JEXISTE

CONCEPTUAL MELODRAMA AND THE REPRESENTATION

OF SUBJECTIVITY AFTER CONCEPTUAL ART

MARCELLO SIMEONE
MASTER OF ARTS IN PHOTOGRAPHY
University of the Arts London. LCC School Of Media

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FOREWORDS

INTRO KILL THE ARTISTS SOUL

IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACOLOUS

10

THE ARTIST HELPS THE WORLD

14

MAKING SOMETHING THAT LEADS TO NOTHING

18

SELF-EXPOSURE AND REPRESENTATION

21

CONCLUSIONS

22

BIBLIOGRAPHY

25

TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS

26

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FOREWORDS

Although I never felt completely at ease growing up in the beautiful but overwhelming
Naples, for I consider myself to be quite an introverted character, I was deeply influenced
by its philosophical (reflective) approach to life and its poetic undertones; the idea that art
is (after all) a valuable tool to intimately discover yourself and should never lack
emotional character is also part of this legacy. It was Plato after all who defended
philosophy as the product of Eros and Kant, before Hegel, who said that nothing great is
ever done without passion. (Golomb, Santaniello & Lehrer, 1999, p.127) Nonetheless, in
the history of philosophy and I would argue in our modern western (by now global)
culture, emotions have often been ostracized. In the history of contemporary art,
subjectivity and emotions have been made problematic by Conceptual art during the
sixties, for a series of reasons that I will mention later in details, but that are not dissimilar
from the philosophical ones. Emotions are by nature unreliable, subjectivity and systems
are always apart and for an art that needs to be rationally analyzed, and problematized
by means of standard (democratic) critical guidelines the individual perception and
experience of the world becomes a danger to its own existence.
Even in todays post-conceptual art landscape, the legacy of this avant-garde movement
remains well in place and as soon as one shifts the focus from the systematic or political
analysis towards a subjective or self reflective investigation, some objections may be
raised and they need to be addressed. A common objection is, for instance, that the
confession of the psychological self presents a fundamental obstacle to the ability to
develop feelings of social interconnectedness (Heiser, 2009, p.9) in other words the
unreliability of the psychological self as a source of emancipation. But we will come back
to this later...now I am wondering...Is it possible to make art that is emotionally intense
but is intellectually engaging and relevant today? Is there any space left for romantic,
existential or poetic discourse in todays post-conceptual art landscape? As a young man
I felt personally perplexed after moving from the 'romantic' south to the 'conceptual' north
- of Italy first and Europe afterwards. In the development of my own personality and work

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methodology I felt the need to adapt my thinking and behaviours to a different set of
cultural parameters.
At the time I felt (kind of) wrong with my need for the emotional in the art, but it made me
realise how cultural shifts and power relations define history, knowledge and who we are
in relation to others; the rational (repressive) power was already at work, outside and
inside me. It became clear (quite immediately) that my own reflective and creative world
had to exist and evolve in the gap between reason and emotion, pathos and detachment.
As for today, I dont think I have entirely resolved the issue and personally I continue to
have a quite problematic relation with feelings and as far as art is concerned I need a
work to be conceptually interesting in order to catch my attention, but I also strive for
empathy and some kind of emotional kick. I have therefore continued to investigate
possible strategies employed by artists whose aim is to create a strong connection
between art and life, using their personal journey into existence as an ideal starting point
to create conceptual works of art that if on one side provoke an intimate, sometimes
moving (emotional) response from the audience on the other employ specific tactics to
keep a door open for this same audience to participate actively in the construction of the
meaning (if any) or narrative (of any kind), remaining faithful to one of the paradigm of
Conceptual art: empowering the viewer and refusing to make art a one-way conversation
(or confession) in which, quoting a Bruce Nauman's work (2004), ILL TALK YOULL
LISTEN.
In many of these works the artists seem to be looking for some kind of meaningful answer
to an otherwise absurd reality, and although overtly dealing with emotions and striving for
communication (or love) there seems to be a certain skepticism deeply informing their
works. Some of their actions seem devoid of any common sense: falling from a tree,
walking on a square, pushing a block of ice along the street. In all these works there
seems to be an ongoing dialogue (or struggle) between the artist and himself. In
questioning the very essence of the artistic production through a series of futile actions
they somehow seem to question the meaning of life: what should we consider as an
'acceptable' and 'accepted' subject of artistic research? Does it have to be a coherent,

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uniform discourse? Does it need to be tangible or at least visible? Has all this effort as
artists (and living human beings) any sense? Do I have anything to tell you in the first
place? And ...what will you understand? In many of these works we won't find any answer
or conclusions but it is exactly this paradox that fuels our own emotional and intellectual
response (participation). Despite exposing their body to the eye of the camera these
artists seem to create an autonomous artistic persona that becomes the agent of a
personal/universal enquiry, concerned with a philosophical (and paradoxical)
investigation. There is a distance, provided by means of a subtle intellectual framework or
the use of irony that allow us as viewers to focus on the subject matter (sadness, love,
absurdity, crisis, failure) through, but more importantly beyond, the artist's own personal
real life.
The feeling today is that we live in the age of uncertainty, where all our beliefs are (to say
the least) under scrutiny, the political system proved to be unfair, God is dead and future
can not be seen through the utopian lens of socialism or the global capitalist promise of
indefinite growth and well being. Furthermore our emotional experience of the fast and
furious world is frustrated and buried under layers of functionalism, competitiveness and
lack of true, deep interpersonal communication. I am thinking of this contemporary man
as someone fully aware of the fact that the tightest system, the most universal
rationalism always stumbles eventually on the irrational of human thought; [he lives] in
that indescribable universe where contradiction, antinomy, anguish or impotence reign,
(Camus, 1942, p.23) and his only option is to keep on searching, an image that reminds
me of the myth of Sisyphus and, as we will see in a moment, not dissimilar to some of
those provided by the artists in this essay.
According to the Greek myth, Sisyphus was punished for all eternity to roll a rock up a
mountain only to have it roll back down to the bottom when he reaches the top. Albert
Camus claims that Sisyphus is the ideal absurd hero and that his punishment is
representative of the human condition: Sisyphus must struggle perpetually and without
hope of success. So long as he accepts that there is nothing more to life than this
absurd' struggle, then he can find happiness in it. Facing the absurd, Camus suggests in

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his book 'The myth of Sisyphus' (1942), doesn't entail suicide, but, on the contrary, allows
us to live life to its fullest and he identifies three characteristics of the absurd life: Revolt,
Freedom and Passion. He also identifies possible archetypes of absurd heroes and
(stretching the boundaries of my imagination) I could probably identify in those
archetypes the personality profiles of the three artists I have decided to include in this
essay: The Seducer (Bas Jan Ader), The Creator (Bruce Nauman) and the Revolutionary
(Francis Alys). Camus emphasizes commitment and refuse reconciliation, for him there is
a metaphysical honour in enduring the worlds absurdity. Conquest or play acting,
creation, multiple loves, absurd revolts are tribute that man pays to his dignity in a
campaign in which he is defeated in advance. (Camus, 1942, p.90)
The absurd man of today must confront modern societies, with a strong tendency towards
depersonalization; these societies get larger and larger and more intricately organised
and so on...but the problem of the person, of the individual as unique being can not be
completely assimilated into any framework whether it's bureaucratic, conceptual or
systematic.
Something of him is left out... (Barret, 1978) Being an individual in our globalised mass
society has become more and more an achievement rather than a starting point. That is
probably why I am interested in the micro cosmos of subjectivity, the way in which a
single individual reacts to life, his emotive response, his search for some sort of selfruling, the elusive grasp of an emotional balance that leads to his individual sovereignty,
a road to freedom and authenticity, his silent struggles and private revolutions.

Kierkegaard, under the pseudonym of Johannes Climacus, in Concluding Unscientific

Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (1846), writes the following cryptic line:
Subjectivity is Truth, using the term subjectivity referring to what is personal to the
individualwhat makes the individual who he is in distinction from others, his unique
relationship with time and the objects. A subject is a person with a past, a present, and a
future, different people experience these in various waysthese experiences are unique,
not anyone else's. According to Sartre, what the individual chooses and how he chooses
will define who and what he isto himself and to others. In that sense becoming an

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individual is a task to be undertaken and sustained but perhaps never permanently

achieved, the time bound nature of human condition requires that existing as an
individual is always dynamic and under way, never static and complete. And depending
on the circumstances it may also involve considerable risk. (Flynn, 2006, p.25)
After all, etymologically, existence means to stand out and in existentialist philosophy
living an authentic life means acknowledging ones distinctive individuality. Contemporary
man is often sleepy, cynically distant or distracted and incapable of questioning his
cultural beliefs; Spinoza believed that the thinker must act against the received wisdom
of the age [and] Kierkegaard wrote essays attacking the most potent forces of conformity
in the Copenhagen of his day, remaining isolated from his society as he sought in the
manner of Socrates to harmonize his life with his teachings. (Flynn, 2006, p.25)
Nietzsche envisioned well in advance the post-modern era and he believed that the herd
would succumb to nihilism, but (in the manner of Camus absurd hero) he believed that
free spirits would survive this plague by embracing this situation and creating their own
truths and values and he was especially interested in the idea of self-overcoming. As
pointed out in the introduction of Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy (Gemes & May,
2009):

Nietzsche considers freedom a kind of perpetual self-overcoming. Freedom is not a

metaphysical capacity to have done otherwise, nor the unconstrained expression of
one's identity, but:
(i)

a psychological self-relation, a relation to one's own drives, desires,

commitments

(ii)

a difficult achievement that depends neither on force of will or selfknowledge, or reflective endorsement alone;

(iii)

a paradoxical form of mindedness, at once affirmative and negative,

whole-hearted and ironic (a tension of the spirit)

(iv)

a form of self-mastery or an expression of the will to power.

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The planning of tasks, actions, gestures concerned with self-overcoming seems to inform
the methodology of the artists in this essay, but the analysis of their artistic strategy
requires an understanding of what happened in the sixties and after with the advent and
legacy of Conceptual art, which de facto originated a deep, radical seizure between
reason and emotions, fragmentary and systematic.

INTRO - KILL THE ARTIST'S SOUL

Is the 1964 when Andy Warhol exhibits Kiss [Fig.02], a 16 mm film showing different
couples kissing in front of the camera. The film starts and there is none of what we might
expect: no romance, no violins. Instead what the artist is showing is a bare, dry series of
close-ups of people kissing for the duration of a film-reel. Black screen; the film begins;
the film ends; black screen and so on...

Fig.01 - 02

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The feeling is that the artists communication strategy is to carefully provide all the
ingredients for an emotional experience, even though this must never get to point of
investing our senses; instead we are left contemplating the screen and subjecting our
feelings to critical analysis.
In the meantime, in an attempt to limit the power of the art market and the role of the
author as a genius/creator, a group of artists declare self-expression dead. Everything
concerned with the ostentation of the artists soul must be avoided in favour of a new
radical approach based on purely intellectual resources, dematerialization of the work
and the shift in power from the artist to the viewer. As harsh as it may sounds the roots of
this new art are to be found in the political climate of the time, where very little space is
left for romantic plots; instead the artists employ a new radical, critical approach to artmaking, it is named Conceptual Art. The Conceptual artist affirms his authorship in
different ways, either becoming a kind of trickster subverting cultural codes or an
intellectual master; alternatively the very concept of authorship is suspended, and the
completion of the work is handed over to the audience. (Heiser, 2011) A growing number
of artists begin to work in a performative way, the ostensible equilibrium between
everyday life and art becomes the expression and metaphor of political and emancipatory
desires (...) The starting point is always the performers body changing from an
autonomous entity into an activist one. (Maude-Roxby, 2007, pp.68,70) photography and
video are the mediums employed by the performer to record the action, providing visual
documentation to the ephemeral gesture, and quickly become very popular mediums
among conceptualists.
Rosalind Krauss in her article Notes on the Index (1977) argues that the quasi
tautological condition of a documentary image should supposedly free artists from the
mystification of authorial mark making (...) Photography, Krauss argues, has at its core no
convention of style but instead it bears the indexical imprint of things in the world.
(Krauss in Witkovsky, 2011, p.23) Conceptual art establishes itself at the forefront of the
art practice, flirting with critical theory, whose role is to define the boundaries of what can
be understood as purely conceptual and tracing a deep sharp line separating reason

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and emotion, inwardness and outwardness, thus setting the rules of what is in or out,
but substantially limiting, in the process, what a pure conceptual artist can do.

IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS

It is for a Dutch artist to push these boundaries, seeking to accomplish the apparently
impossible task of being simultaneously a rationalist and a romanticist, his name is Bas
Jan Ader. In his 16mm black & white silent film I am too sad to tell you (1971) [Fig.03] he
virtually picks up where Andy Warhols Kiss had left us. In the film we see the artist
crying, sitting in front of a neutral, white background from the start to the end of the film.
Although we feel immediately moved, witnessing and participating in his inconsolable
sorrow, the methodology employed by the artist is essentially conceptual as the artist
carefully executes a set of instructions he has planned in advance. Furthermore we are
not given any explanation of the reasons why the artist is crying and for this reason we
are prompted to fill the gap with our own experience and imagination. What we are
confronted with, in other words, is a conceptual abstraction of a melodramatic feeling: the
artist sets up the scene, the light goes on, and he starts weeping; the light goes off,
message delivered. Ader is not telling us any personal fact, instead he has put a system
in place whereby we can both empathize and participate, we dont know whether he is
really sad but what is more important is that Sadness (and not the artist feeling sad) is the
subject matter of this work.

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Fig.03

Ader was a truly conceptual artist, his methodology put great emphasis on the detailed
planning of his actions and installations, that were recorded on silent films and
photographs. Despite working in California in the early seventies Bas Jan Aders work
differs from other body/conceptual artists of his generation such as Chris Burden (the
ultimate hero) or Vito Acconci, he was less interested in the physicality and used his
person as a medium to a different end, metaphysics. His work has also lighter aspects,
he was influenced by slapstick, in the tradition of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton and
much of his oeuvre exists and evolves in the tension between this heightened sense of
pathos (Burden) and irony (Keaton).

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Fig. 04

In much of his work Ader deals with gravity, and is concerned with the notion of the fall. In
Broken Fall (organic) (1971) [Fig.04] we see the artist hanging from the branch of a tree
above a ditch until he can no longer maintain his grip and lands in the water. In Fall 2,
Amsterdam (1970) [Fig.05] Ader rides an old bicycle alongside a canal, with both hands
on the handlebars but with a bunch of flowers in one hand; he takes the bend too wide
and plunges, still on the bicycle, into the water. In both films the artist deals with the
existential adversity of the everyday, much in the vein of Keatons slapstick films [Fig.06].
However, the works are neither an existential heroic nor simply its parody, but precisely
the short-circuiting of the two. In recent years Bas Jan Ader has become the
mythologized figure of the ultimately tragic hero who, crossing the Atlantic in a one man
boat and thus realising the second of the three planned elements of the piece In Search
of the Miraculous (1975) [Fig.14] died, disappearing at sea.

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Fig. 05

The artist becomes in 2004 the pivotal figure of Romantic Conceptualism an exhibition
curated by Jorg Heiser, whose aim is to re-establish a connection between the early
(Jena) Romanticism and Conceptual Art practice. According to the curator, Romanticism
understood not as a synonym for the kitsch of love and desire but as an abbreviation for
the cultural techniques of emotions and for ideas of the fragmentary and the open
appears as a central (though neglected, if not actively ignored) aspect of the Conceptual.
(Heiser, 2004) As Heiser himself points out in a later book, All Of A Sudden (2008),
Romantic Conceptualism works against the notion of the conceptual as a closed system
controlled by intellectual heroes. Slapstick is related to this insofar as it spoils the sublime
in Romanticism; Romanticism, on the other hand, spoils slapsticks contentment in fun for
funs sake.

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Fig. 06

THE ARTIST HELPS THE WORLD

Jena Romantics such as August and Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis and Schelling,
had no cult of the genius, and they did not valorise emotion above reason. What
was central to their movement was profound skepticism about the viability of
traditional attitudes towards truth, an intellectually rigorous theory of art that gave
particular weight to playfulness, fragmented writing, and the notion of literary
irony; a sense that the philosopher ought to be or become more of an artist. (...)
Schlegel defines irony as "logical beauty" and "transcendental buffoonery", a sort
of playful, artistic self-consciousness, the text reflecting on itself. It is a way in
which a piece of art or philosophy indicates its illusory, provisional, limited
character, while gesturing towards an unreachable, higher ground. (Norman,
2002, p.502)

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I am thinking all this sounds decidedly Conceptual and I am also immediately reminded of
a Bruce Naumans work, The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths [Fig.01]
a snail-shaped neon sign hanged in the windows of his studio in 1967. The work stated in
a style usually employed to advertise donuts or beer, the virtues of the artist as a
shamanic service provider. We dont know exactly how to perceive the meaning of this
work: is he sincere in the poetic sense or is he being cynical in the philosophical sense?
Is the work imbued with personal meaning or is total nonsense? Yet again a paradox
triggers the viewers participation.

Fig.07

However, irony is not cynicism, in many ways these are the opposite of one another;
whereas great art may breed irony, hopelessness gives way to cynicism. Irony is a
positive sign, a rebellion against mindless authority and oppression, whether personal or
political. (Morgan, 2002) In this respect I find particularly interesting the early studio
works made by Nauman at the end of the sixties, a series of black and white videos,
where the artist stages the narcissistic drama of the individual, trying desperately to
make something out of nothing. In Violin Tuned D E A D, (1969) [Fig.07] the artist is
shown sideways (he turned the camera at a horizontal position), walking in his studio,

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playing the same notes on the violin over and over again thus creating a hypnotic drone.
The title literally relate to the fact that the four strings of the instrument were tuned to D,
E, A, and D. In Slow Angle Walk (Beckett walk) - (1968) [Fig.08] Nauman records himself
horizontally in such a way that he seems to walk up the wall and with his body forming a
90 degrees angle.

Fig 08 09

He slowly moves his legs mimicking the act of walking and trying to keep his balance,
while his body remains firmly in the centre of the image. The process looks complicated,
both by its physical movements and in its calculation, if the artist-performer loses its grip,
he falls. In other works of the same period the artist, similarly trapped in his studio
performs similar absurd actions such as walking in an exaggerated manner around the
perimeter of a square or obsessively repositioning a T-shaped bar again and again as if
caught up in the problematic resolution of a conflictual and unstable situation of the self
[Fig.09 - 10]. Now, what is also very appealing to me, beyond Naumans performative use
of the body, it is the reductionist ethos of these early works where he goes literally back
to basics, in his attempt to find rational solutions to define art. In the manner of Samuel
Beckett, the artist shows a certain attitude for the non-drama, the play that exists within
the human condition, often perceived as a hovering sphere of the absurdist sensibility.

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Fig. 10

The works of Nauman and Beckett are often associated by the critics with
phenomenology and absurdism, bedfellows of existentialism and Nauman in his video
performances come very close to some of the characters created by Beckett such as
Vladimir and Extragon in his famous play Waiting for Godot, who enact their desperate
lives in isolation of one another in some unknown desolate place (Morgan, 2002, p.10);
his actions apparently lack purpose, he emphasizes through the repetition of his gestures
the slow (subjective) passage of time, confined and unable to escape, thus alluding (but
this could be my interpretation) to the essence of the human condition and the perennial
search for something that may fulfil human desire (the arrival of Godot or the creation of
the work of art).

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MAKING SOMETHING THAT LEADS TO NOTHING

Fig. 11

In the lengthy dedication that accompanies his book The Practice of the Everyday life,
Michel De Certeau calls forth the ordinary man and the common hero: The anonymous
hero is very ancient. He is the murmuring voice of societies. In all ages he comes before
texts. He doesnt expect representation. The writings of De Certeau are often associated
with the work of Francis Alys because De Certeau vindicates a sum of individualities
whose collective and operational tactics engage in silent resistance and transgression.
(Arriola, 2008, p.126) In some of his early works, as a result of this individual struggle,
Alys silently claims back his time by means of poetic actions that undermine the notion
of speed, efficiency, productivity, and therefore progress. In Paradox of Praxis 1 Sometimes Making Something leads to Nothing, (1997) [Fig.12] the artist is seen in a
video pushing a large block of ice through the busy streets of Mexico City until the ice

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completely melts down. Here one is immediately reminded of Camus Sisyphus rolling a
boulder up a hill again and again; both Alys and Sisyphus accepting and embracing the
absurd get free from the idea of life-achievement, engaging de-facto in a form of
resistance and transgression.

Fig. 12

Alys, unlike Nauman, doesnt work in a studio and he seems to be the prototype of the
nomadic (global) artist, he operates in the social interstices and political fractures of the
urban structure, his plots and scenarios spreads like rumours that thrive on the
fragmented stories and debris of everyday situations. He slid pillows into the broken
windows of Mexico City (Placing Pillows, 1990) and walked a magnetic dog collecting
leftovers and debris (The Collector, 1992) [Fig.11]. In the latter work the black and white
photograph is accompanied by with the following text: For an indeterminate period of
time, the magnetised collector takes a daily walk through the streets and gradually builds
up a coat made of any metallic residue lying in its path. This process goes on until the
collector is completely covered by its trophies.
Here again we have the feeling that the artist is voluntarily stressing the value of the
indefinite amount of time in which the apparently pointless gesture of recollection has
taken place and the daily (almost ritualistic) repetition of this action, in apparent, stark

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contrast with common expressions such as time is money, dont waste my time and
hard work, cultural products of the western civilization that emphasise speed, work and
profit above all. In Alys work the ephemeral gesture becomes an action performed to
express ethical meaning that is, in turn, accommodated to the political realm, and what is
intriguing for me in his work is exactly this fusion of ephemeral and ethical, poetics and
politics.
In A story of Deception (2003-2006) [Fig.13] Alys chases mirages in a country road in
Patagonia, again putting himself in the absurd (and romantic) position of try to capture an
atmospheric phenomenon occurring in a perpetually receding horizon. As the artist
explains, this poetic and ephemeral gesture can be read as addressing that very Latin
American political scenario where development programs tend to function in precisely the
manner of a mirage, a historical goal that vanishes perpetually into thin air as soon as it
looms onto the horizon; (Alys, 2006, p.98 ) For me though, the work (as for Bas Jan
Aders attempt to cross the Atlantic in a one man boat In Search of the Miraculous (1975)
[Fig.14] ) is a fantastic on-going dialogue between the traveller and his desires and more
generally remind us of the most daunting task any human being is condemned (at least)
to try to accomplish, the pursuit of happiness.

Fig. 13 - 14

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SELF-EXPOSURE AND REPRESENTATION

Ader, Nauman and Alys use photography and video in order to record their performative
gestures and allow the viewer to take part in their game of self exposure. But is their
conceptual use of the lens-based medium completely alien to representation and
authorship as suggested by Krauss in her Notes on the Index? In short my answer is no.
In Aders films and photographic series we have the feeling that everything has been
carefully staged; hes by all means an aesthete, there is a great deal of attention to
details, colour (when appropriate) and composition. We know from his biography that the
person assisting him in the recordings was his wife Mary Sue Andersen, who was very
close to him, and therefore very well aware of his visual concerns. Some Aders works
reveal a certain pictorial sensibility and his oeuvre is by large a successful effort in the
representation of the metaphysical; he was also notably inspired by Buster Keatons
movies and everything from framing, duration and costumes is there to recall that.

Naumans works are visually very minimal, but again his conscious use of the medium is
key to get the type of viewers response he is aiming at. The studio is empty; everything
is there to suggest the idea of the conceptual artist at work. Nauman turns and twists the
camera in order to deliver the uncomfortable feeling of an unstable psychological relation
with the self and the space around him. His body becomes an object in the world of
others. He plays with the idea of the mental self being penetrable, and vulnerable making
the viewer stands in the voyeuristic position of someone who can look right through him
into his mind. [Our gaze is thus experienced] as an actual penetration into the core of the
inner self. (Laing, 1969, p.110)

With Alys we land in the typical post-conceptual framework; the artists use of the medium
is dictated by several concerns. He is well aware of the conceptual legacy and refuses to
take responsibility for the actual making of the image; his aim is to contextualize his

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gestures in a life-like context and to preserve the experiential aspects of it. The visual
style of his work is generally amateurish, quality is average and framing is kind of
unintentional, but having said that, I would argue that this is a planned strategy and not,
as in the case of many seventies artists, a choice born out of true political antagonism
(Fluxus) or intellectual dogmatism (Performance Art). As post-conceptual artist, Alys
defines his own language, elusively avoiding strict characterization in style and almost
playing with the idea of the documentary, in order to permeate his actions with that lyrical
everydayness at the same time exploiting and reinforcing the myth of the ordinary man.

CONCLUSIONS

In the introduction I have mentioned the reasons why I am interested in subjectivity and
the use of poetic language within a post-conceptual art framework. My personal journey
from south to north brought the issue of the ongoing struggle between reason and
emotion to the foreground of my consciousness. What is more I always felt I had a kind of
all-too-deep fracture between the rational and emotional self right inside me, it is part of
my personality and influence a great deal of my perception of the world, often creating a
gap between a more poetic intention and the resulting more rational gesture. The
consequence is often a tendency of my works towards an emotional implosion. I always
had the feeling that somehow I needed to choose between reason and emotion or trying
to bridge the gap, but either/or (to quote Kierkegaard one last time), the strategy to live a
life poetically (and making art accordingly) has to confront todays deflationary use of the
term poetic, and be informed by the legacy of conceptual art and its critique of
authorship and subjectivity. It is in fact skepticism towards the idea of truth, genius and
creation stemming from the early conceptual experiences, that opens the gate to irony,
playfulness and to the development of artistic personas, central elements in the practice
of conceptual and post conceptual artists such as Ader, Nauman and Alys.

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My decision has been, to serve the purpose of creating a narrative, to imagine their work
deeply immersed in the existentialist tradition of living a life authentically (overcoming
one-self to be what one really is) and to compare contemporary man (crossing the desert
of values and the void left by the death of God in a semi-virtual reality made of subtle
ideological constraints, and depersonalized intimacy) to the Greek myth of Sisyphus. The
philosophy of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus, although dealing with a
dreadful acceptance of the fact that life has a structural absurdity as a project whose
only possible end is oblivion, find in the acceptance of this condition and in the making of
one-self as a living project good reasons to exist here and now; their approach to life is a
call to paradoxical non-conformity that despite belonging to the last century is in my
opinion still significant today. In this essay the artists becomes the anonymous fighters of
a not well defined form of romantic resistance; deceitfully inefficient heroes, masters of
the self, on a mission to accomplish the lyrical revitalization of language.

There always comes a time when one must choose between contemplation and
action, this is called becoming a man. Such wrenches are dreadful. But for a
proud heart there can be no compromise. There is God or time, that cross or this
sword. (Camus, 1942 p.84)

Bas Jan Ader, the seducer, would certainly agree that there is no eternal love but what is
thwarted, there is scarcely any passion without struggle. Such a love culminates only in
the ultimate contradiction of death. (Camus, 1942 p.71) His falls, his longing and the
search for new horizons at the intersection of the heroic and its parody seduce us all; he
is the most romantic of conceptualists.
Francis Alys, the revolutionary, who choose the ineffectual effort as weapon of objection,
the gringo taking to the street to claim his time back, resisting speed and productivity,
chasing mirages in a perpetually receding horizons, in harmony with the nomadic nature
of all poets.
Bruce Nauman, the creator, facing the drama of conception and the (all too

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contemporary) problematic relationship with the self in the micro cosmos of his studio, to
examine, to enlarge and to enrich the ephemeral island on which he has just landed. For
the absurd man is not a matter of explain and solving, but of experiencing and
describing. (Camus, 1942 p.91)

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alys, F. (2006) Fragments of a Conversation in Buenos Aires, in: Francis Alys, A story of Deception, Exhibition
Catalogue, Portikus, Frankfurt
Arriola, M., Goetz, I., Lockemann, K., Urbashek, S. (2008) Francis Alys, Exhibition Catalogue, Mnchen:
Sammlung Goetz
Barrett, W. (1978) Conversation with Bryan Magee on Heidegger and Modern Existentialism - From the 1978
BBC series Men of Ideas. Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvfgAvtNulw [Accessed 16 June
2013]
Beenker, E. (2007) Bas Jan Ader. The man who wanted to look beyond the horizon, in Bas Jan Ader All is
Falling, Camden Art Centre and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Exhibition Catalogue
Camus, A. (1942) The Myth of Sisyphus, Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books
De Certeau, M. (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life, Los Angeles, London: Berkeley
Flynn, T., R. (2006) Esistentialism, A very short introduction, Oxford : Oxford University Press
Godfrey, M., Kelsey, R., E., Rorimer, A., Ruppersberg, A., Witkovsky, M., S., (2011) Light Years Conceptual
Art and The Photograph 1964-1977, Chicago : Art Institute of Chicago, New Haven : Distributed by Yale
University Press
Golomb J., Lehrer R. L., Santaniello W., (1999) Nietzsche and Depth Psychology, SUNY Press
Heiser, J. (2007) Curb your Romanticism Bas Jan Aders Slapstick, in Bas Jan Ader All is Falling, Camden
Art Centre and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Exhibition Catalogue
Heiser, J. (2007) A Romantic Measure in Romantic Conceptualism, Kunsthalle Nurberg, Exhibition Catalogue
Heiser, J. (2008) All of a Sudden - Things that matter in Contemporary Art, Sternberg Press
Heiser, J. (2009) Moscow, Romantic Conceptualism, and after e-flux journal #29, November 2009. Available
from: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/moscow-romantic-conceptualism-and-after/ [Accessed 16 June 2013]
Hong, e., Hong, H., Kierkegaard, S. (1992) Concluding unscientific postscript to Philosophical fragments,
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press
Laing, R. D. (1969) The Divided Self, New York, Pantheon Books
Nauman, B. (2004) Raw Material, Tate Modern, Exhibition Catalogue, London: Tate; New York: Distributed by
H.N. Abrams
Norman, J. (2002) Nietzsche and Early Romanticism, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 63, No. 3, Available
from: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=00225037%28200207%2963%3A3%3C501%3ANAER%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5
[Accessed 16 June 2013]
Robert C. Morgan, (2002) Bruce Nauman, Art and Performance, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
Roxby A. M. (2007) Live Art on Camera, Performance and Photography, Exhibition Catalogue, Southampton :
John Hansard Gallery
Van Bruggen,C. (1988) Bruce Nauman:Drawings 1965-1986, New York: Rizzoli

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TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. 01 - Bruce Nauman, (1967) The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths - Neon, cm 149.9
x 139.7 x 5.1 - Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Fig. 02 Andy Warhol (1964) Kiss - 16mm film (black and white, silent). 54 min. at 16fps. 2010 The Andy
Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Film still courtesy of The
Andy Warhol Museum
Fig.03 Bas Jan Ader (1971) I Am Too Sad To Tell You - 16mm film, duration: 3 min 34 sec,
Sue Ader-Andersen

Film still Mary

Fig. 04 Bas Jan Ader (1971) Broken Fall (Organic) - 16mm film, duration: 1 min 44 sec, Film still Mary
Sue Ader-Andersen
Fig.05 Bas Jan Ader (1970) Fall 2 (Amsterdam) - 16mm film, duration: 19 sec, Film still Mary Sue AderAndersen
Fig. 06 Buster Keaton (1928) Steamboat Bill Jr. (Film still) orig. 35mm silent film, duration: 71 min, Produced
by: Joseph M. Schenck (USA)
Fig. 07 Bruce Nauman (1969) Violin tuned D E A D (Film still) orig. Video (black and white, sound) duration:
60 min, Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI),
New York.
Fig. 08 Bruce Nauman (1968) Slow Angle Walk (Beckett walk), (Film still) orig. Video (black and white,
sound) duration: 60 min, Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy Electronic Arts
Intermix (EAI), New York.
Fig. 09 Bruce Nauman (1965) Manipulating the T Bar (Film still) orig. Video (black and white, sound)
duration: 3 min, Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix
(EAI), New York.
Fig. 10 Bruce Nauman (1968) Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square, (Film
still) orig. Video (black and white, sound) duration: 10 min, Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York
Fig. 11 Francis Alys (1991-2006) The Collector, Black & White Photograph, cm 100x80, The Artist
Fig. 12 Francis Alys (1997) Paradox of Praxis 1 - Sometimes Making Something leads to Nothing (Still from
Video), orig. Video (colour, sound) duration: 5 min The Artist
Fig. 13 Francis Alys (1991-2006) A story of Deception (Still from Video), orig. Video (colour, sound) duration:
15 min The Artist
Fig.15 Bas Jan Ader (1975) In Search of The Miraculous (Film still) -

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Mary Sue Ader-Andersen