A New Refutation of Time

Kunstverein München

11.01.97–02.03.97

Witte de With, center for contemporary art, Rotterdam

05.04.97–25.05.97

DAVID LAMELAS

A NEW REFUTATION OF TIME

CONTENTS / INHALT

A New Refutation of Time

Foreword

Vorwort

Lynda Morris

Interview with David Lamelas, London, December 1972

Gespräch mit David Lamelas, London, Dezember 1972

Heike Ander

Works / Werke 1962–1976

David Lamelas, Raúl Escari

Self-Awareness

Selbst-Bewußtsein

Benjamin H.D. Buchloh

Structure, Sign and Reference in the Work of David Lamelas

Struktur, Zeichen und Referenz in der Arbeit von David Lamelas

Biography / Biographie

Videography / Videographie

Bibliography / Bibliographie

Acknowledgements / Dank

DAVID LAMELAS-A NEW REFUTATION OF TIME

‘Time, though we can intuit such an identity, is a delusion: the indistinction and inseparability of one moment from its apparent yesterday and another from its apparent today is quite enough to disintegrate it.’

Jorge Luis Borges

Historia de la eternidad

Both the work and person of David Lamelas transgress all geographic, aesthetic and cultural limits. He has never adhered to the apparent order of the art world’s norms and, in his nonchalant and scattered way, has always tested their conventionality. Since the early sixties, he has subjected the concept of ‘artwork’ to a veritable dissection process, redefining it as a model of communication. Lamelas’s rational analyses of exhibition contexts and of the passive role imposed on the public by the mass media are certainly among his most pertinent contributions.

His work is one of the best examples of transition in the cultural one-way traffic of the dominant northern countries, as well as one of the motors behind its reversal. Ever moving from continent to continent, his position in the North-South discussion only became clear when he left Los Angeles in 1988 to return to Europe. In contrast to other South American artists who sought asylum from dictatorships, such as Hélio Oiticica from Brazil, Lamelas did not focus on the suppressed precolonial culture but sought rather the very heart of the international production and consumption of mass media and popular culture. Lamelas’s decision to go to Hollywood in 1977, to adapt the film and television industry to his own needs and working context, can in retrospect be seen as the major fissure in his biography. His interest in the American mass media and his subsequent return to the United States can also be interpreted as a skirting of the South-American dictatorships’ imposed cultural censorship and information freeze. As an artist he produced work that was beyond the film industry’s comprehension.

The basic principle behind Lamelas’s earliest works runs counter to euphoric modernism and its claims of universality and belief in technical progress. He culled his subjects from popular cultures and media, and fragmented his ‘icons’ in paintings and installations. Within a few years he evolved his work from ‘shaped canvasses’ to sculpture that introduced site and sign as opposed to form, and architectural interventions that radically changed the exhibition space. Lamelas’s installation in Oscar Niemeyer’s Biennial Palace in San Paulo was his first radical criticism of the International Style as well as one of the earliest rebukes of the sensationalism of exhibitions due to the architectural imposition of presentation devices. One experienced a similar shock at the Office of Information about the Vietnam War at Three Levels: the Visual Image, Text and Audio, which he presented in the Argentinean pavilion at the controversial Biennale di Venezia of 1968.

During the eighties Lamelas expressed again a clear interest in the conventions of space and architecture through site-specific public works that centered on the urban landscape and oppositions between nature and artifice. Here the symbolic assumes the place previously occupied by the rational analysis, the media criticism, the appropriation of characters and the fictional narratives of his earlier films and video works.

In the exhibition and catalogue A New Refutation of Time, the title of an essay by Jorge Luis Borges read in Lamelas’s 1970 film Reading of an Extract from ‘Labyrinths’ by J.L. Borges, we have essentially focused on the development of Lamelas’s work from the early sixties to the mid-seventies. During this period the notion of time appears in numerous works that explore the possibilities of literary and cinematographic fiction in the visual arts. For Lamelas, the dialectic relations between a static and a moving image intensify the perception of reality like in a narrative construction.

This exhibition aims to rediscover one of the founders of an artistic practice that questions institutions, the status of art and the art market, and that connects the reality of the image with analytical questioning and poetic perception. By rounding out the information on the unprecedented initiators of what is now considered a self-evident artistic practice, we hope to broaden and deepen the discussion on the renewed role of art today. If the contemporaneity of an artwork lies in the moment of its conscious reception, then now must be the time in which Lamelas’s impressive production can be received in its complete topicality.

This ambitious project has been made possible in the first place thanks to the generosity and tireless involvement of David Lamelas. We would also like to thank Benjamin H.D. Buchloh and Lynda Morris for their collaboration on this catalogue; as well as Anke Bangma, Barbera van Kooij, and especially Heike Ander for the compilation of the archive and texts that form this catalogue and exhibition. We are particularly grateful to Klaus Richter of Richter Verlag in Dusseldorf for his commitment to this adventure. We especially want to thank the lenders of works to this exhibition and the institutions that have joined their efforts to make this project a success: the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona and the Fundação de Serralves in Porto.

DAVID LAMELAS-A NEW REFUTATION OF TIME

‘Die Zeit, sofern es uns gelingt, diese Identität zu schauen, ist eine Täuschung. Die Ununterschiedenheit und Unauftrennbarkeit eines Augenblicks, ihres scheinbaren Gestern und jenes anderen scheinbaren Heute reichen hin, sie in sich selber aufzulösen.’

Jorge Luis Borges

Geschichte der Ewigkeit

Werk und Person von David Lamelas können sowohl im geographischen, ästhetischen als auch kulturellen Sinn am besten als grenzüberschreitend beschrieben werden. Er hat sich nie an die scheinbare Ordnung der Normen der Kunstwelt gehalten und sie immer in seiner nonchalanten, zerstreuten Art auf ihre Konventionalität hin getestet. Seit Anfang der 60er Jahre unterwarf er den Begriff vom ‘Kunstwerk’ einem wahren Sezierungsprozeß, in dem er es als Kommunikationsmodell neu definierte. Lamelas’ rationale Analysen von Ausstellungskontexten und der passiven Rolle, die die Massenmedien dem Publikum auferlegen, zählen mit Sicherheit zu seinen relevantesten Beiträgen.

Sein Werk ist eines der besten Beispiele für einen Übergangsbereich im kulturellen Einbahnstraßenverkehr der dominanten nördlichen Länder und gleichzeitig auch einer der Motoren in dessen Umkehrung. Immer in Bewegung zwischen den Kontinenten, wurde seine Rolle in der Nord-Süd-Diskussion erst 1988, als er Los Angeles verließ um nach Europa zurückzukehren, wirklich deutlich. Im Gegensatz zu anderen südamerikanischen Künstlern, die ins Exil gegangen sind, wie beispielsweise dem Brasilianer Hélio Oiticica, konzentrierte sich Lamelas nicht auf die unterdrückte präkoloniale Kultur, sondern suchte nach dem Kernpunkt der internationalen Produktion, des Konsums von Massenmedien und Popkultur. Im Rückblick kann sein Entschluß, 1977 nach Hollywood zu gehen, um dort die Film- und Fernsehindustrie seinen eigenen Ansprüchen und seinem Arbeitszusammenhang entsprechend zu adaptieren, als entscheidender Bruch in seiner Biographie gesehen werden. Sein Interesse an den amerikanischen Massenmedien und seine darausfolgende Rückkehr in die Vereinigten Staaten läßt sich auch als ein Umgehen der Zensur und des Informationsstops unter der südamerikanischen Diktatur interpretieren. Als Künstler schuf er Arbeiten, die das Verständnis der Filmindustrie überstiegen.

Die Grundlage von Lamelas’ frühesten Arbeiten wendet sich gegen einen euphorischen Modernismus mit seinen universalistischen Ansprüchen und seinem Glauben an den technischen Fortschritt. Seine Themen fand er in der Popkultur und den Medien, und fragmentierte seine ‘Ikonen’ in Gemälden und Installationen. In wenigen Jahren entwickelt sich sein Werk von den ‘shaped canvasses’ hin zur Skulptur, die Ort und Zeichen als kontrapunktisch zur Form einführte, als auch zu architektonischen Eingriffen, die die Ausstellungsräume drastisch veränderten. Lamelas’ Installation im Biennalepalast von Oscar Niemeyer in São Paulo war sowohl seine erste radikale Kritik am internationalen Stil als auch eine der frühesten Zurechtweisungen von spektakelartigen Ausstellungen, aufgrund architektonisch auferlegter Präsentationsformen. Einen ähnlichen Schock erlebte man im Office of Information about the Vietnam War at Three Levels: the Visual Image, Text and Audio, das er während der umstrittenen Biennale di Venezia von 1968 im argentinischen Pavillon präsentierte.

Ein ausdrückliches Interesse an den Konventionen von Raum und Architektur brachte Lamelas wieder in den 80er Jahren in ortsbezogenen öffentlichen Arbeiten, die sich auf die Stadtlandschaft und die Gegensätze zwischen Natur und Künstlichkeit konzentrierten, zum Ausdruck. Das Symbolische übernimmt hier den, in seinen früheren Film- und Videoarbeiten von rationaler Analyse, Medienkritik, Rollenaneignung und fiktionaler Erzählung eingenommenen Platz.

In der Ausstellung und im Katalog A New Refutation of Time, Titel eines in Lamelas’ Film Reading of an extract from ‘Labyrinths’ by J.L. Borges von 1970 gelesenen Essays von Jorge Luis Borges, haben wir uns im wesentlichen auf die Entwicklung von Lamelas’ Werk von den frühen 60er Jahren bis in die Mitte der 70er Jahre konzentriert. In dieser Periode erscheint der Zeitbegriff in zahlreichen Arbeiten, die die Möglichkeiten von literarischer oder filmischer Fiktion innerhalb der bildenden Kunst untersuchen. In Lamelas’ Augen intensivieren die dialektischen Beziehungen zwischen einem statischen und einem sich bewegenden Bild die Wahrnehmung der Wirklichkeit wie in einer narrativen Konstruktion.

Diese Ausstellung will einen der Gründer einer Kunstpraxis wiederentdecken, die die Institutionen, den Status der Kunst als auch den Kunstmarkt in Frage stellt, und die Realität des Bildes mit analytischer Befragung und poetischer Wahrnehmung verbindet. Mit dieser Vervollständigung der Kenntnis der wirklichen Initiatoren dessen, was heutzutage als selbstverständliche künstlerische Praxis gilt, hoffen wir die Diskussion über die erneuerte Rolle der Kunst heute zu erweitern und zu vertiefen. Wenn die Gegenwärtigkeit eines Kunstwerks im Augenblick seiner bewußten Wahrnehmung beschlossen liegt, muß jetzt die Zeit gekommen sein, in der Lamelas’ eindrucksvolle Produktion in ihrer ganzen Aktualität angenommen werden kann.

Dieses ehrgeizige Projekt kam an erster Stelle dank der Großzügigkeit und des unermüdlichen Engagements von David Lamelas selbst zustande. Wir möchten im weiteren Benjamin H.D. Buchloh und Lynda Morris für ihre Mitarbeit an diesem Katalog danken, als auch Anke Bangma, Barbera van Kooij und besonders Heike Ander für das Zusammentragen von Archiv und Texten, die Katalog und Ausstellung bilden. Wir sind Klaus Richter vom Richter Verlag in Düsseldorf außerordentlich dankbar für seinen Einsatz in diesem Abenteuer. Wir danken ganz besonders den Leihgebern und natürlich denjenigen Institutionen, die mit gemeinsamer Kraft zum Erfolg dieses Projektes beitrugen: die Fundacío Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona und die Fundação de Serralves, Porto.

LYNDA MORRIS

INTERVIEW WITH DAVID LAMELAS, LONDON, DECEMBER 1972

*

LYNDA MORRISWhat was it like to be an art student in Argentina in the mid-1960s?

DAVID LAMELASI was not working in isolation. I had the same sort of information as an art student in London. An important function was fulfilled by the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires. The director, Jorge Romero Brest, organized exhibitions in the middle and late sixties which included the work of many major European and American artists. The Instituto Di Tella, where I showed my work regularly, was about a crossover of ideas. There I was involved with a group of about ten people, who were mostly working in other disciplines. Between 1966 and 1968, there was increasing emphasis on intellectual theory. There was a dialogue between the disciplines of philosophy, social science, psychology and epistemology. This created a climate of knowledge that foreshadowed the thinking we now define as conceptualism. People from other backgrounds introduced other methods of thinking and opened up many new approaches.

LMCan you tell me about your work?

DLThe last piece I made in Argentina before leaving for London was an installation [Situación de tiempo (Situation of Time)]. On opposite walls of a large, dark room I placed seventeen television sets thirty inches apart from each other. The sets were turned on but not tuned into a program. You could only see the snow effect and hear an electronic sound. At this point, I was interested in non-descriptive, non-physical art pieces.

LMThe medium and the context are the form. The works contain no information beyond the apparatus by which information is conveyed.

DLA television set is an inanimate object when it is switched off. It is only looked at because of the information it conveys when it is switched on. In a similar, but different vein, in 1966 I invited people to attend a performance of a piece of mine in a cinema, [Pantalla (Screen)]. On the screen there was absolutely nothing to see, just the continuous flickering of a blank film. In a related work, [Límite de una proyección (aka Light Projection in a Dark Room)], in a bare, dark room I showed a beam from a spotlight directed at the floor. The beam became a physical object. Another work [Proyección (Projection)] I made at this time consisted of two slide projections. It was shown in a gallery that was about twice the size of the ICA in London. The space was completely empty; all one saw were projectors projecting blank slides.

LMYou came to Europe for the 1968 Venice Biennial?

DLThe Venice Biennial piece, entitled Office of Information about the Vietnam War at Three Levels: the Visual Image, Text and Audio was devised in Argentina. In a small office, I had a telex receiving all information about the Vietnam War through a news agency. Newspapers and TV stations get information about many subjects, but I just wanted information on one subject, so I chose the Vietnam War. The information was read out through a microphone as it arrived on the telex in my room at the Biennial. The telexes themselves were hung on the walls. By the end of the Biennial I had four months worth of telexes.

LMDid you choose the Vietnam War as an intentional social or political comment?

DLI was interested in using information relevant to everyone but not connected with art. I did not make a statement about the Vietnam War but about the way people receive information. The Venice Biennial coincided with what was probably the most critical time in the Vietnam War.

In 1967, I had won a scholarship to go to England, so after the Biennial, I went to St. Martin’s School of Art. I was very disappointed to find out that Jan Dibbets, Richard Long and Gilbert & George had been studying there the year before I arrived.

LMDid your move to England impose changes on your work?

DLOf course a move like that does change your work, but it is in terms of a different development rather than changing the basis from which you work. I was aware of what was happening in Europe and was already working with that knowledge. I had always considered London the ideal place for me to work because of what I knew about the artists working there. It was not because of the work of an individual or even a group. It had more to do with the diversity of what was taking place, the sense of freedom. For the exhibition Prospect in Dusseldorf, in 1968, I made an analysis of the elements by which information takes place [Analysis of the Elements by which the Massive Consumption of Information Takes Place]. For this work I taped the radio in London for six hours and then divided the material into three tapes of different length: firstly, News and Information; secondly, Publicity; and thirdly, Music. Next to the tapes was a table with the newspapers and magazines published in Dusseldorf during the course of Prospect.

LMDid the tapes provide a structure of information that could then be applied to the information on the exhibition?

DLThere was also a four-minute filmloop showing a close-up of someone opening a carton of milk and pouring it into a glass. The film represented an activity. People could consider spoken information, written information and visual information. The second piece I made in London was a film called Study of the Relationships between Inner and Outer Space for the Camden Arts Centre in 1968. It was also shown at the Konzeption-Conception exhibition in Leverkusen [1969].

LMWhat was the background to this piece?

DLAfter the Office of Information about the Vietnam War, I became interested in social context. I had not made any work for about five or six months. I had planned some pieces, but they were never made. This work consisted of a film and a book of stills from the film. The film analyzed the ‘inner space’ of where it was shown, the Camden Arts Centre, and the ‘outer space’ of the whole of London, showing the means by which people traveled to the Centre.

LMThe activities of people become more specific and increasingly more important in this and your later films. Why did you ask in the later part of this film about the Moon Landing?

DLThe last part of the film was about how information gets through to people, and the Moon Landing happened to be the most important piece of information in the press at the time. But the piece was about London, about the city and its people.

LMYou presented the visitors with a work which asked them to analyze their visit to the Camden Arts Centre, how they received information about the exhibition and how they traveled to it. Then they were asked to consider what effect this had on what they saw at the Centre. How did the piece differ when it was shown in another context?

DLIt became absolutely another piece. In Leverkusen it was documentation rather than the actual work.

LMWhat did you make for Prospect in 1969?

DLA film called Time as Activity. It was also shown at the Wide White Space Gallery in Antwerp. I filmed three places in Dusseldorf – the Kunsthalle, a fountain on a main street, and a cross-roads – for four minutes each from a static position. I was consciously working with time in this piece. The concept was the structure, or deconstruction, of time in Dusseldorf, where the film was made and also shown. We very seldom stand still for four minutes to observe what is happening around us. This work also explores the difference between the real place and watching that place on film in a museum. You compare what you see in the film with your previous knowledge and experience of that place. Viewers always talk about the car breaking down or the way the swans move, neither of which I had any control over when I made the film.

The play is between the time it takes to see the piece and the time of each of the sections. It is not about the images, but about getting the viewers to understand the nature of the time they spend watching the piece and the difference in time according to what the images are. Film was just the medium I chose for conveying this.

LMYour works all seem to reflect your concern with providing people with structure rather than information. They are not intended to increase the viewer’s knowledge, but to provide them with a way of looking at their own activities, for self-analysis.

DLWhat is important is that there are no barriers between the viewers’ understanding and what is happening on the screen. It should be obvious and something they are familiar with. The viewer should be able not only to understand the ideas in the film but also to be able to link the film to his own activity of watching it. What happens in the film is a comment on the situation of the person looking at it.

When it was shown at the Wide White Space Gallery, I added three large color photographs of Antwerp