Rarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film - David Horvitz - 2nd Cannons - Chinatown
Artist David Horvitz's "Rarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film," on show in Second Cannons Publications' micro-gallery/public vitrine, includes a film clip, a newsprint photograph of the sea from the location of Ader's projected landing spot, and its own small myth. Uploaded onto Youtube in 2007, the film was deleted by the site at the request of the gallery calling the Ader film a hoax, ostensibly for copyright infringement. The scratchy, black and white clip – only a few seconds long – shows a young man bicycling directly into the sea. It cuts off just at the instant before we see him actually fall, reverting to a flash of blank film frames. Uncannily, the clip seems to provide the perfect missing link between the concept-images that are now emblematic of Ader's own life and death (a young man disappears into the sea); and several of his actual (all silent) films.
Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists from Korea
Go to the LACMA website and a wheezing chord welcomes you to a blank white screen. A large black text appears, read out with unexpected vehemence by a synthesized voice: Hey, where'd all the smart guys go? The self-doubting conspiracy theory which follows – the work of artist duo Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, commissioned by LACMA for "Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists from Korea" – is propelled along by sporadic drums and accelerating chords, in a series of short texts which gain in size and urgency.
You know the smart guys, the ones who are in charge?
Who are taking us places, who are telling us to sit back, to enjoy the ride?
Well, I've got news for you.
The smart guys have left us by the side of the road.
I feel that way too. The catalog to "Your Bright Future" self-consciously cites a number of the conceptual hurdles which an exhibition of this type must contend with. Curators are keen to avoid art as metaphor for national progression, the idea of nationality as a unified ethnic identity, or to promote an exhibition as 'exemplary' of the whole of Korean art. Then, the smart guys leave us by the side of the road, with few proposed alternatives. "Your Bright Future" proposes to let the artworks do the talking. Why them? Who knows. But the lucky twelve are here now, and the loose grouping of heavily video- and installation-based works speak in outsized voices.
New Histories for an Untutored Audience: Art on the Middle East in Los Angeles
Since April, L.A. has seen an unbroken stream of small shows on the modern and contemporary history of Lebanon and Iran, narratives positioned to resonate with those of other Middle Eastern countries or countries, like Venezuela, which have historically occupied similar geo-political positions on a world stage.
In three recent exhibits, the impulse to turn geographic units into analytical categories overlapped with a significant use of the heavily "factual:" architectural models, didactic texts, and documentary videos proliferated. What little manipulation there was was mainly a question of presentation. Sleekly documenting the material manifestations of individual and political power in locations where oil money, and center-periphery relations are particularly salient, all three share a common philosophy to "let the facts speak for themselves."
Why this particular congruence? Maybe it's as simple as the fact that all have taken it upon themselves to write essentially new histories for a relatively untutored general audience. They share a common impulse to simultaneously establish a record, and set it straight. Yet this redundancy is a little disappointing. The appearance of three exhibitions like this in the same city, at the same time, seems to point to a broader trend. And the trend itself engenders its own set of nagging questions – not only whether there might be other ways to write new histories, but why exactly this is an increasingly common goal in the contemporary moment: does it help?
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