Last week, on April 1st no less, I had my last event for a while in the Netherlands, before moving to the City Victorious, or rather the city of dust: Cairo. I curated a screening program at Montevideo/Time Based Arts, titled “Perfect Present Continuous”, wherein I tried to bring together video work which presents us with visions bordering on the ideal and the flawed; the moment between the potential of perfection and a preconceived failure, or the porosity between beauty and horror, present and memory, across the brink of time, geo-political space and place. The participating artists were: Raed Yassin, Yane Calovski & Fos, Larissa Sansour, Oraib Toukan and Lamia Joreige. The program was realized within the context of the exhibition “Territorial Phantom”, which opened March 28th.

In the exhibition essay Petra Heck writes: “The artists in 'Territorial Phantom' explore dominant ideas about concepts such as borders, territory, possession and occupying space. They are responding to grids, or are laying these over territorial areas. As artists, they seek to claim space, and employ different artistic strategies to do this. The exhibition presents mental, social or political phenomena regarding the occupation of the space mapped.” It is interesting that the conceptualization of space and place is almost exclusively being designated by territory, whilst the title actually suggests a spectre or ghostlike entity haunting these grounds. In this respect “Phantom Territories” might have been more appropriate as a thematic umbrella. However, Israeli artist Yael Bartana, did strike an interesting chord between a (almost misplaced) performed nationalism and a vision of the future, which hinges on ghosts of the past. Bartana’s work often takes on a documenting/documentary quality, but here the approach was significantly different. In the video “Mary Koszmary (2007) we see a young Pole (performed by Slawomir Sierakowski) speak to an almost empty football stadium, except for a few attentive boy and girl scouts. Using old skool rhetorical strategies, reminiscent of dictator’s speeches and fascist propaganda rallies, the speaker pleads for Poland’s 3 million Jews who left, to return. “100.000 Jews can change the lives of 40.000.000 Poles”, he cries. The staging and format of this performance, which runs counter to its content, raises interesting questions about identity, nationalism, racism and anti-Semitism (and in this case, its hyperbolic and absurd corrective).

I was quite taken by the Russian AES+F group’s video “Last Riot”, which combined game-like animation (complete with mega lizards, Dutch windmills planted in the desert, lava spitting volcanoes and Desert Storm imagery) with footage of androgynous teens clad in military fatigues repetitively battering each other with a variety of weaponry, ranging from golf clubs, to base ball bats. This slow-motioned scene of cyclical and aimless violence is located in a non-distinct icy landscape, and intrigues because of how our gaze seems to enjoy the perverse eroticism of the brutality of youth. As a viewer you are drawn into these violent gestures, and become complicit, for not once do you ask the question what the objective of all this cruelty is. Personally I think the video could have done without the animation bit: it distracts, and does not really add any narrative or conceptual surplus value. Perhaps I am not a fan of this type of animation. I could also not really appreciate Cao Fei’s “RMB City”, but this is probably due to the fact that all things Second Life really irritate me.

It has to be said that I was quite confused when first seeing the AES+F piece, as in the same room Lucas Lenglet’s Panzersperren road barrier/obstacle sculpture was placed. It did fit initially with the “Last Riot” piece, but more as a note in the margin, or an add-on to the whole composition. When after reading the exhibition booklet I realized it was a separate work, it became clear that it was usurped by the power of AES+F’s image, as it was not well lit. A shame really: Lenglet’s piece is definitely strong, and very much deserved a space of its own. Lenglet managed to elegantly combine menacing monumentality with carefully arranged fragility. In addition it is refreshing to see work literally taking up space and negotiating it (in an exhibition that ultimately takes space as its subject), instead of always flatly oozing off a projection screen.

Though slightly out of context if we regard matters strictly spatial, but an excellent work and in line with discussions on nationalism and identity, was Artur Zmijewski’s video “Them” (2007). A prominent figure in the Polish and international art world, Zmjewski does not shy away from engendering a feeling of discomfort in his viewer, or for that matter the subjects – be they human or inanimate - he works with. In “Them” he facilitates an art workshop between Polish Christians, Jews, Young Socialists and Nationalists, and makes them use art as a vehicle for expressing (if not confronting) one another with each other's ideas. You need to take your time with this almost half hour long work, but as time passes the verbal discord and arguments between the workshop participants turn into bouts of painting over each others works, ripping works apart, cutting up of T-shirts, to throwing works out of the window and literally burning them. At a particular moment the room smokes up so badly, that people need to be evacuated and fire extinguishers need to be employed. It is here where any discursive and creative act stops, and where the limits of art in the face of narrow-minded ideology, become apparent.