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"VERY PRIVATE"
Exhibition Concept

19. november 1999 – 5. december 1999, otvoritev 19.11.1999 ob 18. uri
Galerija likovnih umetnosti Slovenj Gradec*
Kustos razstave: Vanesa Cvahte
Koordinacija: Katarina Hergold
20 November – 5 December 1999
Art Gallery Slovenj Gradec
Exhibition Curator: VANESA CVAHTE

»VERY PRIVATE …«

Freud's psychoanalysis has marked the 20th century with the immersion of men in their intimate spheres. With the reception of psychoanalysis and a thorough reversal in the domain of dealing with the human psyche, conventions within mutual relationships between ordinary people, and the sanctioned rituals of the aristocracy (and, later, bourgeoisie) which had been enthroned in past centuries, began to weaken and change. The classicistic and Victorian 19th century reached its demise and defeat, and intimate relationships between individuals acquired legitimacy.

The affirmation of intimacy and inner human life has become a common sign of emancipation and freedom. Freud’s id – the subconscious layer of the human psyche, the cabinet of horror that hides all repressed desires, greed, envy, degeneration and repulsive secrets acquired by homo sapiens during his evolution – has become a subject of scientific research, a theme of novels, a goal of emancipatory movements and a universal feature of the strong man who has become aware (and nevertheless did not despair) of himself.

The legitimisation of man’s inner, hidden, forbidden, obscure and undiscovered Self characterised the fin de siécle and the first half of the 20th century with the unveiling and research into, the dissection and wringing-out of this prohibited and hidden layer of the human psyche. The quest for man’s essence, the metaphysical, unwordable and still elusive ultimate segment, flooded modern art. Art has become an instrument for plunging man into his own self. »The prototype of modernistic work«,(1) as Žižek calls Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, dissects the ungraspable trancendental essence, the »absent god«, the Lacanian-Žižekian »object a«,(2) but at the same time it signals the absolute void and – from today’s perspective – the absurdity of this kind of dissection and wringing-out. Back there, low down, at the bottom, or above man – wherever so crucial or secred a thing may abide – one finds nothing. Godot is merely a metaphor for this void that never shows, of course.

Man has been deeply affected by the modern experience; he has lost all his dignified integrity, while, at the same time he has to face Freud’s infamous attributes, which Catholicism had been repressing so expertly for centuries. Jung tried to restore the dignity of man with his claim that man’s deeper layers contain not only neuroses and pathological traits, but also potentially higher states (!) of the human mind. It seems, however, that his perception and understanding are much less popular than Freud’s. Man obviously prefers to deal with his own pathology rather than the possibility of an archetypal comprehension of the world. But if Freud still believed in the rational and strong man who is able to preserve »common sense« and control his instincts and desires once he becomes aware of them through psychoanalysis, and who would thus eliminate neuroses and mental anomalies, this belated ideal of Renaissance man has crumbled in postmodernism. Postmodernism – under the strong influence of post-structuralism – defines man as a brittle construction conforming to local and global ideologies, historicism, psychological structure and the loss of firm grounds underfoot. Postmodern man can no longer believe even in his rationalism, which is supposed to control his repressed instincts. But after the experience of modernistic quest for the hidden, ultimate, unreachable »object a«, which ultimately turns out to be non-existent, the void ? la Godot, the same man is also deprived of the possibility of believing in something transcedental (at least within the Western tradition of thought). Postmodern man is somewhat desperate, for he has been robbed even of the possibility of doubting – for everything has been doubted before, as Vilém Flusser says. He continues: »What we cannot doubt, neither can we believe.«(3)  According to Flusser, an open view of the world in postmodern man would admit the reality of this unbearable situation: the impossibility of believing in something that cannot be doubted. That which we cannot believe, trust or doubt is precisely the issue which modernism could not word and which escaped all representation.

Lost Illusion … Unburied Dead …

It could be expected that postmodern man would no longer pose himself these immortal questions about the deeper, hidden, unwordable, trancendental issue that eludes all representation, if modernism – in a bitter experience – had already shown quite clearly what a Sisyphean task this is, and that he would rather engage in something that does not escape him all the time: the existing, reachable and perceptible. However, the process continues. In postmodernism this quest has been protracted under the motto of so-called identity. Lost illusions of modernism have been reappearing under the disguise of a quest for identity: a new foundation of the subject, a shelter, or basis, ground underfoot, belief in integrity, identification elements – features in which we could recognise ourselves as sound entities. Flusser says that we are insincere towards ourselves in our refusal to assent to the situation, which does not allow us to believe in the »solidity of the objective world«(4)  whose subjects we are supposed to be. Thus we pretend that nothing has changed, although it should be evident that the classical (Carthusian) persistence with the subject and the object has already proved – in natural sciences and in the practical use of computers – that this explanation and comprehension of the world is obsolete. In other words, the interior/identity/subject, and the exterior/seemingly objective world/object remain categories of common sense, which we can use without much deliberation. Or, as Melita Zajc has said of this century-old (obsolete, in Flusser) problem in the context of media theory and representation: »Instructions on how to create as good an image as possible on the one hand, and indignation about the untruthfulness of the image on the other, are two symptoms of the same. The gap between »the internal« and »the external« of a person, between »the truth« and »the illusion, has been one of the major topics of western European cultures over the past few centuries. (…) Je sais bien … mais quand-m?me. I do know, but still.Manoni’s pattern of fetishist concealment is an excellent description of the situation. We are quite aware that all we have are the representations of the surrounding world, of others and ourselves, yet we act if these representations are exactly ourselves, others and the world itself.«(5)

Thus the dead are coming back; identity is only another term for the quest for the unwordable and ungraspable – with the difference that this quest has become more profane, and a norm in every one of us. And why these »living dead«(6)  have been coming back in postmodernism, as we could ask together with Žižek, and also answer with him that the dead have been coming back because they were not buried, because they did not have a funeral. A funeral represents a symbolic farewell from the dead, a reconciliation with loss. But since postmodern man has still not reconciled himself to the absence of the ungraspable  foundation of man, »object a« (in Lacan and Žižek), the ground underfoot, shelter, trancendental finality, the essence of the subject, the most fundamental and deepest psychological layer to which we could have recourse in temporary confusion, it all keeps coming back and torturing us. It is most probable that precisely these unburied dead drive us into the most common, perhaps even neurotic situations in which we tirelessly ask about »our own identity«: »What we are?«, »What is our essence?« and, more metaphysically, »What and where is God?« Thus we recourse to questions which are, per definitionem, without answers, and so finally we find ourselves stuck in the empty space of our own static mind. In this state we cannot communicate, since we have no co-speaker, and we are inoperative – we are alone, all alone by ourselves, almost dead, and the surroundings, the outside-of-us, lose all sense in this vacuum (while astronauts fly around the Moon; Buddhists communicate with the universe; genetics develop an ideal man so resistant that one day he will be able to fly further than the Moon; quantum physics announces the invention of the time machine – and perhaps it will all end with the »invention« of immortality, which will be merely the starting point of the journey).

The Tyranny of Intimacy

The quest for identity in postmodernism can show itself in different ways. One of them is the approach to intimacy, to the private as opposed to the public. Richard Sennett claims that »the quest for identity, composed of elements of the inner world«(7)  is precisely the destructive force that causes (postmodern) narcissism. And what dimensions does Sennett ascribe to the dissection of and recourse to identity, and to the annoying question – »Who am I?« – in our everyday life and social functioning? Or (which amounts to the same): what about Flusser’s state in which we (still) do not want to concede that we have been stuck in an imposible situation without any safe shelter based on whatever psychological or transcendental foundation in which we could believe, or have recourse to, and which would protect us from the despair to which we resign because of ignorance or simple (transitory) inability to think differently. (Flusser sees the way out from this despair in the active development of human life and work – from »the subject« to »the project«; from something we take for granted to something new, which we are able to shape ourselves; from the static »What am I?« to the active »How do I function?«

According to Sennett, we resort to the intimate sphere because of the fear of uncertain reality – ours is an »intimate way of looking at society«.(8) We are permeated with »narcissism«, the exclusive reference to ourselves, which asks: What does this man, or event, mean to me? What is the relevance of happenings in my surroundings for me? The narcissistic subject searches for and expects »real« and intense experiences only within the framework of his own needs and expectations. This submerging of man into himself in order to intensify the sense of being, le sentiment de l’existence (Rousseau), this current »vulgarisation of the romantic quest for identity« (Sennett), is an expression of postmodern »individualism«, which has been subject to criticism in many sociological arguments. In his Malaise of Modernity, Charles Taylor defines individualism, and the narcissism resulting from it, as a direct consequence of the modern rationalisation of society. Taylor says that we lose a comprehensive view of society because we place our individual lives at the forefront. He speaks of the »slip into subjectivism«.(9)

Sennett also claims that people »lose a comprehensive view of society«, but his critique of narcissism continues towards a criticism of the loss of man’s sensitivity to the public, to res publica. His »intimate way of looking at society« connotes that (postmodern) man is inclined to »psychologise society«: for him, society is only important as far as it can be comprehended as a huge psychological mechanism. It should be clear, for example, that the task of a politician is to prepare and carry out the regulations, but that we only become interested in his work when we face his »personality« in political struggle. We call a political leader »trustworthy« and »legitimate« only when he shows himself as a person (possibly with some cute faults, or as a father, a farmer, a musician with a sub-role in politics, and so on), instead of judging and evaluating him according to his acts and the political programmes he supports. The excessive interest in his person and privacy – which means the obscuring of his public activity – functions as a filter which shades our rationalisation of society. (As an illustration of this thesis let us remind ourselves of the Clinton-Lewinsky spectacle, in which the psychosis – yes, psychologisation – of the public personality blurred his activities and political orientation when, for example, he ordered the disputable bombing in Sudan.) This interest goes hand in hand with the conviction that community is a product of the universal and mutual disclosure of private life. The rise of modern psychology, says Sennett, and of psychoanalysis in particular, is said to be based on the conviction that man will liberate himself from his traumas by poring over and analysing himself to the point where he will trace his most secret desires and needs, where he will be able to rationalise and thus to liberate himself from his own yoke. Sennett claims, however, that people have never dealt so much with themselves as they do today, but the promised »salvation« has not come. People remain stuck in the sphere of intimacy, which has become a kind of general principle: to know and become acquainted with ourselves to the utmost degree. However, says Sennett, in the private sphere we do not search for the comprehension of the world and external laws but rather strive for the mirror that would reflect our psyche in its »authentic image«. This authentic image has become our true obsession, but like every obsession it binds itself into its own circle and forms a finished (uncommunicative) system. The external, »objective« world is suspended.

But we are not satisfied with this perplexing rummage through intimacy – our own and that of others. Sennett brings several examples of the conviction according to which our perceptions and experiences will be much more intense in intimate, the most intimate relationships. Sexuality, for example. The term itself signals a sort of reduced state – in contrast to the (Victorian) term »eroticism«. Contrary to eroticism, sexuality is entropic: we expect very much from it, but we do not learn from it, for we take it for granted and consequently we believe that its »shaping« of whatever kind would mean its manipulation. We simply give ourselves to sexuality – it is supposed to direct us, and not vice versa; something very profound, authentic and exclusively our own is supposed to hide in it. But bare sexuality is nothing so special: it simply is. And it is precisely this dictated sexual spontaneity and the fact that we take it for granted – as if we do not have to deal with it and master it, for it is sexuality that deals with us – which prevents us from learning from it. In sexuality we rather yield to »the infinite quest for ourselves by means of genitalia«.(10) Victorian »courting«, says Sennett, has changed into »an affair«. If »courting« entailed social dimensions, »affair« is only physical love in which the social act is absent. In short, sexuality is a state without social dimensions, instead of  communicative activity. Or else sexuality means »What am I?« instead of »What can I do?«

The principle of intimacy thus represents an institution which is the source of belief, or the measure of reality; Sennett sees it as »the tyranny of intimacy«. Consider the words that we so often say to ourselves: »Be spontaneous«, meaning: »Do not be ashamed of your most secret processes, feelings and instincts«, which implies the need for other people to be intimate with us, that they reveal their »inner self« and shown themselves in a »proper light«. They actually stand for the violent enforcement of the principle of intimacy described by Sennett. We want to impose nearness and tenderness, but exactly after such words people usually start to behave in a confused manner because they find themselves trapped: it is clear that we cannot act spontaneously, since we do not even know what this spontaneity is supposed to mean. Spontaneity – our »true« self – is not recognised; it is imperceptible, of course (for it is only a disguised, ordinary Godot who never comes and never introduces himself). Here we see how the manipulative principle of intimacy, which swears to the »natural«, the »real« human nature, has plunged man into an absurd situation. The psychologisation of social reality, which aims to negate the distance to the Self and others, »has changed an individual into an actor robbed of his gift of acting«.(11) (That is to say, after the statement »be spontaneous« we act perforce spontaneously, but this spontaneity is poor acting: we are not spontaneous, for this is impossible, nor do we behave in the sense of any convention whatsoever – we are confused.)

We live under the delusion that nearness and intimacy create tenderness. Sennett says that this delusion provokes confusion, and it is destructive in the way that it deprives man of his aesthetical capacity of acting, or the capacity to express and articulate his convictions. Intimacy forces us to »localise« our experiences, to confine our activities to our immediate surroundings (family, home, narrow communities that hardly accept new members, closed local institutions, clubs, etc.), or to our immediate needs and desires, which results in the loss of the need and capacity for public activity and responsibility. Thus Sennett compares postmodern times with those of the Roman empire after Augustus, when people retracted to a passive observation of public events and preferred to engage – behind the walls of their dwellings and in the intimate ambience of their families – in the transcendental teachings of Eastern sects (among which Christianity later acquired the role of a new social order).

Sennett claims that we are not actively included in public events and political activities, for the institution of »intimate society« hinders a chance for it. In the nineties, however, we are witnessing of yet another process of the »vulgarisation« of the romantic quest for unique identity. Trivial press, television talk-shows and intimate conversations via the Internet transform the intimate sphere into »public intimacy«: reports on the intimate life of public persons, the weirdest intimate confessions on television, special »rooms« on the Internet, and so forth. Although we cannot deny that all these things educate and liberate people – e.g. in the style of »if all this happens to others, then even my intimacy is not as strange as I thought before« – we still remain in the domain of Sennett’s »principle of intimacy«, which diverts us from »objective« social happenings. Here again is the thought that we perceive the world through these things. Sennett would probably use the term hedonism for it, while someone else might simply say that this is the way of making people stupid by means of tasteless details from other people’s lives.

Intimacy, however, poses problems that cannot be so easily classified as hedonism, nor as making people stupid, nor as a main cause for social disengagement, and nor as a principle of self-recognition.

Art as Social Practice

The relationship between the private and the public has already been turned upside down by the most famous disciple of the school of cynics, Diogenes – also named »Dog« – when he masturbated in a public square in ancient Greece, the cradle of European culture. In this »performance« he also made fun of the then prevalent Platonic metaphysical concept of being, which was oriented towards life beyond earth. Diogenes was not considered to be an artist, for the institution of art was not defined as it is today. Nevertheless, we could count him as a predecessor of performance art par excellence.
In the nineties, Elke Krystufek actually repeated Diogenes’ provocative act when, in 1994, she publicly masturbated at a grand opening in the Kunsthalle on Carl’s Square in Vienna. It would be utterly contradictory to be offended by her action but to speak of Diogenes as one of the main Greek philosophers at the same time. We could only reproach her for one thing: repetition.

But I am not prone even to this reproach, for her action functioned as a critical indicator of the situation in art and – if art has this dimension at all – of the position of society towards intimacy.

Sennett blames us, postmodern individuals, for closing within ourselves and into our intimate sphere, which makes us narcissistic, asocial and apolitical to the point that we evaluate reality only by regarding our own needs and only in the event that this (political, social) reality is psychologically potent. He claims that we could easily characterise artists who deal with human intimacy as those who obediently walk with the flow of time, as conformist members of the institution of »intimate society«. Or rather, even artist are people who narcissistically deal with themselves, or with the intimacy of themselves or others, and (according to Sennett) their works have no social relevance. We could also ask: Why should there be art that deals with the intimate, when we already have all the information about it from television, the Internet, newspapers, exhibitions on man and his body, when we live in the time of advanced educational system, the universal legitimisation of psychiatry, open discussions about sexuality and the human body, the articulation of family relationships, and honest conversations about the »unbearable lightness of being«, or the meaning of life?

Art that explores problems of intimacy starts with the problem of the private and the public at the point where the protagonists of personal confessions on television talk-shows, the trivial press, pornography and education stop. Artists who deal with human intimacy and the position of society towards intimacy are more intimate than the »public intimacy« of the above-mentioned institutions and media. If intimacy has turned public, this does not mean that it has solved its own problems. Or, as Freud would put it: if neurosis is discerned, this does not mean that it has been healed.
It would be wrong, however, to expect any single solution in art. Works of art that deal with intimacy, or the private, are often contradictory, or dialogical. But precisely this dialogue is their quality, which forces us to think about our own intimacy and the position of society towards it. If it happens in the perception of these works that we do not know about whom the artist »speaks« – about us, or about himself – than we are most probably on the right path. Elke Krystufek, who held an exhibition of her photographic collages in Vienna, documented her intimate life in them, while the title of the exhibition was: »I am Your Mirror«.

notes:
(1)  Slavoj Žižek, Liebe Dein Symptom wir Dich selbst, Berlin, 1991.
(2)  Ibid.
(3)  Vilém Flusser, Vom Subjekt zum Projekt, Mannheim: Menschenwerdung, 1994, p. 31.
(4)  Flusser, op. cit., p. 30.
(5)  Melita Zajc, »Fast Cars, Hard Sounds«, in: Media in Media, Ljubljana: Open Society Institute – Slovenia, 1997, p. 40.
(6)  Žižek, op. cit., p. 106.
(7)  Richard Sennett, Verfall und Ende sed öffentlichen Lebens. Die Tyrannei der Intimität, Frankfurt /Main, 1986.
(8)  Ibid., p. 17.
(9)  Charles Taylor, Das Unbehagen an der Moderne, Frankfurt/Main, 1995, p. 10.
(10)  Sennett, op. cit., p. 21.
(11)  Sennet, op. cit., p. 335.
 
 
 
 

The exhibition »Very Private …« presents the positions of eight artists exploring the above problems of the intimate/private in this decade by means of video, video screening, or video installation. The selected artists are:
 
 
 

very private*		Eija Liisa Ahtila	Elke Krystufek			Pipolotti Rist
	absalon		Nataša Prosenc								Gillian Wearing
				Martha Rosler				Mirjana Rukavina
19. november - 5. december 1999
									The opening performance will be staged by Richard Crow* (Great Britain).

 
 

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