Punked It.
The imaginable and principles of vanguard's unresponsibility.



This should have become an article about art discussing principles of punk, inspired by a totally vague invitation card in grey and white, which at first glance recalled a a mountain of waste paper. But then, at least for the utmost readiness and as interpretation with a cerain context knowledge - this card was such revealing and typically proving that we could now rather reason together on general trends in art and its description. It will start at the very beginning, the concept of trends in the Arts (now heave for a last time during this article, then read silently). BR> The principle of the avant-garde, has initially a militarian sense, riding before the troops. In art this matters as hipp, but in his meaning actually at least partially overstressed. Especially difficult has probably become the pioneering interpretation, regarding the vanguardist as particularly smart and witty being, jumping around in front of the troops, at its peak, with the intention to make the troops going on safer and better. This concept, however, is worth further consideration, since it demonstrates that the already classical question about the function of art has this pioneering scheme as a kind of model. If we compare different frontiers: Pioneer A is interested especially ind the greco-Roman antiquity and the related corporate culture and pleasure. In the forest with its lovely lightings he (or she) will jeale after romantic view points and mature berries or friendly farmers. Certainly linked with certain amenities for the following guard, perhaps even the panacea of a subversive, not just hiding pacifism. Howecver, the forces will likely be limited to continue this kind of modest life, spiced with a little alcohol and favourites, intellectual reduction and boredom to be foreseen. Pioneer B is under pressure and gets evidence fantasticaly, brings the forces in a short time to several goals, but unfortunately shocks everybody and attracts the rapid and resolute shelling by the respondent. The whole troop dies together and heroically. As far oberserved in the mind of Pioneer A, virtually only thinking along the fringes of the wine glass.BR> This, although there are still a long tine trends, that move like nomads (armed or unarmed) through the desert and pull real challenges. In buzzwords: transiguration, observation, technical mimesis, mimesis of technologies, abd perhaps, narration. Following the american art theorist Arthur Danto, transfiguration is one of the fundamental principles of modern art. The Brillo boxes by Andy Warhol were the original object of Danto's reflection, that have in the aerly sixties just been sensational cheeky and took with all their trappings important aspects of glamour and entertainment so serious that they became established as monetary substance in the established art world. Now it is sometime claimed that Andy's boxes, like the comic pictures of Roy, have in respect to craftmanship and aesthetics realy been more beutiful and better. Were the Brillo boxes perhaps even bigger? And if so, why? Sure pathos of craftsmanship may play a role in the arts, but for a brillo Box good design would be much better than pimping. Better, bigger, more beutiful, even as Lichtenstein's principle of comic pictures. Loftly seriousness of design, display of offensive gesture, on the border of the cultural "Think about it" - sights. Of course screams us from these plants also the transfigured object into the face: "Do not take me for serious!" We could even clasify around, that the internal division of Lichtenstein's comic pictures was symptomatic of the inner division of contemporary art, how just as accidental examples, is shown by the photographies of Martin Parr (currently running exhibition) and the pictures of Tyman in Munich, Haus der Kunst.Tyman developes in his pictures the serious and pathetic aspect of this form of representation, terribly adopting systems favouring just this, like especially the catholic church and nationalsocialism, who were or are founded on impressions, lies and suggestive effort. But this nestles suggestive and its object closely together, because the subject of art and its use here figures in the same manner for the purpose of creating divisions and projection figures. Ouhps, one could say, and continue the reasoning to art as mimesis of the technical.
But before that we have a look at an invation card for an exhibtion, transfiguring an exhibition space in such a strange way, that it may be called an independent, small work of art. THE little artwork is done by Waidmann and Weinold, usually creating the design for the art collections and museums of Augsburg, and in this case developing an invation to an exhibition of Magdalena Jetelová, who tends to a kind of mimetical discourse about technology (like for instance Carsten Nicolai or, in more recent works, Karen Irmer). You can see a few dazzling tubes, some light, light streaks and a female figure in a someway dancy x-leg posing. Everything is such blurred that a pillar in the background can look just like a person, standing next to the identifiable one, more spirit than material reality. In the foreground a cable comes from the column side, that has won a bit of relief and still clear contours. Then again, in the picture's foreground a display of technology, profound in the background an individually controlled human dance? We rotate the map once around, so to see the entire image on its head. Why not? The motives can hardly be identified, the artist's name is at every turn well positioned and readable. BR>
At 180 degrees the viewer recognizes a special kind of danger in interpretation the frenchmen call "honni soi qui mal y pense". Licenced worlds for vague interpretation, perhaps to show something like this: A central pillar is transformed by, as we have to imagine, the image processing deformations (the exhibition shows that special mirrows, the photographer's objects, are responsible for this effect - it's undecidablility is one subject of Jetelová's installation), in a pair of white, highheeled overknee boots and dragged with someting like a line from the pillar in the front. The exhibition's place name, "H2" rises here in its dark and hiden sense as brand name of a porn film series by Hustler, famous for its female protagonists's legs, found for example at a "Lust und Liebe" - Shop in the internet. This is, - of course ! -, not intended or at highest remotely and because of psychological manipulationintended, not only grey and white like the paintings of Tyman, but similarly unresponsible, because the content is to be constructed or reconstructed (however) by the viewers themselves - thus, who's to blame ! The apollinaire manipulator in this delphic oracle represents a spirit of the columns, here in the role of a covered pioneer....well, to whom quivers his shagger's ear, can read more about it or skip it with a frightful but nevertheless resolute look. "LUST und Liebe" H2 by Hustler We'll change now, anyway, respecting that our content line is not to talk just about current exhibitions, to Berlin, where we can find technician, too - Jetelova's projects of the last ten years, documented on her website, usually take part in regions far abroad, nearly beyond civilization. We put Esther Stocker and Klaus Berends, respectively, their artworks, on the analytician's sofa. Stocker's grids, rugged, in the space piecemeal and streamly distributed pieces of wood (2006), Macintoshian black stripes everywhere on a room's white walls, ceilings and floors (2004) or the black and white painted screening silo in Bressanone (2006), recommend us as a first thought for a psychoanalytical essay the diagnosis of a claustrophobic feeling, caused by the growing consciousness about the stilization and plasticity of electromagnetic fields. Stocker herself delres in Kunstforum 182: "The grid has always interested me because it is an expanding system. Thus, you do not have to answer the question for a center, as the structure simple spreads." Although the installations remember because of their aesthetic context actually more of Minimal Art, Hard Edge painting, furniture design and space design, and the theory of information is judged as the main subject of her works, for eyes tired of theory is most exciting, that formal ontological theories, attributing such a physical existence to everything, now actually seems to be established. The spreading, magnetized sparks of black wood pieces....very alluding. Is Stocker thus much less a critic of a technified culture than an more or less conscious portraitist of all material being?
However, we have explicitely critical artists, like, for instance, Klaus Berends, who is also an artist of technology, but not in the elegant styling the elctroenthusiastic expert expects or the monumental installation's of Jetelová show. All three artists are in a way scientific: Stocker is (unconsciously) ontophysicalistic, Berends analyses real effects of modern technologies in the social and natural environment, Jetelová characterizes and in a way emphazises geographical and physical phenomena. Berends "Schlachtfeld" ("Battlefield") of 2006 consists of a high voltage ceramic insulator, a speaker membrane,copper, iron, and a wooden podium with LED signals. The still active LED draws its energy from still existing electronic cargo. Berends, one of the artists who is capable to answer the questtion "What does he want to tell us?" composes in this way a small monument about new militarian technologies with lowfrequence radiation - such the artist and his journalist explain the nearly scientific content, even if not really scientific in their explanation. "Air - Back" von 2006 even has some irony. It is a small collection of accessoires usable in case of an oxygen shortage during a natural catastrophe or something like it. But well, it helps, if the suction of air from car tires helps ... extreme situations between art, truth and irony of shock on the unpredictable... ...so that we can now all end up in a picture that is somehow PUNK, and nevertheless shows very blurred but nice objects like a Hamiltonian rabbit, thus leading back to the many stories, a work of art offers as a field of projection... BR>


Report: Dr. U. Ritter

Pics:
Invitation card of the exhibition "Departure" von Magdalena Jetelová. Opening tuesday, 19.30 p.m. , H2 - Center for Contemporary Art, Beim Glaspalast 1, 86153 Augsburg.
"Bunny"- Collage made by Dr. U. & d.s.W. (Dr. U. Ritter) , based on a picture from Kunstforum international Nr. 182,"Heavy Burschi" (1989/1990) by Martin Kippenberger.