A few more notes about my thoughts in Spain (and Germany). Through the courtesy of the Spanish Tourist Office, after ARCO I was able to travel to Gasteiz (Vitoria), Donostia (San Sebastian) and Bilbo (Bilbao). In Vitoria I visited the "Artium, Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporaneo" and the Catedral de Santa Maria that is currently being refurbished/reconstructed, and in San Sebastian I went for a stroll in a beautiful 16th century garden sculptor Eduardo Chillida renovated toward the end of his life, and that is now open to the public as a memorial park. In Bilbao it was, of course, the Guggenheim Bilbao. It was a wonderful trip, but that’s not what I want to write about here.
All these cities are located in Vasco (Basque), and area where separatist sentiments are on the rise (see also the last volume of this column). According to recent local newspaper polls, still only 7% of the population support the ETA terrorist group, and in the city hall you find "ETA NO" signs and posters all over ther place. However, like in Catalonia (or cities in multilingual countries such as Belgium or Switzerland), traffic signs are in both Spanish and Basque language, and so are catalogs and brochures in museums.
While walking down a street, the graffitis in the photos on the right, saying something like "They killed my friend. The social democrats (Spanish Socialist Workers Party) are fascists!" caught my attention. The area’s atmosphere isn't particularly unsafe, and the city development in Bilbao in general makes a rather positive and very lively impression, but these things are another part of reality too. Typical for a European country, people seem to be sensitive to politics, and even thought it is said that interest keeps decreasing, media report properly and widely on all sorts of political movements.
It goes without saying that in an environment like this, actual circumstances are having considerable influence on artistic activity. At "Artium", for example, Belgrade-born Marina Abramovic demonstrated once again her skills borrowing motifs from actual events in a small solo exhibition. "Count on Us" is a work made up of video pieces shown on five different screens. One shows the artist herself dressed as a skeleton that directs a children’s choir, while in another one Abramovic appears again with children who this time lay asprawl and form together the shape of a star. Yet another video shows interspersed with thundering electric currents a scenery in which the artist plays with a Tesla coil and a globe a la Chaplin’s "The Great Dictator". According to the artist’s explanation, the work is to criticize the world that watched the Balkan conflict with indifference. "Us" in the title refers to both "us" and "U.S."
In Berlin, at KW Institute for Contemporary Art I had visited an exhibition titled "Regarding Terror: The RAF-Exhibition" (1/30-5/16). The displays related to terrorism and press coverage in the late 20th century included material on the RAF (Red Army Faction) and German terrorist groups like Baader-Meinhof. Local media, but also international newspapers like New York Times reported of families of victims who are opposing the event vehemently as they're seeing it as a "glorification of terrorism". Another spectacular fact is that participating artists such as Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Doug Aitken, Carsten Hoeller, Dinos and Jake Chapman, and the above-mentioned Marina Abramovic sold their works on eBay in order to compensate for a funding the state canceled last-minute.
In other words, artists have turned reports on social and political state of affairs into artworks, and made the entire act an artistic happening, with media serving as a platform to display the circular mutual influencing of reality and press. Results are various of course, but what’s more essential is that this kind of approach itself is extremely healthy.
Back on this side of the globe we have media totally absordeb in the "rich guys' cat fight" between Livedoor and Fuji Television. Before long I guess some scatterbrain will turn that contested takeover into some kind of artwork. Before philosophizing on the social responsibilities of art and artists, isn't it necessary to think about the social responsibility of media?
Ozaki Tetsuya / Editor in chief / REALTOKYO