LOS ALAMOS AND THE "MATTER" OF COLLECTIVISM
- Constantine Dranganas
- Apr 30, 2017
- 8 min read
24-04-2017 at the entrance of the Fotografie Museum Amsterdam (FOAM), a year after my last Musion post. During this time of absence, Musion reinvented itself, to include among others, the Musion Four Axis method, which from now on, will be used as an integral part on the analysis of every exhibition that I will communicate to you.
There couldn’t be a better set of exhibitions - taking place at one space - to start this new Musion "era", than the one currently on display at FOAM. For the past years, the most recognizable photography institute in the Netherlands, has proven that it knows very well how to craft a continuum of successful and carefully curated exhibitions, able to foster discussions and interest within the museum community and the general public.
The rising star of Japanese photography Daisuke Yokota meets the Master of color photography William Eggleston, both accompanied by seven global collectives: Dead Darlings (NL), De Fotokopie (NL), #Dysturb (FR), The Eternal Internet Brother/Sisterhood (GR), Invisible Borders (NG), 8Ball Community (USA) and Werker Magazine (ES/NL). All together occupy FOAM’s space to create a "triangular" internal dialogue/reflection on the current democratic state of art and its social extensions.
The ground floor of FOAM invites to on a journey through the polymorphic photography language of Daisuke Yokota (Saitama,Japan 1983). Under the general title Matter – a word used to describe a physical substance, as distinct from mind and spirit (in physics) which occupies space and possesses rest mass- Yokota introduces us to four installations, dealing with tactile aspects of photography, determined not by camera work, but through an experimentation with the material forms of the medium.
Daisuke Yokota, winner of the prestigious Foam Paul Huf Award 2016, is a familiar FOAM "kid", dating back to his 2014 Site/Cloud exhibition, where the Dutch public first encountered his series of multi-layered black and white manipulated images, which formed alienated, mysterious and poetic representations of a different sort of world.
Yokota is back at FOAM, this time with an exhibition, which could be easily described as a Provoke manifesto. Moving inside the exhibition, his first installation presents a set of large film prints the artist scanned and printed himself, draped throughout the entire room, as a reference to the form and volume of his whole archive and to a darkroom where prints are hung on the line to dry.
Following, a printer in the middle of a room, few prints lying on the floor and multiple projections of his images on the walls, function as an implication of the huge number of images that enter the artists archive every day and from which he has to make a selection to be sold on a limited edition.This second installation questions the value of a single photograph and the emotional value attached to it, all within a medium which is by nature reproducible.
The final two installations, focus on a performance Yokota recorded in 2016 while he burned part of his Untitled / Matter (first room) installation after the photography festival in Xiamen (China), which resulted on his book Matter / Burn Out. The artist used ashes of the "cremation’" of his previous work, to create his last installation in this exhibition called Matter / Vomit, where visitors find themselves walking between two big piles of burned images. In that way, Yokota wanted to point out the tidal wave of images that is poured over us every day and which barely even register in our consciousness.
Yokota enables photography to escape from its usual material and representational form, by submitting a testimonial to the audience, on how the form of a medium embeds itself in any message it would transmit or convey, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived.
With a sense of rebellion, I made my next step, this time inside the maze of Collectivism. Taking this exhibition as a starting point in order to celebrate its 15th anniversary, FOAM formed a broad range of activities throughout 2017, under the title Collaborate! United on the theme of collaboration, Foam’s Collaborate! makes an exploration beyond the limits of photography and fine arts and help develop ties between different artistic disciplines, by venturing into scientific and technological fields
Collectivism is generally described as the practice of giving a group of people priority over each individual in it.The seven collectives presented at this exhibition, have efficiently incorporated this philosophy into their foundation, proved by their initiatives and continuous effort to foster collaborative practices, with the use of artistic means.
The bombardment of images that we perceive today, as an outcome of the rise of social media, creates an urgent need to clarify the value of an image, away from the so called "visual candies" and propagandist imagery. Collectives like the Dead Darlings and De Fotokopie showcase the mechanisms and distribution practises that provide images with financial value. The Eternal Internet Brother/Sisterhood and 8Ball Community create online and offline communities by bringing people together around images to discuss and reflect on political, gender, equality and democratic issues. Last but not least, mass media couldn’t be left unseen, since #Dysturb, Invisible Borders and Werker Magazine work to challenge the current use of images in media, aiming to more multi-vocal and universal insights.
The two collectives that intrigued me the most.
The 8Ball Community is a New York based, independent non-profit organization that, through free, open-access platforms and events, nurtures and supports a community of artists. Their mission is to generate collaborative and educational exchange through public access television and radio stations, an imprint, a self-publishing fair, a public library, an internship program, a residency and series of workshops in art-related trades.
For the Collectivism: Collectives and their quest for value exhibition, 8Ball recreated a complete teenagers room inside FOAM’s space. The room of River to be pronounced they/them showcases a room of a gender-neutral teenager, fan and participant of the 8Ball Community. River invites you to their room, where there is free space for interpretation and thought, with many posters, quotes, objects and famous figures all around the themes of freedom and expression. Gender, religion, class and ability are not of any importance for the 8Ball Community which embraces the freedom to be your true self.
Following the great experience being inside River’s room, I moved into the "realm" of The Eternal Internet Brother/Sisterhood. Started in the summer of 2012 at the mystical island of Anafi, Greece, as an initiative of its founder Mr. Angelos Plessas, this collective invites artists, writers and curators on an annual gathering, to create new concepts swarmed by data, dreams, feeling, sounds and knowledge, in order to a spark a liberated intellectual evolution.
Both 8Ball Community, The Eternal Internet Brother/Sisterhood, and all seven collectives that participate at this exhibition, highlight a plethora of alternative ways to communicate, engage with others, get informed and most of all be capable of questioning the accuracy of the images, visual stories presented to us and their consequences.
Photography is a universal medium which cannot be produced and distributed outside the spectrum of democracy and collectivism.
Talking about democracy, there couldn’t be a better way to complete my visit, than the exhibition of the father of the Democratic Forest and Master of colour photography, Mr. William Eggleston.
Los Alamos presents Eggleston’s portfolio of photographs taken on various road trips through the southern states of America between 1966 and 1974. Los Alamos started in Eggleston’s hometown of Memphis and the Mississippi Delta and continued through New Orleans, Las Vegas and south California, ending at Santa Monica Pier. During this road trip, Eggleston also passed through Los Alamos, the place in New Mexico where the nuclear bomb was developed in secret and to which the series owes its name. Maybe Eggleston used this title in a way of reinterpreting this rather "cursed" area.
The series of 2.200 highly saturated, colorful and masterfully printed images, were finally brought to light in 2003, almost forty years after their production.
Eggleston was always ahead of his time, despite the "dissatisfaction" of some. Back to his 1976 MOMA exhibition, Eggleston presented for the first time, a variety of highly colored images, at a time when Black and White photography was still dominant. This made critics squawk, including MOMA’s curator of Photography back then, John Szarkowski, who characterized his work as "Perfectly banal, perfectly boring, erratic and ramshackle."
This didn’t prevent him though of making a step forward, with the incorporation of the Dye Transfer process to his work, a labour-intensive and expensive technique that since then was mainly used in advertising photography. That brought him closer to his establishment as one of the most influential photographers of modern pop culture.
Democracy in Eggleston’s work was used by the artist as a reference to the democracy of vision, through which he represents the most mundane subjects with the same complexity and significance as the most elevated ones. I am at war with the obvious the famous quote Eggleston said in a conversation with the author Mark Holborn, became the inspiration for his 1989 book The Democratic Forest, on which Eggleston touched upon his attitude of photographing singular pictorial style daily scenes.
For Eggleston, no subject matter is more or less important than another. Via his pioneering use of colour and innate aptitude for form and composition, he managed to transform the ordinary—from sidewalks to laundry rooms, diners and ceiling fans—into distinctive and poetic images.
The poetry of his images, the brightness of his colors and most of all his vision for a more democratic photographic community and philosophy, makes him except of a great artist, a thinker and rebel at the same time.The Los Alamos exhibition combined with the other two, unravel a storyline of change though time, proving photography as a medium able to transform, develop and reinvent itself.
To conclude, William Eggleston, Daisuke Yokota and the seven collectives presented, create a united dialogue around democracy, collectivism, innovation and reinvention, by using photography as a transmitter to share their ideas, concerns and hopes for our modern day societies and the art industry.
The MFA analysis
Since I provided you with an overview of the three exhibitions that I visited, at this point I continue with an additional analysis using the Musion Four Axis method, including the key factors of institute, society, visitors and art.
Institute
With the creation of this multi-layered set of exhibitions, coming at the same time with its Collaborate! program, FOAM boosts its social identity, being an institute which does not seem to limit its sources and impact on rather commercial and easy to digest exhibitions, but by presenting and working to highlight social issues, introduce new faces and practices, and most important to give more space for experimentation and collaboration.
Society
The international and liberal character of the Dutch society, mainly in cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam, does not mean that is not affected by events that take place on European and international ground. Considering the rise of populism, racism and economic/ethical crisis, these exhibitions can offer the opportunity for a reflection around topics such as gender equality, democracy, collectivism, while at the same time they provide members of a society ideas, on how they might get involved or use art as an inspiration/tool to prevent and express their thoughts against injustice.
Visitors
The visitors of the three exhibitions, can get immersed into a storyline which unfolds inside the whole museum space and spend qualitative time on exploring new ideas and initiatives from the artists presented. Following their experience, they can discuss their thoughts with other visitors, friends and family, a process which always lead to new data and ideas. There is also a variety of books and magazines at the entrance of the museum and online, which can provide you with more material to think upon, but also workshops, talks and events that take place.
Art
The media used throughout these exhibitions are photography, video, text and sound, on different presentations. From the classic images of William Eggleston placed in frames, to small documentaries, text information and installations, both by Daisuke Yokota and the seven collectives on display, there is real opportunity for a complete spatial, oral and visual experience.
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