warehouse. Herman Nistch's stained altars, photographs and videos very directly reminded one of the alienated modern body, trying desperately to re-engage through ritual and sacrifice that at times looked sad. Joan Jonas's video installation, Marina Abramovich's spirit adjuster platforms, Douglas Gordon's animal videos, Nakanishi Natsuyuki's paintings, Yoko Ono's Cut Piece video...all generated an overall sense of meaning which illuminated aspects of the body, spirit, matter and time. This venue drew out the multiple resonances in the works through its abandoned materiality, but also by letting works bleed into each other, allowing images to seep into one's view from different spaces. This meant that the body of the visitor was kept alive, challenged and constantly having to negotiate itself - through adjusting the eyes, ears, and letting things other than the work intrude into the experience. As a curatorial space it managed to carry some of the themes and moods of the Director.
Herman Nitsch
Cerith Wyn Evans
The archive of video and films screened in the Red Brick Warehouse was another highlight, but perhaps more because of their historical value as rare documents. I was told off by a gallery attendant for filming a video on my camera. Mostly silent, and transferred from 8mm or 16mm film the films, which ranged from early Gutai stage performances, Butoh dance, Shelter Plan by Hi-red center and the Taj Mahal Travellers touring hippie venues, were also examples of how performance and action can be documented through film. Montage and collage techniques, long shots, rapid editing and handwritten captions were in evidence. Hijikata's butoh actions provided a Japanese counterpoint to the abject transgressions of Nitsch and McCarthy, somewhat more restrained and distant from a sense of guilt. One thing which struck me though as I wandered through this maelstrom of art performances was how sombre much of it is. There is an air of heavy seriousness which hangs around much of the works, manifested through either rumbling, screeching electronic noises, sudden kinds of editing which cut narrative and monotonous voices. Before such works one invariably begins to act in specific ways, becoming quiet, contemplative perhaps, and strangely introverted. The now well worn cliche that 'art performance' is 'serious', not pleasurable, seemed to be very much perpetuated in the Triennale's selection of works (haven`t any curators heard of David Mancuso?) The mechanics of the art exhibition - security, safety etc - are obviously also factors that limit and restrict our access and experience of works. I was left thinking how we end up being spectators of moments and actions performed by others and how - if at all - the exhibition as a medium has and can become more elastic, more forgiving and more loving.
Aki Sasamoto
Good review, I still think despite all the hate I keep hearing about the Triennale it is an interesting event and a very necessary one in the japanese context. More and better explanations / introductions would have been uwelcome, and yes the very relation to exhibition space should have been better conceived (I was excited by the idea of "crevasse", in-betweeness etc before visiting and the idea is not fully realized).
And as a curator I would invite David Mancuso. Oh yeah
:)
see you soon
Posted by: Antonin | November 18, 2008 at 10:21 AM