Courtisane Festival in Gent- A Simple Truth Exhibition

Yesterday I went to the exhibition 'A Simple Truth' in Gent, which is shown as part of the Courtisane Festival. The central theme this year is 'memory'; as I'm planning to write my thesis on memory and language, I found that the exhibition - and the rest of the festival program - were extremely relevant to my research. Phil Collins' piece, for example, specifically deals with the connection between linguistics and cultural memory. The pieces on show in the exhibition were poignant statements about collective and cultural memory, asking questions about the role of media (both art and mainstream) in the shaping of these concepts.


Truth and doubt are inseperable. There's no such thing as an absolute truth, it can't be exactly described, we would need too much words. Sometimes you have to look for details. There you'll find motives that colour and guide, which you'll have to filter and interpret. You've got to build truth, with doubt. A simple Truth looks at the way small gestures and little words define personal recollections and collective memory, how they hide or reveal details.



Telethon- Kevin Jerome Everson, US, 2009



On Memorial Day in 1973, Sammy Davis Jr. hosted a national telethon to raise funds for the Highway Safety Foundation. It wound up losing nearly three-quarters of a million dollars, thanks in no small part to Sammy Davis Jnr’s insistence on having the telethon relayed to over fifty television stations in order to ensure good exposure for himself. Even more curious was the rumoured involvement of the favoured foundation in the production of pornographic films, with filming taking place on a.o. the Highway Safety Foundation bus. But Everson’s Telethon is really about two talented acts waiting to perform in this ill-fated telethon...

I am not sure what to think of this piece; the introductory information provided in the exhibition (and catalog) reads more like an analogy rather than a critical explanation. What I did get from this piece was the questioning of media portrayal of real events. Obviously, Sammy Davis Jr. was the headliner in this telethon, and was the main focus of media attention in relation to the public profile of this event. However, in this piece, two unknown performers are highlighted (I presume they are fictitious characters played by actors). Interjecting actual footage of the telethon with fictional narratives of unknown participants raises the issue of what is shown in the media, and what remains hidden.

Ten Men- Mark Raidpere, EE, 2003



Alienation and isolation are recurrent themes in Raidpere’s work. Ten Men shows a series of ten violent male offenders in Tartu prison. They are all serving long-term sentences, shut away from social life, deprived of any normal professional and individual dignity, imprisoned in a place that leaves them no other possibility of identifying with the society around them. Raidpere asked them how they wanted to be perceived in regard to their personality. The work is unscripted and set against a background of crackling music, reminiscent of a musical box. The prisoners flex their muscles and flaunt their tattoos for the camera, but also smile in embarrassment and look away in hope of solidarity. It is a divergent display of masculinity that leaves us wondering which of the prisoners are brutal criminals and which are simply victims of society.

I found this piece perhaps the most controversial- the portrayal of the men is obviously intentionally ambiguous; we don't know what crimes they committed, only that they were of a violent nature, and that the men continued to be aggressive when imprisoned. The music that plays over the images is the main operative in altering our perception of the men (you can hear it at the start of the video below). I found this quite a disturbing technique- I was watching the videos with the knowledge that these men were dangerous criminals, yet the music attempts to disarm your preconception of them as 'bad'. Freeze frames and slow motion are also employed to single out facial expressions and body language that further confuse our interpretation of these portraits. The piece was effective in that I found myself simultaneously empathetic and fearful of the men.



Visitor- Ivan Grubanov, RS, 2003



When the Serbian artist Ivan Grubanov began his residency at the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam in 2002, this coincided with the start of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague against his former president, Slobodan Milosevic. For two years he visited the Tribunal regularly. Confronted with the man and the events which had shaped his life, he looked for a way to capture the intensity of this experience. He started to make drawings, in an attempt to relate to this chapter in history. Again and again, from the same angle Grubanov draws the man who dominated his life, although he had never met him before. Gradually he developed a sensitivity for Milosovic’s slightest gestures. The intimacy of the drawings is insidious...

I really liked the presentation of this piece- a projector was beaming out the illustrations onto a wall. A very simple, clean exhibit, that relied on the weight of the drawings for meaning. The drawings themselves were minimal line drawings, effective in portraying body language and recognizable characters (Milosevic being the center piece, alongside the judicial participants). Most drawings had a line of text scribbled, almost illegibly, marking out a significant moment in court relating to the crimes Milosevic was being tried for. The illustrations show the retelling of war atrocities and crimes that affected a whole population, played out in the clinical setting of a systematic courtroom. The seeming visual disconnect between Milosevic on trial and the stories of war crimes is effective- we know of the artist's personal involvement in these events, and as a consequence the drawings become a therapeutic, if not a somewhat obsessive attempt, to process memories that are so far removed institutionally from the court proceedings.

Zasto Ne Govorim Srpski (Na Srpskom)- Phil Collins, UK, 2008



“A few years ago I was in Prishtina with a friend from Croatia, miming at the guy behind the counter for beer. In the end my friend came out and asked ‘Imate li pivo, molim?’ There was a very complex reaction from the elderly shop assistant. He said, in Serbian, that he hadn’t spoken Serbian for such a long time. My friend from Croatia corrected him – she was from Croatia, and was actually speaking Croatian. And if his face fell a little, I don’t know. Someone else came in the shop, we made our purchase and left.”

Phil Collins often works in socially and politically contested regions, employing elements of popular culture, low budget television and reportage style documentary, to articulate a critical fascination with the ways in which contemporary media structure lived experience. Shot in black and white 16 mm film, the film weaves unbearably intimate close-ups into a fragmented and effective panorama of Kosovo’s recent past. Contributors include politicians, intellectuals and public figures as well as ‘ordinary’ people recounting in Serbian the reasons why they no longer speak the Serbian language. They range from attempts to historicize experience to deeply personal accounts of trauma and loss.