Well, I was successfully nauseated by the architecture of the hallways underneath the building. The forced perspective of the sloped floor and uneven angles of the hallways left me feeling properly destabilized (this architecture is very intentional) before we were led on what what as a half-lame tour of only a very small part of the Museum. The guide was anxious to the point of distraction and only showed us a couple of exhibits and was thus a little disappointed. The museum, however, was full of carful didacticism, offering a tour of the history of Jews in Germany. After lunch in the café, we didn’t have much time to continue walking through, so, I might return to take the full walk the galleries present.
Author: Gabriel Will (Page 2 of 2)
In many ways, I was lucky to find this small work by Paul Klee among the vast numbers of Picasso’s in the Berggruen Museum, a private art collection rendered available to the public via the cleanly whites and baroque architecture of the historically sited state funded gallery, a space very different from Sammlung Boros’s rough concrete walls and floors, retained as found so as to produce the immanent “authentic” of the hip and moneyed. I say lucky, because the figure of the drawing, “Wissen Schweigen Vorübergehen,” the title spread along the bottom of the drawing as if it were a Mallarmé, seems to be one who is viewing or at least cognizant of Benjamin’s “angel of history,” an angel drawn from Klee’s “Angels Novus,” as our class is no doubt familiar. While that figure is surrounded with golden hue, this person, or image of a person, is placed within the brown and grey mist of hazy decay, the dust of the old: books, scrolls, ruins, swampy and polluted waters.
The figure, genderless or of mixed gender, is torqued at the hips, turning to face the viewer, arms held to the temple and chest in a dancerly gesture of shock and surprise, as if the title of the painting had suddenly approached from behind. Yet, because of the position of the eyes—one which looks directly at the viewer, the other slightly skewed to an indeterminate point behind whom ever is looking at the work—an observer of the drawing is inclined to make the same gesture, to turn one’s body in the same manner as the body of the drawing, to look behind at something unknown, something startling and untoward in its challenge to subjective stability. This sense, of course, was only discovered after a long gaze. If it is indeed that “Wissen” and “Schweigen” have crossed behind you, a viewer of the work is interrogated as one possessing the same challenged access to the title of the work, access only granted by looking somewhere else. The surprise of the new is spread out into an indeterminacy of unknown origin, a constant behind, something that shocks and swiftly escapes, leaving one destabilized and unsure, an affect further reflected in the complicated rendering of the legs: it could be two that are spread out in stability, or two sets in different times, one standing upright, the other on the edge of falling: Motion and in stasis are held in tension.
Besides the obvious reasons for this being a work of “degenerate art,” this clear statement of modern and complicated self reflexivity speaks to a questioning that fascism, at least in the manner it emerged in Nazi Germany, could not tolerate or reabsorb into its sense of self. The separation between the subject and the work is directly interrogated through the shock of the figured observer’s surprise, a surprise cast upon the viewer’s consciousness of their own possible bodily reaction.
Here’s a link to a web based image of the work:
http://www.kunstkopie.de/a/paul_klee/wissenschweigenvorueberge.html
I had never before been on a guided tour of a gallery before. I like to linger in front of art—going on a tour as swift as this one was frustrating as there wasn’t opportunity for the lengthy gaze authentic aesthetic experience requires. While is was interesting to get swift glimpses at what is a very interesting collection of objects and hear the swift, often well determined hermeneutic offered buy the guide (who I swear was a touch stoned), the tour presented itself as an hour and a half long commercial for patronage and interest, further propagating casual, surface level investigations that promote the general disregard of depth found in our spectaclized, entertainment and commodity obsessed culture. The works are indeed shared by the owners, so, they can at least be seen. Yet this is performed in a way that ends up hiding them from the guests that pay to be rushed from gallery to gallery, from work to work. It was titillation, and not much more. The situation of this presentation further reveals how distant our culture is from being able to recognize the other: this alone makes Sammlung Boros worth going to.
Upon visiting the Bauhaus-Archiv, a museum goer is confronted with a collection of objects chosen from what I perceived as the school’s more famous and possibly more obviously influential items of cultural production: architecture, furniture, lamps, tea sets, other items for the household. Along with this is a smattering of paintings, the very famous chess board (which you can purchase a copy of in the giftshop, of course) a couple of textile pieces (one of which is a truly excellent weaving by Anne Albers), some sculpture, and various other pieces from the artistic production of the school. The Museum is useful in this: as I walked through the small, open-spaced galleries, the objects appeared to me as if in a three dimensional coffee table book. Fantastic to see, but, I found myself a little disappointed in this somewhat limited presentation.
Because of the predominance of these types of selections, the role of the Bauhaus as a pedagogical institution is lost in the midst. Documentation of the life of the school barely makes it’s presence felt. There are only brief references to the kind of teaching that took place among the few examples of student work. My own encounters with the Bauhaus have been through retellings of the school itself—I had hoped to see more examples within the galleries. Within this disappointment, however, reside a number of important questions: Why does the curation of this museum value objects of direct commodification over the pedagogical development that took place in the Bauhaus, a development that would find its way into Evergreen via Black Mountain College? What is more important: its students or its objects made? Why is the student body being taken for granted as a forgotten excess to the latter? Given these, how are we to remember the institution? As a pedagogical experiment or as a producer of commodities? Is it even possible to Muezealize education or pedagogy?
In an additional obscuration, I found the galleries to not represent the character of the architecture: I had the best experience of the building sitting the courtyard drinking coffee and walking around the outside after leaving.
These are the instructions for the first “Psychic City” Experiment.
But to loose oneself in a city—as one loses ones self in a forest—that calls for quite a different schooling. Then, signboards and street names, passers-by, roofs, kiosks, or bars must speak to the wanderer like a cracking twig under his feet in the forest, like the startling call of a bittern in the distance, like the sudden stillness of a clearing with a lily standing erect at its center. (p 9, A Berlin Chronicle, Benjamin)
Benjamin describes a flaneurship of his own. This experiment is a sort of reversal of the above passage: the city is treated like a forest that you will not move through. You will attempt to become lost while staying in the same place.
Find a location where you will be comfortable sitting for about 40 minutes. This practice can take place anywhere, but select with intention. Do not pick the first place that comes along. You do not have to know why the place that you select is appealing, but choose it as if there was some sort of thing that is calling you there.
After you have selected your locale, spend about ten minutes rendering some sort of description. This can be of any sort: drawing or writing. It is ok to go longer, but keep it short, direct and clear. This description is an exorcism of a sort, a way to mark the existence of the visables around you. When this is complete, put away the writing or drawing. Attempt to forget what you have just written.
Close your eyes and begin listening to the most distant sound you can possibly perceive. This will not come from a place that you have just described, it will instead emanate from beyond the field of your vision. Once you have become aware of this distant sonic content, allow your attention to rise closer, as if your listening is a tide coming in steadily on a broad and flat beach, while still maintaining attention to the distant sounds. Even though it is difficult, try to not privilege one sound over any other. Continue this process until you have reached it’s end, the end being the sounds of your immediate surroundings. If you find yourself becoming distracted at any moment, do not worry: return to the sounds themselves. Take about 15 minutes perform this whole process. A nearby church, ringing the quarter hours, could be a helpful frame to time your listening.
Some suggestions:
Do your best to not name the sounds you are hearing. Try and hear them as a sound in the air, not coming from a particular source. Make attempts to listen to the whole field of sound as one single thing, thus allowing your attention to broadly focus on the whole. The difficulty of doing this is part of what makes it fun. Notice how a particular sound will repeat in your head as an immediate short term memory, an internal mental echo eerily similar to the original. When you hear a sound that is shocking, notice how your body responds before the sound truly enters reflective consciousness.
When you are finished with your fifteen minutes, spend another 10 describing how it sounded, not what you heard as it is named. Use words or drawings. Onomopea is good, but describing the texture or “color” of the sounds is also a good place to start. What was surprising? What was new? What was familiar? After this writing, look at what you wrote down before you began. Look around. Again, what do you notice now?
Remember what it felt like to experience this kind of listening. Attempt it again when ever you wish or whenever there is a time that needs to be filled: Waiting for the train is a great example.
(This set of instructions owes an awful lot to Pauline Oliveros).