Page 78 - Studio International - November December 1975

a provocative experience,while making sure that the The 9th Paris Biennale occupies three museums and
catalogue contains a strong barrage of argument and displays the work of over 120 young artists. Nineteen
fact. Caniaris left Greece during the early days of the countries have participated in the exhibition and twelve
Junta, and has been living in Berlin under the auspices of critics and organizers were involved in the selection
DAAD. They sponsored the major show of his work on process. There are two notable characteristics which
the theme of the migrant workers : Gastarbeiter — distinguish this year's Biennale from its predecessors :
, which toured Berlin, Heidelberg and
Fremdarbeiter, firstly the participation of China by the inclusion of the
Bochum from January to July. communal work of a Chinese village only serves to
Caniaris' interest in building environments based on emphasize further the second dominant theme running
the private lives of the Gastarbeiter was to draw attention through the western contributions —an extreme
to the private plight of those who are virtually homeless in nihilistic version of individualism which is sometimes
their attempts to pull together makeshift homes. This is called 'ego art'. It is as though the persistent
the part of their lives which is not protected by the laws individualism of a capitalist culture has been pared away
that at least in theory give them semi-equality at work. to the simple exhibition of the contributing 'selves' of the
His main materials are plaster and wire, and his approach artists. Large exhibitions of this sort seem automatically
is a kind of archaeology of the sad and simple courage to transpose individualism from its more comfortable
with which people attempt to make their own context of one-man shows into a stark, competitive relief
environments out of the statutory 8 metres square, one where each contributor appears only to be trying to talk
lavatory to 10 men (or 8 women) dormitory world of the above the noise of the others, and where the emphasis is
immigrant. The individual objects are pathetic : old shoes, upon amplitude first and foremost and quality only
bicycles past repair, the tatty cardboard suitcases bound secondarily.
with string that are the hallmark of the migrant worker in The difference in this exhibition, however, is that the
the trans-European trains. Yet the effect is strangely reduction of the aspects secondary to individualism has
heroic in a humble way. With less drama than Kienholz extended to a simple 'shout' — rather like a
and more economy than Wolf Vostell, Caniaris reflects the phenomenological reduction to 'existenz' — and the
ordinary modern hero's tenacious will to survive. That is simple assertion of the artist's existence is all that is left.
the general theme of his work, and the issue of the Put more plainly, the overwhelming characteristic of the
foreign workers is a specific example. Just before he left works in the show is the repeated photographic, video
Greece in the early days of the Colonels he applied it to the and filmic depictions of the artist himself and in a way
situation of terror there in the symbolic and romantic way that induces a certain reduction beyond essence, which
which was both necessary and typical of his approach : might be said anyway to be accomplished
the red carnation of hope and survival flowering in a automatically by the facticity of the photographic
plaster desert of silence. medium. This is further emphasized by the kinds of
All these events had one thing in common, apart from 'essential' transformations established by the persistent
the theme of Gastarbeiter. They were all reflections after transexual and transvestite appendages to the
the event, and most of them were using primitive and photographic representations.
limited means to scratch the surface of one of the The situation seems best (though inadvertently)
vastest problems of modern Europe. The models of expressed by an American artist's pieces in the video
Brecht and Heartfield, however effective they may have section which are simply titled Telepathic Communication
been in their time, are now no more sufficient than the /, // and /// etc, each of which consists of a single fixed
debased economic models of Adam Smith and Riccardo shot video-tape of the artist's static head staring at the
which led to the impotence in political thinking that camera. The spectator, by staring at the artist, is
causes the problem in the first place. Meanwhile, presumably invited to guess the artist's thoughts (the
interest in the symptoms of this bankruptcy grows. John content of the piece) —the ultimate in existential
Berger's book on the subject was one example. Even in withdrawal. The tape typifies a concern common to a
Brussels part of the Social Programme launched by the great number of the contributing artists who, rather than
Irish Cabinet aims (eventually) to provide adequate exhibiting private experiences as an expression of
educational facilities with the emphasis on keeping the individualism, show themselves having an experience as
immigrants' own cultures alive, rather than suppressing an expression of the impossibility of a shared experience.
or ignoring them. But in spite of all this benign interest, On a more physiological level, the Japanese artist
the reality of the Gastarbeiters'situation grows steadily Takubo shows on video the effects of his drinking an
grimmer. Last year's Dorado referendum in entire bottle of bourbon, and the Jugoslavian artist
Switzerland showed how strongly popular opinion could Marina Abramovic exhibits photos of herself taking
work against them, while in November 1974 certain parts schizophrenia-inducing drugs.
of West Berlin were actually barred to foreign workers. There is also a related preoccupation with play-acting,
ranging from Boltanski's re-enactment of childhood
episodes and Wagnerian postures to Hermine
Freed's tableau re-enactment of historical pictures
which, in her own words, 'were re-created in video with
FRANCE myself playing the central figure in each ... madonna,
odelisk, aristocrat, scullery maid, movie star, etc.'
The obsession with self-identity and its mutability
shows itself in the live and photographed tableaux of
9th Paris Biennale Zaza, Takubo and the English Coum group. But out of
this category of work surely the most dominant feature is
the obsession with transexuality and transvestism (Urs
Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
Musée National d'Art Moderne Lüthi, Alex Silber, Luciano Castelli). Jean-Christophe
Musée Galliera Amman, who organized an exhibition of transvestite art
19 September-2 November called 'Transformer', seems responsible for this emphasis,
though the effect of display after display of
narcissistic photographs, full of the same trappings of
Reviewed by Rosetta Brooks transexuality, was as tedious as the experience of
walking through the homosexual and tramp district of
'The human nature boosted by the petty-bourgeois Paris. The effect was bizarre but unfortunately not quite
(artists) is ... divorced from or opposed to the masses, in the way that such artists would desire.
what they call human nature is in essence nothing but Perhaps the most amusing aspect of this recurrent self-
bourgeois individualism. exhibition by members of different denominations of
'Many petty-bourgeois (artists) have never heterosexuality, homosexuality and transexuality was the
discovered the bright side ... they specialize in inclusion in the catalogue of the names and addresses of
preaching pessimism and world-weariness.' the contributing artists. If the waif-like, narcissistic
Mao Tse-Tung transexuality of the leopard-skin-clad Luciano Castelli is
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