“What does art want? Everything.
What can art do? Nothing.
What does art do? Something.”- Jean-Luc Godard
In the context of an art exhibition in Jerusalem, this quote by Godard provokes a sense of disquiet. We are caught between the desire for everything and the possibility of nothing – while having to take into account both politics and the specific content with which this question is charged here. Disquiet is also, to a certain degree, the cogito that inhabits me: I am neither an art specialist nor an art historian qualified to judge works of art, and I am certainly not an artist. I am concerned because I do not truly believe in the possibility of sharing one’s thoughts, of entering into dialogue, about that which is called art. I am haunted by the idea of repetition, yet we are destined to perpetuate this repetition. I thus dream of a dialogue capable of enfolding that which repeats itself, to the point where another modality will emerge. In this sense, you could say that I am somewhat of a dreamer.
The philosopher is expected to engage in dialogue, rather than demonstrate expertise concerning art; he is expected to provide some form of insight concerning the contemporary “art discourse,” to speak of the dilemmas and debates that fuel the interaction between the space of art and that of philosophical reflection.
Your exhibition examines several questions. The question of place, of the Jerusalem exhibition site – which attempts to remain neutral, or rather less charged with history, with the city’s symbolic dimension. The question of art’s power, or ability to do something, which was defined above using Godard’s motto and succinctly answered by “nothing”: art does, finally, do something, yet its power is no-thing, it serves nothing. Action, if it occurs, may only take place against a background of nothingness. That is, there is a certain relationship between the ability to do “no-thing” and the “doing” of something. This question is thus inseparable from the following point, which concerns multiplicity and diversity in the age of globalization; something akin to the inevitable motion of the world itself, to the “world’s becoming world” – which is radically confronted with the question of art’s power. Globalization shall thus serve as a synonym par excellence for the now, for the world in which we live today. Faced with globalization, the question of art’s power and of this power’s limits is particularly urgent, no less than the question of contemporary art’s diversity and conceptual heterogeneity. Can the idea of multiplicity be engaged in a struggle “against” the standardization of the contemporary world, while globalization itself produces and promotes multiplicity? And if we have no choice other than to react and act against the world’s standardization by means of multiplicity, one must inquire into the status and influence of the very possibility of reacting. What stance can action become possible from? And can art react and act in response to a given dictate? Is such a dictate indeed inevitable? An additional consideration is that of context. According to you, art must “take into account the cultural and sociopolitical context”; are you referring here to an Israeli or to an international context? Can the two contexts be separated? Is there indeed a specific Israeli context that is different from the so-called “global” one? Do we artists and philosophers have any ability to take things into our own hands, and to make an impact on the “work of the world”? One may easily imagine the context overwhelming the work of art, the “making” of art. Conjuring up such a context limits the creator and thwarts the work of art – rendering action impossible. Yet resisting the ambushes of standardization is itself a form of action! Such action depends on the artwork’s “singularity,” on its inventive power vis-à-vis the growing mass character and uniformity of our society.
Bernard Blistène: These are undoubtedly central questions, and you raised them in the order in which we would like to answer them: the question of place, of Jerusalem and Israel; the central question – that of art’s power – which we have tied to Goddard’s reflection; multiplicity and globalization, in terms of the ability of invention to face the dictates imposed by various orders and the world’s own thrust to preserve itself, to persevere; the world’s mobility; and finally, the influence of the context in question. Jerusalem and Israel, capitalism and the market, globalization and standardization – these are some of the points around which we may develop our discussion.
I would add something that has to do with Jerusalem – the city we were invited to exhibit in, and which we did not choose ourselves. If the offer had come from Tel Aviv, our task might have been easier. Yet within this charged city, where the past plays a crucial role, we have intentionally chosen as our exhibition site a new building that has no history. The idea was to exhibit in an ephemeral, temporary, transitional site. In the Talpiyot neighborhood, we found a building that was still under construction, and whose ground floor remains unfinished; we substituted this building for an earlier plan, which involved importing the lightweight, controversial structure planned by French architects Lacaton and Vassal for Documenta 12 in Kassel. We had initially thought of this gigantic hothouse as an exhibition “site” that would stand out in contrast to the city of Jerusalem’s dictates.
Up until four years ago, I had never visited Israel. I arrived here for the first time at Ami’s request. Naturally, my attitude was shaped by clichés: Tel Aviv, the rectangular Bauhaus city; Jerusalem, the ancient city of stones and walls – the Western Wall as well as the one separating East from West. This is how we came up with the initial idea of a temporary, transitional structure. The first site we considered was the plaza leading up to the old Jerusalem-Jaffa railroad station. For various reasons, however, this option proved impossible. Such attempts to search for other spaces, ones in which art is not habitually displayed, partake of a utopian strategy in both the geographical and political context of art.
What is at stake here, then, is the undoing of numerous dichotomies, in addition to that of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Not only because Jerusalem is a place where “things are happening, including an art scene,” but above all because Jerusalem itself is a site of multiplicity. One may say that it is the place where the dichotomy is undergoing a process of “de-dichotomization.” Jerusalem is a divided city that has been “united,” a site of so-called unification. In order to realize this, one must first recognize that Jerusalem has no clear geographical definition. The line separating East from West is at once fictional and real. It is contested on both sides, vacillating between numerous and different identities. Some mark it as running here, others mark it as running elsewhere; others still do not see it all, while the rest see nothing but this line.
Moreover, the city is inhabited by no less than three approaches to divinity – three different, yet radically entangled stances that incessantly define themselves one in relation to the other: the Western Wall is located below the Dome of the Rock, while the Via Dolorosa winds its way between the two. This geographical layout parallels the relations between the three monotheistic religions, and the fact that one cannot approach one without running across the other two. All this leads to a profound linguistic ambiguity, which exists in Jerusalem alone. No one, single language is ever spoken in this city; every language is pervaded by a multiplicity of living or dead languages. Jerusalem is thus the place where this global concert is perpetually inflected by languages that are no longer spoken, languages that bear testimony to an immemorial past and to a possible future. All this inevitably touches upon the Messianic question, which exceeds the scope of this discussion; yet this question pervades every discussion of the city – rendering its decisive circumscription virtually impossible, for it is always marked by means of something other than a simple trace. This is the sense in which I understand what you are saying about a utopia.
There is also of course the issue of the polarity between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem – both their historical differences and the countless other differences between various “spaces” and “sites.” You’ve mentioned architecture, and we could also add other “clichés”: religion in Jerusalem versus secularism in Tel Aviv; transcendence in Jerusalem, immanence in Tel Aviv; studiousness in Jerusalem – hedonism in Tel Aviv; the mountain on one side and the sea on the other. Yet what truly distinguishes them is what remains invisible – that is, their profound homology. What I am saying may make more than one person uncomfortable, yet it seems to me that Jerusalem and Tel Aviv differ from one another only when we consider each of these sites onto themselves, as distinct from one another. I am not saying that “Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are the same thing,” but that the moment you think of Tel Aviv, you succumb to the unexpected resurgence of a certain kind of Jerusalem, and vice versa.
For us, this exhibition site – in addition to its geographical location in West Jerusalem – embodies a space of industriousness rather than of industry, and as such is inherently a kind of “interstice,” a place in the process of becoming. We were intrigued by the architecture of this unraveled site, which defines itself as a commercial center. Yet due to its location in Jerusalem, it has nevertheless been masked by a faux-stone disguise, obeying the myth of the city’s architectural history; at the same time, this site stands out in contrast to standard commercial spaces worldwide, especially since half of it was never completed. This is how we ended up with the 4,000-square-meter space in which we are holding the exhibition.
The building’s stone coating is undoubtedly fake, yet its very artificiality raises the question of the “real”: was there ever a moment during which the city was identical to itself, in which it was itself, the “original” Jerusalem? This question may serve to reveal the existence of a fantasy, and lead to a discussion of what is “real” stone and of what “real” site existed before what, before whom, before which community. What form of contamination or damage are we speaking of? I am not so sure I would like to be transported to this lost Jerusalem. We are in danger here of succumbing to a form of non-religious sacralization, to the magic pull of “authentic” stone. The real and the false, after all, mix and interpenetrate one another, in Jerusalem no less than in Tel Aviv. The “return” to Jerusalem thus also contains an inverse movement – a certain kind of opening not towards the past or towards nostalgia, but rather towards the future. This movement involves a Messianic longing, which may be understood as a privileging of what is unfinished, of change. Paradoxically, it is the blocked horizon – the dead end we are currently facing, as painful and exhausting as it may be – that conditions the future and may also enable future artmaking.
Even if the stones are “real,” one must pay attention to the prevalent mode of construction: the buildings are made of concrete, and are later covered with a stone coating. We are acting within a stage set, in which every single building is part of an artificial, “theatrical” façade.
There is a fundamental contrast between the exhibition building’s exterior, which is coated in real-fake stones, and between the interior, which due to budgetary constraints has remained in its crude state, like an unrealized dream. It thus becomes a “statement” that may be read in the context of one of the central artistic debates that have been ongoing since the 1960s – the discourse concerning the “white cube,” a seemingly ideal space in which the artwork is supposedly realized in the purest manner. The fact that the “space of action” we have chosen remains unrealized obviously appealed to us.
This is the moment to raise a question concerning the notion of “desubjectivization,” which is so dear to you. I cannot remain indifferent to this term, which is so highly charged with the history of philosophy. You seem to relate this “threatening” process – which is characteristic of modernity –to a “loss of identity,” and to a society that functions as a “desubjectivization” machine. Where does this fear stem from?
The term “desubjectivization” is perhaps not the right one in this context. I invoked it in order to point to a syndrome, or process, which is centered upon the transformation of the individual into a “mechanism” in order to ensure the proper functioning of the social system. The individual is imprisoned within the limits of his function. What is at work here is a superior power that replaces any previous forms of hierarchical power, and annuls the value of things.
The question of subjectivity is indeed central to various contemporary art practices, especially over the past 15 years. From a historical perspective, it has resurfaced together with the process of globalization.
The 1970s were characterized by a desire to annihilate the subject, while today the pendulum has swung towards a rediscovery of the value of “subjectivity.” Our cultural horizons are being expanded through this reexamination of the individual’s place in the world.
The history of art, with its restrictive parameters, spoke in terms that left little room for the subject. An attempt has since been made to cope with this problem by turning to extra-artistic models, such as live performance, dance, theater and cinema. The artistic discourse has come to examine the body, temporality and duration with the help of certain pre-Deleuzian thinkers – such as Bergson – whose work enables us to reexamine the legacy of modernism and of the historical avant-garde. These figures also offer ways of thinking about the creative individual’s ability to confront various forms of power.
I would avoid locating the “deposition” of the subject at a single historical moment. Within the framework of questioning logocentricism, there was certainly a need to relativize certain values based on subjectivist humanism. A “deposition” (akin to the deposition of a king) of the traditional subject – of a “free choice made by a pure and abstract autonomous will” – was needed, and its implications are not necessarily catastrophic. I would like to attempt to think positively about the loss, to a certain degree, of the subject’s centrality in the context of artmaking. What is at stake here is the manner in which art and thought depend on this “initial” scene of deposition. It is also a question of taking into consideration the difficulties that the subject comes upon while attempting to respond and act freely in the crushing context of standardization, which precedes one’s very definition as a subject.
Allow me to go back to this project’s point of departure, to the initial stage of raising ideas and examining the concepts in question. Given the biennial-like character of Art Focus, our aim was to create an exhibition matrix that touched upon “current events” in the strong sense of this term. There is no doubt that we are partaking of a global type of artistic and cultural phenomenon, in the context of which artists from around the world find themselves – while each trying to blaze their own path – in the same environment, examining the same questions.
As for the value-related implications of the subject’s deposition – we are by no means promoting the return of an authoritative, sovereign subject. I believe that the question, today, exceeds the clearcut metaphysical categories of “subject” and “object.” It is formulated through the reciprocal relations between subject and object, between the manmade artifact and the use to which the subject puts it. The early 20th century polarities between subject and object, or abstraction and figuration, is no longer tenable. We have emerged out of this dichotomous dead end by formulating a new form of action or new process: man formulates procedures based on which he exercises his authority to a lesser or greater degree. What is at stake here is an attempt to create a new distinction between power (and globalization shall be defined here as the order of power) and authority (that is, the order of the subject).
You argue that faced with globalization, the contemporary subject exercises a certain authority, which is distinct from the order of power. Yet the question remains: what authority can one attribute to the subject? I would like to join you in calling it an authority without power, an authority that characterizes the subject in relation to this superpower called globalization. This is also a question of resistance: I hear you saying that the subject is able to take a stance, to act within this context, rather than to simply resist or distance himself from it. We are talking about the possibility of taking action based on (rather than in opposition to) to a process of globalization that predates us – for no one today continues to situate the roots of globalization in the second half of the 20th century; its roots reach much deeper even than ancient Greece – back to a primeval, immemorial past.
From this perspective, Israel today constitutes a state inscribed within this global reality.
Yet can it act otherwise? Is it enough to want to act otherwise? To want to liberate oneself from this process of globalization, as catastrophic as it may be? The alternative forms of action familiar to us today oppose critical and techno-scientific reason by returning to religion, or by turning to a mystical, populist form of irrationalism or back again to national identity, which was lost and diluted by the onslaught of global uniformity. Another form of “resistance” would involve going east, insisting on the Eastern dimension that was repressed by the Western thrust towards globalization. Yet one must also think about the shared origin and development of religion and reason, about the reciprocal dependency of East and West – which are not opposed to one another but rather nourish each other. If one must act differently, this can only be accomplished through the world’s “becoming world,” by means of languages that are spoken worldwide (Latin, American-English), from within the core of this seemingly borderless process. In order to have a chance at succeeding, such an alternative form of action must initially appear inaccessible.
I agree with your strategy, which involves a return to an etymology of resistance – yet what is at stake here is a stance, rather than a form of resistance. Art produces alternate temporalities; within the irreversible flux that you are describing, can art create other cadences? And no, I am not referring to Slavoj Zizek’s text in Le Monde concerning the need to provide the ignorant masses with a structured basis for learning about resistance. I admit that I was stunned by such a proposition, and would even oppose it.
Our choice of artworks was based on a certain typology, and they all dialogue with the thematics of context and place. I would like to open a parenthesis here in order to provide an example that may speak for itself. We contacted Jimmie Durham – a personality out of the ordinary, a Cherokee artist who has been living in Europe for over 25 years. Durham, a Native American who is not especially fond of America, offered us a certain work; but we wanted another one, Tranquility (2000) – an installation composed of a shattered glider model set on a pedestal. I told Durham that Israel invented the RPV (remote-piloted vehicle), and that the juxtaposition of the glider and the stone used to shatter it would constitute a meaningful metaphor here.
The works we chose all somehow echo the questions raised here: sometimes more directly, as is the case with the 15 Israeli artists participating in the exhibition, and sometimes more metaphorically, especially in the works concerned with multiplicity and identity. We also tried to anchor these questions in examples from recent history – from the neo-avant-gardes of the 1960s. This was why we initially planned to exhibit a work by the well-known American artist Robert Smithson, and why we are exhibiting an old film by Chris Marker, which was created when he first visited Israel in 1960 and became familiar with the history of Zionism.
Marker’s film is fascinating. There is something old-fashioned about his attitude towards Zionism, yet it simultaneously heralds the way in which Israel itself would revise its own accepted narrative. The history of Zionism thus opens up in this work onto a critical, even hyper-critical gaze at Zionism. This film, which is identified with the Zionist project, in fact heralds a process of self-deconstruction.
Marker visited the country in 1960, and his film bespeaks an a priori sympathy towards Israel. He is extremely attentive during his encounters with Israeli kibbutz members, intellectuals and public figures. It is quite clear what attracts or fascinates him. At the same time, he was one of the first to doubt the Israeli project, and this is clearly evident in the film. He explicitly says that the road chosen by Israel seems fundamentally flawed – not because the ideals it is based on are invalid, but because of the very attempt to impose an ideal upon an existing reality. The Israeli utopia was then at its apogee, and Marker raised the very questions that would later counterbalance the Zionist ethos. The second film exhibited in this context is Pasolini’s Inspections in Palestine for “The Gospel According to Saint Matthew,” (1964). This important artist, writer, screenwriter and director – a great modernist yet above all a deeply believing Catholic – came to Israel several years after Marker in search of everything but modernity. He looked in vain for biblical pastures, and left feeling greatly disappointed. Needless to say, the Palestinian question surfaced very quickly. Like Jean Genet, Pasolini was more strongly drawn to the Palestinians – whom he could more easily associate with his atavistic, premodern, “biblical” image of Israel. The film he was planning to shoot in Israel, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, was subsequently shot in southern Italy.
Pasolini saw Israel as a society corrupted by a technological logic and a domineering attitude towards nature – what one may call “instrumental reason.”
Pasolini was searching for Jerusalem, yet found Tel Aviv, even in Jerusalem! One must also add that his Catholicism was that of an upper-class Roman, combined with a kind of unique Marxism. He searched for beautiful images of rocky cliffs, of the desert, of veiled women in a barren landscape. The land of Israel he dreamed of is an exotic place.
I would like to add a third term, paganism, to Pasolini’s mixture of Catholicism and Marxism. It seems to me that Pasolini looks at the land of Israel with a “pagan” gaze. This gaze stood out in contrast to the strand of Zionism rooted in a combination of socialist ideals, an interpretation of the Bible that highlights its work ethos and attitude towards nature, and – above all – a typically Jewish suspicion of anything pagan and of conventional forms of sacredness, a deep reservation concerning primeval landscapes and the sense of being rooted in them.
At this point, I would like to mention another motto you have borrowed from Deleuze, “a form of evasion that is not an escape”: the road of return involves endless detours. It is this idea that interests me in relation to what is taking place here in Israel in the domains of literature, philosophy and art; they are all marked by an inability to choose, in the simple sense of this word, between a return to an (obviously fantastic) origin and an endless lingering – that is, the Diaspora. Even when the longed-for return finally comes, there is no way of avoiding detours, which always frustrate the attempt to set down roots. It is at this point of indecisiveness – of “a form of evasion that is not an escape” – that the promise of art lies. In the midst of this return and by means of this return, without denying its necessity and even legitimacy, there appears a movement that involves detours and a detachment from one’s own roots.
This quote by Deleuze may be related to another quote, by Francis Picabia, who spoke of “a journey without a destination.” To this, I would like to add something about the “non-place” of art. In this context, several of the works we have chosen are constructed in the space between archaic mythologies and modernist utopias. Most of them appropriate the utopian language of the neo-avant-gardes, yet subvert its purpose and meaning. Take, for instance, Haim Steinbach, an Israeli-born artist who lives in the US. Steinbach conceived of an installation consisting of a single train car and a railroad track set down along the ancient route that led from Jerusalem to Damascus, resulting in a kind of “non-site,” or “non-place.” He initially thought of preparing a model of the car, and later decided that the idea had to be implemented on the ground. In contrast to Pasolini’s somewhat folkloristic gaze, he sought to create an emblematic object, which would embody the idea of a journey without a destination.
Since this project was not realized, all that remains of it is an image charged with a powerful symbolic effect, from which we would like to extricate some sort of meaning. The image will be exhibited like a poster, an inscription reminding us of this region’s highly political geography.
Another related work is the one by American artist Jennifer Allora and Cuban artist Guillermo Calzadilla, who work between Puerto Rico and Berlin. They stationed a camel, the ancient vehicle used by desert nomads, at a gas station in Teheran. As the cars come and go, the animal stands there immobile, stoic, playing the role of a camel. This work juxtaposes two cultures: an archaic one and a contemporary one. I would also like to refer to the work created by Chris Marclay, a visual artist and musician from Lausanne, who works mainly in the US. Guitar Drag, which features an electric guitar and amplifier being dragged behind a moving van, alludes to the race riots that took place in Los Angeles during the 1990s. The American Country and Rodeo myth is “dragged along” here in a manner reminiscent of the horrific lynching of James Bird Jr. The amplified sound brings to mind the terrible memory of his cries while being murdered.
This also leads me to think about Claire Fontaine, a “collective” of young political artists (she is Italian, he is Scottish). They created a neon inscription paraphrasing St. Paul’s words in his Epistle to the Ephesians – “dividing the division.” Most of the works we have chosen are recent creations, which are strongly rooted in local cultures and histories; they all freeze the world in a state of arrest, of non-doing.
Can the work of art be in its element in a world where its coming into being is the site of such dilemmas and difficulties? Should one perhaps cease to distinguish between world and art work, because they are mutually responsive? The world, in such a state, turns its back on the art work, refutes what is obvious, refuses the taking of action or any horizon in relation to which one could think. Nevertheless, there are moments in which this is precisely where I identify the opportunities, or possibilities, embedded in multiplicity. The work of art, to paraphrase Nietzsche, shall dance with the paradox.
We, as a quintessential product of our generation, define the questions differently – yet they remain questions, rather than answers. We are thus in agreement. The inevitability of globalization is not such a terrible disaster. There is an attempt here to think with it, or more precisely against it.
There is a line by Ghérasim Luca that I like very much, and which seems quite relevant to our discussion (not without alluding again to Deleuze): Comment s’en sortir sans sortir – a play on words which literally translates as: “How does one get out of it without leaving.”
I would like to share something personal at this point. I did not know Israel, and until now, had had no wish to know it. I come from a Jewish family that became assimilated, atheist even, in the early 19th century. You could say that I’ve all but forgotten my roots, even if I do not deny them. And so my participation in this project was not, from my point of view, without its problems. I had no desire to see this exhibition promoted as part of Israel’s 60th anniversary celebrations, and would actually prefer it not to be associated with any state or any celebration. The possibility of an answer may be found, once again, in Goddard’s apt motto. The idea is simply to do something together, “some-thing.” There always remains something to do with the means at our disposal.
Does the Israeli art scene also operate in relation to such reservations and doubts? Does it ask these same questions? I do still hope that this moment of disorientation, a radical turning point at which everything is questioned, is not so terrible. This is the sphere within which we are acting, and within which a significant artistic event may come into being. Israel is not simply in a state of crisis; it has probably arrived at a point of attrition, which paradoxically may constitute an opportunity for philosophical reflection and artistic action.
We do hope that this exhibition will be international in character. This is the only possible response to globalization: to kill evil through the use of evil. Yet we must note that we were unable to convince any Palestinian artists to take part in this project. They all refused our invitation. Of course we wish they had agreed to participate: after all, our motto is that “art can do something.” We are obviously aware of the problematic nature of their situation; nevertheless, the sphere of art may offer a platform for making an audible statement. Why not seize the opportunity? This year’s Art Focus is taking place at a moment of conflict, in a situation of total impasse. Maybe we did not know how to convince them better? Or have we failed to grasp the abysmal depths of violence and hatred that separate the two sides? The truth is probably, as Hegel put it, that “art is a sweet narcotic unable to cure the misfortunes of this world.”