During an ephemeral nomadic escapism from frozen faces we jump to Piccadilly Circus. All topsy-turvy in monumental split screens crying for attention. Imagine seeing I am too sad to tell you (1971, Bas Jan Ader) but in pop colors in various aspect ratio’s and varying sizes. A multitude of angry clowns slam dance their way through a pathway of disco stages. We have seen them before at Sunset Strip in Viper Room and Echoplex during the same trip when at Bergamot Station Please don’t leave me (1969, Bas Jan Ader) was dripping tears of ink. This time though all seemed less carnavalesque and out in the open. Make-up replaced by gravy from Happy restaurant.
Luckily we blend in easily and at Black Sheep fuel our energy to re-visit Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit at Tate Modern. Turbine Hall feels like an aquatic sublevel with jelyfish-like subcreatures on pause while floating into thin air. We take an elevator all the way up to fourth level where we hear the Perverted Master echoeing through gray concrete curves. What keeps us going back is a nostalgia for black and white mannerisms. Kelley’s suffering gives face to feelings of emotional sadness like Ader’s. Subculture, sublevel, substitute, suburb, subbed… privilige.
It all came together during Grace Ndiritu’s reading Grief later that day at Savile Road. When she mentioned “ethnographic museums that hold objects like totem poles hostage” (p.283, 2024, Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit, Tate Publishing) we flash forward to the upcoming group show Can the Seas Survive Us? from 15 March till 26 October at Sainsbury Centre. Let’s also quote “Contemporary Art in Ethnographic Museums” at Framer Framed Amsterdam “The ethnographic object is mostly used to display a narrative about typical actors which neither speaks nor thinks, they only behave. The object is used as evidence of ideas that never change.”
In response to John Kenneth Paranada’s (curator of Can the Seas Survive Us?) question; “how to create new pathways and radical transformations of our relation with the sea?” we wanted to look at objects in their collection from the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia where islands are dissappearing through climate change. From the many objects we chose former figurehead “The Fishermen’s God” of which we created a phantom echo looking like an alien Klabautermann in all yellow. Both figure-head of ships person as object, mascot as talisman, lookout as indicator, edge as limit.
By cutting-up tradiotional narratives we want to show it is migration that elevates cultures and express the false Eurofication of migrant cultures. We removed the familiar from its points of reference to destabilise a sence of perspective and imply physical displacement forging disruption between viewer and subject. Draw attention to our setting of 3D-printed sculptures around antique globe in front of a Shakespearian backdrop highlighting displacement. Six screens together split-read R E F U G E as taken from the un-staged Strangers Case in which Shakespear fourhondred years ago asked for empathy with the Elizabethan Strangers who started to migrate to the UK from the low-countries in the eleventh century to escape large flooding.
Again we weave histories this time to raise empathy for the first legally accepted migrants in New Zealand at risk of climate change under the Pacific Access Category (P.A.C.) and at the same time raise awareness that in Europe we still not have such legal acceptance for migrants at risk of climate change. The setting is a dark surreal island pitted against the metamorphic sublime. Set in sun-set turning letters over as the ground under our feet, recalibrating things in an endless blur of many shades through a wilderness of elsewheres.
What is sacred? Can we ever go back to paradise?
R E F U G E is striped through by the horizon at sea referering to self-censorship as common culture.
Climate change will be everybodies trauma!
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