19/12/2000

 
Irene Amore 
 
 
Collectives' Fragments

 
   
London galleries 
 
   
The Eyes Oci, 5 minutes, 35 mm, colour, 1982. Modern cartoon animation Producer: KF a.s. - Jiri Trnk









Frantisek Skala-BKS - The Czech Centre




"UNTITLED" 1998, acquarello su carta




Frantisek Skala




Atelier Van Lieshout CASTMobiel, 1996 mixed media, interior 320 x 1130 x 950 cm CAST, Tilburg NL




Frantisek Skala-BKS - The Czech Centre




"UNTITLED (Kitchen)" 1998, acquarello su carta




Tampa Skull, Atelier van Lieshout, 1998, under construction. Photos/Jade Dellinger




Atelier van Lieshout, North Sea Jazz Festival



 
It is not very common to see collectives exhibiting their "products/objects" as artworks in London galleries. Since their major appearances in the 60s, collectives have mostly acted in more open and daily life spaces. Their mode has always been, from the avangardes' onwards, more performative and time-based, involving all aspects of life in a further experience which rejected the traditional Western label of "art", and up to the 70s these experiments still expressed a "political" intent to turn upsidedown our approach to modern existence and review our common perspectives.
In addition, excluding the sharp and iconoclastic gestures of Bank, whose activity directly and more specifically involved visual arts practices, breaking them apart, London visual art scenery (artificially taken here as a genre) speak loud of the artists' attitudes in the postmodern settings: since ideologies died, the spread of capitalism and commodities on a global scale has triggered off a political consumerism and a permanent contestation, and even in the performing and live arts area group practices prefer to have a looser and more pragmatic approach, finally removing utopia from their public agenda, and depositing it in a sort of frozen dreamworld. The relatively safe space of galleries and museums is in the end the best space for these petrified wonderlands.
At the same time, the British scenery clearly shows an anachronistic but also symptomatic increase of interest in, let's say, the impact of art outside the artworld, and in the art's relevance as messenger of social and political means. Exhibitions such as "Protest & Survive" recently held at the Whitechapel Gallery, as well as the ICA programmes, and the questionable interpretation within which the artists of "Apocalypse" have been presented are evidence of this raising concern, strongly supported by the efforts of Creative Britannia to justify economic and social regeneration.

Within this critical frame, which has lost the ideological strength of the 60s and 70s and has gained a light, autocritical and pluralistic approach, the activity of two collectives coming from abroad and showing simultaneously this winter in London provokes all the above issues.
Coming from the obscurity of the former Easter Europe block, B.K.S. is better known (to those who know it, anyway) as the Czech top secret no. 1 organisation. Formed in 1974 and named after the master gothic idea that "the end of the world is Approaching" (as translated from Bude Konec Sveta, in fact), this organisation has in the years drawn up its own rules, customs, practices, hierarchies, and a code of honour that does remind other more powerful secret lobbies such as the freemasonry, and has created around itselves a mysterious, oddly poetic legend within which it is allowed to perform its own private eccentricities.
For its second appearance to the public (after the exhibition "17 Years of BKS Secret Organisation - Documents, Uniforms, Weapons, Artifacts" held at the Pi-Pi-Art Gallery in Prague), B.K.S. supported by Dilston Grove, is taking over the former Clare College Mission Church in Southwark Park, and is using it as its own space for rituals. The former church is in itself a very inspiring venue with its high ceilings, its coldness, its decadent religious texture. Dominated in the middle of the front wall by a gigantic tropheus, made of old wheelrims and fabrics, two long dressed tables seem to wait for their guests, members of this ancient community called to an esoteric convention. A large number of fallic objects are hung on the walls or kept in their cabinets, all weapons and other artifacts in wood and old rusty iron, and an impressive list at the "reception desk" and on the wall mention them very carefully with their specific names, evoking their function in a time when craftmanship still traded. Underneath the gigantic tropheus, a podium and a long table for the "dignitaries" reminds of dictactors' verbosity, but there is no sign of an attending assembly here, and the massive wooden ironing boards hung on both sides of this podium make the whole scenery particularly hilarious.
On the other edge (side), in a sort of handmade gymnasium a monstrous and fancy candelabra with hoops ironically refers to both the splendid life of a sportsman and the misery of a suicidal.
Such a deserted mise-en-scene raises many questions around the organisation and the missing reason of these rituals, which the all Czech catalogue does not reply to. A taste of decadent pleasure endures even when you leave this space.
The parallel exhibition of Frantisek Skála at the Czech Centre does not help in the enquiry into the B.K.S.'s secrets. Frantisek Skála is a Real Member of the Secret Organisation and Commander of the Green LadyBird Order since 1985, but is also a world famous artist, working in illustration, sculpture, performance, film, installation and photography. His fascination for the subtle limit between art and nature, shared with B.K.S., is expressed through organic objects stolen from the everyday life and rendered with humour and an uncontrollable search for pleasure, but being the venue very different (in Southwark an abandoned church with all its overloaded significance, here a newly refurbished white cube gallery) a lot of the original grasp you could gain within the dark walls of the church is dispersed and lost in the whiteness of this neutral space.

Less secretly, the work of the Rotterdam-based "design" collective Atelier van Lieshout is presented for the first time at both The Agency and the V&A.
The AVL was initiated by Joep van Lieshout (known for his 1990 first mobile unit shown at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam), and was set up in 1995. After having exhibited worldwide, the Atelier is presently working on the foundation and organisation of a Freestate in the docklands of Rotterdam, to be officially open in the year 2001. The national flag, the constitution and a steel safe with printed money are on display at the V&A (commissioned by the London Print Work Trust), while The Agency is presenting installation components (mortars, elements of an alcoholic distillery, etc.) and drawings of food processing, sleeping arrangements, etc.
It would not be correct to talk here of an "alternative" solution to contemporary alienated life, as perceived during the 60s. The Atelier, which brings resonances from models such as the Bauhaus, does not have any strictly political intentions against the actual society. It is more the search for an "experiential" independence that leads to this self-centred project: its realisation does not reject models from the consumistic society, and in fact within its constitution it is clearly said that the freestate will be "governed as a company" and its finances will be based on the "sale of products". However, given the multiple functions allowed to individuals by such a pragmatic approach, what makes the Atelier independent is the fact that the corporative organisational model is readdressed to fulfill different purposes: the realisation of "possibilities" otherwise frustrated in our society, the promotion of full "communication" amongst members of the state, the safeguard of the "individual well-being" in line with the respect and improvement of the environment. As declared within the constitution, "you can have fun as long as you don't harm or disadvantage AVL".
Generally, it is difficult to have a clear insight of the AVL Ville project from these scattered fragments, mostly similar to storage items dissected from their functional life. If they do not completely die in the V&A monumental collectionist's paradise, they are certainly celebrated their funeral. The exhibition at The Agency, with its phallic and harmless mortars sitting next to the elements of a full scale alcoholic distillery including its various products, offers a more interesting juxtaposition, in which the defensive attitude of the Atelier is interlinked with its research for a more pleasurable way of living.

Indeed it is quite refreshing to hear that collectives still exist, beyond the end of ideologies, and see here fragments of their activity. In their distinctive character, these two examples show the extent to which "utopias" do not retain any illusion on the capacity of their visions to be socially and politically spread, but have not denied yet the principle of pleasure, which they accurately review and explore in our times, after Dada, Surrealism and Situationism. Whatever directions, experiments, personal obsessions and pleasure they are perceiving, they demonstrate that, although fragmented and incapsulated, there are still examples of communal approach to life to remind us that creative potentials can still be investigated on common grounds.
I must admit that I can't wait for the opening of the A-V-L Ville in Rotterdam and for some more BKS's extravaganza. I am already in the cue to sip AVL's distillery products and hopefully attend the next BKS's secret meeting.

INFORMATION
B.K.S.
From 16 November to 17 December 2000
presented by Dilston Grove, a Café Gallery Projects venue
Clare College Mission Church, Sothwark Park, London SE16
Tel: 020 7232 2399/020 7237 1230
Email: bag.office@virgin.net

Frantisek Skála,
From 24 November 2000 to 2 February 2001
The Czech Centre
95 Great Portland Street
London W1N 5RA
Tel: 020 7291 9920
http://www.czechcentre.org.uk

Atelier van Lieshout, Recent Works
From 31 October to 16 December 2000
The Agency
35-40 Charlotte Road
London EC2A 3DH
Tel/Fax: 020 7613 2080
Email: theagencyltd@agency-gallery.demon.co.uk

An Ideal Home
Atelier van Lieshout and Zoë Walker
From 24 November to 10 December 2000
Victoria & Albert Museum
Cromwell Road
London SW7 2RL

     

 
 

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