The Following Texts on Love Story Are Included in This Pdf
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The following texts on Love Story are included in this pdf: Texts in English: Beckstette, Sven. ‘We Are the Others. On Candice Breitz’s Love Story,’ from: Groos, Ulrike and Wurzbacher, Carolin (editors). Candice Breitz. Love Story. (Bielefeld / Stuttgart: Kerber Verlag / Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, 2016) exhibition catalogue. Koch, Alexander, ‘Candice Breitz: Love Story,’ published online at: http://www.kow- berlin.info/exhibitions/candice_breitz Whitley, Zoé, ‘Oh! Oh! Love: Candice Breitz’s Monologues for Troubled Times,’ from: MacGarry, Lucy (curator) and Law-Viljoen, Bronwyn (editor). Candice Breitz + Mohau Modisakeng. (Venice: South African Pavilion, 2017) exhibition catalogue. Texts in German: Beckstette, Sven. ‘Wir sind die Anderen: Über Candice Breitz’ Love Story,’ from: Groos, Ulrike and Wurzbacher, Carolin (editors). Candice Breitz. Love Story. (Bielefeld / Stuttgart: Kerber Verlag / Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, 2016) exhibition catalogue. Koch, Alexander, ‘Candice Breitz: Love Story,’ published online at: http://www.kow- berlin.info/exhibitions/candice_breitz Online Viewing: Additionally, this pdf contains information regarding how additional footage from Love Story can be viewed online. Love Story [Texts in English] 58 59 SVEN BECKSTETTE Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), the American philoso- The question of what means might be enlisted to create solidarity second space, all of unknown people—three women and three pher observes that “we-intentions” create interpersonal bonds and a sense of connectivity is also the focus of Candice Breitz’s men—from a variety of cultural and national backgrounds. They WE ARE THE OTHERS. but at the same time facilitate immoral actions, as other groups expansive video installation Love Story. Much like Rorty, Breitz too are set in front of a green screen, seated frontally and repre- ON CANDICE BREITZ’S are automatically excluded by the phrase, groups to whom this sees cinema, and specifically the Hollywood blockbuster—its nar- sented slightly larger than life. Their monologues can be experi- we-reference does not apply: “I claim that the force of ‘us’ is, rative forms and its manipulation of our emotions—as a potential enced through the headphones available for use on the seating. LOVE STORY typically, contrastive in the sense that it contrasts with a ‘they’ vehicle for the creation of empathy. However, unlike Rorty, in Love Certain passages that they speak are strongly reminiscent of the which is also made up of human beings—the wrong sort of human Story the artist draws attention to the distance that separates the scripts performed by Julianne Moore and Alec Baldwin. The stories beings.”2 It is possible to transfer this claim directly to the racist first-person narrative of lived experience, from the fictional restag- that are shared by these six people evidently serve as the source “We are the people”—this slogan is inseparably linked to the use of the slogan “we are the people” in Clausnitz. ing of that narrative as a product of the culture industry. The work for the lines delivered by the Hollywood celebrities. Each wears at so-called Monday Demonstrations of 1989, which marked the Rorty’s primary intention is to show how solidarity can be achieved invites empathetic engagement with others who are unknown, least one accessory—a ring, a pin, a bangle—objects that we rec- beginning of the end of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). more enduringly—a process that, in his opinion, can only occur while at the same time didactically drawing attention to the ognize at this point, having already seen them worn by Baldwin At those peaceful protest marches in Leipzig, the use of the word through empathic recognition of the other as a sensitive, suffer- mechanisms that govern processes of identification. and Moore. “people” was directed against the country’s ruling Socialist Unity ing being: “The view I am offering says that there is such a thing The installation consists of two parts. In the front space, there is a The contemporary historical context of Love Story is the migratory Party (SED). It was hence a call for more democracy, in protest of as moral progress, and that this progress is indeed in the direction projection surface of cinematic dimensions, before which a bench movement to Europe of groups of people—referred to as the a government that was viewed as illegitimate. The same phrase of greater human solidarity. But that solidarity is not thought of as invites visitors to take a seat and watch. On the screen we view “refugee crisis”—from the regions of North Africa, the Middle has, however, recently acquired a contrary meaning: in 2014 it recognition of a core self, the human essence, in all human beings. constantly alternating shots of Hollywood actors Alec Baldwin and East, and Southeast Asia plagued by terrorism and civil war. An surfaced prominently at demonstrations staged by the right-wing Rather, it is thought of as the ability to see more and more tradi- Julianne Moore, who—mainly shown in over-sized, half-length enormous increase in such displacement was registered in the populist Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occi- tional differences (of tribe, religion, race, customs, and the like) as portraits—gaze directly at the viewer. They sit before a mono- summer of 2015. Initially triggering a wave of citizen involvement dent (Pegida) movement in Dresden. Via use of the slogan in this unimportant when compared with similarities with respect to pain chrome green screen, a cinematic device typically used so that and, in many cases, self-sacrificing offers of help in Germany, the context, participants sought to underline their sovereignty in a bid and humiliation—the ability to think of people wildly different actors can be inserted into other shots or computer simulations. situation has now changed—above all after attacks, allegedly by to disassociate themselves from a government led by Chancellor from ourselves as included in the range of ‘us.’”3 There are no props, costumes, masks, or any exaggerated make- migrants, on women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015—into a Angela Merkel, which, unlike the People’s Parliament of the GDR, Narrative has the potential to play an important role in creating up. Occasionally, the two are visible in the image as full-length debate on integration, immigration, sexism, Islamization, and politi- had been freely elected via a democratic voting process.1 greater solidarity, says Rorty. He defines “narrative” broadly, to figures, seated on a director’s chair and surrounded by lighting cal and media representation marked by prejudice. This discus- On February 18, 2016, a crowd of approximately one hundred include literature, documentary forms, and above all cinema: “This stands and reflectors. They are not engaged in a continuous dia- sion is increasingly being shaped by protagonists who have vested people chanted “we are the people” in conjunction with the racist process of coming to see other human beings as ‘one of us’ rather logue but speak one after the other. After a while it also becomes interests in dividing society: at elections in three states in March cry “foreigners out” in an attempt to prevent the accommodation than as ‘them’ is a matter of detailed description of what un- apparent that the texts are being spoken from a first-person per- 2016, the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) of refugees in the village of Clausnitz, Saxony. In this context, the familiar people are like and of redescription of what we ourselves spective, yet they do not result in a coherent plot: they jump succeeded, from a standing start, in entering the state parliaments slogan acquires a xenophobic emphasis, expressing a misanthrop- are like. This is a task not for theory but for genres such as ethnog- backward and forward between different contexts—Berlin, with results in the lower double-digit range. ic hatred of refugee families from Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, and raphy, the journalist’s report, the comic book, the docudrama, and, Mumbai, Cape Town, New York, Damascus, Kinshasa, Caracas, For Love Story, Breitz responds to this at times heated debate by Lebanon. Three days later, in Bautzen (also in Saxony), a vacant especially, the novel. Fiction like that of Dickens, Olive Schreiner, and Lubumbashi—and a range of themes such as war, homo- not merely referring to the current refugee problematic but by hotel that had been earmarked to begin housing asylum seekers or Richard Wright gives us the details about kinds of suffering phobia, faith, and atheism. The various strands of the narrative viewing issues of “flight,” “expulsion,” and “displacement” from in March 2016 was set on fire. Overall, the number of attacks on being endured by people to whom we had previously not attended. are nevertheless woven together via the recurrence—across the a global perspective. The work originates out of a series of inter- refugee facilities increased fivefold during 2015. This is not an Fiction like that of Choderlos de Laclos, Henry James, or Nabokov range of fragmented stories—of life threats, abuse, and ultimately views that Breitz conducted in three countries (Germany, South eastern German problem alone: the trend toward growing vio- gives us the details about what sorts of cruelty we ourselves are flight. It is also noticeable that the actors wear different accessories: Africa, and the United States) with six individuals who have been lence is also clearly recognizable in Saarland and North Rhine- capable of, and thereby lets us redescribe ourselves. That is why Alec Baldwin at various moments appears wearing sunglasses or forced to abandon their home countries in response to a variety Westphalia, among other western German states. the novel, the movie, and the TV program have, gradually but wrist accessories, while Julianne Moore switches between a series of adverse circumstances: Farah Abdi Mohamed, for instance, left Following Richard Rorty (1931–2007), the slogan “we are the steadily, replaced the sermon and the treatise as the principal of bracelets and rings.