Re-enact History? Performing the Archive!

Actes du colloque / Proceedings Association des commissaires des arts du Québec / Association of Arts Curators of Québec Illumination : Symposium international sur le commissariat des arts de la scène, une pratique à consolider Envisioning the Practice : International symposium on performing arts curation Sous la direction de / Compiled and edited by Helen Simard Colloque organisé par / Symposium organized by Dena Davida & Jane Gabriels En collaboration avec la / In collaboration with the Faculté des arts Université du Québec à Montréal Montréal, Québec, Canada À / At L’Agora des science 10 au 13 avril 2014 / April 10‐13, 2014 19. Re-enact History? Performing the Archive! Julia Kurz, curator and educator, Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig/ Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, Germany Abstract: This paper discusses the Exhibition Project and Research Process Up Till Now – Reconsidering historical performance and actionist Art from the former German Democratic Republic (8th March - 26th May 2013, Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig, Germany). Up Till Now was particularly interested in experimenting with different curatorial strategies, which help to initiate and enable an updated reception of historic performative works: what could certain historical works mean today? Could they inhabit new meanings? What remains of performative work as a ‘cultural commodity’? By questioning the relationship between performance and its documentation or ‘mediatization’ (video, photo, oral narratives, texts, scores, requisites etcetera), the curatorial team questioned what it meant to work with these artefacts today, and to stage this documentary material. How could artistic approaches, which denied importance of ‘the object’, be shown in an appropriate way? Moreover, questions around the archive also arose: who works with what material, who gets access, how is/was the material contextualized, and what is put on show or not? Why did we choose performance from the former East Germany as our topic of research? Historically, artistic-performative positions and process-based forms of art in the GDR were regarded exclusively as a counter cultural movement against the dogmatic state culture of the dictatorship. Even today, some people maintain this point of view. And yet, there is no archive for GDR performance art and actionist art. Up Till Now can be seen both as a starting point of a longer process aiming to rethink the actual concepts brought forward through performance art in the GDR, as well as a way to push the idea of what an archive is further. Through this project, we created a material collection (printed text: primary resources, scientific papers, catalogue texts, letters, film, video, photographs, scores) based on current research as a working basis for all initiated processes. A selection was implemented into the exhibition, which changed during the project in cooperation with all participants. The invited participants were performers/curators who had worked in the GDR, art critics, theater researchers investigating performance and its mediatisation, as well as international contemporary performance artists. The latter were invited to develop commissioned projects based on their own artistic practice/research and the various offered encounters (including direct dialogue during a panel discussion, via e-mail, workshops etcetera) and were shown successively as part of the exhibition process. The rooms changed constantly, some interventions stayed permanent, some performances only left traces. This text will mainly deal with the research and exhibition project Up Till Now Reconsidering historical performances and actionist art from the former German Democratic 172 Republic”,1 which my colleague Anna Jehle and I curated at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Leipzig, Germany.2 I see my curatorial practice as being informed mainly by critical education theory. By this, I mean that I see myself as a learning and knowing (or not knowing) person within the exhibition process like anyone else: the visitors, the people I meet there, the ones I invite, artists, educators, teens, and adults. I constantly try to avoid imposing certain knowledge by making multiple approaches to receiving the work available, which means I am continually inspired by all the new topics, meanings and opinions that come up throughout an exhibition process. But— and this is important—, I allow myself also to fail, as the failures are especially good opportunities to reflect upon the situations I facilitate. In line with this approach, Up Till Now was not only inspired format-wise by the object of its study, i.e. performance as a temporal and spatial process between people. Our subsuming display allowed the exhibition to be a space of events, a stage, laboratory, workshop and research-archive, as well as a space to present art works. Indeed, in my perception, it unfolded, like a performance art piece itself, as a temporal and spatial process. To a certain extent we were focusing on announced public programs as a main part of the whole exhibition and research process: we had lectures, film-screenings, table talks, workshops and a blog, plus six new commissioned art works, which were developed during the exhibition period and mostly entered the space in the last weeks of the process. Some of them stayed as installations, some only left traces, which were partly also reused, and some just disappeared … 173 (Imag es: 1. Room View Herold/Klimová; 2. Panel Screening) As I am unable to address the entire project Up Till Now in this text, I will focus on some of the conceptual details. Before I start I’d like to introduce you to a method I learned from a 174 colleague, namely Manuela Zechner, a researcher and artist based in London and Vienna and part of the Radical Care Collective, with whom I worked recently. She calls it the ‘Future Archive’.3 I will use her method now to allow us to travel through time: In a far future: Some curators and art-historians gather during an opening. On display: Re-enactments of historical performative works, documents like photographs, Videos, props… the usual suspects when it comes to historical performance art… you know what I mean… really old stuff from 2014. Something one of these people in a far future then might say: Crazy, in the second decade of the millennium… I think it was the 3rd wave of feminism, wasn't it? They still struggled so much with gender issues and racism, even in the cultural field … A possible reply: Yes, amazing, these works by so and so were, above that, really challenging the neoliberal system back then. Today, you cannot imagine that they still did not know how to deal with immaterial labor … Someone adds: Indeed, they still had money back then, right? Back to now: I propose this method because it might be able to explain, in part, what we were trying to achieve with Up Till Now. The main idea of the future archive is to learn more about the status quo: about today. But also to imagine a future where things have changed, and what this future might look like. There might be a different political system or world order. This can be utopian or distopian, whatever you’d like to imagine. But mainly, imagining a future archive is about understanding the here and now: the starting point, and where things go into this or that direction. You can think of various scenarios of how today’s performance might be read in a far future, and I think in cultural work there is a lot about imagining a future together. At the same 175 time, this method creates a possibility to also focus on the past, imagining its alternative endings in the here and now, and considering how history is read and ‘constructed’. Perhaps that was why I ended up examining the performances of artists working during the GDR era during my studies in theater and post-colonial studies: because the ‘handling’ of the history of GDR Performance in the 1990s/early 2000s made me suspicious. Readings of performance works from this era were (and are to a certain extent still) very much guided by specific intentions: to display resistance, opposition and a counter culture in the then socialist workers and farmers state, the German Democratic Republic (today’s former East Germany), but only in opposition to the current politics of the now reunited Federal Republic. I don’t want to criticize displaying resistance, opposition or counter culture, but—and this is the point—in all these reflections on the nonconformist art scene, I noted a lack of discourse on what kind of art was actually being created during the early 90s, especially in relation to contents and forms of the artworks. Indeed, the texts I could find on these performances were often only accompanied by some glyphic images, which testified that something had happened during this time period, but you could only guess what. Moreover, what you could read about— both in interviews and text—was the working and living conditions of artists were at that time. This is, of course, an important topic in respect to the instrumentalization of art in the socialist regime, where art should follow politics and artists were threatened by GDR's secret service: the Stasi. However, you really had to search for more specific information on or descriptions of the art works itself. Fortunately, this has changed recently, as there is more and more research being conducted on this topic. Additionally, I found there was a lack of reflections on what these performances could mean for us today, within the recent system—where resistance is even harder, as there is no inside and outside the system anymore—, and opposition is very well organized in the realm of political parties and Realpolitik, where there is more about the organization of processes rather than topics or urgencies (Latour 2005). 176 In his quasi-Manifesto, entitled From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik, Burno Latour (2005) demands a fundamental change in politics within Western democracies: “We might be more connected to each other by our worries, our matters of concern, the issues we care for, than by any other set of values, opinions, attitudes or principles” (Latour 2005, p. 4). He calls the topics that unite us ‘The Things’, a term which he argues “designates both those who assemble because they are concerned as well as what causes their concerns and divisions” (Latour 2005, p. 13). Indeed, Latour calls out: “It should become the center of our attention: Back to Things!” (Latour, 2005, ibid.). By this, he suggests overcoming the practice of a representational democracy (with its political apathy), and starting over to deal finally with the ‘things’ themselves. It is very much this that I am talking about: it seems to me that there is a need for much more, and constantly evolving, processes around actual things, topics, questions—or urgencies (cf. Rogoff 2008). Now, getting back to Up Till Now, and my interest in examining GDR Performance, one thing that really puzzled me was the observation that, after the fall of the Wall in ’89, a number of performative artists assessed their works as ‘joking around’ or ‘playful experiments’. Most of them, so it seemed, did not really refer to their works as ‘serious’ art pieces. Such a puzzled feeling is maybe the starting point for every research process; my curiosity encouraged me to look closer and think of other ways of addressing the respective performances: this enabled Up Till Now to become a process of re-encounter with the artworks, without pre-determining certain goals.4 177 Images: 1. Research Archive via Lewandwosky; 2. Workshop with Barbora Klímová. 178 As I mentioned, Up Till Now was comprised of various parts. We tried to explore new ways of exhibiting and documenting Performance Art, and how to integrate performances into exhibitions. Like I said, our focus was the transfer of historical performances into a contemporary discourse, in order to re-question this material. Some of our initial questions were: How could we deal with archival material within the exhibitions? Were there possibilities of imagining a performative/performing archive, which was polyphonic and flexible, and expanded not only over the exhibition process but also within the space? We understood all the events that were taking place within the process as part of this living archive, starting with an empty room—our lab—and several invitations. We invited Jörg Herold, Via Lewandowsky (part of the group Autoperforationsartisten) and Gabriele Stötzer (part of the group Exterra XX), three artists working with performance during the GDR era, as well as four young artists all working on various questions of performativity 5 and some contemporary witnesses from the subcultural context of the GDR, among others. We also invited Barbora Klímová, an artist from Brno, Czech Republic, who created the very exciting project series Replaced Brno 2006, which contained of re-enactments of performances from the ‘70s and ‘80s and was shown during the exhibition.6 Moreover, Barbora was also invited to give a performance lecture and a workshop with students of the local university and art academy. During the public panel entitled Encountering Performance, the visitors of the museum were invited to enter into a dialogue with all the participating artists. Through round table discussions and screenings, artistic strategies and approaches became part of a contemporary discourse. 179 Image: Table Talks, Panel "Encountering Performance" Most importantly, we did not claim that Up Till Now was an objective or complete historical recreation of Performance Art from the former GDR, nor did we want to create a linear narrative or generally valid categories. At first, this caused some confusion within the regional scene of researchers and experts dealing with performance from that time. Rather, we began from our subjective starting point into a research process, which turned into a collective once more people got involved. To once again refer to Latour (2005), we felt that approaching ‘things’ should begin and end in the ‘always-new constellations’ that gather around them, a term Beatrice von Bismarck (2012) often uses. We felt that our focus should be on what has actually been said, rather than a predefined methodological approach, so we continually adjust the project with every new step it took. 180 Image: Commissioned Performance "Freedom of Sleep" by Stefan Hurtig This approach also applied to the permanent installation of texts and film material— documents out of private archives owned by Gabi Stötzer, Jörg Herold and Via Lewandowsky, amongst others—, which expanded and changed during the exhibition. Mostly, these artifacts contained of the texts I was referring to above: the already written history of GDR Performance. There were scans of A4 and A3 prints from existing catalogues, research-materials and books accessible at the library of the museum. This allowed visitors to read up on GDR performance, go independently through the material, and compare different texts on or pictures of the same work in various catalogs. We made some efforts to mediate the characteristics of the archives for the visitors, and possibly deconstruct them, and addressed some of the difficulties of working with and documenting performance as a live medium. But they could also just be read.7 Moreover, this material collection was a starting point for the artists participating in the project, which turned their work, from both a practical and theoretical approach, into a ‘performative archive’. The process was a collaborative one, which was very much based on exchange, and practical as well as theoretical reflection. It was very important for us was that all the invited artists were interweaving the historical material with their own artistic practice, which 181 meant the extraction of content related and formal aspects for a present discourse. As such, Up Till Now aimed much more for a conscious transformation of works, instead of the ambition to restage or re-enact close to the original. Images: 1. "After the Transformation" by Ana Hoffner; 2. "The Ground. The Benches." by Ingrid Cogne and Elske Rosendfeld 182 As you can see, and what was also unexpected for most of the visitors, was that we did not lay importance on the artifacts and documents, nor did we focus on preserving and conserving. Rather, we emphasized their use, re-use and appropriation: the reinterpretation of a work’s productivity and reception today. What does it create between past and future? We all know that history is a construction, serving mostly a certain political agenda relating to questions of power: who is allowed to deal, in which way, with what historical material. For example, with Up Till Now, we were often facing the objection that the time hasn’t come yet to look at GDR performance in this way. But what is this way? Clearly, it is totally important for any scientist having an agenda or certain interest, but I would like to question the restrictive politics of the cultures of remembrance, which we encounter here, even in a supposedly unproblematic field. And what comes with this is the practice of categorizing— especially in the scientific field—which creates mighty narratives through exclusion and what makes another way to this way. (These issues, I think, should not exclusively be discussed in the cultural or scientific field, or in cultural politics, as they are addressing a much wider context. But I think they should be negotiated much more openly in our every day practice.) Image: Comissioned Performance "Ich-AG Geige" 183 For me it is important to say—as simple as it sounds—that we do not need to reproduce these habits. Especially in the arts, and from my point of view as a curator and art educator, we have an amazing opportunity to question this practice and challenge anything that evolves out of that. We can explore alternative ways of introducing things, instead of supporting a canonization that supports hegemonic and dominant knowledge. In that way I am especially interested in encounters within exhibitions, which I like to envision as coming together on an equal level. Every element—whether artist, audience, prop, artwork, or text—brings a certain knowledge to a project, and is articulated during the process of encountering in various ways. Exhibitions, performances, and events can be these spatiotemporal structures where things can become public in the form of encounters (Bismarck, 2012). One must remember that the exhibition makers, as well as visitors and objects, are parts of the sequence and parallelism of constellations that are established within the exhibition. As Irit Rogoff once suggested: “The exhibition is more an occasion, which is characterized by its potentiality, rather than by it's manifestation” (Rogoff, 2011). Special thanks to Elizabeth Gerdeman and Helen Simard for proofreading this paper! 1 The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was a state within the Eastern Block, which was established in the Soviet Zone after World War II; it existed from 1949 to 1990. During the process of the German Reunification in 1990, the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany. 2 For further information visit research-uptillnow.tumblr.com (german only), http://issuu.com/uptillnow/docs/uptillnow-issuu (a documentation brochure, German only) or www.gfzk-leipzig.de/?p=19111&lang=en (English Press Release). 3 http://www.futurearchive.org/ 4 I was just guessing, but I believed this attitude perhaps stemmed from the often repeated opinion in the 1990s that, in a closed society like East Germany, the ‘real’ discourse on Performance—namely discourse coming from the West—reached the arts scene via smuggled catalogues during the 80s. As such, German performance from that time period was often understood as late replies to works by Wiener Aktionismus, Landart, or Joseph Beuys, and for that reason were judged by some to be not very relevant. Now, if you hear something like that being said repeatedly about your work, I suppose you might believe it after a while. There is a lot that can be said about adapting to or reproducing stereotypes—which of course is not unique for the reunion process between East and West Germany. 184 5 We invited Ana Hoffner, Vienna, Austria (www.anahoffner.com), Stefan Hurtig, Leipzig (www.stefanhurtig.de), Thomas Janitzky, Leipzig and Elske Rosenfeld from Berlin (www.elskerosenfeld.net) 6 For more on Barbora www.barboraklimova.net Klimová’s project Replaced Brno 2006, please visit 7 We chose to display our research in this way, as simple copies, since it is the way we are most often encounter historical performance art, before we try to dig deeper. Works Cited Latour, B. (2005). From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik—or How to Make Things Public. In B. Latour and P. Weibel (Eds.), Making Things Public, p. 4-31. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press. Rogoff, I. (2008) Turning. In e-flux Journal #0. Retrieved from www.e-flux.com/journal/turning Rogoff, I. (2011, February 2) Looking Away – Participating Singularities, Ontological Communities [Video file]. Retrieved from http://vimeo.com/21190144 [Accessed 24 March 2013] von Bismarck, B. (2012). The Exhibition as Collective. In B. von Bismarck, J. Schafaff, T. Weski (Eds.), Cultures of the Curatorial, p. 289-303. Berlin, Germany: Sternberg Press. © Julia Kurz Biography Julia Kurz, M.A., is a freelance curator, writer and educator working for institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig and Werkleitz – Center for Media Art in Halle (Saale) and within independent transdiciplinary collectives. Kurz has an MA in Theatre and Arabic Studies and did her courses in Leipzig and Damascus, Syria. From 2011 until 2013 she participated in Beatrice von Bismarck and Thomas Weski's Cultures of the Curatorial at the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig. 185