Hello, I am Home !
/Originaly published in Journal for Anthroplogy and New Parasitism,
Vol 4 No 2 2000 /
Gregor Podnar: Home Stories is a project that expressly stresses the cooperation
between the host and the guest.
Pamura Umetessi: The Home Stories project is in fact a series of observations
made in Ljubljana, Berlin and Cologne. These observations were related to the
researching of some ephemeral themes of everyday life in urban environments.
These included consumption, home, lifestyles, identity and the like. Tours of
these cities were not constrained by a narrowly defined programme, but rather
they resembled an aimless wandering. They were expressly open and experimental.
Tadej Pogačar: In fact, this strolling along streets, through construction sites,
shopping centres, entertainment parks, suburbs etc. meant the creation of a
subjective (secret) geography or, to be more precise, the identification of
centres of New Parasitism;(1) and this included urban planning, architecture,
and geography as different social practices. Information gathering was carried
out, and this is important, through direct experience/perception at the actual
location and without mediators. The last stage of the journey was concluded
by moving into the private surroundings of an apartment. At this stage of the
project, the main role passed on to a new actor, the so-called domestic body
in a domestic setting. This of course radically changed the perspective of our
observation and it is here that the cooperation between the host and his guests
assumed the key function.
Gregor Podnar: This means that in Cologne, the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E Museum of Contemporary
Art (P.M.C.A) moved into the apartment of art historian Daniel Spanker and his
family. One of the subjects that you touched upon was the question of home:
what is home, what significance has it held in modern art and what significance
does it hold today - home as a shelter, a territory of privacy and so on.
Tadej Pogačar: When we talk about home we are talking about the everyday, about
a repetitive pattern, that is to say, something monotonous and by no means spectacular
or dramatic. Compared to significant events, home is uninteresting since it
is the site of ordinary rituals and routines only. From the historical perspective,
home and domesticity are specifically modern phenomena proceeding directly from
the capitalist economy; it generated the ideology of separate environments,
that is to say, the division into working and living environments. This division
is a symptom of the dualistic logic which identifies home with privacy, intimacy,
comfort, family and so on i.e. with the passive, feminine principle, while all
that is outside home, that is to say external to it (work, fighting, creativity,
invention) is identified with the male principle. (It is true that men planned
and built homes, but they had to abandon them as soon as they finished the work).
On the other hand, the phenomenon of home is deeply impregnated with patriarchal
power and authority, sexual repression and the like, maintained and fostered
by the nuclear family. This mythology, therefore, operates on two levels: firstly,
it is wholly public and a matter of prevalent cultural codes, but its true significance
resides primarily in individual (subjective) behaviour, which is often not self-conscious.(2)
Pamura Umetessi: And if we talk about contemporary art, home is primarily a
metaphor for bad taste, for mass culture, decorativeness, kitsch. In short,
it is the exact antithesis of genuine (high) art. For Baudelaire, the artist
was a flaneur, a man of the masses, who is oriented towards the World and Spectacle
and as such admires the wonderful panorama of a modern city, while the ordinary
home routine is not his/her subject of interest.
In order to preserve the integrity of its story and its linear narrative, modern
culture has had to suppress the phenomenon of home and domesticity. Home as
the Other of modernism is extremely interesting territory for research into
relations and the condition of modern culture, because it represents the central
arena in which (conventional) divisions and polarizations take place.
Tadej Pogačar: And last but not least, with the Home Stories project, P.M.C.A
has ultimately approached (especially with that part of the project carried
out in Cologne) the original meaning of the term parasite, or the meaning that
prevailed in the past, in antiquity: i.e. a parasite is a sponger who eats at
the table at another's expense.
Gregor Podnar: …. and entertains guests. You mentioned that you have drawn
a "portrait" of your host.
Tadej Pogačar: Yes, he was my theme. Yet I was not interested in his image,
but in him as a possessor of a specific taste, lifestyle and aesthetics. This
of course meant that our field of research had to be expanded radically. We
lived at this location for several days together with our host. We shared meals,
entertainment, we debated and slept under the same roof. When we talk about
art we are primarily talking about the conditions of life, and if we attempt
to talk about these conditions, we must first observe and research them. Since
we wanted to grasp the personal taste of the subject, we had to deal with various
signs (gestures, speech, clothing) and choices (food, furniture, music). Of
course, we were not really interested in these areas, our research required
only selected information that was used in the experiment.
Pamura Umetessi: Among other things, Daniel drew our attention to an interesting
publication in his library. It is concerned with the analysis and topology of
various styles of home in Germany. The research is openly pragmatic and tailored,
in the first place, to the needs of German producers of furniture. On the basis
of statistically processed data, the researchers defined 8 typical social environments
and 13 aesthetic living motives. (The classification of social environments,
among other things, makes a distinction between technocratic-liberalistic environments,
alternative environments, hedonistic environments etc.); and to each of these
environments is added a detailed typology of aesthetic models (what is considered
beautiful in a specific social environment, what is desirable, what is repulsive,
ugly etc.).(3)
Gregor Podnar: Of course, all these classifications and categories pretend to
be objective, to be a neutral tool, but in fact this is never true…..
Pamura Umetessi: Of course, they tell us more about the researcher (his/her
prejudices, inclinations) than about the object of the research.
Tadej Pogačar: Our research, on the contrary, rests on radical subjectivity
and does not attempt to conceal this; neither does it offer useful answers,
but above all it poses new questions.
Gregor Podnar: Let us consider for a while the works created in the apartment.
In Kitchen Ikon (Tomaten Suprematismus) I see an ironic allusion to the scientific
work of Daniel Spark and your painting practice.
Tadej Pogačar: Daniel has been scientifically concerned with icon painting and
the portrait in west European art for years now. This was surely one of the
reasons why we ventured into the personal interpretation of icon. Kitchen Ikon
(Tomaten Suprematismus) is, as its title reveals, a re-interpretation of one
of the key works of modern art - the Suprematist icon.
Pamura Umetessi: Yes, when Malevich talks about Suprematism he cannot avoid
his three squares. Each of them has its accurately defined meaning: the black
one represents economy, the red one signals revolution, and the white one is
a sign of pure activity… Yet, his records reveal that for him there is
much more to them than that: they are energy, the prototypes of the technical
organisms of the future, intuitive forms; (4) in short, they are elements that
are on many levels deeply interwoven in the construction of a utopian, Suprematist
model.
Tadej Pogačar: Our Kitchen Ikon (Tomaten Suprematismus) is a manifold contemporary
icon and the sign of culture in transition - that is what we call the current
cultural/spiritual/economic state in formerly socialist countries. This is the
icon of unbridled and uncontrolled consumption (which in the East has always
been seen as excess)
Gregor Podnar: Your intervention in the apartment includes some kind of a didactic
programme which is part of the "Department of Everyday Life" as you
announced at the opening address.
Tadej Pogačar: The Home Stories project was organized by a new department of
P.M.C.A.., "The Department of Everyday Life"(5) and one of the themes
that was emphasized by the "Department" was the relationship between
the public (media) and the private sphere (how they intertwine, how one blends
into the other).
Pamura Umetessi: It is obvious that media images have seized the key position
in the mediation and economy of everyday exchange in modern society. This fact
raises such questions as: What are we to do with them? How are we to exploit
them or avoid them? Where and how is the subject embeded in these phantasmal
stories?
Tadej Pogačar: Our intervention in the apartment, in addition to making use
of other visual materials, also used toys and the like, then two series of advertisements
from the 50's, 60's, and the 70's that were taken from family and home journals
and shopping catalogues. Innovative kitchen appliances and equipment offered
by these advertisements to potential consumers, are experienced through the
images of happy housewives who embody orderliness, hygiene, harmony, warmth
and the modernity of the home. Yet at the same time, we cannot help but notice
parallel messages, strategies of seduction, gestures, stylization.
Pamura Umetessi: We deliberately chose older examples because distance in time
facilitates the reading of hidden instructions (about adequate lifestyle, the
hierarchy of values, divisions by gender etc.)
Tadej Pogačar: On the other hand, an entirely different facet comes to light
through the work Home Improvement System No. 5. This is an excellent example
of a domestic invention, the system that derives from an immediate, ordinary
experience and economizes the hanging of clothes. We reconstructed this system
within the apartment.
Gregor Podnar: There is an interesting parallel here with the anthropological
recognition that a researcher as a participant observer and a member of the
society that is the object of the research, must be aware that people behave
differently while observed.
Tadej Pogačar: You never know what kind of people you are going to live among.
Undoubtedly, our behaviour changes if we know that we are being observed. This
means that observation must be indirect, concealed or it must stretch over a
longer period of time. As part of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E Security (P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E
Archive) project that took place in Innsbruck, Ljubljana and Berlin, we observed
how visitors to the gallery reacted to our request to take their fingerprints
at the entrance (because of tighter security regulations, record of the visitors,
control etc.) Reactions differed and ranged from flat rejections and resistance
to submissive following of the instructions of our personnel. The Kings of the
Street project was also based on the strategy of surprise and shift tactics.
The chosen actors (tramps in this example) occupied selected locations in the
city centre for one day (those locations where you would not normally see them)
and communicated with surprised passers-by.(6) In such moments of surprise reactions
are more straightforward. But we are interested in all reactions.
Pamura Umetessi: Home Stories is a specific type of research which observes
criteria different from those used in science, for example in anthropology.
As to its methodology, it is a pure bric-a-brac, an assortment of various approaches,
descriptions and interpretations, opinions and perspectives. It is full of coincidences,
chaotic and inconsistent.
The main informant and agent assumes his/her role incidentally, yet the very
fact that he/she accepted it, triggers a chain reaction of unexpected events.
Gregor Podnar: Let's return to the good taste of an artificial tomato. What
is your attitude towards consumption in mass culture?
Tadej Pogačar: Ketchup is better, ketchup is the best! Take for example Germany,
where chips sold on the street are normally consumed only with some addition.
The potato without ketchup/mustard/mayonnaise has no authentic taste, it is
these additions that bring back its natural flavour. And it is only one step
from the design of tastes to the design of habits.
Pamura Umetessi: In the anthropological sense, all commodities for consumption
are in general also cultural products and consumption becomes an important (constituent)
part of mass media culture.
If the function of the museum in the past has been primarily of an educational
nature, today it increasingly inclines towards entertainment and spectacle.
Today it is virtually impossible to distinguish between the populist, modern
museum, a department store with shopping malls (with multimedia spectacles,
artificial nature and exotic exhibitions), and entertainment parks. Yet all
these facts do not relieve us of such questions as: whose consumption are we
talking about, what place in this (social) hierarchy do we occupy, and are we
at all aware of this game.
Gregor Podnar: I am more curious about your personal interest in the artificial
as a personal experience of two systems, one of which is the moderate socialism,
and the other the neo-capitalistic society in transition, seen from the post-ideological
perspective.
Tadej Pogačar: The forms of ideological struggle have changed and today they
are considerably less obvious (yet no less brutal because of this). When Bordieu
talks about the meaning and unfolding of symbolic struggles in modern society,
he stresses that in ordinary life power only rarely manifests itself through
straightforward physical violence, because it repeatedly transforms itself from
brutal force into symbolic, invisible forms of power.
Pamura Umetessi: A good example of an ideological struggle that had an interesting
symbolic form is the use of consumption as a special type of special war that
the West developed in the period of the cold war to defeat the East.(7)
So we have arrived at the major triad: culture - consumption - war! The consumption
war waged through the media defeated the East long before the collapse of the
Berlin Wall; and Berlin played a key role in it.
Gregor Podnar: We talked about the Frankfurt school where consumption was treated
quite critically.
Tadej Pogačar: The criticism of mass culture and consumption in the sixties
and seventies mostly came from leftist circles and was usually more moralistic
than analytic. In the consumer society they saw the crisis of values and the
threat that this was going to impoverish and trivialize high culture. Of course,
this criticism should be regarded within a specific, historical context. Today
the situation has radically changed as has changed our attitude towards reality
and experience…
Pamura Umetessi: … both of which have been mainly construed through the
media. Another thing that has changed is the understanding of consumption. Today
it is taken as a wider and more complex phenomenon, since it includes many other
everyday practices that are directly related to it, for example advertising,
planning, pleasure and the like.
Gregor Podnar: Through the debate about the relationship between the East and
the West you subtly evaded my question about the attitude of P.M.C.A towards
chips and chips with ketchup.
Tadej Pogačar: P.M.C.A observes and analyzes hastened processes which take place
for example in everyday economy and in symbolic systems. At the same time it
acts, builds its own economy, its own network of references, and internal structure.
Consumerism and related social processes found today in the East as well, can
be seen as some kind of a replay of the early wild capitalism of the West, but
in new circumstances.
Gregor Podnar: Your name for the strategy of P.M.C.A, which "nestles"
in various environments or systems, analyses and exploits them, is New endoparasitism.
On the other hand, you talk about the constitution of parallel communication
networks(8) This activity also includes certain social interventions which bring
with them the unexpectedness of events and interrelationships. This is also
characteristic of the Home Stories project, otherwise a multifold project. How
would you classify it?
Pamura Umetessi: New endoparasitism is an artistic strategy that has been developed
over the past few years. It is concerned with the techniques of incorporation
and strategic settlement of certain territories and "bodies".
Tadej Pogačar: In the Home Stories project P.M.C.A could be compared with an
"endogenous machine" which observes and researches selected systems,
relations, images.. (It is well known that the logic of parasitism inverts the
basic parameters of space, economy etc.). The decision to "occupy"
somebody else's home was in the first place a significant strategic decision.
This new micro-environment was suitable for successful survival, and at the
same time it offered diverse research material. In this sense, Home Stories
is a typical endoparasitic project.
Pamura Umetessi: This group of projects, almost as a rule, takes place in semi-public
or intermediate spaces which are not usually public, or not meant entirely for
the public eye. They require a special effort. Sometimes it is even hard to
notice them or distinguish them from their environment, since they are closely
integrated with it, with the system of its workings or its symbolic image. Parallel
communication networks, on the other hand, are of the public nature; that is
to say, they search for the possibilities and forms of cooperation or mobilization
of specific social groups or protagonists that are marginalised, dispersed,
or blocked.
Gregor Podnar: And finally, I would still like to know do you like ketchup?
Tadej Pogačar: We don't mind it now and then…
Notes
(1) For more detailed information see: Tadej Pogačar. P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E, The Museum
of Modern Art and New Parasitism, in: Theories of Display, SCAA-Ljubljana, Ljubljana
1998, p. 49-57.
(2) See Christopher Reed, Introduction, in: Not at Home, The Suppression of
Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture, ed. Christopher Reed, London 1996,
pp 7-17.
(3) Wohnwelten in Deutschland 2, Das Haus, Munchen 1991.
(4) Malevich, Suprematizam-Bezpredmetnost (Suprematism-Non-Materiality) ed.
Slobodan Miljuškovic, Beograd, 1980
(5) P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E The Museum includes the following units or departments:
Department of Geography, Department of Historical Facts, Department of Anthropology
and New Parasitism, Laboratorium (the research and experimental section), P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E
Product Corporation (economic section) and Department of Everyday Life.
(6) See: Pamura Umetessi, Kralji ulice (The Kings of the Street), in Journal
for Anthropology and New Parasitism No. 1 Ljubljana 1996
(7) J. Brzezinski presented very pragmatic instruction for waging special consumer's
war. See: Drago Kos, The Genealogy of Consumption, in: Éasopis za kritiko
znanosti No. 188, 1998, p. 26
(8) Tadej Pogačar, P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E, The Museum of Modern Art and New Parasitism,
in: Theories of Display, SCCA-Ljubljana, Ljubljana 1998, pp 49-57.