OCTOBRE 2011 Issue #21 L’ESSAITHE ESSAY COMME AS PRATIQUE ARTISTIQUEARTISTIC PRACTICE ARTS VISUELS head_issue_no21.indd 1 24.10.2011 15:31:59 The Organ * Concerts Halle/S. féminisme gender Sleater Kinney Müllstation*** The Lurkers Barcelone RIOT GRRRLS Rancid The Clash Kathleen Hanna Electrelane The Offspring* Bernard Heidsieck Beth Ditto PUNK ash* John Cage Alvin Lucier Bikini Kill X-Ray Spex deus* Le Tigre The Rezillos Sound Art The Gossip identity Sex Pistols* ALTERNATIVE Maryanne Amacher Buzzcocks MTV Pauline Oliveros Leipzig Berlin Sham 69 guide to alternative nation 120 minutes Circuit Bending The Vibrators* REM* Ray Cokes Vienne Pouvoir La volonté de savoir Discours Rhizome M. Foucault la différence / la différance Deleuze/Guattari Oscar Wilde Gabriel García Márquez H.V.Kleist DECONSTRUCTIVISME POST-STRUCTURALISME préjugés J.Derrida R. Barthes Hofstadter Franz Kafka Robert Musil Chris Marker Mythologies Logique L’Homme sans qualités Thomas Mann Edith Piaf Sans soleil J.S. Bach Bertolt Brecht EXISTENTIALISME Das musikalische Opfer Huis clos Sartre Camus THÉORIE CRITIQUE / Die Kunst der Fuge Friedrich Dürrenmatt Peter Handke L’Etre et le néant ÉCOLE DE FRANCFORT le théâtre absurde Sisyphos Heinrich Böll LITTÉRATURE Les mots T.W.Adorno Horkheimer APRÈS GUERRE Genève Max Frisch Dialectique de la Raison Homo Faber Samuel Beckett Ingeborg Bachmann Minima Moralia Stiller Thomas Bernhard En attendant Godot Nelly Sachs Günter Grass Elfriede Jelinek Alexander Kluge Cindy Sherman Agnès Varda Photo Alte Meister Fischli/Weiss Lisl Ponger Das Kalkwerk Fritz Lang NOUVELLE VAGUE Sophie Calle Ulrich Seidl Gehen Valie Export Vidéo/-Essai Week-end Orson Welles Auslöschung Michael Haneke J.-L. Godard Harun Farocki Luis Buñuel Tout va bien Hiroshima mon Amour CINÉMA Festen David Lynch Corinna Schnitt Stanley Kubrick Dogma 95 Lost Highway engagé document/aire Mulholland Drive Francis Ford Coppola Claude Lanzmann Lars von Trier 04 CULTURAL IDENTITIES AND THE PRACTICE OF THE ESSAY Geneviève Loup and Ingrid Wildi Merino 06 CULTURAL IDENTITIES ? Valeria Wagner 10 ANNETT RAATZ Seminar 12 JONATHAN GOLDSTEIN Project led by Ingrid Wildi Merino 28 and Geneviève Loup 14 THE FILM AND TALK TALK : VIDEO ESSAY THE INTERVIEW AS Assistant Geneviève Loup AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE Patrick Tschudi Marc Ries 18 JOSEPH FAVRE Contributors 32 SONIA GARCÊS Ursula Biemann, Alba D’Urbano, Marc Ries, 20 MYKYTA KRYVOSHEIEV Valeria Wagner, Frank Westermeyer 34 NORA TEYLOUNI 2 3 22 WE, YOU, THEY Participants, 2nd and 3rd year Bachelor Frank Westermeyer 36 WHOAMI : BODY POETICS students, art /media/ option AND FEMALE IDENTITY Vincent Bailly-Maitre, Yves Barblan, Pauline Cazorla, 24 SEONG JUN PARK CONSTRUCTION IN THE Cloé Collomb*, Joseph Favre, Sonia Garcês, march 2011 WORK OF ALBA D’URBANO Jonathan Goldstein, Mykyta Kryvosheiev, 26 PAULINE CAZORLA Alba D’Urbano october 2010 Chloé Malcotti*, Stéphanie Mirabile*, Seong Jun Park, − Annett Raatz, Nora Teylouni 40 VINCENT BAILLY-MAITRE * Their project could not be finalised and presented in this publication. 42 THE VIDEO ESSAY Ursula Biemann THE ESSAY AS THE ESSAY 44 YVES BARBLAN Geneva University of Art and Design Art of and University Geneva 46 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ARTISTIC PRACTICE REFERENCES, PRESENTATION OF THE CONTRIBUTORS AND IMPRESSUM The aim of this seminar was to question, with the students, the existence of approach, the critical form of the essay examines the issues present in the cultural identities in the field of art; to what extent can we speak of cultu- social space, by revealing latent ideas and thoughts, as well as the tensions ral identities today ? Are they geopolitical constructions, social structures between fact and fiction. or ethnic questions ? To tackle these issues, we looked at artistic practices which use a different aesthetic language. We had to consider the following In order to appreciate the characteristics of this contemporary field of question : how is a cultural imaginary established ? art, we also invited artists and theorists who tackle such questions through their work. Valeria Wagner, who teaches Comparative Literature at the To construct a practical working method appropriate for the essay and to University of Geneva, studied the relationships between the ideological map out an individual area of work for each student, we asked them to representation that underlies cultural unity and the place of the individual produce a semantic representation diagram in which they could place their within a specific social context. Professor of sociology and media theory cultural and artistic references. They were to set out these connections in a at the Offenbach am Main Academy of Art and Design, Marc Ries ana- radial (non-linear) manner in order to develop a reflective approach to the lysed the different forms and functions of interviews, both in the domain of logic through which they create associations. These cognitive mind maps sociology as well as in scientific investigation and artistic research. Professor were structured without formal constraints. The elements were presented in the Intermedia section of the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, Alba intuitively, depending on the importance of each concept, and were joined D’Urbano considered representations of identity through questions lin- together in a subjective way. The chosen form of the diagram makes it ked to gender, social and cultural history and new technologies. Artist and possible to configure the links between the different areas of work, refe- theorist, Ursula Biemann presented the process of reflection in her artistic rences and interest. This graphic formulation was also employed to create a work, also considering the need for contemporary artists to establish a criti- work process for the duration of the seminar entitled The Essay as Artistic cal position with regard to the information provided on global geopolitical Practice. Each diagram unites the most important points of the individual contexts in the media. Professor and coordinator of the art/media/ option memory through words representing the different cultural and artistic refe- of HEAD – Geneva, Frank Westermeyer presented the video work which rences. he carries out in cooperation with Sylvie Boisseau, as well as the project displayed in the exhibition Dislocación. 4 5 Developing an associative logic appropriate to models of thought, the orga- nic structuring of ideas became a working tool for the creation of a specific Closely associating theoretical ideas and practical work processes, the seminar artistic project. On the basis of their diagram, the students had to choose was organised into different periods, alternating group discussions and three main references to design a future work project. individual follow-up with each student. The students attended the lectures given by the different artists and theorists and then developed individual In order to expand our consideration of the question of cultural identities, working methods with Ingrid Wildi Merino. The students thus constructed we chose as a starting point the form of the essay which, by definition, a project using different technical means in order to establish an individual works on multiplicity in a fragmentary fashion. We also invited contributors means of expression. The present publication is based on the content of whose field of work is associated with this type of process. To comprehend the lectures and on the work processes created by the students in the course the structure of the essay, we studied the different areas in which the intros- of the seminar. CULTURAL IDENTITIES AND pection of an individual can take shape, for example, in the social and THE PRACTICE OF THE ESSAY political space or in artistic and film practices. Coming from a literary context whose premises date back to the 16th cen- tury, through writers such as Michel de Montaigne, the essay has influenced the approach to the viewpoint in western culture, by also questioning the relationship to otherness. In describing their most intimate thoughts, au- thors demonstrate their relation to the world and, based on an understan- ding of what essentially constitutes it, they consequently form part of a given cultural context. In the contemporary artistic field, the video essay as defined by Ursula Biemann, relates documentary work and subjective and experimental expression, by ascribing equal importance to the infor- mative dimension and to the aesthetic language. Through a self-reflexive This talk will begin with the fundamental references concerning culture In this nationalist model, culture is understood in both its ‘popular’ and and identity, critical discourses that are mainly rooted in cultural studies. ‘elitist’ aspects. Popular culture includes, for example, folk dances, typi- Subsequently, the issues associated with the notion of cultural identity will be cal food, clothing, certain types of music, that are not linked to the considered in detail by looking at some key moments in the history of phi- humanist heritage; ‘high culture’ is represented by works of art that losophy and aesthetics. This will make it possible to highlight two central belong to a universal model. These two aspects of culture are com- paradigms of the reception of works of art – contemplation and ‘attention within plementary and evoke socio-economic formations that are distinct, but 6 October 2010 inattention’ – as well as the manner in which they establish or shift subjectivities1. integrated or harmonised into a cultural identity supposed to unite a people