"Moment Ginza"
Art Monthly, London, June 1997, p.39-41
Situated in the 60-metre long section 'Rue' at Le Magasin, 'Moment Ginza' results from a proposal by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. Not so much an exhibition, more of an environment, it was inspired by the Avenue Ginza in Tokyo which on Sunday afternoons transforms into a pedestrian promenade: 'a site... for subtle and transgressive choreography'.
The aim of this curatorial experiment is described as the creation of a potential space between reality and virtuality via conflicting urban experiences - 'the city as a transitional site'. Apart from four tables of commercial CD-Roms and Internet sites (one relating to the project), there are works by 13 artists and a collective, Les bourratives. The works are aligned on either side of the street, punctuated by zebra crossings between a vast curved wall on the left and brightly coloured columns on the right which support six yellow globes: Belisha Beacon System, 1997, by Angela Bulloch, a piece which decorates rather than illuminates.
'The construction of the city takes place inside the viewer', reads the hand-out, and drifting into the curiously empty space, swaying to the soft saunds of ambient music and flowing water, one sees on the right, Animal Public, 1994-97, by Jean-Luc Vilmouth which shows a large wall-mirror flanked by two metal tables; one displays rows of potted plants, the other is piled with plastic animal masks emitting muffled growls. (Vilmouth's concern with animals has manifested itself through his Channel Fish, his installation at Waterloo International Terminal and a recent jungle-bar installation with photographs of pubescent girls suckling dogs.) Opposite, Pierre Huyghe's Death Star Interior, 1966, a graphic poster of the 'dark planet' ('Star Wars' series), has 'an extra-bedroom... new scenarios': it sounds promising but sheds no light. Next is the 9-screen video, Moment Ginza, 1997, produced by Gonzalez-Foerster herself. Ange Leccia and Anne Frémy, which functions as a trailer for the whole exhibition. 'Identifying the atmosphere and the specific features of this urban moment', it reads like a tourist advertisement, technically neat and stereotypical in its mix of ancient and modern images of Japan. Perhaps the intention is to deconstruct exoticism.
The curved wail is decorated with Shogun Screen, 1997, by Vidya & Jean-Michel: described as a 'de-luxe fresco, forming a virtual landscape', its interior scenes, delineated in calligraphic style, hover in a surreal-pop space which includes a triple Mount Fuji - ideal decor perhaps for a 'super-modern non-place' as described by Marc Augé. Across the zebra crossing is the only separate room, a white cube empty but for a mass of inflatable cushions clinging to the ceiling - toy hot-air balloons suspended in wordlessness as though in a comic strip: this is Speech Bubbles, 1997, by Philippe Parreno. Then back up the street to see the wall-piece, La Fête au Quotidien, 1996, by Liam Gillick & Gabriel Kuri: this is a calendar of virtual festivities presented at Le Magasin in 1996 which here represents one of Gonzalez-Foerster's 'reminiscences' or 'repetitions in space which lend reality to the site'. It is a somewhat forced alliance, but the piece has a Dadaist wit which lightens the spirit. Another possible connecting thread through this urban labyrinth is the multicolour Wool Memories (I Just covered Macramé), 1994-96, by Vidya & Jean-Michel. Described as a 'wool cable', it appears, in fact, to be twine that has been pulled taut to the end wall where it winds down into a basket (full of Annette Messager's remnants?). Could this be local craft subverting the dominant order of global commercialisation? In between two beacons is Allen Ruppersberg's wall-piece. The Novel That Writes itself, 1978-1996, another 'reminiscence' in which rows of 60s-style Rock posters carry such declarations as: 'The colour of reflection is pink'. Two clocks, one at either end, show the time of day in Grenoble and Tokyo - a judicious representation of cultural difference - is this indeed airport art? If so, Brian Eno's ambient compositions would have been appropriate.
Bemused, we stroll on to the sound of funky music, a mix of Catalan folk and sleasy salsa. Near the end wall lies Untitled, 1990, by Felix Gonzalez-Torres: a stack of red posters to be distributed in the street, 'an ideal public sculpture' and also a 'reminiscence'. Opposite is a huge billboard Lavorare è un brutto mestiere, 1993, by Maurizio Cattelan, showing a poster for a James Bond film while mid-street lies a coloured cluster of office chairs, vacant and forlorn. This, together with a water fountain, fruit machines, the clocks and the zebra-crossings, forms part of the decor by Gonzalez-Foerster - standard fittings for a 'non-place'?
'Moment Ginza' is a highly ambitious project. The political and anthropological questions raised by confrontations between the individual and the collective, the local and the global in a postmodern urban space, are worthy issues, especially for artists working with new technologies. The crucial point made by Augé is that whereas ahistorical 'non-places' can be areas of potential liberties, if they are not balanced with historical places, there is risk of 'madness and solitude'. However, Gonzalez-Foerster's vision dwells on a Baudrillard-style simulacrum of the city centre mise en spectacle for suburban tourists on Sunday visits. This representation amounts to a supermarket environment, a typical 'non-place', designed for consumerism where interactivity is reduced to marketing video games rather than presenting experimental VR installations. The potential, almost minimal, magic of Virtual Space is dissipated by the contrast in scale between the small monitors and the monumentality of the material space. A theme with such exotic overtones needs post-colonial reflection. Instead of allowing for a polyphonic discourse, there is an appropriation of the other through the affectation of a certain Japanese style. All this, as well as the nostalgic 'reminiscences', simply does not add up and the tendency towards mystification reduces the viewer to a state of subordination. At the heart of the exhibition is its modish a-theoretical position which reflects an aspect of current French art that could be related to the so-called new philistinism of Brit Art but for its lack of provocation and humour. There is a very real need to subvert hierarchies in French culture but this shows 'transgressive choreography' just limps around the Virtual and misses its leap into the Real.
Virginia Whiles
Virginia Whiles is a critic, curator and lecturer in cultural studies at Rouen Ecole des Beaux Arts.