Move over NY subway grafitti style! Here comes dot-painting…  And if you want to bulk-order your boomerangs, you can go here. These treasures (and the background research) is thanks to Bill Kruse, in Djakarta airport.

The following thoughts have come to mind over the past four weeks, as the news surrounding the arrest of Ai Weiwei continues to mount, so long as there is no clear information of his whereabouts, nor that of others, including some of his close friends and staff. The underlying issues are indeed complex and certainly deserve further attention. At the same time our attention needs to focus on remembering when people go missing. Let it not be our thoughts that are forgotten. It would be too easy to forget, or worse still, to ignore.

The initial reports on the arrest of Ai Weiwei, such as in the New York Times on April 3rd, raised the concerns of human rights advocates with the “ominous sign” of an increase in detentions and that a “crackdown on rights lawyers, bloggers and dissidents is spreading to the upper reaches of Chinese society.”

Four days later a Letter to the Guardian contained a petition urging the UK government to respond to the arrest. This was sent by email on 7 April, and published and signed by many people on the next day. The petition mentions the release of another great artist, and a great mind, Wu Yuren, on the very day that Ai Weiwei was arrested, and disappeared. It was thanks to the organisers of the petition that the news of Wu Yuren’s incarceration (and release) was published in the Guardian.

Think about it, before forgetting. People get arrested in China, and they do disappear. The first part may be considered familiar, even expected perhaps, especially for those who like their authorities to rule. Yes, it is also true people get arrested in Britain, and have to wait for their charges to be expedited. But do these people just disappear?

Thanks to those who now use social media as a way to publicly empower the world, the news of Ai Weiwei’s detention arrived within an instant. The Twitter pages of Ai Weiwei immediately provided useful information on his arrest, the police raid on the studio in Caocangdi; the raids on his assistant(s); even the phone number of the Beijing Capital. It immediately sparked some of the campaigns and petitions to call for Ai Weiwei’s release. The Free Ai Weiwei website, listing an account of events, also contains a link to the April 8 ‘Notice to the Police’, drafted by Lu Qing, Ai Weiwei’s wife.

Some of the comments made on Facebook were focused on Ai Weiwei’s status as an artist; as one who constantly looks for, and who receives “so much media attention” or as one who needs to be judged on the basis of being a “good artist” or a “outspoken dissenter”. I was therefore somewhat surprised that even after a month of more serious reporting, the Arts Editor of the Sunday Telegraph, Alastair Smart, chose to comment on whether Ai Weiwei’s art is “any good”.

Rather than being concerned with whether his art is good or bad, or with Ai Weiwei’s position and status as an artist, or as a dissident, it has to be noted that his work has rightfully been associated with the media, which makes him “a medium”, as someone who holds the means of communication.

And that leads to the crux of some of the larger issues at stake, not only in China, but whether people have the right to speak, or to employ social media as a forum for social criticism – or does there have to be a long rein held over the power to communicate?

WHAT HAVE WE CREATED?

The TED film (republished on April 4th) seemingly seeks to focus attention on the idealised position of a great mind and a great speaker as a courageous person who can inspire, fascinate, and who “believes in the power of ideas.” Even when his thoughts are addressed solely in the English language, such thoughts can be construed as seditious by the Chinese authorities, despite the introduction to the video which states that “we understand the Chinese authorities’ concern at anything which might provoke social unrest.”

Those who have access to the Chinese language know how it holds the brilliant capacity to speak with both wit and with wisdom. The satirical style of writing is frequently mentioned in relation to one of modern China’s great writers, Lu Xun – a legacy that continues until the present day. Moreover, for the past 20-30 years Chinese contemporary artists (and writers) have been lauded for their wit, cynicism and ridicule of the “China image”, and their iconic smiles and laughter still captivates many audiences, Chinese and non-Chinese alike.

Yet, there has been a much more sinister side to some of the glitziness that surrounds Chinese contemporary art. This includes artists getting arrested, works and exhibitions being banned from display, and national (and international) media being used to ridicule some developments in Chinese art as wrongfully ‘using “the name of art” (yi “yishu” de mingyi). I experienced this more sinister side when conducting my research on performance art in China, including on the development of what became known as the ‘violent trend’ in Chinese art during the years between 1998 and 2003, which I described as ‘flesh art’ in my study of Performance Art in China (Hong Kong: Timezone 8, 2006) – a study that is made available on Google Books.

This troubling side to Chinese art could also be seen in what has been said to have been the last interview with Ai Weiwei before his arrest, produced for the Dan Rather Reports. In this interview Ai Weiwei speaks about his fear of being arrested. However, rather than following the popular image of the “artist-dissident” the interview may actually provide a look at some of the broader issues that concern Ai Weiwei and others in China – which I often see can best be captured by the notion of “being human, all too human” in China, to use a phrase by Nietzsche – whose work has been influential in China.

As time passes, such commentary on the “artist” and the “dissident” start to wear a bit thin, and perhaps need to be sieved a bit, or at least reflected upon. The past four weeks have certainly shown some of the critical analyses disintegrate, fall to bits, fall to pieces. Meanwhile, The Times’ video critique of a Bob Dylan take on Ai Weiwei showed a wonderful sense of wit, but after having watched the human side, it becomes increasingly like a real tragedy.

The point of all this media attention is not only to elicit responses from people. It is important to generate further awareness, and a consciousness is what is needed about the broader issues at stake. Focus and refocus is needed. The Guardian has been very good at including in their reports the names of others who have disappeared together with Ai Weiwei. Meanwhile, the stakes remain high.

There have been a lot of commentaries on Ai Weiwei, speculating on why he was arrested. These include inventive commentaries and testimonies that are worth noting in an online forum, but also those that need to be carefully scrutinized for failing to give proper notice to such modus operandi as adopting official government statements or just operating on the basis of recounting other previous reportage.

Besides such commentaries, there is also the tendency to write on the basis of leads that are based on a mishmash of views, opinions, comments, recollections, recalls, and sheer refutations, without giving them proper thought and analysis. Not to mention the need to reflect on the underlying issue of how much of Ai Weiwei’s story is as much prized and claimed by some as much as it becomes recognised by others – such that news value does not always have to be linked to the value of the artist or his work.

Furthermore, it’s arguable that such reports directly related to the arrest do not always need all the references to museums, exhibitions, artworks, and high-profile people – even when they allow for greater search value on Google, and provide new attention to the triumph of the important public value of contemporary art. The last count of people signing the petition at change.org, asking for the release of Ai Weiwei, was 136,653. That is a significant number, which will hopefully generate further incentives towards developing new platforms for raising more critical awareness to the important role of “creativity and independent thought”.

In 2010, the lit.COLOGNE Festival in Germany focused attention on politics, power, and freedom of speech – and took up the case of the Chinese writer and Nobel Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo. The festival also invited the participation of Ai Weiwei for a public conversation with the Nobel Prize laureate and author Hertha Mueller – a discussion on “art and politics” that has also been linked on the lit.COLOGNE website.

As time goes on, such new platforms will also need to be developed in order to generate new public awareness and common sense about the social dimensions of the arts, and culture more generally that goes beyond the level of artistic production and (infinite) cycles of cultural reproduction. Besides the renewed attention given to important aesthetic debates – including those that focus attention on important links between art, politics and life – one can also think of examining the abiding role of the artist as agent in generating new critical awareness to important cultural and societal transformations. Besides looking specifically at the role of performance art, social installations, or examining the work of artist collectives and artist-run-initiatives, my own experience working with contemporary artists has also drawn attention to a renewed interest in the ethical dimension of the public value and evaluation of contemporary art and culture.

IN CONVERSATION

Questions of value, time, and critical consciousness also underpin a conversation I recorded with Ai Weiwei in 2008, seven years after I first met him, together with the late gallery owner and one of the most inspiring people in the Chinese art world, Hans van Dijk, at the China Art Archives and Warehouse in Beijing.

Following an earlier  interview with Ai Weiwei in Beijing in 2007, the subsequent  interview in 2008 drew initial inspiration from what was the first major review exhibition of Ai Weiwei’s work at the Campbelltown Art Centre, in Western Sydney. Curated by Charles Merewether, the exhibition Under Construction was held five months before the Beijing Olympics and six months after Documenta 12, and hence raised some immediate questions of the popular image versus the underlying consciousness.

Prior to our conversation, Ai Weiwei had already been interviewed by over two dozen reporters and journalists in Sydney – all of whom were keen to focus on the story of the “Chinese dissident, who is able to stay in China.” It should not come as a surprise that there was some anxiety at the start of our conversation. I vividly recall when Ai Weiwei took several sugar cachets, opened them, and poured them out in front of his camera: so as to “make snow, in Sydney”.

Making snow in Sydney was clearly meant to outwit what felt to Ai Weiwei like the need to face the challenge of boredom and repetition, which came from being asked to do one interview after another. Fortunately it also allowed a discussion about the long-term role, value and position of a contemporary artist. Reflecting on a public talk just beforehand prompted the conversation to focus on the question of whether an artist can generate a social consciousness.

A short version of the “Conversation with Ai Weiwei” and the subsequent essay “Ai Weiwei: China’s Social Consciousness” were published in C-Arts, Journal of Contemporary Arts, Vol. 04 (2008). C-Arts has been very helpful in approving access to .pdf copies of the conversation and the essay .

In particular, given the present circumstances, my thoughts again reverted to the interview. When asked how he would like to be remembered, Ai Weiwei enigmatically responded that he would rather be “forgotten,” or at least to be the person “that people remember when they have forgotten something.”

On May 16, six weeks after the arrest and the “disappearance”, his wife Lu Qing was finally contacted by authorities and granted permission to briefly see and talk to Ai Weiwei.  A report in the Guardian makes references to Lu Qing stating how the conversation took place at an unfamiliar location, with people “who did not show their identification”. The conversation, at least brought some positive news about Ai Weiwei’s “good physical health” but also raises concerns about Ai Weiwei being not only described as “tense”, but “mentally conflicted”. There is also still no clear news on the reason for his arrest.

Meanwhile, it is worth reflecting on an earlier report in The Guardian on the release of the lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan. There is a statement to the effect that besides no-one having heard of the whereabouts of Ai Weiwei, the following report should also be accounted for, namely: “His friend Wen Tao, 38, driver and cousin Zhang Jinsong, also known as Xiao Pang, 43, accountant Hu Mingfen, 55, and colleague Liu Zhenggang, 49, also remain missing.”

There are further reports on blocked editorials and missing web-links, including the editorial commemorating the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake.  The DGenerateFilms website contains a link to the 2010 sound-work “Missing” (nian) with thousands of volunteers reading out the names of victims of the earthquake, next to other videos released by Ai Weiwei and his studio.

That there are many who remain “missing” is a matter that raises concerns, and such concerns need to be raised time and time again in order to become noticed as a serious matter. It is too easy simply to forget, and it is not yet the time to have forgotten those who are not to be remembered.

POSTSCRIPT

In order to draw attention to such ethical dimensions, other aspects will first need to be properly analysed, particularly those that relate to precursory values, as well as those that deal with memory, as well as giving attention to remembering values that some may have forgotten once existed.

As media outlets and those who are invited to write for them consider taking the story of Ai Weiwei’s arrest as an opportunity to share their own stories – including the story of a media-world in transition from print to digital – this can indeed raise awareness of how stories are formed. Yet, questions need to be raised on how individual stories and reports can become part of bigger stories, particularly those that are capable of transcending those narratives that seem to operate simply on giving comments or sharing an idea, thought, or opinion.

Comments on reports in the Economist clearly raise the need for some real critical understanding of what has become of ‘a digital rallying cry’, especially when at the bottom one finds comments on “So many lies about Ai Weiwei” and a link to a patriotic website that could have easily been missed, or those that can be viewed with some reflection on how it can lead to understanding some of the deeper issues.

It may therefore also be necessary, at some point to leave some of this pile of general reports, comments, reflections, appearances and personal opinions, to make way for actual, real-time, face-to-face conversation, in order to draw attention to what comes from the senses and the sensibilities of direct public responses. There was a time when artists not only drew attention to the sensations of, but clearly also to their concerns with feelings of a ‘post-sense sensibility’ as it emerges in a society that draws solely on the image of a booming economy.  For further reference one can view the video of the influential 1999 exhibition ‘Post-Sense Sensibility: Alien Bodies and Delusion’ on Vimeo, and is discussed in my study of Performance Art in China.

There is the need not only for more action, but also for critical dialogue. This should be based on in-depth reports and timely analyses that draw attention to the broader social and historical issues and generate an understanding of how the past operates into the present and the future, if not drawing some lessons from it. Geremie Barmé’s ‘View on Ai Weiwei’s Exit’ draws out inspiration in this regard.

Indeed, it would be interesting to know not just what other artists believe in, but also what they would stand for. A report in ArtAsia Pacific called “Beijing Before the Olympics” refers to how “several prominent artists” withdrew from an exhibition in Paris after deciding to join a popular campaign to boycott French businesses following an incident during the Olympic torch relay. Again, Barmé’s thoughts on “Torching the Relay” should draw further interest to such issues.

Thomas Berghuis

Dr Thomas J. Berghuis is a Lecturer in Asian Art with the University of Sydney, Deputy Director of the Australian Centre for Asian Art & Archaeology and a Member of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, convening a research group on Cultural Policy and Heritage. From March to June 2011 Berghuis has been working as a Visiting Fellow in the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University. He is the author of Performance Art in China (Hong Kong, Timezone 8, 2006).

Readers may follow the course of published references to the fate of Ai Weiwei on iconophilia here.

Jorgensen writes: “In the wake of a 2007 Senate Inquiry into the shoddy ‘carpetbagging’ practices that work to rip off remote Aboriginal artists, one would think that the ethical alternative of remote art centres would be looking good. Yet in the mainstream media at least the centres find themselves more embattled, and the journalist whose work sparked the enquiry, The Australian’s Nicolas Rothwell, has changed his mind about the centres’ place in the greater Aboriginal art industry. After supporting the work of art centre co-ordinators across the deserts and Top End of the country for many years, Rothwell’s writing now holds art centres responsible for a deterioration in the quality of Aboriginal art.

“The reason for this shift, however, appears to have less to do with Aboriginal art than its changing political context. In “The Intellectual Class should support the Intervention,” Rothwell complains about welfarism and the chattering leftist class (Australian, December 3 2007). It was also in 2007 that Rothwell shifted his longstanding support for art centres. His writing was always a touchstone of positive news in a newspaper otherwise dedicated to constructing the most troubling representations of Aboriginal people. And this style of reviewing has continued, contributing valuable accounts of artists’ work in remote Australia. However Rothwell has also begun to pen another kind of position, coincident with the government’s own. My argument here is that this position has spilled into his writings on the work of Aboriginal artists themselves, in a worrying conflation of the politics of the moment with opinion about the quality of art from remote communities.”

Iconophilia has also commented on Rothwell’s perverse usage of the figure of death in his writing from this period, (cited here, referencing back to April 1, 2006) and his later more pessimistic view of the contemporary developments in Aboriginal modern art – a concept first articulated by Ian McLean, from which Nicolas Rothwell would surely resile.

Jorgensen marks June 2007 as “the turning point in Rothwell’s writing, …the month that the Senate inquiry made its recommendations, and the ‘Little Children are Sacred’ report was released and served to justify the Intervention. When Rothwell released his first pessimistic essay about the future of art centres, “Colour fades into Shadow”, on June 22, the Howard government had just announced its intention to stage the Intervention on 20 June. He argues that few art centres “are profitable, and making large new funds available to them will not automatically change this picture,” and that “the policy map in place today is really a subsidised culture industry program.” The real crunch comes later in the essay, where Rothwell somehow aligns the death of a young artist with his argument about the Aboriginal art industry:

The attempt to fund, and fence, and define this creative current carries its subtle, inevitable costs. Deep in the Western Desert, at Kintore, the heart of the Pintupi painting movement, and the source of the Centre’s most collected art, a young man died of a heart attack in the smart new clinic building a week ago.

Jorgensen continues: “The tragedy that Rothwell builds around the failure of the Aboriginal art industry, and more specifically the profitability of art centres, is bizarrely to blame for the tragedy of this youth’s death.”

This is however a characteristic trope in Rothwell’s writing (see his “The Vanishing”, December 13-14, 2008). He methodically exploits Indigenous tragedies (historical or anticipated) to illustrate systemic issues, then holds the sociopolitical context to blame for the specific instance he references – with little concern for the effects such invasions of privacy may engender. As a journalist Rothwell seems to have little respect for the ethics of permission or reference to his sources. And he’s always on the lookout for a catchy turn of phrase. Thus most recently (Australian, April 30) he announces that the whole culture of North West Aboriginal Australia is committing suicide: “an entire culture, acting collectively, destroys itself.” And here, Jorgensen engages with his claim that it is the art centres that are “mining” Aboriginal culture:

“This gloss of art with tragedy, that confuses sentiment with rational argument, strikes a theme that will recur through many of his recent essays on Aboriginal art. The problem is not only that he defers to tragedy in order to make arguments about the art centre system, but that his place as the most influential critic of Aboriginal art becomes confused with his role as a political reporter. The art itself comes to appear tragic, as it stands for the demise of an entire era of remote communities, and ultimately the era of self-determination. His tragic view of art centres is little different from the government’s own moves to close outstations, end CDEP and override the Aboriginal governance that has been the backbone of remote communities. Thus in 2008, reviewing the annual Telstra awards, Rothwell writes of art centres:

The upshot is a vast production of market-based art designed to appeal to Western eyes. To succeed, it must be within the accepted template, it must be recognisable, almost brand-like. It is, to borrow anthropologist John von Sturmer’s devastating term, neo-traditional, and it is best if it comes from a new, ‘undiscovered’ art community, where prices and speculative profits are rising at speed. (Australian, August 15 2008).

“I have not been able to find the relevant Sturmer essay, but in my own field of art history, neo-traditional is not a pejorative term. It is instead interchangeable with neo-classicism, or simply classicism, that simply describes a form of art that refunctions older subject matter in a new way. In this same article, Rothwell goes on to further the analogy between the mode of production of Aboriginal art and its quality, arguing that,

The bitter truth is that much good art now comes from private dealer channels, and a great superfluity of market-driven, mediocre work flows out of art centres in the remotest corners of the continent.

And,

Indeed, art centre minders seem in danger of overreach: desert and northern artists want to maintain their culture themselves, they want the freedom to do so, more than the help. The art centres, like all the art trade, are mining culture. To many artists, all those coming to buy look, in essence, much the same. (Australian, August 15 2008).

As Jorgensen rightly points out: “The analogy between mining and culture only represents a problem if one does not recognise the modernity of remote Aboriginal communities. The communities and outstations that host art centres are an invention of postcolonial times, as is the contemporary Aboriginal art movement. That artists are able to recreate culture for the artworld should be celebrated for its innovation and success, rather than condemned for its capitalisation. The contradiction within his writing is the difference between the community arts model and the expectations that the high art artworld has of Aboriginal artists… If there is one thing that the Aboriginal art movement should teach us, born as it was out of great disadvantage, it is that great art happens in spite of its circumstances, rather than because of it.”

There is clearly an ethical and economic conflict at play in the different practices of the Aboriginal-owned and run art centres (of which there are perhaps a hundred across Aboriginal Australia) and the ways and means of so-called carpetbaggers – those independent and self-interested dealers who bypass the art centres to exploit the vulnerability of individual artists. The capacity of independent dealers to control and influence the (aesthetic) direction of an artist’s work is at the opposite end of the scale from the ethical responsibilities that are a constant issue with art centre managers. Here Jorgensen points to the underlying resilience and authority of the artist in either context:

“A good manager not only administrates the business of day-to-day painting, exhibitions and finances, but gives artists guidance as to what makes their paintings more successful. It is on this point of quality that Rothwell’s criticisms of art centers are harshest. For in the artworld the facilitation of work and its sale is the role of dealers rather than community workers. Yet Rothwell overstates and generalises the influence these managers have on the art. Artists are always and finally responsible for their own production, and managers, like dealers, can do no more than advise. Arguments like this presume that Aboriginal people have no agency, and imply that art centres themselves are the dominant partner in their relationship with artists. They do not take seriously the fact of their Aboriginal governance.”

And so Jorgensen continues, making the point that art centres are, in relation to their sociocultural benefits, grossly under-funded. And, that the range of models of engagement with the art world and the art market, from Jirrawun to Warburton, frames the options available to the arts centres and their managers.

“The Jirrawun and Warburton models suggest that the art centre is not the only way forward for Aboriginal art, but also that the choice between the free market and art centres is not as starkly defined as all that. By comparison with Jirrawun and Warburton, art centres represent something of a middle road, marking out the compromise between the market for Aboriginal art and its place in remote communities. The ongoing success of the art centre model in creating and maintaining markets for Aboriginal art makes economic criticisms of their practices difficult to sustain.”

Jorgensen then digs deeper as he explores the overlaps and contradictions between Rothwell’s roles as as a senior journalist with the Australian, writing as often on Aboriginal art as on the politics of the Top End, as much as he ruminates on his own enlightenment.  Jorgenson perceptively points to Rothwell’s influence and authority with other critics:

“…in an essay in Art Monthly Australia by The Sydney Morning Herald‘s art critic John McDonald, [who] quotes Rothwell in an account of the trials of the dealer John Ioannou (“Tommy Watson and the politics of the Indigenous art market,” April 2010). When Ioannou signed up the art centre at Wingellina, in the Gibson Desert of Western Australia, to his own Agathon Gallery in Sydney, he broke the ethical rules that underlie the system… The facts that McDonald gets wrong in his essay only betrays the level of misunderstandings circulating about the Aboriginal art industry, even among Australia’s top critics. When McDonald writes that, “There is always the temptation to give a successful artist a smaller cut, perhaps no more than twenty-five percent of a purchase price,” at an art centre, he misunderstands the regulations that these centres operate under… In his statement “There have been instances when record keeping was virtually non-existent” McDonald could just as easily be referring to Ioannou. An independent auditor of Irrunytju Arts found that Ioannou had not documented transactions or agreements with the artists he represented…”

Jorgensen then asks: “What is the source of Rothwell’s change of mind? What continuity lies between his recent ambivalence toward art centres and the pre-2007 journalism on carpetbagging that made him such a pertinent critic of the Aboriginal art industry in the first place? It lies in a romanticism about Aboriginal artists, a romanticism that has long characterised his reviews of Aboriginal art in The Australian. The exuberant prose with which he celebrates the renaissance of Aboriginal Australia is bound by the romantic contradiction of a disappearing frontier. As the old artists die, Rothwell is concerned that there will be no more great artists, no more hunter-gatherers who once relied on their senses to survive, and who now employ these senses to brilliantly paint. Turning to a free market is a way of keeping the frontier alive in the face of the demise of the first contact generation. This is the point at which the ideology of Rothwell’s political reportage spills into his art criticism. Numerous reviews end by evoking the passage of Aboriginal artists, and the end of Aboriginal art as we once knew it.

“These pessimistic conclusions can be read as the other side of Rothwell’s romantic coin, the one that wants to preserve the frontier while being critical of it. He writes at the juncture of an era of self-determination and a new era of assimilation, of art centres as signs of a compromised vision of Aboriginal autonomy and the end of the illusions that this autonomy brings about. Carrying their anti-colonial and anti-paternalistic colours, Rothwell and McDonald thinly disguise a neo-colonial position of assimilation. Tracing the demise of elderly artists and remote communities becomes the opportunity to rebirth the Aboriginal art movement in a market freed of its responsibilities to remote communities. Art centres become a sign of the stasis of the market rather than its excitement; where they were once a sign of Aboriginal autonomy, now they signal Aboriginal oppression.”

Jorgensen concludes: “Yet if there is one legacy of the self-determination era that should be praised for its total and unremitting success, it is the art centre. In economic terms, these centres generate capital in places popularly thought to be economically unsustainable. If some public funding is necessary to keep this capital in community hands, this minor expense should be seen less in terms of what generates high, collectable art, but in [the same] terms [as] having a national orchestra. If it is necessary for Australia to have an orchestra for reasons of cultural prestige, surely it is necessary to have an indigenous people capable of sustaining what is the most original contribution, if not the only original contribution, that Australia has made to global culture.”

Iconophilia thanks the author for his permission to publish this abbreviated version of the original Arena article.

In November 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a brief but symbolically important visit to Papua New Guinea. Her visit lasted hardly two hours during which her core activity was a visit to the National Parliament. On this occasion, the Speaker decided to hang in the Grand Hall a very large string bag that was offered by the University of Papua New Guinea on Mother’s Day in May 2010. The architecture and the art decoration of the Parliament House is socially and politically meaningful and has been the result of successive attempts to build a national identity thus creating a common platform from more than a thousand independent local political units speaking over 800 languages and who manifest some of the most socially and culturally contrasted features.

The creation of the bilum: The project originated at the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby. Following a discussion with Dame Carol Kidu, Minister for Community Development, I had realized that the Parliament, which was about to vote an important bill to give women easier access to politics, did not display any art work in relation to the world of women and their values. While we prepared the launch of a volume dedicated to string bags that included several important contributions of Papua New Guinea prominent academics, we thought we could also plan the creation of a very large bilum which could be displayed in the Grand Hall. Such a creation was intended to be a tribute to women’s contribution to the country. After discussions held within the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Mrs Ruth Dom and I were appointed to conduct the project. Under the recommendations of Mrs Dom we invited a little more than 20 women from the neighbouring regions to attend an information meeting in the presence of the husband of one of the invited ladies who appointed himself as representative for this newly formed group of women. During the meeting we presented the main lines of the project and we particularly emphasised that there would be little money available. We also highlighted the fact that despite the project being commissioned by the University we wanted to let the women be the authors of the project. We didn’t want to impose upon them any form of program. We had only three requirements. The first concerned the timeframe. We had only a little more than two months since the artwork was due to be presented in May on the occasion of Mother’s Day. The second was the size. We wanted an artefact which would be really large. The third constraint was financial: we had very limited funds and for many of the women we believed at first that this might be very discouraging.

The context of its creation: The monumental string bag was made in a settlement called Morata which is located at the north east border of the University land. For Ruth Dom and myself, it was an easy task to pay women daily visits. It was also easy for us to provide them with yarns whenever they required them. As suggested by Ruth Dom, it was also decided that food should be prepared or at least made available as often as we could arrange it. Several times, we bought rice bags and tinned food for the initially 20 and then 17 women who worked on the project. Providing food is a necessary requirement in most collective work. This marks an alliance and a reciprocal dedication between those who order the work and those who were appointed to do it. It often symbolises more than a relationship of trust and reciprocal recognition but a form of symbolic adoption. On this occasion the food providers, as “parents”, demonstrated that they intended to look after those who worked, their new “sons and daughters”. The final payment was to compensate for the labour provided and acknowledge the importance of the work. The final contribution was also intended to put an end to this temporary adoption and split again the group and send back everyone to their previous activities and previous relationships.

“The baby is too young yet, it is not ready…” The women soon started to organize themselves. The self-appointed male “women’s leader” was politely asked to step down. We all argued (the university and the women who decided to be part of the project) that a man who does not know how to make string bag can be of little help and moreover can be a kind of nuisance in the conduct of the project. We all argued that only bilum makers, Mrs Dom and I should be part of the project. Actually it didn’t really happen this way but while the making of the bag was progressing none of us noticed that some newcomers were building arguments to share the authorship of this incredible experience.

To ensure women had a shelter and a place where they could work without dispute, Mrs Dom generously proposed to host the project under her newly built house in Morata. In doing so, we reminded everyone that this project was a University project and that women should not fear any form of threat linked to where they are working. After a month or so, Tibe Philip, the newly appointed women’s representative asked us to advertise the name of the group as Apa Kenge. The term was made of two words borrowed from the two main languages used by the participants. Part of the women came from the Southern Highlands Province while others came from the region of Goroka. For the launching of the book at the Parliament we invited the 17 women. The bilum was brought to the Parliament, but carefully hidden in a box. It was important to show that the work was in progress but also as important not to reveal anything about it until its completion. Tibe Philip and the other women also feared that some witnesses could “steal” the idea and therefore diminish the impact and the importance of the ongoing work: “the baby is not ready yet, we cannot show it yet”.

The launching: The days preceding the deadline were frantic under the house of Mrs Dom. The excitement and pride grew day by day. The first half of the payment we gave them was spent in nice traditional gowns and for many women their first pair of shoes. In the Grand Hall, the TV and newspaper crews were interviewing the “big shots”: ministers and a few members of Parliament, and the Speaker of the Parliament Jeffery Nape. Quite a large number of the diplomatic body was also there with their spouses. It was also a great day for the University since it was their first contribution to the embellishment of the Parliament. The Speaker and the dignitaries stood on the steps of the monumental stairway. The women who first hid at the back arrived with the bilum following a choreography they had rehearsed a hundred times. The crowd was astonished. The Speaker had prepared a kind but polite discourse. He left his written paper after reading the first lines and improvised an enthusiastic speech in which he said that this bilum was the most beautiful thing he ever saw. It fully deserved a first place in the Grand Hall and was a very strong and convincing embodiment not only of women’s skills but of the nation as a whole. To show his appreciation he promised a gift of 20,000Kina to the clever women.

The end of the project: The gift of the National Speaker was a great relief, since Mrs Dom and I felt a little embarrassed to offer women a very little amount of money for such a tremendous work. And yet it was precisely at that time that dissention re-emerged. Ruth Dom and I were first approached to seek advice about this unexpected gift of money. But neighbours, plus the self-appointed male “women’s leader” claimed their share under several aggressive pretexts. About a year later, the women admitted that they felt disempowered by their very confrontational relationship with the new claimants. Within two days the amount of money had just vanished leaving many with anger and disappointment. The sudden fame and unexpectedly high amount of money offered to the group of bilum makers was probably the cause of this unfortunate ending of the project.

This monumental bilum is an example of a modern creation deeply rooted in tradition. It illustrates the capacity of public institutions (a University and the Parliament) to initiate and acknowledge the creativity of women who live in particularly harsh conditions. It also shows that the creation of a monumental bilum, otherwise a modest artefact, by a group of women living in a neglected settlement of the capital city, could generate national pride and be taken as an example to demonstrate the talents of PNG citizens to the rest of the world.

The Apa Kenge group was composed of: Ruth Kinsley (Southern Highlands), Saina Andrew (Chimbu), Helen Pima (Southern Highlands), Sera Hove (Eastern Highlands Province), Jenny Assi (Eastern Highlands Province), Jenny Hove (Eastern Highlands Province), Margret Hove (Eastern Highlands Province), Linet Hove (Eastern Highlands Province), Rose Inaru (Eastern Highlands Province), Elisabeth Bai (Chimbu), Cicillia Lucas (Chimbu), Livore Kevin (Eastern Highlands Province), Botani Boas (Eastern Highlands Province), Esta Philip (Eastern Highlands Province), Priscilla Andrew (Eastern Highlands Province), Tibe Philip (Milne Bay Province), Vavine Andrew (Gulf Province), Vite Abol (Eastern Highlands Province). Ruth Dom and Nicolas Garnier were coordinators of the project.

What follows is Matthew’s account:

Margaret Seaworthy Gothic is the custom typeface Lawrence Weiner created and has used in his text works since 1968. It’s a bold sans serif, a bit like Impact, and is not open for the public to license or use.

Weiner’s early texts works made use of default typefaces used in sign writing, Franklin Gothic Extra (the default typeface on pre cut letters available at stationery stores) and FF Offline (a default typeface sometimes used for stencils).  These fonts are obviously potent with a burdensome context, they speak of Fordism and in general aesthetics of standardisation that grew out of the Bauhaus and Vkhutemas. Weiner’s concerns, however, at the time of designing the Margaret Seaworthy Gothic, were more immediate: how to escape the signature association of his work with these default typefaces and how to stabilise the context of his work.

By creating his own typeface, Weiner created a context of pure signature – one, however, not wholly devoid of a relationship to Weiner’s thinking, with its keen interest in Wittgenstein and Freud. Margaret Seaworthy Gothic individualises the body of Weiner’s work within the context of the 20^th Century, not simply as a signifier of its geist.

As an artist intrinsically associated with the period, it may seem strange that Weiner has always argued against his work being considered ‘Conceptual Art’; rather, he sees himself resolutely as a sculptor (and, in his words, his work can ‘fuck up your life’). What’s implicit in this way of thinking is that ‘language can represent material without explicit form’ [fn]. As such, words can be as potent in representing, for example, wood as a piece of wood itself. Wood comes forth from the letter forms that make up the word in the same way as the physiological effect of a lover’s presence can be conjured from seeing their name written – their presence coming through the kerning and spacing of the letters. Maybe it could be said it is only in the context of art and love, where the separation of left and right hemispherical brain function is so collapsed, that letter forms can provoke the qualia of a physical presence.

It’s this channelling and conjuring capacity, the magic of translating, that brings the artists Colin Duncan, Nigel Lendon, Andrew Liversidge, Dane Mitchell and myself together. Each work in this show in its own way occupies the gallery as a conceit of relationships, a cybernetic atmosphere and a theatre of aliases. Matter is not banished in the world, but it does take on spooky properties – its scale and identity having been permanently displaced by the network of communications within which it exists.

Colin Duncan’s flat two-dimensional high reliefs render the history of art into a new kind of wingdings; each one is a communicational icon, much like an emoticon, that condenses a huge amount of information into one ultra-recognisable form. These works communicate the entire existence of another work into a complete signifier and, writ large, they fill the gallery with the presence of works that are far removed.

Nigel Lendon’s air works, Maquette for an Invisible Sculpture (1993-2011) and Untitled Invisible Work of Art (2011) [above], directly affect the gallery’s breathable atmosphere, carving in it invisible forms that can only be felt. The architecture of the Margaret Lawrence Gallery, the life sustaining air it contains and Nigel’s work merge as one succinct system of interdependence.

Andrew Liversidge’s molten forms made from $1,000 worth of one dollar coins (the artist’s fee) fugues the form of money, turning it back into mere nickel, copper and aluminium alloy – from gold into lead. The actual value of this alloy, know as a ‘melt value’, is roughly $0.01 per $1 coin. Only the circumstance of a system of shared values allows such magical inflation – almost literally turning lead into gold. By taking the alloy of money as a sculptural material, this work transforms financial currency into an artistic one; a transmutation of one economic structure into another, eradicating one value system and replacing it with another through a crude modification of form.

Dane Mitchell’s way-finding devices inscribed with ‘Do Not Enter’ rendered backwards work directly on the institution of a gallery as public space, where the behaviour of the crowd needs to be choreographed with signage and controlled with surveillance cameras along with specialist staff members. Galleries are spaces where the crowd is free to roam, within limits: they are spaces open to the public, but have codes and privacies that are indicative of the invisible structures that control the presentation of art. By reversing the word ‘Do Not Enter’, Dane puts the viewer on the inside of this system of control. Initially, this may seem overly critical of the institution and the audience’s place within it, however I keenly believe the work uses its gallery context to explore ideas around objective vantage point and certainty of presence.

My work – the Manga comic about the white paint that is the default setting of all gallery walls –  highlights the paint itself to probe its infinite depth as a surface, to see its body come to life. In cybernetics every ‘body’ is in commutation with another; there are no inactive elements, no silences. It seems there is an implicit relationship with Conceptual Art of the twentieth century: when art becomes information, every contextual dimension becomes information, too (hence Lawrence Weiner’s struggle with pre-existing typefaces.) And, in much the same way, each of the works in Margaret Seaworthy Gothic seeks to animate the information in what appears to be silence.

Works illustrated above:

Dane Mitchell: Stanchion 1-5, 2011, Chrome plated steel, mylar, laser prints

Colin Duncan: Shadow, Spiral Jetty, Robert Smithson, 1915, 2006, Acrylic

Nigel Lendon: Untitled Invisible Work of Art, 2011, Radial fans, motion sensors

Andrew Liversidge: FOR THE AVOIDANCE OF DOUBT (QUID PRO QUO AND THE GOLDEN TORPOR), 2011, 92% copper, 6% aluminium, 2% nickel

Matthew Shannon: Weave and Gravity, 2011, Risograph prints

footnote: Weiner, Lawrence. ‘Interview: Lawrence Weiner.’ Artkrush Issue #73.  2007. Flavourpill. 8^th December 2010 <http://artkrush.com/155783>

Photographs by Pamela Faye and Christian Capurro.

“A project like this raises a number of questions about how remote Indigenous Australian works of art operate when seen from outside the established framework that exists in Australia. In a broad context of contemporary practitioners, without the presence of didactic wall texts, and across the barrier of language that exists in a place like China, an audience can only approach these objects as art – or so the logic goes. That is, in its Chinese frame, an awareness of relevant traditional, historical or contemporary contexts cannot be assumed to underlie any reading. So, what’s left when these various groundings are removed? What are other cultures seeing when we present remote Indigenous practice as a dynamic contemporary form?

Zuo Jing photographs Alex Hall, Great Northern Highway near Warmun, WA (author’s photograph)

For the Chinese artists and curators during the residency in July this year, it was perhaps hard not to approach Gija practice as a kind of ‘folk art’, and draw comparison to the practices of minority groups in China. So while dialogue with the urban based Australian artists was fairly easy to establish within the common grounding of International contemporary art, the practice of the Gija was much harder to place, at least in similar terms to how key practitioners are seen in Australia. This is not necessarily meant as a criticism – rather it is a response that I feel highlights differences in production and representation which, let’s face it, still presents challenges in the Australian art world, let alone in International contexts.

Representing cultural difference now forms a significant part of a global contemporary art discourse. This fairly recently emerged willingness on the part of artists and curators to actively explore points of cultural exchange can sometimes be a difficult process. As the No Name Station residency group discovered, actual cultural differences can be fundamental and although art practice can present a common grounding in these contexts it doesn’t necessarily offer up easy resolutions.

Installation view of No Name Station at Iberia Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing, (L-R), Rusty Peters, Berrngalanginy, 2008, Newell Harry, Lloyd Treistino, 1967-2009 (installation in progress) (author’s photograph)

The image above shows Gija artist Rusty Peter’s work alongside the installation in progress of Newell Harry’s work Lloyd Treistino, an exploration of his family’s story of migration shown through selected family photographs and related archived materials presented in vitrines, including letters, watercolours and objects.

The desire to explore this area in regards to the representation of remote practice within wider frameworks raises a series of valid questions, often resulting directly from such difficulties. Like how to negotiate the contemporary in ways that resonate across truly different cultural contexts. And, what does ‘contemporary’ really mean when applied to remote practice anyway? Simply that the art is being made now? Maybe the term is best seen as a particularly Western one – one that emphasises innovation and change – rather than a concept projected onto a totally different tradition of cultural production that has largely emphasised the relative immutability of cultural forms. Does its use set up expectations that aren’t necessarily helpful when considering the real position of the work in question?

The argument can be made that the complex series of exchanges that the indigenous art object represents is perhaps its most interesting aspect in a contemporary art context. When presenting remote indigenous practice in an International arena, or anywhere really, the question of how to articulate its various realities in relation to broader notions of contemporary art is ever present. Maybe without this area being explored in the exhibition context, or at least without it being apparent to some extent to the audience, the work is presented with an unescapable element of artifice…”

Zhao Zhao’s “EURO” (2008), a set of eight “Euro coins” made of lead sheath taken from Anselm Kiefer’s “Volkszählung” (1991)

Maybe most interesting is not only the relationship an artist like Ai Weiwei displays to his country’s cultural history, but to the position he now occupies in China’s cultural landscape.  For instance, a work by the younger generation artist Zhao Zhao (b.1982) presents a group of thirty toothpicks tooled from wooden shards taken from one of Ai Weiwei’s reconfigured temple sculptures, itself made from pieces of Qing dynasty temples salvaged from the wreckers ball in ever modernising Beijing. As well as completing a material transition from the sacred to the mundane Zhao’s work highlights a complex intergenerational exchange, one that I read as particularly Chinese in character and lacking the attendant irony one might expect of a similar work in an Australian context. Illustrated here is a 2008 work – a series of replica Euro coins pressed from lead stolen from Anslem Keifer’s “Volkszählung” (1991) similarly presenting a riff on value and the role of the young artist in existing networks.

View of courtyard 104, Caochangdi, Beijing, designed by Ai Weiwei for Fake Design, 2006

In July this year Zhao attended an artist’s residency in the Gija community of Warmun in WA along with a small group of curators and Australian and Chinese artists as part of the No Name Station project (I took part as a curator). During the presentation of an exhibition in Beijing resulting from this exchange the project group attended a BBQ at Zhao’s apartment in the Caochangdi district of Beijing. This was notable for a number of reasons, but is relevant here because of the architecture of the compound-style network of privately funded galleries, studios and apartments where it was held. The compound itself seems to architecturally embody some of the density of contemporary art in China, representing some of the framework against which its production and engagement plays out. Designed by Ai Weiwei for his own architectural firm Fake Design , it is in a style that effortlessly blends new Chinese modernism with its ancient antecedents. Walled like a commune, the various buildings are linked by a network of alleys linking larger communal areas to smaller internal and external spaces, just like a traditional Chinese courtyard house or the hutongs (alleyways) which used to be a major part of Beijing’s urban space but which have largely been destroyed in the lead up to (and following) the 2008 Olympics. Ironically, at the time of our visit it was unclear whether this development, and others like it in the area, would survive proposed demolition. Fingers crossed it does.

Postscript: the demolition of Ai Weiwei’s studios is reported here at ArtObserved.

Quentin Sprague has a background as a practising artist, arts administrator and curator and has held positions with a number of organisations including Jilamara Arts, NT and Artspace, Sydney. From 2009-2010 he worked directly with a number of senior artists in the East Kimberley region of WA. He is currently developing a curatorial project, Groundwork, for the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne in 2011.

I asked my friend Anthony Mason to check out the markets for signs of modernity in contemporary art while he is in PNG for these three months. His first blog report makes interesting reading. It was this John Siune in the AusAID offices we both liked best!

Thanks to Helen Vivian’s detective work, I was fascinated to read how the London-based Frieze had reviewed Utopia: the genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, the Emily Kame Kngwarreye exhibition at the (then) new National Art Centre Tokyo, while on tour in Japan from the new National Art Museum in Osaka, in June 2008.

Contrary to the self-adulatory press this exhibition received in Australia, in this review Edan Corkhill makes no mention of its institutional origins (The National Museum of Australia) or its local curator, Margo Neale. According to this reviewer, it’s all down to its Japanese curator, Akira Tatehata, as is his “impossible modernist” rubric. As is to be expected, cross-cultural projection is the primary means by which the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye is to be understood in such circumstances. Once in the mainstream of contemporary art, the problem is just how is Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s (or her contemporaries, for that matter) achievement to be judged?

In this instance while the reviewer’s point is to congratulate the curator for stepping outside “the Euro-American mainstream… [which is] a watershed in Japanese museum history”, the standards of evaluation remain firmly within its mainstream rhetoric. So, one finds the curators quoted exclaiming that it displays “all the techniques honed by the Abstract Expressionists”. Once Terry Smith had compared Emily to Monet, everyone else was on the same track. Janet Holmes a Court is quoted as proclaiming “she’s up there with Monet, Modigliani (??) and all the rest…” This is an example of what Darren Jorgenson refers to as “codes of similitude”. By the way, that’s the same M. Monet who, as this reviewer coincidentally commented, had by comparison, seemed “fiddly” when seen in the same venue…

Following our previous thread, I was also interested to read that while describing the extraordinary scale of Emily’s work, (in relation to the dimensions of the National Art Centre’s walls) the writer informs us: “the artist painted on the ground, so the work’s orientations are determined by the curator”. So there you go. It’s mainstream. In black and white. And still my problem remains unresolved…

Look what sells as Non-Fiction at the Perth Airport News Agency! The majority of covers feature either women veiled, or tales of prostitution, apparently. How do we reconcile such apparent extremes? What does this weird conjunction tell us about the popular imagination?