I contributed the following pages to the Ideological Guide, besides being involved in the overall project and, as a jury member, in the award of the e-flux/ideological guide travel grants to three writers.
Today I heard that one of my dearest friends died in a car accident on the Kabul-Jalalabad road. Doctor Mohammed Saeed Niazi was a true friend to me; more than that, he was one of those friends that actually defines what friendship means.
In a recent article, Antonio Giustozzi explains how the Taliban have improved their command & control structure. He describes how, under the military pressure of the US and NATO, and with the support of Pakistan’s ISI, the Taliban leadership has become more in control of the movement; and how this centralization alienates some local Taliban commanders and increasingly the population, who now have to deal with rotating commanders instead of well-known local strongmen (‘the devil you know’). Pakistani influence over the Taliban has always been terrible for the movement’s legitimacy among Afghans. On the other hand this centralization has allowed the Taliban to improve their governance and also their public image, as less brutalities are committed in the name of the movement.
Trevor Paglen: The Fence (Lake Kickapoo, Texas). C-print, 2010. Image of the electronic radar ‘fence’ around the USA to track traffic through space above the USA.
Wang Qingsong was not the most controversial artist of Transfiguration, the official Chinese Pavilion. This giant photograph ‘Follow Him’ (2010) is apparently a critique on the accumulation of knowledge culture we live in.
Shortly after checking into the hotel, I went for a ‘short stroll’. Being back in Venice gave me a natural high, so I wandered further and further from the hotel, until I came to the metal gangway that hangs from the endless walls of a fort-like structure over the lagoon. I was just thinking “I really ought to go back” when I chanced upon an open door in the wall, leading to the giant exhibition ‘Voices of the Unseen, Chinese Independent Art’.
The installation of the exhibition was far from complete, many artworks still being half-wrapped. I wandered through hangar after hangar filled by what seemed at least a hundred Chinese artists. With one or two exceptions I found most of the art garish, commercial, unsurprising – confirming my bias of Chinese art. Seeing that the exhibition had been organized by the Guangdong Museum of Art I also wondered what ‘independent art’ might mean. It seemed to refer to ‘marketable art’.
The same team is behind the über-cool Guangzhou Triennial (the last two editions were called “Meta-Question: Back to the Museum Per Se” and “Farewell to Post-Colonialism”). It is all very depressing.
How big my surprise then when, the following day, I reluctantly visited the official Chinese Pavilion and discovered much more experimental and critical art – truly captivating. As if the Communist Party of China were still truly involved in the problems of society and self-criticism (jiantao) but has given up the illusion of progress under its reign – while the liberal bourgeoisie and capitalist class is celebrating its ascendancy with art that seems to deride any ideal with irony, even sarcasm.
This reversal of positions was truly perplexing, but alerted me to the danger of approaching the perils of ‘national representation’ too simplistically.
Quote from the Ideological Guide: The China Pavilion thus stakes a claim against the commodifying of dissent (…) Is it possible to give this nuance and subtlety a more permanent presence within the onslaught of the marketplace?
More reading: interesting background info on Global Times China
Alfredo Jaar’s iconic installation of the Giardini rising from the bottom of a pool only to disappear again quickly under the waves. Photo & composition by RK
Although I came to Venice to test and explore an artist’s project that fundamentally critiques the system of national representation at the Biennale, I must admit I enjoyed the national pavilions much more than the group show “The Encyclopedic Palace” and some of the collateral events.
Artists and curators asked to represent their country invariably grapple with the question how to ‘represent the nation’ and why they should be the ones called to do it. This intellectual quandary produces some interesting artistic results. Besides, this system does allow for a plurality of approaches to be present in the same event, notably empowering voices from the periphery.
I had my hands full with checking the national pavilions around town and relating what I saw to Jonas Staal’s Ideological Guide to the Venice Biennale. This guide, an app for android and apple-ware, describes each pavilion in detail, providing statistical data for the country, its conflicts and alliances, with a cover piece by an art professional well acquainted with that country, usually a ‘national’ (sic).
It has a navigation system, and although I usually spurn such devices, preferring to rely on my sense of orientation, knowledge of the city map and passers-by, I did use this one. Venice is a labyrinth. The precise GPS pinpointing is more useful than the Biennale’s map. So I managed to see quite a lot in two days, while maintaining the time for long exchanges with the artists and an occasional curator.
What follows are reflections about the national pavilions, interspersed with comments about the Biennale in general and personal perspectives on artists and shows that were not part of the national representation mechanism.
I will be adding the chapters on the national representations as I finish writing them.
All the Middle Eastern national presentations
A protest during the 2011–2012 Yemeni revolution. Photo courtesy of the Al Jazeera Creative Commons Repository, as used in the article Yemen Hip Hop
This year I asked my students, of the course ‘Contemporary Art and Geopolitics in the Arab World’ that I teach at the international Master program of the Paris School of International Affairs, to write a Wikipedia article instead of a normal end paper.
The process was a bit more complicated than I first thought, because I had to gain course instructor rights from Wikipedia, follow a tutorial, write a course page and correspond quite a lot with Wikipedia volunteers throughout the process. In addition, it can be difficult to review the changes students write to existing pages. But I found solutions to all that, and the result is rewarding.
Following are some of the pages of my students, roughly from those I gave the highest marks downward:
Go and have a look, edit their Wikipedia pages or leave some comments…
Ahmed Mater: Muzdalifah (the day after); part of Desert of Pharan/Adam. 180 x 120 cm, 2012
Harper’s Bazaar Arabia published my personal diary about the installation of Desert of Pharan / Adam, by Ahmed Mater, in the Kochi Biennale.
I was curatorial consultant for the Kochi Muziris Biennale; I introduced five of the finally exhibited artists and worked with them on their projects as a curator. These are Ahmed Mater, Amanullah Mojadidi, Gert Jan Kocken, Ibrahim Quraishi and Jonas Staal.
I am now working with Ahmed Mater on the second installment of Desert of Pharan, Room with a View, which will be part of the Sharjah Biennial (opens on March 13).
Moidus Heritage House in Kochi – where the installation of Ahmed’s work took place
See here for more
Finally, after a year and a half working on project proposal and funding, followed by nearly a year intensive research and writing, the Gulf Art Guide is online. Some of the cities (Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Muscat, Doha and Manama) are covered by my co-author Neil van der Linden. The rest is written by me, and I worked a lot on website layout, design, functionalities and editing and proofreading the whole site.
I first looked forward to the day the Gulf Art Guide would finally be finished and online, as a day of relief. But the same evening that it went online I realized that it is like a baby: now I will have to nurture it, help it get over infancy diseases, and help it grow up. No time to celebrate!
The essay, which you can download here, provides an unusual take on the Gulf art scene.
We have over 1000 likes on our Facebook page, which is a good way to keep abreast of what’s going on in the Gulf Art World.
A version 1.1 is being prepared for release in the summer of 2013.
Note: a very different, one-page graphic version of this article was published in the Belgian art magazine A Prior #23; see the article here. I published another article about this subject in the Indian art magazine Take On Art.
Alighiero Boetti: World Map (1971)
With fourteen Afghan artists and at least ten artists whose work reflects on this country, Documenta 13 is strongly flavored by Afghanistan. After Kassel, Kabul is the main location of Documenta (the others being Alexandria & Cairo, and Banff in Canada): 27 Documenta artists will show their work in the Queen’s Palace in Kabul’s Babur Gardens in an exhibition that opens on June 20. Continue reading
