Page 46 - Studio International - December 1971

Projection: the programmes were shown, by about seventy-five happened to own an aeroplane. Jan Dibbets
recently put it this way, in a conversation: 'Land
artists from all over the world. American
new trend at specialists, who think the whole thing ought to Art is something I have not been doing for a
have been done in America long ago, now want
long time. Process becomes object. And if I were
Prospect 71 to do a repeat performance under better to paint a realistic landscape in a picture — the
conditions. The Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf has
landscape is certainly not in the paints and the
to do battle, on a financial and even a personal frame. But in a film reality comes back, in a
Georg Jappe level, with a myopic municipality that would strange way.' Dibbets has done films and photo
like to acquire international prestige at series in which the marine horizon (or the
provincial prices. This has led to the enforced undulating shape of a dune) is cut out and put
neglect of some aspects of the field, especially back in such a way that it jerks from one image
those emphasizing projection itself as such (e.g. to the next; this illustrates particularly vividly
Dibbets' use of a projector circling horizontally the human mind's capacity to abstract within
together with an image that moved downwards, the context of direct reality. The classic formal
or Brown's use of the screen as a floor for the problem of reality and abstraction is here stood
spectator to stand on, or Laura Grisi's projection on its head in as radical (or 'banal') a way as it
of a water vortex on to the floor). Nevertheless, can be: mass into line. Dibbets translates the
it is now possible to identify a number of other classic formal problem, that of light, into
answers to the question 'Why do artists make concrete terms by projecting, as his pictorial
films ?' surface, a beam of light falling through a
First reason : Conceptual Art is no longer Venetian blind that is sometimes open,
content with being written down; it seeks to sometimes closed. (This piece was not in the
become visual. The film camera has increasingly Prospect exhibition.)
taken over the function of the pencil; the basic It is important to note in this connection that
idea is no longer sketched out but recorded on reality on film does not become immaterial just
It was already known that more and more artists film. And since the basic idea of the work because it is reduced to an insubstantial two-
were making films; one had seen them in mostly refers to the process of making, the dimensional image; there is, after all, such a
studios, galleries and group exhibitions here and maker is usually in the picture himself, as an thing as 'immediacy' or 'down-to-earth realism'
there. But these films were always presented as a active participant who demonstrates in visual in a feature film. It is controlled movement, the
sideline; the main thing was still the exhibition terms the consummation of a thought. Left to element of rhythm, that constitutes the crucial
of objects. The 'Fernsehgalerie Gerry Schum' itself as a static end product, the concept in act of choice which deprives the real world, even
has been showing nothing but films and Conceptual Art has a tendency not to be when depicted in naturalistic terms, of its
videotapes for the last two years, but although understood, and even to be left hanging on the reality, and turns it into a phenomenon of light,
it has several times been given air time on the wall as a mere object. Example: a circle on the a collection of light-and-shade values (i.e.
first channel of German television this has ground is just that and nothing more. But if you objects). It is only this translation of everyday
always been so late in the evening that it all see on a screen young Ulrich Rückriem drawing material into terms of a rhythmical principle
remained a matter for a small circle of a perfectly regular circle round his massive that creates an artificial reality, and makes
cognoscenti. person with a piece of chalk, or bashing a circle Prospect 71 into one of the most 'spiritual', one
Now, however, the KUNSTHALLE in Düsseldorf out of the asphalt with a sledgehammer, while of the least matter-bound, exhibitions that
has made the film camera, in the artist's hands, he stands at its centre, then you begin to see there have ever been.
the exclusive theme of this year's Prospect what is happening as the bodying forth in This brings us to the fourth, and perhaps the
exhibition, and has given it the title of Nature of an immemorial geometrical decisive, reason why artists turn to the film
`Projection'. Prospect has hitherto constituted abstraction through a calm, endlessly repeated camera: the search for a renewal of attention.
an attempt to set up alongside the Kunstmarkt, movement carried out in the full consciousness Increasingly, artists in an optically glutted age
the 'art mart' only half an hour's drive away in of the executant's own corporeality. An abstract are pursuing a perceptual minimum. Bruce
Cologne, a different kind of survey exhibition formula becomes a visible, lived experience, Nauman, for example, projects on two facing
which is not primarily commercial. In and mathematics is personified. You may say walls the magnified movement of a little ball in
Düsseldorf each year, avant-garde galleries of that drawing a circle is not much of an a plate, under the title of Two Spheres; you stand
international repute were to present their new achievement; but that's not the point. The best in between, and perceive nothing but the out-of-
discoveries and their programmes for the coming of these films pursue research into optical first phase alternation of high-speed rotary movement
season; but the galleries turned out to be too principles with such minimal resources that the and stasis.
scared of competition, and the days of an result is nakedly evident and striking to the eye If the public is really to give its attention, it
annually changing avant-garde are in any case even though it sounds utterly banal when must relearn a long-forgotten virtue: patience.
over. This year, however, general opinion translated into terms of a verbal description. Of course, artists have always demanded our
seems to be unanimous in saying that Prospect 71 No work of art has ever been any the worse close attention. But now that total concentration
is the most important artistic event in Central because it resists verbalization. Many of these is so frequently a matter of life and death—as
Europe for a long time. And for the first time for films have the character of a visual manifesto. for example in city traffic—we tend in
years even the politically minded younger Second reason: Process Art and Action Art circumstances of less urgency to have less
generation was seen to be flocking into a museum no longer rest content with one-off shots; they concentration than ever before. Furthermore,
once more. This reflects not so much the want to be permanent. Concentration on one's the overproduction of works of art in the last
discovery of new names —the leading influences own physical activity can become a mental event few years has inured many visitors to galleries —
have remained pretty much the same since the of striking elemental force, as when Klaus Rinke, especially at openings —to the habit of the quick
Berne exhibition 'When Attitudes Become for instance, throws water high in the air from a glance and—all too often—the utterly superficial
Form' — as the summing-up of a whole new large pail so that it falls as a spiral, because of impression. The pretty wife of collector X has
tendency: 'projection' in the concrete sense of his own rotary movement, and lands as a circle. often turned out to be more important than the
the word, as colour slide, photograph, film and Third reason: to retrieve reality. Land Art exhibition one came to see. Here, by contrast,
videotape. In ten days more than a hundred was too exclusive; it was only for people who one has to dispense with the 'expert eye' and its

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