Parachute, 1 octobre 2005, Para-para

[" > art coNtemporaiNjcoNtemporary art gratuit free pace 1 Robert labossière > DEDICATED TO YOU, BUT YOU WEREN\u2019T LISTENING, The Power Plaw, ToroNto.YaNN Pocreau > PASCAL GRANDMAISON, Galerie ReNé BIouin, MoNiréal.paee 2 Réal Larochelle > TRACER, RETRACERARACK1NG THE TRACES, Galerie LeoNard & BiNa ElleN, MoNtréal.DomiNique Sirois > CYNISMES?MANIF D\u2019ART 3, Québec.paee 3 Marie-Eve Beaupré > AVANCER DANS LE BROUILLARD, Musée NatiONai des beaux-arts du Québec, Québec.paee 4 Kaira Marie Cabaflas > THE EYE OF THE STORM: WORKS IN SITU BY DANIEL BUREN, GueeeNheim Museum, New Yom.paee 5 Shep SteiNer > FACING THE MUSIC, Roy aivd Edita DiSNey, Cal Arts Theater Gallery, Los Atteeles.OLAFUR ELIASSON: MEANT TO BE LIVED IN (TODAY I AM FEELING PRISMATIC), Jamie Residence, PasadeNa.SaNdra CattiNi > VÉRONIQUE BOUDER, PROMENADE DE SANTÉ, Villa ArsoN, Nice.paee 6 Ed Krcma + Jody PartersoN > FACES IN THE CROWD: PICTURING MODERN LIFE FROM MANET TO TODAY, Whitechapel Art Gallery, LowdoN.paee 7 Stepheis Wrieht > BEYOND BORDERS: ART OF PAKISTAN, NatiONai Gallery of Modem Art, Mumbai.Yam Lau > NESTOR KRUGER: ANALOG, 7* Sharjah BieNNal, UNited Arab Emirates.paee 8 Maureen Murphy > AFRICA REMIX, L'ART CONTEMPORAIN D\u2019UN CONTINENT, CeNtre Georees Pompidou, Paris.Dedicated to You, But You WereN\u2019t ListeiMiNg The Power PlaNi f ToroNio March 25 - May 23 \u201cNewness\u201d today begs certain questions.What has changed?FTow has it changed?Is change important?The premium attached to innovation and originality, to the avant-garde, is under review.In this exhibition, the works of thirteen young artists drop like chestnuts beneath a towering work by Dan Graham, Opposing Mirrors and Video Monitor on Time Delay (1974), as if to answer the question concerning what has changed as follows: Everything and nothing.As usual, our present situation is laced with ironies.But it is also a time when a younger generation of artists is confident enough to engage with practices it has not itself invented.This exhibition, which was curated by Ried Shier, is comprised of conceptual works that elaborate upon and extend Graham\u2019s seminal \u201cTime Delay Room.\u201d The exhibition\u2019s title is revealing: the first part, \u201cDedicated to You,\u201d asserts that since Graham\u2019s conceptual practice of the 1970s, artists have continued to \u201cdedicate\u201d someone other than themselves in the creative process.\u201cDedicated\u201d here has a technical meaning, which can be likened to the way an intercom phone might be described as being \u201cdedicated\u201d to a single purpose; there is no sentiment relative to how Graham uses surveillance cameras and televisions to record and feed back visitors\u2019 images.But for Shier and the thirteen artists knitted into the curatorial theme, \u201cdedicated\u201d is not about instrumentality; it is an idea rich with ironic inflections.For example, visitors viewing g.l.n.\u2019s Space Ship Earth: Highway 44 (2004) may mistake the piece for a straightforward in situ recording of nature sounds until the recordists (Maura Doyle and Tony Romano) become visible in the video, planted in the landscape like the grasses and rocks around them.The sheer pointlessness of their presence elicits an unexpected, sympathetic response; the beholder laughs out loud, perhaps, charmed by the tongue-in-cheekiness of it all: how \u201cdedicated\u201d the artists are to their role, the \u201cdedication\u201d of their equipment to creating land/soundscapes that are \u201cdedicated\u201d to the viewer standing there alone, in the dark, in a gallery in Toronto.\u201cDedicated\u201d assumes a different but also ironic meaning in Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla\u2019s Returning a Sound (2004).A spontaneous flash of brilliance executed without pretence, this film would fall comfortably into line with works like Fluxus artist A1 Hansen\u2019s Yoko Ono Piano Drop more than Graham\u2019s.Here, a trumpet attached to a motorbike\u2019s exhaust pipe blats and drones as the bike is driven around the perimeter of a military base, returning the sound of morning reveille with a Bronx cheer.Returning a Sound also alludes to the second part of Shier\u2019s title \u201cBut You Weren\u2019t Listening,\u201d for the military base is abandoned, there is no one there to \u201clisten,\u201d nor are there any listeners seen in the film itself.The film is \u201cdedicated\u201d to the gallery visitor because she or he is the only remaining possibility for listening, and that listener (i.e., the gallery visitor) is, the title would have us believe, not really listening because the \u201cmusic\u201d is merely a product of the concept \u201ca trumpe t played by a motorbike.\u201d In Graham\u2019s work, I would argue that the issue of \u201clistening\u201d is quite different.One can\u2019t actually \u201clisten\u201d to, as in \u201ctake in\u201d or \u201creceive,\u201d a Graham work; one is too busy sorting out what is going on.The signals coming back at the viewer are too mediated, asymmetrical, out of sync.It is as if Graham\u2019s works were beyond audible range, beyond our social capacity to hear, and it is this challenge to reception that makes his work so interesting.None of the other works in the exhibition is as challenging, though they do reflect on the question of reception.For example, in Dave Allen\u2019s The Mirrored Catalogue d\u2019Oiseaux (2002-03) the music of French composer Olivier Messiaen\u2014music based on natural bird song\u2014 is played to caged starlings in the (vain) hope that they might mimic the music, nature supra-naturally returning to itself.But practically speaking, no one is listening here, neither the birds nor gallery visitors.It is a tautological exercise, ironic to be sure, but wholly lacking in tension or visitor engagement.Then there is the user/viewer interaction in Jonathan Monk\u2019s Searching for the Center of a Sheet of A4 Paper (White on Black, Black on White) (2002), a piece in which the artist records, in two film loops, the attempts of his commercial dealers to pinpoint, without measuring, the centre of a sheet of office paper.While the work removes the artist somewhat from the creative process, it also creates a lovely scene: a dancing ghost suspended between antique projectors.The viewer watches the dots dance back to back to the music of the film ratcheting through the projectors.Like Returning a Sound and The Mirrored Catalogue d\u2019Oiseaux, this work is concept-scripted, but unlike Graham\u2019s work, it falls distinctly within audible range.Yet another way that Graham\u2019s work alienates the viewer is in the way that source materials are multiple and blended through media transliterations.The basic materials are the visitor\u2019s body and movements, as well \t \t \t \t Jennifer Allora + Guillermo Calzadilla, Returning a Sound, 1994, video, 5 min 42 sec.; photo courtesy Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris.as the space itself, which are then mediated (recorded and sometimes time-delayed) and, finally, rendered two dimensionally on television.Media are univocal and blend more literally in Jeremy Deller\u2019g Acid Brass Band (2003-2004), in which Deller asked the Williams Fairey Band, a brass ensemble, to perform acid house dance songs just as they would more traditional compositions.This is also the case in Derek Sullivan\u2019s Endless Kiosk (2005), which recreates Constantin Brancusi\u2019s Endless Column as a kiosk on which gallery visitors can put posters, paper, and advertisements.Both works are hugely entertaining and we are far from \u201c.Not Listening.\u201d Today, the legacy of Conceptualism is felt everywhere.As this exhibition illustrates, for more than thirty years works in multiple or blended media have occupied more Pascal GraNdmaisoN than wall or floor space, unprotected by velvet cordons.Shier has made an admirable attempt to deconstruct Graham\u2019s conceptualism and to show it to be alive and well in the hands of a younger generation.It is not the smallest irony of this exhibition that it positions current works within point blank range of a historical work by an internationally recognized artist, as if the newer works needed historical legitimation.They don\u2019t.But neither do they share Graham\u2019s conceptual framework.They stand in the shadow of Graham\u2019s work and claim its shelter, but their differences, which are not without interest, are also somewhat camouflaged by the canopy of Graham\u2019s work.> Robert Labossière The author is aN artist, writer, aNd New media curator living in ToroNto.Le travail de Pascal Grandmaison s\u2019est distingué depuis quelques années par sa cohérence et sa rigueur remarquables.On a déjà dit de son travail qu\u2019il participait à de nombreuses innovations par ses dispositifs d\u2019expositions, ses modes de présentation et de représentation.D\u2019autres critiques ont vu dans ses oeuvres une heureuse collaboration de références et d\u2019allusions, voire de citations stylistiques ou formelles empruntées à quelque Dan Graham ou Thomas Ruff.Bien que l\u2019on puisse encore trouver des comparaisons et qu'il soit vrai que le jeune artiste semble connaître et maîtriser les principaux enjeux actuels de la photographie et de la vidéo, son travail montre des solutions uniques, riches de nouvelles avenues.Présentée à la galerie René Blouin, la série «Verre» pourrait être considérée en dehors du genre du portrait avec lequel la critique a su jauger ses œuvres jusqu\u2019à maintenant.Bien que les conventions du genre soit inextricablement liées au travail de l\u2019artiste, «Verre» met plutôt en forme une proposition autoréflexive, et plus précisément une complexe collaboration entre différents modes d\u2019appréhension du médium photographique et de ses possibles espaces de représentation.En effet, la série «Verre» montre devant un arrière-plan vide et blanc, comme ceux que l\u2019artiste utilise abondamment dans ses vidéos et photographies, de jeunes gens inexpressifs tenant tous dans leurs mains une plaque de verre qui, bien qu\u2019incolore, occupe presque toute la composition.Seul un léger, mais essentiel, décalage du cadre, à droite, permet de saisir les limites et l\u2019épaisseur de la feuille de verre où s\u2019agrippent les doigts des individus photographiés.Tout comme dans les séries antérieures des «Parcs» et des «Waiting Photography», les sujets solitaires photographiés par Grandmaison sont en pleine introspection, semblant traduire une absence quasi totale de toute expression singulière.Mais ici, la tenue du verre leur redonne un rôle actif, marquant au sein de l\u2019image un point d\u2019entrée extrêmement intéressant.Toutefois, l\u2019immobilisme présent dans l\u2019image suggère un exercice presque méditatif auquel se plient inévitablement les sujets, car la feuille de verre demande une certaine concentration par la lourdeur et la fragilité de sa matérialité.De plus, les fonds d\u2019un blanc à peine teintés qu\u2019utilise Grandmaison sont à la fois restreints et profonds, proposant un espace ambigu, presque absent, où les personnages font office de motifs plus que de portraits.Ce genre d\u2019espace, plat, bidimensionnel, est néanmoins court-circuité par un espace sillonné de multiples indices de profondeur, par le foyer par exemple, fait plutôt derrière le verre, par les doigts repliés à l\u2019extérieur de la plaque, mais aussi par le reflet qui se dessine discrètement sur la surface réfléchissante.Ainsi, l\u2019espace habituellement ambigu que l\u2019on trouve dans les œuvres de Grandmaison est, dans «Verre», beaucoup plus défini, géométrique, voire architec- rt coNtemporaiN _ coNtemporary ari 020 .pace 1 Pascal Grandmaison, Verre 7, 2003-2004, tirage numérique, impression couleur sur papier photographique, 180,3 x 180,3 x 8,2 cm; PHOTO REPRODUITE AVEC L\u2019AIMABLE PERMISSION DE LA GALERIE RENÉ BlOUIN, MONTRÉAL.A' autant de présences et d\u2019images singulières ».Elle poursuit sa démarche en ayant une conscience historique des interactions entre le sonore et le visuel que de nombreux artistes québécois et canadiens expérimentent dans la foulée d\u2019une aventure créatrice qui remonte aux années 1950 et où se sont croisés des artistes comme Pierre Mercure, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Françoise Sullivan, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Armand Vaillancourt et Charles Gagnon.Voilà pourquoi il n\u2019est pas surprenant que, pour «Tracer, retracer», la commissaire ait choisi une œuvre lointaine des années 1970, celle du Néo-Écossais Ian Murray avec sa vidéo Keeping on Top of The Top Song.Cette pièce de 1973 est à la fois hilarante et empreinte de mémoire phonographique : un batteur accompagne, en direct, les enfilades des premières dix secondes des cent chansons les plus populaires des années i960, où se bousculent des extraits des Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Tom Jones, Simon and Garfunkel, Elvis Presley, Neil Diamond et tutti quanti.Deux autres œuvres parachutent aussi le visiteur dans le passé : les sons d\u2019outre-tombe de Friedrich Jürgenson (cueillis à partir des années i960) ainsi que le travail de restaurateur du vidéaste hongrois Péter Sülyi, qui s\u2019ingénie à donner un volet sonore pianistique à un film amateur «muet», tourné à New York en 1942, montrant Béla Bartok jouant une de ses compositions au piano.Si mon scepticisme reste assez grand vis-à-vis le fait que les enregistrements de Jürgenson soient véritablement des voix de personnes décédées, il n\u2019empêche que ces gravures du phénomène evp (Electronic Voice Phenomena) représentent des sortes de partitions bruitistes assez envoûtantes.Le film de Sülyi, Images cinématographiques de Bartok (1989), de son côté, offre une tentative passionnante d\u2019habiller de fugaces images silencieuses avec des sons musicaux, un travail qui se réclame à la fois de l\u2019archéologie pianistique et d\u2019une résistance entêtée vis-à-vis le silence de la technologie.L\u2019installation de Martin Tétreault, r_go (1990-2005), est formée de plusieurs pochettes de disques, d\u2019un lutrin et d\u2019une partition.À partir du grattage minutieux de pochettes de disques des Beatles, Tétreault a tout enlevé, sauf l\u2019image du batteur Ringo Starr.Hommage appuyé et humoristique, avant-plan volontariste qui, le soir du vernissage, s\u2019accompagnait d\u2019un jeu de percussions (exécuté par Pierre Tanguay) de tous les solos de ce quatrième Beatles demeuré dans l\u2019ombre.Pour sa part, les Marqueurs d\u2019incertitude (2005) de Jean-Pierre Gauthier est une ingénieuse double machine en mouvement (petits moteurs, cordes, poulies, fusains) qui a gravé, tout au long de l\u2019exposition, deux taches grises sur un grand mur blanc, tombeau d\u2019une discrète mécanique sonore.Enfin, l\u2019installation sonore Je de Dominique Petitgand (2004-2005).Quatre petits haut-parleurs blancs sont disposés sur le plancher d\u2019une immense salle.Des voix jaillissent une par une de chacun d\u2019eux, des voix jeunes ou plus âgées, complémentaires ou contradictoires, disant la vie quotidienne et les heures qui passent.Il s\u2019agit d\u2019un montage très subtil, d\u2019une bande sonore d\u2019un film sans image, de la diffusion d\u2019un programme radio ou d\u2019un disque; c\u2019est le triomphe d\u2019un monde sonore maintenant vide de tout référent visuel.Le grand bonheur que procure «Tracer, Retracer» émerge d\u2019une série d\u2019œuvres qui tentent, comme le signale Gingras, de «mettre l\u2019accent sur l\u2019écoute; il y est question de documentation, de transmission, de circulation et d\u2019évocation des sons».De la sorte, cette très belle exposition rejoint, dans l\u2019espace des arts visuels et sonores, ce à quoi travaillent les centres d\u2019archives et toutes les sonothèques et phonothèques du monde, à savoir, comme l\u2019exprimait un jour le compositeur Yves Daoust, transformer les traces fugitives en «temps fixé».> Réal La Rochelle L\u2019auieur est professeur et critique de ciNéma.Il a fait paraître récemmeNi De/vys ArcaNd.L\u2019ANge exœrmiNawur aux éditiONs Lémac.Il est aussi l'auteur d\u2019Écorner le ciNéma (les 400 coups) et d\u2019Opérascope.Le film-opéra pn Amérique (Triptyque).real.la_rochelle@videotron.ca tural.En effet, l\u2019aspect spéculaire des photographies de l\u2019artiste ne réside plus dans la contemplation muette d\u2019une surface imprimée, mais bien à travers la réverbération des espaces hors champ sur la plaque; en somme, par la juxtaposition ou même la superposition complexe des espaces photographiés ou simplement suggérés.Si, dans la série «Waiting Photography», les sujets se perdaient dans un vide aussi planéiforme que le mur sur lequel ils étaient présentés, dans «Verre», les images occupent littéralement l\u2019espace de la galerie; l\u2019échelle imposante du support, en quasi-adéquation avec les espaces de la représentation, renforce, quant à elle, la clarté déroutante de la photographie.Montées sur des caissons de 8 cm de largeur, les surfaces imprimées sont projetées dans l\u2019espace d\u2019accrochage.Elles sont ainsi dégagées du mur et leur format, un carré de 180,3 x 180,3 cm, ne va pas sans rappeler la feuille de verre que tiennent les sujets, ce qui participe à la multiplication extrêmement dynamique des espaces où sont permises plusieurs entrées.L\u2019effet repoussoir des caissons alimente doublement les espaces produits par les reflets.Ce jeu de stratifications que propose savamment Grandmaison se trouverait donc davantage dans le constant rapport dialogique qu\u2019il établit avec le hors champ, laissant éclater de multiples spéculations quant au réel objet de ses photographies.André Rouillé, dans son ouvrage La Photographie paru en 2005 (Gallimard), décrit la clarté comme «une forme d\u2019anonymat, de devenir machine à voir de l\u2019opérateur, de désubjectivation du processus photographique par quoi l\u2019exactitude photographique peut atteindre à l\u2019idéal d\u2019objectivité» (p.352).La perfection technique avec laquelle est exécuté le travail de Grandmaison collabore à cet idéal d\u2019objectivité dont parle Rouillé.Les compositions, les cadrages et les éclairages privilégiés par Grandmaison - que la critique aura accusé de suivre de trop près les paramètres de la publicité et de la photo de mode \u2014 sont toutefois brouillés par la réflexion inégale sur la feuille de verre de l\u2019espace du studio où ont été réalisées les prises de vue.Ladite objectivité dont l\u2019artiste semblait faire preuve est ici habilement contredite, et ce, avec grande sensibilité.La lumière naturelle émanant de la fenêtre que Ton croit reconnaître désamorce tout autant les stratégies habituelles recherchées par une photographie de studio.Et s\u2019il est possible de voir, dans le motif de la plaque de verre, une probable mise en abyme de la photographie, il est d\u2019autant plus intéressant de noter qu\u2019elle reflète l\u2019image du studio et, parfois, celle du photographe.Ainsi, on pourrait croire que l\u2019arrière de la feuille de verre permet d\u2019accéder à l\u2019espace latent de la photographie.Le contrat mimétique qui semble lier la photographie avec son sujet voit dans cette série ses mécanismes mis à nu et ses stratégies de captation sabotées.Il est donc possible de spéculer que l\u2019espace de la représentation échappe à son propre cadre et, même, d\u2019affirmer qu\u2019il y a dans cette simple action un renversement d\u2019une importance majeure : c\u2019est le sujet photographié qui délimite lui-même le cadre de l\u2019image en le supportant physiquement et non l\u2019inverse.La réflexion que propose Grandmaison est donc, dans cette série, articulée autour d\u2019un jeu extrêmement dynamique de mise à distance et d\u2019ouverture de l\u2019espace, mais permet aussi de révéler les subterfuges photographiques.De plus, il serait aussi fructueux de penser cette série à partir d\u2019un commentaire sur les limites et les choix de l\u2019intimité, sur les enjeux de la transparence.Il y a dans le travail de Grandmaison une liberté de lecture, une densité du langage d\u2019où, à travers les dispositifs mis en place, se recoupent diverses problématiques résolument contemporaines.> YaNN Pocreau Martin Tétreault, r __co (Vue partielle de l\u2019installation), 1990-2005; photo : E.Mattson, reproduite avec l\u2019aimable permission de l\u2019artiste.L\u2019auteur poursuit des études eN arts visuels à PllNiversiié du Québec à MoNtréal et écrit sur les pratiques artistiques actuelles.Il vit et travaille à MoNtréal.yannpocreau@yahoo.ca CyNismes?MaNif d\u2019art 3 1er mai \u201c12 JUIN Tracer, retracer / TracKiNg the Traces Galerie Leoiviard & BiNa ElfeN | MoNtréal | 2 mars - 9 avril Debout dans une petite chambre presque abstraite, entre trois murs de coton blanc, me voici couvert de seize minuscules haut-parleurs (fixés aux chevilles, aux poignets, aux avant-bras et à la tête).Grâce à Lynn Pook et à sa pièce A fleur de peau (2003), je deviens objet sonore, réceptacle et caisse de résonance relié à un ordinateur.Le courant électrique démarre, vibre en chatouillant les électrodes; une musique bruitiste se déploie alors et je suis devenu le transmetteur.Cette œuvre ouvre l\u2019exposition «Tracer, retracer» organisée parla commissaire Nicole Gingras : «Tracer», comme la gravure qui enregistre le flux sonore; «retracer », comme le sillon ou le code numérique qui permet de rediffuser le son captif.Ces actions convoquent à la fois le passé, la mémoire et la réactualisation.Ils sont synonymes de mort et de transfiguration.Encore avec cette exposition, Gingras démontre qu\u2019elle possède un flair singulier pour faire émerger le domaine sonore dans les arts plastiques : « Tracking The Traces», comme l\u2019indique le titre anglais, Gingras est «à l\u2019affût des traces, des gravures, des signes pour Tome».Ses récents projets confirment sa contribution dans la recherche sur l\u2019art sonore et la ferveur de son intérêt pour la chose.À l\u2019automne 2004, au Musée national des beaux-arts de Québec, elle a rassemblé plusieurs artistes pour «Frottements.Objets et surfaces sonores», et puis, Tannée précédente, elle éditait un livre et un cd, Le son dans l\u2019art contemporain canadien (Artextes Éditions).Pour l\u2019exposition à la galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen, elle souhaite que, à travers différents moyens, «[1]\u2019ensemble de ce projet s'interroge sur la trace ou les traces que laissent les sons en nous et autour de nous, comme Issue d\u2019une volonté avouée de définir la ville comme vecteur artistique, la Biennale de Québec se distingue des autres événements du même acabit par l\u2019espace considérable qu\u2019elle consacre à la relève artistique locale et internationale.Pour la troisième édition de la Manif d\u2019art, les commissaire et cocommissaire, Patrice Loubier et André-Louis Paré, regroupent autour de la thématique du cynisme plus d\u2019une cinquantaine d\u2019artistes de toutes allégeances, de provenances et de pratiques confondues.«Cynismes?» prend la forme d\u2019un regroupement artistique éclectique marqué par des productions à caractère contestataire.Le cynisme s\u2019apparente ici à une remise en question des rapports entretenus par l\u2019humain avec son environnement.Des étoiles aux déchets, en passant par l\u2019humain lui-même, tout est propice à un détournement cynique.Souvent teintées d\u2019humour noir, les œuvres révèlent le mensonge derrière chaque vanité.Ainsi, c\u2019est à partir des grands mensonges utopiques de notre société (la consommation, le social, le politique, l\u2019art, etc.) que s\u2019organise le cynisme des artistes jouant justement sur la frontière poreuse entre rêve, réalité et duperies.Dans cet ordre d\u2019idées, l\u2019univers tentaculaire de la consommation est analysé autant dans son abondance que dans son absence.Les artistes français Laurent La Gamba et Matthieu Laurette posent des regards contradictoires sur l\u2019environnement de la consommation et les excès de son influence.La Gamba photographie des individus peints pour se confondre, un peu à la manière des caméléons, dans la jungle mercantile du supermarché.Tandis que les Homochromies (2003) de La Gamba réfléchissent sur le rôle passif du consommateur littéralement assimilé par la consommation, c\u2019est-à-dire presque consommable, Laurette participe personnellement à cette dynamique promotionnelle rattachée à l\u2019abondance de produits au point d\u2019en tirer profit et de dominer la situation.Comme le témoigne Apparitions : Produits remboursés (2004), Laurette a survécu en consommant exclusivement des produits remboursés dans le cadre de promotions dans les supermarchés.Il s\u2019agit de deux propositions distinctes pourtant inscrites dans la même lecture cynique de la consommation en tant que prédateur.Entre la proie consommatrice prenant l\u2019apparence de son prédateur et celui qui le combat à partir de ses propres armes se rt coNtemporaiN _ contemporary art 020 .page 2 iijjf -\t-¦ ' .> 7 Domimque Sirois L\u2019auteur poursuit des études de deuxième cycle UNiver-sitaire eN histoire de l\u2019art.Elle vit et travaille à MoNtréal.dominiquesirois@sympatico.ca AvaNcer daNS le brouillard Musée NanoNal des beaux-arts du Québec Québec 21 octobre 2004 -17 avril 2005 Qualifiant une condition humaine qui repose sur l\u2019instabilité de l\u2019existence en elle-même, Milan Kundera écrit dans Les testaments trahis que «l\u2019homme est celui qui avance dans le brouillard».C\u2019est donc vers le risque essentiel que s\u2019échelonnent les pas de celui en quête de l\u2019être, vers un réel ambivalent qui met à l\u2019épreuve notre rapport à la trajectoire du monde contemporain.Les propositions de Claire Savoie, d\u2019Angèle Verret, de Jean-Pierre Gauthier, de Michael A.Robinson et de Karilee Fuglem, rassemblées dans l\u2019exposition «Avancer dans le brouillard», tentent de révéler cette fugacité du temps par la bouche de la matière, de rappeler que le fait de «marcher à tâtons» fait intrinsèquement partie des petites errances et autres détours empruntés par l\u2019humain.Conservatrice de l\u2019art actuel au Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Anne-Marie Ninacs a mis en scène cet espace abstrait et inquiétant qu\u2019est la conscience, au moyen d\u2019une exposition où le corps en action doit prendre le risque de se perdre.Tel un flâneur baudelairien, le visiteur se voit encouragé à la divagation et confronté à l\u2019hésitation, à son hésitation devant les démonstrations d\u2019accidents contrôlés et de chaos provoqués.La commissaire, motivée par les difficultés de monstration de ce que Line Ouellet, en préface du catalogue, désigne comme «l\u2019insaisissable et du presque visible», a mis l\u2019accent muséographique sur l\u2019idée du parcours, défini comme un voyage dans l\u2019intime, comme une promenade à la fois cérébrale et littéralement physique.Dans l\u2019idée où les impressions spatiales se prolongent dans l\u2019activité psychique de celui qui regarde, les œuvres sélectionnées traitent des seuils du langage, des logiques irrationnelles, des accidents de matière et autres errances poétiques.Dès son introduction dans l\u2019espace, dans le rôle d\u2019un nouveau venu impromptu, le marcheur se trouve confronté à une structure qui lui suggère trois entrées.D\u2019immenses façades blanches s\u2019enchevêtrent et s\u2019emboîtent, composant un labyrinthe propice au vagabondage culturel.Cet espace déambulatoire, s\u2019entortillant sur lui-même, concourt à la perte des repères géographiques que sont le centre et sa périphérie, provoquant ainsi une expérience de l\u2019œuvre qui renvoie à l\u2019imprévisible et au hasard.Cette architecture singulière, réalisée par Claire Savoie, intègre en son milieu un petit écran diffusant une monobande.Un cadrage serré est effectué sur des mains qui caressent les surfaces de ce dédale à la hauteur du regard, comme si elles déchiffraient le braille inscrit sur la peau des murs.Ces mains frottent, effleurent et parcourent les cloisons blanches, cherchant leur chemin du bout des doigts.Le regardant, hypnotisé par la constance du geste, guette le moindre pli sur la surface dans lequel il pourrait insérer ses réflexions.Une rumeur chaotique diffusée par des haut-parleurs encastrés est perceptible du fond de chaque impasse; des sifflements, des craquements et des voix s\u2019entremêlent.Des verbes d\u2019action et d\u2019état sont scandés, sans jamais offrir de réponse, de sujet ou même de contexte, influençant ainsi le rythme des déplacements du visiteur qui s\u2019effectuent sans vraiment chercher d\u2019issue vers l\u2019extérieur.Contournant l\u2019arête des murs comme l\u2019on tourne les pages d\u2019un livre, dans cet environnement à la fois visuel et sonore, c\u2019est l\u2019oreille pendue au bout des doigts que nous découvrons l\u2019œuvre Qui se tient sur les lèvres (2004).Cet état réflexif est aussi convoqué dans la contemplation de Moments aveugles (2000), de Brouillage dans la peinture u (2001) et de Fait identique (2002), des acryliques sur toile peintes par Angèle Verret.Dans la confection d\u2019Une toute petite décision (2004) ou d\u2019Un jaune inoffensif (2004), elle superpose les couches de pigments légèrement colorés de manière à accentuer les reliefs et autres fossiles du tissage de la toile, autrement invisibles à l\u2019œil nu sur un support vierge.Procédant ainsi, la toile collectionne les épaisseurs, les plis et replis, l\u2019air enfermé sous de fines bulles ainsi que les accidents des strates précédentes.Tel un médium photographique, elle use de la matière comme révélateur de l\u2019image, jusqu\u2019au moment où advient le «dévoilement intuitif», où la couche finale enfermera le souvenir des précédentes.Ces terrains mouvants, pourtant si lisses et vernis, cultivent une attitude insaisissable; ne pouvant définir ni la profondeur ni l\u2019échelle des proportions, ces trompe-l\u2019œil, véritables détournements de réalité, évoquent à la fois le grandiose et l\u2019infime, se jouant du regardant de par leurs similitudes contradictoires, familières au souvenir de vues aériennes comme à l\u2019agrandissement des pores de la peau.Ces surfaces troublantes invitent à l\u2019introspection, ou est-ce plutôt notre regard qui est troublé de ne pouvoir nommer, comme le dit l\u2019artiste, «ce qui du visible s\u2019échappe» ?Les recherches de Jean-Pierre Gauthier, également vouées aux percées du brouillard au moyen de l\u2019expérimentation, visent l\u2019orchestration de l\u2019accident.L\u2019œuvre Échotriste (2002) témoigne de cette recherche.Elle consiste en un système complexe et rigoureux exploitant les possibilités de résonance du frottement de ressorts sur des miroirs pivotants, actionnés à l\u2019aide d\u2019un dispositif électrique ponctué par les signaux des capteurs reconnaissant les déplacements du visiteur dans l\u2019espace.Recluse à l\u2019intérieur d\u2019une pièce isolée, cette installation sonore, présentée au Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal en 2002, doit son titre à une libre interprétation plastique du mythe identitaire de Narcisse.Inspiré par le triste chant de la nymphe Écho, Gauthier a su assembler avec précision les pièces d\u2019une œuvre célébrant le hasard, ce facteur inconnu caractéristique de la condition humaine.Échotriste déploie sobrement dans l\u2019espace un circuit de fils et de tuyaux relié à des haut-parleurs qui traduisent le rythme de cette danse dissonante et lancinante.L\u2019œuvre réagit, varie, se transforme et fait résonner ses cicatrices dues aux impacts de la matière sur les cimaises et les surfaces miroitantes.Opérant selon une séquence aléatoire, puisque influencée par les imperfections de la matière et le passage des promeneurs, cette machine s\u2019emporte dans la production de ses débordements.Le marcheur arpentant l\u2019espace ne peut qu\u2019assister l\u2019air béat à l\u2019évolution de l\u2019œuvre en action sachant qu\u2019il participe à la conversation.Au chevet du mourant alité par Michael A.Robinson, Sweet Dreams (2003) met en scène la cohabitation singulière d\u2019éléments disparates - vidéo, photographie, pièces moulées et objets divers dont un lit et son mobilier, un mannequin, des couvertures et béquilles - sélectionnés pour leur symbolisme et reliés formellement par la blancheur des surfaces et la récurrence des motifs.Le visiteur fait intrusion dans un rêve monochrome aux étranges allures; tel un voyeur il pénètre dans une petite pièce, la chambre de cet homme peint en blanc, endormi.Inconfortable, mais curieux dans la pénombre, il assiste, ambivalent, à un rêve ou à un cauchemar.Ce monde onirique aux symboles aliénants se déploie en une forme hybride où la psyché oscille entre une abstraction s\u2019ouvrant sur un univers poétique et un hyperréalisme pessimiste envers sa propre réalité.Auprès du personnage fut déposé un exemplaire du Répertoire des centres autogérés du Québec et du Canada, de la Critique de la faculté de juger de Kant, de Qu\u2019est-ce que l\u2019esthétique ?de Marc Jimenez et de l\u2019ouvrage de Pierre Bourdieu sur Les règles de l\u2019art conférant à l\u2019installation une attitude critique incisive.Ces «métaphores pathologiques», propose Ninacs, questionnent littéralement la nature même de l\u2019expression créative et la condition sclérosée de l\u2019artiste d\u2019aujourd\u2019hui; elles font appel à une errance engendrée par l\u2019autoréférentialité de la proposition.La production de l\u2019artiste s\u2019engage simultanément dans une multiplicité de directions débouchant invariablement sur une perception de la liberté créatrice de l\u2019esprit qui semble s\u2019endormir, peut-être trop médicamentée par sa société.À mille lieux et quelques mètres de la lourdeur de l\u2019environnement de Michael A.Robinson, Karilee Fuglem célèbre l\u2019introspection, ces silences qui questionnent et épuisent les seuils du langage.Les fragments d\u2019un dialogue emprunté à Virginia Woolf, extrait où les personnages se questionnent sur leur propre existence, tapissent de fines lettres argent le mur exposant many things were left unsaid (2003-2004).L\u2019utilisation exclusive de caractères 2005 irt coNtemporaiN _ contemporary art 020 .page 3 i ¦ minuscules évince l\u2019idée d\u2019un début de la fin et participe à l\u2019effet de suspension, aussi présent dans (Untitled) invisible thread (2002-).Le caractère indivisible du monde, un thème récurrent chez l\u2019artiste, oscille entre le visible et l\u2019invisible.Crochetés en boucles, des fils de nylon se détachent de la matité des murs au passage de la lumière.L\u2019œil cherche et tente de circonscrire leur position dans l\u2019espace aérien, position étrangement située près d\u2019une fenêtre, annulant en partie la subtilité de l'œuvre.Son vocabulaire plastique, lexique du vide et de l\u2019indicible, transpose la profondeur de l\u2019air et l\u2019ampleur de la lumière en une matérialité qui explore les qualités de l\u2019instable.Rendant visible l\u2019anonyme, tel l\u2019écho d\u2019une poussière, ce carrefour de fils qu\u2019aucune cimaise ne satisfait rend compte de l\u2019espace que le visiteur occupe.Tout comme Fuglem, la commissaire fut attentive aux considérations géographiques de l\u2019exposition qu\u2019elle cartographia dans le but de créer un parcours propice aux déambulations de la pensée, une promenade permettant de saisir l\u2019abstrait qui relie les œuvres entre elles.«Avancer dans le brouillard» se joue de ce qui apparaît en périphérie du regard et participe à l\u2019émergence de cet espace semblable au rêve, où les murs blancs chuchotent dans le silence.> Marie-Eve Beaupré L\u2019auteur poursuit des études de deuxième cycle eN histoire de l\u2019art.Elle vit et travaille à MoNtréal.beaupre.marie-eve@courrier.uqam.ca The Eye of the Storm: WorKS in situ by DaNiel BureN Guggenheim Museum | New YorK | March 25 - JuNe 8 Claire Savoie, Qui se tient sur les lèvres (vue partielle), fibre de bois, mdf, enceintes acoustiques, moniteur, lecteurs cd, lecteur DVD, VIDÉOGRAMME COULEUR, SONORE ET BANDES SONORES 250 X 835 X 835 CM; PHOTO REPRODUITE AVEC L\u2019AIMABLE PERMISSION DE L\u2019ARTISTE.In 1971, as part of the Sixth Guggenheim International, Daniel Buren presented a work that is known today only through its photographic reproduction: his Painting-Sculpture (Peinture-Sculpture).Censored and removed from the museum the day prior to the opening without the artist\u2019s consent, this long 20 x 10 m canvas, woven in alternate 8.7 cm blue and white stripes, was suspended vertically and bisected the central space of the museum\u2019s rotunda.Complemented by a similar 1.5 x 10 m canvas that stretched horizontally like a banner across 88th Street, Painting-Sculpture addressed the discursive limits of the museum\u2019s inside and outside by literally presenting the same form both within and without, and thereby dramatizing its inscription within the institution\u2019s legitimating power as well as revealing the assignation of art as dependent on a work\u2019s location inside the museum\u2019s walls.Without recourse to the traditional modernist device of a canvas stretcher, Painting-Sculpture used the building as well as the urban context as its material support.But ultimately, it was the work\u2019s reliance on the museum\u2019s inside\u2014that is, its vertical hang from the skylight to the bottom of the first ramp\u2014that posed a problem for a few of the exhibiting artists and, ultimately, for the museum\u2019s administration.With Painting-Sculpture\u2019s act of incorporation, of literally using the architecture as part of the work\u2019s structure, Buren both completed the period\u2019s emphasis on site specificity and broke with it at once.This is to say that if the Sixth Guggenheim International\u2019s mandate was to present works that were specific to the site, what Buren\u2019s work revealed in the end was the other participating artists\u2019 formal accommodation to, rather than critical interrogation of, this very mandate.Of the twenty-one artists who took part in the International, sixteen signed a petition against the censorship of Buren\u2019s work and Carl Andre went so far as to remove his work altogether in a gesture of critical solidarity.Then Diane Waldman, Guggenheim curator, and Thomas Messer, museum director, justified their decision to remove Painting-Sculpture by explaining that it was \u201cin direct conflict with the work of other artists in the exhibition\u201d (see statements in Studio International, May-June 1971).At the same time, however, the museum identified its commitment to an avant-garde art that \u201cquestions previous art styles, particularly those that directly preceded them,\u201d as Waldman explained in the accompanying catalogue.Moreover, the main objection made by the exhibiting artists in question\u2014in particular, by Donald Judd and Dan Flavin\u2014was that Buren\u2019s large banner-like work visually obstructed views of their own.Far more incisive than the obstruction of any view, Buren\u2019s use of the Guggenheim architecture as support served to rework the organizational function of the museum, whose spiral unfolding often drives the narrative organization of its exhibitions.Similarly, Frank Lloyd Wright\u2019s design of the rotunda displaces attention from the gallery walls to the architecture itself by means of the spiral\u2019s orchestration of opposing centrifugal and centripetal forces.As Buren recently explained: \u201cThe works that were hung on those walls were thrust far from the center by a strong centrifugal force, while the eyes of the viewer were drawn irresistibly back toward the center.\u201d (\u201cA Conversation with Daniel Buren,\u201d Guggenheim website, 2005).Thus, works are pushed away from the viewer as he or she is pulled into the museum\u2019s centre, an architectural performance that secures the viewer\u2019s perceptual attention to the architecture\u2019s inner void\u2014what art historian Alexander Alberro once described as an \u201comnipresent gaping vortex\u201d\u2014and simultaneously reveals the architectural spectacle at the expense of any exhibited work.Indeed, it is precisely this vortex effect that Buren\u2019s current exhibition, \u201cThe Eye of the Storm,\u201d directly engages.The exhibition is comprised of three parts: Around the Comer (2000-05) 'n the Rotunda; Murs de peintures (1966-77), a selection of twenty striped canvases in the Fligh Gallery; and the windows with coloured gels in Color, Rhythm, Transparency, works in situ in the Thannhauser Galleries.The centrepiece of the show, Around the Comer, presents one comer of a mirrored cube, which, if it were fully constructed, would literally box in the entire museum.More specifically, the comer is formed by the intersection of two mirrored walls, an intersection whose edge lines up with the exact centre of the museum.Wedged into the rotunda and spanning from the floor to the sixth ramp, the corner is the only right angle in the entire museum, and thereby serves to introduce and mimic the coordinates of New York\u2019s urban grid within Wright\u2019s organic spiral.Upon entering the museum\u2019s public entrance, however, one encounters the structure\u2019s interior scaffolding, which blocks any immediate view of the building\u2019s interior until one literally turns the corner.Once inside, the work\u2019s external mirrored skin, which reads like that of a skyscraper, is revealed as is the circular skylight (with alternate panes coloured by magenta gels) and the near fluorescent green 8.7 cm dash-like stripes\u2014 Buren\u2019s \u201cvisual tool\u201d\u2014which adhere to the outer rim of the circling parapet.Mirrors, first introduced in Buren\u2019s Cabanes éclatées (Exploded Cabins) in the 1980s, serve in his work neither as a symbol of realist representation nor as a device for the exact reproduction for the viewer of some exterior reality.Insofar as the mirrors reflect, in a work like Around the Corner the inverted symmetry of mirror reflection is both invoked and cancelled.While one critic (mis)described the mirrors as offering a \u201csolipsistic perspective,\u201d (see New York Times, March 25, 2005) their actual effect is not to \u201ccomplete\u201d the spiral but to undo its continuous circularity.In other words, the spiral does not seamlessly unfold between object and reflection so much as reverse its course at the material points of contiguity with the mirrored walls.And when viewed from across the comer\u2019s apex, one perceives the spiral fissure and break as the reflected parapet fails to line up and continue around the corner\u2019s edge.The green stripes that are reflected therein add to the destabilizing effect as do the multiple reflections of spectators both above and below.While \u201cThe Eye of the Storm\u201d certainly addresses questions of materials, architecture, and phenomenological perception as these bear on one\u2019s understanding of the Guggenheim as a specific site, Buren\u2019s earlier work such as Les Couleurs: sculptures and Les Formes: peintures (Centre Pompidou, 1979) interrogated more explicitly the limits of the visible as these relate specifically to the status of institutional conventions.Les Couleurs: sculptures appropriated the flag-form and was placed on top of various buildings far from the Pompidou\u2019s walls, while Les Formes: peintures worked on the interior: its five paintings were literally placed behind canonical works in the Pompidou collection so as to show, as Buren pithily ex- rt coNiemporaiN _ contemporary art 020 .page 4 FaciNg The Music Olafur EliassoN MeaNi to Be Lived In (Today I Am FeeliNg Prismatic) Jamie Resides | sadeNa I il 21 - May 31 Two site-specific exhibitions and one conference entitled \"Institutional Critique and After\u201d marked May 1968, 2005 as the Los Angeles Spring.At the redcat Gallery in the Disney Concert Hall, Alan Sekula curated \u201cFacing the Music,\u201d a selection of documentary-type works (by artists such as Karin-Apollonia Müller, James Baker, and Sekula himself) which were variously engaged with the histories, geographies, and demographics of the Frank Gehry plained, that \u201cthat wall is not innocent\u201d (Buren, 1979).By appropriating the public space of the flag\u2014\u201cles couleurs\u201d also refers to the national flag in French\u2014and the inner space of museum\u2019s hanging respectively, this dual work played with art\u2019s legibility as the functional flag was made aesthetic and painting\u2019s display was revealed as functional in turn.And space both inside and out was posited not only as phenomenal, but also, primarily, as a discursive construction.Within these terms, what does \u201cThe Eye of the Storm\u201d tell us today about the formerly concealed discursivity\u2014be it formal, political, economic, or ideological\u2014of a specific site, a particular architecture?The exhibition\u2019s title, \u201cThe Eye of the Storm,\u201d may literally refer to the museum\u2019s pool on the ground floor, which was designed by Wright to look like an eye, or it may be meant metaphorically, as Buren explains: \u201c[Wright] would remain totally calm in the face of the rising storm that his new structure would unleash .even as he created a storm against contemporary works of art by refusing them a decent wall for hanging\u201d (Guggenheim website).But, perhaps unwittingly, the title speaks more directly to the contemporary situation in which art\u2014and critical practice\u2014finds itself, for if thirty-five years ago, the storm around Painting-Sculpture was all bound up with a few artists\u2019 complaints as well as the museum\u2019s acquiescence to mounting cultural and political conservatism, now everything seems quite \u201ccalm, quiet and peaceful\u201d both inside and outside the Guggenheim\u2019s walls.Indeed, the press surrounding Buren\u2019s current show\u2014 from Beaux Arts, VExpress, Time Out New York, New York Times to my own reflections here\u2014repeatedly invokes the 1971 censorship and subsequent scandal.And it is the insistence on this earlier work, (i.e., its fundamental absence) which, one might say, makes legible what is absent today: for nowadays revealing the discursivity of space as ideologically circumscribed has been assimilated within die art institution and culture at large as one more avant-garde gambit; one does not work against or in opposition to the institution so much as within it.As Buren clarifies, art institutions have lost some of their power through their global \u201cproliferation,\u201d and this condition may also be \u201cthe reason for the fatigue of the entire structure\u201d (Artforum, May 2005, p.210-14).Yet if art institutions no longer secure art\u2019s difference, and take part instead in an ever-increasing culture industry, then indeed there is no longer an outside, an Archimedean point from which to speak and hence critique.Yet Buren never worked from this imaginary beyond; instead, he always inscribed his work within the discursive limitations of a specific site.At the same time, however, his work was nevertheless read as critique insofar as it depended on the stability\u2014real or imagined\u2014of the institution itself.However, today\u2019s situation, in the midst of the museum\u2019s global reach and simultaneous fatigue, begs the question: how is one to tell the difference between art and all the rest, between what goes on inside and outside the museum\u2019s walls?In short, within the eye of the storm, where does one locate a critical practice?> Kaira Marie Cabalas Kaira Marie CabaSas is aN art hisioriaN Iivins in New YorK.Daniel Buren, Around the Corner, 2000-05, and The Rose Window, 2005, works in situ, Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum, New York; photo David M.Heald, © SRGF, N.Y., courtesy Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum.building and its environs.In a different vein, and under the auspices of the Galleria Emi Fontana at the Jamie Residence\u2014a Richard Neutra-like home in the Hills of Pasadena\u2014Olafur Eliasson exhibited a number of light installations made to measure for the various spaces of the \u201cblacked-out\u201d house; the show was entitled \u201cMeant to Be Lived In (Today I Am Feeling Prismatic).\u201d Finally, the conference held at lacma turned upon the Institutional Critique (ic) Movement of the 1960s, a number of international developments, as well as the performance-based practices of a new ic.Mere proximity counts for a lot here.With driving times being what they are, three such events, even if only loosely clustered around an institutional thematic, deserve attention.Why?Certainly not to champion the idea of the artist as curator: it seems obvious enough that this \u201csurefire\u201d model of institutional critique through substitution only manages to sidestep the problem.But then how truly clichéd and mechanical has the notion of site-specific production itself become, especially a flatly Marxist critique of the institution in an institution such as the Disney Concert Hall?Surely the notion that a critical practice need only embody contradiction in order for it to possess the requisite form of reflexivity to reverse the plight of alienation is bankrupt in a context like this?To bring on the vocabulary of Marx\u2019s The German Ideology\u2014a paradigmatic text for such ideological demystification\u2014simply picturing contradiction as content over form is never enough, inasmuch as overturning the \u201creligious realm\u201d for the \u201csecular basis\u201d à la Feuerbach is yet another version of substitution.But no less impoverished is the staging of an exhibition outside of the normal apparatus of the institution when one simply substitutes its evils for a pleasant form of architectural tourism in the hills.That Eliasson\u2019s policy of \u201canything goes\u201d can be accounted for by a naïve fatalism, which assumes that there is no \u201coutside\u201d to the institution, only makes matters worse\u2014though in reality it only casts his theorizing skills in a poor light, for at the Jamie Residence the artist\u2019s essentially poetic practice of transforming spatial questions into purely formal answers once again had viewers dazzled to the point of being slightly dumbstruck.Without any recourse to meaning\u2014and a strict grammar or poetics does not have access to logic, especially the horizon of meaning that typically accompanies institutional practice and which cannot easily be separated out from Eliasson\u2019s thinly veiled references to science in any case\u2014one could only look at the various light spectacles and say: \u201cAt least it\u2019s kind of beautiful.\u201d The unbridgeable, but nevertheless bridgeable, response to a stripped down grammar of stage lighting, lenses, mirrors, and their arrangement on the one hand, and on the other the imperative to make sense of it all in aesthetic terms just the same, are in stark contrast to the materialist drive and hermeneutic logic one confronts in Sekula\u2019s exhibition.What constitutes the interest posed by these two otherwise disconnected events (not to mention the convenient theoretical frame of the conference that so horribly failed to get the measure of the beast) is that \u201cFacing the Music\u201d and \u201cMeant to Be Lived In\u201d demand that one enter into dialogue with them through the optic of a structural frame, or a situational, even \u201crelational\u201d ethic, which is antagonistic and critical of the institution in the one instance, and all too willing to go along with its instrumental plot in the other.The variance is revealing of how broad the spectrum of practices potentially involved in institutional critique currently is.Moreover, there is no good reason to assume that there is only one way to tackle the issue, or that one need to be critical of the institution in doing so.Both idealism and materialism come up against limits here; the burden of criticism, as always, is to show the way in which both do so by way of overcoming a dialectic implicit to each.It is not as difficult as it may seem.In fact, Eliasson\u2019s hermetic installations\u2014generated as if organically from the narrative sub-soil of the institutional space itself, and all but cut off from the world save for a metaphoric system that calibrated the opposites of inside and outside through a set of relays able to transform darkness into light (and perhaps valley heat into air-conditioned coolness)\u2014hinge on a symmetrical model of transfiguration that is homologous to Sekula\u2019s orchestration of the negative reaction formation through which one enters the documentary mode and apparently gains direct access to the external world.That the latter\u2019s critical attitude is as recuperable by a hegemonic system as the former\u2019s affirmationls the first crux of the matter.Ultimately, that the terms of negation or affirmation are far more unstable than one would like to think, and, in fact, ground each practice in a rhetorical model of language that both artists have gleaned from their own practices and apparently disseminated throughout their respective exhibitions as a whole, not only renders one\u2019s original entrance to the exhibitions suspect (already a limit of \u201crelational aesthetics\u201d), but also supplementary to an exchange relation that is potentially a closed and delirious system (a necessary corrective to one recent attempt to complicate \u201crelational aesthetics\u201d by way of antagonism).In an important sense, for the close reader of May \u201805, the negative moment of truth is always already built into these curatorial exercises; at the very least they are dialectical as soon as a viewer enters into dialogue with the work, via the institutional frame supplied.It is in this sense that the L.A.Spring gave unique expression to a global phenomenon in which a broad spectrum of practices\u2014from various political and aesthetic traditions, which are uniquely rooted in the particularities of local circumstance, and concerned with very different hazards, objectives, and horizons\u2014seem to be in the running for the mantle of the true avant-garde, but are potentially not.With the political now completely back on the table after a long hiatus (and apparently for just about everyone), not only do the mystifications of language Je me souviens des gentilles prouesses (1992) de Véronique Boudier, petits exploits physiques comme toucher le bout de son nez avec sa langue et autres micro-acrobaties; de ses grandioses ratages quand ils se présentaient sur un plateau d\u2019argent où trônait un gâteau brûlé (Dessert, 1993); de tout ses gestes inutiles (Que des gestes inutiles, 1995), tout aussi pathétiques que dérisoires.Je me souviens précisément de cette grande toile de bâche déployée comme un paysage et éclairée par deux phares de voiture posés par terre, à un bout de laquelle l\u2019artiste repoussait le vide lui faisant face en vaporisant un appear all the more seductive and threatening, but it seems the oddly unfocused field of contemporary art practice is operating as if it were in a power vacuum.This is one of the reasons why during May \u201805 in Los Angeles, it seemed to have been ever so slightly reassuring that a disparate pattern of possibilities could indeed be secured through institutional critique.It is a curious state of affairs, for in spite of the distance that separates us all from 1968, it seems that political futures always have a way of worming their way into a spectrum of potentially rich, variable, and responsible artistic practices that require nothing less than ethical models of responding to the singularity of each.From the perspective of this new avant-garde of both practice and theory, Eliasson\u2019s largely ahistorical and ephemeral light project at the Jamie Residence would be emblematic of the general threat: a charge \u201cMeant to Be Lived In\u201d more than ably offsets through the almost systematic demonstration of a gamut of relationships, from the irreparable to the wholly symbolic nature of the bond between grammar and meaning individual works posit.On the other hand, Sekula\u2019s exhibition and, specifically, his slide presentation, Prayer for the Americans j (Disney Stockholders) (1997-2005), poses what is at stake in May \u201905 in a far more acute way: the asymmetrical reading his work leaves open is more unnerving, because for all intents and purposes he is a soldier for the cause.Hence the Marxist stand one finds oneself taking in face of the interminably long line of people who, one gleans from title, are Disney Stockholders.One literally assumes the place of a documentary photographer, protester, or pick-eter at some event related to the Concert Hall.The photographs are highly wrought: the anti-aesthetic, waist-level, tilted, and at times jiggled and badly shadowed shots are perhaps taken from a hidden camera.One woman covers her baby\u2019s face from the threat.But the Marxist stand is not the only position one takes in face of the work.We hear the rhetoric loud enough: since the work is projected on a pull-down screen\u2014a comedic hint as to the possibly pedantic and insufferable nature of the terms of this apparently politically engaged practice\u2014one might just as well be an impostor who is putting in time, getting the material, in order to fulfil plans for an eight-year-long project.Prayer for the Americans seems to turn around something like these two fictive possibilities, and it is a tropological prison that is no less delusional than the general economy around which the larger exhibition as a site of good old-fashioned institutional critique turns.The question is how to get out of this vicious circle, or system of consciousness, to the material conditions of production: to paraphrase Marx in the Fourth Thesis on Feuerbach: Once one has determined the identity of the \u201cearthly family .(as) the secret of the holy family,\u201d how does one keep the rivenness of the \u201csecular base\u201d intact, in order that.how would Sekula put it.the priests of the new temple find nothing to laugh at?Evidently, in this city, the answer is obtained via a non-transcendent form of transport that does not merely carry thoughts upward, but outward, along the ground.This is no longer negation then, but the play of the letter stuttering down Grand Avenue\u2014what Sekula calls \u201cthe avenue of culture and official spirituality, replete with what used to be called \u2018ideology\u2019\u201d\u2014or, more precisely, the slide presentation that moves one along a long line of human remainders, not as isolated objects of perception, but as products of labour.Such a material relationship seems inscribed in the title\u2019s cryptic reference to \u201cprayer\u201d; beside this in the obfuscated reference to Hans Haacke in parenthesis; finally, in the irony of an institutional site that is located beside the city\u2019s judiciary function.Rigorous causality and determinate negation give way to something else here: the sheer metonymic proximity of examples.Within the present context of the art world the recuperation of meaning only does violence to such radically unsystematizable moments that certainly exist within the system, but which are no less constitutive of it.What distinguishes May '68 from May \u201905 in Sekula\u2019s work, then, is that the horizon of meaning his work immediately calls up is recognized to be underwritten by its own double and worst enemy, a shadow institution that is constantly creeping up on one in order to make sense or give order to the world by virtue of a metaphoric system of exchange.Beyond this horizon is language as inscription, the grammar of the work, the institution, and its site on Bunker Hill.> Shep SieiNer The author is curreNtly worKiNg on a booK on high modernist paiNtiNg aNd lives in the O.C.peu de parfum, celui-ci se confondant avec l\u2019atmosphère brumeuse de l\u2019immensité sans fond dressée partout autour d\u2019elle (Ballade 2,1998).Le naturel et l\u2019artificiel trouvaient là un point de concordance, les raisons d\u2019une indémê-lable superposition.L\u2019impuissance et les gestes désespérés hantent les œuvres de Boudier comme autant de tentatives pour se mesurer face à l\u2019incommensurable, se tenir debout, même en équilibre, face au chaos.Une de ses premières œuvres consistait à poser deux coussins sur Le Monde, soit l\u2019affirmation d\u2019un être-là et, peut-être, une manière d\u2019écarter Alan Sekula, Gala (still), 2003-05, digital video, 24 min; photo courtesy the artist and Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica.VéroNique Boudier, PromeNade de saNté 2005\tart coNtemporaiN _ contemporary art\t|o2o .pace 5 une certaine réalité pour lui préférer un constat plus brutal.Aujourd\u2019hui, encore, on trouve dans son travail cette façon de faire le monde sien, de le comprendre tout entier.Composées de fragments, comme issues d\u2019un rêve, les expositions de Boudier peuvent réclamer du visiteur qu\u2019il se laisse aller à une promenade sans jamais y trouver le repos, et la présente exposition plus qu\u2019aucune autre.Elle lui demande de tisser des liens d\u2019une oeuvre à l\u2019autre, au-delà de toute évidence, de dérouler selon des logiques intuitives le fil d\u2019Ariane d\u2019une funambule prête à faire le grand saut, à tout moment, semble-t-il.L\u2019artiste fait affleurer à notre mémoire et, plus particulièrement à la sienne, sensations, impressions, fantasmes, souvenirs ou images comme autant de réminiscences ou résurgences qu\u2019elle recueille.Ainsi, «Promenade de santé» s\u2019ouvre sur une projection tripartite où trois figures noires en tutu semblent masquées.Chacune d\u2019elles évolue seule dans un espace immaculé qui pourrait être celui d\u2019une feuille de papier, tant les mouvements qu\u2019elles esquissent se dessinent sur la surface plane du mur.Comme des ombres chinoises qui se déplacent d\u2019un mur à l\u2019autre, les trois danseuses proposent une espèce de ballet sans volume ni espace où elles sont des figures de passage, des corps sans chair.Si les danseuses ne sont pas professionnelles, on y perçoit néanmoins une maîtrise qui nous indique qu\u2019un jour tout ces gestes ont été répétés et appris.Pour les exhumer, l\u2019artiste puise dans ses réserves, ici physiques, ailleurs mentales.Autre forme de passage, l\u2019écoulement du temps apparaît comme un facteur de changement et d\u2019altération des éléments, mais pas à la façon d\u2019une vanité moderne : Montrée précédemment aux côtés d\u2019œuvres jouant les faux-semblants, Libre répartition (2002) évoque précisément cela et sa possible faillite.Avec ses paillettes, son faux marbre et sa feutrine verte bas de gamme, les apparences trahissent ici une piste aux étoiles à laquelle on ne parvient pas à croire.L\u2019émerveillement enfantin s\u2019est mué en farce tragique; le plateau de guéridon en support composite constellé de paillettes simule une sorte de carte d\u2019état-major prise entre le jeu de hasard et les hasards de la cosmétique.Plus loin, baignées dans la lumière rouge des maisons closes, les filles de Choral (2004) poussent la ritournelle avec chacune leur interprétation des Nuits d\u2019une demoiselle, chanson érotique interprétée par Colette Renard à la fin des années 1940, dont la rumeur envahit l\u2019espace.Une série de portraits en buste, épaules nues, fait un joyeux clin d\u2019œil aux marins exposés quelques salles avant ( Un marin dans chaque port, 2005).Sauf que les unes sont de souveraines sirènes et que les autres sont dans l\u2019attente.«Promenade de santé» passe par plusieurs âges de la vie, vécus davantage comme des états que comme des moments.Depuis les gestes appris dans l\u2019enfance et leur remémoration, jusqu\u2019au constat clinique établi par le médecin légiste et reproduit en grand sur les murs verts de la salle (façon bloc opératoire) pour poser là un point final à ce cheminement.Une balade physiquement interrompue nette par un géant shoriken, cette arme de rue japonaise dont les branches sont en forme d\u2019étoiles aux bords acérés, fiché dans le mur.La mise en relation précise de ces deux œuvres suggère l\u2019alternance de deux types de constats qui utilisent des mécanismes de projec- Sandra Cattini, Tutu, installation vidéo, 2002; photo: Jean Brasille, reproduite avec l'aimable permission de la Galerie Chez Valentin, Paris.jlflWl»'», jjftlM i'Mww-.,: Marcel Broodthaers, The Visual Tower, 1966, class jars, wood and magazine illustrations, 88.7 x 49.7 x 49.7 cm; photo courtesy the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh.juste une prise en compte alchimique des métamorphoses qu\u2019il occasionne.Cela a pu se manifester lors d\u2019expositions précédentes par le spectacle de la lente décomposition d\u2019éléments périssables (gélatine alimentaire, substances organiques, lait corporel.) ou, comme c\u2019est le cas ici, par le coup d\u2019arrêt prononcé par l\u2019irruption violente de la mort ou de son symbole ou encore par le temps remémoré du souvenir.Quand bien même ce dernier serait rêvé ou provoqué - car les œuvres de Boudier flirtent toujours avec cette autre limite, celle du factice, de la pacotille ou de la plaisanterie -, cela ne mettrait pas en doute la véracité de son apparition, elle-même souvent mêlée d\u2019expériences présentes ou passées.Du vrai faux qui articule une cosmogonie personnelle et rapproche l\u2019art d\u2019une expérience intime.tion inverses, l\u2019un s\u2019appuyant sur un objet mis en scène à l\u2019appréhension immédiate, l\u2019autre sur une image agissant dans un espace-temps plus lent, mais tout aussi implacable.La collusion visuelle et mentale qui en résulte traverse toute l\u2019œuvre de Véronique Boudier et produit une disjonction permanente entre la réalité et la fiction, l\u2019une alimentant l\u2019autre pour former un anneau de Mœbius.C\u2019est le trait d\u2019union le plus court qu\u2019elle ait trouvé pour rapprocher l\u2019art de la vie.> SaNdra Can ini L\u2019auteur est critique d'art.Elle vit à Paris et à Strasbourg.scattini@club-internet.fr Faces in the Crowd:\t\t\t PicturiNg Modem Life from MaNet to Today\t\t\t \t\t\t \u201cThe apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.\u201d The distilled, crystalline elegance of Ezra Pound\u2019s \u2018In a Station of the Metro\u2019 (1916) provides the title for an ambitious, plethoric exhibition recently on view at the Whitechapel Art Gallery.The poem\u2019s resonant clarity becomes a foil for the sense of inundation felt on attempting to steer a course through this dense, heterogeneous population of icons of modern and contemporary art.The metropolitan crowd is not only the dominant subject here; it also provides the model for the exhibition\u2019s form.Taking Edouard Manet (the quintessential \u201cpainter of modem life\u201d) as its starting point, \u201cFaces in the Crowd\u201d sets aside the canonical narrative of modernism hinged upon abstraction and traces a different but parallel history through figuration.This alternative story, one equally concerned with subject matter and medium, foregrounds the ways in which transformations of urban space and shifting definitions of self are at once contingent and reciprocal.As curator Iwona Blazwick asserts in the substantial catalogue accompanying the show, \u201cwhat is central to this exhibition is the exploration of the relationship between the individual and contemporary society.\u201d The exhibition comprises painting, sculpture, photography, film, and video, and the rostrum of names presented alone initiates the onset of vertigo: Manet, Munch, Vertov, Duchamp, Klutcis, Magritte, Warhol, Bacon, Broodthaers, Beuys, Schneemann, Boltanski, Acconci, Sherman, Ofili, and Gursky are among the one hundred major artists whose works are included.Connective possibilities proliferate in the crossfire of glances and associative ricochets.Indeed, the viewer is at times overwhelmed by such an unexpected confluence of disparate voices, each with much to say, sometimes talking cross-purposes, and not infrequently difficult to keep in check.In fact, there is cause to wonder how such a diverse constellation of artists and artworks can occupy the same space.What question or \u201ccuratorial strategy\u201d is elastic and capacious enough to elicit relevant responses from each of them?The exhibition affords a seemingly unlimited array of interpretive options.As alternative narratives swerve and splinter, Baudelaire\u2019s evocation of modernity as \u201cthe transitory, the fugitive, the contingent\u201d becomes manifest.In this melee, it is necessary for the viewer to divine a trajectory.\u201cFaces in the Crowd\u201d is organized according to a rough chronology, with the downstairs galleries running from the 1870s to the late 1960s, and those upstairs continuing to the present.On the ground floor, a number of photographs taken from Brassaï\u2019s 1932 collection Paris by Night, the result of a series of nocturnal urban wanderings, present a shadowy city laced with menace and compulsion.Looming figures, dark recesses and unnerving inhabitants encrypt these spaces with an urgent and unsettling tension.This veil of suggestion is lifted, however, in the graphic presentation of the aftermath of violent events by Weegee and Warhol.Weegee\u2019s chillingly still Murder on the Roof (1941) and Warhol\u2019s Orange Car Crash (1963), a silk-screened repetition of death and damage, speak of a fixated response to anonymous disaster.The active Surrealist subject at work in Brassai, seeking out the erotic and the disturbing, is replaced by a vacancy that has been numbed by a barrage of the inassimilable.Such questions of subjectivity become dominant in the upstairs galleries.Here, the wilful immersion in spectacular metropolitan experience encountered on the ground floor (Manet\u2019s masked ball, George Bellow\u2019s boxing match, Eve Arnold\u2019s political rallies) gives way to a more introspective engagement, with notions of agency, identity, and representation becoming intertwined.Jeff Wall\u2019s Picture for Women (1979), a meditation on Manet\u2019s Bar at the Folies-Bergère, is juxtaposed with Cindy Sherman\u2019s fictional feminine clichés (1980).Implications for artistic agency are especially complex: Bruce Nauman\u2019s manic Clown Torture (1987) counters Joseph Beuys\u2019s shamanism in I Like America and America Likes Me (1974); the aggression of Paul McCarthy\u2019s debased anal-eroticism in Class Fool (1976) joins with Valie Export\u2019s guerrilla exposures in Genital Panic (1969).More subtly perhaps, works by Vito Acconci and Sophie Calle displace conventional notions of creative agency with intriguing strategies that splice compulsion with detachment.In Following Piece (1969), Acconci allows the duration and spatial parameters of his actions to be determined by the strangers he follows; once selected, these people are trailed until they enter some private space.The uneasy intrigue of these secret pursuits is ambiguously developed by Calle in her Suite vénitienne (1980), where the ghosting continues over a series of days.Taken together, the cacophony that comprises \u201cFaces in the Crowd\u201d serves as an analogue for one of the fundamental conditions of modern experience: sensory overload.Increasingly throughout the twentieth century, the city has become the mise en scène for a vast web connecting labour and leisure, entertainment and ennui, performance and spectacle, autonomy and collective action.But the relations between the individual and society are not only framed by the city, they are also determined by it.As Georg Simmel wrote in \u201cThe Metropolis and Mental Life\u201d (1903), the city itself imposes an \u201cintensification of emotional life due to the swift and continuous shift of external and internal stimuli.\u201d \u201cFaces in the Crowd\u201d sets the metropolis and its psychic space as the ground from which an unstable, multifaceted vision of modernism emerges.From this urban labyrinth powerful assemblages emerge to generate and sustain artistic production.New subject matter, modes of perception, systems of dissemination, and spaces for display become available in a complex cultural field traversed by contending ideologies.As the exhibition demonstrates, these dynamics register their impact on all facets of life, and have been met with an intensity fuelled by the twinned creative lightning rods of exhilaration and anxiety.Yet as Simmel warned more than a century ago, when faced with an agglomeration of relationships and concerns so manifold and complex, the danger is that our fragile constructs \u201cbreak down into an inextricable chaos.\u201d > Ed Krcma aNd Jody PattersoN The authors are writers Iivins in LoNdoN.2005 rt coNiemporaiN _ coNtemporary art I020 .paee 6 BeyoNd Borders: An of PaKisiaN yC- I ^ÊÊ ifBf | +/ t onfrontation between Indian and Pakistan Confrontation between Pakistani and Indil Bani Abadi, The News, 2001, video installation; photo courtesy the artist.M / It \u201cTo cross a frontier is to be transformed,\u201d writes Bombay-born author Salman Rushdie in Step Across This Line.\u201cThe frontier is a wake-up call.At the frontier we can\u2019t avoid the truth; the comforting layers of the quotidian, which insulate us against the world\u2019s harsher realities, are stripped away and, wide-eyed in the harsh fluorescent light of the frontier\u2019s windowless halls, we see things as they are.\u201d Rushdie makes border-crossing sound for all the world like an artistic experience: eye-opening, perception-deepening, even slightly world-transforming, but always accompanied by some attendant unease.Though he never explicitly says so, I take this similitude to be his point: because all frontiers are fictions\u2014that is, products of human will and imagination, even when upheld by grandiose state-sanctioned narratives proclaiming their universality\u2014they are somehow, by definition, an object of predilection for scrutiny by fiction and art, for that scrutiny becomes at the same time an act of self-scrutiny.Because art, too, is partitioned off from other symbolic acts and configurations by borderlines no less permeable than geopolitical borders.Nowhere were the repercussions of border-making more laden in tragedy than with the wholesale 1948 vivisection of the Asian subcontinent into India and Pakistan.\u201cBeyond Borders,\u201d the first museum-scale exhibition in India of contemporary Pakistani art since Partition cleft the two countries apart almost sixty years ago, takes on particular significance in a cosmopolis like Bombay (though \u201cBombay,\u201d the name the Portuguese mariners gave to their trading post, has now been replaced officially by the Marati name of Mumbai).For in some respects, this sprawling multiethnic city is a small-scale example (if one may speak in this way of a city of some twenty million inhabitants) of what India would have looked like today had Partition never occurred.Karachi-based curator Quddus Mirza was commissioned to curate an overview of contemporary Pakistani art in a context where a \u201cje t\u2019aime, moi non plus\u201d attitude of mutual attraction and aversion prevails between the two countries.To do so, he chose to highlight five visual vernaculars particular to Pakistani art-making: the sublimation of calligraphy in Pakistani painting (notably in the work of Hanif Ramay); the re-appropriation of the miniature tradition; visual languages derived from pop culture and the diffuse iconography of everyday design; the body as the main frame of reference for both art and politics; and national cultural identity.Regrettably, given the context and the theme announced by the title, \u201cBeyond Borders,\u201d the exhibition as a whole paid scant heed to the issue of art\u2019s own borders, and the borderlines of art\u2014that glass ceiling in everyone\u2019s head\u2014are ultimately reproduced.This is not to discount the politicized nature of most of the works shown.But like so much would-be political art, many works merely folded political issues into conventional forms, engaging in \"picture politics\u201d rather than doing art politically; illustrating well-worn themes rather than engaging reflexively with how art itself reproduces the logic of partitioning which it sets out to condemn.The interest of borders, of course, lies in transgressing them.Yet as transgressive theorist Georges Bataille understood, transgression is both a necessity and a \u201créinscription\u201d of the violated border, meaning that only a self-reflexive transgression (one reiterating formally a geopolitical transgression) has any real chance of escaping the circularity.The most successful work in this respect, and the most intriguing in the exhibition, is Adnan Madani\u2019s video projection, Playing Chess with Marcel Duchamp (2001).Deliberately deterritorializing his subject matter, Madani can be seen as sublimating the dynamics of partition into the form of the work.The video intermixes footage of an interview with Duchamp over a game of chess, with film of the artist doing likewise, striking similar poses, ostensibly asking the questions in the silent, subtitled film.A spoof on Duchamp\u2019s \u201coverrated silence,\u201d the work is above all an allegory of how borders can enact mutually exclusive yet overlapping ontological landscapes, as the artist struggles for Duchamp\u2019s ear and a straight answer.The interviewer grows increasingly frustrated with the interviewee\u2019s cryptic remarks, and ends up vainly hurling insults at him across the ontological schisms that divide them.Three works by video artist Bani Abidi deal directly with the post-Partition psyche.In The News (2001), a sternlooking television newscaster\u2014her voice as deadpan as her attire is traditional\u2014reads out in Urdu news about some nonsensical border incident involving the theft of a chicken egg: \u201cresolution is sought in age-old conflict,\u201d read the English subtitles in a string of cliches, \u201csituation tense but under control.\u201d Razor-wired or merely rhetorical, borders are physically and symbolically the major obstacle to the construction of new forms of community, of being together; understood in their broadest sense, they are the only obstacle.But the logic inherent in state-promoted border skirmishes finds spokespersons in individuals, not just newscasts.Abidi\u2019s Mangoes (2000) is an allegory of one-upmanship, where mangoes stand in for nuclear warheads.Two women sit side by side eating mangoes: \u201cSo how many sorts of mangoes do you have in Pakistan,\u201d asks the Indian.\u201cAbout five,\u201d answers her Pakistani neighbour, \u201cand in India?\u201d \u201cWe have six,\u201d she replies, upping the ante.\u201cI think we have six or something too,\u201d retorts the Pakistani, not to be outdone\u2014and so the escalation goes.Works of this kind remind us that it is a defining characteristic of borders to be disputed\u2014a fact which might provide some comic relief from the human condition were the outcomes of such disputes not so often tragic.It is, in other words, no easier to trace an arbitrary line across the world than it is to justify or contest that line on some high-minded sounding grounds, be they ethnic, linguistic, or historical.Were they not so permeable (to information, imagery\u2014 indeed to anything that, unlike bodies, can be demateri-alized), borders might appear less arbitrary and be less susceptible to disputation.Selective permeability is the theme of another of Abidi\u2019s videos, Anthems, where a stereo war becomes a border incident.A girl is shown dancing to an upbeat pop song, with an inanely nationalist chorus.A vertically split screen separates her from what appears to be her twin sister to the left who is dancing to a different tune (in all three films, the artist herself plays both parts).They both keep cranking up the volume, in an attempt to drown each other out, in an apt allegory of sameness in difference.The work shown by Pakistani-Canadian artist Rashid Rana, by contrast, has more to do with the construction of identity out of difference.Rana addresses the composite nature of the image and the imaginary, producing large digital prints comprised of thousands\u2014even hundreds of thousands\u2014of tiny images, which themselves function as pixels.His Veil series (2004), portraying women clad in the burkha (the all-covering variety that makes the wearer look like a ghoul) is actually made up of tiny images from porn movies, though this can only be seen from close up.More subtle\u2014hence more incisive\u2014is his All Eyes Skywards during the Annual Parade (2004): two mirror-images of a crowd, in which everyone\u2019s gaze is focused intently on some common event or symbol beyond the frame, stand at right angles to one another.Upon close inspection, one sees the work is made up of myriad tiny still shots from Bollywood movies (if not their \u201cLollywood\u201d counterparts, as the Lahore film industry is now known), yet there is no viewpoint from which one can at once see the little pictures and the big picture which they collectively compose.Obviously, like the images that reiterate them, borders are eminently unnatural phenomena: nature knows no borders, and only human will can secrete the sort of flat-out negation of pure presence that allows borders to fissure an otherwise seamless continuum.Yet, however imaginary, borders are eminently real\u2014for nothing is so real as the imaginary'.Described in this way, too, art-making - as we conventionally know it - has more in common with border-making than we often care to acknowledge.> S t e p h e N Wright The author is aN art critic aNd curator, aNd is parachute\u2019s coNtributiNg editor based in Paris.Nestor Krusjer ANalog Insofar as computer-generated modelling and animation technology has become increasingly entrenched in popular culture for nearly two decades, the applications of such technology are persistently homogenized, mired in conventional techniques of narrative and representation.While intuition certainty hints at the fact that this new medium might essentially be connected to other modes of thought and expression, its potential has yet to be taken up and demonstrated fully.It is perhaps in the discipline of architecture that the medium is currently explored most constructively.An architect such as Peter Eisenmen has recognized the autonomy of 3D modelling software and has developed new design procedures and protocols, thereby generating new forms and problems that depart from traditional paradigms of representation and utility.If such architectural experiments were exemplar encounters between design process and what might emerge as a logic of the virtual, one might ask then how such logic would implicate the realm of the visual with the appearance of images?Or, to put the question differently, what would such implication \u201clook\u201d like?Nestor Kruger\u2019s recent work entitled Analog (Three Cameras Through a Model of Haus Wittgenstein) (2005) draws me to construct the aforementioned line of questioning.Analog, recently shown at the 7th Sharjah Biennial, is a computer-generated animation of an architectural \u201cwalkthrough\u201d that takes place in a virtual model of the house the philosopher Wittgenstein built for his sister in the 1920s.Known for its uncompromising exactitude, the house is faithfully re-constructed in virtual space according to available plans.On the ground floor of the virtual model\u2019s interior is laid a system of tracks which, judging from its scale in relation to the architecture, indexes the hobbyist\u2019s model train track.Three virtual cameras, each \u201cmounted\u201d with a light source that illuminates the space ahead, are programmed to travel along the tracks in different directions.The interior is thus viewed through the trajectories of these virtual cameras.The light, the camera, and the \u201ctrain,\u201d whose bodies we do not see, are in fact without visual representation and physicality; they exist as mathematical points in virtual space.Only the interior of the house and the tracks are actually modelled.In the final work, each camera view is presented as a separate projection comprising, together with the other two, a presentation in the format of a triptych.A computergenerated soundtrack of the engine of a locomotive accompanies the motion of the camera.The duration of the walkthrough, measuring two minutes and ten seconds, is the length of the animation.What complicates matters is that the single light source for illumination, which is \u201cmounted\u201d on the camera, is in fact a projector.This means that the illumination of the scene is provided by a projection, which is a prerecorded walkthrough along the same trajectory of the same camera.Here, something novel happens: the scene is at once illuminated and complicated by an image of itself.I would like to emphasize that insofar as there is \u201cappearance\u201d at all in this scenario, it is due to the effect of this complication.Hence this singular appearance cannot be properly characterized as a superimposition.It is not as if a second image were overlaid on a pre-existing one, thus producing an indeterminate reading of both.Rather, the reverse is the case: it is a result of this complication that appearance is produced at all.Furthermore, the projection presents a view that is slightly ahead of the current position of the camera.Hence the projection is, both temporally and spatially, slightly out of sync with the virtual interior onto which it is projected.The two \u201cimages\u201d of the scene never align.(The two images being the projection and the virtual interior, for in virtual space the distinction between the actual architecture and the projection, the real and the imaginary, has no register.There is simply no referent beyond appearances.) Or, the scene is delivered as already bifurcated, as somewhat \u201cbeside\u201d or ahead of itself.Such might be the \u201cmovement\u201d of the work\u2014an incessant non-arrival of the scene that releases the house from the composure of a Gestalt, from its own geometry.If one were to extract a logic of the virtual out of this scenario, it would not be accomplished by an appeal to a phenomenological account of appearance, for in Analog, it is rather the framing/transcendental conditions\u2014the architecture, the camera, and the light source\u2014that are enfolded, complicated in ways that are difficult to imagine in any other medium.It seems that Analog introduces another order of appearance: one that distributes the scene by the movement of complications and multiplicities without recourse to a prior ground.The three cameras/lights, sharing parts of the tracks and sometimes crossing each other from opposite directions, perform to deregulate the geometry of the house.Less of a guide within the house, they do not so much reveal but produce the house as essentially a self-differentiating movement, as something that simultaneously produces and unmakes itself as it unfolds and multiplies.While I éi Nestor Kruger, Analog (three cameras through a model of Haus Wittgenstein), 2005, three-channel dvd projection with sound; PHOTO COURTESY THE ARTIST AND COODWATER, TORONTO.features of the house are still recognizable, they are expressed differently, in geometries that are looser, constructed out of the event of its complicated appearance, than those laid out by Wittgenstein.Given the novelty of what is \u201cshown\u201d in Analog, one might be inclined to reformulate the limit of the computer program.By definition, avatars or objects in virtual space, in this case the cameras, cannot operate beyond what they are programmed to do\u2014they cannot stray outside of the plan, the schema, to possibly go off track where no track has already been pre-programmed.Still what remains unforeseen is how things may be complicated, how unforeseen appearances can arise out of new complications.In theory, Kruger\u2019s setup could take place not only in Wittgenstein\u2019s, but also in any house, without diminishing its accomplishment.I am, however, convinced that the choice of the Wittgenstein house is integral to the work.Given that the house is total and complete, to the point of being perverse, it appears to be fulfilled in every aspect that necessarily excludes the possibility of contingency.The Wittgenstein house is best when no one lives in it.It is a space that leads one to believe that there is no oxygen in it.This quality finds its counterpart in the self-enclosed totality of virtual space.Is not the Wittgenstein house the appropriate place, where the term otherness seems to have no registry, to investigate whether it might not be the very medium that constitutes its own deregulation and process of becoming?> Yam Lau Yam Lau is aN artist aNd writer based in ToroNto.He teaches paiNtiNg at Yotk UNiversity. ¦k-'z*-.vqjgjaBg on '?¦ >'yj«T > \u2022- \u2022.' , %tg§p Éfifg ill $|?|j3 ; i,?*?tSS; # -%r tHMMfe C\u2019 \u2018 'f-'-sSS; â3J.;Api ^vts sa».^ Mfi -G >M &.& ?s&Sia^r.» üte Ül&g -ÏV-I;'.:.ÿ ¦;,©*» irai st-*-