Why would anyone want to go to a war-show? Why would anyone interested in contemporary art want to visit an exhibition that explores the exact same territory as that which we witness abundantly in the media on a daily basis? When talking about the war, it is all too easy to touch upon common ground: the knowledge of a continuous fiasco that is a widespread presumption. So, why raising consciousness about something that we already know everything about? And, if you decide to explore this dicey terrain, how to be at the same time critical and have an artistically compelling significance?

Here is an exhibition that proves the full potential of politically significant but poetic exhibition-making.
Through the presentation of a complex and multi-layered approach, The Renaissance Society in Chicago restrains from walking into the trap of simplicity. When entering a show called Meanwhile, in Baghdad…, it is easy to think about Jonathan Monk’s Deadman as an actual representation of a civilian killed during the Iraqi war. It makes one go silent to be confronted with a dead body lying on the floor. Hearing the weather report, which seems to be broadcasting incessantly throughout the exhibition space, and the sad voice of a child singing somewhere in the nearby distance, makes for a confusing and unsettling aural experience.

There is an immediate sense that there is more going on than one could have imagined. This is not just an exhibition about the war; its premise is rhetorical and mediated entirely throughout the exhibition experience.

Jonathan Monk’s Deadman is not representing a dead Iraqi civilian, it is a waxwork looking like the artist Chris Burden when he was still young, dressed in Middle Eastern outfit after being fatally shot. The work resembles a strangely perverse mix between a Madame Tussaud celebrity waxwork and a Duane Hanson sculptural piece. Here is Jonathan Monk, who through this work couldn’t be farther removed stylistically from his famous conceptual text pieces. It is the work of an artist who investigates a fellow artist –Burden– by simultaneously using artistic and popular techniques. Burden’s original performances, Shoot, Deadman (!) and Trans-fixed, focused on violence. They could be read as pieces being performed in order to reflect the anti-illusionism deriving from the violence of the Vietnam War, so Monk displays a scathingly motivated conceptual art game while relating his piece to the current Iraqi war.

The weather broadcast turns out to be a sound recording of an epic poem by Kenneth Goldsmith, an American poet preoccupied with “uncreativity as creative practice”. Goldsmith uses a series of writing and self–induced constraints, which he combines with appropriation of speech. He has produced a year of transcribed weather reports in The Weather, taken from an all news radio station over the course of the year 2003. These broadcasts would have sounded like those from any other year, were it not for the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003. In response to that, the anchors gave a twofold report, combining New York and Baghdad weather conditions throughout the 15 days of official battle. After those fifteen days, the reading continued in the same indifferent fashion (only reporting about the New York conditions), delivering a cruel irony when taking in consideration the ever-worsening conditions of US presence in Baghdad.

Halfway the exhibition the sad children’s voice is suddenly revealed. In Construction Site, a video installation by Iraqi born artist Adel Abidin, we see a close-up scene of small Iraqi girl’s hands, holding two white disposable plastic spoons. She is playing with small brick parts and sand. The audio is her voice, singing a children’s Iraqi song about peace:

Dear moon, why do you appear like a song about loneliness when
He has been gone for so long my memories are coming back to
Me like colorful rays of time
Making it easier for me to express my longing for him, when
I feel so empty inside

Before the monitor, on the exhibition floor, the same rubble and sand as in the video is scattered around; with a heartbreaking effect. The scene, which took place in a street in Baghdad right after an explosion in 2006, reflects the universal will to dream about safety and peace instead of castles and fairy princesses.

Meanwhile, in Baghdad… approaches the war as a backdrop; exemplifying a shift from the concrete to a context. It is a testimony of art’s ability to provide information that makes you think differently about its subject matter, without being merely informational. This approach is exemplary for some of the best exhibition-making currently happening. It does so by reflecting on socially and politically significant issues, without aiming to be didactic, but rather by opening up the poetic possibilities arising from its ever-changing and all too controversial topics.

Meanwhile, in Baghdad… at The Renaissance Society in Chicago until December 21: here.

(This text first appeared in a different version in hART magazine.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 1:21 am and is filed under Arts, Exhibitions, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.