The Home Works IV Festival, organised by Ashkal Alwan – the Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts - in Beirut was still in full swing at the time of writing. For the past few days I have been running from exhibition to screening, from panel to performance. The exhibitions and screening programs definitely deserve separate posts, but American artist Michael Rakowitz’ excellent talk really was a breeze of fresh air amongst otherwise rather static and highly academic lectures. Talks, panels and lectures have become standard fare at art festivals. While I concur with the premise that critical discourse and exchange of ideas is seminal, the format and packaging of the latter is as important as the arguments it intends to convey. There is little more exhausting and torturous for an audience than listening for hours on end to dry academic papers being read, with little or no audience engagement, eye contact or badly needed comic relief. We are in the business of art, so let’s equally try to find creative formats to stimulate and engage our audiences in more open and less top-down manners.
This being said, Michael Rakowitz delighted on stage with his charming personality and highly articulate presentation. An American of Jewish and Iraqi descent, Rakowitz has earned critical acclaim for his projects “Return” shown a.o. at the 2007 Sharjah Biennial, and “The Invisible Enemy should not Exist”, shown at the 2007 Sharjah Biennial, the 2007 Istanbul Biennial, and now on show at Gallerie Sfeir-Semler in Beirut in the context of Home Works. He started his presentation by showing us an image of Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome prototype after collapse, indicating the spectacle of failure. An audience member asked Michael during the Q&A if he wasn’t frustrated that his projects and interventions eventually all failed. Personally I would not categorise Rakowitz’ practice as a series of failures, but rather as social-artistic experiments with unexpected outcomes. True, the objective of the projects might not always be fully realised, however the learning process and obstacles Rakowitz faces in trying to implement his projects yield rich insights into how power is distributed along socio-political and economic axes, so that every move Rakowitz makes, holds the promise of dissent. It is perhaps here that art practice differs from grassroots activism. Nevertheless, a few of my Lebanese friends got quite irritated with a certain tinge of what they called naïveté and single source research scripted in the projects. Perhaps this is more due to the fact that Rakowitz’ practice is firmly rooted within a leftists American tradition of community/social arts, which very much mixes activism with artistic practice, though Rakowitz would argue that he is essentially not interested in activism, as such.
I do find that Rakowitz’ projects redeem themselves in how they shed light on covert power dynamics on the one hand, and take a critical socially engaged artistic practice out of the gallery context, on the other hand. This is particularly clear in his project “Return”, wherein Rakowitz, inspired by his grandfather’s US/Mid-East import-export business Davisons & co, reopened the company in the form of a package drop office. Rakowitz’ grandfather was exiled from Iraq in 1946, and with “Return” Rakowitz intended for members of the Iraqi diaspora and other interested citizens, to ship goods from the US to Iraq in the spirit of “Bad Business as Good Art”. Later the project tried importing Iraqi dates as a critique on the restrictive laws and trade embargos on Iraqi goods. It would have been the first Iraqi product explicitly labelled as “Produce of Iraq”, to hit the American store shelves in 30 years. Iraqi dates and date products do get sold in the US, but are labelled as Lebanese or Saudi. Rakowitz’ kept a blog on how the logistics of the venture were faring: his associates in Iraq had a (tacky but proud) box designed, and kept him updated on how the dates in Iraq were doing. Everything was prepared for shipping the cargo via Amman to the US. However in Jordan the shipment was refused due to bureaucratic security issues, and at a second attempt the truck was simply turned away. Eventually the dates had to travel via Syria to Egypt in order to get to their destination. Needless to say that the produce perished in the baking sun. The journey of the fruit resembles that of Iraqi refugees who often get turned away in Jordan and then try their luck in Syria. Eventually the artist ended up offering his customers a meagre 11 boxes of dates airlifted by DHL. Though the whole travel route only took 2 days, the dates got held up 21 days by Homeland Security. This experiment ended functioning as an unsavoury metaphor (or sad poetry in Rakowitz’ words) of American political and military prowess: sovereignty does not exist neither for dates or for Iraqi citizens.
Rakowitz labels his work as a redirective practice, that is, a practice which pushes him to work outside of his discipline (as an artist). In “Return” he became an importer/exporter and shopkeeper, in “The Invisible Enemy should not Exist” an archeologist and historian, and in “Parasite” he returned to his interest in architecture. Yet these are not mere roles he takes on. Yes, there is definitely a performative aspect to it all, but that’s not what it is all about. Rather, the projects (and their respective research and execution) necessitate that the artist works across, beyond and outside of his discipline in order to realise the latter. In “Parasite” he has for the past 10 years attempted to provide individualised shelter structures for the homeless. Working close with a group of homeless men, Rakowitz complied with their demands concerning issues of security and visibility. The tailor-made tent-like constructions all cost below $5 as they are manufactured from garbage bags, are mobile, and literally harness the hot air from other buildings’ ventilation ports by literally parasiting on them. These host buildings are – of course – forbidden territory to the homeless. Not only is the parasite functional, but it provides visibility for a group of people who have been rendered invisible city dwellers within the urban fabric.
When I asked Rakowitz about when something stops being art and turns into something else, he replied: “It stops being art when it becomes normal."
Tagged as:
dates, homeless, homeworks iv, iraq war civilian casualties memorials, michael rakowitz, redirective practice
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