Post on 05-Aug-2020
more from the
Jan/Feb 2015 issue:
Multi
– David Reinfurt
(O-R-G)
Logistics
Make the World
– Jesse LeCavalier
Losing Interest
– Shumon Basar
On Vernacular Computing
– Jacob Gaboury
Review:
Extrastatecraft by KellerEasterling
– Carson Chan
Review:
Amie Siegel: Provenance
– by Rattanamol Singh Johal
Glossary: Curate
– Barry Bergdoll
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Review:Amie Siegel: Provenanceat the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Text / Rattanamol Singh Johal
Amie Siegel, Provenance (still), 2013, HD video, color, sound, 40 min. and 30 sec.
[courtesy of Simon Preston Gallery, New York]
The passages that populate Amie Siegel's 2013 work Provenance [June 23, 2014—January 4, 2015] appear seamless and unhindered. Her expertly executed three-partinstallation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art consists of a central 40-minute videoprojection (Provenance), a framed spread from the printer's proof of an auctioncatalogue (Christie's, October 19, 2013), and a short video set in the auction room atChristie's London, which documents the bidding battle for the title video, consigned bythe artist to the Post-War and Contemporary Art Sale (it sold for $84,788). Within theinstallation's frame, the viewer traverses disparate geographies, clashing chronologies,and competing object economies, yet the urgencies of the situation being documentedare constantly neutralized by a perfected aesthetic of distance, detachment, and tosome extent ambivalence.
The high-definition video camera, a constant companion on the artist's transcontinentalreconnaissance mission, captures the pristine and seemingly uninhabited salons andliving rooms of the Euro-American elite, then courses through auction rooms,photography studios, conservation facilities, warehouses, and cargo-ship holds, beforeexploring the contours, crevices, and cavernous chambers of Chandigarh's modernistbuildings, known across the world as achievements of that 20th-century architecturegiant, Le Corbusier. The north-Indian city, planned and constructed from scratch in the1950s and 60s to serve as a capital for the states of Punjab and Haryana, is theshared legacy of Corb (and company – Pierre Jeanneret, Jane Drew, and Maxwell Fry)and Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister. An avowed modernist, Nehrucommissioned the city to affirm and embody his vision of a forward-looking, secular,and modern new nation, grappling with the trauma of Partition, the challenges ofeconomic ruin, glaring rural-urban disparities, and a severe lack of infrastructure andindustry.
Every aspect of the new city echoed the ideals of the architects and theircommissioner, from its key organizing principle (the indefatigable modernist grid) to thelayout and design of its major public buildings (High Court, Legislative Assembly,Secretariat, Panjab University, and Government Museum and Art Gallery) and theirfurnishings. Desks, chairs, coffee tables, sofas, and cabinets were fabricated enmasse, employing the designs of Corbusier's cousin Pierre Jeanneret, his principalcollaborator on Chandigarh, who remained in the city serving as its chief architect formuch of his life. The unidentified yet easily discernible spaces that open Siegel's videoare impeccably appointed with carefully picked specimens from this prolific production.Chairs dominate this global survey of Jeanneret's displaced furniture, running thegamut from the "Senate" variety with leather upholstery to the more modest classroom,conference room, and library chairs with cane seats and backs. In each of thesespotless rooms, the camera pans and lingers on the individual design objects, dotingon their economy of form and material while revealing subtle traces of their past livesand locations (painted inventory numbers remain visible on their freshly polishedsurfaces).
And thus the journey begins, a voyage-in-reverse, that is. Auctioneers accept bidsrunning into thousands of dollars, in-house photographers scramble to make eachfurniture object appear unique and desirable, restorers work their magic on tornupholstery, broken legs, and damaged wicker. Shots of crowded warehouses andshipping containers lead us right back to the source – the provenance – of thesemobile commodities. Siegel captures Chandigarh's concrete edifices and their interiorsexquisitely: the dull winter sun, the stray monkeys, the pools of water reflecting andsoftening the architecture's hard edges, and indeed, the crowded offices where thesame chairs and tables are subject to continuous use, wear, and tear. Over the years,hundreds have been condemned to rooftops and storage closets, where they await a
purge under suitable protocols. Replacing them piece by piece are modular
workstations and rotating office chairs, today enjoying the kind of universal proliferation
that modernist design and architecture never did achieve. What is most striking is the
coexistence of these period-specific solutions, heightened by the camera's extended
deliberation. No one seems concerned with stylistic incongruities or, more significantly,
the depletion and slow pilferage of a unique legacy. Functionality, comfort, affordability,
and ease of maintenance are the order of the day.
What, then, is Siegel trying to convey? Are we to be surprised that the all-subsuming
art market continues to operate through the nefarious activities of dealers and
suppliers who never fail to exploit weaknesses and leaks in the system? Or does she
rehearse the trope of inherent asymmetry in concepts of heritage, cultural patrimony,
and associated value, between modernism's intellectual homeland and the peripheries
where its productions have remained empty signifiers? The insertion of her own work
into the auction house – wedged between Jasper Johns and Valie Export – speaks of
the kind of self-reflexive strategy spawned by 80s institutional critique, whose potential,
resting in the gesture's immanence, may be altogether exhausted in 2014. For an
incre-dibly sleek, seductive, and highly watchable work, Provenance doesn't quitecome clean about what is at stake.
Perhaps Corb's anthropomorphic metaphors offer us something: if Chandigarh was
designed with a head (the government and judicial headquarters), a heart (the central
commercial district), and lungs (the network of green spaces running through), is the
scavenging of its inner flesh and tissue symptomatic of a collapsed body, a lifeless
organism? Looking beyond the images of dilapidation and decrepitude, we know the
contemporary city endures, supported by its post-modern prostheses and an unshaken
confidence in its ability to draw India's one percent with the promise of wide roads,
regulated traffic, and abundant greenery (Chandigarh consistently tops rankings of per
capita income, living standards, and cleanliness levels in the country). The concentric
logic of Siegel's installation parallels the dialectic between postcolonial modernization
and a home-grown modernism, set in motion by the formidable Nehru-Corb duo. This
dialectic plays itself out repeatedly, its multiple syntheses continually reaffirming and
servicing the demands of a global elite.
– Rattanamol Singh Johal
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