Art Story is a shorter episode exploring an art work, an artist, an exhibition or even a concept through a proudly subjective narrative.
Narrated by: the host, Joana P. R. Neves
Have you ever been under the irresistible spell of an art work? Joana explores an aesthetic shock involving a tongue twister and a photography by Roni Horn in a busy art fair. Maybe you’ll jump into the flow, maybe you’ll be touched by Joana's devotion to the art, the feeling, and the inscrutable nature of certain contemporary art attractions.
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Key themes:
Roni Horn's work; conceptual art art; photography; art installation; art and language; identity and fluidity; androgyny, aesthetic shock
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00:00:00
Hello and welcome to a new episode of exhibition Esters
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with me, your host Joanna Pianevis.
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Today I bring you an episode which is part of the segment Art
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Stories. Art stories are shorter episodes
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where I focus on a specific, more narrative aspect of an
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artwork, of an aesthetic feeling, sometimes even a
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concept. So the last art story episode
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that we published was about the notion of contact.
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What is contact? Is it physical?
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Is it visual? Is it conceptual?
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And what is the difference between touching something,
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being touched by something? This time the perspective is
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completely different. I'm going to start with a
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question. Have you, dear listener, ever
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been under the spell? An unexpected state of complete
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and immediate devotion to a work of art.
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That's precisely the story I'm about to tell.
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I'm about to delve into this state of fascination and the
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pleasure of exploring, finally, a work that I've discovered, I
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think about 15 years ago or more that kept me completely under
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its spell until I decided to record this episode.
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I've been thinking about this for a while and I've been sort
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of fearing it because do you want to break the spell?
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Do you want to stay in that state?
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It turns out that even exploring that feeling made me look at
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other works. I think that sometimes there are
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certain works that just do not need to be investigated.
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They don't have that sort of conceptual depth.
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They have a different kind of depth.
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Oh, and the artist in question is an artist I really, really,
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really love. Rooney Horn, even herself, is a
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bit spellbound by whatever it is that she is to produce or is
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producing. That's how she explains the
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work. And weirdly, I found that that's
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exactly the effect that the work has on me.
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It's a very personal thing. And I think we have to be
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personal. Don't we need a subjective
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relationship with the work to have our own subjective
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relationship with the work? And here I will misquote one of
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my favorite films by Jim Jarmusch, Ghost Dog, where the
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main character says that well follows the book of the samurai.
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And in the Book of the Samurai it is said that you have to know
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the ways of the other samurai so that you are comfortable in your
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own ways. Having said all this, I think
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there is nothing else to do than to go on with the episode.
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So without further ado, let's do this.
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When my children were young, I recited a Portuguese tongue
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twister that goes like this with temp preguntua temp quinte,
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tempu tempu tempu tempu tempu, tempu, temp.
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As a child, I first loved the rhythm of this little text.
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The sounds T&P, which are the sounds of the main words temp,
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also appear. In other words, like Quint, they
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create a sort of drumming of the mouth.
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The sound is made with the tongue placed against the upper
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frontal teeth, whereas the sound is a release of air after the
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lips were slightly pressed together.
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Something happens in the throat too, but unlike the vowels, it
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doesn't feel like singing projecting sound with an open
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chest. It's quite the contrary.
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The consonants are the sounds that constricts the throat, like
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a drum is a tap on a tense surface, a stretched piece of
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leather resonating in a wooden contained space.
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Drumming jumps immediately into your body.
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You feel it. It's not only in your ears, but
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in your flesh, your muscles. A finger starts tapping
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mindlessly. Drumming with words is what this
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little Riddle was allowing me to do.
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It's what first caught my children's attention when they
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would ask me to say it again and again.
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So I repeated the repetition. I said it over and over, and
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within this recitation, the repeated sounds would be played
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again, tongue tapping against the teeth, the mouth expelling
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air, forming a little channel for it to flow and carry the
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next vowel. Being able to create such a
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satisfying rhythm with the mouth, a tongue, throat, teeth,
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your own body is quite incredible if you think about
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it. I've always been attracted to
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art that uses simple and accessible means to mesmerize
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us. The French poet Emmanuel Oka was
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puzzled by Anna Akhmatova saying that poets have a difficult task
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having to work with the same words that we use to invite
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someone over for tea. How about considering Ukaach
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suggested that it is a great thing to work with the same
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words that people use every day? Why, he asks, would we want our
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words to be the purest? But it's not only the economy or
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the handiness of a material or even a technique.
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For me, it's more about seeing and understanding the world
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around you in a completely different way.
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To wonder what other things are there around me that could be
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something else. One day I overheard the child
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ask their mother, can a dog be a cat?
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And for a moment I enjoyed that uncertainty, not finding any
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differences between them and that they could in fact be the
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same thing. Should you look at their size,
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at their vague morphology and their interspecies alignment
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with humans, their common language with us, how they
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accommodate their throats and mouths to meow or bark in a
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certain way. Apparently cats only meow to
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humans, or when they're kittens, they found a way to stretch the
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use of their instrument in order to communicate with us.
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Perhaps they don't see us as humans at all.
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Like the little girl, they don't see any difference between us.
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We're just big, clumsy, lazy cats.
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So even if you don't understand the meaning of the tongue
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twister, you can enjoy its music, appreciate the drumming
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of the words, the rhythm as we accelerate, the repetition
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carried by the sound and the meaning.
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In fact, this may be a tongue twister with all its TS and PS,
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but I also see it as a Riddle. You see, the meaning of this
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little text, which repeats the same word 10 times is also quite
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something. In English it would be something
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like this time asked time how much time time has.
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Time answered time that time has as much time as time has the
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idea of a time doubled. Imagine something we can only
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see as whole. But here there are two times
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chatting, one of them inquiring about their identity in terms of
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quantity. How much time does time have?
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Time is measured so you can wonder about the amount of time
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that time has, but the answer will always be time.
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The time asking the Question Time is how much time time has.
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But if time is doubled then this can't be true.
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If time is doubled, there is a possibility of the existence of
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different times with different amounts which you will only know
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when the time is over. Time will last for as long as it
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lasts. My children enquired about the
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meaning of it. I remember answering, but
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avoiding going as far as I did here.
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I wanted them to have the pleasure of discovering the
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hidden meanings by just giving away a side of it.
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That's the thing about this magical trick of doubling
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something so exquisitely unique and unmultipliable as a concept,
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but so numerous as a thing in itself.
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It's that the puzzle is there, available in your mind whenever
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you feel like diving into it. Although it may not even be the
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purpose, the purpose is multiple.
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It involves the concept, the tongue, words, myth.
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The Greek God of time comes to mind, Kronos, who ate his
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children for fear of one of them dethroning him.
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Only Zeus escaped to make Kronos throw up all of the other
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siblings, leading a war against his father and taking over the
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power. I was and remain fascinated.
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Fascination may be a way to create distance, or perhaps it's
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an inebriation of the mind and senses.
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Indeed, fascination used to mean bewitched, being under a spell.
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Something has control over you, which ultimately is the power of
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time. You will only know at the end
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about this power. Anyway, Speaking of fascination
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and the double, I'm reminded of a time when I was bewitched by
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an art piece. It doesn't happen to me often.
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I love falling for something slowly, feeling it slip under my
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skin. I love the slow mechanics of
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incorporating something, of noticing that something haunts
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you. But that day at Art Basel, of
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all places, I was completely and totally bewitched.
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Art Basel is an art fair established in the city of Basel
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in Switzerland. And at least at the time, it was
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the most prestigious one, with all the blue chip galleries and
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the other established or less so on their tippy toes.
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Not the best place to be spellbound.
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It's not that you don't discover beautiful things so that you
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cannot have an intense sense of connection.
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You do. But it's like being in a
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bookshop reading a few paragraphs of a great book.
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You need to take it with you, spend time with it to fully
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enjoy it. Our fears are not museums or art
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galleries. There are spaces where you start
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the conversation, confirm a suspicion and meet like minded
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people. All this to say that I was in
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the professional mode, walking in the aisles, stepping into the
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booths of the galleries, when two or three booths ahead, from
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afar, I spot the most exquisite shape I've ever seen in my life.
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I walked towards it as if pulled by an imaginary rope, with a
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sense of urgency, need, devotion.
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I was also, I must add, asking myself what is it?
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Because one of the strings of this attraction was the
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impossibility of knowing what that thing was and yet to be
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heart and soul possessed by it. It was almost sexual, something
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that suddenly grabs you whole and there is no other response
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than to follow. When I finally arrived at the
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booth, there it was for me. It was an elongated and sinuous
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soft thing with a visibly soft texture.
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I think it was dark blue or black.
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The artist was Roni Horn, whose work I knew.
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I had been progressively taken over by the work You Are the
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Weather, which was so banal that I took no notice of it.
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In the museum, Roni Horn created the sequence of images of the
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same woman's face. Her name is Margaret and she's
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immersed in water in each photograph.
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I can't quite put words on her expression.
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It would be a discarded image for someone else.
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Perhaps because the subject isn't particularly agreeable.
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A bit frowny even, and at times serious.
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She's always looking straight at the photographer.
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I remember walking out of the exhibition thinking of those
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photographs lined up on the wall and the title remaining like one
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of those little clouds, finger after a storm, when the sky is
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blue again. It was absurd.
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Why, after seeing so much art, was I fixated on what seemed
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like discarded projects of a photography student?
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You are the weather. Beautiful notion.
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And in fact, the stupefying thing about this series, which
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Horn continued, is that the minute changes of the face, the
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weather, the water, the light, I'm never a grand statement, nor
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a specific, easily identifiable state.
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No seduction, No Fear, no rage, no happiness.
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The images were there precisely because we are the weather.
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I am the weather. You listening are the weather.
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We are all the weather, asking each other what is the weather?
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What is the state of being? How long am I to be in it?
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Weather asked whether who the weather is, Whether replied to
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whether that the weather is who the weather is.
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Horne took these images in Iceland in 1994, where she fell
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in love with the landscape. Then there is the water, a
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fascination for Horn, which is also ever changing and always
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the same. In fact, in quite a few
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pictures, Margaret is wet, her hair pulled back as you do when
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you come out of the sea, and she has droplets of water on her
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face. Sometimes her eyelashes stick
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together, still damp, and her skin has that thick, compact
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texture it acquires when it's cold outside.
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And the body has been in that other element.
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In the video, Margaret says that the work quote uses her face as
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a place UN quote. Horn first went to Iceland in
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the 70s when she was 19 years old.
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There is something about it that overtook her.
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It's the only place where she goes just for the sake of going.
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In 1982, she got permission to stay in the lighthouse off the
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southern coast, and she moved in for weeks, watching the weather,
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the birds, the puffins. For Horn, I imagine it was a
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complete immersion in a place that isn't hers, like the city
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you were born in can be. Margaret says that they stayed
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together for a long while there. Horn describes it as an almost
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wordless time, which was important, Margaret says,
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because it's created trust in that space of trust, and you
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trust someone as you trust water, because you observed it.
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You know the limits and the easiness of its body.
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You release something of yourself when you're not
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formulated, sprawling on the pin, as TS Eliot describes being
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defined by someone else. The photographs shown in a
00:16:33
single line also have an erotic component.
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The person is looking straight at the camera, as per the
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artist's instructions, so she's looking straight at us, the
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viewers. Her expression is piercing and
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there isn't a single smile. There is so much trust that
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there is no need to draw us in. It's in a way a triumph of
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reciprocity over the uncritical recording of the machine at Art
00:17:04
Basel. There was no gaze, no face, no
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water. The work was also a photograph,
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but very different from You Are the Weather.
00:17:14
I looked at the label Untitled and then a number.
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Not much help. It was a thing covered with
00:17:21
hair. In fact, for a short time it
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seemed like a long haired head from the back, but the hair,
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closer now, was short and it ran down the neck and below.
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The shape of the head and neck was too long, too thin, the
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place where it curved eerie and unnatural.
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I suddenly realized that I was looking at the back of a bird's
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head and neck as I'd never seen them before.
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How did she photograph birds as if they were in a professional
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photography shoot? Doesn't matter.
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My mind quickly went back to that vision of a feathery
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phallus, that shape where every delicate detail showed the logic
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of a morphology and the intrinsic design of its nature
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in its singularity and its difference, and made complete
00:18:12
sense. What didn't make sense was the
00:18:15
compulsive attraction. There were moments, though,
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where I paused to contemplate the humor of the work.
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A bird looking at the horizon, us looking at the back of the
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bird's neck in total abandonment.
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Funnier. Even.
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In all of photography history that I know of, no one thought
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of this angle, this exquisite moment of personification, not
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turning bird into a person, but seeing the person also as a
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bird. That is, seeing the person as a
00:18:50
person, a being, regardless of gender, of type, archetype, or
00:18:55
any other marker of a group. Roni Horn was fascinated at a
00:19:00
young age by the notion of androgyny, and early on decided
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that her gender was no one's business.
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There is another work of hers whose title is This Is Me, This
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Is You, which shows a great amount of snapshots of herself
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across the years with different types of hair, different
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glasses, angles where it's not clear if the photos are of the
00:19:23
same person or not. They were edited and printed to
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be the same size regardless of all the difference they bear.
00:19:35
There is another thing to say about My Sexy Untitled.
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Each work is a diptych that is 2 photographs of the same bird,
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most times at a slightly different angle. 2 is where
00:19:47
different starts, says Ronnie Horn, and many of her works are
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doubled. Her photo Dead Owl shows a white
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owl on a rock twice, or two different owls on two different
00:20:00
rocks. How to know?
00:20:02
The uncanny act of looking from one to the other tells you as
00:20:06
much about what you see as what you don't see.
00:20:10
Sometimes I think that Horn is talking about herself, about the
00:20:14
fact that attraction for someone like her, often mistaken for a
00:20:18
man, is whatever goes on between the cracks, what happens between
00:20:22
male and female, between a soft small man and a strong,
00:20:26
bedazzled female rugby player. I came across a photo of her in
00:20:30
West Magazine. In the first page of the article
00:20:34
it says Art and Design, Ronny Horn and then the text quote Who
00:20:41
is Rooney Horn? For years the artist has been
00:20:44
asking that very question herself, exploring notions of
00:20:48
perception and identity through sculptures of pure gold,
00:20:51
photographs of taxidermied bird heads, and installations of
00:20:55
melted glaciers. By Julie Belkov November 1st,
00:21:00
2009 Next to it is a photo of Horn in a balcony somewhere in
00:21:06
New York, pouring herself a glass of wine, sat beside a
00:21:09
table on which you can see a lone mobile phone.
00:21:13
She is absorbed in her task but is wearing different shoes.
00:21:17
A black sandal with a black sock on the right foot and the brown
00:21:21
trainer with a black sock on the other blue jeans, a Navy blazer
00:21:26
topless underneath one of her breasts is exposed, placing the
00:21:30
punctum of the photo as Roland Bart has called the exact spot
00:21:34
on a photo where your eye is drawn on its pink nipple.
00:21:38
However, Horn has such a magnetic personality that I'm
00:21:42
not sure if the picture is not about the whole thing being a
00:21:45
punctum. Horn falls on the nerve of
00:21:48
attraction with such subtlety that this photo seems to say you
00:21:53
didn't expect such a pretty pair of tits, did you?
00:21:56
While the rest of the body is vaguely male, vaguely there, No
00:22:00
fashion statement, no seduction, no affirmative Butch attitude
00:22:04
quote Rooney, Horn's subtle but commanding art demands A focused
00:22:10
eye to be seen for what it is. The same can be said for Horn
00:22:14
herself. With the exception of her eyes,
00:22:18
which are the brilliant blue of a far off sea, she's almost
00:22:21
devoid of colour. Her salt and pepper hair is
00:22:25
shown so short as to blend with her pale face.
00:22:28
Her mannish black shirt and jeans adds to the effect,
00:22:32
further deflecting snap judgements.
00:22:35
A quick glance at Horn on the street or in the restaurant
00:22:38
would yield few conclusive clues to her gender, so complete is
00:22:42
her androgyny. She must be looked at UN quote.
00:22:48
When you listen to her talk, her discourse is precise, neither to
00:22:52
familiar nor to conceptual, honest, clear.
00:22:57
She makes me think of another artist I love, Douglas Hubler,
00:23:01
an understated American man, a New York artist who became a
00:23:05
California professor. He was also fascinated with the
00:23:09
way we perceive things, how we are in his words, percipients.
00:23:13
My favorite work of his is Location P17.
00:23:17
Turin, Italy from 1973 is the driest work.
00:23:22
Four photos and two documents framed. 2 photos of a man and
00:23:29
two photos of a place Turin, presumably a map and a text.
00:23:34
The text explains that on March 17th, 1973, he chose a place
00:23:40
some distance away from where he was in Turin because he wanted
00:23:44
to go to a place where he'd never been and would never be
00:23:47
again. He went there, took a photo, and
00:23:50
when he developed it back in America, he, quote, discovered
00:23:55
that at the instant that the photograph was made, a man was
00:24:00
looking directly at the artist, and that man bears a strong
00:24:04
resemblance to the artist, at least more so than most everyone
00:24:09
else in the world. UN quote.
00:24:12
This is what is written on the paper of the artwork.
00:24:16
Why do I find this work so hilarious?
00:24:20
Because as soon as you read the text, you look at the photo and
00:24:23
immediately feel your eyes telling your brain where to look
00:24:27
to find a resemblance. In fact, Hubler reminds me that
00:24:32
one of the most striking aspects of our relation to other
00:24:36
people's face is to point out similarities between them and
00:24:40
someone else. Don't you think that so and so
00:24:43
looks like so and so? They're the spitting image of
00:24:47
each other. Why, I wonder, are we so
00:24:50
interested in looking for sameness?
00:24:52
Why are we not looking for water?
00:24:54
Why are we not like the weather? Hubler's work is a sleight of
00:24:58
hand done with earnestness. He's an honest trickster,
00:25:02
leading you to your own conceptual tics, your obtuse
00:25:06
desire for order and belief. One of his photography works
00:25:10
from 1969 is part of a series where he cut up a piece of time
00:25:15
and handed it to us as an idea. He took 15 photos from the same
00:25:21
angle a group of ducks in Central Park at a one minute
00:25:25
interval from each other. The photographs are in black and
00:25:29
white with the diagonal line across which is a feature of the
00:25:33
park along which the ducks go about their life.
00:25:37
There is a catch though, the text, which is always unlike
00:25:40
Horn, whose words are contained in the title, the dynamic
00:25:44
element of the work says after describing the process.
00:25:48
Quote 15 photographs presented in no particular order, UN
00:25:53
quote. The birds here at the Punctum.
00:25:56
As with Horns, Dead Owl or Untitled, their lives happen out
00:26:01
of frame even when captured by the camera.
00:26:04
Their difference is not caught by the camera and the logic of
00:26:08
their actions is not revealed by the disturbed sequence.
00:26:11
They move like Horn in Iceland, not because they have to, but
00:26:17
because they do. Exhibitionist is an independent
00:26:26
podcast created and hosted by me, Joanna Pierre Nevers.
00:26:31
We have episodes every two weeks and this season, Season 3, is a
00:26:36
bit of a turning point. We have 5 new episode types,
00:26:40
from more experimental art travel logs or art stories to
00:26:45
conversational formats about solo exhibitions with people who
00:26:50
are not part of the industry. Because we're all both actors
00:26:54
and spectators of art and life. If you're new here, you have a
00:27:00
whole catalog of episodes to enjoy this cover them at your
00:27:04
own pace.