Marjetica Potrč

Artists as Reporters: Documentary Videos at Manifesta 3

The Manifesta 3 exhibition showed a number of videos that were strangely fluid and did not seem to convey a clear message. Nevertheless, I found them a pleasure to watch. They reminded me of real-life reporting, such as can be seen on CNN. Therefore, why not compare their authors to free-lance journalists, and say that they report on reality and pass on their reports to the art public?

I have some experience in projects and messages that get scattered on the way. However, I work in a simple way. Whatever fascinates me in real life, I pass on to the gallery. I believe I show more and interpret less. So I am surprised that my work was recently attacked as being romantic, even voyeuristic. I personally think that these categories reflect the position of those who state it. I see no romanticism in people claiming the land in shanty towns, or in the poetics of urban voids in cities. To me these are facts of contemporary urban life. But yes, they may seem threatening to people that describe them as romantic. Sometimes it is easier to overlook what exists in the real world and accept the rhetoric of the past.

Take, for example, journalists that broadcast on BBC or CNN. Their reports might be packaged in a predictable way and therefore sound suspicious, as writer Peter Handke suggests: ‘The refugees all say the same thing word for word. Is that therefore believable?’ Handke comments relate to the reporting from Kosovo. He goes even further. He dismisses virtually all events reported during the Yugoslav wars as unbelievable, as market-driven facts. In his recent theatre play A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia three Western journalists say in chorus things like: ‘We are the market. We are the world. We are the power. We write the history.’ I find these quotes quite humorous. Nevertheless, Handke has a point. I also doubt reports that perpetuate the logic of their own frame. Recently, those less structured caught my attention, those that look unedited. Such reports have a lot in common with the documentary videos showed at Manifesta 3. In my opinion, they make a great contribution to reporting on reality to the art public.

Recently, I came across two videos, both about Iranian women and their place in the contemporary Iranian society. Both were made by Iranian women living in the West already for an extended period of time. Beyond these similarities, videos show a very different face. One is made by Christiane Amanpour, a CNN reporter. The other is made by Shirin Neshat, an artist based in New York. Shirin Neshat's Turbulent is a video presented simultaneously on two screens, one opposite the other. The subject matter of the video, the impossibility of public life for women in Iran, is presented in opposition. On one screen we see a woman singing, on the other screen a male singer listens. As in the thesis--antithesis paradigm, a woman faces a man, an empty theatre faces a full theatre, inarticulate singing faces articulate singing and the woman's chador faces the man's civilised dress. Diametric oppositions add up with ease: feminism versus repressive national state, Iran versus contemporary world, we versus others, and so on.

The video was made in a low budget production and it makes a perfect case for a clear take-home message. However, it is exactly the message that I find irritating. To portray Iranian women Neshat uses the frame of feminism, which by its own making pushes women on the edge of society. In effect, Neshat puts Iranian women in the corner, where it is easy for the Western art public to identify them as victims. But then again, maybe Neshat just makes a too good job by using the rhetoric of the past to make her case for Iranian women. She has a just cause, no doubt about that.

Christiane Amanpour chooses another strategy. She shows rather than interprets. As Neshat, she comes close to her subject, a woman in Iranian society. Here, a woman is shown in the midst of everyday contradictions. She handles illegally obtained video films, she walks the streets covered in her chador, she meets friends. One could say that her day is made of two very different worlds, New York and Teheran. It is exactly this double identity, the travelling between two everyday realities, that I find convincing. Amanpour's video comes close to how I experience the world today.

In the entire M 3 programme there was only one video made by a professional film director, not an artist. This is After, After, a video by Jasmina Žbanić. It shows Bosnian children talking about their war memories, an unsettling experience for the viewer. After, After is labelled as a politically incorrect contribution to the exhibition, a work of art that exploits children. I don't have this objection. I rather think that voyeurism lies in the eyes of the beholder.

Instead, I would like to point out that After, After exploits the frame of the childhood to get to the viewer. The same goes for Amit Goren's Your Nigger Talking and Adrian Paci's Albanian Stories. Albanian Stories shows the daughter of the artist retelling a tale of a rooster, a cow and the International forces, all mixed together. We are facing a child's recollection of her war-time memories from Albania merged with her current life in Italy. By telling her tale she seems to remind us of the importance of fantasy frames through which we process reality. But then, I believe contemporary art is about the same thing, it's about negotiating the real of our everyday life.

Joost Conijn's Airplane makes a good job of that. He shows us the documentation of his travel, an unpretentious video endeavour. At the same time, he makes our imagination fly because the video is literary about flying an aeroplane. Conijn constructed an aeroplane in Eindhoven and transported it on a trailer to Morocco, where it is possible to fly self-made aeroplanes. The video shows his journey and Conijn shows that it is possible to make dreams come true by taking matters in his hands. He therefore makes a case for individual initiative in a highly regulated country, as does Amit Goren's Your Nigger Talking.

Your Nigger Talking is again about travels, some real and some imaginary. The video shows a group of black African children in Israel. They spend their days in an apartment with their teacher, who literary does not allow them to step out of the house. He is afraid that, if stopped by the Israeli police they would get deported. So he teaches them and tells them African children tales. I find the video both humane and activist. It shows that it is possible to overcome the irrationalities of an over-regulated society. Alternative action might be illegal, but it makes sense nevertheless. Most importantly, Your Nigger Talking as well as Airplane do not criticise the system. They do not show a divided world, but simultaneous realities.

I truly believe that a different way is always possible and that it need not be confrontational, in opposition so to speak. I also understand that strategies that reflect the concerns of a contemporary society can be successful. Take the public toilet, a work by Jože Barši, which was installed at Metelkova, Ljubljana in 1999. It proved to be a good conversation piece for the city of Ljubljana as well as within the art system itself. Barši used the Ljubljana City Council art grant for a much needed functional object, a public toilet. Earlier this year the toilet was bought by the Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana. Barši signed a lease with the Museum that obliged the Museum to keep the toilet running for a further two years. Only then will the Museum be able to decide whether their purchase is a functional object or a formal art object. In my opinion, Barši's project in the city and documentary videos at the M 3 negotiate reality successfully.

Personaly, I find documentary videos a pleasure to watch. I became accustomed to watch videos only for a minute or two, so I was surprised that these videos caught my attention enough to spend time at the M 3 watching them. I guess one of the reasons lies in the fact that they are not staged. I could see the author handling the camera, sometimes quite awkwardly. These are narrative pieces, where continuous and aimless narrative seems to be an end to itself; but that's all right. The emphasis is on the story and not on the author. In his statement for the M 3 catalogue, Paci describes his role in Albanian Stories as minimal. He shows rather than interprets. One could expect that the product is a boring experience. Nevertheless, I find stories in all documentary videos tasteful and a pleasure to watch. They unfold with a certain urge and presence, not unlike those that I encounter in reports by free-lance journalists on BBC or CNN. I recently heard that 80 percent of documentaries there are provided by free-lancers. I like to think of artists that showed documentary videos in M 3 in the same way, as free-lancers ‘just taking something from outside and putting it in the context of art’, as Paci said of Albanian Stories. By reporting reality to the art public, they manage to show a fluid world, where realities merge and do not confront each other, a world not unlike the tale Paci's daughter retells in Albanian Stories. Paci didn’t show a staged product, although I speculate that a common art public would unquestionably go for it.

The other day in Dublin, over sushi and a glass of wine, Brian McGuire told me how he, by chance, came across photographs that seemed to pin down the reality better than others. His comment made me aware of how difficult it is to come close to reality, as simple as it might sound. But also, that ethics of individuals, be it artists or reporters makes the process take off the ground.

All the quotations of Peter Hande are from:
J. S. Marcus: Apocalypse Now, The New York Review of Books, vol. XLVII, No.14, Sept. 21, 2000, p. 80-85.

(Marjetica Potrč - Artist, profesor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana)