Electrified 02 - Hacking Public Space: Poetic urban choreographies
Visual arts and media arts meet in public space An interview with the curators of Electrified 02: Eva De Groote (Vooruit) and Thibaut Verhoeven (S.M.A.K.)
During ‘Electrified 02 – Hacking Public Space’ you could witness subtle, poetic performances in the City of Ghent. A man in a fitted suit who lied down when he pleased, a Bulgarian man who taught you a trick in exchange for dirty money, a hobo who asked bystanders to take a picture while he was standing on a rooftop. Needless to say, Electrified 02 took the audience by surprise.
‘Electrified’ is an experimental collaboration between the Vooruit Arts Centre and the S.M.A.K. (the Ghent Museum for Fine Arts). During Electrified 02 – Hacking Public Space, the arts centres focused on public space. Vooruit’s Eva De Groote: “This wasn’t initially the starting point. First, we had to look for similarities between media art and contemporary visual art, and between two completely different art purveyors that operate in the same city.”
Thibaut Verhoeven of the S.M.A.K.: “Media art is underrepresented in museums. Media art is usually presented at festivals, while museums operate in a much more static manner. We really wanted to reflect the attitude of an arts centre like Vooruit in this project.”
What led you to use public space?
Verhoeven: “When brainstorming, we compiled a list of eight words that described our shared attitude. The list consisted of abstract terms such as interactive, ephemeral, dynamic. With those words, we got down to thinking. What could we do together in this common frame? When Eva introduced me to The Yes Men, I had an epiphany. The Yes Men are a group of American political activists who pose as spokespersons for multinationals and spread their satirical message at conferences. In the visual arts, this type of hacktivism is quite common. It started in the sixties, with artists venting social criticism in street performances. With the emergence of virtual public space, several media artists took to hacking with a similar purpose, but aimed at the specific nature of that public space, i.e. the web. We suddenly saw a recurring historical pattern, i.e. the real or virtual public space as a means to convey a hacktivist attitude.”
De Groote: “The word ‘hacking’ is essentially a computer term. Hacking is often perceived as something negative, while hackers originally had good intentions. They were usually geeks who knew a lot about programming and used that knowledge to break into the computer systems of banks and large companies. By doing this, they wanted to prove that their security system was flawed.”
Verhoeven: “With hacking in mind, we decided to invite a few artists to perform in the streets of Ghent, to hack the city so to speak. In order to provide a frame of reference for these performances, we made a timeline, i.e. a subjective history of visual and media art in public space. This overview served as a frame for content, but was also aimed at putting our actions in a historical perspective. Hacktivism has been around for fifty years, so it’s not like we were doing anything groundbreaking.” “The overview highlights the period from 1968 to 2008. We picked a few relevant artists and works for each year. This resulted in a timeline, which clearly shows a shift from visual arts to media arts. In the visual arts, we looked for events that have become iconic. Take Fluxus or the happening movement in the seventies, which saw visual artists experiment with public space. Or take someone like Bas Jan Ader, who was inspired by gravity, but also by his complete physical disappearance in public space. For his last work in 1975, he wanted to cross the Atlantic Ocean by boat. He thought it would take sixty days. Six months after his departure, the wreck of his boat was found, but Bas Jan Ader himself seemed to have vanished from the surface of the earth.”
De Groote: “I thought the timeline was a good solution for a major issue in the media arts. A lot of media art is entertaining and relevant, but not visually interesting enough to exhibit in a museum. The overview made it easy to integrate pieces like these.” “We also made a connection to the present by showing one work from the overview live. Renowned French media artist Cristophe Bruno showed his ‘Human Browser’ on the opening night. He is fascinated by the relation between virtual space, capitalism and language. During the performance, he types in Google keywords. The results are transmitted to a headset worn by an actress with the help of a text to speech system. She repeats these out loud, which leads to pseudo-philosophical babble or an unexpected “Fuck me, please”. The Internet is full of porn, an issue which Bruno raises effectively.”
When looking at the timeline, do you see an evolution in art in public space?
Verhoeven: “The artists who performed at Electrified work in an entirely different context than those in the seventies. Hacktivism was very political and anti-establishment back then. Nowadays, artists mainly experiment with the alienation effect. Many of their performances are quite poetic and try to formulate an artistic answer to the omnipresent slow movement. The artists want onlookers to forget about their stressful lives for the duration of the performance. It’s a form of consolation. Miet Warlop made a beautiful series of video works called ‘Play the Life’ that really catch the spirit of Electrified. In the first video we see her driving her car. As the radio is playing corny love songs, she sings along, serenading unsuspecting bystanders. In another, she gets out of the car to ask for directions. When the person starts his explanation, Warlop imitates his gestures without him realizing. From afar, you see a clever choreography of two pointing arms that go up and down in the air simultaneously. The whole thing turns into an urban choreography that gives a nearly lyrical perspective on urban social tissue.”
If the pieces are intended to console the audience, isn’t it essential that bystanders notice the action?
Verhoeven: “You’re right, but the artists don’t have high expectations. I think they’re looking for one-on-one contact or a simple reaction, but when they see that bystanders notice the performance and their eyes light up, that’s enough for them. It gives them the impression that they played a small part in these people’s lives.”
De Groote: “A similar effect can be obtained with a larger audience in a museum. You don’t have to run in to the performance in the streets. People who visited the exhibit also saw Miet Warlop serenading people from her car. The recording of the event is another tool to spread the message of the artist.”
Verhoeven: “Exactly. I noticed that too during our guided tours. People were really touched by certain pieces.” “We recorded all the performances. The videos could be seen at the exhibition. This was a very interesting way of exhibiting work for us. We’re used to having the exact same exhibition from the opening night to the closing date, which is a very static concept. Electrified was completely different. The exhibition wasn’t finished at the opening night. There was a semicircle of monitors, but only two of those were showing video. The others were showing noise. Every time a performance took place in the city, a video was added. It was interesting to see the exhibition grow so organically.”
De Groote: “It was also our way of showing that the project didn’t merely consist of the exhibition, but that it was a dynamic string of events in the city. The exhibition was merely a framing device for the performances.”
For some artists, the performance is the piece and the recording is secondary. For others, the video is the work.
De Groote: “That’s right. We put everything together and put it on the same level. For Miet Warlop and Messieurs Delmotte the video is the work. But sound artist Pierre-Laurent Cassière had a different approach. For ‘Transphere’ he took two parabolic reflectors, i.e. a microphone and a speaker, into the city. This is a way of transmitting sound on a small scale. It’s a subtle effect, intended to surprise people. Everybody is familiar with the traditional urban soundscape. He plays with that concept by bringing the sound of a passing tram into a shop. It’s his way of manipulating the soundscape of public space. The recording is not really essential. On the contrary, he didn’t want any sound in the recording because he thought it would kill the magic, which is hard to capture on screen. We reached a compromise: we were allowed to film him, but without any sound.”
During the project, there were several performances in the city. Do you think Electrified warmed the hearts of city dwellers?
Verhoeven: “We didn’t want the performances to be announced beforehand. Hacking is essentially an unannounced and unsolicited occupation of a space. The chance that you would witness one of the performances live was very small. The idea behind it was that you wouldn’t attend a performance but that it happened to you, so to speak. That’s the beauty of it.”
De Groote: “We used viral media to promote Electrified. That turned out really well. We received plenty of comments. The project was a bigger hit on the web than in the city. It was a virtual phenomenon. Several bloggers devoted a post to it, and the mainstream press also published articles and pictures on the subject. This generated a lot of buzz, which made people feel involved in Electrified. Not because they saw a performance personally, but because they read about it or saw a picture. To me, that’s just as good and important.”
Verhoeven: “A good example of that is an amazing picture of the performance by Ben Benaouisse that was published in De Standaard, a Flemish newspaper. Benaouisse crawled on a rooftop dressed as a hobo and asked onlookers to take a picture of him. This helps the artist to capture the eye of bystanders. The question is, how will an onlooker frame a picture of a homeless immigrant? He was standing on the roof like a statue on a pedestal or an actor on a stage. The Standaard photographer had climbed even higher up and made a picture including Benaouisse, the roof and the audience. Thanks to the publication of that picture, the message of the artist reached a much larger audience. And, hopefully, this unexpected encounter will lead some people – be it only one – to stop and think about the world we live in and our society. It’s like The Matrix: once you crack the system, you’ll never look at it the same way.”
By Jozefien Van Beek / Translated by Joke Gomperts
