WORDS/FAKE WORDS:Part II – dreamideamachine ART VIEW

Our magazine in close collaboration with LISTE Art Fair, as part of our media partnership on a regular basis, begins a new column in response to the social, political and economic situations, occurring globally, the dimensions that begin to take and the way that all these affect contemporary art and art world. For 3-4 times every month, we are putting questions and concerns to influential people in the art world, setting a discussion, bridging the thoughts, worries, concerns and searches of all of us for the present and the future.

As a reference point the rise of neo-conservatism and the sneaky way that are violated and restricted individual and social freedoms globally, which are the result of hard struggles of the past, we put our relevant question. In the Part II, we have answers from:Costas Varotsos (Greek Sculptor), Nathalie Obadia (Gallery Owner, Paris/Brussels), Gigiotto Del Vecchio & Stefania Palumbo (Supportico Lopez Gallery, Berlin), Marilyn Arsem (American Performance Artist).

By Efi Michalarou & Dimitris Lempesis

Portrait: Nathalie Obadia, Photo: © Luc Castel, Courtesy de l’artiste et Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussel
Marilyn Arsem, Day 83: Transfer 2, 100 Ways to Consider Time, 100 6-hour durational performances by Marilyn Arsem at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, November 9, 2015 – February 19, 2016, Photo: J. Rice

As a result of the sociopolitical problems in the recent years, more and more conservative governments are coming to the fore, culminating with the victory of Donald Trump in U.S.A, the rise of the radical right across Europe and the new walls that rise in various regions of the globe, it has created a strong tendency of neo-conservatism that undermines and hacks away at the civil rights and freedoms. Do you consider that the whole situation may negatively affect the art world and the artists? What implications it will take in the future?

Costas Varotsos (Greek Sculptor):Everything starts from the optimism given by the Industrial Revolution, the concept of time began to have great importance and to expand as a dimension, the development of the analytical thinking had as goal the “objectively” correct in order to be applied to society, but led us into two World Wars. That happened also in art, all the art movements were in essence philosophies trying to find the “objectively correct”, in order to apply it in actuality. Exactly the same happened in politics under an analytical approach of reality, we were reaching an objective element and we were trying to apply it everywhere. This leads very often to dead ends, because we understand that once you try to apply that, in reality is a disaster. Simultaneously the time as value began to expand until it acquired surplus value altering the balance of society.

In art we reached a point, that the analytical approach lead to the extinction of the artwork and replace it with its concept. This is clear at “Neon Electrical Light English Glass Letters Red Eight” (1968) by Joseph Kosuth, something that happened on the economy later. The conceptual approach to the economy, replaced real economy. If the Americans economists had understood the work of Joseph Kosuth, the American economy wouldn’t have collapsed on 2008.

In parallel the approach of reality evolved and we understood the significance of chaos theory. Α doubt has entered to the democratic or hypothetical democratic thinking models and at this moment we are living an enormous collapse. If we assume that the human is a natural phenomenon and society is his spinoff, then we realize that according to the chaos theory, at the same time we have the collapse of analytical thinking and “objectively” correct.

Many countries were destabilized, we are living the effects of this situation but the most interesting is that for the first time people have realized it. Previously the communication levels were minor, now even a citizen of sub-Saharan Africa has access to information and another surprising element is that globally the huge gap between rich and poor was realized. Today, people are way ahead than politicians think, that is the reason of the sudden shift towards conservatism, not in the old sense but as an indifference from these “objectively” correct political systems. In my opinion, Donald Trump does not represent conservatism; he represents the suspicion and deep awareness of the people for the change of the reality. There are no more leftists or rightists, all these ideologies have collapsed. The panic and the severe depression that we meet up, exist because nobody has a reference point.

This was expressed for me at the funeral of Jannis Kounellis. He was baptized Orthodox and he lived in Italy, when he died the funeral would normally be done by the Orthodox ritual, but became at a Catholic Church. Two Catholic priests appeared and didn’t made any ritual, they talked about their personal experience with Kounellis, because they were his friends, the Orthodox bishop was present, at the end of the speech they said that Kounellis was an Orthodox. All they did was to pour a little wine over the coffin, this was the ritual. There we experienced the collapse of the two Churches, with the presence of two Churches and the triumph of art. The artist connected everything.

I believe that we don’t experience a crisis, but we entering to a New World Order, something that most of us do not understand. We are facing fatal situations, that’s why the artists are in front of dark colors, tragic and difficult deadlocks, they are not prepared to cope with the work. Nowadays in front of chaos, the work becomes a reference point, but you should know how to do it, having begun from the past, to work against all.

I realized the gap between time and space and the expansion of time studying the work of Lucio Fontana. I realized that he had understood the problem when he created his “Concetti Spaziali”. I used as my stepping stone the work and the texts of Lucio Fontana and the work off Alberto Burri. I started to expand the idea of space and transparency and to understand the collapse of the system itself. Art is not in danger, because art is basic element of the human existence and cannot be a questioned value, art will exists for ever, like the great artists of the Century. The art system begins to feel that its foundations scrunch, because what it represents and was the “objectively” correct is changing now. The strategy and the moral status of art system is collapsing, it was suspicious and applied over the years, especially after World War II, now came to its limits, it should be redefined.

Nathalie Obadia (Gallery Owner, Paris/Brussels): Though this question, your vision of the world seems very pessimistic. Of course, we are leaving a political and religious turmoil period, but I am optimistic concerning the resistance of the democratic values. Art means freedom of creation: Goya, Picasso or Warhol showed it by some oeuvres sometimes politically engaged and some others which were not.

Gigiotto Del Vecchio & Stefania Palumbo (Supportico Lopez Gallery, Berlin): Art world is nothing else than a mirror of the society we live in. If we pay attention on how and what the art world is supporting and promoting as relevant art and relevant topics, characters, figures, we can see that the differences between this and the political situation are starting to be very few and relatives. Art world could be a very conservative reality when it only dialogues with its economical opportunities, when its rules are coming out mainly from strong economical needs. Of course this is not valid for its totallity, still there are some segments that try to stay autonomous and true. Art is a different thing from the art world, art is born in a pure dimension and stays pure until the corruption arrives from the needs to make it valuable. This situation can easily get worst in the future if the system doesn’t increase the support to what many of us are trying to do, to mark the difference between the artwork-as-capital and the Art-as-capital.

Marilyn Arsem (American Performance Artist): The global political context in which we all live impacts our future, however we spend our time or earn our living. Sometimes it is possible to ignore the larger world and focus on one’s private reality, but other times the political situation at home and abroad cannot be ignored. Being engaged in the art world does not mean that we are different, nor immune from what is happening in that broader context. And if our work isn’t questioning the status quo, then it surely is supporting it. In order to participate in positive change artists and art professionals need to be informed about events in the world and understand the impact of the decisions that are being made by politicians. However, our training as artists gives us the tools to respond creatively. We can make work that envisions other futures, that suggests or describes other possible outcomes. We need to respond with art that is articulate and compelling, that challenges viewers to think differently, and that helps us all to envision and build a better world.

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