“It is important to realize that the appointment that is in question in contemporariness does not simply take place in chronological time; it is something that, working within chronological time, urges, presses and transforms it. And this urgency is the untimeliness, the anachronism that permits us to grasp our time in the form of a ‘too soon’ that is also a ‘too late’; of an ‘already’ that is also a ‘not yet.’ Moreover, it allows us to recognize in the obscurity of the present the light that, without ever being able to reach us, is perpetually voyaging towards us.”

- Giorgio Agamben 2009 What is the Contemporary?

FORWARD

ELAINE THAP

Time is of the essence. Actions speak louder than words.

The throughline of the following artists is that they all have an immediacy and desire to express and challenge the flaws of the Present. In 2008, all over the world were uprisings that questions government and Capitalist infrastructure. Milan Kohout attempted to sell nooses for homeowners and buyers in front of the Bank of America headquarters in Boston. Ernesto Pujol collaborated and socially choreographed artists in Tel Aviv protesting the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Indonesian artist, Arahmaiani toured the world to share “HIS Story,” performances creating problematic imagery ending to ultimately writing on her body to shine a spotlight on the effects of patriarchy and the submission of women. All of these artists confront terrorism from all parts of the world and choose live action to reproduce memory and healing. Social responsibility is to understand an action, account for the reaction, and to place oneself in the bigger picture.

Living Formfully

Nato Thompson’s “Living as Form” is a publication by Creative Time, a nonprofit arts organization founded in 1972.1Thompson became a part of Creative Time in the late 90s. Creative Time predominately features performance in social actions and “Living as Form” is their basic thesis. Socially engaged art has changed the didactics of arts as a direct result of the fall of Berlin in 1989 and the rise of Neoliberalism. Thompson sites many art movements such as Dada but emphasizes that socially engaged art blurs lines and conventions, but does not fit the binary of a specifically timed art movement. Forms are endless within this definition and Thompson believes that art can contaminate and blur into daily life, but also has some flaws. Thompson cites that living as form in the art sense reveals itself in the anti-representational, in participation where the audience is necessary to complete the work, situational in real world time and outside of the gallery space, and utilizes politics in order to manifest.

If this work is not art, then what are the methods we can use to understand its effects, affects, and impact? – Nato Thompson

1 See Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991-2011, edited by Nato Thompson. The introduction relates to the blurring Solutions found through creative thinking are mediated through gatherings of people invested in an issue. Yet, the media can find ways to manipulate the discussion or news of a project. The importance is the artist or producer to cite research and to actively seek structural alternatives as well as finding a way to communicate these ideas. Tania Bruguera’s critique of Duchamp’s toilet also acts as a synopsis of Creative Time’s mission statement. She asks for Duchamp’s toilet to be returned to the restroom because times are changing and modernism is a stagnant form of art criticism that transforms into Neoliberalism. “If this work is not art, then what are the methods we can use to understand its effects, affects, and impact?”2 Thompson believes that even though a socially engaged project isn’t art, the performative act of mobilizing and organizing should be viewed as one form of living artfully. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the DIY attitude of the 90s, the attitude of pro-capitalism rose and free-market philosophies grew rampant throughout the world. To counter these schools of thought, “wars were fought using cameras, the Internet, and staged media stunts.” Thompson cites Guy Debord’s Situationists of Paris 1968 and discusses the “spectacle” where the entire world is the stage. As a result, Thompson believes life has become schizophrenic via media, by living in the digitalized and virtual and the confusion of is this life? The flaw of “living as form” is that it can be utilized by anyone, even capitalists, which lead to even further confusion. The importance is then to ask whom the piece’s audience is, whom it actually benefits, and whether the piece will perpetuate gentrification?3 Protests are necessary and spurred by creative action. By individually analyzing actions, the public can create their own meaning in interpretation of the artwork. Social practice according to Thompson is an art that “involves people more than objects.”4 The difficulty in speaking about social practice is that one term perhaps acceptable for a period of time but than the language shifts as the action is in flux. The double-edged sword aspect of social practice is that it follows entrepreneurial work as such. New language through dialogue is developed when progressing towards social engagement. For now, urgency is the compelling desire to respond to a situation. When is “too soon?” Actions have spurred a revolution: a Tunisian man sets

2 Thompson uses Tania Bruguera to emphasize the important of criticizing and re-contextualizing issues. 3 Thompson on audience pages 30-31. 4 Thompson defines “social practice” page 49. himself on fire to protest police brutality is the origin of the Arab Spring, citizens speaking out against austerity measures in public funding and raised taxes in Greece is the European Summer, and the desire to peacefully assemble and critique the system is the American Fall; all of this occurred 2011 yet continues in 2014.

Milan Kohout “Stuha”

Before this image, all of a sudden, our present may see itself stopped in its tracks and simultaneously born in the experience of our gaze.

- Georges Didi-Huberman 2000 Before the Image, Before Time: The Sovereignty of Anachronism Anachronistic Artforms

In Documents of Contemporary Art: TIME edited by Amelia Groom, the introduction gives an overview of selected writings addressing time in relation to art. She divides the book into three sections: Before, During, After. Groom’s introduction points out that history’s time is comprised of “chance, half-facts, etc.” To our dismay, “we” are not at the center of time. Contemporary art is actually a plastic term, which Groom cites through Giorgio Agamben. Giorgio Agamben’s 2009 piece called ‘What is the Contemporary?’ begins by questioning what it means to be “untimely” by citing Roland Barthes and Nietzsche. He believes to be truly contemporary means to meta-exist in “dys-chrony.”5 The true contemporary sees the darkness in the present, acknowledges that light that will never reach its destination, understands the dividing and fracturing of time as never the same, and cites place in time. When working in durational performance, live action is a way to confront the present and use time as a medium. The performer’s sense of time is different from a viewer’s sense of time, which is different when placed in the temporal reality that is far from centered. Anachronism is the misplacement in time since all art at one point or another has been contemporary.6 With a sign that stated “For Sale” and several nooses, a Czech-born man with political asylum in the United States creates a sensational live action using his eloquent voice to open discourse. Milan Kohout’s “Nooses for Sale” lasted about three minutes before he was arrested. Later, he was brought to court with the only sentence of not have a license to peddle. Kohout is an international artist who makes radical public performances reacting to the political climate at hand. Directing responding to the housing market crash and the big bank bailouts, Kohout created a confrontational piece that scared and angered the general public, but more specifically a corporate enterprise. Kohout reacted specifically to a social experience and felt compelled to visually show that by having business with a big bank like Bank of America, citizens were basically committing suicide, figuratively, financially, and economically.

5 Giorgio Agamben on living in the present while citing the past and re-contextualizing as a result. 6 I paraphrased a section from “Documents of Contemporary Art: TIME” edited by Amelia Groom; ‘What is the Contemporary?’ by Giorgio Agamben 2009

Milan Kohout “Nooses for Sale” 2008 In 2014, although to the media, this performance was old news, homes are still going under foreclosure and Bank of America continues to buy out smaller, independent banks. Kohout continues to make radical work. Kohout is a living example of a contemporary who gives credit to the past while working with time as his medium. His performances are fairly minimalist but the only current term for his work is radical. Kohout is more than that as he blurs art, activism, and life. As an educator, Kohout produces future artists and as a curator, he continues to support live action that pushes social boundaries and etiquette. He fights for creative expression and lobbies for peaceful yet aggressive change. However, he recognizes the strain of capitalist infrastructure that oppresses all. Although contradictory and paradoxical, Kohout subverts capitalist ploys such as advertisement and contracts to show the irony of that same system.

Milan Kohout 2006 United States

Arahmaiani “HIS-Story Written on My Body” 2001-2011 Indonesia Shrouded in mystery and intrigue, Arahmaiani is an Indonesian interdisciplinary artist. Most artworks in one way or another exist as a self-portrait; Arahmaiani challenges the male gaze and stops being the beautiful object that women have been in the past. In “HIS-Story Written on My Body,” she uses objects and projections to extend her body to tell the audience what a patriarchal society imparts on a woman. This performance has multiple lives and as such is a lifelong durational performance that where Arahmaiani subverts mundane actions. The act of writing on the body becomes violent and a rude awakening to the microaggressions that allude to sexism, racism, and classism. Smoking becomes a sexualized and cultural action. The projected images shows that this action has been created before, but now her body has become fragmented and augmented for the viewer’s pleasure. Video creates an alternate reality where a part of an individual is archived. Yet when this action is repeated in real time in front of a real audience, the experience becomes infinite and time seems to stand still. Georges Didi-Huberman beautifully and metaphorically talks about image that surpasses the individual human experience of time. “Before this image, all of a sudden, our present may see itself stopped in its tracks and simultaneously born in the experience of our gaze”7 This epiphany is reminiscent of déjà vu or the resolve to be fully present and understand all of those complicated factors. Arahmaiani creates familiar actions but expontentially creates waves through common human interaction. Writing becomes a form of communication and an act of oppression because who writes the history books other than dead, old white men? Didi-Huberman clarifies that the Present has the ability to reshape with the exception to the Specialist, the Past does not reshape, and finally that we, as human beings are contemporarily transient. Arahmaiani crosses dimensions by utilizing projections, light, and memory. To be euchronistic means ‘of its time.’ The temporal paradox is then liturgical repetition where time is expanding as well as fracturing into something new. Didi-Huberman calls this a “Mythical Moment of Incarnation” where tired tropes such as style and epoch become plastic. Arahmaiani’s performance will change the world, surely in a butterfly effect. Anachronism is temporal differentiation. However, Didi-Huberman calls out historians who miss the point of an artistic gesture because they are confined to an anachronistic past. Didi-Huberman introduces pseudomorphosis, which are the relations of analogy for a short period of time. Didi-Huberman believes some new terms could be polychronistic, hetereochronistic, or

7 Georges Didi-Huberman page 75 anachronistic when discussing art. Arahmaiani’s image, whether it’s physical, ephemeral, or imagined is a living document, charged with the contemporary but also misplaced in time. The accessibly of the Internet now allows for instant gratification and beating the system by hacking. Social media sites enact a forum of freedom of expression for better or worse. Ernesto Pujol attempts to communicate through silence and skillfully arranging human beings as an art form. He is a social choreographer working specific to a site after copious researching. For the ten-hour durational performance,“TZOFIA,” Pujol utilized several performers and collaborating with a light artist, Jan Tichy and sound artist, Ariel Caine. In these hours, Pujol and the other performers interacted with a heavy media environment where they became objects in an installation. Pujol attempted to confront as an outsider to the genocide of Palestinians and the birthright Israelis. His performers were a mix of both ethnicities. His site, the Mann Auditorium at the Tel Aviv Philharmonic, was a metaphor for an ambiguous space where both sides are welcome as artists. Although Pujol is clearly not a savior even with his monastic background, he tied together notions of insider and outsider art. He created a sacred space of reflection and transcendence. Ernesto Pujol is commissioned to make works that bring a community into light. He has worked all over the world, but lives and works predominantly in the Midwest/West. Even if he worked in the Middle East, he finds that it is very important to work within the United States where there is a complex of the American Dream even in dire conditions for many. His works explore all –isms and he spends much time truly getting to know a place before making art in it. “TZOFIA” is a great example of crossing borders and digressing the physical world. Pujol is metaphysical in philosophy and creates in the Present while looking in the Future and being humble in the Past.

Ernesto Pujol “TZOFIA” 2008 Tel Aviv

These artists meditate on controversy and sustainability. Physical bodies in space charged a place in hopes of altering past times. The audience is implicated by witnessing but is also privileged through anonymity on the Internet as well as in reality. An artist with a statement will get a response. Working in ephemeral medium of performance limits the commodification of art, but at the same time there is a lack of documentation. The critical writing is a form of archiving performances, which changes art into an abstract commodity accessible to those who can read. These actions blur the line between art, activism, and life.

What is urgent anachronism in the flux of now?

- Elaine Thap

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Groom, Amelia, Documents of Contemporary Art: TIME, (LONDON: MIT Press/ Whitechapel Gallery 2013)

Thompson, Nato, LIVING AS FORM: Socially Engaged Art From 1991-2011, (NEW YORK: Creative Time Books/ MIT Press 2012)

THANK YOU

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