sensestest

Abandoned Battlefields - Hanno Soans, curator

The Frightening Power of Picture-Mirror - Hanno Soans

Smells Like Transpop - Mari Sobolev and Hanno Soans

The First Full Circle of Jaan Toomik - Hanno Soans

Abandoned Battlefields

We could imagine the aim of art to be losing something in the most significant way...

...and the artist to be somebody gaining the most from this loss...

Raoul Kurvitz, Postapocalyptic Spectacles II, Area of forest-fire at Vihterpalu, North-West Estonia, 1996

In the process of creation an artist first (partially) loses his/her self and afterwards looses contact with the artefact produced, the object. Artists´ commitment is traditionally valued as an object — as lost contact with the psychic content of their creation. It´s a paradox, an absurdity in the chain of consuming arts. But the secret wits among artists have gained from this, turning it an advantage for themselves by starting to use the "negative theology" of minimalism. The structure of experience invested in an art work, which is comparable to that of fundamental religious consciousness, allows me to play with such notions here. My concern lies in the field of the inner experience shared by many creative people, an experience which could be thought of as leftovers of religion. Negative theology put into art practice brings up no theological content whatsoever, but instead the sense of loss.

The point of departure for an artist in this case is psychological, a knot in the creative self. In the testing phase the sensual memories of artists, the memoires involontaires, are awoken... just to be deliberately crushed against the burden of materials. In case of meditative artistic approach the same phase is gone through by slowly consuming the memories awoken. In "ripening process" such art attempts to make felt the absence of the artist in the piece left behind. Here the collision of the strategies belonging to minimalism and those belonging to the bodily experience of performance art lead to the exposure of strange, uncanny ruins of the self.

A family of clothes with letters and parcels

Vasile Rata, Tests

This is very contrary to minimalism as it first came to be known in the history of arts; appollonic asceticism of the senses. Instead it could be valued as sensual excess. But the stronger the alienation from the sensual content of artists psyche during the creative process —the stronger the loss and failure —, the more powerful is also art derived from it. The statement is not a rule, but it nevertheless can be used as a motto for some recent tendencies in Estonian art. The works touched upon could be thought of as battlefields abandoned by artists.
How can the pinnacle of sensual excesses of an artist in creative rage or nunc stans of meditation in material be approached? Wouldn´t it be more adequate to turn away from following the traditional etiquette of exhibition visitor to touching, smelling, hearing, tasting and, among others ... looking? Finally, these are the questions, which can be put up for a curious viewer of the SENSES: test station.

Hanno Soans

The Frightening Power of Picture-Mirror
Hanno Soans

The desire to obtain information about an artist's Personality forms one of the axes in the history of writing about art; one only has to recall Giorgio Vasari's The Biographies of Artists or Leonardo's childhood memories from Sigmund Freud for illumination. In this sense, art history is a literary project used to create portraits of artists. Even if one has tried to wash off the stains of art history's past, laden with cult of personality from today's texts, hope still remains that it is not possible to disengage them fully from the Personality. Many contemporary artists work on the key questions concerned with their own identity.

With the exhibition of self-portraits in Tallinn's gallery Vaala Kõhus (October 13-20), Mark Raidpere continues to compound portrait, identity and confessional biography. But this time (unlike in previous exhibitions) the artist is not alone with his self-portraits. He is there together with Anu A., Ene-Liis, Kiwa, Rainer etc. These ten names, these ten people each mark a different direction in transformation, a counterpart, a double or an intermediate whom Mark Raidpere is using. I do not even know what to call the formation which is created when the images of two existing people melt into one intermediate form and then begin a life of their own. Big wet eyes, a scrubby chin and pathetic carriage indicate the presence of the author in every portrait.

If Raidpere is not Raidpere or even Anu A. in these portraits, who is he then? Maybe a new breed of virtual-artist, "a double-person".
I assumed that for Mark Raidpere this exhibition would be a graduation from minor to major. The starting point of this exhibition is schematically simple and naively funny, as if somebody had drawn a moustache on one of the faces in the pictures. From the artist's earlier descriptions, I understood that the author would be planning a photo-montage series where one can occasionally see the features of his friend in his portraits(just as a new layer of culture is exposed at an archaeological excavation). With this image in mind, I assumed Raidpere would be advancing towards a fragmented picture processing, based on the alienation effect a´ la Destudio.
Considering the previously mentioned—hybrids bred together by synthetic montage—the strong identity of "the double-person" was surprising. The power of the picture-mirror to create images perceived as new personalities is almost horrifying. The spectator at Vaala Kõhus sees portraits of a hybrid breed that has emerged from a transformation; it's "Mutant Disco" for selected deaf-mutes. The features of Raidpere's friends which are gathered around and into him are arranged in the mood of loss common to the music of Portishead. This stuff really is gloomy. This time Mark Raidpere is cruel to his models, in the same way he has been cruel to himself until now.
The author's dialogue with his mirror-self, characteristic to his two previous exhibitions, is present here also. In the semblance of photographic reflections, he is re-arranging his self-image. In the photos of "Io," his first personal exhibition a year and a half ago, a purifying, cathartic mood of shock was dominant. Together with Ene-Liis Semper, "Four-handed Play" streamed the flag of martyrdom/humility; repellence and darkness ruled. This time the connection is more discreet, theatricality, a value associated with camp is diluted with analysis.
The main fuel for man's cultural ambitions is the hope for biography, portrait or monument. Artists and writers have an eternal privilege to these, both as producers and consumers. One of the more vigorous ways to create "lead-free" portraiture or biographical art is to avoid the transparency of the genre. Both the picture and the personality would then be regarded as constructions.
So, what would the biography of "the double-person" be like? I do not know to whom should I present this topical question which is related to the morphology of literature....

Smells Like Transpop
Mari Sobolev and Hanno Soans

Hanno Soans:

1) The statement that an artist (critic, security guard, deputy chairwoman of a coalition party, musician or ice-cream man) is popular presumes that he/she has an interest group with a wide resonance in society. There is a requirement(partially independent from his work assignments): to live, to fulfil, or to personify the wishes and dreams which, in the lives of the people who belong to the interest group are not realised. And as if this was not enough he has to make these wishes and dreams visible in the society.
2) If something is popular, one cannot infer anything substantial from this, only quantitative. It has scale, quantity, power and volume; In short, success. In a media society success is an absolute investment that is perpetual. Success produces and guarantees success, working with the tools of the media. The only impact that is definitely needed is the special skill and ability to raise interest.
3. Of course, the starting point an artist and a writer have towards popularity is much better than a politician's or an official responsible for a city's property. And the reasons for this are absolutely objective: the life-style, values and convictions of popular artists can be as different as the view in a kaleidoscope, all worthy of identification for someone. Mark Kalev Kostabi, for instance, represents the dream that seldom becomes true for an artist: financial success. He is the personification of yuppie values, the yuppie life-style and success. On the other hand there is Kurt Cobain—a dirty, uneducated and drug-affected musician up until his death, one whom it is good to identify with when hungover. An artist inevitably has to concentrate on being interesting.
4. Nietzsche regarded his thoughts as rare high mountain air that is suitable for only a selected few. When thinking about the manner of a unrecognised genius represented by this statement, it is evident why identification is easy. Who would not want to think the same way as Nietzche did? And his philosophy is popular today. Nietzsche's philosophy is in a more confined sense an argument, a popular concept and an indication where to point a finger. Original text and personality do not give any credence to it.
5. The works of a popular artist do not have to have a simple syntax, and surely they cannot be senselessly folksy. A first-rate example is artist Andy Warhol: he concentrated on the idea that his works would be fascinating both to the refined art critic and to the everyday housewife. Another example of this type of popular artist can also be Joseph Beuys, creator of some of the most cryptic installations in the second half of the 20th century. He held public speeches, he was Germany's first-class media figure and he established several political parties; one of them, Germany's Green Movement, was at his time a major political power. To raise interest is the only imperative for a popular artist. In this context popularity does not coincide with commercial success. No matter how popular commercial artists are with their buyers there is no substantial value in their art(or anti-value; pop art is not moralistic nor fastidious), and their life-style is nothing to dream about.

Mari Sobolev:

1) The language of pop art is the most universal language of communication because it is derived from the language of mass-culture; respectively, mass-culture emanates from a market economy which is common in most of the world.
2) The basis for pop art language is universal images.
3) The language of pop art, as in every other language, is able to express the whole spectrum of feeling; the form does not determine the matter.
4) Pop art is not based on memory like most of the cultures, but on forgetting.
5) Pop art lives in the present.
6) Pop art is meant for people, even if it does not reach them.
The word "pop" has quite a complicated etymology. Hanno Soans has considered the subject from the point of "being popular," but this is not the only option. In my theses I concentrated on one possible alternative. I imagined the word "pop" before the word "art"— I got the idea from the word "lollipop" which has nothing to do with popularity. A lollipop is one of the symbols of mass-culture, and the language of mass-culture was the basis of my thesis. A lollipop is significant in many ways: it was present in the reputedly first piece of pop art, a Richard Hamilton collage. In addition, charismatic Estonian transpop artist Kiwa initially came out with a happening called "Lollipop Fiction". And finally, a lollipop is one of the first products of mass-culture that a young citizen gets his hands on.
At the same time one cannot deny the aspect of popularity when observing pop art. I have witnessed the birth of the Estonian version of this phenomenon, and thus I might have underestimated vanity as a possible catalyst. But a certain dose of vanity is needed to attract interest, otherwise an artist could not work, but it does not have to be the driving force. To be honest, Warhol and the other guys do not really interest me (I do not have an urge to identify with them, even though it is necessary to be familiar with their work). I am interested in transpop. "Trans" is a prefix that is as multi-dimensional as "pop", and transpop definitely has a transcendental aspect (especially in Tarrvi Laamann's work); trance as a state (Toomas Altnurme); trance as the basis of club-culture (Kiwa); transparent as a slogan, a poster likeness (Sütevaka Andres). These implications, of course, do not apply to one person only, but are in different proportions dispersed into different works of all of these artists.
I would like to emphasise the aspect of transparency from where the prefix "trans" is derived—to pass through something. It can also be called innocence. It seems that everything in art is done already—someone had an idea, but then it turns out that someone else has also had it. Therefore one has to forget the past and start from the present surrounding us. Artists can see through art history; art history has become transparent, it is not visible and is thus unimportant (unpopular). They also see through the ways of society.
Everyone remembered the end of WW II when pop culture first started out; peace was a relief and inspired optimism. The development of science and technology enchanted people; democracy and socialism were blooming. Today it is evident that there will be no global happiness and the best possible perspective for the future is survival. In the 1960s there was no reason for such pessimism, and it was enough to declare the beginning of new phenomena. A hamburger as big as a room or a row of look-alike Monroes is definitely absurd but it is still more of a joke. It suggests that the values of society have changed but does not give a definite judgement. Even a few years ago a discussion about the depiction of youth culture in art, if youth art exists and if something opposes it, concluded that youth is totally without opinion and aloof. Time has shown that this is not wholly true.
The majority of work shown at transpop exhibitions and artists' personal projects expresses a certain conception and is opposed to the prevailing values. The difference with the "father-killers" of the last decade is that these artists do not battle with art that was already created; they do not want to disagree with the principles of their fathers; they do not claim to be doing something new and different: the manifestation is focused on an entirely different canal—not on art but on everything else that is happening around us, to social values in the widest sense, foremost. It is not important what art was like ten years ago. Election results, stock-market deals, legislation, mass- media, religion etc., they are important. It is not primary to be a cult figure in the middle of your own art.
The transpop exhibitions tend to be anonymous mass meetings. Especially because it is not possible to distinguish anyone's personal handwriting at a road exhibition, for instance. One mostly remembers slogans like "Jerk Off, Bourgeois!" or "Fuck $1,000,000" as the names of the artists. Of course there are artists who use themselves in their art. There are many different presumptions about transpop, especially when considering the work of Kiwa (he is involved in many different forms of art and his image is a part of his art), but he is not typical at all. There are many transpop artists who have done one or two excellent works but no-one has heard of them again. This does not make their work less valuable or important.
One can draw a parallel to music: artist-centred, traditional art is like rock music, where the central figure is a flesh and blood star (with his rotting nose, perversion and arms covered with track marks); club music, though, is created by different DJs and no-one can really define the limit of their authorship, no-one remembers their faces under the knitted hats in the same extent as a rock-star. When Jasper Zoova wrote to the internet billboard "Zoova, the King of Universe," his aim was not to establish a cult of personality, but as they say in one song by Manic Street Preacher: "Who's responsible? You fucking are". When Andrus Joonas's subject is "An Artist Kills a Beast" and then uses himself as the artist's image, he does not want to have his photo published on the cover of a glamour magazine, but stresses the enormous role of an artist in the system of collective responsibility for the individual.
A certain responsibility is essential to the work of transpop's stronger representatives. They have a healthy dose of desire to improve the world and yet they are pessimistic towards this noble cause (this information is obtained from observing their art and also from private conversations).

Hanno Soans:

I am interested in popularity and related social mechanisms . In pop art as I understand it, from the sociological viewpoint, visual arts can also find a niche in pop culture. There they can overcome the dismally marginal importance that they currently enjoy. Also--pop art affords an opportunity to amplify art up to a level of anonymity and abstractness, to disengage the artist from his personality and his art. This is important because if it is effective, then there is no need to simplify self-expression and to pander to consumers of culture. Pop art is accompanied by media hype which can override the most subtle and intricate artistic message. In countries with sophisticated pop cultures, it is the media which has the role of being the advocate of pop and communicating with the consumers of culture. At least in an illusory sense, the centre of pop art is always the cult figure.

The First Full Circle of Jaan Toomik
Hanno Soans

No explanations could tune the reader in to Jaan Toomik's art. His works have the power to share the poetic vision of their author by themselves anyway. Art critics even tend to characterise them as hypnotic, to the extent that they disarm analyses. They inspire an immunity to words or a state of silence which is most frequently used topos in articles on Toomik.
Jaan Toomik began as a painter of mythology in the end of 1980s. Transmitting myths themselves — virulent stories forever repeated through the cultural history in any medium available — was secondary and the presence of mythological awe essential in those early paintings. They could be interpreted as acts of giving up his ego to the literal content of myths forever re-experienced in flesh. Accordingly the mentality of the performances and happenings, which were a crucial stage in the broadening of his personal concept of art in 1991-93, was present in the paintings from the beginning.
The change in the concept of "event" is important in Toomik's new works, land art and videoinstallations. The attitude that something can happen every day according to systematic routine and still be an event at the same time is a paradoxical axis for understanding them. In "Om Mani Padme Hum" (1996) a naked man is filmed greeting the rising sun with a trance-inducing mantra. Sunrise is "the morning news", seen also in "Sun Rises and Sun Sets" in the Santa Fe Biennale (1998). The videoinstallation revealed even more directly the artist's intentions "to create things as unavoidable as natural phenomena, as wind...".
Jaan Toomik uses repetitive structures to alter the state of consciousness of viewers, to make them more receptive step by step. His videoinstallations are aimed at neutralising ego and also often compensate the narcissistic character of video-medium. To archieve that he often submits himself and audience to the melody of chant, to the rules of landscape or to mechanic action.
As an artist Jaan Toomik is obsessed with the concept of death. In Güstrow, Germany (1992) he dug holes into the ground of an ancient churchyard, revealing bones from the ancient cemetery. He installed mirrors on the bottom of those "graves" to reflect back every a human glimpse. In Norwich, England (1993) Toomik found a row of ancient tombstones placed against a churchyard wall and cleaned out a horizontal line of about 2 inches wide crossing all the stones. By doing so he linked different dates, names, texts into an instant experience, which forces to meditate on anonymous character of fate. For the last Biennale in Venice (1997) he created a site specific object on the embankment near Giardini. The installation was made of 22 coffins, side by side in an upright position, upper and bottom boards removed. This piece drew on the genius loci and cultural heritage of Venice forcing morbid connotations. But as an object it was a neutral "frame of perception", a tunnel through which You could see people passing by. Jaan Toomik is also concerned with flux and travel. "A Way to São Paolo" (1994) was an installation in which he used documentary video about an action of floating a large mirror cube on rivers going through three cities. The first action took place in Tartu, a small Estonian city in which Toomik himself is born, the second in Prague which could be considered as center of Europe and the last in São Paolo, city of the biennale this work was made for. Tartu, Prague and São Paolo are situated on a straight line on the map. The way of the mirror cube reflecting its surroundings with cool objective poetry is geographically the most direct way from Estonia to Brazil. The installation also represented the straightest symbolic line connecting artist's birth to the present moment.
Toomik is often himself a traveller figure in his videos. In "Dancing Home", exhibited in ARS 95 in Helsinki and Manifesta I we see the artist on the back deck of a ferry-boat moving according to the monotonous rhythm of the engines. He had to start a journey depressed, as a shamanistic answer to that situation, submitted himself also to the rhythm of engines carrying him along. Using this metaphor of the journey into himself by ritual dancing he created a powerful environment to share his personal nomadic experiences. An interruption in his artistic journey was duly seen between Toomik' s early paintings and later installations. The artist himself bridged this gap by exhibiting some of his new paintings in a new role, together with installations in the Estonian Art Museum (1997). In his last solo exhibition he also showed paintings forming a strong psychic union with the video installation "Father and Son" (1998). The fragments of exhausted human body which appeared in dim light on those paintings induced an atmosphere of melancholy on the exhibition as a whole. In the video a man approaches from behind the horizon. It is a cold winter day and he is skating naked across the sea — You could recognise the artist himself. Making many circles around the viewer he then skates back and disappears into the white radiance he first came from. The motif continues to loop accompanied by a choral sung by his ten years old son. And yet another circle is formed by Jaan Toomik.