Barbara Smith, Tour Outline, January 2011
Okay Mountain and Johan Grimonprez
Blaffer Art Museum presents two new shows: two psychologically engaging exhibitions, said Blaffer director and chief curator Claudia Schmuckli. Themes include: collective vs. personal memory – much used images through us back in time and we relate it to what we were doing/or what we perceive we were doing - like a weird walk down remembrance of the past. Flashbacks of the worst kind. Iconic images that came across our TV screens or that have been visited over time. Things that we remember when – it happened and what we were doing at that time – marked forever by where we were.
First Take: Ok Mountain – Artist Collective/gallery formed in 2006 in Austin by 10 artists taking to illustrate absurdities of contemporary consumer culture. This exhibit explores sleeping as an altered state vulnerable to coercion. Notion of sleep coercion made popular in the movie Inception – the movie. Collective named Artist of the Year at the 2009-2010 Austin Critics Table Awards.
Trust Staircase – 8 wood steps with glowing tops leading up to “leap of faith” to mattress below – or rude awaking. Notice background noise. Altered state of consciousness. Cult mentality. Burma shave like quotes.
Dream Machine – Emotions variations of graphic theme of Okay Mountains logo – smiley face in triangle.
Bunk beds –No mattress for comfort, stripped of privacy, control of subject, voyeurism and mass manipulation.
Instruction Video (19 minutes) – Depersonalization of human at core. Instructions on how to assemble furniture to administering medical assistance. Generic (very) setting, robot-like delivery and acting.
Do you think that our dreams are persuasive during none sleeping hours? How many dream similar dreams over and over?
What does this exhibit says about our current lives? Does it relate to “Big Brother”? Explain how.
What do you think is the artist’s thoughts of our current collective situation? Do you think they think they are part of it?
Johan Grimonprez : It’s a Poor Sort of Memory that Only Works Backwards – Born in Roeselare, Belgium in 1962,now lives in Brussels and New York. He studied and now teaches at the School of Visual Arts and attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.
Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997) – Premiered at the Centre Pompidou. Theme is “threat from above”. Stream of airline hijackings and crashes from 1970’s on foreshadowing 9/11 and the media involvement pushing terrorists to play to the “audience”.
Double Take (2009) – Alfred Hitchcock presents vs. a Doppelganger and Nixon vs. Khrushchev. Birds vs. rockets. TV vs. life baring rockets to outer space. Intertwines Cold War nerves with the treat of nuclear bombs falling from sky. Terror in sky and from sky vs. terror of bird attacks in Hitchcock’s The Birds. The narrator reminds us that “If you meet your double, you must kill him, or he will kill you.” Unnervingly, Johan intersperses aggressive birds terrorizing Tippie Hedren from the air with single bodies falling/floating thru the air like we all saw in the 9/11 video’s. The story by Tom McCarthy where Hitchcock breaks from directing The Birds in 1962 and confronts his doppelganger from 1980. One of them drinks from a poisoned cup of coffee ala Ingrid Bergman’s character in Hitchcock’s Notorious.
Kobarwent or Where is your Helicopter? (1992) – Media anthropologist, Johan spent time in New Guinea. Kobarwent was the New Guinea word for the sound that helicopters made.
It will be all right if you come again, only next time, don’t bring any gear, except a tea kettle…. (1994-2003) – Media anthropologist in New Guinea. Based on his meeting tribesmen who had seen The Sound of Music, and assumed Johan lived in an Austrian mountain scape.
Maybe the Sky is Really Green and We’re Just Colorblind (on going) – Presented as ‘You-tube-o-Theque/Petroteque’ and composed of found materials and clips.
Can anyone explain what the title to Johan’s exhibit might mean? What does he mean: ‘a memory that works backwards’? Is that what usually happens? What would it be or mean to work forward? With so much archived film clips, do you think he is trying to tell us something? Perhaps the historical chant – be careful or history will repeat its self? What if we could extend the memory into the future…. What would that be like? How many things that were written or thought about have since become reality? Can you name some? What about the course of cinema and TV which in the 1950’s was on course to put the cinema out of business, and the debate continues today? How has current and past technology advanced our cultures and fed our fears of disaster? Is there a spiral downward in this? Or can we see ahead, predict the future of our history?