Lizzy Newman
Mir 11
11th Floor 522 Flinders Lane (Kings Carpark) Melbourne, May 2005
Lizzy Newman's work was made for MIR11, but it seemed less concerned with the abstraction offered by art-space, and more interested in camping out in the concrete. The work presented itself up as an aggregate of furnishings, producing a doubly real and imaginary waiting room complete with water cooler. The supply of water was sucked completely dry by the time of the opening, and the fountain sat strangely empty for the duration of the show, kept company by a bin full of plastic cups at its foot. It imparted the work with a slightly depressing ambience, edged by lack, and absence; and of a dissapointment that you get when arriving too late.
Arresting the free-flow of sweaty couriers and well dressed architects between the ARM architectural offices and the lift well, the work hooked into the context of it’s foyer; creaming together the corporate with the abstract and offering itself up, almost masochistically, as a zone of service provision.
That the work was banished from the space, (without the artist's knowledge), by the ARM architects while hosting the arrival of “some important clients” (but replaced by a painting for the occasion!); convinces me of the potency of this work. It’s indeterminate nature worked to playfully unsettle, and activate the latent and forceful politics of its’ place.
Bianca Hester
11th Floor 522 Flinders Lane (Kings Carpark) Melbourne, May 2005
Lizzy Newman's work was made for MIR11, but it seemed less concerned with the abstraction offered by art-space, and more interested in camping out in the concrete. The work presented itself up as an aggregate of furnishings, producing a doubly real and imaginary waiting room complete with water cooler. The supply of water was sucked completely dry by the time of the opening, and the fountain sat strangely empty for the duration of the show, kept company by a bin full of plastic cups at its foot. It imparted the work with a slightly depressing ambience, edged by lack, and absence; and of a dissapointment that you get when arriving too late.
Arresting the free-flow of sweaty couriers and well dressed architects between the ARM architectural offices and the lift well, the work hooked into the context of it’s foyer; creaming together the corporate with the abstract and offering itself up, almost masochistically, as a zone of service provision.
That the work was banished from the space, (without the artist's knowledge), by the ARM architects while hosting the arrival of “some important clients” (but replaced by a painting for the occasion!); convinces me of the potency of this work. It’s indeterminate nature worked to playfully unsettle, and activate the latent and forceful politics of its’ place.
Bianca Hester
posted by speech at
7:30 AM
16 Comments:
I would have thought that architects, of all people - because they are engaged in culture making to some extent and cultural discourse, would have the desire to broaden the audience for contemporary art not protect people from it as these guys did by taking the show down momentarily. The idea that clients wouldn't like this show or understand it and needed to be protected from it is bizzar. If ARM felt embarrassed, and that is what we are talking about here, who are they feeling embarrassed on behalf of? Why not say to the clients "Oh this is an art project, isn't it fantastic, we are offering a space for emerging artists to try things out in a sympathetic environment. Aren't we cool".!!!
am I understanding this correctly?
what was actually the reason that someone took the work down?
The work was taken down twice in the middle of the exhibition period, for a few days while ARM hosted guests. From what I've been told, the first time the work was removed remained unknown to Lizzie Newman and she only found out when she came in to photograph the installation. Also, a few people went to see the work, but there were signs up stating that the work was temporarliy closed. They were perplexed at this, becasue there was a replacement painting put in the foyer (a painting that had been chosen by ARM as a suitable/better replacement of what was already there).
This action reeks of an attitude to art-work as foyer decoration - or is it more about product placement? Viewed at in this light, since MIR11 opened at the start of 2004, artists have provided ARM with a contemporary ambience (through art product) that no doubt aids in providing their corporate image with a sharper (art-ier) edge than their competitors. ARM conveniently and perhaps unwittingly reap the fringe benefits provided by this contemporaneous-ness. It's pretty frustrating that they fail to support those who provide something that assists in the production of their cultural and commercial fortune.
yep. this is the sort of behaviour that can sometimes make me feel awkward, embarrassed even about being an architect. misunderstandings about art, the production of art, and its function in society are rife amongst architects. it is symptomatic of the separation today between the spheres of practice maintained by art and architecture. i think what is really highlighted by the MIR11 situation is the nature of the relationship that was established to begin with. the "landlords" have made only too transparent their attitudes towards what art should be, the parameters of their involvement in MIR11, and the contrast between what they stand to gain, against what they are prepared to stand for. the problem lies not so much in that they should consider reaping some sort of benefit from handing over the space to artists (all space has numerous stakeholders) but it is shameful that they should be pretending to harbour important, artistic, cultural production, whilst secretly engaging in a sort of aesthetic censorship. the irony is that architects - particularly in melbourne - are the sort that never stop whinging about the censorship exercised over their own work by clients, planning authorities, neighbours and the like. morons.
It’s clear that ARM’s architecture has made an important contribution to culture in Melbourne. By calling Newman’s work ‘poorly considered, conceptually sloppy, and badly maintained’ you seem to be missing the slacker absence or ambience in the work. The work is like a kind of rumpled absent version of a foyer. Maybe even the used banal foyer that most contemporary designed foyers try to cover up and eliminate. It’s one foyer inhabiting another and the water cooler suggests some sort of shared social space that is almost too familiar.
If ‘the work is just embarrassingly bad’ that may be just the point, to look at the ‘bar’ or threshold to what’s bearable in an artwork. As an artist Newman consistently points to the remainder that’s not included in an artwork and our looking at it.
Compared to this, for me, Serrano seems like an operatic faux distraction that just deals with all the ways we know the world through the big media. This issue here is not a beat-up it appears to be something genuinely important between us.
Jan, there's a lot to respond to here, I'll try to be brief (I'm sure this comment list will fill up pretty quickly).
You described Lizzy's work as "poorly considered, conceptually sloppy, and badly maintained". I would say that my opinion of the work is the polar opposite. In fact if I was to briefly describe Lizzy's work I would probably use statements like "highly considered" and "conceptually strong". But it doesn't surprise me that our opinions differ, such is the nature of opinions. What does surprise me is that firstly, you appear to believe it is appropriate for your opinions to author the contemporary art space you hosted and secondly, you do not see this as political.
As you pointed out, the sponsors of MIR11 provided numerous forms of support for this (essentially) artist run initiative. In return the sponsors received public recognition for their support and a continually updated, contemporary foyer. You may believe that this exchange is unbalanced, that the support provided outweighed any financial and cultural returns; perhaps you believe the decision to sponsor MIR11 was based largely on generosity and public spirit. If so, I can understand how you may feel victimised by the response you have received from the Newman event. But I think in understanding the political aspect of this you need to question the initial intentions for supporting MIR11 and ask yourself how the actions that were taken towards Lizzy's work may have undermined these intentions.
This current regime encourages people to see themselves as shareholders rather than as citizens!
Jan, this legalistic way of arguing is starting to appear like a living example of this in art.
Artists as citizens need institutions and indepenent enertprises to help them say what they want to and what isn't yet accepted. Not to be intimidated. We're currently working out of a very small pool of knowledge.
“There are no facts, only interpretations”; this implies that so-called facts are sexed-up (or stripped down) as truth. If all is interpretation, then everything is motivated. Everything is at stake. We all have vested interests and we all work for somebody.
Whatever its categorization; ‘tape on board’, put up on a wall, is a contained thing, a thing identifiable as art. To me what counts here is that this thing helped to reassure those involved, because it fortified an already established regime of what ART IS. That tape-on-board-thing gave a sense of security, of ease.
Lizzies work on the other hand didn’t stand as, or in, for art. It mocked, in a playful way, the very relation between art and the corporate foyer (and the very identification/categorization of art and the value systems contingent to it). It, and the actions it inspired, worked to demonstrate that the corporate space desires art (so badly that the work wasn’t just removed, but replaced, by something apparently more real, more factual, more art). The corporate space wants art but it can’t seem to hack it on its own terms. It can’t hack the non-art (read embarrassing) dimension of art; it’s purposeful/purposeless lameness. It’s lameness left a feeling of impotence, and its erasure was an act of assertion. (On the other hand, art wants corporate space, wants the institution and it’s value-adding power….nothing is unmotivated or outside).
Professionalism is a bureaucratic distraction imposed by a regime of control and order. Professionalism wants outcome, regulation, quantifiable knowledge. Professionalism serves the interests of a system that fears disorder, confusion and the unexpected. Professionalism masks over the embarrassment of lameness via efficacy. The unshakeable ‘right of veto’ enacted in this event was a manoeuvre to eradicate the non-professional, the embarrassing.
Removing and replacing Lizzies work was particular kind of architectural gesture (a form of building) enacted out of fear of embarrassment. Think of the city now. Think of how it’s being enhanced, style-guided, fortified. Every square inch (or whatever) of lameness is in the process of being rendered. Like this, Lizzies work was built out. “One day, one hour, painting or no”, the regime of ‘facts’ is largely irrelevant. What I think is important here is the inevitable political effects of the action in its forceful unfolding. Whether something intends to be political or not isn’t the point. Every action produces a context while summoning and enacting power relations. What could be more political?
Hey Bianca,
I read once in this book about the dictatorship of reason in the west that professionalism has its roots in Machiavelli, and that it functions to further the ends of self-privileging elites. It was also said of these professional closed shops that they like to dismantle, clean and disinfect; to leave no place for individual characteristics to hide. A further characteristic, it seems, is to employ argument to convince rather than to discuss and explore. A lot of art is going to give professionals a rash as it will not meet the profession’s demand for tight and shiny and slick. It might be a shock to some, but not all art has to look like a used erection.
But then again, it’s kind of great how some art can be convincingly slick, and come under the radar into these décor schemes like Trojan horses, slowly emanating eroding messiness and disorder. Like how Ricky Swallow’s work might look like Chinese vegetable carving, but, because of this luxury restaurant vibe, it might also about how everything solid turns into air; or, in the case of his Venice showing, inevitably into water too?
(The “contradiction” in being complicit and resistant at the same time is maybe something like how people often don’t steal things because they want them. It could be the tactical action of a person stuck in an anaesthetizing system (even if it is post-traumatic numbness, or a neurasthenic’s “serene” decor) that wants to feel again. A nail-bomb of sorts.)
The best thing I saw in Venice, when I went there once, was a small boat called L’Eagle Tendre.
Which reminds me, there was a project in Venice in 1978 by the Italian architects Superstudio called The Wife of Lot in which the five historical stages of architecture were modeled small in salt and out on a table beside the grand canal. Water dripped onto them from a structure above demonstrating architecture’s inevitable dissolution. They were the group that notably declared in 1971 that the most logical thing an intellectual could do in this day and age is to commit suicide; preferably in public:
“The architect’s suicide and the disappearance of architecture are two equivalent phenomena… In both cases it means eliminating the formal structures connected to artificial scale of values. In this sense, our work has used the instruments of architecture in a contrary fashion, gradually, through absurdity, showing its uselessness, its falsity and its immorality.”
I thought of Lizzy’s work as I read this.
I take suicide here in the vitalist-transformative sense of the word.
There is this ridiculous situation here in pre-election NZ where the media has decided that to talk about suicide encourages people to kill themselves. Violent transformations of the self are generally discouraged; or, simply put, career suicide. I say this because I know you like to think about spiders and spit.
Sorry this is long. All I was going to say when I sat down to write was to ask the architect guy if, yes or no, he has a vested interest in art as décor.
Jan,
Is not censorship inseparable from fear itself? As mentioned, censorship (veto) was written into the initial agreement. I doubt the past directors wrote this into the agreement, they would of, like many other artists, agreed to it, and hoped it would never happen. On the event of which it did happen, they then acted, swiftly, silently and powerfully. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. In such a socio-political world, every move we make is political. Isn't it a matter of investigating each one of our actions to then understand it's potent political meaning?
It does amuse me that MIR 11 ended with an exhibition by an artist turn psychoanalyst turn artist. I was impressed by the simplicity of the show and the aftermath of action that has unravelled a problematic relationship evident between art and the corporation, or art and it's sponsor, art and it's facade/foyer. Your a smart guy Jan, I'm surprised you didn't question this and investigate it before engaging in it's unravelling.
the person who has logged on as "Jan Van Schaik" is gonna be in trouble when the real Jan Van Schaik finds out how stupid he has been made to look.
Dear Anonymous, at the very least I have the courage to take part in the discussion with name on the record. It is all too easy to sling mud from the dark. Also, please learn to spell my name properly if you intend to call me stupid. Thank you for your constructive comments. Jan
could the organisers/sponsors of speech please veto jan van schaik.
do you folks have jobs, families, social lives, anything better to go back to? I think this discussion needs to be put to bed, going nowhere, wake me up when you move on.
Jan,
You argue like Andrew Bolt. All your talk about contracts and fine print and vetos and conceptual sloppyness may be legally correct, but its morally wrong. Im sorry I slung mud at you. See how easy that was. You try.
Jan, I admire you and your belief in the value of speech! Under all this you believe something is worth saying.
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