The broad theme of this exhibition is nothing. Or, to be more precise, there is both the theme of nothing, nothingness, the void, lack, the gap and at the same time there is no theme. The idea ‘theme’ stands in for the excuse, the reason for collecting a group of otherwise disparate artists together under one banner title and in one show. In truth the theme disappears through its production. Through the production of the work, which make no attempts to remain within thematic boundaries, and through the production of the discourse around the work. The questions raised at the beginning of the process of making this show were more or less “How to do a show which is shifted, or destroyed by the curatorial intervention?” and “How to curate a show that existed prior to the curator’s engagement?”. This exhibition, or part of it at least was given to us readymade. What we then proceeded to do was complicate it with conceptual wranglings and antagonistic engagements. We gave up a section of our responsibilities as curators by disengaging with the selection process and letting an element of the chance encounter decide the inclusion of the artists. We de-selected ourselves from the procedure of making the selection of artists and allowed anyone in who wanted to take part. Some came and went and the project stalled and stuttered but something concrete has been realised. What this something is, however, remains to be seen. What was given to us was a manque, failure or miss in French, or more precisely, two; manque manque. A double miss. The idea being that one misses missing. One fails at failing. Manqeé Manque was the title of the project presented to us and one we changed. We missed this double miss. So, there was this idea at the core of our discussions that we would focus on a lack, or a failure. Yet we avoided the lack by turning from it to our current title. For Those Killed In Ambush came at a time we had abandoned or retreated from Manque Manque, and complicates our engagement with the show. There are a number of registers here to work through. The first question to ask would be, who is it that gets killed? The statement doesn’t express the unlucky ones; is it the ambusher or ambushee? All that is known is that someone or some people have been killed and this exhibition stands in for a memorial for them. But also, For Those Killed in Ambush misses something. Who is the precise subject that is commemorated here? Are all deaths during all ambushes memorialised? This seems an over generalised sentiment, surely the point of a memorial is to name the dead, and thus instil them in our collective memory, where here, they are left unnamed and unnameable. But, also, is it a memorial to an already existing artwork? Or rather, less a memorial, more a tribute. The title is taken from Dan Flavin’s piece Those Killed in Ambush, which is already a memorial of sorts to soldiers killed in Vietnam. In Flavin’s piece the blood red florescent tubes form a crossbow when viewed from the front, and a cross in the reflection on the floor. Acting as a homage, perhaps, to Flavin’s piece, or to the unnameable dead in this most particular of martial acts, For Those Killed in Ambush would be peculiar and not wholly satisfying. Already Flavin’s piece marks out a territory of unnamed victims, but Flavin would regularly dedicate his work to, for example his younger brother David, who died of polio, or Vladimir Tatlin or many other artists (Don Judd, Henri Matisse, Ad Reinhardt, Piet Mondrian (who lacked green) etc), friends, collegues etc. In fact, the full title to Flavin’s piece is monument 4 for those who have been killed in ambush (to P.K. who reminded me about death) 2/3, 1966, and is therefore a dedication to P.K. as well as to the victims of the ambush. So, why dedicate something twice? Is P.K. a victim of an ambush? Are we making a three fold dedication or memorial to the unknown P.K. and the unnamed dead of the Vietnam war, as well as to Flavin’s light work? And what can be said of the Ambush? A strategic device deployed very often when in retreat or in smaller numbers, and usually in a tactically advantageous location. For an ideal Ambush the victims would be forced into a narrow and difficult to defend geographical feature, such as a ravine or forest path, giving the attackers the strategic advantage as well as the element of surprise to overwhelm the victim’s superior firepower. In fiction as well as films the phrase ‘cut them off at the pass’ is uttered to indicate the plan to stage an ambush. The pass indicating the strategically advantageous geographical location. But also, the desire to cut them off at the pass, to cut their progress at the point at which they should be moving - to pass is to move beyond, to overcome or exceed - is the desire to halt their progress at the point at which they outdo you. To cut them off at the pass, then is to stop them not just before they get away, but before they get the better of you. Pass also, said in French (in a French accent) distorts to pas, which becomes, in English, not. The ambush takes place in the not, the void, takes its place in the void, is placed in the void. The ambush, then, re-installs the void into the exhibition, the void that was removed, or negated (the negation that was negated - this is a dialectical movement). The title then reads For Those Killed in Ambush that Took Place in the Void, the Lack, the Hole. © Tom Trevatt, 2008
Saturday 11 October 2008
For Those Killed in Ambush - Robert Dingle
For Those Killed in Ambush is an exhibition exploring different conceptions of failure, lack, error, doubt and uncertainty. The exhibition does not attempt to present an anthology of unrealised works, as is the case with Joel Fisher’s The Success of Failure, Sam Ely and Lyn Harris’s archive of Unrealised Projects or Hans Ulrich Obrist and Guy Tortosa’s Unbuilt Roads: 107 Unrealised Projects. Neither are the ambitions of the exhibition the selection of works that attempt to directly represent failure (Janne Lehtinen’s Scared Bird) or attempt to define what is particular to it. Rather, For Those Killed in Ambush offers an interplay of diverse works that orient our attention towards addressing questions that arise from these differing conceptions, creating areas of overlap and interruption between them. Can failure be productive? Failure, lack, error, doubt and uncertainty are often held contrary to our socially established endeavours for greater success and self-satisfaction. Attempting to determine or define these terms ends more often in paradox than resolution or clarity. For instance, to strive to fail adequately fulfils both registers, as it is simultaneously contradictory and goes against the socially established normality. In Three Dialogues, published in the journal Transition, 1969, Beckett pronounced failure to be the inevitable outcome of artistic endeavour, he went further to articulate that the artist should make ‘this admission, this fidelity to failure, a new term of relation.’ In Stephanie Bolt’s No Show (2008) the attention to the brightness of the florescent light is immediate; the consideration of the undersized text in the centre reveals itself gradually in increments only on approach. No Show takes its title from a previous realized-unrealized project where the artist placed an advert in a-n magazine requesting an open submission for a ‘No Show’. Through the reference within the title to Bolt’s previous project the work interweaves questions of production and uncertainty, possibility and refutation, elucidation and senselessness. No Show considered in relation to the open submission investigates the productive space within the act, but only when the conjectural possibility of failure has been removed from the process in spite of whether the act itself is a negation of the terms that usually define or qualify it. Contrasting failure as a hypothetical possibility with the reality of lack and degradation of suburban areas forms the basis of Alexander Page’s Edge of Town (2008). The series of photographs depict the drab and dowdy periphery of the city. Places where things become broken and over grown. A landscape of weeds and warehouses in which the inevitable marks of entropy represent both a sign of degradation along with the increasing uncertainty of potential development and urban renewal. Offering a distinct and divergent line from the realism represented in Edge of Town is Claire Scanlon’s I’ll keep coming back to you, where the production and operation of the work causes the direct deficiency of the essential component (7” 45rpm vinyl). Permitting the inevitable self-destruction and the works ability to ‘function’, the possibility of failure becomes a self-assessed and calculated consideration of the work; a reversal in which its ability to last would be deemed unexpected. There is a productive and generative force behind notions of failure, lack, error and uncertainty and the presence of these ideas are essential components not in ensuring mediocrity, but in generating questions rather then providing answers. Without the risk of failure, the possibility of error and a sense of uncertainty we run the risk of entering into closed systems that would become dogmatic. We would cease to test, explore and loose the potential to stumble across the unexpected. @ Robert Dingle, 2008
Saturday 4 October 2008
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