Goshka Macuga’s current installation ‘The Nature of The Beast’

This installation bombards you: with different art forms, different media types, different questions, all of which force you to use our own discretion as opposed to kitsch art where you just absorb whatever propaganda it feeds you. Yet despite this, it does not hit you: unlike a viewer of Guernica, one is not shocked into a revelation but encouraged to think and learn and discuss the numerous ideas presented. It is a cumulative process of exchange and dialogue, durational rather than immediate. Avant-Garde art aimed to shock people out of their objective, positivist view of the world and become more sensitive and human. But Macuga seems to ask whether it is possible for art to reclaim a less violent relationship with the viewer whilst maintaining its power to broaden his/her mind.

Like Cubism, however, its archival nature brings together heterogeneous elements to emphasise their proximity rather than their difference. For example, Macuga essentially equates fascism and the bombing of Guernica with America’s invasion of Iraq. But the links are never that simple, or two-dimensional. They build up like the layers of a collage, made up of different mediums and historical figures: you find out that the tapestry was covered by Colin Powell at the U.N when he declared war on Iraq, which had been put their by Nelson Rockafella as a deterrent to war (who in turn had destroyed Diego Rivera’s painting as it included a portrait of Lenin), and the tapestry was a copy of the original by Picasso against fascism, which was very useful to Clement Atlee’s campaign and was claimed by Franco after Picasso died, despite his last will and testament. As you can see, layers are constantly stuck on and peeled off people’s mouths as they try to fight their corner. It seems then that the nations are not united, but fractured, like the installation itself.

So in this sense, the exhibition is a paradoxical experience. The emotional aspect of war is both freed and covered up in a rather kaleidoscopic manner: art and dialogue might reveal the true nature of the beast, particularly the documentary that airs the views of disillusioned soldiers, but does it help in stopping it? After all, these soldiers go on fighting. I guess it is slightly encouraging that when Colin Powell tried to destroy the link between art and dialogue, for the sake of war, his actions backfired, merely adding to the anti-war discussion. But is this enough? I think if anything, the exhibition’s location in Whitechapel, where the original Guernica had rallied so much support, seems to call for ‘the good old days’ when art brought society together as a force against tyranny. Perhaps Macuga's aim is to rebuild the social links that have disappeared in modern society.

Reading Kafka's 'Metamorphosis' after 9/11

From the very beginning of Kafka's most reknowned tale, one is lulled into an unflinching acceptance of Gregor's hellish reality. The perceived normality of Gregor's treatment (even to himself) makes it harder to question. This is similar to what happened after 9/11: the unguarded demonisation of all Muslims as terrorists made such thinking mainstream. (Indeed, in my experience, many didn't even know what a Muslim was before 9/11!) But can people who think this way be excused for being ignorant and scared? Gregor feels sorry for his family, as ‘it was precisely all the uncertainty that was oppressing the others and that excused their behaviour.’[1] But surely such behaviour is not innocent and excusable if it results in the demise of another?

At first, Gregor is not at all self-conscious or pre-occupied with his appearance, he is mainly concerned about the weather and work. His self-perception only changes after seeing other people's reactions to him: rather than feeling normal he feels he has to try to ‘make bearable the unpleasantness he was absolutely compelled to cause them in his present condition.’ There is now no doubt in his mind that he has a ‘condition’, a very inconvenient one at that. His perception of the world also changes, ‘with each passing day his view of things at only a slight distance was becoming increasingly blurry...what he saw from his window was a featureless solitude, in which the grey sky and the grey earth blended inseparably.’ And when his sister removes everything from the room, it is as though the world around him is shutting down bit by bit, until even Gregor himself is deleted. By positioning the reader so that they are with Gregor before the others enter, we are able to see that the psychological transformation inflicted upon Gregor by society is far more consequential than his physical metamorphosis. Similar to Fanon's depiction of being black, Gregor, and perhaps the Muslim too, begins to feel a desperation to shed his treacherous skin.

Gregor’s character also changes as a result of his dehumanization. At first he is very considerate but towards the end he feels indifferent towards everyone, including himself, and goes into the room where his sister is playing the violin. He even has violent intentions, wishing to kidnap his sister and ‘spit at his assailants like a cat’. His family consider this a violation, “it has to go.” But when reading this in the wake of 9/11, I couldn’t shake the (rather contemporary) adage that ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’. Like 9/11, Gregor’s transformation throws everything into a state of panic and a world of extremes - good and evil, zealous love and irrational hate, utopian happiness and hysterical grief - which makes any attempt at understanding and integrating impossible.

The sickly sweet and rather surreal ending, depicting the rebirth of the family out of Gregor's ashes, could be used to parody the right wing notion that the suppression and eradication of 'alternative' sectors will bring society together. I don’t think this ending is supposed to feel right or fit with the realism of the rest of the tale, because the idea of self-othering as an acceptable path to social cohesion is unnerving, to say the least.

But Kafka also warns against mere ‘tolerance’, a term we’ve become so accustomed to using, which really just means swallowing one’s repulsion and being patient, ‘only patient’. What is wrong with using the term ‘duty’, or even ‘empathy’, with regards to our global family?

The reader is constantly made to feel that Gregor's is a temporary condition that will go as quickly and randomly as it came. But it is only when he dies that we realise it was actually the beginning of the end for Gregor: ‘he realized that the sight of him was still unbearable for her and would surely remain unbearable for her in the future’. This is how dehumanization happens. Whether it is the sudden enslavement and colonization of the African peoples or the overnight stigmatization of Muslims after 9/11, all are suddenly pushed out of ‘the circle of humanity.’

---

[1] All the quotes for this piece are taken from Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

Impressionism and The City

I think the city inspires art that mirrors the movement of the city. Degas' subjects have blurry outlines and he focuses on the basics, such as the colours and actions of his subjects, as though everything is moving too fast to be able to see anything in great detail. As Ford Maddox Heuffer says, in impressionist writing, 'there would be conveyed the idea that all these human beings melt into the tide of humanity.'[1] Such movement gives the paintings, especially when seen all together, a sense of excitement, as though there is so much to see in so little time. For these scenes of everyday life all take place out in the big wide world and with each narrative we are dropped in media res, the metropolis being ‘a place upon which there is no beginning’ and no end. Having come from the other rooms where more traditional subjects pose for you against an empty backdrop, to now wondering through these scenes of life like a ghost, is a strange sensation; such intimacy with a subject who seems not to see you, transforms you from audience to flaneur.I think the main reason why the city inspires Impressionists is because the artist wants to paint feeling. Painting ‘the great moments, the poignant moods of his life’ is made so much easier by the city, as it is a background that is ‘always in the right note’. Perhaps this is why Impressionists are able to convey both the warmth and the melancholy of the city. Degas portrays both its familiarity and its alienation: for a local, homely feeling he plays boldly with light and colour. These scenes are alive, intimate, real bits of the whole, glimpsed through a window, or from a crowd, perhaps. The focus on colours, the way they jump out at the audience more than the features, also creates a sense of hurriedness and distance, as though passing unnoticed on a bus. The people themselves 'melt' into the background and become part of the 'not me' that merely serves to echo one's mood. This diffuseness can make one feel quite lonely.

However, individuality is at once crushed and celebrated by Impressionist art. Hueffer argues that modern man, whose talents are unchallenged and overlooked in the work place, picks up a hobby to assert his individuality, be it through a sport or merely personal adornment. And Degas kindly displays his subjects in these more defining and even heroic roles - the ballerina, the musician and the trapeze artist. However, for every dainty dancer bathed in light there is a lonely alcoholic, a beggar, or even a rape victim sunk in shadow. They dwell in the 'underbelly', the city's the tragic heroes.

---

[1] All the quotes for this piece are taken from The Soul of London, by Ford Madox Hueffer.

A Permanent State of Flux

Help! I cried to myself, and I held my mouth shut to stop my stomach leaping out of it and closed my eyes tightly to stop the tears from bursting forth and knotted my morose brow into a stern and defiant frown. But why did I do all this? Why did I stifle my own cry for help? As though my 'better' judgement had kidnapped my natural soul and clamped a rough hand over its mouth to prevent it calling out for freedom. Was it fear of rejection? After all, people cry out for help all the time: I am no different. But there was something else. Perhaps I did not wish to disappoint. I'm a hero, not a common civilian who cannot bear the burden of life, but a hero. I love this idea of myself more than myself, and so it was this idea I have to maintain in the mind of others. Yet clamping and paralysing myself into submission rendered me just as useless as everyone else.

And there I had it: It was not life that bewildered and crushed me, it was myself. It was not life that had tied me up with thousands of ropes, tugging violently in different directions, it was me. It was all me. I felt as though I had just been diagnosed with schizophrenia: all this time I had been blaming a figment of my imagination for harming me, when it was myself all along. Ha! To have summated that Life is but an imaginary friend, a scape goat. The ground seemed to give way beneath me. My face was wrenched downwards as though unusually predisposed to the Earth's gravity. And lo, the tears were pulled from my eyes and gathered on my eyelashes like the morning dew on a spider's web. And my 'stern' frown unravelled to reveal a wide, vulnerable brow that opened up to the sky. A symphony of birds erupted into the bright grey expanse and as they spread into every corner I realized they were in my stomach too and there were no corners, no limits, to this fluttering feeling of elation. How wonderful it all was! My heart reached out to them and yearned to grasp the beauty, to taste its deliciousness.

But the desire to contain beauty can never be satisfied, and I made my way home.

Sentimentality

Is it the optimistic version to be nostalgic and in a state of childlike wonder about the proximity of the Docklands? Rather than putting it in its place as a long lost speck, the small fuzzy thing in my gigantic, solid loaf of life? I think perhaps. Don't want to feel too real.

The Dice is Loaded from the Start

The other night, in the midst of a coughing fit, I had an epiphany. An overwheling feeling filled my entire being, and for a split second I was ready, or able to embrace death. Although this feeling had diluted considerably by morning, I remained much more comfortable with the thought of myself dying. However, I was suspicious. Suspicious of my drastic change in attitude, for prior to this 'epiphany' my outlook was quite different: I was extremely worried about dying. Paralysed by anxiety, I'd watch the 'dance of life', waiting for it to end. You see life, the thing I was so excrutiatingly afraid of losing, was being crushed by my vice like grip on it. 

 

So still suspicious, I investigated and came to the conclusion that what I experienced was not an epiphany but a sigh of relief. That night, death seemed to be the only way out. And to think that I no longer had to fear fear itself, that the unknown would become known was a relief. The only thing that would relieve me of my fear of the End was the End itself.

Now this brings me to the workings of  relationships in our society. Since that 'epiphany', I have realised why it is that I tend to avoid relationships like the plague. It is because, similar to the three dooms placed on us at birth (growing old, the deaths of loved ones, and eventually one's own death), relationships are doomed. It is the norm to have at least a couple of serious relationships before settling on 'the one', if one ever does. The couple will share themselves generously with one another, but there is always the guarantee that these shared pieces will be returned to their rightful owners by the end. The guarantee that if, or rather when they want out there is nothing to stop them. Some claim that what they feel is beyond love, it is unique, all they've ever wanted, yet they have signed the guarantee that ensures the End.

In these tenuous relationships we mix in the seriousness, magic and trust of love with the irresponsibility and temporariness of a fling. There is an unknown expiry date and the question of who will instigate it hangs on the air, becoming more and more potent as the self-destruct button becomes more and more tempting. Are we just trigger happy? Or does living, knowing that there is an end, become too much?

If it is so easy (or even necessary) to break this bond, could the previous emotion ever have been considered to be 'true love'? If yes, could it be that we've actually trained ourselves to accept that this fate is an inevitable destination on love's journey? Just as we are constantly trying to immunise ourselves against the other fates imposed on us externally. 

Perhaps it is all part of our consumer culture. We have so much choice so why choose? Let us have it all. Let us feed all our impulses, regardless of the consequences. Who needs discipline when we have capitalism? And relationships are no exception to this trend. They reflect life in western society: following the crowd not knowing why - it doesn't occur to us to think about why because we don't use our initiative unless we're told to. Brainwashed into believing that what we're doing is part of a consensus, a monotenous consensus which if questioned would be disrupted, causing the individual more trouble than its worth. No one wants to be burdened with this inconvenience. Following convention and accepting social constructs as being  part of natural life, whether we like them or not, is much more convenient. So we go on, living a life of convenience. It is a commonly held misconception that following the crowd is a natural reaction. In reality, it is a notion used to control people's behaviour. It makes people lose there abilities to distinguish right from wrong and stand up for what makes sense. Those who go with the flow are domed to always be average, to always experience the mediocre. The price for only following conventional wisdom is giving up our dreams.

So I put it to you, what is love if it follows the rules of convention, without hope, without freedom, paralysed by anxiety? 

The Toilette Scene

Too dreary. Too frumpy. Too garish. Too nice. The girl sifted through her clothing, wildly, like a Yahoo searching for diamonds. Fur, white lace, various types of check, beige cashmere and azure silk flashed through the smoky air. She sat down heavily on the vast four-poster bed with an irritable sigh and lit up her fifth cigarette of the evening. The deep inhalation and slowly rising smoke calmed her. What part did she wish to play tonight? Her audience would have a jumble of predilections and striving to adhere to them all was proving somewhat stressful. She stubbed out her cigarette and got up to look in the gold-framed mirror.

“Ugh, how ghastly!” she said into the mirror with an angry grimace.

“You know what you need, Madam?” replied the mirror, “A mask! That grimace shan’t disfigure your dull visage for long. Look here: we have powders of blue, cherry-blossom and gold, paints of crimson, coal black and ivory white, and mascaras, sprays and scents enough to please an Eastern princess.”

 

And so she began the ritual of adorning her face. And with each layer of paint, a layer of her soul seemed to fall away. She became less wraith-like by the minute, as her spirit weakened, her flesh became more prominent, more important; it was her status, her key and everything she now lived for. She looked at this new person and was pleased and the mirror cried, “Oh, My Dear! All shall love you and their eyes will shine with green envy!”

 

Now that she could bear to look upon herself without despairing, she proceeded to bedeck herself in various different garments and jewels. She wanted an attire that was unusual yet familiar, to make people feel nostalgic for something they did not quite know. She wished to invade her audience’s collective psyche like a dream.

 

From her bedroom - so like an alchemist’s chamber full of colours, potions and artifice - she emerged transformed after hours of meticulous attention to her appearance. And just before she closed the dark, oak door she heard the mirror murmur excitedly: “Bewitching!”