14 May 2008
13 May 2008
A couple paragraphs about Katie Bethune-Leamen
Rem Koolhaas: The typical pizza restaurant in Germany, for instance, is run by Turks, and yet, the discussion among politicians is that these people should know about German history and should have a minimal sense of belonging to an identity, etc., so it is a completely counterproductive and reactionary idea and also part of this nostalgia. It would be really interesting to locate that moment when nostalgia started to become the dominant mode.
Hans Ulrich-Obrist: And when would you locate it? Would you say it was postmodernism?
Rem Koolhaas: I think it was probably earlier, no?*
Maybe, (I'm not sure, hear me? But here I go panning, speculating, for gold) just maybe, Katie Bethune-Leamen's long-titled "Tupac" piece is some sort of attempt to locate a moment for nostalgia's rise to a dominant mode. Probably not, Rem and Hans might have nothing to do with it. The piece whose long title is missing here, whose memory is fogging off in this memory, whose composition should probably be considered in relation to the body of the group show it hung with ,is composed (and decomposed) by 3 links: mushrooms, Tupac and modernism's throne: a chair. (The exact name escapes me... Eames' design, originally issued in fiberglass by Herman Miller, ubiquitous. You've seen them. If you saw one it would be so obvious.)
There are 3 framed digital drawings works on the wall which read left to right. They dissolve linearly like a birth to death narrative: the image dissolves literally; the far right work is nearly black and white, and unlike the others is subtitled. Katie, in her hand writing, has scrawled a nearly decipherable sentence (or maybe it's my memory now) about Tupac Shakur and his ghost; an epitaph of sorts. Looking at the piece, one deciphers that the image of Tupac in the digital drawings is lifted from the blanket on the floor. A mink blanket, I'm told, it's called. It lies there before us, before the wall, below the drawings; it covers what one discovers is an Eames chair, you know the kind, this one is fancier than the kind bought en masse by universities in the 70s, fancier because it has what are known as an Eiffel base for legs (mimicking that shape of that industrial, romantic, French tower) and doubly fancier because it's white. That colorless, pale, white chair lies on it's side, toppled, dead; covered by that Tupac blanket like a cadaver. Sculpted, life-size, mushrooms sprout both from what's visible of the chair and from the blanket. Tupac dead, Eames chair dead, and mushrooms growing upon this substrate demanding our consideration. And as considerate I am, I consider, and all my thoughts return Hans and Rem. Sentimentality, homesickness, youth and oooh it was all so simple then...
Katie's "Tupac" ciphers nostalgia as a dominant mode but it doesn't pin-point nostalgia's rise; honestly, I'm lost here, help, hold me, I have no idea; then again, wait, wait, wait --- maybe it does pin-point a moment.
If it does, then the date lies with Tupac dying in the mid-late 90's, or does the moment rest when Eames chairs were being re-issued in fibreglass-free plastic editions? Probably in the 90s too. Same thing. But wait, Rem has given us a hint: it was probably earlier, no? And he's right, it lies much earlier, probably in the original issue of that Eames chair; somewhere in the midst of American post-WWII revelry; sometime when JD Salinger's Holden is loathing phonies; sometime when Martin Luther King Jr. was dreaming; sometime when a de Kooning was fresh in William Rubin's loft; sometimes when humans hadn't been to the moon yet; sometimes when Russians were warring the west with their cold; sometime when the future was still something look forward to... The exact moment nostalgia arose as a dominant mode is at modernism's peak and simultaneous collapse. And what of Tupac there? Why can't he rest in peace? This is where hip-hop kills us softly and directs us: mushrooms are the remix. Regardless how culture grows and flows and attempts to ascertain its highness through conflation of colors, times and rhymes, down below nature wants to (and of course eventually will) topple it, grow over it like weeds popping through cracked concrete, like books breeding dust, like meanings amplified by ambiguities, like mushrooms growing, rising, out of invisible mold; just add moisture and a bit of willing ghost. Within the remix, shiitake, magic, or otherwise, it's what Tupac Shakur instinctively knew when he rhymed to his mum: "tell my homies, I'm in heaven." What Tupac's premonition points at, and what Katie clarifies with her installation is a contemporary riddle: Never before have we lived in such material wealth and simultaneous spiritual poverty; a condition that obfuscates the present and keeps makes the mass nostalgic for the past; the politicians, on all sides in regards to the present, teach us to die. The riddle Katie leads me to is like a Borgesian labyrinth and I find myself trapped in it and even though it answers nothing, I have to rephrase Hans to ask it differently, to clarify... why did the future become something to be afraid of?
Hans Ulrich-Obrist: And when would you locate it? Would you say it was postmodernism?
Rem Koolhaas: I think it was probably earlier, no?*
Maybe, (I'm not sure, hear me? But here I go panning, speculating, for gold) just maybe, Katie Bethune-Leamen's long-titled "Tupac" piece is some sort of attempt to locate a moment for nostalgia's rise to a dominant mode. Probably not, Rem and Hans might have nothing to do with it. The piece whose long title is missing here, whose memory is fogging off in this memory, whose composition should probably be considered in relation to the body of the group show it hung with ,is composed (and decomposed) by 3 links: mushrooms, Tupac and modernism's throne: a chair. (The exact name escapes me... Eames' design, originally issued in fiberglass by Herman Miller, ubiquitous. You've seen them. If you saw one it would be so obvious.)
There are 3 framed digital drawings works on the wall which read left to right. They dissolve linearly like a birth to death narrative: the image dissolves literally; the far right work is nearly black and white, and unlike the others is subtitled. Katie, in her hand writing, has scrawled a nearly decipherable sentence (or maybe it's my memory now) about Tupac Shakur and his ghost; an epitaph of sorts. Looking at the piece, one deciphers that the image of Tupac in the digital drawings is lifted from the blanket on the floor. A mink blanket, I'm told, it's called. It lies there before us, before the wall, below the drawings; it covers what one discovers is an Eames chair, you know the kind, this one is fancier than the kind bought en masse by universities in the 70s, fancier because it has what are known as an Eiffel base for legs (mimicking that shape of that industrial, romantic, French tower) and doubly fancier because it's white. That colorless, pale, white chair lies on it's side, toppled, dead; covered by that Tupac blanket like a cadaver. Sculpted, life-size, mushrooms sprout both from what's visible of the chair and from the blanket. Tupac dead, Eames chair dead, and mushrooms growing upon this substrate demanding our consideration. And as considerate I am, I consider, and all my thoughts return Hans and Rem. Sentimentality, homesickness, youth and oooh it was all so simple then...
Katie's "Tupac" ciphers nostalgia as a dominant mode but it doesn't pin-point nostalgia's rise; honestly, I'm lost here, help, hold me, I have no idea; then again, wait, wait, wait --- maybe it does pin-point a moment.
If it does, then the date lies with Tupac dying in the mid-late 90's, or does the moment rest when Eames chairs were being re-issued in fibreglass-free plastic editions? Probably in the 90s too. Same thing. But wait, Rem has given us a hint: it was probably earlier, no? And he's right, it lies much earlier, probably in the original issue of that Eames chair; somewhere in the midst of American post-WWII revelry; sometime when JD Salinger's Holden is loathing phonies; sometime when Martin Luther King Jr. was dreaming; sometime when a de Kooning was fresh in William Rubin's loft; sometimes when humans hadn't been to the moon yet; sometimes when Russians were warring the west with their cold; sometime when the future was still something look forward to... The exact moment nostalgia arose as a dominant mode is at modernism's peak and simultaneous collapse. And what of Tupac there? Why can't he rest in peace? This is where hip-hop kills us softly and directs us: mushrooms are the remix. Regardless how culture grows and flows and attempts to ascertain its highness through conflation of colors, times and rhymes, down below nature wants to (and of course eventually will) topple it, grow over it like weeds popping through cracked concrete, like books breeding dust, like meanings amplified by ambiguities, like mushrooms growing, rising, out of invisible mold; just add moisture and a bit of willing ghost. Within the remix, shiitake, magic, or otherwise, it's what Tupac Shakur instinctively knew when he rhymed to his mum: "tell my homies, I'm in heaven." What Tupac's premonition points at, and what Katie clarifies with her installation is a contemporary riddle: Never before have we lived in such material wealth and simultaneous spiritual poverty; a condition that obfuscates the present and keeps makes the mass nostalgic for the past; the politicians, on all sides in regards to the present, teach us to die. The riddle Katie leads me to is like a Borgesian labyrinth and I find myself trapped in it and even though it answers nothing, I have to rephrase Hans to ask it differently, to clarify... why did the future become something to be afraid of?
08 May 2008
Martino Gamper
Martino Gamper is doing a project with Wright in Chicago. Look it up, it's worth it; his work is marked by alchemy, punk and a slight twist garage sale. Lovely.
Images courtesy of: www.gampermartino.com
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