Stephan Blumenschein: "But what a view! Let's take a picture!"
Stephan's 20 minute presentation for CONSTANT CRAVING ~ PERFORMING UNDER CONDITIONS - DAI's 3 day performance lecture marathon at State of Concept in Athens, June 2018.
"But what a view! Let's take a picture!"
Summary
Stephan begins by introducing David, who is performing in his presentation. Both are sat on a bench facing the audience, next to David is a wooden box with some papers. Behind them, a room dividing structure made of MDF is positioned, a speaker placed on a plinth is peeking over the edge behind it. Stephan, holding a microphone, gets up from the bench and begins his monologue, during which he regularly changes his position in the space, positioning himself in a new spot before continuing to speak. The text moves through different subjects, beginning with the origins of varnish, originally made from the sandarac tree common in the region of the seaport Berenice where the term originates. It was used for building ships, furniture and its resin mixed with oil to make tinctures, lotions, and varnish. We learn about Queen Berenice the 2nd’s daily routine of applying these lotions on hair and skin and that “good varnish has to provide three basic functions and qualities: Fix the underlaying layer of paint; conserve and protect from external influences; add brilliance and enhance the depth of the colours, structure of the coated surface.”
The text briefly moves through the history of art exhibitions in France in the mid 18th and 19th century, when art exhibitions have “become part of the cultural agenda of most major cities in Europe” and the shift of art from being a restricted and private pleasure of the aristocracy to a public good potentially for everyone. Varnish played a role also in the exhibition making process of these times, being used on the paintings before the opening of the exhibition – later collectors could join during this phase, a time in which “the air was trembling” and the function of the varnish was not only preservation but also seduction. As he continues to speak, Stephan “draws a line” through the audience with the cable of his microphone by crossing the room: “The exhibitions as a tool of distinction of the distinctive, had lost its power. […] Draw a line, you are in, and you are out.” He describes the perceived “banalisation of the vernissage”, it’s loss of exclusivity and transformation into a more accessible public moment through changing times. He moves on to a more recent development of the 20th century, the “second public life” of artworks and shows through the installation shot with its convention of polished, unpopulated spaces and the distribution or “hyper-circulation” of it in the exhibition’s afterlife. He describes the sense evokes by some pictures that what is shown is not meant to “be with” in an actual space, but rather to be gazed at in primarily this form.
Stefan climbs on the room dividing structure using the bench and wooden box as a step. As he continues to speak, David moves the bench around the room by pushing it over the stone floor, causing a screeching sound. He continues to push the bench back and forth through the audience sitting on the floor, displacing some people, and creating a gap. The text continues to unpack the installation shot and the individualized, disembodied gaze it exemplifies, the private encounter with the work it manufactures, the opening becoming the only social public moment of exhibitions that for the rest remain sparsely visited and borrowing from Mierle Laderman Ukeles‘ manifesto, Stephan asks: “After the exhibition opening, who is going to maintain the exhibition?” The presentation ends with an instruction to “start recording with your capture device, take three steps to the left, start filming for 20 seconds”. David provides an electronic soundtrack while Stephan counts the seconds towards the end of the presentation.
Responses
Marina Vishmidt
Marina Vishmidt describes Stephan’s presentation as an intricately conceived, expansive work. She was intrigued by the dynamics, in the beginning subdued and narrative, then taking increasingly “spatially antagonistic”, playful forms, while the narration continued and moved around the room. She mentions that while she could only register part of the dense text, she was intrigued by the foray into exhibition history, and the dialectics of expansion and contraction of the exhibition space as social and physical. She describes the choreography as increasingly precise but also somewhat anarchic in terms of scenography, addressing expectations of the public – what is included, how it should behave, what type of space should be created – linked to the exhibition bench as a “forceful training device in the bourgeois art public”. She mentions that this was the kind of work that is too intricate to easily capture instantaneously and after this “series of off the cuff phenomenological meditations” she passes the mic to
Maria Lind
Maria Lind finds the question how and when art goes public extremely interesting and appreciated the specific focus of Stephan’s presentation on “the ceremonial moment of making that publicness known”. The included brief history of varnish in relation to painting is mentioned and she elaborates that while varnish was mainly used for new works at the mentioned time, older, unvarnished works where quite accessible as well, also to show off the treasures collected by the monarchy to the public rather than only to facilitate encounters with great art. She mentions that next to public collections, private galleries were already common at the beginning of the 19th century and came with their own habitus and publics, being often in privatized, smaller spaces. She adds a fourth unintentional function of varnish to the three listed by Stephan: the changing of its color over time, which affects the appearance of the painting, obscures the intention of the artist, and thus presents a challenge to art restorers.
Maria Lind appreciated the pointing to the mechanisms and logistics of the opening and the maintenance of the exhibition, and makes a connection to Benjamin Buchloh’s text on the administrative logic of conceptual art. She was more interested in the text and “pertinent hashtags” posited by Stephan, than in the performance and would like to see them explored individually. To her, Stephan’s question “how and when art goes public inside and beyond the exhibition space” is crucial to everyone working in the field of contemporary art and she was happy that he addressed the format of the installation shot, according to her possibly one of the stalest formats of our time.
Sven Lüttiken
Sven Lüttiken speaks from the position of Stephan’s thesis advisor, describing the performance as a kind of presentation of his thesis. He elaborates that it delves into the crisis perceived by Stephan in various modern techniques and methods for making art public in the modern regime of publicness or “Öffentlichkeit”, specifically the vernissage or exhibition opening as the fundamental moment of making art public, turning the exhibition into a stage set for social assembly and the installation shot which proposes the disembodied, isolated viewer in an unpopulated, unsocial exhibition space.
He agrees with Maria Lid that Stephan packed a lot into the presentation, naming its narration, historical and theoretical analysis based on the thesis, voiceover performance and physical aspects. He was intrigued and puzzled by the role of the second performer David, and his slippage between first being a meditating private audience not really viewing something on the bench, then acting as a maintenance worker or artist working as exhibition builder, when moving the bench around the space. He describes how the sonic element of this action became more aggressive and interfered with the spoken word. This leads Sven Lüttiken to questions about the relation between the discursive elements of the piece and Stephan’s practice and the aesthetic dimension taking pointers from the theoretical analysis but can also going further or against it. While it didn’t result in a fully resolved piece in this presentation, he sees it as one indication or manifestation of the often-productive dialectic between the work on the thesis and the feedback mechanism that is established in relation to the artistic practices in many of the other presentations too. He looks forward to the “vernissage of the thesis”, in which he professes complete confidence.
About Stephan Blumenschein