17/4/2003
Undesire
Apexart, New York
Undesire as a title is wrong. It misses the anchor that retains meaning but who really cares? If it is not American when America is wrong to start with? An exhibition at apex was first music to the ears, then everything started getting horrible. Featuring works by Fikret Atay, Phil Collins, Inci Eviner and Dan Perjovschi.
organized by Vasif Kortun
Featuring works by Fikret Atay, Phil Collins, Inci Eviner and Dan Perjovschi
This is the corniest title I came up with. This is definitely an unintended deception. Undesire as a title is wrong. It misses the anchor that retains meaning but who really cares? If it is not American when America is wrong to start with? An exhibition at apex was first music to the ears, then everything started getting horrible. Your fucking president is strangling me. It's not the Iraqis, stupid! I can't even bring myself to go to the USA anymore, up your ass greencard! So, the exhibition changed form, perhaps it is a bit romantic to treat an exhibition like a space of representation, but I don't care any more.
There is the Kurdish artist Fikret Atay with two short videos. Fikret lives in Batman, close to Iraq, a miserable oil producing town with the highest suicide rate in Turkey. Just a week ago, they stretched a net across the atrium of the dinky mall to stop people from taking a dive onto the marble floor. Batman is not batman, this is not Gotham city. This is a town that carries the legacy of papa Bush`s 1991 war, the extraordinary security measures, the unspeakable murders perpetrated by the croonies of the State, it is Texas babyÉ Fikret will show two low-tech videos; one of a "war dance" and the other two kids in a kind of strange song and dance in an ATM cabin.
I saw Phil Collins' portrait videos (baghdad screen tests) at Tiran, Albania December 2002. I felt a bit ashamed of looking people in the eye who cannot look back at me, watching their clean white shirts, trying to fill this gap of silence. These are central to me. They are traveller's works in the sense that comprenshion comes later than the perception of a climate.
Inci Eviner, the other artist from Turkey, shows a large wall paper of an interior. Docile and domestic except for the fact that those live-bomb bodies get inscribed at home.
Finally, Dan Perjovschi whom I hope will do slide-show of his drawings to humour us just a little bit. I used to love the USA. I spent 12 beatiful years there. I am so disappointed now. I refuse to come unless this government is sent away by any means possible.
V.K. 2003
opening reception Friday, April 18, 6-8 pm
Image: Phil Collins, Baghdad Screentests, 2002, DVD, 47 minutes
Apexart
291 Church Street 10013
New York