ALWAYS THE SAME WITH REPETITION?
Conversation between Cornelia Sollfrank and Silke Wenk following the opening of the
re.act feminism exhibition, Academy of Arts Berlin, in December 2008 |
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S.W.:
One of the fascinating principles in your
various works—from the Warhol Flowers to the
shooting performance after Niki de Saint Phalle
at the opening of the re.act feminism exhibition
last night—is that of repetition, or even a repetition
of a repetition. You yourself once called it a
“contemporary method of gaining recognition,”
and I still find that convincing.
C.S.:
A repetition is certainly one possible “view”
of an “object,” an approach—or perhaps also a
way of distancing oneself from it.
Why does one repeat exactly that, which one
repeats, and why does one repeat it? In my Revisiting
feminist art series, I limit the object of
repetition to feminist artworks. So it is not only
an abstract question of repetition as such, but
rather always also a question of the object; I
think the question of what the object has to do
with the method is not insignificant.
S.W.:
Of course it matters what you choose for
repetition. In a different complex of works it
is the Warhol Flowers. They are significant,
since they are works by an artist who reproduced
what had already been reproduced in
the new media of his time. Using popular mass
products, he not only provoked the established
(American) high brow art business, but also
made a name for himself as a unique artist and
author at the same time with the critique of
the idea of the original, art work bound to a
unique signature. This paradox is an important
starting point for your Warhol Flowers—the
“Sollfrank-Warhol-Flowers”—in which you
practically play through the question of the
duplication or the reproduction of originals,
which are not originals in a classic sense (such
as the photographs by Patricia Caulfield, for
instance, which Warhol used as models for his
prints), at the next level of media development,
of digital (re-)production. You include yourself
as an “author” and question this position at the
same time by taking Warhol’s “I want to be a
machine” seriously, or as a “smart artist,” who
lets the machine do the work, setting it to endless
reproduction, in a sense.
C.S.:
I wouldn’t exactly call the method I use
for the Warhol Flowers repetition. Unlike Elaine
Sturtevant, for instance, I don’t attempt to get as
close as possible to the “original,” but leave just
enough of it still recognizable as a reference. I
ultimately limit the pool of images by entering
a search term; then a machine and the principle
of chance enter in—in other words, certain
automatisms that form a collage of images from
existing ones. I also use the store of images from
the Internet because the images I get for a certain
search term are constantly changing and
multiplying. I have been making collages with
the net.art generator now since 2004, and there
are constant aesthetic shifts which are not a result
of the program, but the source material instead.
In this way the net is also reflected on as
a medium in the image series, but without me
having any control over it. That is also a reason
why I have worked so long with the same motif:
to really be able to read these changes. In this
sense, of course, it is also a repetition.
S.W.:
This makes it clear that repetition or even
reproduction is never just “repetition.” In fact,
I would like to call your method of repetition
a subversive one, a re-staging of an already existent
and highly effective system of rules and
meaning which first produces “art” with its essential
parameters of authorship, authenticity
and original. Here I think you increasingly slip
into the role—albeit in different ways, when I
think of the exhibition Originale und andere Fälschungen
(Originals and other Fakes)—of the
various agents of this system, art history and
critique, the museum and, not least of all, the
law, probing and testing their common rules
(certainly not always consciously) in this joint
game.
I mean a subversive repetition in allusion to Judith
Butler, which plays through the construction
and its rules and regularities—in this case
not of “gender,” but rather of “art”—thus making
it recognizable.
C.S.:
I think this idea is very important, because
it has often been suggested that art is simply
there and not subject to any rules—especially
“good” art. This vehement negation of an existence
of rules for art, according to which it first
appears as such, in other words its constructedness,
is what makes it necessary for me to seek
out these rules and visualize them with artistic
means and as part of my work as an artist. Repetition
is an obvious choice, because it directly
causes the disruption of the mechanisms important
to the art system.
And sometimes it is not even necessary to repeat,
but simply to appropriate what has been repeated by others. The oil paintings of the Warhol
Flowers manually produced in China are the
pinnacle of this. Most painting factories have
them in their standard repertoire; the motif is
well suited for both the United States and the
European market. And I can simply order them.
S.W.:
Warhol in oil is exciting. Works by the pop
artist who turned against traditional criteria of
value like the originality and uniqueness of the
work—which is what oil painting stands for—
now return from a different part of the world
“ennobled” or re-auratized. Is it something like
an unintentionally subversive act that reflects the
mechanisms of the western art business back to us?
C.S.:
Or maybe just a gigantic art action: the
endless repetitions of western art history, including
all the modern and postmodern approaches—
all hand-made and in oil … Even
the entire Louvre is repeated: not only in Dubai,
but also in Dafen (a suburb of Shenzhen and the
center of Chinese painting factories). The fact
that this will cause—presumably surprising—
feedback to the western art system, especially in
terms of questions of authorship and originality,
seems “pre-programmed” to me.
A nice anecdote is that I additionally commissioned
a flower motif generated by the net.art
generator as an oil painting, which is much
more difficult to paint due to its pixelated
structure, so it was almost twice as expensive as
the Rembrandt copy I had previously commissioned.
The “material” certainly is rebellious!
Fortunately there are already oil painters in the
painting factory who specialize in pixels.
S.W.:
The game of original and reproduction
can be reopened with your form of a re-“originalization”
of the Warhol Flowers—whether as
an oil painting or a screen print. As we have already
learned from Walter Benjamin, the one is
unimaginable without the other. You make this
explicit and demonstrate it to us as a game whose
rules you are parodying at the same time.
S.W.:
But what is the relationship between this
work complex after and with Warhol and the
Re-visiting feminist art performances? What are
the similarities and what makes up the difference?
First of all, one thing is obvious: here you
are involved with your own body and act with
it. When exactly did you start this series?
C.S.:
I came up with the idea for this in 2005;
the first performance took place in 2006. One
day I got stuck on VALIE EXPORT’s dog performance.
I had often seen the photos, which
are now almost iconic, and I imagined what
would happen if I took her place. It is feminist
art that was important to me as an artist;
it involves the portrayal or exercise of female
aggression and the question of the significance
that these historical works still have,
could have today. I didn’t want to just think
about it, but to really experiment practically
with it, also to find out the extent to which
EXPORT’s intervention strategies can still be
employed today—counter to their appropriation
by the art business. Since we are from
completely different generations of women
artists, very different notions of art (including
the concept of the work and the image
of women artists) and feminism collided as
well. This performance took place in a shopping
mall in Hamburg-Harburg, by the way,
while a Peter Weibel solo exhibition was being
shown at the same time directly next door
at the Falckenberg Collection. The video from
the street performance from 1968 was also
shown in the exhibition.
Surprisingly, this self-exposure also led to a series
of personal experiences for me.
S.W.:
What kind of experiences?
C.S.:
For example, the experience of moving
through a city as a voyeur and secretly taking
pictures in the “Spring in Paris” performance.
That also means exposing myself to physical
risk—which was also the case in the Harburg
dog performance. And then there was also another
kind of interaction, that with my “dog,”
with Monty Cantsin. No matter how theoretically
or conceptually you approach it, something
unforeseeable always takes place between
the participants.
S.W.:
But the performances amount to more
than just your own experiences.
C.S.:
They are public actions with an audience.
However, I can’t speak for the audience’s experiences,
only about what I observed of the audience.
What do you think is happening there?
What is happening for you?
S.W.:
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to be there for
the dog action. But what I find fascinating is that
certain feminist art performances can be called
to mind again, as for example in the re.act feminism
exhibition. So it can come into view again, what
significance the works by various women artists
had for opening up seemingly natural gender
positions—as well as for critically questioning
traditional notions of the work and the artistsubject.
I am happy that these works are being
recalled into the “collective memory” again.
At the same time, though, a possible danger of
museumization is also recognizable here—especially
when the works by women artists are
de-contextualized, in other words presented
separately from the social movements of those
years. I find it problematic when these feminist
interventions are assumed into an art historical
canon as presumably closed works, merely supplementing
the list of masters’ names. But that
is only the one hand.
On the other hand, I am also wondering: What is
the other, the new that occurs when early feminist
projects are re-enacted in the first decade
of the twenty-first century? Surely it is also true
for these kinds of re-enactments that something
else is revealed with each repetition.
What is attempted here with re.act feminism can be
seen as part of a broader movement: for some time
now there have been recurrent attempts in different
places to transfer art actions and methods,
not only feminist ones, from the nineteen sixties
and seventies to the present. I share this fascination
and understand the wish that these kinds of
art performances might have a similar impact
today. However, some attempts at repetition or
re-enactment seem to me to have more of a sobering
effect, if not indeed a boring one. What is
left is often a kind of nostalgia. I think it becomes
clear that if a re-enactment
wants to be subversive,
it should also contain a strategic translation.
What I mean is that it must also include a reflection
on how the media environment or gender
relations as well have changed since then, what
shifts have taken place. After all, there have been
tremendous developments over the last forty
years, particularly as a result of the so-called
“media revolutions” and the tremendously accelerated
circulation of images resulting from them.
C.S.:
First the question of audience experience:
I wrote down several observations directly
after the dog performance. For example, one
is that the majority of the passers-by in the
shopping mall where the performance took
place immediately took out a mobile phone or
even a digicam and filmed the performance.
That means that the people no longer directly
watched, didn’t just expose themselves to the
experience, but held a technical reproduction
device between themselves and that what
irritated
them.
S.W.:
VALIE EXPORT’s action is now processed
for every camera and every computer at home
with these new media. The effect of the remake—
as one result—is general availability.
C.S.:
That is certainly an important aspect, but
it then immediately raises the question of what
this general availability means. I found this hiding
behind a lens almost more important, hiding
behind the media to protect yourself from
what irritates you.
S.W.:
But not wanting to be seen looking has always
been part of the phenomenon of voyeurism.
(VALIE EXPORT also already addressed this,
for example, in Tapp und Tastkino.)
C.S.:
Another observation was that the images of
the dog performance suddenly overlapped associatively
with pictures of the American soldier
Lynndie England, who only a short time before
had tortured and humiliated Iraqi prisoners of
war in Abu Ghraib prison by leading them on
all fours on a leash, among other things.
S.W.:
Exactly, that was at the same time. And
that indicates the contexts again, which can invert
the meanings of single works or actions.
C.S.:
The third aspect that very quickly became
clear was that large sections of the population take
dealing with pornography much more for granted,
dealing actively or passively with SM practices.
You can buy handcuffs and collars everywhere.
S.W.:
To the extent, as you mentioned already,
that your “repetitions” of these kinds of early
feminist performances are also experiments to
investigate their potential “explosive force” today.
At the same time, the question of “female
aggression” is also important to you. How much
this matters today is the question you pose.
It is of course highly significant that a connection
is made between Lynndie England and VALIE
EXPORT through your appearance. We have
women soldiers who we see are no better than
their male colleagues. At the same time, this picture
of Lynndie England is highly charged. My
thesis is that this picture had a function similar
to that of the picture of the woman concentration
camp guard after 1945, namely an exonerating
function (I’m referring here to more
recent historical analyses, which are published,
for example, in the book Gedächtnis und Geschlecht
[Memory and Gender] edited by Insa Eschebach
and myself): England the soldier became a figure
who could be accused of a twofold breach, not
only that of transgressing the limits of military
force by torturing, but also the rules of “femininity”
by presuming to be able to do what men do.
C.S.:
With that we have now found several examples
of how repetitions can become productive.
But I want to go back to your earlier remark
that repetitions often end up becoming boring. I
think that disappointment is an important part
of repetition.
Regardless of what we repeat—something that
we find fascinating, important, cool, radical,
etc., or something we want to criticize—what
emerges in the repetition will be something
different. Especially with the subject of feminist
art, there is a high degree of identification
among many—as with other radical expressions
of that time. The rebels of past are the heroic
icons of today. They stand for something that
one wants to be part of—perhaps by repeating
it. And precisely that obviously doesn’t work. It
becomes clear that history is being repeated and
for that reason it cannot have the same effect.
Perhaps some of the identification is even lost.
Isn’t it precisely repetition that cures us of nostalgia
and reactionary glorification?
S.W.:
I would say, can cure us. To avoid falling
into resignation or passivity, you have to want
to accept the challenge to rethink and further
develop the experiment
C.S.:
Repetition and disappointment are a good
starting point for that. You earlier mentioned
the key word “female aggression.” That is what
the works that I have chosen have in common:
they stage female aggressiveness. And another
work I am still planning is a reading of the
SCUM Manifesto. That is still important to me,
because its author, Valerie Solanas, fired several
shots at Andy Warhol in 1968, seriously wounded
him. This should also make clear that I have
not been dealing with the Warhol Flowers for
years because I have an oedipal or fetishist relationship
to Warhol. Apart from that, the text is
still highly topical, especially the part where she
writes about the art business. And I can’t think
of a more appropriate place for the reading of
the Manifesto than the opening of an art fair...
S.W.:
So you want to take up the role of the miscreant
of the avant-garde of the latter half of the
twentieth century, which is how Solanas is seen
by quite a few people, and play it through?
C.S.:
Repetitive actions are certainly well suited
to produce statements about their object as well.
It is just as certain, however, that they no longer
trigger what they triggered “in their own time”;
if female aggressiveness is the issue today, then
we have to look for completely different images,
forms and actions.
S.W.:
I would like to phrase the term “female
aggressiveness” more precisely, because it is obviously
not about the fact that women in fact
really exercise physical violence, but rather that
their existence per se is not welcome in certain
areas, or is even perceived and interpreted as an
aggressive penetration into a territory where
they were previously not supposed to play an
active role...
C.S.:
Aggression means rejecting the assigned
role, expanding it or transgressing it. Depictions
of female dominance, whether with weapons or
simply even technical skills, stand for exactly this.
S.W.:
So the problem would not be that a woman—
especially in the concrete sense—turns violent, but rather that she presumes the right to
do exactly the same as her equally qualified male
colleagues do. It does not seem uncommon that
this by itself is already perceived as aggression,
also for the simple reason that the gendered privileges
taken for granted are called into question.
So perhaps we shouldn’t speak here of “female
aggressiveness”, which also holds the danger of
essentialism, but rather of structures and the
projections produced through and in them.
C.S.:
But doesn’t the repetition of a performance
address exactly these structures and question
whether and how they have changed over the
past forty years? The boundaries have certainly
shifted, but they are still there.
S.W.:
So the question remains how art—as an
experiment or even as a trial action—is able to
further test and undermine the game rules that
keep the art business running. Repetitions can
affirm the rules—indeed, this is the only way
they retain their validity. But their validity,
their effect that seems to stem from a natural
law, can also be called into question by a radical
disclosure in an aesthetic experiment, if one
attempts to take over the game rules and play
them through to the limits of absurdity—thus
exposing them to ridicule. Laughing at structures
and the rules that affirm them can have
a liberating effect, establish distance and thus
release pleasure in the next experiment. In this
sense, I look forward to your next actions.
Translation: Aileen Derieg
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