graphic design: Fredrika Spindler Heeg, Carl FredrikHårleman, CarstenHöller, Jennifer Allen, Erikvan der board: advisory Schalk, Kim West Staffan Lundgren, HelenaMattsson, Meike Power Kinkle, Ekroth, Jeff Trond Lundemo, BrianManningDelaney, board: editorial publisher & editor: Overseas Council forCultural Affairs. Site issupportedby The SwedishNational any mannerwithoutpermisson. lication maybeusedorreproducedin All rightsreserved.thispub- Nopartof [email protected] submissions: Europe Sweden issues): (four subscription [email protected] www.sitemagazine.net Sweden se Åsögatan 176 site printing: LexiconNo. 1,typefaces: SiteSpecific – 116 32Stockholm 116 Vol. 17, No. 4, 1961. 1961. 4, No. 17, Vol. � From www.authentichistory.com Pages 30 – – 30eur – 150sek 40usd Alfa Print, Solna Text proposalstobesent – 21.2007 31 of

Konst issn 1650 – 7894 Treasure Chest Treasure 40 sek • 4 eur • 6 usd Sven-Olov Sven-Olov Wallenstein

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contents

page 2 Limited Freedom,

Unlimited Masks: Lene Berg’s ‘Gentlemen & Arseholes’ of theartistLeneBerg, whousesthecia of ries. BrianManningDelaneyprovidesareading or-der tosave us fromsuch amortalthreat. the needtolearnfromauthenticsources, in write aletterthankingtheeditors, andstressing ing toJ. EdgarHoover, whodidnothesitateto the youngMarx. This was particularlyilluminat illuminating cartoonthatdepictsthestruggleof Communism”, thefirstprovidinguswithan issueson starts publishingaseriesof “Godless Treasure Chest, publishedbytheCatholicGuild, his socialexistence. In1961, thecomicbook since man’s consciousnessisdeterminedby surrounding world:thereisnomorefreewill, lin, andlearnstoapplyhisideastheconcrete The youngMarx this categoryseemstohave fallenintooblivion, perceived asasupra-individualentity. Today tion that wants to unearth Romania’s recent past. “proof politics” andsensationalisminanexhibi- ian eraarehandled, andthedialecticbetween atotalitar probes theway inwhich memoriesof Ravini’s essayontheartistStefanConstantinescu “active forgetting”, asNietzsche said. Sinziana Cube,” standsuptoday. once gave risetotheexpression White “The institutionalcritique, whichhow theprojectof book, StudioandCube, DanKarlholmdiscusses weapon. BrianO’Doherty’s Inareviewof recent theCold Warties of cultureasatooland useof ject matterforart, andlooksintothecomplexi- By Brian Manning This issuegivesusmanysuch authentichisto Art historyoncebeganasadiscourse onstyle, History isindeedobliviontoo, orperhapsan Delaney

page 4 Studio Time and Gallery Space:

follows Hegel’s lecturesinBer- The Cube Reconsidered By Dan Karlholm

page 5 An Archive of Pain Authentic Authentic Histories in the Place of Oblivion By Sinziana Ravini asasub page 6 Old Dogs, New Lights - - - -

By Jeff Kinkle

the at admirer enthusiastic their or Chest Treasure either by appreciated be not probably would that way a in Marx,although and Hegel read we way the affected profoundly Situationism,which into merge to was that avant-garde repressed seemingly movement,a Letterist the to back us finally, Kim West’s obituary takes Isidoreon Isou beginning.the to backAnd us brings Mattsson WarCold architecture,Helena the onAmerican of impact psychological the at Warlooks at which , webs surroundingthegreatspider. thecob stein attemptstobrushaway someof Hegel’s process itself. Celebrating the200thbirthdayof the forming Absolute Subjectintothehistorical trans- was fascinatedwithhistorytothepointof philosophy.history of Hegelontheotherhand overthrows notonlythesubject, butalsothe igsberg”, andhowhisCopernican Revolution Deleuze’s theold readingof “Chinaman Kön- of PureReason .of Staffan Lundgren takesalookat Critique corded onlyasmallsectionattheendof enough divides this issue into two parts. cessity change.of This state mind of pertinently melancholy state mind,of but also about the ne is the Sign You Have Been Waiting For, are about a sen, cusses howwellshesucceeds. attempts torevivethisconcept.Kinkledis- Jeff but inhernewbook, OntheStyleSite, InaBlom pages 7 –10 In a review of Beatriz Colomina’s Beatriz of review a In Kant didnotcaremuch forhistory;itwas ac- The two art projects by Björn Kowalski Han- fbi

Yesterday is Crowding up my World and Site Project: . • Phenomenology of Spirit,Sven-Olov Wallen-Phenomenology of This is the Sign You Have Been Waiting For, 2007 By Bjørn-Kowalski Hansen Yesterday is Crowding Up My World, 2007 By Bjørn-Kowalski Hansen

page 11 Note on Deleuze and

Domesticity De Quincey By Staffan Lundgren This

- page 12

-

Hegel and the Spirit

of Phenomenology The letter from John Edgar Hoover Hoover in appears Edgar John from letter The � Source as above. as Source our way facing of threat life.” serious notes and that magazine “Communism represents the the of most greetings readers his the to extend Director The 1961. the editors By Sven-Olov Wallenstein

page 14 Treasure Chest Treasure Transparency, Paranoia, and the Idea of Concealing in the Production of the Postwar American Home

Vol. 17, No. 2, 2, No. 17, Vol. By Helena Mattsson

page 16 Isidore Isou, 1925 –2007 By Kim West • site • 21.2007

Limited Freedom, Unlimited Masks: Lene Berg’s “Gentlemen & Arseholes”

Brian Manning Delaney

Imagine that a Scandinavian artist wanted to messages, far less clear than one might imagine, reignited shortly after the end of World War ii, terpreting Gentlemen & Arseholes, to do little more create a panegyric to the cia, a celebration of and careful reflection is needed before we can perhaps as a proxy for European anti-Semitism, than begin with these questions, instead of pur- the world-historical wisdom and beneficence begin to understand what the piece means. A de- which of course had largely ceased being politi- suing them as far as one should. Given that the of this maligned and misunderstood agent of scription of the subject of the work reveals how cally correct. The low-brow, superficial culture whole matter of the cia funding of the cff has freedom, a work that would move the viewer complicated interpreting it will be. of the u.s. would poison Europe’s centuries-old for the most part been forgotten, people today to reflect on the true role of the cia in securing Gentlemen & Arseholes is, to begin with, at least Teutonic depth, British wit, Italian taste, and are initially stunned by the very facts themselves, freedom for the West, to entertain the possibility in some way about the cia’s Cultural Cold War French je ne sais quoi. “Brothers in culture: unite!” and immediately start reading Gentlemen & that the cia’s role in the Cultural Cold War, in activities during the 1950s and 1960s. Specifically, went the battle cry. “Look east to Dostoevsky Arseholes as little more than an artistic version particular, might have been overwhelmingly the work deals with the Congress for Cultural and Tchaikovsky, instead of west towards the of a straightforward, if gripping, historical text, positive, that the cia may well have saved West- Freedom and its flagship journal, Encounter, and money-grubbing ‘International American’, one such as Frances Stonor Saunders’ book, ern Europe, and therewith, a few decades later, touches on a number of ethical questions sur- towards Disney and Hollywood, which are run Who Paid the Piper?: cia and the Cultural Cold War the whole of Europe, and perhaps, ultimately, rounding the Congress and its activities. Berg’s by crass capitalists and protected at the point of (1999), which recounts, with the peculiar moral the whole world—for who knows how far west project consists of a reprint of the first issue of a gun by all those coarse, bubblegum-chewing indignation of the British left,2 the shocking the lusterless, grim wheels of the Soviet Union Encounter, altered in various ways, such as by the negroes you see standing around on the street details of the cia’s Cultural Cold War undertak- might have rolled had Greece, or Turkey, or addition of “inserts”—newspaper articles, pho- corners of your once noble cities of Berlin and ings. Given that Berg is Scandinavian, and that perhaps Italy or France, fallen for the blandish- tographs with captions, along with Berg’s own Rome.” The Soviets were of course slightly more the vast majority of art from Northern Europe ments of Soviet propaganda. short texts (themselves entitled “On the Trail of subtle than that, but the cia’s response was far (or from the u.s., for that matter) that touches in How would an artist with such an idea pro- a Liberal Conspiracy”)—placed inside the pages more subtle indeed. Instead of meeting this at- any way on u.s. culture or foreign policy takes ceed? Would it be possible to receive funding of the journal; along with a video, The Man in the tack with a blunt “Go u.s.a.!” counterpunch, the a distinctly critical stance against the u.s., we from, say, the Swedish government, or any Swed- Background, which repeats the same sequence of wise men of the cia, grasping what Hegel called simply assume, once the fascination with the his- ish foundation, for such a project? From a Nor- scenes, mostly taken from an old home movie of the “awesome power of the negative”, simply torical details begins to wear off, that the piece is wegian foundation? For that matter, from any some of the central players on vacation in South- sought out anti-communists and anti-Stalinists, but more calumny heaped upon the u.s., and we Western European funding source? Wouldn’t the ern Europe while attending a conference, but whatever other views they might have held, and answer the obvious ethical questions surround- artist have to lie, if nobly, about the true nature with a different voice-over each time, recounting showered them with funding, allowing them to ing the work almost as fast as they are raised, of the work in order to get funding? And, if the different stories, all of which seem equally fitting write and produce whatever they wished, under that the meaning of the work is simply: the cia’s artist ever wanted to receive funding again— for the scenes being shown. I had the pleasure of the assumption that the result would in some skullduggery was at best bumbling interference we’re of course leaving aside the vanishingly seeing the work at Midway Contemporary Art way be pro-democratic, if not pro-u.s. For over a in the world’s greatest centers of culture, at worst few artists whose works are “collected” right as in Minneapolis, where it was shown from March decade and a half, writers and artists of all stripes, a needless, freedom-perverting atrocity, and that they are produced—and if she wanted to show 17 to May 5. In a darkened room, copies of the including pacifists and socialists, many of them every one of the pipers knew full well who paid her work anywhere in Europe (for that matter, journal were placed on a table illuminated by an markedly anti-American, received what for most them, and that they should have refused the anywhere in the West, aside from a gallery or overhead hanging lamp, producing the cloak & intellectuals was a small fortune from the cia. money, or admitted receiving it from the start. two in perhaps northern Virginia or Canberra), dagger ambience one might associate with a cia The project was truly gargantuan. The Congress Thus everyone is guilty: Michael Josselson, the wouldn’t the work have to disguise its message or sis back office, or a secret “gentlemen’s” club for Cultural Freedom had offices in dozens of people who worked for the Congress for Cultural so thoroughly that a lifetime would have to pass (or, as the name of the work suggests, a “cia & countries, funded twenty magazines, and spon- Freedom, and above all the cia. before it was decoded? Might the artist simply sis club”). At the other end of the large exhibi- sored hundreds of art exhibits, performances and It is clear, however, that any reasonable inter- have no choice but to appear to fall in line, to tion space we have the sunny scenes of the home conferences throughout the world. pretation of Gentlemen & Arseholes must move present the work as yet another morality play movie from Greece, with Berg recounting dif- The twist is that the funding was more or beyond knee-jerk assumptions about Berg’s from Western Europe (or the coastal u.s.) about ferent narratives in Norwegian (with subtitles) less covert, at least until 1967, when an article political agenda. First of all, the work is clearly, the blood on the hands of Americans? Might about Michael Josselson, the Administrative Sec- containing accusations of secret cia funding at one level, a kind of tragedy about some of the she have to resort to the stratagems and feints retary and one of the architects of the Congress appeared in Ramparts, accusations which were most disreputable-seeming cia employees. The normally associated with pre-Enlightenment for Cultural Freedom, his wife Diana, and some shortly thereafter proudly confirmed by Thomas story of Josselson and his wife is particularly philosophy and art, or with 20th century Soviet of their colleagues. There is also an interview Braden, former head of the cia’s International moving. Josselson nobly agreed to take the fall journalism, making use of acrostics, diversions, with Diana Josselson, conducted by the artist not Organizations Division, in The Saturday Evening when The Saturday Evening Post article appeared, masks and esotericism of all kinds? The fact long before Diana Josselson’s death in 2005. Post, in an article entitled “I’m Glad the cia is and many of Europe’s intellectual elite promptly that a Scandinavian artist is very unlikely to be Berg’s work, multifaceted though it is, deals ‘Immoral’”. This is where the obvious ethical abandoned him, leaving him to twist in the burned at the stake (unless she produces a work with only one small part of the sprawling Con- questions begin: Was the cia immoral or not? wind. Berg displays an unmistakable tenderness critical of Islam’s treatment of women) doesn’t gress for Cultural Freedom. The Congress for Did the beneficiaries of the money, which came for Josselson, an Estonian Jew who became an mean that making certain political statements Cultural Freedom (ccf) is described in an article via front organizations and foundations, really American citizen during World War ii, and who wouldn’t amount to professional suicide. published on the cia’s Web site as one of the cia’s not know the money was provided by the cia? believed passionately in the cause of the ccf. Lene Berg’s work, Gentlemen & Arseholes may “more daring and effective” efforts.1 The ccf was Does it even matter, given that these men and Secondly, the bite of some of the strongest sug- well not be a paean to the cia, and the above created in order to counter the Soviet Union’s women of culture were able to produce the gestions of an anti-u.s. or anti-cia stance vanish scenario may well prove to be an absurd counter- Kulturkampf for the hearts and minds of vacillat- works they would have produced anyway? And upon sufficiently close examination. This, by factual once the work is examined closely, but the ing leftists throughout the West, though the pri- did these men and women, in point of fact, the way, is where we have the strongest concrete questions such a scenario suggests might be more mary battlefield was Western Europe. The Soviets really produce the works they would have pro- evidence of esotericism in the work, though we illuminating than the more obvious ones elicited had begun exploiting long-standing European duced anyway? can’t be certain whether Berg’s masks are masks by the work. The piece is complex, its message, or anti-Americanism, which, paradoxically, was Unfortunately, it is all-too tempting, when in- of political necessity, or whether the masks are

2 site • 21.2007

� � Diana and Michael Josselson 1958, video stills Michael Josselson 1958, video stills from from The Man in the Background, Lene Berg, 2006. Part The Man in the Background, Lene Berg, 2006. of the project Gentlemen & Arseholes. Part of the project Gentlemen & Arseholes.

instructive or playful—and there is a significant begins with a description of O’Brien posing the translations of her texts having been done by “an financial and social conditions that make difference. On the one hand, there is the esoteri- question, in 1966, of why Encounter hadn’t once American who wishes to remain anonymous”. it possible for things to materialize and be cism of someone like Shostakovich, who was mentioned the Vietnam War. Berg then notes Who is this American? Why does he or she want distributed. threatened with death or exile to a gulag. On the O’Brien made this claim “right in the middle of to remain anonymous? Was the translator even other hand, there is the esotericism of Nietzsche, Operation Rolling Thunder and the u.s. was in American? Was there a translator at all? Is an art- The people associated with Encounter did what which was more playful, and was even a means the process of dropping more bombs on Vietnam ist under any obligation to be honest? Were the they “wanted to do”, as did Berg; yet, we are told to force the reader to think independently, as Leo than the world had ever seen before...” On the writers for Encounter, who were not journalists, a few lines later, they and Berg cannot simply “do Strauss has pointed out—indeed, instead of hid- surface, this might seem like a line from Harold under any obligation to be honest? (For that mat- what [they] want to do”. What do we make of this ing the esoteric nature of his works, Nietzsche Pinter’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech, the sort ter, what sort of honesty can we demand even direct contradiction? If Berg were a Hegelian we frequently exhorted his readers to look for hid- of journalists? Isn’t the livelihood of journalists would be tempted to “think the contradiction”, den meaning everywhere. The nature of Berg’s everywhere threatened? Isn’t there a party line, to interpret the editorial, and the work itself, freedom, and thus the nature of her esotericism, “ The CIA may well the same one, in the overwhelming majority of as “speculative”—that the conditionality of free- is perhaps somewhere between that of Shosta- newspapers and even art magazines from Stock- dom doesn’t negate freedom. But I think it’s kovich and that of Nietzsche. Nietzsche could have saved Western holm to Perth? Imagine a journalist wanted to more sensible to interpret this contradiction, safely scream at the reader: “those who have Europe, and there- pen a paean to the cia... Would any art magazine which can be construed as the primary tension ears, hear!”, “all deep things love a mask”, and in the West dependent on state funding publish in the work as a whole, as the kind of Nietz- could use his ever-present suggestive dashes and with, a few decades it without preceding it with a prominent “major schean tension that Strauss, Wittgenstein, and ellipses. For Shostakovich, on the other hand, later, the whole of third”, such as one of Joe McCarthy’s or J. Edgar many others emphasized was needed to goad us such interpretative instructions would have been Hoover’s most banal, paranoid letters?) to think—in the case of Gentlemen & Arseholes, to suicidal. He had to hide the esoteric meaning Europe, and per- This brings us to the somewhat odd, lengthy think about the nature of freedom, and to think carefully within the exoteric. Any interpretative haps, ultimately, editorial that Berg wrote. It would seem that about what that means for the work at hand, instructions were feints directing the listener Berg is reminding the interpreter that all deep and for art in general. to the exoteric level, as in the editorial note the whole world” things do indeed love a mask, even if they may But to the extent that Berg’s life conditions accompanying his Fifth Symphony, “A Soviet not actually need the mask. In this sense, the are somewhere between those of Shostakovich artist’s reply to justified criticism”; elsewhere, he editorial at first makes Berg seem more like and Nietzsche, we have a tension in the very even wrote that the symphony’s conclusion was of thing that pleases people who would rather be Nietzsche than Shostakovich, even if she may degree to which the Nietzschean tension itself “joyful and optimistic”. It took years for music pleased than think. But Berg surely knows that well not be as free as Nietzsche was. This, finally, can be displayed: the very existence of masks theorists to understand the possible significance a discriminating reader will note that the Gulf is the primary reason why the work cannot be is neither unambiguously unmasked, nor fully of the violent hammering of the first and fifth of Tonkin incident had occurred less than two interpreted as a leftist morality play about the hidden. To the extent that the possibility of tones of the final D major chord, and the rela- years before the articles for Encounter up till that cia’s perversion of freedom. Berg’s editorial first Berg’s continuing to work as an artist is more tively weak third tone (the tone that determines time had been written. A careful reader will also spells out the many levels on which the work can constrained than was Nietzsche’s possibility that the chord is major instead of minor) in the notice the awkward structure of the sentence— be read: it is a tragedy, a comedy, an investigation of writing with utter freedom (he, like few conclusion to the final movement, a movement not: “right in the middle of Operation Rolling into the conditions of freedom, and more. others, was “free as a bird”), her permitting the which otherwise seemed to be a triumphant Thunder, during which the u.s...” but the more But then we have a puzzling sequence of state- existence of this second tension, by partially glorification of Stalin. Shostakovich’s musical forced “... and the u.s. was in the process ...”. ments. First: lifting up the Shostakovichian mask covering esotericism was complicated enough that even How can the writers and editors of Encounter be the Nietzschean use of masks, is not only one today there is no consensus on the meaning of accused of being stooges for American foreign There is no evidence that the cia ever of the most interesting aspects of the work, it is the work. policy when the overwhelming majority of the censored Encounter, or in any way told the also a sign of great courage. We should hope that The anti-Americanism of the West has its own articles were written during a time when the editors or writers what they should write, the board members of various art foundations triumphalism, and, on the left (which itself Vietnam conflict was generally seen in the West think, or say. Judging by all available facts, in Oslo and Stockholm, who might have hoped has essentially no internal resistance, because as another Korea, and long before most of the the whole thing was based on a tacit agree- they were funding a work whose message would it still fashions itself the resistance) the major massive bombing had taken place? ment between what the people associated be more like Tim Weiner’s in Legacy of Ashes: The third is generally loud and clear, be it a riff on There is of a course a risk of over-interpreta- with Encounter wanted to do, and what the History of the cia, will have missed this partial Americans’ obesity, ignorance, superficiality, tion with Gentlemen & Arseholes, as there is with cia wanted to fund. Something similar is lifting up of the outer mask. Failing that, we hypocrisy, or aggressive, self-serving foreign Shostakovich. But when we’re dealing with a the case with Gentlemen & Arseholes, which should hope they will at least esteem Berg’s fear- policy. Dinner table conversations can riff on sufficiently meticulous artist like Berg, analyz- has been realized under conditions that can lessness. Otherwise they would prove themselves any of those themes, but art tends to focus on ing even the slightest oddity is always repaid, be described as complete freedom. to be yet more gentlemen and arseholes.• some aspect of foreign policy. Cognizant of the and plenty of curious features of the work stand need to include at least a hint of anti-American out as worthy of analysis. For example, she leaves She then lists the numerous foundations (all but Notes triumphalism, but less threatened than Shosta- out—we have to assume intentionally—the one funded “by the state”) who gave her money, 1 https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intelligence/kent-csi/docs/v38i5a10p.htm kovich was, and thus free enough to make the scare-quotes around “immoral” in the title of and then writes: 2 Stauners’ book is reviewed by Thomas M. Troy, Jr., esoteric level transparent to a relatively careful The Saturday Evening Post article mentioned who can’t resist ribbing her for her moral outrage: viewer, Berg includes her own short text about above, which makes Braden seem like a recal- But one thing that is certain is that, either “Frances Saunders evidently was dismayed and shocked! Conor Cruise O’Brien publicly questioning the citrant apologist for government turpitude, way, neither I, nor those who worked for shocked! to learn there was gambling in the back room of Rick’s café.” (https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for- integrity of the people behind Encounter. The instead of a critic of historically benighted mor- Encounter, can simply do what we want the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/ text, dealing with how the ccf began to unravel, alism. And then there is the odd note about the to do: there are many ideas, but it is the studies/vol46no1/article08.html)

3 site • 21.2007

Studio Space and Gallery Time: The Cube Reconsidered

Dan Karlholm

This book, the elegant materialization of an Vermeer and Velasquez, it is only in the 19th cen- of making art is not yet definitely interrupted), quotations, is as irritating here as in that more illustrated lecture, revolves around a pair of spac- tury, he argues, that the studio becomes a subject whereas museum time is “frozen” (meaning, I well-known essay). The suggestion raises many es for art, namely “where art is made and where of its own. Courbet’s famous The Painter’s Studio guess, that art is installed as a historical trace of a historical questions that need to be dealt with. art is displayed,” according to its descriptive (1855) “provides one of the first modern texts past existence). But what about gallery time, un- What is the relation, for example, of Alfred Barr’s subtitle. The dichotomy, or pseudo-dichotomy, for the relation of studio to exhibition space.” mentioned in this account? Gallery time surely is whitish MoMA walls to these artist studios? is abbreviated for the main title: Studio and Cube. The relation is an interrelation, a commingling a temporality of its own, in which the works are And what about historical precedent? The first The latter is, of course, another abbreviation for of the two. But what interests O’Doherty is the terminated but in waiting for a transfer to some white gallery walls were possibly those of the the white cube, the successful metaphor coined by extent to which the studio becomes mytholo- other time-space. They may head straight for Berlin Nationalgalerie in 1906. The big historical the author in 1976, which refers to the ideological gized as the “mysterious locus of the (potentially the public museum, without passing through question, which also Inside the White Cube left content and capacity of the purified modernist subversive) creative act.” The studio is “a think- some private collector or safety deposit box, or be unresolved, is how the white cube phenomenon exhibition space for art.‡ The expression has ing space” which comes to stand for the art and stuck in this transit hall forever. They may also, came about, when, where, and why; what exactly long since lost its quotation marks, and has been the artist, and is important in the “development of course, have to return home the same as they brought it about, and how has the content de-authorized in the late modern or postmodern of the self-referential work of art and the closed came but certainly different. of this content-less form changed over time? discourse of art. What Brian O’Doherty seeks to aesthetic systems of late modernism.” The au- For all its thought-provoking reasoning, good O’Doherty’s by now classic account is still an do with these places is to study their relationship, thor argues that there is a connection between points and entertaining anecdotes, the overall excellent piece of criticism with its drastic char- which turns out to be trickier than it may seem. the self-referential creative process that takes argument of this text raises another set of ques- acterizations and many illuminating historical The text begins by presenting the “studio-bed- place in the studio and the fashioning of the tions as well. Is not the gallery as much, if in a connections. The present book is a good lecture room” of Lucas Samaras, which he reconstituted autonomous artwork, which “in turn transfers different sense, a place of production as the stu- that manages to revive interest in the former as art in his New York gallery in 1964. He took the to the gallery.” Now, is this to say that art is dio, even before relational art projects took com- text, advance its arguments somewhat, and, not material contents of this room, bed, clothes, wall made autonomous already in the studio, due to mand of it as a site for experiments and literal the least, stimulate further critical work on the decorations, art, junk, etc. and installed them in the mystic creative process of the artist in whom production? Duchamp is invoked, as well as the contextual constrains of art today.• a structurally identical way in the space reserved the power to make art is invested, before this is idea of the “creative act,” but with no repercus- for the exhibition of art. From this suggestive confirmed, so to speak, in the gallery? Or is the sions on this issue: “In the 1950’s ‘the creative Notes vantage point, seemingly collapsing the subti- object in the cube a displaced object, which has act’ became a popular fetish that exonerated the ‡ Brian O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space, with an introduction by Thomas Mc- tle’s distinction, we are led through well-known lost its origin or home (which is in the studio)? spectator from the travail of engaging the work Evilley (Santa Monica, San Francisco: The Lapis Press, sections of modern art history and the history of The author remains vague on the nature of what itself. The mystery of the work was displaced to 1986). Originally published in Artforum in 1976. studio paintings in particular, i.e. paintings de- is altered or effectuated by this transfer. the mystery of its creation,” by which O’Doherty picting their own place of origin with or without And what is actually meant by the gallery? seems to mean the artist’s original creation in Brian O’Doherty, Studio and Cube: On the Re- the artist present. But among the many excellent The term was only loosely defined in Inside the the studio. Daniel Buren is invoked too, who ar- lationship Between where Art is Made and Where illustrations of artworks—more numerous than White Cube, but at least once referred to as a com- gued that the proper place of art, its home, was Art is Displayed (New York: A Buell Center/ the pages of this volume —are also many docu- mercial locale. Here, however, the gallery is not the studio. Such a view, along with the idea that FORuM Project Publication, 2007) ments of artist studios kept by Rothko, Picasso, theoretically distinguished from the museum, art is “made” in the studio, ignores the extent Ernst, Rauschenberg, Mondrian, et al. The book presumably since both of these spaces display to which art is “made,” according to this post- ends with a kind of reversal of Samaras’ gesture: art. But if we fail to distinguish the temporal Duchampian commonplace, with every serious when Brancusi’s famous studio, arranged like display of a commercial gallery from the more encounter with it, typically outside of the studio. a gallery, “entered the museum intact.” But or less permanent display of an art museum, the The author’s concluding point is that the stu- entered as what? Surely, it entered as a studio, if analysis of the functions of these spaces will not dio has “influenced” the white cube (“gallery and also a displacement for the mythic artist, whereas go far. Interestingly, however, along with dis- museum”). The increasingly white and sparse Samaras’ studio, intended as a “picture of me,” tinguishing between different spaces and places studio environments of Mondrian and Brancusi entered as art. for art, O’Doherty discusses different temporal may account for the establishment of the white While the author recapitulates some famous conditions for art as well. Studio time, for ex- exhibition space for art (exactly where is un- Dan Karlholm is professor in Art History at historical paintings of the studio, by Van Eyck, ample, is open (art is unfinished and the process clear, and the lack of references, despite direct Södertörn University College, Stockholm

4 site • 21.2007

An Archive of Pain in the Palace of Oblivion

Sinziana Ravini

� Ceausescu’s Palace Photo: Sinziana Ravini

I have always admired those that master the art day or the location where they were being held. den and while there did exist some kisses in clas- queue, which led suddenly to huge amounts of of looking back, those who return to their home- At the same time, I remember myself how as a sics from the forties and fifties, it was likely only people having dead relatives to brag about. lands, if only momentarily, to then raise their little child in school I sang hymns in Ceausescu’s because someone had fallen asleep at the censor If the exhibition’s skeleton is Archive of Pain, and feelings and their considerations to the desirable honor in the belief that I lived in the best of bureau. Love was taboo, but love for the West, for its meat is the more tragic-comic works—The Pas- heights of aesthetics. Stefan Constantinescu is possible worlds. It is painful to listen to an old the freedom to be able to move and think freely, sage and Dacia 1300 My Generation—then the exactly such an artist who has managed to create officer who gave out anti-communist pamphlets pulsed strongly in every soul, not in the least skin or the outer membrane is the image series a portal between two cultures—the Swedish and in his youth, forced to hide in the mountains for in Ceausescu’s, who built his entire palace after Northern Light (2006), which is about the artist’s the Romanian. This portal is not only spatial but several years with his comrades, who later turned Western models. Communism led paradoxically life in the Stockholm suburb Vällingby. Images also temporal. It leads back to Romania’s dark- him in. In jail he chose to play epileptic and straight to capitalism. immortalize moments of waiting, dark cold days, est history—the period between 1948 and 1989 pretended he didn’t feel pain when the soles of The only period in Romanian history in which packages with books and films from Romanian where thousands of intellectuals and all sorts of his feet were sliced because he didn’t want to communism appeared to work well in practice friends, empty rooms and objects that have individuals who opposed the party were impris- give up his friends. was during the 1970s. Constantinescu’s The Pas- ceased to call for a use. They are like visual scores oned and tortured to death. Archive of Pain (2000), How easy would it be to dismiss this documen- sage (2005) shows just that by giving voice to a to Satie’s Gnossiennes No. 1. Here the inter- a work consisting of twelve filmed confessions of tary, multi-ethnic tradition that cuddles with pair of Chileans who fled Pinochet’s regime for cultural space seems to have morphed into an communist dissidents, was shown last summer the Other, that wants to give the victims a voice, Ceausescu’s, trading one dictator for another. infinite waiting room. at The Museum for Contemporary Art in Bucha- while at the same time aestheticizing them and One of the Chileans, Pedro Ramires, remembers Ceausescu’s architectonic monster of a palace rest (mnac), which organized a whole exhibition thereby sacrificing them all over again? The bur- how it was to live in Romania during the 1970s is also one single large waiting room for better around Stefan Constantinescu that had the den of proof politics has always gone hand and and shows a certain regret over having left Roma- times. Many lives have been claimed to build somewhat ironic title, “Thanks for a Wonderful, hand with an appetite for sensationalism. Had it nia for Sweden. In his world it was definitely bet- these huge salons with specially ordered rugs, Ordinary Day.” not been for all the other works in the exhibition ter before. As a communist refugee, he was well a lobby that would have room for the Arc de It is no small feat for the Romanian state, which space that invites everyday micropolitics into the taken care of by the Romanian state. Here the triomphe, and an avenue that makes the Champs still steers the arts, to let these heartbreaking context, the works would have fallen heavily to ideals could be woven together and the dream Elysée look like an old back lot—all in order to stories of mental and physical torture come to the ground. Now they are instead lifted up by could be built. That he never was able to see the defeat the French in the art of building. Dictator- the surface, especially considering that the Mu- all these other people’s stories, those who were land that he idealized collapse, much less glance ship and low self-esteem go hand in hand, as is seum for Contemporary Art and the parliament never imprisoned, but constantly feared pos- behind its curtains, contributes undeniably to his well known. That art and politics live under the share the same building: Ceausescu’s old palace. sible imprisonment, who constantly suspected romaniticization of a past Romania. same roof does not mean that they are doomed If there is one thing that Romania did not have neighbors and family members as belonging to One other work in the exhibition that defini- to failure. Ceausescu’s communist temple has time for in the years after the fall of communism, the secret police—Securitate—but that still suc- tely does not try to romanticize the past Roma- every possibility of being transformed into a form it is to deal with the communist party’s horren- ceeded to find small pleasures from cigarettes, nia, but that focuses upon the country’s vision- that works against the dualist antagonism to the dous acts of terror. And certainly it is difficult to chewing gum and candy from the west. In these ary dreams, is Dacia 1300 My Generation (2003). benefit of a dialectical antagonism, to borrow clean up the mess when it is still being created— stories the Romanian mentality is revealed in all The Dacia factory started in 1968, the same year the language of Chantal Mouffe. For the time if not by the same ideologies of yesterday, then of its complexity. For if there was something the the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia, and manu- being the communist mentality seems to still be at least by the same people. Even if this is not the Romanians excelled at, it was being communist factured the equivalent of the ddr’s Trabant: alive in these walls.• case, people still live under this conviction: the and capitalist at the same time. This Janus-faced a car anyone could own. This symbol for the same evil sits in power even if it has a newer face. ideology affected even me who proudly wore progressive working-class transformed over the The importance of Constantinescu’s Archive my Pioneer’s tie during the day and played hap- years to become a symbol of the lost promise of of Pain to the anonymous suffering cannot be pily with Barbie dolls and Kinder Eggs in the a better future—in other words a piece of junk over-appreciated as it provides to the commu- evening. Naturally I had heard the rumors that that people were able to keep maintaining year nion of collective guilt both flesh and blood. It people in the West were unhappy, that they com- after year, even though reserve parts disappeared is painful to see these people who risked their mitted suicide or ate themselves to death, if they from the market and queues for gas grew longer lives for a better future, who spent up to fifteen didn’t shoot each other down like in Westerns or and longer. Only those with a certificate showing Sinziana Ravini is an art critic, lecturer years in prison without knowing the time of the gangster films. Love films were absolutely forbid- a near relative had died got to go in front of the and curator.

5 site • 21.2007

Old Dogs, New Lights

Jeff Kinkle

Ina Blom’s On the Style Site, as the book’s subtitle lighting, lit spaces, and media machines while it tion of subjectivity through the relation between mov- and thought-provoking in itself and does relate suggests, is largely concerned with mapping re-orders our perception by making visible the ing image media and the ‘perceptual’ creation of space”. to material elsewhere in the book but again feels the nexus where art, sociality and media culture techniques behind this creation. (81) Many works are discussed in which television a bit random. “Rock” too is defined as broadly as meet. An art critic, curator, historian and theo- Things get complicated as Blom then inscribes is treated essentially as a lamp: as a device for fur- possible and appears to include all varieties of rist, Blom performs a re-reading of the artworks the style site within the media (once again, nishing artificial light. For example, Rehberger’s popular music, mainstream and underground. of many of the usual suspects of the past twenty broadly defined). Following McLuhan and others, 81 Years (2002) is seen to present television at its The immense variety of rock sites—from sitting years such as Olafur Eliasson, Philippe Parreno, the ubiquity of the media produces a certain kind “most raw or reduced state: as a dispenser of light at an arena rock concert, laying in bed watching a Rirkrit Tiravanija, Liam Gillick, and Tobias Reh- of mediatic subjectivity, not only on the level and time”. (105) In the end, however, the use of music video, dancing in a club with bass so heavy berger, armed with a theoretically dense concep- of content as an ideological state apparatus but lamps as an entry point seems a bit too random one feels nauseous to killing time with muzak tual schema that draws heavily on contemporary in its form, in the way television for example and forced. Blom continually makes claims like, in an elevator or listening to an iPod anywhere— philosophy and media theory in general and structures the subject’s perception of time and “Living in the aura of lamps essentially means makes the concept difficult to work with. theories of immaterial labor, cognitive capital- space. Blom’s stance is influenced by the work having one’s entire perceptual apparatus con- Unfortunately there is no proper conclusion ism, and biopower in particular. Looking at art- and theory of Nam June Paik and she draws nected to the global electronic and informational to the book that brings everything together and ists rarely considered under the rubric of insti- heavily on theories of biopower and immaterial networks”, (73) which is probably true, but the as a result the book feels more like a collection tutional critique, and who are often seen to flirt labor, primarily those of Foucault and Maurizio same could be said of say eating an avocado in of essays than a proper treatise. This is not a with the aesthetics of design, fashion, and the Lazzarato, but also to a lesser extent Negri and Sweden (which also arguably engages more of the problem per se, but the chapters are linked to mass media, Blom discovers a latent “criticality” Hardt on affective labor and Jonathan Beller senses than lamps). an extent that it would be unsatisfying to read that is usually underplayed in discussions of on “the cinematic mode of production”, and In On the Style Site “media” is almost synony- each on its own. At the same time, they do not their work or omitted altogether—a criticality the idea that in post-Fordist societies life itself mous with “television”. Writing in 2007, one build on each other enough to make a coherent she attempts to expose by thinking them in rela- is put to work for the valorization of capital. also wonders why the focus is on television? Do whole. The argument of the book meanders tion to what she calls “the style site”. Production is no longer limited to the workplace people still watch television? Socializing with and it feels like many important discussions Blom’s starting point is the idea that over the but seeps into all aspects of our everyday lives. primarily London and Stockholm’s cultural are never flushed out—politics being the most past several decades, as notions of intervention Watching television can be seen as being produc- classes may not make one representative of soci- conspicuous by its absence. Key concepts are in the politics of social space, institutions, and tive for capital and this is demonstrated by the ety at a whole, but I barely know anyone that referenced but the debates surrounding them the realm of the sociality itself have come to the sophisticated ways in which advertisers, corpo- owns a tv. There are also quite different senses are not. Without entering into the discussions fore, the term “style” has by and large disap- rations, and networks vie for our attention. The of time and community generated or engaged by around concepts the attention theory of value, peared from critical and historical discourses on value that attention produces may be difficult to video games and the Internet. We could perhaps immaterial labor (and by and large only citing art. Simultaneously, however, style has become quantify but the emphasis placed on television even speculate that these medias are reconfigur- a single book by Lazzarato), the theoretical increasingly central to our culture and economy ratings and the high sums paid for advertising ing attention and sociability. I often find myself background feels less than rigorous despite the as a whole. The term style has been displaced demonstrates its existence. The media’s influ- fast-forwarding through thirty-second viral fact that Blom has obviously read both widely from the art world into mainstream culture ence on the subjectification process is thus seen videos to get to the so-called money shot: skip and carefully. At times the book feels a bit like a where it plays a key role in the development of as immense and so is the media’s reliance on the build up and only see the funny fall. And cocktail party where each guest doesn’t want to subjectivity. The worlds we inhabit—not least style. “The style site is, perhaps above all, treated when surfing online it seems to be inattention, upset the host by bickering amongst themselves, galleries and exhibition spaces—are increasingly as a mediatic site and is associated with the the inability to focus on a Web page for more smiling and pretending to get along while the stylized worlds. Everyday life is now coated with global information networks of contemporary than three seconds, that generates value and not tension simmers beneath the surface. Lazzarato, style—subjectivity is constantly reproduced in capitalism, with all the difficulties this entails really attention. We can perhaps think of the rise Laclau and Mouffe, Latour, McLuhan, Foucault, and through style. The aim of Blom’s book “is to for concepts such as ‘place’ or ‘context’”.(14) Her of things like Attention Deficit Disorder as an Tarde, Benjamin, Bergson, Heidegger, etc., are operate in extension of this displacement, all the claim as to the centrality of media to current inability of the state to keep up with the changes all repeatedly referenced yet without any real while testing the ground for a different way of style is not problematic in itself but one begins being instituted by our engagement with these conflicts erupting. This can work for a Nicolas relating to the style issues within art historical to become concerned that the concept of the new media technologies.2 Bourriaud, but not in a comparably dry academic and art critical writing.” (13) This is not done by style site has become a bit of a behemoth. As the Overall, there is a sense that the tumidity of text like this. The artist or curator as dj fine, but merely returning to a vocabulary of style and term style by and large falls out of the middle Blom’s core concepts makes the history and con- not the theorist as dj going from punk to polka form, as Blom states, “style, here, is not primarily sections of the book as the focus is placed on the temporary examples she chooses seem arbitrary. to hard house without a cross-fader. evoked or referred to as an attribute of artworks media in general and television in particular, This is true of the book’s second chapter that On the Style Site is just under two-hundred but as a social site, and, furthermore, that the the extent to which the style site is even a useful deals with the Constructivists and the historical pages and one suspects that it might have work- works to be discussed in this context should be concept for addressing the influence of the tele- development of the style site. In many respects ed better as a provocative, elongated essay or seen as interventions in—or operations on— visual on subjectivity becomes questionable. this history is similar to the one sketched by Hal as a larger survey covering the development of what we may now call the style site”. (14) The middle two chapters are centered on Foster, only with design standing in for style, the style site and its present importance more The style site is conceived as a key “place” in Blom’s discussion of what she calls “lamp works”. which begins with Art Nouveau and goes thoroughly: as it stands it feels both too long and which (post)modern subjectivity is created and Used as a methodological convenience to ground through Bauhaus then continues into the pres- too short. Still, Blom’s text is very rich in both continually reproduced by the environment in her discussion of the style site and its relation ent in which everything from “jeans to genes” is its theoretical and philosophical discussions and all of its cultural, economic, and technological to the media, contemporary works of art using subject to design imperatives.3 It is understand- in its analyses of specific artists and works. It is a complexity.1 A consideration of the ways in lamps are specifically chosen because they direct able why Blom would choose the Constructivists formidable attempt at revitalizing the discussion which style—as a catchall term meant to include us to a field of artistic articulation in which art, as a key moment in the style site’s growth, but around a group of artists who one suspected not aesthetics, design, and fashion—structures our technologies, media, economic production, and it is also true that she could have chosen pretty much new could be said about and should cer- everyday lives is combined with the focus on the personal lifestyles are treated as a continuum. much any of the groups of the historical avant tainly be of interest to those concerned with the site-specificity of contemporary art. As Blom (59–60) Lamps are a creator of atmosphere and garde. This is doubly true of the discussion of the intricacies of art practice and aesthetics under writes late in the book in a formulation influ- ambiance, themselves heavily stylized and lamp works, where Blom even acknowledges that the reign of so-called cognitive capitalism.• enced by Deleuze and Guattari, style site artists plugged into an immense networked electrical the discussion of the style site in relation to artists and artworks “invent artistic methodologies grid; they also, Blom proposes, prompt discus- who work with lamps is somewhat haphazard, Ina Blom, On the Style Site: Art, Sociality, and that make it possible to focus on the machinic sion on the televisual. Blom’s argument as to why but then even the artists chosen seem random. An Media Culture (Sternberg Press, 2007). production of sociality.” (172) Referencing Craig lamps prompt this discussion is difficult to sum- artist working with lamps such as Rafael Lozano- Saper’s concept of sociopoetics, Blom empha- marize as it builds on McCluhan, David Toop, Hemmer seems to be more relevant to a discus- sizes that these works are more experiments on Gernot Böhme, Walter Benjamin, and Heidegger, sion of aesthetics, biopower, and biopolitics than Notes the style site than works that proclaim their ex- but the basic idea is that by building atmospheres many of those discussed, yet is omitted. 1 In this respect Blom’s concerns are similar to those of theorists such as Brian Holmes and Suely Rolnik, istence within the style site. They not only reflect around the emanation of electronic light, they This is the biggest problem with the final although her interests are more philosophical and art on the ways in which style produces subjectivity; mirror or reflect upon our mediatic environ- chapter as well, which seems to come out of no- historical, less economic and geopolitical and informed they actively reconfigure this production. For ments and how media structures our perception where. Blom used to work as a rock journalist by Guattari than Holmes and Rolnik respectively. example, Eliasson’s work, to oversimplify Blom’s of space and time. “By framing atmospheric and and the final chapter of the book looks at the 2 I owe this point to discussions with Mark Fischer, Alberto Toscano, John Hutnyk, and Tom Bunyard on argument, is seen to both reflexively consider environmental styles rather than distinct media intersection of rock and art, building on many of the “attention theory of value”. how our perceptual reality is created through contents, [the lamp works] explore the produc- the concepts in previous chapters. It is coherent 3 Hal Foster, Design and Crime (UK: Verso, 2002), 16.

6

site • 21.2007

� Cordelia and King Lear. From Charles and Mary Lamb, Tales from Shakespeare (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Company, 1901)

Note on Deleuze and De Quincey

Staffan Lundgren

“As soon he speaks against Hegel, Levinas can only understanding of time, and as a consequence, of sense and reason in accordance is the genesis of offend us due to our lack of interest in Kant. He confirm him, has already confirmed him.” history. We can see this in Nietzsche and Philo- reason—a discord, not an accord, is at the heart will also proffer three reasons for the negligence Jacques Derrida sophy where Deleuze will bring to the fore a of modernity. of Kantian philosophy in his homeland, reasons pre-Kantian “philosophy of being” and a “phi- The final paragraph of the “Poetic Formulas” that to a large degree still speak to us today: the “What I most detested was Hegelianism and losophy of will” (that, paradoxically, will first begins with a confession that the four wordings language in which it is written, “the supposed dialectics,” Gilles Deleuze writes in a “Letter to come into being with Nietzsche). As an example clearly are “arbitrary in relation to Kant”, but, as obscurity of the philosophy which they deliver”, Harsh Critic”.1 “My book on Kant’s different”, he of what this turn of history will amount to, Deleuze continues, “not at all arbitrary in rela- and “the unpopularity of all speculative phi- famously continues, “I like it, I did it as a book Deleuze, in the lecture series “Synthesis and tion to what Kant has left us for the present and losophy whatsoever, no matter how treated, in about an enemy.” Time”,4 will designate Kant as the founder of the future”. Deleuze then makes an enigmatic a country where the structure and tendency of In what must be said to be a central passage in phenomenology: reference to Thomas de Quincey’s essay The society impress upon the whole activities of the this 1963 “Kantbuch” (Kant’s Critical Philosophy), Last Days of Immanuel Kant which, as he writes, nation a direction almost exclusively practical”.5 Deleuze will point to what must be the most rad- With Kant it’s like a bolt of lightning, after- “summed it all up, but only the reverse side of Writing out in the country at the northern bor- ical implication of the Copernican Revolution. wards we can always play clever, and even things which find their development in the ders of Hamlet’s kingdom, one can only concur The relation between subject and object, that must play clever, with Kant a radically new four poetic formulas of Kantianism.” What is it with de Quincey’s last reflection, which not only previously had been that of a relation between understanding of the notion of phenome- that has found its development in the formulas addresses the oblivion of Kant, but indeed sum- something internal and something external, non emerges. Namely that the phenomenon presented? What are we to expect from de marizes the downside of modernity. becomes internalized, it becomes, as he writes, will no longer at all be appearance. The dif- Quincey? His essay begins with the assumption At the end of the “Poetic Formulas” Deleuze “a relation between subjective faculties which ference is fundamental, this idea alone was leaves us with a question: “Could this be a Shake- differ in nature”.2 In the same moment as the enough for philosophy to enter into a new spearean side of Kant, a kind of King Lear?” How difference between external and internal, object element, which is to say I think that if there “ To suppose a reader are we to answer this question? By proclaiming and subject, thing and representation, are inter- is a founder of phenomenology it is Kant. that Kant has abdicated? Rather we are to pose nalized, the difference transforms into a struggle There is phenomenology from the moment thoroughly indifferent it to ourselves in such a way that it will force us of legislative power, a conflict of the faculties of that the phenomenon is no longer defined to Kant, is to suppose to read Deleuze reading Kant in a way that does a self that is no longer—can no longer be—itself. as appearance but as apparition. not turn Deleuze into a Kantian, nor Kant into a A fundamental chasm is opened in the subject him thoroughly Deleuzian. If so, let us first of all follow Deleuze, that, many will contend, is the genesis of our In this sense Kant’s critical philosophy turns into unintellectual; and, who opens his 1978 lecture on “Synthesis and schizophrenic modernity. Deleuze will later sum- the differentiating condition, the critical border, Time” by saying: marize this turn by a sententious phrase bor- or perhaps even the genesis of a certain relation therefore, though rowed from Rimbaud, “I is an other”, a phrase to both past, present and future philosophy. Or in reality he should We are returning to Kant. May this be an that in his preface to the English trans-lation of as Deleuze has it in “Letter to a Harsh Critic”, happen not to regard occasion for you to skim, read or re-read his book on Kant appears as one of four poetic describing his work on the “Kantbuch”: “I sup- The Critique of Pure Reason.• formulas with which he aims to summarize the pose the main way I coped with it at the time was Kant with interest, it Kantian philosophy.3 to see the history of philosophy as a sort of bug- The consequences of this internalization are gery or (it comes to the same thing) immaculate would still be amongst of course far-reaching, not only in terms of the conception.” (Letter 6) the fictions of courtesy Notes overthrowing of an ancient hierarchical struc- For Deleuze the synthesis of the faculties 1 Gilles Deleuze, “Letter to a Harsh Critic” in Negotia- to presume he did.” tions (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 6. ture, an overturning that emerges from the newly will not be effected by a bridging of the gap in a Henceforth cited as Letter. found powers of the rational being—that it is dialectical scheme, making understanding and 2 Gilles Deleuze, Kant’s Critical Philosophy, (University of now “we who are giving the orders”, that “we are sensibility the foundation of reason, but will Minnesota Press, Minneapolis: 2003), 14. Henceforth the legislators of nature”. (kcp 14) God is already instead be attributed to the force of imagination. that “all people of education”, even if they are cited as KCP. 3 “On Four Poetic Formulas that Might Summarize the dead, at least in Deleuze’s Nietzschean reading A correspondence or accord between the facul- not familiar with Kant’s philosophy, will have Kantian Philosophy” in Kant’s Critical Philosophy as of Kant. If the Law once was a representative ties can only come into being by a fundamental some interest in the personal history of the great above. The text would later appear in a prolonged ver- of the missing God(s) or Good, now—since we discord, one that Deleuze will find in his reading “Chinaman of Königsberg”. For this reason de sion in Essays Critical and Clinical. are the legislators—we have another effect of the of the third Critique. Once again he will invoke Quincey concludes that “to suppose a reader 4 Gilles Deleuze, “Synthesis and Time, 14/03/1978”, 5. The page refers to the English pdf version available at revolution, which Deleuze points to with the Rimbaud. “A disorder of all the senses” points thoroughly indifferent to Kant, is to suppose www.webdeleuze.com. The lectures were held spring words of Kafka: “The Good is what the Law says”. to the free play of imagination that pushes itself him thoroughly unintellectual; and, therefore, 1978 at Vincennes. Rimbaud and Kafka are accompanied by and the other faculties to the limits and beyond though in reality he should happen not to regard 5 Thomas de Quincey, “The Last Days Of Immanuel Shakespeare—with Hamlet, “time is out of joint”. in a fearful struggle. The force of imagination Kant with interest, it would still be amongst Kant” in The Works of Thomas de Quincey: The Spanish Military Nun; The Last Days of Immanuel Kant, Vol. III As the Copernican Revolution implies a chasm that here creates disorder rather then the solid the fictions of courtesy to presume he did.” (Last (Kessinger Publishing, 2006), 99–100. Henceforth cited in the subject it will also turn and split our entities of understanding, sensibility, the inner Days 99) But de Quincey is not only trying not to as Last Days.

� Pages 7 and 10 which he has been working on the head)—but also the nickname been gallery displays. The profits from recognizable Nordic design were created specially for SITE Bjørn-Kowalski Hansen, for many years. It is difficult to of one of its inhabitants, who is support the town in various ways, elements common in the ’70s and by Bjørn-Kowalski Hansen. Both This is the Sign You Have Been describe the work, since it takes now the poster boy for all of the such as by paying for the girls’ ’80s. More importantly, it is a posters are about a state of mind, Waiting For, 2007. on so many different forms, and different projects. soccer team, a new oven for the visionary corporate project built a melancholy about yesterday, but has many of the trademarks of a It started out with the T-shirts local sauna, or the “Free Hair Cut on a hope for sustainability and they also proclaim that something Pages 8 and 9 typical relational sculpture where that came out under the Håkki Day”, when a hip hairdresser maximizing empathy and real has to happen right now in order to Bjørn-Kowalski Hansen, the various threads of the work brand, with witty slogans that was flown in for a whole day to do value instead of economic profit. make a change for a sustainable Yesterday is Crowding have many different aspects. It all became very popular, not only the hair of anyone who wanted a Håkki TM shows that it is not a tomorrow. Up My World, 2007. evolved around the small Swedish in Ljungaverk but in Stockholm, free trendy hair cut. Even though utopian project, it actually does town of Ljungaverk where the Berlin and elsewhere. A new some aspects of the project can something—and one can even Power Ekroth Berlin-based Norwegian artist local factory closed down, which slogan was produced every week. be seen as relational, this is not have fun while doing it. Bjørn-Kowalski Hansen’s turned the city into one of those The trademark expand- about relational aesthetics. The two works, Yesterday most renowned project is the vanishing small towns. Håkki is ed and now there are even Every little branch, logo, print, is Crowding Up My World, and multifaceted, ongoing work not only the Norwegian word for shops named Håkki. A book has gallery design, display, etc. has This is the Sign You Have Been Håkki TM (www.haakki.com), Mullet (long on the sides, short on also come out, and there have its very own aesthetic, borrowed Waiting For, both made in 2007,

11 site • 21.2007

Hegel and the Spirit of Phenomenology

Sven-Olov Wallenstein

i. The great spider of history the French Revolution and the Terror, to which readings once and for all manage to separate had rendered absolute, and the recreation of a Two hundred years ago one of the most ambi- Hegel devotes a famous analysis of the dialectic the “rational core” from the “mystical shell” (as unity of reason and society on a higher level, not tious, dense, and enigmatic works in the his- of “absolute freedom”, to the Napoleonic wars, Marx said), or just simply provide a disfigured just as a correlation of ends that we may “reflect” tory of philosophy was published: Hegel’s all of which had a profound impact on German portrait devoid of both history and future. upon, but as a truly substantial and living unity. Phenomenology of Spirit. Neither a commercial nor intellectual and political life. But on a more gen- This equation that links subject to substance, The historical present appears as a moment of an academic success in its own time, the book eral level we could also speak of the emergence and that will produce the idea of the system as Entzweiung and Zerrissenheit, a splitting and has remained with us to this day, more often of the modern state apparatus after 1789, with its the mode of existence of truth, has a decisive laceration that results from the Enlightenment cited and alluded to than actually read. It is one new bureaucracies and institutions, techniques historical background in Kant’s critical phi- and its “philosophy of reflection”. This is how of those works, like Dante’s Divine Comedy or of power and mechanisms of individualization losophy. Kant too creates a kind of system or the young Hegel paints the present age in his Hölderlin’s late poetry, that always lies ahead of and subjectification, together with the discourse “architectonic” that reintegrates the splits and thesis, the so-called Differenzschrift of 1801, where us, that always awaits its adequate deciphering. of political economy as the mode of a new “gov- divisions that had been produced by Enlighten- the “need for / of philosophy” (das Bedürfnis der Hegel’s works may lie behind us like gigantic ernmentality”, all of which have been analyzed ment culture: freedom and necessity, soul and Philosophie) is at once a subjective and an objec- and enigmatic pyramids, as Nietzsche notes, but by Foucault, among others. From his first texts body, reason and nature, etc. For Kant, all of tive genitive: the present needs philosophy this then also points to a future task: to unravel and onwards, Hegel reacts to these transforma- the earlier theories could be taken as partial to overcome itself just as much as philosophy them as the origin of a certain philosophical mo- tions, and a reflection on the nature of political truths that however lose their legitimacy when needs to take a new step to truly become itself. dernity that fuses Concept and History into the modernity, as a quest for the unity of individual they are extended to experience as a totality. The philosophy of the future, Hegel suggests, movement of thought itself. Many subsequent subjects and collective orders, traverses all of The unity of reason that was determined by must transcend mere reflection in a movement attempts to understand the historicity of think- his works: the individual must be recognized Descartes on the basis of the mathesis, consists of speculation, i.e. the recognition that all the ing, from Heidegger and Adorno to Foucault and respected, while still being understood in for Kant in an articulation of levels that must inherited dualisms have in fact been produced by and Derrida, indeed remain indebted to Hegel, terms of an overarching order that makes this be distinguished as well as united. The unity of us: speculation means to return from reflection precisely because they want to free us from a individuality possible. Fifteen year after the Reason does not imply that one particular theory to a new identity that acknowledges difference certain Hegelian shadow, from the theodicy or Phenomenology, the Philosophy of Right would should be applied to everything, but resides in and splitting as part of itself, to the “identity of parousia of history that he created, and because attempt to solve these problems, but we can see a “transcendental reflection” on the difference identity and non-identity”. This move however they all aspire to end with the Hegelian ending of them germinating already in the texts from the between spheres of rationality, on the principles requires a “speculative leap” or “proposition”, an metaphysics, as it were. At the end of his inaugu- Jena period, where Hegel develops a reflection that provide each of them with a particular event in thought and language (Hegel here plays ral lecture at the Collège de France in 1970, L’ordre on labor, language, and interaction that can be legislative autonomy while also connecting them upon the German word Satz, which means both du discours, Foucault famously notes that all the understood both as a way to conceptualize or on a higher level within a system of ends. The “leap” and “proposition”), but it also demands anti-Hegelianisms of our time may be nothing “comprehend” an emerging social reality as well Kantian subject is thus necessarily fractured: it that we remain rational and not succumb to the but another ruse of history, a kind of detour at as a response to the political philosophies of has several positions and functions depending Romantic temptation to project reconciliation the end of which he is still waiting for us, im- Plato and Aristotle. on the telos of its activity, but at the same time it into the sphere of the irrational (for instance mobile, as the great Spider of history that will On the one hand, this emphasis on subjectivity always strives for a unity that in Kant’s vocabu- into art, as was proposed by Schelling), since this eventually lure us into his all-encompassing web. situates Hegel within the development of the lary could be called a “regulative idea”, or a focus means that the leap will become a deadly one, a But all of these rejections assume that we universal mathematical science that was pro- imaginarius as he says toward the end of the first salto mortale plunging us into the abyss of non- already know what Hegel means, what his argu- posed by Descartes as the way for the subject to Critique. In this way Kant’s critical re-structuring knowledge. ments in fact amount to, which is by no means achieve mastery over the world: it is by carrying of Reason prefigures the analysis of modernity This is one of the reasons why Hegel always certain. The great Hegel scholar Otto Pöggeler out the operations of the mathesis universalis that as a process of rationalization that Max Weber remained critical of all attempts to return to remarks, in his Hegels Idee einer Phänomenologie we can at least approach the infinite knowledge more than a century later would describe in some pre-modern unity, for instance the vari- des Geistes, that he wrote the book (it was first of God, and mathematics and geometry are the terms of “disenchantment” and bureaucracy, and ous versions of ancient Greece that had been published in 1973) to save Hegel’s book from a foremost tools. When we reach Descartes, Hegel as the emergence of science and politics as “pro- proposed in the wake of Winckelmann (although certain intentionally malevolent use to which it says in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, fessions” with their respective competences and these ideas are in fact based on a misreading of was put by German philosophy departments. If we are like sailors who have spent a long time procedures. Kant is indeed the first bureaucrat of Winckelmann: for him, too, Greece was irretriev- there was an aspiring Ph.D. candidate that they adrift on the open sea, and suddenly can cry out pure reason, and his invention of a new type of ably lost, and the invention of art history is a were reluctant to accept, they would say to him: “Land, ho!” This new beginning must be given legally and juridically inflected vocabulary (“the work of mourning). This return is however just yes, you will be admitted to the program, we its rightful due, and there is no way back to the court of reason”) testifies to this. as often proposed as a way into the future, as in just want to you to write a brief essay where you cosmic order from out of which the ego cogito After Kant many efforts will be made to re- the case of the anonymous fragment that since summarize the basic arguments of the Phenom- emerged. On the other hand, Hegel stresses that think this architectural synthesis and indicate its discovery by Franz Rosenzweig has been enology. After this, the student would sink into this subject must also be understood as substance, a place where that kind of unity that Criticism called “The Oldest System Program of German the deepest despair and disappear out of sight i.e., as the way in which the intersubjective projects could be realized, and not just in terms of Idealism”, dating from 1796 / 97 (the handwriting forever. For those of us who have tried to make order embedded in institutions, customs, and an imaginary focus: reconciliation (Versöhnung) is undoubtedly Hegel’s, and he is now gener- our way through this text, let alone translate it practices comes to know itself, and the indi- must be real, and not just a representation, as ally accepted as its author), which proposes an (as the present writer has), this makes perfect vidual becomes conscious of itself as the bearer Hegel says. This is perhaps the fundamental idea of a future synthesis of art and philosophy sense: the labyrinthine quality of the prose, of rationality that transcends it. Hegel is indeed way in which history enters philosophy, and for that will echo in many subsequent visions of a the architectonic complexities of the Hegelian a post-Cartesian, but by no means simply the his successors Kant appeared as naive since he social-political Gesamtkunstwerk, from Wagner phrase that not only relate to the syntactic struc- culmination of a philosophy of subjectivity, as simply accepted and systematized in an a priori and Nietzsche and onwards, on both sides of the tures but also to the very movement and content for instance Heidegger often seems to suggest, fashion those divisions that in fact had been political spectrum. This new world on the one of his thought, appear to render any attempt at but above all a thinker of intersubjective practices, brought about by the historical process. The hand constitutes the fulfillment of the Enlight- simple summaries futile. which is the basic tenet of the contemporary responses of Schiller and Hölderlin, and then enment, since it needs to have passed through “non-metaphysical” reading favored both in the of Schelling and Hegel, will be to introduce the the moment of sundering and reflection, but it ii. Towards the system analytical as well as the hermeneutic tradition, density of the historical process as an essential is also a step beyond it. Hegel shares something But how then should we approach this mon- where the notion of “spirit” is reinterpreted in a moment in thought, and the question of philo- of this Romantic desire to take “the step beyond strous book? Like all great works it is marked decidedly non-religious and almost sociological sophical validity will henceforth be related to the the Kantian borderline” (as Hölderlin calls it in by its origin, while not being reducible to it: sense, as those practices that underwrite and question of historical becoming—we pass from a his famous and programmatic letter to Neuffer philosophy is not just of its time, Hegel famously support a certain culture’s understanding of “structural analysis of truth” to an “ontology of in 1794), and the System fragment is an obvious notes in the Introduction to his Philosophy of itself, and which are absolute in the sense that actuality”, in Foucault’s felicitous phrase, which case of this, but as we have already remarked this Right, but is “its own time comprehended in they have no simple “outside”. For others this he applies to Kant’s political writings, but in step or leap must preserve reason and the supe- thought” (ihrer Zeit in Gedanken gefasst). The may be not so much a way to put Hegel back on fact more accurately describes Kant’s immediate rior status of philosophy. Absolute knowledge Phenomenology was written during a period of his feet, as Marx once attempted, as to cut off his aftermath. The historical task will present itself will consist in a full conceptual explication of dramatic and momentous shifts, leading from head; the future will decide to what extent such as the overcoming of the distinctions that Kant the rational structure of the world, not in any

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� Robert Morris, Il pensiero di Hegel, 2002.

intuitively created work of art or “intellectual this). This is further aggravated by the fact that tive method, modern philosophies of finitude at the end of l’ancien regime proposes something intuition” that lays claim to immediacy. The Phenomenology was intended as a “propedeutic” would then be led to view a concept like “Geist” that comes close to Nietzsche’s analysis of nihil- absolute, Hegel stresses in the Preface to the Phe- to the true science, i.e. the system of categories with the utmost suspicion, as the remnant of a ism; the French revolution and the subsequent nomenology, can neither appear as “shot from out and absolute determinations of being of which theological discourse that can have little or no terror that in its affirmation of absolute freedom of a pistol”, like Fichte’s subject, nor can it de- Hegel would propose a first version in his Science credibility today. Geist is in this view not so much unleashes the “fury of destruction”; the beauti- scend into a “night where all cows are black”, like of Logic (1812–1816), and that no longer needs or a Cartesian ghost in the machine, as the name for ful soul who retreats into himself and his moral Schelling’s indifferent Absolute, but rather can perhaps even tolerates a genesis from the point of an impossible and untenable third-person objectiv- certitude, and wants to find peace by always only come at the end, as the result of the totality view of a consciousness that undergoes finite and ity of the subject-object correlation, which has to be forgiving the crimes of the other. Without here of conceptual mediations. The Phenomenology, one-sided experiences. This question whether abandoned if we are to adhere to a strict analytic attempting to produce an exhaustive list, we then, will be the project of attaining the absolute there can be an “introduction to the Science of of finitude, whether this be in the Husserlian or can see the extent to which Hegel’s text brings beyond the confines of finitude and limits, while Logic” was stated already in Hegel’s own time, and Heideggerian version. together analyses of philosophical theories and still respecting the critical and epistemological has then been brought up several times, most (Against this “official” version of phenomenol- political events, artworks and religious experi- demands of Kantianism. recently in the debate sparked by Hans Peter ogy, it has been claimed that the discourse on ences, virtually all the facets of existence in a Fulda’s Das Problem einer Einleitung in Hegels Geist is by no means absent from Husserl and narrative that pretends to be both historical and iii. From consciousness to the absolute: Wissenschaft der Logik (1965), with subsequent Heidegger, but in fact often surfaces in decisive logical, or perhaps none of them. Phenomenology and Logic responses from Otto Pöggeler, Dieter Henrich. places, as Derrida proposes in De l’esprit (1987). Is this multiplicity of perspectives and topics The Phenomenology is one sustained and grandi- Werner Marx, and many others. The question at This is particularly connected to the way in the result of a confusion? What type of narrative ose attempt to lead “natural consciousness” to stake can be formulated in different ways. For which both Husserl and Heidegger conceptual- is unfolding here? The debate has raged since the completion of absolute knowledge, and to instance as follows: Does Hegel’s Phenomenology ize Occidental history and philosophy—fusing the publication of the book as to whether all, do this by following the movement of conscious- already presuppose the structures of the Logic for them into a unity, where history of philosophy or some, or perhaps none of its chapters can be ness itself. We start off with the most meager of the movement of dialectics to get started? If this and philosophy of history become one—as read as a reflection on empirical history, and if all conceptions of knowledge, “sense-certainty”, is the case, then the Phenomenology surely can- the gradual unfolding of a singular structure, so, how this squares with the attempt to provide which lays claim to have the full richness of the not be claimed to be a “science” on its own. But regardless of whether this is understood as a an epistemological and not simply historical ex- world at its disposal by using words such as what should we then make of the two titles that teleology of reason that has to be saved from planation of succession figures; if the text in fact “here”, “this”, and “now”, and by trying to hold Hegel puts before the text of the Phenomenology, the danger of an irresponsible technicism and a is a “palimpsest” (Otto Pöggeler) resulting from on to the sensuous particular, either in the form “Science of the experience of consciousness” and forgetfulness of the constitutive role of transcen- the fact that Hegel changed his outlook in the of the object or the subject, in the form of imme- “System of Science, Part One: The Phenomenol- dental subjectivity, as in Husserl’s Krisis, or as a process of writing, and which should lead us to diacy. This will however not work, for as soon as ogy of Spirit”? progressive oblivion of being, where Husserl’s distinguish between a true and a merely appar- sense-certainty attempts to say what it means, it Questions of philology apart (and they do recourse to a constituting subjectivity is part of ent phenomenology; if the structural confusion is forced into the element of universality, which exist, since there is considerable confusion the problem rather than of the solution, as in (especially in the latter half, of which Hegel him- here for Hegel significantly appears as language, concerning titles and subtitles, most of which Heidegger.) self speaks in a letter to Schelling) simply results the more “truthful” element in its movement of however are due to printing errors), the true These structural complexities however belong from a failed because insufficiently thought- negating and preserving the particular accord- problem is to what extent the perspective, which to the systematic horizon against which the Phe- through attempt to combine perspectives that in ing to the double logic of Aufhebung. This is the can no longer be a perspective, of absolute nomenology as a whole in the last instance is to be fact are irreconcilable. Here it may be sufficient starting point of the dialectic, and it is crucial knowledge can be harmonized with a situated measured. The text as it stands is still an almost to note that the book contains virtually all of for Hegel that the movement of negation and experience, i. e. how infinity can be reconciled infinite resource of philosophical ideas, no mat- the themes and problems that would later be preservation is not forced upon consciousness with the finitude of experience. In the preface ter how we judge its ultimate position inside brought out and developed on their own. But from the outside, by “us”, i.e. the readers and/or to the Phenomenology Hegel speaks of how some—in fact non-existing—Hegelian system: it many readers in fact perceive Hegel’s later and narrator of the Phenomenology already supposed contemporary consciousness no longer toler- must be stressed that the Science of Logic already perhaps more coherent versions of the system, as to know the goal of the entire journey, but that ates dogmas and imposed solutions, and that it in its first version testifies to a different view of they develop from the first edition ofEncyclopedia it exists because of the way consciousness tests demands that a “ladder” should be given to it so the system than the one announced in the Pref- (1817) and onwards, as much more sterile and ar- itself by always supposing a standard to which it that it may ascend to the heaven of the concept, ace to the Phenomenology, which shows that the tificially constructed than the living and organic subsequently proves unable to live up to. In this which probably is how he saw the function of question of the first book’s compatibility with writing of the Phenomenology, precisely because way, natural consciousness is driven from station the Phenomenology. But if the ladder is itself the rest of the system must remain conjectural. of its violent tensions, enigmatic transitions, and to station, which for it is a painful journey (akin part of a science that on the other hand neither We still need to traverse the text of the Phenom- often insane complexity. The contorted archi- to the “stations of the cross”), an experience of needs nor even tolerates it, do we not then see enology itself, on a path that will take us through tectonic of Hegel’s phrases somehow testifies to loss and despair that forces it to face up to the an unbridgeable gulf opening up in the midst a series of “shapes of consciousness” (Gestalten des the need for a language of laceration that could power of the negative, although for us this jour- of Hegel’s system? There would be no way from Bewussteins), and on this long and laborious jour- only be turned into a system at the expense of its ney means that consciousness attains higher and finitude to infinity, and no way back, once we ney we encounter many figures that after Hegel violence and beauty. Perhaps this is what Hegel higher levels of understanding of the necessary have passed over. Modern phenomenological have become detached from the movement of himself discovered toward the end of life, when intertwining of the world and consciousness, philosophies of finitude, from Husserl to Heide- the Phenomenology as such, and have entered into he planned to revise the text for a new edition; until finally, at the moment of absolute know- gger and Merleau-Ponty an onwards, would in a general philosophical vocabulary. We move almost immediately after having begun he broke ing, both come together into a final unity which this perspective amount to a return to an im- through the dialectic of master and slave which off and noted: “Curious early work, not to be still preserves all the former articulations as an manent perspective: a method that stays within links together death, desire, and work (perhaps rewritten” (Eigenthümliche frühere Arbeit, nicht “interiorized” and “remembered” content. finite consciousness, and substitutes the analysis the most famous figure, which through the Umarbeiten). • The difficulty with this conception, whose of intentionality, noetic-noematic correlation, highly original reading proposed by Alexandre implications extend beyond Hegel exegesis, is and constitution for the false and impossible Kojève in the 1930s became the matrix for a long the question of whether these two perspectives, passage towards infinity promised by Hegel, tradition of philosophies of desire, from Sartre The first Swedish translation of the the immanence of finite consciousness that un- and rejects his split vision as a contradictory and and Bataille to Lacan and Deleuze); unhappy Phenomenology of Spirit, by Brian Manning dergoes the experiences and the transcendence dogmatic metaphysics. consciousness, which was first emphasized and Delaney and Sven-Olov Wallenstein, will of the narrator who addresses us in the “we” that Something similar would also apply to the read as an autonomous problem in an important be published at Thales in the spring 2008, “knows” can truly be brought together (to which concept of spirit: for Hegel, at least as he is read book by Jean Wahl in the 1920s; Antigone and together with an introduction, Hegel och we could add the rarely noticed third position of traditionally, this would be a going beyond of Creon, who in Hegel’s reading both believe they Andens Fenomenologi, at Axl Books. An in- the reader, who knows more than finite conscious- all finite perspectives toward an absolute subject are doing the right thing and in this will tear ternational Hegel symposium will also be ness but less than the infinite narrator, and can that finds itself in its otherness and returns to asunder the harmonious fabric of Greek ethical held at the Goethe Institute in Stockholm, only be included in the superior narrator called itself in the circularity of the ab-solute as that life; the “lacerated language” of Rameau’s Nephew September 5-7, 2008. For more informa- “we” in an insecure and tenuous fashion, and which is ab-solved from external reality. In reject- who completes the movement of Bildung in a ver- tion, see the website of the Swedish Hegel I think most readers of the text can recognize ing the onto-theological structure of the specula- tiginous re-evaluation of all values, and already Society: www.hegel.se.

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Transparency, Paranoia, and the Idea of Concealing in the Production of the Postwar American Home

Helena Mattsson

Architecture and war produce new subjects. tion of dreams of an ideal home. The spectator is 1950, this time with the architect and Ise Gropius. Beneath the lawn shelters were built, and in- Like war, architecture organizes individual desires drawn to the large windows, but doesn’t want These two images are made into “primal scenes”: side food and tranquilizers were stored—100 and internalizes orders and roles. Both phenom- to remain too long in front of them, since some- the first one displays the master architects in a pills was the recommended amount for a family ena may be viewed as biopolitical “machines” thing unseemly might appear. What decides the public space that excludes women; the second of four. In 1961 John F. Kennedy gave an impor- whose functions, technologies, and forms are con- amount of time spent looking is not courtesy, a couple in a domestic environment about to tant speech where the safety of American citizens stantly shifting. During the Second World War, rather it has something to do with the spectator’s create a common space. The task then becomes during a situation of war was proclaimed to be European modernism was affected not only by own identity. Colomina stresses that the trans- to understand these two situations and to link his own responsibility: “In the coming months I physical warfare, but also by an ideological one: parent house is also a machine for looking at the them within a more encompassing narrative: hope to let every citizen know what steps he can “The house with a flat roof was Oriental and outside: “there is a kind of reverse exposure, an “This book is a study of the space between these take to protect his family in case of attack.” The Oriental was Jewish.” Modern architecture has x-ray of the people outside the building.” The photographs,” Colomina writes, “the space with- Department of Defense issued a pamphlet, The however not only been exposed to war, but has it- history of how we are looked upon by our build- in which American architecture would rapidly Family Fallout Shelter, which became a bestseller self acted as a “war machine” directed against ings remains to be written, she suggests. arise and flourish for a time.” with almost five million copies sold. The sub- various invisible threats, from tuberculosis to the This new transparent home, which appeared Such a highly conscious way of framing and urban family started to construct systems of de- contemporary idea of a hidden terrorism. to showcase its interior, was the object of the constructing history often yields impressive re- fense to keep intruders away from their bunkers: Beatriz Colomina’s Domesticity at War can be attention of a whole world, and for the first time sults, and it draws the reader into the story, but the idyllic suburbs with their transparent homes read as an analysis of American architecture as a American architecture was at the center. “This sometime it seems a bit too constructed. There and trimmed lawns were preparing for war. This biopolitical machine in the postwar period. After sense of obsessive, embattled domesticity is the are few contradictions and the profusion of was indeed a new landscape. In Colomina’s 1945 the war, whose visibility on the American trademark of the immediate postwar years and archive material is seldom allowed to complicate words: “a network of buried surrogate houses, continent had been primarily located in the media, the focus of this archeological study,” Colomina the story. The story is so elegant and seamless bunkers beneath the lawn acting as the coun- now becomes a domestic affair with the return writes in the introduction. The idealization of that one sometimes wishes for something to go terpart to the fragile pavilions above, row upon of millions of soldiers. The distant suddenly home had its backside, and transparency can wrong and for the whole edifice to collapse, or at row of hidden concrete fortifications topped by becomes close. The physical and mental traumas indeed be used as a means to hide—in fact, she least open up to a more polymorphous inter- transparent boxes”. of the war veterans, together with other traumas, claims, this “concealing” was the underlying pretation. For those of us who have followed That American domesticity was at war comes came to affect society as a whole. America was structure of the Cold War. Through a series of Colomina’s work, much of the material is already across vividly in the images in Life showing a still at war, although the threat now came from case studies she constructs an elegant narrative familiar, and for me personally, the chapters on newly married couple that spent their two-week within. A new paranoia would soon emerge in that weaves together the psychology, sociology, “X-Ray Architecture” and “The Underground honeymoon in the shelter, or in the images of the guise of the Cold War and anxieties could and architecture of American postwar society. House” are the ones that really open up new ave- another couple who cheerfully and proudly pose once more be projected onto the outside world, The story is richly illustrated and full of captivat- nues of thought. inside their shelters surrounded by canned food this time on Communism and the bomb. The ing details, occasionally almost like a wunderkam- Another truly fascinating section, “The Lawn and supplies. And in a case like The Underground nation under reconstruction had to relate to a mer of peculiar things—text fragments, objects, at War,” shows how the lawn was turned into a House, on display in what many architectural new set of invisible threats and Colomina’s book films, photographs, buildings, models—where concrete as well as symbolic place for the opera- reviews described as the rather commercial and shows how postwar architecture can be under- each shelf produces its own narrative, its own tion of “concealing” during the postwar years, kitschy New York World’s Fair in 1966, the stood as a direct response to this. chapter, all of them autonomous and yet part of and how it can be seen as the expression of a bunker is wholly domesticated into a traditional Just as the war had been a phenomenon en- the same world. The composition of the book is split country: smiling faces, equipment and gad- suburban ranch-style house. Here not only the countered through images and stories, this new often reminiscent of the way in which Charles gets on the lawn, all meant to cover over depres- interior, but also exterior aspects like weather everyday life was also constructed through rep- och Ray Eames used to arrange all their gathered sions, tranquilizers, and mental disorder. Dur- and view were fabricated. The bunker was a resentations. Colomina writes: “buildings had information, and they are indeed also one of the ing the war the government recommended machine that produced its own environment, become images, and images had become a kind book’s main references. people to stay at home and care for their lawns— weather and lighting conditions. “Peace is of building, occupied like any other architectural Colomina has developed a technique for “the lawn was war therapy,” as Colomina puts achieved in this war by environmental control,” space.” The anxieties produced by the Cold War creating stories that has its obvious advantages, it. But the lawn too contained its enemies Colomina notes. and the global threat were covered over by an but also its limitations. History is sometimes within—weeds and vermin. Insects turned into Another system for environmental control infinite proliferation of images depicting a thor- portrayed in a thoroughly staged and edited symbolic creatures, surrogate soldiers that could analyzed by Colomina is House of the Future, an oughly controlled domestic environment, with way, with an intricate plot and a colorful open- be used for testing chemical weapons. The “Jap exhibition house designed by Alison (and Peter, meticulously described details and perpetually ing scene. In this case, it begins with two beetle” was a reflection of a racist perception of Colomina claims) Smithson and shown at the Ju- smiling faces. Domestic life was staged and ex- photographs, the first showing Le Corbusier, Japanese people. This was expressed in the pages bilee Ideal Home Exhibition in 1956. This is the hibited, not in a white cube but in a transparent Alma Gropius, and Walter Gropius at the Café of Life thus: “Both are small but very numerous European version with an overground bunker house. Colomina provides an interesting reading des Deux Magots in Paris 1923; the second show- and prolific, as well as voracious, greedy and (that can be compared to other forms of Brutalist of the role of this transparency in the produc- ing Gropius’ private home in Massachusetts in devouring.” architecture). The house was conceived as a body

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� Illustration by Mike Ludlow from the July 1960 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Found at todaysinspiration.blogspot.com

without windows to the outside world. At the ex- fashion spread. The home becomes a transitional Santa Monica, of Philip Johnson’s The Glass House horizontality of the psychoanalytic patient, on hibition h.o.f was presented as a box, in its turn site, it promises both change and continuity, and in New Canaan, and of Mies van der Rohe’s Farn- the couch.” This would be something like a shift enclosed within a larger box, and with only a small domestic life can itself be turned into a work of sworth house—to which one could add the first in the strategies of practices of the self, leading window opening for the viewer to peep through. art, as in the case of the Defense Unit with its high presentation of Pollock at the Venice Biennial, from the “invisible” medical threats to psychic During the exhibition actors staged scenes from degree of flexibility. which made an impact described by the architect diseases, and Colomina proposes that the emerg- everyday life, showing us images of a happy and A recurring theme in Domesticity at War is the Peter Smithson as an indelible “image” that ing control of tuberculosis in the 1950s meant glamorous life led by a young couple with no relation between the respective architectural would overturn the French tradition. It is well that mental illnesses came to be a national kids. But, Colomina proposes, there was another modernisms of Europe and the u.s.. Does it make known that American art was part of an ideologi- obsession. side to the house as well, that “the absurdly cal program aiming to project u.s. power, politi- Domesticity at war probes deeply into what at happy, shiny world of American advertising for cally, economically, and culturally, and this pro- first sight may seem like peripheral topics, and the perfect domestic life was in fact a landscape cess has been described in detail by, for example, Colomina has unearthed rich material that of fear, a deceptive symptom of cultural para- “ The Department of Serge Guilbaut in his How New York Stole the Idea shows us how what appears as marginal details noia.” h.o.f only opened up toward the interior, of Modern Art. Colomina too discusses the role of may in fact be the main story. The story she tells a paradise-like inner yard, and upward, toward Defense issued a architecture and images of domesticity as propa- of the American postwar home forms an impor- the “unbreathed air.” Colomina reads both The pamphlet, The Family ganda tools, for instance the role played by the tant part in the mapping of how architecture Underground House and The House of the Future as kitchen and the suburban home as a “weapon” constructs new subjectivities, how the individual “escape vehicles,” which makes them paradig- Fallout Shelter, which at the American National Exhibition in Moscow internalizes new forms and control which at the matic for the visions of future homes during the became a bestseller in 1959. Here one could have wished for a more same time opens up new freedoms. Cold War. Everything was there inside the house, developed discussion of how (the image of) ar- Even though the book is a historical study, it and its inhabitants could escape without with almost five chitecture and domesticity were used by both the is definite bearings on the present. America is leaving it: “The house had finally become the million copies sold. American state and the corporate world in their still at war—1.6 million American troops have whole world.” strategic work to influence the world to take “the been sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the age Buckminster Fuller’s postwar “environmental The suburban family proper political course.” Not all political propa- of terrorism the idea of a hidden threat is indeed controls” created similar closed worlds. They are started to construct ganda was as explicit as in the case of the private more alive than ever. In a discussion with Homi not referred by Colomina however, who instead suburban builder William Lewitt: “No man who Bhabha, published in Artforum this summer, chooses to highlight Fuller’s Dymaxion Deploy- systems of defense owns his own house and lot can be a communist. Colomina suggests that today it is no longer the ment Units. These grain bins, or “ready-mades” to keep intruders He has too much to do.” family home that provides a symbolic shelter, as Colomina calls them, were exhibited at MoMA Ever since Robert Kuch discovered the tuber- but rather individualized light-weight clothes in 1941 under the name Defense Unit. This was away from their culosis germ in 1882, there is a story to be told and personal gadgets. This privatization be- the first time that an entire home was shown in bunkers: the idyllic of the relation between modern architecture comes visible when we pass the airport security a museum, and here too the home is portrayed and medicine, and the kind of self-control that checks, and Bhabha describes his own reaction as an escape vehicle and a dream machine. The suburbs with their is implied in a hygienic consciousness. Evil and when he is politely asked “could you please…”, impact of war on art and culture was a common transparent homes sickness had finally acquired a concrete form, as almost a desire to cry out ”Yes, yes, absolutely. topic for discussion during the period, and as albeit one that was not visible to the naked eye. Search me, and search the other men even more!” MoMA’s Alfred Barr asked: “What good is art in a and trimmed lawns This was a source of anxiety, and each individual For him this indicates a new form of individu- time of war? Why maintain our cultural interests were preparing for could create his own techniques for avoiding ation that calls for a rethinking of the idea of and activities when the air hums with bombers it. In this way the hygienic project was not just biopolitcs. This is also the strength of the story and the news of the battle?” Fuller’s Defense Unit war. This was indeed something implemented from above by medical narrated by Colomina: it links past and present would be one solution to the problem, since the a new landscape.” science and discourse, but was also a “practice of together in a way that constantly calls for new grain bins he finds in Missouri can be used both the self” that permeated everyday life. Modern reflection.• as bomb shelters and summerhouses. Fuller architecture and modern homes show the extent writes: “You can put one in your backyard, for in- to which such anxieties and fears are external- Beatriz Colomina, Domesticity at War stance, dive into it if any dive bombers come over sense to speak of an American postwar avant- ized in physical forms, as well as internalized (Barcelona: Actar, 2006). and maybe next year (provided there is no direct garde that would continue the work of the histori- in the distribution of domestic utensils and the hit) turn it into a guest house or cart it to the cal avant-garde? Colomina points to 1949 as the very organization of domestic life. After the war, beach for a summer cottage.” The Defense Unit year when the world, and particularly Europe, mental hygiene displaces physical hygiene, and received extensive media coverage—for instance turned its gaze to American architecture. This Colomina suggests that “it is as if the horizon- in Vogue, where it was used as the backdrop for a is the year of Charles and Ray Eames’ house in tality of the tb patient had been replaced by the

15 site • 21.2007

Isidore Isou, 1925 –­ 2007

Kim West

On July 28, 2007, Isidore Isou died in his home “discrepant” but which consist of a more varied what resembles left-over shots from Isou’s Traité, would not only aim to cause scandals, but also to in Paris. While the simultaneous passings of image material, Isou is engaged in directly ma- cuts from Hollywood films and newsreels, etc. direct attention towards “traditional” cinema’s Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni nipulating and destroying (“chiseling”) the film Here too the film frames are scratched and mani- implicit preconditions, that is, to unveil the two days later have received enormous attention, frames by scratching them, drawing and writing pulated, sometimes to the degree that they be- material qualities of the film frame and demon- the demise of the Romanian-born, French poet, upon them, turning them upside down, play- come almost completely “abstract”. But the strate how the space is an essential element of the artist, filmmaker and philosopher has been met ing them backwards, etc. Both newly made and essential part of Le film est déjà commencé? takes “medium” of cinema to the same degree as the with almost complete silence. This may appear “found” shots are subjected to this treatment. place “outside of” the image-track. At the moving image. remarkable concerning a man who founded Let- The newly made ones most often show “Daniel” premiere screening in Paris on December 7, 1951, To enumerate everyone who has been influ- terism, created the “hypergraphical” text and the in different situations together with Paris artists the audience was forced to stand outside the enced by Isou’s Letterism would probably be a su- “discrepant”, “chiseled” and “super-temporal” and writers such as Blaise Cendrars and Jean entrance to the movie theater for one hour, wait- perhuman task. The threads spread to a number film, designed theories in philosophy, politics, Cocteau (Isou wanted to raise the market value ing for “the film to start”. In the lobby, shots from of post-wwii experimental artistic movements: economics, architecture, psychology, etc, and of the film by casting celebrities), and the found Griffith’sIntolerance were projected onto a pink Nouvelle Vague, Nouveau Réalisme, Neo-Dada, who between his “literary” (Letterist) debut in ones consist of discarded shots from newsreels screen, at the same time as Letterists in civilian conceptual art, etc. Just trying to establish a list 1947 (Introduction à une nouvelle poésie et une nou- and so on. It would not be difficult to point out clothes shook dusty carpets and poured buckets of artists and poets who have been directly as- velle musique) and his last publication in 2004 (the how different artists / filmmakers have borrowed with ice-cold water from the balcony above. Just sociated with the movement generates an almost 1,400-page “lifetime achievement” La Créatique and developed ideas and techniques introduced as the atmosphere was about to get out of hand, non-surveyable catalogue. And the collected ou à la Novatique) brought out hundreds of books, in Traité de bave et d’éternité: how the examination the audience was allowed to enter the movie productions of Isou and the still active Lemaître made over twenty films, as well as producing into the possibilities of “discrepant” cinema be- theater, where Lemaître’s trashed collage film would fill their own library / cinematheque / innumerable paintings, sound works, sculptures, comes a central feature in the cinematography of was projected onto a covered screen in front of museum, to the extent that the amount may have objects. Isou’s fundamental philosophic, aesthet- the following decades, in the works of filmmak- which Letterist spectators / actors performed and a discouraging effect—it would take strong moti- ical and political idea was based upon a notion of ers such as Resnais, Debord, Godard, and Duras, conversed with the image track. After one hour vation to really examine the tens of thousands of total creativity, of endless production. It would to name only the most obvious ones; and how the the projection was ended by the theater’s direc- pages of text, to see the hundreds and hundreds not be inappropriate to claim that he seems to manipulation, destruction and scratching of the tor because the last film reel had mysteriously of hours of film. In short, a number of histories have devoted the significant part of the 82 years film frames point forward to, among others, art- disappeared. This caused a great outrage and the remain to be written (not least about Letterism in of his life to putting this idea into practice. At the ists/filmmakers such as Paul Sharits and Caroline screening had to be shut down by the police. Swedish poetry and art). But the productions of same time, the media silence regarding his death Schneeman, but also to Stan Brakhage, who, in a It has of course been easy to dismiss a spectacle Letterism are not only a subject for the historians, is hardly surprising. Letterism remains one of the letter from 1994, mentions Isou’s film as a central like this as a “Neo-avant-garde” repetition of despite the recent death of the movement’s most neglected avant-gardes of the 20th century, source of inspiration: “If the Lumière brothers the provocative cabarets of the Futurists and founder. Several of the aesthetic models devel- often dismissed as but a moment in the prehis- and Méliès represent the ‘wings’ of cinema […] I Dadaists. But the question is whether that is the oped by Isou and his followers from the ’40s and tory of Situationism, yet whose influence over a estimate that Isou is the organic backbone, which story one has to tell. It is possible to see con- onwards could perhaps gain a new relevance in number of other artistic, literary and cinemato- comprises a nervous system, with its synapses, nections between a film such asLe film est déjà today’s “post-medium” technological situation: graphical movements remains to be mapped out chiseled, electrified, all these rhythms creating commencé? and early cinema’s “cinema of attrac- hypergraphy, which constitutes a method for and whose radical aesthetic models have yet to be an emotional investment of the mind. Since I tions”, where the projection was integrated into writing with all possible systems of notation drained of potential. first sawTraité de bave et d’éternité it has obviously a larger context which often comprised acting, in all possible media; infinitesimal poetry, an The Letterist cinema is a clear example. In 1951 served as a fundamental inspiration for all of my voices and performances. Perhaps one could say art for virtual signs within all art forms; meca- Isou directed the groundbreaking Traité de bave films, just as it has for other independent film- that the cinematographic experiments of Isou, aesthetics, which invents a series of mechanic et d’éternité, which among other things launched makers in the United States”.‡ Lemaître and the other early Letterists (Gil J Wol- assemblage forms to serve as supports for the the “discrepant” and the “chiseled” cinema. In One of the many figures that appear inTraité de man, François Dufrêne, Guy Debord) belong to endless aesthetic creation... Even though Isou’s the first part of the film, we are invited to follow bave et d’éternité is the young poet and soon-to-be a sidetrack to the history of the fiction film and extremely tense tone of voice in his manifestos the figure Daniel, “played” by Isou himself, as filmmaker Maurice Lemaître, who already later the traditional projection apparatus, in which and declarations may have a tiring impact, there he wanders about the streets in St-Germain-des- the same year, inspired by the energetic former they develop a legacy from the early cinema in may still be things to learn from his attack on the Prés. Parallel to the images of “Daniel” we hear a Romanian, made the equally groundbreaking Le a way that precedes e.g. Anthony McCall’s and word, his defense of the letter, and his promo- voice (Isou’s own) that, sometimes with a vague film est déjà commencé?, with which he launched Stan VanDerBeek’s “expanded cinema” and the tion of a “radical artifice” in all domains and all connection but most often completely without his idea of a “Syncinema”, that is, a film that “structural film” of Michael Snow or Paul Sharits, media. To create is, as a thinker who happened to relation to the events in the image-track, reads, engages the whole space of projection and uses it and that points forward to cinematography’s be born the same year as Isou said, to resist.• declaims, shouts a treatise about how “the two as an artistic resource. The image track in Le film new projection apparatuses in the spaces of con- wings of cinema”—image and sound—should be est déjà commencé? consists to the largest degree temporary art, as well as, more generally, the new Notes ‡ ”Lettre de Stan Brakhage” in Frédérique Devaux, separated and finally given their freedom. In the of found or, to use an anachronism, “detourned” spatialities of film screening in our technological Traité de bave et d’éternité d’Isidore Isou, (Paris: Yellow second and third parts of the film, which are also material: long shots from Griffith’sIntolerance , present. In this sense, Isou’s and Lemaître’s films Now, 1994), 149.

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