Watching it on TV
Watching it on TV
An interview with Gabriel Kuri and Amalia Pica
Gabriel Kuri is a Mexican artist based in Mexico City and Brussels and Amalia Pica is from Argentina and is now living in Amsterdam after just completing a residency at the Rijksakademie. Both have a particular position regarding their status as Latin Americans. Gabriel Kuri’s works are an activity. They teeter over the arbitrary, mitigating between speculation and fact. Gabriel likes to use the word ‘futile’, I would prefer ‘necessary’, where necessary touches on their quiet but modest manipulation. The thing (the object, the result) in all its conceptual thing-ness takes on an intelligence of its own, never in denial of convention entirely or of the system in place, instead it uses it on its own terms. Like a revolt. Kuri’s works are actions wherein the question remains always eloquently unanswered: is it an interruption or does it establish a relationship?Amalia Pica’s work can be signified as performative in that her works often relate to a happening. She usually reacts either to the context at hand or to established (historical) myths and (national) rituals in order to investigate social customs and their clichés. The results, whether film, drawings, performances or more sculptural interventions function as personal observations and can be viewed as subtle commentary, not without an ironic twist. Recently, I spoke to both about the relationship between their respective cultures and their work, ‘outsiderism’, clichés and their views on national identity.
Amalia, we talked about you being able to quote (or intentionally misquote) your own culture as a means of commenting on it or critiquing it, but that this becomes problematic if an ‘outsider’ would do so. In Orange Room for instance, an installation you made at the Rijksakademie during your first year, you painted your studio including all the objects inside ‘Dutch orange’. Only after being in the room for a while could the viewer notice that the orange explicitly missed certain parts. A full orange view was therefore visible exclusively from one vantage point. A similar use of cultural signs could be perceived in the performance toc-toc, where you had foreign residents wear and stomp around loudly in Dutch clogs. Can you elaborate a bit on your relation to being an ‘outsider’, if you explicitly make use of it?
‘Well yes I have sinned (I confess), but it was a bit of a desperate gesture. It is, I think, a matter of references, of how to get a grip on things. When you position yourself as an outsider you catch the references that are in the air, possibly the ones that are for export anyway. And then you operate on the surface of things. These were the sort of things I was thinking about when I made Orange Room. There is one unifying image from the outside, but once you enter things are not all of one kind. This can be unveiled only as time is spent with each thing, observing them from several perspectives. Another work I did my first year here was toc-toc. And although I wouldn’t say that I organized toc-toc only to find out whether the Dutch really owned wooden clogs, or just simply to talk to people, I was quite curious to see if the cliché was at all valid. At the same time, as a foreigner, you work with your own tools, tools that might not have caught up with the new place, or might be the ones that you create with the knowledge of the limited relation you have built up to the new.’
Gabriel have you ever ‘sinned’?
‘I have sinned, of course -I grew up in a Catholic country- but not in the way that Amalia confesses having to, or you suggest I might have found myself having to, at least not as an initial gesture to kick off communication based in cultural difference. I would like to think that my being Latin American would be something that surfaced after years of acquaintance and not as my hello gesture.’
I found this quote that relates to the Anthropophagic Manifesto written in 1928 by Oswald de Andrade. The term anthropophagy, which actually connotes cannibalism, acquired a new meaning thanks to De Andrade. He used it to suggest a liberating process capable of incorporating European culture. Later, anthropophagy was also employed to describe a link between nationalism and cosmopolitanism, where the Tropics is not denied, but the European tradition isn’t either. Continuing on this idea of ‘exotocism’ or ‘outsiderism’, can either one of you relate to this notion of anthropophagy?
‘There is the issue of the colonial that can’t be denied. I mean, who invented contemporary art? And does it matter anymore? I guess what still matters is which kid is the owner of the ball (and there you have me performing the proper Argentinean, coming up with street soccer metaphors.) It’s difficult to be very clear about this in relation to my work. What might be appropriate is the Argentinean expression “and we watch it on TV”. It defines the position of a witness that hasn’t been invited to the live event (probably again a soccer match). But still there is enough proof that great art has been done from looking at a TV set.’
‘I would rather think of the assumed violence in anthropophagy than in a fusion explained in terms of dialectical oppositions.’
Can you explain this further Gabriel? Do you believe this dialectic opposition is necessarily violent?
‘No, what I meant was I prefer thinking of anthropophagy as the merging of two or more worlds, with the hunger and violence it implies, than to think of two worlds coming together only in terms of their dialectical oppositions (like primitive meets civilized, chaos meets order, nature meets culture, etc.).’
And would you say you played with a notion of ‘watching it on TV’ or outsiderism ever?
‘Yes I have, in my work there are many comments on the ways information is delivered and consumed. The paradoxes of first-hand experience, witnessing, overhearing, being lied to or participating in public imagination and ritual are very important.’
Gerardo Mosquera says (see his article in this issue) that Latin American art appropriates a language which is clearly not its own, on purpose, and, importantly, makes this evident, in order to enter into a dialogue that is foreign, very clearly as a kind of ‘guest’.
‘When put like that it sounds a bit cynical and I couldn’t say I take such a conscious step. I see myself as trying to appropriate art as if it were a given language sometimes, but those are moments which I don’t consider my best.
But in relation to your question, and in relation to Mosquera’s text now that I reread it I wonder whether it is one of those family jokes, or more specifically an internal one. I wonder if he is trying to address the fact that Mike shoes are produced in Latin America. And whether he is referring to that, with a wink. This self exoticism could also mean taking advantage of identity politics.’
‘I would normally not like to think of my works in terms of having or not having a Latin American look. And if I am forced to answer this kind of question, I would much rather try and consider the whole oeuvre: its apparent motivations, its processes, its look. I think I might divert the answer here to a condition that annoys me and it has to do with certain artists and exhibition or publication makers finding a niche for the Latin American look, pretty much in the 90’s focus group (or market niche) logic, incorporating the supposed desire for fairness in the race towards globalization. To quote a recent example, let us think of the nightmarish chapter for the Latin American look that happened in the 80’s –for reasons that we now comfortably perceive as frivolous- with all these magic realist paintings and their nouveau riche aesthetics; is there not a similar symptom today with the aesthetics of subversion? The look of something rather than the thing, and still catering for a focus group under the disguise of social awareness?’
Gabriel, can you think of any specific examples of this happening now?
‘The favela chic style as promoted in English or Dutch art-lifestyle magazines. Or the Peruvian Jota Castro dressing up in guerrilla drag and indoctrinating everyone on how he is the Che Guevara of art, who gave up a juicy career in international law to become a social activist/artist.’
If you had to, could you define Latin American Art, or what is understood as the cliché of Latin American Art?
‘I absolutely would not. I would not venture into saying what Latin American Art is about but I know there are artists in Latin America whose work is of relevance and imagination. One distinction I may mention is that artists coming from Latin America have less of an academic approach; there is less theory between art and artist. This might come from the difference in education in countries of L.A. and say, the US and Europe, the latter two are of course more proficient.’
‘You are probably just as qualified as me to answer this question. Some friends of mine that are from Latin America and that I met in Europe have consciously shifted their practices, to escape such categories. And others have changed the way they speak about what they do for the same purpose. It is an unbreakable code to be slippery about this.’
Would you say that art from Latin America is always ‘contra’?
‘No. I wouldn’t say that art from Latin America is always anything. “Always” is so definitive. But there is something of the contra that is very present in Argentinean idiosyncrasy. When I go back to Buenos Aires and go to a lecture or panel discussion I realize that people discuss much more. The level of confrontation is high. And people have less shame to say things to each other. As if there was an agreement to put etiquette aside to actually be able to talk to each other and think together and against each other. I am pretty sure that as an outsider someone could be shocked at the level of agitation, and maybe think it’s rude, but the truth is that there seems to be a fundamental agreement on the fact that criticism validates the other. Someone sustains your sight, your eyes, in conversation. And it sounds cliché but I find it to be true. But to specifically say that this happens in the works as well? Too hard to give you a categorical answer. Or maybe I just refuse to give you one to be contra!’
‘I can answer that it may be more of a wish of mine -than the actual acknowledgement of a reality- that art from Latin America would strive to be “contra”. It becomes increasingly difficult to find that integrity and keep the right pitch, as discourse circulates so quickly these days and there is hardly any form of it that is not immediately welcomed by one or more of the streams of the mainstream. As a general intent (with of course many, many shades) I believe art should be contra spectacular. Paraphrasing Žižek when he speaks about the former eastern block, tyranny is no longer the image of a boot stomping on your head, but rather a smiling face who does things “for your benefit”. This is what I mean by the tyranny of spectacle, in an economy based on the provision of services, cultural production that aspires to any radicality should not aim at the spectacular. And of course it is tricky because the spectacle assimilates things quicker than ever.’
I think here you two are agreeing that ‘contra’ is a necessary element in artistic practice, per se. Would I be right?
‘Yes but art should be a mechanism to see through and not just to oppose. Let us not forget that the most normalizing and oppressive of systems and situations need their contras to make their missions clearer. Artists can aspire to see through this and really go to the depth of the problematic.’
Speaking now more specifically of this notion of ‘participant’ audience or participatory audience, Hélio Oiticica called for an anti-art based on ‘open’ works that create experimental conditions where the artist takes on the role of ‘proposer’ or ‘entrepreneur’ or even ‘educator’. Relating this to your own work, do you see yourself as a ‘proposer’. Gabriel?
‘I don’t actually point to the dematerialisation of the art object, I think things (fabricated, form) are actually quite useful mediators of communication, as long as they remain vehicles and not the ends towards which creative practice is aimed. And yes, the performative object is a notion I feel close to, I like it when artworks actually do something rather than just sit to be contemplated. By that I mean that they establish a relationship (a communicative one) beyond the author’s intent, even though this might be rooted in paradox or impossibility.’
Amalia, I would most certainly qualify your work as performative. I’m thinking here of your proposal for the Liverpool Biennial in which you plan to white-wash the four equestrian monuments in the city, this of course does literally have a performative reference in that it is an action which takes place over time (the paint will fade), but would, for instance the drawings you made of the notebook paper also be so described?
‘Well, they are blank pages, so I guess you could say so. There is something of ‘the state of becoming’ in them. For an Argentinean they are also a bit more. These papers haven’t changed since my mother went to elementary school. So I could most certainly say they are directed to the memory of a state of becoming: “back to the future”, the memory of the things you hadn’t thought yet. At the same time there is another relation to performative object here, the classic one of the trace. And I do realize that this idea is a bit worn but I feel it applies. In this case the trace is that of the good student who, though highly confused, still wants to get it right – but doesn’t know how or even what to get right. The obsessive or perfectionist manner of the drawings imitates this good student who no matter what will try to please the teacher.’
Maybe I should put it differently. Would it be silly of me to state that art from Latin America has the ‘ability’ to combine the conceptual with the object, craft, with the conceptual?
‘I won’t stop you from saying this, you are probably right, but following your suggestion, I would rather think of Latin Americans being able to grasp the sensuous aspect rooted in a given artistic concept.’
‘No, It does ring a bell of course. And in relation to defining some aspects that could qualify as common to the art being made in Latin America, I think you put your finger on something. I could have never put it like that myself because “craft” and “conceptual” have never seemed oppositional to me.’
Maxine Kopsa
