"Procedure, after all, has been followed in each case, and, as any bureaucrat will tell you, this is much more important than the phantom stuff of truth"
Tom Morton, 2005. Maurizio Cattelan: Infinite Jester, in The artist’s joke, 2007, edited by Jennifer Higgie. London, Cambridge: MIT, Whitechapel: 205-211.
Conceived as a plan B to what would have been a more legitimate exhibition (complete with authorized wall space, windows, and real friends) Touching Moments confidently vacillates between flagrant delusions and ascetic candor, work and play, self-irony and ill-conceived judgment. As a project it forges and occupies a space within the precinct of art that, in open recognition of its impoverished currency, makes it seem somewhat worthwhile. Invited by Robert Weinek to facilitate an exhibition with the young curators (participants in an idols styled 18 month curator workshop/program organized by Cape), Christian Nerf and Douglas Gimberg were eventually compelled to resort to hijacking whatever exhibition was on at the national gallery – only to find that there was hardly anything there. Two of the main exhibition spaces were empty, the others filled with the somewhat staid permanent collection, the yield of the illustrious Pancho Guedes and a moving but nonetheless untouchable Ernest Cole exhibit. Finding out from a cleaning lady what we were unable to extract from the front desk, (that the upcoming exhibition was work by the ‘friends of the national gallery’) and then from another lady hidden in a spacious cupboard, that it was a members only event; it was conceded that all in all there was not much to think about and quite clearly nothing worth hijacking. The facilitators resorted to taking photographs of spatial defects.
We met Robert and the young curators at studio 2666 the following morning at 4:30 am. Cajoled on by the early hour, the coffee, rusks and the sherry, as well as Christian and Douglas’ thought provoking presentation, the meeting prompted a series of discussions that came as close as possible to what some might be able to call progressive.
One way of approaching Touching Moments would be to see it as a joke, a handshake with a finger that tickles the inside of your palm, funny because you don’t know how else to react but still awkwardly inept at forging any meaningful relation. Provided with envelopes containing a photograph of one of the selected defects which had been formatted as a work of art (artist, title, date) and the instruction to write a 300 word motivation for the work, the young curators generally approached the project in high spirits, squandered their R15 budget (provided as an entrance fee for the gallery) on air time, transport and other miscellaneous activities and ended up writing five remarkably convincing texts. Placed in an opportune position to speak art speak from an unquestionably non-serious position and reverting sardonically at times to the generic issues that populate the South African art imagination, the final texts read nonetheless as earnestly concentrated interpretations. Recited individually at the Cape offices before being published here, the initial readings were punctuated by self-depreciating giggles, yet while everyone was clearly enjoying the silliness of it all there was still an element of seriousness that undermined the superficiality of the performance. As an experimental process, Touching Moments has exhibited the impossibility of art to be taken seriously, as well as the impossibility of its practitioners to take this non-seriousness too seriously. The ineptitude of art to appear as a sincere pursuit elicits an extremely limited reverberation, as Maurizio Cattelan has repeatedly revealed, the borders of art are exceptionally flexible;
"What's a guy gotta do to piss someone off around here? You try to move the borders a little bit further, and then you realize how easily the art world can absorb any blow. But that's okay, I guess that's part of the game [...] wasn’t the dream of the avant garde to become completely mainstream?"
Maurizio Cattelan (or Massimiliano Gioni, Cattelan’s stand in alter ego) quoted by Tom Morton (ibid).
Like this very blog, which parades itself as an affiliate of the National Gallery, Touching Moments was, to an extent, an attempt to piss someone off, or at least, to take the piss. The opening event, brazenly held outside the National Gallery regardless of having no permission whatsoever, elicited more support than opposition from the gallery staff. The director of the gallery came outside and stood with everyone in the rain to listen to Ronald Suresh Roberts’ speech – she even praised the event afterwards and expressed disappointment that the soap boxes (a permanent installation of bronze soapboxes and a video camera that plays live, though without sound, inside the gallery) hadn’t been used as a platform instead. Despite this glaring lack of outrage, a sense of mischief still pervaded the entire occasion, even as everyone returned merrily to their Friday afternoons, wet paper bagged beers in hand and without so much as a slap on the wrist or a fine for drinking in public. Touching Moments is also, therefore, an exhibition of artists and art practitioners who are at home with the futility of their day jobs, content to play jokes on ourselves and each other without ever needing to laugh too hard. To paraphrase what Tom Morton (2005: 208) so articulately explains, ‘like institutionalized prisoners, what we really want isn’t liberty at all but rather a bigger cell, a better tobacco allowance and more accommodating wardens’.
Confronted then with the opportunity to stand up for something that no one really believes in, the best course of action is either to lie or do nothing. It’s too late to do nothing, and to lie would require an announcement of success, a thigh slapped and a back patted, which would completely undermine the most inspiring aspect of the project, its unashamed failure. To be honest, instead, it is enough to rephrase one of Slavoj Zizek’s favourite Marx brother’s jokes ('this man looks as an idiot, acts as an idiot; but this should not deceive you - he is an idiot!'), altering it then to ‘this exhibition sounds rubbish, looks rubbish; but this should not deceive you – it is rubbish!’.
Francis Burger
