NEW YORK 2004
NEWS FROM HOME
THE FRONTIER CONFRONTED
ARTISTS: FRANCO ANGELONI / HENK BOVERHOFF / JIM COSTANZO / DORINE VAN DELFT / MATT DUCKLO / MAI UEDA / ARTHUR ELSENAAR / SIMON FERDINANDO / ATOUSA B. GHIASABADI / LEON GOLUB / KIM GORDON / PAUL GROOT / KIMBERLY LEWIS / ROBERT LONGO / MILTOS MANETAS / DAISUKE NISHIMURA / YOKO ONO / FEDERICO D’ ORAZIO / REMKO SCHA / DAVID SMITHSON / JEROME SYMONS / ELINE O’HARA SLAVICK / BABETH M. VANLOO / PAUL GROOT / MONIEK VOULON
Exhibition at White Box’s The Annex / New York / USA 2004
Curated by Moniek Voulon
THE FRONTIER CONFRONTED
[ORIENTALISM < > OCCIDENTALISM]
FIRST: Chantal Akerman observed herself observing the houses and the streets of Manhattan in the film “News from Home” [1976]
THEN: Edward Said from Columbia University observed the West observing the Arabs in his work “Orientalism” [1979]
NOW: The Lost Frontier In The Iraqi Desert
Moniek Voulon and 23 other artists from New York and Europe observe in a global and recon-structive way the rebuilding of the world according to the imaginative vision of Bush. They observe the utopias and the spiritual and intellectual projects of Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld.
They observe the idea of the regeneration of Arabia by America and the confrontation of the Biblical Imagery with the abstract visuals of the Muslim Koran.
And they observe how the ideas of Orientalism and Occidentalism, the two most fundamental political positions of today, dominate the scene at the American frontier in Iraq.
“News from Home” is the second part of a political-artistic trilogy curated by Moniek Voulon, which gives voice to our anxiety about the American invasion and occupation of Iraq.
[The first installment was entitled “La Nuit Américaine”, the final one will be “Le Mépris”]. At the same time it is an exhibition of artists from Europe and America that cope with contemporary life. It shares the rage about the American politics of the Bush administration with Michel Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, but, different from Moore’s rhetorics, it is not a dogmatic tale and it employs some elementary esthetical codes that Moore never heard of.
“News from Home” is about images and about a political aesthetics that was devloped by different European and American artists and filmmakers. It is partly based on the methods used by the French New Wave film director Jean-Luc Godard, and tries to turn his film language into a useful artistic attitude.
Political activism and ideological inspiration are part of the game, but above all, the aim here is to reformu-late a politically oriented cinematograhic attitude into a working politically oriented artistic model.
l
“News from Home” starts as a salute to Chantal Ackerman’s film “News from Home”, 1976, in which, she observes herself as she observes the streets and houses of Manhattan — a thrilling prelude to the 9/11 events. But it also refers to Edward W. Said’s “Orientalism”, 1979, in which he observes the West observing the Arab world, and “Occidentalism”, 2004, a recent reflection on fundamantalism, in which Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit observe the Arabs observing the West. The exhibition is not a direct product of these views, neither will one find here a definitive Orientalist or Occidentalist point of view.
Rather than being partisan in the worldwide struggle between these dominant positions, this exhibition can be seen as a protest against this ideological Catch 22.
As the world of today is trapped in the force field between these two poles, we realize that the Cold War between communism and capitalism has been followed by an actual War of Fundamentalisms.
Instead of the End of History as announced by Fukayama, the Utopia’s of Bush and Bin Laden, these extre-me representants of the Orientalist and the Occidentalist ideologies, brought us a new world wide war.
II
The story of Orientalism is the story of the imperialist drive of the European, Christian nations towards the East. Writers like Gustav Flaubert and T.E. Lawrence, and politicians like Napoleon and Benjamin Disraeli, dreamt their one-sided Western fantasies about the Orient — a Europe-centered and racist, exotic fairytale full of lust and love. Living in the post-enlightenment period, they want “to manage – and even produce – the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically and imaginatively”, as Said puts it. Driven by an interpretation of the world of the Islam as “one proto-type of closed traditional societies”, they try to find an excuse for invading and exhausting Arab countries under cover of a liberating ideology, as an excuse for rebuilding the world according to their imperialistic imaginative vision.
As it was in the last centuries, and as it is today, with the Utopia of Bush and the spiritual and intellectual projects of Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. An excuse for the regeneration of Arabia by America in pushing the abstract visuals of the Muslim Koran aside by the force of the the Biblical Imagery.
“Occidentalism”, on the other side, shows the unexpected results of the ideology of Orientalism. All the one-sided fantasies turn into a negative anti-image. The image of the enlightened White Man now incorporates the Doom, is the embodiment of Evil. The racist imperialism of the West is now confronted with a pure, religious negativism. It started with the slavophilia of Dostoyevski and we also discern this tendency in the mentality of Japan’s Kamikaze-fighters in World War II. But with the fantasies of master-brain Mohammed Atta, Occidentalism became the hot item of today.
His dream of a new Caliphat, a new pure Islam without frontiers or state borders, became a nightmare for the West.
Occidentalism as political-religious Utopia, without any distinction between politics and religion, with the failing modernization in the Arab countries as an excuse for the religious, traditional search for authenticity.
The flight and fight of Atta & friends against modernity and, of course, against Gothic City, as the epitome of the Western world, started the new war between Occidentalism and Orientalism. The destruction of the Towers of Babel as the supreme and sublime symbol of the Occidentalist’s revenge against the Western city that he is jealous of. [Anti-liberal occidentalists cherish a deep hatred of the City].
Because of the terror of Occidentalism in Gothic City, the West invaded Iraq, where it was immediately confronted with its own shadow, with a self-generated monster.
News from the enemy became News from Home. The Utopian dream of Wolfowitz, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld became the nightmare of the Abu Ghraib prison in Bagdad.
III
So now the ideas of Orientalism and Occidentalism, the two most extreme political positions of today, domi-nate the scene at the American frontier in Iraq. The artists involved here in “News from Home” realize how dangerous the dogmatic views of both these parties are, and invite the public to participate in a more nuanced debate. Though the exhibition does not completely avoid political rhetorics [being in a sense didactical and even self-referential], it wants to help develop an instrument to avoid the ultimate, terrifying choices proposed by the e/vangelist of the dogmatic ideologies. “News from Home” is about observing, not only about observing the enemy, but about observing the observer, and so about observing yourself. It shows you your image in the mirror, but what you see is not always what you expect to see.
In building up a relevant metaphorical portrait, artistic introspection can disturb our routine in always expecting a mirrorlike image. As we all know, sometimes you have to look for the devil in yourself, not in your supposed enemy.
Paul Groot, 2004 / Introduction in Catalog
Exhibition at White Box’s The Annex / New York / USA 2004
Curated by Moniek Voulon
Catalogue NEWS FROM HOME / 2004Interview by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Molly Nesbit with Leon Golub and Nancy Spero
SPONSORS:
Grant from The Netherland-America Foundation New York USA
Loft New York Mondriaan Foundation Amsterdam
Materiaal Foundation Amsterdam