[spectre] NEWS FROM HOME group show in Chelsea

[geert]

From: jim costanzo <j at jimcostanzo.us>
Subject: NEWS FROM HOME group show in Chelsea
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 2004 07:29:09 -0400

Pressrelease

NEWS FROM HOME  - October 2004
Curated by Moniek Voulon

Exhibition at WHITE BOX’S THE ANNEX 
601 West  26th Street  14th floor, Manhattan / Chelsea / New York

Opening:    Saturday, October  9 - 2004,  6-8 pm            
Opening performance: Mai Ueda
Exhibition: October 9 through November  5  -  2004 
Debate:       at White Box, dates and participants, to be announced

FIRST:
Chantal Akerman observed herself observing the houses and the streets of
Manhattan in the film “News from Home” (1976)

THEN:
Edward Said from Columbia University observed the West observing the
Arabs in his work “Orientalism” (1979)

RECENTLY:
Ian Buruma & Avishai Margalit observed the Arab fundamentalists in
observing the West in their “Occidentalism” – The West in the Eyes of
its Enemies” (2004)

NOW: 
THE LOST FRONTIER IN THE IRAQI DESERT
Moniek Voulon and 23 other artists from New York and Europe observe in a
global and reconstructive way the rebuilding of the world according to
the imaginative vision of Bush.
They observe the utopias and the spiritual and intellectual projects of
Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. 
They observe the idea of the regeneration of Arabia by America and the
confrontation of the Biblical Imagery with the abstract visuals of the
Muslim Koran.
And they observe how the ideas of Orientalism and Occidentalism, the two
most fundamental political positions of today, dominate the scene at the
American frontier in Iraq.
Paul Groot, 2004

Participating artists:
FRANCO ANGELONI / HENK BOVERHOFF / JIM COSTANZO / DORINE VAN DELFT 
MATT DUCKLO / ARTHUR ELSENAAR / SIMON FERDINANDO / ATOUSA B. GHIASABADI
/ LEON GOLUB / KIM GORDON / PAUL GROOT / ELIN O’HARA SLAVICK / KIMBERLY
LEWIS / ROBERT LONGO / MILTOS MANETAS / DAISUKE NISHIMURA / YOKO ONO /
FEDERICO D’ORAZIO / REMKO SCHA / DAVID SMITHSON / JEROME SYMONS / MAI
UEDA / BABETH M. VANLOO / MONIEK VOULON 


NEWS FROM HOME  New York 2004
Moniek Voulon,  2004 curator/artist 
email: mvoulon at dds.nl


> page 2  >


Pressrelease                                 

News from Home:  The Frontier Confronted
by Paul Groot, 2004

I
“News from Home” is the second part of a political-artistic trilogy
curated by 
Moniek Voulon, which gives voice to our anxiety about the American
invasion 
and occupation of Iraq. (The first installment was entitled "La Nuit
Américaine", 
the final one will be "Le Mépris"). At the same time it is an exhibition
of artists 
from Europe and America that cope with contemporary life. 
It shares the rage about the American politics of the Bush
administration with 
Michel Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, but, different from Moore's rhetorics,
it is not 
a dogmatic tale and it employs some elementary esthetical codes that
Moore 
never heard of.  
"News from Home" is about images and about a political aesthetics that
was 
developed by different European and American artists and filmmakers. 
It is partly based on the methods used by the French New Wave film
director 
Jean-Luc Godard, and tries to turn his film language into a useful
artistic 
attitude. Political activism and ideological inspiration are part of the
game, but
above all, the aim here is to reformulate a politically oriented
cinematographic 
attitude into a working politically oriented artistic model.

II
"News from Home" starts as a salute to Chantal Akerman's film "News from
Home", 1976, in which, she observes herself as she observes the streets
and 
houses of Manhattan - a thrilling prelude to the 9/11 events. But it
also 
refers to Edward W. Said’s "Orientalism", 1979, in which he observes the
West 
observing the Arab world, and "Occidentalism", 2004, a recent reflection
on 
fundamantalism, in which Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit observe the
Arabs 
observing the West. The exhibition is not a direct product of these 
views, neither will one find here a definitive Orientalist or
Occidentalist point
of view. 
Rather than being partisan in the worldwide struggle between these
dominant 
positions, this exhibition can be seen as a protest against this
ideological Catch 22. 
As the world of today is trapped in the force field between these two
poles, we 
realize that the Cold War between communism and capitalism has been
followed 
by an actual War of Fundamentalisms. 
Instead of the End of History as announced by Fukayama, the Utopia's of 
Bush 
and Bin Laden, these extreme representants of the Orientalist and the
Occidentalist
ideologies, brought us a new worldwide war.

III
The story of Orientalism is the story of the imperialist drive of the
European, 
Christian nations towards the East. Writers like Gustav Flaubert and
T.E. 
Lawrence, and politicians like Napoleon and Benjamin Disraeli, dreamt
their one-
sided Western fantasies about the Orient - a Europe-centered and racist,
exotic 
fairytale full of lust and love. Living in the post-enlightenment
period, they want 
"to manage - and even produce - the Orient politically, sociologically,
militarily, ideo-
logically, scientifically and imaginatively", as Said puts it. Driven by
an interpretation
of the world of the Islam as "one proto-type of closed traditional
societies", they try
 to find an excuse for invading and exhausting Arab countries under
cover of a 
liberating ideology, as an  excuse for rebuilding the world according to
their 
imperialistic imaginative vision. As it was in the last centuries, and
as it is today, with 
the Utopia of Bush and the spiritual and intellectual projects of
Wolfowitz and 
Rumsfeld. 
An excuse for the regeneration of Arabia by America in pushing the 
abstract visuals of the Muslim Koran aside by the force of Biblical
Imagery.

>

"Occidentalism", on the other side, shows the unexpected results of the
ideology 
of Orientalism. All the one-sided fantasies turn into a negative
anti-image. The 
image of the enlightened White Man now incorporates the Doom, is the
embodi-
ment of Evil. The racist imperialism of the West is now confronted with
a pure, 
religious negativism. It started with the slavophilia of Dostoyevski and
we also 
discern this tendency in the mentality of Japan’s Kamikaze-fighters in
World War II. 
But with the fantasies of master-brain Mohammed Atta, Occidentalism
became 
the hot item of today.

His dream of a new Caliphat, a new pure Islam without frontiers or state
borders, became a nightmare for the West.
Occidentalism as political-religious Utopia, without any distinction
between 
politics and religion, with the failing modernization in the Arab
countries as an
excuse for the religious, traditional search for authenticity. The
flight and fight 
of Atta & friends against modernity and, of course, against Gothic City,
as the 
epitome of the Western world, started the new war between Occidentalism 
and Orientalism. The destruction of the Towers of Babel as the supreme
and 
sublime symbol of the Occidentalist’s revenge against the Western city
that he 
is jealous of. (Anti-liberal occidentalists cherish a deep hatred of the
City).  
Because of the terror of Occidentalism in Gothic City, the West invaded
Iraq, 
where it was immediately confronted with its own shadow, with a
self-generated
monster. News from the enemy became News from Home. The Utopian dream of
Wolfowitz, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld became the nightmare of the Abu
Ghraib 
prison in Bagdad. 

IV
So now the ideas of Orientalism and Occidentalism, the two most extreme
political positions of today, dominate the scene at the American
frontier in Iraq. 
The artists involved here in "News from Home" realize how dangerous the
dog-
matic views of both these parties are, and invite the public to
participate in a 
more nuanced debate. Though the exhibition does not completely avoid 
political rhetorics (being in a sense didactical and even
self-referential), it wants
to help develop an instrument to avoid the ultimate, terrifying choices
proposed
by the evangelist of the dogmatic ideologies. 
"News from Home" is about observing, not only about observing the enemy,
but 
about observing the observer, and so about observing yourself. It shows
you 
your image in the mirror, but what you see is not always what you expect
to see. 
In building up a relevant metaphorical portrait, artistic introspection
can disturb 
our routine in always expecting a mirrorlike image.
As we all know, sometimes you have to look for the devil in yourself,
not in your 
supposed enemy. 

Paul Groot, 2004       

NEWS FROM HOME  New York 2004
Moniek Voulon,  2004 curator/artist 
email: mvoulon at dds.nl