In 1981 Zbygniev Warpechovski (b. 1938) delivered a memorable performance on the subject of Solidarity being crushed by the totalitarian regime at the Art Research Exchange in Belfast. His 2009 performance juxtaposed dreams about poems with dreams about a young muse (performed by Kinga Kedziora) expressing an anguished faith in creativity. Back on Earth, Jerzy Beres (b. 1930) offered the traditional Slavonic gestures of sharing (splitting a log) and greeting (a glass of vodka) as signatures for friendship. Jan Swidzinski (b. 1923) reduced his gestures to two movements of hands, and conjured a merry-­go-­round of ambiguity from four words: was it Life? Art? Beginning? End? Waldemar Tatarczuk (b. 1964), wrote words with fallen leaves on a pathway, using his foot: ‘It was, It is, It will not be.’ The leaves and the words ceased to be two separate phenomena in an induced metaphor for cycles of being. Through the fellowship of poetry with love, friendship with sharing, life with art, death and renewal, a concept of togetherness emerged.
 
The performances by Sandra Johnston (b. 1968) and Alastair MacLennan (b. 1943) evoked still different kinds of togetherness. Their collaborative practice (mode of togetherness) came about by chance: as a response to an organizational error during the Borderline project in Timisoara, Romania, in 2009. There were two artists and only one slot. That experience motivated their performances in Belfast: Stillest (in two parts) and Gust to Dust.
 

Part 1 of Stillest involved the barefoot performers holding a pig ear in each hand and each pushing a fish, very slowly, from one end of the black and white tiled floor to the exit door. Dressed in matching black trousers and tunic they meandered towards and away from each other. Johnston later remarked that the fish kept sliding into proximity with the other one.

 
Stillest part 2 in the Senate Room, with the audience seated along the walls, switched from synchronised to parallel actions, and at a poignant moment, to an interaction. Divided by a row of tables, the performers delivered their solo actions. Johnston could not see MacLennan at all; he could only see her silhouette against the windows.
 
MacLennan balanced a large tree branch horizontally on his head; Johnston pressed a glass of water against her neck, approximately against the thyroid gland: gestures related to energy levels. She managed to do this for almost an hour, a remarkable feat of will (when I tried it at home, I started choking in seconds). The mind and body forged a double bind: intention controlled the will, the will invented skills that controlled the body: a matter of holding it still, overcoming natural reflexes, or simply avoiding failure. This togetherness requires complete abandonment of dualism, and of the neat division between perception, cognition and action, of any separation between thought and embodied action.
 
This mental investigation into how quickly the body uses energy then switched from the two separate actions to one that involved both performers at once: Johnston turned and moved slowly towards MacLennan while he continued balancing the branch on his cranium. The vacuous frozen gestures of both arms functioned as counterweights to the heavy unwieldy load, keeping his neck and head steady. Johnston placed her glass of water in one of his hands, the hand that was engaged in sensitive balancing. The continuous componential thought process (do not let the branch slip) was opened by a ‘catch and toss’ thinking, the source of which was Johnston’s interaction. She altered one part of the chain of MacLennan’s action with asynchronous input behaviour, utterly unexpected in relation to her previous solo action. She prompted an adaptive process that forged emergence of functionally valuable side effects, like softness, gentleness, caring, giving, sharing, giving up, cooperation, collaboration, working together, etc. This was togetherness of brain and body, body and mind, thinking and feeling, calling for more than a componential explanation, which would be insufficient in the face of the emerging values, continually at risk of failure.
 
In a mute, stationary, durational performance Gust to Dust, given later outdoors on the lawn, the two performers held a large tree branch each (cut from MacLennan’s garden). The body appeared to be extended by the branch soaring vertically up. Incredibly they manage to carry the weight for the better part of an hour. Freeing their hands at the end, they scattered seeds into the wind.
 
These performances involved unimaginable physical discomfort for the artists, placing their bodies amongst the ‘cognitively inert’ creations, like rocks and volcanoes. This remnant of dualism was swiftly undermined by making dead fish, pigs’ ears, tree branches, and water into components as essential as the bodies and minds of the two artists. These selfreflecting universes wiggle out of traditional analysis, reminding us why the study of creativity had to expand to include neurology.
 
If I were to apply one context only, I would interpret these performances as metaphors for life in Northern Ireland, the fish relating to its livelihoods and religion, the branches cut off and difficult to balance relating to fragmentation, alienation and loss of coherence. The emerging values of togetherness signal the chance of better life.
 
Aiming took place 22-24 October 2009.

 
The book’s first epigraph, from St. Augustine, patron of autobiographers, includes ‘What I did there by way of writing, such skill as I had therein being placed at thy service . . . my books bear witness, both those disputations, which I had with them that were present with me, and such as I composed by myself alone . . .’
 
There we have some elements of a characteristic Raworth dynamic: the senses, especially sight and hearing, and the unreliability of their evidence; an examining intelligence; memory; and writing, either ‘original’ or in concert with other minds.
 
So, what about the poetry? Try this:
 
a very strange kind of intervention
led to the conclusion
time is also finite
further apart
when you subtract infinity
although this technique is rather dubious
travelling in a certain direction
an isolated system always increases
the matter particles get
from the point of view of trying
thus memory passes
faster than light
too rapidly to join up
disordered arrangements
 
The primary effect is that of an odd flickering of language as it seems plain sense but then skitters away just as it looks to be getting somewhere, the breaks between the lines of poetry feeling a little like those ellipses in the prose. There seems to be echoes of Einstein on Relativity in there, but at the end the focus isn’t on physics, but on memory and the presentation of material.
 
But through its layout on the page, this declares itself to be poetry. What help might that offer us in reading?
 
Try a few touchstone observations. Jakobson, Shklovsky, and the other Russian formalists stressed the uncommunicative nature of literary, and especially poetic, language: a poem isn’t there to convey information like a user-‐manual, but to draw attention to itself, to be on display as artful language.
 
Ezra Pound teased out and defined phanopoeia, melopoeia and logopoeia as the elaboration, respectively, of visual imagery, sound effects, and word-­play in a poem.
 
These can be very useful when assessing the merits of conventional poetry, and for negotiating certain practical problems, such as translation. Remembering, for example, that visual imagery is the easiest element to carry over from one language to another, whereas word-­play is the most difficult, helps explain why the Italian Dante has been such an important figure for English poets, while the Russian Pushkin has gone largely ignored.
 
Bring this toolkit to Raworth’s poetry and see what you get. Visual images seem in pretty short supply in the poem above, and even where one does briefly coalesce elsewhere in his verse, it seems immediately to disperse, long before it might contribute to a clearly observed physical world in the manner of Dante. Effects of sound? Nothing there either; no rhyme, assonance, alliteration, no clogging of the surface of the language so as to delay its passage. And word-­play? Zilch.
 
Go further: repetition, variation, listing, parallelism. Nothing there either. And, like every one of the other 110 poems in the volume Eternal Sections, it’s fourteen lines long, but displays no other mark of the sonnet.
 
Far from delaying us and drawing attention to its art, Raworth’s language seems to usher us along like a cop at the scene of a crime or an accident: nothing to see here and certainly nothing to admire, move along please, ladies and gents, disperse.
 
Occasionally, there’s a flash of wit, often sparked by error, distortion, misunderstanding: ‘general betrayus’ (‘Maltese Named Trouble’) may take a moment to recognize, likewise the flaw in:
 
some of you older children may see
the floors in my argument mind the edge
(‘Letters from Yaddo’)
 
The one thing you can quickly gather from all this is that the writing is highly self-­aware, but that rather than occasioning complacent self-­regard, this awareness hunts itself on, ‘finding ways to pull the view past faster’ (There are few people who put on any clothes (starting it), p.27)
 
‘So how do little children know what’s boring?’ (ibid. p.20). Raworth might have ushered us ‘into a new home contaminated / by brightly coloured ancestors’ but chooses not to. The ancestors make their appearance in the prose, but not the poetry. ‘His grandparents were there in O’Casey’s book. Mr. Moore walking bareheaded in the pouring rain at his wife’s funeral. That’s the least I can do for her he said.’ (A Serial Biography, p.30) Though widely known in the US and elsewhere as an English poet, Raworth has chosen to travel on an Irish passport. End of similarity to just about any other Irish poet since the death of Beckett.
 
‘Attracted by pathos’? Negative. A native weakness for ’boutgates and ambages’ (‘Baggage Claim’)? Not that either. But ‘sometimes a fragment of language / illuminates a world not consistently round // breathing its air’ (ibid.).
 
in the order of emergence
the first throat chuckles
change to one syllable
in the focus of activity
also providing
the normal basic cry
a strong element
halfway through the period
separated by brief pauses
sure what they mean
into longer sequences
accompanying heart and respiration
babbling a random selection
of well-­practiced sounds
 
Having refused to act poetic, having withdrawn, seemingly to allow us clearer access to a world outside, because that world proves disordered, incoherent, this language receives the reader again. But the focus now, for lack of fuller distraction, and because no individual detail offers itself as writerly, obstructing, delaying, is on the relationships between the elements rather than on those elements themselves; the mind, the voice, speeds from detail to detail.
 
Faster than light. Join the dots.
 

 
This  exhibition  of  large-­scale,  wall-­hung  tapestries  by  Romanian Cela Neamtu was part of an official celebration  of  Irish­‐Romanian  relations,  which  had  been marked earlier in the day by a very enjoyable concert  of  Romanian  and  Irish  classical  music  at  the  CIT School of Music, in which that institution’s debt to a  group  of  much‐loved  Romanian  teachers  was  in  evidence. The designs were based on church window shapes, and the artist referred to her work’s drawing on  the  spiritual  and  cultural  reserves  of  traditional  Romanian life.
 
Not Art (bad cop): the art-­craft distinction was useful here  as,  artistically,  the  introduction  of  Eastern  Christian motifs seemed tokenistic and the use of colour  (dominated  by  biscuits  and  beiges)  bland.  Taken as craft, the weaving skill and tonal control could  be  appreciated  (especially  from  a  distance),  though the inclusion of rough, unfinished areas seemed a little seventies-­eightiesish.
 
Art (good cop): A lot of bad things could be said about this  exhibition.  Why,  for  instance,  is  there  still  a  3‐D  map of the city lying bloated and deformed in the middle of the so-­called exhibition space? But that’s for another day. Once you get over the fact that you are basically  looking  at  woven  carpets  of  stained  glass  windows (ahem) without the stained glass, it is possible  to  enjoy  these  craftworks,  even  if  one’s  tongue remains firmly stuck in one’s cheek. The divine light  that  surrounds  the  woven  fenestrations  is  uniquely creepy and manages to create a theophanic experience without the need for any religious content. Maybe  the  artist  herself  felt  the  need  to  break  us  away from the tapestries’ supernatural associations by deliberately exposing the human techniques applied in their  construction  in  a  least  one  of  the  works.  The  experience was odd but strangely entrancing.
 

Part 2: Crawford Municipal Gallery
Drawing to Form

 
The  ground  floor  galleries  presented  work  from  the  Weltkunst Collection of British art from the late eighties and early nineties, which is currently on long-­term loan to IMMA. The show comprised drawings and  sculptures  by  artists  known  chiefly  for  their  sculptural work: Anish Kapoor, Rachel Whiteread, Anthony Gormley, Shirazeh Houshiary, etc. The larger collection  was  originally  put  together  by  the  art-­dealer Adrian Ward-Jackson, a friend of Princess Diana’s, who died of Aids at the age of 41.
 
Not  Art  (good  cop): ‘Weltkunst’…This  foundation,  for  whom the internet offers a PO box in Zurich and little else  by  way  of  information,  has  something  of  the  mysterious post‐war internationalist aura of a fictional organisation  in  a  James  Bond  plot.  What  I  found  interesting about the exhibition, which was otherwise quite  patchy,  with  a  number  of  fairly  slight  pieces  making claim to attention purely by virtue of the famous names attached, was this idea of ‘weltkunst’: world-­art.  Brought  together  in  this  way,  this  generation of British artists seemed to take on a role left  vacant  by  Henry  Moore,  producing  a  sculptural  vocabulary amenable to global architectural or infrastructural  settings.  The  tendency  to  massiveness  and abstraction, the pursuit of ‘fundamental forms’ – prehistoric  or  ethnic  building  and  craft  meeting  organic and subatomic shapes in the case of Kapoor and  Houshiary,  approximative  casts  of  the  human  body or suburban house, in the case of the more insular  Gormley  and  Whiteread  –  and  the  use  of  industrial materials, suggest an idiom translatable into nationally  varied  built  environments,  colder  than  the  organicism of Moore or Hepworth, but stopping short of  the  rationalism  of  the  old  Internationalist  Style,  a  kind of technologically empowered compromise.
 
Art (art cop): This exhibition reveals the many inherent difficulties  of  curating  with  a  private  collection.  Collections are mostly compiled by individuals with specific (irregular at best) artistic tastes, large wallets and  some  undying  wish  to  be  memorialised.  Bought  and donated for vanity reasons to Art Institutions they often  turn  out  to  be  more  albatross  than  peacock.  Albatrosses they have to store, maintain, exhibit and then tour, which doubles up as a way of valorising or giving provenence to a collector’s prophetic vision. For the most part, this is not the case with this exhibition. But  I  do  have  to  ponder  the  merits  of  counterposing  Rachel Whiteread’s incidental or preparatory drawings with  Anthony  Gormley’s  blood  and  semen  drawing.  The now ubiquitous Gormley has to be rolled out at every  mention  of  ‘British’  and/or  ‘sculpture’  along  with his cohort Anish Kapoor. Neither of whom added anything  of  substance  to  this  exhibition,  apart  from  their populist reputation, and the works on show led to no new access points to their practice. But it would be wrong of me not to mention the positives: how the exhibition  provides  a  strange  cultural  snapshot  of  British sculpture of the late 80s; and how the dark terre verte green walls, reminiscent of those in the In-Finitum exhibition in Venice last year, greatly added to the experience of Shirazeh Houshiary’s large drawings, which  crept  to  the  edge  of  perceptual  vision  (a  highlight for me).
 

Part 3: Triskel Arts Centre
Plan B

 
The Triskel was enjoying its temporary location in the old ESB substation on Caroline Street. Its ground‐floor gallery  opening  onto  a  shopping  thoroughfare,  the  driving post-­punk (New Orderish?) sounds of Dublin band Cap Pas Cap flooded the street, washing around the  passing  public  and  drawing  in  the  curious.  Unfortunately, the size of the crowd inside meant that Cork  art-­group  Not  Abel’s  exhibition  Bored  of  the  Event couldn’t be viewed, but the upstairs gallery (a bright,  atmospheric  space,  full  of  possibility)  was  hosting another, albeit less countercultural show. Plan B  was  based  on  a  limited  edition  volume,  from  the  Enitharmon Press, of poems by Pullitzer prize-winner Paul Muldoon and photographs by Norman McBeath.
 
Not  Art  (bad  cop):  A  press  release  has  claimed  that  this collaboration can be thought of in terms of a ‘distinctly  new  genre  –  ‘photoetry’  –  the  description  and coinage coming from Muldoon himself. It can’t, which  is  precisely  the  problem  with  the  exhibition.  Taken individually this was strong work: Muldoon’s characteristically  inventive,  controlled  play  with  the  happenstantial (though in a darker mode than usual, to  the  point  of  callousness,  even,  in  the  case  of  ‘The  Sod Field’) and McBeath’s unexpected raids on the old resource  of  mouldering  Ireland.  But  what  on  earth  were the two doing together? It is a weakness with almost  all  such  collaborations  that  either  the  image  illustrates the words, or the words provide a harmonious parallel (‘response’) to the images (there is one case of this in Plan B, a poem responding to one of the included photographs), but it never gets beyond this  polite  waving  across  a  distance.  Sometimes,  one  suspects, it’s simply a matter of writer and artist liking each  other  personally,  or  even  liking  each  other’s  work, but never to the point of understanding it as occupying  the  same  space.  The  individuals  might speak to each other, but the work doesn’t, which is a bizarre  affair  considering  the  exploration  of  the  interchange between word and image since, at least, the  advent  of  advertising,  Cubism,  cinema,  concrete  poetry.
 
Art (hard cop): Like in some Large Hadron Collider Paul Muldoon’s written words were hurled around the ESB substation  to  either  fuse  seamlessly  in  some  new  art  matter or disintegrate completely in the ecstasy of a beautiful  new  Big  Bang  on  contact  with  the  Norman  McBeath photography. Instead of discovering the wonders of the art universe we arrived at ‘photoetry’? Both  photographer  and  poet  seemed  highly  capable,  which makes the randomness of this ‘collaboration’ all the more unfortunate. (And I use ‘collaboration’ here to  mean,  well,  actually  nothing  really).  The  highlight  was the distraction of Cap Pas Cap’s rhythmic tunes wedging  themselves  through  the  floorboards  of  the  exhibition. So much of a distraction that I decided to move  to  the  darkness  downstairs  and  make  my  ears  bleed.
 

Part 4: The Lavit Gallery
Monochrome

 
Fr. Matthew Street’s Lavit Gallery has been ploughing a  lone  furrow  since  the  disappearance  of  the  Vanguard and Fenton Galleries (are there still exhibitions in Gallery 44?).
 
Not  art  (neutral  cop):  Monochrome  was  a  little  like  the day’s weather and our experience of visiting five city-centre galleries: anything but homogenous. All the work  was  ‘professional’  –  it  had  the  sheen  of  high  production values. But there was a wide range of quality:  from  the  genuinely  interesting  architecture‐like abstract drawings of Wesley Triggs, to impressive but  unoriginal  affairs,  to  renditions  of  popular  motifs  that, were it not for the standard of execution, would not look out of place on a park railing.
 
Art (cop­‐on!): The odd nature of our task was felt once again  in  the  anachronistic  world  of  the  Lavit  Gallery.  As witnessed by the list of former graduate award winners on the wall above its stairs, the Lavit has been a  significant  catalyzing  agent  in  Cork’s  artistic  past.  These days it’s neither a private gallery proper nor a craft shop for passing tourists, and has lost the central position it once had. And ‘Monochrome’ is a reflection of  this  malaise.  In  a  time  when  possibilities  for  exhibiting in Cork are limited, and with private galleries  abandoning  the  centre  of  the  city,  this  is  surely a moment of opportunity for the Lavit, its chance to return to a position of leadership. That said, there  is  no  doubting  the  merits  of  the  black  &  white  etchings by John Graham and the sensitive draughtsmanship  of  the  experienced  Megan  Eustace.  Both could easily slot into more prestigious surroundings.  But  in  the  end  it  was  Wesley  Triggs’  conté on paper drawings that managed to stay with me past the top of the stairs. Simple, graphic motion studies.  Line-­making  that  teases  between  presence  and absence, positive and negative spaces, what it is and  what  we  perceive  it  to  be.  It  conjured  scenes  in my  mind’s  eye  of  9/11:  the  concrete  of  the  World  Trade Centre’s façade shattered and jagged above the rubble, the surrounding chaos, and the fog, ethereal … yet just marks on a page.
 

Part 5: The Space Gallery
Cruciverbal

 
Perched high above the solicitors’ offices and banks of the  South  Mall,  The  Space  Gallery  is  run  by  Cork  Contemporary Projects, a group of recent graduates responding to the dearth of infrastructural support for non-commercial art with a DIY, collaborative provision of the public conditions for their practice. The results, if for economic reasons on a modest scale, have been anything  but  amateurish,  though  the  difficulty  of  maintaining such a position is attested by the recent, unfortunate demise of Joe Nix’s The Couch. Along with the  Basement  Project  Space  and  The  Black  Mariah  (currently being hosted by the Triskel in the ESB substation  on  Caroline  Street),  The  Space  cultivates  the otherwise barren ground on which ‘emerging artists’ in the city must subsist.
 
Not art (good cop): Cruciverbal, curated by Fiona Kelly, though not an artists’ show, was not quite a curator’s either.  Based  on  the  crypticism  of  crossword  puzzles,  the exhibition was the result of 26 artists being commissioned to produce a visual response to a verbal clue.  The generative  crossword  itself  appeared  in  the  centre of the room, and crossword motifs could be found on the walls among the more or less uniformly‐sized work: the presentation was immaculate. The exhibition’s format was engaging, though it was clear that  the  various  artists’  strongest  work  was  not  on  show. Neither was there any particular sense of curatorial thinking about new Irish art, though the cut-­and-­paste, almost Pop aesthetic of the pieces suggested  that  the  vast  resources  of  online  imagery  were exercising their influence. These were informal responses  to  an  informal  commission,  which  came  together in a quirky and amusing show.
 
Art  (good  cop):  The  ever-industrious  Space  and  Cork  Contemporary Projects were launching yet another exhibition  and  we  managed  to  inveigle  our  way  into  the gallery in advance of the opening. Cruciverbal was the result of a brave, if cryptic, curatorial strategy by Fiona  Kelly.  I  enjoyed  its  playful  nature  and  the  struggle to solve the riddles (made doubly hard for us as the titles / clues and name-plates were yet to be affixed). But the limitations of curatorial strategies like this were evident. Not every artist is so flexible that he or  she  can  apply  their  practice  to  any  amount  of  restrictions. So some worked well as artworks while other were just visual puns. All the same, like my visits to the Simplex or Crosaire, I may not have left with a sense  of  completion,  but  I’d  certainly  gained  something by the attempt – if only a quizzical smile.
 

Addendum

 
Art (Irish cop): Even though we didn’t quite make it in person  (it  was  too  far  off  our  pre‐planned  route)  we  did come across a new public art-­work in Fitzgerald’s Park,  through  a  newspaper  cutting  read  during  our  sweaty lunch-­break. But I feel it must get a mention, for  the  ambition  of  the  project  if  not  for  patriotic  reasons. On May 12th sculptor Jane Heffernan unveiled  a  finely  crafted  bronze  bust  of  Brigadier  General Daniel Florence O’Leary in the presence of the Venezuelan  ambassador  to  Ireland.  O’Leary  was  one  of Cork’s most famous military leaders. After his father’s business went bankrupt he left for England to join  the  British  Legion.  From  here,  in  1819,  he  later,  like many Irishmen at the time, travelled to Venezuela to join the ranks of Simon Bolivar’s liberating army. A bright scholar with a penchant for adventure he soon climbed  up  the  ranks,  becoming  a  close  friend  of  Bolivar and later reaching the position of brigadier general. This sense of overcoming the odds may have rubbed  off  on  Heffernan,  as  there  are  virtually  no  images of the great man: she had to work predominantly  from  a  reproduction  of  a  naïf  19th  century painting.

What if we graded the ‘contextual awareness’ of a writer by the number of Neoconcretist artists he or she is able to invoke? A beginner would remain stuck with Clark and Oiticica (and perhaps Lygia Pape as well), whereas an initiate might be able to mention Amilcar de Castro or Franz Weissmann. The mere mention of Décio Vieira (1922-­1988) – alongside the likes of Rubem Ludolf or Osmar Dillon – would then be a sure sign of expertise, well bound within the language barrier that surrounds Brazilian scholarship. Things are not so simple, of course, and the truth is that here there are no Brazilian ‘subjects supposed to know’ – to use a well­‐known Lacanian formula. Vieira’s position in Brazil is perhaps more problematic than that of Neoconcretism abroad: his notoriety is highly local, and mostly superficial. This is why the recent exhibition Décio Vieira: Geometric Investigations, curated by Brazilian art historian Felipe Scovino – the first solo show of the artist since his death in 1988 and the first ever in São Paulo – is genuinely path‐breaking.
 
By foraging through private collections, Scovino managed to assemble an impressively representative set of works, ranging from Vieira’s early participation in the Frente Group (the highly unorthodox core of Rio de Janeiro Concretism in the early 1950s) through his Neoconcrete period and beyond, up to the artist’s final years in the 1980s. And it becomes quite clear that Vieira deserves a better critical fate than that of a name to be dropped every now and then (which makes one dearly regret the fact that there is no catalogue for the exhibition). His use of colours alone demands reflection, pointing to some idiosyncratic (but also crucial) aspects of Brazilian Concretism. Many paintings rely on a skilfully enacted and somewhat contradictory balance: well‐defined geometric divisions seem hardly able to keep smoky areas of colour to insinuate smoother, more nuanced transitions. The ‘smokiness’ comes from Vieira’s recurrent use of egg tempera, a technique he adopted in the wake of his friend Alfredo Volpi, an Italian‐Brazilian painter of an earlier generation who temporarily flirted with Concretism in the 1950s.
 
One may also remember the indictment of Rio de Janeiro Concretism by the shocked leader of its orthodox São Paulo counterpart, Waldemar Cordeiro: ‘There is even brown in these paintings’.² In 1956, both groups finally managed to show together, but instead of celebrating the formation of a unified, national front, the event became a huge case of mutual misrecognition – or of the recognition of their irreconcilable approaches. Of course, it was precisely in having to defend against accusations such as Cordeiro’s that the poet Ferreira Gullar ended up theorizing Neoconcretism (one just wonders how Cordeiro would react to Gullar’s relatively recent branding of Vieira’s pastel drawing technique as a kind of ‘sfumato’).³ As a group, Neoconcretism was hardly coherent (a point Scovino is keen on stressing). It makes sense: after all, one may think of it as radically pushing the category of ‘concrete art’ to its limits (which were, in turn, theoretically redefined).
 

 
One particularly brilliant example in this case is a 1959 monochromatic drawing by Vieira, where different geometric sections are uniformly filled with blue pastel (Sem Título, pictured). The differentiation of the areas is minimal, but eloquent: it relies solely on directionality and on the varied intensity with which Vieira pressed the pastel against the highly textured paper. The dominant centre of the composition is a blank lozenge, whose whiteness suddenly coheres into a colour of its own, in contrast to the whiteness that grounds the coloured areas, visible in the deep paper recesses that remain unmarked. Animated by tonal transitions and by the direction of the marks, the drawing enacts a circular movement around the blank centre – like an abstract windmill. The bottom half is lighter and expansive, suggesting a cool, gaseous ascent; the darker patches in the top become compact and weighty in contrast, leading one’s gaze back downwards – an unexpected sense of gravity instils itself. All areas in the drawing are materially the same, but phenomenologically distinct; their juxtaposition testifies to the subtle, but often dazzling achievements of Neoconcretism, which supported Gullar’s enthusiastic readings of Merleau‐Ponty. The latter, an integral part of the movement’s cultural atmosphere, can hardly be said to stand as programmatic. Despite (or maybe because of) its rich diversity, Neoconcretism lasted only two years. Such fleeting complexity grows richer the more we are able to look and study works by Vieira and others – and is by far more challenging than a stable, empty and merely convenient signifier.
 
NOTES
 
1 Michael Asbury, ‘Neonconcretism and Minimalism: Cosmopolitanism at a Local. Level and a Canonical Provincialism,’ in Kobena Mercer (ed.), Cosmopolitan Modernisms (Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 2005), p. 174.
 
2 Waldemar Cordeiro, ‘Teoria e Prática do Concretismo Carioca’, in Aracy Amaral (ed.), Projeto Construtivo Brasileiro na Arte (Rio de Janeiro : Funarte, 1977), p. 135.
 
3 Ferreira Gullar, ‘Frente Group and the Neo-­‐Concrete Reaction’, in Aracy Amaral (org.), Arte Construtiva no Brasil: Coleção Adolpho Leirner, (São Paulo : Melhoramentos, 1998), p. 152.
 
 
Décio Vieira: Geometric Investigations was on show at Centro Universitário Maria Antônia, São Paulo, 23 March – 25 May 2010.

A series of nine films made from 1989 – 2003 make up the  exhibition’s  second  theme,  Soho  and  Felix.  Soho  Eckstein, a bloated Johannesburg capitalist, and his often  naked  alter‐ego  Felix  Teitlebaum  –  both  of  whom, it should be observed, bear an intended physical  resemblance  to  their  creator  –  preside  over  scenes of mourning and devastation: mineworkers solemnly trek underground, bodies fall apart, animate severed  heads  litter  the  ground,  and  Soho  enjoys  a  baked chicken leg. Beautiful African music – choral sounds  that  undulate  before  they  soar  –  plays  in  the  background, occasionally displaced by more dissonant noises.
 
Artist  in  the  Studio,  the  third  theme,  consists  of  a  three-­part film installation projected on all four walls of a single room. As the title implies, the subject here is Kentridge himself, in his space of work, making and unmaking his art. In one projection, a colony of ants, rendered  white  on  black,  scurry  around  the  artist’s  desk in un-­choreographed movements that reveal mesmerizing  patterns.  In  another,  Kentridge  tears  apart a drawing of himself, before a reverse-­motion effect  puts  it  back  together.  These  exercises  in  self-­portraiture might be read as a retreat from the busy public  spheres  that  provide  the  mise-­en-­scène  for  many Kentridge pieces, but in another interpretation they  are  simply  the  most  explicit  examples  of  a  self-­critical and self-­aware sensibility that lends the artist’s work much of its political efficacy.
 

Theme  four  is  devoted  to  works  created  in  conjunction with Kentridge’s 2005 production of Mozart’s 1791  opera  The  Magic  Flute.  Mozart’s  opera  chronicled the emergence of enlightenment civilization and advent  of  modern  disenchantment.  In  drawings  and  miniaturized performances – representative images impose astrological diagrams and other scientific symbols on empty, exotic landscapes – Kentridge offers his own  critique  of  enlightenment  rationalism  and  the  imperialist violence with which it is bound up.

 
This  spring  Kentridge  directed  another  opera,  Shostakovich’s The Nose (1930), based on Gogol’s 1836  story  of  the  same  name.  Moving  from  the  contradictions of colonial enlightenment, then, Five Themes concludes with the dialectic of revolution and reaction  in  twentieth-­century  Russia.  Again  we  are  surrounded by multiple film projections. On one wall unfolds dialogue from Nicolai Bukharin’s 1937 show trial.  On  another  a  black  woman  dressed  in  Prussian  military fatigues and carrying a large flag paces against a  white  screen,  onto  which  her  profile  is  cast.  Like  Gogol’s story, the critique here is expressed in the idiom  of  the  absurd  –  the  most  appropriate  vocabulary, Kentridge seems to suggest, for confronting  without  reconciling  ourselves  to  the horrors of the long twentieth century.
 
While  aesthetically  and  politically  moving  throughout, Five Themes is not without its shortcomings. The exhibition  is  organized  chronologically,  and  there  is  little engagement – either through curatorial text, or through spatial arrangement – with the ways in which the  artist’s  multiple  thematic,  methodological,  and  historical projects speak to one another. Five Themes, in other words, conforms to rather than deconstructs given  temporal  or  conceptual  frames.  Paradoxically,  though, this central shortcoming brings into starker relief  one  of  Kentridge’s  abiding  strengths:  the  facility with which his work transcends divisions of here and there, then and now, subject and object. Resisting simple  oppositions,  Kentridge  creates  a  constellation  effect- one that reveals much about the imbrication of  different  histories  of  violence,  and  one  that  highlights the role of the solitary witness in remembering  the  past  while  recognizing  the  impossibility of ever making it whole.
 
Perhaps my initial identification with Benjamin’s angel was  misplaced.  Certainly  Kentridge  leads  us  through  the wastelands of our modern history. But his work – like  the  medium  of  drawing  itself,  which  is  at  soul  a  speculative errand into the unknown – gestures as well  toward  the  endless  possibilities  of  what  is  to  come. The perspective here is Janus-faced in the best sense.
 
 
William Kentridge: Five Themes was on view, 24 February–17 May 2010.

In  academia,  a  polite  way  to  say  that  we  found  our  colleague’s intervention or talk stupid and boring is to say:  ‘It  was  interesting.’  So  if  instead  we  tell  our  colleague openly: ‘It was boring and stupid’, he will be fully  entitled  to  feel  surprised  and  to  ask:  ‘But  if  you  found it boring and stupid, why didn’t you simply say that  it  was  interesting?’  The  unfortunate  colleague  is  right to take the direct statement as involving something  more,  not  only  a  comment  about  the  quality of his paper but an attack on his very person.

(Slavoj Žižek, How to Read Lacan, 2006)

 
With a series of 14 photographs entitled 600 a Month Max. (2010), on show at Tom Barry’s till the autumn, Catherine  Harty  gives  visibility  to  the  unspoken  hostility that greets potential tenants of low­‐cost housing in Cork City. The works are made using a basic digital camera to photograph a computer screen onto which  some  unusually  dismal  pictures  have  been downloaded from a well­known property website. It is not  just  that  these  low‐end  flats  and  bedsits  are  unappealing; it is the frank declaration of the zero effort  that  has  been  taken  to  render  them  even  minimally attractive. Their casual and blatant ugliness speaks  very  clearly  of  an  utter  disregard  for  the  aspirations and subjective life of the potential tenant.
 

One image of a shadowy bedroom, taken from outside in  a  dingy  corridor,  would  easily  stand  in  as  a  convincing crime scene photograph. In another, a stained  mattress  neighboured  by  a  wretched  little  pine table and set against a blank grey wall seems destined  to  become  the  dreary  arena  in  which  the  endgame of some deep depression will soon be played out.  Or  again,  in  another  image,  we  are  presented  with a pair of orange armchairs, brighter this time and actually arranged as if to be viewed; they do not retain this  veneer  for  long,  though,  as  we  soon  notice  how  the photographer has neglected the low sloping ceiling that would painfully cramp the space that one’s head would occupy if we were to sit down. Sometimes such  neglect  is  signalled  by  a  particular  incongruous  detail: the absurd dangle of the unplugged chord of a kettle;  or  the  faintly  obscene  way  the  empty  fridge  door has been left hanging open; or an empty, unlabelled  green  plastic  bottle  that  has  been  left  behind to proudly rule the kitchen work surface, competing  only  with  the  raw  white  glare  of  the  camera’s flash reflected back from the ceramic tiles behind.  Harty  writes  of  the  deep  sense  of  ‘hopelessness and despair’ that attended her trawl through  these  dismal  living  options,  and  this,  we  imagine, might be no exaggeration. Especially in a visual culture so saturated by endlessly airbrushed and eroticized  advertisements,  these  photographs  constitute veritable emblems of cold disregard, symptoms of a complete withdrawal of care.
 
Why  is  it  important  that  Harty’s  photographs  are  not  simply prints of JPEGs downloaded from the Internet? What  is  the  effect  of  the  mechanical  interference  of  her camera, which has evidently struggled to focus properly on these images on screen? What additional meanings are produced by the contingent distortions, striations  and  other  pixellated  variations  that  result?  For me, these chance effects suggest the affective background  against  which  the  everyday  reception  of  such images takes place. Computers do not process meanings,  but  rather  code;  they  do  not  get  upset  by  hostile moves made within our specifically human symbolic structures. By contrast, a person looking for a place  to  live  attends  to  and  invests  in  such  photographs: they are visions of a potential home, and they  need  to  sustain,  on  some  level,  the  projections  that will attend this idea. The sophistication and success  of  Harty’s  series  has,  then,  partly  to  do  with  the way in which this affective dimension has been registered:  as  a  friction,  disturbance,  or  distortion  on  the surface of the image itself. The camera’s blind, automatic  struggle  to  capture  the  image  from  the  screen can be allowed to signal something of the flathunter’s  stung  incomprehension  at  having  this  indifference served up with such excessive bluntness.
 
Harty’s  series  concisely  figures  a  harsh  knotting  together of point-­and-­shoot photography, economic division,  the  Irish  property  market,  and  a  subjective  world of aspirations and vulnerability. In terms of artistic  strategy,  her  project  makes  sense  within  a  trajectory of conceptual practices directed towards the  critique  of  institutions  and  ideologies:  Dan  Graham’s Homes for America (1966-­7), Hans Haacke’s: Shapolsky  et.  al.  (1971),    or  Martha  Rosler’s  The  Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems (1974­‐5), to name three crucial precedents. The artist selects, appropriates and re-­contextualizes in order to produce new meanings from existing material. In large part,  such  gambits  succeed  insofar  as  the  logic  and  effects of specific systems (economic, architectural, semiotic,  aesthetic,  etc.)  are  given  new  visibility.  The  apparently blank, anonymous or deadpan presentational mode is one way to reserve a space for both  fascination  and  indignance,  whilst  avoiding  the  (innumerable) traps of rhetorical cliché and righteous posturing.
 
Much  recent  (and,  indeed,  not  so  recent)  theorising  about art has championed its potential to perform assaults  upon  the  smooth  functioning  of  dominant  symbolic systems; art can interrupt the seamless surfaces  of  a  reified  world  and  render  its  familiar  objects strange again. This programme becomes particularly  resonant  when,  as  here,  the  disturbance  of art’s formal, semiotic and aesthetic conventions is united with a registration of the cold negligence with which  basic  social  bonds  are  cut  by  the  continuing  proliferation of the currently dominant economic system.
 
 
Catherine Harty: 600 a month max. was on view at Tom Barry’s summer-winter 2010.