Modern Fossils

Genetologic Research 31/07/2009 15:28

Christopher Locke
Modern Fossil - Asportatio Acroamatis, 2009
(commonly referred to as the Cassette Tape)

‘These Modern Fossils are made from actual archaic technology that was once cutting-edge. Most of these examples were discovered in the United States, although the various species are represented all over the world. It is sad, but most of these units lived very short lives. Most people attribute the shortened lifespan to aggressive predators or accelerated evolution, but this is not necessarily true. It has been shown recently that the true demise of most of these specimens came from runaway consumerism and wastefulness at the high end of the food chain.

This species was first seen in the mid 1960s, but is not widespread until the 1970s. Similar to Repondecium antiquipotacium, it is thought that the compact disc lead to the decline in the Asportatio acroamatis population in the late 1990s. Asportatio has often been found in close proximity to Ambulephebus sonysymphonia, suggesting a close relationship between the two species’.

- Christopher Locke -

Dominaludus Sexagentaquad, 2009
(commonly referred to as the Nintendo 64 Controller or “N64″)

Deferovoculae Cellarius
(commonly referred to as “Cellular Phone” or “Cellphone”. This particular example is a “Motorola Meteor”)

Homo Stupidus Stupidus; The Missing Meme

Genetologic Research 27/05/2009 00:38

Ida - Researchers from the University of Oslo have suggested the specimen, which was found 95 per cent complete, may be the root of anthropoid evolution, when primates were first developing the features that would evolve into our own.

Discovered in Germany, Ida is so well preserved that even the outline of its fur can be seen. An incredible 95 percent complete fossil of a 47-million-year-old human ancestor has been discovered and, after two years of secret study, an international team of scientists has revealed it to the world. The fossils remarkable state of preservation allows an unprecedented glimpse into early human evolution. Discovered in Messel Pit, Germany, it represents the moment before anthropoid primates–the group that would later evolve into humans, apes and monkeys–began to split from lemurs and other prosimian primates. This groundbreaking discovery fills in a critical gap in human and primate evolution.

- www.history.com -

Maarten Vanden Eynde
Homo Stupidus Stupidus, 2008 A.D.

Richard Dawkins
The Ancestor’s Tale: A pergrimage to the dawn of Life, 2005

Just as we trace our personal family trees from parents to grandparents and so on back in time, so in The Ancestor’s Tale Richard Dawkins traces the ancestry of life. As he is at pains to point out, this is very much our human tale, our ancestry. The Ancestor’s Tale takes us from our immediate human ancestors back through what he calls concestors, those shared with the apes, monkeys and other mammals and other vertebrates and beyond to the dim and distant microbial beginnings of life some 4 billion years ago. It is a remarkable story which is still very much in the process of being uncovered. And, of course from a scientist of Dawkins stature and reputation we get an insider’s knowledge of the most up-to-date science and many of those involved in the research. And, as we have come to expect of Dawkins, it is told with a passionate commitment to scientific veracity and a nose for a good story. Dawkins’s knowledge of the vast and wonderful sweep of life’s diversity is admirable. Not only does it encompass the most interesting living representatives of so many groups of organisms but also the important and informative fossil ones, many of which have only been found in recent years.

Dawkins sees his journey with its reverse chronology as cast in the form of an epic pilgrimage from the present to the past [and] all roads lead to the origin of life. It is, to my mind, a sensible and perfectly acceptable approach although some might complain about going against the grain of evolution. The great benefit for the general reader is that it begins with the more familiar present and the animals nearest and dearest to us?our immediate human ancestors. And then it delves back into the more remote and less familiar past with its droves of lesser known and extinct fossil forms. The whole pilgrimage is divided into 40 tales, each based around a group of organisms and discusses their role in the overall story.

- Douglas Palmer -

Meme

Richard Dawkins first introduced the word in The Selfish Gene (1976) to discuss evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. He gave as examples melodies, catch-phrases, and beliefs (notably religious belief), clothing/fashion, and the technology of building arches.

Meme-theorists contend that memes evolve by natural selection (in a manner similar to that of biological evolution) through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance influencing an individual entity’s reproductive success. Memes spread through the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. Theorists point out that memes which replicate the most effectively spread best, and some memes may replicate effectively even when they prove detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.

A field of study called memetics arose in the 1990s to explore the concepts and transmission of memes in terms of an evolutionary model. Criticism from a variety of fronts has challenged the notion that scholarship can examine memes empirically. Some commentators question the idea that one can meaningfully categorize culture in terms of discrete units.

WHATS UP DOC?

Genetologic Research 12/05/2009 00:22

Hyungkoo Lee
Lepus Animatus, 20052006
Resin, aluminum sticks, stainless steel wires, springs and oil paint
111 x 60 x 70 cm

WHATS UP DOC? LEE HYUNGKOO AND THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES
By Howard Rutkowski

The Punch Line

A black room frames the installation, which is dramatically spot-lit. A presentation of two skeletons, not unlike what one might see in a museum of natural history; a predator chasing its prey. Then the dawning its Wile E. Coyote and The Roadrunner! Reduced to a science exhibit! Brilliant, clever and very, very funny.
Once the laughter subsides, something very interesting begins to emerge. The work is not merely clever or amusing in the way that Cattelans taxidermy animals are. Theres a whole new bit of forensic activity at work and the viewer is drawn into an exploration of the process behind this reductio ad absurdum. First of all, cartoon characters are not real; they are two-dimensional exaggerations of human behaviour. Yet, over time, they have entered the pantheon of global popular culture and are more recognisable than the real personalities that shape our world (Just consider the multi-national empire that is Disney). Our own predisposition to anthropomorphise furry (and feathered) creatures allows us to endow them with personalities that reflect our own and to place them in situations that mirror the trials and tribulations of our daily lives. So, if these cartoon figures can represent us in a simplified, yet extreme form, it follows that this form can be deconstructed and analysed.
Lee Hyungkoos approach eschews the pop psychological approach to deconstruction. What he is doing is actually physical deconstruction more pop palaeontology and it is detailed, thorough and completely worked through.

Familiar Tree

This was Lees original idea for the title of the exhibition. As a play on family tree, he was looking to describe the evolution of his creations and to evoke the empathy we all have with these animated characters. This new body of work began with Homo Animatus of 20022004. This was an homunculus Latin for little man a cartoon exaggeration of human form (think of Elmer Fudd as a skeleton). The original homunculus was a creature with magic powers that medieval alchemists claimed to have created. Considering that Lees studio looks more like a laboratory than a typical artists atelier, the connection is even more easily drawn. Plus cartoon characters do possess incredible strength, resilience and resourcefulness: how many times has the Coyote fell off a cliff, only to rebound fully-intact in the next frame?
Homo Animatus was an extension of a series of earlier pieces where the artist physically sought to alter to reduce to cartoon simplicity his own anatomy. Using plastic forms, enlarging and reducing lenses, Lee created a variety of body costumes that altered both ones appearance and ones vision of the real world at the same time. Homo Animatus is, for Lee, the Origin of the Species; in a peculiar and devolutionary way, of course, and in keeping with how animated creatures serve as stand-ins for their human counterparts. Canis Latrans Animatus (Wile E. Coyote) and Geococcyx Animatus (Roadrunner) followed and are now joined by Lepus Animatus (Bugs Bunny), Felis Catus Animatus (Tom), Mus Animatus (Jerry), Anas Animatus (Donald Duck) and his three nephews, Animatus H, D and L (Huey, Dewey and Louie).
Familiar Tree remains an appropriate description for this body of work. These are the skeletons of characters/personalities that are as close to us and as instantly recognisable as our own inner frames.

The Process

Stories of any kind usually require a build-up before offering the denouement. The joke involves a narrative before providing the punch line. Lee Hyungkoo works backwards. Merely seeing the work gives no clues to the complexity of its creation. Visually, the work can strike a chord and delight, amuse or bewilder, but examining its origins and development frames it properly.
Lees studio is a laboratory and could not be further removed from a scruffy artists garret. With a white-coated, masked team of technicians working in clean rooms, the space is unlike any other. Bones of real animals sit on shelves alongside those of the works in progress. Clay constructions of skulls of imaginary characters provide a reference to those reconstructions of our fossilised ancestors. The walls are adorned with drawings of the anatomies of both real animals and their animated renditions. The tools and working methods are more akin to the procedures seen on the Nature Channel than the usual brush and paint-pot strewn environments one usually associates with the creation of contemporary works of art.
The adoption of Latin names to describe the individual creations underscores the faux-scientific approach, utilising the classifications associated with kingdom, phylum, genus, species that categorise every living thing on the planet. Fans of the Roadrunner cartoons will recall that schoolboy Latin was often used to describe the characters, e.g. Coyotus imbicilus.

The Sources

The work itself, while sublime, delightful and amusing, requires an in-depth understanding of how all of this came to be in order to be fully appreciated. Observing the creation of this various works does provide the modus operandi behind Lees work, but where does the origin of the Origin of the Species lie?
Lee has cited Rodin and Giacometti as sculptural artists to whom he has responded within the development of his own work. Rodin was a breakthrough artist who sought to imbue the natural human form warts and all with a heroic sense of space, rejecting along the way the idealisation of the body that was previously the hallmark of Western sculpture. Rodin changed the way one could look at the human figure much in the same way that Lees optical helmets and body-distorting devices create alternative physical realities.
Giacomettis own work passed through a number of critical stages representational, cubist and surrealist until he reached his apogee in Post-War Europe and sought to render the human form in all its existential angst. Giacometti found the inner reality of man.
Lee has spoken about the ability of these two artists to create a new sense of sculptural space. Space is a concept that all artists working in three-dimensions must come to terms with. With this new body of work Lee has gone from the virtual space defined by his Objectuals series and has made the virtual a reality.

Anas Animatus L; Anas Animatus H, 2006
Resin, aluminum sticks, stainless steel wires, springs and oil paint
49.5 x 31 x 33 cm; 52 x 28 x 34.5 cm

Animalis Universalis

Genetologic Research 10/05/2009 13:49

Joan Fontcuberta & Pere Formiguera
Felix Penatus, 1987

Joan Fontcuberta´s and Pere Formiguera´s work Fauna is the Natural History of imagination. It consists of an Archive of impossible but possibly existing animals - hybrids and meta creatures.
The collector of the Archive is Dr. Ameisenhaufen, the Alter Ego of the artists. These pictures are a part of a series of Fauna consisting of dozens of different animals. All the animals have been originally “reconstructed” in their natural size.

Solenoglypha Polipodida, 1987

Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Class: Reptilia-Ratidae

Sighting: Found in a deciduous forest in the federal state of Tamil Nadu in southern India,
thanks to informant G-16, who was attacked while looking for truffles. Observation and capture lasted for a period of 30 days, during which it proved impossible to locate any othe} specimen. Survived in captivity until it was killed by artificial means to allow study of its internal structure.

Date of Capture: 30 April 1941.

Main Traits: Osseous internal skeleton. Pulmonary respiration. Typical vertebrate nervous system. It has not been possible to observe its reproductive system, but everything would indicate that it is oviparous with division of the sexes. The captured specimen is an adult male measuring 133cm in length.

Morphology: Corresponds to a mixture of reptile and non-flying bird. Although it has no wings now, it is quite possible that more primitive forms did have them. The morphological characteristics correspond completely to those of report 21 on the postRellic fauna of Mobolk, provided by Dr. Ray’s liaison. It would thus correspond to suborder 8 of the current New Zoology.

Habits: Extremely aggressive and venomous, it hunts for food and also for the pleasure of killing. It is quite rapid and moves forward in a curious and very rapid run, thanks to the strong musculature of its 12 paws and the supplementary impulse which it obtains by undulating all of its body in a strange aerial reptation. When facing its prey it becomes completely immobile and emits a very sharp whistle which paralyzes its enemy. It maintains this immobility for as long as the predator needs to secrete the gastric juices required to digest its prey, which can vary between two minutes and three hours, as determined by the size of the victim. At the end of the whistling phase, Solenoglypha launches itself rapidly at its immobile prey and bites the nape of its neck, causing instantaneous death. Immediately afterwards, if it wishes to eat its victim, the beast vomits part of the gastric juices all over the animal and waits for this highly acidic matter to begin to take effect, while it circles around the dead animal uttering the characteristic murmur of “Globe-toe,” with a 3-pause-1 cadence. Unlike known reptiles, Solenoglypha never rests after eating. Quite the contrary, it sets off on a wild chase which is only interrupted for the purpose of defecation.

Cercopithecus Icarocornu, 1987

Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Class: Mammalia

Sighting: Found in the Amazon jungle (Brazil) with the aid of the eminent anthropologist Dr. Edson Nelinho, who discovered it while carrying out studies on the Nygala-Tebo tribe. Once in Brazil, accompanied by Dr. Nelinho, whom the primitive tribes consider to be semi-divine, and my assistant Hans, I lived among the NygalaTebo for 12 days, observing the curious behavior of this extraordinary animal.

Dates of Observation: 28 February to 11 March 1944.

Main Traits and Morphology: It is a long-tailed simian with large wings which turn it into an animal eminently suited for flying. Its morphology apparently corresponds completely to that of a mammal and has nothing to do with a bird’s. At any rate, the close vigilance to which the natives subjected us prevented me from carrying out any detailed observation of the animal. From what I could observe, it is omnivorous with an indiscriminate diet of insects, fruit and small animals which it hunts in full flight with its long and resilient barley sugar horn. It would correspond to suborder 6 of the current New Zoology.

Habits: Cercopithecus Icarocornu is the sacred animal of the indigenous Nygala-Tebo tribes, for whom it represents the reincarnation of Ahzran (he who came from heaven). The females give birth inside a large cabin in the village to which only the great shaman has access. The baby animals remain inside the cabin until they have completely developed their ability to fly, at which point the tribe celebrates a lavish ceremony during which Cercopithecus undergoes an operation in which it is grafted with the skin of the silver fish of the Amazon, which covers all of the pectoral and abdominal zone. Once this has been done, the animal is set free, although it never strays very far away from the village, and participates by its presence in all of the sacred festivals of the NygalaTebo. During these festivals the animal is given a spirituous beverage which it drinks eagerly, sinking into a state of complete inebriety, at which point it begins to flap its wings so madly that it hovers in mid-air with its body immobile, singing like one possessed. Its song is strangely husky and deep, given its small size, and it articulates a series of sounds which constitute a kind of psalmody which the natives seem to understand and to which they listen with great attention. The sexual act occurs inside the cabin, which is also the place where the elderly take refuge when they feel that death is near.

Digging up the Future: On the Imaginary Archaeology in Art and other Sciences.

Genetologic Research 09/05/2009 12:38

[a reaction to Dieter Roelstraete’s The Way of the Shovel: On the Archeological Imaginary in Art /e-flux journal] by Maarten Vanden Eynde, April 2009

The present returns the past to the future Jorge Luis Borges

Besides prediction models based upon recovered data from the past and the present, there is nothing but imagination at hand to envision the future.

The specific interest or intent of art and all existing sciences seems to flock together whenever a distinctive humanistic evolution is inevitable, creating an épistème of knowledge (1) . In the Middle Ages we struggled to find similarities and resemblances between micro and macro, humans and god, earth and heaven. - We are all alike, mirrored by the image of God - was the prevailing dictum. It took until the 17th century before we started to look for differences, classifying species in separate models (taxonomy, Linnaeus) and paving the way for individual existence. In the 19th century Darwin and Lamarck opened the door to the past and instigated the origin of history. We discovered where we came from and started to reconstruct the string of our evolution. Marx introduced the theory of historical materialism and added why to the questions of when, where and how. Photography was invented and gave us the first artificial tool to catch a moment. Slowly but destined we became grounded in the reality of the present.
These new certainties, knowing where we come from and the ability to define the distinctiveness of being a homo sapiens sapiens, created an outburst of self-confidence during the 20th century in art and all the other sciences, opening up endless possibilities to act within the present. The result was there, immediately visible and the responsibility was all ours. This conviction in own abilities stimulated the industrial evolution, which changed the world beyond recognition and gave way to the largest population explosion in human history. We learned to genetically manipulate life, we unravelled the mysteries of most DNA strings (including our own), we figured out a way to recreate almost anything out of almost nothing by using nanotechnology, and found ways to be everywhere at the same time (radio, television, internet). We mastered the épistème of the present, leaving but the future to be destined.
The notion of consequence is the first manifestation of futurism; concern slowly replaced the initial euphoria about endless growth and infinite possibilities. The speed of new inventions and subsequently growing knowledge is accelerating just like the expansion of the universe and might bring us to what is currently known as the Singularity (2). At that moment, predicted to occur around 2035, knowledge is doubled every minute, making it impossible to comprehend for normal humans.

Andy Warhol
Campbells Soup Cans, 1962

The Club of Rome was the first to use computer models to predict the future (3). Some predictions proved to be farfetched since evolutions in general behave more chaotic than anticipated, but many future scenarios became reality by now. Their first report Limits of Growth of 1972 caused a permanent interest in what is to come and it is still the best selling environmental book in world history. The second report from 1974 revised the predictions and gave a more optimistic prognosis for the future of the environment, noting that many of the factors were within human control and therefore that environmental and economic catastrophe were preventable or avoidable.
This notion of self-control in relation to making history by interfering in the present became the most important theorem of the 20th century. Also in the art world this feeling of being able to transcendent your own existence by imagining what might, what could and what should became predominant. Although a great deal of artists working with history are digging up old stories, forgotten facts and undisclosed objects of the past to reinvent and reinterpret history, a much bigger number of artists is involved in writing current history, looking at what might be relevant for future generations to remember us by. Preluded by Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol was probably the first artist to fully realize the potential of freezing and claiming history by randomly choosing an insignificant object like a can of Campbell soup or a box of Brillo soap and lifting it above oblivion. This self-proclaimed Deus Ex Machina or act of vanguardism was copied by many other artists, like Heim Steinbach, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, who, with changing luck, tried through object fetishization to declare or even force history to happen.
A similar strategy is the combination of elements from the past with the present, already cashing the idea that the present is also the future past and that future historians could unwillingly mingle both and by doing so creating a stimulus for an altered state of remembering or stronger; to rewrite history all together. These combined traces of different pasts create an endless chain of possible futures, visualised by artists like Simon Starling, Ai Wei Wei, Wim Delvoye and Brian Jungen.

Ai Wei Wei
Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola Logo, 1994

To many critics and curators focus on the past to make sense of or give value to archives, artistic research or current art production in general. By doing so, they enforce a self-fulfilling prophecy upon the work and dont do right to the imagination and sheer curiosity of the creator towards representation of the present in the future. What will remain? What is our heritage for the future? Even artists like Gerard Richter, Roy Arden, Peter Pillar, Batia Suter and Lois Jacobs who on a first glimps seem to work with the past are rather formulating different answers to what could or should remain of the present.
Roy Ardens Versace for instance is not looking at the past in the historical sense but merely imagining how we might look back at the past in the future. It questions the relevance or value of anything present in our contemporary society to represent that same society in the future. Many other artists like Cornelia Parker, Mark Dion, Damien Hirst and Guillaume Bijl are doing the same thing; they lay the foundation of future history. They are telling a story, our story. Cornelia Parker uses remnants of (self) destroyed parts of reality and tries to put it back together again. Mark Dion is showing the left overs of our society in a more classic archaeological context and Damien Hirst and Guillaume Bijl subtract a certain object or entire space out of our present world, like a slice of cake, and preserve it directly for future generations. Although using different modes of working they all work with possible remnants of our current civilisation, imagining different pieces of the puzzle that could be used in the future to puzzle back together again the history we are currently creating. They work within the future, not the past.

Roy Arden
Versace, 2006

The Way of the Shovel: On the Archeological Imaginary in Art

Genetologic Research 07/05/2009 12:43

By Dieter Roelstraete

He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging.

Walter Benjamin¹

[Preliminary admonition: there is no disgrace in seeking to define either the essence or the attributes of art. For…]

…art is, or at least can be, many things at many different points in time and space. Throughout its historywhich is either long or short, depending on the definition agreed uponit has assumed many different roles and been called upon to defend an equal number of different causes. Or, alternatelyand this has turned out to be a much more appealing and rewarding tactic for most of the past centuryit has been called upon to attack, question, and criticize any number of states of affairs. In the messianic sense of a calling or a call to either change or preserve, for those are the only real options open to the messianicwe might locate both the roots of arts historical contribution to the hallowed tradition of critique and the practice of critical thought, as well as its share in the business of shaping the futurepreferably (and presumably) a different future from the one that we knowingly envision from the vantage point of today.

In the present moment, however, it appears that a number of artists seek to define art first and foremost in the thickness of its relationship to history. More and more frequently, art finds itself looking back, both at its own past (a very popular approach right now, as well as big business), and at the past in general. A steadily growing number of contemporary art practices engage not only in storytelling, but more specifically in history-telling. The retrospective, historiographic modea methodological complex that includes the historical account, the archive, the document, the act of excavating and unearthing, the memorial, the art of reconstruction and reenactment, the testimonyhas become both the mandate (content) and the tone (form) favored by a growing number of artists (as well as critics and curators) of varying ages and backgrounds.² They either make artworks that want to remember, or at least to turn back the tide of forgetfulness, or they make art about remembering and forgetting: we can call this the meta-historical mode, an important aspect of much artwork that assumes a curatorial character. With the quasi-romantic idea of historys presumed remoteness (or its darkness) invariably quite crucial to the investigative undertaking at hand, these artists delve into archives and historical collections of all stripes (this is where the magical formula of artistic research makes its appearance) and plunge into the abysmal darkness of historys most remote corners. They reenactyet another mode of historicizing and storytelling much favored by artists growing up in a culture of accelerated oblivionreconstruct, and recover. Happy to honor their calling, these artists seek out the facts and fictions of the past that have mostly been glossed over in the more official channels of historiography, such as the History Channel itself.³ They invariably side with both the downtrodden and the forgotten, reveal traces long feared gone, revive technologies long thought (or actually rendered) obsolete, bring the unjustly killed back to (some form of) life, and generally seek to restore justice to anyone or anything that has fallen prey to the blinding forward march of History with a capital, monolithic Hthat most evil of variations on the Hegelian master narrative.

_{Jeff Wall, Fieldwork. Excavation of the floor of a dwelling in the former Sto:lo nation village, Greenwood Island, Hope, B.C., August, 2003, Anthony Graesch, Dept. of Anthropology, University of California at Los Angeles, working with Riley Lewis of the Sto:lo band, 2003. Transparency in lightbox, 219.5 x 283.5 cm.

Collection of the artist. Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.}

The reasons for this oftentimes melancholy (and potentially reactionary) retreat into the retrospective mode of historiography are manifold, and are of course closely related to the current crisis of history both as an intellectual discipline and as an academic field of enquiry. After all, arts obsession with the past, however recently lived, effectively closes it off from other, possibly more pressing obligations, namely that of imagining the future, of imagining the world otherwise (differently). Our cultures quasi-pathological systemic infatuation with both the New and the Now (youth) has effectively made forgetting and forgetfulness into one of the central features of our contemporary condition, and the teaching of history in schools around the globalized world has suffered accordingly.

[This diagnosis of a crisis of history may strike the informed reader as unnecessarily alarmist and overblown: indeed, even the most cursory glance at the groaning bookshelves in the History section of ones local culture mallor its counterpart on Amazon.comseems to suggest the opposite to be true. True, there is plenty of historiography out there, but it is of a very problematic, myopic kind that seems to add to the cultural pathology of forgetting rather than fight against it. It is a type of writing that prefers to hone in on objects (the smaller, the more mundane, and the less significant, the better) rather than people, the grand societal structures that harness them, or the events that befall them and/or help bring those structures into being. Virtually every little thing has become the subject of its own (strictly cultural) history of late, from the pencil to the zipper, the cod, the porcelain toilet bowl, the stiletto, the potato, or the bowler hat. It does not require too great an imaginative effort to discern the miserable political implications of this obsession with detail, novelty, and the quaint exoticism of the everyday (best summed up by the dubious dictum small is beautiful). Indeed, it seems sufficiently clear that the relative success story of this myopic micro-historiography, with its programmatic suspicion of all forms of grand historicization, is related both to todays general state of post-ideological fatigue as well as to the political evacuation (or de-politicization) of academia, of which the crisis of history is precisely such an alarming, potent symptom.]

_{Roy Arden, Versace, 2006.

Archival pigment print, 25 x 21 inches.}

In this sense, art has doubtlessly come to the rescue, if not of history itself, then surely of its telling: it is there to remember when all else urges us to forget and simply look forwardprimarily to new products and consumerist fantasiesor, worse still, inward. Indeed, this new mode of discursive art production boasts an imposing critical pedigree, a long history of resistance and refusal: the eminent hallmarks, as we know, of true vanguardism.

One geopolitical region whose recent (and rewardingly traumatic) history has become especially prominent with arts turn towards history-telling and historicizing (its turn away from both the present and the future), is post-communist Central and Eastern Europethe preferred archeological digging site (if only metaphorically) of many well-read artists whose work has come of age in the broader context of the globalized art market of the last decade and a half. Ironically enough, the regions triumph w

Present the Present

Genetologic Research 04/05/2009 15:14

‘Are you present in the present to present the present?’ - Jamila Adeli, artistic director of BodhiBerlin asking independant curator Manray Hsu during a dialogue called: Can The Same Exhibition Happen Everywhere? in the framework of Rotterdam Dialogues: The Curators, March 7th 2009, Witte de With, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Félix Gonzàlez-Torres
Untitled (Perfect Lovers), 1991

Noumenon Conundrum

Genetologic Research 30/04/2009 13:24

Charles Avery
The Islanders: An Introduction, 2004 - ….

For the past four years, Scottish artist Avery has created texts, drawings, installations and sculptures which describe the topology and cosmology of an imaginary island, whose every feature embodies a philosophical proposition, problem or solution.

Untitled (World View), 2008

Avery’s mapping of the Island, to be completed over a projected ten-year period, can be interpreted as a meditation on making art and the impossibility of finding “truth”. The artist is characterised as a bounty-hunter, retrieving artifacts and documenting scenes from the subjective realm. Some of the works on show will focus in absurd detail, on particulars such as the sale of pickled eggs in the marketplace. Others present mysterious landscapes, such as the “Eternal Forest”, a place no one can ever reach but where a prized beast called the Noumenon is rumoured to live. A specimen of the Island’s wildlife will also be on show, having been realised in the form of a large taxidermy sculpture. These vivid and intricate works invite the viewer to recreate the Island in their own minds, and to use it as an arena for exploring philosophical conundrums and paradoxes.

Untitled (Stone-Mouse Display), 2008