Category: art

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art complaints example exhibition thoughts

Voicing displeasure #4 Strange Fruits

Welcome to the Strange Fruits episode of the Voiced Displeasure. Maybe the least favorite one, but tasty, for sure. Poetic, inevitably. The main protagonist relates to the 3 sections: Juice, danger, and joy; Systems, sugar, skin, and stain; The land of rightness, emptiness, and gray color. Next time instead of the external keyboard, you might bring the fork. Have you ever heard a fruit talking? Did you find it uncomfortable? Understandable. No judgments. This is a safe space. Let´s bite.

JUICE, DANGER, AND JOY

”I am a little parasite stuck on your ceiling, watching and waiting for the right moment to grab your face. I am an angry skeleton under the thousand layers of this skin blanket. I want to get out of my colonized past.

I am the one you want to squeeze. My lemonish, bitter body is hanging on the walls of your borders. Experience the haptic touch of this nectarous object – me. Me, the stranger. You – domestic. Me – the dirt on Your floor. You – the boundary. My amorph shape stands out from the crowd, breaks the concrete, entering the void. I produce joy. Try me. I am a violent inhabitant trying to break your comfort. I am the stain spot of this system.

These little hands were holding the poles in the foreign trains and buses, being observed. My hands are being watched – the way they move, how the fingers fold and dance around the strange objects. I am the sensation. My legs are making the gaps between the foreign feet, stepping into the unknown. Kissing the strange ground, while dropping the strange juice into the dry field. My earlobes are made of sugar, melting in the strange air. My lungs are suffocating from the bizarreness of this place. Its mystifying inner shakes my foreign outer. Its breeze freezes me. I must get out.”

THE FRUITS FROM A STRANGER

MANIFESTING THE JOY OF THE DANGER

Residents Aliens, drawing
©Nadja Kracunovic

SYSTEMS, SUGER, SKIN, and STAIN

My charming existence.
My strange fruits.
Its juicy resistance,
that shoots the roots.

The alluring, strange chain,
keeps my existance remain.

My omnipresent stain
melts the acid rain.

The land of rightness, emptiness, and gray color

Welcome to Saxony, the land that tears the skin of the beast. Welcome to the act of peeling one’s outer. Chemnitz means stones, coming from the language that I can understand, for some reason. Welcome to Chemnitz, friends. Welcome these words that are coming and be free to dive into the experience.


”The strangeness climbs through my spine, from the bottom. Slowly and precisely it covers the whole backside. I feel the structure and heaviness of my skull. My earlobes are collapsing. My head leans towards the shoulders as if it is going to fall. I feel alienated from the outside.

Some parts of my body feel numb. There is a space around my inner skin that I have no contact with. I turn my head to the right I look at one point. My attention stays in the corner of my eye creating the tension of the eye muscle. I can see the small humans inside a human, I sense how they move around me. I see the shadows of these bodies, I feel the coldness piercing my outer strongly through the borders. I AM THE OTHER. The other on many that are the same.

I slowly pull my own inside towards the outside shell. I humbly tore the skin of a creature. I peel the layers of its skin and try to get out. It lasts and feels like forever. I am the stain spot on this map. Pulling. Vibrating. Pushing. I am so alive.”

PS: NEVER EAT THE FRUITS YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN BEFORE.

* “Strange Fruit“, Abel Meeropol, Billie Holiday, 939, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Fruit

The displeasure of Strange Fruits was inspired also by the book „Strange Fruit“ by Lilian Smith, 946, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Fruit_(novel).

Categories
art complaints example general thoughts

Voicing displeasure #3 The Code of Visibility

I believe that invisibility for Him made me urge the visibility everywhere else. I must be loud. I must be seen. Spreading the presence wherever I can, proving my existence while being unrepeatable, unique, ubiquitous. You made me visible by hiding me. But watch out, I do have this voice.

The night felt long and exhausting. After I woke up this morning, there was a spit of trauma on my pillow. It is like many others very blurry, but while writing it I sharpen and sculpt it.

I am a parasite, poster poem
©Nadja Kracunovic

WALLS, DRINKS, CODES, AND SCREAMS

The bar was divided by many walls and halls as if it is an apartment adapted to a so-called place for celebrations. It felt as if the whole family and family from a family were standing in that celebration room. The blurry-faced shapes of human bodies, that presented my close friends were behind the celebration wall, with me, drinking vodka in a very hesitated, thirsty manner. In reality, I never drink vodka, but there I am – as drunk as Cooter Brown, celebrating. I can very well recognize the sound of Him through the walls – drunk as well, heavy smoker’s tone, intense and boisterous voice.

The agony entered the celebration room immediately after I did. Greeting the family (probably mine) and kissing the cheeks of the men that I have never seen before. The sweaty, muscular bodies are welcoming and celebrating my arrival – me being there after so long. At that very moment, I recognized just the figure of my little half-brother that I see for the second time. And then, He appeared. To be more precise in the description of this sibling relationship, the only thing we share is exactly Him. Approaching me confidently, bringing by each step this before-the-storm feeling. I trembled the celebration out of my skin. The scream was there coming from His mouth, manifesting years of anger – outrage irritated by my existence. Why is He furious? Shouting and breaking the glasses in front of my fragile, never-used-to-be-screamed-at body. I was the most visible and invisible person in the room. After more than 15 years of absence, He appears and yells all his masculinity at the female offspring. I could not hear the words, it was too loud to understand them. Fifteen years transformed into a simple spillage of anger. That might be the scream of becoming a father for the first time. At least to me.

All the girls in the world, unite. My code is being loud, being visible. My code is being patient and listening. My code is never ever in my life abandoning you, whoever you will be. My code is being strong like She is. The code of mine is taking care of the children, all the children of the world. My code has a voice must use it.

Nadja’s father (Serbian: Nadjin tata), the handmade doll
©Nadja Kracunovic

But, who wants to pass through me, must pass through my room. I yelled back. I screamed my face off, turning purple and spitting the sentences in His face while saying the words I can not understand. I am not a small girl to be shouted at – I am this deep voice that grew up from a child you never wanted.

After one drink
I turn pink
I scream for Him
My body blinks.

To get it all out,
I need some weeks
Increasing my voice
To fight the beast.

After just one drink
I scream to protect
I turn pink
And there comes my act.

I am a parasite,
I am the stain
I exist so much
that He can not obtain.

Voice up the visibility. Pierce the authority.
Categories
art book general thoughts

A drop in the bucket – about feeling disillusioned and gaining hope

Making a complaint can evoke a feeling of futility.

Giving so much, receiving so little.

Like a drop in the ocean, 

dissolving in a system that has not been waiting for your concern. 

Like a drop on a hot stone, 

dissipating with a hiss in a system not willing to see its own wrongs.

Like a drop in the bucket,

adding another one, and another,

until you are dried out.

The drop, the hiss, not heard, 

rendered invisible, inaudible, by the institutional barriers.1

Drop after drop,

until you end up dropping your complaints.

Making a complaint can drain you.

It’s exhausting, while what you complain about is already exhausting.2

Soon you realize that there are certain rules that define if you will be heard.

You have to find the right paths,

paths made so entangled; they seem to be made in order for you not to find them.

A paperwork so user unfriendly, as if build to avoid its own purpose.3

In fact, you even have to be right person to complain, 

and often if you are in a position where you need to complain,

you are not that right person.4

Making a complaint can disillusion you and your belief that you have a saying in a system.

How many drops do we need to break the barriers of institutions?

How many drops do we need to be heard by those who cover their ears?

Those avoiding seeing their mistakes, not willing to allow change. 

How many drops do we need to create a river that forms its way through the impassable structures of institutions? 

We might need so many drops.

Making a complaint can be very painful

But sharing pain can be a relief,

sharing energy can be empowering. 

Let’s unite, hear those who complain, join their voice,

Let the rain fall,

let the drops become one.

Making a complaint can bring about sea change.

“A drop is just a drop is just a drop

until she meets another

combined they run together

she rinses stone, gets through walls, she crosses borders, never holds

until all the drops become one

big deep blue

where every drop

is just a drop

is just a drop

is just a drop” 

Faraway friends – Intro (Rain is coming)

1 See: Ahmed, S. (2021): Complaint! 2021, p.6.

2 See: ebd., p.5

3 See: ebd., p.31

4 See: ebd., p.4

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art example general

Voicing displeasure #2 The Professional Cry

Salty liquid. The sea of the eye lobe. Isn’t it absolutely the same as going to pee? Goes in – goes out. I drop the tears and let them unite into the army. Teary tear, just be.

There was me and four girls from Iran, by coincidence. We were trying to empower our feminity and learn to say NO. We said NO many times in these three hours. I almost broke into the tiniest thousand pieces of human flesh. I tried not to. Never show the instability, delicacy and fragile persona. Drop the humor, start the joke. It is not professional to cry.

NO, digital poster ©Nadja Kracunovic


The third girl said that she feels this socially constructed burden and pressure of being the ideal worker, the best one in the world. The best one in the class. The best one in the bed. The best from the best. Best beast in the wildness.

Me? I bumped into the presence of the physical objects being inside my body because my clock tik-tak-ed and it was time to drop it. What is this pile of thorns which pierce my stomach?

You are not allowed to be a pussy. You are not allowed to be a pussy.
If you are going to be a pussy, be the best one you can possibly be.

Cry holders, digital drawing ©Nadja Kracunovic

Crying my best

There is a cave inside my chest,
little yellow stone, in my own trap.
Hold it up, bravely
Let it shape and progress.

There is desert inside my belly,
blown away from the West.
I tried to protect it,
by sheltering it with my legs.

Nevertheless,
I AM THE BEAST.
I must hold it up,
until I increase.

Melting the cave
into the cheese,
licking the floor
with my fragile knees.

I wanted to scream,
from the bottom of my feet.

My tears.
My precious tears.

The end of it is almost there, near.
Hold the breath, up – the chin!

Don’t you agree
with the crying discipline?
Controled by the queen,
I hold the steer.

I am crying my best!
Can’t you see?

Sharpen your tears, it is going to be a long one.


©Nadja Kracunovic


Categories
art chapter general

Voicing displeasure #1: Masculine Femininity

You are not a blowjob in the rain. You are not a piece of meat on the bar’s toilet tiles. You are the deepest voice of Southeast Europe.

”You are a boy, aren’t you?” I was asked by Frauenarzt (gynecologist) on the first call I made after moving to Germany. I wanted my female, dear friend down there to be healthy, but my ultra-deep, male voice transformed everything into an uncomfortable phone conversation – confusion about my gender. Far away from being insulted, I was actually glad that she showed her disorientation in our dialogue. I never thought that this masculine polished, deep tone coming from my stomach, being transmitted through my mouth could be my own defense mechanism against the enemies. My own complaining tool. A voice fighting the whole army – the voice winning the war. I must admit, I was bitter and partially heartbroken that I could not be a princess of my father’s kingdom, neither could I be the most wanted girly girl in my classroom. All my honeyed and nectarous power was visible much later after puberty tore down the confused teenager.

The voice became both an important and powerful tool of mine over the years. There is so much to tell. So much to complain about. Screaming in the holes of the system, spitting on their streets, and yelling whenever I feel like it. My voice is my medium. My voice is my capital. My masculine persona was born within it.

Let’s talk about boys. Voice of the boys. Boys for the voice. Voicing the boys. The ones that I love, the ones that abandon me, scared me, the ones that empowered me, satisfied me, treated me as an object, terrified me, loved me, protected me, and let me be the version of Nadja I am, while writing this.

I will tell you about the act of loudness after I tell you the ”Mustard bastard”.

MUSTARD BASTARD

My fingers in your hair, he said. 

My hair was tied up in a high ponytail so that it would not fall into miniature portions of so-called canapes. I would cut the bread into slightly larger croutons. I would cover a slice of bread very precisely with yellow, freshly produced mustard. The knife I used was the same one used for butter with a carved brand on the bottom of the handle.

He said: I would like to tie your hands up around the radiator and feed you. I will grab your hair and pull it until you start crying. I will spread it all over your body.

My favorite color has always been yellow. My grandmother bought me a yellowish backpack for the first day of school. She said that I look like the sun and that the whole world rotates around me. 

He would put my yellow backpack on the floor and take my clothes off – to explore the sun’s rays. My skin is cowered while my 15 old body is shivering. When he finished splashing mustard over my belly I would cry from the pain, but he would take me in his lap calling me his little sun. The pain would pass soon.

Bon Appetit! My mother prefers eating hot dogs without mustard while I eat them with.

I can’t tell why

but I love yellow

I can’t really know

Is this taste mellow

if you plant it,
it will surely grow
is this taste bitter

or is it just the snow?

he talks about my body

to inhabit it,

have a sip
capture it
matter it
body skip
imagine it.

He likes my mustard,
Bon Appetitt.

THE ACT OF LOUDNESS

These so-called mustard bastard made my voice silent many, many times. This phenomenon is called the loss of voice and it is a real psychological disorder. Indeed.

A girl from Yeman was born from rape, believing that rape is the only thing she deserves. An older man from the park was touching his genitals 2 meters from my 17 years old presence. Females ages 16-19 are 4 times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault. Two middle-aged men were jerking off in front of me on the bus 706 in Belgrade, in the middle of the day. In Nicaragua, between 1998 and 2008, police recorded 14,377 cases of sexual assaults, with more than two-thirds of reports involving girls under the age of 17. A 50 years old man told me that he will tie my hands around the radiator in the supermarket, while I was selling the mustard. Every 73 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted.

The loss of voice is an experience when a person has something she or he feels is important to say but does not say it. Often this refusal to speak one’s mind is linked to feelings of inadequacy, fear of rejection, or fear of humiliation. Once adolescence is in full force, this inner, authentic voice is rarely shared with anyone, except for a few people whom girls trust. Outside of these close and trusting interactions, girls use an “acceptable” voice – one that expresses what they assume others expect them to think and feel.

Girls must use all the masculinity. Girls must scream stronger, dig deeper and spit harder.

The Act of Loudness, media performance, 2021

I dig, dig, dig

I plant,

I am a juicy fig.

Take me, try me, do not jig

I smell like a bloody rose,

Look at me!

I dig, dig, dig

and it grows.

Should I be loud?

I dig,

dig for the crowd.

I dig here, I dig now.
You are the one that is endowed.

I will scream for the supreme.

Am I allowed?

Is this bitterness in my mouth?

It pulses and shelters. What about?

I dig, dig,

and it sprouts.

VOICING DISPLEASURE #1
Text, video/performance, illustration: Nadja Kracunovic (Nađa Kračunović)

Categories
art basic book general

Making the unnoticed visible. Rachel Whiteread’s “Double-Doors” on the cover of Sara Ahmed’s “Complaint!”

The cover of the publication “Complaint!” by Sara Ahmed (2021) shows an exhibition photograph of the installation “Double-Doors II, A+B”, 2006/2007 by Rachel Whiteread. In this photographed “room”, “Sara Ahmed” is set above the doors in cream-coloured capital letters and in 2D. The photograph is surrounded by a frame, also cream-coloured, in the lower part of which the title of the book and a quotation from Angela Davis are set in black letters and the same typography as above.

The “Double-Doors” are the focus of attention; in contrast to the entire publication, including its illustrations in the interior section in black and white, the cover and thus also the photograph of the doors is printed in grey-white-black-toned colours. This colour printing is reminiscent of a griseille technique or also of monochrome colour field paintings, they rely on a strong shadow effect in their effects, were used in different centuries and for different genres: Griseille for medieval panel/ancient paintings or also stained glass in churches and monasteries, monochrome (here in greyscale) can find its application in all fields (advertising, photography, design, interior/architecture) and was a preferred format in modernism. The colour-field paintings were often large-format, to the point of colour uniformity, and were often painted by male painters.

Here now are Whiteread’s double doors, two quite obviously unrelated, different door variants. The reference to Whiteread is noted on the back of the cover, so that Whiteread’s name does not compete with Ahmed’s name, and so it is not immediately apparent to quick readers or readers unfamiliar with art that the cover design is an illustration of an artistic sculpture.

Whiteread’s artistic strategy essentially focuses on transforming everyday objects such as mattresses, boxes, hot-water bottles, but also staircases and entire houses, and even doors, into sculptural negative forms made of resin, rubber, concrete or plaster, sometimes even taking another replica from the replica. In this way, the cavities hidden in the objects take shape and, in particular, the surfaces, their wounds, scratches and wear and tear are materialised. With this negative replica process (also referred to as mummification in theoretical reception), the 1993 Turner Prize winner transforms the previous voids that existed in familiar routines but were not recognisable, the seemingly absent, into a volume that can now in turn attract attention like a crime scene and evoke new themes and interpretations. These can be memories, pasts, nostalgias, pains, obsessions, pathologies, etc. The previously unseen becomes imaginable and visible through a minimalist process of abstraction and materialisation, especially the traces of use on the surfaces become recognisable, documented and archived and can be interpreted by the recipients in a personal process of reception. Whiteread herself speaks of the entrails she is interested in, entrails that no one has seen before and now become sculptural.

Ahmed is also interested in previous emptiness, the previously unsaid and unobserved, which is now to find presence. She dissects the “entrails”, the inner life – of complaint operations: What takes place, where and by whom, with whom, what is enforceable, what is prevented? And she is interested in the traces that arise and remain, the pain, injuries and scars that are documented and archived as possibly traumatised psyches, as in Whiteread’s sculptures. Both colleagues focus their attention on doors. While Whiteread seems to be interested not only in the topos but also in the formal as sculptural questions, perhaps also in psychological and physical similarities to the users, Ahmed emphasises both their metaphorical and operational dimension with the doors: doors must be opened in order to make and enforce complaints, complaints are made behind closed doors, doors are closed for those who complain or are closed:

„Doors can tell us something not only about who can get in but who can get by or who can get through. After all, when a path is no longer available to us, a door becomes a figure of speech: we say that door is closed. A women of colour academic described her department as a revolving door, “women and minorities” enter, only to head right out again: whoosh, whoosh.“ Source: https://feministkilljoys.com/2020/03/17/slammed-doors/

„Note then: power can work through what might seem a light touch: all you need to do to close a door on someone is to write them a less positive reference. This means that: the actions that close doors are not always perceptible to others. A closed door can itself be imperceptible; we can think back to the how diversity is figured as an open door; come in, come in; as if there is nothing stopping anyone from getting in or getting through. Or it might be that the effects of the actions are perceptible but the actions are not: so when someone is stopped, it seems they stopped themselves.“ Source: https://feministkilljoys.com/2020/03/17/slammed-doors/

The fact that Whiteread’s exhibition photograph of the door installation has now just been put on the cover of Ahmed’s book in greyscale colours certainly has something to do with the source photograph. Whiteread’s material, both the sculptures and installations and the exhibition photographs, not infrequently turn out in this colour scheme. But with the decision to design the cover in this way and exactly this way, next semantic levels merge with each other: it is about the “entrails”, which can now already be more precisely designated in the application of the technique of griseille or monochrome. For these artistic techniques reference specific places (churches, monasteries), times (modernity) and practitioners of these techniques (male artist colleagues) and can thus determine very precise structural and cultural techniques and framework conditions. The use of griseille and monochrome thus makes a meta-commentary on the subject: Attention, the cover seems to announce, we are located with the now following contents between the book covers in toxic, ideological, (quasi-)religious, traumatic, maltreating, in effective contexts of meaning of patriarchally effective structures and cultures.

This is also the context in which the quote from Angela Davis, the ancestor of the US civil rights movement and feminism, chosen for the cover design, is to be understood:  “Complaint! is precisely the text we need at this moment.“ Like Whiteread’s artistic strategy of transforming negative forms into positive forms or recognising the positive in the negative replica – for example, the doorknob in the hole – this is precisely what is envisaged for Ahmed’s book; the use of plaster for the materialisation of the absent, which is used as a healing material in medicine, points in the direction of the concern presented here.

Categories
art basic book general

Das Nichtbemerkte sichtbar machen. Rachel Whitereads „Double-Doors“ auf dem Cover von Sara Ahmeds „Complaint!“

Das Cover der Publikation „Complaint!“ von Sara Ahmed (2021) zeigt eine Ausstellungsfotografie der Installation „Double-Doors II, A+B“, 2006/2007 von Rachel Whiteread. In diesen fotografierten „Raum“ ist oberhalb der Türen in cremefarbenen Großbuchstaben und in 2D „Sara Ahmed“ gesetzt. Die Fotografie ist von einem ebenfalls cremefarbenen Rahmen umgeben, in dem unteren Teil des Rahmen ist der Titel des Buches und ein Zitat von Angela Davis in schwarzen Schrift und der gleichen Typografie wie oben gesetzt.

Im Zentrum des Blicks stehen die „Double-Doors“, im Unterschied zu der gesamten Publikation einschließlich ihrer Abbildungen im Innenteil in Schwarz-Weiß ist der Einband und damit auch die Fotografie der Türen in Grau-Weiß-Scharz-getönten Farben gedruckt. Dieser Farbdruck erinnert an eine Griseille-Technik oder auch an monochrome Farbfeldmalereien, sie setzen in ihren Effekten auf eine starke Schattenwirkung, wurden in verschiedenen Jahrhunderten und für verschiedene Genre eingesetzt: Griseille für mittelalterliche Tafel-/Altarmalereien oder auch Glasmalereien in Kirchen und Klöstern, Monochromie (hier in Graustufen) findet in allen Bereichen ihre Anwendung (Werbung, Fotografie, Design, Innen-/Architektur) und war ein bevorzugtes Format in der Moderne. Die Farbfeldmalereien waren oft großformatig, bis hin zur Farbengleichheit und wurden oft von männlichen Malern gemalt.

Hier nun Whitereads Doppel-Türen, zwei ganz offensichtlich nicht zusammen gehörende, unterschiedliche Türvarianten. Die Referenz auf Whiteread ist auf der Rückseite des Einbandes notiert, so dass Whitereads Name nicht in Konkurrenz zu Ahmeds Namen tritt und damit für schnelle oder kunstunwissende Leser*innen auch nicht gleich erkenntbar ist, dass es sich bei der Einbandgestaltung um die Abbildung einer künstlerischen Plastik handelt.

Whitereads künstlerische Strategie konzentriert sich im Wesentlichen darauf, Alltagsgegenstände wie zum Beispiel Matratzen, Schachteln, Wärmflaschen, aber auch Treppen und ganzen Häuser, und eben auch Türen in skulpturale Negativformen aus Harz, Gummi, Beton oder Gips zu überführen, manchmal auch vom Abdruck einen nächsten Abdruck zu nehmen. Über diesen Weg nehmen die Hohlräume, die sich in den Gegenständen verbergen, Gestalt an und werden insbesondere die Oberflächen, ihre Wunden, Kratzer und Abnutzungen materialisiert. Mit diesem Negativabgussverfahren (in der Theorierezeption auch als Mumifizierung bezeichnet) verwandelt die Turner-Preisträgerin von 1993 die vorherigen, in den vertrauten Routinen zwar vorhandenen, aber nicht erkennbaren Leeren, das scheinbar Absente in ein Volumen, das nun seinerseits wie ein Tatort Aufmerksamkeit finden kann und neue Themen und Be-/Deutungen evoziert. Hierbei kann es sich etwa um Erinnerungen, Vergangenheiten, Nostalgien, Schmerzen, Obzessionen, Pathologien etc. handeln. Das zuvor Nichtgesehene wird durch einen minimalistischen Abstrahierungs- und Materialisierungsvorgang vorstell- und sichtbar, insbesondere die Gebrauchsspuren auf den Oberflächen werden erkennbar, dokumentiert und archiviert und können von den Rezipient*innen in einem persönlichen Rezeptionsprozess be-/deutet werden. Whiteread selbst spricht von den Eingeweiden, die sie interessiert, Eingeweide, die zuvor niemand zu Gesicht bekommen hat und nun skulptural werden.

Auch Ahmed interessiert sich für bisherigen Leeren, das bisher Ungesagte und Unbeobachtete, das nun zur Präsenz finden soll. Sie seziert die „Eingeweide“, das Innenleben – und zwar von Beschwerdeoperationen: Was findet hier wo und durch wen, bei wem statt, was ist durchsetzbar, was wird unterbunden? Und sie interessiert die Spuren, die entstehen und zurückbleiben, die Schmerzen, Verletzungen und Narben, die wie in Whitereads Plastiken als womöglich traumatisierte Psychen dokumentiert und archiviert werden. Beide Kolleginnen richten dabei ihr Augenmerk auf Türen. Während Whiteread neben dem Topos das Formale als skulpturale Fragen, vielleicht auch psychologische und körperliche Ähnlichkeiten zu den Benützerinnen zu interessieren scheinen, stellt Ahmed mit den Türen sowohl deren metaphorische als auch operative Dimension heraus: Türen müssen geöffnet werden, um Beschwerden anzubringen und durchzusetzen, Beschwerden werden hinter verschlossenen Türen vorgebracht, Türen sind für diejenigen, die sich beschwerden, verschlossen oder werden geschlossen:

„Türen können uns nicht nur etwas darüber sagen, wer eintreten kann, sondern auch, wer vorbeikommt oder wer durchkommen kann. Denn wenn uns ein Weg nicht mehr offen steht, wird eine Tür zu einer Redewendung: Wir sagen, dass die Tür geschlossen ist. Eine farbige Akademikerin beschrieb ihre Abteilung als eine Drehtür, durch die “Frauen und Minderheiten” eintreten, nur um gleich wieder hinauszugehen: wusch, wusch.“ Quelle: https://feministkilljoys.com/2020/03/17/slammed-doors/

„Beachten Sie also: Macht kann durch eine scheinbar leichte Berührung wirken: Alles, was Sie tun müssen, um jemandem eine Tür zu schließen, ist, ihm eine weniger positive Referenz zu schreiben. Das bedeutet, dass die Handlungen, die Türen schließen, für andere nicht immer wahrnehmbar sind. Eine geschlossene Tür kann selbst nicht wahrnehmbar sein; wir können uns daran erinnern, wie Vielfalt als offene Tür dargestellt wird; hereinspaziert, hereinspaziert; als ob es nichts gibt, was jemanden daran hindert, hereinzukommen oder durchzukommen. Oder es könnte sein, dass die Auswirkungen der Handlungen wahrnehmbar sind, die Handlungen selbst aber nicht: Wenn jemand aufgehalten wird, scheint es, als hätte er sich selbst aufgehalten.“ Quelle: https://feministkilljoys.com/2020/03/17/slammed-doors/

Dass Whitereads Ausstellungsfotografie der Tür-Installation nun gerade in Graustufenfarben auf das Cover von Ahmeds Buch gebracht wurde, hat sicher auch mit der Ausgangsfotografie zu tun. Whitereads Material, sowohl die Plastiken und Installationen als auch die Ausstellungsfotografien, fallen nicht selten in dieser Farbgebung aus. Aber mit der Entscheidung, den Einband so und genau so zu gestalten, verschmelzen nächste semantische Ebenen miteinander: Es geht um die „Eingeweide“, die in Anwendung der Technik der Griseille oder der Monochromie nun schon genauer bezeichnet werden können. Denn diese künstlerischen Techniken referenzieren bestimmte Orte (Kirchen, Klöster), Zeiten (Moderne) und Praktizierende dieser Techniken (männliche Künstlerkollegen) und können damit sehr genaue strukturelle und kulturelle Techniken und Rahmenbedingungen bestimmen. Der Einsatz von Griseille und Monochromie nimmt damit einen Metakommentar auf das Thema vor: Achtung, scheint das Cover mitzuteilen, wir befinden uns mit den nun folgenden Inhalten zwischen den Buchdeckeln in toxischen, ideologischen,  (quasi-)religiösen, traumatischen, malträtierenden, in wirkmächtigen Bedeutungszusammenhängen patriarchial wirksamer Strukturen und Kulturen.

In diesem Kontext ist auch das für die Umschlaggestaltung ausgewählte Zitat der Altvordern von US-amerikanischer Bürgerrechtsbewegung und Feminismus Angela Davis zu verstehen: „Complaint!  is precisly the text we need at this moment.“ Wie Whitereads künstlerische Strategie, Negativformen zu Positivformen umzuwandeln bzw. im Negativabdruck das Positiv zu erkennen – beispielsweise im Loch den Türknauf – wird genau das auch für Ahmeds Buch in Aussicht gestellt; der Einsatz von Gips für die Materialisierung des Absenten, das als ein Heilungsmaterial (in) der Medizin eingesetzt wird, weist die Richtung des hier vorgetragenen Anliegens.

Categories
art basic book general genre

Term „Complaint!ivism?“

Complaint!ivism?, neologism, still with implicit questioning: linguistic expression for a ? movement, technique, form of critique ? that places complaints at the centre of its operations. 

Word combination from

1.) the September 2021 book by Sara Ahmed “Complaint!” (Duke University Press), in which she studies complaints through the oral and written testimonies of academics and students who have made complaints about harassment, bullying, and unequal working conditions at universities. Ahmed explores the gap between what is supposed to happen when complaints are made and what actually happens. The book is a systematic analysis of the ways in which complaints can be both enforced and stopped.

2.) The suffix ‘ivism’ points to a variant of genrefication, i.e. the formation of a genre, of making complaint activities usable for the artistic field. This can be both the subject of the complaint (its methods, potentials, difficulties, etc.) and the technique of complaining (when? Where? How? To whom? With whom?). The question mark indicates a provisional nature, since at this stage this is a hypothesis to be tested in the course of the winter semester 2021/22. The examination includes, among other things, the clarification of similarities or differences, for example, to Institutional Critique, Protest Art or Conflictual Aesthetics, and is to be lined out using concrete examples from the artistic and curatorial field.

Categories
art basic general genre

Begriff “Complaint!ivism?”

Complaint!ivism?, Neologismus, noch mit impliziter Fragestellung: sprachlicher Ausdruck für eine ? Bewegung, Technik, Kritikform ?, die Beschwerden in das Zentrum ihrer Operationen stellt. 

Wortkombination aus

1.) dem im September 2021 erschienenen Buch von Sara Ahmed „Complaint!“ (Duke University Press), in dem sie mittels mündlicher und schriftlicher Aussagen von Akademiker*innen und Studierenden, die sich über Belästigung, Mobbing und ungleiche Arbeitsbedingungen an Universitäten beschwert haben, eine Studie zu Beschwerden verfasst. Ahmed untersucht hierin die Kluft zwischen dem, was passieren soll, wenn Beschwerden vorgebracht werden, und dem, was dann tatsächlich geschieht. Das Buch ist eine systematische Analyse der Methoden, in deren Anwendung Beschwerden sowohl durchzusetzen als auch unterbunden werden können.

2.) Der Suffix ‚ivism‘ weist auf eine Variante der Genrefizierung, also der Bildung eines Genres hin, Beschwerdeaktivitäten für das künstlerische Feld nutzbar zu machen. Hierbei kann es sich sowohl um das Thema der Beschwerde (deren Methoden, Potentiale, Schwierigkeiten etc.) als auch um die Technik des Beschwerens (Wann? Wo? Wie? Gegenüber wem? Mit wem?) handeln. Das Fragezeichen verdeutlicht eine Vorläufigkeit, da es sich hierbei zum jetzigen Stand um eine Hypothese handelt, die im Verlauf des Wintersemesters 2021/22 zu prüfen ist. Die Prüfung beinhaltet unter anderem die Klärung von Gemeinsamkeiten oder Unterschieden etwa zur Institutional Critique, zur Protest Art oder zur Conflictual Aesthetics und soll anhand konkreter Beispiele aus dem künstlerischen, kuratorischen und kunstinstitutionellen Bereich vorgenommen werden.