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2010

"(...)Then he was born of a cow, which is nicer, then of a giant lizard
from New Guinea, big as a donkey, then he was born for the second
time of a woman, and in the course of that was mindful of the future,
it was women after all whom he knew the best and with whom he
would be most at ease later, and now he was already looking at
that breast so soft and full, while making the little comparative
judgments which his already considerable experience permitted."
Henri Michaux, Selected Writings, New Directions Publishing, New York, 1968, page 73. [translation Richard Ellmann]


Being the one who made me, it occurred to me that my mother was indirectly the origin of my own production. As the allegorical artist behind the artist I am, my work is consequently her doing. The first Metragram photography I therefore took in my mother's salon. As an architect she built this house for her family, and I decided to inscribe my own practice into hers, and being her work, make her enter mine.
I hereby send my reader to Alain Jouffroy's Manifeste De La Poésie Vécue (L棚nfini / Gallimard Publishers, 1994). Michel Leiris will speak of po駸ie v駻idique in similar terms in a text about Paul Eluard. (Michel Leiris, Bris馥s, Folio essais, Gallimard Publishers, 1992, page 197. Originale publication in 1966)



"Origin here means that from and by which something is what it is and as it is. What something is, as it is,
we call its essence or nature. The origin of something is the source of its nature. The question concerning the
origin of the work of art asks about the source of its nature. On the usual view, the work arises out of and by
means of the activity of the artist. But by what and whence is the artist what he is? By the work; for to say that
the work does credit to the master means that it is the work that first lets the artist emerge as a master of his art.
The artist is the origin of the work. The work is the origin of the artist. Neither is without the other. Nevertheless,
neither is the sole support of the other. In themselves and in their interrelations artist and work are each of them
by virtue of a third thing which is prior to both, namely that which also gives artist and work of art their names -- art."
Martin Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, in Basic Writings, Harper, San Francisco, 1977, page 149.

Five years after this first image was taken, I returned. In the arts, vanitas is a type of symbolic still life painting commonly executed by Northern European painters in Flanders and the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The term vanitas itself refers to the arts, learning and time. The word is Latin, meaning "emptiness" and loosely translated corresponds to the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of vanity.
I noted that Schumann's Vanitas vanitatum (vanity of vanities) is adjunct of Mit Humor.

Thus this calligraphic intervention related to the Anthropometries of Yves Klein, the Logograms of Christian Dotremont and the Dactylograms of Piero Manzoni, which I have labelled a Metragram and that consists of inscribing on the hypogastrium (womb) of a woman with monochromic black ink -- tabula rasa, pinakis agraphos. A Metragram is a symbolic (perhaps cathartic) inking with a calligraphy brush of the origin of the world.
For a glimpse at other images from the Metragram series, visit this webpage.

This small exhibit of several images from the Metragram series, I titled after James McNeill Whistler's Arrangement in Grey and Black; a ready made connection of a sort:

"To represent someone or even something has now become an endeavour as
complex and as problematic as an asymptote, with consequences for certainty and
decidability as fraught with difficulties as can be imagined".
Edward Said, Representing the colonised: Anthropology's Interlocutors', Critical Inquiry, Winter 1989, v.15, no. 2, page 206.

She desired to remain anonymous, but was both intrigued and pleased to contribute to this photographic series.
Her mother stand in the next room, anxious about leaving her daughter alone, but a family friend had introduced us and she had agreed to leave us. Her main worry was that the camera I used might be allowing me to take x-ray photography which would allow me to see under her child clothes. In effect, to her this might give me a understandable reason to be wanting to do such a shooting. But her daughter disagreed, and was intrigued by a form of unknown entering the household, and happy to be exchanging with a stranger however curious my approach was.

Thus this calligraphic intervention related to the Anthropometries of Yves Klein, the Logograms of Christian Dotremont and the Dactylograms of Piero Manzoni, which I have labelled a Metragram and that consists of inscribing on the hypogastrium (womb) of a woman with monochromic black ink -- tabula rasa, pinakis agraphos. A Metragram is a symbolic (perhaps cathartic) inking with a calligraphy brush of the origin of the world.
For a glimpse at other images from the Metragram series, visit this webpage.

This artist talk is part of a larger series of discussions which should be considered storytelling objects. It used a number of earlier works and interventions -some unfinished or never even shown- as the base for a display of ideas and ruminations believed to be more meaningfully conveyed through stories. Maybe here the travelling contemporary artist is in some way similar to the Kamishibai of Japan who, between the two world wars, was telling from the back of his bike different stories based on a number of picture cards. We can also think of the bakhshi or Ashug of central Asia or the itinerant storytellers of Africa (mikilist of the Congos, Griots of Mali, bards, ashiks, jyrau,...) who go from one village to the next, unfolding a story.

Starting from concrete examples (i.e. "Abreaction" intervention / Shanghai-2004, "A nos morts" intervention / Senegal-2005, or "Off the record" curating project / Tokyo-2006...) the talk attempted to show how the use of the "broader public space" -meaning the foreign public space- for artistic interventions pondering such ideas as statelessness or diasporism, can offer an appropriate catalyst for engaging with issues of today.

Talk invited by Inder Salim.

"About this room, which was plunged in utter darkness,
I knew everything, I had entered into it, I bore it within me,
I made it live, with a life that is not life, but which is
stronger than life, and which no force in the world vanquish".
Maurice Blanchot, L'arrêt de mort, Gallimard, Coll. L'Imaginaire, 1948, page 124.

Upon entering the ashram of Tagore's family, on the campus of Visva Bharati University in Santiniketan, across from the Brahma Mandir (Prayer Hall) constructed by Ravindranath Tagore in 1891 (also known as Upasana Griha), is a greenhouse of similar size. Oddly, it is left abandoned, while it seems evident that the lookalike buildings were made to dialogue: one is a rectangular glasshouse pavilion while the other is a rectangular greenhouse of similar proportions intricately covered with plants; it's windows resembling vegetation stained-glass.

Thus this calligraphic intervention related to the Anthropometries of Yves Klein, the Logograms of Christian Dotremont and the Dactylograms of Piero Manzoni, which I have labelled a Metragram and that consists of inscribing on the hypogastrium (womb) of a woman with monochromic black ink -- tabula rasa, pinakis agraphos. A Metragram is a symbolic (perhaps cathartic) inking with a calligraphy brush of the origin of the world.
For a glimpse at other images from the Metragram series, visit this webpage.

The ashram of Kankalitala is one of the fifty-one Shakti Peethas sprinkled throughout the Indian subcontinent on the banks of Kopai River, believed to be the last step on the pilgrimage, where the waist (or kankal in Bengali) of Sati (or Parvati, her reincarnation) fell.

The Shakti Peethas (holy places of cosmic power) are places of worship consecrated to the goddess Sati (or Dakshayani, or Druga, or Parvati depending on form she is in), the female principal of Hinduism and the main deity of the Shakta sect or Shaktism. An aspect of Devi, Dākshāyani is the first consort of Shiva, second being Parvati, her reincarnation. In Hindu Mythology, Sati plays the role of luring Shiva from ascetic isolation into creative participation in the world.
In Hindu mythology, Sati was the daughter of Daksha, son of the Hindu creator god Brahma. Sati was in love with Shiva, god of destruction, but her father forbade her to have anything to do with him. Her father's objections eventually led Sati to her death. To find a husband for his daughter, Daksha held a gathering of the gods. Sati was to throw a bouquet of flowers into the air and marry the one who caught it. The only god not invited was Shiva. However, Sati prayed to Shiva, who appeared at the gathering and caught the flowers. Enraged, Daksha had to permit the two to marry. After Sati's wedding, her father planned a ceremony involving a sacrifice, and again he invited all the gods except Shiva. Unable to persuade her father to invite her husband, Sati threw herself into the sacrificial fire and burned to death. Shiva, overcome by grief, took Sati's body from the flames and began to dance with it. Here the myth splits in two options: according to some traditions, it is believed that an angry Shiva performed the fearsome and awe-inspiring Tāndava dance with Sati's charred body on his shoulders. During this dance, Sati's body came apart and the pieces fell at different places on earth. According to another version, Shiva placed Sati's body on his shoulder and ran about the world, crazed with grief. The Gods called upon Lord Vishnu to return Shiva to sanity. Vishnu used his Sudarshana Chakram to dismember Sati's lifeless body, following which Shiva regained his equanimity. Both versions state that Sati's body was thus dismembered into 51 pieces which fell on earth at various places.

Appear in this image Mukul Ghatterjaa, a sadhu (wandering monk) who was passing by on that day since he is a vagrant ascetic. As I explain him what a metragram was about, he simply said: "Shiva didn't created man, man created Shiva".

Thus this calligraphic intervention related to the Anthropometries of Yves Klein, the Logograms of Christian Dotremont and the Dactylograms of Piero Manzoni, which I have labelled a Metragram and that consists of inscribing on the hypogastrium (womb) of a woman with monochromic black ink -- tabula rasa, pinakis agraphos. A Metragram is a symbolic (perhaps cathartic) inking with a calligraphy brush of the origin of the world.
For a glimpse at other images from the Metragram series, visit this webpage.

(...) "I shall go to where your boat is moored,
Death, Death, to the sea where the wind rolls
Darkness towards me from infinity.
I may see black clouds massing in the far
North-east corner of the sky; fiery snakes
Of lightning may rear up with their hoods raised,
But I shall not flinch in unfounded fear -
I shall pass silently, unswervingly
Across that red storm-sea, Death, Death.".
Rabindranath Tagore, Maran-milan (Death-wedding - 1902), Penguin Books India, 1995, page 69. (translation William Radice)

Thus this calligraphic intervention related to the Anthropometries of Yves Klein, the Logograms of Christian Dotremont and the Dactylograms of Piero Manzoni, which I have labelled a Metragram and that consists of inscribing on the hypogastrium (womb) of a woman with monochromic black ink -- tabula rasa, pinakis agraphos. A Metragram is a symbolic (perhaps cathartic) inking with a calligraphy brush of the origin of the world.
For a glimpse at other images from the Metragram series, visit this webpage.

Mi‘rajiyya, the Night Journey - الإسراء والمعراج - blue chalk mural installation (8 m x 4 m), 2010

"Glory to (Allah) Who did take His servant for a Journey by night from the Sacred Mosque to the farthest Mosque, whose precincts We did bless,- in order that We might show him some of Our Signs: for He is the One Who heareth and seeth (all things)."
Qur'an, Sura Al-Isra : the Night Journey - Sura Bani Isra'il

In Islamic tradition, the Night Journey (Isra and Mi'rāj) describe the journey Muhammad took in one night, around the year 621, which took him from Mecca to Jerusalem, then paradise and hell. It celebrates the prophet's ascent into the Heavens, on the back of a Buraq, a celestial beast whose speed is according to its sight, his legs reaching wherever its eyes can see. The story reminds inevitably of Dante's Divine Comedy.

Mi'rajiyya (or The Treatise on Ascension) refers to a form of Muslim Religious Poetry which addresses Mi'rāj. The work presented here is a contemporary calligraphic interpretation rendered in blue chalk and evokes the passage by the "Farthest Mosque" on Temple Mount, often mentioned in the medias these days. The piece was influenced by the reading of Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Journey to the End of the Night, and ponders on the existentialist thoughts developing in a traveller's mind.

Exonymie - 2000 re-assembled borrowed books & MDF custom made bookcase (9 m x 1,9 m x 40 cm), 2010

One of the first universities to include an art faculty in Western Europe, the University of Louvain was founded in 1425 with the support a papal bull issued by Pope Martin V (who himself emerged after a split since his election effectively ended the Western Schism) as a Studium Generale. This university was institutionally independent of the local ecclesiastical hierarchy. Until the independence of Belgium in 1831, this ancient university was conducting its instruction in Latin. In 1971, following the rise of the linguistic divide and communitarianism between the French-speaking and the Dutch-speaking people, the University of Louvain was split into two autonomous entities: the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL) which would remain on the premises in Flanders and the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL) which would move to a nearby purpose built city (Louvain-la-Neuve).
In 1972, following this separation, the united Christian Social Party was ultimately split as well forming the Parti social chrétien and the Christelijke Volkspartij. In consequence of these divisions the absurd and Borgesian partition of more than one million books from the Central Library of the Universiteit van het hertogdom Brabant, the University of Louvain started. The collection was split up "equitably" with even numbered books going to the French-speaking UCL and odd numbered books going to the Dutch-speaking KUL.

The installation presented here, entitled Exonymie, consists in the reconstruction of a shelf from the original library. This shelf was then re-stocked by reuniting 1000 books from each library, bringing together the previously separated even and odd volumes. These 2000 books represent a re-assembly bringing side by side books that hadn't touch each other for more than 40 years; the oval stickers on their spines still reflecting the original call number classification.
The exhibition included a workshop made in collaboration with Palestinian artist Nida Sinnokrot on the question of communitarianism in Belgium and the notion of border. Our guests were: Véronique Caye, Jean-Christophe Lanquetin, Jérémy Tomczak, Nina Støttrup Larsen, Emmanuel Lambion and Pathy Tshindele. Lectures by Herwig Lerouge, Hendrik Pinxten (vooruitgroup) and Louis Van Hove were also proposed.

While the project was part of the off program of the Brussels art Fair, the Belgian government was dissolve for the second time during the week of the workshop (continuing the 2007-2008 Belgian political crisis) with the prime minister resigning over the ever stronger separatist movements shaking the country. My thanks to Catherine Henkinet, Laurent Courtens, Herwig Lerouge, Hendrik Pinxten, Louis Van Hove, Dirk Aerts, Mel Collier, Marc Derez, Jean Germain, Erna Mannaerts, Charles-Henri Nyns, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the Université catholique de Louvain.

more information on the Bozar website.

The storytelling objects attempt is part of a larger series of lectures which uses a number of earlier works and interventions -some unfinished or never even shown- as the base for a display of ideas and ruminations believed to be more meaningfully conveyed through stories.

For instance I introduced The Madagascar Plan, a verbal monument using the Malagasy oral tradition of kabary. The work was done in 2007 in the village of Isorana, region of High Matsiatra, in the Fianarantsoa province of Madagascar. From 1938 onward, before opting for their extermination, Nazi Germany seriously considered and nearly carried a plan to forcibly relocate the European Jewish population to the African island. In his Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East, Heinrich Himmler declared: "I hope that the concept of Jews will be completely extinguished through the possibility of a large emigration of all Jews to Africa or some other colony." (Christopher R. Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution, University of Nebraska Press, 2004.)

http://www.transcri.be/2007AN.html#110

The 'traveling artist' is here in some way similar to the Kamishibai of Japan who, between the two World Wars, was telling from the back of his bike different stories based on a number of picture cards.
I introduced several recent works and site specific installations in Senegal, Costa-Rica, Japan, Iran, Madagascar and Egypt.

Curated by Antonia Macaja for galerija miroslav kraljevic (www.g-mk.hr)

The Madagascar Plan - a verbal monument, 2007 - http://www.transcri.be/2007AN.html#110

Artists: Vahram Aghasyan, Ben Cain, Alex Cecchetti, Haris Epaminonda, Zachary Formwalt, Tina Gverovic, Eric Van Hove, Gregor Neuerer, Lisl Ponger, Olivia Plender, Marinella Senatore, Guido van der Werve
Curated by Antonia Majaca & Ivana Bago (Institute for Duration, Location and Variables - DeLVe)

The exhibition Neither From, Nor Towards (its title taken from Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot) takes place in the Zagreb Art Pavillion, built a result of negotiations with Croatian cultural actors to participate at the 1898 Budapest Millenium Exhibition, celebrating the thousandth 'anniversary' of the Hungarian nation in the historical context of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The Budapest Millenium Exhibition, similarly to the 1924 Great Empire Exhibition in London, was conceived following the model of the then popular World Fairs, events that only seemingly included a more 'horizontal' and democratic constellation - not showcasing the geographies of empires with their colonies and dominions but, instead, the 'world as a whole'.

Read more about this on e-flux: http://e-flux.com/shows/view/8263

"To represent someone or even something has now become an endeavour as
complex and as problematic as an asymptote, with consequences for certainty and
decidability as fraught with difficulties as can be imagined".
Edward Said, Representing the colonised: Anthropology's Interlocutors', Critical Inquiry, Winter 1989, v.15, no. 2, page 206.


Thus this calligraphic intervention related to the Anthropometries of Yves Klein, the Logograms of Christian Dotremont and the Dactylograms of Piero Manzoni, which I have labelled a Metragram and that consists of inscribing on the hypogastrium (womb) of a woman with monochromic black ink -- tabula rasa, pinakis agraphos. A Metragram is a symbolic (perhaps cathartic) inking with a calligraphy brush of the origin of the world.
For a glimpse at other images from the Metragram series, visit this webpage.